Private Contractors Failing Just as Spectacularly in Afghanistan

Let's talk about how superior the private sector is to the public sector for a bit. We're going to hear a lot from Republicans about how government is evil and corrupt and incompetent, and how the private sector is the only entity that can really get things done -- and does it cheaper. The first problem here is that the math doesn't work at all. Let's say a project will cost X when all is said and done. You look at materials, labor, equipment you may need, gas, etc. and that's what you wind up with. A private contractor would need X + profit to get the job done. Government can do it for X, because it doesn't have to turn a profit. Last time I checked, X + anything is more than just X, so the idea that a private company can do the same thing for less doesn't really pan out, arithmetically. The only way you can pull this off is to subtract from X -- and that means skimping on something somewhere and winding up with a cheap piece of crap. Doubt it? Then explain why military personnel were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq or why they were served rotten meat.

In 2006, Business Week reported, "The losses to fraud and waste in Iraq are almost certainly in the billions, current and former government officials agree. The Special IG for Iraq Reconstruction says it has more than 80 open investigations and has referred 20 more cases to the Justice Dept. for prosecution. A spokesman for the criminal investigative arm of the Defense Dept. says that office expects a 'rise in referrals of potential fraud or corruption cases' because of the recent deployment to Iraq of additional Pentagon investigators and FBI agents."

Billions in waste and fraud, often covered by unfinished and unusable projects, doesn't really strike me as big savings. It strikes me as waste and fraud. The military used to do a lot of this stuff themselves -- do we really need to outsource mess halls and laundry duty, for example? -- but now it has, for reasons nobody seems to be very good at explaining, become completely impossible. The military can fire a long range missile straight down the chimney of some terrorist hide out with pin-point accuracy, but they couldn't possibly cook a damned hamburger.

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The Media, Massa, Paris Hilton, and Afghanistan

Not feeling 100% this morning -- late winter cold or early spring fever or a combination of both, I think. Anyway, it's going to be short today. Luckily, I found a guy to guest-blog for me, so here ya go:

Politico:

In a speech on the House floor, an angry [Rep. Patrick] Kennedy turned a speech on Afghanistan into a finger-pointing lecture to the Washington press.

"If anybody wants to know where cynicism is … cynicism is that there is one … two press people in this gallery," Kennedy said, angrily pointing to the press gallery where reporters sit. "We're talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press?"

"No press!" Kennedy repeated, his voice cracking. "You wanna know why the American public is fit? They're fit because they're not seeing their Congress do the work that they're sent to do."

"It's because the press, the press of the United States, is not covering the most significant issue of national importance, and that is the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. ... It's despicable, the national press corps right now!" Kennedy said before being cut off by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), who was presiding over the chamber.

Granted, Erik Massa is a big story, but where was Afghanistan before that story broke? There's an honest to God war on -- a war of debatable merit -- and there's no coverage. Part of the problem here is that there's no debate of those debatable merits. Democrats and President Obama have painted themselves into a corner on Afghanistan. They supported occupying Afghanistan as a way to avoid looking weak for opposing the occupation of Iraq. It may have been a good short term strategy (politically speaking, anyway), but in the long term, maybe not so much. And Republicans? Well, what do you need to say, other than it's a war. If it involves converting massive amounts of money into bombs, then blowing all that money up, they're all for it. It's what they do. There's your bipartisanship for you -- we can all agree to kill people and blow up money, but we can't get it together to save people's lives and save our own money with decent, affordable healthcare. Yay for bipartisanship.

At issue was a resolution to withdraw from Afghanistan. It was doomed to failure and lost big -- 65 yeas to 356 nays. Support withdrawal? Fine. Don't support it? Fine.

But shouldn't a real war be some kind of an issue to somebody? Doesn't an issue this big and this consequential deserve some kind of debate? And not just in congress but, as Rep. Kennedy points out, in the press?

Otherwise, the "forgotten war" will just keep on being forgotten. We can still chase around Erik Massa or whatever other scandal-of-the-day is out there. It's a 24 hour news cycle -- there's plenty of time. We'd still have time to find out what Paris Hilton had for breakfast.

But can't we get an hour or two for Afghanistan?

-Wisco


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Someone Want to Tell Limbaugh There's a War On?

A lot of people think that Rush Limbaugh is knowledgeable and intelligent. Those people couldn't be more wrong. Yes, he commands a big audience by talk radio standards, but it isn't all that hard to convince a pack of idiots that you know what you're talking about. On issue after issue, Limbaugh not only demonstrates no understanding of politics and the law, but that even the most very basic facts are beyond him. There have been a few real boners over the years, but none as bad as Monday's gaffe.

Raw Story:

During is Feb. 15 broadcast, the man commonly credited as the strongest voice in the Republican party spun his reality-bending spiel after suggesting that big-box retail chain Walmart lobbies Washington lawmakers to keep Obama from "nationalizing" them -- a statement that, if not a joke, can only be characterized as transparently false.

"The last time this happened was World War II," Limbaugh said. "But that was because there was a war on and it made sense. But there's no war on right now, other than the Taliban wing of the Republican party and its war against Obama and the Democrats."

Even as he declared "there's no war on right now," American and NATO troops waged a house-to-house campaign in the Afghan city of Marjah. In the month of January alone, 32 U.S. soldiers died from wounds inflicted by improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan, amid a dramatic spike in violence. A total of 317 U.S. soldiers died prosecuting the war in 2009; at time of this writing, another 43 had already been felled so far in 2010, according to iCasualties.org. In Iraq, while violence is down from years past, 4,376 American soldiers have been killed since President George W. Bush launched the war in 2003.

Obviously, there is a war on -- two, in fact -- and Limbaugh himself was once a big fan of both of them. Had someone on the left screwed up this bad, Limbaugh would dedicate a three hour show to it. It would be proof that the left is out of touch, that they never think of the troops in the field, that they don't understand, let alone appreciate, the sacrifices made on our behalf.





But Rush himself did it, so somehow, it'll be cool. It does point to one problem that almost no one is talking about; we've fought these wars for so long that it's become background noise. When the war in Iraq is officially over, it'll will become the second longest war in American history. The longest will be Afghanistan. War has become a constant in our lives, so much so that we've come to confuse our current state with peace. I'm not making an excuse for Limbaugh who, as a "pundit," is expected to know what the hell he's talking about. But I'm explaining how easily the mistake could be made by someone else. It's especially galling for Limbaugh to do it, after constantly attacking President Obama for ignoring the "War on Terror." The WoT is an actual, honest to goodness war, Limbaugh and others on the right argue. To drop that argument so easily and offhandedly shows you how much Limbaugh believes it.

But Afghanistan is a real war and has been called the forgotten war. All of our attention -- left and right -- has been on Iraq. But the war in Afghanistan roars on, whether we're paying attention or not.

L.A. Times:

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and The Outskirts Of Marja, Afghanistan -- As U.S. Marines battled Sunday to consolidate their hold on the southern Afghanistan town of Marja, Western commanders reported the first serious setback of the 2-day-old offensive: the deaths of a dozen Afghan civilians in an errant rocket strike.

At least four of those killed were children, an Afghan government official said.

U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of Western forces in Afghanistan, apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the deaths. The fatalities marked the first instance of large-scale civilian casualties since the start of fighting in Nad Ali, the district in central Helmand province where Marja lies.

"We regret this tragic accident and offer our sympathies to the families of those killed and injured," said Maj Gen Michael Regner. "Our combined forces take every precaution to minimise civilian casualties and we will investigate this incident to determine how this happened."

Allow me to make an argument that Regner -- or Limbaugh, for that matter -- would never make; those people were killed deliberately.

Not those very Afghan civilians, but some Afghan civilians. Follow me here; if you'd asked anyone who was in any way realistic about war if there would be civilian casualties, the only honest answer would be "of course." If you take a course of action that youknow will result in civilian deaths, you can't come back later and say you didn't mean to kill any civilians. Not honestly and logically, anyway. You did something that you were sure would kill civilians and you were right. You can say you didn't mean to kill these particular civilians, but someone was going to lose that backwards lottery and you knew it. People are dead and you knew it would happen.

To make matters worse, while all of this deliberate death is going on, we're busy pretending it's not. Maybe we're sick of war, but imagine how Afghans feel.

Of course, imagining how Afghans feel would require some compassion. Not to mention some admission of responsibility from fair weather war cheerleaders like Limbaugh. So that's not going to happen. What will happen is that people like Limbaugh will become so tangled up in their own denial and vitriol that they forget the killing is happening at all.

-Wisco


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Expecting More of Obama

Big night last night. The president's announcement of an escalation of the Afghanistan war managed to make few people happy. On the right, this can be explained -- to a large extent, anyway -- by kneejerk partisanship. For them, Barack Obama can do no right. They don't like that the president set a 18-month timeline to begin withdrawal. But it's not hard to imagine that, had he gone with an Bush-like open-ended commitment, they would be criticizing him for not having an exit strategy.

With the media stuck in the 2008 presidential campaign, it should be less surprising that they keep running to John McCain for reactions to Obama's actions. They don't seem to realize that there is now no way that McCain/Palin can still win it (it's over, guys). But they keep doing it and I keep wondering why. Still, McCain gives what we can call the unofficial Republican response on ABC's Good Morning America today:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said while he agrees with the president's decision to up the number of troops, setting a timeline for withdrawal will only allow the Taliban to regroup and emerge stronger when U.S. forces leave Afghanistan.

"I support the president's decision to have a properly resourced counter insurgency strategy," McCain told "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts today. "My only difference... is setting a date for return... Dates should be determined by success on the ground not by the calendar."

Remember that whole "commanders in the field" thing Bush used to pull? He'd basically argue that the president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and, as such, he couldn't do anything that the Pentagon didn't agree with. It didn't make any sense then and it doesn't now, but McCain seemed to buy it at the time. You wonder why he doesn't buy it now.





"I'm absolutely supportive of the timeline," says Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top "commander in the field," "The 18 months timeline, however, is not an absolute. It's not an 18 months and everybody leaves. The president has expressed on numerous occasions a long-term strategic partnership with Afghanistan and that includes all manners of assistance."

So there's that. Other reactions have been as predictably reactionary.

It seems clear that if we want legitimate criticism of Obama's plan for Afghanistan, we'll have to point our eyes leftward.

MSNBC's FirstRead:

Democrat Russ Feingold (WI) today suggested there is a "significant" number of Senate Democrats with concerns about the administration's plan to increase troops in Afghanistan.

[...]

"I was just in a Democratic conference lunch, and I spoke out on this," he said on the Senate floor. "And I won't say who-said-what, but the number of people who joined me in expressing these very concerns was significant. Many members in my caucus, and I believe members of the Republican caucus -- perhaps from different philosophical prospective -- will come to the same conclusion that this is a mistake to move in the direction of this huge troop buildup."

It sounds like we won't have to look far on the left to get that criticism. A "significant" number can mean a lot of things, but it can't mean "a few." Feingold doesn't really play those word games anyway. Take it from someone who's lived in his state his entire career -- Russ Feingold is blunt. If he says the number is "significant," then it is. Or, at least, he believes it is.

But this leaves everyone on the left -- Obama, those who support his decision, and those who oppose it -- in a difficult position. For Obama, he's already made his concession to progressives -- he's included a timeline for withdrawal. Had this happened with Bush and Iraq, Democrats would've popped the champagne and declared victory. Party hats and whistles all around.

On the other hand, Democrats opposed to the increase have good reason to expect more from Obama than they did of Bush. So it's logical that they would demand more of him than they did of Bush. Where a timeline for withdrawal from Bush would've been acceptable to most Democrats, that acceptance would've been the result of what Bush himself once called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

For Obama, there is no such soft bigotry. And this is were the problem stems for everyone. Progressives need to expect more, while Obama seems to believe he can't do more. Something has to give and it's hard to see where the give will be.

-Wisco


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In the Graveyard of Empires

Like most problems his administration faces, Obama inherited the the war in Afghanistan from his predecessor, George W. Bush. And, like most of these Bush legacies, it's the result of incompetence, neglect, and an obsession with neoconservative ideology. Afghanistan is a big pile of military blunders and foreign policy mistakes. Let's look at the military side and just focus on the obvious for a moment.

Afghanistan is well-known as the "graveyard of empires," an impossible terrain in a difficult to reach region of the world. It's nation of mountain ranges with mile after mile of natural fortresses. Fighting a war on two fronts is a classic military mistake and Bush made it by deciding to invade Iraq -- for no good reason. Iraq became the "central front on the war on terror," with Afghanistan becoming a nearly forgotten adventure that popped up in the news occasionally. We were fighting a war in what very well may be the most dangerous region of the world and doing it halfheartedly. Combine this with installing a corrupt puppet government and you could only screw things up worse if you tried.

But it wasn't only Bush who was making strategic mistakes here. At home, especially on the campaign trail, Democrats used the Afghanistan war to beef up their own military bona fides. They pointed out everything that I just have, while thumping their chest and proclaiming themselves better at war. Barack Obama may have inherited the Afghanistan war, but he also used it as political leverage against Iraq war supporters -- he wasn't some hippy-dippy peacenik, he wasn't against war, he just didn't like the Iraq war. Why, lookie here at the Afghanistan war -- now there's a war someone ought to win.





It's impossible to say whether this particular war would've been won or lost by now if the Bush administration hadn't distracted themselves with their fun little snipe hunt in Iraq. But I think it would've been over by now, win or lose. The Bush administration, dominated by starry-eyed dreamers who thought they were neocon supermen, were certain they could have everything and that nothing in history applied to them. They were special, they were the first realists to ever walk the face of the earth, geniuses to a one and pretty damned near infallible.

The result was disaster on all fronts. All they really managed to do was to keep the ball rolling long enough for someone else to come along and fix it all. And Barack Obama was the guy who came along.

New York Times:

President Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan as he prepared to address the nation Tuesday night to explain what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency.

Mr. Obama conveyed his decision to military leaders late Sunday afternoon during a meeting in the Oval Office and then spent Monday phoning foreign counterparts, including the leaders of Britain, France and Russia.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, declined to say how many additional troops would be deployed, but senior administration officials previously have said that about 30,000 will go in coming months, bringing the total American force to about 100,000.

30,000 is the number everyone seems to be using. If there's anything good to be taken away from this, it's that the kid who fixes the jams in the Obama White House copymachines is probably smarter than anyone in the Bush administration. But this is an unsatisfying takeaway.

If it were me, I'd blow off the classical military strategies in Afghanistan. History shows that this "blow stuff up and kill lots of people" way of doing things doesn't accomplish much. What I would do would be different.

I'd take all the troops that were there now and secure the largest contiguous area we could safely secure. Then I'd turn that area into Awesome City. We're talking freakin' Disneyland here. All the money we'd be spending on blowing things up, we'd spend on building. There are people in Afghanistan who not only don't have electricity, but don't know what electricity is. Simple infrastructure work would look like a miracle to many of them. Move your gaze a few countries over to the middle east; people don't like Hamas because they blow things up, they like them because they build and do charity work. The thing you don't hear about much in the west is that Hamas builds hospitals and schools. They do things their governments fail to do.

We don't have to play a classic offense/defense game -- which history shows is a loser anyway -- we can play a defense/defense game and win the war by fighting it in people's heads. If NATO-controlled Afghanistan is Awesome City and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is Sucktown, where do you think most people are going to want to live? And how much popular support do you think that would leave the Taliban? Who's going to join the Sucktown Defense League?

But, of course, I'm not Commander in Chief. Whatever we do in Afghanistan, Republicans and Democrats should remember that they blew it. Republicans can blame themselves for backing the invasion of Iraq and Democrats can blame themselves pushing Afghanistan to prove they aren't "soft on terrorism" or pacifist pansies.

There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing down the road, but few of those fingers will be attached to clean hands.

-Wisco


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'The Only Solution Given is Pills'

The Army has a bit of a problem. Despite efforts to curb suicide among troops, Army suicides continue to rise. "One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year," CNN reported yesterday. "The Army said it already has confirmed seven suicides, with 17 additional cases pending that it believes investigators will confirm as suicides for January.

"If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January."

In fact, the Army has seen a rise in suicide every year for the past four years. To combat the problem, the service has created a "battle-buddy" program, which is basically the buddy system for suicide, but this has turned out to be as ineffective as you might have thought it would be.

In 2005, in testimony to a House Appropriations subcommittee, the Army’s surgeon general placed the blame squarely on the troops. "That’s still part of our culture: Real men don’t see [mental health counselors]…" said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley. "I would like to see a culture that resets the force mentally." Macho, tough guy culture was killing troops, but it seems a pretty safe assumption that this culture had been with the Army longer than its suicide problem. I don't remember the Army having a previous reputation as being a place for sharing and emotional support. Clearly, this "real men" culture -- which, of course, includes real women -- may be aggravating the problem, but it couldn't possibly be the cause.

For their part, the Army seems at a loss to explain the real cause of the suicides. "This is terrifying," Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard told CNN. "We do not know what is going on." She speculated that maybe it was winter blahs.

"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.

"But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers," CNN reported.

Now we're getting someplace.





"Unfortunately, I don't find [the rise in suicides] very surprising," John Soltz, an Iraq war vet and founder of VoteVets.org, told MSNBC's Tamron Hall. He said that, of the some 160,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, "twenty thousand of them are medicated on different things like Prozac and Zoloft."

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, Soltz said, wasn't considered seriously enough and, if a soldier does complain of mental or emotional stress, Army doctors will "just give you a pill and send you back to combat."

In a June TIME magazine piece titled "America's Medicated Army" journalist Mark Thompson spoke to a service member about his experience in Iraq. "You don't always know who the bad guys are. When you search someone's house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there's little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor -- things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they would," said Sergeant Christopher LeJeune. "It's not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they're having over there for a variety of reasons. If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills." LeJeune says he was given the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam.

Looking at the warnings, this seems like an insane combination. Zoloft warnings include, "You may have thoughts about suicide when you first start taking an antidepressant, especially if you are younger than 24 years old." Meanwhile, clonazepam users are warned, "People who have underlying depression should be closely monitored while taking clonazepam, especially if they are at risk for attempting suicide."

In May of 2006, the Hartford Courant did an investigation of the military's drug prescription practices and found "a growing number of mentally troubled service members who are being kept in combat and treated with potent psychotropic medications -- a little-examined practice driven in part by a need to maintain troop strength."

Among the paper's findings:

-Antidepressant medications with potentially serious side effects are being dispensed with little or no monitoring and sometimes minimal counseling, despite FDA warnings that the drugs can increase suicidal thoughts.

-Military doctors treating combat stress symptoms are sending some soldiers back to the front lines after rest and a three-day regimen of drugs -- even though experts say the drugs typically take two to six weeks to begin working.

-The emphasis on maintaining troop numbers has led some military doctors to misjudge the severity of mental health symptoms.

If John Soltz's numbers are correct, these conditions are true for 12.5% of troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the Army isn't tracking this at all. The TIME article tells us, "At a Pentagon that keeps statistics on just about everything, there is no central clearinghouse for this kind of data, and the Army hasn't consistently asked about prescription-drug use, which makes it difficult to track." In fact, TIME tells us:

Military families wonder about the [Army's reliance on prescription drugs], according to Joyce Raezer of the private National Military Family Association. "Boy, it's really nice to have these drugs," she recalls a military doctor saying, "so we can keep people deployed." And professionals have their doubts. "Are we trying to bandage up what is essentially an insufficient fighting force?" asks Dr. Frank Ochberg, a veteran psychiatrist and founding board member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Given everything we know about the use of psychotropic drugs to medicate soldiers, it seems amazing that few would make the connection with the rising suicide rates. But admitting the connection would've meant an admission of failure by the Bush administration -- something they just didn't do. The military was "completely overextended by the Bush administration," said Soltz, adding that he hoped the Obama administration would do a better job of addressing these issues.

That hope should be shared by most of us, since it seems pretty clear that we're killing our own troops in an attempt to keep them in the field.

-Wisco

A Green New Deal

I guess the big news from this weekend is that some guy in Iraq winged a pair of shoes at President Bush's head. All the news reports are telling us that this is a "sign of contempt" in Iraq, but it's hard to think of a place in the world where it would be a sign of anything else. It may not be universal, but it'd still be a pretty clear signal of disrespect anywhere you go -- "And now, in our traditional welcome, we shall batter you with shoes..." Still, shoes must be dirt cheap in Iraq, because you know that guy's probably not getting them back. I'm sticking with flipping the bird. Especially in this economy.

The shoe story has been so big that it's knocked other stories off the front page. Blagejovich has become "Blag-who-evich?" If the Governor of Illinois had known that was all it took to take the media heat off him for a moment or two, he might've hired someone to throw a pair of size 10s himself. That's one way to get a little breathing room.

But the shoe-chucker also knocked a developing story off the media radar this weekend. And that story's bigger than Blago. It's a developing story with international implications. Where the neocons in the Bush administration thought they could rebuild the world by knocking stuff down and blowing people up, others want to rebuild the world by rebuilding the world.





And if there was ever a time that the world needed rebuilding, it's now. The financial crisis is global, leaving no nation untouched. At the same time, we're facing what many recognize as the challenge of our lifetime -- if not of our young century -- global warming. There's a growing consensus out there that these are two problems with a single solution.

UN News Service:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for renewed global solidarity to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and the financial crisis, telling ministers gathered at a United Nations conference in Poland that the world cannot afford to let economic woes hinder progress on “the defining challenge of our era.”

[...]

“The world is watching us. The next generation is counting on us. We must not fail,” he told participants from nearly 200 nations, who have been meeting for nearly two weeks as part of UN-led negotiations aimed at reaching an ambitious global climate change deal next year.

Secretary Ban used the term "Green New Deal" to describe what was needed. "An investment that fights climate change, creates millions of green jobs and spurs green growth," he said. "In short, our response to the economic crisis must advance climate goals, and our response to the climate crisis will advance economic and social goals."

This story followed other stories along the same lines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used a weekend interview to announce that she'd seek an even larger economic stimulus package than had previously been considered. "This week we had our most recent presentations from economists to tell us what -- how robust such a package should be in order to have an impact on the economy, to turn the economy around," she said on Bloomberg TV's Political Capital with Al Hunt. "Economists told us that the package had to be strong enough, half a trillion, $600 billion, somewhere near that." A large part of that would go toward broader internet access and green energy.

And Barack Obama's thinking even bigger:

Raw Story:

President-elect Obama's transition team may double the size of a planned economic stimulus package in an effort to prevent soaring unemployment.

"Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as 'a very low-end estimate,' one person familiar with the matter said," according to a report in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. "The final number is expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over two years."

"We won't do it the old Washington way," Obama said about his stimulus plan earlier this month. "We won't just throw money at the problem. We'll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve -- by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world."

Some see this as a return to the policies Franklin Roosevelt used to deal with the great depression. "Well, I think the government is back and we're all the better for it," says economic analyst Jeff Madrick. "In fact, the government has been away at least since Ronald Reagan...

"If we spend money at the federal level at propitious times, we can get that bottom we're talking about and begin to recover as well. Unemployment comes down. Incomes rise again... Our infrastructure is a mess. Our education needs reform. We're not attended to our energy needs, people well know now."

Economic theory has been bass-ackward since Reagan. And Bush's policies have only been an exaggeration of that trend. Where government needs to spend when times are bad and build surpluses when times are good, Republicans have been approaching everything in the opposite direction -- only worse. Spend money when times are good, borrow money when things are bad. You don't need to be economic genius to see that that's a bad idea. All the while, we're supposed to keep cutting taxes and expect government to operate on sunshine and happy thoughts. National debt skyrockets, wages stagnate, and the economy relies on paper shufflers who don't actually produce or sell anything.

On the other hand, you need something constructive to spend money on when times are bad. Some argue that it was WWII, not FDR's public works programs, that ended the depression. But that stops making sense when you think about it; we take our nation's wealth, convert it to bombs, and blow it up in Europe. As investments go, blowing up money doesn't strike me as a very good one. It was building bridges and highways and hydro-electric dams, while changing the disastrous environmental practices that led to the dustbowl, that got America on her feet again. Investments in infrastructure are investments that have returns -- we're still enjoying the fruits of those investments today. Had we followed the current Republican economic reasoning, our manufacturing base would've failed -- as it's failing today -- and we wouldn't even have had the capacity to blow up our money in Europe. If that doesn't kill the "war is good for the economy" idea, consider that we're in two wars now -- how's that working out for you? In any case, even the "war is good for the economy" argument admits that government spending helps in hard times.

So we find ourselves in a perfect time to deal with global warming. We need to invest in change, at a time when an investment in change is essential. There's a growing consensus in the world that this investment has to happen and that this investment is the way out of our mutual financial crisis. We've got the government to do it, we've got the means to do it, we've got an international call to do it.

Given that, I say we roll up our sleeves and do it.

-Wisco

Analysts: McCain Speech 'Flat,' 'Tired,' 'Mediocre,' 'Strange'

It's time to put partisanship aside. Politics have gotten too mean, too personal, too divisive. That was John McCain's message to America last night -- one night after a night of mean, personal, divisive partisanship. Nice to know that's all over and the McCain campaign, having run almost nothing but largely untrue attack ads, is now planning to get down to substance.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

McCain's acceptance speech last night requires that you ignore a lot of things. In running against the Washington establishment, you're supposed to forget that McCain has been part of that establishment for the past quarter century. In his call for an end to partisanship, you're supposed to forget the previous night of unrelenting attack speeches. In his call for peace, you're supposed to forget that he's never voted against military action in his life. We're supposed to believe he's a "maverick," despite this:

We believe in low taxes; spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.

We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.

We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.

I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.

Any Republican could've listed those beliefs. It's hard to be a maverick when your beliefs line up with every other Republican in America. So he has to keep saying it. He used the word "maverick" eleven times last night. And, just as on the previous night, there was no such place as Afghanistan. Elvis was mentioned, a tyrannosaurus was mentioned, but no Afghanistan. Will someone please inform the Republicans that we're fighting a goddam war there? They really don't seem to know. It hasn't been mentioned once during the entire convention, as far as I know. It sure hasn't during prime time.





There was a war present last night -- the Vietnam war. The abbreviation "POW" came up fourteen times. Did you know that John McCain's a POW? He never seems to talk about it, except on those rare occasions that the Earth is orbiting the sun. Running a word count on the speech, I find it's 3,971 words long. 634 of those are about how McCain was a POW. That's about 16% or more than one sixth. By contrast, less than half of that page space was devoted to the economy -- 303 words.

Newsflash for Baghdad Johnny; the Vietnam war isn't much of an issue these days. You might want to update your talking points.

The speech itself wasn't much to write home about. In fact, it was a snooze fest. Writes Ezra Klein:

Of the four major speeches delivered across the two major conventions, I have the least to say about John McCain's speech, though perhaps that's because it was the speech in which the least was said. In a sense, the digitized backdrop behind McCain was a perfect symbol for the address: It began with a generic American house, moving quickly to a generic American flag, ending with recorded fireworks. Clip art for the nationalistic set, but moving if you've rarely seen such images before. And so too with his speech.

Klein's assessment isn't unique. Congressional Quarterly's Taegan Goddard calls it "flat," with a "lack of specifics of what he wants to do as president." In Goddard's assessment, as in mine, the "maverick" label fails. "A McCain presidency seems to be mostly about his character and a few tired Republican ideas, such as school choice, cutting foreign aid and the new favorite, 'drill, baby, drill.'"

But no matter the content, McCain had serious delivery problems with this speech. Starting with the awful lime green background (that later turned to blue) and continuing through McCain's difficulties reading from the teleprompter, the speech was very disjointed and hard to follow. To top it off, the crowd reaction at the end of the speech seemed forced and staged, almost like delegates were reacting to flashing "applause" signs at the side of the stage.

Overall, it was a very mediocre performance. I'm not sure it got the job done.

Liveblogging the speech, The Field's Al Giordano, who -- it must be said -- is openly rooting for Obama, wrote:

This is so happily terrible. "My friends, we'll drill them now, we'll drill them now!" Should be an interesting night in St. Paul as they haul in the big oil equipment and open up a hole in the city. Worst. Acceptance. Speech. Evah!

When Obama backers are positively gleeful about a McCain speech, there's a bit of a problem. Another problem is a counter-programming one -- McCain's speech competed with the opening game of the NFL. We'll see how that played out. Even the base wasn't impressed overall:

Associated Press:

Some of McCain's toughest critics in punditry came from what you'd expect to be friendly territory. "John McCain has proved that he's not going to win this election with oratory," said Alex Costellanos, a Republican consultant working for CNN.

Fox analyst Karl Rove called his speech "workmanlike" and "not all that great."

"It was a strange speech, a strange week, a strange convention," analyst Charles Krauthammer said on Fox, "and yet I think it was effective."

I'd like to point out that Krauthammer, like fellow neocon/pundit William Kristol, has a pretty consistent record of being wrong. As I wrote yesterday, I think the McCain campaign is closing ranks and beginning to run a base-centric get out the vote campaign. That's what Sarah Palin is all about. We're going to see attack, attack, attack. It was the previous night that represents the McCain campaign from here on, not McCain's near-apology for it that we heard last night.

Last night was McCain's last try at independents and swing voters and I don't believe he delivered. He'll get a bump, but as I said before, that'll be people converted from not voting at all to voting McCain. It'll be a Palin bump, delivering the religious right and right wing radicals who were ambivalent about the candidate, not new converts to the reborn conservative cause.

Don't get used to the nice Grampa McCain's "can't we all just get along?" tone from last night. That McCain will show up for the debates, but on the stump he'll be entirely absent. It'll be right back to the partisanship he found so distasteful last night, as he uses Sarah Palin to reignite the culture war and pound away at wedge issues. Bush III will run a typically Bushian campaign.

For all his talk about change last night, McCain doesn't have that arrow in his quiver. He'll go right back to everything he decried last night. It's really all he's got.

-Wisco

"I Know How to Win Wars"

I've written before that a good way to spot a bad argument is to look for declarations. When someone throws out a claim without any proof, then there's a good chance that they're pulling stuff out of their butt. FOX News offers an excellent example with their reliance on the term "some people say." It allows them to cite a source for their assertions that's so vague that it might as well not exist -- in some cases, it doesn't. "Some people say Barack Obama's not patriotic," a foxbot will tell us and we're up in the air over how reliable these "some people" are. Are these "some people" the guys around the FOX watercooler? Show me an argument that hinges on a declaration and I'll show you a poorly crafted chunk of BS.

Keeping that in mind, we can look at a speech John McCain gave yesterday to a crowd in New Mexico and conclude that he was shoveling it deep. "I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars," Baghdad Johnny told an audience in Albuquerque. "And if I'm elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory, I know how to do that."

There's a slight problem with this declaration of competency on McCain's part -- we haven't actually won the war in Iraq. McCain's big idea was the surge. Now he apparently has nuthin'. That's it. If this is how you win a war, where's the big win? When it comes to Iraq, McCain hammers the argument that "the surge worked." Fine, for the sake of argument, let's let him have that one. The surge worked.

Now what?

-Continued after the jump-


Ask that question -- which, of course, no one has bothered to ask -- and you'd probably hear crickets. McCain's argument for his continued occupation is rooted entirely in the past. It should bother people that he doesn't talk about what we will do, but what we have done. In the times he talks about the future, he uses declarations. "We will win" is not a plan. And John McCain, based on what I've read on his Iraq policy page, doesn't actually have a plan -- he has his declarations. If McCain "knows how to win wars," why isn't he sharing that info with us, is it a secret plan? We're treading water here, what would Baghdad Johnny do differently?

Even his plans for the broader "War on Terror" aren't so much plans as they are hopes.

Reuters:

McCain received a standing ovation from the crowd when he vowed to get elusive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden if elected. "When I am commander-in-chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide," he said.

Where have we heard that before? If declarations aren't an argument, then neither are baseless promises. Like pretty much everything McCain's talked about in his campaign, he's heavy on the promises and light on the specifics. Bush has been playing this game for years and we've got jack to show for it. We kind of need a little more than vague forecasting, a peek into the Team McCain crystal ball. We need something that approximates some kind of a plan. McCain's strategy is identical to Bush's -- wishing makes it so. There is no plan, just declarations that we'll "win" -- whatever the hell that means...

Another speech on the issue of Iraq and Afghanistan was made yesterday by Barack Obama. No matter what you think of Obama's plan for those conflicts, you have to admit he won the argument -- mostly by being the only one of the two to actually have one.

Calling Iraq a distraction, Obama proposed pulling forces out of that useless occupation and putting them in Afghanistan. Citing the Marshall Plan, Obama told the audience:

Such a strategy would join overwhelming military strength with sound judgment. It would shape events not just through military force, but through the force of our ideas; through economic power, intelligence and diplomacy. It would support strong allies that freely shared our ideals of liberty and democracy; open markets and the rule of law. It would foster new international institutions like the United Nations, NATO, and the World Bank, and focus on every corner of the globe. It was a strategy that saw clearly the world's dangers, while seizing its promise.

As a general, Marshall had spent years helping FDR wage war. But the Marshall Plan -- which was just one part of this strategy -- helped rebuild not just allies, but also the nation that Marshall had plotted to defeat. In the speech announcing his plan, he concluded not with tough talk or definitive declarations -- but rather with questions and a call for perspective. "The whole world of the future," Marshall said, "hangs on a proper judgment." To make that judgment, he asked the American people to examine distant events that directly affected their security and prosperity. He closed by asking: "What is needed? What can best be done? What must be done?"

As I said, Obama wins this argument simply by being the only one to show up for it. Not only does he spell out an honest to goodness strategy, but he cites an example of how it has worked in the past. "As President, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy -- one that recognizes that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin," he said. "I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

Who agrees with Obama? The government of Iraq, for one. They want us gone. McCain's plan for Iraq -- such as it is -- runs contrary to Iraq's plan for Iraq.

But another group who agree with Obama are the military.

Barack Obama is taking heat for hinting that he might refine his 16-month timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. But a forthcoming Pentagon-sponsored report will recommend an even steeper drawdown in less time, NEWSWEEK has learned. If adopted, the 300-page report by a defense analysis group at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., could transform the debate about Iraq in the presidential election.

Expected to be completed in about a month, it will recommend that U.S. forces be reduced to as few as 50,000 by the spring of 2009, down from about 150,000 now. The strategy is based on a major handoff to the increasingly successful Iraqi Army, with platoon-size U.S. detachments backing the Iraqis from small outposts, with air support. The large U.S. forward operating bases that house the bulk of U.S. troops would be mostly abandoned, and the role of Special Forces would increase.

The new focus would be Afghanistan. McCain says he knows how to win wars, but the guys who actually win the wars are with Obama's plan.

So McCain can declare all he wants, but until he comes up with some sort of concrete proposal, he's really coming up empty. He's making a lot of martial noise, but there isn't any substance there -- it's all frosting and no cake.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; military; Pentagon; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; Barack Obama has a plan, John McCain has promises and declarations

Justice Delayed -- For Centuries

There are two opinions by two candidates on the Boumediene et al v Bush ruling by the Supreme Court that restored habeas corpus rights to prisoners at Gitmo. One is from a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, the other's from an ex-Navy pilot.

Hell, we could quit right here; it's pretty obvious who'd be right. But soldier on we will. First, the senior lecturer from the law school. Barack Obama said, "that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday."

The ex-Navy pilot weighed in. "These are enemy combatants," John McCain said of the ruling. "These are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that people in this country have. And, my friends, there are some bad people down there, there are some bad people."

Have I ever mentioned that these neocons always talk to you like you're a freakin' three year-old? Yeah, there are some "bad people" at Guantanamo. Perhaps even a boogeyman or two. But there are "bad people" in civilian jails right now. What McCain seems to be arguing is habeas corpus rights should only be granted to prisoners the state believes are innocent. That's no one. McCain, not surprisingly, doesn't seem to understand the purpose of "The Great Writ."

The surest way to get out of jury duty is to tell interviewers, "If he wasn't guilty, he wouldn't have been arrested." Anyone who doesn't understand why that makes you an unfit juror should probably shut up now. People who equate incarceration with guilt just plain don't understand the concept of justice.

Yet that's the test that the Bush administration has been putting their prisoners to. If they aren't terrorists, they wouldn't be at Guantanamo. That's all the proof that you or I or anyone is supposed to need -- their say-so.

But given what the Bush administration's word has been proven to be worth -- over and over and over, scandal after scandal, crime after crime, lie after lie -- it's kind of worth the effort to just go ahead and doublecheck.

Which is what an independent study of detainees at Gitmo has done.

McClatchy Newspapers:

A study published by a professor at the Seton Hall School of Law found that 45 percent of 516 Guantanamo detainees examined had committed hostile acts against the United States or its allies, and that only 8 percent of them had been al Qaida fighters. The study drew on unclassified Department of Defense transcripts and documents from military tribunals at Guantanamo.

To be fair, a study by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center found that 73% posed a "demonstrated threat." No matter which study you believe, that adds up to a lot of people who aren't a threat. And West Point's study is deeply flawed. "West Point included in its 'demonstrated threat' category anyone who'd committed hostile acts; been identified as a fighter; received training at a camp run by al Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces; or received training in combat weapons other than rifles or other small arms," McClatchy reports.

It's that identification "as a fighter" that's problematic. "The system of identifying men as fighters..." the report goes on, "depended on the accounts of the men who initially detained the 'fighters,' often Afghan commanders looking for bounties from U.S. forces who paid more for men alleged to be Taliban or al Qaida leaders."

In other words, anyone looking to make a few bucks and get rid of someone they didn't like could sell them -- there is no other way to put it -- to the Bush administration and the US military. Another McClatchy article tells us the story of Mohammed Akhtiar, a prisoner at Guantanamo.

"American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed 'infidel' and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't," we're told. "The U.S. government had the wrong guy." He was "imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops."

In an investigation of released detainees, McClatchy found that most were "low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals." At least seven had worked for the US-backed Afghanistan government and had no ties to militants.

"The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners," the report reads.

But they still get those military tribunals, right? Even without habeas rights, they still get their day in court.

I guess so, if you can call the kangaroo courts of the military tribunals anything other than a sham. Prisoners are denied evidence that would help in their case -- either because such evidence was destroyed to cover up war crimes or because the evidence has been classified. And that "day in court" is entirely theoretical. So far, one has been held (other cases never went to trial). The wheels of phony justice grind slow, I guess. At this rate of one trial every six years, the final detainee of maybe 500 held can expect to see justice in the year 5008 -- 3,000 years from now.

Of course, that ratio's about to be thrown by a whopping five trials of high profile detainees -- just in time for the elections. None of these detainees' guilt is in very much doubt. The highest profile trial will be that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the so-called "Mastermind of 9/11" who broke under torture. He admits he did it and wants to be martyred. Anyone whose guilt is iffy isn't getting anywhere near a even a kangaroo court any time soon. Even with this new ratio of six trials every seven years, we're looking at 583 years of pre-trial detention. Being found innocent nearly six centuries from now isn't exactly justice.

So, of the two candidates, the senior law lecturer has a better argument than the ex-pilot. Yes, there are "bad people" at Gitmo. But habeas corpus isn't going to set any of them free. It's the people who aren't so bad that the writ is designed to protect. In fact, letting prisoners exercise the right of habeas corpus would help sort out the mess the Bush administration has made of the detainee situation and keep us from wasting time and money on people who are no threat.

And those are, apparently, people John McCain and the rest of the neocons can't be bothered with worrying about.

-Wisco

Techorati tags: politics; law; Constitution; human rights; torture; Guantanamo; habeas corpus; Bush's and John McCain's "War on Terror" would keep people in Guantanamo for life without trial

McCain's Stand on Veterans is to Stand on Veterans

The ABC News blog, Political Radar, summed it up this way; "Obama Tells Veterans: 'I WIll Not Let You Down'." Speaking to a town hall in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Obama told vets:

We should make sure that today’s veterans get the same benefit that my grandfather got when he came back from World War II. It was a good investment not only for him, but it was a good investment for the country, built our middle class. So we're gonna make sure that that get's passed. Because we gotta have outstanding educational opportunities for our veterans when they come home.

"I will cede to no one the ability to talk about veterans’ issues," Obama said. "John McCain will have to decide whether he thinks that the current level of benefits is sufficient. If he does, then that’s a substantive debate that we’ll have in November."

Do I need to add that it was Memorial Day yesterday? For his part, John McCain spent his day defending his stand on increasing vets benefits under the 21st Century G.I. Bill -- he's against it. His reasoning mirrors George W. Bush's in that he's afraid that if you give veterans decent benefits, active duty personnel will quit to become veterans.

"In my life, I have learned more from noncommissioned officers I have known and served with than anyone else outside my family," McCain said at a competing New Mexican event in Albuquerque. "They are very hard to replace. Encouraging people to choose to not become noncommissioned officers would hurt the military and our country very badly."

Except the current debate is over a bill authored by Virginia senator Jim Webb -- former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan -- that merely updates the benefits given to veterans of WWII to the present market. In other words, this is catch-up. McCain's and Bush's arguments ignore history; the original G.I. Bill didn't destroy the military and bring America to her knees. McCain, who makes his political living posing as America's leading veteran, stands in opposition to almost every veterans' organization in the nation -- virtually all major vet groups support Webb's bill, including the typically right-leaning VFW. McCain, clearly, does not stand for veterans here. McCain stands for the military and puts that institution above the people of whom it's comprised.

Since McCain's opposition to the bill is identical to Bush's and since their arguments are likewise identical, a Memorial Day NYT editorial applies just as aptly to Baghdad Johnny as it does to the Commander in Chief.

He is wrong, but at least he is consistent. Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform. He does this on the ground that the bill is too generous and may discourage re-enlistment, further weakening the military he has done so much to break.

So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.

And, while Bush was "pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq," McCain's only real complaint was that he wasn't doing it fast enough. McCain's stand on Iraq has always been "more" -- more personnel, more money, more blood, more death, more throwing our reputation in the world down the toilet. With Baghdad Johnny it's always more, more, more. Like Bush, he assumes that if what you're doing isn't working, you do more of it. Unlike Bush, he comes to that conclusion months sooner.

Except, of course, when it comes to the G.I. Bill and veterans' benefits. Then the mantra is "less, less, less." Plenty of medals to hand out, many posthumous, but anything that might make these volunteers choose to improve their prospects outside of the military is bad. John McCain, as much as he talks about veterans, can't convincingly argue that he stands for them. McCain stands for the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the Veterans' Administration, but not the veterans. Get down on that ground level, where you see that armies are made up of individual people, and John McCain is nowhere to be seen. He's hovering high above, where an army is one thing and the only reference to individuals is in the BS catch-phrase "support the troops."

A catch-phrase rendered meaningless by the lack of support it represents. Like those damned. stupid bumper magnets that people put on their cars or those idiotic little flag lapel pins that the Republicans pretend you're required by law to wear, McCain's support of the troops is for display purposes only. John McCain supports the troops in much the same way that a mattress sale supports Presidents' Day -- i.e., he doesn't. Veterans are just an excuse to run a sale on John McCain.

Of course, in Bush's case, the White House has a strategy; when you're getting bad press, attack the media. In a response to the NYT editorial, the White House said that the paper "doesn't let the facts get in the way of expressing its vitriolic opinions" and that the "editorial could not be farther from the truth about the President's record of leadership on this issue."

If had been about McCain -- and, as I've pointed out, to a certain extent it is -- you could expect the Straight-Talker to try to spin his way out of it in a very Bushian way.

It's bad enough that Bush hides behind soldiers whenever the going gets tough -- expect him to be surrounded by military personnel when he vetoes Webb's bill -- but when the opportunity arises to do them any good at all, he runs. This is shameful behavior from a US President and it's just as shameful from a presidential candidate like John McCain. If you think praising veterans while stabbing them in the back is a wonderful thing for a president to do, Baghdad Johnny's your man.

In the competing vet events yesterday, Barack Obama came out on top -- clearly and inarguably. John McCain's stand on veterans is to stand on veterans. To use them and, when you're done with them or they're rendered unusable, to throw them away. McCain's view on vets is a typically Republican view; a sink or swim argument that's loaded with market-tested words and phrases like "bootstraps" and "personal responsibility."

Bush will veto Webb's bill. And John McCain won't vote to override. He probably won't vote at all, showing that, for all his heroism and valor, he's a political coward.

Barack Obama proves that you don't have to be a vet to care about vets, while John McCain demonstrates that being a vet doesn't automatically mean you give a damn. There's one veteran in the world that we know John McCain cares about and that's John McCain. As far as caring about any other vets -- well, there's no evidence of that.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politic; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; Barack Obama; Jim Webb; military; Veterans have nothing to thank John McCain for

John McCain's Hundred Year Jobs Program

As the wars slog on and on and on, the consequences at home grow. The war in Iraq is now expected to cost Americans $3 trillion dollars, once all the borrowing and spending has finally been accounted for. That figure, by the way, represents cockeyed optimism -- the debts continue to rise.

Coalition losses total 4052 military deaths. Of course, that's today. Accurate casualty figures have a very short shelf life and the number only increases. On the Iraqi side, as many as 90,778 have died.

Those costs are permanent, the money wasted will never be regained and the fallen will never rise again. Other costs are likewise permanent, but go unmeasured or when they are documented, go largely ignored by a media fascinated by a presidential campaign at home and war fatigue among the public.

News & Observer (N. Carolina), "Combat vets face hurdles as students":

Spc. Natasha McKinnon survived losing part of her left leg to an improvised bomb in Iraq. Now that she's back, she's trying to find her balance in college life. Sometimes she can't recall a professor's name. She loses track of test dates. Occasionally, she forgets she has pulled off her prosthetic leg to rest her stump during a long lecture, only to tilt off balance when she tries to stand.

As tens of thousands of veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq try to collect on their promised college benefits, McKinnon and others are finding that their combat experience complicates the transition from soldier to student.

Some have trouble collecting the government money that is supposed to pay for college, or they discover that the benefits aren't nearly enough to cover tuition and other bills. While their classmates complain about homework and hangovers, many vets struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, the effects of traumatic brain injury, lost limbs and a range of chronic medical problems.

"Not only am I a full-time student," McKinnon told the paper, "I'm a full-time patient. It takes a toll, mentally and physically. Sometimes I'm there in class, but only in body. Not in mind."

There are moves out there to make the lives of student vets like McKinnon's a little easier. Enter the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007. This has widely been reported as an "expansion" of the WWII-era Montgomery G.I. Bill, but it's really just an update. According to the Inside Higher Ed, "The bill would enable eligible veterans to receive payments covering tuition -- up to the cost of in-state tuition at the most expensive public college in a veteran’s home state -- room and board, fees, educational costs and a $1,000 monthly stipend." We aren't talking about sending vets to Harvard or Yale here; this would allow them to enroll in state universities.

Of course, the Pentagon and John McCain oppose the bill -- which otherwise has bipartisan support. "Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college," ABC News reported. Do they really need an incentive? You'd think a pointless and needless war would be incentive enough.

For his part, McCain has offered an alternative bill. Not surprisingly, it's a freakin' joke. "The McCain-sponsored bill aims to increase the $1,100 per month active-duty service members now get for educational expenses to $1,500." reports The Hill. "The sum would increase to $2,000 per month for a member who served on active duty 12 years or more."

Let me repeat that -- under McCain's bill, you'd have to serve for twelve years in order to qualify for just $2,000 a month. And, for people enlisting today, that's not $2,000 today dollars, that's $2,000 2020 dollars. Figure in projected inflation and that's $1,516.51. You know what? You might as well take that $1,500 and get out as soon as possible, while you're actually college-aged. There's your "incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college." McCain apparently shares Bush's math skills, which have us shoveling $3 trillion down a rat hole while cutting taxes for the wealthy.

Of course, that's not the only program Baghdad John has in mind for military personnel. A new Democratic National Committee ad reminds us of McCain's jobs program:



On the plus side, McCain's "hundred years in Iraq" means jobs for life -- if you can call that a plus. It also means shoveling trillions more down that aforementioned rat hole.

John McCain has been running as America's leading veteran. But veterans would be right to ask him, "What have you done for me lately?" Under President McCain, they'd get endless war, joke benefits, and -- assuming they ever get out -- they'll come home to a ruined economy.

If that's leadership, John McCain can keep it.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; Republican; elections; 2008; G.I. Bill; Jim Webb; The bad news is John McCain's education benefits for veterans, the worse news is his century-long jobs program

A New Low

In the Iraq war, nothing is sacred. The Bush administration, deeply entrenched in their failed adventure, has always been shameless -- the lies that led us here is proof enough of that. For the Bush administration, there have always been two enemies to fight; whoever happens to be shooting at US personnel at the moment and those who'd dare suggest that maybe this big invasion wasn't such a good idea. Luckily for those of us who belong to the latter group, Bush can't get away with shooting us too. So other methods, both hamhanded and subtle at once, have to be used to defeat the danger we pose to their war.

Being shameless, nothing is too low, too exploitative. There is no lower limit, other than what they can get away with. The Bush administration actually fights three wars -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and the propaganda war against the truth. It's that third war that this administration has fought the hardest and invested the most time waging. Truth is a rare commodity in the White House.

Being shameless, the neocon dreamers who started this whole thing are above nothing and the tragedies of the other wars become ammunition for the propaganda war. There is no grief that can't be exploited, no fear that can't be fostered, and no loss that can't be turned to political gain. With an administration that politicizes everything, no exploitation is too crass.

In this war against the American people, there's no such thing as "too low." We have an example:

Washington Post:

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor fought dozens of battles in the streets of Ramadi, shouldering his MK48 machine gun without complaint in the 130-degree heat of Iraq's violent Anbar province.

In May 2006, only a month into his first deployment to Iraq, the 25-year-old Navy SEAL from Garden Grove, Calif., ran under fire into a street to drag to safety a wounded comrade who was shot in the leg, earning a Silver Star for his courage.

On Sept. 29, 2006, another act of valor would cost Monsoor his life -- and save the lives of three comrades. For that act, he will posthumously be awarded a Medal of Honor on April 8, the White House said yesterday.

Monsoor threw himself on a hand grenade to save his comrades. "He made an instantaneous decision to save our teammates. I immediately understood what happened, and tragically it made sense to me in keeping with the man I know, Mike Monsoor," said Lt. Cmdr. Seth Stone, Monsoor's platoon leader. He died a half hour after the incident.

The Medal of Honor is the military's highest honor. Only three have been awarded in Afghanistan and the current Iraq war combined.

Remember that date -- April 8 -- while you read another snippet from Associated Press.

The House plans to consider by early May legislation that would continue paying for the Iraq war, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday.

The legislation will come after Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador there, testify on April 8 and April 9. The two officials are expected to tell Congress that impressive security gains and modest political progress has been made since last year's influx of U.S. troops, and that troop withdrawals can continue this fall only after officials ascertain it wouldn't hurt security.

Democrats are expected to challenge their recommendation that troops should stay, contending that the Iraqis are not doing enough to hasten progress so long as the U.S. is leading combat operations. They have held off on approving all the money President Bush wants for the war this year.

As I say, shameless. On the same day that Petraeus gives testimony about how much we need to stay in Iraq, Monsoor will be award a Medal of Honor posthumously -- in a White House ceremony where Bush will speak about all the heroes in Iraq who all desperately, desperately need our support. And, since Bush defines "support" as "willingness to send to kill and die," that will mean staying in Iraq until time stops. Oh, and vote for McCain while you're at it.

A man dies in an act of extraordinary courage and valor, serving his nation far beyond what could reasonably be expected of anyone, and he comes home to be used as a rallying flag for support of the war. Even in death Michael Monsoor is not without his uses and, for an administration that uses everything and anything for political advantage, his actions and resulting death comes at just the right time. The enemies, the Democratic party and their screwy ideas about ending this catastrophic waste of people and money, are storming the castle. Gen. David Petraeus, our only real hero of Iraq, needs all the help he can get.

Of course, the testimony by Petraeus and Crocker will -- in reality -- be nothing but a sales pitch. A beg for more money and more time and more heroes like Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor. All just to run out the clock until the next poor sap takes the Oval Office and the historical blame that comes with being the President who "lost" Iraq.

Nothing is sacred when it comes to protecting Bush's legacy -- at least, nothing other than Bush's sacred legacy. Nothing is too exploitative, too shameful, or too self-serving. In an administration that politicizes everything, even death is a tool in the propaganda war. What Lincoln called the "last full measure of devotion" is not full enough. Even the lost heroes must fight on.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; military; White House; General Petraeus; Ryan Crocker; neocon; For the Bush administration, the only value a Medal of Honor has is propaganda value

Every Four Years, the World Disappears

Hillary, Barack, Johnny Ed, Rudy, Johny Mac, Mitt, Ron... The primaries seem to be sucking up all the air in the media. The primaries are fun, infuriating, and goofy all at once. We wait for someone to do something stupid, wait for someone to say something wise (sadly, a rarity), and wait for Rudy to say 9/11 -- then we all do a shot.

But there's still a war on. Two in fact. Candidates talk about war a lot, but lately that's been about all the coverage of it we've been getting. Once again, the mainstream media drops the ball. You'd think that in a 24 hour news cycle, they'd be able to jam a little war news in there.

In Iraq, it wasn't all that long ago that we got this good news -- October 15th, 2007, in fact:

Many U.S. military commanders in Iraq believe they have dealt a large enough blow to al Qaeda in Iraq to declare victory over the group, according to a report in the Washington Post.

The Iraq franchise of Osama bin Laden's terror network has been deemed the deadliest threat facing American forces and their allies since shortly after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

U.S. generals tout recent successes against the Sunni militants as evidence that al Qaeda in Iraq, known by the acronym AQI, may have been dealt a blow from which it cannot recover.

That's right, we were winning Bush's Global War on Terror in Iraq. Never mind that there wasn't an AQI before we showed up. We had them on the run and out. A total rout. Beaten. Defeated. Gone forever. Boo-Ya!

One of the underreported news stories, pushed off to the side because Hillary "cried" maybe, is that those triumphant "Al Qaeda Defeated in Iraq!" headlines were a little premature.

L.A. Times:

Under cover of darkness Tuesday, American soldiers crept across a bridge where just days before insurgents had left a chilling warning: a severed head with a message identifying the Iraqi victim as a U.S. collaborator scrawled across the forehead with a black marker.

Through the biting cold, the troops crunched down a winding gravel road, past frost-glazed reeds, empty storefronts and spacious homes surrounded by orange and pomegranate trees. Inside, anxious families told them about the masked gunmen who have ruled their lives, less than a mile from where the U.S. military has maintained a small outpost in recent months.

About 4,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces, backed by warplanes and attack helicopters, swept into the northern Diyala River Valley overnight in the opening salvo of the latest effort to flush the Sunni Arab militant network al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates out of their havens, the U.S. military said.

In addition to this news, the World Health Organization tells us, "An average of 120 Iraqi adults died a violent death every day in the three years following the US-led invasion of March 2003..." No word on kids.

Bush tells us things are improving in Iraq, but the truth is that he's being extremely selective in the stories he gives us as proof. An Associated Press reporter sat in on a White House briefing with Iraq envoys. "The situations the leaders reported ranged from the dire to the celebratory," CBS and AP reported yesterday. It seems that things are either good or really, really bad. It all depends on where you are in Iraq.

John Jones, the provisional reconstruction team leader in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, gaped in awe at the report from another team leader, Angus Simmons. Simmons had talked about all the ways his team was helping boost tourism in the southern province of Najaf, home to holy sites, including assisting the Iraqis' dream of a new airport. It was a situation unimaginable to Jones in his area, which has become a messy new stronghold for extremists who have been pushed out of Anbar province by the increased U.S. troop presence there.

That'd be the Diyala province where we're now fighting the previously soundly defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. "We're still struggling," Jones said. "The key thing for us is we're making small steps." The AP reporter says that Jones' "biggest victory" was "getting access from the provincial governor." Wow...

In Afghanistan, Bush is planning a "mini-surge" of 3,000 Marines to help fight a resurgent Taliban. AP reports that "Afghanistan experienced a record level of violence in 2007, with more than 6,500 people killed."

Despite all of this, what's the big foreign news lately? An Iranian boat may or may not have done something freaky. Frankly, I'd take either side of that story with a grain of salt -- neither Iran nor the Bush administration have any credibility. Either way, no shots were fired, no one was hurt, nothing actually happened. "If it bleeds, it leads," is apparently no longer a rule for the media. The media is now where propaganda wars are fought. Actual wars are being pretty thoroughly ignored.

During election campaigns, the media seems to forget that the rest of the world exists. Iraq's heating up, Afghanistan's heating up, and we're talking about Mitt Romney's hair. If any of these war stories are news to you, then the mainstream media has failed you. In a perfect world, even if you only rely on one TV news broadcast a day, a scan of the headlines in your paper or listen to the news breaks on the radio on your way home, you'd know this stuff.

And too many people don't. Yet, if John McCain trips on a sidewalk or Barack Obama accidentally wears two different socks, you'll know all about it -- everyone will. It seems to me that if they stopped focusing on this stupid minutia, they'd have time to cover things that are actually important. If the primary coverage were about the issues and policy differences -- you know, the stuff that actually matters -- we'd know all about what was going on in the big wide world. Instead, we're mostly ignorant for eleven freakin' months or more every four years.

We do need to know about the campaign, but we don't need to know everything about the campaign. If Rudy Giuliani visits a petting zoo or Mitt Romney gets another of his daily haircuts, I don't freakin' need to know about it.

We need to know about the world. It doesn't stop existing every four years.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; terrorism; Bush; Democrat; Republican; primaries; 2008; When there's a presidential election, the media practically shut down their foreign news bureaus