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.

Jim Webb on the Incarceration Crisis

2007-03-18T13:44:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at Raising Kaine

This comes a little late, but a week ago Senator Jim Webb was on the ABC show This Week with George Stephanopolous and said something which took me by delighted surprise.

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.

Yesterday I had the chance to thank Senator Webb in person for bringing up this virtually invisible issue at Brian Moran's pancake breakfast and told him how grateful I am as a criminal defense attorney to see a United States Senator calling attention to this enormous crisis. He immediately (and impressively) off the top of his head started reciting the facts and figures of incarceration and expressed dismay that an entire segment of our sociey, the young black male, is growing up incarcerated or under court supervision. He said "it's terrible that you can make a mistake when you're 18 years old and have it follow you around for the rest of your life. We have to change that." He added that this issue is as important as the war and economic fairness. For information on some of those facts and figures see this New York Times article Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

Senator Webb mentioned an article he wrote for Parade Magazine in 1984 on the Japanese prison system. What We Can Learn From Japanese Prisons. While I would never endorse the Japanese practice of interrogating prisoners and having them sign confessions without a lawyer present, we could learn something from the Japanese sense of fairness and honesty in dealing with prisoners. An American former prisoner told Webb

he prefers Japan's legal system to ours. Why? "Because it's fair," he says. "They never tried to trick me, even in interrogation. They were always trustworthy. I could have got five years and they gave me two. The Americans who were helping them wanted me to get 20. The guards at Fuchu were hard, but they never messed with you unless there was a reason. You didn't have to worry about the other prisoners coming after you, either. And the laws of Japan are for everybody. That's the main thing. The laws in this country depend on how much you can pay. I'd rather live under a hard system that's fair."

Having represented dozens of people suckered by detectives and private security personnel into confessing, usually on the promise of release or of lenient treatment, I say a change would do the entire system good. The bitter fact is that the police lie. They lie all the time. Their lying is trained into them at the academy and accepted by the courts with nary an eyelash batted. They lie about the evidence; they lie about the statements of suspected co-defendants; they lie about the legal effect of a conviction; they lie about their power to affect the outcome of the case once it has gone to the prosecutor. Having been forbidden to use force on criminal suspects they resort instead to interrogation techniques designed to elicit confessions, but not necessarily the truth, and they have little understanding of just how their techniques can in fact result in injustice. It is the poor and uneducated who are most susceptible to these techniques, which can account at least in part for the feeling among many of my young, poor, uneducated, and minority clients that their involvement with the system is an inevitability, perhaps even a rite of passage. Moreover, there is a sense among them that the only difference between their dishonest approach to life and the government's is that the government has power and that is why cops can lie to get what they want while the suspect is punished.

On top of this is the acceptance within our society of brutality and rape of prisoners within our prison system. People talk of such things with a smile and a wink instead of as the appalling thing it is.

Added to this are the extraordinary rates of incarceration, often for decades, for crimes which often involve only dishonesty or non-violent drug offenses. I asked Senator Webb to look into the skewed results produced by mandatory minimum sentencing in which all the power rests with the prosecutor - who chooses what charges to bring against defendants in order to bring about particular dispositions - and reduces the judges to mere clerks imposing sentences based on worksheet calculations.

I asked the Senator to consider the problems of the mentally ill. Few services are available for the mentally ill and they are often incarcerated for crimes committed while in the grip of their delusions or their compulsions. Many of them have fallen through the cracks and are off their medications when they commit their crimes. Don't get me started on how much of this is related to unavailability of mental health treatment services even in so-called "good" health benefit plans. We are warehousing the mentally ill in our jails and prisons.

Last, in a zero-tolerance state like Virginia, where possession of any drug but marijuana is a felony, I have seen long time resident aliens and undocumented aliens either deported for their drug felonies (one ecstasy pill is all it takes for a felony conviction) or denied the ability to apply for citizenship because of their status as felons. Senator Webb replied that he hopes some day soon to hold hearings on this issue and I wished him success.

Looking back, I realize I piled a lot on his plate in a two minute conversation, but at least he's willing to pay attention to this crisis. Once again, thank goodness that Jim Webb won that election instead of George Allen.

Surge Scandal - Army Deploying Medically Unfit Troops

2007-03-12T19:11:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at Raising Kaine

Mark Benjamin of Salon.com reports that the Army is deploying troops to Iraq who have well-documented unfitness for duty (read here).

Is it any surprise that commanders are feeling the pressure to activate as many of their troops as possible to meet the demands placed on them by this surge? Benjamin reports that

a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

Soldiers reported being ordered to attend a meeting on February 15th at which

Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade [met with] with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier's "physical profile," an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier's physical limitations because of medical problems -- from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny.

Eight soldiers described being summoned to a perfunctory meeting with "Lt. Col. George Appenzeller, who had arrived from Fort Stewart, Ga., and Capt. Aaron K. Starbuck, brigade surgeon at Fort Benning."

In direct contradiction to the account given by the soldiers, Appenzeller said physical examinations were conducted and that he had a robust medical team there working with him, which is how they managed to complete 75 reviews in one day.

The article does not detail who besides Appenzeller and Starbuck were on this "robust medical team", but it is hard to imagine that a thorough review could have been done in less than a half hour at the least. At the rate of two soldiers per half hour for, say, a ten hour day, that still makes only twenty doable in one full day, doesn't it? Also, there's no information about whether this "robust medical team" contained more than one surgeon.

it is hard to imagine there is not some desperation behind the decision to deploy some of the sick soldiers. Master Sgt. Jenkins, 42, has a degenerative spine problem and a long scar down the back of his neck where three of his vertebrae were fused during surgery. He takes a cornucopia of potent pain pills. His medical records say he is "at significantly increased risk of re-injury during deployment where he will be wearing Kevlar, body armor and traveling through rough terrain." Late last year, those medical records show, a doctor recommended that Jenkins be referred to an Army board that handles retirements when injuries are permanent and severe.

A copy of Jenkins' profile written after that Feb. 15 meeting and signed by Capt. Starbuck, the brigade surgeon, shows a healthier soldier than the profile of Jenkins written by another doctor just late last year, though Jenkins says his condition is unchanged. Other soldiers' documents show the same pattern.

One female soldier with psychiatric issues and a spine problem has been in the Army for nearly 20 years. "My [health] is deteriorating," she said ... "My spine is separating. I can't carry gear." Her medical records include the note "unable to deploy overseas." Her status was also reviewed on Feb. 15. And she has been ordered to Iraq this week.

Other medically unfit soldiers selected to continue our mission of spreading democracy to Iraq include a captain whose back was "corkscrewed" in a Humvee accident there last year, and a female soldier who had part of her coccyx removed after an accident years ago and suffers from

degenerative disk disease and has two ruptured disks and a bulging disk in her back.

This soldier is now already in Iraq. Another soldier, whose military occupation is truck driver, developed sleep apnea after his return from his last deployment. As a result of his condition he now has narcolepsy and actually fell asleep during his interview for Salon. Nevertheless, he has also been ordered to Iraq, apparently to drive trucks.

These medically unfit soldiers are not only at extremely high risk for injury or death, but pose enormous risk to their healthier comrades. A medically unfit soldier is a burden to his or her unit. This situation should be investigated and the medically unfit personnel already sent overseas called back home before they or their units suffer any losses as a result of their conditions and appropriate sanctions handed out to those who have put them in this position.

UPDATE!! Have just discovered a diary on this very subject at dKos and posted by paddykraska. Visit paddy's diary here and check out her recommendations for ways to draw the attention of elected representatives to this issue. Everyone should be outraged.

Habeas Corpus - Why Congress Must Act

2007-03-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

A great article from Aziz Huq, found on the Thomas Paine website, Habeas Corpus Can't Wait

Delay in the day of reckoning occurred not due to the detainees’ lawyers, but through a series of increasingly reckless maneuvers by the administration and its lawyers to avoid any review of the factual grounds for detention. First the government argued that Guantánamo was not part of the United States, and the president’s sweeping judgment that anyone picked up by the CIA from Bosnia to Pakistan via Thailand must be an “enemy combatant,” and therefore undeserving of any judicial solicitude. Then there were legislative efforts, in the form of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and the 2006 Military Commissions Act, to stymie review.

It is important again to emphasize that what the government has sought to avoid is not simple “release.” What the D.C. Circuit held last week was that the Military Commission Act stripped the courts of power even to hear the detainees’ pleas. And at best the Supreme Court will determine that the detainees have a right under the Constitution to be heard. None will necessarily be released. None will even immediately get a day in court. The best case scenario is that the mere prospect of review will push the government into moving forward with releases.

But this is not enough. To understand why, look at the section of Guantánamo called Camp Six. Camp Six is the “more comfortable” facility in which detainees who have been “cleared” are held. As James Cohen’s recent account for the National Law Journal makes clear, detainees in Camp Six are kept in cells with walls, floors and ceilings of solid metal for 22 hours a day, denied natural light or air and have virtually no contact with human beings other than guards. Conditions are worse than any Supermax facility in the United States.

Thus, it is not sufficient to ensure that the detainees have their day in court. Even those who the government concedes to be innocent of any terrorist involvement are still kept in brutalizing and inhumane conditions. A comprehensive solution to the Guantánamo problem requires much more. And, acting alone, the courts have only limited capacity to that end.

So Congress too must act, and there is much that it can do now. The court proceedings are no cause for delay. A comprehensive solution necessarily involves multiple branches of government, and the sooner legislators act, the sooner America can remove the moral stain of Guantánamo from its plate.

I can only concur.

GMU! GMU! GMU! Lookout VCU, we're coming for you ...

2007-03-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

Sorry, very excited right now after watching GMU dismantle ODU in the Semis at the CAA tournament. Great game, terrific defense, and great teamwork. Congratulations to Coach Larranaga and his team.

Iraqi Insurgency in a Nutshell - Or Why We're Up the Proverbial Creek

2007-03-03T12:14:00.001-05:00

Kevin Berger of Salon.com, recently interviewed Evan Kohlmann, founder of GlobalTerrorAlert.com, "a clearinghouse of virtually every communiqué -- video, audio, Internet, printed -- issued by insurgent groups in Iraq." The Iraqi Insurgency for Beginners

Kohlmann has ... emerged with a clear-eyed view of who is fighting whom in Iraq and why. Given his insights, Kohlmann has been put to work as a consultant by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA.

Some highlights:

You have to be careful when you say "insurgency." You have to distinguish between the Shiite militias and the actual insurgency, which is the Sunni groups. Most of the Shiite militia activity is not directed at the U.S., it's directed at the Sunnis. The Sunni insurgency, meanwhile, is directed at everyone -- the U.S., the Iraqi government, the militias.

The best way to divide it up is into three camps. You have Sunni nationalists, initially a large portion of the insurgency; the moderate Sunni Islamists, who use Islamic terminology and talk about establishing a government based on Sharia law; and you have the Salafists, like the group Al-Qaida in Iraq. To them, the fight is not about preserving the borders of Iraq, it's about revolution, about rebuilding something completely new on the basis of some kind of idyllic Muslim empire.

Kohlmann describes the evolution of the Iraqi insurgency from nationalist groups seeking to expel the invader from their midst to increasingly radicalized elements who feel they have no choice but to join forces with Al-Qaida.

Has the U.S. invasion, in fact, strengthened al-Qaida?

Definitely ... The hardcore true believers of al-Qaida at one time were probably 10 percent of the insurgent groups. Now they're 50 percent. Al-Qaida is growing in places it shouldn't. You have groups ... that have transitioned from being traditional insurgents to extremist ones. Or take a popular insurgent group called the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The very name of the group has a nationalist, not Islamist meaning. And yet ... people from the 1920 Revolution Brigade [are] now fighting alongside al-Qaida. The U.S. is failing miserably at containing the spread of al-Qaida.

Why are the more moderate Muslim groups siding with al-Qaida?

They have no choice. There's a group called the Iraqi Islamic Resistance Front ... They ... were also the subject of a flier that was being posted around in Ramadi. The flier was signed by al-Qaida and said the Front was working with the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi government, and so is no longer a legitimate group. The Front ... issued a statement saying, "We're not working with the government, we're with you guys ..." So there's a lot of pressure to work with al-Qaida or be targeted by it.

Kohlmann notes that those who work for the Iraqi government or for U.S. forces in Iraq are targeted by Al-Qaida and if those who work for anyone else are targeted by the Shiites.

Would al-Qaida have blown up the mosque if the U.S. wasn't in Iraq?

There wouldn't be an al-Qaida in Iraq if the U.S. wasn't there. The story of al-Qaida in Iraq begins in 2003. We handed al-Qaida exactly what it was looking for, a real war in the Middle East where it could lead the way. Al-Qaida is like a virus. It goes for weak victims and it uses conflicts to breed. Iraq gives al-Qaida a training ground, a place to put recruits in combat. If they come back from battle, you have people who have fought together, trained together, you have a military unit. As Richard Clarke has said, it was almost like Osama bin Laden was trying to vibe into George Bush the idea: "Invade Iraq, invade Iraq." This was an opportunity they seized with amazing alacrity. As brutal and terrifying as what they've done is, you have to acknowledge they capitalized on an opportunity that we handed them. (Emphasis added)

And as for democracy:

What happened to the U.S. message of democracy?

It totally failed. The idea of Western-style democracy in Iraq doesn't appeal to anyone. It was our own myth. We thought that if we get rid of Saddam Hussein, people would come together and celebrate and democracy would reign throughout the Middle East. The people who thought that up are people who think Iraq is like Texas ... To Iraqis, tribal affiliations, religion and family mean a lot more than saying, "I'm from Iraq." You know we're doing a bad job of communicating our own message when we're losing the propaganda war to people who cut other people's heads off on camera. Think about it: People in one of the most Westernized countries in the Middle East would rather trust al-Qaida than the United States. That's a terrible sign of things to come.

Of course, now the U.S. is fighting people on all sides of the partisan divide in Iraq.

The U.S. is fighting both the insurgency and Shiite militias, right?

Right. But the Shiites aren't a simple group either. They have divided themselves into two factions: the pro-Arab Shiites who are Iraqi nationalists and the pro-Iranian Shiites. There have been some incidences involving the Shiite Mahdi Army and the U.S. and British military. But the scope of activity between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military is minute. The militias pose less of a day-to-day insurgent problem and more of a problem in the way they have infiltrated the Iraqi police force and other Iraqi government services, particularly the Interior Ministry, and how they arranging the murder of Sunnis through those agencies. They are creating instability, and that's the main reason we're going after them. It's also the No. 1 reason why Sunnis fight and are upset: The Shiite militias have essentially taken over the law enforcement and are using it to murder Sunnis.

We invaded Iraq to rectify crimes by Saddam Hussein against the Shiites, right? We wanted to bring him to justice. What the Sunni groups are saying is, "How come there's no justice to people who are drilling holes in people heads right now? Never mind 20 years ago." ... So the Sunnis are saying to the U.S. "... we're going to take matters into our own hands." And the Shiites are saying the same thing. They're saying, "You can't protect us from al-Qaida's suicide bombers. Your idea of strengthening security is to crack down on the Mahdi Army, who are the only ones preventing suicide bombers from coming into Sadr City. Why should we trust you? We should rely on ourselves. You can't trust anyone but your own people."

Kohlmann dismisses the Administration's ratcheting up of hostilities toward Iran for its alleged complicity in the deaths of 170 American servicemen while Saudi Arabia is not even criticized for its support of the insurgents

Money and weapons and personnel have been coming across the Saudi and Syrian borders for four years and have been directly aiding Sunni insurgents, who are responsible for the lion's share of U.S. casualties. It's the height of hypocrisy to attack Iran and not criticize Saudi Arabia ... if you want to know who is responsible for the fact that al-Qaida is succeeding in Iraq, it's Saudi Arabia. The most common nationality of foreign insurgents in Iraq has been Saudis. Where do you think all the money comes from to pay for these operations? It's from Saudi donors. I'm not blaming this necessarily on the Saudi government. But they have made some very provocative statements about the idea that if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, they're going to actively aid Sunnis in their war against Shiites. If we're going to put pressure on Iraq's neighbors, let's put pressure on all of Iraq neighbors to stop contributing to the violence.

Kohlmann is opposed to withdrawal from Iraq due to his fear that it may become a situation akin to Rwanda, and he describes the Iraqi government as a "joke".

So what's the solution?

We have to give people a reason to stop supporting al-Qaida. And the only way to do that is to punish the people who are harming them. We have to show that democratic forces can also hold up justice. Right now, democracy for Iraqis amounts to Shiites in control of the police force and running everything. The things that might convince Sunnis to move back in the other direction would be a real step at trying to reform the Iraqi police force, the Interior Ministry, and try and bring some of the individuals in those places, which have committed gross crimes, including crimes on the scale of Saddam Hussein, to justice.

Does the Bush administration have the smarts to figure that out?

I'm not sure they do. I thought perhaps, in invading Iraq, they had some long-term view that nobody else could see. But that hope faded very quickly. The Bush administration didn't reach out to anyone credible when they were asking about, for instance, the connections between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Anybody with any real knowledge of the region would have told them there are no connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The only people who believed that nonsense were lunatics.

Kohlmann's bleak assessment concludes that the "best solution is not to have invaded at all." There are no good options in Iraq, just some options which may be worse than others, and each with its own disadvantages. General Odom is on record as saying that we should leave Iraq because it would remove us as the irritant driving the Iraqi nationalists and perhaps force the warring parties to step back and decide whether they want to continue their downward spiral into mass murder or come to some agreement with each other.

Any solution here would have to include the countries in the region which are using Iraq as their proxy for political jockeying, and even more clear is that the surge will not work. This problem cannot be solved by military force but by diplomatic pressure on neighboring countries and direct pressure on the corrupt and Shiite dominated Iraqi government, police, and Interior Ministry.

How American Am I?

2007-02-16T21:17:00.000-05:00

Another one of those darn surveys. Here are the results:

You Are 71% American

Most times you are proud to be an American.
Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe
Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home.
You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

I was a little surprised at how well this thing tagged me this time.

It's the real me.

Tortured Detainees Are Not the Only Ones Traumatized

2007-02-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

A very disturbing column in the Washington Post today from a former interrogator who has nightmares about his complicity in brutal treatment of detainees should give us pause and make us consider the human cost, not only to detainees, but to those we place in charge of them.

Eric Fair was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. He has nightmares featuring a man whose name he no longer recalls, but whose torment he remembers well. Mr. Fair says he was ordered to enter this man's cell every hour, to strip him of his clothes and deprive him of sleep in order to force admissions from him.

I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680.html
It is impossible to dehumanize the helpless prisoner without dehumanizing ourselves. Mr. Fair's account is heartbreaking, and should remind us that we are all capable of bad acts and inhumanity under the right circumstances. When people of conscience allow themselves to be lured into inhumane acts they pay a terrible price, one that includes regret and recrimination. How many people return from war full of self-loathing for the things they were made to do, the compromises they made with their own values? Some bury their consciences, and others, who lack conscience, become further inured to others' pain and are likely to continue inflicting pain on others throughout their lives. It is a predictable result of a brutal process, and when our leadership promotes such inhumanity it is becomes all the more prevalent.

Mr. Fair should be congratulated for having the courage to step forward and write this searing self-indictment. I hope he achieves some redemption in the effort.

Congressional Investigation of Blackwater

2007-02-05T20:14:00.000-05:00

Comes a report from PilotOnline.com telling of a Congressional investigation of Blackwater and other contractors. New Congress to Shine a Spotlight on Blackwater USA

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., ascended to the chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which will hold four days of hearings beginning Tuesday on waste, fraud and abuse in government contracting.

Included in the hearings will be testimony from family members of the four Blackwater contractors killed in Fallujah, who are

suing Blackwater, claiming the company broke its contractual obligation to the contractors by sending them into hostile territory with insufficient protection.

Senator Webb has made it clear, both in recent interviews, and during the confirmation hearings for General Casey that he intends to push for a Senate investigation of the approximately 100,000 contractors in Iraq and the accompanying waste, fraud, mismanagement, and most important of all, lack of accountability:

Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, whose election in November was crucial in tipping the Senate to Democratic control, raised the issue last week during confirmation hearings for Gen. George Casey, the outgoing top U.S. general in Iraq who has been nominated for Army chief of staff.

“This is a rent-an-army out there,” Webb said, noting that in nearly four years of war no civilian contractor has yet been prosecuted for misconduct in Iraq.

“Wouldn’t it be better for this country if those tasks, particularly the quasi-military gunfighting tasks, were being performed by active-duty military soldiers in terms of cost and accountability?” Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary, asked Casey.

“It’s important that they are used – these contractors are used for logistics-type skills and not necessarily the combat skills,” Casey replied, referring to armed security contractors like those fielded by Blackwater. “Those are the ones that we have to watch very carefully.”

Despite extensive anecdotal accounts of contractor abuses, particularly of Iraqi civilians, only four civilian contractors have been convicted of wrongdoing, all for fraud rather than abuse. It is impossible to have a mercenary army of some 100,000 spread throughout a chaotic country like Iraq without there being some demonstrable misconduct. Contractors are accountable to no one, and where there is absolute power there will inevitably follow misconduct and abuse. The military has the Uniform Code of Military Justice to regulate excesses by military members, but what is there to regulate the contractors? All thinking Americans should welcome the Congressional hearings and hope for Senate hearings to follow.

Four Ghosts of the White House

2007-02-02T23:12:00.000-05:00

This comes courtesy of Comedy Central:

The Four Ghosts of the White House

One night, George W. Bush is tossing restlessly in his White House bed. He awakens to see George Washington standing by him Bush asks him, "George, what''s the best thing I can do to help the country?"

"Set an honest and honorable example, just as I did," Washington advises, and then fades away...

The next night, Bush is astir again, and sees the ghost of Thomas Jefferson moving through the darkened bedroom. Bush calls out, "Tom, please! What is the best thing I can do to help the country?"

"Respect the Constitution, as I did," Jefferson advises, and dims from sight...

The third night sleep still does not come for Bush. He awakens to see the ghost of FDR hovering over his bed. Bush whispers, "Franklin, What is the best thing I can do to help the country?"

"Help the less fortunate, just as I did," FDR replies and fades into the mist...

Bush isn''t sleeping well the fourth night when he sees another figure moving in the shadows. It is the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Bush pleads, "Abe, what is the best thing I can do right now to help the country?"

Lincoln replies, "Go see a play."

Senator Webb Sheds Light on the Matter, Lampshade or Not

2007-01-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

In keeping with his status as a rising star in national politics Senator Webb was interviewed on Face the Nation and declared a Person of Interest on the McLaughlin Group today.

Bob Scheiffer on Face the Nation started off asking Senator Webb what he thought of the peace rally which took place yesterday. Webb replied that "one of our greatest strengths is we have the right to stand before the people in power and state our views." He went on to distinguish the turmoil of Iraq from that of Vietnam, noting that along with the war many other issues had been involved in the protests, and that 8 years after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution the majority of Americans supported our assistance to the South Vietnamese government.

He went on to point out that he was not so much against the Iraq war as he and others of long military background and experience thought it would be strategically bad idea. There was no endpoint, no strategic plan. He said we cannot keep increasing troop numbers on the theory that when all else fails we are going to throw more military in. The preponderance of evidence is that it will not work.

Scheiffer then asked what Webb suggested. He replied that what is needed is something like the Dayton accords. The problem cannot be solved militarily but requires a political solution in which the parties can be brought in and assume ownership of the issue and responsibility for its resolution.

On Scheiffer's inquiry about his response to SecDef Gates's statement that the Senate opposition was "emboldening" the enemy, and Vice President Cheney's statement that Webb's opposition to the increase was "hogwash", Webb replied that throughout the history of this war Cheney's statements have been "off and wrong". As to Gates's comments, he said they were wrong and a Defense Secretary should not take such positions. He questioned which enemy Gates was talking about: Iran? Al Queda? Al Sadr? In a situation in which the enemies are many the solution is to "boldly step aside and invite them to the table" to negotiate. By starting this war "we lost the place we had in the world before we began this".

Next was the question of the resolution. What should happen if the President does not listen? Webb replied that there will be other congressional actions. We need a strategy with clearly articulable endpoint and Congress will take the steps necessary to accomplish that. He noted also concern about the way the money is being spent. He hopes soon to "put on a lampshade, er, eyeshade, and really analyze the situation. There has been no accountability and a lot of sweetheart deals for the contractors," and he is going to see how the money’s been spent.

Webb went on to say that when he first arrived Senator McCain met with him and said there needs be no impugning of the patriotism of either side. He hopes Senator McCain remembers this because recently he has been seeing something bordering on charges of disloyalty from the Republican side. He pointed out that "our military is diverse and we should not presume to speak for the troops. What we’re doing is trying to define how it can be a win."

Once again Senator Webb hammers home his major points about strategic necessity and context in our actions rather than mere tactical moves. He noted again that we cannot be trapped into trying to solve this matter militarily. I wondered if he misspoke and said lampshade because he really is trying to shed some light on how this war should be conducted and on the other troublesome aspects, including the abject failure to establish accountability with respect to contractors.

On to the McLaughlin Group. John McLaughlin declared Senator Webb a Person of Interest, reviewed his impressive resume, and asked if Senator Webb heading for national leadership or will he burn out? UPI's Martin Walker said Webb will be a national statesman who was "absolutely right" in his challenge to the President. He called him "brilliantly bipartisan" in his choice to refer to two Republican presidents and said "this guy is going to be a sage of this country."

Do Hagel and Webb have special authority as combat veterans? inquired McLaughlin. Pat Buchanan opined that Webb lends great authenticity to the war debate, a tough guy who "wrote a great book". He has "capacity to be a president but in that party it would be very tough for him." Eleanor Clift described him as a serious man who is among people who were in student council during Vietnam. Among administration voices are the chickenhawks, and they're flocking.

Tony Blankley didn't like the chickenhawk comment, but declared that Webb is a virile man in a party led by two women and the Democratic "nuts" now have a real man around the house. Was hoping Clift would succeed in her attempt to launch herself at his throat.

The admiring Walker summed up by saying this war is more and more about people sent into a less and less hopeful fight, and now there is a war hero to say so. He cited with approval Webb's statement that Americans will fight and die when called but the President owes a corresponding obligation to be extremely thoughtful about the battles into which he sends them.

There you have it. A year ago Jim Webb was a private citizen who had already just about made up his mind not to run for office. Now he's on a fast track to becoming one of the nation's elder statesmen and among the most influential members of the Senate. Astounding.

Finally! Contractor Abuse Investigation

2007-01-28T00:22:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press is reporting that the Army has set in motion as many as fifty criminal probes into contractor abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070128/ap_on_go_ot/war_fraud

Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations ...

Battlefield contractors have been implicated in allegations of fraud and abuse since the war in Iraq began in spring 2003. A special inspector general office that focused solely on reconstruction spending in Iraq developed cases that led to four criminal convictions.

Imagine that! After four years of contractor fraud stories, anecdotal because the Republican-dominated Congress refused to hold hearings or establish a Truman-like Commission to detect and deter such abuses, the IG's office got four whole convictions. Wow, war profiteering criminals must be on the run now.

The Pentagon has viewed outsourcing a wide variety of military tasks as much more efficient, leaving troops trained in combat to the business of war.

But the Government Accountability Office reported in December that the military has been losing millions of dollars because it cannot monitor industry workers in far-flung locations.

The Defense Department's inability to manage contractors effectively has hurt military operations and unit morale and cost the Pentagon money, the GAO said.

Some 60,000 contractors have been supporting the Army in Southwest Asia, which includes Iraq. That compares with 9,200 contractors in the 1991 Persian
Gulf War.

Commanders are often unsure how many contractors use their bases and require food, housing and protection, according to the report. One Army official said the service estimates losing about $43 million each year on free meals provided to contractors who also get a food allowance.Bold added.

There's a WTF moment for you. Free meals to the tune of $43 million a year to people who are being paid a food allowance? Commanders don't know how many of these folks to plan for? And of course the number of contractors in this article is substantially smaller than has been reported in other sources.

In fact, the most recent figure is that some 100,000 contractors, enough to compete in number with the our military, are in place in Iraq. http://www.newsobserver.com/505/story/525092.html
This article deals with the great cost of covering the insurance required for every single contractor in Iraq.

U.S. taxpayers pay the premiums to insurance companies for these contractors. When the contractors are killed or injured in war, taxpayers pay the benefits, too ...

Bunny Greenhouse, a top contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers, said that insurance companies have charged exorbitant premiums, considering that it is taxpayers who are taking the risks.

"The insurance companies are getting over on us," Greenhouse said. "This has been accepted because no one looked into it."Bold added.

The cost of insurance for contractors on the battlefield is at record levels; 100,000 contractors are in Iraq now, far more than in the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when 9,200 private contractors were used. This unprecedented use of private contractors -- driven in part by the relatively small number of troops deployed to Iraq -- is a mounting, open-ended tab for taxpayers.

It is impossible to say how much the insurance costs. No agency regulates the premiums, and no one tracks the overall costs ...

The number of contractors covered by the insurance has grown more than sevenfold in the past five years and will continue to grow ...

In the first gulf war, seven contractors were killed. As of October, 646 U.S.-financed private contractors had been killed in Iraq. Most deaths stem from acts of war ... This allows the insurance companies to ask the U.S. Department of Labor to pay all future benefits and reimburse the insurers for all payments, plus 15 percent for processing the claims.

Sounds like there's room for more investigation. I keep waiting for Congress to start looking into these issues. It is apparent that the mere threat of Congressional oversight has suddenly jump-started the fraud investigations, but there is room for hundreds of probes into this mess.

Wilkerson: Administration Rejected Iran Overtures in 2003

2007-01-18T19:55:00.000-05:00

In an interview on the BBC News program Newsnight, former senior aide to Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson said that Vice President Cheney and other ideologues at the White House rejected Iran's offers of concessions in return for talks in 2003 despite enthusiasm for the proposals at the State Department. Washington Snubbed Offer

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said.

The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.

In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.

But as soon as it got to the White House, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself
Lawrence Wilkerson
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had allowed the rebel group to base itself in Iraq, putting it under US power after the invasion.

One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan - but was over-ruled.

"We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that," Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.

"But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's office, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself."

Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.

Once again we see the Administration's preference for dogmatic and destructive consistency instead of flexibility and negotiation with the goal of minimizing casualties.

I hope Congress's various Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees investigate these allegations to the fullest extent possible. Not only has the Administration's policies provided fodder for Ahmadinejad's extremist diatribes, but they have set in motion the distinct possibility that the Administration may choose to launch a unilateral pre-emptive attack upon Iran under a pretext of nuclear threat, a threat which, if it could even be conceded exists, could have been obviated by merely agreeing to talk to Iran as long ago as 2003.

William Friedkin on James Webb

2007-01-17T12:08:00.000-05:00

Great article by William Friedkin on Jim Webb as he knows him.

Ambush: Reflections on My Friend Jim Webb

Highlights:

We've known Jim since 1999 when he wrote an original screenplay called Rules of Engagement, which I directed. We remained friends in spite of numerous "creative differences" -- often heated, sometimes bitter.

I came away from that experience feeling that Jim Webb is the most complex, principled man I've ever known. He came away feeling good about what I had done with the finished film -- though he still refers to me as the only man in the country with a temper worse than his. I accept this as a compliment.

Mr. Friedkin went on to describe Webb's swearing-in, and the private party that took place that evening:

Later, in a small private room in a chic new restaurant ten blocks from Georgetown, 20 guests have gathered to celebrate, including ex-marines who served in Vietnam, and Sen. Robb and his wife Lynda.

When Sherry and I arrive we're greeted by one of Jim's legislative aides and by Lynda Robb who says, "You must be those Hollywood moguls George Allen said are Webb's real friends." "That's us," I answer, "and proud of it."

I'm introduced to Mac McGarvey, Webb's radio operator in Vietnam. Mac lost his right arm in combat. A proud, balding man with a mustache and deep Southern drawl, he was Webb's driver in the recent Senate campaign and is now his legislative liaison for Veteran Affairs.

The term "legislative liaison" is too polite a description for Mac. Tattooed above the stump that was his right arm is the phrase, "Cut along the dotted line." "He's the only man now working in the Congress who has a nipple ring," Webb says, beaming. Mac smiles and nods. When he gets up to toast Jim, words fail him. He tears up and so do we. "I love this man. I just love him..." He sits down to a round of applause.

Seated next to us is Col. Mike Wyly, a short, wiry man who was Webb's Company Commander in DELTA Company, fifth Marines. Webb was a second Lt. in the 1st Battalion.

"First thing I did with a new second 'louie,'" says Col. Wyly, "was send him out on night patrol -- wanted to see right away what he was made of. This was in May of 1969, in the An Hoa Basin. Webb's squad was ambushed by a larger North Vietnamese squad. They came under machine gun fire and I thought for sure they were gone. Next thing I hear is Lt. Webb, on this 2-way radio, reporting the exact amount of rounds his squad had expended and 'no friendly casualties.' This guy was for real."

Wyly went on: "The mistake people make with Jim -- George Allen made it, and so did George Bush -- is when they try to ambush him. Jim fights harder when he's ambushed. In the Senate campaign, every time Allen's people tried to put Jim in a hole, he fought his way out and left Allen bleeding. At the White House reception, when President Bush confronted him about his son, that was an ambush. It was a set-up, and the Bush folks made the story public, trying to make Jim out to be a hothead."

"I wasn't surprised by Jim's victory," adds Wyly. "I've long ago stopped being surprised by anything he accomplishes. I wrote him up for the Silver Star and the Navy Cross. There are a lot of men alive today because of Jim Webb."

I ask Col. Wyly what he does now.

"I'm retired but I run a ballet company up in Pittsfield, Maine. Bossov Ballet Theater -- more of a school than a performing company. We found this amazing choreographer from Russia and brought him to Maine. Last year he did a performance of The Red Shoes with these kids and it was sensational. Jim's on my board, you know."

I ask the Colonel how he went from commanding Delta Co. in Vietnam to the Bossov Ballet Co. in Pittsfield. "There are a lot of similarities between ballet and the Marine Corps," he replies. "You need discipline, dedication, and motivation to excel at either."

Tom Lehner, formerly Chuck Robb's campaign manager, now heading Webb's transition team, delivers a toast: "Two-and-a-half years ago, Jim called and said he was interested in running for the Senate against George Allen. I said, 'Okay, but it'll change your life. You'll have to do things you won't like 24/7 and the sad thing is you won't win.' He did everything opposite of what I advised him and now here he is."

Finally, Webb rises to thank everyone in the room, which he does modestly and graciously, ending with, "it will always be an honor to serve this country."

The mood of the nation is contentious, a perfect setting for Webb. "I know I'm a combative person" he says, "but what I learned in law school was how to fight with my brain." All his life he has had to re-channel his anger or be consumed by it.

I recall a passage from one of his novels, A Country Such as This: "There was a weakness in his country, in its leaders or maybe its system that had botched this thing badly, called on citizens to sacrifice then rebuked their efforts..." Webb wrote these words 7 years ago about the Korean and Vietnam wars. The old battles seem so far away, yet so near.

Ending his toast, Jim Webb smiles at his lifelong friend, Mac McGarvey. "Y'know, anyone can become a Senator. Not everyone can be a Marine."

Thank you Mr. Friedkin for this fascinating article.

Webb Interview Re State of the Union

2007-01-16T22:02:00.000-05:00

For the second year in a row a Virginian has been chosen to deliver the Democratic response to the President's State of the Union speech. Newbie Senator Webb has been picked by Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi to make the response. Webb was interviewed by phone for WAVY 10 in Hampton Roads.

Freshman Senator Jim Webb back in national spotlight

In 2006, Jim Webb stunned the Commonwealth with a win to unseat a favored incumbent.

His victory over Republican George Allen gave Democrats control of Congress.

In 2007, the nation will hear him speak, after the President's address to a joint session of Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave him the good news.

"I feel honored that he asked me, and I'll do my best to carry the load of the Democratic party and also to say things that are dear to my heart," Webb said by phone.

Webb said he hasn't had much time to craft a speech, but dear to his heart are issues he campaigned on, an end to the war in Iraq, and a fair economy for all.

"Obviously, the President's gonna have a lot more time than we will. But, we hope to be able to make the key points that will demarcate the differences in approach to governing the country," Webb said.

No doubt, the President's plan to bring 20,000 new troops into the warzone will be discussed. It's a move Democrats are fighting. Webb said he's gained insights on two committees he serves on: the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Foreign Relations.

"I think there are a number of people in both parties who are seeing it the same way. We have to do something affirmative to bring this war to a conclusion."

Webb follows in the footsteps of another Virginia lawmaker in the national spotlight.

Governor Tim Kaine gave this same speech last January.

"We've got some really good leaders here in Virginia, people who are trying to solve problems. I think it's great," Webb said.

The President's State of the Union address airs Tuesday, January 23rd.

Senator Webb will speak for about five minutes shortly after Bush's address.

Webb Interview re SOTU

Five minutes to respond to a speech which has been in development for months is not much time. I hope the Senator's staff is spending some serious time with him working on major points, but I look forward to the response. No matter how well the President dresses his pig it's still just a lot of fatback and squealing. My advice to the Senator would be to prepare for all possibilities and then go out there and have a good time.

How Much Do Contractors Charge? - Request for Information

2007-01-15T20:37:00.000-05:00

Several days ago I was talking to the family of a soldier in Mosul who complained about the costs to their Army son in Mosul of just the ordinary comforts and things at their son's post, telling me that he was being charged $45 for a case of Coke by the local contractors.

I am searching for information and stories about the charges contractors are making to our military members who must rely on them for the usual items found at PXs and on bases in Iraq.

Anyone who has a complaint, explanation, anecdote, or whatever can e-mail me at catzmaw@gmail.com.

Why Habeas Corpus, the Hamad Project, and the Duke Lacrosse Case Are All Related

2007-01-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

In response to my post about Mr. Stimson I received an invitation to view this website: Project Hamad

The invitation came right on the heels of my having seen most of the 60 Minutes report on appalling and flagrant prosecutorial misconduct in the Duke lacrosse case.

As the Stimson incident demonstrates there is among our leadership a disregard for the rule of law and the principles of fairness shocking to all Americans who regard them as the bedrock of our society. It is not ethnicity or religion which makes us Americans, but our abiding belief in the principle that all are created equal and the laws should apply equally to all. It is our inherent suspicion of power which gave us our system of checks and balances, and our belief that all accused persons should have the right to confront their accusers and examine the evidence and test the witnesses which makes our system great.

The Duke lacrosse case shows that in the face of abiding prosecutorial ambition, incompetence, and outright dishonesty even the rich and privileged in this country may find themselves branded as criminals and prosecuted, despite proof of innocence. Does anyone seriously think this was an isolated instance? What would cause an experienced prosecutor to so casually hide exculpatory evidence and manipulate the findings in the case? A pervasive culture of corner-cutting and lax ethical standards, that's what. He did it because where the defendant is not a rich white kid with dedicated and determined parents and aggressive and competent legal representation he gets away with it. The Duke case demonstrates why we have to have standards of evidence and discovery in criminal cases. What would have happened to these boys if their lawyers had not been able to scrutinize the evidence, the reports, and hire their own expert?

Then there is Adel Hamad. He is described as a father of four from Sudan who was working at a hosptial run by an NGO called World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Pakistan, distributing food and clothes, etc. WAMY is alleged to possibly support "terrorist ideals". Mr. Hamad was arrested in his bed in the middle of the night and sent to Gitmo, where after several years of incarceration without charge he was given an administrative review hearing, at which he denied that WAMY is a terrorist organization and asked why he, an employee, would be arrested rather than the CEO or administrators. The review panel voted to keep him, but with a lone dissenter:

The U.S. Army Major, who dissented in his case, concurred: "Even if elements of certain NGOs provide support to terrorist ideals and causes that is insufficient to declare an employee of said NGO an enemy combatant; to do so would lead to unconscionable results: one would have to declare all physicians, nurses and aid workers of any suspect NGO as enemy combatants; the ramifications of such logic would lead to unforeseen and unconscionable results."

Article 20 of the 4th Geneva Convention states: Persons regularly and solely engaged in the operation and administration of civilian hospitals, including the personnel engaged in the search for, removal, and transporting of and caring for wounded and sick civilians, the infirm and maternity cases, shall be respected and protected.

The report goes on to state:

The dissenting [said] "The fallacy of logic that seeks to classify Hamad as an enemy combatant because he many have come in contact with al Qaida member in the course of providing aid to refugees, or teaching at a school, would also provide support that a local merchant who 'came in contact' with al Qaida members could be detained as an enemy combatant."

... Interviews with Dr. Sailani, and Dr Roghman (both WAMY hospital physicians) and Dr Najib (the hospital director and general surgeon) reveal that Hamad never spoke about politics, that there was no anti-American activity at the hospital and that Hamad did not have contacts outside the hospital grounds.

So far, no other evidence aside from a possible tenuous guilt by association has been leveled against Mr. Hamad. There is no evidence that he's ever picked up a weapon, been on a battlefield, or even expressed approval of terrorist activity. However, Mr. Hamad does not have the right to bring a petition for a writ of Habeas Corpus because the Administration, with the connivance of Congress members who appear to fear this ancient curb on arbitrary and capricious detention as much as they fear terrorists, gutted this essential writ and made it unavailable to him.

Do we really want guys like Stimson making the decisions about who should be incarcerated indefinitely? Are we that afraid of our own system of justice that we cannot use it to sort out the good from the bad? Can we not even extend some form of protection against fear-based and fear-mongering prosecutorial excess against the defenseless, whether they be good or bad? If Mr. Hamad is a terrorist then show me, and I'd be happy to lock the door on him permanently, but give the man the right to know what evidence exists against him. It's basic fairness.

Cross posted to Raising Kaine

10,000 Dead? 100,000 Wounded?

2007-01-14T01:09:00.000-05:00

From Capitol Hill Blue comes this story about a classified Pentagon memo which projects 10,000 casualties in Iraq by the end of 2008. Pentagon memo

Pentagon planners this week warned President George W. Bush that his "troop surge" plan could double U.S. casualties in Iraq in the coming year and result in 10,000 or more American deaths by the end of 2008.

In a classified assessment memo, military experts predicted violence against U.S. troops will increase "at a sustained pace" and concluded that increasing the use of soldiers for house to house searches in Baghdad will "dramatically alter" the "ratio of casualties to actions" in that civil-war torn city, says a military source familiar with the memo.

The Pentagon report admitted battle weary soldiers are more prone to mistakes that lead to casualties and noted that military personnel sent to Iraq for third and possibly fourth tours increase the odds that those soldiers will become casualties of war.

The memo concluded that American military deaths could top 6,000 by the end of 2007 and exceed 10,000 or more in 2008 with more than 100,000 wounded and/or maimed for life ...

The casualty assessment comes as the Pentagon abandons its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty ... Until now, the Pentagon's policy on the Guard or Reserve was that members' cumulative time on active duty for the Iraq or Afghan wars could not exceed 24 months. That cumulative limit is now lifted; the remaining limit is on the length of any single mobilization, which may not exceed 24 consecutive months, Pace said.

In other words, a citizen-soldier could be mobilized for a 24-month stretch in Iraq or Afghanistan, then demobilized and allowed to return to civilian life, only to be mobilized a second time for as much as an additional 24 months ... by next January, the Pentagon "probably will be calling again" on National Guard combat brigades that previously served yearlong tours in Iraq.

Senator Webb has repeatedly asked what the endpoint is in this endless conflict. So let's ask the question: what strategic interest of the United States will be served by all these deaths and maimings? How will they make us safer?

Charles Stimson is Un-American and a Disgrace to the Legal Profession

2007-01-13T16:20:00.000-05:00

Excuse the emotion running through the heading of this post. Today I learned that Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs and a lawyer educated at a pretty good law school, George Mason University, apparently believes the pro bono attorneys representing detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere, should be punished for their loyalty to the highest principle of their profession, the defense of the accused.

Mr. Stimson apparently slept through his Ethics, Criminal Procedure, and Constitutional Law classes and probably thought the defendant deserved what he got in "To Kill a Mockingbird".

The story's here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/washington/13gitmo.html?em&ex=1168837200&en=7891524ddd2fcf3b&ei=5087%0A

Mr. Stimson made his remarks in an interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio, a local Washington-based station that is aimed at an audience of government employees.
The same point appeared Friday on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, where Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, cited the list of law firms and quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”
In his radio interview, Mr. Stimson said: “I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking.” The F.O.I.A. reference was to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Monica Crowley, a conservative syndicated talk show host, asking for the names of all the lawyers and law firms representing Guantánamo detainees in federal court cases.
Mr. Stimson, who is himself a lawyer, then went on to name more than a dozen of the firms ... describing them as “the major law firms in this country.” He said, “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”
Karen J. Mathis, a Denver lawyer who is president of the American Bar Association, said: “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.”

Gosh, I wonder who the "unnamed Senior U.S. official" was? Reading and re-reading his words, it seems clear to me that he is trying to intimidate and drive away the only attorneys who can handle the demands of representing people being held on an island away from scrutiny and most court jurisdiction and who have the assets and resources to handle the enormous mound of paper obfuscation and litigation launched at them by cretinous, authoritarian public officials whose bottom line isn't the protection of our country and everything it stands for, but avoidance of a spotlight on their appalling treatment of detainees and the questionable circumstances under which so many of them are being held.

Mr. Stimson's attitude presents a first-rate argument for the necessity of open and aggressive representation of detainees. Due to this administration's disrespect for our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and requirement for fairness which first and foremost must exist for justice to be done, the deck is heavily stacked against the detainees whose attorneys must scale towering wall of government secrecy, avoidance, and deception just to get a hearing on the evidence. Time to end the secrecy and to fire people like Mr. Stimson, who holds the enormous power of the state and all its resources yet does not recognize that he is part of a system in which good legal representation of the accused is necessary to assure that the weight of his power does not crush the innocent.

Fighting Words

2007-01-10T08:59:00.000-05:00

Great article about a recently returned Maryland National Guard officer/DC Lawyer, Adam Tiffen, who maintained a blog (thereplacements.blogspot.com). I haven't checked out the blog, yet, but it's a solid story about one man who felt called by duty to go to Iraq, who did the best that he could under the circumstances, and who maintained a blog while there which has received wide circulation and even been cited in Doonesbury. The story is at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901373.html

Waldo Jaquith's General Assembly Tracker

2007-01-09T12:41:00.000-05:00

Congrats to Waldo Jaquith on Richmond Sunlight, tracking every bit of legislation and vote in the General Assembly. Here's the link: Richmond Sunlight

RTD Shows Mac McGarvey Some Love

2007-01-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

I remember the article Jim Webb wrote for Parade Magazine in the early 80s about his friend and former radioman, Mac McGarvey. It is quoted extensively in this Richmond Times-Dispatch story about his new role as Jim Webb's legislative assistant for Veterans' Affairs. What impressed me then, and continues to impress me, is the enormous affection and respect these two old friends have for each other. Blessed with natural ability, confidence, and a straightforward approach, Mac exudes loyalty without obsequiousness and seems to me the sort of person who would with affection, humor, and blunt talk let his old friend know if the fame and adulation are going to his head.
Webb enlists comrade for new Senate duties

Michael "Mac" McGarvey was 18 and a radioman for Jim Webb's Marine Corps rifle platoon in Vietnam when McGarvey's right arm was sliced off.

"The day the piece of shrapnel ripped his arm away just below the shoulder, a clean swipe like a hot knife that left the arm itself intact at his feet, I cried," Webb wrote later.

Fast-forward to the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 4, 2007. Webb, 60, raised his hand to take the oath as a senator from Virginia. McGarvey, 56, and close friend to the man he calls "Skipper" Webb, watched it on TV.

This time, it was the proud McGarvey's turn to get emotional.

"I had tears in my eyes," said McGarvey, a striking presence with a shaved head, mustache and goatee, suspenders and one empty white shirtsleeve.

McGarvey is in Washington now to serve as Webb's legislative assistant for veterans affairs ...

Last year, McGarvey was Webb's campaign driver. He operated a camouflaged campaign Jeep and later a motor home and traveled roughly 30,000 miles.

Before that, McGarvey enjoyed the unpaid role of what he calls "sort of an impresario" at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville ...

Between 1985 and 2001, McGarvey worked in the Veterans Administration, which eventually became the Department of Veterans Affairs. With only a high school equivalency diploma, he rose to head a prosthetic and sensory aids service at Nashville's Veterans Affairs center. That unit handled about 35,000 patient disabilities per year.

In 1992, Webb went with a group to Vietnam on a humanitarian trip to deliver prosthetic aid to people who had lost limbs in the war.

"Mac was the guy I brought with me," Webb, a former Navy secretary, said last week.

"Particularly on the medical side, he really understands the VA system," Webb said. McGarvey is empathetic and well-respected among veterans' groups, he said.

And he ran "the No. 1 honky-tonk in Nashville, Tennessee," Webb added. "You have to know how to work with people if you're running Tootsie's."

At Webb's temporary office, McGarvey stretched out his left hand to greet a visitor warmly. He seized an opening in an interview and joked about being "short-handed," deflecting any unease. And he acknowledged that he wasn't thrilled at first with the idea of moving to Washington, but Webb won.

"He gave me that Jim Webb look, and said, 'Mac, I need you up here.' Jim's the closest friend I have ever had in my life. There's very little I wouldn't do for him," McGarvey said.

McGarvey had been planning to retire to his native southern Illinois and build a house. He's set that aside now to work for fellow veterans.

"It will allow me the opportunity to look at ways of possibly making life better for not only the veterans, but for VA employees," McGarvey said.

Congratulations to Mac McGarvey on his new position. I think we're going to see some real strides toward legislation benefitting veterans and their families.

My Book Quiz Results

2007-01-08T21:59:00.000-05:00

Here's the result of my Book Quiz:

You're The Poisonwood Bible!

by Barbara Kingsolver

Deeply rooted in a religious background, you have since become both isolated and schizophrenic. You were naively sure that your actions would help people, but of course they were resistant to your message and ultimately disaster ensued. Since you can see so many sides of the same issue, you are both wise beyond your years and tied to worthless perspectives. If you were a type of waffle, it would be
Belgian.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

In keeping with my alleged schizophrenia I don't know whether to be delighted or despairing. There's actually a lot of truth to this assessment, but the whole "tied to worthless perspectives" thing sort of hurts.

Webb's New GI Bill

2007-01-06T17:31:00.001-05:00

Keeping a promise he made during the campaign, Jim Webb's first act as Senator was to introduce a sweeping expansion of veterans' educational benefits, Senate Bill S.22. Here are the highlights from the Marine Times.

Called the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, Webb’s bill would boost benefits so they equal the amount paid to World War II veterans. That would mean the GI Bill would cover the full cost of tuition, room and board plus a $1,000 monthly stipend. His bill also would drop the $1,200 enrollment fee active-duty service members must pay to be eligible for the GI Bill.

In a statement, Webb, formerly secretary of the Navy, said the current GI Bill “served this nation well during peacetime, but times have unfortunately changed. The demands placed on [service members] in this post-9/11 era are much greater than when Congress established the current program.”

Webb said that with many military members serving two or three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, “it is past time to enact a new veterans’ education program modeled on the World War II-era GI Bill.

“This is exactly what our legislation does,” he added. “It will provide veterans of the 9/11 era with the same program of benefits that our fathers and grandfathers received after World War II.”

Marine Times article

It seems only fair that American military members who have been required not only to put their lives and families on hold, but also their educations and prospects for advancement, be provided the resources to improve themselves and their prospects for success.

Webb Party at Clarendon Ballroom

2007-01-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

I was hoping to have a twofer to report; having intended to go to the Senate Open House today, but I ended stuck at work today and must settle for a report on the goings on at the Clarendon Ballroom last night.

At 4:45 I walked around the corner and saw Mac McGarvey standing surrounded by Arlington motorcycle cops, and realized that Senator Webb must already be there somewhere. Mac looked sharp in a muted plum business suit. That man is intense.

The paying customers were checking in, getting name tags, and proceeding downstairs, while the everyone else stayed on the main floor. There were already at least 150 in the Ballroom, probably more, and the crowd was growing by the minute. After scoring a free Miller Lite at the bar I grabbed a pretzel and wandered around until meeting other people I recognized as having phonebanked at the Webb HQ on Wilson Blvd. We ventured to the food tables, which were hidden behind a ravenous horde, and I decided not to take a chance on being trampled and eaten.

At some point the band set up, and by that time the crowd was pretty thick. The Locust Mountain Boys is a classic bluegrass band. Their lead singer, 18 year old Jesse Carper, plays mandolin, sings lead, and shows enormous stage presence. They played for over an hour of rousing bluegrass classics. I'm a little old to be a groupie, but I ended up moving to the front to take pictures and get a little closer to the music.

After the band stopped for a well-deserved break it was about another half hour in the crowded room before Donald McEachin came on stage and bade us all welcome the man who turned the United States Congress blue, Jim Webb.

A vigorous and energetic Webb took the stage, greeted the crowd, and told us of his proposal for a GI Bill like the one given WWII vets upon their return from the service. He talked about the need for a change in foreign policy and promised action to bring all parties to the table in negotiations. He spoke of the need to ensure economic fairness for all and to enact the minimum wage legislation. He thanked everyone for their support, teased that he doesn't expect to be invited to George Will's Orioles party this year, and cracked that "it's all about the beer," promising more parties with free beer from time to time. What a contrast between his sometimes palpable uneasiness during the campaign and his self-assurance and comfort before the crowd last night. This amazing transformation took place in less than a year. Hong Le Webb and the new baby and her daughter were all there, and took the stage.

Webb surprised the Locust Mountain Boys with a request that they retake the stage and play Freeborn Man. They blew the doors off the place with a loud, proud rendition.

Sliding into the role of MC Senator Webb then introduced Rodney Crowell, who has written songs for Emmylou Harris and others. Webb said he wanted Crowell to play a song which has particular meaning for him and is for those who are serving overseas, Remember Me. Terrific song. First time I've ever heard it.

The Senator then left the stage and started shaking hands with as many in the crowd as he could. I'd brought a copy of Born Fighting which I wanted him to sign for my niece, a Marine reservist recently returned from her second tour in Iraq, but as he approached I was suddenly run over by a very excited Vietnamese gentleman who in a combination of English and Vietnamese begged Senator Webb to take a picture with him. He was so darn excited I couldn't complain. It seemed to have great meaning for him. Webb complied and was carried farther away from me by the crowd. I resolved to get him to sign it today, but then had to stay at work. Someday ...

Finally the crowd began to diminish. We had one more song from the band and then things began to wrap up. Fortunately, the bar was still open and I finally got a second beer and spent a few minutes talking to Steve Carper, Jr., the leader of the band and Jesse Carper's father. His father, Steve Carper, Sr., was there, too, so it's a real family operation. What a pleasure it must be to have your son following in your footsteps and continuing a family tradition, and one which gives people such joy. Mr. Carper told me how lost they'd gotten driving around Arlington. They passed the Pentagon several times and finally told a police officer who they were and where they were going. They were pleasantly surprised to receive a police escort to the Ballroom. Mr. Carper asked me what it was like on September 11, 2001, and we spent a few minutes in somber discussion of that terrible day. I wish I'd brought enough money to buy their CD.

It was a great party and I'm glad I got the chance to attend.

Casualties of War

2007-01-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

Interesting and poignant article on the 59 women soldiers killed so far in Iraq and the memorial to them at Fort Lee, Virginia. (U.S. Deaths in Iraq Mark Increased Presence)

One thing this war has done is settle the question of whether women can function in combat situations, at least of the sort our military is experiencing in Iraq. In a war with no front line women are becoming casualties no matter what their MOS, and serving courageously when thrust into combat.

Another story, published today in the WaPo, notes the tremendous sacrifices being made by small numbers in our society, while the burden of the war is borne by a few. With Iraq War Come Layers of Loss

How unconscionable it is that those who are being asked to risk all are also being forced to carry the heaviest burden. No family should be driven into poverty because they have lost their primary wage earner or must care for a severely disabled member injured in the war.

James E. Dean -- Update on a Tragedy

2006-12-29T11:02:00.000-05:00

Today brought more information about the tragic death of James E. Dean, the young reservist who, upon being ordered to Iraq after having been severely traumatized by his 18 months of service in Afghanistan, became despondent and committed suicide by cop a few days ago. (see first post on this story)

Here's the story: Distant War May Have Claimed Maryland Soldier

I don't know why the headline says the way "may" have claimed this young man. Dean had already fought in one war, serving 12 months as a sergeant, leading a small infantry unit on the front lines in Afghanistan. Army records show that he was an excellent soldier, and he had a fistful of awards to prove it: for service in defense of the nation, good conduct and outstanding marksmanship with rifles and grenades. He was such a good soldier, in fact, an Army spokesman said, that the military needed him back just three weeks after his first Christmas with his wife.

He couldn't stomach the thought. His post-traumatic stress disorder, which was diagnosed shortly after he returned from Afghanistan, became worse immediately after he received the letter -- and so did his drinking and his rages, family members said. He would break down in front of his wife, telling her over and over that nobody knew what it had been like.

Apparently Mr. Dean was diagnosed with PTSD and has been under treatment for it for some time. Why was someone in his fragile emotional state being recalled to duty? What provisions are there in the military to excuse from duty those with a documented history of PTSD? Are there any at all?

This poor man had married, started a job, and was working his way back from his crippling depression when the rug was pulled out from him and he was staring back into the abyss out of which he'd just crawled. Heartbreaking.

There was some criticism of the way the police handled the situation, apparently following their protocol of isolating the "suspect" and seeking to have him have contact with only their negotiator. Mr. Dean's cell phone service was apparently cut off and he was not able to have contact with family members with whom he wanted to talk. I understand that this is part of the standoff protocol, but it does make one consider whether things would have gone so completely downhill if he had been allowed to talk to someone whom he trusted instead of a stranger, a representative of state power. The article says he shot at three police cruisers and then pointed his weapon at an officer, and this was the reason for the trooper's decision to kill him. Where a man has lost all hope, and all connection with those who might give him hope, he just may take any action necessary to achieve his self-destructive purpose. The trooper's duty was to see to it that his colleagues were not injured or killed by someone who was clearly desperate.

Transportation - Virginia's House Republicans Play Fast and Loose

2006-12-28T11:10:00.000-05:00

Two articles from the Washington Post highlight the transportation crisis in Virginia: Virginia House Puts Onus on Counties for Road Crisis

Anyone could see that development has taken place too fast and with too little concern for transportation or even accessibility from the new subdivisions to local shopping centers. In going past Centreville I've noticed that it would be impossible simply to walk out the developments on the right side of the road and cross the street to the shopping centers on the left. It's too dangerous. There seems to have been little planning in many of these developments for alternative routes to the main roadways, to alternative methods of transportation including walking and biking, or for easy access for people who live in the neighborhood but feel compelled to drive a car to their shopping centers just for the protection it offers. However, as the article notes

The GOP legislation unveiled at the Capitol largely takes aim at future development by requiring local governments or homeowners associations to maintain new subdivision roads. It does not give local governments greater authority to deny subdivision developments because of traffic impact, a power supervisors have requested for years.

The rest of the state enjoys the revenues produced by all the new Northern Virginia residents and businesses. Northern Virginia's economy drives the rest of the state, but reactionaries like Howell and company will not allow localities to do anything to curb the developments which bring this revenue but want to make them responsible for solving the transportation problems the development offers. This is an unwarranted abdication of state responsibility. The WaPo editorial calls it in The Snooker Strategy

On taking office at the start of the year, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) did the sensible thing by proposing a tax package that would yield $1 billion annually for transportation statewide. The Republican-dominated state Senate backed him. But Republicans who control the House of Delegates would have none of it. Instead, after a generation of neglect, they have decided to attack the problem of Virginia's roads with press releases ... Rather than proposing a long-term fix for a long-term problem, they proudly announce that they favor spending what amounts to a pittance -- half of the state's current $500 million surplus -- on one-time transportation projects. Never mind that they have no viable plan for sustaining that already inadequate spending next year and the year after, since surpluses never last and cyclical downturns are inevitable. Never mind that once the money they propose spending is divvied up statewide, it would result in barely enough to build a decent interchange and a few precious miles of highway in Northern Virginia. Never mind that soaring highway maintenance costs are already gobbling up state funds meant for road construction to the tune of $450 million a year, which is approximately twice the amount the House Republicans propose spending on transportation from the current surplus. And never mind that skyrocketing costs for road materials and construction compound the cost of foot-dragging on a long-term solution. None of that bothers the House Republicans, because they're really more interested in scoring PR points than in building roads.
Mr. Kaine, stymied in his attempts to fashion a sustainable program of new funding, proposes spending an additional $161 million in surplus funds on transportation improvements during the coming fiscal year. (That, in addition to $339 million in surplus funds left over from last year.) It is, as the governor recognizes, a drop in the bucket and one that must be weighed against competing funding demands for public safety, schools and the poor. It would do nothing for Metro, which is slowly strangling from lack of revenue; for widening Interstate 66 inside the Beltway; or for the staggering improvements needed around Fort Belvoir, where 20,000 defense jobs are to be relocated -- let alone projects elsewhere in the state.

James E. Dean -- An Iraq War Casualty

2006-12-27T13:52:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post this morning comes this tragic story:

Reservist Due for Iraq Is Killed In Standoff With Police

Army Reservist James E. Dean had already served 18 months in Afghanistan when he was notified three weeks ago that he would be deployed to Iraq later this month. The prospect of returning to war sent the St. Mary's County resident into a spiral of depression, a neighbor said.

Despondent about his orders, Dean barricaded himself inside his father's home with several weapons on Christmas, threatening to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed yesterday by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer, police said.

How awful it must have been for this young man who had already honorably served his country for 18 difficult months in the sometimes forgotten war in Afghanistan to hear that he would be sent back into war again. It seems indecent, the demands we place on the few among us who serve. How many James E. Deans have there been - broken people being told their first round of sacrifice was not enough, that they must go back and sacrifice some more while the vast majority of their countrymen stay safe and untroubled here? Vietnam was rough, but at least we didn't keep sending people back to it time after time, not unless they volunteered. Tours were extended in Korea, and the war must have seemed endless to those serving in World War II, but the difference here is that it is the reservists and National Guardsmen who are being called up over and over to fight in a war without discernible territorial gains, without uniformed and readily identifiable opponents, without front lines and rear echelons. In this war no one is really in the rear, opponents are not in uniform and the daytime good guys can be the night time bad guys. The people we fight for are indiscernible ethnically and linguistically and visually from the people we fight against. We gain no territory and we see no cessation of violence. It just goes on endlessly and pointlessly, a savage war involving conflicts older than our nation.

James E. Dean, a "good country boy" according to his neighbors, is an Iraqi war casualty as surely as if he had been hit by an IED. We should all shed a tear for this young man, and the many others like him who manage somehow to hang on, but who are every bit as broken and traumatized as he was. Rest in peace, James E. Dean.

State of Emergency -- The Right to Health Care

2006-12-26T15:40:00.000-05:00

Cross Posted from diary posted on Raising Kaine

A thoughtful article in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Mother Jones magazine, by JoAnn Wypijewski, discusses the difference between the concept of "affordable health care" and health care as a right.

http://www.motherjon...

The author recounts shocking statistics of the demise of union mines in Virginia, noting that in the 1980s there were hundreds of mines in Virginia and 17,000 union miners, but that after the successful Pittston strike of 1989 their victory proved hollow as

Pittston and other mine operators began declaring bankruptcy, reneging on their contracts, selling their assets or reopening under new names, offering similar wages but no benefits ... Retiree health and welfare had been a centerpiece of the strike; the corporate backlash threw down a choice: the old folks or your jobs. Now workers from shuttered union mines are loath to organize their new job sites because they could never win the old-style comprehensive retirement benefits, which their former employers are still legally obligated to pay them so long as they don't work under another union contract. Union mines, meanwhile, won't hire experienced workers who are a few years shy of being vested because that would mean inheriting retirement obligations ... Lifetime health benefits, which nationwide keep 60,000 umwa retirees and their families alive, have become a rope for slowly strangling the union.

As a result of the growth of non-union mines the health of the workers and their families has suffered.

Statistics tell the tale:

According to Sparkle Bonds of the Virginia Black Lung Association, miners are getting sicker younger—in their late 30s or 40s rather than in their 60s or 70s—because of higher concentrations of dust and less stringent oversight ... The umwa's president, Cecil Roberts, can preach up a storm for the union cause, but he doesn't see the people as a whole getting much of a break from the economics of lowered expectations without nationalized health insurance ... But even if the Democrats want to make health care a right ... as Roberts would dryly note later, "they can't do anything so long as there's this war."

The author recounts Jim Webb's visit to Wise County, where he

moved so fluidly from vulnerability to vulnerability ... that it seemed natural when a student asked him, "So are you saying you're going to move toward socialized medicine?"

Webb said that growing up and then serving in the military ... made him open to an "efficient government-administered insurance system." He could have added that his touchstone is itself being eroded by war. The immense needs of the wounded are careening toward the wall of limited resources. Veterans Affairs treated 23 percent more wounded in the first quarter of 2006 than the Bush team had estimated for the entire year.

Ms. Wypijewski concludes that the question of health care will turn ultimately on how the government can justify a costly war while maintaining that providing health care for all is beyond its means, but she notes also that we cannot maintain a war economy and hope to provide for universal health coverage.

In the midst of all the talk of last chance surges and the congenital idiocy of some of Virginia's elected representatives one of the most pressing issues in this country cannot and should not be forgotten. This article points out the flaw in merely advocating "affordable health care" and instead notes that health care coverage should be treated as a right. The only solution to the type of behavior illustrated in her article -- the companies that go bankrupt and then return in different guises without benefits or pesky union interference, the companies that hire people as "part time" workers at 38 hours a week so as to avoid having to pay them benefits, the companies that seek out cheap undocumented immigrants for whom they often do not pay workers' compensation insurance and whom they can count on not to push their rights when injured -- is to establish a system of universal health care coverage.

Lawmakers should not shy away from this discussion as they have in the past. First, the right to health care should be treated as a given. Second, legislation establishing this right should be packaged in such a way as to prevent companies from being able to opt out of it through the methods described above. I'd like to know what thoughts people have on this and what they would suggest as a way to address this growing problem.

Virgil the Virulent

2006-12-26T14:35:00.000-05:00

A friend e-mailed me this weekend about the Virgil Goode affair, told me that he'd been in college with old Virge, who was an asshat then and remains an asshat now.

Much has been written about Virgil Goode and his disdain for the bedrock philosophy underpinning our political system, about his pandering to the most ignorant and fearful among us, about his disregard for the first principle, the very first Amendment to our Constitution, which recognizes that paramount to a free society is the freedom to believe and worship as one chooses, if one chooses to believe at all.

I've decided instead to write of the loss Virgil Goode has suffered in not knowing the people he vilifies so readily. At the heart of Christianity is the knowledge that all people are human and all humans worthy of being treated as individuals who rise and fall on their own merits and not upon their class or ethnicity. Virgil, like many self-satisfied and smug people who call themselves Christians, sees only a monolith when he looks at Muslims, a big, dangerous monolith bent on destroying American values. Well, Virgil, maybe you should get to know some Muslims. There are plenty available in this area. Some are devout, just like Christians you know, and some are Muslim in name only. Some of them believe their faith calls upon them to be kind and generous to others and some believe their faith makes them the tyrants of their households (you know, like the LaHayes). Some are knuckleheads, just like some non-Muslims, but the vast majority seem to be ordinary people who want what's best for their families, who want their kids educated and their trash picked up and their commutes to be shorter. A lot of them are indeed immigrants, although I know a number of home-grown American Muslims and converts. Has Virgil ever seen a mosque bulletin? They have them, you know, just like Christian churches. They list the dates of the clothing drives and the youth car washes, carry ads for local businesses, announce activities of their scout troops (yes, Virgil, there are even Muslim Boy and Girl Scouts), and list speaker schedules.

Read some of the prattlings of the Christian right and see a vision of Jesus wrapped up in American flag, spouting Republican values, and sporting an M-16. A brief perusal of some of the more conservative sites today showed me glowing tributes to Jesus in the margins, pious statements of "unto us a child is born", and references to the "Prince of Peace", and "goodwill toward men". Some of these same sites are defending Virgil Goode and ranting against Muslims as if by definition all Muslims are fanatics. Well if they're all fanatics and anti-democratic, why are we trying to cram our version of democracy down a Muslim country's throat? Why is it that the Christian rage on the right is so dogmatic and so full of hate for an entire class of people? It seems to me decidedly un-Christian to hate and fear Muslims just for being. Jesus preached that we should love our enemy, but these so-called devout Christians can't even muster a live and let live attitude toward their neighbors.

Iran's Economy and the Iraqi Problem

2006-12-26T12:29:00.000-05:00

From today's Washington Post we get this story (Iran Oil Revenue Quickly Drying Up, Analyst Says) telling us that Iran's oil revenues are dropping by some 10 to 12 percent per year. According to Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University,

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 to 12 percent annually. In less than five years, exports could be halved, and they could disappear by 2015.

Mr. Stern suggests that rather than rattle sabers and talk of a military solution to the Iran problem we just sit back and wait for nature to take its course. While Ahmadinejad, who should more properly be known as "I'manuttajob", has been occupying himself with spurious attacks on the Holocaust and sowing discord in the Middle East, including Iraq, he hasn't been paying attention to business. Voters in Iran seem to recognize there's a problem at the top given their recent smackdown on I'manuttajob at the polls, but if the United States takes an aggressive stance and tries for a military option, we will lose the potential benefit of Iranian discontent and cause them to close ranks.

The Iranians have not been reinvesting in oil production and are heavily subsidizing domestically consumed gasoline. As the Iranians' domestic situation becomes increasingly precarious they will be forced to focus more on the energy issue and less on developing weapons or sowing Islamic revolution. Recently, President Bush was asked if he would consider talking to the Iranians about the Iraq situation. He said he would only do so if they agreed to cease their uranium enrichment program.

Bush's position is wrong. Tying the Iranian uranium enrichment program to the Iraq issue is a mistake. Iraq is not related to the uranium enrichment program, but it IS related to the question of Iranian domestic tranquility. Iran's economy is already creaking under the strain of its energy subsidies, its bungling management of its oil resources, and its status as a near-pariah state with a huge and increasingly unemployed young population. Does Iran want an Iraqi refugee problem, too?

For the past two or three Sundays I have watched proponents of discussions with Iran get tongue-tied when asked what we could possibly offer Iran as an incentive to enter into such discussions. I watched Charles Krauthammer do this to Mark Shields just two Sundays ago. The answer is easy. Iran does not want an Iraqi Arab refugee problem on its border. Iran has been protected to an extent from a flow of refugees by the difficulty of the terrain and by the fact that much of it borders Iraqi Kurdistan, but as the Sunni insurgency becomes increasingly violent, and Baghdad neighborhoods increasingly unlivable, there will be a flow of people to the eastern borders of Iraq. They can't go to Sunni, Baathist Syria. They will not be welcome in predominantly Sunni Kuwait. They won't be welcome in Kurdistan, and Anbar province is dominated by Sunnis who will certainly not permit thousands of Shiite refugees to cross on their way to Syria and Jordan. This leaves Persian Iran, which has no real desire to be overrun with Arab refugees even if they share the same sect.

Our refusal to talk to the surrounding countries in the region is setting the stage for a proxy war between Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran because we are not offering any good reasons why they should refrain from such a war. The insurgents and militias are not operating in a vacuum. They're getting outside support from Iran and Syria. If we want to stop the internal strife in Iraq we are going to have to deal with the people writing the checks. This can only be done diplomatically.

Webb's Plans for the Senate

2006-12-20T18:45:00.000-05:00

Senator-elect Webb was interviewed yesterday for the Daily Press. Here's the story:

New Virginia senator calls Bush a `failed president'
By David Lerman
Newport News (Va.) Daily Press

WASHINGTON - Virginia Sen.-elect Jim Webb said President Bush is a "failed president" who should use his last two years in office to repair America's image abroad by ending the Iraq war through intensive diplomacy.

In an interview Tuesday with the Newport News Daily Press, Virginia's newly elected Democratic senator made clear his antipathy toward Bush and his determination to help set a new course in Iraq.

Webb, an early and outspoken critic of the Iraq war, ousted Republican Sen. George Allen last month by a razor-thin margin that tipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. A decorated Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary, Webb has a 24-year-old son now serving in Iraq as a Marine.

"He's a failed president," Webb said, when asked what he thinks of Bush. "He has two years to try to show some true leadership when it comes to rehabilitating the image of the United States around the world.

"I warned three months before we went into Iraq that we were squandering an historic opportunity to keep almost the entire world with us in the war against international terrorism. And we have failed utterly to do that. It is now up to us and that hopefully includes the president to try and remediate the situation in a way that will enhance the stability in the Middle East and rehabilitate our relationship with countries around the world."

Webb's coolness toward Bush first surfaced last month, after an icy exchange between the two men at a private White House reception was leaked to the media.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, Jimmy.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb replied.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush shot back. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said in ending the conversation.

The incident underscored Webb's reputation as a fiercely independent operator who will not easily be constrained by Washington standards of decorum or party orthodoxy. A Democrat-turned-Republican-turned Democrat, Webb served in Ronald Reagan's Pentagon before becoming a best-selling author and then launching his improbable bid for a Senate seat.

Webb confirmed the exchange with Bush Tuesday, but said he was not trying to insult the president and would be willing to work with him next year.

"I have declined to answer personal questions about my son in a political context," Webb said in explaining his response to Bush. "All I was doing was trying to curtail a conversation. I said nothing publicly about it at all until the story was leaked, I think by the White House. I'm happy to go over and have breakfast with President Bush, if he wants to have breakfast."

The White House has declined to discuss the incident, saying it does not comment on private receptions.

Bush critics have cheered Webb's feisty exchange as evidence of his willingness to challenge the president and fight for policy changes. But some conservatives have faulted Webb for an impolitic tone toward the president and questioned his fitness for the clubby Senate, where collegiality and compromise are considered essential.

Webb dismissed the criticism, saying, "I think people who are worried about that are going to be pretty surprised. I have friends on both sides of the aisle. I am looking forward to working with people."

Outlining his priorities for next year, Webb said he would seek a new course for Iraq, more generous education benefits for recent military veterans, and legislation aimed at narrowing the economic disparity between rich and poor.

During the campaign, Webb often spoke about the growing divide between the rich and the poor, a divide he said risks tearing American society apart. He said Tuesday he hopes to begin addressing the problem through measures such as increasing the minimum wage and examining the fairness of corporate tax breaks.

He is also drafting a bill that would offer full college tuition and benefits to qualified military veterans who have served on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001.

"I'm really hopeful we can move that bill this year," he said of the initiative, which he pushed throughout his campaign.

But it is on Iraq that Webb will undoubtedly spend most of his time as a freshman member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. The newly appointed Democratic chairmen of those panels have already called for extensive Iraq hearings beginning next month.

"I want to hear the administration and the military leadership articulate the endpoint in their strategy," Webb said. "How do we know when we are done?"

While urging diplomacy and a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, Webb has declined to endorse a timeline for withdrawal.

Asked about proposals for a short-term surge in troop levels, Webb said, "I'm willing to hear them out. I don't see a clear reason for it. I want to see what they're talking about." Webb calls Bush a "failed president"

Looks like Senator-elect Webb will hit the ground running and is taking his new responsibilities seriously. On Saturday I went to the party at Aldo's Italian Restaurant for Webb volunteers and the other Democratic candidates. Jim Webb showed up early before the speeches and spent considerable time talking to every single person who approached him. After all the speaking was done and most people had cleared out, he remained and continued to shake hands and meet with everyone. I don't believe a single person was turned away of the dozens who approached. During his speech he made it clear that he appreciates the efforts made on his behalf and reiterated his promise to campaign strongly for all Democratic candidates in the upcoming General Assembly elections.

It's clear from the President's press conference today that he will reject any real attempt at diplomacy and is preparing to order a "surge" into Iraq of troops for "one last push" to stabilize the situation. Historically speaking last pushes, last stands, and last surges have a dismal record. Those who advocate this surge cannot articulate what exactly such a surge will accomplish and how, but it's as if they feel the need to "do something."

When asked about talks with Iran, Bush replied that he would only agree to it if Iran would cease its nuclear enrichment program. Why Iran would agree to do so when there is absolutely no incentive on the table is beyond me, but that's what he said.

Senator-elect Webb and company will have their work cut out for them when they start work next week.

Attempted cross-posting at VA-Sen Progressive Wave

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

2006-12-20T15:35:00.000-05:00

From TPM Muckraker comes this charming article listing all the stuff the Bush Administration doesn't want you to know: Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us, by Paul Kiel.

Among items the Bush Administration has decided to stop publishing or to reclassify as secret:

the Department of Defense has suddenly classified the numbers of attacks in Iraq for September through November of this year -- after providing the figures for every month since the war began. Why classify the information now? If there's a good explanation, we don't know it, and the Pentagon isn't returning our calls.

As others have noted, it's far from the first time that the administration has tried to deep-six data that was unhelpful to its goals. Over the years, they've discontinued annual reports, classified normally public data, de-funded studies, quieted underlings, and generally done whatever was necessary to keep bad information under wraps.

Wouldn't it be great to have all those examples in one place? Thankfully, Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report has started us off on that goal ...

Steve's list is quite helpful and constantly under revision as readers add their own stories of the Bush Administration's obsessive secretiveness. The theory appears to be that no news is better than bad news, so in the face of government incompetence, or mis, mal or nonfeasance, and in the face of unfortunate ecological consequences of present policies or disparate income impacts on ordinary people of Bush's tax cuts, the Administration's best option is to simply declare it all secret or to stop publishing the information. This is called the "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" approach to public information, or the Sergeant Schulz Two-Step.

Here's the link to the Carpetbagger report: Keeping Iraq attack numbers under wraps

Wilkerson's Analysis

2006-12-19T13:06:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Bernie Quigley for posting a link to the following on RK. Is the U.S. Being Transformed into a Radical Republic?By Col. (Ret.) Leonard Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff.

... As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: "America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great ...

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin ...

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that ... will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck ...

This administration has expanded government ... and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington ...

First, it was Mr. Perle and people such as he who put us where we are today, not the terrorists of 9/11. A somnolent Congress assisted - a Congress that, as Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia said as the Senate failed to debate in the run-up to the Iraq war, was "ominously, ominously, dreadfully silent."

Second, people such as Mr. Perle do not represent the bulk of Americans, who are anything but radical. Instead, they represent the Robespierres and Napoleons of this world, the neo-Jacobins of today ...

Congress can awaken and discover that the Constitution is correct, that Congress is in fact a separate and equal branch of government ...

We can halt the precipitate slide in our standing around the world, convince the majority of the Islamic world that we can and must co-exist - and eventually prosper together - and at the same time confront, confound and defeat the small element in Islam's midst that lives to murder innocents, Christian, Jew and Muslim alike.

All we need do, in reality, is return to our roots. Never in our almost 800-year history since the Magna Carta have we been radicals.

I can't really add to what Col. Wilkerson says. This is a strong defense of the America which appeals to and has always been a beacon of liberty to the world, not the scared oaf stomping about the world looking for enemies and trying to force its version of democracy down other countries' throats.

Rights Denied, an American Detainee in Iraq

2006-12-18T18:04:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration's shameful abnegation of our most basic civil rights is illustrated by this story from the NY Times today: Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment.

We must ask what "freedom loving" purpose is served by denying legal counsel to an unjustly detained U.S. citizen overseas. How is it that our President claims to champion our system of rights and freedom when the most basic protections are not afforded even to our citizens, let alone to other detainees who do not have the minimal protection offered by U.S. citizenship? Without the protections afforded by our Bill of Rights and the requirement that our government follow its provisions who is safe from governmental incompetence or overreaction? Donald Vance, the detainee in question, was a Navy veteran working as a contractor for a security firm in Iraq who tried to do his patriotic duty and alert our government to his firm's illegal dealings and diverting of arms and munitions. The shocking part is that he and Mr. Ertel, the other American detainee, had alerted the military authorities in Baghdad to their company's criminal activities after Mr. Vance collected substantial information about his company's misdeeds and communicated it to the FBI. Also shocking is the apparent incompetence or sheer apathy of the military authorities who held him in stressful and torturous conditions and apparently did not even check his computer as he requested for his communications with the FBI for weeks after his detention. There is a distinct quality to this of the right hand not knowing, or perhaps not caring, what the left hand was doing.

Given the way this situation was handled I have to ask: how were we as American citizens made safer by suspension of habeas corpus, of the application of the most basic civil rights, of the institution of torture light for detainees? I certainly do not feel any safer.

And let's consider yet another question. Without strict regulation of the circumstances of detention and interrogation of detainees, especially U.S. citizens, what protections do whistleblowers have against a corrupt military investigatory authority? I'm not saying the ones in this situation were corrupt, but really, what protection is there? Who's watching the ones doing the detaining?

Speaking of oversight, Alice Marshall of GOTV has posted the following to her site about the Truman Committee from the Next Hurrah blog: The Next Hurrah: (Harry) Truman Committee

Can Diabetes Be Cured?

2006-12-16T18:45:00.000-05:00

Mosquito Blog put out a line on this article from the Canadian National Post regarding a potential cure for diabetes: Diabetes Breakthrough?

Pain researchers working with diabetic mice discovered somewhat by accident that they could cure the mice's (meese's?) diabetes with a single shot of capsaicin to their pancreases, followed by injection of a neuropeptide. Crazy stuff. Considering that Type II diabetes is the fastest growing disease in the developing world, if this research is on to something it would be of great benefit to everyone. Hope it leads to something good.

Conservative Myths

2006-12-14T07:22:00.000-05:00

Bob Burnett posted the following to the Huffington Post, his list of ten conservative myths and what can be done to refute them.

Killing conservatism

Does the President's New Advisory Panel Know That Rampant Unemployment Can Lead to Civil Unrest?

2006-12-12T10:02:00.000-05:00

Today's Washington Post features two articles, the gists of which conflict with each other. On the one hand, we have the specially picked group of three generals and two advisers summoned to the White House to speak plainly to President Bush (after only four years ... what progress!) about the situation in Iraq, and to address the ISG report. Of course only people critical of the report were invited, but even so, their assessments conflict with each other to a degree. The advisory group agreed on some things: that the President needs to shake up his national security team; that we should not withdraw troops from Iraq, yet; and that we should not engage Syria and Iran as recommended by the ISG. The meetings are described as "carefully choreographed", which is another way of saying that even in the midst of saying he wants a real assessment and blunt speaking from his advisers, Bush seeks to direct the conversation to the path he wants to take by choosing only those advisers who are critical of the report or its conclusions. The advisers apparently agreed that the war was still "winnable", but then even they differed on how exactly to win it. Retired General Keane proposes sending 20,000 more troops to Baghdad for added security, while Retired General McCaffrey says this will achieve nothing. Everyone seems to agree we should train more troops to be trainers of the Iraqis, but there is a general sense even from this meeting that this tiny group of hand-picked advisers is in serious disagreement about how the goal can be achieved.

Experts Advise Bush

In contrast is an article in the same edition which describes a Pentagon promoted campaign to increase job opportunity for Iraqis, whose joblessness rates in some areas run almost 70%.

Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the top U.S. field commander in Iraq, said that tackling unemployment could do far more good than adding U.S. combat troops or more aggressively pursuing an elusive enemy. He said the project to open the factories and stimulate local economies is long overdue and was born "of desperation."

"We need to put the angry young men to work," Chiarelli said in a phone interview from Baghdad. "One of the key hindrances to us establishing stability in Iraq is the failure to get the economy going. A relatively small decrease in unemployment would have a very serious effect on the level of sectarian killing going on."

To Stem Iraqi Violence

Seems to me that the advisers haven't addressed this fundamental issue in their considerations of the "new way forward" urged by Bush. The most troubling thing about the Bush policy is the promotion of military over alternative forms of seeking his ever elusive "victory". General Chiarelli makes more sense than the advisers and they should consider what he says in weighing our options.

The New Inequality

2006-12-10T19:11:00.000-05:00

Here's a report in the New York Times magazine which tells us that recent economic figures show that income inequality, which has been increasing for thirty years among blue collar workers in this country, now extends to white collar, college educated workers, too.

Over the last five years, the average pay of college graduates grew at only a little better rate than inflation. For now, most holders of bachelor’s degrees appear to be on the wrong side of the inequality divide, which suggests that the slice of the American work force on the right side of the divide has become extremely narrow. Even families at the 90th percentile of the income distribution (now earning about $110,000 a year) have received only a marginally bigger raise over the last decade than those in the middle of the distribution.

... two economists in their mid-30s, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, have ... discover[ed] that at the very highest levels of the income ladder, inequality has indeed continued to accelerate. The top 0.1 percent of earners — that’s one out of every 1,000 families — made 6.8 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2004, up from 4.7 percent a decade earlier and about 2 percent in the ’60s and ’70s.

... From World War II through the 1970s, while most Americans were getting solid raises every year, the incomes of the richest 1 percent were doing only a little better than inflation. Since the 1980s, the two groups have switched places. The affluent have received huge gains, and everyone else’s pay growth has slowed down. For the last six decades, in other words, the American economy has been much more of a zero-sum game than we might like to believe.

Looks like Jim Webb and the progressives are not far off base when they talk about the rising inequalities in our society. Whatever the causes are, and I think it's only logical that they be tied to rampant deregulation, globalization, tax advantages for outsourcing, illegal immigration, abuse of the H1-B visa process, the "winner take all" mentality present in our nation's boardrooms, it's time to start taking this problem seriously.

The New Inequality

The Bush Paradox

2006-12-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

In this guest column for The Seattle Times Thomas Cronin and Michael Genovese analyze what they call "the Bush Paradox". Point by point the authors examine Bush's pronouncements against his actions and the result is not pretty. A good treatment of the paradox that is our President.

Here's the cite:

Remembrance -- Pearl Harbor 65 Years Ago

2006-12-07T14:16:00.000-05:00

In the midst of a war lasting longer than our involvement in World War II we should take time to remember the day, 65 years ago, that America was dragged into that war by a savage and unprovoked attack. Americans responded with a sense of sacrifice and purpose. The objectives were clear, the cause was noble, and the enemy easy to identify. Young men were approached on the streets and asked why they were not in uniform. Young women like my mother, sometimes in defiance of their parents, flocked to the factories and to the offices of a rising military bureaucracy. My mother worked for the Navy Department in ugly temporary buildings set up on the National Mall, and returned home every night to a boarding house for respectable single young women at 1830 K Street, NW in Washington, DC. The Washington suburbs exploded into a flurry of building, both government offices and housing, for the hordes of job seekers and government workers flooding into the area. Ordinary citizens, scout troops, and civic organizations had victory gardens, collected metal for the war effort, saved pan drippings for use in defense factories, donated clothes and toys to military and refugee families, hosted military people on temporary assignment, or sheltered refugees from the Battle of Britain and orphans from Europe. Paying income taxes was considered a patriotic duty which would help win the war. The ranks of the armed forces and merchant marine swelled with young men (and sometimes women) from all walks of life and all backgrounds. Ivy League scholars, Hollywood producers and actors, professional athletes, and business people donned the uniform proudly, and stood with the miners, farmworkers, ranchers, factory workers, teachers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, and others from all parts of the class spectrum.

Looking at the present situation, when it comes to sacrifice ... hmm ... not so much. Oh, some people sacrifice, but they're the same ones, over and over. They're the dedicated people who've joined the armed forces for a variety of reasons -- some to serve their country, some to get an education and training, some to find adventure, and some because they were looking for purpose -- and who are now prevented from leaving when their time is up by stop loss orders and broken promises that they won't have to go back again, or at least not anytime soon. They're the ones whose pain and suffering I have heard at times dismissed or minimized because "they volunteered." Our leaders talk about supporting the troops, and everyone has a yellow magnet on their car, but try discussing raising taxes or sacrificing anything to pay for the war. Try discussing services for returning vets, some of whom are horribly wounded and traumatized. Try talking about the need to provide services for the families of our military, whose providers and parents, sometimes both parents, have been to war as many as three or four times.

Maybe we will be able to talk of such things now that the leadership has changed in Washington. In the meantime, then, we should remember Pearl Harbor and its survivors who gathered for their five year reunion.

Here's their story.

Time for A New GI Bill

2006-12-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

There's a new book out by Edward Humes called Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream. I heard an announcement that Mr. Humes will be interviewed and the GI Bill discussed on C-Span this weekend at 11 a.m. EST. I have not yet been able to read the book, but a review posted at the publisher's web site read:

"Humes examines and celebrates the G.I. Bill, the benefit program for veterans signed into law two weeks after D-Day. A remarkably farsighted piece of legislation, the G.I. Bill aimed to reintegrate into American society the 16 million veterans who would return from WWII ... In the five years after V-J Day, eight million returning vets made use of the bill's educational provisions, while the bill's loan guarantees brought home ownership within the reach of five million vets, resulting in the explosive development of suburbia ... the bill, he says, was an enormous giveaway program by big government, one that cost a fortune while reaping an even larger fortune for the country ... only meager benefits await those returning from today's wars." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Senator-elect Webb has said that he will introduce legislation for a new G.I. Bill upon entering office. Such a proposal is absolutely necessary. I know of returning vets who do not have enough money to pay for their educations, who are having trouble securing or renewing their employment, and who are struggling to catch up with their contemporaries who did not have to put their lives on hold and were able to go about building their lives without interruption and without concern for a potential new deployment.

Bronze Star Woman

2006-12-05T08:52:00.000-05:00

Spc Ashley Pullen is a National Guardswoman who saved one of her team leaders during an ambush in Iraq. She was awarded a Bronze Star with a V for valor, but now she faces recovery from post traumatic stress disorder.

Ms. Pullen deserves credit for courage and fortitude. She's expecting her first child and struggling to deal with the traumatic effects of her experiences in Iraq. I caught the tail end of a news report last week about the use of a heart medication to treat PTSD, and it was said to show great promise. Perhaps she would benefit from this medication. In the meantime, though, I wish her the best of luck, a true recovery, and a wonderful life with her new baby and husband.
See the complete article here.

Jim Webb Interview With RTD

2006-12-04T10:40:00.000-05:00

Peter Hardin of the RTD interviewed Jim Webb last week and managed to avoid asking him stupid questions like whether he thinks George Allen is a racist, and how his "boy" is doing. Instead, Webb is finally given an opportunity in an interview to discuss legislation he wants to propose and to explain his position on a number of current nominations. Here are some highlights:

Q: Is there a past or present senator whom you think you may model yourself after?

A: In the middle of this campaign, when people were writing about the debates -- that I wasn't answering questions like a political person -- I sat down one night, I said, 'Well, who would be a prototype?' And it came up Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Someone who had spent a great deal of his life in the intellectual world. For him, that was as an academe. But for me, writing is completely intellectual, or largely an intellectual experience.

Someone who was willing to grapple with the really complex issues of society, and tried to bring them into some sort of legislative, governmental resolution.

Editor's note: Moynihan, who died in 2003, served as a Democratic senator from New York for 24 years.

Q: What will be your first legislative effort?

A: The first thing I want to do is introduce the GI bill for the people who have been serving [in the military] since 9/11 ... Every war era has a different kind of GI bill. But I think the best one for the people serving since 9/11 is the World War II model, [which] ... covered all your tuition, any college you can get into, plus bought your books and gave you a monthly stipend.

Q: Sen. George Allen would allow visitors to carry a concealed firearm into a national park. You wrote a letter during the campaign on gun issues; do you intend to introduce a bill that would repeal the gun ban in national parks?

A: I'm willing to look at that. I'm a strong Second Amendment person . . . I've not seen Allen's bill.

... The difficulty in gun-control issues has always been that we're such a diverse country -- geographically, demographically and in other ways -- that it's hard to have a national standard on a lot of this stuff. What works in New York City doesn't necessarily work in Southwest Virginia, and vice versa ...
Q: Your thoughts on Bush's nomination of Robert Gates for secretary of defense?
A: ... he seems to have a very realistic approach to the Middle East, and he was a member of the Iraq Study Group, which gives him a fresh and independent look at the problem ... his coming in as secretary of defense might be a signal that the administration is looking for a more constructive way to reduce our presence.

Q: You're not willing to say whether you would support or oppose him, if you had a vote?

A: I've not been able to examine his record in a way that the senators on the Armed Services Committee would be able to.

Q: Do you have a position on proposed federal Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco manufacturing?

A: We'll have to take a look at it and get the advice of people that I respect on it, because I don't have a position on it right now. I don't want to pull one out of thin air either ...
Q: Do you have a position on filling the seat on the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated by J. Michael Luttig?
A: Senator [John W.] Warner has approached me about that. [Warner] asked for my input. We're working on that right now ... For all judicial nominations, I'm setting up an advisory committee of attorneys with strong experience ...

Q: Do you have an opinion on Bush's nomination of William J. Haynes, the Pentagon general counsel, for the 4th Circuit?

A: I have no opinion yet. I'm going to look at his credentials.

Q: Will you be accessible to the media?

A: Absolutely. And . . . I will expect [reporters and editors] to be fair to me ... So there are standards of fairness, but I also understand the adversary nature that's essential to the democracy.

Here's the cite.

Setting Up a Blog

2006-11-30T22:23:00.001-05:00

After spending the last few weeks hanging out on other people's blogs and making a pest of myself I decided I needed a home base for my pestilence. This blog will cover anything that grabs my admittedly scattered attention, but most of the focus will be on politics with a little bit of history, law, and baseball thrown in. Go Nats!