Here Come the Threats and the Empty Posturing

Hold on a minute...we're going to call a do-over with our Farm Bill post just like the House did a little while ago...

The House overwhelmingly rejected President Bush's veto of a $290 billion farm bill Wednesday, but what was to have been a stinging defeat for the president became an embarrassing episode for Democrats.

Only hours before the House's 316-108 vote, Bush had vetoed the five-year measure, saying it was too expensive and gave too much money to wealthy farmers when farm incomes are high. The Senate then was expected to follow suit quickly.

Action stalled, however, after the discovery that Congress had omitted a 34-page section of the bill when lawmakers sent the massive measure to the White House. That means Bush vetoed a different bill from the one Congress passed, leaving leaders scrambling to figure out whether it could become law.

Democrats hoped to pass the entire bill, again, on Thursday under expedited rules usually reserved for unopposed legislation. Lawmakers also probably will have to pass an extension of current farm law, which expires Friday.

"We will have to repass the whole thing, as will the Senate," said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. "We can't let the farm bill just die."

Republican leaders called for a farm bill do-over. The White House, almost gleefully, seized on the fumble and said the mixup could give Congress time to fix the "bloated" bill.

It's a setback, to be certain, but what is needed now is a little bit of legislative statecraft and sleight of hand to GET the farm bill BACK on track and get it passed. Was the bill sabotaged? Who knows? But the President simply doesn't matter anymore. That's why so many Republicans are voting for the Farm Bill this year.

They violated international law, they employed torture, and Condoleezza Rice is complicit

An audit by the Inspector General for the Department of Justice was released yesterday and what is detailed in the 370-page report is enough to turn the stomach of decent people. It is horrifying. It is sick. It is perverse. And FBI Agents were complaining about the detainee treatment they witnessed that was perpetrated by military interrogators and CIA agents at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and other detention centers.

And it was all done in your name. You had to be made safe, you know, even at the expense of the moral high ground that we liked to consider we occupied. That illusion should be over by now, in the face of what we know has transpired.

Complaints by FBI agents about abusive interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other U.S. military sites reached the National Security Council but prompted no effort to curb questioning that the agents considered ineffective and possibly illegal, according to an internal audit released yesterday.

Reports that Guantanamo detainees were being subjected to extreme temperatures, religious abuses and nude interrogation were conveyed at White House meetings of senior officials in 2003, yet these questionable tactics remained in use, a lengthy report by the Justice Department's inspector general concluded.

In one instance, colleagues of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft reported that he personally aired concerns about Defense Department strategy toward a particular detainee with Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, while other Justice managers shared similar fears with the council's legal adviser in November 2003, the report said.

Ashcroft declined to be interviewed by investigators, so it remains uncertain how aggressively he pressed the issue, according to the report. Other senior Justice officials told investigators that no changes were made in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay even after these and other complaints filtered up to the National Security Council.

Nearly half of the 450 FBI agents who worked at Guantanamo reported that they had observed or heard about military interrogators using a variety of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees, with the most common being sleep deprivation and short-shackling -- or locking a detainee's hands and feet together to prevent comfortable sitting or standing -- for long periods of time.

Military officials at Guantanamo Bay used some aggressive techniques before they were approved, possibly in violation of Defense Department policy and U.S. law, the report said. They also continued to use "stress positions" and other such techniques well after they were prohibited by Defense Department policy in January 2003, the report said.

The 370-page report draws heavily on e-mail messages and contemporaneous memos to provide the clearest and most definitive account to date of the key tactics used by the government against suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It describes, for example, a "frequent flyer program" meant to lessen resistance by extensively disrupting sleep, use of strobe lights in conjunction with loud rock music, twisting of thumbs backward, and exposure of detainees to extreme temperatures, threatening dogs, pornography and sexual taunting.

Detainees in Iraq had water poured down their throats while they were cuffed and kneeling, the FBI agents told investigators.

Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was angry. "Some have suggested that the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody was simply the result of a few bad apples acting on their own. The report released today by the Department of Justice Inspector General is proof that that is simply not true. The IG found that scores of FBI agents observed the use of harsh interrogation techniques in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay."

Aren't you just bursting with pride?

We can not abide this as a nation. We know the Congress can't impeach Bush and Cheney because there is not the political will to make it stick. If anyone got a blow job the woman who knew about it and could prove it is conveniently dead..so...no impeachment for them...

But Condi Rice is another story. Can't we impeach her for her complicity in desecrating our country and allowing us to become a nation of gulags and torture and Kafkaesque process?

UPDATE I / Warren Street / 11:51 AM

The government kept meticulous records of everything it did, also in our name, by the way. TPM's document collection has more

This is just for IRAQ:




What kind of horrific bureaucracy keeps track of how many times it threatens to harm someone's family? I just want to know. Because I don't care what anyone says--THAT'S un-American. Period.

Michael Gerson's Mancrush on Robert Gates

Some people just can't hide their mancrushes, can they? We've seen the media's mancrush for Senator John McCain, and now we see evidence that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has a huge fan in Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.

Gerson tries to rewrite the history of the Walter Reed scandal into a mash note to Gates:

When he was told that some in the Army were dismissive of press reports on the mistreatment of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to one witness, grew "very, very quiet." Within two weeks, the Walter Reed commander was out of a job.

This kind of decisive silence has been employed by Gates to good effect in scandals ranging from misdirected nuclear parts to the cremation of fallen American soldiers and pets at the same facility.

To those who know this Eagle Scout with 28 years of experience in government, his subdued efficiency is not surprising. To those of us who haven't had the pleasure, his transformational ambitions and strategic boldness are surprising indeed.

Decisive? It took him almost two weeks to get rid of an incompetent General? In the middle of a war, the Secretary of Defense has to wait that long to make a basic decision on who is in charge of one of the major facilities that treats and cares for wounded soldiers? We're not talking about who's in charge of the motor pool on Fort Sill. We're talking about a facility that is just across town from the Pentagon. And his solution was to simply move that same General to another command?

The commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center was fired yesterday after the Army said it had lost trust and confidence in his leadership in the wake of a scandal over outpatient treatment of wounded troops at the Northwest Washington hospital complex.

Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who assumed command of Walter Reed in August, will be temporarily replaced by Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley. But the appointment of Kiley, who had earlier been the facility's commander, surprised some Defense Department officials because soldiers, their families and veterans' advocates have complained that he had long been aware of problems at Walter Reed and did nothing to improve its outpatient care.

The action came 10 days after a Washington Post series exposed the squalid living conditions for some outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed and bureaucratic problems that prevented many from getting the care they need.

"The care and welfare of our wounded men and women in uniform demand the highest standard of excellence and commitment that we can muster as a government," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a statement. "When this standard is not met, I will insist on swift and direct corrective action and, where appropriate, accountability up the chain of command."

A senior Defense Department official said Gates had demanded quick action to show that the Pentagon was serious about improvements at Walter Reed. But the official said that Gates was not involved in the appointment of Kiley.

That's not decisive. That's incomprehensible. Weightman went from commanding Walter Reed, a small Army post northwest of Washington DC to commanding Fort Detrick, a much larger Army post...northwest of Washington DC. And, when you think about it, how much sense did it make to take Walter Reed away from Weightman and give him command of Fort Detrick?

The mission of the U.S. Army Garrison and Fort Detrick is to Command, operate and administer the use of resources to provide installation support to on-post Department of Defense and non-Department of Defense tenant organizations; and to furnish automated data processing, financial management and logistical support as directed to selected Headquarters, Department of the Army staff and field operating agencies.

Major tenants located on Fort Detrick are the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, 21st Signal Brigade, and the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency.

Fort Detrick serves four Cabinet-Level agencies, which include: The Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Agriculture and Department of Human Services. Fort Detrick's DoD support also includes elements of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Beyond that, Fort Detrick supports several Unified and Major Army Commands: Unified U.S. Army Forces Command, U.S. Army Space Command, U.S. Army Information Systems Command, and U.S. Army Health Services Command.

Fort Detrick today is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation supporting a multi-agency community. Approximately 5,800 military, federal, and contractor personnel are assigned there. They conduct biomedical research and development, medical materiel management, and defense communications. Each of the military services is represented. The Commanding General, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), is the installation commander.

[SNIP]

As the Department of Defense's lead laboratory for medical biological defense, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases conducts basic research leading to the development of vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and information to protect U.S. service members from biological warfare threats. The institute is a world-renowned reference laboratory for definitive identification of biological threat agents and diagnosis of the diseases they produce.

And, like any good corporate leader, the guy brought in to clean up the mess created by the demonstrably incompetent guy who was kicked upstairs to run a biological warfare program turns out to have been exactly the wrong guy.

Oh, and one more thing--that "decisive" decision by Gates? How'd that work out?

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley has lost his job as Army surgeon general, another casualty of the care scandal at Walter Reed Medical Center.

Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren asked for Kiley's resignation, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates approved the action, a senior Pentagon official said.

In its official announcement, the Army said Kiley had requested retirement.

Kiley had been made temporary head of Walter Reed, the Army's top hospital, after Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman was ousted in the wake of a series in The Washington Post that found soldiers living in deplorable conditions.

However, he was quickly replaced by Gen. Eric Schoomaker amid criticism that Kiley, who was head of Walter Reed from 2000 to 2004, had been aware of the problems at the facility.

That's decisive leadership? Ten days after the problems were exposed, Gates fired Weightman and either did or didn't have anything to do with the decision that installed Kiley. Ten days after that, Gates fired Kiley. Weightman got a promotion, if you consider being sent from Walter Reed to Fort Detrick a promotion.

Does Michael Gerson have an editor? An editor who actually reads the Washington Post? Did it escape Gerson and his editor's attention that the Washington Post actually won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Walter Reed scandal?

Apparently, it did.

The Spy Who Posted His Professional Resume

No, it's not Instaputz...

A retired University of Tennessee professor is accused of conspiring to provide military secrets to a Chinese graduate student.

J. Reece Roth was indicted Tuesday on 18 charges related to violating the Arms Export Control Act and trying to defraud the U.S. Air Force.

The charges involve work performed by Roth and the student on an Air Force contract to develop flight controls for weapons-deploying unmanned aircraft.

The government says Roth failed to get permission to involve a foreign national in the work, carried sensitive documents on a lecture trip to China and directed wire transmissions of restricted technical data to China.

Roth's attorney says his client has done nothing illegal and conducted himself ethically and honestly.

Being the "wily" spy that he allegedly is, Roth seems to have committed the greatest sin that a spy can commit--he put his entire professional resume online. Here is the heavily edited version, and I'm just keeping all of the open references to working with foreign entities of interest, with China and with Chinese educators:

The most recent version of the professional resume [over ten pages in length] that Roth posted online and updated on January 3, 2008

J. Reece Roth, Ph. DProfessor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and IEEE FellowPlasma Sciences Laboratory (http://plasma.ece.utk.edu)Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee
Dr. J. Reece Roth obtained an S. B. in Physics from MIT in 1959, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1963 with a major in Engineering Physics. He joined the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio in 1963, where he was Principal Investigator of the Lewis Electric Field Bumpy Torus Project until 1978. He is presently Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; an Honorary Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, P.R.C; and an Interim Honorary Professor of the Shenzhen Campus of Tsinghua University, China.

...is an Honorary Professor, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 1992;

...and Interim HonoraryProfessor of the Shenzhen Campus of Tsinghua University, China, 2006-2008.

Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering

Iranian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering

City of Hong Kong

Slovak Research and Development Agency

Prof. Roth published a 1985 textbook Introduction to Fusion Energy, which is now in its fifth printing, and a