Lott: Republicans Should Have ‘Kept Their Mouths Shut’ About Bush Meeting

By ThinkProgress on May 10, 2007 at 6:28 pm

Desperate to cover-up the increasing conservative divisions over Iraq, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) today blasted the Republicans who spoke to the media about their meeting on Tuesday with President Bush.

During a CNN appearance today, Lott said that he was “concerned” that the Republicans “had this frank discussion with the president, which could have been very positive, and then they came out and started talking about it.”

“[T]hey broke one of the cardinal rules, in my opinion,” Lott said. “If they’d have kept their mouths shut, their value of speaking candidly would have been worth a lot more.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/05/lottisolated.320.240.flv]

Digg It!

Transcript: Read more

()

Pentagon Breaks Pledge To Troops, Sends Them Back To Iraq After Just Nine Months At Home

By Amanda Terkel on May 10, 2007 at 11:49 am

On April 11, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that tours of duty for the Army would be extended from 12 months to 15 months, effective immediately. In exchange for the extensions, soldiers would receive at least a year home between deployments. This rest time was intended to “provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families…particularly guaranteeing that they will be at home for a full 12 months,” Gates added. Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/05/gatesdeploy.320.240.flv]

But Gates has not kept his promise. Stars and Stripes reports:

The Army is sending a company of Europe-based soldiers back to Iraq before the unit has had a full 12 months of “dwell time,” or at-home rest.

Members of the 1st Armored Division’s 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, Company A, learned Tuesday that they are scheduled to head back to Iraq in November, just nine months after the 150-soldier company left the combat zone in February after a 13-month deployment.

A recent Pentagon report concluded that soldiers on extended and repeated deployments “were more likely to suffer acute stress, and that mental health problems correlated with higher rates of battlefield misconduct.”

When asked yesterday about this nine-month deployment, Gates simply replied, “I’ll be very interested in finding out more about that.” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman’s response was that “there are some people, just by the nature of transferring units and things like that may not end up with the full 12 months.”

According to Whitman, the 12-month rest period between deployments “is a goal,” not a guarantee.

Digg It!

Transcript: Read more

()

Yglesias

Bye, Bye, Blair

By Matthew Yglesias on May 10, 2007 at 10:03 am

British PM Tony Blair will step down on June 27. Here from the archives is Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s big Blair profile in the June 2004 Atlantic.

I’ll just return to my token stolen-from-my-grandfather point about Blair, namely that he was more significant in selling the Iraq War in the United States than is commonly recognized. Lots and lots of Democrats who would never in a million years have taken George W. Bush’s word for it that there was this huge Iraqi WMD threat and a reasonable American military plan to take it out, were perfectly prepared to be convinced by the fact that Blair, who one would think had access to more detailed information than any of us sitting at home reading the newspaper. In retrospect, obviously, this turns out to have been a terrible heuristic, but I think it was one that influenced a lot of people at the time.