By Staff
The Bush administration has just about run its course, but even at a too-little-too-late pace, it sure was refreshing to see old-school Defense Secretary Robert Gates (he served under Papa Bush) fire Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey over the shocking neglect of injured veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
It's called accountability and has been absent from government-loathing neocon Washington since 2001.
Gates must have been out of the loop for the memo about how the younger George Bush and his wrecking crew dispose of things which demand accountability.
Recall the outcome of previous poor performances such as former CIA director George Tenet's intelligence that it was a "slam dunk" Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction, so we should invade Iraq.
Of course, since World War II, Pakistan and North Korea getting nuclear bombs, genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, China's invasion of Korea, Russia's invasion of Afghanistan and the Shah of Iran's fall all caught our "intelligence agencies" off guard.
There was Gen. Tommy Franks, in charge of that invasion, whose decisions resulted in an insurgency forming.
Finally, Paul Bremer bungled the occupation of Iraq, strengthening the insurgency, which eventually flowered into full-blown civil war.
You remember how sternly they were dealt with.
Bush awarded Medals of Freedom!
Why has this administration been so nonchalant about shameful blunders, from low-level punishments at Abu Ghraib prison to FEMA Director Michael Brown, late of the International Arabian Horse Association, and his "heck of a job" in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? At root, they disdain government as any kind of positive force.
Incompetence has never been a firing offense in the Bush administration.
Ask Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, who presided over debacle after debacle for years until he was essentially voted out of a non-elective position in the November 2006 mid-term elections.
Blame game: The chief strategy of those who talked the United States into invading Iraq and are now determined to talk their way out of any responsibility for the mess they made is to blame the Iraqis, for not seizing the democracy we wanted to impose on them.
U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, who visited the Battle Creek veterans hospital Saturday afternoon, said that night at the Cass County Republicans' Lincoln Day dinner in Edwardsburg,, "I was very alarmed – as I'm sure all of you were – to see these stories that emerged about Walter Reed. Defense Secretary Gates is doing an outstanding job getting to the bottom of this and we're going to deal with it as quickly as we can."
"Newsweek's story referenced a Harvard study about the nearly 400,000 servicemen and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and their claims are just sitting there for a year before they're processed. I got a copy of the Harvard study and read it. One of the recommendations is something I intend to do Monday or Tuesday when we come back into session" by reaching out to Democrats.
"That is change the standard for the burden of proof for service-connected injuries," Upton said to applause. "Instead of having it be borne solely by the veteran, we need to say if it's service-connected, they're going to get payment day one. We're going to have an anti-fraud unit to make sure it's not taken advantage of, but they aren't going to have to wait a day for the claims that they need for their disability. We may be able to get this considered on the House floor before the month is out."
And another thing: For those who think the mainstream media don't serve the American public or the national interest, remember where all those TV reports on conditions at Walter Reed originated – with a newspaper, The Washington Post.
Cuban oil: The discovery of potentially billions of barrels near the shoreline attracts the attention of the U.S. petroleum industry. If that doesn't change the Bush administration's mind about the trade embargo banning American companies from doing business in Cuba, nothing will.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, mastermind of the 1994 Republican revolution in Congress, led the charge against President Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky while having one of his own with the woman more than 20 years his junior who became his third wife. The fact he's coming clean now can only mean he's running for the White House, too.
His parents will be prouder once he makes a mint: John Cornwall, 22, an Atlanta software engineer who graduated from Duke University in May 2006, missed his college lifestyle, so he modified one of those dorm refrigerators to throw beer to his couch with a tap on a remote. It can catapult 10 cans from its magazine before reloading.
Unwarranted bad rap: U.S. schools take heat for unhealthy lunches, vending machines and physical education cuts, but a study suggests they do a better job than parents keeping kids fit and trim. Five- and 6-year-olds gain more weight over the unstructured summer than during the academic year.
Doug Downey, an Ohio State University sociologist who co-authored the study, theorized the "lazy days of summer" really are, stuffed with snacks and lounging about watching TV and playing video games.
Comerica said March 6 it plans to move corporate headquarters from Detroit to Dallas, affecting 200 of its 7,500 Michigan employees (and 241 branches). The bank wants to be closer to its high-growth markets in Texas, Arizona, California and Florida. Comerica Park, home of baseball's Detroit Tigers, has more than 20 years left on the naming rights, unfortunately.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "Reports of liberalism's demise are always premature. Liberalism will rise again and again because … reviving concern for the less privileged and less powerful are inevitably what free citizens demand at the end of a conservative era."
– Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on the death of Arthur Schlesinger
Obit: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 89, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Kennedy confidant, died Feb. 28 after suffering a heart attack in a Manhattan restaurant. A lifelong liberal, the Harvard man received a National Book Award for "Robert Kennedy and His Times" and a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for "A Thousand Days," his JFK administration memoir. Schlesinger also won a Pulitzer in 1946 for "The Age of Jackson," about Andrew Jackson's administration. He never revealed Kennedy's infidelities, writing instead, "At no point in my experience did his preoccupation with women – apart from Caroline crawling around the Oval Office – interfere with his conduct of the public business."