Thank you
Thank you
to all our readers who submitted questions for the candidates at the New Leadership on Health Care 2008 Presidential Forum. Keep checking back to Think Progress to see highlights of the event.
UPDATE: Check out Blog for our Future and MyDD, both of whom liveblogged the forum.
UPDATE II: Taylor Marsh and Swampland have more.
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Former Gonzales aide agrees to testify.
Former Gonzales aide agrees to testify.
Kyle Sampson, the former aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who resigned last week, has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year. “His appearance will mark the first congressional testimony by a Justice Department aide since the release of thousands of documents that show the firings were orchestrated, in part, by the White House.” “He was right at the center of things,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY said. “He has said publicly that what others have said is not how it happened. … He contradicts DOJ.”
Bush to keep Gitmo open to 2009.
Bush to keep Gitmo open to 2009.
“The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay will likely remain open for the rest of George W. Bush’s presidency, because it will take time to conduct the legal proceedings of the detainees there, the White House said on Friday.”
From today’s press briefing:
Q: So, realistically, are you saying that Guantanamo Bay will not be shut down before the end of his presidency?
SNOW: I doubt it, no. I don’t think it will.
Obey Hits Back Against Washington Post’s Smearing of House Iraq Bill
Obey Hits Back Against Washington Post’s Smearing of House Iraq Bill
This afternoon, the House passed the U.S. Troops Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act. The bill expands funding for veterans health care, requires the Iraqi government to meet certain benchmarks of progress, and calls for the strategic redeployment of all U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2008.
This morning, the Washington Post editorial board, who in 2003 called the Iraq War “an operation essential to American security,” smeared the House plan as “an unconditional retreat.”
Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI) responded on the House floor. “Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn’t listen enough to people like the Washington Post,” Obey said. “It’s that we listened too much.” Obey concluded, “And I would say one thing, those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn’t have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like The Washington Post … hadn’t supported going into that stupid war in the first place.”
Watch it:
See more of the House floor debate at The Gavel. Glenn Greenwald has more on the Washington Post editorial page here, and Horse’s Mouth has more on Obey’s speech here.
Transcript: More »
Bush promises to veto House Iraq bill.
Bush promises to veto House Iraq bill.
“I will veto it if it comes to my desk,” Bush said, adding that he thinks the legislation has “no chance of becoming law.”
UPDATE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacts to the bill’s passage: “The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of this war. … The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not.”
House approves redeployment.
House approves redeployment.
With a 218-212 vote, the House passed the U.S. Troops Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act, which calls for the redeployment of troops out of Iraq by 2008.
Gates admits U.S. military not ready for new conflict.
Gates admits U.S. military not ready for new conflict.
“We would not be able to achieve our goals on the timelines that we’ve set for ourselves in terms of being successful in that other conflict,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. “It would take a little longer and we would not be as precise. We would not have as many precision weapons. … It would be more of a blunt-force effort.”
Griles to plead guilty.
Griles to plead guilty.
J. Steven Griles, the “former No. 2 official in the Interior Department,” today “will admit lying to the Senate about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who succeeded in gaining the official’s intervention at the agency for his Indian tribal clients.” “He is the 10th person — and the second high-level Bush administration official — to face criminal charges in the continuing Justice Department investigation into Abramoff’s lobbying activities.”
BREAKING: First Republican calls for Gonzales to resign.
BREAKING: First Republican calls for Gonzales to resign.
Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) has become the first Republican member of Congress to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.
UPDATE: AP:
“I think the president should replace him,” Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press. …
“We need to have a strong, credible attorney general that has the confidence of Congress and the American people,” said Sununu, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year. “Alberto Gonzales can’t fill that role.”
“I think the attorney general should be fired,” Sununu said.
FACT CHECK: U.S. Troops Don’t Have A ‘Strong Aversion’ To Homosexual Conduct
FACT CHECK: U.S. Troops Don’t Have A ‘Strong Aversion’ To Homosexual Conduct
In an interview earlier this week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace called homosexuality “immoral” and said he supports the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy because the military “should not condone immoral acts.” Days later, Pace said, “I should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views.”
Today, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) condoned Pace’s comments in an op-ed for the USA Today:
Against the backdrop, liberals in the USA are making another attempt to force open homosexuals into America’s military population. In a media question-and-answer session, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated his personal view that homosexuality was immoral.
Gen. Pace’s principles reflect the strong aversion of our Marines and soldiers to homosexual conduct. These moral principles also reflect the position of the predominantly conservative families who send their young men and women to serve in the U.S. military.
But the views among servicemembers differ from Hunter’s — and Pace’s — personal feelings. Last December, a Zogby Interactive poll of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” A 2004 poll found that a majority of junior enlisted servicemembers believed gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 16 percent in 1992.
UPDATE: In an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled, “Bigotry That Hurts Our Military,” former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) calls for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He voted for the policy in 1993. “This policy has become a serious detriment to the readiness of America’s forces,” Simpson writes, “as they attempt to accomplish what is arguably the most challenging mission in our long and cherished history.”
Bush Slashes Economic Aid For Latin America, Belying ‘We Care’ Message
Bush Slashes Economic Aid For Latin America, Belying ‘We Care’ Message
During his trip to Latin America, one of President Bush’s goals is to “challenge a widespread perception in Latin America of U.S. neglect,” and he has been telling the region’s chronic poor, “We care about your plight.” (In his speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Bush used the phrase “social justice” five times.) “It’s an attempt to try to show a softer, gentler Bush,” Armand Peschard-Sverdrup of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.
While in Brazil, Bush brought this message to a Sao Paulo, Brazil community center that houses poor children:
President Bush has brought an unaccustomed message for Latin Americans on his weeklong swing through the region: I feel your pain. And he is taking it to some unaccustomed places — hotbeds of poverty and disaffection that he generally has missed on earlier trips.
“There are a lot of hurting people in the world, a lot of hurting people in Brazil,” Mr. Bush said as he toured a ramshackle community center in São Paulo Friday, a facility that cares for 3,000 children a week from the city’s vast slums. “And the people in the United States care.”
But as the Latin America Working Group (LAWG) points out, the Bush administration’s latest budget outline slashes economic aid to Brazil:
The budget also cuts total aid for Latin America from $1.6 billion this year to $1.45 billion for 2008. “The smaller, poorer countries that could use some aid are unlikely to get much relief,” Business Week recently reported, “since U.S. assistance to the region, currently around $1.6 billion annually, is set to drop next year. And the biggest chunk of that aid is aimed not at poverty relief but at helping Colombia battle drug trafficking and a 40-year-old leftist insurgency.”
“In the short term, [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez has more to offer because our aid is peanuts,” said Johns Hopkins’ Riordan Roett. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he’s tossing around a billion here and a billion there.” As the New York Times writes, “A lot more will be needed if promoting social justice is to be more than a sound bite.”
Accountability at the FBI…kind of.
Accountability at the FBI…kind of.
At a press conference today, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III responded to the Justice Department Inspector General’s report that found “pervasive errors in the FBI’s use” of National Security Letters to obtain the personal information of U.S. citizens. “How could this happen?” Mueller asked rhetorically. “Who is to be held accountable? And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable.” However, Mueller “dismissed the idea of offering to resign, saying there has been ‘no discussion of that.’“
Pork Report Exposes $4 Million ‘Polar Express To Nowhere’
Pork Report Exposes $4 Million ‘Polar Express To Nowhere’
Yesterday, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) released the “Pig Book,” its annual compilation of all the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. This year’s edition contained some welcome news: “thanks to voter outrage and a one-year moratorium imposed by Democrats after taking over Congress,” the “number and cost of pork-barrel projects is way down” after years of record pork-barrel spending.
But the news was not all good. CAGW found that in last year’s defense spending bill, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) included $209,900,000 for projects in his state. The level of spending represented “an increase of 127 percent over the $92,425,000 for Alaska in the fiscal 2006 defense bill.” Stevens is no stranger to pork — he championed the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” and is one the Senate’s most prolific earmarkers. One egregious pork request from Stevens could be called the “Polar Express to Nowhere”:
$4,000,000 for the Northern Line Extension … The Northern Line Extension will provide a direct route from North Pole (pop. 1,778 in 2005) to Delta Junction (pop. 840 in 2000), which is a whopping 82.1 mile drive on one highway between the two villages … The Alaska Railroad Corporation said, “The proposed rail line would provide freight and potentially passenger rail services serving commercial interests and communities in or near the project corridor.”
For a sense of the metropolises that are the “communities in or near the project corridor,” here is a map of the area via Google:
Stevens is no fan of CAGW or their reports. “All they are is a bunch of psychopaths,” he said in 1999. “They are idiots.”
REPORT: 72 Percent Of Army Brigades Have Served Multiple Tours of Duty
REPORT: 72 Percent Of Army Brigades Have Served Multiple Tours of Duty
The Center for American Progress has released a new study on the state of our military readiness. The report — “Beyond the Call of Duty: A Comprehensive Review of the Overuse of the Army in the Administration’s War of Choice in Iraq” — undertook a “massive research project to identify, brigade by brigade, the number and duration of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan by the active Army.” The report found a large majority of Army brigades have served multiple tours:
– Brigades with one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan: 12
– Brigades with two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan: 20
– Brigades with three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan: 9
– Brigades with four tours in Iraq or Afghanistan: 2
The report also points out that a total of 420,000 troops have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once, and over 84,000 National Guard and Reservists have done multiple tours.
The multiple deployments and extended tours of duty are taking a serious toll on our soldiers. Two-thirds of Army brigades are “not ready for wartime missions,” and one Pentagon survey found that troops in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from chronic shortages of armored vehicles, heavy weapons, and communications equipment.
In addition, an Army survey conducted last year found “U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder”:
Combat stress is significantly higher among soldiers with at least one previous tour — 18.4 percent, compared with 12.5 percent of those on their first deployment, the survey found. [...]
The report also found a doubling of suicides among soldiers serving in the Iraq war from 2004 to 2005, the latest period for which data are available.
President Bush’s escalation strategy will push these overstressed troops even further. “Our Army is in bad shape,” report co-author Lawrence Korb said, “and the surge will only make it worse for the Army and the country.”
Americans want redeployment.
Americans want redeployment.
60 percent of Americans “want Congress to set a timetable to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of 2008,” according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll. “The share of people who now call the war a mistake is 59 percent — the same as September 2005 and the highest level in the 58 times the question has been asked since the war began.”
The world’s “most famous freshman congressman.”
The world’s “most famous freshman congressman.”
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who two months ago became the first Muslim sworn into Congress, “has plans to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top State Department officials to talk about showcasing his story as part of their public diplomacy efforts in the Muslim world.” Already, the State Department’s overseas press bureau has profiled Ellison three times. “I’m willing to do whatever I can to make some friends for America,” Ellison said. “It’s a very positive development,” said Voice of America’s Faiz Rehman, a native of Pakistan. “He is the most famous freshman congressman in the world.”
FEMA to Katrina trailer residents: “Pack and pray.”
FEMA to Katrina trailer residents: “Pack and pray.”
A FEMA trailer park was “abruptly closed down” this weekend because of “ongoing problems with raw sewage that pours onto the grass” and consistent power outages. FEMA moved many of the families to other nearby mobile home parks. Some of the displaced residents “questioned the genuineness of the sudden concern for their health because the stink of sewage has been a nuisance for about a year.” “They know how to put me out,” Katrina victim Allsee Tobias said, “but they don’t know how to help me out.”
Colbert praises John Gibson’s journalistic courage.
Colbert praises John Gibson’s journalistic courage.
Last week, ThinkProgress noted that Fox News host John Gibson had accused reporters of “news-guy snobbery” for covering the Iraq war instead of Anna Nicole Smith.” “John Gibson is right,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday, praising Gibson’s “courage” for reporting on Anna Nicole and not Iraq. Watch it:
Pentagon: Debating ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Will Stir ‘Divisiveness And Turbulence Across Our Country’
Pentagon: Debating ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Will Stir ‘Divisiveness And Turbulence Across Our Country’
Last January, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking him for his opinion on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy “in light of the growing call of military leaders to reconsider DADT and the mounting evidence that calls into question the rationale for this policy.”
In a letter obtained by ABC’s The Blotter, Pentagon official David Chu responded by claiming that even a debate about the issue would hurt the war effort:
“The Global War on Terrorism is far-reaching and unrelenting,” wrote David S. C. Chu, Defense Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness… “A national debate on changing” the Pentagon’s ban on openly gay service members would bring “divisiveness and turbulence across our country,” which “will compound the burden of the war.”
This is a shoddy attempt to stifle debate, and in fact the opposite is true — repeal of DADT would relieve, not worsen, the “burden of the war” on our military.
Since DADT went info effect, the Pentagon has dismissed more than 11,000 servicemembers, around 800 of whom had “some training in an occupation identified … as ‘critical.’” At a time when the military faces a readiness crisis, the Pentagon can ill-afford to dismiss two service members a day as it is doing under the current policy. One study by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network found the U.S. military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays and lesbians were allowed to be open about their sexual orientation.
Army Putting Kiley Back In Charge of Walter Reed
Army Putting Kiley Back In Charge of Walter Reed
Today, the Army announced the commander of Walter Reed hospital, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, has been relieved of command. According to the press statement making the announcement, Army surgeon general Kevin Kiley will be Weightman’s temporary replacement.
Kiley ran Walter Reed before becoming the Army’s surgeon general. During that time, Kiley ignored multiple complaints about the facility from soldiers and veterans groups. From this morning’s Washington Post:
[A]s far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army’s top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.
Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that “there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need.”
“I met guys who weren’t going to appointments because the hospital didn’t even know they were there,” Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer. [...]
On Feb. 17, 2005, Kiley sat in a congressional hearing room as Sgt. 1st Class John Allen, injured in Afghanistan in 2002, described what he called a “dysfunctional system” at Walter Reed in which “soldiers go months without pay, nowhere to live, their medical appointments canceled.”
Even now, Kiley has claimed the problems at Walter Reed’s infamous Building 18 “weren’t serious” and he has attacked the media’s coverage of the issue as “one-sided.” “I want to reset the thinking that while we have some issues here, this is not a horrific, catastrophic failure at Walter Reed,” Kiley has said.
UPDATE: John Aravosis reminds us that Kiley took no action when informed that a soldier was sleeping in his own urine.
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