Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, idiocy, John McCain

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade

Former U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. is going to work for Fox News Channel as a political commentator, the network announced this morning.

Now heading the Democratic Leadership Council and working for Merrill Lynch, the former Congressman from Memphis was bested by Republican Bob Corker in the November election.

The following is the complete text of the press statement put out today by Fox News:

Former Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. has joined FOX News as a political contributor to the network’s news programming, announced Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of FOX News. He will be under contract with FOX News to provide political commentary and analysis on international events and the 2008 election.

Harold Ford, Jr. served Tennessee in the United States Congress for 10 years. He earned a reputation of being one of the most dynamic leaders in the Democratic Party. Described by President Clinton as “the walking, living embodiment of where America ought to go in the 21st century,” Ford is now a Professor of Public Policy at Vanderbilt, Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch.

In making the announcement, Ailes said, “We are very happy that Harold Ford, Jr. will bring his independent voice and brilliant ability to analyze the issues to FOX News. His wealth of experience and insight will be key to FOX as we endeavor to stay on top of fast moving events around the world and here in our own country. The upcoming Presidential campaign will be one of the most interesting in our lifetime and Harold’s depth of knowledge and analysis about American politics will enhance the news we deliver to our viewers.”

Labels: DINOs, DLC

Labels: Republic Party, Valerie Plame

It's hard to tell what the Pentagon's objective really is in releasing the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession. It certainly suggests the Administration is trying to blame KSM for al-Qaeda terrorism, leading us to believe we've caught the master terrorist and that al-Qaeda, and especially the ever-elusive bin Laden, is no longer a threat to the U.S.

But there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy. On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated.

Just as importantly, there is an absence of collateral evidence that would support KSM's story. KSM claims he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation from A-Z." Yet he has omitted details that would support his role. For instance, one of the more intriguing mysteries is who recruited and vetted the fifteen Saudi hijackers, the so-called "muscle." The well-founded suspicion is that Qaeda was running a cell inside the Kingdom that spotted these young men and forwarded them to al-Qaeda. KSM and al-Qaeda often appear bumbling, but they would never have accepted recruits they couldn't count on. KSM does not offer us an answer as to how this worked.

KSM has also not offered evidence of state support to al-Qaeda, though there is good evidence there was, even at a low level. KSM himself was harbored by a member of Qatar's royal family after he was indicted in the U.S. for the Bojinka plot — a plan to bomb twelve American airplanes over the Pacific. KSM and al-Qaeda also received aid from supporters in Pakistan, quite possibly from sympathizers in the Pakistani intelligence service. KSM provides no details that would suggest we are getting the full story from him.

Although he claims to have been al-Qaeda's foreign operations chief, he has offered no information about European networks. Today, dozens of investigations are going on in Great Britain surrounding the London tube bombings on July 7, 2005. Yet KSM apparently knew nothing about these networks or has not told his interrogators about them.

The fact is al-Qaeda is too smart to put all of its eggs in one basket. It has not and does not have a field commander, the role KSM has arrogated. It works on the basis of "weak links," mounting terrorist operations by bringing in people on an ad hoc basis, and immediately disbanding the group afterwards.

Until we hear more, the mystery of who KSM is and what he was responsible for is still a mystery.

Labels: Administration B.S., terrorism

Greenspan did put forward a proposal on how to reduce the growing inequality of incomes in the United States — admit more skilled immigrants into the country.

The former Fed chief said that increasing the number of immigrants with sought-after skills would increase the labor supply of these workers in the United States and hold down the wage gains of all workers with these skills.

In that way, Greenspan said, the gap between skilled and unskilled workers would be lowered. He said it was critical to find ways to address growing income inequality in the United States.

Income inequality ``is where the capitalist system is most vulnerable,'' Greenspan said. ``You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.''

Labels: Alan Greenspan, greed, idiocy

The Homeland Security Department said Wednesday it has created a unit to combat the threat posed by "homegrown terrorists" — citizens or legal residents who plot attacks from inside the nation's borders.

"This phenomenon presents a real and serious challenge to our nation," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a Senate panel.

Labels: terrorism

Labels: Alpha Dogs, bloggers

BLITZER: The White House counsel, Fred Fielding, was up on the Hill today. I don’t know if you had a chance to meet with him. But he’s not necessarily ruling out allowing some White House staffers, maybe even Karl Rove to come and testify. Do you want Karl Rove to testify before your panel?

LEAHY: I’ve never met Mr. Fielding. Frankly, I don’t care whether he says he’s going to allow people or not. We’ll subpoena the people we want. If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they don’t want to have.

BLITZER: Will you subpoena Karl Rove?

LEAHY: Yes. He can appear voluntarily if he wants. If he doesn’t, I will subpoena him. The attorney general said, Well, there are some staff people or lower level people — I’m not sure whether I want to allow them to testify or not. I said, Frankly, Mr. Attorney General, it’s not your decision. It’s mine and the committee’s. We will have subpoenas. I would hope that they wouldn’t try to stonewall subpoenas.

************

BLITZER: But is there anything illegal in putting one of Karl Rove’s associates in and making him the U.S. attorney in Arkansas?

LEAHY: There’s nothing illegal in a president firing — by itself, in firing a U.S. attorney. What it does say, however, to law enforcement, You either play by our political rules — by our political rules — not by law enforcement rules, but by our political rules, or you’re out of a job. What I am saying is that that hurts law enforcement. That hurts fighting against crime. And if it is done to be stop an ongoing investigation — this is something we don’t know — if it is done to stop an ongoing investigation, then you do get into the criminal area.

From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran in Texas, beginning in 1986, the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates' Democratic opponents. Rove happened to have a close and mysterious relationship with the chief of the FBI office in Austin. Investigations were announced as elections grew close, but there were rarely indictments, just tainted Democrats and victorious Republicans. On one occasion, Rove himself proclaimed that the FBI had a prominent Democrat under investigation -- an investigation that led to Rove's client's win. In 1990, the Texas Democratic Party chairman issued a statement: "The recurring leaks of purported FBI investigations of Democratic candidates during election campaigns is highly questionable and repugnant."

A year later, Rove received a reward. Gov. Bill Clements, a Rove client, appointed him to the East Texas State University board of regents. Appearing before the state Senate's Nominations Committee, a Democratic senator asked Rove about how long he had known the local FBI chief. "Ah, Senator," replied Rove, "it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?"

There was once another Republican prosecutor who insisted on behaving professionally instead of obeying partisan hints from the White House. His name was Charles A. Banks, and the Washington press corps said nothing when he was punished for his honesty by the administration of the first President Bush.

The cautionary tale of Chuck Banks begins during the summer of 1992, as the Presidential contest entered its final months with Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton leading incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

At the time, Mr. Banks had already served for five years as the United States Attorney in Little Rock. As an active Republican who had run for Congress and still aspired to higher office, he counted Mr. Clinton among his political adversaries. The first President Bush had recently selected him as a potential nominee for the federal bench. Nothing could have better served Mr. Banks’ personal interests than a chance to stop the Clintons and preserve the Bush Presidency.

In September 1992, a Republican activist employed by the Resolution Trust Corporation provided that opportunity by fabricating a criminal referral naming the Clintons as witnesses in a case against the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association (the small Arkansas savings and loan owned by Whitewater partner and Clinton friend James McDougal).

The referral prepared by L. Jean Lewis lacked merit—as determined by both Mr. Banks and the top F.B.I. agent in his office—but Ms. Lewis commenced a persistent crusade for action against the hated Clintons. The F.B.I. and the U.S. Attorney repeatedly rejected or ignored her crankish entreaties.

[snip]

The Whitewater case didn’t save the first President Bush, but it was later revived as a pseudo-scandal that ultimately wasted almost eight years of investigative effort and tens of millions of dollars in an effort to destroy President Clinton. More pertinent today is what happened to Mr. Banks and Ms. Lewis—and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Little Rock.

Mr. Banks forfeited his promised judgeship and returned to private practice with his political career ended.

The incompetent Ms. Lewis appeared before the Senate Whitewater Committee, where she lied repeatedly before “fainting” under examination by the Democratic counsel. She then disappeared from public view until 2003, when the White House rewarded her with an important federal job. Those who had observed Ms. Lewis in action were astonished when she was named chief of staff to the Pentagon Inspector General, at a salary of $118,000 a year.

An ugly sequel occurred last December, when the Justice Department rudely ousted H.E. (Bud) Cummins III—another upstanding and competent Republican prosecutor in Little Rock—so that a crony of Karl Rove could replace him in the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Was this what George W. Bush meant when he promised to return “honor” and “integrity” to the Oval Office?

For those who didn't follow the whole saga in Washington state (like me) this article gives a full rundown of what happened and the Republicans' insistence that the election was stolen by the Democrats despite no proof that any such thing happened. The Justice Department never "ordered" the US Attorney to do anything. Rove isn't that bold. He had local surrogates do it, just as he did in New Mexico. And when Mckay refused to play ball he was first denied a federal judgeship and then fired.

As Josh Marshall noted last night, the GOP cries of voter fraud go back a long way. It's an extension of their old habits of disenfranchising blacks in the south and latinos in the southwest (as Joe Conason outlines here.)

But since the 2000 election the Democrats have been the ones complaining about voter irregularities and I think that Rove recognized that he could deftly twist the public awareness we created and turn it back on us. His problem was that the Democrats won the election by too wide a margin in 2006 for them to cry fraud in any systematic way --- and some US Attorneys refused to play ball.

If Rove had been successful, however, I suspect that he could have pulled off something even more subversive for 2008. He could have had in place pliant US Attorneys who are willing to keep open all of these cases of "voter fraud" and pursue new ones from the 2008 election. If a Republican wins the presidency, no harm no foul, they just keep pressing, suppressing the vote and pushing the new meme about Democrats stealing elections. If a Dem wins, they exert political pressure to keep these US Attorneys in place for reasons of "justice department integrity" and a Democratic president finds him or herself battling their own Justice Department --- which has been salted with Karl Rove's partisan clones who cannot be fired.

The problem for Karl was that a handful of US Attorneys with integrity wouldn't be pressured with the usual inducements and so they had to be forced out. The problem for Democrats, however, is that if they don't handle this carefully, the scenario I outlined above could happen anyway. You can bet that nothing any Republican says now will stop them from screeching like rabid howler monkeys if a Democratic president tries to replace even one Bush appointed US Attorney in 2009.

Labels: Karl Rove, Patrick Leahy, Prosecutorgate

The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly.

The pumps are now being pulled out and overhauled because of excessive vibration, Corps officials said. Other problems have included overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets, according to the documents obtained by the AP.

Col. Jeffrey Bedey, who is overseeing levee reconstruction, insisted the pumps would have worked last year and the city was never in danger. Bedey gave assurances that the pumps should be ready for the coming hurricane season, which begins June 1.

The Corps said it decided to press ahead with installation, and then fix the machinery while it was in place, on the theory that some pumping capacity was better than none. And it defended the manufacturer, which was under time pressure.

"Let me give you the scenario: You have four months to build something that nobody has ever built before, and if you don't, the city floods and the Corps, which already has a black eye, could basically be dissolved. How many people would put up with a second flooding?" said Randy Persica, the Corps' resident engineer for New Orleans' three major drainage canals.

The 34 pumps — installed in the drainage canals that take water from this bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city and deposit it in Lake Pontchartrain — represented a new ring of protection that was added to New Orleans' flood defenses after Katrina. The city also relies on miles of levees and hundreds of other pumps in various locations.

The drainage-canal pumps were custom-designed and built under a $26.6 million contract awarded after competitive bidding to Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla. It was founded in 1926 and supplies flood-control and irrigation pumps all over the world.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Labels: corporatism, House Republicans, Jeb Bush

Under criticism from lawmakers of both parties for the dismissals of federal prosecutors, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted Tuesday that he would not resign but said, “I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.”

The mea culpa came as Congressional Democrats, who are investigating whether the White House was meddling in Justice Department affairs for political reasons, demanded that President Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, explain their roles in the dismissals.

Labels: accountability

Despite the timid coverage of Dick Cheney's recent speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2007 Policy Conference, America's violent-tongued Vice President gave a speech that all but accused the Democratic party of plotting to commit treason and kill American soldiers. Somehow, the thinly-veiled threats and violent vocabulary of Cheney's horror-soaked speech was missed by CNN when it described the Vice President as "chiding" Democrats.

Reading through Cheney's speech--posted to the White House web site for any journalist to read a full 5 hours before the CNN article appeared on their web site--I was able to quickly pull together the following list of words and the number of times they were repeated, all of which evoke violence and all of which were used by the Vice President in the span of 27 short minutes:

war - 31
terror - 26
enemy - 12
attack - 7
battle - 7
kill - 6
destroy - 4
bomb - 3
weapons - 2
death - 2
murder - 2
violence - 2

In this speech--where CNN claims the VP was only "chiding" Democrats--our NC-17 VP repeated the words "war," "terror,""enemy," "murder," "death" and "kill" enough times to make Quentin Tarantino cover his ears and switch over to the Animal Planet.

For goodness sakes. Cheney's speeches need a warning label: "**WARNING** The Vice President of the United States gives speeches peppered with violent vocabulary that may give you and your children nightmares for days."

Does Dick Cheney really believe that Osama bin Laden is going to rule over a "totalitarian empire" that subsumes all of Europe, the Middle East and even "the islands of Indonesia," destroy Israel, and impose their will on the world with their stockpiles of nuclear weapons? One can debate what's really in someone's mind only with speculation, but I think he probably has come to convince himself of that. There is no doubt that hordes of the hard-core Twenty-Three-Percenter followers have come to believe that. And our foreign policy, and large parts of the domestic behavior of our government, is absolutely predicated on that twisted worldview.

As always, the person whom Cheney quoted most heavily in his speeche yesterday is bin Laden, because they see world events in exactly the same apocolyptic terms.

Labels: Dick Cheney

Labels: homeownership

(AP) U.S. President George W. Bush, left, greets workers during his visit the Labradores Mayas Packing Station in the village of Chirijuyu Tecpan, Guatemala, Monday, March 12, 2007. Labradores Mayas is an agriculture cooperative

Labels: George W. Bush

Should Rudy Giuliani be the Republican nominee in 2008, Democrats can create the same doubt about him, but without relying on distortion. They could instead use the truthful words of sympathetic subjects who credibly blame Giuliani for the loss of their loved ones on Sept. 11.

These are people who have no partisan ax to grind -- many voted for Giuliani for mayor at least twice and would ordinarily have been considered part of his base. That will make their burning desire to set the country straight about his actual 9/11 record harder to dismiss, along with their genuine fear of what kind of president he would be.

The intensity of their feelings can be heard in the voice of Rosaleen Tallon. A stay-at-home mom who supports right-to-life candidates and lives in the unglamorous New York suburb of Yonkers, Tallon lost her brother Sean, a former Marine who became a probationary New York City firefighter, on 9/11. Six years later she is still enraged that Sean never heard the Fire Department's radioed "mayday" order to evacuate the twin towers before they fell. If he had, she says, he would have heeded the directions of his superiors and gotten out.

As Rosaleen will tell anyone willing to listen, the vintage radios that Sean and 342 other city firefighters carried at their deaths on 9/11 were known to be defective. The faulty radios were the target of years of scathing internal assessments, bureaucratic wrangling, and accusations of bidding favoritism, and still the Giuliani administration had never replaced them.

Here, in the radios fiasco, was government paralysis at its worst, the sort he frothed about as a reformist candidate for mayor. The city's firefighters were sent into the towers without the basic ability to send or receive maydays. The buck stops with Rudy, who knew that the same radios had faltered when the World Trade Center was first bombed by terrorists in 1993, the year he was elected mayor.

What is more, just three months before the 9/11 attack, a city firefighter trapped in the basement of a burning house in Queens broadcast a mayday on a high-tech digital radio issued by his administration to replace the older variety. When firefighters battling the blaze didn't hear his SOS -- it was picked up only by radios carried by firefighters a couple of miles away -- an uproar ensued. The firefighter survived, but the high-tech replacement radios, which had never been field-tested, were thus withdrawn, and the firemen went back to relying on their old radios, just in time for 9/11.

And on Sept. 11, the faulty radios were just part of a tableau of dysfunction. Fire Department officials couldn't communicate with police officials, whose helicopters had bird's-eye views of the unstable towers poised to fall. Police and fire communications weren't linked, and no one bothered to set up a unified police-fire command post on the street near the towers, which is Emergency Management 101. Meanwhile, the city's emergency dispatchers fielded a flood of 911 calls from panicked World Trade Center workers and gave out the wrong advice, or just threw up their hands -- "Do whatever you have to do, Sir."

Where was Rudy? He didn't know what to do or where to go because he had put his emergency command center in exactly the wrong place. Against the advice of experts, he had built the emergency command center in the area most likely to be attacked, an area that had already been attacked, the 23rd floor of No. 7 World Trade Center. It was off-limits on the only day it was ever needed.

Giuliani's supporters believe it would be impossible to undermine the ingrained perception of their candidate as a national icon, Rudy the Rock. But imagine what a talented and aggressive Democratic media consultant could do with Giuliani's real 9/11 record. Imagine Rosaleen Tallon and a Greek chorus of angry, bereaved New Yorkers in a spate of heart-tugging commercials. The ads could include not only the family members of men and women killed on 9/11, but also hard hats sickened by prolonged exposure to the toxic ground zero air that Giuliani declared safe to inhale within days of the attack. And the chorus could include the mayor's downtown constituents, who were left to rid their homes of chemical dust without city assistance, risking their own well-being. The New York City government now estimates that 43,000 people have significant 9/11-related health problems. Many, no doubt, would gladly go on camera.

Giuliani's vulnerability can be detected, in part, in his shifting accounts of his actions. He has said, for example, that technology for police-fire interoperability didn't exist at the time the planes slammed into the towers. A fawning 9/11 Commission swallowed that line, but the U.S. Conference of Mayors found shortly before Giuliani's testimony to the commission that of 192 cities it evaluated, three-quarters had radios interoperable across police and fire departments.

Giuliani has also said that firefighters remained in doomed towers because they, as a breed, are wired to their bones and sinews to stand their ground. But firefighters are also part of a quasi-military chain of command and are wired to obey orders during a crisis -- if they can hear them. Tellingly, Giuliani's Republican successor, Michael Bloomberg, who took office in January 2002, had little difficulty outfitting the FDNY with reliable radios, which they now carry with them into harm's way.

"He tells filthy lies, shamelessly parlaying his failures into a multinational empire and national campaign," said Sally Regenhard, the mother of a fallen firefighter. He cut and ran, she says. "All the heroes of 9/11 are dead or wounded, spiritually, emotionally or physically."

"He has alienated pretty much everybody in the 8,000-member fire department -- by and large, we all resent him," said New York City Fire Capt. Michael Gala, citing the city's response on 9/11, the very day upon which Giuliani's presidential hopes will rise or fall. "We don't forget. That's the big thing -- we don't forget."

Labels: 2008 election, 9/11, Rudy Giuliani

The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.

The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.

The White House continued to defend its handling of the dismissals.

“We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion,” Ms. Perino said.

“We stand by the Department of Justice assertion that they identified the seven U.S. attorneys who were removed, as they have said, based on performance and managerial reasons.”

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, Prosecutorgate

Labels: Fox News, idiocy

"This is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective gear. "This whole thing is about taking care of soldiers," he said angrily. "If you are fit to fight you are fit to fight. If you are not fit to fight, then you are not fit to fight."

As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier's "physical profile," an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier's physical limitations because of medical problems -- from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny.

The 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade is now leaving for Iraq for a third time in a steady stream. In fact, some of the troops with medical conditions interviewed by Salon last week are already gone. Others are slated to fly out within a week, but are fighting against their chain of command, holding out hope that because of their ills they will ultimately not be forced to go. Jenkins, who is still in Georgia, thinks doctors are helping to send hurt soldiers like him to Iraq to make units going there appear to be at full strength. "This is about the numbers," he said flatly.

That is what worries Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, who has long been concerned that the military was pressing injured troops into Iraq. "Did they send anybody down range that cannot wear a helmet, that cannot wear body armor?" Robinson asked rhetorically. "Well that is wrong. It is a war zone." Robinson thinks that the possibility that physical profiles may have been altered improperly has the makings of a scandal. "My concerns are that this needs serious investigation. You cannot just look at somebody and tell that they were fit," he said. "It smacks of an overstretched military that is in crisis mode to get people onto the battlefield."

Eight soldiers who were at the Feb. 15 meeting say they were summoned to the troop medical clinic at 6:30 in the morning and lined up to meet with division surgeon Lt. Col. George Appenzeller, who had arrived from Fort Stewart, Ga., and Capt. Aaron K. Starbuck, brigade surgeon at Fort Benning. The soldiers described having a cursory discussion of their profiles, with no physical exam or extensive review of medical files. They say Appenzeller and Starbuck seemed focused on downplaying their physical problems. "This guy was changing people's profiles left and right," said a captain who injured his back during his last tour in Iraq and was ordered to Iraq after the Feb. 15 review.

Appenzeller said the review of 75 soldiers with profiles was an effort to make sure they were as accurate as possible prior to deployment. "As the division surgeon and the senior medical officer in the division, I wanted to ensure that all the patients with profiles were fully evaluated with clear limitations that commanders could use to make the decision whether they could deploy, and if they did deploy, what their limitations would be while there," he said in a telephone interview from Fort Stewart. He said he changed less than one-third of those profiles -- even making some more restrictive -- in order to "bring them into accordance with regulations."

In direct contradiction to the account given by the soldiers, Appenzeller said physical examinations were conducted and that he had a robust medical team there working with him, which is how they managed to complete 75 reviews in one day. Appenzeller denied that the plan was to find more warm bodies for the surge into Baghdad, as did Col. Wayne W. Grigsby Jr., the brigade commander. Grigsby said he is under "no pressure" to find soldiers, regardless of health, to make his unit look fit. The health and welfare of his soldiers are a top priority, said Grigsby, because [the soldiers] are "our most important resource, perhaps the most important resource we have in this country."

Grigsby said he does not know how many injured soldiers are in his ranks. But he insisted that it is not unusual to deploy troops with physical limitations so long as he can place them in safe jobs when they get there. "They can be productive and safe in Iraq," Grigsby said.

The injured soldiers interviewed by Salon, however, expressed considerable worry about going to Iraq with physical deficits because it could endanger them or their fellow soldiers. Some were injured on previous combat tours. Some of their ills are painful conditions from training accidents or, among relatively older troops, degenerative problems like back injuries or blown-out knees. Some of the soldiers have been in the Army for decades.

[snip]

The captain interviewed by Salon also requested anonymity because he fears retribution. He suffered a back injury during a previous deployment to Iraq as an infantry platoon leader. A Humvee accident "corkscrewed my spine," he explained. Like the female soldier, he is unable to wear his protective gear, and like her he too was ordered to Iraq after his meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon on Feb. 15. He is still at Fort Benning and is fighting the decision to send him to Baghdad. "It is a numbers issue with this whole troop surge," he claimed. "They are just trying to get those numbers."

Another soldier contacted Salon by telephone last week expressed considerable anxiety, in a frightened tone, about deploying to Iraq in her current condition. (She also wanted to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.) An incident during training several years ago injured her back, forcing doctors to remove part of her fractured coccyx. She suffers from degenerative disk disease and has two ruptured disks and a bulging disk in her back. While she said she loves the Army and would like to deploy after back surgery, her current injuries would limit her ability to wear her full protective gear. She deployed to Iraq last week, the day after calling Salon.

Her husband, who has served three combat tours in the infantry in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he is worried sick because his wife's protective vest alone exceeds the maximum amount she is allowed to lift. "I have been over there three times. I know what it is like," he told me during lunch at a restaurant here. He predicted that by deploying people like his wife, the brigade leaders are "going to get somebody killed over there." He said there is "no way" Grigsby is going to keep all of the injured soldiers in safe jobs. "All of these people that deploy with these profiles, they are scared," he said. He railed at the command: "They are saying they don't care about your health. This is pathetic. It is bad."

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq

The White House acknowledged on Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove served as a conduit for complaints about federal prosecutors as House investigators declared their intention to question him about any role he may have played in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Rove relayed complaints from Republican officials and others to the Justice Department and the White House counsel's office. She said Rove, the chief White House political operative, specifically recalled passing along complaints about former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias and may have mentioned the grumblings about Iglesias to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Iglesias says he lost his job as the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico after rebuffing Republican pressure to speed his investigation of Democratic officials in the state.

Rove said he did not suggest that any of the U.S. attorneys be forced to resign, Perino said.

The new details about Rove's involvement in the firings emerged as the top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee declared their interest in talking to him. The committee is trying to determine whether the firings were part of an effort to exert political influence over federal prosecutions.

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., confirmed their plans after McClatchy Newspapers reported that New Mexico's Republican Party chairman, Allen Weh, had complained to Rove and one of Rove's deputies about Iglesias. Iglesias was fired Dec. 7.

"Mr. Conyers and Ms. Sanchez intend to talk with Karl Rove about any role he may have had in the firing of the U.S. attorneys," said Sanchez spokesman James Dau.

Labels: Bush Administration, evil, Karl Rove

“Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston,” spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “The chairman, president and [chief executive officer] will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the [United Arab Emirates].”

Speaking at an energy conference in nearby Bahrain, Lesar said he would relocate to Dubai from Texas to oversee Halliburton’s intensified focus on business in the Mideast and energy-hungry Asia, home to some of the world’s most important oil and gas markets.

“As the [chief executive officer], I’m responsible for the global business of Halliburton in both hemispheres, and I will continue to spend quite a bit of time in an airplane as I remain attentive to our customers, shareholders and employees around the world,” Lesar said. “Yes, I will spend the majority of my time in Dubai.”

“The eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities, and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton’s overall portfolio,” Lesar said.

Is this about tax breaks? Getting beyond the reach of congressional subpoenas? And what about all that sensitive information that Halliburton has had access to? At a minimum, reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts.

Labels: Dick Cheney, Halliburton

Labels: Air America

Labels: bloggers

Labels: Stephen Colbert

The chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party was quoted Saturday as saying he urged presidential adviser Karl Rove and one of his assistants to fire the state's U.S. attorney. He said later, however, the decision had already been made by the time he talked to Rove.

McClatchy Newspapers reported that Allen Weh said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove, asking that he be removed, and followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.

Weh told The Associated Press later Saturday that "Rove has little or nothing to do with this."

Labels: Bush Administration, Karl Rove, Mob tactics

Labels: family values