Secretary of State Rice doesn't want to have to answer any more of those bothersome questions

Rice Signals Rejection of House Subpoena

Condoleezza Rice has become the apologist for the Bush Administration - not just for the President's mis-steps but also for her own.

This week she paraded through the Sunday Talk shows to defend herself from accusations made by former CIA director George Tennent. Previously she went against statements made by former Secretary of State Collin Powell who has sought to distance his fault in the Iraq mess.

Yes, she has time for the talk show host, most all of whom treat her with great respect. But no, she does not have time to our Governments House oversight comittee that would call on her to `speak under oath'.

She most probably would use the favorite line of the Bush administration- `I don't recall.' When asked the tough questions, so why should she waste her valuable time. Time that could be better spent basking in the presence of the man who calls her `his sister' and of whom she accidentally once called her husband (I am referring to President Bush.)

Bush has pressed upon all those in the Administration that they serve at his pleasure. This is a great untruth- the Administration serves at the pleasure of the people - and the people are not pleased. Treating Congress as though it does not matter is criminal for the Secretary of State a position that she has proven herself to be ineffectual at. She like Attorney General Gonzales should be instructed again and again to resign - not because it would serve the President best - but because it would serve our country best.

Note: A new biography about Ms. Rice is coming out this week by a Newsweek writer.


Secretary of State Rice Signals Rejection of House Subpoena, Citing Executive Privilege
By MATTHEW LEE
The Associated Press

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a congressional committee and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order.

Rice said she would respond by mail to questions from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the Bush administration's prewar claims about Saddam Hussein seeking weapons of mass destruction, but signaled she would not appear in person.

"I am more than happy to answer them again in a letter," she told reporters in Oslo, where she is attending a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

The comments were her first reaction to a subpoena issued on Wednesday by the committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Rice said she respected the oversight function of the legislative branch, but maintained she had already testified in person and under oath about claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa during her confirmation hearing for the job of secretary of state.

"I addressed these questions, almost the same questions, during my confirmation hearing," she said. "This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered."

Rice noted that she had been serving as President Bush's national security adviser during the period covered by the panel's questions and stressed the administration's position that presidential aides not confirmed by the Senate cannot be forced to testify before Congress under the doctrine of executive privilege.

"This all took place in my role as national security adviser," she said. "There is a constitutional principle. There is a separation of powers and advisers to the president under that constitutional principle are not generally required to go and testify in Congress.

"So, I think we have to observe and uphold the constitutional principle, but I also observe and uphold the obligation of Congress to conduct its oversight role, I respect that. But I think I have more than answered these questions, and answered them directly to Congressman Waxman."

Rice declined to respond when asked if she would absolutely refuse to testify under subpoena.

Her spokesman, Sean McCormack, said later that no final decision had been made about Rice appearing before the committee.

Waxman's committee voted 21-10 on Wednesday to subpoena Rice despite the State Department's insistence that the questions have already been answered and that the doctrine of executive privilege .

The congressman has complained for weeks that Rice and the State Department have failed to respond to questions about the claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to by uranium from Niger.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Walter Reed Hospital Update /Video

Staff Sgt, John Shannon, after pausing and tapping his head — voiced a very powerful statement today at the hearing:

Shannon: My biggest concern? My biggest concern is having the young men and women that have had their lives shattered in service to their country to get taken care of. That's my biggest concern.

Waxman: Staff Sgt, John Shannon, that's your biggest concern and it's got to be the biggest concern of all Americas. I think people are shocked when they heard about the Washington Post story…

Jeffrey Feldman:

Annette McLeod's husband, National Guardsman Cpl. Wendell McLeod, is in the VA system to receive care for brain injuries he sustained in Iraq. "He got treatment a dog didn't deserve," said McLeod to a panel of stunned Committee members…

Update:

“We have let some soldiers down,” said Peter Geren, the undersecretary of the Army.

No, Mr. Geren, you’ve let every soldier, sailor, and airman down - not to mention the American public, which continues to be deceived by the ineptitude and callousness of the people in charge.

Republicans misdirect thier " Slow Bleed" rhetoric

The republicans have come up with a rhetorical response to the Democratic led rejection of the Bush "Surge Policy".



Bush's surge policy began prior to the State of The Union Address when he announced it, and without Congressional input. This lead the House to pass a non binding resolution opposing it - after it already was happening. Unfortunately, the President and the military did not have the 21,500 extra troops the President wanted- and so far only a part of the Surge has been sent.



The "Surge Policy" is part of a joint effort with the Iraqi military and Police to firmly secure the one city and surrounding area of Baghdad. This has been met by heavy violent resistance and many US military have already lost their lives. The Democrats have so far refrained from calling this the "Quick Bleed Strategy"



Democrats deny that they are seeking to cut off funding for the troops, however Democrat Senator Murtha promises to seek legislation to tie the funding to troop readiness= ADQUET TRAINING AND EQUIPMENT.

It is ironic that the Republicans are complaining about the Democrats desire to spend the governments money more wisely, since in the past they were considered the more fiscally conservative party.

US money in Iraq has been 'squandered' - report

The US government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and a never-used camp for housing police trainers with an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say.



Paul Bremer former coolition authority leadr in Iraq recentlly blamed poor payroll records for the 12 billion dollars lost somewhere in Iraq.



The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion dollars and left the region near civil war.

"The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," according to the 579-page report, which was being released today.

Calling Iraq's sectarian violence the greatest challenge, Mr Bowen said that billions in US aid spent on strengthening security has had limited effect. Reconstruction now will fall largely on Iraqis to manage, and they are nowhere near ready for the task.

The audit comes as President George Bush presses Congress to approve $1.2 billion dollars in new reconstruction aid as part of his broader plan to stabilise Iraq by sending 21,500 more US troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.



Democrats in Congress have been skeptical. Sen. Jim Webb has suggested that the US is spending too much on Iraq reconstruction at the expense of rebuilding New Orleans, Louisiana, from the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought 17 months ago. Rep. Henry Waxman plans in-depth hearings next week into charges of waste and fraud in Iraq.

According to the report, the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International for the residential camp for police training personnel outside of Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds, which has stood empty for months. About $4.2 million of the money was spent improperly on 20 trailers for important visitors and an Olympic-sized pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but never authorised by the US.

US officials spent another $36.4 million for weapons such as armoured vehicles, body armour and communications equipment that cannot be accounted for. DynCorp also may have prematurely billed $18 million in other potentially unjustified costs, the report said.

Responding, the State Department said in the report that it was working to improve controls. Already, it has developed a review process that rejected a $1.1 million DynCorp bill this month on a separate contract because the billed rate was incorrect.

Meanwhile President Bush has sent in troops ill equipped.




Meanwhile- Military families to Congress: cut the funds


The House passes a non-binding resolution against the "surge"; the Senate fails to. Opponents invoke the need to "support the troops." Is anybody listening to the troops and their families? From Military Families Speak Out, Feb. 5:

Military Families Urge Congress to Vote Down Bush Request for Billions to Contine Iraq War

Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) members today called on Congress to support our troops and honor the fallen by voting against President Bush's request for a supplemental appropriation that would allow the U.S. military occupation of Iraq to continue. Military Families Speak Out, an organization of over 3,200 military families opposed to the war in Iraq, is the largest organization of military families opposing a war in the history of the United States.



"President Bush is now requesting funds to continue an unjustifiable war that is taking the lives of three U.S. troops and countless Iraqi children, women and men each day," said Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out and stepmother of a Marine who served in Iraq. "Now is the time, and Congress is the vehicle, by which this horrific war can finally end. We call on Congress to support our troops by voting against the funds that would allow this war to continue. To do otherwise would be to abandon our loved ones and the people of Iraq to the unending and worsening violence of this misbegotten war. "

"Our elected officials cannot oppose this war and fund it at the same time. We expect more than resolutions, limitations and investigations," explained Charley Richardson, also a co-founder of Military Families Speak Out and father of a Marine. "The one thing that Congress can do to end this war, right now, with a 50% plus one vote of either house, is to de-fund it. 

Military families across the country with loved ones currently serving in Iraq, those with loved ones soon to deploy or re-deploy, families with loved ones who have been wounded physically and/or psychologically, and those whose loved ones died as a result of the war in Iraq are available for interview regarding President Bush's supplemental funding request for the Iraq war, and the need for Congress to support our troops by opposing it.

Posted by Paul Grant (follower of Basho)

halliburton's No Bid Contracts

Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post

Thursday 28 August 2003

Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.

The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.

Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary, include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.

Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1 billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's name for the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about $705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said.

Specific work orders assigned to the subsidiary under Operation Iraqi Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170 million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28 million for the construction of prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon has not previously publicly acknowledged.

Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that made its name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out many support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel, a California-based engineering firm that has won hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction contracts, and Virginia-based DynCorp, which is training the new Iraqi police force.

The government said the practice has been spurred by cutbacks in the military budget and a string of wars since the end of the Cold War that have placed enormous demand on the armed forces.

But, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money-making opportunities. "The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe," Waxman said. "This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less."

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to discuss the details of the company's operations in Iraq, or confirm or deny estimates of the amounts the company has earned from its contracting work on behalf of the military. In an e-mail message, however, she said that suggestions of war profiteering were "an affront to all hard-working, honorable Halliburton employees."

Hall added that military contracts were awarded "not by politicians but by government civil servants, under strict guidelines."

Daniel Carlson, a spokesman for the Army's Joint Munitions Command, said Brown and Root had won a competitive bidding process in 2001 to provide a wide range of "contingency" services to the military in the event of the deployment of U.S. troops overseas. He said the contract, known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, was designed to free uniformed personnel for combat duties and did not preclude deals with other contractors.

Carlson said the money earmarked for Brown and Root was an estimate, and could go "up or down" depending on the work performed.

The Joint Munitions Command provided The Washington Post with an updated version of a spreadsheet the Army released to Waxman earlier this month, giving detailed estimates of money obligated to Brown and Root under Operation Iraqi Freedom. Estimates of the company's revenue from Iraq have been increasing steadily since February, when the Corps of Engineers announced the company had won a $37.5 million contract for pre-positioning fire equipment in the region.

In addition to its Iraq contracts, Brown and Root has also earned $183 million from Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war on terrorism and combat operations in Afghanistan, according to the Army's numbers.

Waxman's interest in Halliburton was ignited by a routine Corps of Engineers announcement in March reporting that the company had been awarded a no-bid contract, with a $7 billion limit, for putting out fires at Iraqi oil wells. Corps spokesmen justified the lack of competition on the grounds that the operation was part of a classified war plan and the Army did not have time to secure competitive bids for the work.

The corps said the oil rehabilitation deal was an offshoot of the LOGCAP contract, a one-year agreement renewable for 10 years. Individual work orders assigned under LOGCAP do not have to be competitively bid. But Waxman and other critics maintain that the oil work has nothing to do with the logistics operation.

The practice of delegating a vast array of logistics operations to a single contractor dates to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study commissioned by Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The Pentagon chose Brown and Root to carry out the study and subsequently selected the company to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief executive of Brown and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency.

At the time, said P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of "Corporate Warriors," it was impossible to predict how lucrative the military contracting business would become. He estimates the number of contract workers in Iraq at 20,000, or about one for every 10 soldiers. During the Gulf War, the proportion was about one in 100.

Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from its contracts in the Balkans, and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year.

Waxman aides said they have been told by the General Accounting Office that Brown and Root is likely to earn "several hundred million more dollars" from the no-bid Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields. Waxman, the ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, had asked the GAO to investigate the corps' decision not to bid out the contract.

After a round of unfavorable publicity, the corps explained that the sole award to Brown and Root would be replaced by a competitively bid contract. But the deadline for announcing the results of the competition has slipped from August to October, causing rival companies to complain that little work will be left for anybody else. Bechtel, one of Halliburton's main competitors, announced this month that it would not bid for the corps contract and would instead focus on securing work from the Iraqi oil ministry.

In addition to the Army contracts, Halliburton has profited from other government-related work in Iraq and the war on terrorism, and has a $300 million contract with the Navy structured along similar lines to LOGCAP.

Pentagon officials said the increasing reliance on contractors is inevitable, given the multiple demands on the military, particularly since Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a champion of "outsourcing," writing in The Post in May that "more than 300,000 uniformed personnel" were doing jobs that civilians could do.

Independent experts said the trend toward outsourcing logistic operations has resulted in new problems, such as a lack of accountability and transparency on the part of private military firms and sometimes questionable billing practices.

A major problem in Iraq, Singer said, has been the phenomenon of "no-shows" caused by the inhospitable security environment, including the killing of contract workers, including a Halliburton mail delivery employee earlier this month.

"At the end of the day, neither these companies nor their employees are bound by military justice, and it is up to them whether to show up or not," Singer said. "The result is that there have been delays in setting up showers for soldiers, getting them cooked meals and so on."

A related concern is the rising cost of hiring contract workers because of skyrocketing insurance premiums. Singer estimates that premiums have increased by 300 percent to 400 percent this year, costs that are passed on to the taxpayer under the cost-plus-award fee system that is the basis for most contracts.

The LOGCAP contract awarded to Brown and Root in 2001 was the third, and potentially most lucrative, super-contract awarded by the Army. Brown and Root won the first five-year contract in 1992, but lost the second to rival DynCorp in 1997 after the GAO criticized the Army for not adequately controlling contracting costs in Bosnia.