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Sen. Reed: White House Blocking Petraeus From Pursuing ‘New Direction’ In Iraq

By Amanda Terkel on Jul 16, 2007 at 8:00 pm

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has repeatedly said that the United States must wait until September to assess the success of the President’s escalation policy in Iraq. Last month, Petraeus said it was “premature right now” to discuss the way forward in Iraq.

But yesterday on C-SPAN, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), who recently returned from a trip to Iraq, suggested that those comments aren’t Petraeus’s real views. Rather, he is shilling for the administration. “I got the impression from Gen. Petraeus that he wasn’t waiting” until September to reassess the Iraq policy. “Now he might be overruled by people in the White House and, you know, wait until September. But he seemed very eager to come forward as quickly as possible with a new direction and policy.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/07/reedpetraeusdirection.320.240.flv]

The Bush administration has consistently used Petraeus as a “political prop,” as Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has noted. Bush has mentioned Petraeus “at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences.” In May, the White House used Petraeus as a PR flack to promote its war czar.

Today the Washington Post notes that some members of the military are worried that “the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve. ‘The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration,’ one retired four-star officer said.”

Transcript: Read more

Korb: Iraq Study Group Recommendations Are ‘Weak,’ Not A ‘Serious Change Of Policy’

By Guest Blogger on Jul 16, 2007 at 4:40 pm

korb_reed.jpgThe New York Times reports today that “a growing number of senators from both parties are making a new push to adopt the [Iraq Study Group's] recommendations into law.” The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt claims in today’s column that “everyone agrees” on the Baker-Hamilton approach.

The middle-ground proposal, introduced by Sens. Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), has been touted as a “compromise” between the President’s stay-course-strategy and a phased redeployment.

But as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb, who formerly served as a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, explains in today’s NY Daily News, the Baker-Hamilton recommendations “are now far too weak a prescription for the dire situation that faces us on the ground in Iraq”:

A cursory reading of the report might give one the impression that adopting its recommendations would result in a serious change of policy. After all, it calls for transitioning U.S. forces away from combat missions, accelerating the training of Iraqi forces and focusing more on regional diplomacy.

But look closer. While the Iraq Study Group does call for withdrawing some American troops in the spring of 2008, it conditions that withdrawal on the Iraqi government accomplishing a host of objectives.

But those are the very same benchmarks Bush is already using to measure our progress and using as a condition of withdrawal. The initial assessment report the White House released late last week makes clear that none of these benchmarks has been fully met, and on only half of these have the Iraqis made any progress.

Inexplicably, Salazar has argued that the Baker-Hamilton measure is the “right thing” because “there are people on both sides who don’t like it.”

As Korb explains though, the so-called “compromise” offered by Salazar and Alexander is toothless and does not constitute the true departure from the President’s failed policies that is needed. Instead, Congress should embrace the Levin-Reed amendment and start to “strategically reset” our presence in the Middle East.

– Ryan Powers

BREAKING: Reid To Force All-Night Filibuster On Iraq Withdrawal

By ThinkProgress on Jul 16, 2007 at 2:40 pm

Moments ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that in response to conservative obstructionism, he plans to force war supporters to physically remain in the Senate and filibuster Iraq withdrawal legislation.

Reid accused conservatives of “protecting the President rather than protecting our troops” by “denying us an up or down vote on the most important issue our country faces.” He said that if a vote on the Reed/Levin Iraq legislation is not allowed today or tomorrow, he will keep the Senate in session “straight through the night on Tuesday” and force a filibuster. From Reid’s speech:

Republicans are using a filibuster to block us from even voting on an amendment that could bring the war to a responsible end. They are protecting the President rather than protecting our troops.

They are denying us an up or down — yes or no — vote on the most important issue our country faces.

I would like to inform the Republican leadership and all my colleagues that we have no intention of backing down.

If Republicans do not allow a vote on Levin/Reed today or tomorrow, we will work straight through the night on Tuesday.

The American people deserve an open and honest debate on this war, and they deserve an up or down vote on this amendment to end it.

UPDATE: Watch the video:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/07/reidfilibuster.320.240.flv]

OpenLeft, Firedoglake and others have also called for Congress to call the conservatives’ bluff and force them to filibuster the Levin-Reed Iraq bill.

Read Reid’s full speech HERE. Bob Geiger has more.

Voinovich: Bush Has ‘F’ed’ Up The War, Needs To Start Thinking About His Legacy

By Faiz Shakir on Jul 16, 2007 at 1:47 pm

Last week, in a conversation with senior White House political aide Karl Rove, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) warned that conservative support is quickly eroding for the war, and to stem the tide, Bush must institute a plan that begins the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Voinovich told Rove, “The president is a young man and should think about his legacy.” CNN reports:

Voinovich added that other Republicans are close to speaking out against the President’s current strategy. “I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.”

In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House’s handling of Iraq by charging the administration “f–ed up” the war. [...]

A White House spokeswoman confirmed to CNN that Rove, who speaks with Voinovich frequently, had the phone conversation with the senator last week and they did discuss the President’s legacy. But the spokeswoman declined to provide further details, citing Rove’s desire to keep phone conversations with senators private.

Watch CNN’s report:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/07/voinovichfedp.320.240.flv]

According to CNN’s Ed Henry, Voinovich is privately warning the White House that “if there’s not a dramatic new strategy [by September], he will endorse a Democratic plan mandating a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops.”

Voinovich had an opportunity last week to put his tough talk into action, but failed to do so. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced an amendment to provide more rest to members of the Armed Forces deployed overseas. Voinovich voted against that measure.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent labels Voinovich part of the “WINO caucus” — Waverers In Name Only.

Digg It!

Yglesias

The Petraeus Dodge, Part II

By ThinkProgress on Jul 16, 2007 at 12:38 pm

Thomas Ricks takes a look at the new habit — attributed in Ricks’ piece to Bush, but reflecting a wider swathe of the right — of “wielding [Genera David] Petraeus as a shield against a growing number of congressional doubters.” Ricks floats the theory “that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve.” That seems doubtful to me. The administration expended no effort whatsoever on setting Generals Casey, Abizaid, and Franks up as scapegoats (Franks even got a medal of honor) before turning on a dime and deciding to make them scapegoats.

Which isn’t to say that Petraeus won’t become a scapegoat — Bush’ll do it the minute he thinks it serves his interests — but just that that’s unlikely to be the specific motive of the current parade of Petraeus-adulation. Most likely, it just is what it appears to be — an effort to cover for the bankruptness of the strategy by hiding behind a man with a glowing reputation among reporters.

Yglesias

Too Little, Too Late

By ThinkProgress on Jul 16, 2007 at 9:52 am

I’ve been remiss in not linking to my latest diavlog with Ross Douthat. One point worth emphasizing is probably this one about the Bush administration’s remarkable inability to ever capture the conventional wisdom on Iraq and thereby stabilize his political situation. The starkest example is the case of the Iraq Study Group report, which was released in December and which moderates in both parties and Broder-types were begging to see made the basis of post-midterms Iraq policy. Instead, Bush announced the “surge” and only now is turning back to Baker-Hamilton, months later, tentatively, after support for that position is already slipping away.

I don’t really know whether or not I think that’s a bad thing, but it’s a distinctive feature of Bush’s political strategy. Conventional presidential strategy suggests that one should seize opportunities to occupy the middle ground and defang the political opposition. Bush, though, has tended to do the reverse and deliberately magnify policy disagreements with Democrats (lots of pro-war candidates in 2002 got attacked as soft on Saddam anyway) in hopes of winning dramatic politcal confrontations. From the vantage point of 2007, that’s obviously worked terribly. But it worked a lot better — and for a lot longer — than I think almost anyone would have predicted back in early 2001.

Yglesias

Blogosophere Gets Results

By ThinkProgress on Jul 16, 2007 at 9:02 am

The shrillest professor unloads on waiting times:

A cross-national survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund found that America ranks near the bottom among advanced countries in terms of how hard it is to get medical attention on short notice (although Canada was slightly worse), and that America is the worst place in the advanced world if you need care after hours or on a weekend.

We look better when it comes to seeing a specialist or receiving elective surgery. But Germany outperforms us even on those measures — and I suspect that France, which wasn’t included in the study, matches Germany’s performance.

What’s more, as Krugman goes on to point out, it’s one thing to have your procedure delayed because the equipment or personnel are needed to treat someone else’s more acute condition. It’s another thing entirely for the delay to be caused, as it typically is in the United States, because a company is trying to earn more money:

his can lead to ordeals like the one recently described by Mark Kleiman, a professor at U.C.L.A., who nearly died of cancer because his insurer kept delaying approval for a necessary biopsy. “It was only later,” writes Mr. Kleiman on his blog, “that I discovered why the insurance company was stalling; I had an option, which I didn’t know I had, to avoid all the approvals by going to ‘Tier II,’ which would have meant higher co-payments. [...]

To be fair, Mr. Kleiman is only surmising that his insurance company risked his life in an attempt to get him to pay more of his treatment costs. But there’s no question that some Americans who seemingly have good insurance nonetheless die because insurers are trying to hold down their “medical losses” — the industry term for actually having to pay for care.

We also see further demolition of hip replacement myths. It’s worth saying, of course, that people who kill people in exchange for money in the US health care sector aren’t, on some level, bad people. If you worked for an insurance company and construed your job as facilitating the delivery of medically useful health care to patients in need, you’d rapidly find yourself unemployed. Similarly, a doctor whose practices don’t serve the insurance company’s needs will find himself off the roster and useless to anyone. A company that cared more about helping sick people than earning profits would see its stock value decline to the point where it would be taken over by some other company that was willing to kill for money.

It’s the logic of the system and on some level it’s no different from any other business. But whereas Apple or Toyota or Starbucks make money by delivering their products to people, insurance companies make money by not delivering health care to sick people.

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