Senator Santorum
Santorum’s Gallows Poll at Pushing Rope
The Heretik at The American Street
Fester at Comments From Left Field
Rummy Should Be Worried at Loaded Mouth
A look back at The Onion in January, 2001
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Pathetic
I am speechless. To think that this administration and it’s Republican party patsies would be willing to wipe away three centuries of progress by tossing habeas corpus out the window in order to save their pathetic little political lives is effin’ nauseating.
From today’s NY Times:
Enemy Combatants:
A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill
could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign
citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and
indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give
the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.The Geneva Conventions:
The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by
allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation
methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret —
there’s no requirement that this list be published.Habeas Corpus:
Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to
challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor
coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance
to prove their innocence.Judicial Review:
The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system,
except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and
bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or
indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is
to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.Coerced Evidence:
Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable
— already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined
in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005
Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.Secret Evidence:
American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is
kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate
executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney
seems to weaken protections against such evidence.Offenses:
The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of
the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape
and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only
forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex.
The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
Condi Rice
Crooks And Liars with Jack Cafferty’s take on Bush’s comment about the violence in Iraq; “I like to tell people, when the final history is written on Iraq,it will look like just a comma.”
Shakespeare’s Sister on more of Condi’s lies.
political, cartoons, political cartoons, Condi Rice, satire, Middle East
Disco is Back OR Hollowing the Army
ABC News is reporting that senior US Army officials want to expand the size of the active duty force by 60,000 individuals in future fiscal years. This is a good way to continue having the US Army see its rock bottom days of the mid-70s again as it already is seeing brigades train for combat deployment with no equipment and only half of its authorized manpower, bases are seeing their electricity reduced because the support commands can not pay the bills, and recruiting standards have already dropped.
There are two basic ways to increase the size of the US Army. The first is to increase the intake of new individuals. The second is to slow the outflow of individuals who are already in the system. I will address the first, and then the second issue. The FY05 recruitment pool was held to near peacetime standards (high school graduate, average or better intelligence, no major trouble with the law, in pretty good health, and young), and these standards led to an a shortfall of roughly 8,000 individuals for the US Army. In the past fiscal year, the Army has adapted several changes. Some of these changes are neutral to force quality — handing out larger bonuses, engaging in more targetted marketing, increasing the number of recruiters, while other changes have lowered the average quality of recruit. These changes increasing the acceptable age of recruits to 42 years old, doubling or tripling the number of recruits with significantly below average test scores, and a massive increase in moral/criminal waivers. The US Army for its marginal recruits have lost their preferred marginal recruits to Wal-Mart and McDonalds since 2005 and thus have had to go to people with even fewer options to fulfill the demand.
Tom’s Dispatch has an excellent arthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.quote.gif
insert blockquoteicle on the twelve signs of a cracking Army. I want to highlight a single example as it focuses on maintaining individuals within the force pool.
4. Rubber-Stamp PromotionsEarlier this year, the Army admitted that, to maintain desperately needed numbers, it was forgoing almost any measure of quality when it came to its officer corps. According to 2005 Pentagon figures, 97% of all eligible captains were promoted to major — a significant jump from the already historically high average of 70-80%. “The problem here is that you’re not knocking off the bottom 20%,” one high-ranking Army officer at the Pentagon told the Los Angeles Times. “Basically, if you haven’t been court-martialed, you’re going to be promoted to major.” Despite near-guaranteed promotions, the San Antonio Express-News reported that the “Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the number rising to 3,300 in 2007.”
This minimal wash-out rate expands to basic training and other more advanced training schools. The military is not for everyone, and individual skill sets do not always match with the needs of the service. From roughly 1980 to 2003, the US Army often would try to seperate without prejudice individuals who were not a good fit for the Army. That has fundamentally stopped. Once an individual has signed on the dotted lines, the Army is determined to keep them in uniform no matter what.
These are the conditions that exist for the current US Army. If the US Army tries to expand by 60,000 slots, it means some combination of peace breaking out and a recession occurring will drive high quality recruits into the recruiters’ office, and keep high quality officers in uniform, OR a further dropping of internal quality control and a further lowering of incoming recruiting standards.
McCain Concedes Right to Define "Torture" to Bush
You can read the Bill here (pdf file). Other than specifically banning that which was already obviously banned - murder, rape, maiming - the Bill provides a litany of vague and ambiguous phrases (e.g. “Grave Breaches”, “severe physical or mental pain or suffering”) as to what the Bush administration can or cannot do in interrogating detainees and, most disturbingly, the phrases are left to the interpretation of the President himself.
So when McCain, Graham and Warner tell you that water boarding is prohibited, don’t believe them. There is no express provision barring waterboarding, stress positions, sleep depravation, sensory depravation, exposing detainess to extreme temperatures, etc. Indeed, White House officials have made clear, their interpretation of the Bill means the CIA can continue doing what they’ve been doing. The Bill’s also retroactive to 1997 — there must’ve been a lot of this stuff needing ex post facto legal validation.
Worse, the Bill now creates the legal basis military interrogators have said they would need before they too engaged in the techniques that the CIA has been using. The Bill actually expands the ability of our government to torture.
Short of getting another “look at me” moment from an adoring and drooling press, McCain has accomplished nothing in the fight to preserve our national identity as a civilized country that takes the moral high ground against torture.
Uncle Remus
George Allen making aspersions. Start your spin cycle, Georgie!
Scrutiny Hooligans and the need for protest music.
Pushing Rope on the Geneva/Torture deal between The White House and Republicans.
political, cartoons, Political Cartoons, Humor, Satire, Senate, Republicans, Congress, GOP, George Allen, racism, Virginia, Virginia politics, jim webb, james webb, macaca
Iraq War Vets Launch Campaign Ad Targeting Santorum
VoteVets.org is releasing a campaign ad today in Pennsylvania that targets Sen. Rick Santorum specifically for voting “to kill an amendment in 2003 sponsored by Senator Mary Landrieu (Vote #116, 108th Congress, First Session), which would have added $1billion to the budget of the National Guard and Reserves for procurement of equipment - including body armor.”
Here is a preview of the ad.
SENATOR RICK SANTORUM’S RECORD ON TROOPS AND VETERANS ISSUES
Voted to deny the Veterans Health Administration millions of additional dollars by restoring pre-2001 taxes on those making more than $1m and closing tax loopholes corporations exploit. (Stabenow Amendment No. 3141, 3/16/2006)
Voted against giving veterans medical care programs an additional $1.5 billion in 2007. (Akaka Amendment No. 3007, 3/14/2006)
Voted to disallow a vote on an amendment that would ensure that veterans health programs always receive proper funding (Motion to waive CBA, Stabenow Amendment No. 1937, 10/6/2005)
Voted against giving families of the fallen the same amount families of first responders on 9.11 received. Santorum was one of only 25 Senators to take such an extreme stand. (Motion to table Kerry Amendment No. 334, 4/13/2005)
Voted with the extreme of his party to deny Guardsmen and Reservists called to war and had to leave their jobs without pay do not suffer economically. Only 39 other Senators voted in this way (Motion to table Durbin Amendment No. 356, 4/13/2005)
Voted against $1.98 billion more for the VA, including hundreds of millions for health care for those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan when they returned. (Motion to waive CBA, Murray Amendment No. 344, 4/12/2005)
Voted no to increase veterans’ medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006. (Akaka Amendment No. 149, 3/16/2005)
Voted to disallow even a vote on a bill that would have helped ensure proper funding for veterans health care programs forever. (Motion to waive CBA, Reid (for Daschle) Amendment No. 3409, 6/23/2004)
Voted against closing corporate tax loopholes to pay for an increase of $1.8 billion in veterans’ health programs by billions. (Nelson (FL) Amendment No. 2745, 2/10/2004)
Voted no to create a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans’ medical care by $2.7 billion and lower the national debt by reducing the President’s tax breaks for taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million a year. (Daschle Amendment No. 2710, 3/9/2004)
Fund Let’s Slip a Two’fer, and Possibly an October Surprise
On Hardball this evening the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund said two things that are worth noting. First, in defense of the President’s torture sins he said the following,
Chris, you have a shifting definition here. On September 12, 2001, I think almost anything that was done at the time would not have been viewed as torture by the American people. Now it’s September 12, 2006 (sic), it’s five years difference. And I think now that there is a shifting definition.
Huh? If I am not mistaken what Fund is trying to say here is that any torture committed between Sept. 12, 2001 and now can be justified by some sort of crime-of-passion excuse. Nice try but it is for these exact reasons that the Geneva Conventions were written. If all we have to do is justify our bad deeds by saying we were really pissed at the time then the rule of law is replaced by the rule of the wild west.
The second thing Fund did this evening was reveal in a little greater depth what I think is the Republican party’s 2006 October surprise. He kept referring to how there is no credible evidence that torture was committed at Guantanamo Bay, and oh by the way, now all the detainees we have are in Guantanamo Bay. As if them having been transferred there two weeks ago erases anything that may have occurred to them while they were being detained, shall I say, elsewhere.
He then goes on to give the big clue.
I think in the next few months, we’re going to hear how the British extracted information from the people that were planning to blow up those airliners in Britain. And we’re going to have a very interesting debate as to whether or not that will be viewed as a torture.
So, if I have this right Fund is suggesting that we will have real world proof of the administrations “ticking time bomb scenario” revealed to us publicly soon. How convenient. In the midst of a heated mid term election, with the President against the ropes and fighting powerful members of his own party of his desire to redefine torture, a real world example of torture providing actionable inteligence.
Of course I could be wrong but it just seemed like too nice of a piece of foreshadowing to be ignored. As promised I have updated this post with the exact words of Fund which can be found here as transcribed by MSNBC.
James Dobson to Visit Pittsburgh
I was heading south on I-79 this afternoon and was confronted with the “do you want some candy” look of none other than Rev. James Dobson staring down at me from a 40 ft. billboard. Apparently Mr. Dobson has decided to kick off a set of what he is billing as “Stand for the Family Rallies” here in America’s sweating groin of heathenism - Pittsburgh.
In collaboration with leading pro-family groups, Focus on the Family Action and Dr. James Dobson are gearing up for the November elections by hosting rallies intended to mobilize Christian voters.The rallies will kick off in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 20, followed by St. Paul, Minnesota October 3, and Nashville, Tennessee October 16. Brad Miller Public Policy Representative with Focus Action explains the purpose.
These rallies are designed to educate and to motivate pro-family conservative Christians.
That’s right, you too can spend some time with the SpongeBob-o-phobic reverend as he prepares you for the upcoming mid-term elections. Sounds like a blast.
Of course Maria has already beat me to this, but if you are interested in showing your disdain for this fellow you can join Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, show up yourself with a sign and a bullhorn at Mellon Arena, or write the Post Gazette or Tribune Review and let them know what you think.
New Air America Radio Lineup
As of this morning, Monday September 18, 2006, Air America Radio has reorganized the schedule that appears on both it’s internet feed and on XM Satellite Radio. Since the folks that run the website appear to be a bit late in updating their online schedule I figured I would provide it to you.
6-9 AM The Young Turks
9-12 Noon The Sam Seder Show
12-3 PM The Al Franken Show
3-6 PM The Randi Rhodes Show
6-8 PM The Rachel Maddow Show
8-9 PM Politically Direct
9-10 PM EcoTalk
10-12 AM Peter Werbe
Scarborough to Congressional Republicans, Your Constituents are Stupid
In what the Washington Post is billing as the “Republican Advice Issue” Former Republican Congressman and MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough attempts to answer the defining question of this election cycle. How can Congressional Republicans, running for their political lives, deflect responsibility for their failures over the past five years?
I can’t help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church’s Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?
How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?
Easy. Blame George W. Bush.
I have a real hard time with Joe, who claims to be all about accountability and strong moral values, suggesting the way for congressional Republicans to win is to throw the President under the bus. Does this not ring of hypocrisy? The problem isn’t the President, the problem is that once given complete one party control of the government the Republican controlled Congress shirked their main duty as a check on executive power, failed to question a single Bush position, and instead simply rubber stamped everything the Prez threw at them.
Incredibly what Scarborough is saying here is that Americans - more accurately Republican Americans - are so stupid that one more lie coupled with a little blame shifting is their only salvation. I have an alternative solution directed at those in the Republican party that Joe finds so stupid, your best bet for returning to some sort of normalcy in Washington is swallow your pride and ensure the Democrats gain a majority in Congress. This is the only way to guarantee that George W. Bush is held in check for the next two years.
I firmly believe that if this occurs the President will leave office in 2008 with a job approval rating near 60%. What you say? Listen, the downfall of any one party rule is that the bad ideas are given as much credibility as the good. I am no fan of “W” but you have to admit that he would not be nearly as polarizing a figure had he been kept in check over the past five years. Maybe, just maybe asking the president to decide which battles to fight will allow him to become the uniter he ran as in 2001. For America’s sake I can only hope so.
Karl Rove Constructs a Talking Point
This gag was inspired a while back by the fine folks at Republispin, and I’m just getting around to drawing it.
Ron has a great post about the connection between former Deputy Secretary of State Dick Armitage and Pakistan’s Musharraf.
Great News! The Dark Wraith has revamped The Big Brass Blog, originally started by Pam’s House Blend and Shakespeare’s Sister. The Big Brass Alliance will soon follow. Check it out!
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Kristol & Lowry: "Send More Meredith Howards"
Jeebus.
From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
An Army reservist who has become the oldest Wisconsin war casualty in at least 50 years told family members that she worried about being too old and poorly trained for combat.
“We had no idea why she was there,” said Lorraine Stevenson, a cousin of Merideth Howard of Waukesha, who was killed Friday in Afghanistan, five months after her unit arrived there.
Rest In Peace, Ms. Howard. You are a hero.
POSTSCRIPT: Meredith Howard was killed in Afghanistan. A fact that points out another glaring problem with Kristol and Lowry’s editorial that I criticized yesterday. Their call for more troops was only for Iraq … Afghanistan wasn’t even mentioned. In fact, we’ve withdrawn many of our troops from Afghanistan even though the job there is far from being done and is in perilous danger of completely unraveling. This is the job that a vast majority of the American public and the International Community supported. Success in Afghanistan is critical to our credibility as a nation and, hence, our long-term foreign policy.
Yet, Kristol and Lowry ignore the impact “more troops” for Iraq would have and, indeed, has had on Afghanistan. Once again, I stand by my charge that the Post editorial was not a serious proposal by mere political ass coverage for two selfish and egotistical blowhards. For selflessness, we have Ms. Howard.
Stay The Course
Paul at Shakespeare’s Sister on the BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S. Presidential Daily Briefing and Tony Snow’s bullshit.
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Future Kristol & Lowry: The Oasis Was Right Over the Next Dune
Today, Fred Hiatt’s editorial page in the Washington Post gave free space to the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol & the National Review’s Rich Lowry to post a disingenuous piece of bullshit that can only be read as an effort by the two to obtain future ass coverage.
The solution to all things wrong in Iraq, they claim, is MORE TROOPS.
Matt Yglesias has chewed up Kristol for his historical shortcomings on this issue while Glenn Greenwald takes Lowry to the shed for his outright duplicity.
But most disingenuous, in my opinion, is that Kristol and Lowry don’t have the balls to say exactly from where these troops are to come. You certainly aren’t going to see Lowry signing up or Kristol going door-to-door to his friends urging that they or their kids join up.
Nor was the word-that-dare-not-be-mentioned mentioned. Let’s see if you can guess it by filling in the following sentence: “Reggie Bush was the No. 2 selection in this year’s NFL _____.”
They simply provide a proposal for which they offer no viable specifics. The cavalry is just expected to appear magically on the bluff and save the day.
Yet, these two, better than anybody, know that neither Republicans running for reelection nor a president trying to retain control of Congress can demand more troops right now regardless of source. So given that this is a call with no backbone, what gives?
Both Kristol and Lowry see the writing on the wall. The war in Iraq is a failure and the American public isn’t going to tolerate a never ending engagement. They are betting, probably correctly, that the situation will disintegrate further and they want to be able to distance themselves from that failure. But calling for redeloyment or withdrawal is anathema to their followers and they don’t want to be known as sell-outs. On the other hand, being on record as supporting Bush’s doomed policy (one that really includes no plan) is also not appetizing. So, instead, they pimp a hawkish position that their readers will lap up and they can then lay future claim to the line that if we would’ve just kicked a lil more ass, it would not have turned out the way it did. By then, they hope the viability issue of their proposal has long spiraled down the memory hole. And they do this knowing all the while that there is no chance that their proposal will be followed.
This isn’t a serious proposal but mere ass coverage by those who want to indefinitely preserve keeping their collective snouts deep in the rightwing media trough.
As a secondary matter, notice how careful constructed this paragraph - the paragraph which really forms the evidentiary basis for their argument - is:
There is no mystery as to what can make the crucial difference in the battle of Baghdad: American troops. A few thousand U.S. troops have already been transferred to Baghdad from elsewhere in Iraq. Where more U.S. troops have been deployed, the situation has gotten better. Those neighborhoods intensively patrolled by Americans are safer and more secure. But it is by no means clear that overall troop numbers in Baghdad are enough to do the job. And it is clear that stripping troops from other fronts risks progress elsewhere in the country.
Of course, we’ve learned that the Baghdad redeployment has not necessarily worked in decreasing the violence in Baghdad. That’s why the paragraph has built-in deniability all through out it. It really is meaningless upon a close read.
These are two truly pathetic creatures and the Washington Post should be ashamed of allowing them to print such self-serving garbage without demanding that they give some specifics as to viability.
Robbing Peter to pay interest to Paul
The Clauswitzian dictum that war is politics by another mean is no more prominent than in the field of counterinsurgency. Here, the counter-insurgent force should win almost every military fight at or above the platoon level. Here, the counter-insurgent force should be seeing massively imbalanced in their favor kill ratios. Here the counter-insurgent force should enjoy massive advantages of firepower, operational mobility and damage resistance. And yet, the counter-insurgent force despite conventional military superiority often loses as the insurgent force is able to win the higher level political fight.
The Washington Post reports that there are US Marine officers who are seeing this problem repeat itself in Anbar Province.
there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province’s most significant political force……
One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, “We haven’t been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically — and that’s where wars are won and lost.”…..
Counter-insurgency work is long, boring, manpower intensive work that can only produce positive results over a long time period in which the counter-insurgent force is able to build a credible promise of security and superior alternatives than the insurgent force. The insurgent force has a much easier job of only needing to be occassionally successful as a chaos inducing agent while the counterinsurgent force needs to win almost every inflection point of order over chaos.
Besides the initial disdain that the US military had towards counterinsurgency and its marked preference for kinectic force on force engagements where the US usually dominates, one of the other failures of the Anbar counterinsurgency effort has been the lack of troops. The Marines routinely have had to play a shell game with combat units, moving a battalion from Quaim to build a concentration near Hit, uncovering Haditha to reinforce Fallujah and then scrambling back once their rear has been threatened. The general offensive into Fallujah during November 2004 required a theatre wide shell game as British troops backfilled for Marines near Baghdad, and the Army stripped Mosul of its garrison. This trend has continued.
it is a cry for help from an area where fighting remains intense, yet which recently has been neglected by top commanders and Bush administration officials as they focus on bringing a sense of security to Baghdad. An Army unit of Stryker light armored vehicles that had been slated to replace another unit in Anbar was sent to reinforce operations in Baghdad, leaving commanders in the west scrambling to move around other troops to fill the gap.
The US military is losing in Iraq. It is abandoning the chance of an effective counterinsurgency in Al-Anbar province in order to slow down Baghdad’s descent into anarchy. It is not reducing the violence in the capital, but it is conceding the hinterlands of the Sunni Aran insurgency to the insurgency, even though the US has reinforced Ramadi in the past three months.
The US is engaged in a slow collapsing bag of a mission. Baghdad and Al-Anbar are two swirling vortexes that mutually reinforce each other’s destructiveness. Since the United States has neither the physical ability or the political will to supply in the future the physical capability of putting thirty brigades into Iraq for five to ten years, then getting out and minimizing the future costs is the best policy option.
Iraq, Counter-insurgency, Politics