Bad Deeds for 7-13-2007

Bush Gets His Iraq Report Card Changed
The draft Iraq progress report showed all 18 benchmarks were missed. Two days later, the released report shows eight benchmarks graded as “satisfactory.” How did that happen? The facts show that some benchmarks claimed as “satisfactory” only demonstrate minimal progress, not achievement. Others have been achieved on the surface, but fail to accomplish the overall purpose of the specific measurement. A point-by-point analysis of six of the benchmarks by the National Security Network follows:

Benchmark (i)
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward forming a Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and then completing the constitutional review.

Response: The committee reviewing the constitution has experienced numerous delays. Most of the highly contested issues have been put off. Even if the government managed to pass the constitution, there would still need to be a national referendum.

Benchmark (viii)
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan.

Response: Establishing committees has had little impact on Baghdad’s population which still lacks access to many basic services like water and electricity.

Benchmark (ix)
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.

Response: According to military officials the three brigades that came to Baghdad were understaffed and poorly trained causing a major delay in Baghdad security operations.

Benchmark (xiii)
Assessment: The Government of Iraq with substantial Coalition assistance has made satisfactory progress toward reducing sectarian violence but has shown unsatisfactory progress towards eliminating militia control of local security.

Response: Estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq remain roughly the same as they were when the surge began in February.

Benchmark (xiv)
Assessment: The Government of Iraq — with substantial Coalition assistance — has made satisfactory progress toward establishing the planned Joint Security Stations in Baghdad.

Response: While the Joint Security Stations have been established there is little to indication that they are having a substantial impact on security and in some cases are actually making Iraqis feel less safe.

Benchmark (xvi)
Assessment: The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.

Response: The Sunnis – one of the largest and most important minority groups – are currently boycotting the government. The Iraqi Accordance Front is also boycotting.

Another similar reality check on the benchmarks

Mitt Romney’s False Boasting – Out on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has been boasting of some impressive accomplishments as governor of Massachusetts, while also outlining bold foreign policy proposals. But Romney sometimes alters the past, exaggerates his record and traffics in ambiguous language. Here are a few of Romney’s dubious statements:

He claims that President Clinton “began to dismantle the military” when it was President George H.W. Bush who started making deep cuts in defense budgets years before Clinton took office.
He claims to have balanced the Massachusetts budget through the elimination of duplicate state agencies when he actually relied mainly upon increases in fees and cuts to education and local aid to do so.
Romney takes credit for submitting state income tax cuts, although income tax rates did not change during his term as governor.

Free Calls Home for Soldiers May End Soon – Officials with the Freedom Call Foundation have announced that they have run out of money to cover the expenses associated with telephone calls from soldiers to their families. The Morristown, N.J.-based charity has been providing the service for military families for free since 2004. “We do about 2,000 of these a month,” said John Harlow, executive director and founder of Freedom Calls. The calls can get very expensive, Harlow said. “We have to maintain these satellite links which costs tens of thousands of dollars a month.” Harlow said the organization is looking for donations and is planning some fund-raisers to help find money for its $1,000 a day budget. The organization uses e-mail, phone calls, and video tele-conferencing to connect soldiers with their families. “If we don’t find the funds we are going to have to stop operation,” Harlow said. For more information on Freedom Calls Foundation, visit www.freedomcalls.org or call 973-290-7886.

Tax Loopholes for the Rich – The Blackstone Group, the big buyout firm, has devised a way for its partners to effectively avoid paying taxes on $3.7 billion, the bulk of what it raised last month from selling shares to the public. Although they will initially pay $553 million in taxes, the partners will get that back, and about $200 million more, from the government over the long term. Lee Sheppard, a tax lawyer who critiques deals for Tax Notes magazine and has studied the Blackstone arrangement, said it was a reminder of the disconnect between the tax debate in Congress and how the tax system actually operates at the highest levels of the economy. Stephen A. Schwarzman, the co-founder of the Blackstone Group, made nearly $400 million last year.

Bush Objects to Public Health Care – Speaking in Cleveland this week, Bush boldly asserted, “I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it’s wrong and I think it’s a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress’s attempt … to federalize medicine…In my judgment that would be — it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.”

What “innovations” has it produced? The deductible, the co-pay, and the pre-existing condition are the only ones that leap to mind.

What the War Has Done to Our Sons and Daughters – Interviews with 50 US veterans show the pattern of brutality in Iraq. A few abbreviated excerpts:

Planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside Iraqi corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat.
Hit-and-run in which a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all.
Raid on a house: You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall… Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds.
My squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots the family dog. The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified.
Some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he’s going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene thing you’ve ever seen. Every person got out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to shreds.
I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?
A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want.
I just remember thinking, ‘I just brought terror to someone under the American flag.’

Bush and Republicans Don’t Listen to Iraqis Either – We know Bush and the Republicans aren’t listening to the American people. Now, a poll of Iraqis, conducted by the BBC and other news organizations, found that only 22 percent of Iraqis support the presence of coalition troops in Iraq, down from 32 percent in 2005. If Iraqis were pleading with us to stay and quell the violence, maybe we would have a moral responsibility to stay. But when Iraqis are begging us to leave, and saying that we are making things worse, then it’s remarkably presumptuous to overrule their wishes and stay. We simply can’t want to be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there.

DoD No Bid Contracts Have “Put Troops At Risk” – A study completed in late June by the Pentagon’s Inspector General concludes that the Department of Defense (DoD) has risked the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq due to malfeasance in awarding and monitoring contracts for badly-needed armored vehicles. The study, which was requested by Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, found that since 2000 the DoD has awarded “sole-source” contracts valued at $2.2 billion to just two companies, Force Protection, Inc.(FPI) and Armor Holdings, Inc (AHI). Inspector General auditors found that the Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) made these two companies the sole providers of armored vehicles and armor kits for troops, despite knowing that other suppliers may have produced the equipment so desperately needed in Iraq substantially faster. Both manufacturers fell far behind delivery schedules, while AHI also produced inadequate and faulty equipment.

White House, Pentagon Cite Executive Privilege to Hold up Documents on Friendly-Fire Victim Pat Tillman – Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed on Friday afternoon that the White House and Pentagon were holding up a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the friendly fire death of former professional football player and Army Corporal Patrick Tillman.

Regards,

Jim