Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow first reported on the case of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, a decorated U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who received notice last September that he was being discharged from the Air Force under the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Watch it:

As Maddow reported, Lt. Col. Fehrenbach defended America’s skies in the days after 9/11, and flew combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, for which he won the Air Medal for heroism. He has logged over 2,000 hours in the air, over 1,400 of those in fighters, and over 400 of those in combat. Fehrenbach has eighteen years’ worth of experience flying fighter jets.

To put the rank stupidity of the military’s anti-gay policy in dollars and cents terms, the amount of taxpayer investment represented by Lt. Col. Fehrenbach is enormous. In firing him, not only do the U.S. taxpayers lose the money that was spent training him, we lose the money we have to spend training someone else to replace him, as well as the hundreds of other pilots he could have trained. It’s like flushing tens of millions of dollars down the toilet.

In March, CAPAF’s Lawrence Korb wrote about the costs of DADT:

Since 1994, the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 military personnel across the services, including approximately 800 with skills deemed “mission critical,” such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists. These are the very specialties for which the military has faced personnel shortfalls in recent years.

In 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that the cost of discharging and replacing service members fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years totaled at least $190.5 million. This amounts to roughly $20,000 per discharged service member.

Analysis of GAO’s methodology, however, shows that the $190 million figure may be wildly off the mark. A recent study by the Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that GAO’s analysis total left out several important factors, such as the high cost of training officers — commissioned soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and Coast Guardsmen with several years of service experience — who were discharged due to their sexual orientation. When these costs were factored in, the cost to the American taxpayer jumped to $363.8 million — $173.3 million, or 91 percent, more than originally reported by GAO.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong in any era, but in a financial climate like today’s, it’s just staggeringly irresponsible.

Conservatives have criticized many of the choices Secretary Gates has made in regard to key defense programs and expenditures — yet here we have a way to save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in defense costs, by repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s interesting that when offered a choice between service to fiscal responsibility and service to their own discomfort with homosexuality, some choose the latter.

Our guest blogger is Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The Senate Democratic Policy Committee held the 19th in its series of hearings on waste, fraud and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday. What we heard was really stunning.

We learned that the Army’s biggest contractor in Iraq, KBR, received bonuses totaling $83.4 million for work done during 2007 under LOGCAP III Task Order 139, which included electrical wiring work throughout Iraq. According to the Army’s own criteria for performance bonuses, in order to properly receive such a bonus, the firm’s work was to have been “excellent.”

Witnesses told our committee KBR’s work was far from excellent. As they described it, it sounds more like a disaster:

– One witness was Eric Peters, a former KBR Master Electrician who worked in Iraq for KBR as recently as this year. He said he quit the company after determining that KBR was incapable of doing the electrical wiring work properly, did not care about the safety of its own employees, and sought to intimidate those who spoke up. Peters also noted that KBR hires third country nationals who are not electricians to do wiring work. Often, workers and supervisors don’t even speak the same language.

– Another witness was Jim Childs, also a Master Electrician. The Army hired him to inspect KBR’s wiring work in Iraq after I asked the Army to take a closer look at what KBR was doing. He told us KBR’s electrical wiring work in Iraq was the “most hazardous, worst quality work I have ever inspected. During my theatre-wide inspections, I concluded that roughly 90 percent of the new construction building work by KBR was not properly wired. This means that over 70,000 buildings in Iraq were not up to code.”

– Our third witness was the former Army contract manager who previously managed KBR’s LOGCAP III contract. He told us the $83.4 million bonus received by KBR was “highly inappropriate” and if he had not been forced out of his position managing that contract – after he refused to rubber stamp nearly a billion dollars in questionable KBR charges – he would have objected to awarding the bonus.

The sad story of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a Green Beret, really tells it all. He was electrocuted as he showered in a shower stall on a U.S. military base. His mother was told he was electrocuted because he carried an electrical appliance into the shower. She refused to accept that explanation and forced an investigation which determined that the real cause of Sgt. Maseth’s electrocution was faulty electrical wiring.

Did KBR move quickly to correct the wiring? Not according to Jim Childs, who told us that a full 10 months after Sgt. Maseth’s electrocution death, KBR still had not fixed the wiring problems to make the shower safe.

I intend to continue to pursue this issue. I want to know why KBR got these bonuses and who approved them. I also want to know what the Pentagon is doing to hold KBR accountable for its work in Iraq. Tens of millions of dollars in bonuses for slipshod, deadly wiring work sure isn’t holding anybody accountable for anything.

I intend to keep asking these questions, and more, until I get satisfactory answers. American taxpayers and American soldiers, who put their lives on the line, deserve no less.

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The New York Times is at it again. Reaching back into an old bag of tricks, Bush administration holdovers in the Pentagon have used the paper of record to spread false propaganda at a critical juncture in a key national security debate, this time about released Guantanamo detainees supposedly returning to terrorism. This article has just one purpose: to mislead readers about the true nature of the threat posed by released Guantanamo detainees.

Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller discards any semblance of journalism and merely serves as a conduit for unnamed Pentagon officials to claim without any supporting evidence that 74 released Guantanamo detainees are “engaged in terrorism.” The headline screams “1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds,” and the entire opening of the story presents the Pentagon figures as conclusions of fact that are being withheld for political purposes.

Not until the 17th paragraph does this key passage appear:

The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.

Got that? Bumiller admits that “only a few” can be independently verified, more than half aren’t even identified, and no details are provided about the specific accusations but not until almost the end of the story.

We know previous Pentagon efforts to link released detainees with terrorism have included those who have written op-eds or participated in films about their experience at Guantanamo as “returning to the fight.” What kind of journalism allows a reporter to write a story so clearly slanted in one direction without even a minimal effort to verify the information that forms its basis?

An accurate story using this same information would report that some Guantanamo detainees have engaged in terrorism upon release, but that most of the allegations of such activity remain unconfirmed and that previous Pentagon reports have included activity that is not normally associated with terrorism. It wouldn’t make for such a sensational headline, but it would be much more representative of the truth.

Clear away all of Dick Cheney’s tired 9/11 fearmongering, the discredited arguments about Saddam’s terrorist ties, the canned outrage at the release of information that was already public, and the unfalsifiable claim that, because of the Bush administration’s policies, the terrorists only managed to hit us once, and what you’ve got left is Cheney’s claim that information exists that proves that the Bush administration’s use of waterboard torture produced specific intelligence that prevented another successful terrorist attack in the United States. Even if this is true — and as I’ve written before, there’s probably no single American less deserving of the benefit of the doubt in this respect than Dick Cheney — according to DNI Blair, “the damage [these techniques] have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.” But we shall see.

One interesting aspect is Cheney’s schizophrenic attitude toward America’s image management, something he shares with a lot of conservatives. After praising President Obama’s “wise decision” in “reversing his plan to release incendiary photos” of Iraqis being abused by U.S. soldiers, Cheney went on dismiss “the notion that American interrogation practices were a ‘recruitment tool’ for the enemy,” calling it “another version of that same old refrain from the Left, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’”

Cheney is arguing against Gen. Petraeus, Sen. John McCain, and military interrogators who have acknowledged that abusive interrogation practices have incited hatred against the U.S. and served as a recruiting tool for our enemies. Cheney implicitly admits as much with his comments about the “incendiary photos” — if bad publicity has nothing to do with national security, what’s the problem? Why should we care who they incite?

As for the notion that criticizing national security policies as counterproductive is the same as saying “We brought it on ourselves,” well, Dick contradicts himself here, too, as he is quite happy to cast blame on the Clinton administration’s anti-terrorism policies for an attack that happened on the Bush administration’s watch. Why can’t Dick Cheney stop blaming America?

President Obama has repeatedly discussed the need to “look forward” when it comes to examining the Bush administration’s torture program. But in March, he did not rule out prosecutions of the Bush lawyers who authorized enhanced interrogations, saying he would leave prosecutions up to the discretion of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Today, during his much-anticipated speech on national security policy at the National Archives, Obama addressed lingering questions about his views on a truth commission and torture accountability. Obama said that instead of a 9/11-style commission, he favors an investigation of “abuses of our values” done through Congress. Most notably, the President reiterated his view that the DOJ “and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws”:

That is what I mean when I say that we need to focus on the future. I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November. And I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.

I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

Watch it:

In his confirmation hearings, Holder flatly said that “no one is above the law. … There are obligations that we have as a result of treaties that we have signed — obligations, obviously, in the Constitution.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee is already pursuing an investigation into interrogation of detainees, having examined the treatment of two “high value” detainees. “We have adopted a scope of work; we have hired independent staff. They are intelligence professionals and we will be doing this look back, which will probably take 6, 8 months,” Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said.

Speaking in front of the original U.S. Constitution at the National Archives this morning, President Obama delivered a lengthy, detailed speech outlining his approach to national security. Obama criticized Bush’s legal system at that convicted only three terrorists in seven years. He said it was “clear” that, “rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.”

Discussing the problem of what to do with the detainees currently imprisoned at Guantanamo, Obama reminded the audience that the problem was caused by the erroneous decision to open the extra-legal prison camp in the first place:

Indeed, the legal challenges that have sparked so much debate in recent weeks in Washington would be taking place whether or not I decided to close Guantanamo. For example, the court order to release seventeen Uighur detainees took place last fall — when George Bush was President. The Supreme Court that invalidated the system of prosecution at Guantanamo in 2006 was overwhelmingly appointed by Republican Presidents. In other words, the problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.

He also seemed to mildly rebuke Congress — which yesterday barred the use of any funds to transfer detainees to the United States — for making “decisions within a climate of fear.” He challenged them to remember their oath:

As our efforts to close Guantanamo move forward, I know that the politics in Congress will be difficult. These issues are fodder for 30-second commercials and direct mail pieces that are designed to frighten. I get it. But if we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes. … I have confidence that the American people are more interested in doing what is right to protect this country than in political posturing. I am not the only person in this city who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution — so did each and every member of Congress. Together we have a responsibility to enlist our values in the effort to secure our people, and to leave behind the legacy that makes it easier for future Presidents to keep this country safe.

Watch it:

Obama said that his administration “will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders.” He disputed conservatives’ claims that U.S. prisons could never accommodate terror detainees as “not rational.”

Transcript: Read more

This was an interesting passage from yesterday’s Politico profile of Charles Krauthammer:

Krauthammer’s formative departure from liberalism came in response to the anti-nuclear movement of the early Reagan years. In 1981, he wrote a scathing attack on the massive nuclear freeze movement, which he now describes as “hysteria.”[...]

“I don’t get caught in enthusiasms,” Krauthammer said of the nuclear freeze movement and of Obama’s mass appeal.

Krauthammer’s view of the nuclear freeze movement is charmingly antique. Histories of the the Cold War have increasingly acknowledged the extent to which the nuclear freeze movement played a part both in President Reagan’s decision to seek reductions on nuclear arms (a policy for which brave warriors like Norman Podhoretz condemned Reagan as a “traitor to anti-Communism”) and in creating and strengthening networks of pro-human rights and democracy activists and dissidents in Eastern Europe.

In her 1995 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article “Who Killed the Cold War?” — which warned that the role of peace movements in shaking the nuclear status quo was being “written out of accounts of the 1980s” — historian Mary Kaldor noted that “Five million people demonstrated in the capitals of Western Europe in 1981 and 1983.” The movement was unprecedented in scale and in its transnational character.”

What made the peace movement of the 1980s different from earlier movements was the explicit link between peace, and democracy and human rights…From the beginning, this new movement sought links with individual dissidents and groups in Eastern Europe.

Dissidents like Czechoslovakia’s Vaclav Havel and Poland’s Adam Michnik, among others, have acknowledged that the cultural, intellectual, and scholarly exchanges which grew out of the anti-nuclear movement were extremely important for the training and morale of their movements, for helping them agitate against their governments, and for preparing them to participate in a peaceful transition of power after the Soviet Union collapsed. The conservative hero myth of the Cold War, in which Reagan scared Communism to death with a threatening wave of his big, shiny missile, essentially writes this aspect out of existence.

As for Krauthammer’s claim that he doesn’t “get caught in enthusiasms,” any casual examination of his work reveals that Krauthammer is in fact enormously enthusiastic about at least a couple of things: American military power, and the necessity of vigorously applying that power against the “existential” threat of radical Islamic extremism.

In his 2004 explication of his neoconservative worldview, which he called “democratic realism“, Krauthammer claimed that the U.S. should be “friends to all, but…come ashore only where it really counts. And where it counts today is that Islamic crescent stretching from North Africa to Afghanistan.”

In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile crisis, we came to the edge of the abyss. Then, accompanied by our equally shaken adversary, we both deliberately drew back. On September 11, 2001, we saw the face of Armageddon again, but this time with an enemy that does not draw back. This time the enemy knows no reason.

Were that the only difference between now and then, our situation would be hopeless. But there is a second difference between now and then: the uniqueness of our power, unrivaled, not just today but ever. That evens the odds. The rationality of the enemy is something beyond our control. But the use of our power is within our control. And if that power is used wisely, constrained not by illusions and fictions but only by the limits of our mission — which is to bring a modicum of freedom as an antidote to nihilism — we can prevail.

About this, a few things: It’s pretty enthusiastic. It’s pretty hysterical. And it’s pretty clear that anyone who thinks you can apply the term “realism” to the proposition that the United States deploy forces across the entire Middle East and North Africa is either crazy, or is just fooling around. Make up your own mind.

The intervening years have, of course, not been kind to Krauthammer’s vision of an America untroubled by gravity, not that he or any of his fans seem to have noticed. It’s worth pointing out, however, that what Krauthammer’s continuing refusal to grant a Cold War role to the peace movement and his persistent and destructive illusions about the transformative potential of American ordnance have in common — indeed, something which is a defining characteristic of neoconservatism — is that, for all of the wind about freedom and democracy, it’s a view of history that is largely dismissive of the historical role of actual people in taking their freedom and making democracy.

But, on the other hand, he’s really popular with people who hate the president.