Today on Special Report with Brit Hume, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow expressed regret for his past criticisms of President Bush, detailed yesterday on Think Progress. Watch it:
Snow changes his mind quickly. He leveled some of his harshest criticism at Bush in the last six months.
Full transcript below: Read more
accidentally admits he no longer lives in Pennsylvania. (Background here.)
Early this afternoon, conservatives in the House Homeland Security Committee voted down an amendment by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that would have mandated 100 percent scanning of American-bound shipping containers for radiological weapons.
The vote followed an “aggressive lobbying campaign” by a “coalition of industry groups” who pressed conservative members to oppose the amendment. Yesterday, committee chairman Peter King (R-NY) announced that he was caving to industry interests. His excuse was that Markey’s plan was “not realistic“:
There’s no sense putting something in the bill if it’s not realistic, if it’s not going to be implemented and can’t be done. We want a real bill, not a headline.
In fact, the plan is realistic: for well over a year, Hong Kong has been successfully using high tech screening machines to inspect every single container. Achieving that in the United States will undoubtedly take time, but it is technologically feasible, and should be our number one port security priority. Businesses that rely on shipping simply don’t want to spend the money, and conservatives are bending to their will at the expense of our homeland security.
On the Senate floor earlier today, 59 senators (52 Republicans, 7 Democrats) voted for an amendment proposed by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) that effectively cut $1.9 billion from funds for troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan (see the text of the amendment here). Despite the fact that the Senate’s $106.5 supplemental spending measure is full of bloated earmarks that could be trimmed, the Gregg amendment to the Iraq supplemental specifically diverted $1.9 billion from defense appropriations for domestic border security. Congressional Quarterly provides the details:
The amendment would apply an across-the-board cut to the $69 billion included in the bill for the military. Of that amount, $67.6 billion was requested for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and $1.4 billion was designated to repair hurricane damage done to military infrastructure along the Gulf Coast.
Gregg aggressively defended his measure, stating that anyone who alleges “that these funds are going to come out of the needs of the people on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan is pure poppycock.” But in fact, that’s exactly what Gregg did, according to both Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and President Bush. Here’s Bush:
These funds support U.S. Armed Forces and Coalition partners as we advance democracy, fight the terrorists and insurgents, and train and equip Iraqi security forces so that they can defend their sovereignty and freedom.
Clinton agreed, saying the Gregg amendment would “take money from troop pay, body armor and even [the] joint improvised explosive device defeat fund.” She called it “a false, cheap choice to score political points.”
Lawrence O’Donnell says the “buzz among the Washington press corps right now” is that Karl Rove asked to testify to the grand jury today, signaling that Rove’s lawyer “believes an indictment is imminent and is sending his client back to make a final desperate attempt to avoid indictment.”
UPDATE: “According to NBC News’ David Shuster, legal sources say Rove volunteered to testify and was no subpoenaed. Rove’s decision followed a recent conversation with Fitzgerald.”
The headline from the Rumsfeld/Rice trip to Baghdad today is that the United States might pull out 30,000 troops this year. There’s actually nothing new in this statement. Since last year, top Bush administration officials and generals in the field have been saying that significant withdrawals of US troops were likely to occur in 2006.
As many have learned the hard way, it is more important to watch what the Bush administration does rather than believe what it says. There are troubling signs that the Bush administration wants to make the U.S. presence permanent in Iraq. According to Newsweek, the Bush administration is putting forward plans to beef up military installations in Iraq:
- The Bush administration is asking for more than $1.1 billion for new military construction in Iraq – roughly double what it plans to spend in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE combined.
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NellisBalad Air Force Base in Northern Iraq is second only to London’s Heathrow airport with 27,500 landings and takeoffs a month;- The $592 million new US Embassy in Baghdad rivals the Vatican City in size (US embassy is 104 acres, about 80 football fields; Vatican City is 109 acres).
The main problem is these steps only feed perceptions of occupation that fuel terrorist attacks and give America’s terrorist enemies the perfect recruitment tool — without helping advance U.S. interests in the Gulf region.
The United States need to take back control of its national security and send a clear message to Iraqi leaders that they need to strike the power-sharing deals to stabilize the country — as proposed in American Progress’s strategic redeployment plan.
Read the “first comprehensive accounting of credible allegations of torture and abuse in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guant¡namo.”
Fox News’s White House correspondent Carl Cameron just reported that Rove will testify before the grand jury today. The AP reports it will be his fifth appearance.
John King, CNN’s political correspondent, just reported:
CNN is told by three force sources familiar with the investigation that this morning Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff and top political adviser, is meeting with his attorney and is to meet this morning — if it is not already under way — with the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. According to sources, the goal of the meeting is for Karl to clear up some lingering questions about his role in a White House campaign to undermine Ambassador Joe Wilson — remember he was the the critic of the Bush administration case ever going to war in Iraq, his wife the CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose name was Outed.
It’s a complicated legal investigation and it has become a complicated political problem for the White House. Our understanding, Karl Rove is meeting with his attorney this morning, meeting with the special prosecutor this morning and the hope from Rove’s camp is that he can answer the few remaining questions about his involvement, his back and forth with reporters, during that time frame, his comments to the FBI and other investigators including the grand jury that is investigating this for quite some time now. And the hope from the Rove camp, all can be resolved and Karl Rove cleared of wrongdoing in the relatively near future.
The AP is also reporting that Fitzgerald went before the the grand jury this morning.
UPDATE: More details from the National Review’s Byron York.
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