Radiation Therapy Follies

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.