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Are You on the Terror List? 509,000 People Are

Trish

The FBI watch list of suspected terrorists is so long, it would be easier to tell you who they’re not monitoring than who they are.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.

The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.

You can check the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control list of suspected money launderers yourself

A portion of the FBI’s unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to “the entire watch list of 509,000 names,” which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force…

“It grows seemingly without control or limitation,” said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure “stunning.”

“If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless,” he told ABC News. “You’ll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror.”

“Useless” is probably accurate.

U.S. lawmakers and their spouses have been detained because their names were on the watch list.

Reporters who have reviewed versions of the list found it included the names of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, at the time he was alive but in custody in Iraq; imprisoned al Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui; and 14 of the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers, all of whom perished in the attacks.

The same can be said for the OFAC list, which all financial institutions must check before opening a new account. That’s right, before you can open a checking account, some poor teller has to look to see if you’re there.

But unlike the FBI’s “secret” list, you can check the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control list of suspected money launderers yourself by simply going here.

After you get through the A’s, which all start with “Al-” something, the list gets more interesting. But like the FBI’s, it still contains this entry, under a couple of different spellings:

HUSSAIN, Saddam (a.k.a. ABU ALI; a.k.a. AL-TIKRITI, Saddam Hussein;
a.k.a. HUSAYN, Saddam; a.k.a. HUSSEIN, Saddam); DOB 28 Apr 1937;
POB al-Awja, near Tikrit, Iraq; nationality Iraq; named in UNSCR
1483; President since 1979 (individual) [IRAQ2]

Is it any wonder Americans don’t want to hand over their civil liberties in exchange for the “security” offered by our government?

Troops in Iraq are Getting Shortchanged on Medical Care

Buck Banks

Need some M*A*S*H with that surge? A recently uncovered Army report (not released to the media or public, of course) found that medical support services in Iraq are not what they should be. The report noted shortcomings in medical staff training, medevac facilities and a lack of lab personnel and facilities that means blood samples are shipped all the way to Germany for testing.

‘It could be a bloody — it could be a very difficult August.’
— George W. Bush, on his surge

A shortage of lab and pharmacy technicians makes it difficult to conduct tests near the battlefields, according to briefing slides prepared by the Army Medical Department. When the Army can hire lab personnel, they frequently need additional training, according to the briefings. To complete lab tests, the Army must send patients’ samples to the Landstuhl Regional Army Medical Center in Germany, a process that can take two to three weeks to return results to medical facilities in Iraq.

Even when lab work can be done in Iraq, it is often conducted on an ad hoc basis. “Blood collection and apheresis [separation of blood components, such as platelets] are ‘Hey you’ tasks,” according to the briefings, which were conducted in February during a mid-year review for Maj. Gen. Ronald Silverman, commander of the Iraq-based Task Force Three Medical Command. The Army Medical Department Center and School conducted the review, which included representatives from major Army commands, divisions and brigade combat team surgeons.

The findings point out deficiencies in what is otherwise a vast improvement in battlefield medicine in the past 15 years. The advances, together with a system of medevac helicopters that can transport a wounded soldier from the battlefield to a field hospital in an hour or less, have boosted the survival rate of Iraq casualties to nearly 95 percent.

Still, the briefings portray a combat medicine operation struggling under inadequate and poor training. For example, the briefings describe combat medics who are poorly trained to perform emergency surgical airways when working in the field. Performing airway procedures is a key component of emergency medicine, which includes insuring that a patient can breathe and stopping a patient’s bleeding.

Government Executive, which broke the story, sent written questions to the Army regarding the specifics of the briefings. The Army’s response was a typical Catch-22:

Army headquarters did not respond by the time this article was posted. Cynthia Vaughn, head of public affairs at the Army Medical Department, declined to respond because she said the briefings were marked “For Official Use Only” and “are not intended for public release, and it would be inappropriate for us to respond to questions relating specifically to this document.”

So let’s be clear, since the materials were not intended for public release, the Army won’t comment on them, even though the materials now have been released, as of publication of this article. Sounds like a new version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” only it’s now “You Can Ask Till You’re Blue in the Face, but We Won’t Tell.”

Although the survival rate of casualties is about 95 percent, the kinds of wounds inflicted in Iraq are typically more serious than in previous conflicts. And as improvised explosive devices get ever more powerful, the wounds they cause require faster, better critical care. We have just finished what has been the bloodiest month of 2007, with 127 Americans and two Britons killed in May. The total of American casualties has now exceeded 25,000 since the war began.

And it looks like it will get worse before it gets better. Even George Bush has admitted that his so-called surge will likely produce more U.S. casualties.

“We’re going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months. We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties,” Bush said at a press briefing in the Rose Garden in late May. “It could be a bloody — it could be a very difficult August.”

And just when the troops will need it most, it appears that their medical support won’t be as good as it should be. Typical. Just like the administration sent them into Iraq without body armor or armored Humvees, so it now is surging them with insufficient medical supplies, personnel and facilities.

Heckuva job, Bushie!

Gotta See This Video. Then Show It To Somebody Else

Trish

Outrage fatigue and Bush fatigue make us forget there are others like us out there. Watch this video and remember there is cause for hope as well as outrage. Then visit the web site to learn more.

Avaaz.org (Our name means “Voice” or “Song” in several languages including Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Nepalese, Dari, Turkish, and Bosnian) is a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. Our aim is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people — and not just political elites and unaccountable corporations — shape global decisions.

DoD to Troops: No More Social Networking; Now Go Surge!

Buck Banks

Speaking of military appreciation: The Department of Defense has banned soldiers from accessing social-networking Web sites like YouTube, MySpace and MTV.com. Why? Ostensibly because they take up too much bandwidth downloading videos of their child’s first steps or a piano recital, you know, life stuff. Like any big corporation, the DoD doesn’t allow soldiers to use DoD computers for personal stuff, though they can access AOL or Yahoo! to send e-mails to loved ones.

‘Leaving comments on myspace was his way of letting us know he was okay.’

Hardest hit by the ban are military families:

One woman, who could not be reached separately for comment, wrote: “My son is deployed in Iraq, I don’t get much news from him, letter writing is not his thing I guess. MySpace is a way for me to see that he is ok. I can just log on, go to his page and see that he has logged on for the day. That alone takes some of the worries away.”

Another woman wrote similarly, describing how difficult it was not to know what was happening to her son, who served with the Army’s Special Forces in Baghdad.

“We could not always connect via phone. Leaving ‘comments’ on myspace was his way of letting us know he was okay. He could send a note to everyone on his friends list in one posting. I lived to see he had logged on. His … unit already had myspace and youtube blocked. He had to search to find a DoD or private computer that would allow him to log on. The DoD has NO idea how much I lived for those log on’s. It told me MY kid was okay.”

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) is on the case, but it looks unlikely that Defense will lift the ban.

Iraqi Parliament Majority Favors U.S. Withdrawal

Jon Ponder

Our Liberal Media seems desperate to bury this story. Via BuzzFlash.com, I found it buried inside the Washington Post site:

A majority of members of Iraq’s parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq’s legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament’s approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007

Sussing Out Bush’s Never-Ending Surge

Buck Banks

Political analyst Craig Crawford equates the pattern the Bush administration has established with Congress with Muhammad Ali’s infamous boxing tactic he used against George Foreman — the “ropa dope.” By laying back on the ropes, Ali was able to prolong the fight until Foreman wore himself out whaling away on him.

The White House might be preparing the way for another “ropa dope” of Congress.

Crawford sees the same kind of tactic at work in George Bush’s surge, which seems to somehow keep getting extended. As Crawford sees it:

Back in December, when Bush announced his new Iraq strategy, his GOP war supporters — and even the White House itself — had pinpointed this summer as the soft deadline for determining whether it is working. But early last month the president announced that the troop boost would not even be completed until June, thus buying a few more months.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., among others in their party, are now settling upon September as a deadline. But the White House might be preparing the way for another “ropa dope” of Congress. Yesterday the Pentagon announced that another 35,000 troops were notified that they are likely to be heading to Iraq by December. That suggests that, come September, the White House will be asking for a reprieve until the end of the year — and possibly beyond.

Dick Morris: Keep Troops in Iraq As a ‘Convenience’ to Terrorists

Jon Ponder

Political terror: One of the stupidest scare tactics deployed by Pres. Bush et al is that idea that if we leave Iraq, the 4,000 or so al Qaeda terrorists there would “follow us home.” Obviously, nothing about our presence in Iraq prevents al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq — or Afghanistan, Pakistan, London, Düsseldorf or anywhere else — from coming here.

“Convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.”
— Dick Morris

You’d have to be pretty thick not to see through that, but since the Bushies continue to hammer at it, it must be working with their base.

Now Dick Morris, the professional Clinton-hater and semi-pro foot fetishist, has taken this dumbest of all war rationales to the next level, saying we must keep our troops in Iraq to serve as live bait for the terrorists:

One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within [the terrorists’] arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.

Translation: Support our troops by making them terrorist magnets.

What is really scary here is the fact that about a quarter of our fellow citizens are so ignorant and/or easily deluded that they can’t parse the cynicism behind statements like these.

Writing the Book on Iraq Reconstruction

Buck Banks

Wasteful reading: The plot is thick, the characters familiar. The inspector general tasked with overseeing the Iraq reconstruction has been criticized by disgruntled former employees for using agency resources and personnel to produce a book along the lines of the 9/11 Commission Report about the reconstruction. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen is currently the subject of an ongoing investigation that some believe might have been instigated from the White House due to the agency’s occasional (gasp!) criticisms of the Bush adminsitration’s handling of the decon … er … I mean reconstruction of Iraq.

Waste represents a transgression that is less than fraud and abuse, and most waste does not involve a violation of law.

SIGIR spokeswoman Denise Burgess said the project, called the “Story of Iraq Reconstruction,” or SIR, is a “capping report” that will present SIGIR’s unique perspective on the reconstruction, including the period before oversight was established.

“What it’s not going to be is a publication with a whole bunch of reports in it,” Burgess said, explaining that it would use a narrative style to appeal to a wide audience. Citing the Iraq Study Group report and the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission as models, she said the SIR project would “drill up” to capture the full picture of reconstruction.

Burgess said plans for publishing the report still are being fleshed out, but it is expected to be complete by the end of 2007. She said she did not know the size of the team working on it, but said it consisted of in-house employees, though she said contractors have done much of the writing for the IG’s quarterly reports to Congress and three lessons learned reports.

But, in a plot twist eerily similar to the firing of federal prosecutors, some have seen the heavy hand of the White House behind the yearlong investigation:

Some news reports have suggested that the investigation could be a form of retaliation by administration officials against Bowen, whose office often has been critical of the reconstruction effort.

White House spokesman Tony Snow also has said there is no link between the White House and the investigation, noting that “when people raise allegations, somebody is going to look into it.”

So who can blame Bowen for wanting to protect his reputation in these days of legacy-building? Meanwhile, he continues the difficult task of overseeing the rebuilding of a ruined country:

In February, Bowen worked with the head of the Government Accountability Office and IGs at the State and Defense departments to come up with a common definition for “waste.” The overseers agreed that “waste represents a transgression that is less than fraud and abuse, and most waste does not involve a violation of law. Rather, waste relates primarily to mismanagement, inappropriate actions or inadequate oversight.”

Whew! I’m glad we finally got that “waste” definition out of the way four years into the thing. Now we can carry on with the real job of rebuilding. Once we definitively define it, that is.

Bush Should Veto the Iraq Spending Bill Until We have a Timetable for Bringing Home the Contractors

Buck Banks

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.