THE PROGRESS REPORT
IRAQ
$300,000,000,000.00
We'd call it buyer's remorse, but "remorse" doesn't quite capture the stunning tragedy of the moment. Following yesterday's Senate approval of the latest war supplemental, American taxpayers will soon have paid three hundred billion dollars – that's $300,000,000,000.00 – to help finance the most disastrous foreign policy decision of our generation. You paid. Your co-workers paid. Elderly couples, struggling single parents, college kids, middle-class families – we all paid. Here's what you've got to show for it:
NO CREDIBLE "VICTORY STRATEGY": Defense Secretary Rumsfeld recently claimed that while the Bush administration has no exit strategy for Iraq, it does have a "victory strategy," the goal of which is "to help the Iraqi Forces develop the skills and the capacity to provide their own security." The sad truth: we don't have either. Though more than a year and a half has passed since Gen. John Abizaid first announced plans to build Iraq's security force, the Government Accountability Office reported last month that coalition leadership has still failed "to develop a system to assess the readiness of Iraqi military and police forces so they can identify weaknesses and provide them with effective support." What to make of President Bush's cheery declaration last week that Iraqi forces now outnumber their U.S. counterparts? It's simply not credible. The GAO states explicitly: "U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped." Moreover, the high number of security forces frequently touted by senior White House officials "overstates the number actually serving," probably by "tens of thousands." As one training supervisor, Army Staff Sgt. Craig E. Patrick, admitted recently: "It's all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we're right on schedule to be out of here. I mean, they can [mislead] the American people, but they can't [mislead] us. These guys are not ready."
MULTIPLE NEW THREATS TO GLOBAL SECURITY: The CIA's National Intelligence Council believes that "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists," providing "terrorists with 'a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills.'" And with Iraq's fragile constitutional process still endangered by ethnic tensions and deadly insurgents, new potential threats lie just around the bend: a much-feared ethnically-driven civil war, a Shiite theocracy allied with mullahs in Iran, or a fractured Kurdistan in the north destabilizing Kurdish regions in Turkey, Iran and Syria.
HIGHEST LEVEL OF TERROR ATTACKS IN TWO DECADES: Every year since 1985 the State Department has published its annual report on international terrorism, described as "the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world." In compiling the latest report, "the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985." (Eager the see the findings for yourself? Don't hold your breath. The State Department decided to suppress the report.)
HISTORIC RECRUITMENT SHORTFALLS: The numbers tell the disturbing tale. The Army in February failed to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp for the first time in five years. The Marine Corps recently missed its monthly recruitment goal for the first time in ten years. The National Guard missed its annual recruitment goal for the first time in eleven years. (Both the Army and the National Guard missed their recruitment goals again in March, by an even greater margin than in February.) The share of females in Army recruiting classes is steadily declining. And "the number of foreign nationals enlisting in the US military is dropping, even though service now provides a fast track to American citizenship," the Associated Press reported this week.
UNPROTECTED TROOPS: Shockingly, a "third of the 35,000 Humvees and other trucks in Iraq" still "rely on sheet metal as a last-minute solution" to thwart insurgent attacks. And until yesterday, the war supplemental bill didn't include one red cent for armored Humvees and trucks. In an eleventh hour push, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) was able to crowbar roughly $200 million into the Iraq package for armor costs. Too bad the Army and Marine Corps say they need at least $750 million to finish the job.
NO SYSTEM FOR ACCOUNTABILITY: The Bush administration clearly knows how to spend our money. Keeping tabs on it is a whole other story. Though the watchdog group Transparency International recently declared that Iraq is becoming "the biggest corruption scandal in history," Sec. Rumsfeld is taking his sweet time figuring out how to keep our tax dollars from being swindled. GAO chief David Walker told the Senate two weeks ago the Pentagon still "doesn't have a system to be able to determine with any degree of reliability and specificity" how we spend war-related emergency funds. Moreover, Walker said, while there's no doubt that previously appropriated funds were spent, "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth."
$300,000,000,000.00
We'd call it buyer's remorse, but "remorse" doesn't quite capture the stunning tragedy of the moment. Following yesterday's Senate approval of the latest war supplemental, American taxpayers will soon have paid three hundred billion dollars – that's $300,000,000,000.00 – to help finance the most disastrous foreign policy decision of our generation. You paid. Your co-workers paid. Elderly couples, struggling single parents, college kids, middle-class families – we all paid. Here's what you've got to show for it:
NO CREDIBLE "VICTORY STRATEGY": Defense Secretary Rumsfeld recently claimed that while the Bush administration has no exit strategy for Iraq, it does have a "victory strategy," the goal of which is "to help the Iraqi Forces develop the skills and the capacity to provide their own security." The sad truth: we don't have either. Though more than a year and a half has passed since Gen. John Abizaid first announced plans to build Iraq's security force, the Government Accountability Office reported last month that coalition leadership has still failed "to develop a system to assess the readiness of Iraqi military and police forces so they can identify weaknesses and provide them with effective support." What to make of President Bush's cheery declaration last week that Iraqi forces now outnumber their U.S. counterparts? It's simply not credible. The GAO states explicitly: "U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped." Moreover, the high number of security forces frequently touted by senior White House officials "overstates the number actually serving," probably by "tens of thousands." As one training supervisor, Army Staff Sgt. Craig E. Patrick, admitted recently: "It's all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we're right on schedule to be out of here. I mean, they can [mislead] the American people, but they can't [mislead] us. These guys are not ready."
MULTIPLE NEW THREATS TO GLOBAL SECURITY: The CIA's National Intelligence Council believes that "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists," providing "terrorists with 'a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills.'" And with Iraq's fragile constitutional process still endangered by ethnic tensions and deadly insurgents, new potential threats lie just around the bend: a much-feared ethnically-driven civil war, a Shiite theocracy allied with mullahs in Iran, or a fractured Kurdistan in the north destabilizing Kurdish regions in Turkey, Iran and Syria.
HIGHEST LEVEL OF TERROR ATTACKS IN TWO DECADES: Every year since 1985 the State Department has published its annual report on international terrorism, described as "the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world." In compiling the latest report, "the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985." (Eager the see the findings for yourself? Don't hold your breath. The State Department decided to suppress the report.)
HISTORIC RECRUITMENT SHORTFALLS: The numbers tell the disturbing tale. The Army in February failed to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp for the first time in five years. The Marine Corps recently missed its monthly recruitment goal for the first time in ten years. The National Guard missed its annual recruitment goal for the first time in eleven years. (Both the Army and the National Guard missed their recruitment goals again in March, by an even greater margin than in February.) The share of females in Army recruiting classes is steadily declining. And "the number of foreign nationals enlisting in the US military is dropping, even though service now provides a fast track to American citizenship," the Associated Press reported this week.
UNPROTECTED TROOPS: Shockingly, a "third of the 35,000 Humvees and other trucks in Iraq" still "rely on sheet metal as a last-minute solution" to thwart insurgent attacks. And until yesterday, the war supplemental bill didn't include one red cent for armored Humvees and trucks. In an eleventh hour push, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) was able to crowbar roughly $200 million into the Iraq package for armor costs. Too bad the Army and Marine Corps say they need at least $750 million to finish the job.
NO SYSTEM FOR ACCOUNTABILITY: The Bush administration clearly knows how to spend our money. Keeping tabs on it is a whole other story. Though the watchdog group Transparency International recently declared that Iraq is becoming "the biggest corruption scandal in history," Sec. Rumsfeld is taking his sweet time figuring out how to keep our tax dollars from being swindled. GAO chief David Walker told the Senate two weeks ago the Pentagon still "doesn't have a system to be able to determine with any degree of reliability and specificity" how we spend war-related emergency funds. Moreover, Walker said, while there's no doubt that previously appropriated funds were spent, "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth."
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 12:02 PM
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