Necessary News

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Keeping Track Of Iraq Month

• For the last few months, the White House has repeatedly asked us to wait until September to assess the situation in Iraq. With September right around the corner, we figured it was time to take a look at what’s ahead.
• Last week: A National Intelligence Estimate requested by War Czar Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute found a) continued political deterioration and b) “measurable but uneven improvements” in Iraqi security.
• What you may not know: The Washington Post found out that Gen. David Petraus fought with the NIE to get assessment of the poor security situation in Iraq toned way down.
• Next Tuesday, September 4: A 70-page report from the Government Accountability Office.
• What to expect: According to officials who’ve seen the report, it “paints a bleak picture of prospects for Iraqi political reconciliation.” [Washington Post]
• Next Week: A report by an independent commission of military experts, commissioned by Congress, headed by former Marine Gen. James Jones. [Newsday]
• What to expect: Anthony Cordesman, an adviser to the independent commission released a “scorecard” on Iraqi forces this week which found they are “years away” from taking over responsibility for their own security. Also, “White House and military projections of a timetable for transition from U.S. troops to Iraqi security forces have been often revised in recent years and have proved unrealistic.”
• Next Week: Hearings in both the House Foreign Affairs and House Armed Services Committee to discuss above-mentioned reports.
• The Following Week: At long last, Army Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will report to Congress about whether President Bush’s strategy is working in Iraq. Already there is some disagreement about when the two will testify in front of Congress. The Pentagon wants their testimony to take place on September 11 (shameless, shameless attempt to capitalize on American fears and emotions connected to that day). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly said, yeah right, nice try, now pick another day. [Washington Post]
• After That: Finally, President Bush will follow the Petraeus report with his own report about the 18 political benchmarks first reported on in July. That interim report showed not a single benchmark had been completed. [Washington Post]

An average of 62 Iraqis are killed every day this year, double to the average 33 killed every day in 2006.

More American Kids Living Without Health Insurance

• According to new Census numbers released yesterday, the number of Americans living without health insurance rose to record levels last year. [Bloomberg]
• The Sick Truth: 15.8% of people in the U.S. lack health insurance, tying 1998 for the highest level in the past two decades. That’s 47 million Americans without health coverage (up from 44.8 million in 2005). [USA Today]

• The problem: Fewer people are getting health insurance through their jobs. In 2005, 60.2% of Americans were insured through their employers; last year, that percentage fell to only 59.7%.

  And the government isn’t picking up that slack. The percentage of Americans with government-based insurance fell to 27% last year, down from 27.3% in 2005.

• As expected, little kids were hit especially hard. An additional 611,000 children lacked health insurance in 2006, bringing the total of American kids without insurance to 8.7 million.
• That’s 11.7% of all kids (that’s up from 10.9% in 2005).
• Keep that in mind as the fight over SCHIP heats up this fall. A bi-partisan Congress wants to renew the program, which provides health coverage to 6.6 million kids whose parents make just enough that they don’t qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford expensive premiums. They also want to increase the program, getting affordable health coverage to millions more kids. President Bush has threatened to veto that legislation, saying he wants to protect private insurance companies. (Yep, he really said that.)
• The White House, gearing up for battle, also announced new policies to make it nearly impossible for new children to sign up for SCHIP. For example, to sign up new children, parents making over 250% of the poverty level (or $51,625 for a family of four) now need to prove the kid has been uninsured for a year. No exceptions, “even if a parent dies and the child loses coverage under an employer’s group policy.” [NY Times]
• Also, the state must prove 95% of children from families making less than 200% of the poverty level have been signed up for the program before letting other children in, a near-impossible feat no state has yet been able to accomplish. That’s just mean. [Washington Post]

By the way, President Bush has received more than $3 million in donations from rich insurance companies. Poor, sick kids aren’t so quick to open their wallets.

Senator Larry “Lewd Conduct” Craig’s Record on Gay Rights

The Story

• Senator Larry Craig of Idaho plead guilty to charges of disorderly conduct for making “sexual advances” to a plainclothes police officer in an adjoining men’s bathroom stall at Minneapolis International airport. [NY Times]
• Last year, Senator Craig, married with three children, publicly rejected assertions by gay rights activists that he was gay saying they were “completely ridiculous.”
• But the Idaho Statesmen has followed dozens of allegations to the contrary, including one man’s insistence that he had a sexual encounter with the Senator in 2004 in Washington DC’s Union Station. [Idaho Statesmen]
• Let’s check out Senator Craig’s record on gay rights, shall we?
• Senator Craig was a vocal proponent of the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in 2006. He also voted for the 1996 “Defense of Marriage Act” defining marriage as between a man and a woman. [On The Issues]
• He’s voted every possible time to prevent expanding the definition of Hate Crimes to include sexual orientation. [Human Rights Council]
• He’s opposed efforts to prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation. [On The Issues]
• He’s also been rated a flat zero three terms in a row by Human Rights Council’s rating of gay-friendly legislators. [HRC] [HRC] [HRC]

The Audio

• Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who is openly gay and served with Craig in the House, put it bluntly during an appearance on Bill Maher: “I think there’s a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. People who want to demonize other people shouldn’t then be able to go home, close the door and do it themselves.”
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• Craig gets lyrical with your standard sound byte, apologizes for the “cloud placed over Idaho.”
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• Craig says he’s innocent, and that pleading guilty was due to an “overreaction.” Kind of like how our gas was due to those bad nachos.
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• Craig is so *not* gay it’s not even funny.
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• And finally, Craig thanks everyone for coming out. We’re just saying.
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One of Craig’s defenses? That he has a “wide stance” that was misinterpreted as a solicitation.

The Lesson of Abu Ghraib: Feel Free to Torture, Just Don’t Talk About it

• Flashback: In 2003, allegations of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison came to light “with the release of pictures of U.S. soldiers smiling while detainees, some of them naked, were held on leashes or in painful and humiliating positions at the prison.” [AP]
• Yesterday, a military court Tuesday acquitted an Army officer of failing to control U.S. soldiers who abused the detainees at the infamous prison in Iraq.
• The military court acquitted Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan of three counts: cruelty and maltreatment for subjecting detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by dogs; dereliction of a duty to properly train and supervise soldiers in humane interrogation rules; and failing to obey a lawful general order by ordering dogs used for interrogations without higher approval.
• Here’s the kicker. The court found Jordan guilty on one account: disobeying a general’s order not to talk to others about the investigation into the abuse.
• Jordan faces a maximum sentence of five years. The court planned to begin the sentencing hearing later Tuesday.

That’s right, folks. Abu Ghraib is, more or less, fight club. The first rule about it? Just don’t talk about it.

U.S. Reconstruction Funds Fuel Insurgency

• Your tax dollars are helping to finance the anti-US insurgent groups in Iraq. Whoops. [McClatchy]
• McClatchy reports that extortion from militant linked-tribes across Iraq have “siphoned off money” Godfather-style from American reconstruction projects.
• Insurgent groups, like Al-Qaeda in Iraq, charge “protection fees” or “road use fees” to American contractors, then use this money to fund sectarian violence and attacks on US soldiers.
• It doesn’t happen directly. Rather, “A U.S. company with a reconstruction contract hires an Iraqi sub-contractor to haul supplies along insurgent-ridden roads. The Iraqi contractor sets his price at up to four times the going rate because he’ll be forced to give 50 percent or more to gun-toting insurgents who demand cash payments in exchange for the supply convoys’ safe passage.”
• With more contractors moving into al-Anbar province in the wake of high profile deals with local Sunni tribes, al-Qaeda in Iraq and other militants are expecting an extortion windfall: “Every contractor in Anbar who works for the U.S. military and survives for more than a month is paying the insurgency,” says one Iraqi politician familiar with the system, “The contracts are inflated, all of them. The insurgents get half.”
• This is just one example of resources American resources getting lost, mismanaged and stolen in Iraq. Yesterday, the NY Times reported that preliminary investigations into the 190,000 lost guns (remember those?) has uncovered “a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel.” Stay tuned. [NY Times] [Mic Check]

Iraqeteering.

Good News, Bad News

Sci-fi freaks, get ready: In two separate studies published simultaneously in the American journal Science this week, neuroscientists working in London and Geneva report making volunteers feel like they have left their bodies using virtual reality goggles, cameras and a plastic rod. The central question scientists wanted answered was: Why do we feel ourselves located inside the physical body? Let’s check out the pros and the cons. [ABC]

GOOD NEWS

Scientists are excited by the practical applications of the study, such as doctors performing surgery from remote locations.

BAD NEWS

“Virtual reality goggles, cameras, and a plastic rod.” Huh, and here we thought all it took was heroin.

Quote Of The Day

“I believe this is the right time for my family and I to begin a new chapter in our lives.”

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales‘ grammatically incorrect resignation letter. [Think Progress] [I vs. Me]

Speed Round

AUDIO: GONE-ZALES

Glenn Beck doesn’t think anyone cares about Gonzales’s resignation. What a joker.

AFGHANISTAN

Good news: the Taliban pledges to release the rest of its South Korean hostages. Bad news: They’ve already killed two. [AP]

MORE AFGHANISTAN

Roadside bomb kills 11 NATO troops. [AP]

WE’RE HAVIN’ A HEAT WAVE...

Triple digit temperatures scorch the west coast. [LA Times]

63

The death toll thus far for the fires that are ravaging Greece. [LA Times]

IRAQ

Actorvist Angelina Jolie pops up in Iraq and Syria to call attention to the humanitarian crisis there. Er, Angie? Yeah, we’ve heard about it. [US Magazine]

OFF THE HOOK

Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan was found not guilty yesterday for his role in the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He was, however, found guilty of disobeying orders not to discuss the investigation. [AP]

POOR PEOPLE

The poverty rate dips slightly for the first time since the Clinton White House, down to 12.3 % from 12.6 % in 2005. [ABC News]

IRAN

Trying to stoke the crazy flames, Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares there’s a power vacuum in Iraq and, coincidentally, he’s here to help fill the gap. Pipe down, there, pepperpot. [Fox News]

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel, the former Alaska senator, wants to correct the record: For any of you out there who thought he proposed a Teflon dome over Mount McKinley back in the 1970s, that’s not true…He only wanted to create a community near Mount McKinley that would be covered with a dome.” [Anchorage Daily News] via [Hotline]

NORIEGA

The former Panamanian dictator will likely be extradited to France after spending over 17 years in American prison. There, the convicted drug smuggler faces an additional ten years for money laundering. [CNN]

INSANE. NO, REALLY?

The Astronaut who drove 900 miles in diapers to assault a romantic rival with pepperspray is planning an insanity defense. Should be a tough sell. [CNN]

47 Million

Number of Americans without health insurance in 2006, an increase of 5 percent from the previous year representing the largest increase in four years. [Bloomberg]

ARMS CONTROL

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-IN) and former senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) have floated a proposal to “expand the reach and strength of their program to secure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.” [Washington Post]

JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS

Yahoo! says it was only following Chinese laws when it handed the personal information of famous Chinese political dissidents over to the Chinese police so they could be arrested. [WSJ]

(DON’T) GIVE US YOUR TIRED, YOUR HUNGRY...

Obstacles Keep Iraqi Refugees From U.S [New York Times]

CRISIS AVERTED

Guns are discovered at an Illinois school. [AP]

GO KATIE GO

Eat your heart out, Brian Williams: Katie Couric’s going to anchor the news from Iraq. [Washington Post]