The Political Chase

Blackwater resumes operations

The NYT is reporting that Blackwater has resumed operations in Iraq, but it is unclear to what extent and upon whose approval.

Brief summary. Blackwater USA, a private security contractor based in North Carolina with thousands of approximately 1,000 employees in Iraq (see update below), is primarily responsible for providing security for American officials, particularly those residing in the Green Zone. On September 16, Blackwater was escorting an American diplomatic convoy and became involved in a shooting that killed eight Iraqis. Due to Blackwater’s alleged history of extreme and uncontrolled violence, the Iraqi government quickly moved to ban Blackwater’s operations on September 18. However, the Iraqi government has no legal authority over U.S. corporations or individuals, the ban was still implemented. Since Blackwater was the only source of protection for Americans and other officials outside of the Green Zone, they were unable to leave the protected area for basically any reason — no trips to the airport or one of those garden spot markets John McCain strolled through. Stuck in the middle of hell.

Now, only three days after the Iraq government’s “ban,” Blackwater has resumed operations, in spite of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s substantial criticism of the company after the September 16 shootings. Interestingly enough, Blackwater reloads their gear while Maliki is reportedly on his way to the U.S. to meet with the Decider.

When asked about Blackwater resuming operations, an American Embassy spokeswoman said the decision had been made “in consultation with the Iraqi authorities.” I suppose we can take that to be on about the same level as Mr. Bush consulting with leaders in Congress on the strategy for Iraq.

Late Update: Based on an article in today’s (9/22) Washington Post, I revised the number of Blackwater USA employees in Iraq to “approximately 1,000.” The previous number of employees reported was based on my recollection of other press accounts, which may have been inaccurate due to early reporting of the Blackwater incident.

Today’s Lunch - Wrapping Up the Week

Today’s 10-in-3 episode gets you caught up with the week’s top headlines, including Christian martyrs, an NRA conference, Democratic mothers, Rudy’s headlines, and how Huckabee succeeds by grasping at straws.

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GOP Filibuster Blocks Levin-Reed Bill

The Senate failed to pass today yet another bill requiring the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The Levin-Reed bill, which would have required the withdrawal of most troops and begin within 120 days of enactment, failed to stop the GOP filibuster with 47 votes.

Last year, the Republicans threatened to use the “nuclear option” to keep Democrats from filibustering on one Bush judicial nominee. Bill Frist, the Righteous Republican Majority Leader at the time, pitched several temper-tantrums on the floor of the Senate, declaring he would break the super-majority rule (60 vote minimum) that had been in place for more than 200 years if the Obstructionist Democrats did not allow the Righteous Republicans to have a single majority vote for a federal judge nominee. Now that the Democrats have majority rule, the Righteous Republicans filibuster almost every piece of legislation Democrats submit and on issues as significant as the war in Iraq.

Hypocrisy seems to be viewed as a virtue to the Righteous Republicans when they repeatedly try to protect the Decider, but blasphemy when the Obstructionist Democrats use it to stop the approval of a federal judge. 

Olbermann: The President of Hypocrisy

In response to President Bush’s ignominious press conference yesterday, Keith Olbermann blasted the president in a Special Comment on Countdown last night. Olbermann accused the president of polticizing the military by pimping General Petraeus, “reducing a four-star hero to a political hack,” and intentionally diverting criticism.

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TPC Roundup - Congressional Bombs and Syrian Bombs

HEADLINES

• Washington: Bush No Comment on Syria, Will Veto Child Health Bill
• Washington: Bush “Received B in Econ 101, A in Keeping Taxes Low”
• Congress: Iraq War Funding Bill Fails, Senate Condemns MoveOn.org
• Iraq: Blackwater Unprovoked According to Iraq Probe
• Nation: Thousands March Protesting “Jena 6″

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Give me, Give me, Give me

WASHINGTON

• “Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said,” the Washington Post reports. “The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence.”
• President Bush threatened yesterday, “to veto a bill expanding a popular children’s health insurance program, calling it “a step toward federalization of health care,” the New York Times reports. “The program expires Sept. 30, and Congress is on the verge of renewing it by providing coverage to an additional 4 million children over the 6.6 million already enrolled — at an additional cost of $35 billion over five years.”
• “President Bush pointedly declined on Thursday to discuss an Israeli airstrike in northern Syria,” the New York Times reports. “Mr. Bush did, however, warn North Korea that the United States expected it to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs and to stop selling weapons or expertise abroad, as it promised to do this year.”
• “Sidestepping the turmoil in the housing market and the credit problems associated with it, President Bush said Thursday that the nation’s economy was strong and would remain so if Congress steered clear of tax increases,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “But he would not rate the risk of recession, saying, ‘You need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low.’”
• “President Bush acknowledged “some unsettling times” in the country’s troubled housing and credit markets, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke offered more assurances steps would be taken to curb the fallout,” the Boston Globe reports. “The housing slump, the worst in 16 years, is likely to drag on well into 2008, when the nation will be voting for a new president. Home foreclosures - now at record highs - and delinquencies are likely to get worse, Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday.”
• Bush “plans to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New York on Monday during the U.N. General Assembly meetings, the White House said,” Reuters reports. “The meeting will be to ‘continue discussions on helping the Palestinian Authority and on issues related to an eventual two-state solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security,’ White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said on Thursday.”

CONGRESS

• “Underscoring his resolve,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “revived a proposal to cut off funding for most U.S. military operations in Iraq by next summer — the most drastic antiwar measure in the legislative mix, and the biggest long shot for passage,” the Washington Post reports. “With only a few votes changing since May 16, when similar language died on a 67 to 29 vote.”
• “Congress gave final approval Thursday to legislation designed to transform the Food and Drug Administration from a passive monitor to an active detective seeking out medications that have been approved for sale but turn out to be hazardous — a problem linked to an estimated 15,000 deaths a year,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “The drug-safety provisions were the centerpiece of a massive bill that also would renew industry user fees that fund the FDA’s review of medications and medical devices submitted for approval.”
• “Democrats are disappointed they have been unable to force President Bush to change course in Iraq, but they will keep pushing — with or without Republican help,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Thursday, CNN reports. “GOP senators have filibustered every Democratic-led push to bring troops home from Iraq.”
• The Senate on Thursday “overwhelmingly condemned the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org for its newspaper ad that last week accused the top U.S. general in Iraq of lying and misrepresenting the situation on the ground, a measure on which Democratic leaders had refused to allow a vote last week,” the Washington Times reports. “The nonbinding measure, offered by Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, passed by a vote of 72-25, with 24 Democrats and one independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont, voting against it.”
• “The FBI has taped conversations between Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska and an oil company executive who has pleaded guilty to bribery, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation,” CNN reports. “The calls were between Stevens, who is up for re-election in 2008, and Bill Allen, then CEO of oilfield services firm VECO Corp., the source said Thursday.”
• “A Washington watchdog group on Thursday asked the Justice Department to investigate Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) for possible tax violations and improper use of his House office and staff,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) filed the complaint here just two days after declaring Scott among the 25 ‘most corrupt’ congressmen here for mingling personal and campaign interests, failing repeatedly to pay personal and business taxes and, as one of his former aides claimed, using his House staff to work on his campaign.”

IRAQ

• “Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected,” the New York Times reports. “In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.”
• “Iraq wants to tighten control over security contractors after a deadly shooting incident involving the U.S. firm Blackwater, ending their long immunity from Iraqi prosecution, the Interior Ministry said” today, Reuters reports. “Spokesman Major-General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf said the ministry had drafted legislation giving it wider powers over the contractors and calling for ’severe punishment for those who fail to adhere to the…guidelines on how they should operate.’”
• “Military officials said Thursday that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan–including food, water and shelter–were under review by criminal investigators, double the amount the Pentagon had previously disclosed,” the New York Times reports. “In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and materiel for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities, the officials said.”
• “The first cases of cholera appeared in Baghdad on Thursday, in a sign the epidemic that has already sickened thousands in northern Iraq is now spreading more widely in a population made vulnerable by war to a normally preventable disease,” the New York Times reports. “The World Health Organization and Iraqi Red Crescent Society reported two cases here and Iraqi television reported another case, in a 7-month-old baby, in Basra, far to the south.”

NATION

• “Tens of thousands of chanting marchers descended on the small Louisiana town of Jena on Thursday to protest the treatment of six black teenagers who allegedly beat a white classmate after a series of racially tinged incidents at the local high school,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. “Hailing from as far as England, protesters arrived at sunrise by the busload to rally behind the ‘Jena Six,’ as the accused teens have come to be known, in a legal case that has drawn worldwide attention.”
• “Prominent Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu violated federal election laws by reimbursing several donors for the political checks they wrote, and extracted campaign donations from others by threatening to cut their ties with a highly lucrative Ponzi scheme he oversaw, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department” on Thursday, the Washington Post reports. “A federal fraud case that the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District unsealed against Hsu suggests for the first time why he in a short period of time became one of the nation’s most prolific bundlers of campaign funds.”
• “A big overhang of property will bring U.S. house prices down further, but it is too early to say if the economy will plunge into recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan was quoted as saying” today, Reuters reports. “Greenspan said in an interview with Austrian magazine Format that low interest rates in the past 15 years were to blame for the house price bubble, but that central banks were powerless when they tried to bring it under control.”
• “A federal grand jury has subpoenaed House records connected to a one-time aide to” former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, “who has been caught up in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal,” AP reports. “The subpoena involving Ed Buckham was issued to the chief administrative officer of the House by a grand jury in Washington.”

WORLD

• “Hundreds of Islamists chanting slogans against Pakistan’s military leader rallied outside the Supreme Court” today “as judges heard petitions challenging President Gen. Pervez Musharraf right to run for re-election,” AP reports. “Opposition parties have promised to stage anti-Musharraf street protests across Pakistan” today, “claiming it would be illegal for the general, who seized power in a 1999 coup, to run.”
• “A bomb attack” today “against a convoy of French troops killed one soldier and caused many casualties among Afghans near the blast, while heavy fighting in southern Afghanistan killed about 75 Taliban fighters, officials said,” AP reports. “The attack in western Kabul blew the windows out of a civilian bus and set at least one vehicle on fire.”

General Clark gets surprise ’sailor talk’

This is not FOX News - you get the unedited facts. A viewer calling in to ask a question spices up C-SPAN’s interview of Gen. Wesley Clark (retired) about his new book.

Warning: Contains Explicit Language