Catzmaw's Commentary

Foreclosure Phil Hates Whiners

2008-07-12T22:28:00.002-05:00

For a superb article on just why Phil Gramm is a greedy lowlife who is more responsible than any other Congress critter for the mortgage foreclosure crisis, take a look at this article from Mother Jones Magazine.

Foreclosure Phil

Foreclosure Phil was in the news this week, denouncing Americans as a nation of whiners. This mantra was picked up by the likes of Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, who from their lofty perches on top of their inherited wealth, took the silver spoons out of their mouths just long enough to say they agreed. Outrageous.

In Sorrow for Four Boy Scouts

2008-06-12T18:38:00.006-05:00

An elegy is a mournful remembrance, usually a poem, which expresses sorrow for death, quite often the deaths of the young and innocent. I'm not much of a poet, but would like to express here my sorrow over the deaths of four young Boy Scouts, the trauma of their loss to their friends and families, and the loss of these fine young men to their communities and society at large.

Years ago, as the single mother of two boys (and a girl), and worried that my sons would not have enough "guy stuff" in their lives, I decided to enroll my sons in the Boy Scouts. My oldest son was first. Over the years he went to summer camp, eventually making it to Lenhok'sin High Adventure camp at Goshen Scout Reservation, Philmont Scout Reservation (which any Scout will tell you is their Mecca) and with his younger brother to the Northern Tier High Adventure camp, at which they made a canoe and portaging expedition for some ten days through the Canadian wilderness down the Manigotagan River.

As a former Girl Scout and avid camper and general outdoorsy type I welcomed the opportunity to become an assistant leader. I went on many campouts and hikes and other activities, eventually attending seven summer camps over the years, and gained insight into adolescent boys which I wished I'd had as an adolescent girl, and a great deal of admiration both for the dedicated men who are real dads and spend real time with their boys, and for the boys themselves. They weren't all little angels. Some of them were downright troublesome from this criminal lawyer's point of view, but the good always outweighed the bad, and during the course of my Scout career I met many young men whom I could see would grow to be the backbone and stalwarts of their families and communities. I grew fond of many of them and still wonder at times how they are doing.

Accordingly, it was with shock and sadness that I heard of the loss of these young men. I've sent my sons to high adventure camp, praying that all I would see when they came back would be a few bug bites, a sunburn, and a bruise or two from the highly physical nature of some of the activities. On the other hand, I know from experience that sending your child into the woods for an adventure may result in harm. Adventure is impossible without some danger, and it's this aspect which can be very frightening. I well remember my older son coming home from a "shakedown cruise" through the Shenandoah in preparation for the rigors of Philmont. He'd had an encounter with a bear one night that scared the stuffing out of him - but he went back out a couple of weeks later. At Philmont, which is in New Mexico, he was on a bare mountain trail with a lightning storm blew up and lightning struck only a few yards from where he was. Only the quick thinking of the guide in hustling the boys away from their exposed equipment before the strike saved their lives. In Canada, my younger son was in a canoe that was sucked into a strong undertow. He and the guide and another boy were forced to jump out of the canoe before going over a 12 foot waterfall, after which he was sucked into a hydraulic for what seemed to be forever but was probably under a minute. All the things in his pockets were sucked out and lost, and the boy with him actually lost his pants. The only injuries to my son were deep abrasions and bruises on his legs. They took months to heal completely. In the photo above you can see the damage to the canoe. It looks as if it got hit by a rock and pried open with a can opener. Shocking to think that my son endured the same forces which so twisted and damaged reinforced aluminum.

At Dulles Airport I met the gaze of the Assistant Scoutmaster leading the group as he told me with horror of my son's near-death experience, and recounted with equal horror how hard it would have been to break the news of HIS son's death to his wife, as his son was the other boy in the canoe. He was filled with remorse for something that was not his fault and beyond his control and which had in the end caused no lasting harm. It's a hard thing, being responsible for the safety of other people's children beside your own. Even going to regular summer camp every year saw me make at least one hospital trip each time with kids who'd suffered concussions, sprained a limb, cut themselves, were stung by bees, and sometimes kids just being drama queens. They ran the gamut, and every time something happened there was that painful moment of having to pick up a phone and tell a parent over 100 miles away that his kid was in the hospital or had been injured in some way. It's hard.

So why send your son (or daughter - girls go to the same adventure camps as the boys) to a place where he or she might be harmed? Because they could be harmed just as well at home and you can't spend your life being afraid to go anywhere or afraid to let your child go anywhere for fear some harm might befall that child. And sometimes, it is with such adversity that our often over-protected sons and daughters rise to meet the challenge and astound us with their response. Along with telling me of my younger son's near death the leader told me with admiration of my older son's response to the emergency. As soon as it became clear that his brother was going to go over the falls another leader yelled at my older son to try to portage his canoe over land and put in below the falls in anticipation that his brother might be knocked unconscious and need to be fished from the river. My older son, who is not very big, paddled quickly to shore, pulled the canoe out of the water and on to his shoulders, and ran through the brush, dragging a hapless dad who'd agreed to come on the trip at the last minute and who could barely keep up with a focused 16 year old determined to rescue his younger brother. He bulled his way through the underbrush and put in downstream many yards away. All he knew was that he needed to save his brother. Since then, my two boys, who are about as different as night and day, are very close. They look out for each other.

There are news reports that the quick response of the Scouts at the camp and their leaders saved lives. Everyone did what they could to deal with the situation, and you can believe that this was a maturing and life-changing experience for the young men at this camp. They will carry scars, but many will also carry the knowledge that they rose to a challenge and prevailed as best they could. Many of them have learned first hand the nature of loss, the value of friendship, the fragility of life.

But still ... still ... you think your kid's going away for an adventure, not to his death. You send him off to camp and think of how he'll learn new things and grow and spend time with his friends and come home with talk of pranks, contests, and sometimes off-color jokes. You await his return, sunburned, bug-bit, and exuberant at having spent a little time at a place where he has a degree of independence and expectations to meet and challenges to overcome. You do not expect to lose him. And if you are the leader it's a heavy weight you carry. You go to camp, usually accompanying your own child, and you take on the obligation to care for the others. You've been through training and talked with your fellow leaders about the what-ifs: what if Johnny, who's allergic to bees, gets stung by a bee; what if Harold, who's got ADD, forgets to take his meds; what if Sam, whose parents are locked in a bitter divorce battle, gets depressed or acts out against the other boys; what if, what if, what if?

I'm sorry this is such a long essay, but something about this terrible tragedy sparked in me the nightmare I always pushed aside during those years. The nightmare possibilities became real for these boys and their families, and the pain of their loss is a palpable thing. So take a minute and think about these young men and their families and feel the sorrow of their loss.

Wrong About Wright - Or How the Punditocracy is Making Suckers of Us All

2008-04-29T14:21:00.002-05:00

Cross-posted to Raising Kaine

Show of hands - who here has actually listened to the Moyers interview, the NAACP speech, and the National Press Club speech WITH its follow up Q&A session?

Me, me, I did!! Really? Okay, anyone else? How about you David Gergen? How about all you other media pundits? What's that, you only heard the "highlights", but you didn't have time to listen to all the rest of it? Oh, you liked the Moyers interview because the Rev came off as such a nice, polite, man but you can't deal with the firebrand, the jack in the box, the bouncing around getting in your face version of the Rev? Apparently it's okay to listen to a few highlights, to decide to focus on the one or two outrageous sounding statements, and then to pontificate and pound the table and DEMAND that the Rev stop saying what he's been saying all these years, and that he take cognizance that he may be harming Obama's campaign, and that Obama not only distance himself and denounce those outrageous statements as not representative of his personal views, but that he also denounce, strongly and without reservation, the Rev, notwithstanding that the Rev ain't running for public office, that the Rev isn't part of the Obama campaign, that he views the Rev as his pastor and not as his mentor, and that the Rev has made clear that he sees himself as a religious figure and Obama as a political figure and that these are indeed two different species.

Question(s): WHY are we allowing people opposed to Obama to define the parameters of this debate? WHY are we allowing to go unchallenged the assumption that this guy is nothing but a hate-spewing, attention-seeking, racially divisive fruitcake and that Obama owes it to the nation to apologize for even knowing him? WHY are we even assuming that Wright owes it to Obama to curtail his activities in order to promote Obama's chances? Wouldn't that mean Wright really IS a part of the Obama campaign after Obama and company just finished explaining that he isn't? WHY aren't we demanding that our beloved "liberal" MSM stop focusing on the guy who is not running for public office and focus instead on those who are? I've asked this in a couple of other forums, but am I just being stupid or is it just possible that we, the Obama supporters, have also allowed ourselves to become distracted by a non-issue? I cringed when Obama said the Rev was a legitimate campaign issue - NO HE'S NOT! He's your former pastor, not a political adviser, and he fills a totally different role, one outside of politics, which has to do with your relationship with Christ and the church. Sheesh, when did it become acceptable not only to impose religious tests on our political candidates, but now upon the religious figures in their lives? How can we even tolerate this incredible diversion from the real substance of this race?

As to Reverend Wright himself, I've been astounded at the response of so many in the media who thought the Moyers interview went just fine, but are all over him for being animated, angry, and just plain active in his speeches before the NAACP and the National Press Club. He didn't change his statements, he just made them more forcefully. His answers to questions did not deviate at all between the Moyers interview and those two speeches, but his audiences did. Moreover, he stayed for a lengthy Q&A session yesterday at that National Press Club speech and took on all comers. The questions were written on note cards by the dozens of journalists in attendance and he answered them all. He looked positively gleeful at times, which I heard denounced as arrogance by the pickle-puss pundits scrutinizing him. He committed the unpardonable sin of having a lot of fun during that session, so rather than review the Q&A for its substance, CNN and MSNBC viewers were treated to frowning commentators talking about his arrogance and the looming horribleness of his effect on the Obama campaign. Why, they found him downright uppity. They showed him saying that when Obama gets the nomination on November 5th he'll be in Obama's face the next day wagging his finger because Obama's the representative of a government he finds oppressive. Ohmigod, said our pundits, he "threw Obama under the bus. How appalling." Yes, something's appalling, I'd say.

If I'd known one does not need either sense or brains or cultural understanding in order to become a pundit I would have become one years ago - except for the dress-up part. I just hate dressing up and trying to look like I have gravitas and understanding surpassing that of mere mortals on my stern mien - ick, maybe I'll stick with blogging. Anyway, what the punditocracy appears not to understand is that not only does Obama not consider the Rev to be his man, but the Rev does not consider Obama to be his man. He thinks Jesus is the man. That's what he meant when he said Obama was a politician while he is a pastor. Their roles are different, and in the great scheme of things he sees the master he serves to be infinitely greater than the one Obama serves. He's obviously an extraordinarily intelligent and articulate individual, notwithstanding his rather bizarre belief in the origins of the drug war and AIDS, and he's trying to get it across to all those self-important and self-appointed commentators that his first obligation is to his God and his church and his people. This is hard for pundits to understand because while many of them consider themselves religious they actually mean that they go to church from time to time and might believe in God, but not, you know, in that weird way of the evangelicals they secretly love to mock. Wright's trying to say that God transcends politics and other earthly considerations and is not impressed with the politically powerful. This is why he is not calculating his appearances and his statements to what the pundits perceive to be Obama's needs. He said it himself yesterday. He believes that if God intends for Obama to be the nominee, then it will be so. He does not believe Obama's candidacy is either his responsibility or his duty. Maybe we should take a page from Wright, not only the page wherein his devotion to the poor, downtrodden, addicted, abused, abandoned, and sick may be found, but the page wherein he tells us it's his job to utter the truth as he sees it, and to serve the truth. His truth may be off when it comes to AIDS and the drug war, but it's on target when he's addressing the history of the black church, when he's talking about this country's history and the great stain on its soul. He points out that God and Country may not be one and the same, that the real arrogance may be our belief that we have all the answers and only our way of doing things will do. Isn't that what we criticize this Administration for believing?

So, let's step back, take a deep breath, and the next time some media moron says "hey, look at the crazy pastor" we respond with "uh huh, and what exactly did Obama and Hillary and McCain say about the economy today? That pastor's not running for office, so why are you focused on him and not the people who are?" Just a suggestion.

Travesty - Fort Bragg's Treatment of Returning Soldiers

2008-04-27T16:03:00.005-05:00

This was posted on Fred2Blue's blog, who deserves credit for bringing it to our attention, and viewers were encouraged to copy and circulate it wherever possible. It tells of the treatment of the 508th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne, who returned only a week ago from a hellish 15 month tour of Afghanistan.

How were they treated upon their return home? See for yourself.

There is absolutely no excuse for this. I've heard other things about Fort Bragg's treatment of our returning veterans. Only last year I posted a diary telling of medically unfit soldiers who were being forced to go back to Iraq despite their clear ineligibility for deployment.

With all the bad attention Fort Bragg got last year for sending disabled veterans back into a war theater you would think they'd get the hint and start treating our soldiers better.

Of course, this is really all part of a larger problem, and that's this Administration's reliance on flag pins and yellow car magnets when discussing patriotism. Real patriotism is taking care of those who are out there making the sacrifices our government has asked of them.

Obama Repudiates Pastor's Excesses

2008-03-16T09:50:00.003-05:00

Obama here handles his pastor's inflammatory statements about as well as they can be handled.

I'm getting a little annoyed at the guilt by association being foisted on all three candidates who are being trailed by ridiculous statements from embarrassing surrogates. McCain has Hagee and Parsley; Hillary has Geraldine Ferraro (who STILL won't apologize for making racist statements); and Obama has Reverend Wright. I wish Hillary had repudiated Ferraro's statements, but it's time to get back to the race. I'd like to see McCain repudiate the statements of Hagee and Parsley, but I don't believe for a minute that McCain believes the Catholic church is the Whore of Babylon, as Hagee does, or that he shares Parsley's antipathy toward everyone who isn't a right-wing fundamentalist biblical literalist whackjob. Let's move on.

I'm Stealing Phriendly Jaime's Post

2008-03-13T19:04:00.002-05:00

(Stolen, by invitation, from West of Shockoe)

Please steal this post from me and spread it far and wide

I'm serious. I would like as many of you as possible to steal this straight from here, put it on your blog(s), email it to everyone you know, tell them to forward it to everyone THEY know, print it out on cards and send them/give them to strangers and acquaintances, post it as a flyer on a telephone pole, etc., etc., etc.

Thanks in advance.

Subject: The Real Truth About Barack Obama!

As enthusiastic volunteers in the Barack Obama campaign for the Presidency, we have put together a list of facts about Barack so that you will know the truth about him. Please follow the links we have included for documentation of these facts. If you value the truth as we do, please spread this information via email, blog, or any other means, to everyone you know.

Did you know that Barack Obama is a devout Christian? He has been a member of the same United Church of Christ congregation for 20 years, and was married there to his wife Michelle in 1992.

Did you know that Barack Obama often leads the US Senate in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Did you know that Barack Obama is a strong friend of Israel and has spoken out strongly against anti-Semitism?

Did you know his grandparents from Kansas were part of the "Greatest Generation?. His grandfather served with Patton's Army during World War II, and his grandmother, a real "Rosy the Riveter", worked in a bomber assembly plant back home.

Did you know that Barack Obama was opposed to the war in Iraq from day one, before we invaded, even while he was running for the Senate, and knowing his opposition might be politically unpopular?
"I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." --Barack Obama, 2002

Did you know Obama favors transparency over secrecy in our government? Did you know that Obama worked with Republican Senator Tom Coburn to pass one of the strongest government transparency bills since the freedom of information act? He's calling it Google for Government and you can see the results at www.usaspending.gov. Sen. Obama has also released his own tax returns for public review.

Did you know that after graduating with honors from Harvard Law School, Barack practiced civil rights law and also taught Constitutional Law for 10 years at the University of Chicago, one of the nation's best law schools, where he was consistentl y rated by his students as one of their best instructors? Did you also know that he was the first African-American elected pres ident of the prestigious Harvard Law Review?

Did you know that Barack Obama is an outspoken advocate for women's rights and has been a principled defender of the civil rights of women?

Did you know that despite the grueling schedule of running for President, Senator Obama remains a devoted family man, making time to do things like pick out a Christmas tree with his wife and two young daughters, or hurrying home to spend Valentine's Day with them? Did you know he hasn't missed a single parent-teacher conference while running for President?

Did you know that Barack Obama has a stellar environmental record, including having the highest rating from the League of Conservation Voters (96%) of any Presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican?

Did you know that Barack Obama has been an elected legislator longer than Senator Clinton?

Did you know that Barack is a member of all of these Senate Committees: Foreign Relations; Veteran's Affairs; Health, Education, Labor & Pensions; Homeland Security and Government Affairs?

Did you know that Senator Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored 15 bills that have become law, and has introduced amendments to 50 bills, of which 16 were adopted since he joined the Senate in 2005?

Did you know that Senator Obama sponsored legislation working together with Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar, to keep Americans safe by keeping dangerous weapons out of terrorist hands? The two senators also visited the former Soviet Union to inspect the decommissioning of nuclear weapons. Sen. Lugar said of Sen. Obama, "He does have a sense of idealism and principled leadership, a vision of the future."

Did you know that Barack Obama is the only candidate running for president who voted against using cluster bombs in Iraq and the only candidate who supports banning the use of landmines?

Did you know that, as an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama succeeded in passing legislation requiring the videotaping of police interrogations, gaining the respect and support not only of fellow legislators but that of the police, who had initially opposed the legislation?

Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, Ulysses S. Grant, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton were all younger when they took office than Barack Obama will be?

During election season many emails are circulated about the candidates. Some are true, some aren't. It's often difficult to determine the truth. We encourage you to visit the following non-partisan sites that do a good job of fact checking the candidates.

http://www.snopes.com/

http://www.factcheck.org/

Source for HTML version (and the history of this project): The Obama Viral Email Project

Additionally, if you receive an email smear about Barack Obama, the Obama campaign wants you to forward it to:

watchdog@barackobama.com

They are keeping tabs; please forward it on if you get one.

The Incarceration Crisis Revisited -

2008-02-28T22:07:00.002-05:00

(Cross-posted to Raising Kaine)

From the Washington Post comes the unsurprising news that more than one percent (1%) of all the adults in America are in jail or in prison. Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group.

Last March Jim Webb surprised a lot of people by telling George Stephanopolous on This Week that

We've -- this is a chance to put a lot of issues on the table. One of the issues which never comes up in campaigns but it's an issue that's tearing this country apart is this whole notion of our criminal justice system, how many people are in our criminal justice system more -- I think we have two million people incarcerated in this country right now and that's an issue that's going to take two or three years to try to get to the bottom of and that's where I want to put my energy.

Talk about a voice crying out in the wilderness. Is anybody else even paying attention to this enormous social calamity? Can a society be called healthy which incarcerates so many of its members, and at least half the time for non-violent crimes rather than for actual crimes of violence or chronic recidivism? Something's wrong with this picture.
The article tells us

when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- alternative punishments such as community supervision and mandatory drug counseling that are far less expensive may prove just as or more effective than jail time.

Florida, which nearly doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.

How about the money involved in jailing so many people?

over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased by 127 percent, while spending on higher education rose by 21 percent. For every dollar Virginia spends on higher education, it now spends about 60 cents on corrections. Maryland spends 74 cents on corrections per higher-education dollar.

Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation's incarcerated population has actually been growing far more slowly since 2000 than during the 1990s, when the spate of harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the early 1990s, states across the nation adopted "three-strikes-you're-out" laws and curtailed the discretion parole boards have in deciding when to release an inmate. As a result, between 1990 and 2000, the prison population swelled by about 80 percent, increasing by as much as 86,000 per year.

For over 20 years I've represented criminal defendants in the Virginia courts. Most of my clients have been lower income, minority, under-educated individuals with drug and alcohol problems. Some have significant mental health issues and are referred to as dual diagnosis.

Criminal defendants do not exist in a vacuum. Many have at least one child, at least one significant other (some have an impressive array of significant others, but I digress), and one or more parents or grandparents whose lives will be affected by their incarceration. Few things are more disheartening than watching a mother of young children go to prison for two or three years because her drug addiction is out of control and she steals to support it. It's difficult to tell distraught parents and dependents of such people that they may have to do without them for a few years. An extraordinary number of grandparents are raising their children's children or even their grandchildren's children. In these fractured families the children are at extremely high risk for early involvement in drugs, sex, and alcohol. The grandparents, lacking any financial contribution from incarcerated parents, are stretched to the limit.

There are diversion programs, and access to them has increased over the years. My only quibble with the article's statements about such programs is that they "may" be a better alternative. They ARE a better alternative. Diversion programs require the inmates to engage in counseling, critical self-analysis, job training, and proper management of their finances. Participants are required to pay their child support, address their addictions, learn new behaviors and take personal responsibility for their actions. Does anyone think warehousing people for years is even equal to the positive aspects of a diversion program?

Not everyone in a diversion program succeeds. Sometimes my clients are brought back before the court - it may be years after their diversion - for probation violations. Sometimes life's problems catch up with them and they decompensate, fall of the wagon, and re-offend. Mental health professionals understand this, that recovery from addiction is often a two steps forward/one step back type of process.

I could spend the next two hours highlighting my pet peeves with the criminal justice system. There are far too many offenses which have been labeled felonies, and far too many offenses which are actually symptomatic of social diseases or mental health disorders but which are aggressively prosecuted. There are few resources available for defendants who are genuinely mentally ill. Most diversion programs will not take dual diagnosis inmates. If they are bipolar, schizophrenic, suffering from other disorders requiring medication, then they are SOL when it comes to getting any help. We warehouse our mentally ill inmates and then kick them out into society to re-offend. Still, however, inmates who are eligible for diversion programs more often than not benefit from them. There are some good outpatient treatment programs and some good alternative diversion programs which gradually release inmates onto probation and into society. Some of my clients have gone through such programs, and years later I encounter them in the role of counselor to another inmate seeking diversion.

Contractor Cupidity and the Long, Late Arm of the Law

2008-02-25T19:28:00.003-05:00

From the Chicago Tribune on February 21st came this story of indictments of KBR contractors for massive corruption in procuring and administering contracts before and during the occupation of Iraq.

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Rock Island sentenced the Army official, Chief Warrant Officer Peleti "Pete" Peleti Jr., to 28 months in prison for taking bribes.

The article gives a mind-numbing account of the many ways in which the law was flouted, corruption flourished, criminal behavior was tolerated, and our troops were ill-served by the ones entrusted to provide for them.

A common thread runs through these cases and other KBR scandals in Iraq, from allegations the firm failed to protect employees sexually assaulted by co-workers to findings that it charged $45 per can of soda: The Pentagon has outsourced crucial troop support jobs while slashing the number of government contract watchdogs.

The dollar value of Army contracts quadrupled from $23.3 billion in 1992 to $100.6 billion in 2006, according to a recent report by a Pentagon panel. But the number of Army contract supervisors was cut from 10,000 in 1990 to 5,500 currently (emphasis added).

Last week, the Army pledged to add 1,400 positions to its contracting command. But even those embroiled in the frauds acknowledge the impact of so much war privatization.

"I think we downsized past the point of general competency," said subcontractor Christopher Cahill, who for a decade prepared military supply depots under LOGCAP. Now serving 30 months in federal prison for fraud, Cahill added: "The point of a standing army is to have them equipped."

I remember the mother of a soldier telling me a year ago that her son had paid exorbitant amounts for basic things like soda and snack foods. She and her retired Army husband were outraged and felt betrayed by the system they had spent their lives supporting.

As for Cahill's comments, they're his way of saying that while the cat was away the mice played. Somewhere in the midst of the current administration's worship of all things private sector was lost the understanding that vast power and access to resources without accountability breeds corruption.

But wait, there's more

By June, Seamans and fellow KBR procurement manager Jeff Mazon, a Country Club Hills resident, had executed subcontracts worth $321 million. At least one deal put U.S. soldiers at risk.

The Army LOGCAP contract required KBR to medically screen the thousands of kitchen workers that subcontractors like Tamimi imported from impoverished villages in Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

But when Pentagon officials asked for medical records in March 2004, Khan presented "bogus" files for 550 Tamimi workers ...

KBR retested those 550 workers at a Kuwait City clinic and found 172 positive for exposure to hepatitis A, Lang told the judge. Khan tried to suppress those findings, warning the clinic director that Tamimi would do no more business with his medical office if he "told KBR about these results," Lang said in court. The infectious virus can cause fatigue and other symptoms that arise weeks after contact.

Retesting of the 172 found that none had contagious hepatitis A, Lang said, and Khan's attorneys said in court that no soldiers caught diseases from the workers or from meals they prepared. It remains unclear if that is because the workers were treated or because they did not remain infectious after the onset of symptoms

A couple of things spring to mind upon considering this information. First, WHY was KBR looking for employees in Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh when it had a perfectly employable pool of people sitting right there in Baghdad? After all, we were liberating the Iraqis and making their way straight for democracy and all that; how come we didn't want to hire them to do the work and chose instead to import impoverished Muslims from another part of the world? Think that might have led to some resentment? Naw. I'm sure all those recently-liberated and unemployed Iraqi Shiites were happy to help out their South Asian Sunni brethren. Why, it didn't hardly feel like a foreign occupation at all. And as for the Sunni Iraqis, it was almost as if they were the ones being employed, what with Sunnis being one monolithic entity without national sensibilities or pride.

The second thing is how little oversight the corrupt KBR employees exercised over their subcontractor Tamimi, not even verifying that the workers employed by Tamimi met at least minimum health standards for food workers. These people aren't even real Americans, being willing as they were to risk the very health of the soldiers they were fleecing.

All I can say is that the Webb-McCaskill Commission can't get up and running soon enough to suit me. I look forward to a long line of prosecutions of those who did this to our military.

Veterans Harmed By Errors on DD214s

2008-02-25T14:08:00.001-05:00

Cross-posted to Raising Kaine

Military.com has posted a story, originally from the Buffalo News, of the plight of an increasing number of veterans who are finding their DD214s, the records of their military service, contain sometimes critical errors and omissions.

The story tells of close to 2,000 veterans whose records have been so poorly documented that they are losing access to veterans' services, compensation, and care.

Some highlights:

Christopher M. Simmance helped keep the peace as an American Soldier in the Middle East, but when he returned home and later suffered a breakdown, he was turned away from the VA hospital because the government didn't acknowledge his overseas duty.

Dana Cushing as a Marine served two tours of duty in Iraq and a third in east Africa, but when she returned home, she found herself labeled a "conscientious objector" and also was denied medical care by the government ...

The Army alone has a backlog of 1,890 veterans seeking corrections on their discharge papers, and some have been waiting for three years, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Many other veterans probably have faulty discharge papers but don't know it because they have not sought benefits ...

When [Simmance] returned home to Buffalo Niagara and sought help from the local Veterans Affairs office, he said he was told his discharge papers were not in order and he was ineligible for help. Simmance said he was turned down twice for treatment at the VA's Batavia residential facility for post-traumatic stress disorder ... he continues to wait for a corrected version of his discharge papers -- a wait that started seven months ago and shows no sign of ending soon ...

Errors are occurring more frequently on discharge papers, known as DD214 forms, because the work is often farmed out to civilians, according to Patrick W. Welch, director of Erie County's Department of Veterans Services.

"In the olden days, it was usually military records personnel who were processing you out. They were active duty military people. They had a better feel for what you were entitled to and they would ask questions," said Welch, a Vietnam veteran.

Civilians who never served in the armed forces, he said, are more likely to make mistakes ...

Military officials, contacted by The Buffalo News, said those leaving the armed forces should carefully check their records because they are in the best position to know if the papers are complete and accurate.

"That's not true. This is your very first DD214, so how do you know what to look for? On top of that, you don't know what the code numbers stand for. Unless you work with those codes daily, you don't know what they mean," said Ronal R. Bassham, a veterans advocate for United Auto Workers Region 9.

I'm sorry. I need to have it explained to me again why the private sector always does everything so much better than the public sector, even in specialized areas such as evaluation of military service. I've heard of problems like this from friends who work at Veterans Affairs, complaints not only about clueless civilians, but particularly about the temporary help that's brought in to take care of the overflow. The contractor is there, first and foremost, to make money. When employees don't have to worry about a profit motive they are more likely to take the time necessary to get the information right.

The story continues with accounts of veterans, needful of help for their service-related problems, being turned away or forced to burn through their assets while awaiting correction of their DD214s. Some of these veterans have ended up living in their cars or on the streets.

During World War II, when there were millions in the Armed Forces and millions being processed out at the same time, it seems that most of the records were fairly accurate despite the lack of computers and other modern amenities. There is no excuse in this computer age for months long delays and flagrant inaccuracies in record keeping.

Afghanistan Combat - Civilian Casualties and the Impossible Goal

2008-02-24T18:52:00.006-05:00

From the New York Times comes this article by Elizabeth Rubin, who was embedded with Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Korengal River valley of northeastern Afghanistan.

The author originally went to the Korengal Valley to find out why there have been so many civilian casualties associated with the Afghan counterinsurgency. However,

After a few days, the first question sparked more: Was there a deeper problem in the counterinsurgency campaign? More than 100 American soldiers were killed last year, the highest rate since the invasion. Why were so many more American troops being killed?

What follows is an article describing the extraordinary courage, despair, and pain of soldiers who've been set an impossible task. Rubin introduces us to their commanding officer, 26-year old Captain Dan Kearney, and to the men, some of whose deaths and grievous wounds she witnessed while accompanying them on their patrols and operations.

the Americans have steadily increased their presence in Kunar province, fanning out to the small platoon-size outposts that have become the signature of the new counterinsurgency doctrine in both Afghanistan and Iraq ... The soldiers of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team live there in dusty tents and little wooden huts ... the place was protected by not much more than concertina wire and sentries ...

Dan Kearney ... had been in Iraq ... But as hard as Iraq was ... nothing was as tough as the Korengal. Unlike in Iraq, where the captains and lieutenants could let down their guard in a relatively safe, fortified operating base, swapping stories and ideas, here they had no one to talk to and were almost as vulnerable to enemy fire inside the wire as out ...

And unlike every other place I’ve been in Afghanistan ...the Korengal had no Afghan police or district leaders for the Americans to work with ... As Kearney put it ... the Korengal is like a tough Los Angeles neighborhood, “and we’re the L.A.P.D. kicking in the door, arresting guys, demanding information about the gangs ... Now we’ve angered them for so many years that they’ve decided: ‘I’m gonna stick with the A.C.M.’ ” — anticoalition militants — “ ‘who are my brothers and I’m not gonna rat them out.’ ”

Kearney and his men replaced a unit of the 10th Mountain Division so traumatized by their tour that

near the end of their tour, many would sit alone on the fire base talking to themselves. Privates disobeyed their sergeants, and squad leaders refused to step outside the wire to show the new boys the terrain. No one wanted to be shot in the last days of his tour.

Kearney's predecessor had promised he would not bomb Afghans' homes, and Kearney tried to keep that promise:

When Kearney’s moment of decision came, two of 2nd Platoon’s sergeants, Kevin Rice and Tanner Stichter, had been shot, and the fight was still going on. Kearney could see a woman and child in the house. “We saw people moving weapons around,” Kearney told me. “I tried everything. I fired mortars to the back side to get the kids to run out the front. I shot to the left, to the right. The Apache” — an attack helicopter — “got shot at and left. I kept asking for a bomb drop, but no one wanted to sign off on the collateral damage of dropping a bomb on a house.” Finally, he said, “We shot a javelin and a tow” — both armor-piercing missiles. “I didn’t get shot at from there for two months,” Kearney said. “I ended up killing that woman and that kid.”

Rubin goes on to describe the history of Korengali hostility toward the Americans. It wasn't based on their hatred of us "for our freedoms" as our President is so fond of saying. It wasn't because they were seeking a utopian new caliphate or trying to impose Taliban rule on Las Vegas. It wasn't that they were pawns of Osama Bin Laden. No, it was because when the Americans arrived in 2001

the Pech Valley timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on the mansion of their biggest rival — Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of his family ... and the Americans arrested others and sent them to the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis ... Kearney met as many villagers as possible to learn the names of all the elders and their families. But he inherited a blood feud between the Korengalis and the Americans that he hadn’t started, and he was being sucked into its logic.

Rubin describes a frustrated and increasingly traumatized unit full of short-timers who had been stop-lossed and could see no progress and no end to their own suffering. A number of them were on anti-depressants and

after five months of grueling foot patrols up and down the mountains, after fruitless encounters with elders who smiled in the morning and were host to insurgents in the evening and after losing friends to enemy fire, Captain Kearney’s men could relate to the sullen, jittery rage of their predecessors ...

The article goes on to describe Operation Rock Avalanche, a chaotic and brutal air assault on the village of Yaka China. In stark language and with accompanying photos Rubin tells of an operation which resulted in five dead and eleven wounded civilians and angry elders wavering between accepting the Americans' help or seeking vengeance. They opted for vengeance.

THE DAY AFTER the meeting with the elders of Yaka China, Yarnell and John could hear insurgents trying to pinpoint where Kearney and his men were ... We could hear someone who called himself Obeid saying he’d do whatever the Yaka China elders decided — whether to cooperate with the Americans or take revenge ...

Kearney ... would fool the insurgents, feigning a troop extraction when the helicopters came for resupply and pushing out his best guys in small “kill teams.” We heard the insurgents say, “We have wolves on them,” meaning spotters. A hoarse, whispering insurgent had eyes on either Sgt. Larry Rougle and his scouts or on Lieutenant Piosa and his rear guard ... Then nothing happened for almost 24 hours.

Rougle — who was called Wildcat — was on his sixth deployment since Sept. 11, 2001. He was with the first group of Rangers in Afghanistan ...

I hung out with Piosa and his crew ... in a moment, recess was over. The insurgents were on them. Bullets ricocheted all through the woods ... I followed Piosa through the brush toward the ridge. We came upon Rice and Specialist Carl Vandenberge behind some trees. Vandenberge was drenched in blood ... Rice was shot in the stomach ...

Piosa moved on to the hill where the men had been overrun. I saw big blue-eyed John Clinard, a sergeant from North Carolina, falling to pieces. He worshiped Rougle. “Sergeant Rougle is dying. It’s my fault. . . . I’m sorry. . . . I tried to get up the hill. . . .” Sergeant Rougle was lying behind him ...

Two of Rice’s squad mates appeared, eyes dilated. They couldn’t believe they’d seen, up close, the ghosts they’d been fighting for the last five months. “I saw him in the eyes,” Specialist Marc Solowski said. “He looked at me. I shot him.” He and Specialist Michael Jackson had crawled up the hill twice trying to retake it. Each time the insurgents in “manjammies” whipped them back with machine-gun fire. There was blood on the stones around us. Some thought they saw blood trailing down toward the village of Landigal, where they were sure an insurgent had dashed into a cottage.

“We’re not losing this hill again,” Piosa shouted. “This hill is ours!” He wanted bombs to be dropped immediately.

“There’s women praying in that house,” Dunn shouted back.

... The F-15 known as Dude was en route, the Apaches were chasing men and Kearney — who had bolted down the mountain, throwing grenades in caves — was barking orders ... He wanted to punish the valley. Stichter had his eyes on a guy pacing a rooftop in Landigal and wanted to blow his head off. Specialist Mitchell Raeon, whose uniform was now soaked in Rougle’s blood, had the guy in his scope but couldn’t range that far. “That’s a female,” Dunn said.

Kearney had identified insurgents who’d dashed into a house and wanted to hit them, but Stichter got back word from Camp Blessing saying the target was too close to other houses. Kearney sent back a reminder — you let some guys get away the other night. It was impossible to know for sure, but Kearney believed they were the guys who had killed Rougle, and now, he said, you’re going to let another group get away?

Someone cursed, then said, “They’re all leaving the house.”

... with no warning, an F-15 dropped a bomb on Landigal, but off target, or so it seemed. Kearney was furious. He was sure headquarters had intentionally missed the house he had wanted hit.

I noticed Raeon was packing and unpacking Rougle’s things. Rougle’s scouts were in disarray, rudderless, and admitting it. Raeon said he kept seeing in his mind Rougle’s face alert and then dead, switching back and forth; he wanted it to stop.

The next day brought another brief firefight, and Rougle’s scouts rallied swiftly. They said they felt him watching and proud. There were more bomb drops and refusals to drop bombs, and then Becky, everyone’s favorite Apache pilot, swept in. Not only did she offer the comforting voice of a woman seeping right into their ears, but Becky was one of the most aggressive shooters. She flew up and down the canyon walls seeking out and rocketing insurgents. We heard them on the radio again boasting about retreating to safety under fire.

And that's it. Seven men lost and no progress whatsoever, just a lot of blood and pain. No resolution.

This article does call into question how we're supposed to win over the hearts and minds of reclusive, clannish, and impoverished people who live by the blood feud. There are no easy answers here, but it is clear that the entire burden of this war, particularly this part of the two fronts we are maintaining, has fallen on small groups of soldiers. The men of Kearney's unit had been in almost constant combat for 15 months and several were stop-lossed. That is unconscionable. Even the jungle combat of World War II contains few examples of men kept on the line for more than a month before being relieved and sent rear-ward for rest and recuperation. Months ago I read an article about the ground-breaking psychological studies of men in combat during World War II and recall reading that the motto became "Every Man Has His Breaking Point." These men are clearly at their breaking point and not only they, but innocent civilians, will suffer. There is no excuse to place such a burden on such a small number of people.

Touting Torture - Waterboarding and the Ethically Impermissible

2008-02-23T21:11:00.004-05:00

The Department of Justice took out the trash on Friday, February 22nd, and dumped a little tidbit into a news cycle which perhaps it hoped would be missed between accounts of Britney's child visitation woes and Hillary's increasingly desperate attacks on Obama.

The New York Times reported Friday that the DOJ's internal ethics office is investigating the origins of the infamous Torture Memo which led to the equally infamous waterboarding and torture of terrorism suspects by the CIA.

H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (who knew they had one?) responded to a letter from Senator Durbin of Illinois, and Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island:

the legal advice approving waterboarding was one subject of an investigation into “the circumstances surrounding the drafting” of a Justice legal memorandum dated Aug. 1, 2002.

The document declared that interrogation methods were not torture unless they produced pain equivalent to that produced by organ failure or death. The memorandum, drafted by a Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, and signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was withdrawn in 2004.

Mr. Jarrett said the investigation was also covering “related” legal memorandums prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel since 2002. That suggested the investigation would address still-secret legal opinions written in 2005 by Steven G. Bradbury, then and now the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, that gave legal approval for waterboarding and other tough methods, even when used in combination.

Mr. Jarrett said his office was “examining whether the legal advice in these memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.”

“Because of the significant public interest in this matter, O.P.R. will consider releasing to Congress and the public a nonclassified summary of our final report,” Mr. Jarrett wrote, using the initials for the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Justice Department officials said that the O.P.R. inquiry began more than three years ago and noted that it was mentioned in a Newsweek article in December 2004. It has since been expanded, the officials said, to cover more recent legal opinions on interrogation.

Mr. Jarrett’s letter, dated Monday, came in reply to a Feb. 12 letter from Mr. Durbin and Mr. Whitehouse to him and the Justice Department’s inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, seeking an investigation into the department’s legal approval of waterboarding.

“Despite the virtually unanimous consensus of legal scholars and the overwhelming weight of legal precedent that waterboarding is illegal,” the senators wrote, “certain Justice Department officials, operating behind a veil of secrecy, concluded that the use of waterboarding is lawful. We believe it is appropriate for you to investigate the conduct of these Justice Department officials.”

According to a Washington Post article

The memo was formally withdrawn in 2004 by Jack L. Goldsmith, who succeeded Bybee as head of OLC. Goldsmith concluded that legal opinions on the NSA program, torture and other issues were fundamentally flawed and told the Senate last year that the memos created "a legal mess."

Two other Justice memos that are known to have dealt with waterboarding and harsh tactics are still-secret opinions penned in 2005 by Steven G. Bradbury, who is currently the acting OLC chief. Administration officials have said those opinions authorized a number of techniques, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and head-slapping.

Proving once and for all that crappy research skills and a willingness to overlook teeny-tiny ethical issues like whether coerced confessions violate the very basis of our system of justice don't necessarily pose an impediment to the ambitious and well-connected young ~~persecutor~~ prosecutor, it should be noted that John Yoo is a law professor at the University of California Berkeley College of Law and his ~~co-conspirator~~ former boss, Jay S. Bybee is now a federal judge sitting on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yes, both men are examples of how those who disregard and flout the highest standards of the legal profession are ~~punished~~ rewarded for their perfidy.

The New GI Bill - Webb Proposes and the Pentagon Opposes

2008-02-13T22:21:00.007-05:00

In the last two days there have been two broadcasts featuring Senator Jim Webb's proposed S.22, the Bill to amend the GI Bill to provide for payment of the education costs of our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

The Bush Administration, which is long on yellow car magnets but short on actual substantive relief such as longer dwell times, appears to be compounding its neglect of our returning veterans by refusing to support Senator Jim Webb's New GI Bill, which provides for tuition and stipends for our returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to attend the four year colleges of their choice.

Last week we heard testimony by Admiral Mullen and SecDef Gates before the Senate on the Administration's latest defense appropriations requests. To their credit both Mullen and Gates told Senator Webb that they did not understand the Pentagon's apparent opposition to his Bill. Mullen said "we need to take care of these people from the moment they are recruited for as long as they are in the system" and Gates said he had attended Georgetown on the GI Bill after his Air Force Service.

Yesterday the educational problems of returning veterans and the benefits of the New GI Bill were featured on The News Hour on PBS. Here is the link to the story: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june08/gibill_02-12.html The shocking thing was the opposition of the Pentagon spokesman, who appeared to be concerned only with whether the GI Bill was necessary in order to promote retention. In fact, the Pentagon apparently takes the position that the GI Bill will affect retention, and therefore opposes it. This is an unconscionable, selfish argument.

Senator Webb appeared this morning on C-Span's Washington Journal to discuss the legislation. The link is http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Series&Code=WJE&ShowVidNum=9&Rot_Cat_CD=WJ&Rot_HT=206&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=100&ShowVidDesc=&ArchiveDays=30

Just hit the link to the February 13, 2008 complete program and scroll through to about 1:31:35 to pick up Senator Webb's interview and discussion of his press conference on the issue. He discussed the combined veterans groups supporting the legislation, the faults of the Montgomery GI Bill, which was intended to be a recruitment tool, and compared it to the types of benefits returning World War II veterans received. He talked about the difficulty of obtaining good figures, but said it should cost about $2 billion per year. Every dollar that went into the WWII GI Bill was repaid seven times over. Secondly, it's the type of program which will increase military recruitment.

Would everyone get the same benefits? In the sense that it's the same as WWII. The payments are capped at the maximum that a state school would charge, and members of the National Guard and Reserve would be eligible. There are two steps for the NG and Reserve. The first would give benefits even if deployed for a short amount of time, but if they should serve more time overseas then the second step would be that they become eligible for the full scope of benefits just as the regular Army would be.

Senator Webb received overwhelming support from callers, several of whom talked of their own experiences with the GI Bill. Senator Webb made a point of discussing the disruption to National Guard and Reserve troops who are repeatedly called away from their civilian lives and suffer from serious delays in obtaining education.

The issue of mental health and veterans' suicides also came up. Senator Webb pointed to the repeated deployments and the pressures that attend them. He saw the report on the Guard and Reserve. He points out that the young people with four year enlistments are also suffering from terrible difficulties because there is no release for them. He said we should have the right kind of professionals in place to assess PTSD and traumatic brain injuries.

Webb told one caller he did not understand why the Bill hadn't been proposed before, and called it a "pure equity issue" for people who stepped forward to serve their country in a time of need and deserved this benefit. One woman called, frustrated, and demanded to know why the Bill hadn't been proposed before and worried that it would not pass. Webb replied that if he had been in the Senate 5 years ago he would have pushed for it then. He also told her that the best thing we can do is give a veteran an affirmative view of the veteran's service. Educational benefits achieve this goal and may contribute to the mental well-being of returned veterans.

One elderly caller called the Democratic attacks on Bush "propaganda" and compared it to criticisms of Truman during Korea. Webb replied that "this President ... listened to some very bad advice and made a strategic blunder in terms of putting us in Iraq." He likes to refer to it as a double strategic mousetrap. He said "we tied up the finest military in the world and burned our people out." The second prong is that we've tied up our resources and cannot respond on a number of strategic fronts. The issue about PTSD and suicides "is real." Webb talked about knowing what it is like from personal experience for returned veterans to deal with the effects of their experiences.

He said we "should all agree on this". He said "President Bush should be the first guy to step forward and say we should give this to all the people who served." The last caller was a woman from North Carolina. She asked why our troops must stay over so long and come back and suffer from suicides. The moderator also asked him to talk about the SecDef's decision to pause the drawdown in Iraq. Webb replied that after 5 years this Administration should have been able to figure out rotational cycles which would allow 12 month deployments and appropriate dwell times. He suggested that the SecDef should listen to the commanders above Petraeus who want us to draw back our military. He called it "doable."

Complete documentation of the 21st Century GI Bill, the press release, and other materials may be found at Senator Webb's website: http://webb.senate.gov/

FISA Freakout - Senator Webb, the Constitution, and What It All Means

2008-02-13T18:17:00.003-05:00

Cross posted to Raising Kaine

On February 12, 2008 Senator Jim Webb issued the following statement on his vote for passage of the FISA bill:

There were a number of measures brought before the Senate today that I believed could have improved the FISA bill which passed overwhelmingly tonight. This is a complex law. It becomes imperative that we look for ways to both keep our nation safe from further terrorist attacks and ensure that our government's surveillance is conducted in a legal manner that comports with the U.S. Constitution.

"Senators Feingold, Tester and I spent two months working to construct and introduce an amendment designed to add further safeguards against Executive Branch surveillance on innocent Americans. I believe the amendment best answered the call of Americans who have been demanding a proper system of checks and balances for our government's surveillance program. Our amendment regrettably failed this afternoon.

"I also supported two amendments which sought to limit immunity for telephone companies in proper situations. These amendments would have allowed consumers to move forward with legal action in certain situations, for example where companies have acted in bad faith in aiding government surveillance. Unfortunately, both of these amendments failed as well.

"Our current FISA bill expires in two days. As someone who has decades of experience in dealing with national security matters and classified intelligence, I believed it was necessary to implement a surveillance program that provides professionals an updated set of tools to properly respond to terrorist threats. However, I plan to urge my colleagues who sit on the Senate-House conference committee to adopt House provisions that better protect Americans from Executive branch overreach.

I've been monitoring the "debate" over Jim Webb's vote on the FISA bill. Most of the commentary is along the lines of Jim Webb being a Constitution hating fascist, a "sell-out", and a craven cave-in to the Bush Administration. One commentator suggests the best solution for this problem is to harass the stuffing out of his staff by inundating him with calls designed to "change his mind." Yes, harassing phone calls, just the thing to terrorize Webb and cause him to rethink his position, admit he was wrong, and stampede him into a reversal or at best a heartfelt apology. We all know how effective hectoring phone calls can be, especially against people with reputations for pugnacity.

I would suggest on the contrary that all the Webb ranters take a deep breath and chill. Here's why:

All this crap about betrayal and turning on the Constitution is really beginning to frost my nether regions. Webb and the other Dems are stuck in the unenviable position of trying to figure out how to perform their sometimes contradictory functions of protecting the country and protecting the Constitution while dealing with a hostile President threatening veto and Republican colleagues whose numbers are sufficient to prevent overcoming any veto. Now a lot of those guys aren't even running for re-election. There's a desperation in this lame duck crowd that makes it next to impossible to push through any compromises. No one's going to respond to our Democratic Senators reaching across the aisle. They'd rather have their vetoes and their filibusters and when some bad consequence occurs they'll point to the Dems and say "see what you made us do." The Senate Dems are playing with a bunch that has nothing left to lose, dangerous and obfuscatory opponents.

I've seen comments ridiculing the notion that there is a real and present danger to this country posed by terrorists or other criminal types. Webb happens to disagree. Maybe they're right. Maybe he is. He believes, based on his vast experience in the military, in the Defense Department, and on his career as a strategic thinker, journalist, and author that terrorist communications pose a serious threat to this country. Even the naysayers would agree he owes a duty of protection to this country.

Webb also owes a duty to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Contrary to the suggestions of some in this forum he hasn't torched the Constitution. I checked his website and couldn't find a single invitation to the Constitution-burning at the National Archives this evening. What he HAS done, apparently against his own inclinations, is agree to allow for retroactive immunity for telecoms on their past actions in responding to the overreaching requests of the Executive Branch. He makes it clear in his statement that he did it, not because he wants to abolish the Constitution and destroy the Bill of Rights, but because the time to act was down to two days and he feared the consequence of failing to pass the legislation. It's possible he was wrong, that he weighs too much his duty to protect the country against his duty to uphold the protections of the Bill of Rights, but when we elected him we elected his brain and his experience and we understood that sometimes his sense of the balance between the competing interests might differ from ours.

There are those who are angry that the telecoms will be immune from consequence for their violations of this law. Fair enough. I hate to see law violators absolved of liability. But let us not kid ourselves. There is no purity or consistency in the application of the law. There are times when the competing interests raise their ugly heads and what is right and fair gives way to what is practical and to a certain extent also right. Where do all the naysayers think qualified immunity for public servants comes from? How about sovereign immunity? The law is replete with immunities and qualifications and limitations on liability for untoward behavior. Some of this behavior has a direct bearing on constitutional rights, but along the way courts and/or legislatures made the determination that competing interests outweighed the constitutional considerations. Added to the mix is that the behavior is all past, not ongoing or current, that the laws are still in effect, and that it's clear that the type of behavior the telecoms were engaging in a few years ago would never pass muster today. Usually when a pass is granted a wrongdoer he's placed on notice that future wrongdoing will not be tolerated or excused. There will be no "following orders" defense.

And let us consider this: there is NO absolute right to anything under the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. ALL of them are considered to be subject to competing interests. The law is riddled with exceptions and qualifications and parsing of meaning.

Two other points should be considered by the Webb-bashers: a) the legislation comes up for review again in six months; and b) he is hoping to achieve better Constitutional protections during the Senate-House Conference committee meetings. Instead of burning his telephone lines with angry and pointless attacks, perhaps people's energies would be better expended in encouraging his colleagues to go along with him and the House version. Senator Webb is not the enemy here. Let's let him do his job.

From Silent Spook to All Kiriakou All the Time - Something Doesn't Smell Right

2007-12-12T02:06:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at Raising Kaine

Is it just me or is there something fishy about this Kiriakou guy? Just last week we learned out of the blue that the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotape of detainee interrogations, some of which included torture such as waterboarding. Within a few days of these revelations a new face suddenly appeared on the scene, that of the earnest and articulate John Kiriakou, who claims to have been intimately involved in the apprehension of Abu Zubaydah and his interrogation, but not his waterboarding. Yet in spite of claiming to have not been on the scene when Zubaydah cracked, Kiriakou talks about it as he were. Moreover, he repeatedly asserts that Zubaydah cracked after only 38 seconds and immediately provided information, really good information, that saved a lot of lives.

Okay, call me suspicious, but something's off. Kiriakou makes me wonder if he's leading us all down the primrose path. He claims to have been an important factor in the CIA's apprehension and interrogation of the suspect, but has he actually offered any proof of his claims? How do we know what his position was within the agency? Why is he suddenly hitting every talk show in town, blabbing as fast as his tongue can move and asserting simultaneously that waterboarding is torture, which is bad, but that it worked really well and really fast on Zubaydah, which is good? Does anyone else think there may be a little disinformation campaign going on here?

My suspicion that maybe there is something contrived at work here deepened after I read Red Wind's diary at DailyKos Who Are You, John Kiriakou? Red Wind points out that up until Kiriakou started describing Zubaydah as an extremely high value detainee most people in the know did not regard him as such, and moreover, most or all of the information Zubaydah provided was either already known or was discredited:

In fact, much of the interview, and much of the tone of the ABC tape, goes to great ends to inflate the importance of Abu Zubaydah. To watch the report, you would believe that Zubaydah was the linchpin to breaking open the whole 9/11 conspiracy, and you would also believe that the crucial information was first divulged by AZ as a direct result of the waterboarding.

Ross and his colleagues do little to undercut this contention. It makes for an exciting exclusive, but not for very good journalism. The truth—if we can ever truly get there in these hyper-secret times—about Abu Zubaydah and his importance seems much, much hazier than Kiriakou or ABC leads us to believe.

Though I don’t have time to post a complete point-by-point (I’m a little under the weather today), I have read numerous major reputable publications on this subject, and I can safely say that for every bit of information that Kiriakou (or, for that matter, George W. Bush) claims was revealed by AZ after his torture, there is credible evidence that the US knew the intel before Zubaydah was even captured. The Washington Post and New York Times have covered this, and even the Report of the 9/11 Commission makes note that the supposedly key information that Kiriakou and Bush like to attribute to AZ—the “nickname” of Khalid Shaykh Mohammed—was known to the US before the attacks of 9/11/01.

Ron Suskind, in his book, The One Percent Doctrine, calls Zubaydah a low-level logistics guy, responsible for making minor travel arrangements, who knew nothing of al Qaeda’s inner workings. Suskind also notes that AZ was, in the words of one intelligence analyst, “insane, certifiable, [a] split personality.”

Given all this how is it that Kiriakou is allowed to go around, unchallenged, asserting that Zubaydah's information was so spectacular? Why isn't the CIA moving to stop him from revealing its activities and supposed secrets? The CIA seems unfazed by his garrulousness, not even denying or objecting to what he's doing, yet he paints himself as somehow being in opposition to the CIA.

Here's what I think. Kiriakou can be only one of two things. Either he was a low-level CIA functionary who likes to pretend he was far more important than he actually was and his prattlings are just the rambling boasts of a little man; or he is a sandbagger. All trial lawyers know that the best way to handle detrimental information about a witness or evidence is to lead with it before the other side can. When a witness has a serious flaw the attorney presenting that witness will often ask the witness about his flaws instead of waiting until opposing counsel raises the issue in cross-examination. This is sandbagging. I've listened to Kiriakou. A day or two ago I heard him say that he has decided that waterboarding is wrong and we shouldn't do it, but in the same breath claiming that it had such salutory effect on Zubaydah he could not deny its efficacy. His whole conversation was a resounding endorsement of the practice once you look past the BS feeble protests against it. I suspect that Kiriakou is being allowed to say what he is saying because it's setting up the administration's defense - sure, waterboarding's probably illegal and all, but look how many lives it's saved, they'll say. And yet ... and yet there is no showing that it saved lives. There are only Kiriakou's claims that it did. No one else in the administration can actually admit having been involved in waterboarding because they could be prosecuted. But they can sandbag the opposition. They can plant the idea that Zubaydah cracked after half a minute, had a vision of Allah that night, and the next day commenced to spill his guts and name every Al Qaeda cell from Peoria to Peshawar. How convenient. Half a minute of discomfort for all those lives? What a great bargain. Sure, it's the devil's bargain, but it's not like we hurt the guy, and he was really only discomforted for half a minute. No biggie, right?

Yesterday I listened to the interview where Kiriakou claims that he cracked after only 5 seconds of waterboarding and was amazed at Zubaydah's ability to resist for a whole half minute, but then I remembered journalist Kaj Larsen's endurance of 25 minutes of waterboarding before the session was stopped. How to explain the disparity between Kiriakou's claim that half a minute is an extraordinarily long time when Larsen underwent almost half an hour? Could this be a deliberate attempt to minimize the torture in the minds of the public?

I'm just saying, we should stop taking this Kiriakou at face value.

Finally Free of Photons - Fabulous

2007-11-05T14:24:00.000-05:00

Here's my last post from the Parotid Tumor Patients' Forum. Of all the things I've lost it's my mind I miss the most, and look forward to renewing its acquaintance after a few days or weeks off the radiation. Let's hope it missed me and wants to come home.

Finally Free of Photons - Fabulous!

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Monday, 5 November 2007, at 1:01 p.m.

It finally happened. The day I thought would never come arrived and on Friday I issued forth from Radiation Oncology on a couple of hugs, calls of congratulations, and clutching my freakish souvenir - the much-maligned "autocast" - my mask. It still bears tape with little "x-marks the spot" inkings and one long and carefully drawn "V" along the lower left quadrant (with a tip of the lizard skin to Jodie).

My emotions are mixed. For three months the Radiation Oncology unit has been a regular part of my daily schedule. I've gotten to know the wonderful women who are the backbone of the unit; have listened to the gentle teasing of its outnumbered male, Mr. C; have enjoyed my conversations with Dr. L over everything ranging from my treatment plan to mutual acquaintances to the latest depredations of the Demon Spawn, also known as Arlington County's Parking Enforcement.

For three months I've plopped into the unit's comfortable chairs, chatting with patient and staff alike, phasing through as all radiation patients do since treatments never exceed a few weeks or months at most, and quite often may be as brief as one or two visits.

What can I say about this strange science? Every day at RT is a voyage on the SS Paradox, a sophisticated balance of hair of the dog with what bit you and destroying the village to save the village. Now my ship has come in and I can resume my life, wait for the infernal itching on my neck to go down, and find other things to occupy my mornings.

I took the mask to work and horrified all the claustrophobes by modeling it with commentary. My children were astonished when they saw the thing. I think they thought I was got up in something like a hockey mask every day.

My appearance at work on Saturday turned into a little bit of a reality check as I was there for only two hours before being overcome with exhaustion and driving home to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening on the couch. The cat took up her position on my chest and the dog his position on my legs, and my 16 year old and I watched "Jaws" as I told him of the summer of my own 16th year when the movie was released and my sisters refused to go swimming with our family off the shores of Massachusetts. Normalcy is nice.

Today I went to work and felt a little less fatigued, but forgot the name of the restaurant up the street when suggesting to a colleague that we go there for lunch, and forgot a copy of the code section I needed for court today, and forgot the name of the client on my walk from the office to the court. Radiation does that, I think. Its effects ripple like the pond into which the rock has been dropped, and it will take a while for the waters to recede and for the silt to settle and the depths to clear. I'll just have to be patient.

So that's it. My little adventure is done. It's been almost a year since I went for the physical that set me on this course. Let's see what 2008 brings.

Photon Freakout

2007-10-26T22:53:00.000-05:00

Another couple of weeks have gone by and with them seventeen photon treatments; seemingly endless treatments. It's hard to remember what it was like not to report to the hospital every weekday. I'm there walking the hallways so much that not only have I found all the shortcuts to the cafeteria, but my presence in areas usually traversed only by maintenance and other staff goes unremarked. A familiar face, I blend into the surroundings. After including x-rays over the last few days I had hoped to be told that today was the last treatment. It was not to be so. My reassessment is on November 2nd.

Anyway, the latest installment of my Parotid Tumor Patients' Forum Journal is done, so I'm posting it for whatever it's worth to whomever might wander by. Here it is:

Photon-a-Palooza: Radiation Cogitation
Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Friday, 26 October 2007, at 9:34 p.m.

To everyone waiting with bated breath for last week's posting which never came, I'm sorry. You can breathe now. The fact is that I fired up the old computer all ready to type away, a copy of Moby Dick beside me AND a re-run of Star Trek, Next Generations on the telly for inspiration, and I just ran out of steam. Crashed. Too pooped to pop, I ended up lying on the couch (a real couch with bouncy cushions, the decorative afghan, etc., not that thing at radiation oncology some comedian named a "couch" and which is actually a hard narrow table not made for large middle-aged women with dicey backs and plump thighs). Lacking any cat-themed throw pillows I instead propped a real cat on my chest and a Jack Russell terrier across my hips. The cat lay there for hours, gazing into my face with disconcerting feline opaqueness and occasionally pricking me awake with a single, casual claw to the top of my sternum or sticking her bewhiskered nose into my open, lightly snoring mouth. Glad to know there are some things which can make me more uncomfortable than the mask.
Before proceeding I must congratulate Jodie for somehow managing to weave the mini-series "V" into a discussion of Hannibal Lector by way of offering a cogent explanation of why the mask makes us look like cannibalistic reptilian pseudo-aliens. Liver with fava beans! Sounds, um, not too good, but the man's a cannibal and there's no accounting for taste.
Now, as for the last seventeen days of photon goodness, anyone can get used to anything if it's reduced to a routine. It's just very tiring and a little unnerving.
I've spent the last few days pondering WHY it's unnerving. It's not the staff, the facility, or even the process itself. The staff is just wonderful. I couldn't say enough about how helpful and kind they've been. The facility is modern, well-lit, with good chairs and lots of reading material and water and strategically placed baskets of crackers. The process, too, is non-threatening and mundane, a routine during which a friendly technician usually opens a door and tells me to go on down the hall to the treatment room, where I am always greeted by one or more of the personnel, usually a technician and/or a nurse and/or a dosimetrist and one of their new interns. The interns are always young and enthusiastic; cute, but competent, who remind me of my own dear 21 year old daughter. An old hand, I stroll into the treatment room and wait for them to complete setup so I can lie down.
Setup changes from patient to patient depending upon the treatment ordered. If I enter the room after a breast cancer patient has been in there I'm likely to see two stirrups off to the side, and a little round stand for the patient's head. The stirrups are for the patient's arm, which must be placed out of her way while the breast is irradiated. This setup is of a piece, with that portion of the table being removable, stirrups and all, and another, flat portion of table laid down in its place. The setup for a head and neck patient like me consists of a rod containing little pegs placed in grooves on the table, upon which a sort of tray is dropped into place on the pegs, and which itself may have some pegs for placing in the table's holes, for stability. Near each corner of this tray are latches: round buttons with flat metal prongs on them which can be turned to hold in place the clear plastic headrest. The misnamed couch is in fact like a Lego pegboard on which many setups can be erected, or maybe it's just a big game of Battleship.
I lie on the couch and arch my head back a little for the mask, which is placed over my face and firmly strapped down. I can move my face inside of it a little bit for comfort, but comfort is a matter of perspective. To me, comfort means that I feel constricted, but not so constricted that I think I'm suffocating. Staring upward at the blue sky ceiling panels through the gauzy fuzziness of the mask I feel the couch slide silently under the collimator. Treatment rooms have these things - blue sky ceiling panels and walls with scenes of flowers and gardens - an effort to alleviate the claustrophobic sensation of a room without windows. Talking is impossible - probably not a bad thing - and I can only stare upward at the machine. I've memorized the innards of the collimator, trying to guess the depth of the hole through which the white light comes (maybe 18 inches?), and noticing the tell-tale wedge formation of large MLCs just below the light. Much of the structure looks like the inside of an SLR camera lens.
At some point during the treatments we decided to dispense with the hospital gown and instead treat me in my work clothes. Some mornings the shirt has to be taped down to reveal my clavicle and the little tattoo dot next to it. Considering the difficulty of lining up something as round and irregular as a neck and shoulder, the crew works very fast and efficiently. Reflected in the machine I sometimes see the green laser line tracing down my clavicle. Sometimes an ink dot enhances the underlying tattoo. Sometimes the green laser light isn't on, and I can see reflected the piece of tape, a line carefully marked down it, which courses down the left side of my mask. The reflections are obscured when someone slaps the MLC wedge into its slots on the collimator and I read the legend: "30 cm x 40 cm 15 degrees steel".
Happy with their work the techs walk out the door, a huge 12-inch thick door with a red radiation caution sign on the outside, and leave me alone on the other side of it. Sometimes I hear a "poomf" noise as the door softly closes. I have often wondered whether this sensation of being left alone is what is so disquieting, but think not. I've never minded being alone. As a child I used to hide in closets and under beds, avoiding parental scrutiny and reading voraciously by the light of my Girl Scout flashlight. Nope, solitude for me can be comfort.
Alone in the room there is nothing to do but wait, with an odd sense of anticipation, for the treatment to begin. No announcement precedes it, just silence and a sudden buzzing noise from the left which goes on for over forty seconds. The buzzing stops, and the collimator rotates to my left. Someone enters the room and removes the wedge, then leaves again. Another soft poomf and the collimator rotates all the way under me. Sometimes the green laser light is on and I watch two narrow lines of green chase each other across the ceiling, and then the bottom section of the machine is above me; a flat, gray mass with a piece of masking tape across it with "Do not rotate beyond this point" written on it. I wait, and another buzzing starts, this time for 30 seconds or less. One day last week the buzzing stopped after only a few seconds, and I lay there confused and wondering if I should move, until it started up again and completed the dosage. Somehow a switch had been accidentally hit.
A few days ago as I lay on the couch after a session I glanced up and noticed a surveillance camera in the corner. A technician told me the camera shows each patient in the room, and all that is necessary if I am ever in distress is to raise my arm and they will come running. This is good to know. Perhaps I will work up the nerve to start flashing gang signals or make little animal shapes one of these days.
On top of the treatments there are x-rays. Lots of x-rays. Maybe this is the source of the disquiet, the sensation that on top of the unnatural amount of radiation I receive each day there are additional rads coming through my x-rays.
Maybe the disquiet is related to physical reaction to the treatments. In the mornings I receive a treatment and sometimes upon getting up from the couch I feel a blocked sensation in my ear, or a coarse static. Sometimes I feel a delayed electric sensation swelling my throat or lips for hours afterwards, like an overdose of sun at the beach. My voice comes out croaky sometimes, sounding like the eternal teenage boy on The Simpsons. My gums hurt and my teeth are sensitive. My neck is red on the left side and I think of how appropriate it would be to have Gretchen Wilson singing Redneck Woman just once in the treatment room. I'm tired and my brain is foggy. How many times have I had to explain to people that if it is not in front of me I may not remember it? Or that I cannot quite recall things which normally would be at my fingertips? A natural chatterbox from whom words normally gush unimpeded and heedlessly, I suddenly find myself groping for words at times, reaching across the radiation-induced drought and stumbling over pebbles of thought as I grope for pools of my former loquacity.
So, perhaps the disquiet is this; the feeling after decades of being warned of the dangers of radiation, of being taught to "duck and cover" in the early sixties at my grade school, of living through the Cuban missile crisis at ground zero in the DC area, and through the no-nukes movement of the late seventies, that being on the wrong side of the danger sign on the blast door is abnormal. It's a cognitive disconnect to be on the wrong side of that door, in a room with false windows, and next to a machine which is giving me the equivalent of dozens, or maybe hundreds of x-rays every time I'm there, not just from the front but from the back, also.
Notwithstanding this disquiet, every day I report for treatment, and every day walk from the room unimpeded and generally unscathed but for the minor complaints put forth above. There is nothing here from which I will not recover. The disquiet is in the end like the monster under the bed, unsettling but not real. It is tolerable, and as I embark on the next week of treatment I understand that I will feel a bit worse before I feel better, but that this will be but an interesting topic of conversation at dinner one day, a set of experiences out of which I might weave a tale, its tone either somber or amusing or informational, but something which will be in the past. My future does not include this disquiet. All is well.

Radiation Update - Parotid Tumor Journal

2007-10-13T21:08:00.000-05:00

Thank you to those who've expressed their concern about my situation. I feel fortunate in that my condition is not cancer, and I will not require chemotherapy, and that I live in an area where there is easy access to cutting edge modern medical treatment. For those who may have stumbled onto this site while looking for information about parotid tumors, you cannot do better than to look at the superb Patients' Forum on Parotid Tumors run by RoxanneM at this link.

Unfortunately, I am not yet done with treatment. I've been through five weeks of electron RT and am now embarking on about three weeks of photon treatment. During these past weeks I have been posting a journal of my experiences on the Patients' Forum, going by the screen name CarlaFW. I've reproduced the journal in its entirety, unedited and complete with minor errors, below. The biggest error is that I am not in IMRT radiation therapy, but straight-up photon treatment. The later entries tend to be more accurate than the early ones due to the information I've gathered during this period. Maybe by the end of this little episode I'll actually know what's going on. In the meantime, I would like to extend thanks to the Radiation Oncology staff of the Virginia Hospital Center. They are the best.

Starting Radiation Treatment Next Week

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Thursday, 2 August 2007, at 10:27 p.m.

Well, I've gone and done it. After dillydallying, ducking, and diverting myself for the last few months since my April surgery I've finally started preps for radiation treatments. After five recurrences during the last 34 years it's clear something a little more drastic than waiting for the next pleomorphic adenoma to grow in is called for, so I'm ready to roll.

I've been to see the radiation oncologist twice this week. He's very comfortable to be around and his office is efficient yet lowkey. On Tuesday I showed up to have my mask made. This is the thing which will be placed on my face to keep me immobile during the treatments over the next few weeks. I'm curious about others' experiences of this rather bizarre process. I'm not claustrophobic, but having a large, warm, rectangular, meshy, waxy thing placed over my face like Saran wrap and strapped to a table was a bit unnerving, especially when it began to stiffen. However, the reality is it wasn't too bad. You can actually see and breathe through the thing. There was a lot of marking of things with green magic marker, bits of masking tape being torn off and slapped onto it, and various terms being tossed about. Hard to follow for this math-phobe, but they answered all my questions to my satisfaction.

Today I went back for a bit of tinkering. This time my doctor greeted me with flat piece of pink wax upon which had been crudely drawn an ear outline. He snipped and worked it and kept fitting it over my ear. Once he felt it was sized right he picked up a lead disk, traced an outline of the wax onto it, and more snipping and shaping ensued. Come Monday I'm assured this thing will have a wax coating. It's to protect my ear and ear canal from the radiation. After that I had to lie on a table for about 15 minutes while more measurements were taken, and then two tiny tattoo dots were put on my temple and front of my ear. They're hardly noticeable.

I'm told treatment will be mostly with electrons, calculated to appropriate depths at a strength of 9 million volts(!?). Electron treatment is supposed to be far less destructive than photon treatment since electrons are particles and photons are rays. It's possible that due to some earlier involvement of my lymph nodes in my fourth surgery that I may have to have photon radiation on the nodes, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now it looks like we're just doing the electrons. My doctor wants to review my ancient file and make a final determination. He told me that my record makes me a little bit of a medical anomaly and he and my surgeon are planning to present my case to some meeting next week. Sounds like fun.

My friends' crazy senses of humor are a help. Some of them are planning to get my mask after we finish the treatments, cast some molds, and create "cargoyles" for various places like their gardens and maybe my office. The kitschier/tackier, the better. We wouldn't want to leave me with any shreds of dignity, would we? Maybe we'll fashion a "twin" for me for the high occupancy vehicle lanes.

Anyway, Monday's the big day. We'll see how things go.

First Week of Radiation In the Books

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Friday, 10 August 2007, at 10:38 a.m.

Well, I've finished the first week of radiation. It's 9 million volts of electrons every morning at 8 a.m. It's just a regular appointment I keep every morning, after which I proceed to work or sometimes home if I feel like a little nap. So far, so good.

As to side effects, yesterday I got the shock of my life when I accepted a spoonful of Italian ice. The right side of my mouth felt like I'd just broken a tooth and slapped ice on top of it. Ouch! My tongue feels slightly larger. The left side of my head, which is the treatment side, has been stiffening up lately. Yesterday my jaw felt very stiff on the left and I found myself working it and stretching it like the Tin Man after a rain. Last night I couldn't sleep due to the ache in my shoulder radiating down from my neck. But aside from this irritating tightness I haven't got much to complain about. I feel more tired than usual, but have been able to work. There is a sense of ditziness that hits right after the treatment - where I have trouble finding words and completing thoughts - but that sensation burns off after a little while, and part of that may be related to menopause. Or maybe I'm just ditzy and never noticed it before. Who knows?

Last night I did a little research and found some reference to hearing loss related to electron radiation, so am planning to ask the doctor about that on Monday. My last tumor was so large I had impaired hearing, but after the surgery my hearing improved. I'd hate to lose it again, but sometimes you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. More on this later.

Anyway, now I have two days before I have to go back again, a welcome respite, and then back into action on Monday. It helps enormously to have such a friendly, helpful, responsive staff. I've seen pictures of their children and favorite pets, heard anecdotes of family adventures, and gossiped about hair care and favorite foods. They're downright neighborly.

Second Week of Radiation Complete!

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Friday, 17 August 2007, at 9:32 p.m.

Another week has passed and another week of radiation is done. There's more fatigue, but that may be related to the fact that my teens don't seem to understand that I need a lot more uninterrupted sleep these days. They're used to their insomniac night owl mother prowling the house at all hours and so think nothing of starting conversations or calling me from their friends' houses at 1:30 a.m. Today, my business partner finally called my daughter and asked her to read the riot act to her brothers since I'm walking around with bags under my eyes large enough to shutter a window.

With the exception of a small computer problem which caused my treatment to be postponed until Thursday afternoon there have been no problems. As for side effects I've noticed a stiffness in my jaw and next to my ear, and a mildly bruised feeling on the side of my head. I have started to see a diminution of my sense of taste, especially along the left side of my mouth, and my teeth and gums are increasingly sensitive. This problem I am treating aggressively with high fluoride prescription toothpaste and Sensodyne after every snack or meal during the day. The sense of scattered thinking remains, although maybe that's the fatigue more than anything else. I continue to pause to grope for words, probably to the relief of colleagues who needed a break from my constant prattling.

Looking forward to my little weekend break.

Third Week of Radiation Done

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Saturday, 25 August 2007, at 8:04 a.m.

After three weeks of radiation I have to say that electron's definitely the way to go.

This week the doctor increased the thickness, by one centimeter, of the bolus, the gel-filled thing resembling a mousepad which they place over my ear after taping the ear shield to my head and hair. The idea was to get closer to the surface of my skin, and I noticed an immediate increase in the sensation of a sunburn within a day or two. I was surprised at how much heavier the bolus felt with the added thickness. Like lead. I also asked why, after counting off the seconds during each treatment, there is as much as five seconds variation in treatments. The technologist told me that she measures the barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature of the room every day and the readings are input into the computer, which then adjusts the time to allow for the proper dosage. The dosage determines the amount of time the treatment is administered, not the other way around. The doctor gave me an appointment for Tuesday to review my treatments. Several weeks ago he told me he must decide whether to "go deeper" after my lymph nodes, and I got the distinct impression this meant switching to protons. Can only hope I'm reading this wrong.

So here we are, after the third week and fifteen zappings, and the worst side effects I can report include increasing fatigue and an ear that feels sunburned. The fatigue is a real drag. For a self-employed person no workee equals no eatee, so I've been trundling off to work every day after radiation. Yesterday one of my colleagues dropped in and told me she'd seen me leaving skid marks on the sidewalk from hauling my rear to the courthouse. I feel just as I did in college when I came down with mononucleosis in the last month of my last year and had no choice but to continue going to class, writing papers, and taking exams. Brutal.

Intense feelings or aggravation or agitation can bring me down in a hurry. I'm usually a very energetic, some say hyper, person who feels energized by debating or generally dealing with people. The other day I was arguing with a prosecutor over disposition of a minor case and actually started to stagger with exhaustion. I had trouble finding words and that really scared him. Poor guy made me go sit down until I could pull it together. Looks like I should avoid taking on any jury trials or anything requiring intense preparation.

Other than fatigue I'm feeling more pain and sensitivity in my teeth and gums, the side of my head feels stiffer, food is looking less attractive, and I've opened up a sore right above my earlobe which bleeds occasionally. Every day a technologist marks my head with either a green magic marker or a red magic marker (depending on the technologist) prior to treatment. The red has leeched into the gray hair surrounding the site, which when added to the green on my face gives me a slightly Christmasy look and opened up a lot of good natured ribbing.

Fourth Week of Radiation Done!

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Saturday, 1 September 2007, at 10:49 p.m.

Well, another week's gone by and other than even more fatigue I'm still feeling pretty darn good.

The skin on the left side of my face is taking on a very sunburned look and my ear feels increasingly as if it's blocked or full of ear wax or something. Though unpleasant these feelings are not terrible and I have been able to continue working, albeit with a reduced schedule and frequent little catnaps. I definitely require more rest.

The doctor and I met briefly on Tuesday, during which he told me he's very pleased with my progress thus far and anticipates the treatment concluding about two weeks from now. Happy news. Two days later his assistant stopped me and asked if I understood the doctor was talking about current electron treatments for the area next to my ear and not necessarily about the lymph nodes. D'oh! If he decides to go after the lymph nodes it'll be no more nice electrons and hello photons. As I told the techs, no one ever hears Captain Kirk telling Scottie to arm the electron torpedoes, and anything that can blow spaceships out of orbit, like photon torpedoes, just can't be good for your body. Didn't hear any disagreement there, although the girls did ask if I always think in popular cultural allusions. Um ... yes?

Anyway, I'm still able to sort of taste things and beer and wine have not lost their charm (hooray), thus allowing me to continue swilling at baseball games and Bar functions. And I can't begin to express my gratitude at being able to drink coffee in the morning. Have to be careful not to burn, but boy do I need the caffeine. The aggressive prophylactic treatment of my teeth also seems to be helping. I floss and brush several times a day and use fluoride treatments. Still no major complaints about them.

So that's it. More of the same, with no big surprises, and that's fine. One can get used to anything if one does it enough.

Fifth Week of Radiation Done - and Over?

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Friday, 7 September 2007, at 9:23 p.m.

Today I was told that my last electron treatment will be on Monday - just one more day. Then, after a rest of about a week to ten days we're going to move on a brief session of IMRT photon radiation - to take place between a week and a half and three weeks.

My ever helpful friends have suggested that we find a Star Trek costume for me so we can get in the mood for the "photon torpedoes". I can't see any downside. I suggested that I take the Lieutenant Uhura role, but these same friends say that I simply don't have Nichelle Nichols's legs and maybe I should stick to a Captain Kirk/Scottie scenario.

Overall, I cannot complain about the electron treatments. Despite periods of extreme exhaustion I'm able still to work and even go out with friends or to a ball game. Part of this is probably due to my natural high energy, but a lot is due to the fact that electron radiation is a much more superficial type which does not cut through everything in its path.

So, after five weeks I can report a sore ear, slightly impaired hearing which will probably resolve itself over time, pervasive fatigue, and a rather sunburned looking side of my face. I've lost my sideburn, the radiation leaving a smooth edge to the hair almost to my temple, which looks as if I went after it with a razor. My hair is shortish, but long enough to easily cover the missing little hank of hair.

All in all, not a bad experience.

Sixth Week After Radiation Started

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Friday, 14 September 2007, at 9:03 p.m.

I did my last electron radiation treatment on Monday. Nice to have a break from the festivities before I start on the IMRT ... now with more photons!

The staff warned me that I would continue to feel the effects of the treatment for days afterwards. I think I walked out of there expecting to be completely normal (to use the term loosely) by Friday. Instead, my skin continued to get flaky and irritated and I started to drag quite a bit by today. But come to think of it I've been working late and intensely, and my drama prone family has had more than the usual share of crises this week. The only thing for the flaking/itching is keep slathering on the Alra Therapy Lotion. Great stuff. It really does help. My doctor called me out of the blue today, told me that he does this each Friday with everyone who's completed a course of radiation, and asked how I am. He told me all sounds normal and is looking forward to seeing me next week for a review and the simulation for the IMRT. Since I spend most of my time listening to other people's complaints and dealing with their problems it was gratifying to have someone ask me how I am.

I used the extra time granted by my lack of a regular RT meeting to search the web for an appropriate picture of Captain Kirk and Scottie to present to the girls at Radiation Oncology in honor of the "photon torpedoes". The dialogue goes like this:

"Arm the photon torpedoes, Scottie."

"Cap'n, ah cannae do it. She's a menopausal woman, dangerously unstable. One wrong move and she's likely to blow."

"Never mind that, Mr. Scot. Give me those photon torpedoes."

Cue cheesy 60s Star Trek music.

Might as well have a little fun with this.

Send in the "CAT"

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Wednesday, 3 October 2007, at 7:44 p.m.

Well, it was off to the radiation oncologist today for evaluation and review. Fresh from a triumphal five week tour of electron world (Now, with more linear acceleration!), I am now preparing to embark on a three week course of photon therapy, which I like to refer to as breaking out the photon torpedoes.

Before we start it's necessary to get a "CAT" Scan tomorrow. Yes, yes, I know, it's actually a CT Scan. Boring! I'd much rather have it done by a cat. I can see it now (scene goes all misty into black and white):

"Okay Carla, we're going to do a 64-slice CAT Scan to map your head and neck. Here kitty, kitty, kitty ..."

"Mrrrowwwwrrr, pfst!"

"There you go, kitty. Come on over to Carla."

"Nice kitty, do your damage. We need 64 slices."

"Hey, are you sure this is safe? That cat looks angry ... no don't ... mreowwwrrrhhhrrowwww ... pfsssttt! Ow, for pete's sake, what are you doing?"

"Come on, kitty, just 4 more and we're done."

"Rowrr!"

"Ackkk, I'm bleeding!"

"All done, Carla. Don't you just love our brand new 64 slice CAT scan? It's the latest in medical technology."

"Hackk, spft, hackck ... "

Ooh, a hairball. These technical problems happen sometimes ..."

The "CAT" Would Have Been More Fun

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Friday, 5 October 2007, at 12:01 a.m.

Today I went for simulation in preparation for photon radiation starting next week. All in all I think my idea about using a "CAT" scan was more fun than today's adventure.

I was ushered to a back room, where once again all my idiot questions were answered fully and completely. This bunch is unstoppable.

A radiation tech, or maybe she's a dosimetrist, told me she was going to assist in making another mask for me. Ruh roh! Now, for those who've been following my adventures you know that I was actually fitted for a mask about two months ago, and then when I showed up for my electron treatments they just had me tilt my head, placed an ear shield and a bolus on my ear, and zapped away for five solid weeks. No mask, just a warm, electric sensation.

So I asked: "Why no mask before?" Turns out a mask can't be used in electron treatments because the poor little sensitive electrons just get absorbed right into the mask and lose their effectiveness. This makes them sound sort of wussie, albeit rather soft and cuddly.

Now the photon torpedoes have no such problem. They're a leaner, nastier form of RT; sort of like the kids in my old neighborhood growing up. Photons are gangsta to electrons' wannabes, so they'll go right through the mask and pretty much anything else in the way, impeded only by the MLCs. The way the dosimetrist explained it the MLCs are dozens of tiny lead leaves which can adjust and flutter to block and direct the photons, which allows them to do their work while avoiding damage to surrounding tissue.

Still awash in the glow of new-learned useless information I was directed to sit on a table next to the CT scanner. The doctor, the physicist, and dosimetrist all gathered around and started talking in tech speak and numbers at each other. Always at times like this the magic markers come out and before I know it there are multi-colored circles, slashes, and little exes on my face and neck. Everyone's got a favorite color it seems. After rendering me suitably ridiculous looking the team decided it was time to mask up. Mr. C., the physicist, cheerfully declared that they were going to make my neck hurt now. Hey, the man was being honest.

The table had a little plastic stand for my head. Apparently these stands are labeled "A", "B", and "C" depending on size. They tried the B, then the C, then the B, then finally the A. I felt like Goldilocks choosing a bed.

Everything was fine until they asked me to tilt my head back, then farther back, then pretty much all the way back while perched on the stand. Oy! I was handed a big ring to hold between my hands.

The ever-cheerful Mr. C approached with a large round yellow frame across which was stretched a hot, gauzy, waxy-looking membrane, like a thick piece of Saran wrap, and without further ado pressed it down around my face and locked it into the table.

This can be a startling, confining experience. The waxy stuff is very warm, but starts immediately to cool, and as it cools it hardens. You can breathe through it, and see through it, but as it dries you feel it adhering to your forehead and chin. In my case the tech speak kept right on going, with the dosimetrist and Mr. C marking pieces of masking tape and slapping them onto strategic parts of my mask. Occasionally the magic markers came out again.

Eventually all the scribbling and tech speak was done and the machine was turned on and I was sent into the scanner, then back out again. There seemed to be a lot of this in and out stuff, with the dosimetrist, Mr. C, and the doctor occasionally wandering back into the room to fuss over the mask and speak in anagrams and numbers some more.

At one point Mr. C started poking my chest, as if he was looking for my sternum. It turned out that my surgeon had what my radiation oncologist regarded as an obsession with my chest - not the good kind of obsession, mind you - but a concern that tumor cells may have migrated there. I was sent into the scanner yet again to take pictures almost to my waist. Then the dosimetrist tattooed two little marks on my clavicle, which she laughingly called the "vampire bite", and we were done.

By this time I'd been almost an hour with my neck locked into an unnaturally tilted position and things were getting uncomfortable. All you can do in such a position is stare upward, which in my case meant watching the two green laser lights on the ceiling, then the blinking red lights as I entered the scanner, then the whirring thing inside its frame inside the machine.

Finally the dosimetrist came out and unsnapped the mask from its base. By that time I was stiff as a board. The doctor explained that everything was clear and it was nice to hear there were no masses lurking in my lungs or shoulder. The area to be irradiated is about 15 centimeters, from the mastoid process down to the clavicle.

So that's it. The dosimetrist showed me all the pictures and the area to be treated. I told the doctor that I'm not claustrophobic, but after an experience like that was considering taking it up, and he laughed and replied that he has a lot of angry friends who insist on entering the machine feet first or even sedated.

I toddled off to work, which is where I discovered the criss-cross pattern of the mask still on my face, where it remained for a solid hour and a half before fading.

So, the long and short of it is that the mask can be annoying and confining and a little unnerving, but even an hour in the darn thing does no real harm, and for my treatments of course I will be in it at most for a couple of minutes. No big deal, but I still would have liked a cat in there with me.

Arm the Photon Torpedoes, Mr. Scott

Posted By: CarlaFW
Date: Saturday, 13 October 2007, at 1:20 p.m.

Well, I've started my latest round of radiation, this time with photons. Except for the incredibly confining mask, the length of time spent getting zapped, the direction in which I'm being zapped, the multiple zaps, and the difficulty of lining up my uncooperative shoulder with my equally uncooperative neck, it's exactly like electron treatment.

When one hears that one is going to get two different types of treatment one assumes that there will be two different machines. However, now I'm back in the old room with my good buddy the Clinac21EX/23EX linear accelerator. It turns out that linear accelerators are used for multiple purposes, making them the Ronco kitchen tools of the radiation world. Darn things have more diversity than a New York street festival.

With nothing better to do I slipped into toddler mode this week and asked a lot of stupid technical questions. The main machine is called the gantry. That it rhymes with pantry makes it all the more kitcheny to my ears, and the fact that it strongly resembles a gigantic '70s era Sunbeam mixer doesn't help. The mixer head is referred to as the collimator, which sounds suspiciously like colander. The collimator is very versatile and has a number of grooves and locking mechanisms for the insertion of various implements to assist in the administration of the radiation. In my case there is a metal tray called an MLC wedge which slides and locks into place, and helps to shape and direct the beam.

On Tuesday I reported for what I assumed would be my first treatment, but it was actually another picture taking session. I got on the table, technically called a couch (a really hard, flat, narrow couch without any fluffy cat pillows, decorative afghans, or bouncy cushions), and the mask was strapped over my face. It is extremely snug, but does not hurt. With my head tilted pretty far back the edge of the mask butted up against the top of my throat, and with inhalation I felt the jugular pulsating against it. Ick. I found myself delaying taking a breath just to avoid the sensation. I was then elevated pretty high, and the couch slid under the collimator. I mumbled a request through my mask for a doughnut (mmm, doughnut!), which is the ring I hang onto with both hands so my arms don’t slip down my sides and ruin the setup. The doughnut is a wonderful invention, especially for those of us who may be a bit over-nourished.

My vision from the mask is somewhat obscured but good enough to see the flat metal of the collimator, and the rectangular hole through which I could see more metal layers of varying shapes, and a white light. In the ceiling there is a cross-shaped hole out of which comes a green laser light. For this session I could see my reflection from the glass covering the hole in the collimator, and saw reflected a green line which traced the line of my clavicle. The technician and dosimetrist fussed over me with a green magic marker and started the usual routine of speaking in jargon and numbers. The technician carefully drew a line (green ink this time) from the top of my throat through the tattoo marker and to the next tattoo marker, then traced the green light down my clavicle and then up to my shoulder, following the line of light from the rectangular opening above me. The result was an incomplete rectangle, with the top open. Then they inserted the MLC wedge and the light was bent by the presence of a series of ridges, like little steps, in effect creating a step-shaped shadow on my skin. This too was carefully traced and the blocked area colored in a little. It ended up looking like a diagram from a kid’s science fair project on how waves create sand dunes. Charming, especially after I couldn’t get the ink out completely, even with a shower the next morning.

Then commenced the picture taking. It seems to me we do a lot of this. At times I feel like a celebrity fashion victim what with the technician running into the room with her digital camera for another shot of the hospital gown-clad plump lady strapped to the couch, and then the x-rays from the gantry. They took a series of x-rays from the top, then rotated the gantry upside down and took more pictures from beneath me. I hadn’t noticed before, but the couch is actually just a big grid with a kind of plexiglass covering it.

After the session I asked a lot more stupid questions. It seems I am receiving 176 cGys (they used to be called rads, but are now called grays after a British physicist, and designated by Gy) on the top shot, and 117 cGy on the bottom shot. At my first treatment on Wednesday I went through the first zapping, then lay there perplexed and wondering if I should try to move, when the gantry suddenly rotated upside down and they administered the second dose. The first dose is always around 40 or 45 seconds by my count and the second is about 25 to 30 seconds. The doses are administered by 100 monitor units, or M.U.'s. As with the electron treatments the time varies for each dose based on environmental factors.

So far I’ve had three sessions. Setup is more complicated than it was for electron treatment. The mask has to be strapped on and my shoulder has to be lined up just so, and then the lights have to line up exactly before they commence. I’ve already noticed a nasty stiffening in my shoulder and will have to ask about possible physical therapy or exercises for the problem. After my third session on Friday I went off to court and while standing in a hallway felt a wave of fatigue rise from my ankles and swell over my head. My voice is starting to feel a little raspy, and I expect that I might have a sore throat by the end of next week. Given a choice I would say that even a free week at the beach inclusive of admission to the seafood buffet would not induce me to stay at Club Rad, but sometimes we have to do what we have to do. It’s not jail and it’s not permanent, so I’ll keep on trudging to the Radiation Oncology office every morning until they tell me to stop. It beats having yet another doggone surgery.

At any rate I can still work, and so I do, and last night a good friend took me to the National Italian American Foundation gathering in D.C. with a show by Neil Sedaka. My friend did the whole radiation thing for breast cancer, plus chemo, which I don’t have to have, so I’m still coming out ahead. We went and had a great time and met some charming Canadians and found out that Neil Sedaka is at least part Italian and in fact can sing and speak in Italian. Who knew? Life goes on.

Radiation Therapy Follies

2007-08-02T23:18:00.001-05:00

The last few months have been a whirlwind of weird medical issues and elderly relative caretaking responsibilities. Oh, and there's also running the business and all that. I haven't posted in a very long time, but I've missed my blog.

Starting next week I begin radiation treatment for my little parotid tumor problem. Although the April surgery came back with a benign pleomorphic adenoma diagnosis, the fact is that without drastic measures I will have another - sixth - recurrence, and that each recurrence increases my chances of developing a malignancy.

Accordingly, I agreed to radiation treatment. On Tuesday I went to my radiation oncologist and was fitted with a mask. A large, rectangular, waxy, gauzy, heated thing was pressed down over my face as I lay on a CT Scan table and strapped down. As soon as it began to cool it started to stiffen. Not a painful experience but a bizarre feeling. For a fleeting moment I thought "I have to get out of here" as I considered ripping the damn thing off and fleeing. It passed, but I realized then that for the truly claustrophobic it has to be a miserable experience.

As the thing cooled they huddled next to me, drawing on it with a green marker and sticking marked pieces of masking tape in various spots on the mask. The two doctors worked companionably with each other, and it felt oddly like we were all involved in a grade school science project together with me as the test subject.

They told me they planned on using electron radiation primarily and hoped to avoid using photon radiation. To me radiation's just whatever is likely to make me glow in the dark, so I had to ask the difference. Well, it seems that electrons are delivered by a particle beam which can be tweaked and calibrated to a very subtle degree. They can be programmed to a great range of intensity and depth, and upon reaching their calculated depth they dissipate. Photons, on the other hand, are rays and keep going past the point of their original focus. They are necessary for deeper, more radical treatments. I asked if this is why Star Trek features photon torpedoes but no electron torpedoes. "Sure," replied one doctor.

After about 20 minutes the mask was removed and I was left with green marks down the left side of my face which came off readily with an alcohol wipe.

Today I went back for some tweaking and discussion of my case. The oncologist sat next to me with a wax slab upon which was a crudely drawn outline of my ear, and he snipped and shaped it to fit the ear, then traced it onto a lead sheet and cut that out. Again, he and the other doctor, his assistant, chatted companionably, exchanging little pointers and comments. "He's been with me for 23 years," he said of his assistant. "Since he was a kid." There was much happy talk about how well the ear shield turned out, with compliments all around from assistant and staff, and this I somehow found comforting. There is much to be said for making a patient feel as if she's participated in a joint effort rather than like a project to be worked on.

By Monday morning the shield will be coated with wax and I will wear it for each of my treatments. It feels strange but beats having stray electrons rattling down my ear canal and wrecking what's left of my hearing on that side. Given my history - five recurrences over 34 years, the oncologist told me that he was considering photon radiation of my lymph nodes. Ick. I'd much rather deal with the kinder, gentler electrons, but I'm not the expert.

The ear shield done it was time to take more measurements. Once more I ended up on a table, which was moved around and situated under a boxy looking machine so close it almost touched my face. The table moved smoothly and swiftly, like the beginning of an amusement park ride. Both doctors seemed inordinately pleased with the ease of their measuring and calibrating and more drawing on my face ensued. Then a tiny tattoo point was made on my temple and another on the scar directly in front of my ear. The one on my temple hurt and bled and made me wonder, not for the first time, why anyone would volunteer to be tattooed. The second one I hardly felt at all since the nerves are so deadened there from five separate surgeries over the same spot.

As I prepared to leave the office the oncologist told me he and my surgeon are going to present my case to a roundtable of doctors. It seems I'm a medical anomaly with my early onset of parotid tumors and my recurrent and never fully effective surgeries. Having hung out at the extremely useful Parotid Tumor Patients Forum online I know of situations a lot stranger and certainly more serious than mine, but that's a worldwide forum. I don't imagine they've seen that much of it on their little patch.

So there it is, the little problem that's been occupying so much of my time and attention these last few months. Now that it's getting underway maybe I can stop fretting over it and fret over more important stuff, like this stupid war and our equally stupid administration. Now there's a real problem.

Death of a Soldier

2007-05-15T16:11:00.000-05:00

Just read this powerful article about the life and death of Army Staff Sgt. Darrell Ray Griffin, Jr. E-Mails Reveal a Fallen Soldier's Story. Sgt. Griffin was killed by a sniper in Sadr City on March 21, 2007 while standing in the hatch of his Stryker vehicle. Embedded journalist Alex Kingsbury had met with and interviewed him extensively just a few days before.

Sgt. Griffin sounds like an extremely bright individual who approached seriously the question of who he was, and why he was there, and who struggled to reconcile the horror of his war experience with his vision of what he should strive for in his own life. He deserves to be remembered.

The Good That We Do Ain't Doing So Well - Iraq Reconstruction Projects Going Down the Tubes

2007-04-29T22:25:00.000-05:00

A common complaint of Iraq war supporters is that the MSM "doesn't tell the success stories" of projects built and progress made. Setting aside for a moment the story of those projects which never made it off the ground thanks to rampant corruption, contractor incompetence, and diversion of funds to other "purposes", what has happened to the projects which did get built?

According to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), nothing good.

The New York Times reports that a sampling of eight Iraq reconstruction projects shows that

in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

According to the SIGIR

At the [Baghdad] airport ... inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital, a rehabilitation project in the northern city of Erbil, an expensive incinerator for medical waste was padlocked — Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment — and partly as a result, medical waste including syringes, used bandages and empty drug vials were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.

The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

Additionally

inspections found numerous instances of power generators that no longer operated; sewage systems that had clogged and overflowed, damaging sections of buildings; electrical systems that had been jury-rigged or stripped of components; floors that had buckled; concrete that had crumbled; and expensive equipment that was simply not in use ... most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect ... that kind of neglect is typical of rebuilding programs in developing countries when local nationals are not closely involved in planning efforts ...

Only recently has the SIGIR been allowed to come into its own as a source of rigorous audits and on-the-ground accountability for U.S. funds expended in Iraq. In early November 2006 Senator Duncan Hunter slipped language into an appropriations bill seeking to cut off the SIGIR's funding as of October 2007. Fortunately, this was reversed when the new Congress took over in January 2007, but how characteristic of the Administration to seek to squelch criticism by shooting the messenger.

So Are They Prisoners of War or Criminal Detainees?

2007-04-27T20:29:00.000-05:00

For a brief period on Thursday, April 26th, Senator Patrick Leahy became a witness and testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the rights of Guantanamo detainees.

Leahy described the indefinite detention of hundreds of individuals as "un-American". Senators skirmish over Gitmo detainees. Thank goodness for people like Leahy and Senator Levin, who point out the hypocrisy in a system which professes the rights of the accused and yet holds them indefinitely without the right even to demand probable cause. As Levin said:

"America at its best is a beacon for human rights and human liberty, and that's how we like to see ourselves ... but much of the world sees us in a very different way when we fail to live up to the standards we profess."

The government has released well over 300 of these detainees, the so-called "worst of the worst" according to Cheney, yet the continued detention of the remaining detainees is considered justified by the nature of the accusations against them. What a crock.

We hear it over and over again: We're in a "global war on terror". Really? It's a war? Then why aren't the rules of war being followed? Why aren't the people we're detaining being considered prisoners of war and subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention?

They're not soldiers but terrorists? Well aren't terrorists criminals? Why can't we subject them to the criminal laws of this country as we used to do before the Bush Administration decided to create this legal limbo where people are neither soldiers nor criminals but something in between? How is it that we were able to try and convict terrorists like the blind sheik and his co-conspirators after the first World Trade Center bombings without sending them to an island with no recourse to the legal system? Didn't we try and convict Tim McVeigh without taking away his right to an aggressive legal defense? The law is not the enemy. Legal protections and standards of evidence and fairness are not the enemy. Again, what is our government afraid of?

Bush Administration Continues Its Attack on Gitmo Lawyers

2007-04-26T08:50:00.000-05:00

Cross-Posted to Raising Kaine

Here's an article from the New York Times describing the latest in the government's efforts to curtail and obstruct Guantanamo detainees' attorneys in their pursuit of fair hearings on the evidence for their clients. Court Asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantanamo

The government has proposed some teeny-tiny adjustments to the way Gitmo detainees are represented, to wit:

the government would limit lawyers to three visits with an existing client at Guantánamo; there is now no limit. It would permit only a single visit with a detainee to have him authorize a lawyer to handle his case. And it would permit a team of intelligence officers and military lawyers not involved in a detainee’s case to read mail sent to him by his lawyer.

The attorneys have been accused of "causing unrest" at Guantanamo. Well we all know how happy the detainees were to be there until all the pesky lawyers showed up. The government's hatchet man, Cmdr. Patrick McCarthy, says defense lawyers have

gathered information from the detainees for news organizations. Commander McCarthy also said the lawyers had provided detainees with accounts of events outside Guantánamo, like a speech at an Amnesty International conference and details of terrorist attacks.

“Such information,” his affidavit said, “threatens the security of the camp, as it could incite violence among the detainees.”

Give the government the right to review all communications between lawyers and their clients? How could that possibly be seen as impeding the relationship between attorneys and clients? The government guys will keep their secrets and won't use the information gleaned to seize unfair advantage in their cases. Honest!

And one visit to initiate representation? Sounds reasonable. After all, the detainees have been locked up for years by generally white, non-Muslim Americans who don't speak their languages, and the lawyers are generally white, non-Muslim Americans who don't speak their languages, either, so no reason for the detainees to be suspicious of any lawyer who shows up - sometimes sporting a Jewish name - and says "let me help you. And by the way, if you do allow me to help you this is the only time we're going to talk about your case so I need to know everything. And by the way, everything you tell me through correspondence or meetings will also be told to the government's lawyers. But I'm really on your side. Seriously. Trust me. So come on, start talking."

Of course the attorneys deny that they have done the things of which they're accused. No proof offered, just the usual speculation and hinting at dark things to come. These people are wasted in the law. They should all be in Hollywood writing scary screenplays for a revival of the Goosebumps series.

I have an idea. Let's distribute the detainees around our federal prison system and CLOSE Guantanamo. Let's let their attorneys see them the way they see their non-detainee clients.

This issue is yet another "sky is falling" assertion by elements of the Bush Administration bound and determined to continue stacking the deck against the Guantanamo detainees. Here's another suggestion. Why not drop all the bulltwaddle, gather the evidence and put it out there, and hold some damn hearings with real rules of procedure and rules of evidence? Or is that just too scary a prospect for the likes of Alberto ("I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing") Gonzales and this Administration?

How Do I Scandalize Thee? Let Me Count The Ways.

2007-04-24T19:39:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted to Raising Kaine

For all the people who wished me well during my recent parotid tumor surgery - Thank You. The surgery turned out far better than anyone could have predicted, and I face the world today with a normal (albeit not very striking) face and a renewed sense of purpose.

From Tom Raum of the Associated Press comes a story of just how many scandals we've seen out of the Bush Administration. Bush Administration Awash in Scandals. Tom Raum points out that

Campaigning in 2000, Texas Gov. George W. Bush would repeatedly raise his right hand as if taking an oath and vow to "restore honor and integrity" to the White House. He pledged to usher in a new era of bipartisanship.

The dual themes of honesty and bipartisanship struck a chord with many voters and helped propel Bush to the White House in one of the nation's closest-ever elections. Americans re-elected him in 2004 after he characterized himself as best suited to protect a nation at war.

Now, with fewer than two years left of his second term, the Bush administration is embroiled in multiple scandals and ethics investigations.

Mr. Raum highlights the Administration's dirty little secret, which is that unquestioning loyalty to President Bush and his neocon ideology trump technical competence, trump effectiveness in government, trump the independent nature of every position from the Attorney General on down. Mr. Raum highlights

Some recent incidents:

- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war as deputy defense secretary, acknowledged he erred in helping a female friend he is dating to get transferred to a high-paying job at the State Department while remaining on the World Bank payroll. The revelations fueled calls from the bank's staff association for him to resign.

- Matteo Fontana, a Department of Education official who oversaw the student loan industry, was put on leave after disclosure that he owned at least $100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company.

- Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon at the agency earlier this year with other top GSA political appointees at which Scott Jennings, a top Rove aide, gave a PowerPoint demonstration on how to help Republican candidates in 2008. A congressional committee is investigating whether the remarks violated a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes.

- Julie MacDonald, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but has no academic background in biology, overrode recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species and improperly leaked internal information to private groups, the Interior Department's inspector general said.

Today I spoke to a client who started to complain about the Bush Administration, but then remembered that she was speaking on a government phone from her government agency. This life-time employee has had drilled into her head the separation between political advocacy and the performance of her duties as a government employee. She breathes, thinks, and channels the Hatch Act. You couldn't say the same for Lurita Doan and the other high ranking Bush appointees who have turned their agencies into private sounding boards for and advocates of Bush Administration policies. Wherever one turns there is evidence of undue influence, overreaching, and cooptation of the most essential regulatory federal functions. And then there are the scandals. Does Paul Wolfowitz have a sense of shame? A sense of limitation on his endless sense of right to self-gratification and self-aggrandizement? Is his only qualification to hold his office his unquestioning loyalty to the Bush Administration and the policies which flow therefrom?

What of Alberto Gonzales, the chief apologist for and architect of the Bush Administration's torture policies? Does he have any sense of shame? Is he aware of any obligation other than his unquestioning loyalty, repaid by Bush's bottomless boosterism, to the Bush Administration and its Bill of Rights curtailing Constitution crushing policies?

Today I read of the defection of Pete McCloskey from the Republican Party. He left the Republican Party, to which he and his family had been founding and sustaining members since the time of Lincoln, and joined the Democratic Party, complaining that

it seems that every Republican presidential candidate is now vying for the support of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells rather than talking about a return to the values of the party I joined nearly 59 years ago.

Traditional conservatives who value the philosophy of the original Republican Party should indeed be worried. They have been replaced by neocon ideologues and members of the new Inquisition and America is much the poorer for it.

Living With A Parotid Tumor

2007-04-15T19:04:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty busy working lately, which accounts in part for why there haven't been any new diaries, but there is also the knowledge that in a few days I will be having surgery for the fifth recurrence of a medical oddity known as a parotid tumor. For all the normal people out there who have never heard of the parotid gland, it is the largest salivary gland in the human body, a matching set on each side of the head, and is perilously close to the facial nerve and nerves controlling things like eyelids and ears and whatnot. Four times I have had a form of tumor called a pleomorphic adenoma, a benign and largely painless thing which just keeps growing until it is taken out. My four surgeries took place starting in 1974 and continuing to 1983, with varying degrees of success. After nine years of surgeries just about every other year I decided to simply ignore the next recurrence, which started when I was about 26 years old and when my family and career were just getting started, and has been growing inexorably to this, my fiftieth year. Time for it to go.

The problem with parotid tumors is that sometimes they can "go south". In other words it is possible for my benign pleomorphic adenoma to become a carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma. This, and the fact that the darn thing is really sticking out of my head now, covered only by a hank of my graying, thinning hair, means it is time to take out the trash. The surgery is on April 19th. In a few months I will undertake radiation treatment, whether or not the biopsy is bad, in order to try to prevent or at least delay another recurrence. Each recurrence increases the possibility of a malignancy developing. The problem with radiation treatment is that there is some research indicating that a recurrence after RT is more likely to be malignant than it would have been if the RT hadn't been undertaken, but by the same token that is only if there is a recurrence. At this point the likelihood of a recurrence if I do not have the RT is 100% and if I do have the RT it's more like 50%. I'd rather take a chance of a bad recurrence for the opportunity to have no recurrence, instead of sitting around waiting for the inevitable next recurrence without the RT.

So the tumor's coming out in an outpatient procedure. If all goes well I'll be up and running around after a few days. If not so well, then I may have some problems with my eyelid - the transgenital nerve which controls the eyelid runs through the tumor - and my eyelid would not be able to close. There's always a danger of facial paralysis, but for some reason this does not bug me as much as the thought of having a Pinkerton eye (we never sleep!). If my lid is affected then it may affect my sight, which will in turn affect my ability to do close work. If the facial nerve is damaged I may look like I have Bell's Palsy, but as long as I can talk, see, and swallow I can live with the idea. It no longer frightens me, as it did when I was a young litigator starting out, that my looks could be so affected. Guess we'll know after Thursday.

Confessions of a C-Span Junkie - Two Callers Show the Way

2007-03-22T12:40:00.000-05:00

Every morning I watch the news until the fake bonhomie and pressing stories of how to make the best fashion decisions or adopt a shelter animal get to me and I feel compelled to change over to C-Span's Washington Journal.

This morning, as I got ready, then left the house and started my usual drive around town, I heard interviews with Dem. Rep. Crowley, and a Texas Republican (blanking out on her name), and finally Rep. Maxine Waters. The call-ins were particularly uninspiring, and in the case of the Texas rep. no less than three callers in a row called in to express support for the war and to say that if "we don't fight them there they'll come over here", the Bush Administration's favorite reason for staying in Iraq forever.

Thankfully, the quality of call-ins changed radically as soon as Representative Waters came on board. The first caller was an older man who said he was sick of all the talk about "get them there or they'll come here" and recalled that back during the days of Vietnam this is exactly the justification used to keep the Vietnam war going. It was all about stopping communism "before it comes here" he pointed out. Then he said "how many terrorists are they talking about coming here? Fifteen, twenty? Where's their army, their air force, their navy? What heavy artillery are they bringing with them? I'm tired of hearing that we have to keep this war going on over there because a handful of terrorists might come over here." Wow. Great comments.

The very next caller stated that he is a Ronald Reagan Republican who believes in the principles of shared responsibility and shared sacrifice. He said "I make $450,000 a year. I have two children in college. In the past few years I've received tens of thousands of dollars in tax relief. I have not been required to sacrifice anything and I have sacrificed nothing. The only two times President Bush asked people like me to make a sacrifice for the war he asked me to go shopping." This caller said he is disgusted at the selfishness of an administration which calls upon only a small portion of the population to make a real sacrifice while refusing even to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes to make it possible. I think this same caller then commented on the massive government growth under Bush and flagrant violations of civil liberties.

It's callers like these who keep me listening to C-Span although many others cause me to yell at my radio as I drive, much to the consternation of passing drivers.