Blogs: Real Security

Yesterday on Democracy Now, Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage discussed with Rep. Lynn Woolsey the House Iraq bill which includes a firm deadline of Aug. 31, 2008 to redeploy combat troops out of Iraq.

Woolsey has been leading the effort to defeat the bill because it includes funding for the war in the interim. But Borosage made the case for the supporting the bill:

I agree [with Rep. Woolsey] it doesn’t go far enough. We’d want the troops home as quickly as we could, if we could get them there. The question is, is it a valuable symbolic vote?

Because if it passes and we get the majority, the President will veto it, and then you will have in the public, very clearly, a statement that the majority in the Congress is against this president's policy and has voted against it and is for bringing the troops home at a date certain.

And the President is standing in the way of that, and his Republican allies and those conservatives in the Democratic Party that vote with him.

I think that’s a very valuable line to draw.

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Yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee unanimously passed reforms, in the wake of the Walter Reed scandal, to improve the ability of wounded soldiers to get needed health care.

CQ Today notes that the bill recognizes that the privatization of key functions has contributed to the problems, and includes a "one-year moratorium on hiring private contractors to perform 'Department of Defense functions' at medical facilities".

Hopefully that will stop the bleeding, and give time to restore a system with quality service and accountability.

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Amry Surgeon General Kevin Kiley, the guy recently bumped up to head Walter Reed even though he was directly implicated in the scandal, was belatedly forced to resign today.

On one hand, good. On the other, doesn't do much lasting good if the names change and the policies stay the same.

Little has been said about the conservative policies of underfunding and privatization that contributed to the shocking poor conditions at Walter Reed. That's where our attention should turn.

UPDATE: Think Progress reports that Kiley's replacement "seems to be cut from the same cloth".

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As the Walter Reed scandal sears the public, more attention is being paid to whose heads should roll than what policies need reform. While both are important, if bad policies don't change, new people can't do a better job.

It's becoming clear that Walter Reed suffers from the hallmarks of conservatism: underfunding our government and privatizing our government.

Retired Army Major General Paul Eaton has a NY Times oped titled, "Casualties of the Budget Wars" which informs us that:

Last year, because of spending in Iraq, the Army had a $530 million shortfall in its budget for posts at home and abroad. This forced the Army’s vice chief of staff, Richard Cody, to tighten belts that were already at the last notch.

And he argues:

The general effort by [former Defense Sec. Donald] Rumsfeld and [recently deposed Army Sec. Francis] Harvey to privatize services at Army bases needs to be reined in. Some of the problems at Walter Reed seem to have been caused by the contracting out of maintenance services and other support jobs.

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The United States is preparing its third rush towards war in six years, and experts are already warning that by hyping up the tension between U.S. more »

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The results of Iran's local elections are still being tabulated, but headlines around the world more »

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The widely seen YouTube video of U.S. more »

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So Moqtada al-Sadr is withdrawing support from Maliki's governmentmore »

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It is an acknowledgement that has come too late for too many of the soldiers and civilians who have died in Iraq, but some of the mainstream media is finally beginning to call the more »

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Too lazy to go over and read Sy Hersh's latest bombshell on the machinations for war with Iran at The New Yorker? Here are the juicy bits.

more »

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