Author: Buck Banks
Four Years Later: Mission Still Accomplished!
Uh, remind me again, what was the mission and how do we measure “accomplished?” Heckuva job, Bushie!
Bush Should Veto the Iraq Spending Bill Until We have a Timetable for Bringing Home the Contractors
The Democrats, as usual, have it all wrong when it comes to Iraq. We don’t need a timetable for bringing home the troops, we need one for the contractors and subcontractors — that’s where the real money is going. Of course, then you’d have to know how many of them there are.
The Iraq reconstruction effort, while prone to waste, is experiencing less fraud since a crackdown in 2004.
David M. Walker, chief of the Government Accountability Office told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that not only doesn’t the Defense Department know howmany contractors and subcontractors it has, it also doesn’t know what they are doing over there..
Because the U.S. military relies so heavily on defense contractors, it qualifies for the trifecta of boondoggles: fraud, waste and abuse. DoD is so bad about spending our money responsibly that this testimony was taken in January, but only released in an unclassified version last week.
Oh, and Defense lacks guidelines on using contractors, too, but if it did have guidelines, it wouldn’t have enough contract oversight personnel to ensure that contracted work gets done.
Is this beginning to sound like the same guys that brought us the post-Katrina response? You bet!
It gets better: Last Thursday the Office of Management and Budget released a new certification for project and program managers designed to ensure they have the skills to define and manage contracts. But — and here’s the good part —
Defense is exempt on the grounds that it already has a similar program.
But there is a bright spot in the government’s management of the war — the reconstruction effort, while prone to waste, is experiencing less fraud since a crackdown in 2004.
Quote du Jour
The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
— Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of Harvard Law School
Poll: Most Americans Don’t Want Veto of Iraq Funding Bill
The Pew Research Center has just released a poll that found six out of 10 Americans do not want President Bush to veto the Iraq spending bill that calls for a timetable for troop withdrawal. That’s almost as many Americans as voted for Al Gore for president in 2000!
The poll detected deep-seated pessimism among Americans for prospects in Iraq.
The challenge is that neither side seems inclined to compromise: 54 percent of withdrawl timeline supporters do not want the Senate to compromise with Bush to avoid a veto; likewise, 54 percent of those opposed to a timeline for withdrawal do not want Bush to back down on his veto promise. Not that that’s very likely.
The poll detected deep-seated pessimism among Americans for prospects in Iraq, and for the first time a majority (51 percent) of respondents said they did not think the U.S. would succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq. Only a quarter think that the troop surge is having a positive effect and only a third think it will have a positive long-term effect on the situation in Iraq. Forty-one percent believe that maintaining a military presence in Iraq increases the likelihood of a terrorist attack on the U.S., while 45 percent say withdrawing would increase the odds of a terrorist attack on American soil.
Even Republicans are growing disenchanted with Bush’s handling of the war. Almost half (45 percent) say they want a candidate for president who will take a different approach from Bush’s, while only 41 percent say they want a candidate who will cary on in Bush’s footsteps. When applied to both Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, however, the number wanting a change in strategy jumps to 52 percent.
Quote du Jour
I am persuaded that diverse of you, who lead the people, have labored to build yourselves in these things; wherein you have censured others, and established yourselves ‘upon the Word of God.’ Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say? I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
— Oliver Cromwell
McCain On Gonzales — ‘Nobody Asked Me’
In a post earlier today, I quoted John McCain as telling The Politico that nobody had asked him whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign. That no one would ask one of the putative GOP front-runners in the prez election what he thought about what is rapidly becoming a non-partisan issue struck an alert Editor Trish as odd. So she sent me back to the Internets to see what I could find.
‘That’s why I think the attorney general would be serving the man he admires and has been friends with for many, many years by stepping down.’
— John McCain
— John McCain
Indeed, either McCain’s memory is as bad as Gonzales’ or he is lying about being asked the question before yesterday when he said Gonzales should resign.
This quote ran in an April 20 story about gun control in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings:
Yesterday, McCain reiterated his strong support for the war in Iraq and was noncommittal on the future of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. McCain said he believes how Gonzales handled yesterday’s hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee will be a key factor in whether he should remain in office or resign.
This ran
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters in New Hampshire as he officially declared his presidential candidacy that he would have more to say on Gonzales on Thursday. Then, he told CNN’s Larry King that he was “very disappointed” in Gonzales’ performance and, asked whether Gonzales should step down, said: “I think that out of loyalty to the president that that would probably be the best thing that he could do.”
But that’s all I could find. Maybe they didn’t ask, or maybe McCain just didn’t tell.
This is the rest of what McCain told The Politico yesterday, before he blabbed to Larry King:
“But the Justice Department is the last institution of government where there should be any politicization of any kind. We’re talking about the administration of Justice.
“That’s why I think that the situation has been very frustrating to a lot of people. But I also think it’s probably harmed the president. That’s why I think the attorney general would be serving the man he admires and has been friends with for many, many years by stepping down.â€
Asked why the situation had been allowed to drag on so long, McCain said: “I really don’t know. You see these things happen and it’s pretty easy for you to figure out.†But he added that it can be less clear “inside the bubble.â€
McCain also said ruefully that he had no insight into communication among the president’s inner circle. “As you know,†he said with a mischievous smile, “I’m not the most frequent visitor to the White House.â€
And the way McCain’s campaign is going, it doesn’t look like his White House visit frequency is going to increase any time soon.
Costly Collaboration: Mainstream Media Gave the Bush Administration a Pass on Run-Up to the Iraq War
Perhaps Jon would not have been so surprised at the New York Post’s creative editing of an Associated Press story if he had watched the premiere of Bill Moyers’ new PBS series, “Buying the War,” last night. He would have still been angry and depressed after watching the parade of well-known journalists admit to giving the Bushites a pass on such important stories as Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda and 9/11, weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq war as an essential component of the neocons’ War on Terror.
While all of those stories have since come to be labeled lies, the lack of skepticism from the press at the time and the incessant drumming of the Bush admin’s messages into the ears and minds of a shell-shocked populace have resulted in the grim fact that more than half of Americans still believe that Saddam had WMDs and links to al Qaeda. That’s what happens when the press abdicates its role as watchdog over freedom.
You can watch the 90-minute documentary here or read a transcript of it here. But be prepared to get angry and depressed by what you see and read.
Crackpot McCain Piles on Gonzales
From the Who Cares file: There are no sympathetic characters in this drama. Prez candidate and song stylist John McCain yesterday took an opportunity to try and position himself as a political outsider by calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ resignation. Why did it take him so long to say that he thinks Gonzo should go? Nobody asked him, he told The Politico yesterday.
“Out of loyalty to the president, he [Gonzales] should obviously step down,†McCain said. “He’s not serving the president well. I reached that conclusion a long time ago. I just haven’t been asked.â€
Gee, the biggest political story in the news and nobody has asked one of the putative GOP presidential candidates what he thinks on the topic? Maybe nobody cares. Or maybe they are afraid he’ll start singing again.
In related news, the Senate Judiciary committee is mathematically challenged:
On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the panel’s topic Republican, wrote to Gonzales seeking more information.
“By some counts you failed to answer more than 100 questions, by other counts more than 70, but the most conservative count had you failing to provide answers well over 60 times,†the blistering letter says.
Giving Gonzales more opportunitites to lie and obfuscate won’t accomplish anything, but it does give the illusion that the Senate is doing something. And maybe McCain should come up with a new tune for the Gonzales case, say, to the tune of Warren Zevon’s “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money.”
American Family Association Defaming Hate-Crime Legislation
Disturbing distortions: I suppose it would be way too much to ask Donald Wildmon, head of the arch-conservative, hyper-religious American Family Association, not to lie. When it comes to pushing his homophobic agenda, facts become irrelevant in his efforts to stir up his constituents about hot-button issues.
If this Thought Crimes law passes, your right to share politically incorrect parts of your Christian faith could, in fact, become a federal crime.
— Donald “Wildman” Wildmon
— Donald “Wildman” Wildmon
His latest target is H.R. 1592, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, which has been introduced in the House of Representatives and is headed toward a vote. Wildmon wants his legions of religious zealots to believe that, “If this Thought Crimes law passes, your right to share politically incorrect parts of your Christian faith could, in fact, become a federal crime,” he wrote on the AFA’s Web site and included in an e-mail alert today.
According to Wildmon’s view, “‘hate crimes’ laws inevitably leading to ‘hate speech’ laws targeted specifically at Christians and other faith groups who hold traditional beliefs on homosexuality.” Yeah, and smoking pot inevitably leads to mainlining heroin and following Islam inevitably leads to a life of terrorism. While Wildmon would like to have his followers believe that embedded in this bill is some poison pill that will undermine the entire Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our society, it is instead a bill that provides funds to local law enforcement to prosecute hate crimes.
The only catch is the $5 million annual alottment is held by the U.S. Attorney General, who provides the dough in the form of grants when communities apply for it. But hopefully by the time the bill is made into law we will have a new, competent AG. The bill effectively gives smaller and rural communities access to funds to pursue hate crime investigations and prosecutions that they might otherwise not be able to afford.
And these crimes are not merely calling someone names. Crimes covered under the statute are serious, violent, often involving guns or weapons, and always resulting in serious bodily injury or death.
What I think really galls Wildmon is the bill’s provision that adds gender, sexual identification and gender identity to the list of real or perceived attributes — including race, color, religion and national origin — that constitute the basis of hate crimes. He blames Democrats and gay activists for this assault on the family and the church, but his arguments, based as they are on lies and distortions, only serve to deceive his already deeply misguided followers.
One of Wildmon’s more blatant lies is calling the legislation a Democratic Party bill that he says the Dems are passing to make good on unspecified campaign promises to gay activists. While indeed the bill is sponsored by John Conyers, D-Detroit, it has 112 co-sponsors, among them such Republican stalwarts as Christogpher Shays of Connecticut, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Mark Kirk of Illinois and others.
So get on board with H.R. 1592. It’s a good law, and one that we hope will help deter hate crimes.
