Today’s Army is out of balance

I found this VetVoice story through Crooks and Liars, and it is just incredible. From VetVoice:

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody sternly rebuked all those who've been blowing sunshine and spreading baseless happy talk for five years with regard to the war in Iraq. And he was blunt--blunter than I've ever heard him before--about the crisis facing the Army. He even went so far as to hint at the "D-word" in his prepared remarks:

Today's Army is out of balance. The current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies . . . Current operational requirements for forces and insufficient time between deployments require a focus on counterinsurgency training and equipping to the detriment of preparedness for the full range of military missions.

Given the current theater demand for Army forces, we are unable to provide a sustainable tempo of deployments for our Soldiers and Families. Soldiers, Families, support systems, and equipment are stretched and stressed by the demands of lengthy and repeated deployments, with insufficient recovery time. Equipment used repeatedly in harsh environments is wearing out more rapidly than programmed. Army support systems, designed for the pre-9/11 peacetime Army, are straining under the accumulation of stress from six years at war. Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it.


And then he added the kicker:

If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the All-Volunteer Force and degrades the Army's ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.

When Cody says "this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the All-Volunteer Force," he's really saying we have three options:

1. We can change course now and save everyone a lot of trouble.

2. We can maintain our current course in Iraq and watch the Army disintegrate as it did during and after Vietnam.

3. We can institute the Draft.

There is not much else to say here--the Army is broken. We are faced with the three options of either pulling out of Iraq, watching the Army disintegrate, or institute the draft. At this point, President Bush is more than happy to allow the Army to disintegrate if it would allow Bush to salvage his "legacy" and blame the Army's disintegration on his successor (who may end up being a Democrat). As for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, how much do you want to bet that he will continue the Iraq war with some form of draft? The longer this war continues on, the worst it will get for our military. And the harder the choice will be between these three no-win options.

U.S. military getting gouged at the gas pump

I shouldn't be surprised at this story. From MSNBC News:

WASHINGTON - Think you're being gouged by Big Oil? U.S. troops in Iraq are paying almost as much as Americans back home, despite burning fuel at staggering rates in a war to stabilize a country known for its oil reserves.

Military units pay an average of $3.23 a gallon for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, some $88 a day per service member in Iraq, according to an Associated Press review and interviews with defense officials. A penny or two increase in the price of fuel can add millions of dollars to U.S. costs.

Critics in Congress are fuming. The U.S., they say, is getting suckered as the cost of the war exceeds half a trillion dollars — $10.3 billion a month, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Some lawmakers say oil-rich allies in the Middle East should be doing more to subsidize fuel costs because of the stake they have in a secure Iraq. Others point to Iraq's own burgeoning surplus as crude oil prices top $100 a barrel. Subsidies let Iraqis pay only about $1.36 a gallon.

The U.S. military, through its Defense Energy Support Center, buys fuel on the open market, paying from $1.99 a gallon to as much as $5.30 a gallon under contracts with private and government-owned oil companies. The center then sets a fixed rate for troops, currently $3.51 a gallon for diesel, $3.15 for gasoline, $3.04 for jet fuel and $13.61 for a high-octane fuel used mostly in unmanned aerial vehicles.

Kuwait does grant substantial subsidies, but they cover only about half the fuel used by the U.S. in Iraq. And the discount is eaten up by the Energy Support Center's administrative costs and fluctuations in the market.

Overall, the military consumes about 1.2 million barrels, or more than 50 million gallons of fuel, each month in Iraq at an average $127.68 a barrel. That works out to about $153 million a month.

Think about it for a moment. The U.S. military is stuck in an endless war in Iraq. The Middle East private and government-owned oil companies are more than happy to charge the Pentagon whatever they feel is the market price for gas that day--remember, the Pentagon is buying 50 million gallons of fuel a month on the open market. And while some suppliers are charging a low price of around $1.99 a gallon, and others are charging over $5.00 a gallon, the prices average out to around $3.23 a gallon for gas. If the U.S. military doesn't purchase their gas from these Middle Eastern energy suppliers, you can bet that there will be a lot of U.S. military trucks, tanks, helicopters, and airplanes sitting with empty gas tanks. You can also bet that the Bush administration will not do a damn thing about this issue of high gas prices for the Pentagon--private suppliers gathering around the American taxpayer trough to pig out on their fill!

We need to get out of Iraq.

Pentagon awards $300 million arms contract to 22-year old

I found this story through TPM Muckraker, which linked to the original New York Times story. It is just incredible. From The New York Times:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY’s performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian.

Read the entire New York Times story--it is mind-boggling. Here is a young kid who decides to jump into the shady world of the arms trade--and the Pentagon happily gives this kid's company $300 million worth of arms contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the NY Times, AEY was an unknown defense company that has been thriving since 2003, when the Pentagon started tossing billions of dollars to train and equip police and military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy." This is the most important sentence in the Times story. The Pentagon is not sending their own experts to the former Communist bloc countries to purchase these old munitions. Instead, the Bush administration has ordered the Pentagon to throw the U.S. taxpayer's money into a giant trough to allow war-profiteers to get piggishly fat with profit. AEY is an example of the excessiveness the Bush administration is giving to these war-profiteers. The losers in this game are the U.S. taxpayer, whose money is going to these war-profiteers, and the Iraqi and Afghan police and military, who are getting stuck with this useless junk of munitions.

There are so many more details in this story that are just amazing. The 22-year-old kid, Efraim E. Diveroli, has been involved in two instances of domestic violence against his girlfriend--one of which, in November 2005, the "young woman sought an order of protection from him in the domestic violence division of Dade County Circuit Court." Miami police were also called out to Diveroli's condo "during an argument between him and another girlfriend. According to the police report, he had thrown her 'clothes out in the hallway and told her to get out.' A witness told the police Mr. Diveroli had dragged her back into the apartment. The police found the woman crying; she said she had not been dragged. Mr. Diveroli was not charged." AEY's vice president, David M. Packouz, was a licensed masseur. Both Diveroli and Packouz were involved in a fight with a valet parking attendant in December 2006, outside of Diveroli's condo. Miami police were again called out. When police searched Diveroli, they found a fake ID, which would allow him to purchase alcohol as a minor. Possession of forged documents is a felony, in which a felony conviction would nullify Diveroli's federal firearms license. Diveroli "entered a six-month diversion program for first offenders in May 2007 that spared him from standing trial." Reading this, I have to ask, this is the president of a $300 million arms company? It is almost like The Wild One meets The Lord of War.

Welcome to the world of the Bush administration's war profiteers.

Pentagon says new Iraq fighting arises from surge's success

Read the headline again. Now read the Associated Foreign Press story below:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a "by-product of the success of the surge."

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that the Iraqi government and security forces were now confident enough to take the initiative against Shiite extremists in the southern port of Basra.

"Citizens down there have been living in a city of chaos and corruption for some time and they and the prime minister clearly have had enough of it," he said at a Pentagon press conference.

[....]

The violence raised fears that a unilateral ceasefire called by Sadr last year, which US military officials have credited with helping to bring down last year's high levels of violence in Iraq, was coming apart.

Morrell, however, disputed suggestions that the fighting showed the risks of drawing down US "surge" forces.

"This has just begun this week," he said. "But I think at this early stage, it looks as though it is a by-product of the success of the surge," referring to the sharp hike in US troops in Iraq from earlier last year to quell violence.

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

OOPS! My Bad! U.S. mistakenly sent nuclear fuses to Taiwan

You know, with the war in Iraq, the extended tours, the shifting of logistics operations to big war profiteers like Halliburton, and the complete evisceration of the U.S. military by the Bush neocons, it doesn't surprise me that this story actually happened. From Reuters News:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military mistakenly shipped four fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan in 2006 and never caught the error, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, acknowledging an incident likely to rile China.

The military was supposed to ship helicopter batteries to Taiwan, but instead sent fuses used as part of the trigger mechanism on Minuteman missiles. Taiwan returned the parts to U.S. custody last week.

No nuclear material was shipped to Taiwan, Pentagon officials said.

The problem went unnoticed until Taiwan realized it did not have the helicopter batteries it ordered and reported the issue to the United States, U.S. officials said.

The United States has notified China, which claims the self-ruled island as its own, and is modernizing its military to close the technology gap with Taiwan's mainly U.S. weapons. The two sides have been run separately since 1949, and Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

"The secretary of defense is taking this very seriously. We are all taking this very seriously," Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said.

"Though this was not and could not be construed as nuclear material ... I would tell you that we are very concerned about it," he told reporters at the Pentagon.

What I find so amazing here is that the U.S. military sent the nuclear fuses to Taiwan in 2006, and they never caught the error. The fuses were placed in an unclassified storage facility in the U.S., and then shipped to Taiwan in 2006. The Taiwan military then placed the fuses in their own storage facility until 2008, when they opened the box and discovered they had nuclear fuses instead of helicopter batteries. It was the Taiwanese military that caught the error--and not the U.S.

I'm starting to wonder when the U.S. military will be mistakenly shipping nuclear warheads to Iraq?

PTSD benefits to war veterans vary

Graph showing Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with mental ailments are seeing disability payments vary according to where they live. From McClatchy News.

This is from McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Veterans coming home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating mental ailments are discovering that their disability payments from the government vary widely depending on where they live, an exclusive McClatchy analysis has found.

As a result, many of the recent veterans who're getting monthly payments for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Department of Veterans Affairs could lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes.

The Bush administration has sought to reassure soldiers that they'll be treated fairly, but veterans in some parts of the country are far more likely to be well compensated than their compatriots elsewhere are, the analysis found.

McClatchy's analysis is based on 3 million disability compensation-claims records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as separate documents that the VA provided. The analysis is the first to examine the issue of state-to-state variations in compensation for those young veterans who've left the military since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001.

For veterans, their families and their advocates, the issue of disability compensation is hugely important. Disability checks are now worth up to $2,527 a month for a single veteran with no children. Because they last a lifetime, low payments set now — when veterans are young — have a dramatic impact.

So far, more than 43,000 recent veterans are on the disability compensation rolls for a range of mental conditions from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression and anxiety. Of those, more than 31,000 have PTSD, which has emerged as one of the signature injuries from the war on terrorism. Given the number of soldiers who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's a fraction of what the total will be.

The VA's assessments of those injuries, however, are all over the map.

Of the recent veterans processed by the VA office in Albuquerque, N.M., 56 percent have high ratings for PTSD. Of those handled by the office in Fort Harrison, Mont., only 18 percent do, the McClatchy analysis found.

"There's no reason in the world that a veteran from Ohio should be shortchanged on benefits simply because he is from Ohio," said U.S. Rep. Zack Space, a Democrat from Ohio, where veterans had among the lowest compensation rates in the nation. "And there's no reason a veteran from New Mexico should be getting more benefits simply because he lives in New Mexico."

I've read this story three times, and I can't figure out why these veteran medical payments are varying as according to where the veterans live. McClatchy goes into detail as to how these disability claims are processed, but there isn't really much of an explanation as to the discrepancy of the claims. According to McClatchy:

Although they're supposed to follow the same rules, the reality for VA workers in different offices is far different. What generates a high rating in one location may produce a lower one somewhere else.

[....]

Part of that is due to training differences around the country, and part is due to the personalities of individual employees who are handling claims and the different doctors and psychiatrists examining veterans who've applied for compensation.

Somehow there are training differences around the country as to how VA workers process these PTSD claims, and this difference in training is causing a difference in benefits paid to the claims.

Looking at this story, it appears to me that this is an example of how the Veterans Administration was never fully prepared for this long war we're in. The Bush administration never bothered giving the troops the support they needed for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the Bush administration is not giving the support these Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans need for helping with the PTSD, and the benefits they should be paid for their illness. The Veterans Administration never provided the resources and training to help these veterans. This is just another example of this Bush administration's failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Army desertion rates soaring 80 percent since 2003 Iraq invasion

Judy over at Judes BlogLoggin sent me this story. From The International Herald Tribune:

After six years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, American soldiers are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980. The number of US Army deserters this year shows an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

The totals remain far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when conscription was in effect, but they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

"We're asking a lot of soldiers these days," said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. "They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."

The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared with 3,301 last year.

The Army has had to bear the brunt of the war demands as many soldiers served repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders — including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey — have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are under way to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.

"We have been concentrating on this," said Wallace. "The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers."

Still, he noted that "the military is not for everybody; not everybody can be a soldier." And those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it, he said.

There is a lot to talk about on this story. First, there is the question of why desertions have increased. And the answer is quite simple--it is the endless back-to-back tours in Iraq that soldiers are forced to endure. The Army doesn't have enough troops to continue this war. And not only does the Army not have enough troops to continue the war, but volunteer enlistments to the Army have been consistently dropping. All of this links back to the Bush administration's war in Iraq. This Army is broken.

The second interesting point is the Army's failure to acknowledge that it is the war in Iraq that is causing this breakdown. Go back up into this Hearald Tribune story, and look at what this Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel, has to say about the desertions--We're asking a lot of soldiers these days....They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier. The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers. [The] military is not for everybody; not everybody can be a soldier." And those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it, Wallace said. Look at the quotes that Wallace gives to this story. First, Wallace acknowledges that the Army has demanded a lot from their soldiers, and that the soldiers are experiencing a great deal of stress over the extended, back-to-back tours. But then Wallace makes a 180 degree turn, and blames the soldiers for their desertions, saying that not everyone can be a good soldier. It now becomes the soldiers' fault for not taking these endless, back-to-back tours--three, four, or even five times in a row where they are away from their families, their spouses, and their children. It is not the Army's fault for completely using up their troops in this disastrous war in Iraq. There is a hypocrisy here within the Pentagon, where the Iraq war is causing the military to be broken down. This increase in Army's desertion rate is just another symptom of the Army's complete breakdown.

Finally, there is this comparison between the desertion rates of today, with the Army's war in Iraq, compared with the desertion rates of the Army during the Vietnam War. The Herald Tribune reports that total desertion rates are lower today than they were during the Vietnam War, where they ranged from 1 to 3 percent (which is up to three out of every 100 soldiers) during the 1970s, and even peaked at 5 percent. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the desertion rate was between 2 and 3 out of every 1,000 soldiers. For 2007, the Army reports a desertion rate of nine in every 1,000 soldiers. The problem with these statistics is that there is one big variable that the Army has ignored, when comparing the desertion rate in the Vietnam War with the desertion rate for Iraq--namely, the draft! During the Vietnam War, the Army was conscripting young Americans to go and fight in the jungles, whether they supported the war or not, and whether they wanted to join the military or not. They were drafted into the Army against their will. And those young Americans, who didn't want to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War, were going to find ways to get out of the Army, and out of the war. That includes desertion. So for these desertion rates, you have to consider the number of Americans who didn't want to serve in the Army, but were conscripted against their will. That number is certainly going to be higher.

Now let's go to the war in Iraq. The Army is no longer an army of draftees, but of volunteers. These are young Americans who willingly chose to join the Army--they knew they were going to have to fight in a war someday. And if these young Americans enlisted into the Army after the September 11th terrorist attacks, they certainly knew that they were going to be sent to fight in either Iraq or Afghanistan. These are soldiers who were not drafted into the Army against their will, and would not desert the Army because they opposed the war. That is the biggest difference between this Army fighting in Iraq, verses the Army fighting during the Vietnam War. It is a difference that you really can't compare here, because you have two different armies comprised of two different types of soldiers--one is an army of volunteers, verses another army of draftees. You really can't compare the two.

Now you can compare the desertion rates between the Army of the 1980s and 90s, verses the Army of today, since all three armies were comprised of volunteers. And here is where the desertion rates do get interesting. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Army desertion rate was between 2 and 3 out of every 1,000 soldiers. For 2007, the Army reports a desertion rate of nine in every 1,000 soldiers. The desertion rate for the Army in 2007 is three times higher than the desertion rate in the 1980s and 90s. Why? The answer probably goes back to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We've been engaged in these disastrous wars for six years--far longer than any of the military engagements that the U.S. has been in during the 1980s and 1990s, and that includes the 1991 Gulf War. Again, the Army has used up its troops from the extended, and back-to-back deployments, since the Army cannot recruit enough volunteers to replace those used-up troops. U.S. soldiers are saying enough is enough--they've served their country many times over, and now they want to go back to their families. They want out of this disastrous war.

Excuse me, where's the Army?

Graph showing parents and other advisors who are less inclined to endorse enlistments to young people. From McClatchy News.

I found this story through McClatchy News:

THURMONT, Md. — The Army is struggling to find volunteers for an unpopular war, despite recruiting bonuses of up to $20,000 and pay increases for enlistees that have beaten inflation by 21 percent since 2000.

It met its numeric goal of 80,000 recruits last year, but it paid a price in terms of declining numbers of high school graduates and lower scores on skills and physical tests. The percentage of minimally qualified Army recruits, known as Category IVs, has quadrupled since 2002, and the percentage that required special health or moral waivers has risen sharply as well.

And many recruiting problems preceded the Iraq war.

So what's really making good Army volunteers so hard to come by and, in a larger sense, sapping America's ability to fight a ground war or occupy foreign soil?

Pentagon and outside experts cite these factors in order of importance:

* While risks to U.S. troops are far lower than they were in most previous wars, young adults and their parents find them unacceptably high.

* Parents who went to college want their kids to go to college. So do parents who didn't. As the college-bound percentage of high school students has risen to two-thirds, the percentage that intends to enlist in any branch of the military has fallen by nearly two-thirds.

* Draft-era veterans, who for generations provided role models for military service, are dying off. A Pentagon study projects a 14 percent decline in high-quality recruits from a 10 percent drop in the veteran population.

* Most parents, grandparents, ministers and others whose approval potential recruits seek don't endorse enlistment these days.

* African-Americans, who joined the all-volunteer force in disproportional numbers for years, have cooled on military service recently. So have Hispanics.

* Except among those who sign up, duty to country isn't an important value, according to Defense Department polls.

Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Van Dusen, 26, a low-key Iraq infantry veteran who recruits in Thurmont, Md., a leafy, friendly farm town 50 miles northwest of Washington, sees all these factors. But the most powerful one, according to Van Dusen, who describes his own combat stint as "mostly boring," is fear, among recruits and their parents.

"They all figure they're going to get sent to Iraq, be in a firefight in the first 10 seconds and die," he said.

Now McClatchy reports that deaths among U.S. troops deployed in Iraq average 2.3 soldiers per day. Currently there are 169,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq. During the Second World War, the daily U.S. death toll was 307 soldiers killed. According to University of Pennsylvania demographer Samuel Preston and co-auther Emily Buzzell, the death risk for U.S. troops in Iraq is about a fifth of that for the U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam. According to Preston, "People do seem extremely surprised" by the numbers because they "severely overestimate the death rate in Iraq." But what McClatchy, and the Army, do not realize is that it is not about the death rate of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but the perception that an individual, who joins the Army, will quickly be sent into the U.S. war in Iraq. If you enlist, the Army's going to send your ass to Iraq. And with American public support turning against the war, young Americans are turning away from enlisting into the Army, even as the Army continues to lower standards, and add more incentives and bonuses to new recruits.

And there is another aspect of this story that the Pentagon has really ignored. The U.S. has been involved in this war for over five years. The American public has seen so much of this Bush administration's incompetence in the planning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the reconstruction of Iraq after the U.S. invasion, and the failure of the U.S. military to secure the Iraq once the ethnic civil war had started. This is about the Bush administration's lies to the American people in order to drum up support for the war, the intelligence cherry-picking, and the PNAC neocons' marketing strategy to make the U.S. an imperial power in Iraq. This is about the lack of U.S. troops to occupy the country, the lack of body armor for individual soldiers, and the lack of armored humvees. This is about the corruption of the current Iraqi government, the corruption of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the waste of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that have disappeared. This is about endless extended tours of U.S. soldiers, and the "flat daddies." This is about Blackwater, and the contractors that shoot at Iraqi civilians first, and then refuse to ask questions. All of these details link together into a colossal screw-up by this Bush White House in sending the U.S. into this disastrous war in Iraq. The American people realize this, and they want no part of this war. That is why the Army is struggling to find volunteers--no one wants to fight in this war in Iraq.

You would think that the Pentagon would realize this. I guess not.

House passes new war funding bill tied to withdrawal

This is on MSNBC News:

WASHINGTON - House Democrats pushed through a $50 billion bill for the Iraq war Wednesday night that would require President Bush to start bringing troops home in coming weeks with a goal of ending combat by December 2008.

The legislation, passed 218-203, was largely a symbolic jab at Bush, who already has begun reducing force levels but opposes a congressionally mandated timetable on the war. And while the measure was unlikely to pass in the Senate — let alone overcome a presidential veto — Democrats said they wanted voters to know they weren't giving up.

"The fact is, we can no longer sustain the military deployment in Iraq," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "Staying there in the manner that we are there is no longer an option."

The White House pledged to veto the bill, and Republicans said they would back the president.

"These votes, like the dozens of previous failed votes, put the interests of radical interest groups ahead of the needs of our military and their mission," an administration statement said.

The bill represents about a quarter of the $196 billion Bush requested for combat operations in the 2008 budget year, which began Oct 1.

It would compel an unspecified number of troops to leave Iraq within 30 days, a requirement Bush is already on track to meet as he begins in coming weeks to reverse the 30,000 troop buildup he ordered earlier this year. It also sets a goal of ending combat by Dec. 15, 2008, and states that money included in the bill should be used to redeploy troops and "not to extend or prolong the war."

The measure also would set government-wide standards on interrogation, effectively barring the CIA from using such harsh techniques as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

So far, we're looking at symbolic politics being played here by the congressional Democrats on sticking another withdrawal timetable in the war funding bill. President Bush vetoes the bill, then the Democrats will cave and give Bush the war funding bill he wants--without timetables, restrictions, or standards on torture. We've seen this little game take place on war funding, telecom immunity, domestic spying--it is endless congressional rubber-stamping for King George The Deciderer! Think about it. The congressional Democrats pass a war funding bill with a withdrawal timetable. Bush vetoes the bill, saying that the Democrats are weak on fighting the Great War on Terror, are not supporting the troops, are unpatriotic Americans who side with the terrorists, and are losing the war in Iraq to the terrorists. The Republican Party and Faux News will jump on the president's bandwagon, reiterating and re-amplifying these stale, distorted arguments. The congressional Democrats will become so worried over the GOP claims that they are "weak on terrorism," and become so worried that they will lose to the GOP in the 2008 elections on this theme, that the Democrats will again cave to President Bush's demands for war funding without restrictions. And again, the congressional Democrats will show to the American people that they really are "weak on terrorism" because they continue to cave to Bush over the Iraq war funding issue. For once, I would love to see the congressional Democrats say no, and not give President Bush the war funding until he agrees to withdrawal the troops from Iraq. But I'm not holding my breath on this latest Iraq war funding bill with the withdrawal timetables, because looking at the Democratic leadership's past experience over the course of this year, they have continually caved to the Bush administration on practically everything. So I expect them to cave on this war funding bill as well.

I wish I could be wrong here.

Rapid response to the endless war and Bush's draft

I found this through Americablog here. Late last night, I wrote a couple of posts on General David Petraeus' hint that the Iraq war could last for a decade or longer, and President Bush's war czar Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute's endorsement of a return to a military draft to make up for the Army's shortfall of troops in Iraq. Well, the folks over at Americans Against Escalation in Iraq have quickly produced a political commercial criticizing both of these Bush yes-men general's statements. From YouTube:



This is a pretty rapid response to both of these stories. This is probably going to get some serious press time over next week, especially as these two stories are digested by Americans over the course of this weekend.

Bush war czar considers draft "on the table"

If you thought Petraeus' hinting of the U.S. war in Iraq to be lasting for 10 years or more, this story is going to make you search for those Zippo lighters. This is the second story I found off Americablog, with the original source story from The Guardian:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

``I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,'' Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's ``All Things Considered.''

``And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another,'' Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a ``major policy shift'' and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.

The repeated deployments affect not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military, Lute said.

``There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families,'' he said. ``And ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions.''

The military conducted a draft during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. The Selective Service System, re-established in 1980, maintains a registry of 18-year-old men.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has called for reinstating the draft as a way to end the Iraq war.

Bush picked Lute in mid-May as a deputy national security adviser with responsibility for ensuring efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated with policymakers in Washington. Lute, an active-duty general, was chosen after several retired generals turned down the job.

Okay, I'm going to play devil's advocate here--Let's bring back the draft! I'm 43 years old, so the Bush administration will never draft me in the military. The real reason I'm all for instituting the draft here, is that this draft will turn young people angrily against President Bush and this war in Iraq. You want to get people out protesting in the streets? Have King George The Deciderer draft you and ship you to Iraq. A military draft will bring this Iraq war directly into every American's home, with a young American in prime fighting age. The Vietnam anti-war movement started with high school, and college-age American kids putting their feet down and exclaiming, "No, I will not fight in this unjust war!"



Chuck Rangle is right--the fastest way to end this Iraq war is to institute a draft.

Pentagon lost 190,000 weapons in Iraq

How much more incompetent can this administration be? From The Washington Post:

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.

You can read the report here.

I will be honest, I don't know which is worst--the fact that the Pentagon lost over 190,000 weapons that were supposed to be given to the Iraqi security forces, and have obviously ended up in the hands of the insurgents, or the fact that General Petraeus was responsible for rushing this haphazard program into Iraq and practically giving these weapons to the Iraqi insurgents when Petraeus was in charge of the security training of Iraqi forces. And now Petraeus is in charge of all U.S. forces in Iraq? Why do I get this feeling like my brain is going to explode as a result of all this incompetence and stupidity I'm seeing within the Pentagon and the Bush administration?

Continuing with some of the interesting details of this WaPost story:

In an unusual move, the train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces is being managed by the Pentagon. Normally, the traditional security assistance programs are operated by the State Department, the GAO reported. The Defense Department said this change permitted greater flexibility, but as of last month it was unable to tell the GAO what accountability procedures, if any, apply to arms distributed to Iraqi forces, the report said.

Iraqi security forces were virtually nonexistent in early 2004, and in June of that year Petraeus was brought in to build them up. No central record of distributed equipment was kept for a year and a half, until December 2005, and even now the records are on a spreadsheet that requires three computer screens lined up side by side to view a single row, Christoff said.

The GAO found that the military was consistently unable to collect supporting documents to "confirm when the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, and the Iraqi units receiving the equipment." The agency also said there were "numerous mistakes due to incorrect manual entries" in the records that were maintained.

The GAO reached the estimate of 190,000 missing arms -- 110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols -- by comparing the property records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered. Petraeus's figures were compared with classified data and other records to ensure that they were accurate enough to compare against the property books.

In all cases, the gaps between the two records were enormous. Petraeus reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 pieces of body armor and 140,000 helmets were issued to Iraqi security forces from June 2004 through September 2005. But the property books contained records for 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80,000 pieces of body armor and 25,000 helmets.

The root cause for this screw-up in the lost Iraqi weapons may again lie with the Bush administration. Instead of allowing the State Department to run the security training programs, for which they had experience in, control of this program was transferred over to the Defense Department. The Defense Department had no experience in running security training programs, and the DoD was given the mother of all security training programs here. I'm guessing that the PNAC neocons wanted to maintain total control over every U.S. reconstruction program taking place in Iraq. One way to manage this total control of the U.S. reconstruction and occupation of Iraq is to centralize the control of these programs within the Defense Department, where they could be closely monitored by the neocons. The State Department is run by career officials and diplomats who probably would have questioned the neocons interference in State's running of the security training programs in Iraq. I will admit that this is all speculation here.

Pentagon tells Clinton to shut up!

This is just incredible. The Pentagon and the Bush administration can not seem to win the debate on the war in Iraq. All their happy talk of progress in Iraq is certainly not convincing the American people, and it is drawing a lot of criticism by the Democrats. But this latest MSNBC News story is just incredible:

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has issued a stinging rebuke to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguing that she is boosting enemy propaganda by asking how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq.

Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman wrote a biting reply to questions Clinton raised in May, urging the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

A copy of Edelman's response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote.

He added that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

Read it again--the Pentagon has just told Senator Hillary Clinton to "SHUT UP!" All this talk of U.S. troop withdrawals is reinforcing enemy propaganda! So now the Pentagon considers Senator Clinton to be the enemy because she's providing propaganda to the terrorists and they are trying to stifle Clinton's First Amendment rights by demanding that she shut her trap! Is the Pentagon now being staffed by eight-year-olds? If Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman cannot defend the Bush administration's pro-war policy in Iraq, even as Iraq descends into a complete disaster, then the only immature argument Edelman has left is to tell Clinton to clam it? I just have to laugh at the incompetence and immaturity of Edelman and the Pentagon here. Continuing with the MSNBC Story:

Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has privately and publicly pushed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace two months ago to begin drafting the plans for what she said will be a complicated withdrawal of troops, trucks and equipment.

"If we're not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way," she said then.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called the response "at once outrageous and dangerous."

"Redeploying out of Iraq with the same combination of arrogance and incompetence with which the Bush administration deployed our young men and women into Iraq is completely unacceptable, and our troops deserve far better," said Reines, who said military leaders should offer a withdrawal plan rather than "a political plan to attack those who question them."

As she runs for president, the New York senator has ratcheted up her criticism of the Bush administration's war effort, answering critics of her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq invasion by saying she would end the war if elected president.

This Bush administration no longer has an argument, or a rationale, for supporting this war in Iraq. No one, except for the hard-core conservatives, even believes the stale arguments for supporting the war that are now coming out of the Bush PR Department. It is why this story is significant. It shows that since this administration can not make a convincing argument for supporting this war, that they are irrationally and illogically lashing out at their critics--SHUT UP Hillary Clinton! You're supporting the terrorists! I suspect we'll see more of this irrational lashing as September comes around.

General Pace, Chairman Joint Chiefs, resigns. Bush nominates Admiral Michael Mullen

This is off The Washington Post:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced yesterday that Marine Gen. Peter Pace will step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September, a move that Gates said will avoid the contentious congressional hearings that would be needed to reconfirm the nation's top military officer. Pace will leave after just two years in the post, the shortest stint as chairman in more than four decades.

The surprise announcement yesterday at the Pentagon amounts to Pace being fired before a customary second two-year term. He has served as the top military adviser to President Bush and the defense secretary since 2005, leading a war effort that has frustrated the American public and appears no closer to a conclusion.

Gates said that his decision was rooted in political considerations and that he took guidance from members of Congress who warned that Pace could face a maelstrom on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would dissect the military's failures in Iraq. Pace has been at the center of war planning and policy since the days immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when he started as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Pace's departure -- along with the simultaneous retirement of Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, his vice chairman -- ends a nearly clean sweep of top military advisers linked to the tenure of former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Both military officers were close to Rumsfeld and have been criticized for not challenging him.

In office since Rumsfeld was ousted after the November elections, Gates has shown a desire to distance himself from Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Since he arrived, new commanders have moved into Iraq and U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, and the White House has added Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute to a unique position coordinating war policy. As he noted yesterday, Gates had planned to retain both Pace and Giambastiani but decided against that when it became clear that Pace would face a difficult reconfirmation hearing.

Gates said his decision had "absolutely nothing to do with" his view of either officer's performance.

"I think that the events of the last several months have simply created an environment in which I think there would be a confirmation process that would not be in the best interests of the country," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon during an afternoon news conference. "I am disappointed that circumstances make this kind of a decision necessary."

Gates said he has recommended that Bush nominate Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chief of naval operations, as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs for a term beginning Oct. 1. Mullen is the longest serving of the service-branch chiefs of staff, taking the top Navy position in July 2005. Gates also recommended that Marine Gen. James Cartwright, now head of Strategic Command, be nominated to replace Giambastiani.

I think what we're seeing here is another series of Bush administration house cleaning of the Pentagon, replacing former generals who were involved in the PNAC neocon invasion planning of Iraq, with a new set of generals who will end up harping the same Bush PR-strategy of continuing the war in Iraq until President Bush leaves office. And it is not just house cleaning to replace military generals with Bush "yes men." According to the WaPost:

Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, predicted that the moves probably will not change the course of U.S. military affairs. "It's largely symbolic," Kohn said. Yet as a symbol, the ousting of the two top officers in the U.S. military establishment is striking, he said, "particularly as another reminder that Mr. Rumsfeld and his methods and style are now gone."

Gates contacted senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in recent weeks and heard bipartisan warnings that hearings for Pace could go badly. Yesterday, senators soundly praised Pace for his 40 years of service, but many Democrats expressed a desire to move toward new leadership. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had solicited the opinions of a broad range of his colleagues in response to a request from Gates about a possible hearing this summer.

"I found that the views of many senators reflected my own, namely that a confirmation hearing on General Pace's reappointment would have been a backward-looking debate about the last four years," Levin said in a statement.

[....]

But congressional staffers said there was concern from both parties that Pace's confirmation hearing could evoke bitter debate about Iraq war policy. Some said Pace's recent comments to reporters at the Chicago Tribune about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, in which he said homosexuality was immoral, would also be a distracting issue.

"It was apparent to people on both sides that this was going to get ugly, and not just over Iraq," said one staffer.

There is a couple of things in this WaPost story that really caught my eye. The first is how the WaPost is spinning this story of Pace's resignation as cleaning out former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "people," and replacing them with Gates' "people." The subtle message here is that by replacing the top military commanders who worked for, and may have been loyal to, Rumsfed, with military commanders who are loyal to Gates, there is the perception that the Democratic Congress will continue the Bush administration's pro-war strategy in Iraq--but under a new military management. In other words, this becomes another Bush PR argument for continuing the Iraq war, since the war is now being run by Gates' military commanders rather than Rumsfeld's military commanders.

The second thing I noticed in this WaPost story is about Pace's renomination hearings. By replacing Pace with Mullen, the Bush administration would not have to endure a Senate confirmation hearing of Pace that will bring up a whole host of issues on the Iraq war--from the invasion planning, the reconstruction, intelligence failures, the insurgency, Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Gitmo, and so much more. By replacing Pace with Mullen, the Bush administration is hoping that the Congressional Democrats will concentrate on Mullen's service record, rather than asking Mullen about his military and policy views on the Iraq war. Again, it is a CYA PR-strategy by the Bush White House.

U.S. Military censors journalists from taking pictures of wounded American soldiers

This is censorship by the American military. I found this New York Times story through Americablog. Here is the NY Times story:

Many of the journalists who are in Iraq have been backed into fortified corners, rarely venturing out to see what soldiers confront. And the remaining journalists who are embedded with the troops in Iraq — the number dropped to 92 in May from 126 in April — are risking more and more for less and less.

Since last year, the military’s embedding rules require that journalists obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited.

If Joseph Heller were still around, he might appreciate the bureaucratic elegance of paragraph 11(a) of IAW Change 3, DoD Directive 5122.5:

“Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member’s prior written consent.”

[....]

Ashley Gilbertson, a veteran freelance photographer who has been to Iraq seven times and has worked for The New York Times, (along with Time and Newsweek among others), said the policy, as enforced, is coercive and unworkable.

“They are basically asking me to stand in front of a unit before I go out with them and say that in the event that they are wounded, I would like their consent,” he said. “We are already viewed by some as bloodsucking vultures, and making that kind of announcement would make you an immediate bad luck charm.”

“They are not letting us cover the reality of war,” he added. “I think this has got little to do with the families or the soldiers and everything to do with politics.”

[....]

Until last year, no permission was required to publish photographs of the wounded, but families had to be notified of the soldier’s injury first. Now, not only is permission required, but any image of casualties that shows a recognizable name or unit is off-limits. And memorials for the fallen in Iraq can no longer be shown, even when the unit in question invites coverage.

The U.S. military has decided that journalists covering the Iraq war must "obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited." If a reporter wants to take a picture of a wounded American, then the reporter has to get a signed consent form from that wounded American, who, at that moment on the battlefield, couldn't care less about signing consent forms, but would rather get to the hospital and have the doctors treat the soldier's wounds. It is a back-door approach to censorship on the American media. The Bush administration, and the Pentagon, knows that the American public is turning against the war. The only way to continue the war is to censor whatever information comes out of Iraq--keep the war sterile to the American public. The Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of flag-draped American coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base from Iraq. Now it is time to ban the American media from taking pictures of wounded Americans--keep the war sterile to the American public.

Can't take pictures like these anymore:

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Kimberly Kemp, left, and Maj. Craig Stanaland wheel a U.S. Marine who was wounded during an assault near the Syrian border into a hospital in Balad, Iraq, on Monday. Jacob Silberberg / AP

A wounded American soldier lay on the hood of a Humvee on Tuesday in Baghdad as she was moved after a missile attack on an Iraqi police station. The missiles were fired from a nearby apartment building. Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

And let's not forget the flag-draped coffins of American dead here:













America--This is what is happening in Iraq.

U.S. commanders in Iraq see Bush troop surge extended well into 2008

This is off The Washington Post:

The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year.

U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

"The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. The new requirement of up to 15-month tours for active-duty soldiers will allow the troop increase to last until spring, said Odierno, who favors keeping experienced forces in place for now.

"What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," he said in an interview in Baghdad last week. "Are we making progress? If we're not making any progress, we need to change our strategy. If we're making progress, then we need to make a decision on whether we continue to surge."

Before I go into any greater detail, I want to go back to a Jan 11, 2007 MSNBC story on President Bush's announcement of the troop surge:

WASHINGTON - Defying public opinion polls and newly empowered Democratic lawmakers, President Bush told Americans Wednesday that he is dispatching 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq. And in a rare admission, he said he made a mistake by not deploying more forces sooner.

Bush said his new strategy, in which Iraqis will try to take responsibility for security in all 18 provinces by November rather than just three now, “will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings” and other violence.

But he said the increased military presence would help break the cycle of violence gripping Iraq and “hasten the day our troops begin coming home.”

And President Bush specifically gave a benchmark to the Iraqi government on this troop surge. According to the transcript of Bush's surge speech:

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend 10 billion dollars of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws — and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks.

The Iraqi government is suppose to "take responsibility for the security in all of Iraq's provinces by November." Those were President Bush's words. Now go back up and re-read the first four paragraphs of the WaPost story. The U.S. generals in Iraq are saying that the Bush troop surge is not working! The benchmarks Bush gave in his troop surge speech was that the Iraqi government would take over security operations in all of Iraq's provinces in November. It is clear that the Iraqi government can not pass this benchmark that was specifically stated by President Bush. The American generals are saying that this troop surge will need to be extended from November 2007 to April 2008. The American generals are saying that the original troop surge plan, proposed by President Bush in January 10, 2007, is not working--it is failing. And since this troop surge is failing, we have to extend the plan well into 2008, and the presidential elections.

That is the story, as reported by the Washington Post. Now for the story behind the story.

First, it is obvious that the Bush troop surge plan is not working. And this is not good for the Bush administration. President Bush needs to keep the Iraq war going until 2009, when he can hand off this entire Iraq mess to his successor, and wash his hands of this entire bloody war. If President Bush can hand the war off to his successor, then Bush can claim he did everything necessary to win the war, and he was not responsible for losing the war--his successor, if a Democratic president, was responsible for losing the war in Iraq. This is all about salvaging President Bush's legacy here. If Bush can keep the war going without benchmarks or timetables into 2008, then he can be reassured that both Iraq will be the overriding issue in the 2008 elections, and that Congress will not pass any legislation for resolving the Iraq war, or withdrawing the troops, until after the November 2008 election--until after George W. Bush leave office in January, 2009. It is the ulterior motive for the Bush administration's continuation of this war. It is also the first thing you need to remember.

The second thing you need to remember is that the political climate in Washington, and the country, has changed. The Democrats are in control of Congress. Congress had already passed a war funding bill, which contained both benchmarks for measuring the success of the Bush troop surge, and withdrawal timetables of U.S. forces if those benchmarks were not achieved. President Bush vetoed the war funding bill, claiming that "Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible...." The President wants a blank war funding check, the Democrats in Congress are willing to fund his war, but with conditions and benchmarks. This is the showdown taking place between the Bush White House and the Democrats in Congress over who controls this war in Iraq. This is far different than the past four years of war funding, where Bush could force a Republican-controlled Congress to rubber-stamp his blank checks. Bush needs to keep his blank check war funding going on for the next two years, otherwise there will be no money to continue the war. So that is one giant headache for the Bush administration. And now to make matters worst, House Democrats are considering a bill to release a limited amount of funds to allow Bush to continue the Iraq war until this July. Congress would then possibly reconsider a bill to release funds to continue the war into September, depending upon whether the Iraqi government has made progress towards reducing the ethnic civil war that is raging inside its borders. Here the Democrats are telling the Bush White House that Bush will get his blank check for war funding, but only until July, or September--depending upon whether the benchmarks for success are achieved. Again, Bush is constrained in that he can't get a blank check to continue the war until 2009.

But there is more change in the political climate within the country. It is the poll numbers--they are showing a sinking Bush presidency. The latest Newsweek poll has President Bush's job approval ratings dropping to 28 percent. You can look at all the sinking Bush job approval ratings here. The poll numbers on Iraq are also showing bad news for Bush, where two-thirds of the American public disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war in Iraq, and where a majority of Americans support some type of withdrawal timetable for U.S. forces in Iraq. President Bush has lost the support of the American people regarding the war in Iraq. This is a disaster for the Republican Party. All of the GOP presidential candidates, except for Representative Ron Paul, support the Bush war in Iraq. And that is a problem here. We have Republican presidential candidates that are supporting the Bush war in Iraq, and Republican congressmen who are being pressured, more than likely by the Bush White House, to continue following the Bush troop surge plan in Iraq, even as the polls are showing that American public opinion has turned against the war and the against the Bush administration's Iraq policy. The longer the Republican Party continues to follow President Bush's Iraq war plan, the greater the exposure of the Republicans being out of touch with the American people on Iraq. This is the danger the Republican congressmen face. They can either support the president, and face the wrath of the American people in 2008, or they can shift their position on the war and hope this will save their political careers at the expense of the Bush White House anger. This is also a problem for the congressional Republicans since George Bush is placing his own presidential legacy ahead of his political party's need to elect both Republican congressmen and a Republican president. In simple terms, the Republican congressmen are caught between a rock and a hard place.

And that is why you're seeing a change in the Bush PR strategy here. This is a delaying tactic here. The delaying tactic is for the American generals to tell Congress--and especially the Republican congressmen--how long it will it take to determine the success of the Bush troop surge. President Bush needs to keep the Republican congressmen in line until the beginning of 2008. The Republicans are worried that Bush declining poll numbers, and the growing American publics' oppostion to the war will cause greater Republican congressional losses, and the loss of the White House in 2008. So in order to save their political skins, more Republican congressmen may end up supporting either the House proposal for limited war funding in July, or even a potential withdrawal timetable in September--one with enough votes that will override a presidential veto. So what we have here is that the Bush administration may be shifting more of the PR strategy of selling the war on the Pentagon, determining how long the surge success will be, rather than having it go through the Bush White House. The bush administration is hoping that both the Republican congressmen, and possibly the American people, will trust the Pentagon in providing the surge assessment, and recommendations for extending the war, rather than having that news come from the White House.

And hopefully allow President Bush to extend his war into January, 2009.

Army soldiers to serve 15-month extended tours in Iraq

Looks like the Bush administration is well on their way towards completely destroying the Army. From The Washington Post:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced this afternoon that all active-duty Army soldiers currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan could serve extended tours of up to 15 months in combat, meaning more than 100,000 troops now at war probably will be kept overseas three months longer than their expected one-year deployments.

The new Pentagon policy also means that tens of thousands of Army troops headed to Iraq and Afghanistan in coming months likely will serve tours 25 percent longer than the one-year tours the Army has had in place for the two conflicts over the past five years.

Gates said the change is necessary to prevent five Army brigades from deploying to combat before they complete a desired 12-month rest period at home and to give predictability to soldiers and their families.

So instead of 12-month tours, the more than 100,000 troops will be kept in Iraq for 15 months. The Army cannot find enough bodies to replace their already worn-out troops, so they've been lowering their standards for recruits. The Army has had to offer bigger bonuses, and raise the age limit to make up for the falling enlistment numbers. There is even a strange idea of allowing foreign citizens to join the U.S. Army as a fast-track means of gaining U.S. citizenship. And while the Army was able to achieve their recruiting goals for 2006, the Army can only lower their standards so far before they realize the sad truth that young Americans are not joining the military because of this unpopular war in Iraq. This breakdown in the Army is starting to show with this 15-month extended tour being forced on the troops.

It is going to get worst over the next year.

WaPost: 3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar'

Excuse me, but isn't the president suppose to be the "Commander-in-Chief?" And if so, then why does President Bush need a "War Czar?" From the Washington Post:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once. Officials said they are still considering options for how to reorganize the White House's management of the two conflicts. If they cannot find a person suited for the sort of specially empowered office they envision, they said, they may have to retain the current structure.

It would appear to me that the Bush administration is trying to find another scapegoat to pin this latest troop surge failure on, thus absolving President Bush from any blame or responsibility for getting the U.S. into this disaster of a war in Iraq. It is not the president's fault--it is the war czar's fault!

Of course, never mind that the president is the Commander-in-Chief....

Hunger strike breaks out at Gitmo

This is from The New York Times:

A new, long-term hunger strike has broken out at the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with more than a dozen detainees subjecting themselves to daily force-feeding to protest their treatment, military officials and lawyers for the detainees said.

Lawyers for several hunger strikers said their clients’ action were driven by harsh conditions in a new maximum security complex to which about 160 prisoners have been moved since December.

The 13 detainees now on hunger strikes is the highest number to endure the force-feeding regimen on an extended basis since early 2006, when the military broke a long-running strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners into “restraint chairs” while they are fed by plastic tubes inserted through their nostrils.

The hunger strikers are now monitored so closely the they have virtually no chance to starve themselves. Yet their persistence underscores how the struggle between detainees and guards at Guantánamo has continued even as the military has tightened its control.

“We don’t have any rights here, even after your Supreme Court said we had rights,” one hunger striker, Majid al-Joudi, told a military physician, according to medical records released recently under a federal court order. “If the policy does not change, you will see a big increase in fasting.”

A military spokesman at Guantánamo, Cmdr. Robert Durand of the Navy, played down the significance of the current hunger strike, describing the prisoners’ complaints as “propaganda.”

A couple of items here. First, we've got 13 inmates going on this hunger strike as a protest against the harsh conditions they face in Gitmo. They still have no legal rights, no charges have been leveled against them, no trial, and no cross-examination of the evidence against them. The Bush administration has not only locked them up and threw away the key here, but the administration has placed them in a new maximum security complex for which they are just rotting away. And of course, the U.S. military is calling this "propaganda." Continuing with The NY Times story:

Newly released Pentagon documents show that during earlier hunger strikes, before the use of restraint chairs, some detainees suffered sharp weight losses. A handful of those prisoners lost more than 30 pounds in a matter of weeks, the records show. By comparison, the current hunger strike — in which 12 of the 13 were being force-fed as of Friday — seems almost symbolic.

For instance, the medical records for Mr. Joudi, a 36-year-old Saudi, show that when he was hospitalized on Feb. 10, he had been fasting for 31 days and had lost more than 15 percent of his body weight.

By the time he was transferred a few days later to a “feeding block” where hard-core hunger strikers are segregated from other prisoners, his condition had stabilized and his weight was nearly back to its ideal level for a man his size. (His exact weight gain was not recorded.)

Lawyers for several detainees being held in the new maximum security complex, called Camp 6, compared it to “super-max” prisons in the United States. The major differences, they said, are that the detainees have limited reading material and no television, and that only 10 of the roughly 385 men at Guantánamo have been charged.

The Camp 6 inmates are generally locked in their 8-by-10-foot cells for at least 22 hours a day, emerging only to exercise in small wire cages and shower. Besides those exercise periods, they can talk with other prisoners only by shouting through food slots in the steel doors of their cells.

“My wish is to die,” one reported hunger striker in the camp, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, a 27-year old Yemeni, told his lawyer on Feb. 27, according to recently declassified notes of the meeting. “We are living in a dying situation.”

[....]

Camp 6 was originally designed as a modern, medium-security prison complex for up to 200 inmates, with common areas where they could gather for meals and a large, fenced-in athletic field where they might jog or play soccer outside the high, concrete walls.

But after a riot last May and the suicides of three prisoners in June, the unit was retrofitted to limit the detainees’ freedom of movement and reduce the risk that they might hurt themselves or attack guards, military officials said.

Senior officials expressed concern in interviews about how prisoners would react to the greater isolation in Camp 6. Most had been held on makeshift blocks of wire-mesh cells that — while often hot, noisy and lacking privacy — allowed them to communicate easily, pray together and even pass written messages.

Guantánamo’s other maximum-security unit, Camp 5, has pods of cells that face each other across a short hallway, allowing the roughly 100 detainees there to converse fairly easily. In Camp 6, the prisoners can see one another from their cells only when one of them is being moved. At other times, they look out on the stainless-steel picnic tables in the common areas they are not allowed to use.

Lawyers for half a dozen Camp 6 detainees said their clients were uniformly despondent about the move even though, as military officials note, the new cells are 27 square feet larger than the old ones and have air-conditioning, nicer toilets and sinks, and a small desk anchored to the wall.

“They’re just sitting on a powder keg down there,” said one lawyer, Sabin Willett, who, like others, described an atmosphere of growing desperation among the prisoners. “You’re going to have an insane asylum.”

This is how the Bush administration fights The Great War on Terror--building what amounts to concentration camps for these supposed terrorists. Lock them up and throw away the key. Deny them any legal rights. Let them rot away.

Read the entire article.

Pentagon memo shows general tried to warn Bush on Tillman's death

There are days when even I'll have to admit that political CYA really stinks. And that is what we have here with this MSNBC story--a major political CYA between the Pentagon and the Bush White House over the death of an Army Ranger. From MSNBC News:

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Just seven days after Pat Tillman's death, a top general warned there were strong indications that the NFL star-turned-soldier did not die in an ambush in Afghanistan, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. But it was not until a month afterward that the Pentagon told the public and grieving family members the truth — that Tillman was mistakenly killed in Afghanistan by his comrades.

The memo reinforces suspicions that the Pentagon was more concerned with sparing officials from embarrassment than with leveling with Tillman's family.

In a memo sent to a four-star general a week after Tillman's April 22, 2004, death, then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that it was "highly possible" the Army Ranger was killed by friendly fire. McChrystal made it clear his warning should be conveyed to President Bush.

"I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Cpl. Tillman's death become public," McChrystal wrote on April 29, 2004, to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command.

White House spokesman Blain Rethmeier said Friday that a review of records turned up no indication that the president had received McChrystal's warning. Bush made no reference to the way Tillman died in a speech delivered two days after the memo was written. But Rethmeier emphasized that the president often pays tribute to fallen soldiers without mentioning the exact circumstances of their deaths.

The family was not told until May 29, 2004, what really happened. In the intervening weeks, the military continued to say Tillman died under enemy fire, and even awarded him the Silver Star, which is given for heroic battlefield action.

The Tillman family has charged that the military and the Bush administration deliberately deceived his relatives and the nation to avoid turning public opinion against the war.

Tillman's mother, Mary, had no immediate comment Friday on the newly disclosed memo.

Pat Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004. It doesn't bother me that both the Pentagon and the Bush White House used Tillman's death for the political purpose of selling their war in Iraq to the American people, or even to try to stifle criticism of that war. Politicians will use their own military service records, or even other military heroes to advance their political goals. What bothers me here is that the Pentagon believed that the cause of Tillman's death was a potential political liability to the Bush White House, to the point of where this Major General McChrystal sent this memo to General Abizaid, warning Abizaid that the Bush administration could become embarrassed in presenting misleading statements regarding Tillman's death. What are they going to say--that Tillman was the ultimate "Rambo" hero, standing tall with his M60 machine gun, blasting those evil terrorists away, sacrificing his own life to save his fellow Army Rangers, and protecting the good old US of A? It bothers me that the Pentagon was more concerned about President Bush making an embarrassing remark, than about actually telling the truth about the events surrounding Tillman's death. McChrystal pretty much knew a week after Tillman's death that Tillman was killed by friendly fire. And yet, the Pentagon waited for a month before telling Tillman's family the truth of Tillman's death. The Pentagon should have just told the truth right away, rather than playing CYA politics. Because with the release of this memo, we've got a whole new scandal, where top Pentagon officials seemed more concern about protecting their own asses, rather than doing their jobs. Who else knew of this memo? Who else read this memo? And are we to accept the Bush administration's claims that the president never received McChrystal's memo and the warning, considering the constant lies this administration has told the American public regarding faulty Iraqi intelligence, the Valerie Plame scandal, the attorney purge scandal, or even all the delusional talk of how the U.S. is still winning in Iraq?

Another scandal....