Day: May 17, 2007

Bush Refused to Say Who Ordered the Goulish Arm-Twisting Visit to Ashcroft’s Hospital Room

Jon Ponder

At a news conference today, Pres. George Bush refused to say who sent two of his most senior officials to then-Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft’s hospital room to twist his arm on warrantless wiretapping. Via Think Progress:

Back in those happy days in the 90s, if Clinton had refused to answer a question like this a shitstorm would’ve erupted. Ted Koppel would’ve put up a “17 days and still no answer” clock. Tweety would have had 37 blond conservative lawyers on every night to demand “accountability.”

KELLY O’DONNELL, NBC NEWS: Sir, did you send your then chief of staff and White House counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft while he was ill to get him to approve that program, and do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?

BUSH: Kelly, there’s a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn’t happen. I’m not going to talk about it. It’s a very sensitive program. I will tell you that one, the program was necessary to protect the American people and it’s still necessary, because there’s still an enemy that wants to do us harm, and therefore I have an obligation to put in place programs that honor the civil liberties of the American people — a program that was, in this case, constantly reviewed, and briefed to the United States Congress. And the program, as I say, is an essential part of protecting this country, and so there will be all kinds of talk about it. As i say, I’m not going to move the issue forward by talking about something as highly classified subject. I will tell you, however, that the program was necessary.

O’DONNELL: Was it on your order, sir?

BUSH: As I said, the program is a necessary program that was constantly reviewed and constantly briefed to the Congress. It’s an important part of protecting the United States, and it’s still an important part of our protection, because there’s still an enemy that would like to attack us, no matter how calm it may seem in America, an enemy lurks and they would like to strike. They would like to do harm to the American people, because they have an agenda. They want to impose an ideology. They want us to retreat from the world. They want to find safe haven, and these just aren’t empty words. These are the words of al Qaeda themselves, and so we will put in place programs to protect the American people that honor the civil liberties of our people and programs that we constantly brief to Congres

Can you imagine this scenario if Bill Clinton had dodged a question this way? Atrios can:

Back in those happy days in the 90s, if Clinton had refused to answer a question like this a shitstorm would’ve erupted. Ted Koppel would’ve put up a “17 days and still no answer” clock. Tweety would have had 37 blond conservative lawyers on every night to demand “accountability.” etc… etc…

But Bush answered the question by not answering it, says Digby:

Bush was deeply involved. He met with both Comey and Mueller on the issue after they all said they’d resign. The spinners are trying to say that their Dear Leader finally overruled others who had nefarious intentions , but his refusal to answer the question today should put that to rest. There’s no reason for him to launch into such outdated 2003 gibberish about enemies lurking who “would like to strike” if he didn’t order it. It’s obvious that he did.

Bush Opposes Pay Raise for Troops and Benefit for Widows of Soldiers Killed in Battle

Pensito Editors

Army Times, via Speaker Pelosi’s website, The Gavel:

Troops don’t need bigger pay raises, White House budget officials said Wednesday in a statement of administration policy laying out objections to the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill.

The Bush administration had asked for a 3 percent military raise for Jan. 1, 2008, enough to match last year’s average pay increase in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee recommends a 3.5 percent pay increase for 2008, and increases in 2009 through 2012 that also are 0.5 percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises.

Here’s the actual language from the administration:

Military Pay: The Administration strongly opposes sections 601 and 606. The additional 0.5 percent increase above the President’s proposed 3.0 percent across-the-board pay increase is unnecessary.

And widows’ current benefits are “sufficient”:

Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance: The Administration opposes section 644, which would pay a monthly special survivor indemnity allowance of $40 from the DoD Military Retirement Fund. The current benefit programs for survivors, DoD’s Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) and Department of Veterans Affairs’ Dependency Indemnity Compensation (DIC), provide sufficient benefits…

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Militarism is fetish worship. It is the prostration of men’s souls before, and the laceration of their bodies to appease, an idol. What they do not see is that their reverence for economic activity and industry, and what is called business, is also fetish worship.

— Thorstein Veblen, American social scientist

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.