Waxman Won’t be Ignored

The days of Condi dismissing the oversight committee are numbered. By my count, there are about 18 left…

Congressman Waxman let it be known today that ignoring him would not make him go away.

On 12 March, 2007, Congressman Waxman reopened an investigation into the specious allegations of lies about yellowcake Uranium and aluminum centrifuge tubes. At that time, the Congressman sent a letter to Secretary of State Rice that should have made it clear he wants answers (even if she was distracted by thoughts of shoeshopping).

Since 2003,I have written 16 letters to you, either in your capacity as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State.

According to Committee records, you have satisfactorily

responded to only five of those l6 letters. Those five were co-signed by Republicans.

Under the Bush Administration, several agencies followed a policy of not responding to minority party requests.

Although I do not agree with this policy, I presume that you were also following it when you decided not to respond to my requests for information.

I am now renewing my requests as the chairman of the chief oversight committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

(She blew off that March 12 letter as well.)

So the Congressman sent another along today, and attached a copy of the March 12 letter, and told her she is expected to appear before the committee on 18 April. (.pdf warning)

“I’m not an environmental scientist, but I play one in the Bush administration…”

Good lord. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Bush administration hack that it seems was only put in their position solely to destroy their department from the inside.

An Inspector General’s report released yesterday found serious conflicts of interest and manipulation of science by a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Fish and Wildlife. The IG found evidence that she repeatedly pressured senior scientists and changed reports to make them industry-friendly.

In an especially blatant instance of conflicting interests;

…according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a "nesting range" of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a "running battle" with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there. (emphasis added).

The insidiousness of these political hacks will not be palliated when the end of an error comes to a close and the Bushies leave Washington forever. These partisan flaks are pushing out the people who are dedicated not to politics but to their jobs. The ones who have served faithfully no matter who was in charge are leaving in disgust, and you just know they are not being replaced by dedicated public servants. They are being replaced with partisan flaks that will be weak links in the civil service system for years to come. It will be decades before we are rid of these worthless patronage whores.

Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work,

and then get elected and prove it. –P.J. O’Rourke

Which is worse: When outrages take place, or when they no longer surprise you?

There is an insidious abuse of troops taking place in the shadows, and it needs to be exposed to strong overhead light.

It is the use of the 5-13 discharge to cull injured troops from service and deny them future benefits through the VA. A 5-13 is a psych discharge. It brands the veteran as having a personality disorder, an Axis II disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association. Personality disorders are deemed pre-existing conditions, and therefore the military is absolved of all future responsibility to those veterans.

Take the story of Specialist Jon Town, reported by Joshua Kors in the April 9 issue of The Nation.

Jon Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion's headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.

"The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground." Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. "They started shaking me. But I was numb all over," he says. "And it's weird because... because for a few minutes you feel like you're not really there. I could see them, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead."

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans' rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.

The number of 5-13’s coming down has ballooned. It has reached the point where they would have us believe that the Army took an entire Division of hinky, psychologically damaged troops in recent years. Even with the number of waivers that have been issued to meet recruiting quotas (17%) that stretches credulity.

Not surprisingly, Fort Carson is at the vanguard of soldier abuse and neglect. Again. For cryin’ out loud, can we get an IG on-post please? Preferably a hardass. I mean, what the hell is it going to take? You hear a tale of soldiers being abused by the system, you won’t have to listen long before you hear “Fort Carson” in that conversation. And this scandal is no exception. The command culture there once again sets the bar for fecklessness and mendacity as low as it has ever been.

Inspector General.

Fort Carson.

Now.

Got that?

Okay.

Now that we have settled that, let’s talk about Feres v U.S., the 1950 Supreme Court decision that protected military medical professionals from civil suit. Because of this ruling, there is no recourse of accountability for mental health professionals who mislead vulnerable and compromised troops.

Who will be the courageous congressperson who will sponsor the legislation that gives the troops the right to seek civil remedy for professional malfeasance at the hands of military health professionals?

In the meantime, since legislation moves slowly, Senator Bond needs to move forward with his threat and launch a congressional investigation into the abuse of 5-13 discharges to avoid fulfilling responsibilities to wounded and damaged troops. And every single 5-13 discharge that has been processed in the last four years should be thoroughly reviewed, and those found to have been misdiagnosed should have their benefits restored, retroactively.

We have 535 elected officials. Will just one stand up for what is right here?

[Originally posted at Watching Those We Chose.]

Violence Returns to Baghdad

After initially abating in the face of increased American troop presence, the bloodletting resumed in Baghdad on Thursday. Twenty-five bodies were found in the streets, in an indication that militia / death squad activity was ticking back upwards. A particularly bloody day in Baghdad ended with a coordinated bombing attack in a crowded Shi’ite marketplace.

Another Shi’ite neighborhood was the target of bombings in the city of Khalis in the explosive Diyala province.

In both instances, attacks were coordinated to inflict maximum civilian casualties. In the Baghdad marketplace, the bombers positioned themselves at either end of a maze of shopping stalls and blew them selves up. Over a hundred were wounded, and hospital officials estimated, based on a crude tally of body parts, that eighty perished.

The attack in Khalis followed the same attack strategy. Fifty-two were killed and eighty more were wounded. The local health center was quickly overwhelmed and ran out of basic supplies.

In both attacks, the bombers struck around 6:00 p.m. on Thursday evening, in crowded marketplaces, as Muslim families hurried to purchase provisions before Friday, the Muslim holy day.

In Tal Afar, after three days of particularly vicious sectarian fighting, the city remained under curfew, patrolled by American forces to keep the sides separated long enough for the currently enflamed passions to cool.

The initial success of the troop build-up was short lived, and we are right back where we started, but now more heavily invested. It is time to accept reality. All the wishful thinking in the world is not going to salvage a hash-mark in the “Win” column for the United States in Iraq’s civil war, and to even pretend its possible is folly pure and simple.