"Progress in Iraq"

Almost exactly four years ago, in June 2003, the White House began to make excuses for the occupation of Iraq. On June 21st, 2003 we first heard Bush defensively use the rhetorical phrase "progress in Iraq" to deflect criticism of his failure to end the insurgency. These were the first echoes of the rhetoric of quagmire, which haunt us still.

I'm not speaking, incidentally, of Bush & Co.'s defensiveness regarding the grounds for invading Iraq. Embarrassment over that began growing even before Bush had declared victory in Iraq, as the administration pretended over and over again to have found WMD, only to backtrack. But that topic pretty well has disappeared from WH rhetoric, since it refuses to explain its pre-war lies.

No, I mean the false reassurances that Bush & Co. have been giving us about the internal situation in Iraq. Although the occupation was recognizably a debacle at least by the beginning of May 2003, never the less for several months after the invasion the administration concentrated on crowing about their "success" in overthrowing Hussein and spreading freedom. It is stunning now to re-read the news reports about Iraq from May and June 2003, and contrast them to the utter silence of the White House regarding the unfolding disaster.

In early June, 2003 in a speech to troops in Qatar came the first slight hints from George Bush that all was not skittles and beer:

Our forces are taking aggressive steps to increase order throughout the country. We are moving those Baathist officials that are trying to hang on to power. There are still pockets of criminality. Remember, the former leader of Iraq emptied the jail cells of common criminals right before the action took place. And they haven't changed their habits and their ways. They like to rob and like to loot. We'll find them. (Applause.)

"Right before the action..." refers obliquely to two massacres of demonstrators in Falluja in late April, which greatly inflamed the Iraqi resistance. Bush's accounts of the violence in Iraq have always been vague in the extreme, right from the very start. The other characteristic we see in that speech are the soaring predictions for a better, happier Iraq...at the end of the rainbow.

Criminal courts are now reopening. Day by day, the United States and our coalition partners are making the streets safer for the Iraqi citizens. We also understand that a more just political system will develop when people have food in their stomachs, and their lights work, and they can turn on a faucet and they can find some clean water -- things that Saddam did not do for them.

Sad to say, we're as far now from achieving those things as ever. Anyhow, this speech in Qatar was the barest acknowledgment that the burgeoning chaos in Iraq actually needed to be addressed.

It wasn't until June 21st that Bush finally saw fit to address the issue back home.

To get a sense of how late the (tacit) admission came that something had gone wrong, compare these articles that both were published the very same day. They describe the daily grind of the guerilla war in terms reminiscent of Vietnam. In late June we were also seeing news reports showing that the window of opportunity to shut down the Iraqi resistance was already closed, or nearly so.

In the midst of this, on June 21 Bush finally acknowledged in his weekly radio address that American troops were still fighting a dangerous enemy.

Making Iraq secure is vitally important for both Iraqi citizens and our own forces. The men and women of our military face a continuing risk of danger and sacrifice in Iraq. Dangerous pockets of the old regime remain loyal to it and they, along with their terrorist allies, are behind deadly attacks designed to kill and intimidate coalition forces and innocent Iraqis.

American troops had in fact been dying at a rate of more than one per day during May and June, unacknowledged by the President.

For the first time in over a decade, Iraq will soon be open to the world. And the influence of progress in Iraq will be felt throughout the Middle East. Over time, a free government in Iraq will demonstrate that liberty can flourish in that region.

American service-members continue to risk their lives to ensure the liberation of Iraq. I'm grateful for their service, and so are the Iraqi people. Many Iraqis are experiencing the jobs and responsibilities of freedom for the first time in their lives. And they are unafraid.

Progress in Iraq. Although almost unknown until that June day, the phrase has been used hundreds of times since then by the Bush administration. By mid July, 2003 it had already become the preferred catch-phrase for the administration's rosy scenarios:

Q Scott, earlier today, you said you saw steady progress in Iraq. It's been a very bad day. An American soldier killed, a pro-American mayor killed in Iraq, a little kid killed. Where's the progress?

MR. McCLELLAN: We are making some important progress in Iraq. There are obviously -- there are still some difficulties, there are some are there are loyalists to Saddam Hussein and his former regime, Baathists and others from outside the country that are trying to disrupt these successes. They oftentimes will target the success that we are making, so that's why you have seen some of these attacks.

And here we see the rhetorical twin to "progress in Iraq"—the notion that attacks by the Iraqi resistance prove that success is being achieved, rather than the opposite. The greater the violence, Bush & Co. began telling us that June, the surer the sign that the attackers are "desperate" to undermine the administration's successes.

Q Ari, why should Americans take at face value what Paul Bremer and others in the administration have said that the attacks against U.S. forces that we've seen seeing repeatedly over these past few weeks are basically the last desperate cries and acts of violence from a dying regime? Why shouldn't they believe that, in fact, it's evidence of a guerrilla insurgency movement that is really testing and challenging whether or not the United States was prepared enough for this phase of the conflict?

MR. FLEISCHER: Because I think that if you look at the Iraqi people, the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly pleased with the fact the United States has helped them to get rid of the Saddam Hussein regime. That was clear from their dancing in the streets, from the way they tore down the statues.

Desperation and progress; progress and desperation. They'd become rhetorical tropes by the time Cheney growled this to an AEI audience on July 24.

We still have many tasks to complete in Iraq, and many dangers remain. There are still some holdouts of the regime, joined by terrorists from outside the country, who are fighting desperately to prevent progress of any kind for the Iraqi people.

By late July, no discussion of Iraq was complete without the obligatory nod toward "progress".

The plan sets out ambitious timetables and clear benchmarks to measure progress and practical methods for achieving results. Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment. America and our partners kept our promise to remove the dictator and the threat he posed, not only to the Iraqi people, but to the world...In the 83 days since I announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, we have made progress, steady progress, in restoring hope in a nation beaten down by decades of tyranny.

Four years after "progress in Iraq" became a by-word, George Bush is still hearing reports about it. June 14, 2007:

General Dempsey has just come out of Iraq, where he is working with the Iraqi troops to prepare for -- to prepare them for the day when they will be responsible for the security of their country. He explained to me the progress that has been made over the years that he has been there.

Bush & Co. continues to feel reassured about the progress in Iraq. June 18, 2007:

President Bush had a nearly hour-long secure video teleconference with Iraqi leaders on Monday and came away impressed and reassured by the progress they're making on political, security and economic reforms, the White House said...

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, on Sunday called the situation in Iraq "a mixed picture, but certainly not a hopeless one." He noted frustrations among signs of progress, and cautioned against withdrawing troops too soon.

Too soon, evidently, would be any time before we stop seeing signs of "progress in Iraq". June 18, 2007:

Q But, Tony, can you give us some sense of why [the President] felt reassured, given that we've heard reassurances before?

MR. SNOW: Well, again, it is clear that you've got an environment now where the key leaders are working together on these issues. And, yes, we have heard a lot of these things before, but without -- and I'm not in a position to go into the details and what they were saying, but there are reasons we think they're very serious in moving forward on the key items.

Q But, Tony, we've heard that before, many times.

MR. SNOW: I understand. I understand.

Q I mean, why is there any more reason now to believe that they're serious about moving forward than there was the last time you said that? Or the time before?

MR. SNOW: I understand. But, again, I think -- let me put it this way, that you see that there are tangible efforts going on and I'm just not going to go into any greater detail...

Q Tony, do you agree with General Petraeus's assessment that it could take about a decade to stabilize Iraq, to fully stabilize --

MR. SNOW: Well, what General Petraeus was pointing out -- this is pretty much standard doctrine when it comes to counterinsurgency, is that counterinsurgency is something that does take a great amount of time. He says 10 years. That does not mean that you're going to have people on a forward combat operation posture for 10 years, but it does mean that -- he says that it's perfectly conceivable, and that tends to be kind of the textbook sense of how long such operations take place.

On the other hand, what he also said is, if you take a look at what's going on in the key areas of concern when we were talking about the Baghdad security plan -- what were they? They were Anbar and they were Baghdad -- you see signs of progress there.

Maybe you do, Mr. Snow. My eyes aren't that sharp.

crossposted from Unbossed

Tragedy as photo-op

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that television networks, pundits, politicians, and sundry public personalities tend to treat large-scale disasters as if they were abstractions, really little more than occasions for self-promotion, rather than the stuff of personal tragedy? The thought has occurred to me from time to time, I'll confess.

Take the Virginia Tech shootings in April. From the moment the news broke, there was a rancid taste of the Big Carnival about it.




But the opportunism of the news media was quickly thrown in the shadow by the President's insertion of himself into the picture.



His "concern" was genuine, no doubt, as were the feelings of all three Cabinet officials put in charge of studying the shootings. You can tell that from the spectacle they made last week of presenting Bush with their hastily produced report.





Scarcely possible to believe that any adults would stand around grinning about a report on a bloody massacre. Even harder to believe that Margaret Spellings would show up for such a session wearing a pink-bow-second-runner-up kind of contraption around her waist. Mike Leavitt has embarrassed himself enough recently by ignoring the death of Senator Thomas of Wyoming. As for the desperate need of Gonzales and Bush to improve their own public standing, well... The kindest interpretation would be that these pictures were faked in order to embarrass the participants—except that they're official White House photos—or that Borat was involved somehow (but he's nowhere to be seen in the pictures).

A harsher judgment was offered by Whatever it is, I'm against it:

From the grins on these clowns’ faces – Jeebus, just look at Gonzales, he looks like a 5-year old just told he’s getting ice cream and pony rides – I can only assume that the information that 32 people were slaughtered at Virginia Tech less than two months ago was not shared.

It's all just a kiddy's game for these politicians, I'm afraid. Compare the above photos with this scene from a White House Easter Egg Hunt (with two of the same principals).



The fact that Bush felt the need to have himself photographed appearing to read the report he'd just been handed shows what a Big Carnival the Virginia Tech shootings were for the White House. From Bush's canned statement, it also appears that he received only a summary of the report and, unsurprisingly, learned almost nothing new from it. Somebody seems to have used the phrase "information sharing" within his hearing, but other than that the report looks to be a total wash as far as Bush is concerned.

They learned a great deal and today presented me with their key findings. I look forward to reviewing their recommendations in more detail, but a few points are immediately clear: Information sharing among the healthcare, law enforcement, and education communities must improve; those groups must better understand the federal laws related to information sharing; and accurate, complete information sharing between states and the federal government is essential in helping to keep guns out of the wrong hands and to punish those who break the law.

The main point of the Oval Office ceremony, maybe the only point, was to be seen grinning. Every tragedy for this White House is a photo-op. Actually doing something to improve the lot of Americans, not so crucial.




For the White House, it's a world inhabited by plastic turkeys.

"I thought they wanted to know."

In the upcoming New Yorker, Seymour Hersh portrays the outright hostility with which Rumsfeld's Pentagon greeted the exacting and judicious report about Abu Ghraib written by Major General Antonio Taguba (h/t to Welcome to Pottersville). Even if you thought you knew how low down and rotten so much of the military leadership had become under that despicable man, you'll find elements in this story that will surprise you.

Hersh has been covering the Abu Ghraib scandal since the spring of 2004.

The forthcoming article is based on a series of interviews from earlier this year, after Taguba retired. It is a must read, so I will quote just a few selections.

Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn’t say anything.”

It seems pretty clear that Rumsfeld believed Taguba had leaked the report, and in any case, for Rumsfeld as for other members or the ruling triumvirate, the leaks are what matter—not the wrong-doing. In that kind of climate, it's perfectly understandable that Pentagon insiders more and more began to leak reports about criminal investigations, from Abu Ghraib to Haditha. The expectation of many must have been that, without public knowledge of the outrageous facts, the reports would likely get deep-sixed.

When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

That almost speaks for itself about the corrupt climate in Rumsfeld's Pentagon.

We were told by Hersh after the story first broke that many of the abuses in Abu Ghraib were much worse than what the public knew.

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not...Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it.

Hersh documents that the Pentagon was informed repeatedly over months (beginning on Jan. 15, 2004) about the evidence that had been uncovered and the confessions obtained from guards. Thus Rumsfeld lied to Congress about what he knew.

Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’ ” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” Asked specifically when he had been made aware of the photographs, Rumsfeld said:

There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I don’t remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know, and you didn’t know, and I didn’t know.

“And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are,” Rumsfeld said...

It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

That's what Rumsfeld encouraged: Omertà.

A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

Taguba shares his thoughts as well about who inside Abu Ghraib was aware of the torture even before MP Joseph Darby spilled the beans.

Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003—when much of the abuse took place—Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, “Sanchez knew exactly what was going on.”

Taguba also faults M. Gen. Geoffrey Miller for bringing Guantanamo-style abuses to Abu Ghraib. Hersh adds that Miller's activities at Gitmo were investigated later by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, whose report recommended that Miller be admonished for abusive interrogation techniques. But higher-ups, including the Pentagon Inspector General, over-ruled Schmidt and all but ignored his factual findings.

Taguba had known Miller for years. “We served together in Korea and in the Pentagon, and his wife and mine used to go shopping together,” Taguba said. But, after his report became public, “Miller didn’t talk to me. He didn’t say a word when I passed him in the hallway.”

And that was the overall story of Taguba's career after he filed his report on Abu Ghraib. He became a ghost walking the halls of the Pentagon. In Jan. 2006, was told brusquely that he had to retire within the year; no reason was given.

And why was that? Because he refused to help the others to cover up the truth about the mission that Gen. Miller was given in Iraq, and about the Pentagon's awareness of wrongdoing there. Because he was shattering the glass wall of plausible deniability about all manner of illegal DoD and CIA operations authorized with a wink and a nod by Rumsfeld and Bush.

Taguba, looking back on his testimony, said, “That’s the reason I wasn’t in their camp—because I kept on contradicting them. I wasn’t about to lie to the [Congressional] committee. I knew I was already in a losing proposition. If I lie, I lose. And, if I tell the truth, I lose.”...

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.”

Right after he filed his report on Abu Ghraib, Taguba's expected promotion was blocked.

Later in 2004, Taguba encountered Rumsfeld and one of his senior press aides, Lawrence Di Rita, in the Pentagon Athletic Center. Taguba was getting dressed after a workout. “I was tying my shoes,” Taguba recalled. “I looked up, and there they were.” Rumsfeld, who was putting his clothes into a locker, recognized Taguba and said, “Hello, General.” Di Rita, who was standing beside Rumsfeld, said sarcastically, “See what you started, General? See what you started?”

What Gen. Tabuba started, in point of fact, became a lengthy cover-up in which no senior military officials have ever been penalized. Hersh's article documents this aspect of the scandal also, including several egregious examples of denying the facts. Brig. Gen. Richard Formica, head of Camp Nama (a detention camp at Baghdad Airport), comes in for particular discredit.

The official inquiries consistently provided the public with less information about abuses than outside studies conducted by human-rights groups.

Which is why it's critical to keep drawing public attention to these human-rights reports, as we've tried to do here.

crossposted from Unbossed

Another Walter Reed privatization scandal

If you've been reading Unbossed for long, you'll recall that shirah has been writing for years about the Bush administration's reckless and often outlandishly illegal campaign to privatize as many federal jobs as possible. The old and new media finally started to pay attention in March when we highlighted the role that unbridled privatization played in creating the miserable conditions for patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Through a series of infamously corrupt bids, the politically well-connected IAP World Services was awarded a contract for support operations at WRAMC. The bad will generated by IAP's manipulation of the "process" led directly to the rapid decline of services—as experienced workers fled WRAMC even before IAP took over!

Today we learned of another, similar scandal. This one involves a private contractor who over many months simply neglected to deliver a mountain of mail to patients at the Medical Center. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

*
* *

The Associated Press reports:

The Army said Friday that it has opened an investigation into the recent discovery of 4,500 letters and parcels — some dating to May 2006 — at Walter Reed that were never delivered to soldiers. And it fired the contract employee who ran the mailroom...

Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, commander of Walter Reed, said he ordered a team of 20 to 40 soldiers and civilians to launch an around-the-clock operation to screen, survey and forward all the letters and parcels. Items addressed to soldiers still at Walter Reed were being hand-delivered Friday night, he said.

"This delay is completely and absolutely unsatisfactory," Schoomaker said...

The acting Army surgeon general, Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, said...she ordered an immediate review and inspections of mail room procedures and supervisory controls at other medical centers.

It's too soon to tell whether in this scandal there are further stories of personal suffering cloaked behind the plain facts of indifference and incompetence. Are there patient records or billing information lurking in that mountain of undelivered mail? How many desperately awaited checks gathered dust? Whose shattered lives were affected?

What's clear in any event is that this represents another case of gross negligence, in which there is no effective oversight of those who contract to perform essential government services. It's a pattern that we've seen over and over again. The Bush administration trusts with the fervor of the true-believer that privatizing the federal workforce is a panacea for all ills. Any evidence to the contrary is deeply unwelcome. Therefore little evidence regarding the effectiveness and integrity of these new contractors is collected, and even less is actually acted upon.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

*
* *

The corporate contractor is also responsible for allowing the mail to pile up, of course. Which corporation is it? The AP does not say, and thus far neither I nor shirah have been able to pinpoint the privatization contract in question.

But I can venture some guesses. One obvious suspect is IAP, which in recent years has held various contracts for delivering military mail in Kuwait, Iraq, and also Afghanistan. In many instances, you won't be surprised to learn, the troops complained about the poor service provided by IAP.

Even so, DoD continued to press ahead with further plans to privatize this basic service. Here's a report from last July, Defense Department seeks input on military mail overhaul:

The Defense Department is weighing options for reconfiguring the military postal system, in what could be a precursor to a public-private job competition for the processing and delivery of mail to the armed services.

A December report by the Defense Business Board, an advisory group for top Defense leaders, suggested that the department issue a request for proposals soliciting what it termed "transformational" solutions to military mail delivery.

"Outsourcing to the maximum extent possible would allow private sector best practices to guide the development of the most efficient business model, making use of available technology," the board reported. The group noted the current piecemeal approach to outsourcing elements of the mail system risked increasing complexity and costs, and suggested the department start with a clean slate to solicit a new, end-to-end solution that would integrate with the existing military supply chain.

The group cited an April 2004 Government Accountability Office report on mail delivery during Operation Iraqi Freedom, which found that many service members were unhappy with long delivery times, and that Defense was unable to reliably track delivery times...

In recent years, public-private competitions often have been controversial, with high levels of union involvement and congressional intervention. [Director for housing and competitive sourcing in the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment Joseph] Sikes said a Defense mail competition, depending on what particular job functions were included, could be less contentious since many of the affected employees are military, rather than civilian.

At WRAMC, however, the mail is currently being handled by a private contractor. It's possible but not necessary to infer from the AP report that the employee who was fired today had been working at that job as early as May 2006. Several of the IAP contracts at WRAMC became effective only this year, but that may not be relevant because IAP held a variety of contracts at the Medical Center already in 2005.

IAP supports the Army's mission at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where employees provide administrative, professional, industrial and technical support on a task order basis through the service program known as FedSource.

There are plenty of possible culprits in this scandal, however. I learned from shirah that ServiceSource holds many contracts for operating government mailrooms, including those at the IRS (where mistreated employees filed a successful lawsuit), the EPA, and many military bases.

*
* *

The military acted quickly to begin delivering such mail as it can, once the scandal was uncovered. Perhaps the Army brass have gotten the message finally that it's far better to fix what is broken at WRAMC than to cover it up. Let's hope they'll explain as soon as possible how the mailroom escaped effective supervision for so long, and how this reflects upon the ongoing privatization of government services.

Quis non custodiebat ipsos custodes?

crossposted at Unbossed

The VA's "facts" are no longer operative

In testimony to the House in February the head of Veterans Affairs, James Nicholson, painted a rosy picture of the speed with which VA hospitals schedule appointments for patients. The senior VA doctor, General Michael Kussman, repeated these assertions less than a month ago: "there are 39 million appointments a year, of which 37 million are achieved within 30 days... That’s about 95 percent." The same picture was given in the 2006 VA Annual Report published last November.

As almost any VA patient or staffer could have told Kussman, that can't be right. Now a draft report by the VA Inspector General, obtained by McClatchy, shows that appointments are filled less quickly, and that the VA statistics have been manipulated for public consumption.

Looking at appointments that the VA said took place within 30 days, the inspector general found that only 78 percent of primary-care appointments and only 73 percent of specialist visits were within 30 days.

As it did in 2005, the inspector general found that VA schedulers weren't following department procedures when making appointments.

The VA calculates waiting time as the difference between the appointment date and the patient's "desired date." But the report said schedulers often mistakenly recorded the first available appointment as the desired date, thus understating waiting time...

Schedulers used the wrong desired dates 72 percent of the time for the bulk of visits analyzed, according to the report.

And, again as nearly any vet could have explained, the IG report finds that the standards vary significantly from one hospital to the next.

Some medical centers performed far worse than average. In Columbia, S.C., and Chillicothe, Ohio, only 64 percent of VA appointments were within 30 days of a patient's request, the report said. The high score among centers studied was Detroit at 84 percent.

Tomorrow the Charlotte Observer will print its investigation of how and why wait-list statistics are being manipulated at one VA hopsital:

Within weeks last summer, the number of veterans officially waiting for eye care at the Asheville VA hospital ricocheted from zero to more than 800, down to zero and back up again, according to documents obtained by the Observer.

Documents and interviews about the waiting list detail a problem VA investigators have found with the way the agency tracks patients waiting for care. The Asheville incident also shows the difficulty of gauging how many veterans await service...

Generally, a VA hospital is supposed to put patients on an electronic waiting list if they can't get an appointment within 30 or 120 days, depending on their eligibility level for service. Scheduling is supposed to happen within seven days of when a patient or doctor requests an appointment.

In May 2006, Asheville staffers began telling top management they needed an eye clinic waiting list because they couldn't see patients quickly enough...

In August, workers received clearance to create the waiting list, a task that took two weeks. Then managers said to quickly remove everyone from the list. That happened just before the list would typically have been reviewed by regional managers in Durham.

The McClatchy report follows up upon this one from a month ago, which described some of the ways in which the VA has exaggerated its achievements.

A review by McClatchy of the quality measures the VA itself commonly cites found that:

• The agency has touted how quickly veterans get in for appointments, but its own inspector general found that scheduling records have been manipulated repeatedly.



• The VA boasted that its customer service ratings are 10 points higher than those of private-sector hospitals, but the survey it cited shows a far smaller gap.



• Top officials repeatedly have said that a pivotal health-quality study ranked the agency's health care "higher than any other health-care system in this country." However, the study they cited wasn't designed to do that...

The VA's top health official, Dr. Michael Kussman, was asked in March about the agency's resources for PTSD. He said the VA had boosted PTSD treatment teams in its facilities.

"There are over 200 of them," he told a congressional subcommittee. He indicated that they were in all of the agency's roughly 155 hospitals.

When McClatchy asked for more detail, the VA said that about 40 hospitals didn't have the specialized units known as "PTSD clinical teams."...

Experts inside and outside the VA point to studies showing the agency does a good job, particularly with preventive care, and that it compares favorably with the private sector. While that may be true, McClatchy also found top VA officials buffing up those respectable results in ways that the evidence doesn't support.

The reporter, Chris Adams, goes on to detail many ways in which the VA had been "buffing up" its results. The article needs to be read in full to appreciate the extent of the duplicity which "habitually" attaches to nearly all VA record-keeping.

Incidentally, a simultaneous report from the VA Inspector General on treatment of mental health backed up Adams' finding that PTSD clinics were not as numerous as earlier stated. (The AP produced a summary of the IG report.)

The VA has a terrible record on the crisis of PTSD presented by the Iraq war. At hearings in March, for example, House members heard an earful about such problems.

Under questioning, Kussman also acknowledged that the department was a bit "surprised" by the extent of reported cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome and traumatic brain injury but were making adjustments to cope. "We are ideally poised to take care of" the growing caseload, he said.

That drew an angry response from Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif.

"I find that kind of misplaced optimism, that defense of the system, a cause of where we are today," Filner said, noting that VA officials in individual clinics themselves had reported an overstressed system.

Perhaps that's a tad unfair to the VA managers, however; they may have been completely pre-occupied with counting their bonuses.

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-Calif.) criticized inadequate budget planning by the VA in 2005 and said he was concerned that VA officials who "miscalculated the needs of our veterans were awarded with significant bonuses."

By chance, today the House heard testimony on the VA-bonus scandal.

The VA needs to do a better job of handing out department bonuses based on performance after it awarded $3.8 million to senior budget officials who put health care at risk, investigators said Tuesday....

Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., who chairs the House subcommittee on oversight, decried the payments as evidence of improper favoritism. He directed his harshest criticism at VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, who declined to testify before the subcommittee.

All bonus recommendations must be approved by Nicholson.

"When the backlog of claims has been increasing for the past few years, one would not expect the senior-most officials to receive the maximum bonus," Mitchell said in a prepared statement. "Indeed, it appears the bonuses in the central office were awarded primarily on the basis of seniority and proximity to the Secretary."

Because rising to the top within the VA is self-evidently a mark of distinction.

crossposted from Unbossed

Court of Appeals: Due process = Presumption of innocence

The Court of Appeals in Virginia handed down another devastating rebuke of the Bush administration's lawless treatment of terrorism-suspects. It's not too grandiose to say that this ruling also demonstrates why due process is inextricably linked to the presumption of innocence.

Here's a spare narrative of the events: In December 2001 federal agents arrested Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was enrolled as a graduate student in Illinois, and eventually began to prosecute him for bank/credit card fraud. It alleged he was an agent of Al Qaeda. At long last, on Friday, June 20, 2003 the court scheduled a hearing on pre-trial motions.

Then on Monday, June 23, 2003 Bush abruptly declared al-Marri to be an "enemy combatant" and ordered him to be transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina. Prosecutors asked the Illinois court to dismiss the indictment, which it did with prejudice (meaning the government could not refile the charges). Al-Marri was spirited off to Charleston, where he was held incommunicado for 16 months and, he says, interrogated abusively, threatened, and tortured via sensory deprivation. The administration has continued to insist that al-Marri is a member of Al Qaeda.

In the ruling today, the Court directed that the Pentagon must either prosecute al-Marri for a crime, deport him, imprison him as a material witness, or release him "within a reasonable period of time". "But military detention of al-Marri must cease."

As the Court observed, President Bush had abused his authority as Commander in Chief of the armed forces to deprive suspects of their civil rights by transferring them illegitimately into military custody.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them “enemy combatants,” would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country. For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. It is that power -- were a court to recognize it -- that could lead all our laws “to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces.” We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”

The core issue was why the government had begun al-Marri's prosecution only to transfer him without explanation to a Navy brig and interrogate him in secret, while denying him access to civil courts and charging him with nothing. The administration has never explained that sudden reversal. Al-Marri asserts that the government feared to proceed with the trial.

Marty Lederman highlights this section from today's ruling:

The Government’s treatment of others [in the criminal justice system] renders its decision to halt al-Marri’s criminal prosecution -- on the eve of a pre-trial hearing on a suppression motion -- puzzling at best. Al-Marri contends that the Government has subjected him to indefinite military detention, rather than see his criminal prosecution to the end, in order to interrogate him without the strictures of criminal process. We trust that this is not so, for such a stratagem would contravene Hamdi’s injunction that "indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized." 542 U.S. at 521. We note, however, that not only has the Government offered no other explanation for abandoning al-Marri’s prosecution, it has even propounded an affidavit in support of al-Marri’s continued military detention stating that he "possesses information of high intelligence value." See Rapp Declaration. Moreover, former Attorney General John Ashcroft has explained that the Government decided to declare al-Marri an "enemy combatant" only after he became a "hard case" by "reject[ing] numerous offers to improve his lot by . . . providing information." John Ashcroft, Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice 168-69 (2006).

In other words, the administration decided that the man's habeas corpus rights meant nothing when balanced against the desirability of interrogating him at leisure and in any fashion it wished.

Lederman also notes that the timing of the transfer was suspicious in another way as well. On April 4, 2003 the Defense Department Working Group report on detainee interrogations was issued, asserting preposterously that the Commander in Chief could cite "necessity" and "self defense" as grounds for ordering illegal and abusive interrogations. This was the work mostly of several nuts who then infested the Office of Legal Counsel; it was based upon the infamous Bybee memo of August 1, 2002. The Working Group report was rushed out in order to thwart the attempts by military lawyers to put a stop to the illegal abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo. As far as Rumsfeld was concerned, from April 4, 2003 it was full steam ahead with nearly every conceivable form of abusive interrogation.

And it was in June 2003 that the civil trial of al-Marri was abruptly abandoned, and he was transferred to the Charleston naval brig.

As the Court of Appeals stressed, the purpose of military detention is "to prevent the captured individual from serving the enemy." There was no justification for handing al-Marri over to the military because he was already under arrest and awaiting trial.

The obvious purpose for declaring al-Marri an "enemy combatant", whatever that is (the term was invented by the Bush administration to cloak an abundance of abuses), and throwing him into a military brig incommunicado, was to abuse and degrade him until he "confessed" whatever the government wanted him to confess to.

That's the way things used to be done in the former Soviet Union. In the US, however, we cherish the presumption of innocence and other liberties that go hand in hand with it—the right not to incriminate oneself and, above all, due process. Today's ruling struck a blow for them.

crossposted from Unbossed

British reports about secret CIA torture flights

More than two weeks ago, This World (BBC) aired a documentary on the CIA "ghost" flights that carry prisoners around the world-wide torture network. It's very impressive reporting and I think you'll want to watch it; certainly if you live in the US, you may never see programming like this. Fortunately, the video now has been posted on-line.



This link will take you to the full hour-long program. The program has also been posted in six 10-minute segments, if you prefer to view it that way. The first segment is here.

Only last weekend, one of the CIA's most notorious torture planes refueled at an RAF base in Suffolk, England (image above). Via NewsHoggers and The Agonist, I see that The Daily Mail has a detailed report on that incident.

The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.

Its registration number, clearly visible on the fuselage, identifies it as a plane which the European Parliament says has been involved in 'ghost flights' to smuggle terrorist suspects to shadowy interrogation centres abroad.

Records show the plane is owned by Blackwater USA, a CIA contractor described as "the most secretive and powerful mercenary army on the planet". An eyewitness, who previously worked as an RAF electronic warfare expert, said that as the plane - a CASA-212 Aviocar - taxied to a stop on the runway it was met by a US military Humvee.

The vehicle contained four US security policemen armed with M16 assault rifles, who accompanied the camouflaged crew to the airport terminal.

From Britain, the plane flew on to Malta, where it usually is stationed. The aircraft is well documented in European flight logs as one of the most active "ghost planes".

Thus the torture flights continue, and continue to use Britain as a staging area—despite the claims of the Association of Chief Police Officers that they had found no evidence of British collusion with the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The release of that report last week was timed to coincide with the Council of Europe report that found substantial evidence of collusion between European governments and the CIA torture network.

You'll recall too that in March McClatchy showed that as recently as January prisoners in Africa were being flown to secret prisons as part of the "extraordinary rendition" program. The news from Britain strongly suggests that the European part of the "spiderweb" remains active as well.

crossposted from Unbossed

It's Just A Little Liberty, Get Over It: vote suppression vs. the fraudsters

From one of my favorite political blogs, Desert Beacon, comes this excellent discussion of an important Senate bill, S. 453. It seeks to eliminate the myriad vote-suppression tactics that have proliferated in recent decades. These tactics are a national scandal.

Indeed, I have first-hand experience with them. On Election Day 2004, my wife and I received a call from the George Bush re-election campaign, purporting to be part of their get-out-the-vote operation. But they already knew it would be a cold day in hell before either of us voted for that man. No, they were playing another, altogether disgraceful game: The caller gave us the wrong polling place to go to (in another town, miles away). My county Clerk of Elections told me that evening that she'd received "many" complaints like mine that day, all relating to fraudulent information given out by Bush campaign callers.

It's time to put a stop to this and every despicable tactic to suppress votes. For democracy to thrive, citizens need to be encouraged to vote, not the reverse.

I'm pleased that Desert Beacon has agreed to let me crosspost here his discussion of the Senate bill intended to put a stop to some of the worst abuses.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a session on S. 453, a bill to prevent deceptive election practices and voter intimidation at the polls, on June 7, 2007. Mr. Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, recounted examples of deception and intimidation in Orange County, CA, Baltimore, MD, and in Virginia; and, indicated that the NAACP is in strong support of the proposed legislation. [JudSenTest]

Douglas F. Gansler, Attorney General of Maryland, added details about deceptive practices discovered in his state, and also urged passage of the bill. [JudSenTest]

Gansler's testimony was augmented by that of John Trasvina, President and General Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who noted that the vote suppression activities reported by MALDEF in Tucson, AZ in 2006 -- which the organization reported on the day the activities occurred -- have never been investigated by the U.S. Attorney's office. [JudSenTest]

And, then came the fun: Peter N. Kirsanow before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the last panel urged that "voter registration fraud" and other bete noires of the Bush Administration be added to S. 453, the "Prevention of Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation in Federal Elections Act." Kirsanow's statements, made as an individual and not in his capacity as a member of the Civil Rights Commission, constitute an almost perfect litany of Republican obfuscation of voting issues. [JudSenTest] TPM Muckraker "Dead People Voting: the real problem," links to video of Kirsanow's presentation.

Kirsanow's contentions:

1. The Civil Rights Commission determined that there were "only two ostensible instances of perceived voter intimidation" in the 2000 election in Florida six months after the election. On the contrary, the "potential felon" purge of Florida voting rolls removed thousands of eligible voters, primarily African Americans. The state dropped the purging system after media reports emerged revealing that the 2004 list included thousands of eligible voters, heavily targeted African Americans and virtually ignored Hispanic voters. [PFAW]

2. A "subsequent media analysis showed at least 2000 votes were cast illegally in the Florida election." Media analysis (or a compilation of repetitious reports) does not substantiate the charges; and, the 2006 EAC review observed that allegations did not translate into formal complaints or prosecutions. [EAC] There is no factual substantiation for this claim.

3. An Ohio voter registration drive paid registration workers with crack cocaine in 2004. This story has been around the block several times. Unfortunately for Kirsanow it was true of only one man in Defiance, OH, and he was caught by local officials well before the election. [CNN] Instead of the "thousands" implied by the staccato banter of Mr. Kirsanow, the total number of cards the man filled out turned out to be 124. [Toledo Blade] On the other hand there were 976 voters "purged" from Ohio rolls until a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss all 976 allegations of voter registration fraud brought by the Republican Party. [NPR]

4. A non-citizen in Philadelphia registered to vote, and the individual did not vote; although Kirsanow alleges someone else used the ballot -- with no substantiation for his claim. Note, that Kirsanow admits there was ONE illegally registered immigrant.

5. St. Louis' black community voter registration drive yielded 3,800 new voters, all of which were fraudulent. Mr. Kirsanow seems to have forgotten that in 2002 the Justice Department reached a settlement with the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners which resolved the issue -- against the Commission which had improperly removed voters from the rolls. [FA]

6. John Sample testified to the Senate Rules Committee that there were more registered voters than citizens in Alaska. This would be the same Cato Institute-John Sample who edited "James Madison and the Future of Limited Government" for Cato Press, and wrote "Welfare for Politicians: Taxpayer financing of political campaigns" also for Cato. When, where, and to what Mr. Sample testified is not provided in Mr. Kirsanow's account.

7. Voters in Florida, Kentucky, North and South Carolina are registered in multiple jurisdictions. "The bill is silent on this deceptive practice." If someone moves from one state, or jurisdiction, to another and registers to vote in the new location -- with no intention whatsoever of voting from the previous address -- this is hardly a "deceptive practice." Further, Mr. Kirsanow ignores completely the July 2004 request by Republican officials in Kentucky to have the party put "vote challengers" in predominantly African American precincts. [PFAW]

8. Mark Hearne "adviser to the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform" has noted ballots cast by ineligible persons dilute or cancel out votes of eligible voters. "This bill does not address the deceptive practices that make this possible." And, we know that Mark Hearne and his American Center for Voting Rights have folded the tent, as described in Slate's "The Incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights" and Mr. Hearne has cleansed his resume of affiliation with the group.

What's a little liberty? However, Mr. Kirsanow was not the only panelist to oppose the passage of S. 453. Washington lawyer William B. Canfield offered perhaps the most egregious argument that could possibly be presented against the measure:

"The bill would criminalize non-violent behavior where voter intimidation or campaign deception were proven in court. Assuming, as I do, that voter “intimidation” is, on it’s face, repugnant, it isn’t, by it’s nature, a crime that deprives a victim of life or liberty…why then should it be subject to a criminal rather than a civil penalty?" Doesn't deprive a victim of liberty? What is a more essential element of liberty than the act of voting in a democracy?

Recommended Reading:

"Complaints abound over enforcement of voter registration law" McClatchy June 6, 2007

"Post-Dispatch: ACVR's Thor Hearne blames the BradBlog for his demise: Imagine what we could have done if the GOP gave us the million dollars Thor had?" BradBlog June 7, 2007

"The Fraudulent Fraud Squad: The incredible disappearing American Center for Voting Rights" Slate May 18, 2007

"Election Crimes: an initial review and recommendations for future study, December 2006" U.S. Election Assistance Commission

"The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Suppression in America" PFAW 2004

"Efforts to stop 'voter fraud' may have curbed legitimate voting" McClatchy One of the supporters of the Bush Administration policy, Hans von Spakovsky, is now facing Congressional scrutiny as the White House has nominated him to serve on the FEC. *

* Nominations to the Federal Election Commission June 13, 2007 Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. Nominees: Robert D. Lenhard, Maryland; David V. Mason, Virginia; Hans von Spakovsky, Georgia; Steven T. Walther, Nevada [Reid]

More evidence the British military feared that invading Iraq was illegal

The Independent reveals that the head of the British Navy in 2003 sought private legal advice about whether it would be a crime under international law to take part in invading Iraq.

Admiral Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord, approached lawyers to ask whether Navy and Royal Marines personnel might end up facing war crimes charges in relation to their duties in Iraq. The extraordinary steps taken by Sir Alan - which The Independent can reveal today - shows the high level of concern felt by service chiefs in the approach to war - concern that was not eased by the Attorney General's provision of a legal licence for the attack on Iraq.

The apprehension felt by the military commanders was highlighted at one meeting where General Sir Michael Jackson, the head of the Army, is reported to have said: "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure [the former Serb leader Slobodan] Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the cell next to him in The Hague."

You may recall that in the year before the invasion the British Attorney General, Lord Peter Goldsmith, had warned repeatedly that there was no legal basis under international law for invading Iraq (as at the Downing Street Memo meeting of July 23, 2002). Even if Blair shrugged these warnings off, the British military became increasingly alarmed that they might be ordered to commit a crime of war. The Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Michael Boyce, finally demanded that Goldsmith give a clear ruling on the question of legality.

The man who led the Armed Forces into Iraq expected that the Prime Minister and the Attorney General would have joined him in the dock if he had been prosecuted for war crimes, it emerged yesterday.

Lord Boyce, who as Adml Sir Michael Boyce was the Chief of the Defence Staff in 2003, apparently feared that he might be convicted by the recently-established International Criminal Court in The Hague.

"If my soldiers went to jail and I did, some other people would go with me," he told The Observer yesterday.

Pressed on whether he was referring to Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, Lord Boyce replied: "Too bloody right."...

Interviewed by the Sunday newspaper, Lord Boyce said: "I wanted to make sure that we had this anchor which has been signed by the Government law officer. . . It may not stop us from being charged but, by God, it would make sure other people were brought into the frame as well."

Goldsmith finally caved in to pressure from Blair and Dick Cheney, and delivered an opinion on the very eve of war that unsaid every warning he had previously given.

The reluctance with which that opinion was delivered was obvious to all, however, and military personnel were sufficiently worried that Admiral Alan West sought private legal advice. From the Guardian:

...a senior military source said: "The defence chiefs were aware of a rising degree of worry in all three services. Some of this has been passed to them through the padres. What was noticeable was the difference in attitude among the men and women compared to the Afghan war. There was genuine unease and it was the duty of the chiefs of staff, as the head of the services, to get clarification about whether they would be in breach of international law. There was also a degree of worry about the independence or otherwise of the government legal advice.

"Admiral West approached lawyers ... on whether the impending action over Iraq was justified. It was a personal decision on his part and he felt this was necessary because of his duty of care towards people serving under him...

In the event, the advice Admiral West got from the lawyers was that the invasion could just about be justified due to Saddam Hussein's flouting of United Nations resolutions, although the question of how much time Iraq should be given to comply would have to be considered carefully.

I wonder whether that private legal advice given to Admiral West had anything at all to say about what he might need to do if George Bush should order UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq before their jobs were done?

crossposted from Unbossed

George Bush is bleeding public support now

Some stunning new poll numbers out today from AP-Ipsos (a tip of the hat to Scott Horton at Harper's). Support for George Bush and the Republican Party has plummeted just during the last month. Of course, Bush's poll numbers have been crumbling slowly for a long time. But the drop since May has been precipitous and nearly unprecedented during his presidency.

Here are some of the results:

• The right track/wrong track numbers have dropped by 4% in the last month: 75% wrong track/ 21% right track. That's the worst they've ever been in this poll.



• Bush's disapproval figure climbed by 5% in the last month, to 66% (again, his worst ever disapproval rating in this poll).



• Bush's disapproval figure on his handling of "domestic issues" climbed by 4% in the last month, to 66% (again, his worst ever).



• Bush's disapproval figure on his handling of "foreign policy issues and the war on terrorism" climbed by 6% to 63% (just below his worst ever showing of 64%).



• Bush's disapproval figure on his handling of Iraq climbed 5% to 69% (just below his worst ever showing of 71%).

The only parallel for such a rapid collapse of support during Bush's presidency is from the period November to December 2006, when his numbers fell about as much in each category. That was immediately after an election in which Democrats swept to power. By the start of December, of course, Bush was also bogged down because of his determination to resist public pressure to adopt a diplomatic solution to the Iraq quagmire. So the huge Nov.-Dec. 2006 drop was a measure of Bush's extreme political troubles.

The same, I would argue, is true of this month's extraordinary collapse. Iraq is probably the largest factor; Americans simply don't believe the administration's ridiculous assertions that the "surge" is improving things. Domestically, Bush's immigration bill was deeply unpopular, especially with his few remaining supporters.

What these new numbers show is that Bush is rapidly becoming even more marginalized politically.

Oh, and one last set of numbers from the poll is worth noting: 54% of the public now identifies with the Democratic Party, only 36% with the Republicans.

So much for Rove's permanent Republican majority. If we go into the 2008 election with anything like a differential of 18% in voter ID, it will foretell an historic landslide.

Reporting that falls through the cracks

Do left-wing bloggers read the San Diego Union-Tribune? This story from yesterday got me to thinking again about the apparent blind-spots that persist in lefty blog coverage of the news.

The report reveals moderately important information about the firing of the US Attorney Carol Lam. Oddly, though, it hasn't been mentioned by any diarist at the biggest left-wing blog, Daily Kos.

This is one of several major regional papers that are producing distinguished reporting on several key issues that concern us all. The same is true of some of the smaller wire services and newspaper chains. At least as often as not, though, these reports get little or no attention in leftopia.

So what's the point of having this big megaphone in www.Land if it picks up only intermittent signals?

The San Diego story tells us that in her thirteen-page letter to the House Judiciary Committee, responding to questions about her firing, Lam told the committee that she'd been given the bum's rush when she asked for a little time to put her current cases in order before stepping down.

A few days after learning last December that she was to submit her resignation effective Jan. 31, Lam asked Michael Battle, then the head of the U.S. attorney executive office, for extra time to ensure “an orderly transition – especially regarding pending investigations and several significant cases that were set to begin trial in the next few months,” Lam wrote in her answers...

About a month passed when Lam got a call from Michael Elston, Gonzales' former chief of staff, telling her that her request for extra time was “not being received positively” and that she “should stop thinking in terms of the cases in the office.”

“He insisted that I had to depart in a matter of weeks, not months, and that these instructions were 'coming from the very highest level of the government,' ” Lam wrote.

Among her pressing cases, obviously, were several connected to the "Duke" Cunningham corruption probe. The pressure "from the highest level of government" (which would be the White House) to dump Lam as quickly as possible reinforces vividly the impression that the White House has turned the DoJ into a political machine.

Pretty bracing stuff, then, from a paper that has been leading the pack in coverage of Cunningham, Abramoff, and the whole rotten gang of corrupt Republicans. But it came from Copley News, so how many bloggers were paying much attention?

It's far from the only example of great reporting that has too little impact in lefty blogging.

Take the Baltimore Sun, another paper that rarely gets mentioned here. Siobhan Gorman practically owns the NSA and national security intelligence beat (honorable mention to Dana Priest, but nevertheless...). When's the last time any of Gorman's pieces got so much as a nod from bloggers? Yet the other day she had an interesting interview with CIA Director Michael Hayden:

Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency, has also been forced to grapple with one of the agency's thorniest issues in recent decades: what to do with the secret jails that the CIA has been operating for the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

"We're the nation's intelligence agency, not the nation's jailer," Hayden said.

And a few days before that Gorman had an overview of changes being contemplated in Pentagon intelligence operations. Then there's this from yesterday:

National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen Keith Alexander has launched a marketing blitz.

His goal: to get his employees on message.

Last month, Alexander launched an "Internal Communications Campaign" to promote "buy-in" among his troops for plans to modernize NSA’s spy capabilities and to generate "positive" news stories, according to planning documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun.

The two-part campaign will employ a set of "cascading messages" repeated down through NSA’s hierarchy, as well as "viral" marketing "to generate excitement and unity enterprise-wide," one planning document says.

Whether you think this is merely idiotic, or symptomatic of a willingness of the new and improved NSA's willingness to engage in prohibitted domestic activities (propaganda), still it's arguably a big deal that the super spy agency that's illegally wiretapping around America is being led by dolts.

I'd really, really like to see more attention given on line to the original reporting of papers like the Baltimore Sun and especially Siobhan Gorman's work.

Let me put this boldly: It's a sin to let good reporting fall down the memory hole. Enough bitching and moaning about the MSM's failings, for now. What about just cataloguing some of its successes?

Want to help keep the pressure on about abuses at Guantanamo? Then keep an eye on The Miami Herald for the rest of us. CIA torture flights got you down? There are several newspapers in North Carolina that have been following that story for quite a while (and the Charlotte Observer has published great reports about Gitmo as well).

Why is it that despite all the acclaim that bloggers have showered upon McClatchy, much of their important and compelling reporting still trickles into leftopia only slowly if at all?

Several hundred somber-faced Iraqis assembled today in a parking lot just outside Damascus to register with the U.N.’s refugee agency...

On a busy day, a U.N. spokeswoman said, as many as 8,000 refugees request appointments. Syria is so flooded with displaced Iraqis – the latest estimate is 1.4 million – that relief workers are struggling to cope with the crisis. One man who applied today showed me his appointment date: Jan. 4, 2008.

Even some important stories from the LA Times and Chicago Tribune get less attention from bloggers than they merit. Mark Silva's reporting ought to be near the top of everybody's must-read list -- yet he's almost never mentioned in leftopia. chiz.

I'm not even going to discuss the near total lack of awareness of most foreign reporting that we see in all too many blogs. In this regard, this blog is somewhat better than most. But that says quite a lot, doesn't it?

Gentle reader, the sun does not rise whenever the NYT is put to bed. The sun does not set to the glow of MSNBC. There's a world of good reporting out there that falls through the cracks, month after month. Grab that megaphone and use it. In the immortal words of Sid Caesar...

We've got to get organized!