Yet Another Military Scandal Brewing?

Pentagon Is Probing Veterans Home

By Steve Vogel and Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A01

Reports of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine and feces at the Armed Forces Retirement Home prompted the Pentagon yesterday to begin investigating conditions at the veterans facility in Northwest Washington.

The Government Accountability Office warned the Pentagon this week that residents of the home "may be at risk" in light of allegations of severe health-care problems. Residents have been admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center with "the most serious type of pressure sores" and, in one case, with maggots in a wound, according to a GAO letter sent to the Defense Department.

«Snip»

Timothy Cox, the chief operating officer for the retirement home, said yesterday that the accusations are "without merit," and he blasted the GAO for making "inflammatory allegations" without investigating them.

«Snip»

Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) sent a joint letter to Gates on Tuesday saying they were "dismayed" by the GAO letter and calling on Defense "to immediately undertake an independent investigation."

So, apparently "just" allegations at this point, but if the GAO went public with this, I suspect that there is some fire behind the smoke.

R.

A Theme Song For Our Times - Written in 1964

The Times They Are A Changin' - Bob Dylan, 1964

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway


Don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside

And it is ragin'.

It'll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'.

Between Gonzogate and articles like:

9 officers cited for mishandling Tillman's death

"A Pentagon investigation has found that nine officers, including as many as four generals, were at fault for the bungled aftermath of the friendly-fire killing of former football star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman in 2004, according to news reports Friday evening."

I'm finally beginning to muster a little optimism that positive change is on the way. Let us all hope that it continues. The Tillman story hopefully provides some measure of satisfaction to a family that faced the pain of losing their son and sibling and then were made fools of.

R.

Quote of the Day

Our pal Montag:

... Remember, to a "loyal Bushie" black is white and up is down. If they say they are innocent, it is time to build the scaffold and oil up the hanging rope ...

Oh, the whoring!

The first couple chapters of The Fourth Estate are up at The Practical Press.

If you missed my previous novel The Captains, you can check it out here.

Oaths ...

Leahy on Olbermann's show:

... "The reason I want to do it under oath..remember in the Valerie Plame thing, nobody had anything to do with this. Noboby outed her name. Nobody said she was a CIA operative, nobody at the White House did, until some of these people were under oath and then we find out, gosh, they did. It's amazing how that focuses ones attention." ...

NYT (unfirewalled) via Atrios:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in an hourlong meeting last fall, according to documents released Friday that indicate he was more involved in the dismissals than he has claimed.

Last week, Gonzales said he ''was not involved in any discussions about what was going on'' in the firings of eight prosecutors that has since led to a political firestorm and calls for his ouster.

A Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Gonzales' aides said late Friday.

...

Truth has always been the first casualty of the Bush administration.

Quote of the Day 2

Cdr. Huber on the funding bill passed by the House today:

... As to the criticism that the House bill passed because it threw pork to U.S. spinach and peanut farmers: I'd rather see farmers profit from this war than to see Halliburton and its subsidiaries make another dime from it ...

Props

This is rare enough that I felt it merited a post.

I was watching Lardass this afternoon, and Chris Matthews was talking to some idiot Rethug congressman about the house passing the supplemental Iraq bill with its conditions. The congressturd was going on and on with the usual talking points, "the Democrat Party doesn't support the troops, they shouldn't micro-manage the war", blah-blah-blah. At one point he mentioned the 'lefty' Washington Post.

To his credit, Matthews said, from my memory:

"The Post isn't liberal any more, Congressman. I've been reading it for a long time and it's a neocon paper now."

Mrs. G was home for lunch. I don't smoke in the living room so I was watching it in another room. We both applauded at the same time.

Occasionally even the gasbags get off a good point.

Gag me with a Security Letter

WaPo prints an anonymous editorial by a recipient of a possibly illegal yet somehow binding FBI Security Letter.

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

In this lawless arrogant administration which has utter contempt for the rule of law and the Constitution, every agency they have control over is a criminal organization. Things rot from the head down.

They all need to go. Now.

Don't expect the truth from Karl Rove

James C. Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential", is an expert on that slimeball and sounds off:

Whether Rove chats or testifies, Congress will surely be frustrated. Asking Rove questions is simply not an effective method of ascertaining facts. Reporters who, like me, have dogged the presidential advisor from Texas to Washington quickly learn how skilled he is at dancing around the periphery of issues. Any answers he does deliver can survive a thousand interpretations. Few intellects are as adept at framing, positioning and spinning ideas. That's a great talent for politics. But it's dangerous when dealing with the law.

Rove's famous memory, which recalls precinct results from 100-year-old presidential elections, often seems trained only to serve his political ends.[...]

If Rove winds up under oath before Congress, members will get a command performance by a man with masterful communications skills. They can expect to hear artful impressions, bits of information and a few stipulated facts.

But they should not expect the truth.

Thanks Jim, but we know that. What we want is for him to step on his weenie by perjuring himself under oath so we can lock him up.

With friends like us, who needs enemies?

Mother Jones

They cheered the U.S. invasion; they offered to help, signed on as translators, risked everything they had to work for the United States. But when they had to run for their lives, America slammed the door.

In the past, notes Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch, the United States has often aided those persecuted for supporting it; since the Vietnam War, 1 million Vietnamese refugees have been resettled in the United States, including tens of thousands of South Vietnamese army veterans. But the Bush administration "has abdicated that obligation," says Frelick. "The people who have fled are the ones the administration was relying on to build democracy in Iraq; it would rather ignore them than acknowledge that its initiative has failed.

That is how Bush wins 'hearts and minds': Thanks a pile for helping my stupid plans fail. Tough shit all your countrymen want to kill you. It's your goddam fault it didn't work. Whaddya expect us to do, welcome you with open arms? Kick rocks, 'Raqs.

I'm ashamed of us.

Al Qa Qaa Revisited

A quote from my post of 27 October '04:

Not only have we not heard the last of this, I think we have barely heard the beginning. Every time a car bomb goes off, or a Humvee carrying American soldiers gets blown away, think of George W. Bush. Be angry, be very, very angry.

Here's an earlier one:

Don't worry, Bush. Our soldiers will find the explosives. Oh, yes. They'll find them the same way they found missing or "dud" explosives in Vietnam - one piece at a time. Each time they find a little of it, one or more of them will die or be horribly maimed, just like Vietnam. Each soldier, and his family, can thank Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld for his death or lifetime as a cripple.

These explosives may turn up anywhere in the world for many years to come. We won't know where until it's too late to do anything except police up the carnage.

This could have been prevented, but Bush didn't do it. There is absolutely no excuse or reason for not securing these caches. Incompetence doesn't begin to cover it. Criminal negligence is closer to the truth.

Bush, if anything you've ever done consigns you to Hell, this is it. You motherfucker.

Me'n Fixer posted several times in blind rage that month on the theft of explosives and weapons from the cache at al QaQaa. Kindly ignore the predictions of Kerry's victory. We thought reality would trump stupidity. It almost did...

But I digress. Here's from WaPo on the GAO report just out:

The U.S. military's faulty war plans and insufficient troops in Iraq left thousands and possibly millions of tons of conventional munitions unsecured or in the hands of insurgent groups after the 2003 invasion -- allowing widespread looting of weapons and explosives used to make roadside bombs that cause the bulk of U.S. casualties, according to a government report released yesterday.

The GAO report pointed to several critical assumptions underlying U.S. military war plans in 2003 that proved invalid -- including expectations that Iraqi resistance was unlikely and that the Iraqi army would capitulate and continue to provide security.

As a result, widespread looting of munitions took place, including at the majority of Iraqi Republican Guard garrisons as well as 401 other sites, according to the GAO.

Pentagon programs have secured or disposed of more than 417,000 tons of munitions, the report said. But it said an unknown quantity -- ranging from thousands to millions of tons of conventional munitions -- remain unaccounted for.

Our troops are still finding them, a little bit each day, just as we predicted. The Government Accountability Office took their own sweet time to agree with us, but they finally did.

And our Soldiers and Marines and Iraqis are still dying because of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney and his neocons' insanity, evil, and sheer incompetence. May God damn them all.

Update:

The Air Force Times weighs in as well:

But the Pentagon provided no witnesses to the hearing despite repeated requests, much to the chagrin of the chairman, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass.

"This is troubling at a number of levels," Tierney said. "There are people tasked with having their act together to protect our troops going forward. What does this say, if they don't even have their act together to put forward a single witness to talk to us about these issues?"

Yeah, if you don't talk about it, it'll go away. Might take a while, but the insurgents can only build bombs so fast...

House OKs timetable for troops in Iraq

Yahoo! News

Ignoring a White House veto threat, lawmakers voted 218-212, mostly along party lines, for a binding war spending bill requiring that combat operations cease before September 2008, or earlier if the Iraqi government does not meet certain requirements. Democrats said it was time to heed the mandate of their election sweep last November, which gave them control of Congress.

The bill marks the first time Congress has used its budget power to try to end the war, now in its fifth year, by attaching the withdrawal requirements to a bill providing $124 billion to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of this year.

"If you want peace, stop funding this war," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.

Yep.

Shifts ...

[Welcome to all of Shakes' readers stopping by. ~ F.]

People are starting to get it*.

WASHINGTON -- Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged since the second year of George W. Bush's presidency, as attitudes have edged away from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political dominance for more than a decade, a major new survey has found.

The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press, found a "dramatic shift" in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, half of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, while only 35% aligned with Republicans.

What's more, the survey found the public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats' values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s, skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has edged down.

Those findings suggest that Republicans' political challenges reach beyond the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Bush. [my ems]

...

Values are only values when they are put in practice. Rethug 'values' are nothing more than a 'do as I say, not what I do' load of bullshit and Americans are seeing that in a big way now.

By the way, as Spring arrives, do you catch a faint scent of Watergate on the breeze lately? Heh ...

*Great thanks to the inimitable Oliver Willis for the link.

Quote of the Day

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Big Brass Balls):

"What we're told we can get is nothing ... Nothing ... Nothing," complained Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) growing visibly hot under the collar about a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer the White House has made about Karl Rove and others appearing before Congress in its investigation of the firings of federal prosecutors.

"The White House will determine what the agenda is," the chairman complained today. "That to me is nothing."

"Fuck me? No, fuck you!"

Oops...

Got this by e-mail from Mrs. G:

A drunk man who smelled like beer sat down on a subway next to a priest. The man's tie was stained, his face was plastered with red lipstick, and a half empty bottle of gin was sticking out of his torn coat pocket.

He opened his newspaper and began reading. After a few minutes the man turned to The priest and asked, "Say Father, what causes arthritis?"

The priest replies, "My Son, it's caused by loose living, being with cheap, wicked women, too much alcohol, contempt for your fellow man, sleeping around with prostitutes and lack of a bath."

The drunk muttered in response, "Well, I'll be damned," then returned to his paper.

The priest, thinking about what He had said, nudged the man and apologized. "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to come on so strong. How long have you had arthritis?"

The drunk answered, "I don't have it, Father. I was just reading here that the Pope does."

Bada-Bing!

They have to be Republicans

Only they would put the lives of beloved family pets second to profits. I'm sure most folks' pets nowadays are like our Princess Shayna, more children than pets.

The Canadian pet food giant, Menu Foods, knew about problems with pet illness and death for nearly one month before they ordered the products recalled from store shelves, and instead conducted their own tests resulting in pet illness and deaths before making a decision to order a public recall of the products.

Fresh evidence proves that back as far as February 20, 2007, Menu foods knew about problems with at least some of their 88 brands of cat and dog food, and instead of taking immediate action to remove the dangerous products, began a series of tests on animals instead. Only after a number of animals, mostly cats died, then Menu decided that perhaps they should take some stronger action. Normally most companies that find glass or some other foreign material in a line of products will isolate what run of foods has been compromised, and immediately order a recall of that run of foods to protect the public. Why Menu waited for days while more animals became sick and some died, leaving their owners with big vet bills or loss of animal companionship is a very good question. But corporations don't like taking huge financial hits, and recalling around 60 million cans of food is a huge loss for a company. [my ems]

...

Heartless bastids.

Scary ...

When you look at how your taxes are spent by the federal government, not in dry accountant-speak or eye-glazing spreadsheets, but for guys like me, it really hits home. Karlo has graphs!

Belarus invades Ukraine!

Sort of ...

You know you're in trouble ...

When your coworkers know where you blog.

Get 'im, Babs!

Think Progress

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has said Al Gore is "full of crap" and compared people who believe in global warming to "the Third Reich." During today's Senate hearing, Inhofe used a considerable amount of time to attack Gore's use of carbon offsets and try to convince him to sign a sham "energy ethics pledge." (Find the real facts on Gore's energy usage HERE and HERE.)(Links at site - G.)

Inhofe asked Gore for his reaction, but then quickly cut him off saying Gore had taken up too much time. When Gore tried to go on, Inhofe repeatedly interrupted, adding, "I don't want to be rude, but from now on, I'm going to ask you to respond…in writing." Inhofe said Gore could respond verbally only if it was a "very brief response."

Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) finally intervened. "Would you agree to let the Vice President answer your questions?" Inhofe said Gore could respond when he was done talking, but Boxer wouldn't have it: "No, that isn't the rule. You're not making the rules. You used to when you did this. Elections have consequences. So I make the rules." The hearing audience applauded loudly. Watch it:

By all means watch it! Check a few of the comments, too. Heh.

Yo, Inhofe: Babs ain't a bitch, but she bitch-slapped the fuck outta you, asshole! 'Bout fuckin' time somebody did, oil-whore.

I ♥ Barbara Boxer! I'd like to ♣ Inhofe.