Yesterday, more than 40 members of the bipartisan Consensus for American Security, made up of retired military leaders and national security experts, sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urging them to vote on the New START Treaty by the end of the year. The letter highlights the urgency of the national security crisis being created by the absence of mechanisms to monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The letter states:

Currently, we have no verification regime to account for Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons. Two hundred and ninety seven (297) days have elapsed since American teams have been allowed to inspect Russian nuclear forces, and we are concerned that further inaction will bring unacceptable lapses in U.S. intelligence about Russia’s strategic arsenal. Without New START, we believe that the United States is less secure.

The fact that the Right in the U.S. isn’t rushing to get New START ratified is a damning indication of both their foreign policy incoherence and how their animosity toward the President drives their views. The Right consistently clamors about how we can’t trust the Russians, yet if you don’t trust the Russians you want to have this treaty ratified yesterday and you want US inspectors back on the ground in Russia to start inspecting Russian nuclear missiles as soon as possible. This was David Broder’s point in August, when he noted that Jon Kyl’s lack of awareness of the verification gap was quite “the price to pay for ignorance.”

Yet the apparently pro-Putin Heritage Foundation in a new memo from the mysteriously anonymous “New START Working Group,” insists that there is no urgency to ratify the New START Treaty or inspect Russia’s nukes.

The two sides, in a December 4, 2009, joint statement, expressed their commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the START treaty following its expiration. Is the Administration now suggesting that Russia might violate this spirit of cooperation while the Senate does its due diligence on New START? Finally, the U.S. has 15 years of data on Russian strategic forces thanks to START, and the Russians are unlikely to significantly change their forces while the Senate takes its time.

This is simply jaw dropping. The Heritage Foundation apparently thinks that it is okay to simply trust the Russians because they deem it “unlikely” they will do any cheating. This is the same organization that puts out videos grouping Putin with Kim Jung Il and advocates building super awesome Gazillion dollar missile defense system on the pretty unlikely grounds that the Russians are out to get us. There is an informal agreement to follow “the spirit” of the START treaty, despite it not having legal force. But this was always premised on the notion that New START would be ratified rapidly since it is not that different from the old treaty. In other words, there would be little reason to fear Russian cheating, since in a few months time the treaty would take force.

But 300 days later we still have no treaty. And there is a real and present danger that should the Senate punt on New START that the spirit of this agreement will collapse. Believing it unlikely that a more conservative Senate will ever ratify New START, the Russians may decide to change their approach. Anyone the least bit distrustful of the Russian military should be very afraid of this outcome. Yet, in what has to amount to a massive betrayal of Reagan’s “trust but verify” statement, the Heritage Foundation is now saying, take your time trust the Russians.

Finally, Heritage claims that the Administration should have just sought a five-year extension of the START I treaty. I mean duh, why didn’t the Administration think of that? Maybe because you can’t simply unilaterally extend treaties. There were many indications that the Russians were not interested in extending the START 1 treaty as it was. If the Russians didn’t want to, it couldn’t be done. But furthermore, the US also wanted to renegotiate and update the treaty. Many of the verification and monitoring measures in old START had become, well, old, unnecessary, and burdensome.

But lastly, debating why or why not something was done 18 months ago is irrelevant – we are where we are and that is a place where the US is rapidly losing its intel on Russia’s nuclear arsenal. It is a place where we simply trust the Russians. If the Heritage Foundation believes it was a grave mistake for the Obama administration not to have sought to extend the original START treaty so that verification remained in place, then it should be important enough to them to urge the ratification of New START now. The fact that isn’t, speaks volumes.

Last spring, the United States pledged nearly $1.2 billion in emergency aid to Haiti following its tragic earthquake that left hundreds of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.

Yet the Associated Press (AP) reports today that “not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived” to Haitians who badly the need the aid. This summer, both the House and the Senate passed a bill that would make $917 million available for Haiti reconstruction aid. Yet Congress must also pass an authorization bill that directs exactly how the money will be spent, and thus far, the U.S. Senate has failed to do.

The AP conducted its own investigation of why the Senate has failed to pass the authorization bill, and it discovered that a single senator “pulled it for further study.” After calling dozens of senators’ offices, the AP discovered that the senator holding up the bill is Tom Coburn (R-OK). Coburn spokeswoman Becky Berhardt explained that the reason he is holding up the bill is because he objects to the creation of a senior Haiti coordinator — a position that would cost a paltry $5 million over five years — when the United States currently has an ambassador to the country:

Now the authorization bill that would direct how the aid is delivered remains sidelined by a senator who anonymously pulled it for further study. Through calls to dozens of senators’ offices, the AP learned it was Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma. “He is holding the bill because it includes an unnecessary senior Haiti coordinator when we already have one” in U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, Coburn spokeswoman Becky Bernhardt said.

The bill proposes a new coordinator in Washington who would not oversee U.S. aid but would work with the USAID administrator in Washington to develop a rebuilding strategy. The position would cost $1 million a year for five years, including salaries and expenses for a staff of up to seven people.

While Coburn continues to hold up much-needed reconstruction aid over a relatively meaningless objection, “just 2 percent of [Haiti's earthquake] rubble has been cleared and 13,000 temporary shelters have been built – less than 10 percent of the number planned.” There are estimated to be 1.3 million Haitians still homeless as a result of the earthquake.

The New York Times reports that, “even as officials in the United States and Iraq made public pronouncements that reveled in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s demise,” the group has “embarked on a wave of terror that managed to shake even an Iraqi public inured to violence”:

[D]uring the past two months, Iraq has witnessed some of its highest casualty tolls in more than two years, according to the government.

How Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has managed this unlikely turnaround — from a near spent force to a reinvigorated threat to Iraq’s democracy in a little more than two months — is a puzzle to both the Americans and Iraqis who study the insurgent group, some of whom now wonder whether the organization in Iraq can ever be entirely defeated.

“The people who said Al Qaeda in Iraq was finished were fooling themselves,” said Hadi al-Amiri, former leader of a Shiite militia and also of the Parliament’s security committee, using another name for the insurgent group. “They have sleeper cells throughout the country that have always been capable of rising up at any moment. They will not be finished in Iraq anytime soon.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported Sunday that hundreds of police officers, formerly members of an American-backed Sunni Anbar Awakening paramilitary force, “will be stripped of their ranks“:

The officers called the move by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which oversees police, a threat to security in Anbar, once a stronghold of Sunni insurgent violence. In 2006, a group called the Awakening, some of them former insurgents, rose up with tribal and U.S. backing to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq. The same strategy was mirrored across the country with American backing and funding, and what became the Sons of Iraq is credited with helping calm Sunni Arab areas.

In 2007, the U.S. military transformed many of the Awakening members in Anbar into police officers. Now many, such as these 410 men, are being stripped of their ranks, are being targeted by al-Qaeda in Iraq or think the Shiite-led government is trying to get rid of them.

“This committee in the Ministry of Interior is sectarian,” said Ahmed Abu Risha, the head of the Awakening and a tribal leader in Anbar. “When you dismiss those who fought al-Qaeda in the streets, this is support for al-Qaeda. What I expect are dire consequences.”

The rise of the the Sunni Awakenings paramilitaries and the degradation of Al Qaeda in Iraq were, rightly or wrongly, touted as two of the key achievements of the surge in Iraq.

Another supposed achievement was the weakening of anti-American Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Articles reveling in Sadr’s demise became an entire genre unto themselves, including this classic from former occupation spokesman Dan Senor. As I wrote at the time, Senor and others really failed to grasp that Sadr was more than just a militia leader, he was a symbol of Shia suffering with considerable support among Iraq’s urban Shia underclass. The U.S. wouldn’t change this simply by beating up on the Jaysh al-Mahdi.

The U.S. beat up on the Jaysh al-Mahdi pretty bad. But as Babak Dehghanpisheh wrote in August, Sadr is now “a kingmaker in Iraqi politics,” commanding the largest single bloc in Iraqi parliament, put there by Sadr’s considerable support among Iraq’s urban Shia underclass.

It’s generally been accepted that, while the surge helped produce greater security in Iraq, it failed to facilitate the political development that was one of its goals. As Brian Katulis, Marc Lynch, and Peter Juul wrote back in September 2008, the surge “froze into place the accelerated fragmentation that Iraq underwent in 2006 and 2007 and has created disincentives to bridge central divisions between Iraqi factions.” That analysis has been pretty strongly vindicated, but now going on seven months since Iraqis have been trying to form a government, it seems that even of some of the security gains upon which the “surge success” narrative was based are dissolving as well.

And if that weren’t troubling enough, consider: This is the success we’re trying to reproduce in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV) released a vicious ad slamming opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as being the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” “Illegals sneaking across our border, putting Americans’ safety and jobs at risk,” the ad narrator proclaims as images of menacing men with flashlights walking along a fence appear on the screen alongside a snapshot of an innocent looking white family.

The tone of the ad is so offensive that even the chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Hispanic Caucus and Angle spokesperson, Tibi Ellis, criticized it on Spanish language radio. The Las Vegas Sun reports:

Tibi Ellis on Monday told 1060 AM Spanish radio host Edwin Saldarriaga that she doesn’t agree with Angle’s depiction of illegal immigrants in a campaign ad released earlier this month.

“I condemned this type of propaganda, no matter who is running them, where they blame Mexicans as the only problem and where they attack them as the only source of illegal immigration,” Ellis told Saldarriaga. “I don’t agree with that.”

Ellis stressed to Saldarriaga that she was not representing Angle during the interview. Ellis, however, has served as a spokeswoman for Angle, according to an interview she gave to Texas GOP Vote, in which she recounted a campaign trip she took with Angle to Denton, Texas.

Watch the ad:

Politifact found the claims made in Angle’s ad are also blatantly false. Besides claiming that Reid and “illegal aliens” are BFF, the ad accuses Reid of giving undocumented immigrants tax breaks as the rest of Nevadans languish in the deep recession. However, according to Politifact, “Most of the Angle camp’s cited votes were actually aimed at people in the U.S. legally (even though they may formerly have been illegal), and in at least two cases, we disagree that what was being voted on represented a ‘special tax break’ at all.”

A Reid spokesperson remarked, “Sharron Angle’s extreme hostility toward Hispanic Nevadans is so blatant and so striking that not even her own campaign surrogates can avoid denouncing her shameless efforts to play on voters’ worst fears with her thoroughly-debunked lies about immigration.”

Angle’s campaign, however, has not “conceded” the Latino vote. Angle is reportedly “courting endorsements from Hispanic leaders and has plans to air Spanish-language ads.” Some Latinos still remain skeptical. “For me, she is scary,” Esperanza Montelongo, a Reid supporter who hosts a Spanish-language political radio show in Las Vegas, told the Associated Press. “She is anti-anything Latino.”