Dan Froomkin on spending the next 50 years in Iraq:

It’s troubling because American troops have been in South Korea for more than 50 years — while polls show the American public wants them out of Iraq within a year.

It’s flawed because in South Korea, unlike Iraq, there’s something concrete to defend (the border with North Korea); and because Iraq, unlike South Korea, happens to be in a state of violent civil war.

It’s dangerous because the specter of a permanent military presence in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the most inflammatory incitements to Iraq’s ever-growing anti-American insurgency, and may even be destabilizing to the entire region.

And it’s telling because it gives credence to persistent suspicions that establishing a long-term strategic presence in the Middle East was a primary motivation for this misbegotten war in the first place.

Meanwhile, Atrios offers a must-read answer to the question, “Why do we stay in Iraq?“

Last week, ThinkProgress noted that a bill called the OPEN Government Act had been locked down in the Senate by a secret hold. The bill in question is a “bipartisan effort to update the seminal Freedom of Information Act to make the government more open and accountable.” The act would:

– Restore meaningful deadlines for agency action under FOIA;
– Impose real consequences on federal agencies for missing statutory deadlines;
– Establish a FOIA hotline service for all federal agencies; and
– Create a FOIA Ombudsman as an alternative to costly litigation.

When Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) tried to bring the bill to a vote on the floor, “the vote was blocked by ‘Senator Anonymous.’ Some Republican senator called the Minority Leader’s office and objected to a vote on the bill, but asked for anonymity and did not publicly state the reason for the hold.”

The man behind the secret hold has now revealed himself: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Kyl’s excuse for placing a hold on the bill? Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department opposes several provisions:

Kyl says the Justice Department is concerned that it could force them to reveal sensitive information.

In a statement Thursday, Kyl said the agency’s “uncharacteristically strong” opposition is reason enough to think twice about the legislation, and he will block a vote until both sides can work out the differences.

Kyl’s water-carrying for the Justice Department is untenable. The OPEN Government Act has overwhelmingly passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. Similar legislation in the House passed in March by 308 to 117. Kyl needs to get out of the way. As Sen. Leahy put it, “This is a good government bill that Democrats and Republicans alike can and should work together to enact. It should be passed without further delay.“

Construction of the colossus U.S. embassy in Baghdad continues, projected to eventually cost $592 million. IraqSlogger reports today that American officials have reported “instances of appalling living conditions, abuse, and coerced labor” among the foreign construction workers:

During a telephone interview last weekend, [a high-level project manager] said the laborers “had their backs to the wall,” and had been living 20 to a trailer. Protests over First Kuwaiti’s bad food, abusive treatment from managers and unsafe working conditions were routine among many of the 2,700 workers during much of 2005 and 2006. [...]

[Former Army emergency medical technician Rory Mayberry] says he found the most basic of medical needs missing and that clinics lacked hot water, disinfectant and hand washing stations. Mayberry also claims that workers’ medical records in total disarray or nonexistent, beds were dirty and the support staff was poorly trained. Prescription pain killers were being handed out “like a candy store … and then people were sent back to work,” to operate heavy equipment or climb scaffolding, he adds.

In 2006, the State Department’s inspector general flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a “brief” review. “Nothing came to our attention,” he wrote in a memo.

Outed former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her book publisher are “suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of unconstitutionally interfering with publication of her memoir. … The suit said although the CIA had released Plame’s dates of service in an unclassified document, ‘the CIA now purports to classify or reclassify Ms. Wilson’s pre-2002 federal service dates’ so it cannot be published in her memoir ‘Fair Game.’ The CIA had also demanded ‘significant portions’ of Wilson’s manuscript be ‘excised or rendered “fiction”‘ to protect the secrecy of Wilson’s service before 2002.” In March, Plame’s husband Joe Wilson referenced the potential suit during an interview with Keith Olbermann:

The CIA is taking a look at it and they have no particular objections to the contents. They are trying to claim that she did not work for them before 2002, or cannot acknowledge she worked for them before 2002, which is sort of an Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass. We may have to litigate that. This is not the USSR. This is America and she has a right to tell her story.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams “is reportedly interested in having Keith Olbermann do occasional essays on “The NBC Nightly News.’“

White House communications aides are expressing regret for failing to utiltize bloggers as a way to “catapult Bush’s propaganda.” Bulletin News (sub. req.) reports:

“We didn’t use the new tools of communication” like the Internet, blogs and mobile technology, said a former key official. As a result, added another official, the President’s message was filtered through the mainstream press which eventually got bored with the story and stopped reporting the President’s repetitive messages. “You’ve got to use the new tools. They can reach far more people than TV or the papers,” said an administration official. “A video on the Internet or some blogging can reach millions and we should have played with that much more,” said the official. White House insiders, however, dismissed the complaints, mostly from former communications officials, claiming that they have worked with bloggers and non-traditional media but that the tide has turned against them.

A Georgia man with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) “is now in an Atlanta hospital under federally enforced isolation” after recently taking two transatlantic flights, which might have exposed other passengers to the disease.

Though the man ignored requests by public health officials not to travel, the New York Times reports that “the episode also raised questions about how rapidly health officials could respond to a similar emergency with other deadly infectious diseases.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been instrumental in dealing with this recent TB case. President Bush has repeatedly lauded their work in public health. From 2001:

I believe — firmly believe that because of the good folks who work in this building and other buildings throughout Atlanta, Georgia, and throughout the country for CDC, that we’ve saved a lot of lives in America. … I’m going to talk about public health officials as part of being the new heroes of America. And that’s why I’ve come by today, to thank them.

Yet despite his rhetoric, Bush has repeatedly proposed slashing the CDC’s budget:

– 2002: Proposed a $174 million cut.

– 2003: Proposed a $1 billion cut, with no new funding for preventive health divisions working on TB.

– 2004: Proposed an increase of “less than 1 per cent.”

– 2005: Proposed a $263 million cut, while simultaneously proposing a $270 million increase in abstinence education.

– 2006: Proposed a $500 million cut which would have slashed grants to state and local health departments like the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department involved in this week’s TB-scare.

– 2007: Proposed a $179 million cut, in addition to unspecified plans for more CDC “savings.”

– 2008: Proposed a $37 million cut, including “massive funding cuts in proven health protection programs.”

In a report submitted to the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, CDC Director Julie Gerberding warned that a TB outbreak could result from the administration’s proposed cuts. She noted that “emerging plagues such as drug-resistant tuberculosis represent ‘urgent threats that have become more prominent in the dawn of the 21st century.’”

Additionally, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, points out that the full scale of the “erosion of [CDC's] traditional disease control activities has been ‘masked’ by infusions of cash earmarked for spending on bioterrorism and pandemic activities.”

But even Bush’s myopic focus on terrorism does not appear to have paid off. The Department of Homeland Security has been unable to explain how the TB-infected man was able to simply drive into the United States on his return trip from Canada when “all border crossings had been given his name and told to hold him if he appeared.”

UPDATE: The patient is now being treated in Denver.

– Jordan Grossman