THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

December 2006: Week One

Page Two

 

Bolton resigns as UN ambassador

• December 4: US ambassador to the UN John Bolton announces that he will resign when his temporary appointment expires within the next few weeks.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  Bolton has been awaiting confirmation for his nomination for over a year, but both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have blocked Bolton from coming up for review. Bolton was unable to pass the Senate's nomination process once before, and was given a recess appointment by Bush, who defied the Senate in the appointment. Many senators believe that Bolton's vituperative, combative, sometimes bullying style does not represent the US well in the UN. Bush says in a statement that he is "deeply disappointed that a handful of United States senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate. They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time. This stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation." Bush knows well that Bolton does not enjoy a majority of support in the Senate, and his renomination of Bolton hours after the Democratic victory on November 7 is widely seen as a repudiation of any pretense of bipartisanship and cooperation. Democratic senator John Kerry says Bolton's departure may be a turning point for the administration: "With the Middle East on the verge of chaos and the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea increasing, we need a United Nations ambassador who has the full support of Congress and can help rally the international community to tackle the serious threats we face." Kerry says this is an opportunity for Bush to nominate an ambassador "who enjoys the support necessary to unite our country and the world and who can put results ahead of ideology." (AP/Yahoo! News)
• December 4: Lawyers for "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, bolstered by psychiatric evaluations, say their client is unfit to assist in his own defense because of the mental and physical depredations he has suffered.

  Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"

  Padilla, an American citizen, has been in US governmental custody on a Charleston, South Carolina naval base for almost four years without having charges brought against him until the last few months, as a result of the threat of a Supreme Court decision declaring such government detentions without charge unconstitutional. A video recently released by the government of Padilla's visit to a dentist outside of his cell tells the story of the kinds of extreme treatment Padilla has received. On May 21, Padilla was escorted off-base for a root canal. Padilla was removed from his cell by having his feet slid through a rectangular panel and shackled. His hands were thrust through another hole and shackled. Guards then entered his cell, chained his cuffed hands to a metal belt, and placed heavy blackout goggles over his eyes, rendering him sightless, and padded earphones over his ears, rendering him temporarily deaf. He was marched down the corridor to the base dentist. Padilla's lawyers call the treatment of their client dehumanizing, accusing the government of using sensory deprivation tactics against Padilla. Padilla's status was recently changed to criminal defendant and he faces a criminal trial in January 2007; his lawyers say that all charges should be dropped due to "outrageous government conduct." They say that Padilla was mistreated and tortured during his years as an enemy combatant. Padilla currently awaits trial in Miami.
• His lawyers also say that Padilla is unfit to stand trial and cannot assist in his own defense. Padilla, they say, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by years of torture and depredations. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of "truth serums." The military and the prosecution both deny that Padilla was ever treated in any manner except humanely, and say Padilla never complained of abusive treatment to staff or medical personnel.
• Padilla was denied legal counsel for 21 months while being interrogated and abused on a daily basis. One of his lawyers, Andrew Patel, says that Padilla's isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. Patel writes in an affidavit filed on December 1 that Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, "as part of an interrogation plan." Many military and legal experts have said that Padilla's treatment, even from the limited amount of information made available to the public, is unprecedented and most likely unconstitutional. Philip Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now a lawyer specializing in military law, says, "There's nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement." The only other enemy combatant currently detained in the US, Ali al-Marri, who holds dual Qatari and Saudi citizenship, has made similar claims about his own treatment at the same Charleston brig.
• Another lawyer for Padilla, Orlando do Campo, says that while such extreme transportation methods such as detailed in the video are rarely used for exceptionally violent prisoners, Padilla is "completely docile." Do Campo continues, "There was not one disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, not one act of disobedience." Patel affirms, "I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of 'a piece of furniture.'" Prosecutors want to bar Padilla's lawyers from mentioning the circumstances of his military detention during the trial, saying that the information could "distract and inflame the jury." However, defense lawyers say it is unconscionable to ignore Padilla's military detention because, among other reasons, it altered him in a way that will impinge on his trial. Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, who examined Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, affirms that Padilla "lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense. ...It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation."
• The actual charges finally brought against Padilla are completely different from the accusations aired against him when he was arrested in 2001. At that time, and repeatedly since then, governmental officials, including former attorney general John Ashcroft, said the government had solid evidence that Padilla was attempting to build and explode a "dirty nuclear bomb," most likely in or near Chicago, and Padilla has strong and verifiable connections with al-Qaeda. The actual charges against him say nothing of any nuclear bomb or any direct terrorism connections, nor do they even allege that Padilla planned any violent acts at all. Instead, he is now charged with being the recruit of a "North American terror support cell" that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist "global jihad" in general, with a special interest in Bosnia and Chechnya. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled overseas "to participate in violent jihad" and filled out an application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan. He faces one charge of conspiracy and one of providing material support to terrorists. He could receive up to 30 years in jail. The most serious charge against him -- conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country -- was thrown out by a federal judge, who said that the charge merely replicates accusations in the other counts and could lead to multiple punishments for a single crime. The Department of Justice is appealing the ruling.
• Padilla's lawyers say that Padilla does not believe they are on his side. Patel affirms, "Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government's interrogation scheme." He especially does not like to discuss what happened in Charleston, fearing that he will be sent back there. "During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body," says Patel. "The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel." (New York Times)
• December 4: Another so-called "Pat Tillman" incident has occured, with a US soldier dying because of friendly fire and the US military lying about the circumstances of his death.

  War in Afghanistan

  The soldier, Jess Buryj, was accidentally shot in the back by his own fellows in Afghanistan back in March 2004, but the story is just now hitting the press. The US military has attempted to blame first hostile Afghan fighters and then Polish soldiers for the death, but another American soldier who was in the same firefight as Buryj has told Buryj's parents that another US soldier actually fired the fatal shot. Buryj's father was so shaken by the apparent cover-up that he came to question whether the body they buried was even their son's. According to an AP report from March 2004, which used information provided by the Pentagon, Buryj died "while heroically trying to stop an attack on an Army checkpoint." The report read, "Jesse Buryj, 21, of Canton, [Ohio,] fired more than 400 rounds at a dump truck trying to crash the checkpoint near Karbala. He shot the driver of the truck, which then crashed into the Humvee in which he was riding, an Army sergeant told his mother, Peggy Buryj, on Wednesday morning." The official US casualty report said that Buryj had died of "a back injury" caused by "hostile enemy activity." Actually, the dump truck was filled with dirt or sand, not explosives, and was driven by civilians who had no weapons.
• Some time after Jesse's death, his mother Peggy posted a somber comment on a "fallen hero" message board that read, "I am Peggy Buryj, the mother of Jesse. My son was promoted to Specialist the day he died. My son died as the result of friendly fire." The death certificate now called Jesse's death "homicide," and the Buryj family learned that Jesse had been shot in the back. On December 3, the Washington Post's Josh White reported that US Army officials destroyed critical evidence that could have determined who shot and killed Buryj, "one of several problems with the friendly-fire inquiry that may permanently shroud Buryj's death in mystery, according to an Army inspector general's review." An investigation "found that criminal investigators destroyed bullet fragments, agents failed to collect ballistic evidence from weapons at the checkpoint, medical personnel made incorrect notations on Buryj's records and military officials knew his death was a friendly-fire case months before they officially notified his family," according to White. "As a result, Buryj's family buried him believing he was killed when his vehicle was rammed by a dump truck. They did not learn that he was shot by friendly forces until nine months after his death, and a lack of physical evidence means it is nearly impossible to know what happened that night."
• Investigators ruled that the Poles "probably" fired the fatal shot, but the Poles strongly deny it. The final report notes that the original investigators were well aware of international sensitivities involving countries among the coalition of the willing. This could explain why they wanted to hide the friendly fire angle at the outset. In January 2006, Mrs. Buryj told White, "If they can lie to Pat Tillman's family, what do you think they're going to do to Ma and Pop in Middle America here?" Now she remains angry about the handling of the case, blasting the "incompetence." She is resigned to the idea that she may never know what happened to her son, White reports. "I feel like I gave them my son and they've done nothing but dishonor him," she told the reporter.
• On November 17, 2006, PBS aired an interview with Peggy Buryj. She said in part, "And on the death certificate, it said, 'Cause of death, penetrating gunshot wound to the back.' I said, 'He was shot?' I just couldn't believe that they would leave out that detail that Jesse was shot. I start making phone calls. I'm calling everybody I could possibly call that I could think of. I even called, like, the Red Cross. Could you help me here? Anybody, help me. ...If Jesse was killed here at home, I could go to the police station and say, 'Could you please give me a copy of this?' The police report. I could go to the coroner and get a copy of the autopsy. [Instead e]verything went through the military. I ave a son that's dead. That was shot. I don't know who shot him, how he was shot. I know nothing other than the fact that my son's dead." The Buryjs had to file a FOIA request to get the documentation that proved he had been killed by friendly fire. "[T]he more I read it, the more holes were in it," she said. "The more inconsistencies, the more this isn't right. In my gut, I knew this isn't right...." Then a soldier from Jesse's unit appeared on her doorstep. "He came here and told me that the Polish had absolutely nothing to do with Jessie's death. He was there when the confession was made. As to who shot Jessie. He was there when statements were coerced, and the reports were falsified. And he said the Polish were a complete scapegoat. They had nothing to do with Jessie's death. [He told me,] "If this was my parents, I would want them to know." Currently the Army is still investigating the friendly fire charges. She said that far more families than the seven admitted by the Army -- hers, Tillman's, and five others -- have been misinformed of the circumstances of their loved one's death. "The people that have come forward -- and made the stink...and questioned it, are the people that are getting the attention.... I hope the military's accountable. I hope -- for the truth. For the truth. That's all I ever wanted was the truth." (PBS/Editor and Publisher)

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• December 5: Robert Gates, the Bush nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, sails through his Senate confirmation hearings with a minimum of objections.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  The next day, Gates is overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate 95-2. The only nay votes come from two Republicans, Rick Santorum, who is in his last days as a lawmaker, and Jim Bunning. Both oppose Gates's recommendation of opening talks with Syria and Iran, with Bunning accusing Gates of wanting to "bring terrorists to the negotiating table" and Santorum delivering a near-hourlong rant about "Islamic fascism" and warning the US not to open negotiations with any "rogue nations." Gates, winning the unanimous approval of the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says, in contradiction to statements from Bush, that the US is not winning in Iraq, but he is confident Bush will listen to his ideas about forging a new war strategy. Gates even questions the wisdom of invading Iraq in the first place, something Rumsfeld would never consider: "Was the decision to go in right? I think it is too soon to tell." While unwilling to get specific about that question, he does say that there have been "clearly insufficient troops" in Iraq after the invasion, a view shared by many US analysts but never accepted by Rumsfeld. Many feel that the committee approves Gates so readily, not because of Gates's stellar record of government service, but because they are so ready to have Rumsfeld depart. The full Senate could seal Gates' confirmation as early as December 6. "In my view, all options are on the table, in terms of how we address this problem in Iraq," he tells the committee. During a discussion of the upcoming Iraq Study Group report, he says plainly, "There are no new ideas on Iraq." Gates was a member of the group until Bush announced his nomination for the Pentagon job last month. Democrat Carl Levin, who will chair the committee during the next session of Congress, says, "I voted yes because in both the substance of his answers and the tone of his answers, he seemed open to course correction." Levin had opposed Gates in hearings for the same post under Reagan, when Levin raised questions about Gates's truthfulness under oath surrounding Gates's involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.
• Asked about withdrawing US forces from Iraq, Gates says, "It seems to me that the United States is going to have to have some kind of presence in Iraq for a long time...but it could be with a dramatically smaller number of US forces than are there today." He adds, "Our military wins the battles that we fight. Where we're having our challenges, frankly, are in the areas of stabilization and political developments and so on." He says other federal agencies should do more in Iraq, a turnaround from Rumsfeld's jealous grip on authority. Much of the questioning from panel members focuses on whether Gates is committed to providing unvarnished advice to Bush, a question that came up during his tenure as director of the CIA. He assured the committee he would not shirk from that duty. (AP/Yahoo! News, Reuters, AP/Yahoo! News, CNN)
• December 5: Bush's press secretary Tony Snow takes issue with newly approved secretary of defense Robert Gates's assertion that the US is not winning the war in Iraq.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Snow tells reporters that Bush still maintains the US is actually winning in Iraq. He also charges that the press is going negative on the administration, and indirectly accuses the press of trying to deliberately lower troop morale: "What I think is demoralizing is a constant effort to try to portray this as a losing mission." Snow also asserts that the term "civil war," which Bush refuses to use to characterize the civil war in Iraq, is little more than a political label. Snow tells one reporter asking about the characterization, "It's interesting -- what intervened other than an election to get people to change the label?" The report fires back, "The violence got worse, I suppose." Snow retorts, "I said it's very difficult to figure out that there is any clear definition, and if you have one, please pass it on." And Snow tries to tell the press that Gates and Bush are alike in their thinking on the war; to note that Gates answered the question of if the US is winning in Iraq with "No" and Bush's answer to the same question of "Absolutely yes," is somehow trying to pit a fight between Bob Gates and the president." When Snow refuses to answer repeated questions of "Does the President today believe that we are winning in Iraq? It's a very straightforward question," as one reporter says, and Snow keeps dodging, a reporter notes, "Okay, so that might change from day to day. So it may have changed...he may no longer believe that we're winning the war in Iraq. You don't know." Snow strongly disagrees with that, and again tries to imply that Gates and Bush are in accord, a conclusion which, to their credit, the reporters refuse to swallow. (Editor and Publisher)
• December 5: Barbara Boxer, the Democratic senator who will chair the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, says to expect a "sea change" from six years of Republican inaction on global warming and says Congress will soon begin sending Bush legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gases.

  Global warming and the environment

  Boxer says that her goal of imposing mandatory limits on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases may not be met, but she is willing to be flexible. "I have no line in the sand," she says. "Even a little step will look like a big step." She also promises to end Bush administration rollbacks on environmental rules if they are not supported by science. "Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy or changes in the dead of night -- it's over," says Boxer. "We're going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. ...This is a sea change that is coming to this committee." Boxer's chairmanship will be drastically different from her predecessor, Republican senator James Inhofe, whose last hearing on December 6 will focus on his view that the news media has fanned alarmism about global warming. Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax, blocked attempts in his committee to regulate carbon dioxide. Boxer's first hearing next month also will be devoted to global warming, but from an opposite point of view from Inhofe's. "This is a potential crisis of a magnitude we've never seen," she says, explaining that her goal is to impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide, a step vehemently opposed by Bush's top environmental advisers. But she promises to hear views from all sides before sending a bill to the full Senate. "I very much want the environment to go back to being a nonpartisan issue," she says. Boxer's model will be a new California law that imposes the first statewide limit on greenhouse gases and seeks to cut emissions by 25%, dropping them to 1990 levels by 2020. Other areas of primary concern include children's health and toxic chemicals, and contaminated toxic waste sites yet to be cleaned up under the Superfund program. Boxer says she also intends to use a committee chairman's powers to obtain documents on how regulations have been developed and priorities chosen. "We want to send a signal to the world," she says, noting that the US now lags behind more than 50 other countries addressing global warming. She said she has received calls from several foreign leaders expressing hope for a new US environmental policy. (AP/Yahoo! News)
• December 5: Continuing his apparent slide into violent mental illness, Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly tells his radio audience that "we may have to level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people," just like in World War II when the US did the same thing "in Germany and Japan.

  War with Iran

  Now, do we want to do that again? OK? We have already killed hundreds of thousands of people on one day. Of course not, but we may have to." O'Reilly argues that such a move would be necessary, for example, "[i]f Iran takes over Iraq and then fosters a revolution inside Saudi Arabia...and gets control of all the oil and says we're not selling to the USA, we are going to level that country, because you...need gasoline to live." (Fox News/Media Matters [link to audio])

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Iraq Study Group repudiates Bush's war policies; Bush brushes off recommendations

• December 6: The Iraq Study Group issues its long-anticipated report, and its conclusions are grim.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Bush's war policies are failures across the board, the ISG reports, and the group warns of ever-dwindling chances to change course before crisis turns to absolute chaos with dire implications for terrorism, war in the Middle East and higher oil prices around the world. The group is made up of Republicans and Democrats, and led by chairman James Baker, the former secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton. While the group is relatively bipartisan, it has no staunch anti-war advocates on its panel, nor did it consider testimony from any sources who oppose the war and advocate quick withdrawal.
• Nearly four years, $400 billion and more than 2,900 US deaths into a deeply unpopular war, violence is bad and getting worse, there is no guarantee of success and the consequences of failure are great, says the report. It continues by recommending that the US should find ways to pull back most of its combat forces by early 2008 and focus US troops on training and supporting Iraqi units. The US should also begin a "diplomatic offensive" by the end of the month and engage adversaries Iran and Syria in an effort to quell sectarian violence and shore up the fragile Iraqi government. "Despite a massive effort, stability in Iraq remains elusive and the situation is deteriorating," the report says. "The ability of the United States to shape outcomes is diminishing. Time is running out." Republican senator Chuck Hagel says, "The report is an acknowledgment that there will be no military solution in Iraq. It will require a political solution arrived at through sustained Iraqi and region-wide diplomacy and engagement." Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats said the ball is in Bush's court. "If the president is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible," she says. The ISG leaders say they tried to avoid politically charged language such as "victory," on the one hand or "civil war" on the other, but the words they chose were still powerful. The report says the current strategy is not working and lays out example after example where it has come up short.
• While the group's characterizations of the current civil war in Iraq are grim and blunt, the recommendations are another story. The recommendations were written after long and contentious debate among group and panel members, and reflect their attempt to find a "mushy middle" among the different viewpoints. Nor do the recommendations include ideas that the panel members felt certain would be rejected by the White House, particularly the idea of a quick withdrawal or a firm timetable for withdrawal. Nevertheless, the group says that major changes in policy need to be implemented now. "We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution," says Baker. "In our opinion, that approach is no longer viable." Hamilton adds that while the commission agrees with Bush's goal of an Iraq able to govern, protect and sustain itself, the administration needed new approaches. "No course of action in Iraq is guaranteed to stop a slide toward chaos," he notes. "Yet, in our view, not all options have been exhausted." Bush says he will give the report due consideration. "This report gives a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq," Bush says after an early morning briefing from the group of five Republican and five Democratic former government officials and advisers. "It is a report that brings some really very interesting proposals, and we will take every proposal seriously and we will act in a timely fashion." In a all-too brief nod to bipartisanship, Bush then meets with Congressional leaders from both parties and says he wants to cooperate to "send a message to the American people that the struggle for freedom, the struggle for our security is not the purview of one party over the other." The commission also briefs members of the Iraqi government by teleconference, and one official there agrees that Iraqis must take responsibility for their own security. "Absolute dependence on foreign troops is not possible," says Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.
• Among its 79 recommendations, the group said the United States should reduce political, military or economic support for Iraq if the government in Baghdad cannot make substantial progress. The report says Iraqi leaders have failed to deliver better security or political compromises that would reduce violence, and it implies that a four-month joint US-Iraqi military campaign to reduce violence in Baghdad, the so-called "go long" option, is hopeless. "Because none of the operations conducted by US and Iraqi military forces are fundamentally changing the conditions encouraging the sectarian violence, US forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end," the report says. This completely repudiates one of the central tenets of the Bush military strategies in Iraq: in Baghdad and elsewhere, US forces are supposed to help Iraqi units "clear, hold and build," shorthand for routing insurgents or other fighters from problem areas, securing those areas from further violence and setting a positive future course. The group would not endorse a timetable for withdrawing US troops, but it does warn against both a precipitous pullback and an open-ended commitment to a large deployment. Instead, the report recommends that some US troops leave relatively soon, and others stay to begin intensive training, equipping, and advising Iraqi forces, perhaps even embedding in Iraqi units.
• The report recommends that Bush put aside his personal grudges and feelings, and engage Syria, Iran and the leaders of insurgent forces in negotiations on Iraq's future, to begin by year's end. It also urges him to revive efforts at a broader Middle East peace.
• The report lays out consequences from bad to worse, including the threat of wider war in the Middle East and reduced oil production that would hurt the global economy. In a slap at the Pentagon, the commission says there is significant underreporting of the actual level of violence in Iraq. It also faults the US intelligence effort, saying the government "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias." The report notes that Iraq costs run about $8 billion a month and that the bills will keep coming. "Caring for veterans and replacing lost equipment will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars," the commission says. "Estimates run as high as $2 trillion for the final cost of the U.S. involvement in Iraq." (MSNBC [full text of report; embedded PDF file], AP/Yahoo! News)
• December 6: The ISG reports that the Bush administration has routinely underreported the level of violence in Iraq in order to disguise its policy failings.

  Iraq war and occupation

  The group calls on the Pentagon and the director of the US intelligence community, John Negroponte, to immediately institute a new reporting system that provides "a more accurate picture of events on the ground." The finding confirms allegations by Democratic lawmakers and other critics that the Bush administration has withheld or misconstrued intelligence that conflicted with its Iraq policy while promoting data and claims that supported its positions. Such misrepresentations and lies date back to the beginning of the push for war with Iraq, when Bush and his administration's officials told everyone who would listen that Iraq was laden with WMDs, and that Saddam Hussein was in bed with Islamic terrorism. Both claims were absolute lies. Bush and his top officials have denied the allegations of "fixing" the data surrounding the levels of violence in Iraq, and have repeatedly accused the news media of exaggerating the violence between Iraqi Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims, minority Kurds and other groups. On page 94 of its report, the Iraq Study Group found that there had been "significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq." The reason, the group said, was because the tracking system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis. "The standard for recording attacks acts a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," the report said. "A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt US personnel doesn't count. ...Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."
• One example is the data behind the claim by US officials that violence in Iraq dropped by 52% during July and August of 2006. The US fudged the real numbers by excluding all those killed by car bombings and mortar attacks from the tabulations. On one day in July, the US reported a mere 93 attacks or significant acts of violence in Iraq, yet, according to the ISG report, "a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light more than 1,100 acts of violence."
• The panel also notes a shortage of proficient Arabic speakers, a problem that the administration and intelligence officials have been urged to correct since the 9/11 attacks and have yet to adequately address. (McClatchy News)
• December 6 - on: The reaction to the ISG report from the left is relatively mixed, but few have any illusions about either its content or its likelihood of "saving" the situation.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Progressive political commentator P.M. Carpenter gives credit where credit is due: "Quite aside from the wisdom or folly of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, and quite aside from how much, if at all, those recommendations are executed by the White House, I must admit the ISG did a bang-up job of first lowering expectations and then impressing a resigned public with its sweeping breadth -- and severity." Carpenter writes that he is "stunned" to hear the commission publicly condemn Bush's war management as "a nightmare" equivalent to Saddam Hussein's atrocities. "For anyone watching yesterday, thinking, as I did, that James Baker was there only to wipe Junior's chin, hoist his knickers and rescue his presidency, well, we all got an education. Taking into account the sensitivity of his historical ties to the Bush Dynasty, Baker's defenestration of George W. was as firm-handed as any critic's. 'We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution,' he said in direct repudiation of his old boss' scion. 'In our opinion, that is no longer viable.' He might as well have called George delusional. In private, I suspect he did. I also suspect Baker is no longer on the White House's Christmas card list."
• Carpenter is less enamored of the report's conclusions. He says the idea of leaving a relatively small number of US soldiers embedded with larger Iraqi troop contingents would "irresponsibly leave those advisers at the mercy of their feckless, or worse, militia-aligned Iraqi 'trainees.'" But it may not matter: "Any of the report's irresponsible recommendations are as inconsequential as the sensible ones, however, since Bush 'seriously' pronounced all of them worthy of action 'in a timely fashion.' Translation: they're already collecting dust. No one, let alone one of Daddy's servants, is going to tell George Jr. how to run a war. In fact, the White House laughably declared the report a validation of its policies, in that the panel proposed no timetabled or immediate withdrawal. Then again, that singular omission was the panel's most egregious misjudgment, so in that sense it was indeed a validation of White House thinking."
• The Guardian's Jonathan Steele writes accurately enough, "The country's political elite wants to ignore the American people's doubts and build a new consensus behind a strategy of staying in Iraq on an open-ended basis, with no exit in sight." Progressive blogger Glenn Greenwald, one of the most thoughtful and level-headed voices on the Internet, writes in continuation of Steele's observation, "The [ISG r]eport single-handedly cancelled out the results of the last election by purporting to identify as the 'center' a position which is squarely at odds with the emphatically anti-war views of the American public that is the real mainstream." A solid majority, 60%, of Americans want US troops out of Iraq within six months, Greenwald observes from a recent AP poll. Politically, 60% is a mandate in anyone's party, but Bush officials and their apologists continue to portray supporters of withdrawal as cut-and-run cowards. 71% say they want the troops home within two years. Greenwald writes, "It isn't that most Americans have grown 'weary' from the war or that they are 'frustrated' and 'impatient' because they like to win. Put simply, they have given up on this war, and favor withdrawal -- now. That just has to be the first, clear premise for every one of these discussions." Instead, the ISG report dismisses any consideration of any timetable for withdrawal as "precipitate" and warns that any quick withdrawal will create a venue for even more violence than we see now -- a ludicrous argument, considering the evidence that shows the longer US troops stay in Iraq, the more violence will be seen. Greenwald writes acidly, "[The Washignton Establishment] now recognizes that Americans have given up on the war but they believe that that view is rash, uninformed, emotional -- 'precipitous,' to use the condescending label assigned to that view by the Report. The crazed and lowly masses need the steady, sober hand of the Washington Establishment -- symbolized by the old Washington relics dragged out to put their stern seal of approval on the next two years of our occupation (despite the fact that they were the ones who helped bring about this disaster)."
• The obviously exasperated Greenwald writes, "But the rhetoric and specific claims in the Report matter little. What matters most -- really exclusively -- is that this Report (in the eyes of the Beltway media and related types) has become the defining position of the Center. And the Report unmistakably endorses our ongoing occupation of Iraq, and emphatically rejects the notion of withdrawing any time soon. We just had an election where Americans repudiated this war and made clear that they want to withdraw. Yet somehow, within a matter of weeks, Washington power circles were able to shoo that election result away like the annoying mosquito that it is and supplant their own pro-war judgment as the 'mainstream' view to which all serious people, by definition, pledge their allegiance. When 2008 comes around and we still have between 130,000-150,000 troops occupying Iraq (at the cost of $8 billion per month) -- and another 20,000 or 30,000 American soldiers are dead or maimed and a few hundred thousand or so more Iraqi civilians are dead -- we can look back at this moment when the Washington Establishment, yet again, blocked the path of withdrawal. And none of that damage will be mitigated because the Report included some 'candid' assessments of how badly things have gone, suggested 'negotiations' with Iran or Syria, 'recommended' that we try harder to solve the Israel-Palestine problem, or any of the other nice ideas it included, all so that the Report will feel 'reasonable,' even while it hands George Bush free rein to stay in Iraq through the end of his presidency -- exactly what Americans do not want.
• The New York Times's Frank Rich calls the report's proposals "bogus," and slams the pre-release hype that such a group of aging Washington insiders could produce anything truly departing from the norm: "Only in Washington could an unelected panel of retirees pass for public-policy Viagra," he writes. The panel's recommendations, he writes, "are bogus because the few that have any teeth are completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to 'influence events' for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the bank in Vegas."
• Rich continues, "The group's coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters, equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact. To take just one example: Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at that), there's no reason to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army and police force where all those who came before have failed. As the report points out, the loyalties and capabilities of the existing units are suspect as it is. By prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn't plotting a way forward but delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to enact a charade of progress to pacify the public while Washington waits, no doubt in vain, for Mr. Bush to return to the real world."
• Rich concludes by predicting that Bush "will stay the course, with various fake-outs along the way to keep us from thinking we've 'lost,' until the whole mess is deposited in the lap of the next president." Rich adds that it is a "reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will stand still while we dally. The Iraq Study Group's insistence on dragging out its deliberations until after Election Day for the sake of domestic politics mocked and undermined the urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile the violence metastasized. Eleven more of our soldiers were killed on the day the group finally put on its show." He warns, "As bad as things may seem now, they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may salvage, starting with Afghanistan. The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our age."
• Progressive political commentator Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch says that the ISG never seriously considered the idea of a relatively quick, time-constrained withdrawal, and that is part of the ISG's tremendous failure. "In fact, withdrawal, aka 'cut and run,' has never been more than a passing foil, one useful 'extreme' guaranteed to make the consensus-to-come more comforting," he writes. What was produced, Engelhardt asserts, was a classic "Washington inside job." He writes that the report suggests the following:
• "Talk to those hostile neighbors; 'embed' swarms of still-to-be-trained military advisors with Iraqi troops where, so far, they have had little luck except in generating scads of complaints; pull out (or back into our massive Iraqi bases) American 'combat forces,' except for those slated to be part of an in-country 'rapid reaction force,' not to speak of all those American trainers and logistics experts; and accomplish this by perhaps early 2008. All of this will be termed a 'short' period of time to change US policy and the path to be headed down will be labeled 'phased withdrawal' or the beginning of an 'exit strategy," when it will be nothing of the sort. And most of those "redeployed" troops will be just over the horizon, most likely in Kuwait, Dubai, and other Gulf states, ready to re-enter Iraq if need be -- and, Engelhardt writes, they will be needed. "Put in a nutshell, the Iraq Study Group plan -- should it ever be put into effect -- might accomplish the following: As a start, it would in no way affect our essential network of monumental permanent bases in Iraq (where, many billions of dollars later, concrete is still being poured); it would leave many less 'combat' troops but many more 'advisors' in-country to 'stand up' the Iraqi Army (tactics already tried, at the cost of many billions of dollars, and just about sure to fail); many more American troops will find themselves either imprisoned on those vast bases of ours in Iraq or on similar installations in the 'neighborhood' where they are likely to bring so many of our problems with them. And those aggressive chats with the neighbors, whose influence in Iraq is overestimated in any case, are unlikely to proceed terribly well because the Bush administration will arrive at the bargaining table, if at all, with so little to offer (except lectures). All of this should ensure that, well into 2008, at least 70,000 American military personnel will still be in Iraq, after which, in the midst of a presidential election season, will actual withdrawal finally appear on some horizon? In other words, the Baker Commission plan guarantees us at least another 3-5 years in Iraq." And of course, the US advisors "embedded" with Iraqi troops will be in mortal peril and virtually unprotected.
• Engelhardt is unforgiving: "Talk about a plan being DOA, when it comes to changing policy, even before an adamant president has the chance to consider how to reject some of its essential parts! After all those endless months, this, it seems, is the best the present generation of Washington 'wise men' (and one woman) can actually deliver. I think I can guarantee that, with eight months and a giant staff of experts at your beck and call, you and a small group of your neighbors -- with no ties to Washington, a cursory knowledge of our 1,347-plus days already embedded in Iraq, and...no, let's say with just eight days, or maybe eight minutes -- could have come up with a plan at least this hopeless. While the Iraqis were experiencing an actual civil war, combined with an actual insurgency, combined with actual American attacks from the air and the ground on actual city neighborhoods, combined with actual terrorist attacks, combined with actual widespread criminal activity, combined with the actual collapse of their economy, combined with the actual non-delivery of essential social services, combined with the actual flight of whole populations from ethnically cleansed or simply half-destroyed neighborhoods, combined with actual staggering death tolls, the American media and White House officialdom have passed through their own maelstrom over whether or not to apply the term 'civil war' to the Iraqi situation. NBC and the Los Angeles Times have finally voted 'yes'; others are waffling; the administration continues to deny that the 'sectarian violence' in Iraq could possibly be a 'civil war,' which is evidently imagined inside the Oval Office as nothing short of Armageddon itself."
• Engelhardt himself recommends full withdrawal, with a strict timetable for departure, but that option was not even considered by the ISG. He says that redeploying troops to Kuwait or the Gulf states could cause the same problems that stationing US forces in Saudi Arabia has already caused -- of course, those troop placements was one of the driving rationales behind the 9/11 attacks. And he notes that there is a very simple explanation why there has never been an "exit strategy" for Iraq: Bush never intends to leave. Engelhardt says you'll know that the discussion surrounding Iraq will be serious when "some serious panel gets together to sort out our future strategy in Iraq, and you start regularly seeing 'withdrawal' surface in the media without an adjective attached, or when you see any sober discussion of permanent bases, American air power, or oil."
• Carpenter's colleague in the progressive blogosphere, Margie Burns, calls the report an exercise in the self-evident. "Both Iraqi and American leaders told us that, as Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq," the report avers. "As Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq." Burns is not impressed. "This is a statement of breathtaking self-evidence. It was always true that Baghdad dominated Iraq. Baghdad was the hub and brainpan of practically the entire resources of Iraq. Most of Iraq outside of Baghdad is desert. Only 13% of Iraq is arable land; its principal waterways, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, run through Baghdad. In a national population of about 27 million people, a sizeable plurality of 5 million lived in Baghdad, one of the more progressive and secular cities in the Middle East and one of the oldest cities in the world. Baghdad is and was the Iraqi national capital and the hub and control center for communications, health, and imports and exports, including oil, which provided 95% of Iraqi government revenues. Everybody engaged in planning to invade Iraq knew this simple fact. ...Anyone who looked at a map knew it. Anyone who read the 'Iraq' entry in the CIA World FactBook knew it. Anyone who looked up Iraq in any standard, respected encyclopedia knew it. Anyone who checked the World Almanac and Book of Facts knew it. The White House itself acknowledged this blatantly obvious disproportion between Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, in harping on the known evils of Saddam Hussein's consolidation of internal power."
• The idea advanced by the ISG, that while US troops could clear any neighborhood, there aren't enough troops on the ground, nor enough support from Iraqi forces, to hold those "cleared" neighborhoods, is "[a]nother statement of breathtaking, if belated, lucidity: there was never any doubt that Iraq could be crushed by the USA." Burns writes, "Iraq is smaller than Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, North or South Korea, and Poland; less than one-twentieth the land area of America; less than one-tenth the population of America. It had less than one-third the population of Vietnam. Iraqis had already been wasted by two wars in two decades that depleted their population, debilitated their industry and agriculture and retarded any potential for national unity or popular resistance to Saddam. Without allies, or Kuwait, they hardly have a port. As those of us knew who were not influenced by Orientalist fantasies about the strange magical powers of Middle Easterners, Bush administration efforts to instill fear did everything but accuse the Iraqis of having magic carpets to fly (yet unknown) weapons across the Atlantic."
• Burns says that almost everything uttered by Bush officials on the subject of Iraq has either been deliberate lies or the product of rampaging ignorance. "But ignorance can be strategic -- within the solipsistic confines of intra-administration politics. Bush-Cheney policy has been to keep genuine ignorance unchallenged, within the administration, as much as possible. This White House has made a practice of hiring personnel without genuine expertise in their fields, of leaving sensitive positions pertaining to the Near East or to intelligence unfilled, and of undermining or retaliating against career intelligence and foreign service personnel whose information could have derailed White House war-boosting. Several prominent Bush insiders, like the current Secretary of State, were professional militarists whose careers of artificial prominence were built by corporate donors in the Cold War and who had to find another insider career of contract-generating bellicosity after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The same mavens are now in the process of either leaving government or distancing themselves from their previous arguments. They continue to try to cover up the shameful fact that Iraq was in a condition of pitiful weakness, partly to distance themselves from the horrors visited on the Iraqi people and partly to avoid blame for the cost in American lives and treasure in Iraq. ...The question was never whether the US could crush Iraq. That was a given. The question (for anyone determined to go to war; that is, setting aside the illegitimacy of the war itself) was how the US could keep Iraq -- or even Baghdad -- once conquered; and by what means or how far this nation would be willing to go, to do so." (TomDispatch, P.M. Carpenter, Margie Burns, New York Times/Editor and Publisher, Guardian/Unclaimed Territory)
• December 6: Ideology rules the final days of the Republican leadership in Congress, with the Senate putting forward a bill advocating tax breaks for millionaires and relaxing restrictions on offshore oil drilling, while the House pushes a controversial, unscientific bill defining the concept of "fetal pain" as an attempt to limit abortion access.

  Congressional Republicans

  This lame-duck Congressional session has already scheduled to end early, perhaps as soon as the end of the week. The House anti-abortion bill, a transparent attempt to pander to the conservative base, would require abortion providers to inform a woman 20 weeks into her pregnancy that an abortion will cause pain to the fetus. Republicans were unable to pass the bill, which almost certainly would have not passed the new, Democratically-controlled Senate. The bill defined a 20-week-old fetus as a "pain-capable unborn child." Most scientists do not accept that definition, and there is considerable debate whether a fetus at that stage of development has enough of a neural system to feel pain or react to stimuli. (AP/Yahoo! News)
• December 6: Some Republican veterans of the 109th Congress, widely considered the laziest and most venal assemblage of lawmakers since the infamous 80th Congress of 1948, are whining about the new Democratic leadership's announcements that the 110th Congress will work harder and longer than their predecessors.

  Congressional Republicans

  Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is writing the schedule for the new Congress, says members should expect longer hours than the four-day week -- or less -- they have grown accustomed to. Expect five-day work weeks starting from the outset: "We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th," Hoyer tells reporters. Under Republican leadership, the 109th Congress got used to coming in late on Tuesday and leaving early Thursday, when the House wasn't in recess altogether. Now, says Hoyer, House members can expect to work till 6:30 PM every weekday except Fridays, when business will conclude around 2 PM. Hoyer and other Democratic leaders say they have two reasons for their new work ethic: to achieve as much of the sweeping legislative agenda they have planned, and to enforce a new work ethic on the lax, lackadaisical Congress, which will go early into recess on December 8 without even bothering to pass the fundamental spending bills that fuel the government. The current Congress will have worked a grand total of 103 days in 2006 at the close of the session, seven fewer days than the infamous "Do-Nothing Congress" of 1948. Hoyer says members can bid farewell to extended holidays, the kind that awarded them six weekdays to relax around Memorial Day, when most Americans get a single day off. Hoyer says members need to spend more time in the Capitol to pass laws and oversee federal agencies. "We are going to meet sufficient times, so the committees can do their jobs on behalf of the American people," he says.
• Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, tries to accuse Democrats of being "anti-family" by their insistence on working a full work week. Keeping us up here eats away at families," says Kingston, who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says." For the record, a one-way flight from Atlanta to Washington's Reagan Airport takes about 90 minutes, according to Delta Airlines. Kingston adds that time away from Washington is just as important to being an effective member of Congress as time spent in the Capitol: "When I'm here, people call me Mr. Congressman. When I'm home, people call me 'Jack, you stupid SOB, why did you vote that way?' It keeps me grounded." California Republican Elton Gallegly says, "If we're doing something truly productive, that's one thing. If it's smoke-and-mirrors hoopla, that's another." One wonders just what kind of legislation Gallegly will define as "hoopla." Republican whip Roy Blunt tries to put a brave face on the longer work week. "They've got a lot more freshmen then we do," he says of the Democrats. "That schedule will make it incredibly difficult for those freshmen to establish themselves in their districts. So we're all for it." At least one Democrat, Florida representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, says the longer work week is making her change her plans: she runs her daughter's Brownie troop meetings on Monday afternoons. "I'll have to talk to the other mothers and see if we can move it to the weekend," she says. Outgoing majority leader John Boehner says that creating a calendar that satisfies the needs of all 435 members, from all 50 states, is impossible. "Between the travel issues, the members' work schedules, the family and district issues, it was a Rubik's cube," he says.
• At least one Democrat is game. Newly elected representative Mike Thompson, who lives in California's Napa Valley and will have to leave his home at 3 AM on Mondays to get to work in Washington, says he's ready. "It's long overdue," he says. "I didn't come here to turn around and go back home." (Washington Post)
• December 6: Former vice president Al Gore, speaking with NBC's Matt Lauer, calls Iraq the "worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States."

  Iraq war and occupation

  He asks Bush "to try to separate out the personal issues of being blamed in history for this mistake and instead recognize it's not about him. It's about our country and we all have to find a way to get our troops home and to prevent a regional conflagration there." He says, "The fact is, this is a very bad situation. Our country has to find a way to get our troops out as quickly as possible without making the situation even worse in the manner of our leaving." Gore notes that there are several reports coming out on Iraq, the ISG report, one from the Pentagon, and an internal report within the White House, all, according to Gore, pointing the same direction. "This is an utter disaster, the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States. We as a nation have to find a way, in George Mitchell's words, to manage a disaster. But I would urge the president not to -- to try to separate out the personal issues of being blamed in history for this mistake and instead recognize it's not about him. It's about our country and we all have to find a way to get our troops home and to prevent a regional conflagration there." (NBC/Think Progress [link to video])
• December 6: James Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is currently chairing hearings intended to, in his words, "turn up the heat on the media coverage of global warming" and focus on "'the hype of global warming' and what causes it."

  Global warming and the environment

  Fox News airs without contradiction Inhofe's claims that "[i]t was warmer in the '30s than it is today," and "it was warmer in the 15th century than it is today." Neither of these assertions are true; NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has proven, using its average global mean surface temperatures data, that Inhofe's claim of the Earth being warmer in the 1930s than now is completely wrong. And a June 2006 study from the National Academy of Sciences disproves Inhofe's assertion that "it was warmer in the 15th century than it is today." The NAS study shows that in most global locations, it is warmer now than at any time since at least 900 A.D. Inhofe, who has compared people who assert that global warming is real with terrorists, says that the entire issue of global warming is "being distorted by the media." Of course the Fox coverage, anchored by Fox correspondent Molly Henneberg, is sympathetic with Inhofe's unscientific views, and portrays other, more scientifically based views on the realities of global warming as "questionable." Inhofe's suggestion for combating the problem? "Let's let God work his thing, keep the cycles going, and if there's something that we can do -- certainly, we do want to clean up the air, clean up the pollution -- CO₂ is not a pollutant." Inhofe will be replaced with Democrat Barbara Boxer, one of the strongest environmental proponents in the Senate. "We can't, as policymakers, it seems to me, turn our backs on the overwhelming scientific evidence and opinion" about global warming, she says. (Media Matters)
• December 6: Conservative radio talk show host Hal Turner, a frequent advocate of violence against Democratic lawmakers, posts a timetable for the assassination of members of Congress who vote for amnesty for immigrants.

  Conservative hate speech and intolerance

  On his Web site, Turner posts the following (all postings edited to remove frequent capitalizations): "Any member of Congress who introduces, co-sponsors or votes in favor of any such amnesty will be declared a domestic enemy and will be considered a legitimate target for assassination. ...Members of Congress and the Senate will not be permitted to betray our nation by simply giving away the most cherished aspect of America, citizenship, to millions of people who cared so little for what citizenship means that they came here against our law." Turner says his calls for violence and assassination are protected by the First Amendment.
• Turner actually began his broadcasting career as a regular caller on the Sean Hannity radio show, where he identified himself as "Hal from North Bergen." Turner regularly made remarks on Hannity's show such as his August 1998 bit, "[I]f it weren't for the white man, blacks would still be swinging from the trees in Africa." Hannity apparently approved of Turner's racism; Hannity did not rebuke Turner for his racism, Turner was allowed to speak on the show whenever he called, and the two became friends. (Hannity now refuses to speak about Turner, but at the time he spoke frequently with Turner off the air, and gave Turner advice about how to combat his homosexuality and cocaine addiction.)
• Turner has also been involved in politics and racial activism. He began his public career working with the 1992 presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan, and became a regular caller on the WABC talk show hosted by Bob Grant, a virulent racist and Nazi supporter. In 1994, Turner held a rally for Grant, who, among other racist tirades, frequently advocated "The Bob Grant Mandatory Sterilization Program" for minorities. (After weathering intense pressure from the NAACP and other civil rights groups, WABC fired Grant in 1996. His WABC replacement? Hannity.) In 2000, Turner ran for Congress in his New Jersey district, and Hannity endorsed him on the air during his Fox News show. Turner was enraged when Republican leaders chose Hispanic candidate Theresa de Leon over him, and had what he later called an "epiphany," deciding that the system was rigged against white men and that he would abandon all ties to the mainstream. "I had never judged people on their race, not prior to that point," Turner said in a February 2003 interview. "And there I was, on the receiving end -- in America -- of a decision that I wasn't good enough because I was a white male."
• Shortly thereafter, Hannity began throttling back on the racist rhetoric on his broadcasts, in order to criticize Democrats for being racists themselves. (Of course, Hannity does not object to the racist affiliations of favored guests like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour, and former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, all of whom have spoken before gatherings of America's largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens.) After WABC's screeners began blocking Turner's calls, he began broadcasting ten hours a week, renting time for his own talk show on shortwave radio maverick Allan Weiner's WBCQ, located in Monticello, Maine. Turner built up a fairly substantial audience, paying for the rented airtime with advertising and donations. Turner has become a favorite of many on the radical right, including several in the neo-Nazi National Alliance. After neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator leader Matthew Hale was arrested in late 2002 for allegedly soliciting the murder of a federal judge, Turner openly supported Hale. Since then, Turner has told his listeners how to make bombs, celebrated the firebombing of an apartment containing "Savage Negroes," and called for the murder of immigrants, writing on his Web site, "When enough illegal aliens get killed they will stop coming to the country!"
• In 2003 Turner said US District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow was "worthy of being killed" for ruling against Hale in a trademark dispute. The day after Lefkow's husband and mother were found murdered on February 28, 2003, Turner posted a photo on his website of Judge Lefkow with the headline "GOTCHA!" (Turner called the "Gotcha" headline nothing more than "a ribbing, a zing," and justified the gloating celebration of two senseless murders by saying, "This judge chose to make rulings in -- in a case against people that I know. It was almost as though she had gotten a comeuppance. ...I have rendered an opinion that what she did on the bench makes her worthy of being killed, yeah." Journalist David Neiwert writes, "[P]eople like Turner are clearly using the [murders] to intimidate the judiciary. They're saying: 'See? This is what happens when you don't rule in our favor.' It's a form of terrorism. If that isn't a crime, it ought to be.") Turner also wrote an article for the far-right chat room Liberty Forum outlining tips to help white supremacists avoid scrutiny from federal agents. "So what can we, as White Nationalists (WN), expect as a result [of the killings]?" he wrote. "Frankly, a sh*t storm" Turner was eventually visited by FBI agents, though when a suspect was arrested, he had no organizational links to white supremacist groups. By this time, Turner had quit the Jewish-owned WBCQ because, as he told a reporter, he saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and realized he "could no longer do business with Jews." Turner now broadcasts over the Internet.
• On April 12, 2006, Turner had a physical altercation with Jaime Vazquez, a former Jersey City Deputy Mayor and member of the Jersey City Council, and current Jersey City Commissioner of Veterans' Affairs. Vazquez, a disabled, Purple Heart-awarded Vietnam veteran, was conducting a protest in front of Turner's house in response to Turner's hiring an airplane to carry a banner with an anti-Mexican slur over a political rally at Jersey City's Liberty State Park. Turner said at the rally, "The illegal immigrants are breaking the law, and people like me should break the law as well by shooting them down." Vazquez wore a sign that stated: "Hal Turner -- shoot me! Racists and bigots like you are cowards." Turner confronted the disabled Vazquez and a fight ensued, in which Vazquez hurt his back and fractured his wrist. Turner and Vazquez filed criminal charges against each other, but a judge subsequently found neither man criminally liable.
• Turner's penchant for courage behind the keyboard or the microphone and for self-aggrandizement was also on display when, on December 20, 2006, his show was barraged by numerous prank calls. He believed, falsely as it turned out, that the attacks came from an IRC network, and subsequently exhorted his listeners to use reverse phone directories to find the pranksters and to exact justice: beat them to death, firebomb their homes, and slit their throats. On December 22, Turner posted a partial list of phone numbers of people who he believed were the prank callers. Via the comments page, regular listeners began to translate the posted numbers into actual addresses. The list was apparently taken down, but as of December 24, 2006, the list was placed online again after alleged threatening calls were made to Turner's family members. After a period of being offline, on December 27th, 2006 Turner's website redirected to the FBI's homepage. Shortly thereafter, the site came back, with an article claiming that some of Turner's listeners tracked down one of the perpetrators and beaten him bloody. Turner even posted a picture of the supposed victim, but within hours the image was proven to be merely a picture found on the Internet via Google, from a backyard wrestling site. The article was taken down soon afterwards. He is now using the pranks to ask for money to support his bandwidth costs and legal fees, and says the feud was instigated by pedophiles upset with Turner's stance that pedophiles should receive the death penalty.
• Just before the November 7 midterm elections, Turner advocated assassinating Democrats to avoid a turnover of Congress. He posted, "We may have to assassinate some of the people you elect on Nov. 7! This could be your last election chance, to save this Republic.... Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary." Turner defined his position as commentary instead of advocacy, when one supporter wrote, "Hey Hal instead of saying 'may' say you will kill them!" Turner replied, "No no no no no. Words mean things. The difference between 'may' and 'will' is the difference between an opinion and a threat. One is lawful, the other is not!"
• Turner says in his current posting, "Congress will not be permitted to betray our nation by giving citizenship to tens of thousands who didn't give a s--- about our other laws as they murdered, raped, robbed, dealt illegal drugs, drove without licenses or insurance, stole the social security numbers and/or identities of millions of lawful citizens and most of whom don't give a s--- enough about our country to even learn our language!" He continues, "Members of The United States House of Representatives or United States Senate who try to grant any form of amnesty to millions of illegal aliens are hereby notified they may as well paint a bulls-eye target on themselves. Our bullets don't care about their sovereign power." In what seems like a direct threat, he says, "This seems to be 'it' folks. I'm going to do what I have to do to protect my nation from its government. I know where all of my New Jersey Congressmen and Senators live. Do you know where yours live? If not, you better find out before January so you can scope out their neighborhoods and prepare yourselves. ...Those of you who, for years, have said you're 'gonna do this' or 'gonna do that' when the time comes; are about to face ugly reality. In January, 'the time' will come. In January the entire world will find out if you're real or just a bigmouth coward." Turner says he will not post lists of addresses or maps to lawmakers' homes -- not because of any concern for personal safety, but because he doesn't want to lose the element of surprise.
• At least one reader seems ready to take Turner up on his challenge: "I'm sitting here now with my 30.06 stripped down. Can do this in the dark. Don't want any grains of sand in the mechanism." Another reader asks, "Where can we get some polonium-210?" referring to the Russian spy recently poisoned with the substance. Posters who object to Turner's hatred and virulence receive very specific death threats, as in one example from a Daily Kos blogger, who, after objecting to Turner's attacks on immigrants on April 29, received the following reply: "...We know where you're at now. And we're going to take you out. You really f*cked up posting here. We have you're [sic] IP address. We have you're [sic] home address. We know all about you. You really did f*ck up, you'll see!" (As far as the editor of this site is aware, nothing overt was done as a followup to the threat. But the posting of such a specific threat is itself illegal.)
• The Secret Service says it is not involved in any consideration of Turner's statements, because Turner has not said anything threatening towards anyone the Secret Service protects. The matter must be taken up with local law enforcement, says a Service spokesman. FBI spokesman Paul Bresson refuses to comment on what, if any, investigations of Turner's statements are taking place. "The Internet does not give anyone a license to espouse violence, but there is a certain amount of protection, First Amendment protections, that are built in and we're mindful of those," he says. Bresson calls it a "fine line," and says the FBI will look at all the information available and "make a determination" as to whether any crime might have been committed.
• Turner responds derisively to a poster who says he's forwarded Turner's comments to the FBI. "You called the FBI about me? Big deal!" he retorts. "One can only illegally 'incite' violence when what is said is uttered in a context which lends itself to imminent lawlessness. I will not be arrested because I have thus far committed no crime. Just because you don't understand the subtle delineations of the law does not mean I have broken the law. The FBI has been receiving reports about me from morons like you for six years. I'm still here. Your posting did, however, give me a chuckle!"
• Still, it is hard to see Turner as anything else but someone inciting others to violence. He piles on an ugly, racist component to his already-racist rant about immigrants, writing, "The pro-white movement has a habit of making martyrs of folks who take action. They hold rallies for them. They put up web sites about them. Just so we're clear, the only people authorized to do that for me after I become a martyr (alive or dead) are those who stand with me when the fight takes place. Because if you are, today, 'pro-white' and you fail to stand with me in confronting our renegade government, then I say you are a coward and I don't want my name being uttered by cowards. ...[Amnesty for immigrants] will erase us as a nation and I will not permit it. What about you?" Earlier, he posted on his site, "I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done." During the Terri Schiavo controversy, he wrote, "I advocate the use of force to rescue Terri Schiavo from being starved to death. I further advocate the killing of anyone who interferes with such rescue." The same day, he posted the following ominous statement, with its obvious implications: "Web site updates temporarily offline. I am traveling to do something important." (Editor's note: sure you were, Hal.) He dismisses all of this as "hyperbole."
• Turner twists his anti-Semitism around a bit to respond to Jewish Democrat Joe Lieberman's primary loss in Connecticut, writing on August 9, "Jew news stories and opinion columnists are already screaming how unfair and wrong it is to oust Lieberman. One Democrat columnist (jew) in the New York Post even wrote 'So now that the wackadoo wing of the party has a bloody scalp, what are they going to do with it? Wave it at Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon and Afghanistan and Indonesia and Great Britain and Spain and Israel and New York and declare peace?' Hal Turner answers, 'no, they're waving the bloody scalp at Jews and declaring peace! And that will work because all these wars have been driven by neo-con jews who are more interested in protecting Israel than they are doing what's right for the United States."
• Turner has a long record of open and aboveboard racism of the most virulent kind. His Web site featured the following headlines and commentary from August 2006: "Washington DC Police Arrest Five in Robbery, Rape Spree.... When you read this MSNBC story, take note of how they carefully avoid telling you that all five are black!" To a California story about a string of gas station robberies apparently committed by blacks, Turner wrote, "Whether they're in California, New York or darkest Africa, negroes just can't help being negroes. Tell me again how 'we're all equal?' He reported that a "sp*c" was arrested for carjacking, and asks, "Tell me again how 'They're just coming here to work hard and better their lives?' ...Those of you who still think illegal aliens should be given 'a path to citizenship' really need to get your head out of your *ss. They broek [sic] our law to come here. Do you really think they'll bother obeying any of our othe [sic] laws? Stop being stupid. Speak out: 'Build a wall; Deport them all!'" His intolerance spreads to homosexuals, with the headline, "F*gs bashed in Estonia parade," and to Jews, when he wrote, "Jew-run media 'shocked' at 'intolerance.' Of course, the jew media is not shocked by grown men jack-hammering each other in the *ss...but then again, perversion and degeneracy is the hallmark of the filthy jew!!" But back to the racism: "When will some of you wake up to the fact that non-whites are genetically different from whites to such an extent as to make them living among us a bad thing? Some of you are so afraid of being called a racist, you are actually willing to ignore 500 murders for the sake of political correctness. Get your head out of your *ss and start speaking out even if you are called 'racist!' If we whites don't do something now, we will lose America to these non-white savages!"
• Despite his rhetoric, Turner says he is merely giving political commentary, and no one should take his threats and incitements to violence seriously. He says earlier statements he made about assassinating half of Congress and three Supreme Court Justices were not serious, and that he never wrote up a hit list because he didn't actually plan to do anything that he was advocating. He says he has been investigated repeatedly by the Secret Service, the US Marshals Service, and other law enforcement organizations. He says that's because he's very careful to "use words such as 'may have' [or] 'might' which are opinions/observations rather than threats. ...I am totally familiar with three specific US Supreme Court decisions and those parameters govern what I say and write. [My comments are] uttered in a context which does not lend itself to imminent lawlessness, [do not constitute a] true threat, [and should be considered] political hyperbole." (World Net Daily, The Nation, Wikipedia, Daily Kos, Daily Kos, Eschaton, Orcinus)

---

"The truth is a lot of reports in Washington aren't read by anybody. To show you how important this report is, I read it." -- George W. Bush, December 7, 2006

• December 7: Unsurprisingly, Bush responds to the ISG report (see December 6 item) by hunkering down in his own version of reality and refusing to budge.

  Iraq war and occupation

  He grudgingly admits that "it's bad in Iraq," and says he is "disappointed" in the progress being made in Iraq, but continues to oppose the central recommendation of the ISG report -- opening negotiations with Syria and Iran about Iraq -- and continues to insist that the US cannot negotiate with either country because they support terrorists, including some of the foreign fighters in Iraq. He also says that any consideration of withdrawal of significant numbers of US forces is not on the table at the present time. Bush says that he will take the ISG report "under consideration," and adds, "It makes sense to analyze the situation and to devise a set of tactics and strategies to achieve the objective that I have stated. And so, if the present situation needs to be changed, it follows that we'll change it if we want to succeed." One recommendation that Bush says he will take up is the advice to restart US-led peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. (AP/Yahoo! News)
• December 7: As the discord in Iraq threatens the remnants of its oil industry -- production levels are down from prewar levels, and the industry infrastructure is devastated by violence, lack of investments, and corruption.

  Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"

  Worse, the control of Iraq's immense oil reserves is one of the critical elements underpinning the dispute between the nation's three major religious and ethnic groups, the Shi'a, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. The US has pressured Iraqi leaders to pass a hydrocarbons law that would more fairly regulate the distribution of oil revenues and close some of the sectarian rifts. Political squabbles have overshadowed what could be the historic aspect of the legislation: although the previous regime had moved towards opening up the sector, in order to encourage oil companies to break United Nations sanctions, the law is expected finally to reverse the 1972 nationalization of the industry. According to drafts now circulating, it would allow various forms of foreign partnership, possibly including production-sharing agreements. Such contracts are preferred by oil companies, allowing them to hedge the risk of cost overruns and giving them greater scope for gain if oil prices rise. In other words, oil companies are salivating over the prospect of finally gaining real access to Iraq's oil. "The whole industry is interested in Iraq, including us," says a BP official, but "[t]he security situation would have to improve dramatically if oil companies like us were to commit themselves to long-term exploration and production."
• While international oil companies are used to working in troubled environments, from rebel attacks in Nigeria to general strikes in Venezuela, the conflict in Iraq not only dwarfs anything they have had to deal with in recent history but has also been on a steady escalation, putting into question the very existence of the Iraqi state. "To look into future [Iraqi oil] policy is to look into the unknown," Walid Khadduri, an expert on the country's resource sector, told a recent London conference. "You can't discuss future oil policy before knowing what will happen in the south of the country [home to most of Iraq's oil wealth], who will control the south, whether it's one national party or even local Shia parties." According to the Iraq Study Group, the country is producing only 2.2 million barrels a day and exporting about 1.5 million per day. This is below the Iraqi government's target of 2.5 million barrels a day, and falls far short of the sector's vast potential. A recent report from the oil industry's general inspectorate found that Iraq had lost more than $24.7 billion of potential oil revenues over the past three years because of political instability and violence, including the sabotage of pipelines. From a global perspective, Iraq's oil is becoming increasingly important to overall supply as demand accelerates, from China in particular, and output from fields in the US, Europe and parts of Asia slows with their advancing age. According to the International Energy Agency, the developed countries' watchdog on the issue, Iraq would have to increase its oil production by 4.9% each year until 2030 to meet the world's ever-increasing oil demand. Big oil multinationals struggling to increase their own production and add to reserves have been desperate to be given a chance to develop Iraq's oilfields. The country has 115 billion barrels of estimated reserves and only 22 out of 87 known fields are on stream. Large tracts of Iraq remain little explored.
• Big oil companies, increasingly shut out of profitable projects in Venezuela and Russia, and entirely shut out of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Mexico, are looking to Iraq to bolster their profits and prominence. BP and Royal Dutch Shell have agreed to provide free assessments of the geological, technical and other data on Iraq's two main oilfields, Kirkuk in the north and Rumaila in the south. This has helped them catch up with competitors such as France's Total, which may have gained access to such data when they negotiated contracts with the Hussein regime. Others such as Chevron have forged relationships and gleaned information by organising training sessions for Iraqi engineers outside Iraq. But it it might be Russian, Chinese and Indian oil groups that stand to benefit first from Iraqi oil, given their apparently greater willingness to take on the security risk. Hussein Shahrastani, Iraq's oil minister, recently embarked on a tour of Asia, holding meetings with China's four biggest energy companies. He said concerns over security did not come up. "Unlike western companies, we are willing to work under any circumstances," says Leonid Fedu, vice-president of Russia's Lukoil. "It looks like Russians have a different definition of risk." The US's ConocoPhillips oil conglomerate owns a chunk of Lukoil.
• Some western oil executives say that if a legal framework for investment emerges, the west's energy companies might begin by investing in the relatively stable and underexplored Kurdish north. Groups such as Norway's DNO are drilling for oil in the Kurdish regions. Canada's K Petroleum and the UK's Sterling Energy have signed agreements for field studies. But such contracts are part of the political controversy that has been holding up parliamentary approval of the hydrocarbons law. The Kurdish region has been asserting its right to develop new fields, based on the ambiguous wording of the Iraqi constitution adopted in October 2005. The politics of oil have also pitted the Sunni Arabs, concentrated in the oil-poorer center of the country, against Shi'a parties that are dominant in the south, home to most of Iraq's oil reserves. The Sunni voted against the constitution in a referendum last year partly because of a clause allowing the creation of federal regions, which the Sunni fear could lead to the breakup of the country and deprive them of a share of oil revenues. Kurdish aspirations for control of the northern city of Kirkuk, whose surrounding fields account for nearly 10% of total oil reserves, form another explosive issue that is also fiercely contested by Sunni Arabs. Indeed, analysts warn that the lethal mix of sectarian politics and disputes over oil should make the most adventurous oil companies cautious. If violence continues to escalate, the risk of a gradual disintegration of the country into separate Shi'a, Kurdish and Sunni Arab parts will mount, rendering irrelevant any legal framework approved by parliament. Raad al-Kadiri, director for the Middle East and North Africa at PFC Energy, a Washington-based industry consultancy, says that even if oil legislation is agreed and at least some of the political disputes over oil are settled, foreign investors might still not feel sufficiently protected. "When we talk about legislation we talk about civilized politics in four square miles of Baghdad, which has less and less relevance to what happens outside," he says, referring to the heavily guarded Green Zone, home to government offices. "It's not clear what will happen in Iraq...and that pushes oil and gas investments way back." (Financial Times)
• December 7: House Democratic Leaders aren't happy their GOP colleagues have left them with a plethora of unfinished business as the 109th congressional session comes to an end.

  Congressional Democrats

  "The war in Iraq and the Republicans in Congress are in disarray," House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi says. "They are going to leave a mess as they go out." Incoming Majority Leader Steny Hoyer adds, "We are ending appropriately; doing nothing -- at least doing nothing right." The next day, House Republicans fire back with a raft of accusations. "House Democrats have spent every waking moment of the past Congress obstructing any effort towards progress," says Kevin Madden, spokesman for outgoing House Majority Leader John Boehner. "They have tried to blow up the tracks on immigration reform, tax relief, earmark reform, you name it. ...And now in the last few days of this Congress where they have a chance to help make progress, they decide instead to abdicate their responsibilities and play the blame game. Just goes to show they're a party of zero ideas and zero action." Madden doesn't mention that the Republican House leadership made it virtually impossible for Democrats to have any meaningful input whatsoever on legislation, which voids out his accusation that Democrats "obstructed progress," nor does he mention that in the last few days of Congress, it was the Republicans who chose not to consider critical budget legislation, and the Republicans who chose to bring the session to an early end. Obviously Madden is preparing his sound bites for when the Democrats actually take over the House leadership. (CNN, CNN)
• December 7: The media watchdog organization Media Matters for America identifies six major findings in the Iraq Study Group's report that major news outlets have largely overlooked.

  Conservative media slant

  Media Matters examined print media coverage from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Associated Press, all of whom underreported, or failed to report at all, these six major findings. In addition, the same underreporting, or lack of reporting, was observed on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. (Details of what finding was reported, or not reported, by what outlet can be found on MMFA's Web page, linked below.) The major findings that were not reported by these mainstream media outlets include:
  • The Pentagon's underreporting of violence in Iraq. Near the end of the ISG report, the commission wrote that there is "significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq" -- a finding that takes on particular significance considering Bush's repeated assertion that his Iraq policy is tied to the "conditions on the ground." According to the commission, the Department of Defense "standard" for recording acts of violence functions "as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases" and thus has inaccurately depicted the "events on the ground." The report recommends that the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, and the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, should "institute immediate changes in the collection of data about violence and the sources of violence in Iraq to provide a more accurate picture of events on the ground." Even though this is one of the most significant issues covered in the report, one that affects every decision made concerning Iraq, almost all major media outlets ignored this finding.
  • Lack of knowledge regarding insurgency and militias. The ISG found that "the US government still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias." The commission portrays the intelligence community's degree of knowledge on these fronts as falling "far short of what policy makers need to know." (Details of the intelligence community's shortcomings are available on the MMFA Web page.)
  • Shift of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. The ISG finds the situation in Afghanistan dire and deteriorating, and says that US troops might need to be shifted from Iraq into Afghanistan -- a reversal of the Bush policies towards the two countries. The report calls Afghanistan's borders "porous," says that the Taliban poses a "renewed threat," and notes, "If the Taliban were to control more of Afghanistan, it could provide al-Qaeda the political space to conduct terrorist operations. This development would destabilize the region and have national security implications for the United States and other countries around the world. ...The huge focus of US political, military, and economic support on Iraq has necessarily diverted attention from Afghanistan. As the United States develops its approach toward Iraq and the Middle East, it must also give priority to the situation in Afghanistan. Doing so may require increased political, security, and military measures." The assessment of the critical deterioration of Afghanistan, to the point where additional US troops may need to be deployed there, has been widely overlooked by the major news outlets.
  • The lack of Arabic speakers. Since the March 2003 invasion, US personnel have been critically hampered by the lack of fluent Arab speakers among their number. The report states, "All of our efforts in Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by Americans' lack of language and cultural understanding. Our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage. There are still far too few Arab language -- proficient military and civilian officers in Iraq, to the detriment of the US mission." This issue has barely been covered by the mainstream media.
  • The US is considering extending National Guard and Army reserves deployments. The long-running conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have done considerable damage to the Army's state of readiness, and the report notes that the Army is "now considering breaking its compact with the National Guard and Reserves that limits the number of years that these citizen-soldiers can be deployed." The report states, "[T]he long-term commitment of American ground forces to Iraq at current levels is adversely affecting Army readiness, with less than a third of the Army units currently at high readiness levels. The Army is unlikely to be able to meet the next rotation of troops in Iraq without undesirable changes in its deployment practices. The Army is now considering breaking its compact with the National Guard and Reserves that limits the number of years that these citizen-soldiers can be deployed. Behind this short-term strain is the longer-term risk that the ground forces will be impaired in ways that will take years to reverse." This consideration, with its possible impact on hundreds of thousands of soldiers, families, and communities, has not been reported at all, as far as MMFA can tell.
  • The spending on the Iraq war is subject to little scrutiny The ISG is critical of the Bush administration's persistent use of emergency supplemental appropriations to fund the war and circumvent the normal budgeting system, with little Congressional oversight or even manifest curiosity. The report states that "the public interest is not well served by the government's preparation, presentation, and review of the budget for the war in Iraq," and recommends that "[c]osts for the war in Iraq should be included in the President's annual budget request, starting in FY 2008." The report continues, "[M]ost of the costs of the war show up not in the normal budget request but in requests for emergency supplemental appropriations. This means that funding requests are drawn up outside the normal budget process, are not offset by budgetary reductions elsewhere, and move quickly to the White House with minimal scrutiny. Bypassing the normal review erodes budget discipline and accountability. ...[C]ircumvention of the budget process by the executive branch erodes oversight and review by Congress. The authorizing committees (including the House and Senate Armed Services committees) spend the better part of a year reviewing the President's annual budget request. When the President submits an emergency supplemental request, the authorizing committees are bypassed. The request goes directly to the appropriations committees, and they are pressured by the need to act quickly so that troops in the field do not run out of funds. The result is a spending bill that passes Congress with perfunctory review. Even worse, the must-pass appropriations bill becomes loaded with special spending projects that would not survive the normal review process." This huge issue of billions of dollars being spent without Congressional oversight, and untold sums going to unreviewed "special spending projects," is also being ignored by the mainstream media.
  (MediaMatters)
• December 7: Religious conservatives are lining up to oppose the Senate's consideration of increasing the US's contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

  Religious conservatives

  The Senate is considering raising the US's contribution to the organization to around $700 million for 2007. Overall, the Global Fund spends billions to fight these diseases. According to the organization, over half a million people around the world are currently battling HIV/AIDS with retroviral therapy paid for by the fund, and millions more are getting assistance in fighting TB and malaria. But voices on the right are demanding that the US cut off assistance to the Global Fund. Why? Because right-wing Christian organizations that assert abstinence is the only way to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS aren't getting enough of the money, these groups say. "There's cancer in the fund," Peter Brandt, senior director of government and public policy for the Christian group Focus on the Family. "It does such an unbelievable job in discriminating against faith-based organizations." Brandt wants the government to eliminate all spending on the Global Fund's HIV programs because it is not providing sufficient money to faith groups and has given little support to abstinence messages. He says FOIF would not oppose the US's support for the fund's tuberculosis and malaria programs. FOIF is joined by other activist Christian conservative groups, including the Gerard Health Foundation, which gives about $2 million annually to anti abortion and abstinence programs worldwide and wants all US money cut from the fund, period. The liberal organization People for the American Way observes, "Some on the right, such as Focus on the Family, have been complaining recently that it is unfair to accuse them of not caring about anything other than their own narrow social agenda -- but such complaints ring hollow when they try to cut off funding for global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment simply because their right-wing approach isn't getting a big enough slice of the pie." (Boston Globe/People for the American Way)

 

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