Look it up- It was Clinton who publically called for Rumsfelds resignation

Republican Candidate McCain now claims it was he who made the call for then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign over failed military strategy.

He lied. Hillary, not Obama or McCain stood at the forefront of ousting Rumsfeld.

It was not Clinton alone Sen. John Kerry called for his resignation and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y called for his impeachment. ( Note: Joe Lieberman, former Democrat, thought it was a bad idea.)

McCain now admits he did not call for the resignation:

"As he gets closer to the Republican nomination, Sen. John McCain has been trying to balance his unqualified support for the Iraq war by reminding audiences that he was also a tough critic of how it was managed until President Bush finally changed strategies a year ago. In recent weeks, McCain has gone so far as to tell audiences that he was “the only one” who called for Donald H. Rumsfeld’s resignation as defense secretary.

The trick is that he never did, at least not publicly. The senator from Arizona was a tough critic of Rumsfeld and more than once said that he had no confidence in the Pentagon chief in the two years before Bush finally dumped Rumsfeld in November 2006. But even as he was criticizing Rumsfeld, McCain typically stopped short of calling for the Pentagon chief to step down.

While campaigning in Fort Myers, Fla., on Jan. 26, he told a crowd: “In the conflict that we’re in, I’m the only one that said we have to abandon the Rumsfeld strategy — and Rumsfeld — and adopt a new strategy.” Four days later during a debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., aired on CNN, McCain said, “I’m the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go.”

A McCain spokesman acknowledged this week that that was not correct.

February 9 Washington Post article, the Post reported on February 16 that McCain "overstate[d] his public position on Rumsfeld" and never called for him to resign.

( Note Sen. Obama was not not active in this debate.)

Sen. Clinton: Rumsfeld should resign


Updated: 2006-08-04 09:34


WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday called on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign, hours after excoriating him at a public hearing over what she called "failed policy" in Iraq.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: "I just don't understand why we can't get new leadership that would give us a fighting chance to turn the situation around before it's too late," the New York Democrat and potential 2008 presidential contender said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think the president should choose to accept Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation."

"The secretary has lost credibility with the Congress and with the people," she said. "It's time for him to step down and be replaced by someone who can develop an effective strategy and communicate it effectively to the American people and to the world."

Asked about Clinton's comments, Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff said, "We don't discuss politics."

Clinton had resisted joining the chorus of other Democrats demanding Rumsfeld's ouster. Her remarks Thursday were the harshest assessment yet from the woman considered her party's early front-runner for the 2008 presidential nomination.


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. [Reuters]
The former first lady has come under attack from some in her own party for voting for the war in 2002 and her current opposition to a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal.

She criticized Rumsfeld in person earlier Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

"Under your leadership, there have been numerous errors in judgment that have led us to where we are," she said. "We have a full-fledged insurgency and full-blown sectarian conflict in Iraq."

The defense secretary rejected some of her specific criticisms as simply wrong and said the war against terror will be a drawn-out process. He said he never glossed over the difficulties of the fighting.

"I have never painted a rosy picture," he said. "I've been very measured in my words, and you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic."

Earlier in the day, the senator wasted no time going after Rumsfeld when he testified in a morning hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Under your leadership there have been numerous errors in judgment that have led us to where we are," the New York Democrat said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "We have a full-fledged insurgency and full-blown sectarian conflict in Iraq."

The defense secretary seemed briefly stunned by the intensity of her attack, exclaiming, "My goodness," before launching into a point-by-point defense.

He rejected some of her specific criticisms as simply wrong and said the war against terror will be a drawn-out process.

"Are there setbacks? Yes," said Rumsfeld. "Is this problem going to get solved in the near term? I think it's going to take some time."

The testy exchange between Clinton and Rumsfeld came after a top general told the panel violence in Iraq is probably as bad as he's ever seen it and the country may be descending into civil war.

"We hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration's strategic blunders - and frankly the record of incompetence in executing - you are presiding over a failed policy," she said. "Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?"

Rumsfeld vehemently denied he'd ever glossed over the difficulties of the fighting in Iraq or elsewhere.

"There's a track record here," countered Clinton. "This is not 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, when you appeared before this committee and made many comments and presented many assurances that have frankly proven to be unfulfilled."

"Senator, I don't think that's true," Rumsfeld fired back. "I have never painted a rosy picture. I've been very measured in my words and you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic. I understand this is tough stuff."

At that point, the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, came to Rumsfeld's defense, saying his past comments had been balanced.

Clinton still shied away from a demand made by a growing number of Democrats: a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

The disagreement between the two extended to Afghanistan. The senator specifically faulted Rumsfeld for saying in 2002 that the Taliban was gone, noting that the extremist faction has grown stronger in recent months.

He conceded violence has escalated in Afghanistan, but added, "Does that represent failed policy? I don't know. I would say not."

The defense secretary said he expected the violence there to follow a seasonal pattern and decline as winter approaches.

Military Wants Signing Bonus Money Back From Wounded

Nov 19, 2007 8:05 pm US/Eastern
Wounded Soldier: Military Wants Part Of Bonus Back
Reporting
Marty Griffin
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.

He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.

Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

"I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.

It's a slap for Fox's mother, Susan Wardezak, who met with President Bush in Pittsburgh last May. He thanked her for starting Operation Pittsburgh Pride which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages.

He then sent her a letter expressing his concern over her son's injuries, so she cannot understand the U.S. Government's apparent lack of concern over injuries to countless U.S. Soldiers and demands that they return their bonuses.

While he's unsure of his future, Fox says he's unwavering in his commitment to his country.

"I'd do it all over again... because I'm proud of the discipline that I learned. I'm proud to have done something for my country," he said.

But Fox feels like he's already given enough. He'll never be able to pursue his dream of being a police officer because of his wounds and he can't believe he's being asked to return part of his $10,000 signing bonus.

KDKA contacted Congressman Jason Altmire on his behalf. He says he has proposed a bill that would guarantee soldiers receive full benefit of bonuses.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

THE BLUNDER FACTOR: The editor of this blog is putting together a book on the blunders of Bush's invasion of Iraq.

This story falls under the failure to care for the troops- Enlistment failures (like lying to recruits) Failure to provide adequate equipment, adequate training, adequacy time off between tours, adequate care after returning (Micheal Reese Fiasco), and no adequet respect.

Iraq sues US pharmaceutical giants for past HIV-contaminated blood

by Assad AbboudMon Mar 26, 10:31 PM ET

Iraqi AIDS patients plan to sue French and US pharmaceutical giants for millions of dollars compensation after being infected by HIV-contaminated blood shipments in a massive 1980s health scandal.

Of 238 Iraqis infected with the AIDS virus involved in this scandal,199 have died. These AIDS cases in Iraq are the result of blood imported from France for transfusions in the 1980s by the Saddam regime. The French companies that supplied the blood have offered to compensate the victims' families with the paltry amount of $5,000 to $25,000 per person. The Iraqi health ministry has rejected the offer.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society says the blood was bought by the Saddam Hussein regime from Austria and France to treat child haemophiliacs with a hereditary bleeding disease.

Another 39 infected patients are fast facing the same fate in a country where AIDS represents the ultimate social stigma, and patients have neither the means nor the opportunity to purchase adequate, up-to-date medication.

Now the IRCS is demanding 238 million dollars in damages from French company Sanofi-Aventis, which acquired firm Merieux after it sold contaminated blood-clotting agents to the Iraqi health ministry, and US-based Baxter International, in which Austrian outfit Immuno AG has since been incorporated.

"We are now asking for 238 million dollars, i.e. one million dollars for each victim," for loss of life and the nightmares they endured, said IRCS head Said Ismail Haqi. A Baghdad court is to begin looking into the case on April 8.

Haqi said the Iraqis rejected an out-of-court settlement offer from Sanofi-Aventis of between only 5,000 to 25,000 dollars per patient, an amount he slammed as "humiliating."

"This is not enough for treatment. Only 5,000? Is this what a patient is worth because he is Iraqi?" Haqi said.

In 1996, four drug companies, including Baxter, agreed to pay 640 million dollars to up to 6,000 American haemophiliacs who contracted AIDS through their blood products before HIV was scientifically identified as a virus.

When contacted by AFP in Paris, Sanofi-Aventis declined to comment while a spokesman for Baxter was unable to confirm that the company had received a copy of the complaint and was therefore not in a position to comment.

"Two to three people die every year for lack of medicine. Entire families were doomed because a member was suffering from AIDS. Families of the victims have been living in tragic conditions for a quarter of a century," Haqi said.

As children began to fall ill in the mid-1980s, the Iraqi government ordered the victims into brutal hospital isolation, ignorantly believing that HIV was a virus that could spread like tuberculosis.

Hanan Abdul Karim, a doctor in her mid-30s, still weeps at the memory of her brother Diaa, who died aged 16 after being separated from his family for eight years in a hospital room which even nurses were too frightened to enter.

"My brother was eight when the government took him from school into the Tuwaitha hospital," just south of Baghdad, some distance from the family home in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala.

"It was practically a detention camp. He used to get his food handed through the window," she said. So great is the stigma of AIDS, that no one ever married her or her five sisters.

The family was allowed to see but never approach Diaa once a month for eight years. Even in death, they were barred from saying their final goodbye.

"They put his body in a steel box and wouldn't let us open it. They warned us not to talk about it. Just imagine what it means for a child to suffer from AIDS in Iraq," she said.

By 1986, the IRCS says 186 Iraqi children were infected with HIV, some of whom later infected husbands and wives through sex after marriage.

"One died a few months ago after his wife died too. They were unaware they were patients and some married unknowing they had the symptoms," Haqi said.

He says the victims and their families have been betrayed. In 2000, the Saddam regime filed a politically motivated suit for 30 million dollars against Merieux just to keep them quiet but it never had a hope.

The then and current Iraqi health ministries flatly deny any outbreak of AIDS in the country. Only the IRCS is brave enough to take the case.

Khalid Ali Jaber, who lost five haemophiliac sons to AIDS between 1986 and 1996, refused to talk about his experiences.

"I signed an undertaking not to talk about the reason of the disease. I had to move house four times so people wouldn't find out."

"The majority of Iraqis are ignorant about this disease. People refused to eat during the wakes I held for my sons believing that AIDS could be transferred through the mouth," he added.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/iraqfranceaustriaushealthaids&printer=1;_ylt=AvAPQbVa_WeZfq8zrQIFMTKKOrgF

Blog Carnival Roundup on the Iraq War

Blog Carnival - A look at what Bloggers are blogging about Iraq around the World Wide Web. The opinion of these Bloggers do not represent the opinions of this Blog or it's editor. These are posted to give a wider view of opinions.


Michael Boldin presents Saddam was Right and Bush was Wrong posted at Populist Party of America.

Tracy Coenen presents Fraud, waste, and abuse in Iraq reconstruction posted at FRAUDfiles.
Iraq

Anthony Cavella presents Troops Make A Positive Impact In Iraqi Community posted at A Soldier's Mind.

Jon Swift presents Jon Swift: President Bush's Secret Plan for Winning the War in Iraq posted at Jon Swift, saying, "Although I wrote this piece exactly a year ago, it has proven to be remarkably prescient."


Alvaro Fernandez presents TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), Iraq and neuropsychology posted at SharpBrains.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of iraq news and history using our
carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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