United States News Digest
Senator Lautenberg: Cheney Is the Lead Chickenhawk
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, declared, "We know who the chickenhawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others, but when it was their turn to serve, they were A-W-O-L from courage."
To underscore his point, Lautenberg defined a chickenhawk as "having the shriek of a hawk, but the backbone of a chicken, and now the chickenhawks are squawking about Senator Kerry. The lead chickenhawk against Senator Kerry is the Vice President." He recalled Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that he had "other priorities" at the time of the Vietnam War, so he did not serve.
To drive the point home, Lautenberg pulled out a large drawing of a chicken dressed up as a war hawk!
According to radio reports, pandemonium broke out in response to this octogenarian, World War II veteran Lautenberg's intervention, with Sen. John "Bullmoose" McCain jumping to Cheney's rescue, and demanding that the issue of service in Vietnam be dropped from the rhetoric of the campaign.
Rumsfeld-Cheney Transformation Doctrine Killing U.S. Troops
The May 3 issue of Newsweek reports that one out of four soldiers killed in Iraq has died unnecessarily, and that they would be alive today if they had had armored vehicles. This is according to a study being circulated in the Pentagon, which reports that of 789 total Coalition deaths as of April 15, there were 142 killed by land mines or improvised explosive devices, and 48 others died in rocket-propelled grenade attacks. Almost all were killed while in unarmored vehicles. Thousands more were injured, many with serious wounds, while travelling in unprotected vehicles.
The Army is 1,800 short of its requirements for armored Humvees, Newsweek says, and it notes that troops are trying to improvise to get more protection, but Humvees which are modified with armor, can't take the extra weight, and their transmissions and suspensions systems fail. Soldiers in Iraq are complaining that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and the top brass "have been too reluctant to modify their long-term plans for a lighter military"a core tenet of Rumsfeld's and Veep Dick Cheney's utopian plans for a lighter, more mobile imperial fighting force, and their assumption that heavier, armored vehicles are a relic of the past.
Meanwhile, Stars & Stripes reported, on April 25, that the House Armed Services Committee called Defense Dept. acquisition officials into a hearing last week, to ask them why armor needed to protect U.S. troops is so slow in getting to Iraq. Unarmored Humvees weren't designed for the type of fighting being experienced in Iraq, said the commander of the 1st Armored Division. "They were supposed to be behind the lines." The commander describes Iraq as a "non-linear battlefield," with threats coming from all directions. "It's 24-7, 365 [days], 360 degrees," he said.
Pentagon leaders haven't addressed the requests for additional armor kits, so that production will shut down on April 30. As well, says Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif), the Bush Administration has not earmarked sufficient funds in its 2005 budget to provide for the Army's need for armor, Humvees and add-on kits.
9/11 Commission Rejects GOP Demands on Gorelick
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, rejected a demand, on April 25, from 11 Republican Senators, that it call Commission member Jamie Gorelick to testify as a witness in front it. The Senators, led by Kit Bond (R-Mo), argued that any report by the Commission "will be incomplete without public testimony by Ms. Gorelick about her activities while serving as Deputy Attorney General." This followed Attorney General John Ashcroft's effort to disrupt the Commission's work, by falsely charging that Gorelick was largely responsible for allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place, because she "built the wall" that separated intelligence from law enforcement.
Indicating that they are looking for any pretext to discredit Commission findings damaging to the Bush Administration, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) stated: "By refusing to require this key testimony, the Commission administers a self-inflicted wound, which further puts its judgment and impartiality in doubt."
Negroponte Grilled on Administration's Iraq Plans
John Negroponte, the Bush Administration's nominee to become Ambassador to Iraq, was grilled by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during his confirmation hearing on April 27, as to whether the Bush Administration has a policy for Iraq, and if so, what it is. The members of the committee present made clear from the outset that they intend to support his nomination when they vote on April 29, but the Senators, still angry over the Administration's refusal to send any official to testify at the previous week's hearings on Iraq, seized upon Negroponte's presence to try to get some answers on policy. The skepticism and fear over the insane contradictions of the Bush Administration schemes for Iraq was bipartisanas was the lack of any answer to what is to be done.
"American credibility in the world, progress in our war on terrorism, relationships with our allies, and the future of the Middle East depend on a positive outcome in Iraq," committee chairman Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind) stated in opening the hearing. He asked how Negroponte would ensure that the people named to the new government of Iraq would be acceptable to the Iraqis? How did they intend to get a UN resolution through the Security Council, this time? Who will be in charge: the U.S. military or the U.S. Embassy? Who decides, if the Iraqi government opposes military action which the U.S. military views as necessary?
His fellow Republican, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, began by lecturing Negroponte on the urgency of the U.S. forging alliances with "our Muslim allies" and the United Nations, if there were to be success in the Middle East. What would it take to get France, Russia, and Germany to help? And what powers is the interim Iraqi government to have? Do they have sovereignty, or do they not have sovereignty? "If a country doesn't have the sovereignty to make national security decisions for itself and military commitments, then I'm not sure I would define it as a sovereign government," he said.
Senators Joe Biden (D-Del) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) went after the de-Baathification policy as a colossal failure. Biden also wanted to know who will control the reconstruction fundsthe Embassy or the Pentagonin a situation where almost 50% of those funds are reportedly being siphoned off to corruption and security costs?
Cheney Praises Churchill, Trashes Kerry
In a lengthy speech to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had given his Iron Curtain speech 58 years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney cast himself and President Bush as following the tradition of the Churchill-Truman cold warriors. Without a mention of the Churchill-FDR alliance against the Nazis, Cheney lauded the Churchill-Truman drive against "imperial communism."
He then went into a lengthy defense of the Bush Administration's War on Terror, citing the policy of pre-emptive war, and repeating his frequent mantra about new terror attacks to be expected inside the U.S. "We have to assume they will make further attempts inside the United States, especially in an election year," Cheney warned. No mention of the lack of weapons of mass destruction, or of the simmering insurgency against Americans in Iraq, or the chaos in Afghanistan. In his typically lying fashion, Cheney claimed victory was in process.
The Vice President then turned to trashing Senator Kerry. Bush, he lied, is "calm and deliberate, comfortable with responsibility...." Kerry, on the other hand, has trouble "making decisions and standing by them." He proceeded to outline known flip-flops on Kerry's part.
After Cheney's speech, the president of Westminster College issued a notice to students and faculty rebuking Cheney for his "Kerry bashing." Fletcher Lamkin, a former administrator at West Point, said the "content and tone" of the speech was not what was expected, as it was supposed to be on foreign policy. Democratic candidate John Kerry accepted an invitation from the college to speak there April 30.
Carpetbagger Contractors Fined Millions for Fraud
Led by Dick Cheney's Halliburton, 10 companies that were awarded $7 billion in U.S. government contracts for Iraq "reconstruction," have paid more than $300 million in penalties since 2000 to settle allegations of bid-rigging, fraud, delivery of faulty military parts and environmental damage.
For example, the Cheney-Bush team is paying more than $780 million to one British firm convicted of fraud on three Federal construction projects and banned from U.S. government work during 2002, according to government documents reviewed by Associated Press. A Virginia-based company convicted of rigging bids for U.S.-funded projects in Egypt, won Iraq contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Plus, a third company found guilty of environmental violations and bid-rigging won U.S. Army approval for a subcontract to clear an Iraqi harbor. Seven other firms with Iraq contracts have agreed to pay financial penalties without admitting wrongdoing. Combined, the 10 companies have paid fines to resolve 30 alleged violations in the past four yearssix of which paid penalties more than once. Yet, the firms have been awarded $7 billion in Iraq contracts.
The Cheney-Bush Administration had repealed regulations enacted by the Clinton Administration that allowed officials to bar new government work for companies convicted or penalized during the previous three years. The new rules were suspended during the Bush administration's first three months in office, and revoked in December 2001.
Punished contractors include:
* HALLIBURTON paid $2 million in 2002 to settle charges it falsely boosted costs on a maintenance contract at now-closed Fort Ord in California
* BECHTEL paid more than $110,000 to the EPA and the Energy Department in 2000 and 2001 over safety and environmental violations; three of its subcontractors have been fined more than $86 million.
* AMEC, a British firm that paid $1.2 million in fines for contract fraud on projects in California and Missouri, debarred for one year in 2002.
* American International Contractors Inc. paid $4.7 million in fines in 2000 after pleading guilty to bid-rigging on a U.S.-funded water project in Egypt.
* Fluor Corp. paid $8.5 million to the Defense Department in 2001 to settle charges of improperly billing.
* Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. paid a $969,000 fine in 2002 for environmental damage in the Florida Keys.
* Northrop Grumman Corp. paid $191.7 million in the past four years, including a 2000 case over faulty military replacement parts.
Special Prosecutor Appointed in Files Theft Case
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of the theft of sensitive Democratic files from the Senate Judiciary Committee computer system, and has appointed the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, David Kelly, to head the probe. Democrats on the Committee, along with three Republicans, had pushed for the appointment of a special prosecutor who could conduct an aggressive investigation, free of influence from Washington.
Over a period of 18 months, two Republican staffers downloaded close to 5,000 files covering Democratic tactics in opposing President Bush's judicial nominees, and some of the documents were leaked to right-groups groups and publications.
This is the third case which the Justice Department has assigned to a special prosecutor; the others are the Valerie Plame leak case, and an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct in the Detroit "al-Qaeda sleeper cell" case.
|