“The population is in despair,” retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote in an assessment on the situation in Iraq, based on a recent round of meetings there with Gen. David H. Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders. “Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.” McCaffrey was scheduled to brief White House officials on his findings yesterday.
“The Army’s new acting surgeon general said Tuesday she is concerned about long-term morale because the military lacks money to hire enough nurses and mental health specialists to treat thousands of troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Donald Rumsfeld “cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday in a case he described as ‘lamentable.’” The district judge “threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan,” arguing Rumsfeld “cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.”
After environmental groups leaked the Interior Department’s secret plan to “gut” the Endangered Species Act yesterday, senators vowed to block the proposed changes through appropriations legislation.
“Hundreds of Iraqis detained in the current security crackdown have been crammed into two prisons run by the Defense Ministry that were designed to hold only dozens of people.”
$100 million. The amount of the penalty the leading manufacturer of night vision gear will pay for sending classified materials overseas.
“Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment,” which “would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same strict scrutiny given by courts to allegations of racial discrimination.” The constitutional amendment was three states short of passage in 1982.
“The House on Tuesday approved a two-year extension [through 2010] of a program offering tax credits for construction of low-income housing in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”
And finally: Angelina Jolie’s father, actor Jon Voight, was yesterday spotted “putting in a good word for meticulous oral hygiene.” Waiting for a meeting in the Hart Senate office building, Voight engaged in a “five-minute dental-flossing session.” “He was really digging in there,” one witness noted. “Like some people pace and talk on their cell phones, he was pacing and flossing.”
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