Tag: Iraq

Footing the bill: At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld an earful of criticism over the Bush administration’s policy of using supplemental appropriations to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain said that reliance on emergency spending provided an “end run” around Congress.

Democrats were howling too, arguing that wartime costs should be predictable more than four years after the onset of the Iraq war.

“I don’t know how you can call it an emergency anymore,” McCain told Rumsfeld.

Supplemental spending requests are not held to the same authorization standards as traditional budget submissions.

McCain also argued that supplemental spending was contrary to congressional efforts to improve the appropriations process. Supplemental spending requests are handled solely by the Appropriations committees, and are not held to the same authorization standards as traditional budget submissions.

“To continue to come up here with a, quote, emergency spending request is something that’s become unacceptable and it’s got to stop,” said McCain, long a watchdog of wasteful government spending.

In response, Rummie seemingly contradicted himself:

Rumsfeld responded by saying he could submit the wartime costs in the regular budget, but had been advised by Congress several years ago not to do so because wartime costs were unpredictable. His remarks diverged from his testimony last year that supplemental appropriations were prepared much closer to the time funds are needed, allowing more accurate cost estimates and quicker access to funds.

In two weeks the Pentagon will request $70 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of fiscal 2006, bringing the year’s total wartime emergency appropriations to $120 billion. Appropriators attached a $50 billion bridge fund to the 2006 Defense spending bill, even though it was not requested by the administration.

Cindy Sheehan, via Buzzflash:

This afternoon at the People’s State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?

After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn’t feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn’t disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I didn’t want to be disruptive out of respect for her…

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; “Protester.” He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs…

The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, “That’s Cindy Sheehan.” At which point the officer who arrested me said: “Take these steps slowly.” I said, “You didn’t care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps.” He said, “That’s because you were protesting.” Wow, I get hauled out of the People’s House because I was, “Protesting.”

Do yourself a favor and read the whole article. It’s amazing. Excerpts:

In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was “less and less worth it,” because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can’t hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha…

Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?

…Though it hurts, I believe that his death — and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq — was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator — a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation — a careless disregard for professional military counsel.

But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.

War lies: Bob Geiger at the Yellow Dog Blog was on hand when former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter debated the formerly liberal Christopher Hitchens about the war in Iraq. The event was held at the Tarrytown Music Hall near New York City and was moderated by talk-show host Jay Diamond. Based on Bob’s report, Ritter won the debate quite handily:

“I am as opposed to this war as strongly as one can possibly be against this war,” said Ritter firmly. “I cannot come up with one justification worthy of a single American life for why we’re in Iraq…”

Hitchens, the acerbic British author and Vanity Fair contributor is a self-described “proponent of the Iraq war,” and, while sometimes hard to pin down on his overall political views, clearly came to this event prepared to defend George W. Bush and the Iraq war.

“Another confrontation with Saddam Hussein was inevitable,” said Hitchens in defending the Iraq invasion. “Who should have determined the timing of that confrontation? Saddam Hussein? Or the U.S. and other democratic nations?”

When asked point-blank by the moderator whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had the credible capability of harming the U.S. at the time of the invasion, Hitchens, who was in no position to challenge Ritter’s expertise on the subject, stuck to vague GOP talking points.

“As long as Saddam Hussein was in power, it was not possible for the U.S. to ever relax,” Hitchens said.

Ritter, whose last role at the U.N. was as chief of the “Counter-Concealment Team,” fired back at Hitchens.

“The Iraq Survey Group, headed by David Kay, found [in post-invasion Iraq] that Iraq had destroyed the totality of its nuclear weapons program and confirmed what the CIA had already said about them having destroyed it as far back as the summer of 1991.”

In 2002, I spent an hour or so driving west from Palm Springs listening to Ritter making some of the same points about Iraq in a taped speech on Pacifica Radio. He introduced himself as a lifelong Republican who had voted for Bush in 2000, and then he proceeded to tear apart the Bushists’ phoney rationale for war.

That trip through the desert was a tipping point. Ritter confirmed what I suspected: We were being lied to about the reasons for war. I had supported ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban, but there was no way I could get behind a war that was being cooked up for obscure reasons by a failed Texas oilman and the former CEO of Halliburton, both of whom had axes to grind with Saddam that had nothing to do with national security.

Scott has been right about Iraq from the beginning, so I found this statement in the Yellow Dog’s report very telling:

Absolutely astounding. Dumbfounding. Just too much for words.

The recent comments by Secretary of Defense Donald Dimwit Rumsfeld about Osama bin Forgotten defy credulity.

“I think it is interesting that we haven’t heard from him for close to a year,” Rumsfeld told reporters en route to Islamabad.

“I don’t know what it means, but I suspect in any event if he is alive and functioning that he is spending a major fraction of his time trying to avoid being caught,” Rumsfeld said.

So Donnie just finds it “interesting” that bin Laden hasn’t bombed us lately. And he doesn’t know if bin Laden is dead or alive. Doesn’t sound like he cares too much, either. Is it me, or is this guy just begging for something really bad to happen?

Wait, it gets worse.

Rumsfeld’s comments echoed earlier assessments by the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, but contradicted the assertion of al Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri in a video interview earlier this month that bin Laden’s battle against the West was only just beginning.

Said Rumsfeld, “We just don’t know.”

That’s a big “Duh!” there, good buddy. We don’t know squat and you’re making it sound like you have as much control over that as the weather; like you’re not the frickin’ defense secretary and the war we’re in has so little to do with this guy that we can’t even be roused to find out if the so-called target has passed away from natural causes while waiting on us to get it together enough to find him.

Good job of staying on message by Dewayne Wickham in USA Today. Wickham reminds us of last year, when Bush told Matt Lauer that the war on terror couldn’t be won, that we can only “create conditions so that … those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world, let’s put it that way.” He worries that Bush has now morphed into thinking that we can win after all, if we win in Iraq.

…it wasn’t the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his ilk that sparked the war in Iraq. It was the Bush administration’s desire to settle old scores with Saddam. And it’s an illusion because it masks the president’s failure to pursue the man who ordered the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on this country as aggressively as he does the fight in Iraq.

Think about it.

When was the last time you heard Bush speak more than fleetingly about other fronts in the broader war? Virtually all of the troops and resources devoted to the war on terror have been sent to Iraq. If you listen closely to what Bush has been saying recently as he has stumped the country trying to reignite support for the war in Iraq, it sounds as though he thinks the war on terror will end when the U.S. declares victory in Iraq.

“These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield — and they seek to attack us wherever they can. This has attracted al-Qaeda to Iraq, where they are attempting to frighten and intimidate America into a policy of retreat,” the president said Sunday night in an Oval Office address to the nation.

That’s the new “domino theory.” It’s born of the Bush administration’s warped war policies — a jingoism that used the war on terror as an excuse to topple Saddam’s brutal regime. Unlike the broader war on terror that Bush once said we couldn’t win, the president is certain we will prevail in Iraq.

I worry that he is obsessing on the wrong fight.

Just in time for Christmas! Which is the only thing I don’t like about this – the timing. The report is being released tomorrow – just as the country is blanking out for the holidays. Whatever impact it might have will likely be forgotten by the time Congress comes back next year:

House Judiciary Committee Democrats, spearheaded by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), are set to release possibly the sharpest congressional critique to date surrounding Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

The report, titled “The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Coverups in the Iraq War,” is slotted to be made available to the public Tuesday. RAW STORY acquired a copy of the book’s cover and some additional information about the document today.

According to Democratic aides, the report will focus on alleged manipulation of pre-war intelligence by the White House, specifically covering such topics as the Downing Street Minutes as well as the White House position on the Geneva Conventions and international law as regards its policies toward prisoners of war. Sources say the report is slated to be published as a book.

The ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Conyers had previously pushed for an inquiry into the Downing Street Minutes, official minutes of a 2002 meeting among British Prime Minister Tony Blair, members of British intelligence MI-6, as well as Bush administration advisers. Most notably, the minutes included a comment from British intelligence director Richard Dearlove, who was quoted in a secret meeting before the war as saying “intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”