Eric Umansky

Rebuilding Bug-Out

I've been writing--and talking--for the past few weeks about why the White House's apparent decision to stop giving reconstruction dough to Iraq is stupid.  Michael O'Hanlon takes up the cause in a, OK, OK, sonorous op-ed, in today's WP:

Our generosity toward Iraq is not what's at issue. It is the safety and well-being of our own troops -- and our prospects for strategic success in this critical counterinsurgency and nation-building campaign....

In addition to fully funding existing plans for infrastructure and health care, the United States should work with the Iraqi government to develop a massive job creation program. To some extent, military commanders have being doing this piecemeal with their commander emergency response program funds. But these efforts have been underfunded and unsystematic. What is needed is a Roosevelt-like pledge that any honest Iraqi who wants a job can have one.

A jobs program, designed largely to put money in people's pockets for the next few critical years, would probably not appeal to the Bush administration's free-market faithful. Nor would it probably be what Democrats or Republicans in Congress would most wish to trumpet to constituents when campaigning this summer and fall. But such an initiative need not and should not be cast as philanthropy. The goals, pure and simple, are to reduce the number of Iraqis willing to fire grenades at passing police officers, plant explosives along the routes of troop convoys, or otherwise aid and abet the insurgency. In other words, the purpose is to win a war that is not yet won, but must be.

Seems like a good idea. Chances of being approved by the administration? Right.

Our Gov't, Working For You

The NYT details how gas companies are screwing the government out of royalities for gas taken from public land. The scam is simple: They report a low-ball price to regulators (charged with assessing royalities);  the companies actually sell the gas for much more. So what has our government done to stop the screwing? Why, of course, cut support for oversight:

The Interior Department has scaled back on full audits, pushed out a couple of its more aggressive auditors and been criticized by its own inspector general for the audits that it did pursue....

Johnnie M. Burton, director of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, said she had not known and could not explain why companies were reporting higher sale prices to their shareholders and to the Securities and Exchange Commission than to her office.

"I can't answer because I don't know," she said in an interview. "We don't look at S.E.C. filings. We don't have enough staff to do all of that. If we were to do that, then we would have to have more staff and more budget. You know, there is such a thing as budget constraint, and it's been real tough, let me tell you."

These kinds of shenanigans aren't new. Energy companies have been screwing the government for years. During the Clinton administration, the government tried to fight back. The Bush WH, of course, seems to be taking a different approach: aiding and abetting. Hey, different strokes for different folks.

 

Force-Field for Tanks?!?

Allow me to geek-out for a moment. Because this, if true, is indescribably cool. From the  Sunday Times (U.K.):

THE British Army’s next class of armoured vehicles will be protected by a “force field” of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket- propelled grenades, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signalled, writes Michael Smith.

The electric armour, invented at the ministry’s scientific research centre, will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world.

It will also confound repeated claims from military experts that “the tank is dead” because more nimble forces are required for the war on terror.

The new armour will allow western armed forces to regain the upper hand against terrorists and insurgents armed with the ubiquitous RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade, which can penetrate most current heavy armour.

The invention is just as effective against the “shaped charge” roadside bombs used by insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The armour is also much lighter, with about two tons of it reckoned to provide protection equivalent to that of 20 tons of conventional armour.

The Army’s Challenger 2 tank, which weighs 62½ tons, and the 24½-ton Warrior armoured vehicle had to be ferried by sea to the Gulf for the Iraq war, a complex process taking many weeks.

The new vehicles — which are expected to enter service early in the next decade — would be smaller and lighter, enabling them to be moved by C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.

The MoD has now handed a contract to Lockheed Martin, the American company, to make a demonstration version of the British invention.

Air Marshals--Only the Best Need Apply*

*Warm bodies also desired. From the watchdog folks at POGO:

A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) internal only job announcement will likely lower the quality of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) by allowing all TSA employees, such as screeners and administrative personnel, to become air marshals.  Currently, most air marshals that were originally hired are experienced law enforcement professionals. Screeners and administrative personnel rarely have any prior law enforcement experience.

By opening air marshal positions to TSA employees, TSA hopes to fill the ever-larger holes in its coverage of flights, since air marshals have been leaving FAMS in droves due to allegedly poor management and very low morale. 

I don't really know how much of a harbinger this ad really is: After all, allowing for non-cops to be hired is different from actually  hiring them. But I do know there have been plenty of reports about how poorly run the air marshal program is.  I also know how much experience I'd prefer air marshals on my plane to have .... And you?

Remember this Bright Shining Moment?

The Atlantic's fine, nearly book-length, piece about Pakistani nukes salesman A.Q. Khan dredges up a White House achievement I had forgotten about:

When the Bush administration finally decided to go public with its concerns about the North Koreans' nuclear-weapons program [which was aided by Pakistan], it delayed leaking the intelligence information until late October of 2002, after Congress had given its approval for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The blundering that fall defies belief: while dragging the United States into a disastrous war in the pursuit of phantom weapons programs in Iraq, the U.S. government condoned the tangible actions of Pakistan.

Let's give the administration a pass on the disingenuousnes, but not on the stupidity and rigidity.
If Iraq really had been a sigificant danger to the U.S. and North Korea really was less of one, then keeping the intel on the down low would have been a reasonable move. The problem, of course, is that Iraq wasn't a threat...and North Korea is a big one (for its profileration potential at least). The issue isn't that Bush et. al.  made a bad call (acting as if Iraq was the top threat), it's that the "badness" of the call was obvious at the time.

And by the way, let's return to the Atlantic piece, because the U.S.'s turning a blind eye to Pakistan gets worse. This last part doesn't have to do with Iraq so much as it does with the U.S.'s decision to prop up stick by Pakistani ruler Musharraf at all costs. Musharraf had given A.Q. Khan a slap the wrist, while Khan--and Pakistan's nukes export biz--continued, and the U.S. fiddled:

Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with Musharraf, and afterward, when asked on ABC television about Pakistan's assistance to North Korea, said, "President Musharraf gave me his assurance in that conversation, as he has previously, that Pakistan is not doing anything of that nature … The past is the past. I am more concerned about what is going on now. We have a new relationship with Pakistan."

The past was the past, but it bore a striking resemblance to the present. Khan had been removed from the laboratories, but as the U.S. government must have known full well, he continued to run Pakistan's nuclear networks and to pursue that business all over the world. Khan was vulnerable now, a man positioned to take a fall; but he had become so stupid about himself that apparently he did not believe it, and in any case he was busy. Along with filling the import orders for Pakistan's ongoing nuclear-weapons programs and arranging for exports to Iran and North Korea, he was now occupied with Libya as well.

The details continue here.... I recommend printing it out--and havin a lot of paper in your tray.

 

Dept. of Convincing Quotes

From USAT:

BAGHDAD — The number of attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces and civilians increased 29% last year, and insurgents are increasingly targeting Iraqis, the U.S. military says.

Insurgents launched 34,131 attacks last year, up from 26,496 the year before, according to U.S. military figures released Sunday.

Insurgents are widening their attacks to include the expanding Iraqi forces engaged in the fighting, said Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a coalition spokesman.

He added, "It tells me the coalition and the Iraqi forces have been very aggressive in taking the fight to the enemy."

That quote has to be taken out of context...right?

(Via TP)

The Real Problem with Those Signing Statements

The signing statements, in which President Bush has repeatedly said he reserves the right not to follow certain laws (including the McCain anti-torture amendment) aren't so-bad in and of themselves.  The problem is what they're an indiction of: The president's intention not to be bound by laws. He could skip the signing statements and just go on ignoring the laws. (In that way, the statements have their own silver-linings--at least we now know where the president stands and how he will or will not carry out the law.)

I'm not advocating that the president ignore laws or that the signing statements are dandy. What I'm saying is that the signing statements aren't really about some hypothetical argument or future court case down the road.  Instead, they're flags about what the president intends to do here and now. Let me crib from Mickey, who cribbed from me:

My bloggingheads and Slate colleague Eric Umansky makes a good point about presidential "signing statements" [V]: They seem to merely give the President his equal say on how a law should be interpreted--an executive legal spin that balances out the spin the Congress typically hides in a statute's legislative history. But in fact the President has a bit of a drop on the legislature in this interpretive battle, since it's the President who administers and enforces a law until someone challenges it in court--and it can take years before the sometimes-onerous prerequisites for a lawsuit are met ("standing," etc.). That's if the issue is even "justiciable." ... Presidential "signing statements" may be justified as a sort of retaliation--I wrote some Congressional legislative history once myself once, and my goal was to bury the most tendentious and partisan interpretations deep within unbroken paragraphs of tedious boilerplate, where nobody would find them except our allies in the "public interest" bar. But Umansky's right that the relationship between the excutive and legislative branches is not symmetrical when it comes to these statutory commentaries. ... P.S.: I see no solution to the problem except quicker judicial decisions that focus almost entirely on the text rather than the dubious interpretations of either branch.

A Good Idea

Require that congressional bills be posted on the 'net for 72-hours before they're voted on.  If anybody think that's not a good idea, I'd love to hear why.

Given That Our Army is Overstretched

This seems nuts:

The Army announced yesterday that it will cut six National Guard combat brigades -- or up to 24,000 infantry and other combat troops -- as part of an effort to ease budgetary pressures and shift manpower into homeland defense missions.

In addition to scaling back the guard's combat brigades to 28 from 34, the active-duty Army will add one fewer combat brigade than it had planned, ending up with 42 instead of 43, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told a Pentagon news briefing yesterday.

As a result, the Army in coming years will grow to 70 instead of the anticipated 77 active-duty and National Guard combat brigades to respond to overseas and domestic contingencies, Harvey said. In 2003, the Army had 67 combat brigades, Army officials said.

Last month my colleague Fred Kaplan explained why the government--including Congress--insists on tossing dough toward fantsy-schmanzy weapons of questionable need while cutting money for what amounts to the military's most pressing need: boots on the ground.

Dept. of: I'm not Reassured

From the WP's  Iraq wrap-up:

Also, government health officials announced Wednesday that they were investigating the death of a girl who suffered from symptoms similar to those associated with the strain of avian influenza that has killed 80 people worldwide.

Najm Abdullah, a physician who heads the government's health office in Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, said a 15-year-old girl who had died near Iraq's border with Turkey and Iran would be tested for the virus.

"It is not proved" that the girl had bird flu, Abdullah said in an interview, but he said he expected the disease to spread to Iraqi towns near the Turkish border. Turkey has reported 21 confirmed cases of the disease, apparently contracted by people who handled infected chickens.

"We have excellent precautions to face the bird flu in Iraq," said Qasim Yahiya, a Health Ministry spokesman. He said that Iraq had stopped importing poultry from Turkey and was planning to purchase and destroy all chickens in the area within 20 miles of the Turkish border.

Sure you do.