Did the Pentagon Help Smear Obama Yesterday?

The smear against Obama--that he cancelled a visit to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to visit wounded troops--was perpetrated with the help of outlets like the Drudge Report overnight. But, curiously, the headline has now vanished from the front page of the site. Could it be because there was Pentagon interference in the cancellation?

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama scrubbed a planned visit to see wounded American servicemen and women in Germany after Pentagon objections that the stop at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center could be seen as a political event, according to Obama's campaign.

Although the Illinois senator visited troops in Afghanistan and Iraq on the first part of his overseas trip, those stops were part of an official Congressional delegation, and therefore deemed apolitical. The European tour, which included a speech in Berlin last night before an enthusiastic crowd of 200,000, is funded by the campaign and as such is not official government business.

"Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country," retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, an Obama adviser, said in a statement.

"We learned from the Pentagon [Wednesday] night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event. Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perceived as a campaign event...and decided instead not to go."

This is the price you pay for being too successful--did the Pentagon bow to pressure from the Republican Party and throw a spanner in the works so that the stories of his visit with wounded troops wouldn't bookmark his visit to Germany? The flyers for the Berlin event had the visit printed on them but the Obama campaign said the flyers were incorrect because the decision to cancel had been a last minute decision. The McCain campaign quickly denounced the move, almost seeming to have a ready-made smear in hand:

The spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Thursday that Obama made his decision out of respect for the servicemen and women, but Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign immediately criticized the move.

"Barack Obama is wrong. It is never inappropriate to visit our men and women in the military," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the Republican contender.

Pretty clever for an off-the-cuff remark, since the cancellation happened at the last minute. And, no, the press wasn't going with Obama, Hagel and Reed to the medical facility--that had already been decided.

What isn't clear is whether or not we can expect the Pentagon to continue working alongside the McCain campaign.

UPDATE: Brandon Friedman at Vote Vets has more.

--WS

Gates Makes His Case to Stay on at Defense

While we're not huge fans of some of his earlier work, we bear a grudging respect for what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been doing--and saying--as of late. It's too bad the Republicans went out and found a Secretary of Defense who, essentially, rips the guts out of every argument John McCain and his surrogates have been making this year.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned yesterday against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role.

"We cannot kill or capture our way to victory" in the long-term campaign against terrorism, Gates said, arguing that military action should be subordinate to political and economic efforts to undermine extremism.

I can't wait for the outcry--Secretary Gates has basically undercut the rationale for staying in Iraq, effectively debunking the myth that if we don't fight them over there, we'll end up having to fight them over here. He has put the onus on Secretary Rice, who has never been up to the task. Her State Department is a shambles, with hundreds of key positions unfilled for months and years.

Every time McCain talks about attacking Iran, staying in Iraq, or using war as the instrument of our foreign policy--he should be hammered with this quote from Gates. McCain's manly boast about "I know how to win wars" should have been met with laughter and derision. Instead, the Man Crush continues.

We don't need another Richard Cohen type situation--Gates should not be kept by a possible Obama administration, if only because we need to develop Democrats who can effectively lead on defense issues.

[h/t to Juan Cole]

--WS

No SOFA For You

The complete and utter failure of our policy in Iraq is exemplified in our ability to negotiate a working Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with a country that is run by a man who would be dead or exiled in 24 hours if our troops weren't there.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a "bridge" document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.

The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.

The position of the Maliki government is this--we'll get a better deal from someone else. They refuse to be the Arab client state of the neoconservative movement, so they have scuttled the talks and dealt Bush a very minor blow.

Minor, because the war isn't exactly being reported in the US. That's why we're blogging this on Sunday morning--no one gives a shit about what failed over the weekend. You can expect the fact that we have no SOFA agreement with Iraq--after over five years of occupation--to be raised as an issue exactly zero times from here on in.

--WS

Pentagon Begins Assessing Impact of Rising Food Prices

In light of growing unrest around the world over rising food prices, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is asking for a closer look at the crisis and its security implications, a U.S. military official said Monday.

Adm. Michael Mullen has instructed his staff to investigate the matter so his office can be prepared in the event the crisis becomes a defense issue, the source said.

It's the first time the highest levels of the U.S. military have become involved in the issue.

The crisis first gained international attention when riots broke out several weeks ago in Haiti and Egypt over the high cost of food.

The U.S. military official emphasized that there is "no military planning" and no intention of getting U.S. troops involved in the crisis.

The source acknowledged there is little the U.S. military can do, but said, "This is an area that has certainly got our attention now."

Even as they look into the matter, Mullen's staffers are not expected to come up with any formal recommendations to the chairman.

The rising cost of bread in Egypt has led to government crackdowns

Police clashed with protesters in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla on Sunday, firing tear gas and arresting dozens after angry residents demanding an end to price hikes and soaring inflation set two schools ablaze and burnt tyres along the city's railway.

Egypt is the world's biggest consumer of bread, with each Egyptian eating 400 grams of bread a day. That compares with France - the land of the baguette - where the figure is only 130g per day.

The shortages have forced bakers and consumers on to the black market. According to the state-owned daily Al-Ahram, 12,000 people have been detained in raids across the country in recent days and they are all to face justice over selling flour on the black market.

A 100 kilogram sack of subsidised flour is worth about $3.14. The same sack costs $377 on the black market.

The government is desperately scrambling to contain the crisis.

On Friday the authorities announced plans to suspend rice exports for six months from April and the commerce ministry said cement exports will also be frozen over the same period in an attempt to combat price rises.

The Pentagon views what is happening in Egypt as a crisis:

Egypt could be one area of concern for the Pentagon because unrest there has continued sporadically over food prices, two senior U.S. military officials have said.

Cairo is a major ally of Washington in the global war on terror, and the United States does not want the unrest there to grow, possibly risking the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.

Other countries throughout the developing world have been hit hard by the rise of food prices:

There also have been riots over high food costs in Haiti, sparking concern about another wave of illegal immigration to the United States.

The rising costs and chaotic riots have prompted several countries to stop exporting wheat and rice, and the U.N. World Food Program has cut food rations to millions of displaced people in Sudan's Darfur region because so many food convoys have been hijacked.

In other areas of the Middle East, bread is a symbolic basic staple of life, and as prices rise, resentment of wasteful government spending begins to grow:

In Yemen, where food riots broke out in recent months, the answer to nearly every question we asked about food elicited emotions ranging from fear of malnutrition to anger over the exorbitant rise in prices.

The cost of one round of traditional flat bread, roughly two slices of bread in the United States, has risen sharply, from about 10 Yemeni rials (about 2.5 cents) to 20 rials in the local bakeries. This may not sound like much to an American who’s used to paying $3.50 or more for a loaf of bread, but it is to a Yemeni – and to many others in the developing world for whom food expenditures can represent 60 to 80 percent of a family’s spending.

Few of the Yemenis we met, if any, understand why food prices have risen so sharply. Even Americans awash in information are as confused and confounded as Yemenis. More than one person made a connection between higher food prices and the ongoing construction of what they call the “President’s Mosque” – a mosque named after the country’s leader and reported to cost $65 million. (They had no proof, which, of course, seems an unnecessary part of any discussion about supposed government excess.)

In Yemen, when the price of bread rises, so does anger and resentment of the government. Elsewhere, because of government subsidies, the price of bread is stable, contributing to different kinds of headaches.

In Iran, inflation is now up to an annual rate of 18 percent; earlier this month, that cost the economic minister his job. The bakers get government flour and are allowed to charge only a certain low rate for the bread they sell.

[SNIP]

The menu that people hit by this immediate crisis are using is fairly simple: flour and rice, even as these staples double or quadruple in price; cakes in Haiti made largely of mud, choked down in a desperate attempt to fill one’s belly; bread baked by the military in Egypt. But from our travels, it seems that the menu items that helped create the current crisis are more complex, processed and partially hydrogenated than these modest items.

Food corporations have learned how to enter the developing world. Few of the families we met could afford a week’s worth of a processed food item at one time, so the global food companies make their wares more affordable by offering them in single-serving packets. In Manila, individual portions of “foods” such as imitation-cheese spreads, chips and spiced rice dishes are much like the convenience packs sold in the United States. Highly processed foods are making inroads into the diets of the developing world, and with that comes dependence.

In fact, there are many organizations throughout the world who are expressing concern about the rise in food prices:

UN staff in Jordan also went on strike for a day this week to demand a pay rise in the face of a 50% hike in prices, while Asian countries such as Cambodia, China, Vietnam, India and Pakistan have curbed rice exports to ensure supplies for their own residents.

Officials in the Philippines have warned that people hoarding rice could face economic sabotage charges. A moratorium is being considered on converting agricultural land for housing or golf courses, while fast-food outlets are being pressed to offer half-portions of rice.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation says rice production should rise by 12m tonnes, or 1.8%, this year, which would help ease the pressure. It expects "sizable" increases in all the major Asian rice producing countries, especially Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines and Thailand.

Holmes is the latest senior figure to warn the world is facing a worsening food crisis. Josette Sheeran, director of the UN World Food Programme, said last month: "We are seeing a new face of hunger. We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it."

The programme has launched an appeal to boost its aid budget from $2.9bn to $3.4bn (£1.5bn to £1.7bn) to meet higher prices, which officials say are jeopardising the programme's ability to continue feeding 73 million people worldwide.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said "many more people will suffer and starve" unless the US, Europe, Japan and other rich countries provide funds. He said prices of all staple food had risen 80% in three years, and that 33 countries faced unrest because of the price rises.

In the UK, Professor John Beddington, the new chief scientific adviser to the government, used his first speech last month to warn the effects of the food crisis would bite more quickly than climate change. He said the agriculture industry needed to double its food production, using less water than today.

He said the prospect of food shortages over the next 20 years was so acute it had to be tackled immediately: "Climate change is a real issue and is rightly being dealt with by major global investment. However, I am concerned there is another major issue along a similar time-scale - that of food and energy security."

The possibility that the Pentagon might need to deploy US troops to prop up various "friendly" regimes throughout the world hinges on whether such a move would be feasible. The strain on US troops because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have left the Pentagon less likely to resort to full scale invasions.

Any plan to invade a country or countries due to instability would likely resemble the plans revealed by General Wesley Clark:

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

The Pentagon has long maintained plans to invade virtually any and all countries in the world:

It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade: "The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival."

In the event of war, the American planners figured that England would use Canada (Crimson) -- then a quasi-pseudo-semi-independent British dominion -- as a launching pad for "a direct invasion of BLUE territory." That invasion might come overland, with British and Canadian troops attacking Buffalo, Detroit and Albany. Or it might come by sea, with amphibious landings on various American beaches -- including Rehoboth and Ocean City, both of which were identified by the planners as "excellent" sites for a Brit beachhead.

Of necessity, the Pentagon strikes "Question 21" from the Security Clearance questionaire

As the war in Afghanistan grinds on toward the seven-year mark, and the war in Iraq is almost two months into the sixth year, the effects on our military forces have been overwhelming. Last month the RAND corporation released a study that pulled the curtain back on the horrors of what our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are being forced to deal with and should have served as a wake-up call for the homefront - and the Pentagon. It also compliments and confirms an Army study on mental health that was released by the Joint Chiefs earlier this month that pegged the number of soldiers suffering from PTSD after one deployment at 12%, after two deployments at 18.5% and after three deployments at 28%.

Many units have deployed multiple times, and as the studies showed, the members of those units are suffering horribly. The more times they deploy, the worse they suffer.

Until yesterday, many of those who are suffering the effects of repeated combat rotations suffered in silence...because of "Question 21."

Anyone wo has ever gone through the process of getting a security clearance knows what it is..."Have you consulted a mental health professional in the past seven years for issues other than martial problems or grief?" A "yes" required excruciating details of the reason treatment was sought, and the treatment method(s) employed. This usually raised other questions and led to closer scrutiny.

John E. Fortunato, chief of Fort Bliss' Restoration and Resilience Center, which treats soldiers returning from combat with post-traumatic stress disorder, called Thursday's announcement an important first step.

Fortunato, who has treated 37 soldiers since his center opened nearly a year ago, said commanders have taunted troops and told them to "soldier on" when they complained of combat stress.

Soldiers have "paid such a high price for PTSD," Fortunato said.

The cost of treating a soldier is far less than pushing him or her out of the Army, Fortunato added. He estimated it costs his center roughly $20,000 to treat someone with post-traumatic stress disorder, compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars the military would have to spend to replace the discharged soldier.

"The measure (of mental health treatment) success is retention," he said.

During his visit, Gates said the military must lift the stigma on mental health care and encourage troops to see it as equal to physical care.

"The most important thing for us now is to get the word out as far as we can to every man and woman in uniform to let them know about this change, to let them know the efforts that are under way to remove the stigma and to encourage them to seek help when they are in the theater or when they return from the theater," Gates told reporters here as he announced the change.

"The department considers it a mark of strength and maturity to seek appropriate health care, whenever required," James Clapper, the undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and David Chu, the undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, wrote in a letter announcing the change.

It is a welcome change that is long overdue, but truly - it's better late than never.

PALE RIDER ADDS...

It's a welcome step--but will they really strike the question and not hold that against someone when they are adjudicating a clearance renewal? Because that's what this essentially affects. A soldier who reclasses into an MOS or job specialty that requires a clearance after an initial tour shouldn't be penalized, and those who already had clearances shouldn't be penalized for getting PTSD counseling. So you need to strike that question for the FIRST application for a clearance and then for the 5 year periodic updates.

MORE IMPORTANTLY--they strike Question 21, but did you know--Questions 27, 28, and 29 are about ANY kind of "illegal drug use" and the number one item detailed is marijuana? Did you know that Question 30 asks about alcohol and whether or not use of alcohol led to any kind of counseling?

Seems to me, they can strike Question 21, confident they will catch anyone who has PTSD who "self-medicates" with marijuana or alcohol, and as we know from the data, sufferers of PTSD have to self-medicate with whatever they can find while they await treatment in a very slow system and while they go through a phase of getting their various life issues under some kind of control.

The medications that go with that treatment have always been of interest on the clearance paperwork as well--meaning, if you were prescribed valium or some other form of legitimate drug for treatment, you had to disclose that in detail as well. So I hope they end the scrutiny of counseling AND they end the scrutiny of asking what medications were used to treat the PTSD.

As it sits right now, forget about medical marijuana for an active duty soldier. If an active duty soldier legitimately needs it to calm down, the tests hot on a urinalysis, their career is essentially over if they've been in longer than 36 months. This reform is welcome, but the treatment of PTSD often conflicts with what they allow, culturally, in the military, and that's a nearly zero level of tolerance for anything relating to marijuana. If a person who has separated from service needs it, that is less complicated. And if someone is a reservist or guardsman, their testing regime might be less often than for the active duty, but they're in jeopardy of testing positive and facing UCMJ.

A mature and considered debate awaits--do we treat these men and women with medical marijuana or not? And if we do, then THAT should not endanger their clearances nor should it end their careers. So, it's all well and good to strike Question 21 if they then know they can turn around at get someone on the other questions, which ask about use at any time since the age of 16, use while holding a clearance, manufacturing and distribution, and whether use of alcohol led to ANY kind of counseling or treatment. Those questions would surely catch quite a few people who might have answered in the affirmative on Question 21.

Blue Girl adds -

Pale Rider raises a damned good issue. Medical marijuana would, in my (medical) opinion, be preferable to long-term use of any of the anti-anxiety drugs in the benzodiazapine family. They are highly addictive, and highly intoxicating. They also have a long half-life, which means that the drug builds up in the system, and tolerance from intoxication takes a long, long time to kick in. Frequently, by the time it does, an addiction has set in, and abuse soon follows. Benzos should only be used for short periods of time for this reason. But PTSD is not a short-term disorder. It takes a long time to treat.

Marijuana, too, has a long half life, but it stores in the fat cells and doesn't have an amplified intoxication effect.

And by the way, it's bullshit to say it can't be regulated and dosed, because it sure as hell can. By one of the oldest and most effective methods of extracting active ingredients from medicinal herbs...tincturing. Tinctures can be tested for efficacy by batch via chemical assay, and graded by a system something akin to proofing of alcohol. We don't have to distribute two-finger bags and rolling papers at sick call.

And we might need to have a serious discussion about what is best for those in need and forget what gets the authoritarians, hippie-haters and conservatards in a lather. Stop even paying attention to those whack-jobs. They have been wrong about everything and that is never going to change, it's a hallmark of the species. The sooner we get past trying to placate those implacable mouth-breathers and marginalize them to the degree they so richly deserve, the better off we'll be as a society.

Bean Counting Gone Horribly Wrong

Put this on your outrage pile...

Since 2004, the Pentagon has spent roughly $16 billion annually to maintain and modernize the military's business systems, but most are as unreliable as ever—even as the surge in defense spending is creating more room for error. The basic defense budget for 2007 was $439.3 billion, up 48 percent from 2001, excluding the vast additional sums appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to federal regulators and current and former Pentagon officials, the accounting process is so obsolete and error prone that it's virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up. While the department's brass has made a few patchwork improvements, billions are still unaccounted for. The problem is so deeply rooted that, 18 years after Congress required major federal agencies to be audited, the Pentagon still can't be.

There are some wars going on--you'd think we'd see some cooperation:

Preoccupied with protecting their turf, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines continue to maintain separate, increasingly outdated systems that can't talk to each other, trace disbursements, or detect overbilling by contractors. At the Indianapolis facility, as at the Defense Department's four other main U.S. centers for financial operations, accounting programs under the same roof can't share information without extensive jury-rigging, as though contracts, payments, and accounting had nothing to do with one another.

"In the Defense Department, what you have now are material weaknesses that are in every single area, in every part of the department, so deep and so wide you do not really have any way of figuring out where money is being spent," says Linda Bilmes, a federal budget expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

You have to read all the way up to page three to find this little nugget:

The Indianapolis center and other back offices are supposed to comply with a congressional mandate to track how much of each year's emergency appropriations are spent on the Bush administration's declared global war on terrorism. But a former senior official from the Indianapolis center, who requested anonymity, says that its outmoded systems can't be tweaked to produce such data. Instead, it's done offline by workers combing through computer data and pulling out what they think should be attributed to the war on terrorism. Their guesswork, the source says, is probably way off.

The dysfunction stems in part from the traditional independence of the military branches. Over several decades, they have cobbled together separate processes for identical functions, resulting in the uncontrolled growth of more than 4,000 accounting, financial, and inventory systems. Their names form an acronym soup: CAPS, Stanfins, IAPS, Somards, Samms, Mocas, HQARS, Stars. The department's primary system for handling weapons contracts and payments dates from 1958; a costly attempt to replace it was abandoned in 2002 as a failure. The Army's notoriously inaccurate main accounting system was created in 1966.

I would hasten to add that none of this is by accident. I happen to know there are certain DoD agencies that have sophisticated systems that are pretty complex. They're up to date, have vast capabilities, and use cutting edge technology. Whatever boondoggle exists in Indianapolis is largely an intentional design, combining the best efforts of thousands of planners to hide the money they're spending and keep Congress off of their turf.

The first task of the next Secretary of Defense is to designate the system that they're going to use, and give everyone two fiscal years to transition. And then every single computer, mainframe, desk lamp and lightswitch in Indianapolis gets shut off, permanently. Failure to do that means an instant 25% cut in funds for each year until the DoD is in compliance with Congress. Fix it, make everyone use it, and then shut that old system down forever.

Cliff May Reveals the Insanity of Modern Conservatives and the War

Get ready to see some goalposts moved around...

Five years ago this month, American troops liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Then came the hard part.

American intelligence had been wrong about Saddam’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction: They were nowhere to be found. Most academic experts had failed to perceive the currents of religious extremism and sectarianism running just beneath Iraq’s secular surface. State Department consultants and U.N. advisors proved unequal to the task of building democratic political institutions quickly from scratch.

The media had understated Saddam’s barbarism: It had been too risky to report in depth on the mass graves Saddam filled with dissidents; the tens of thousands of Kurds gassed to death in their villages; the camps where Saddam trained terrorists for assignments abroad. As a consequence, few anticipated how severely Iraqis had been traumatized.

First of all, Cliff May is insane. He is a neocon without a fucking soul. Any person with even a shred of self-awareness would shut up about these things and try to hide. The truth of the Iraq war is wrapped up in the fact that these people have gotten 4,000 Americans killed for their own fantasy of an oil-rich state in the heart of the Muslim world, adorned with permanent bases and run by corrupt sycophants.

Who publishes this crap? The reason why "State Department consultants and UN advisors" proved unequal was because Don Rumsfeld shut them completely and utterly out of the process and did not allow them to participate in any meaningful way. People from the State Department quit because the policy was flawed. Many more have retired rather than pound sand. A good number of people have bravely tried--many UN personnel have died trying to help the US in Iraq. They were not "unequal." They were unable to operate inside of the whirlwind of chaos created by the failed strategies of Don Rumsfeld. Second of all, everyone and their brother knew Saddam gassed the Kurds--it was widely disseminated information. Third, those "international terrorists" have never really materialized because they really didn't exist. It was all Pentagon propaganda to help grease the skids for war. All now disproven, of course, by a Pentagon that was forced to come clean.

And America’s military, so adept at bringing down a dictator, was unprepared for the “small war” that would follow: terrorist attacks on innocent Iraqis that the “international community” would blame not on the perpetrators - but on America.

Like most military strategists of the late 20th century, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld envisioned wars of the 21st century as akin to computer games. Advanced technology, more than blood and sweat, was supposed to be decisive. And in a place like Iraq, it was believed, the U.S. “footprint” should be as light as possible because close proximity to American soldiers would surely incite the natives to violence.

It's nice that May realizes the only way to get through this column is to throw Rumsfeld under the bus. But where does he talk about Feith, Wolfowitz and all of the other neocon chickenhawks who never served in the military or in combat? Where does he admit that a cabal of incompetent sons of bitches smashed our military on the rock of and Iraqi insurgency? Where does he talk about Richard Perle and Bill Kristol, who opined that the Sunni and Shia were secular and have always gotten along? All of the assembled thinkers on the right were WRONG. Utterly and completely. You don't get something this wrong very often. And they were as wrong as possible. And that doesn't matter?

The result of so many errors and misjudgments was catastrophic. Three years after the liberation of Iraq from Saddam, much of the country had been taken over by al-Qaeda. Other areas were under the sway of Iranian proxies, in chaos, or close to civil war.

Absolutely, totally and completely WRONG: al Qaeda in Iraq is a loosely affiliated organization that was created to engage the Americans in Iraq. It is not the same "al Qaeda" that hit us on 9/11 or in Africa. And it has NEVER been responsible for more than 10% of the attacks on the US. Our main opponents are Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen.

Iraq’s military had been disbanded by the American envoy, L. Paul Bremer. America’s forces were cooped up in heavily guarded Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) waiting for actionable intelligence that seldom arrived. When it did, they would drive their vehicles to battle down roads their enemies had lined with bombs.

Finally, after the 2006 election rebuke to President Bush, a new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, was assigned to the Pentagon, and a new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, was deployed to the field of battle. American forces set out to liberate Iraq - for a second time.

Bremer had nothing to do with the "strategy" of disbanding the army or cooping up troops in bases. That was all Rumsfeld, Myers, Franks, Abizaid, Sanchez and Casey. They made the calls. And it was the Pentagon hacks like Feith and Wolfowitz who were the civilian controlling authorities that forced these policies onto the backs of the military commanders. Bremer was a stooge, nothing more. He didn't make a single decision that didn't have the stamp of approval from Washington DC. And it was those incompetent idealogues that staffed Bremer's CPA with young Republicans who didn't have a fucking clue as to what they were doing.

There have been dozens of generals who have fought in Iraq. And out of that group, Petraeus was a division commander far down the line who came back to Iraq to "train" the Iraqi police. And he failed at that. So after dismal failures and a wave of retirements from the men who fought in Iraq during the first two years, all they had left was Petraeus.

The Petraeus strategy was nothing if not counterintuitive: He gave the enemy more targets and assigned them to more vulnerable positions - outside the well-guarded FOBs and in the shadowy streets. But once the Iraqis understood why the Americans were there - to defend them from terrorists - they provided a wealth of intelligence. Before long, Americans and Iraqis were fighting side by side against their common Islamist enemies.

That was historic. It should have been big news. But the media were not much interested. As one well-known reporter told me: “It doesn’t matter.” The important action, he said, was taking place not in Baghdad but in Washington, where politicians were reading the polls and finding Americans discouraged and ready to cut their losses.

No, they weren't fighting "side by side" and they certainly won't ever again get that opportunity again--thanks to the fact that we've failed to pay the Sunnis their ten dollars a day. Too many of the Iraqis that have tried to fight alongside US troops have turned their weapons on our troops. Too many of them are militiamen in disguise. And far too many of them cannot organize themselves into units and sustain the fight for themselves. How many Iraqi battalions can stand up and fight on their own? We cannot know that number until it is briefed to us next month, if anyone remembers to ask at all. But for three years, one a handful of Iraqi battalions have ever reached that status and the number has actually declined.

What’s more, such groups as MoveOn.org - heavily invested in an American defeat they could blame on Bush, Cheney, and the “neo-cons” - had a well-funded plan, “Iraq Summer,” that was to make it politically untenable for members of Congress to continue to support the Iraq mission.

MoveOn.org doesn't have that kind of clout. Far more powerful was the group called the American voter that threw Republicans out of office. If the American people are savvy, they'll figure out that the only way to end the war--which they have wanted to do in overwhelming numbers--is to keep throwing Republicans out of office AND to elect better Democrats, like Donna Edwards. No question--Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid should pack it in and make way for new blood after just one year of setbacks and failures. But you cannot argue that a heretofore unheard of obstructionist Republican minority has mortgaged its own future by covering the President's ass.

What this perspective failed to take into account: the startlingly rapid progress that Petraeus and his troops would make against al-Qaeda and the Iranian backed militias. That was coupled with a battle of ideas on the home front: Tenacious pro-mission groups - e.g. Vets for Freedom, Families United, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Move America Forward, Freedom’s Watch - formed a loose but effective coalition that matched MoveOn.org congressional contact for congressional contact, and told the stories most reporters would not.

One can say the invasion of Iraq was unwise. Before committing troops to battle, a president should have a realistic understanding of what can be achieved, in what time frame, and at what cost. One can say the occupation of Iraq was bungled.

Unwise? Try "the worst foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States of America." And that loose but INeffective coalition couldn't for air out of a paper bag. There is no pro-war movement or anti-war movement in this country. There are just a few thousand cranks on one side acting out their childish fantasies, in the face of a liberal anti-war group that organizes online as opposed to the streets of Washington DC.

What one can not say is that regime change in Iraq was unjustified: Not if you know Saddam’s record, his clearly stated intentions, and his ties to international terrorists - including, as a new Pentagon report reveals, a group headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al Qaeda’s second-in-command.

Bullshit. There was no link between Iraq and al Qaeda. Already disproven, move along, nothing to see here. Just another wingnut dementia episode. Thanks for trying.

Nor can one say that the outcome in Iraq - the heart of the Muslim Middle East - will be inconsequential to the outcome of the wider war being waged by militant, supremacist Islamist movements intent on nothing less than the destruction of America and the West.

Really? Talk about a wingnut fantasy of Lord of the Rings proportions. And how are they going to destroy us? By invading America with their ten million man army of tanks and planes? With their non-existent nuclear weapons?

They don't have to try and destroy us. Thanks to wingnuts like Cliff May, our own government has already done more damage to the US than the Islamic militants ever could.

A Billion here, a Billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money

The actual Pentagon audit [.pdf] reveals a lot more waste of taxpayer money than the news outlets bothered to report. (Where is that "liberal media" again? Under aWol's desk? Behind the curtains? Or maybe it was smuggled into Syria?)

On May 13, 2005 PL 109-13 “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005,” became law, and set aside $5.7 Billion for the Iraq Security Forces Fund. The Commander, Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq received $5.2 billion to provide equipment, services, training, supplies, and construction of and repairs to facilities and infrastructure.

On June 15, 2006 PL 109-234, “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery, 2006” became law. That piece of legislation mandated a series of three audits of the Iraq Security Forces Fund.

The third audit is now complete, and the Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq (MNSTC-I) has been unable to account for over a billion dollars in materiel, services, weapons and cash. As a result, the MNSTC-I was not able to provide reasonable assurances that the Iraqi Security Forces Fund had achieved or was achieving the results the money was supposed to buy, or even that the funds were used in the manner intended when the American taxpayers were handed the tab. The MNSTC-I was not able to offer assurances that there were even safeguards in place to prevent waste, fraud and mismanagement. Because of these shortcomings, several of the auditable transactions revealed that $1.8 million of funds could have been “put to better use.”

The internal Pentagon auditors recommend that the MNSTC-I develop and implement internal controls and protocols for forward-deployed personnel to observe and follow to maintain records to facilitate oversight of the funds and establish “accountable property records for expenditure of wartime funding.” In addition, the audit recommended that the MNSTC-I develop procedures for the processing, management and oversight of Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests (MIPRs) and identify personnel requirements for proper sourcing in the Joint Manning Document that is submitted through CENTCOM and the Multi National Forces – Iraq, the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense. The goal of the recommendations is to ensure compliance with DoD financial regulations.

Now, before we dig in to the findings, it would be appropriate to remind ourselves that the Pentagon uses accounting methods that would make your average Hollywood studio accountant turn beet-red with shame. When they admit that a billion went missing, apply exponents as multipliers until your mind is boggled and you pass out – then double it, and you might be half way there. Maybe. If they’ve been frugal about the waste, fraud and abuse.

Let’s look at the areas the audit examined, shall we?

Service Contracts The Department of Defense’s own protocols require triannual reviews be conducted on service contracts. This was not done.

Service MIPRs Because MNSTC-I lacked internal safeguards and protocols, there is no way to even tell if the funds allocated to the State Department were ever disbursed.

Equipment Contracts Lack of procedure and protocol at MNSTC-I led not only to a lack of oversight, but to the lack of an audit trail as well. Instead, MNSTC-I relies heavily on other DoD Components in the field to self-report. This way of doing business makes audits virtually impossible.

Equipment MIPRs Receipts for equipment and materiel passed off to the ISF did not record traceable data. In plain English – lots and lots of guns went out the door, without so much as having the serial numbers recorded.

Construction MNSTC-I did not have policies and procedures in place to assure that construction projects were being completed on time or to spec. Instead, they simply relied on contractors and subcontractors to self-police and properly report. The Pentagon only reviewed six incomplete construction contracts, leaving 84 unexamined, because MNSTC-I claimed that the task of providing documentation would prove too onerous.

So to recap…

The MNSTC-I was not able to provide any reasonable assurances that the ISFF has achieved any of the intended results, or that resources were appropriately distributed. Without auditable records, the audit determined that at least $1 Billion in equipment was unaccounted for. Not only is the equip missing, the scenario under which it went missing was so disjointed and chaotic that the Pentagon auditors determined that trying to track it down would be an exercise in futility. Instead, they have opted to simply write it all off, with a promise to do better in the future.

Auditors simply throwing their hands in the air and writing off at least a Billion bucks just perfectly illustrates fiscal responsibility by the Bush administration and makes those vetoes and veto threats totally understandable.

Right?

Political Prosecutions: they are not just for the DoJ any more!

The Pentagon has their own version of using prosecutions to influence elections.

It was so bad, so obvious, and so odious that Air Force Col. Morris Davis resigned in protest. He was pressured to bring prosecutions against high-profile detainees in advance of the 2008 elections, whether they were ready or not, rather than prosecute cases that were more solid, and ready to proceed.

Davis abruptly resigned after complaining that his authority in prosecutions was being usurped. He argued that Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a new legal adviser to the convening authority for military commissions, should remain a neutral and independent party and should leave prosecuting cases to prosecutors.

In his complaint, Davis alleged that Hartmann inappropriately requested detailed information on pending cases, defined the sequence in which cases would be brought forward and expressed an intent to personally conduct pretrial negotiations with defendants' attorneys.

A Pentagon review found that Hartmann did not attempt to coerce Davis's team but advised that he should "diligently avoid aligning himself with the prosecutorial function so that he can objectively and independently provide cogent legal advice" to the convening authority -- the official in charge of supervising the commissions.

J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Hartmann was not available for comment.

These bastards have politicized absolutely everything, to a disgusting, sickening degree. They have brought charges against people for the sin of working for a Democratic state government. They have engaged in caging to suppress the votes of African-American members of the military. They have spied on Americans, trashed 800 years of common law by suspending Habeas Corpus, they have engaged in torture and they have dismissed the Geneva Conventions as "quaint."

And now, they have stooped to political prosecutions of terror suspects.

Through their perfidy, their mendacity, their craven disregard for the rule of law, they have put the very Republic at peril.

I am honestly terrified, not of Islamists, but of my own government. I have serious doubts about the ability of the nation to withstand another fifteen months of these bastards. What the hell, Nancy? If this isn't enough to put impeachment back on the table, you are as despicable, feckless and loathsome as they are, and you deserve the same fate.

Oh for the good old days of $500 hammers and $600 toilet seats!

Those 1980’s abuses of the American taxpayer seem downright quaint in comparrison. What were they thinking, marking up the price of the goods themselves? The real profit margin is in fraudulent shipping and handling! (Pikers!)

A South Carolina defense contractor pleaded guilty yesterday to bilking the Pentagon out of $20.5 million over nearly 10 years by adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of shipping spare parts such as metal washers and lamps. The parts were bound for key military installations, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one instance, in 2006, the government paid C&D Distributors $998,798 in transportation costs for shipping two 19-cent washers. Charlene Corley, 47, co-owner of C&D Distributors, used the money to pay for luxury homes, cars, plastic surgery and jewelry, according to court documents.

"It is a troubling case because the fraud took place during a time of war," said Kevin McDonald, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina. The $20 million "that could have gone to assist our military was diverted and used in a fraudulent manner for excessive personal enjoyment."

C&D billed the Pentagon for materials and shipping separately, and they received payment on 112 of the fraudulent invoices submitted before the scam was uncovered. Among the abuses of your checkbook and mine was a $445,640 shipping invoice for an elbow pipe that cost less than ten dollars, and six machine screws worth a total of $59.94 were shipped at a cost of $403,436.

But there is even more salacious detail…C&D was owned and operated by twin sisters, and one of them committed suicide last fall after being questioned by investigators. The surviving sister is trying to make sure that most of the blame is shifted to her former womb-mate in an effort to reduce her prison time.

"We do not dispute that we participated and benefited in and from the conspiracy," Harris said. "We have, however, always maintained that her sister was the primary actor in this fraud, the primary beneficiary of this fraud, and unfortunately she is not here to today to assist us in distinguishing their roles in the fraud."

And this, boys and girls, is why we need oversight!

So much for 12-months “Dwell Time”

Stars & Stripes reported Thursday that the Army is rotating a combat company back to Iraq a mere nine months after they left. Members of the 1^st Armored Division, 1^st Battalion, 6^th Infantry, Company A were informed on Tuesday that they will return to Iraq in November, for a 15 month deployment. They just finished a 13-month deployment to Iraq in February.

On April 11, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that tours would be extended to 15 months for all active duty Army personnel currently deployed or with orders to the theatre of operations. At the time the extended tours were announced, the SecDef also stressed that soldiers would be guaranteed a full year at home.

When asked about the situation late Wednesday, Mr. Gates said he could not explain why the Army was sending the company back to battle a mere nine months after it’s last deployment finished. “I’ll be very interested to find out more about that. We just need to find out about that, because I made it clear that people would have 12 months at home.” (emphasis added)

Apparently the SecDef needs to have a chat with Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman about just what, exactly the Secretary meant when he said those words, because he got something entirely different out of the SecDef’s proclamation..

“[T]here are some people, just by the nature of transferring units and things like that may not end up with the full 12 months.”

“The United States military is not a static organization,” Whitman said.

The Army, Whitman said, is “managing intensely” “individuals in units, and assignment policies, and rotations and things like that.”

“But it’s not going to be 100 percent, or you would have to basically, you know, lock down the Army, and nobody would transfer from one combat unit to another combat unit,” Whitman said.

Rather than a guarantee, Whitman said, the 12-month dwell time between deployments “is a goal, to have units and individuals to have an appropriate amount of time for recovery and for stability purposes at home station and to be able to be with their families.”

So…a promise made to the services by the Secretary of Defense is a goal, eh?

The fact remains, we have asked too much of our services, especially of the Army. It is simply unsustainable. We have a reckoning in store, and it will not be pleasant to deal with. It would behoove us to start that process now.

An *Outing* at the Pentagon

It isn’t often that my husband finishes whatever he is reading and casts a smug look my way and says something like “Gates is steppin’ all over his dick on this one.” And launches into what passes for a tirade in the most reflective, responsible person on the entire face of the earth. (This is the guy you want in a missile silo, okay? I mean, if they are going to be out there, this is the guy you trust with that duty. When he rants, people listen.)

Call him the anti aWol.

He gets no jollies from the misfortune of others, as a general rule. But he really loathes George Bush, as only a veteran can. While aWol was AWOL, he was holding a draft card and dreading trips to the mailbox. While aWol was drunk in a gutter, he was an enlisted Airman with a heavy-duty AFSC. While aWol was running his first oil company into the ground, he was bootstrapping an engineering degree. While aWol was cutting a swath of fecklessness across Texas, he was restoring the integrity of the officer corps and rebuilding a military decimated by lies and politics during the Vietnam era. While aWol was stumbling through life, he was stitching back together the tattered remnants of the Honor Code. (I also have a brother who fits that description, except for the draft-card bit. When I say I see things differently, that view isn’t from the belfry.)

I listened when he pointed out days ago that there was an extension coming, and that Gates was going to get caught with his pants down on this matter. When aWol threatened that tours might have to be extended if the funding battle drags on, he looked at me and said “Gates just got fucked. Extensions are already a done deal. Watch this unfold. Gates may be losing his touch. But look for him to try to frame Inman anyway.” When the insider Contra-gate jokes come out, he's overdosing on Schadenfreude...

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates complained bitterly today that "some very thoughtless person" at the Pentagon leaked word about duty extensions for Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates said that the leak robbed the Army "the opportunity to notify unit commanders who could then talk to their troops 48 hours before we made a public announcement."

We all know that they would have liked to keep that ace in the hole for the funding battle, but it didn’t work out that way.

So plan B…Take advantage of the Friday News Dump, like they did last week with the redeployment of the Guardsmen. But that didn’t work out so swell, either. The push-back is well underway, it would seem.

If I were a betting woman, I would put my money on that leak coming from a low-level Captain at the Pentagon who has done a tour. Or a civilian with some skin in the game.

Here is the deal – most of the people at the Pentagon are non-partisan professionals. They are just people, doing their jobs and collecting their pay. Lots of folks who do 20 or more rotate through the Pentagon, and there are tons of civilians who work there. Most of the people who work there are civilians, in fact. So stop being afeared of the Pentagon. It isn’t some magical, mystical, evil place. It’s a big building with an interesting geometric shape, and it happens to be the headquarters for the nation’s defense services. It has an aura that isn’t really deserved. And it smells funny - or at least it did when I was a kid.

For every “famous” person who has an office in the Pentagon, there are, at minimum, a couple of thousand who are actually making things work and who never hold a presser. Those folks are going to be there after this criminal crew is banished to the cruel, fickle hands of history. They see the devastation this petulant, brain-damaged president and his craven, capitulating minions, have wrought, and they are quietly pushing back against the tide of mendacity.

And you know what? Evil doesn’t win when good people do something.

So step up. Take stock of your abilities, and then do something.

Lot's of contact information, readily available on your left.

UPDATE: If it turns out that it was Senior Brass who leaked, I will owe Larry Johnson a beer. The email exchange has been archived for future examination by relevant congressional committees.