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Jump In Front Of A Crowd, Call It A Parade

By Christy Harvey on Feb 1, 2005 at 6:27 pm

To great fanfare and applause, the Pentagon announced this week that President Bush would propose dramatically increasing the “death benefit” paid to the families of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to $250,000.

Talk about jumping in front of a crowd and calling it a parade. Lawmakers have been pushing to raise the death benefit for years, but the White House has fought against it. In 2003, the Army Times reported that the Bush administration was strongly opposing a proposal to double the $6,000 benefit paid to families of troops who died on active duty, calling it wasteful and unnecessary.

What’s more, military officials say it’s a good start, but the benefit hike is still too narrow. The new death benefit only applies to soldiers who are killed on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving out soldiers killed anywhere else. Especially in this day and age when the fight against terrorism has no borders, the Defense Department should not decide benefits based on geography.

During a hearing on the proposal, Adm. John B. Nathman, vice chief of naval operations for the Navy, told the Senate Armed Forces Committee, “They can’t make a distinction. I don’t think we should either.” Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, agreed, “I believe a death is a death and I believe this should be treated that way.”

Politics

Pfizer Forgets Alzheimer’s Trial

By ThinkProgress on Feb 1, 2005 at 3:58 pm

Last December, data gleaned from a long-term study by the National Cancer Institute showed Pfizer’s popular painkiller, Celebrex, more than tripled the risk of heart disease in patients who took it once a day.

Pfizer executives were shocked by the findings:

“These clinical trial results are new. The cardiovascular findings in one of the studies are unexpected…Pfizer is taking immediate steps to fully understand the results and rapidly communicate new information to regulators, physicians and patients around the world.” – Hank McKinnell, Pfizer CEO

“In placing this new information in context, it is important to understand that the APC trial results differ from both the PreSAP cardiovascular results as well as the large body of data that we and others have accumulated over time, in which an increased risk of serious cardiovascular events in arthritis patients, even at higher-than-recommended doses, had not been seen.” – Dr. Joseph Feczko, president of worldwide development for Pfizer.

“New,” “unexpected,” “not been seen.” Turns out, in yet another reminder of the importance of patients’ rights, not only had Pfizer executives seen those results before, they’d buried them.

A previously unpublished study, conducted more than four years ago, found Alzheimer’s patients taking the pain killer were up to four times more likely to have cardiovascular risk factors than those taking a placebo.

Although the Alzheimer’s study was finished in late 2000, it was “not available for an FDA expert panel that met in early 2001 to assess the cardiovascular risks of COX-2 inhibitors.” The data, when finally released, was presented to minimize the appearance of risk factors which would have alarmed physicians.

Good thing the White House is making sure someone stands up for the right of big Pharma to not be sued by the patients it deceives.

Media

Rushing to Pull the Race Card

By ThinkProgress on Feb 1, 2005 at 3:21 pm

A few weeks before checking himself into a rehabilitation center to deal with his drug addiction, conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh did what he does best: talk a lot about something of which he knows a little. With an expert’s cockiness belied by his obviously amateur status, Limbaugh described Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb as an overrated quarterback, lavished with undue credit by a politically correct media desperate to see a black quarterback succeed. Though other analysts at the time had also called McNabb overrated (and for those who bothered to do the analysis at the time, he wasn’t), Limbaugh stood out for jumping to conclusions in a way that made it seem like he in fact was the one desperate for McNabb’s race to be a factor. Of course McNabb deftly stepped out of the pocket of controversy and Limbaugh resigned before he got sacked.

Leading his team to the Super Bowl this year, McNabb is aware that his race is still an issue but in a different way. McNabb sees himself as a role model for all the young children out there intent on defying the odds and the stereotypes that might tell them they are not smart enough, good enough, or any of the other critiques McNabb (and many other black quarterbacks) has heard throughout his career. There is no doubt that McNabb is a class act, both on and off the field.

And Limbaugh…well, not surprisingly, he has yet to retract his statements but even he’s trying to get on the McNabb bandwagon.

Security

Leaving the Cold War Behind

By ThinkProgress on Feb 1, 2005 at 12:43 pm

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was widely praised when she announced during her confirmation hearing, “The time for diplomacy is now.”

Of course, the time for diplomacy was actually three years ago, and the Bush administration seems set on repeating the errors that plagued its unsuccessful first-term diplomatic efforts.

The Defense Science Board Task Force, a Pentagon advisory group, last year specifically criticized the Bush administration for developing their diplomatic strategy using the prism of the Cold War. As Sydney Blumenthal explained:

The Bush administration, according to the Defense Science Board, has misconceived a war on terrorism in the image of the Cold War — “reflexively” and “without a thought or a care as to whether these were the best responses to a very different strategic situation.” Yet the administration seeks out “Cold War models” to cast this “war” against “totalitarian evil.” However, the struggle is not the West vs. Islam; nor is it “against the tactic of terrorism.” “This is no Cold War,” the report insists.

Which makes it more than a little disturbing that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed State Department employees yesterday on how she plans to model her diplomatic strategy after American policy during the Cold War. She said past diplomatic success was “just a matter of harvesting good decisions” made by Cold War architects like Dean Acheson and George Kennan, and described how “we are now in a similar period.” “That is the basis of our foreign policy,” she said, “it’s a foreign policy based on the heart of who we are.”

Security

We Can’t Drop the Chalabi

By Judd Legum on Feb 1, 2005 at 8:27 am

Last May, U.S. intelligence officials accused Ahmed Chalabi — the Iraqi darling of the neo-cons — of passing intelligence secrets told to him by Bush administration officials to Iran. It was also revealed that Chalabi “met with a senior Iranian intelligence official described as a ‘nefarious figure’ who has played a direct role in activities against the United States.”

But apparently that wasn’t enough to convince the Bush administration to cut off contacts with Chalabi. Appearing on CNN Late Edition on Sunday, Chalabi said:

I don’t speak to top U.S. officials….Contacts at the low level have started, and I expect them to continue at this rate.

A couple of questions: Which “low level” Bush administration official is talking to Chalabi? What, exactly, do they have to discuss with a suspected informant for the Iranians?

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