Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Obama sows seeds of demise
Right now, Obama’s ratings must be pleasing to his eye. Voters like him and his wife immensely and approve of his activism in the face of the economic crisis. While polls show big doubts about what he is doing, the overwhelming sense is to let him have his way and pray that it works.
But beneath this superficial support, Obama’s specific policies run afoul of the very deeply felt convictions of American voters. For example, the most recent Rasmussen Poll asked voters if they wanted an economic system of complete free enterprise or preferred more government involvement in managing the economy. By 77-19, they voted against a government role, up seven points from last month.
And in the Fox News poll — the very same survey that gave Obama a 62 percent approval rating and reported that 68 percent of voters are “satisfied” with his first hundred days — voters, by 50-38, supported a smaller government that offered fewer services over a larger government that provided more.
By 42-8, the Fox News poll (conducted on April 22-23) found that voters felt Obama had expanded government rather than contracted it (42 percent said it was the same size) and, by 46-30, reported believing that big government was more of a danger to the nation than big business. (By 50-23, they said Obama felt big business was more dangerous.)
By 62-20, they said government spending, under Obama, was “out of control.”
So if voters differ so fundamentally with the president on the very essence of his program, why do they accord him high ratings? They are like the recently married bride who took her vows 100 days ago. It would be a disaster for her life if she decides that she really doesn’t like her husband. But she keeps noticing things about him that she can’t stand. It will be a while before she walks out the door or even comes to terms with her own doubts, but it is probably inevitable that she will.
For Americans to conclude that they disapprove of their president in the midst of an earth-shaking crisis is very difficult. But as Obama’s daily line moves from “I inherited this mess” to “There are faint signs of light,” the clock starts ticking. If there is no recovery for the next six months — and I don’t think there will be — Obama will inevitably become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And then will come his heavy lifting. He has yet to raise taxes, regiment healthcare or provide amnesty for illegal immigrants. He hasn’t closed down the car companies he now runs and he has not yet forced a 50 percent hike in utility bills with his cap-and-trade legislation. These are all the goodies he has in store for us all.
Obama’s very activism these days arrogates to himself the blame for the success or failure of his policies. Their outcome will determine his outcome, and there is no way it will be positive.
Why?
• You can’t borrow as much as he will need to without raising interest rates that hurt the economy;
• The massive amount of spending will trigger runaway inflation once the economy starts to recover;
• His overhaul of the tax code (still in the planning phases) and his intervention in corporate management will create such business uncertainty that nobody will invest in anything until they see the lay of the land;
• His bank program is designed to help banks, but not to catalyze consumer lending. And his proposal for securitization of consumer loans won’t work and is just what got us into this situation.
So Mr. Obama should enjoy his poll numbers while he may.
Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of Outrage. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by e-mail or to order a signed copy of their new best-selling book, Fleeced, go to dickmorris.com .
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
100 DAYS, 100 MISTAKES
1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress. 'Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability,' Obama said." -- McClatchy, 3/11
2. "There is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some adjustments." -- Obama during the campaign.
3. This year's budget deficit: $1.5 trillion.
4. Asks his Cabinet to cut costs in their departments by $100 million -- a whopping .0027%!
5. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties." -- ABC News, 4/15
6. "Mr. Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the 'teleprompt president' over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech." -- Sky News, 3/18
7. In early February, the 2010 census was moved out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House, politicizing how federal aid is distributed and electoral districts are drawn.
8. Obama taps Nancy Killefer for a new administration job, First Chief Performance Officer -- to police government spending. But it surfaces that Killefer had performance issues of her own -- a tax lien was slapped on her DC home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. She withdrew.
9. Turkey tried to block the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as new NATO secretary general because he didn't properly punish the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel were outraged; Obama said he supported Turkey's induction into the European Union.
10. . . . and he never mentioned the Armenian genocide.
11. The picture of Obama and Hugo Chavez shaking hands.
12. Hugo Chavez gave him the anti-American screed "The Open Veins of Latin America." Obama didn't remark upon it. At least it wasn't DVDs.
13. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega went on a 50-minute anti-American rant, calling Obama "president of an empire." Obama didn't leave the room. "I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought," he said.
14. Executives at AIG get $165 million in bonuses, despite receiving an $173 billion taxpayer bailout.
15. "For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back." -- Associated Press, 3/18
16. "After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway." -- New York Post, 2/15
17. MEGHAN CLYNE ON: "I WON" AND THE DEATH OF BIPARTISANSHIP
"Obama soared to victory on the hopeful promise of a new era of bipartisanship. During his inaugural address he even promised an 'end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.'
"Too bad it took all of three days for the promise to ring hollow.
"Start with Obama's big meeting with top congressional leaders on his signature legislation -- the stimulus -- on the Friday after his inauguration. Listening to Republican concerns about overspending was a nice gesture -- until he shut down any hopes of real dialogue by crassly telling Republican leaders: 'I won.' Even the White House's leaking of the comment was a slap at the Republican leadership, who'd expected Obama to adhere to the custom of keeping private meetings with congressional leadership, well, private.
"It's only gone downhill from there. The stimulus included zero Republican recommendations, and failed to get a single House Republican vote.
"It's not just the tactic of using Republicans for bipartisan photo-ops, and then cutting them loose before partisan decisions, that irks Obama's opponents. The new president wasted no time rushing forward with policies and legislation guaranteed to drive Republicans nuts. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- a partisan hot-button that drew all of eight Republican supporters in the entire Congress. Then there was the swift reversal of Bush policies on abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research -- issues dear to the Republican base.
"And when Obama and the Democrats in Congress took up SCHIP -- the children's health-insurance bill that Republicans say vastly expands government's role in health care -- they had an easy chance for real bipartisanship. After all, the bill had been hashed out in the previous Congress, and a bipartisan accord was reached before President Bush responded with a veto. Did the Obama team push for the compromise version in the 111th Congress? Nope. They went back to the drawing board, ramming through the Democrats' dream version.
"Of course, the lack of bipartisanship isn't limited to Capitol Hill. Obama has taken gratuitous swipes at the Republicans who recently decamped Washington, blaming President Bush for everything from the economy and the war to the lack of sufficient puppies and rainbows. And who could forget the Rush Limbaugh flap -- in which Obama's top advisers, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated a public relations campaign meant to undermine the Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, by framing talk-radio personality Limbaugh as the real head of the Republican Party.
"For now, Obama's back-pedal on the bipartisanship promise just makes him look insincere. But the real consequences of the mistake will be felt soon enough. As Presidents Bush and Clinton could tell him, congressional majorities do change -- and at some point, Obama will need Republicans on his side. He'd be smart to spend his second 100 days making up for the serious snubs of his first."
-- Meghan Clyne is a DC-based writer.
18. "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today." -- Department of Homeland Security intelligence report
19. Nixes a "buy American" provision in the stimulus bill.
20. "Yes, Canada is not Mexico, it doesn't have a drug war going on. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there." -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The 9/11 hijackers did not come across the Canada border
21. "The Obama administration is signaling to Congress that the president could support taxing some employee health benefits, as several influential lawmakers and many economists favor, to help pay for overhauling the health care system. The proposal is politically problematic for President Obama, however, since it is similar to one he denounced in the presidential campaign as 'the largest middle-class tax increase in history.' " -- New York Times, 3/14
22. JOE SCARBOROUGH ON: PROMOTING FEAR
"During his historic inaugural speech, Barack Obama promised to usher in a transformational age where hope would replace fear, unity would overtake partisanship, and change would sweep aside the status quo. But early in President Obama's first 100 days it is obvious that the only thing that is changing is the Candidate of Change, himself.
"The same politician who proclaimed during his inauguration that 'on this day we have chosen hope over fear' soon warned Americans that the US economy would be forever destroyed if the stimulus bill was voted down.
"Why was it that same man who promised to put Americans' interests ahead of his own political ambitions chose instead to use the suffering of citizens to advance his agenda?
"Maybe he was following the guidance of Rahm Emanuel, who famously said, 'You never want to waste a good crisis.'
"They didn't.
"The White House's warnings were so over-the-top that Bill Clinton felt compelled to warn the new president against making such grim pronouncements. Americans would quickly warn that the White House would not channel FDR's eternal optimism but rather embrace the gloomy worldview of Edgar Allen Poe.
"The Candidate of Hope also quickly adopted the Nixonian worldview that Americans voted their fears rather than their hopes. Over Mr. Obama's first 100 days, that cynical calculation paid off politically for a White House that seemed most interested in appeasing the most liberal members of his Democratic Party.
"I expected more from Barack Obama. For the sake of my country, I hope I get it from the new president over the next 100 days."
-- Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and author of "The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise" (Crown Forum), due out June 9.
23. Sanjay Gupta was in discussions to become Surgeon General, but the TV personality withdrew after he was criticized for his flimsy political record.
24. Rasmussen finds 58% of Americans believe the Obama administration's release of CIA memos endangers the national security of the United States.
25. Only 28% think the Obama administration should do any further investigating of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects.
26. "Obama thanked CIA employees for their work and said they're invaluable to national security. He explained his decision to release the memos, then told everyone not to feel bad because he was now acknowledging potential mistakes. Theirs, not his. 'That's how we learn,' Obama said, as though soothing a room full of fourth-graders." -- The Oklahoman, 4/23
27. By releasing the torture memos, Obama opened American citizens up to international tribunals. A UN lawyer said the US is obliged to prosecute lawyers who drafted the memos or else violate the Geneva Conventions.
28. In their first meeting, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave Obama a carved ornamental penholder from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet. Obama gave him 25 DVDs that don't work in Europe.
29. TIM CARNEY ON: PICKING BILL RICHARDSON AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
"Richardson's value in Obama's Cabinet had everything to do with appearances. First, he was the Hispanic pick. Second, because Richardson had run against Obama for President, tapping him for the Cabinet helped the media write the Obama-Lincoln comparisons by burnishing the 'Team of Rivals' image.
"But Richardson withdrew before Obama was even inaugurated when news came out about a criminal investigation involving David Rubin, president of a firm named Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin & Co. (although there was no Chambers or Dunhill), who had donated at least $110,000 to Richardson's campaign committees and had also profited from $1.5 million in contracts from the state government.
"This was an early warning sign about Obama's vetting process (various tax problems and the Daschle problem would reveal this as a theme), but picking Richardson to run Commerce also highlighted that Obama and Richardson's promise of 'public-private partnerships' -- such as Detroit bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, and green energy--was an open door for corruption and was at odds with Obama's promise to diminish the influence of lobbyists.
"The Richardson mistake was one of Obama's first, and it was emblematic. Richardson embodied Obama's attention to self-image and the problems inherent in his vision of an intimate business-government connection."
-- Tim Carney is a Washington Examiner columnist
30. Timothy Geithner nomination as Secretary of Treasury was almost torpedoed when it was discovered he had failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. He also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. He was confirmed anyway.
31. . . . Not so lucky, Annette Nazareth, who was nominated for Deputy Treasury Secretary. She withdrew her name for undisclosed "personal reasons" after a monthlong probe into her taxes . . .
32. . . . or Caroline Atkinson, who withdrew as nominee for Undersecretary of International Affairs in Treasury Department, with a source blaming the long vetting process. Geithner still has a skeleton crew at Treasury, with no one qualified -- or willing -- to take jobs there.
33. "Barack Obama has been embroiled in a cronyism row after reports that he intends to make Louis Susman, one of his biggest fundraisers, the new US ambassador in London. The selection of Mr. Susman, a lawyer and banker from the president's hometown of Chicago, rather than an experienced diplomat, raises new questions about Mr Obama's commitment to the special relationship with Britain." -- Telegraph, 2/22
34. Obama's doom-and-gloom comments and budget bill push the Dow below 7,000, from which it's only recently recovered.
35. "You're sitting here. And you're -- you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, 'I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money--' How do you deal with -- I mean: Explain. Are you punch-drunk?" -- Steve Kroft, "60 Minutes," 3/22
36. "We have begun to modernize 75% of all federal building space, which has the potential to reduce long-term energy costs by billions of dollars on behalf of taxpayers. We are providing grants to states to help weatherize hundreds of thousands of homes, which will save the families that benefit about $350 each year. That's like a $350 tax cut." -- Obama, describing something that doesn't cut taxes.
37. "The Obama administration has directed defense officials to sign a pledge stating they will not share 2010 budget data with individuals outside the federal government." -- Defense News, 2/19
38. Backtracking on a campaign promise he made to black farmers, Obama significantly lowered the amount of money they could claim in a discrimination settlement against the Agricultural Department. "I can't figure out for the life of me why the president wouldn't want to implement a bill that he fought for as a US senator," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association.
39. "I've been practicing bowling. I bowled a 129. It was like the Special Olympics or something." -- Obama on "The Tonight Show"
40. Obama lifts travel and remittance restrictions on Cuba.
41. Obama considers dropping the embargo on Cuba.
42. After warming signs from Raul Castro, Fidel Castro says Obama "misinterpreted" his brother's words, and that Cuba would not be willing to negotiate about human rights.
43. Obama is considering dropping a key demand to Iran, allowing it to keep nuclear facilities open during negotiations.
44. In a letter to Dmitri Medvedev, Obama offered to drop plans for a missile shield in Europe in exchange for Russia's help in resolving the nuclear weapons issue in Iran.
45. Medvedev said he would not "haggle" on Iran and the missile shield.
46. Obama asked Congress for an extra $83.4 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a special funding measure of the kind he opposed while in the senate. As a candidate, Obama promised to cut the cost of military operations.
47. After trying to woo Europe as the "anti-Bush," Obama made an impassioned plea for more troops in Afghanistan. "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," he said. "This is a joint problem it requires a joint effort." Only the UK offered substantial help, most others refused.
48. "While the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama's campaign in 2008." -- Washington Post, 3/27
49. Obama bows to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a G-20 meeting in London.
50. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah." -- An Obama aide
51. DANA PERINO ON: REMAINING IN CAMPAIGN MODE
"Has it really only been 100 days? In many ways it feels like a lot longer.
"That's partly because the new administration remains in campaign mode most of the time. Now that's not in itself a bad thing if you can do that and accomplish your agenda. But what's happened is that a popular new president has laid out a very bold agenda in the midst of an economic crisis, and I don't think Congress is going to get a lot of work done on those big ticket items this year. They'll eke out a couple of small wins on issues like healthcare and maybe energy, but the Democrats will hail them as big victories. The Republicans have been working like a cohesive and loyal opposition party, and they need to continue to outline positive new ideas like the recent one to help grow American's savings.
"The early stumbles on the administration's high profile nominations -- Daschle and Richardson for just to examples -- acted like weights around their ankles. In addition, the partisan shots from the White House were unbecoming and I don't think we'll see more of that. Our allies and our enemies -- heck, even we ourselves -- are trying to understand the new foreign policy direction, which in some ways seems to be change just for the sake of change. The next moves by the leaders of other countries -- like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela -- probably will prove that really not much will change just because America has a new president.
"In many ways, it's the next 100 days that will tell us more about our new president and what he'll be able to accomplish than we can forecast based on the first 100 days."
-- Dana Perino was White House press secretary in the Bush Administration
52. "We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary." -- Obama, describing the stimulus bill
53. Three candidates for ambassador to the Vatican -- including Caroline Kennedy -- were turned down by the Holy See because they supported abortion, according to reports.
54. After saying he wouldn't have lobbyists in his administration, Obama made 17 exceptions in the first two weeks in office.
55. . . . including Tom Daschle, who worked as a top lobbyist yet was going to be appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services -- until his failure to pay income taxes derailed his nomination.
56. For an April 14 speech at Georgetown, the administration asked the university to cover up all signs and symbols -- including the letters "IHS" in gold, a symbol for Jesus.
57. Samantha Power, who resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster," was hired to a position on the National Security Council.
58. "Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park -- despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions." -- Chicago Sun-Times, 2/20
59. Firing Rick Wagoner as president of GM.
60. Threatening to fire Vikram Pandit as CEO of Citigroup.
61. Threatening to fire anyone the administration doesn't like from any company.
62. Not adopting a dog from a shelter.
63. "The GAO study asserts that officials from most of the states surveyed 'expressed concerns regarding the lack of Recovery Act funding provided for accountability and oversight. Due to fiscal constraints, many states reported significant declines in the number of oversight staff -- limiting their ability to ensure proper implementation and management of Recovery Act funds.' " -- ABC News, 4/23
64. "The National Newspaper Publishers Association named Obama 'Newsmaker of the Year.' The president is to receive the award from the federation of black community newspapers in a White House ceremony this afternoon. The Obama White House has closed the press award ceremony to the press." -- Los Angeles Times, 3/20
65. "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." -- Attorney General Eric Holder
66. "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances." -- Obama, on consulting with only "living" presidents
67. Obama quietly announced that he would not press for new labor and environmental regulations in the North American Free Trade Agreement, going back on a campaign promise.
68. NICOLE GELINAS ON: MISSPENT STIMULUS
"One of Obama's most poignant missed opportunities was in not using the historic $787 million stimulus package to reorder state and local government's spending priorities. As states and cities continue to spend ceaselessly and without results on education and healthcare, they're crowding out investments in the physical infrastructure that the private sector needs to rebuild the economy.
"In the stimulus, of the more than $200 billion that went directly to states and cities, nearly 70% went to education and healthcare spending. Only 24% went to infrastructure spending.
"But the states and cities in the most trouble already spend way too much on education and healthcare, pushing taxes up and sending private industry away. They don't spend nearly enough on infrastructure, which attracts the private sector and builds the real economy.
"As David Walker, former comptroller general of the US, said at the Regional Plan Association's annual meeting a week ago, nationwide, we are the 'highest in the world' on education. We are 'the highest in the world' on healthcare. 'Nobody comes even close.' On infrastructure, by contrast, we are 'below average' in both critical new investments and in much-needed maintenance spending.
"And, as Democratic governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell said at the same conference, when President Dwight Eisenhower left office, infrastructure spending was about 12.5% of non-military domestic spending. Today, it's about 2.5%.
"This shortfall is obvious to anyone who's ridden on an "express train" to the outer boroughs or driven on the Cross Bronx Expressway recently. But in New York, as elsewhere, the stimulus money has just allowed the state to ramp up spending on its wasteful, inhumane Medicaid program and its nosebleed public-school spending.
"Meanwhile, the subways are about to crumble into oblivion -- taking the economy with them. The same is true of decaying infrastructure in California and in aging states across the nation.
"The stimulus was a once-in-a-generation chance to change this. Instead, it made the situation worse."
-- Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to City Journal
69. "The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to overrule Michigan v. Jackson, the 1986 Supreme Court decision that held that if police may not interrogate a defendant after the right to counsel has attached, if the defendant has a lawyer or has requested a lawyer. This isn't the first time the Justice Department, under President Obama, has sought to limit defendants' rights." -- TalkLeft blog
70. "By any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster." -- Obama
71. "Ahh, see. I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here." -- Brushing off questions from the White House press corps
72. On Earth Day, Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One to get to Iowa, burning more than 9,000 gallons of fuel.
73. "President Obama's plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs for the treatment of troops injured in service has infuriated veterans groups who say the government is morally obligated to pay for service-related medical care." -- Fox News, 3/17
74. "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it." -- Obama during his first State Of The Union address. A German invented the automobile
75. RALPH PETERS ON: FUMBLING IN AFGHANISTAN, FAKING IT IN PAKISTAN
"We're squandering blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Instead of concentrating fiercely on the vital task of destroying al Qaeda and its friends, the Obama administration's determined to erect a modern nation where no nation exists. Afghanistan isn't a country. It's a dysfunctional reservation inhabited by tribes that hate each other. There's no 'Afghan' identity. And even if our blind-to-reality efforts succeeded perfectly, the result would be meaningless.
"Except as a target range where we can gun down terrorists, Afghanistan doesn't matter. Next door, Pakistan matters immensely. But we don't know what to do about it. With 170 million anti-American Muslims descending into chaos as Pashtuns, Baluchis, Punjabis, Sindhis and others claw each other over the country's shabby remains, Pakistan's corrupt president shrugs, its military cowers, its loathsome intelligence services collude with Islamist extremists, and the safety of its nuclear weapons grows doubtful.
"Pakistan may be this generation's chamber of horrors.
"The Obama administration's response? Drill more wells in the Afghan countryside. Dramatically reinforce our troops in Afghanistan, sticking them with an impossible mission of modernizing a pre-medieval landscape while exposing them at the end of an insecure 1,500-mile supply line through, of all places, Pakistan.
"As for Pakistan itself, the Obama administration wants to send billions of dollars to a thieving government that makes Nigeria's look like a Quaker meeting and to hand Pakistan's military more arms -- weapons that might soon be used against us.
"Pakistan was a bad idea when it was created in 1947. It's a worse one now. Afghanistan wasn't even an idea, just an accident of where other borders ended. We can't 'save' either one -- because neither wants to be saved on our terms.
"Obama said the right things -- that Afghanistan isn't Iraq and that our goal should be the destruction of al Qaeda. But his policies just regurgitate our Iraq strategy (one he opposed) in a profoundly different context, while ambitious generals echo Vietnam-era calls for more forces.
"Our troops will do whatever we ask, to the best of their magnificent abilities. But we should ask them to do things that make sense. We need creative strategic thought, but we're succumbing to sheer inertia. And the president's supporters who howled that we should abandon Iraq to concentrate on their candidate's 'good war' don't seem to be volunteering to do any fighting. Menwhle, our president's trpped himself inside his own campaign promiseing, Vietnam!"
-- Ralph Peters is the author of "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a BeW"
77. "President Obama failed to consult Congress, as promised, before carving out exceptions to the omnibus spending bill he signed into law -- breaking his own signing-statement rules two days after issuing them -- and raised questions among lawmakers and committees who say the president's objections are unclear at best and a power grab at worst." -- Washington Times, 3/24
78. Adolfo Carrion was confirmed as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, but is serving under a cloud after allegations that he accepted thousands of dollars in cash from developers whose projects he approved.
79. KYLE SMITH ON: GOING AFTER RUSH LIMBAUGH
"Every so often an unfocused athlete forgets about the field of play and climbs into the stands. Ty Cobb did it. Ron Artest did it. Maybe no one did it with more sick flir than the greasy, furious Hanson Brothers who, in 'Slap Shot,' climbed into the stands to give a beatdown to a fan.
"In March, Barack Obama sent his own personal Hanson Brothers, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and spokesman Robert Gibbs, out to attack a non-politician -- Rush Limbaugh -- who was sitting innocently in the stands jeering the action. Limbaugh didn't even throw a cup of beer.
"Senior White House staffers, who have already fallen into the classic trap of paying more attention to polls than fixing the country's problems, had become obsessed with surveys showing that Limbaugh was an unpopular figure with swing voters. Pretty soon Emanuel and Gibbs developed Limbaugh Tourette's. To paraphrase Joe Biden's witty putdown of Rudy Giuliani, for a few days every sentence they uttered contained three things: a subject, a verb and Rush Limbaugh.
"El Rushbo, chuckling over his cigar as his ratings skyrocketed, could not have been more pleased if a picture had emerged of Obama wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and burning the American flag on Harvard Square. Even that portion of the public that doesn't like Rush squirmed at the embarrassing spectacle of the president's men going all Mean Girls on an entertainer. George W. Bush's spokesmen maintained a dignified silence about Michael Moore. Picture them fanning out over the Sunday talk shows to denounce, and drive up the box-office receipts of, 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Wouldn't you have loved that, Michael?"
-- Kyle Smith is a Post columnist
80. Forced banks that didn't want TARP money to take it, then added on stipulations about pay and government control after the fact. Secretly forced Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, then allowed the bank to be criticized for overpaying.
81. "More than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States," Obama said in Mexico, yet factcheck.org says, "The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. We can find no hard data on the total number of guns actually 'recovered in Mexico,' but US and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns that it submits for tracing. Therefore, the percentage of guns 'recovered' and traced to US sources necessarily is less than 90%."
82. Obama: "[Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc.], said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off." Jim Owens: "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again."
83. "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." -- Obama in Strasbourg, France
84. Joe Biden: "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong."
85. Joe Biden: "You all worked for change. You wanted to see change. Well, that wasn't a hard thing to try to communicate to the American people. Obviously, obviously, we needed a change almost no matter who was running."
86. Joe Biden: "You know, I'm embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number? I should have it in front of me and I don't. I'm actually embarrassed."
87. "There are more than 6.5 million trucks in the United States. The program Congress terminated allowed 97 Mexican trucks to roam among them. Ninety-seven! Shutting them out not only undermines NAFTA. It caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade coming out of 40 states." -- Charles Krauthammer, 3/20
88. DAVID M. DRUCKER ON: BOWING TO CONGRESS
"Although the president possesses enormous political capital -- both because of high approval ratings and because his administration is still in its infancy -- he has generally declined to exercise it with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, including when it comes to crafting legislation key to moving his agenda forward.
"Rather he has allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) to craft legislation as they see fit -- even though the very bills in question were proposed by the president and involve key planks in his agenda. Among them were Obama's signature $787 billion economic stimulus bill, his first major piece of legislation that was signed into law in February; and now health care reform, currently being negotiated on Capitol Hill with minimal input from the White House.
"This soft-pedal style of leadership runs the risk of forcing Obama to embrace legislation constructed for narrow partisan interests rather than in a manner capable of garnering broad bipartisan support. Over time, the public might come to see Obama's deference to Pelosi and Reid as a weakness of leadership not befitting a president in tough times."
-- David M. Drucker is a staff writer for Roll Call
89. "It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me." -- Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who became the second failed Commerce Secretary nominee
90. In the third sentence of his first speech as president, Obama said, "44 Americans have now taken the presidential oath." The correct number is 43, as Grover Cleveland served twice.
91. The $49 million inauguration -- triple what taxpayers spent at Bush's first inauguration.
92. Giving the Queen of England an iPod full of his own speeches.
93. Three prime-time briefings in his first 100 days, eating into television revenues and this Wednesday pre-empting "American Idol."
94. "The United States government has no interest in running GM. Your [GM] warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been, because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty." -- Obama
95. GM is given $15.4 billion in loans from the government.
96. The Obama Administration is trying to scuttle a lawsuit filed in federal court against Iran by former US embassy hostages. The lawsuit alleges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers who interrogated the captives.
97. GLENN BECK ON: BAD ECONOMIC PREDICTIONS
"Ten days before his inauguration, the President's chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Rohmer, released a report describing what to expect economically during the first 100 days and beyond. It presented two starkly different scenarios: one good (if the stimulus were to be passed), and one terrifyingly bad (if we did nothing). Amazingly, the report estimated that if the stimulus package were to pass, the unemployment rate would not go above 8% at any time until at least 2014.
"It's already at 8.5%.
"In fact, while there is an acknowledged level of uncertainty, the projections estimated that the unemployment rate would be lower today if we had done nothing at all. This suggests one of two things: either the administration misjudged the seriousness of our economic problems, or the stimulus plan is actually making things worse. I suspect it's a little of both.
"Remember, when the President's budget was released, he was roundly criticized for his never ending deficits, even under his own optimistic scenarios for growth. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected deficits that were even uglier. But, if the President and his economic planners were this far off, this soon, how much worse does the future look now?
"The election was supposed to bring 'change,' but I was hoping for more than the letter after the President's name, the positivity of the media coverage, and the hypoallergenic qualities of the White House puppy. President Obama didn't get us into this situation, but so far he's doubling down on the same spending philosophy that did. Common sense tells us that new debt is not the cure for old debt. No matter what the slogans say, that won't change in 100 days or 100 years."
-- Glenn Beck is the host of the "Glenn Beck" show, weekdays at 5 p.m. on Fox News.
98. "Education Secretary Arne Duncan has decided not to admit any new students to the D.C. voucher program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools ... For all the talk about putting children first, it's clear that the special interests that have long opposed vouchers are getting their way." -- Washington Post, 4/11
99. Obama enrolled his daughters in a DC private school.
100. "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." -- Obama to Rep. Peter DeFazio, after the Democratic congressman voted against the stimulus bill.
Due to an editing error, a portion of this piece originally was improperly credited to Sarah Palin, when it should have been attributed to Meghan Clyne.
Misconceptions About the Interrogation Memos: Their goal was to allow the CIA and military to stay within the parameters of a murky area of the law.
By WILLIAM M. MCSWAIN
President Barack Obama has reinvigorated the critics of George W. Bush's antiterror policies by opening the door to prosecuting or sanctioning those who crafted interrogation policy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. These critics -- including the president -- are laboring under numerous misconceptions. Many of them have no experience with or understanding of military or CIA interrogation, the purpose of which is to gain actionable intelligence to safeguard our country. The recently released memos by lawyers in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel were written to assist interrogators in that critical mission. The memos cannot be fairly evaluated without that mission in mind.
Military and CIA interrogators are trained to use creative means of deception, and to play on detainee emotions and fears. This can be a nasty business. People unfamiliar with it, therefore, might even view a perfectly legitimate interrogation of a prisoner of war that is in full compliance with the Geneva Conventions as abhorrent by its very nature.
But military interrogation is not akin to a friendly chat across a conference table -- nor is it designed to gather evidence in a criminal trial, as an FBI interview might be. There is a fundamental distinction between law enforcement and military interrogations that we ignore at our peril.
Second-guessers can also fail to appreciate the increased importance of interrogation (and human intelligence in general) in the post 9/11 world. We face an enemy that wears no uniform, blends in with civilian populations, and operates in the shadows. This has made eliciting information from captured terrorists vital to the effort of finding other terrorists. As interrogation has become more important, drawing out useful information has become more difficult -- because hardened terrorists are often trained to resist traditional U.S. interrogation methods.
Fortunately, aggressive interrogation techniques like those outlined in the memos to the CIA are effective. As the memos explain, high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, and Abu Zubaydah, one of Osama bin Laden's key lieutenants, provided no actionable intelligence when facing traditional U.S. methods. It is doubtful that any high-level al Qaeda operative would ever provide useful intelligence in response to traditional methods.
Yet KSM and Zubaydah provided critical information after being waterboarded -- information that, among other things, helped to prevent a "Second Wave" attack in Los Angeles, according to the memos. Similarly, the 2005 report by Vice Adm. Albert Church on Defense Department interrogation policies, the "Church Report" -- of which I served as the executive editor -- documented the success of aggressive techniques against high-value detainees like Mohamed al Kahtani, 9/11's "20th hijacker."
The aggressive techniques in the CIA memos are also undeniably safe, having been adopted from Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training used with our own troops.
I have personally been waterboarded, put into stress positions, sleep deprived, slapped in the face. While none of this was enjoyable, I am none the worse for wear.
While such techniques are used in U.S. military training, some apparently consider them too brutal, too abusive, too inhumane -- in short, too much like "torture" -- to be used on fanatics like KSM who are bent on the mass murder of innocent American civilians. And if legal advisers such as Steven G. Bradbury, Jay S. Bybee and John Yoo are to be prosecuted for having sanctioned their use under careful controls, who's next? Every commander who ever implemented a SERE course?
Many critics also play the Abu Ghraib "trump card": The abuses of prisoners at that facility in Iraq allegedly "prove" the Bush administration's supposed policy of abuse, first codified in its legal memos. This ignores all relevant evidence.
As the Church Report concluded, after a thorough review of all Defense Department interrogation policies, the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bore no resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater. The 2004 Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations -- whose four members included two former secretaries of defense under President Jimmy Carter -- also stated that "no approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities."
Similarly, the critics like to default to Guantanamo as a symbol of the kind of abuse that Mr. Bush's antiterror policies allowed. Yet, at the time of the Church Report, there had been more than 24,000 interrogation sessions at Guantanamo and only three cases of substantiated interrogation-related abuse. All of them consisted of minor assaults in which military interrogators had exceeded the bounds of approved interrogation policy. Notably, the Church Report found that detainees at Guantanamo were more likely to have been injured playing recreational sports than in confrontations with interrogators or guards.
Mr. Bush's advisers were public servants with the memory of 9/11 still fresh in their minds, doing their best to give legitimate legal advice in a murky, largely undefined area of the law. Is this the stuff of which federal prosecutions, or even sanctions, are made?
As a former federal prosecutor, I know a good case from a bad one. I know a case based on solid evidence and even-handed application of the law versus one based on scoring political points. Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, have professed their desire to take politics out of the Justice Department, to restore integrity to a department that they believe had gone astray under Mr. Bush. Their recent actions, however, speak otherwise.
The bottom line is that any attempt to prosecute or sanction lawyers such as Messrs. Bradbury, Bybee or Yoo would be a fool's errand. And whatever our new president and his attorney general are, they aren't fools. Or at least I don't think they are. For the good of the country, I hope they don't prove me wrong.
Mr. McSwain, a former scout/sniper platoon commander in the Marines and assistant U.S. attorney, was executive editor of the 2005 Review of Department of Defense Detention Operations and Detainee Interrogation Techniques (The Church Report). He is an attorney in private practice in Philadelphia.
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Long Road Back: A Texas bicycle ride helps wounded veterans rehabilitate and reconnect.
San Antonio, Texas
In late July 2008, as Chad Fleming sat on a stool during a crowded happy hour at Bobby Van's steakhouse in downtown Washington, D.C., he felt an intense itch on his left foot and did what just about anyone would do in a similar situation. He scratched.
Or he tried to.
Fleming, a decorated Special Forces soldier, doesn't have a left foot. It had been removed, along with the rest of his leg just below the knee, ten days earlier. So when he reached to scratch it, he missed and "took a nosedive off the barstool." Fleming was embarrassed, and the glares from the other patrons told him that they thought he was just drunk. Then they noticed his crutches and his missing limb.
"It was great," he says, in his distinctive Alabama accent. "We didn't pay for anything. The next day my buddies picked another restaurant and told me I had to repeat the performance."
Fleming still gets the sensation that he has feeling in his missing lower leg--"phantom pains," they're called. To him, they're very real. They must be if Fleming is willing to complain about them, even momentarily, because he doesn't complain much about anything. "It's debilitating. Sometimes you just have to sit down and wait 'til they're gone. You're just sitting and looking at nothing and wondering why it hurts." Doctors and physical therapists tell him that such sensations are normal, nothing more than attempts by the nerves that remain in his stump to send pulses to the ones that are no longer there.
The medics don't actually call it a "stump" anymore, and Fleming was told he shouldn't either. A therapist told him to call it his "residual limb," shortly before handing him a tight wrap to control swelling in his leg when he sleeps. The packaging identified the pantyhose-like item as a "stump shrinker."
"It's my damn leg," he says, laughing. "I'll call it what I want."
So he does. It's Jethro.
"Now, I go in and they say how is your residual limb. I tell them Jethro's doing great."
I met Fleming (and Jethro) in late March at the Center for the Intrepid, a state-of-the-art facility for wounded warriors at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. We were there to participate in the Texas Challenge, a six-day, 350-mile bike ride from San Antonio to suburban Dallas, sponsored by Ride 2 Recovery, a nonprofit group that uses cycling to help wounded warriors with their rehabilitation.
Fleming had been planning to make the journey on a hand-cycle, a vehicle that looks like the product of a one-night stand between a recumbent bike--the kind favored by fat, bearded men who like to tinker with things that come in kits--and the Green Machine big wheel that was popular in the 1970s. A hand-cycle has three wheels--two in back and one in front--and it is propelled forward when the cyclist repeatedly moves "pedals" in front of his chest in a circular motion, much as a traditional bicyclist does with his legs.
But three days before the ride was to begin, Fleming met John Wordin, the accomplished former professional cyclist who runs the group that organizes Ride 2 Recovery (R2R). Wordin looked at Fleming, who wears a size 50 jacket and has a 33-inch waist, and asked why he wasn't going to ride a traditional bike. Fleming told Wordin that he didn't have one, and Wordin promised to get him one.
Wordin was having lunch with Dallas Cowboys legend Roger Staubach later that day and made his pitch. "I kind of put him on the spot," Wordin concedes. Staubach, who had met Fleming briefly, volunteered to buy him a bike. So Wordin went immediately to a local bike shop and bought Fleming a $1,500 all-carbon Scattante bike. Staubach autographed it, and Wordin presented it to Fleming moments before the ride began.
Fleming was stunned: "They said to me: 'Here is a bike. Now ride it to Dallas.' "
The first day of riding was meant to be easy--just 51 miles--from San Antonio to the town of San Marcos. In matching red-white-and-blue R2R jerseys, we set out from the Center for the Intrepid (CFI), home to 22 of the participants. As they would each of the following five days, the seven hand-cyclists--three with severe spinal cord injuries, two double-leg amputees, and two single-leg amputees--led the way.
Forty-nine of us on upright road bicycles--they were called ten-speeds when I was younger--followed directly behind at a pace that was leisurely for us, fast for hand-cyclists. Our group included two-dozen soldiers with injuries sustained in the war on terror, some physical therapists and doctors, two Vietnam war amputees, an 11-time U.S. national cycling champion (Wayne Stetina), the co-star of NBC's Chuck (Adam Baldwin), and a retired Texas businessman (and Vietnam vet) who paid for the privilege. The USO, which buys bikes for wounded warriors, sent along a canteen truck and two cheerful staffers. Other support staff, including two highly capable mechanics, followed in vans.
After several miles, the pack began to splinter--with small groups and individuals forming a line that stretched several miles along the winding country roads north of San Antonio. Although most of us were filled with the energy that comes with the first day of a long-awaited event, no one was in much of a hurry.
The get-to-know-you conversations in a group like this are different than in others. I was naturally curious about the injuries of these soldiers and Marines, but too nervous to ask about them. But these are questions that wounded warriors are not afraid to ask one another, so time after time as we rode in those first few hours I listened in on detailed discussions that started with some version of the most obvious question to ask.
What happened?
That question was at the front of my mind as I approached Duane Wagner on a back road that twisted between the cattle ranches of south central Texas. Wagner, one of the Vietnam vets, is missing both legs below the knees. His prosthetic legs are black cylinders, decorated with American flags. They are perhaps half the diameter of the shaved, muscular thighs that rest on them, and no one else on the ride wore anything that resembles them at all.
Wordin had introduced Wagner at the briefing we'd had that morning before we left San Antonio. The ovation he'd gotten from the group suggested that he was respected, even revered by those on the ride.
I was slightly out of breath when I pulled even with him. Wagner was pedaling methodically, his legs pumping without much effort. We pedaled together for a bit, and I tried to make polite conversation. Beautiful day. Ride much? Texas is pretty. I thought I'd throw him some lingo to demonstrate that I was down with wounded warrior jargon. That Bam-cee sure is an impressive facility, I said, referring to the Brooke Army Medical Center.
The conversation was one-sided. Wagner told me that he'd done a previous ride in California but otherwise kept his answers short. He wasn't being impolite, just not particularly friendly.
After several periods of silence, Wagner asked me what I was doing on the ride. "I'm just hoping to finish," I said in the annoying, sing-songy tone I unconsciously reserve for people with disabilities.
For the first time, Wagner looked up from the road ahead and turned his head to me.
"You f--ing pussy," he said, more in disappointment than anger.
I looked in vain for a smile.
"Hoping?" he said, his voice full of disdain.
I tried to explain.
I haven't been on a road bike in more than 25 years. I've had six surgeries on my knees. I've been riding my mountain bike, but the weather in D.C. hasn't allowed me to be out as much as I'd like. And I've had some real stiffness in my back.
I recognized that I sounded like the feline in his accusation, but for reasons unclear to me, I kept going.
I've been working a lot lately and although I get to the gym regularly, I've found that it's really hard to get in good shape on an elliptical.
Wagner waited until I was done.
"I'm 62 years old and a double-amputee who broke his back six months ago," he said. "And I'm going to finish. If you don't finish, I'm going to find your local newspaper and tell them to write a story about what a pussy you are."
"I'm writing about the ride for my magazine, so it'll be even worse. If I don't finish, I'll have to write that story myself."
That comment elicited a smile, finally, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. "Oh s--, you're the journalist?"
I had been introduced to the group before we left. But Wagner hadn't made the connection--perhaps because I was now stuffed into tight biking lycra like a sausage, a sight that would make even the toughest warrior avert his eyes.
The conversation began to flow, and we chatted easily for several minutes. Then, without warning, he turned serious.
"If you write about me can you please mention my wife, Pia?" I wondered if she was sick.
"Her real name is Cheryl," he said, "but she's a real pain-in-the-ass. I call her Pia."
I got the joke. "All caps then?"
"Yeah, P-I-A. Pia."
As Wagner tried to convince me that real cyclists use salted butter--not the ever-popular Chamois Butt'r--to lube their man parts, Adam Baldwin joined us. At 6'4'' and 240 pounds, Baldwin could easily be mistaken for an NFL linebacker. He also looks much younger than his 47 years. The riders in this group know him chiefly as Animal Mother, the psychotic and nihilistic Marine in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam war film, Full Metal Jacket. Baldwin, a Chicago native, has an easygoing manner and seems indifferent to his celebrity.
Our little group does not stay together long. Wagner takes off when we come to the beginning of a long, steep hill on the four-lane highway that we've been riding on for several miles. He is out of sight by the time Baldwin and I are halfway up the hill and when we crest the top, he has disappeared around a corner about a quarter-mile down the road.
At a brief rest stop in Converse, at a Chevron station across the street from a high school football stadium that is bigger than any high school stadium I've ever seen, a driver for Oak Valley Dairy stops to ask about the ride. "Alex" is stitched onto his uniform. He tells me that his brother did two tours in Iraq and that his best friend--"my boy," he calls him--was killed in Nasiriya on March 23, 2003, just four days into the war, when a group of Iraqis pretended to surrender and then opened fire on their would-be American captors. Before we leave the gas station, Alex waves me over to his delivery truck. "Do you guys need any water?" he asks. My sense is that we've got enough water to flood a desert, but he wanted to help and I wanted to let him. So I grabbed four gallons of spring water and put them into one of the support vans.
Tuesday's ride took us to Austin. As we arrived, John Wordin had the first group wait to allow the slower riders and the hand-cyclists to catch up. We then rode as one group to the O. Henry Middle School, where hundreds of students, many of them waving American flags, lined the streets and applauded wildly for the wounded warriors. Many had handmade signs. "Thank You!" "You Are Heroes." "Troops Are Tough."
After dinner, nearly everyone gathered in the parking lot of the Extended Stay Deluxe in north Austin. The photographers, who captured images from the ride and processed them in an RV they termed the "ScanVan," had put together a slide show of the day's activities. Most of the riders had a beer in hand to watch.
I joined a conversation between Allan Annaert and Ryan Clark, two soldiers who were in rehabilitation at the CFI. Clark is chubby and his ruddy cheeks are almost always stretched into a wide smile. His clean-shaven face and wire-rimmed glasses give him the look of a young professor. He lost his left leg in Iraq.
Annaert, a St. Louis native and a diehard Cardinals fan, married a local girl he met while stationed in Germany. He wears a tight stocking on his right leg, which was seriously damaged by shrapnel. He has also had surgeries to improve his hearing, which was damaged during the blast that injured his leg.
Clark was trying to convince a skeptical Annaert to try clipless pedals on his bike when Duane Wagner walked up. He was wearing shorts and a royal blue Hard Rock Café T-shirt from Hanoi. Although his carbon fiber prosthetic legs are just over a year old, they show considerable wear and tear. The right one, in particular, looks like it has been dragged behind a car for hundreds of miles--with large gashes and chunks missing.
Annaert told Wagner that he liked the shirt, but for several minutes the conversation remained focused on the virtues of toe clips. When there was a pause, Wagner used it to change the subject.
"I got this shirt when I went back to Vietnam in 1998," he said, describing a 16-day bike ride he took across the country with other veterans of that war. Clark commented, somewhat idly, that he'd be interested in going back to Iraq in 30 or 40 years to visit Baghdad or see the ruins at Babylon. Annaert said that he, too, would like to return to Iraq one day.
It's fine to return to the country, Wagner told them, but do not return to the site of your injury. He paused for a moment--as if to make sure that he wanted to do what he was about to do--and then began to tell us about his trip. Wagner explained that his unit was stationed in the Quang Tri province north of a village named Cam Lo when the North Vietnamese overran their position. He grew quieter as he spoke, his voice was almost a whisper. There were only five survivors, he explained, and one of them, one of his best friends, had lived in Austin and had hosted a reunion of the survivors a few years earlier. But that friend had since died, and Wagner told us that he worried about coming back to Austin because of the memories of his friend and their reunion.
In halting tones, Wagner described how some in his unit strung up dead Vietcong in their village to serve as a warning to would-be attackers. Pause. The young soldiers looked at him intently. "That trip opened the gates of hell for me. It opened the gates of hell."
"Thirty-eight men died that night," he said, choking back tears. He opened his mouth to go on but nothing came out. So he paused again. None of us said a word. The laughter from the conversations around was loud and, though there was no reason for anyone outside of our little group to respect the silence, the laughter made me furious.
Wagner walked off. He turned as he reached the side door of the hotel and for a moment looked like he was going to come back to finish the story. But then he waved and shook his head.
"Sorry."
The beds at the Extended Stay Deluxe were not exactly deluxe. So in addition to the expected fatigue of muscles that had been underused for years, I woke with a stiff back. But I was still better off than Adam Baldwin, my roommate for the night. Our assigned room had just one bed and a short, beat-up sleeper sofa. Baldwin volunteered to sleep on the floor atop the sofa mattress. He found a used syringe under the sofa and tossed it aside with barely a comment--not your typical celebrity.
Baldwin and I had decided we'd spend the day at the back of the ride with the hand-cyclists, allowing us to spend some time with those guys and, importantly, to ride at a more leisurely pace.
Baldwin struck up a conversation with Lucas Goedert, a soldier who had suffered severe spinal cord injuries when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle rode over an IED in Iraq. The top was closed so when Goedert was sent skyward with greater force than the vehicle, his head hit the top of the vehicle and his spine collapsed like an accordion. After numerous surgeries, he walks now with a cane and, occasionally, loses his balance as he tries to stand up. Still, it's far better than his initial prognosis would have suggested. He rides on a steady diet of Percocet, Marlboro Reds, and five-hour energy drinks.
Goedert and Baldwin chatted about Chicago--Baldwin is from the northern suburbs, Goedert from the west side; Goedert is a White Sox fan, Baldwin likes the Cubbies. Then Goedert asked Baldwin about his career. He seemed not to know what Baldwin had done since Full Metal Jacket, so Baldwin talked to him a bit about Chuck and explained in some detail about the less glamorous aspects of working in Hollywood.
Goedert was impressed that Baldwin was doing the ride.
"I don't think too many of those guys in Hollywood would do this," he said. "I don't know if they're too stuck up or what."
"Well, I apologize on my colleagues' behalf," Baldwin replied.
"Oh, don't apologize. They're the ones missing out."
We took a short break--long enough for Goedert to take off his shirt. We were joined by General David Blackledge, the highest-ranking officer wounded in combat in the war on terror. I'd met Blackledge in Umm Qasr, Iraq, a week into the Iraq war. He is thin and looks more like a banker than a general. In February 2004, he was in the middle Humvee of a three-vehicle convoy when it was ambushed in Iskandariya. Blackledge saw his interpreter take a bullet through his head, and he suffered severe back and neck injuries when his vehicle rolled. His rehabilitation lasted 11 months, and he was redeployed shortly after it was done. In November 2005, he narrowly escaped injury in an al Qaeda attack on three hotels in Amman, Jordan. When Blackledge was introduced on the first day of the ride, he told the soldiers, many of whom are still on active duty, to call him Dave.
As we started to ride once more, Blackledge asked Goedert about the elaborate dragon-themed tattoo that covered the top half of his back. It was two interwoven dragons, their heads just below his shoulders, one of them black-and-red and the other black-and-light blue. He got them, he explained to us, because a dragon is a fierce fighter that shows no fear--sort of like he had been before his injury. A buddy suggested he add the colors--red representing his fiery temper and blue indicating he's cool.
On his chest, on his right pectoral muscle, Goedert has a tattoo of a baby's face--an image that looks like it was taken from a photograph. And on his two forearms, he has an intricate tattoo of skulls that form one single image when he holds them together in front of his body. It took six hours to get that one--Goedert fell asleep.
At about mile 35, we turned from the shoulder of a paved four-lane highway onto a small gravelly road. Goedert grimaced as his arms continued to turn the wheel in front of his chest. The difference in the surface made our ride slightly bumpy. It was the kind of change I probably wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't seen his expression. The road jostled his bike and shot searing flashes up his back.
Goedert talked about the pain and how he manages it.
"I don't know if you're a doctor, but don't judge me, man," he said to Blackledge, after admitting that he sometimes takes one more Percocet than prescribed by his physician.
"I won't judge you."
After we came to the top of a slight hill, Goedert stopped and put his head down on his wheel. He apologized to us. "Sorry for holding you guys up, man. This s-- hurts." His triceps had black streaks where the wheels had rubbed him as he pedaled. "I don't cry," he said. "But if I did, I'd be crying like a bitch right now." Two members of the ride's support staff tried to convince him to jump into the support van for the last five miles until our lunch stop.
"Are you f--ing kidding?" he said, and pushed off down the hill.
We stayed Wednesday night in Killeen and departed to a rousing send off the next morning at Fort Hood.
I rode much of Thursday morning with Chad Fleming, who was happily riding the bike Roger Staubach bought him. By midweek, it had become comfortable for me to talk to these soldiers and Marines about their injuries, and I asked Fleming what happened.
Fleming was in command of a small special ops group. In October 2005, on the day they were scheduled to leave Iraq--they had already formally handed off to their replacements and it was just 18 hours till their departure--Fleming's commanding officer came to him with one last mission. He was told that a high-value target had presented himself, and his guys were going to go after him.
Fleming and his men went out on a daytime patrol, and when they ran low on fuel decided to stage underneath a bridge viaduct. Almost immediately, they began taking small arms fire. Moments later, the enemy began dropping grenades on their vehicles. One grenade detonated two feet behind Fleming and blew him forward just as another detonated in front of him. Halon bottles--designed to suck the oxygen out of a vehicle that's been hit to prevent fires--went off. Fleming remembers intermittent smoke and darkness. He tried to open the ramp on the back of the vehicle to get out only to discover that the hydraulic lines had been severed in the attack. He had no choice but to climb onto the roof. In a matter of moments he was struck in the thigh and knocked off his vehicle. He continued shooting as he hit the ground and shortly thereafter passed out. (It was the second time Fleming had been shot in three weeks. On September 18, he had been hit in the chest. He returned to duty two days later.)
Fleming was taken to the Cash--Combat Support Hospital--where he underwent the first of more than 20 surgeries to save his leg.
"I tried to do limb salvage for 26 months," he says. During that time, he was redeployed to Iraq twice. On his first trip back, in the summer of 2006, he served as a detachment officer-in-charge for a special ops and sniper unit. None of his toes worked. He had several rods in his foot to give it the shape of a normal foot. He was missing a four-inch section of his fibula and a four-inch piece of shrapnel was embedded in his tibia. His Achilles tendon did not function.
Fleming would wake early for physical therapy and by midmorning he would be planning missions. And initially, he even accompanied his men on patrols and raids after taping up his foot. "It was like walking on a 2x4." After time, he worried that his inability to function normally could jeopardize his soldiers.
"I asked myself: Are my guys going to get injured because they're taking care of me? So, I stopped. If I didn't it would have been selfish. If one of them gets killed, how are you going to live with yourself?"
His second deployment came in the spring of 2007--against the recommendations of his doctor. Fleming served as a special ops liaison officer. "After getting over there, I'll be honest with you, it kind of sucked," he says. "I'm doing PT and you hear a mortar land right outside."
In early July 2008, Fleming made what he calls "the hardest damn decision of my life." Shortly after his injury, his surgeon told him to do everything he could before exercising "the permanent option." Fleming felt that he had and chose to have his lower left leg amputated.
"You can't put it back."
It turns out to have been a good decision. "Since that day, everything has been great. I've got absolutely no regrets since my amputation. I'm back to the old Fleming that I used to be. Now the only thing that I'm limited by is my mind. I have no bad days. I shouldn't be sitting here. I shouldn't be talking to you. I should be dead. Every day is a good day."
By that reasoning, Thursday was a good day. By any other standard, it sucked. Although we rode the first 29 miles with a slight wind at our backs, the afternoon was miserable. The wind, which had been coming from the south, simply switched directions, and we rode the final 36 miles into a 40-mph headwind.
There was virtually no conversation among the riders--suffering is a solitary activity. My longest exchange came when I rode past Duane Wagner.
Each time we had passed one another since our first encounter, he had mocked me. "I'm just hoping to finish," he'd say.
In this wind, my original goal seemed a lot less pathetic. "Still just hoping to finish," I said to him.
Friday was actually a great day. Fleming and I went out again with the first group--the hand-cyclists and the slower cyclists. Not long after we started, we had formed a three-man group with Mike McNaughton, a veteran of the Louisiana National Guard. McNaughton had become something of a celebrity after he challenged George W. Bush to invite him to the White House for a run.
McNaughton had been trained to defuse land mines. He was clearing a field 30 miles outside of Kabul on January 9, 2003, when he stepped on an antipersonnel land mine. McNaughton says he remembers being thrown up in the air with his eyes closed and hitting the ground hard. He knew exactly what had happened to him.
McNaughton first met Bush on one of the former president's many unpublicized trips to Walter Reed. McNaughton had woken from yet another surgery to be told that the president might be dropping by. He was skeptical. But Bush showed up. When they met, McNaughton, still under heavy doses of morphine, told the president that one day they should run together at the White House. It was a leap of faith--McNaughton had just had his right leg amputated and he had not yet been fitted for a prosthetic.
Before their first visit ended, Bush told McNaughton that he would, indeed, invite him to run at the White House, and once again McNaughton was skeptical. But not long after the visit, the Guardsman received a phone call from the White House asking about the progress he had made with his rehabilitation. Those calls became a regular occurrence. And on April 14, 2004, McNaughton ran with Bush on the White House jogging track.
On this day, I settled in with McNaughton and Fleming and we rode together for the first hour.
After a brief lunch stop, we set out again, this time with the fast group, which was larger than usual. This larger group maintained a steady, brisk pace, and several riders struggled to keep up. The fatigue--from a grueling ride on Wednesday into 40 mph headwinds and the long ride today--was evident on the faces of even the most experienced riders.
At about mile 65, we began to slow down so that the entire group could come together for a visit to Cleburne Middle School. We chatted at the top of the hill as we waited for stragglers, just around the corner from the school.
Suddenly, we heard what sounded at first like barking come from the back of the group. Everyone turned. McNaughton came charging up the hill, fueled by anger.
He dismounted from his bike, threw it to the side and ran to the front of the group. "F-- you guys," he shouted. "This isn't a f--ing race!"
McNaughton had been riding with the fast group for most of the last leg. At some point, however, he had been left behind.
"Nobody looked back! You guys with two legs--I'd trade places with you in a f--ing minute. So f-- you guys."
Several of the experienced riders in the group tried to calm him down. McNaughton was defiant. "F-- you!" he said as he made his way back to his bike. "Once more: F-- you!"
John Wordin and several other riders walked over to talk to McNaughton. The rest of us stood in stunned silence trying to make sense of what had just happened. I was standing directly in front of McNaughton as he exploded. Were his comments directed at me? We had ridden together that morning and had a great conversation. Did I breach some unwritten rule when the two groups combined? Should I have waited? Where is the line between support and pity?
By dinner, raw feelings had given way to jokes. As we climbed off the vans that took us to that night's dinner, John Wordin shouted: "Is McNaughton here? Can't leave him behind again." And by dinner the next night, when McNaughton presented Wordin with a gift from the riders, he was happily making fun of himself.
After dinner, many of the riders gathered for beers in the parking lot of our hotel--the Comfort Inn, Cleburne. The next day's trip would start a little earlier than usual--because George W. Bush was coming to address the riders and because we needed to arrive in Arlington early enough to attend a Texas Rangers exhibition game--but at 41 miles it was the shortest of the six days. The sense that the hard part of the ride was behind us was obvious in the number of riders in the parking lot and the number of Bud Light tallboys consumed.
I had just cracked my second when one soldier I hadn't spent much time with sought me out. We had been assigned to room together earlier in the week, but after dropping off his bike in the room (and learning that I was to be his roommate) he opted instead to crash with some others. During the Friday ride, we chatted a bit--mostly about politics and news--and discovered that we had similar tastes.
When he approached, I assumed that we would simply pick up that conversation. He had other ideas and asked to speak with me in private. We'll call him John. I'm not using his name or the details of his service because, for reasons that will soon be clear, I've never been more sympathetic to a request for anonymity. Also, he said: "If you use my name when you write about this, I will hunt you down and kill you."
No problem, I told him.
"This ride saved my life," he began.
For 30 minutes, I listened.
John had served in the Gulf war and in Somalia. He thought of himself as a badass--a professional warrior. Military service was all he had known and it was all he wanted.
In Iraq the second time around, John sustained a traumatic brain injury that triggered a downward spiral in which his physical injuries exacerbated the psychological damage he had suffered and his psychological damage led to further physical deterioration.
An extended stay in the hospital with little physical activity led him to gain lots of weight. If his injuries had been external and obvious, they might have actually contributed to his image as a war fighter. Instead, the extra pounds changed his body and he no longer looked like the warrior that had become his identity. He was embarrassed to see his friends, his fellow soldiers, even his wife and children.
"I didn't even feel like a man," he told me.
After his release from the hospital, he spent most of his time alone. He knew that he still loved his family and couldn't understand why he found solitude comforting. Most nights after dinner, he retired to his garage, worked on his car and had a drink.
"It wasn't a good drink."
At his lowest moments, he thought seriously about taking his own life.
When he first heard about Ride 2 Recovery, he dismissed any thoughts of participating. He was too out of shape. But as he fought off the demons of war, his mind repeatedly returned to the challenge of a ride. And finally, with the encouragement of his doctor, he signed up. As John began to train for the ride, he could sense some return to normalcy--not a complete recovery, but something.
On the ride itself, he struggled. He often required a push in the small of his back from one of the experienced riders as he tried to fight his way uphill. At other times, he had to get off his bike entirely and take a break.
It wasn't pretty, but he finished. "That's why we do this ride," says R2R founder John Wordin. "For guys like that."
I started the ride Saturday with Jim Penseyres, a Vietnam veteran and single-leg amputee. Penseyres is an accomplished cyclist. He has completed the Race Across America--a 3,000-mile ride across the country--seven times. He is thin and a bushy gray mustache covers much of his weathered face. Penseyres is soft-spoken and smiles easily. He is the amateur philosopher of the group.
When we had a moment alone, I told Penseyres about my conversation from the previous night. He responded with a parable.
Two guys are walking along the beach at low tide, one of the guys starts picking up the sand dollars that are all over the entire beach and begins throwing them back into the sea. After a few minutes his friend watching him says: "Do you really think you're making a difference? Look down the beach, there must be a million sand dollars on the beach." The other fellow just stands there for a moment in silence, bends down and picks up another sand dollar and shows it to his friend and says, "Well it makes a difference to this one."
Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins).
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The New Centurians
6:26:42 - 15.7 mph despite SSE winds of 20 mph w/ gusts to 30+ mph
Click here to view/print SE route map and cue sheet
We had 20 some-odd riders including 1 recumbent. A cohesive group that worked well together in the head wind for 25 miles from Farmersville to Royce City. A 3-man crash in Josephine slowed us down a bit, but all were able to continue riding and thanks to Dustan from Plano Cycling and Fitness for fixing the bikes. Five virgin centurians made it to the finish - well done!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The President's Apology Tour
....Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir "Years of Renewal": "The great statesmen of the past saw themselves as heroes who took on the burden of their societies' painful journey from the familiar to the as yet unknown. The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar. Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values; stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital."
A superstar, not a statesman, today leads our country. That may win short-term applause from foreign audiences, but do little for what should be the chief foreign policy preoccupation of any U.S. president: advancing America's long-term interests.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Depeche Mode's 'Sounds of the Universe': Electro-rock therapy
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 Enlarge | By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY | |
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| Staying current: Depeche Mode's Andrew Fletcher, left, David Gahan and Martin Gore will release a new album, Sounds of the Universe, Tuesday and start a U.S. leg of their world tour July 28. | ||
The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture: The Red Cross was completely wrong about 'walling.'
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.
Interrogations were to be "continuously monitored" and "the interrogation team will stop the use of particular techniques or the interrogation altogether if the detainee's medical or psychological conditions indicates that the detainee might suffer significant physical or mental harm."
An Aug. 1, 2002, memo describes the practice of "walling" -- recently revealed in a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which suggested that detainees wore a "collar" used to "forcefully bang the head and body against the wall" before and during interrogation. In fact, detainees were placed with their backs to a "flexible false wall," designed to avoid inflicting painful injury. Their shoulder blades -- not head -- were the point of contact, and the "collar" was used not to give additional force to a blow, but further to protect the neck.
The memo says the point was to inflict psychological uncertainty, not physical pain: "the idea is to create a sound that will make the impact seem far worse than it is and that will be far worse than any injury that might result from the action."
Shackling and confinement in a small space (generally used to create discomfort and muscle fatigue) were also part of the CIA program, but they were subject to stringent time and manner limitations. Abu Zubaydah (a top bin Laden lieutenant) had a fear of insects. He was, therefore, to be put in a "cramped confinement box" and told a stinging insect would be put in the box with him. In fact, the CIA proposed to use a harmless caterpillar. Confinement was limited to two hours.
The memos are also revealing about the practice of "waterboarding," about which there has been so much speculative rage from the program's opponents. The practice, used on only three individuals, involved covering the nose and mouth with a cloth and pouring water over the cloth to create a drowning sensation.
This technique could be used for up to 40 seconds -- although the CIA orally informed Justice Department lawyers that it would likely not be used for more than 20 seconds at a time. Unlike the exaggerated claims of so many Bush critics, the memos make clear that water was not actually expected to enter the detainee's lungs, and that measures were put in place to prevent complications if this did happen and to ensure that the individual did not develop respiratory distress.
All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military's own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress. This has created a large body of information about the effect of these techniques, on which the CIA was able to draw in assessing the likely impact on the detainees and ensuring that no severe pain or long term psychological impact would result.
The actual intelligence benefits of the CIA program are also detailed in these memos. The CIA believed, evidently with good reason, that the enhanced interrogation program had indeed produced actionable intelligence about al Qaeda's plans. First among the resulting successes was the prevention of a "second wave" of al Qaeda attacks, to be carried out by an "east Asian" affiliate, which would have involved the crashing of another airplane into a building in Los Angeles.
The interrogation techniques described in these memos are indisputably harsh, but they fall well short of "torture." They were developed and deployed at a time of supreme peril, as a means of preventing future attacks on innocent civilians both in the U.S. and abroad.
The dedicated public servants at the CIA and Justice Department -- who even the Obama administration has concluded should not be prosecuted -- clearly cared intensely about staying within the law as well as protecting the American homeland. These memos suggest that they achieved both goals in a manner fully consistent with American values.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, who served in the Justice Department under George H.W. Bush, were U.S. delegates to the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?
I AM in Midtown Manhattan, where drivers still play their car horns as if they were musical instruments and shouting in restaurants is sport.
I am a long way from the warm breeze of voices I heard a week ago on Easter Sunday.
“Glorify your name,” the island women sang, as they swayed in a cut sandstone church. I was overwhelmed by a riot of color, an emotional swell that carried me to sea.
Christianity, it turns out, has a rhythm — and it crescendos this time of year. The rumba of Carnival gives way to the slow march of Lent, then to the staccato hymnals of the Easter parade. From revelry to reverie. After 40 days in the desert, sort of ...
Carnival — rock stars are good at that.
“Carne” is flesh; “Carne-val,” its goodbye party. I’ve been to many. Brazilians say they’ve done it longest; they certainly do it best. You can’t help but contract the fever. You’ve got no choice but to join the ravers as they swell up the streets bursting like the banks of a river in a flood of fun set to rhythm. This is a Joy that cannot be conjured. This is life force. This is the heart full and spilling over with gratitude. The choice is yours ...
It’s Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up ... self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.
Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.
It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.
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Last Sunday, the choirmaster was jumping out of his skin ... stormy then still, playful then tender, on the most upright of pianos and melodies. He sang his invocations in a beautiful oaken tenor with a freckle-faced boy at his side playing conga and tambourine as if it was a full drum kit. The parish sang to the rafters songs of praise to a God that apparently surrendered His voice to ours.
I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.
The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”
Well, yes. It is us.
Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.
Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.
A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.
But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.
Your soul.
So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.
Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.
Not all soul music comes from the church.