State Dept. Orders Site To Take Down Photos Of The $592 Million U.S. Embassy In Iraq
State Dept. Orders Site To Take Down Photos Of The $592 Million U.S. Embassy In Iraq
On Tuesday, ThinkProgress highlighted photos of the U.S. embassy in Iraq, which is set to open in September. Projected to cost $592 million, the embassy will have a staff of 1,000 people and operating costs will total $1.2 billion a year. The complex will be 104 acres, which is the size of approximately 80 football fields.
The architectural firm designing the embassy, Berger Define Yaeger, recently posted the designs for the colossus on its website (which is currently down). Today, the State Department ordered Berger to remove the images. AP reports:
Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project. [...]
The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.
ThinkProgress has captured several of the images:
The complex “will include two office buildings, one of them designed for future use as a school, six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants.”
According to news reports, “Some U.S. officials acknowledged that damage may have been done by the postings and used expletives to describe their personal reactions.” But it is unclear whether the damage was done to security or public relations. (Aerial images of the embassy can be easily obtained from sites like Google Maps.)
The real damage of these images comes from bolstering the perception of a long-term U.S. occupation. While Americans will be living in posh quarters, the citizens of Baghdad are currently surviving with just 5.6 hours of electricity a day. Baghdad was also recently rated the world’s worst city in which to live.
(HT: Arlen)
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Troubling. Flawed. Dangerous. Telling.
Troubling. Flawed. Dangerous. Telling.
Dan Froomkin on spending the next 50 years in Iraq:
It’s troubling because American troops have been in South Korea for more than 50 years — while polls show the American public wants them out of Iraq within a year.
It’s flawed because in South Korea, unlike Iraq, there’s something concrete to defend (the border with North Korea); and because Iraq, unlike South Korea, happens to be in a state of violent civil war.
It’s dangerous because the specter of a permanent military presence in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the most inflammatory incitements to Iraq’s ever-growing anti-American insurgency, and may even be destabilizing to the entire region.
And it’s telling because it gives credence to persistent suspicions that establishing a long-term strategic presence in the Middle East was a primary motivation for this misbegotten war in the first place.
Meanwhile, Atrios offers a must-read answer to the question, “Why do we stay in Iraq?“
Shilling For Justice Department, Kyl Placed Secret Hold On Open Government Act
Shilling For Justice Department, Kyl Placed Secret Hold On Open Government Act
Last week, ThinkProgress noted that a bill called the OPEN Government Act had been locked down in the Senate by a secret hold. The bill in question is a “bipartisan effort to update the seminal Freedom of Information Act to make the government more open and accountable.” The act would:
– Restore meaningful deadlines for agency action under FOIA;
– Impose real consequences on federal agencies for missing statutory deadlines;
– Establish a FOIA hotline service for all federal agencies; and
– Create a FOIA Ombudsman as an alternative to costly litigation.
When Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) tried to bring the bill to a vote on the floor, “the vote was blocked by ‘Senator Anonymous.’ Some Republican senator called the Minority Leader’s office and objected to a vote on the bill, but asked for anonymity and did not publicly state the reason for the hold.”
The man behind the secret hold has now revealed himself: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Kyl’s excuse for placing a hold on the bill? Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department opposes several provisions:
Kyl says the Justice Department is concerned that it could force them to reveal sensitive information.
In a statement Thursday, Kyl said the agency’s “uncharacteristically strong” opposition is reason enough to think twice about the legislation, and he will block a vote until both sides can work out the differences.
Kyl’s water-carrying for the Justice Department is untenable. The OPEN Government Act has overwhelmingly passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. Similar legislation in the House passed in March by 308 to 117. Kyl needs to get out of the way. As Sen. Leahy put it, “This is a good government bill that Democrats and Republicans alike can and should work together to enact. It should be passed without further delay.“
U.S. embassy ‘built with coerced labor.’
U.S. embassy ‘built with coerced labor.’
Construction of the colossus U.S. embassy in Baghdad continues, projected to eventually cost $592 million. IraqSlogger reports today that American officials have reported “instances of appalling living conditions, abuse, and coerced labor” among the foreign construction workers:
During a telephone interview last weekend, [a high-level project manager] said the laborers “had their backs to the wall,” and had been living 20 to a trailer. Protests over First Kuwaiti’s bad food, abusive treatment from managers and unsafe working conditions were routine among many of the 2,700 workers during much of 2005 and 2006. [...]
[Former Army emergency medical technician Rory Mayberry] says he found the most basic of medical needs missing and that clinics lacked hot water, disinfectant and hand washing stations. Mayberry also claims that workers’ medical records in total disarray or nonexistent, beds were dirty and the support staff was poorly trained. Prescription pain killers were being handed out “like a candy store … and then people were sent back to work,” to operate heavy equipment or climb scaffolding, he adds.
In 2006, the State Department’s inspector general flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a “brief” review. “Nothing came to our attention,” he wrote in a memo.
Plame sues CIA for blocking her memoir.
Plame sues CIA for blocking her memoir.
Outed former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her book publisher are “suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of unconstitutionally interfering with publication of her memoir. … The suit said although the CIA had released Plame’s dates of service in an unclassified document, ‘the CIA now purports to classify or reclassify Ms. Wilson’s pre-2002 federal service dates’ so it cannot be published in her memoir ‘Fair Game.’ The CIA had also demanded ‘significant portions’ of Wilson’s manuscript be ‘excised or rendered “fiction”‘ to protect the secrecy of Wilson’s service before 2002.” In March, Plame’s husband Joe Wilson referenced the potential suit during an interview with Keith Olbermann:
The CIA is taking a look at it and they have no particular objections to the contents. They are trying to claim that she did not work for them before 2002, or cannot acknowledge she worked for them before 2002, which is sort of an Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass. We may have to litigate that. This is not the USSR. This is America and she has a right to tell her story.
Olbermann to Nightly News?
Olbermann to Nightly News?
NBC News anchor Brian Williams “is reportedly interested in having Keith Olbermann do occasional essays on “The NBC Nightly News.’“
White House regrets failure to do more blog outreach.
White House regrets failure to do more blog outreach.
White House communications aides are expressing regret for failing to utiltize bloggers as a way to “catapult Bush’s propaganda.” Bulletin News (sub. req.) reports:
“We didn’t use the new tools of communication” like the Internet, blogs and mobile technology, said a former key official. As a result, added another official, the President’s message was filtered through the mainstream press which eventually got bored with the story and stopped reporting the President’s repetitive messages. “You’ve got to use the new tools. They can reach far more people than TV or the papers,” said an administration official. “A video on the Internet or some blogging can reach millions and we should have played with that much more,” said the official. White House insiders, however, dismissed the complaints, mostly from former communications officials, claiming that they have worked with bloggers and non-traditional media but that the tide has turned against them.
CDC’s Ability To Respond To Tuberculosis Scare Hampered By Bush’s Budget Cuts
CDC’s Ability To Respond To Tuberculosis Scare Hampered By Bush’s Budget Cuts
A Georgia man with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) “is now in an Atlanta hospital under federally enforced isolation” after recently taking two transatlantic flights, which might have exposed other passengers to the disease.
Though the man ignored requests by public health officials not to travel, the New York Times reports that “the episode also raised questions about how rapidly health officials could respond to a similar emergency with other deadly infectious diseases.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been instrumental in dealing with this recent TB case. President Bush has repeatedly lauded their work in public health. From 2001:
I believe — firmly believe that because of the good folks who work in this building and other buildings throughout Atlanta, Georgia, and throughout the country for CDC, that we’ve saved a lot of lives in America. … I’m going to talk about public health officials as part of being the new heroes of America. And that’s why I’ve come by today, to thank them.
Yet despite his rhetoric, Bush has repeatedly proposed slashing the CDC’s budget:
– 2002: Proposed a $174 million cut.
– 2003: Proposed a $1 billion cut, with no new funding for preventive health divisions working on TB.
– 2004: Proposed an increase of “less than 1 per cent.”
– 2005: Proposed a $263 million cut, while simultaneously proposing a $270 million increase in abstinence education.
– 2006: Proposed a $500 million cut which would have slashed grants to state and local health departments like the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department involved in this week’s TB-scare.
– 2007: Proposed a $179 million cut, in addition to unspecified plans for more CDC “savings.”
– 2008: Proposed a $37 million cut, including “massive funding cuts in proven health protection programs.”
In a report submitted to the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, CDC Director Julie Gerberding warned that a TB outbreak could result from the administration’s proposed cuts. She noted that “emerging plagues such as drug-resistant tuberculosis represent ‘urgent threats that have become more prominent in the dawn of the 21st century.’”
Additionally, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, points out that the full scale of the “erosion of [CDC's] traditional disease control activities has been ‘masked’ by infusions of cash earmarked for spending on bioterrorism and pandemic activities.”
But even Bush’s myopic focus on terrorism does not appear to have paid off. The Department of Homeland Security has been unable to explain how the TB-infected man was able to simply drive into the United States on his return trip from Canada when “all border crossings had been given his name and told to hold him if he appeared.”
UPDATE: The patient is now being treated in Denver.
‘The Constitution in Crisis.’
‘The Constitution in Crisis.’
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, has announced a series of hearings titled “The Constitution in Crisis: The State of Civil Liberties in America.” Topics to be covered by the hearings include:
– The National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and proposed expansions;
– The erosion of Habeas Corpus through the Military Commissions Act;
– The sanctioning of torture through the Military Commissions Act and other government policies;
– The practice of “extraordinary rendition,” or government sponsored kidnapping;
– PATRIOT Act threats to privacy rights, including the FBI’s abuses of the National Security Letter authority and intrusions into Americans’ “Freedom to Read”;
– Government surveillance of First Amendment-protected activities; and
– The gutting of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights and Voting Rights Divisions.
More details at The Gavel.
New Hampshire governor signs civil unions law.
New Hampshire governor signs civil unions law.
“Gay couples in New Hampshire will able to join in civil unions starting next year under a bill Gov. John Lynch signed into law Thursday. … Couples entering civil unions will have the same rights, responsibilities and obligations as married couples. Same-sex unions from other states also would be recognized if they were legal in the state where they were performed.”
Pentagon ‘Migrated’ Soviet Cold War Torture Techniques to Guantanamo, Iraq
Pentagon ‘Migrated’ Soviet Cold War Torture Techniques to Guantanamo, Iraq
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) is a program designed to train U.S. soldiers to withstand torture if they are ever captured as prisoners of war. Developed during the Cold War, U.S. solders are subjected to techniques based “on how the Soviet Union and its allies were believed to treat prisoners,” including “prolonged use of stress positions, exposure to heat and cold, sleep deprivation and even waterboarding.”
A recently declassified investigation from the Department of Defense’s Inspector General confirms “how the military training was ‘reverse engineered‘ for use by American interrogators,” training interrogators on more “effective” ways to elicit information:
Counterresistance techniques were introduced because personnel believed that interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees. … On at least two occasions, the JTF-170 (interrogators) requested that Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (the agency conducting SERE training) instructors be sent to Guantanamo to instruct interrogators in SERE counterresistance interrogation techniques.
Those “counterresistance” techniques also migrated to Iraq, again at the orders of military officials:
The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency was also responsible for the migration of counterresistance interrogation techniques into the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility. In September 2003, at the request of the Commander. … Joint Personnel Recovery Agency sent an interrogation assessment team to Iraq to provide advice and assistance to the task force interrogation mission.
Because the techniques were so extreme, several intelligence officers “vehemently objected to the use of the techniques, but their protests were ignored.” The report notes:
SERE team members and TF-20 staff disagreed about whether SERE techniques were in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. When it became apparent that friction was developing, the decision was made to pull the team out before more damage was done to the relationship between the two organizations. The SERE team members prepared After Action Reports that detailed the confusion and allegations of abuse that took place during the deployment. These reports were not forwarded to the U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said he found the Pentagon report “very troubling” would hold hearings on how the SERE training methods “migrated” into Iraq and Guantanamo as the basis for interrogation. “They were put to a purpose that was never intended,” he said.
Scammers target military families.
Scammers target military families.
“The American Red Cross has warned military families to beware of a scam in which callers tell family members their service member has been injured in Iraq, with the apparent goal of getting the service member’s Social Security number and date of birth.”
Like Goodling, Schlozman Politicized Hiring At Justice Dept’s Civil Rights Division
Like Goodling, Schlozman Politicized Hiring At Justice Dept’s Civil Rights Division
During her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week, former Gonzales aide Monica Goodling admitted that she had “crossed the lines” of the law by screening the political backgrounds of applicants for non-political jobs at the Justice Department. Yesterday, the DoJ announced that it was expanding its investigation of Goodling’s partisan hiring practices to include “scrutiny of hiring in the Civil Rights Division, which oversees voting rights.”
A central figure in the expanded probe is Bradley Schlozman, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division currently serving in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. He is set to appear next Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Schlozman is reported to have repeatedly inquired about applicants’ political affiliations:
However, former employees of the division’s Voting Rights Section, whose decisions can affect the outcome of elections, told McClatchy that eight lawyers had been hired there since 2004 largely because of their Republican or conservative connections.
Two former department lawyers said that when they’d applied for jobs elsewhere in the division in early 2005, Schlozman had asked them to delete mention on their resumes of Republican affiliations and resubmit them. Both attorneys were hired.
One of them, Ty Clevenger, said Schlozman “wanted to make it look like it was apolitical.” Clevenger also said that when he’d passed along a resume from a fellow Stanford University Law School graduate, Schlozman had asked, “Is he one of us?”
Additionally, “half of the 14 career lawyers hired under Schlozman were members of the conservative Federalist Society or the Republican National Lawyers Association, up from none among the eight career hires in the previous two years” while “the average US News & World Report ranking of the law school attended by new career lawyers plunged from 15 to 65.”
While serving in the Civil Rights Division, Schlozman appears to have put ideological loyalty above prosecutorial ability. His upcoming appearance before Congress should shed more light on just how deeply he politicized the division.
Time’s up.
Time’s up.
Atrios points out that on Nov. 30, 2006, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that his “country’s forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007 — which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops”: “I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007.”
UPDATE: By the way, Iraqi forces aren’t ready:
Iraqi PM al-Maliki told Lara Logan of CBS Evening News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that he has a real fear of a coup by the Iraqi army.
Al-Maliki said that some of the officer corps have been creating problems and even violating the security of military operations.
Report: In Meeting, ‘Wild-Eyed’ Bush Thumped Chest While Repeating ‘I Am The President!’
Report: In Meeting, ‘Wild-Eyed’ Bush Thumped Chest While Repeating ‘I Am The President!’
Georgie Anne Geyer writes today in the Dallas Morning News about President Bush’s strange behavior during a recent meeting with “[f]riends of his from Texas.”
But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.
Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”
This is the second time in recent weeks that accounts have surfaced of Bush lashing out or “ranting” in private meetings when responding to criticism of his Iraq policy. Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report offered a similar account earlier this month:
[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.
Like the tearful House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Bush needs to channel his bottled up emotions towards a more worthy end — winding down the war in Iraq rather than defending the status quo.
Bill O’Reilly on Mitt Romney:
Bill O’Reilly on Mitt Romney:
“He’s got the jaw going on, the little gray thing in there. And I think that means a lot in America.”
‘See how many people are dying in Darfur: None.’
‘See how many people are dying in Darfur: None.’
Yesterday, the Sudanese ambassador to the United States, John Ukec Lueth Ukec, held a press conference in Washington to respond to the Bush administration’s sanctions. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank sums up his speech, in which he denied that Sudan is doing anything wrong:
Genocide in the Darfur region? “The United States is the only country saying that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide,” Ukec shouted, gesticulating wildly and perspiring from his bald crown. “I think this is a pretext.”
Ah. So what about the more than 400,000 dead? “See how many people are dying in Darfur: None,” he said.
And the 2 million displaced? “I am not a statistician.”
Find out the facts on Darfur at the ENOUGH project.
Paul Wolfowitz: ‘I’m Not An Architect Of Anything’
Paul Wolfowitz: ‘I’m Not An Architect Of Anything’
Shorly after 9/11, Paul Wolfowitz began advocating an attack on Iraq, establishing “what amounted to a separate government” to push for war. He invited journalists to secret meetings, laying out the foundation for his plans. Former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke recounts one particular meeting:
“I began saying, ‘We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.’ Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.‘”
Last night on the Charlie Rose show, Wolfowitz denied being “an architect” of the catastrophic decision to go to war. “I’m not an architect of anything,” he said. Rather, he clarified that he was someone who was “closely associated with a controversial Iraq policy,” and that his involvement with Iraq is what doomed his reign at the World Bank.
Watch it:
Unlike Richard Perle, Wolfowitz revealed that he has not given up hope in the neoconservative dream of transforming Iraq through U.S. occupation. Comparing Iraq to El Salvador, Wolfowitz said, “El Salvador fought a terrible, terrible civil war for more than 10 years. … And today El Salvador is one of the most successful economies in Central America.”
But the U.S. never occupied El Salvador. While El Salvador grapples with problems today, it serves as an example of the fact that a long-term U.S. occupation is not a requirement for the democratic transition of a country.
Instead of learning the lesson of El Salvador, Bush is more interested in the Korean model. Yesterday, Bush said he envisions an occupation of Iraq similar to that of South Korea, where U.S. troops “have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years.”
Transcript: More »
Chris Matthews asks the important questions.
Chris Matthews asks the important questions.
Matthews on Al Gore: “Do you think, uh, do you think, Jill, he’s had cosmetic surgery around the eyes, below the eyes? What do you think? … You don’t want to talk about that one? Everybody’s so afraid of that one, but I think there’s some work been done. It looks pretty good actually.”
NASA Administrator: Global Warming Is Not A ‘Problem’
NASA Administrator: Global Warming Is Not A ‘Problem’
This morning on NPR, NASA administrator Michael Griffin was asked, “Are you concerned about global warming?” His answer: “I’m aware that global warming exists” but “[w]hether that is a longterm concern or not, I can’t say.” Griffin said he is “not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”
Griffin also charged that people are “arrogant” for assuming that “this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings,” hinting that global warming may actually be good for the earth. This myth is a popular right-wing talking point.
CLICK HERE TO LISTENGriffin’s remarks are stunning, coming just days after his own agency released a report warning of the “disastrous effects” of climate change:
Even “moderate additional” greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past “critical tipping points” with “dangerous consequences for the planet,” according to research conducted by NASA and the Columbia University Earth Institute.
With just 10 more years of “business as usual” emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, “it becomes impractical” to avoid “disastrous effects.”
James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, called Griffin’s dismissal of global warming “an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement.” “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change,” he added.
Also, scientific consensus does not hold that today’s climate is the “best climate.” We are already seeing melting glaciers, higher temperatures, and stronger natural disasters. The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated, “Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent.”
UPDATE: House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) responds: “Setting aside NASA Administrator Griffin’s personal views on the significance of global warming, I remain concerned that NASA is not doing as much as needs to be done on climate change data collection and research. Based on NASA’s own five-year budget plan, the agency will be unable to start any of the new Earth observations initiatives recommended by the National Academies for the foreseeable future. That’s not going to get us where we need to be in our understanding of climate change. NASA needs to do more.”
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