The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.
Just in time for the election!
Torture doesn't work. In fact, in a counterinsurgency it works against you because it turns the locals against you. That is why the Marines took that guy back to his house. Because they knew we were trying to win that neighborhood's trust, and torturing one of their own was not the way to do it, even if he was working with the Muj. Kill him in open battle, sure, they would understand that, but not torture. It backfires on you everytime. Every story about our hapless spook operators torturing some terror suspect makes every Marine and soldier patrolling through the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan less safe.
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
Lets stop chasing oil and use something else.
Mr. KUCINICH. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2 of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House.
The form of the resolution is as follows:
Resolved, That President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate...
While the newly released memo focuses on "asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators," it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:
... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
I love how the ends now justify the means.
JOHN YOO'S hitherto secret memo justifying the use of harsh interrogation tactics has finally been declassified and released. As legal scholar Marty Lederman observes, it is hard to see any real justification for having kept the document under lock and key for so long--except, I suppose, that it makes clear there's no wondrous legal proof lurking behind the curtains here, just Mr Yoo's rather extreme (and by now depressingly familiar) view that there is no law higher than presidential whim in time of war. Or, as he puts it, "it is for the President alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy."
Two senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have requested a full accounting of how Iraq is spending its soaring oil revenues, amid starkly conflicting estimates of how much the country has invested in rebuilding its broken infrastructure and providing basic services to its citizens.
The request, sent Friday to David M. Walker, the top official at the United States Government Accountability Office, estimates that Iraqi oil revenues could skyrocket above $56 billion in 2008, largely because of the rising price of oil.
Baghdad's hospitals are poorly equipped, lack medicine and equipment, are frequently overcrowded and have too few nurses and doctors to care for the patients. Many of them are also dirty, and I have had doctors tell me that they always advise patients to go home if they possibly can to avoid becoming sicker. While Iraqi doctors are often quite good, and some younger doctors have gone to sessions held by groups like Doctors Without Borders, most have had little access to training in the last five years and are working with antiquated equipment.
...
Medicines are of questionable quality and often outdated. Basic antibiotics are available, but most ills are treated with broad spectrum drugs rather than drugs tailored to the particular illness. For high blood pressure, a common complaint, doctors often prescribe diazepam (Valium) and little else. Diabetes is hard to treat because it is difficult to get steady supplies of insulin. These are just a few examples, there are many more.
How can we help them win the war on terror if we can't help them win the war for basic healthcare?
After a two-year rush program by the Pentagon's research arm, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, troops are now getting what might be described as Google Maps for the Iraq counterinsurgency. There is nothing cutting-edge about the underlying technology: software that runs on PCs and taps multiple distributed databases. But the trove of information the system delivers is of central importance in the daily lives of soldiers.
The new technology--called the Tactical Ground Reporting System, or TIGR--is a map-centric application that junior officers (the young sergeants and lieutenants who command patrols) can study before going on patrol and add to upon returning. By clicking on icons and lists, they can see the locations of key buildings, like mosques, schools, and hospitals, and retrieve information such as location data on past attacks, geotagged photos of houses and other buildings (taken with cameras equipped with Global Positioning System technology), and photos of suspected insurgents and neighborhood leaders. They can even listen to civilian interviews and watch videos of past maneuvers. It is just the kind of information that soldiers need to learn about Iraq and its perils.
Great to know the war on terror will now be fought with technology from years ago.
