Day: April 30, 2007

Murtha: It May Take Impeachment to Get Bush’s Attention

Jon Ponder

Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., is being scoffed at by the likes of Tucker Carlson on his MSNBC show today for suggesting that it might take impeachment to get through to Pres. Bush about ending the war. On “Face the Nation” yesterday, Murtha said:

[We] need to make this president understand, Mr. President, the public has spoken. There’s three ways or four ways to influence a president. One is popular opinion, the election, third is impeachment and fourth is, and fourth is the purse.

Bush is impervious to popular opinion and election, and his Republican enablers in the Senate have the votes to keep money flowing to Iraq until he leaves office. Tactically, impeachment is the only viable option.

Tucker did his patented faux astonished outrage at the idea Democrats would propose impeachment now because it would shut the government down during wartime — as if Bush has anything to do with running either the government or the war.

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.

American Rightwing Terrorist Arrested in Bomb Attempt – But Not by Homeland Security

Jon Ponder

On Friday, the Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested a homegrown American rightwing terrorist named Paul Ross Evans who had attempted to bomb an abortion clinic in Austin earlier in the week week:

A cynic might wonder if the reason DHS leaves domestic terrorists to task forces like the one in Texas is political, since clinic bombers are tacitly supported by the GOP’s Christian nationalist allies.

A 27-year-old Austin man was … charged with placing an unexploded [sic] bomb containing some 2,000 nails outside an abortion clinic in the state’s capital.

The explosive device also included a propane tank and a mechanism “akin to a rocket,” Austin Police Commander David Carter said.

The device was discovered on Wednesday in the parking lot of the Austin Women’s Health Center, police said.

It is surprising that Evans was arrested by the terrorism task force — which is comprised of federal, state and local law enforcement authorities — and not the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS). And even though Evans was arrested by a terrorism task force, none of the charges against him are terrorism-related:

Evans was charged with violating federal laws banning the manufacture of explosives and interfering with access to an abortion clinic. He appeared before a federal magistrate, and was being held without bail.

No further arrests were anticipated in the case. “The threat is over,” Carter said.

It is exceedingly strange that in the Republican mindset that dominates our culture abortion clinic bombers do not fall under the purview of DHS and yet child predators and pornograhpers do. (I first learned that DHS tracked pedophiles when the department was instrumental in arresting John Mark Karr, the man who falsely claimed to have killed JonBenet Ramsey.)

Certainly, the government has a responsibility to investigate and arrest anyone involved in child predation and porn, but it’s hard to make the case that this problem, serious as it is, is a threat to homeland security. It seems that these sorts of crimes ought to be handled by the FBI.

Conversely, people who bomb abortion clinics are, by definition and intent, terrorists who threaten America homeland security. Who would be better at investigating them than DHS?

A cynic might wonder if the reason DHS leaves domestic terrorists to task forces like the one in Texas is political, since clinic bombers are tacitly supported by the GOP’s Christian nationalist allies.