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Rumsfeld blames the generals for poor pre-war planning.

By Satyam Khanna on May 8, 2008 at 7:50 pm

In February 2003, Gen. Eric Shinseki famously predicted that “several hundred thousand” troops would be needed for post-war hostilities in Iraq. According to documents recently released by the Pentagon in response to The New York Times’s expose on its propaganda program, however, Donald Rumsfeld claimed in a 2006 briefing that the reason why he did not support a larger invasion force was because commanders did not request it:

RUMSFELD: Now, it turns out he [Shinkseki] was right. The commanders–you guys ended up wanting roughly the same as you had for the major combat operation, and that’s what we have. There is no damned guidebook that says what the number ought to be. We were queued up to go up to what, 400-plus thousand.

Q: Yes, they were already in queue.

RUMSFELD: They were in the queue. We would have gone right on if they’d wanted them, but they didn’t, so life goes on.

In reality, Rumsfeld fought back when generals like Shinseki requested more troops. He said in 2003 that Shinseki was “far from the mark.” As McClatchy reported in 2004, “Central Command originally proposed a force of 380,000 to attack and occupy Iraq. Rumsfeld’s opening bid was about 40,000. … By September 2003, Rumsfeld and his aides thought, there would be very few American troops left in Iraq.”

Climate Progress

Sen. Ben Nelson Describes Disastrous Global Warming Bill As ‘Realistic’

By Brad Johnson on May 8, 2008 at 7:31 pm

Sen. Ben Nelson
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)

In the past two weeks, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) has been circulating draft climate legislation in line with President Bush’s Rose Garden global warming speech, which called for industry tax credits and for U.S. global warming emissions to continue growing until 2025. To do so would be sheer lunacy. But Voinovich embraced the plan and translated Bush’s goals into the Incentives-Based Alternative Climate Policy Act. Voinovich’s bill was crafted by a who’s who of industry front groups, including the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, the National Manufacturers Association, the Edison Electric Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council.

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Steve Cochran summarized the Voinovich proposal as “bankrupt,” saying:

It’s a detailed prescription for doing nothing. If you think climate change is a hoax, this is your bill.

Friends of the Earth president Brent Blackwelder agreed, saying the Voinovich bill is “repugnant and immoral.” He warned:

Any senator who votes for such sham legislation will answer for it at the ballot box.

But as Darren Samuelsohn reports in E&E News, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) is placing himself in the Voinovich camp. Samuelson writes:

In contrast, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) maintained that he is a long way from backing the Lieberman-Warner bill. Instead, he is taking a close look at an alternative climate bill circulated from Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) that opens with tax incentives for new energy technologies but falls back on cap and trade if the other ideas have not worked by 2030.

“It’s a more realistic approach to what technology is going to be required,” Nelson said. “Just legislating it, doesn’t get you there.”

Joe Romm at Climate Progress responds to Sen. Nelson: “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!“

Politics

Senate ethics complaint against Vitter dismissed.

By Matt Corley on May 8, 2008 at 6:33 pm

Last year, after it was revealed that Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) telephone number was part of the late D.C. Madam’s records, CREW asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate whether it amounted to “improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate.” Today, the committee informed Vitter that it was dismissing the complaint against him because the incident occurred before he ran for the Senate. CREW responded by saying that “the Senate Ethics Committee has once again done what is does best: nothing.”

Climate Progress

Is 450 ppm possible? Part 5: Old coal’s out, can’t wait for new nukes, so what do we do NOW?

By Joe Romm on May 8, 2008 at 5:53 pm

Suppose the leaders of this country were wise enough to put a moratorium on traditional coal (the most urgent climate policy needed, as discussed in Part 4)? How will we meet our steadily growing demand for carbon-free power over the next decade? And to get on the 450 ppm path, we don’t just need to stop U.S. emissions from rising — we should return to 1990 levels (or lower) by 2020.

NUCLEAR: Nuclear is an obvious possibility, beloved of conservative Francophiles like McCain and Gingrich, but energy realists understand that it is very unlikely new nuclear plants could deliver many kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2018, let alone affordable kWhs. Indeed, back in August, Tulsa World reported (here):

American Electric Power Co. isn’t planning to build any new nuclear power plants because delays will push operational starts to 2020, CEO Michael Morris said Tuesday….

Builders would also have to queue for certain parts and face “realistic” costs of about $4,000 a kilowatt, he said….

“I’m not convinced we’ll see a new nuclear station before probably the 2020 timeline,” Morris said.

And that in spite of the amazing subsidies and huge loan guarantees for nuclear power in the 2005 energy bill (see here).

As for the $4,000 a kw capital cost — and the related electricity price of about 10 cents per kwh — mid-2007 has already turned into the “good old days” for nukes. Utilities are now telling regulators that nukes will cost 50% to 100% more than the AEP estimate, as I’ll report in a couple of weeks.

One very good source of apples-to-apples comparisons of different types of low- and zero-carbon electricity generation is the modeling work done for the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) on how to comply with the AB32 law (California’s Global Warming Solutions Act), online here. AB32 requires a reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The most valuable document is probably the “Generation Costs,” although the slides for the recent May 6th presentation are fascinating.

The research for the CPUC puts the cost of power from new nuclear plants at 15.2 cents per kWh. It also puts the cost of coal gasification with carbon capture and storage at 16.9 cents per kWh. In any case, given its immature state and the mismanaged federal effort (see “In seeming flipflop, Bush drops mismanaged ‘NeverGen’ clean coal project“), coal with CCS won’t be providing much power by 2020. At this point, it would even be pure speculation to say that coal with CCS will be one of the low-cost options in the 2020s.

So what do we do in the near term to meet the projected 1% annual increase in demand over the next decade while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions? There are only three plausible options, and we’ll need them all:

Read more

Politics

Nuns strike back against voter ID laws.

By Amanda Terkel on May 8, 2008 at 5:39 pm

On Tuesday, 12 nuns in their 80s and 90s fell victim to Indiana’s strict voter ID law when they were turned away from the polls because they lacked a valid photo ID. Time’s Karen Tumulty notes that nuns in Missouri are now basically “rap[ping] the Supreme Court’s knuckles with a great big ruler” and objecting to these ineffective voter ID laws:

“This may sound like a good idea at first,” stated Sister Sandy Schwartz of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary regarding voter ID requirements, “but once you stop to think about who would really be affected, this is going to keep a lot of our loved ones from being able to vote.”

Today, the Missouri House gave final approval to a controversial constitutional amendment that pushes the state a step closer toward adopting a voter ID law. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) said that if approved, an ID requirement could “put the voting rights at risk for up to 240,000 registered Missouri voters.”

Digg It!

Yglesias

The New Nixon Library

By ThinkProgress on May 8, 2008 at 5:19 pm

As Kevin Drum explains:

Well, just for the record, it turns out that last year the library was transferred into the federal system and a new director, Tim Naftali of the University of Virginia, was named director. The old private foundation still controls a couple of buildings, but basically it’s now a nonpartisan institution under federal control. Naftali told me that they’re busily updating the displays and that Nixon’s presidential papers, kept in Washington until now, will be shipped to California as soon as a new archive building is constructed. It is, one might say, the New Nixon Library.

If you read, say, this you’ll get a sense of where Tim’s coming from politically.

Media

Only Two News Networks Willing To Explain Their Role In Pentagon Propaganda Program

By Matt Corley on May 8, 2008 at 4:48 pm

abccnnlogos.jpgOn April 20, the New York Times published a blockbuster exposé revealing a secret Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to “generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.” Though the analysts often had “ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies” they assessed on air, their potential conflicts of interest were “hardly ever disclosed to the viewers.”

Four days after the Times’ expose hit newsstands, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) wrote letters to the heads of ABC News, CBS News, CNN News, Fox News Channel, and NBC News asking for “specifics about each outlet’s policies surrounding the hiring and vetting of military analysts reporting on the Iraq War.” Here’s part of what she wrote to ABC News head David Westin:

When the American people turn on their TV news, they expect coverage of the Iraq War and military issues to be using analysts without conflicts of interests. When you put analysts on the air without fully disclosing their business interests, as well as relationships with high-level officials within the government, the public trust is betrayed.

Politico reports today that only Westin and CNN’s Jim Walton have responded to DeLauro’s questions. In his response, Westin asserted that ABC News had “acted responsibly”:

From what I know of our reporting involving our military analysts, I am satisfied that ABC News has acted responsibly and has served its audience well.

Both Westin and Walton’s responses lacked any genuine self-examination. But the fact that they were even willing to reply is more than the other networks did, proving that the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz was right when he said “the networks are ducking this one, big time.” In the week after the story broke, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that “out of approximately 1,300 news stories, only two touched on the Pentagon analysts scoop — both airing on PBS’s ‘NewsHour.’”

DeLauro, along with 40 other lawmakers, are calling on the Pentagon’s Inspector General to investigate the program.

Economy

North Carolina Shuts The School Doors On Undocumented Immigrant Children

By Guest Blogger on May 8, 2008 at 4:24 pm

Our guest blogger is Henry Fernandez, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund focusing on state and municipal policy.

schools.JPGThe North Carolina Attorney General’s office decided yesterday that undocumented immigrant students cannot attend public colleges in their state. This decision to cut off opportunity for one group of North Carolina residents affects even those children who have gone to North Carolina public schools since kindergarten, and cannot remember ever living anywhere other than North Carolina.

This finding appears to have been unnecessary and could have been decided differently, as a prior Attorney General had found that these same students could attend. It turns out that there are only a handful of undocumented students attending North Carolina community and four year public colleges, and all of these are paying full tuition, effectively subsidizing other North Carolina residents who pay the lower in-state tuition.

The state estimates that of approximately 471,000 students in its public colleges, only 367 (or less than one tenth of one percent) are undocumented immigrants. So it is not clear what problem opponents of these students were trying to solve. However, removing even the hope of attending college for undocumented students currently in elementary or high school in North Carolina seems particularly unfair. Most of these kids arrived in the United States with their parents as young children and had no choice in the matter. Nor would most have any idea how to get around in their parents’ home countries.

Ensuring that undocumented immigrant children cannot get a higher education is a mistake. The United States needs all of the well educated workers we can get. Since these young people have no connection to any country outside the United States, they will remain in North Carolina, without a college education. Thus, they will be less likely to hold a job that lifts them out of poverty and when they start their families, their children will be less likely to escape poverty or to do well in school.

It is precisely because these children have worked hard while playing by the rules, and because education ends the cycle of poverty, that progressives support the Dream Act, which would provide in-state tuition and a path to citizenship for children who have grown up here, played by the rules, and want to go to college. And decisions like today’s by the North Carolina Attorney General are why our country needs to pass a national comprehensive immigration law that creates a path to citizenship for those 12 million undocumented immigrants already here, while ending the state by state approach that continues to fail to solve a problem which should be handled by the Congress and President.

Politics

Latest KBR scandal: contractors accused of sexual harrassment at British Embassy in Iraq.

By Ali Frick on May 8, 2008 at 4:00 pm

The latest in a long, long line of scandals plaguing Iraq contracting company KBR, today the Times of London reports that British employees of KBR working in the British Embassy in Iraq have been accused of sexual harassment. One Iraqi woman, a cleaner at the embassy, says that the KBR employee offered to double her pay if she slept with him; when she refused, she was fired:

The Iraqis accuse the embassy of leaving the abuse unchallenged and failing adequately to respond to complaints against several British managers for KBR. The company was allowed to conduct its own inquiry, an arrangement criticised as a very serious conflict of interest.

The complainants — the cleaner and two male cooks who worked in the embassy canteen — say that some KBR managers groped Iraqi staff regularly, paid or otherwise rewarded them for sex and dismissed those who refused or spoke out.

All three Iraqis lost their jobs in the Green Zone. Two KRB employees who worked in the embassy spoke out in support of the women; a few days later, KBR sent them home on paid leave and later fired them. The women also say KBR never interviewed them when conducting their internal review.

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