side note: deja vu……this is what condi had to say on meet the press today concerning iran: “The international community’s credibility is at stake here,” she said. “And we have a choice, too. We can either mean what we say, when we say that Iran must comply, or we can continue to allow Iran to defy……..Rice also said the United States probably would seek a U.N. resolution requiring Iran to comply with demands that it stop enriching uranium. Rice mentioned a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which means it can be enforced through penalties or military action.

By SADAQAT JAN
Associated Press Writer
Yahoo news

The Iranian deputy oil minister said Sunday he did not believe the United Nations would impose sanctions on Iran because that would boost oil prices even higher.

“Any action like that will increase oil prices very high. And I believe that the U.N. or its bodies will not put any sanctions on oil or the oil industry,” M.H. Nejad Hosseinian told reporters after talks in Islamabad with Pakistani officials over a proposed pipeline to transport Iranian gas to Pakistan and India.

The United States and its European allies have pushed the possibility of sanctions after a report from the U.N. nuclear monitor confirmed the Iranians had successfully produced enriched uranium and defied the Security Council’s Friday deadline to stop the process.

Russia and China — two veto-wielding Security Council members — have opposed the possibility of such punitive actions.

Iran has not budged on the enrichment program. But it offered Saturday to allow U.N. inspectors to resume snap inspections of its nuclear facilities if the Security Council left the dispute to the U.N. nuclear monitor, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The White House rejected the offer, saying Iran must give up its nuclear ambitions and the debate must move to the Security Council.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday she believed Iran was “playing games.”

“But, obviously, if they’re not playing games they should come clean, they should stop the enrichment,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”

Rice also said the United States probably would seek a U.N. resolution requiring Iran to comply with demands that it stop enriching uranium. Rice mentioned a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which means it can be enforced through penalties or military action.

“The international community’s credibility is at stake here,” she said. “And we have a choice, too. We can either mean what we say, when we say that Iran must comply, or we can continue to allow Iran to defy.”

Enriched uranium, depending on the degree of processing, can be used either to fuel civilian power plants or to make nuclear weapons.

While Iran insists it has no plans to make weapons and does not need or want them, the United States, Britain and France suspect the program is aimed at producing nuclear warheads.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran wanted to resolve the dispute through diplomacy but warned it would not “surrender under threats and pressures.”

But Asefi reiterated Iran’s offer off allowing intrusive inspections if the Security Council dropped the matter. He did not comment on Washington’s rejection of the proposal.

___

Associated Press reporter Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.

original article

side note: i was laughing out loud while watching this!! and what makes it even sweeter is that leaker of a president had to sit and listen to colbert tee off on him about everything from iraq to wmd’s, to plamegate………..bushie was just a few feet away…..i wish there could’ve been a camera on bush during colbert’s routine….would’ve got some great facial expressions

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

side note: i’ve seem parts of the dinner on a few different websites. i’ll post one from C&L after this. what i saw of colbert was priceless! we must understand that bushie is shielded from everything…..and here he has a tv personality tearing him apart and he has to sit there and take it…….

by E&P Staff

WASHINGTON A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—&ldquoand Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, “I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought ” Valerie Plame.” Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, “Uh, I mean… he brought Joseph Wilson’s wife.” He might have “dodged the bullet,” he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn’t there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, “if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail. ”

Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, “When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday – no matter what happened Tuesday.”

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side.” He also reflected on the alleged good old days, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.

Addressing the reporters, he said, “Let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know–fiction.”

He claimed that the Secret Service name for Bush’s new press secretary is “Snow Job.”

Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special “Gannon” button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.

As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling. The president shook his hand and tapped his elbow, and left immediately.

Those seated near Bush told E&P’s Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had quickly turned from an amused guest to an obviously offended target as Colbert’s comments brought up his low approval ratings and problems in Iraq.

Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.

“This was anti-Bush,” said one attendee. “Usually they go back and forth between us and him.” Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy, and left the dais shortly after while most seated near him, including Colbert and Snow, glad-handed the crowd. “You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert,” he reported.

After the gathering, Snow, while nursing a Heineken outside the Chicago Tribune reception, declined to comment on Colbert. “I’m not doing entertainment reviews,” he said. “I thought the president was great, though.”

Strupp, in the crowd during the Colbert routine, had observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting–or too much speaking “truthiness” to power.

Asked by E&P after it was over if he thought he’d been too harsh, Colbert said, “Not at all.” Was he trying to make a point politically or just get laughs? “Just for laughs,” he said. He said he did not pull any material for being too strong, just for time reasons. (He later said the president told him “good job” when he walked off.)

Helen Thomas told Strupp her segment with Colbert was “just for fun.”

In its report on the affair, USA Today asserted that some in the crowd cracked up over Colbert but others were “bewildered.” Wolf Blitzer of CNN said he thought Colbert was funny and “a little on the edge.”

Earlier, the president had addressed the crowd with a Bush impersonator alongside, with the faux-Bush speaking precisely and the real Bush deliberately mispronouncing words, such as the inevitable “nuclear.” At the close, Bush called the imposter “a fine talent. In fact, he did all my debates with Senator Kerry.” The routine went over well with the crowd — better than did Colbert’s, in fact.

Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter of the Doobie Brothers–in a kilt.

original article

via crooksandliars.com

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

via crooks and liars

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

side note: enjoy. Just to remind all our readers what kind of scum this guy is, here’s a quote from last year:
June 22nd, 2005- (Rove’s comments at a fundraising dinner in Manhattan for the Conservative Party of New York State) “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers, (see article)“.
Well, actions speak louder then words.

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Despite vehement denials by his attorney, who said this week that Karl Rove is neither a “target” nor in danger of being indicted in the CIA leak case, the special counsel leading the investigation has already written up charges against Rove, and a grand jury is expected to vote on whether to indict the Deputy White House Chief of Staff sometime next week, sources knowledgeable about the probe said Friday afternoon.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was in Chicago Friday and did not meet with the grand jury.

Luskin was informed via a target letter that Fitzgerald is prepared to charge Rove for perjury and lying to investigators during Rove’s appearances before the grand jury in 2004 and in interviews with investigators in 2003 when he was asked how and when he discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, and whether he shared that information with the media.

If the grand jury returns an indictment Rove would become the second White House official – and one of the most powerful political operatives in the country – charged in the case since the leak investigation began in the fall of 2003.

In the event that an indictment is handed up by the grand jury it would be filed under seal. A press release would then be issued by Fitzgerald’s press office indicating that the special prosecutor will hold a news conference, likely on a Friday afternoon, sources close to the case said. The media would be given more than 24 hours notice of a press conference, sources added.

Luskin was at his office when called for comment but his assistant said he would not take the call or comment on this story.

In recent weeks, sources close to the case said, Fitzgerald’s staff has met with Rove’s legal team several times to discuss a change in Rove’s status in the case – from subject to target – based on numerous inconsistencies in Rove’s testimony, whether he discussed Plame Wilson with reporters before her name and CIA status were published in newspaper reports, and whether he participated in a smear campaign against her husband.

The meetings between Luskin and Fitzgerald which took place on several occasions a few weeks ago were called to discuss a timeframe to schedule a return to the grand jury by Rove to testify about, among other things, 250 pages of emails that resurfaced February 6 from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Office of President Bush in which Rove wrote to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card about strategizing an attack against Wilson, sources familiar with the case said.

An earlier date for Rove’s testimony was scheduled, but Fitzgerald canceled the appearance because of matters related to another high-profile case that was coming to close in Chicago, sources said.

The rescheduled grand jury appearance by Rove took place Wednesday afternoon and hinges on whether Rove’s testimony about the reasons he did not disclose the emails during his previous testimony will convince Fitzgerald not to add obstruction of justice to the list of charges he intends to file against Rove, sources said.

As of Friday afternoon, sources close to the case said, it appeared likely that charges of obstruction of justice would be added to the prepared list of charges.

Rove testified that he first found out about Plame Wilson from reading a newspaper report in July 2003, and only after the story was published did he share the information about her CIA status with other reporters.

In fact, evidence has surfaced during the course of the two-year-old investigation that shows Rove spoke with at least two reporters about Plame Wilson prior to the publication of the column that first unmasked her identity and exposed her covert CIA status.

The explanation Rove provided to the grand jury – that he was dealing with more urgent White House matters and therefore forgot – has not convinced Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Rove has been truthful in his testimony.

Rove has been questioned by FBI investigators and grand jurors on ten different occasions since October 2003. The time he has spent under oath exceeds 20 hours, sources said, adding that he answered a wide-range of questions about intelligence the White House used to win support for the Iraq war.

But it was during Rove’s request to appear before the grand jury for a fourth time that he suddenly changed his testimony to explain the circumstances of his conversation with at least one reporter, and how his attorney, Robert Luskin, helped Rove jog his memory.

Fitzgerald has been suspicious that Rove altered his previous testimony once it became clear that the reporter he spoke to, Matt Cooper of Time magazine, would be forced to testify and reveal his sources for a story he wrote about Plame Wilson in July 2003. One of those sources has turned out to be Rove.

Moreover, Rove has testified that he and other White House officials were not involved in a coordinated effort to attack the credibility of Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who in mid-2003 questioned the veracity of the Bush administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence.

However, grand jury testimony by at least a dozen administration officials have portrayed Rove as a key player in a campaign to destroy Ambassador Wilson’s credibility in Washington, DC, sources familiar with several of the witnesses’ testimony said.

Jason Leopold spent two years covering California’s electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t. He is the author of the new book NEWS JUNKIE. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview.
see original

side note: i’m still waiting for our Right-wing readers to write me and tell me I’m some crazy liberal nut, about the cost of this unpopular, war of choice. Come on guys… where you at? Remember, this thing was going to pay for itself! It takes a REAL man or woman to admit mistakes. Once you admit it, it gets a whole lot better, i promise!

By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

The Iraq war has already cost the United States $320bn (£180bn), according to an authoritative new report, and even if a troop withdrawal begins this year, the conflict is set to be more expensive in real terms than the Vietnam War, a generation ago.

The estimate, circulated this week by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), can only increase unease over the US presence in Iraq, whose direct costs now run at some $6bn a month, or $200m a day, with no end in sight.

The Bush administration has refused to provide any specific overall figure for the war’s cost. But the Senate is set to approve another emergency spending bill in May, meaning that Iraq will have consumed $101bn in fiscal 2006 alone, almost double the $51bn of 2003, the year of the invasion itself – and all at a time when the federal budget deficit is running at near record levels.

But these figures pale beside what lies in store, the CRS says in its analysis. The Bush administration is desperate to announce a reduction in the 130,000-strong US force before November’s mid-term elections, where public disillusion with the war threatens disaster for the Republicans.

However, even if everything goes relatively smoothly, costs until a phase-out is complete could top $370bn. This would make the Iraq conflict, now into its fourth year, more expensive financially than the Vietnam War, which lasted eight years. Vietnam claimed 58,000 American lives, far more than the almost 2,400 lost in Iraq thus far. But in today’s dollars it cost “only” $549bn, much less than the $690bn for Iraq, and a projected combined $811bn bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a far cry from the weeks before the war, when a White House official was rapped on the knuckles for suggesting the cost might be between $100bn and $200bn, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, was touting “a number that’s somewhere under $50bn”.

Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank but then Mr Rumsfeld’s deputy at the Pentagon, even theorised before Congress that the post-invasion period might pay for itself as Iraq’s oil revenues soared.

The financial analysis by the Congressional Research Service lists various “key war cost questions” and “major unknowns”, such as future troop levels, but its financial conclusions are restrained compared with other non-official figures.

Scott Wallsten of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, has estimated an overall cost of $500bn thus far, with as much again possible. Most, he says, will be paid for by the US (unlike the 1990-91 Gulf War, which the US fought almost for free, thanks to contributions from Saudi Arabia, Japan and other allies).

In January, a study by Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist and former Nobel Prize winner, and the Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes reckoned the conflict could ultimately cost $2 trillion, if all factors are taken into account. These include the long-term healthcare costs for the 16,000 US soldiers already wounded in the conflict, and other indirect or hidden costs such as the rise in the price of oil, the need to finance larger budget deficits, higher recruiting costs and losses to the economy caused by the wounded.

The Pentagon has treated such outside estimates with disdain. But it resolutely refused to give a detailed picture of its own. Some experts suggest, however, that the Pentagon may have deliberately inflated its financial needs now, fearing that as the war becomes ever more unpopular, Congress will grow less willing to provide funds in the future.
see original

side note: take a close look at what this president and this GOP held congress treats our soldiers. the next time you hear a bush backer talk about the troops, just let him/her know what’s really up. They’re cutting benefits any and every chance they get. Why? The bottom line of course.

Shortchanging the Wounded
By Judith Coburn

On the eve of his Marine unit’s assault on Falluja in November, 2004, Blake Miller read to his men from the Bible (John 14:2-3): “In my father’s house, there are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I leave this place and go there to prepare a place for you, so that where I may be, you may be also.”

A photograph of Miller’s blood-smeared, filthy face, so reminiscent of David Douglas Duncan’s photos of war-weary Marines in Vietnam, is one of the Iraq War’s iconic images. Over a hundred newspapers ran it. But as the San Francisco Chronicle reported recently, Miller, a decorated war hero, has been shattered psychologically by Iraq. Disabled by flashbacks and nightmares, he continues to pay daily and dearly for his service there.

His eloquent commitment to his fellow Marines is the highest value in military life. But the Bush administration, which sent Blake Miller, his fellow Marines, and 1.3 million other Americans (so far) to war in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently does not share this commitment.

Much has been written about how President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld waged war on the cheap, sending too few ill-equipped young soldiers — 30% of them ill-trained Reservists and National Guardsmen — into battle. But little has been reported about how shockingly on-the-cheap the homecomings of these soldiers have proved to be. The Bush administration awarded Blake Miller a medal, but it has fought for three long years to deny soldiers like him the care they need. While Miller and his men were being thrown into the fire in Falluja, the White House was proposing to cut the combat pay of soldiers like them. (Only an outburst of outrage across the political spectrum caused the administration to back off from that suggestion.)

The Veterans Administration, now run by a former Republican National Committeeman, has been subjected to the same radical hatcheting that the White House has tried to wield against the rest of America’s safety net. Cutbacks, cooking the books, privatization schemes, even a proposal to close down the VA’s operations have all been in evidence. The administration’s inside-the-beltway supporters like the Heritage Foundation and famed anti-tax radical Grover Norquist like to equate VA care with welfare. Traditionally, however, most Americans have held that the VA’s medical care and disability compensation was earned by those who served their country.

Unfortunately, in our draft-free country, the fight to protect the Veteran’s Administration and to fully fund it has gone on largely out of public sight. Other than the Washington Post and the Associated Press, relatively few journalistic organizations have bothered to regularly cover the VA. The fight over it that White House hatchetmen, VA political appointees, and their allies in Congress have had with Congressional critics (Democratic and Republican) along with veterans’ organizations has been monitored closely only by veterans’ websites like Larry Scott’s VAWatchdog.org, veteransforcommonsense.org and military.com.

“Enron-styled Accounting”

While national deficits soar, thanks in part to skyrocketing war costs, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are flooding into the increasingly underfunded VA system. The Pentagon says that 2,389 Americans have died and 17,648 have been wounded in combat in Iraq (and another 285 have died in Afghanistan). But these casualty figures seem to be significant undercounts. After all, 144,424 American veterans have sought treatment from the VA system since returning from those wars, not including soldiers actually hospitalized in military hospitals.

These figures were wrested only recently from the Veteran’s Administration after years of fruitless demands from Democrats on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. The 144,424 figure includes not only many of those 17,648 reported wounded in combat by the Pentagon — if that figure is, in fact, accurate — but those wounded psychologically, those injured in accidents, and those whose ailments were caused or exacerbated by service in the war. (Think of war, in this sense, as an extreme sport in its toll on the body.) Of course, neither Pentagon, nor VA figures for the wounded include estimates of those soldiers or veterans who don’t show up at a Department of Defense (DoD) or VA facility. Among these casualties are post-combat-tour suicides (who obviously can’t show up) and the victims of diseases like leishmaniasis, caused by the ubiquitous sand flies in Iraq, who often suffer on their own.

Nonetheless, the VA has admitted — and it’s been confirmed by an Army study — that a staggering 35% of veterans who served in Iraq have already sought treatment in the VA system for emotional problems from the war. Add this to the older veterans, especially from the Vietnam era, pouring into the VA system as their war wounds, both physical and emotional, deepen with age or as, on retirement, they find they can no longer afford private health insurance and realize that VA health care is — or, at least in the past, was — more generous than Medicare.

Just as the Pentagon failed, after its March 2003 invasion of Iraq, to plan for keeping the peace, guarding against looting, fighting a resilient insurgency, or handling a civil war, so has the Veterans Administration failed to plan for caring for casualties of the war. The VA admitted recently that 33,858 more vets showed up for treatment in just the first quarter of FY2006 than were expected for the entire year. Do the math yourself. Multiply times 4, assuming that the war goes on injuring Americans at current levels, and you get a possible underestimate of 135,000 casualties for the year.

Even more distressing, the San Diego Union recently reported that mentally ill soldiers are being sent back to war armed only with antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. The Union quotes Sydney Hickey of the National Military Family Association as saying that “more than 200,000 prescriptions for the most common antidepressants were written in the last 14 months for service members and their families.” According to the Union, an Army study also found that 17% of combat-seasoned infantrymen suffer from major depression, anxiety, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a single tour in Iraq. California Sen. Barbara Boxer has called for an investigation.

Are such chronic underestimates merely the result of incompetence? Not according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s investigative arm. In a series of reports on the Veterans Administration over the last three years, the GAO found that the VA’s top officials submitted budget requests based on cost limits demanded by the White House, not on realistic expectations of how many veterans would actually need medical care or disability support.

In repeated testimony before Congress, top VA political appointees have opposed demands by veterans’ groups like the American Legion and the Disabled Veterans of America to increase significantly funds for medical care and disability payments for the new patients now flooding the system. Top VA officials assured Congress that more money wasn’t needed because the agency had stepped up “management efficiencies.” But the GAO found that, from 2003-2006, there were no obvious management efficiencies whatsoever to offset the increased treatment costs from the Iraq War, nor did the VA even have a methodology for reporting on such alleged efficiencies.

While the GAO’s findings, when describing the VA’s budget manipulations, were couched in such relatively polite bureaucratic euphemisms as “misleading,” “lacked a methodology,” and “does not have a reliable basis,” the conclusions nonetheless were striking. “The GAO report confirms what everyone has known all along,” American Legion National Commander Thomas L. Bock commented. “The VA’s health-care budget has been built on false claims of ‘efficiency’ savings, false actuarial assumptions and an inability to collect third-party reimbursements — money owed them. This budget model has turned our veterans into beggars, forced to beg for the medical care they earned and, by law, deserve. These deceptions are especially unconscionable when American men and women are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Some veterans are calling it fraud. Rep. Lane Evans (Dem.-Ill.) of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee calls it “Enron-styled accounting.”

Budget Busting

The economic realities of the wars the Bush administration has taken us into are, in truth, budget busting. A recent study by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard management expert Linda Biones — that actually factored the costs of “coming home” into war expenditures — sets the total cost of the Iraq War between $1 and 2 trillion, including $122 billion in disability payments and $92 billion in health care for veterans.

Pentagon health-care costs for soldiers still in the military have doubled in the last five years and are projected to total $64 billion or 12% of the official Pentagon budget by 2015, according to William Winkenwerder, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Soaring American medical costs are only partly to blame. Advances in combat medical care have also meant that far more wounded soldiers are being kept alive than in earlier wars, many of them with serious brain injuries and/or multiple amputations. Taking care of these tragically maimed soldiers for life will be extraordinarily costly, both in terms of medical care and their 100% disability payments. (The VA rates disability on a scale of 0 to 100%, which then determines the size of the monthly disability payment due a veteran.)

Even before recent veterans began flooding the system, the VA was already underfunded and being criticized for poor services. Then, three years ago, Rep. Evans and Rep. Chris H. Smith, (Rep.-NJ), Chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, raised the alarm that the VA, already short of funds, would face a catastrophe as the troops began returning from Iraq.

Smith was rewarded for his efforts to sound the alarm by being removed not just from his chairmanship, but from the committee altogether, by the House Republican leadership. Similarly, in November 2004, VA head Anthony Principi was forced out by the White House because of his opposition to the VA being shortchanged in the budget the White House demanded — so lobbyists for veterans believe. But Principi seems not to have suffered from his VA experience. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that a medical services company Principi headed, and returned to after running the VA, earned over a billion dollars in fees, much of it from contracts approved while Principi was VA chief.

The VA admits its disability system was overburdened even before the administration invaded Iraq; and, by 2004, it had a backlog of 300,000 disability claims. Now, the VA reports that the backlog has reached 540,122. By April 2006, 25% of rating claims took six months to process — no small thing for a veteran wounded badly enough to be unable to work. An appeal of a rejected claim frequently takes years to settle. One hundred twenty-three thousand disability claims have been filed already by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, in its budget requests, the administration has constantly resisted congressional demands to increase the number of VA staffers processing such claims.

The True Cost of Coming Home

Congress has fought the White House over its low VA budgets for several years. In the FY 2006 budget, all Congress could finally grant the VA was $990 million above the agency’s already meager request — an increase of just 3.6% over the previous year despite the rise in casualties to be treated. In fact, top VA officials now admit it would take a 14% increase in the present budget simply to keep up with the inflation in medical costs.

Rep. Evans estimates that there has been a $4 billion shortfall in VA funding in the years 2003-06. In 2005, the White House admitted that, for medical services alone, the VA was short $1 billion for the year — and another estimated $2.6 billion in 2006.

What may ultimately swamp the Veterans Administration’s ability to cope is the emotional toll of combat — unless it jettisons thousands of returning soldiers. Nearly one in three veterans has been hospitalized at the VA, or visited a VA outpatient clinic, due to an initial diagnosis of a mental-health disorder, according to the VA itself. Its numbers are consistent with a recent Army study on soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Such a rate might add up over time (depending on how long these wars last) to almost half a million veterans in need of treatment — or more. A 2004 study of several Army and Marine units returning from Iraq and Afghanistan that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine found only 23-40% of those with PTSD had sought treatment. And post-traumatic stress is called “post” for a reason — its most serious symptoms usually emerge long after the trauma is over.

Listen to the VA’s own national advisory board on PTSD in a report released in February, 2006:

“[The] VA cannot meet the ongoing needs of veterans of past deployments while also reaching out to new combat veterans of [Iraq and Afghanistan] and their families within current resources and current models of treatment.”

The VA is now paying out $4.3 billion a year for PTSD disability to 215,871 veterans. The report also found that a returning war veteran suffering from emotional illness now has to wait an average of 60 days before he or she can even be evaluated for diagnosis, let alone treated. Forty-two percent of VA primary care clinics had no mental-health staff members and 53% of those that did had only one. Eighty-two percent of new patients needed to be in the most intensive PTSD treatment programs, the VA report found, but 40% of those programs were already so full that they could only take a few more patients; 20% said they were too full to take any at all.

“VA’s data show a 30% increase in the number of [Iraq and Afghan War] veterans who have an initial diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder from the end of FY 2005,” says Rep. Michael Michaud (Dem.-Me). “I applaud the courage of these veterans who have sought help, but the administration refuses to acknowledge fully the demand and need for mental health services.”

Further down the line: How many Iraqi veterans will eventually join the ranks of the 400,000 homeless vets on the streets of American cities? (Right now the VA takes care of only 100,000 such vets, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.)

This dire situation has only encouraged the budget cutters and anti-government radicals like Norquist, who once joked that he hoped to shrink the government enough so that he could drown it in a bathtub. With PTSD rates soaring among vets, the hatchets have been out not just when it comes to treating them, but even when it comes to the diagnosis of PTSD itself. In 2005, the VA, under White House pressure, announced that it was reopening 72,000 long-approved PTSD disability claims for review, many of them for Vietnam veterans. Right-wing columnists quickly swung into action with op-ed pieces insisting that many PTSD claims were fraudulent. The VA backed off — but only after a New Mexico newspaper reported that a troubled Vietnam veteran with a 100% PTSD disability killed himself upon fearing that the VA might review his case and a firestorm of criticism from Congress and veterans’ organizations followed.

Other White House ideas for cutting back the VA, including making vets pay insurance premiums, higher co-pays and doubling Vets’ costs for prescription drugs, have also been beaten back by Congress. One VA response to its huge backlog of claims has been to limit enrollment for its services. In January 2003, the White House ordered the VA to create a new temporary cost-cutting category of “affluent” vets who would not be eligible to use the VA. But the new category seems headed for permanency. And it sets the cut-off level for eligibility for VA care so low — around $30,000 for a so-called “affluent” family of four — that many vets who have been cut off can’t possibly afford health insurance and medical care on the private market.

In World War II, 12 million Americans fought on behalf of a nation of 130 million. Twenty-five percent of American men served in that war. They came back heroes to a country more than willing to give them the latest medical care, compensate them for their wounds, send them to college, and help them buy homes.

Fifty years later in Iraq — an unpopular war — only 1.3 million are fighting for a nation of 300 million. “Never have so few sacrificed so much for so many,” one Desert Storm veteran said recently. Iraq may be the wrong cause for sacrifice. But Vietnam veterans taught us that once war starts we must be willing to take care of everyone who gets hurt in it.

Judith Coburn has covered war and its aftermath in Indochina, Central America, and the Middle East for the Village Voice, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times, and Tomdispatch, among other media outlets.

Copyright 2006 Judith Coburn
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By Michael Liedtke
The Associated Press
truthout.org

San Ramon, Calif. – Chevron Corp.’s first-quarter profit soared 49 percent to $4 billion, joining the procession of U.S. oil companies to report colossal earnings as lawmakers consider ways to pacify motorists agitated about rising gas prices.

The San Ramon, Calif.-based company’s net income, reported Friday, translated into $1.80 per share, two cents above the average estimate among analysts polled by Thomson Financial. It compared to a profit of $2.7 billion, or $1.28 per share, in the same January-March period last year.

Revenue totaled $54.6 billion, a 31 percent increase from $41.6 billion last year.

If not for continuing production problems caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer, Chevron said it would have made an additional $300 million – an amount that would have generated the highest quarterly profit in the company’s 127-year history.

As it was, the performance marked the fourth consecutive quarter that Chevron has earned at least $3.6 billion as the company continued to capitalize on oil prices that have climbed above $70 per barrel since the first quarter ended.

The run-up recently has pushed gasoline prices above $3 per gallon, much to the frustration of consumers and politicians looking to win votes in an election year.

Chevron released its results after two of its biggest rivals, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp., already provoked public outrage with similarly large first-quarter profits. Combined, the three oil companies earned $15.7 billion during the three months of the year.
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By Robert Everett-Green
The Globe and Mail

The world awaits Young’s most powerful album in years, a disc fuelled by outrage at Washington.

We met outside a bagel joint in north Toronto, then drove a few blocks to a quiet street where two strangers could sit in a big old Cadillac and listen to the car stereo in peace. Then Robert Young slipped a CD-ROM from a plain white sleeve and gave me a rare preview of the nine explosive new songs on his brother Neil Young’s much-anticipated album, Living With War.

The disc was made in a hurry, recorded in three days on Neil Young’s California ranch and another 12-hour session in a Los Angeles studio. I can hear the urgency in Young’s singing, as if there’s not a moment to lose when a great lie has spread over the land and only strong, sustained truth-telling can turn it back.

Living With War is a fierce, comprehensive indictment of the Bush administration and all its failures, at home and abroad, but it doesn’t feel like an outsider’s dissent. It’s the work of someone who clearly identifies with the core values of ordinary Middle Americans who voted for Bush, who sent their sons and daughters to war, and who are beginning to feel betrayed.

Flags of Freedom, for example, starts like a proudly patriotic song from the days before the Vietnam War began to stain the self-image of the republic. Young depicts a parade of recruits marching off to war down the main street of their small town, church bells ringing and “the flags of freedom flying.” But when the soldiers have passed, with parents and sisters watching, Young pointedly asks: “Have you seen the flags of freedom? / What colour are they now?” It would be hard to miss the sense of doubt and disappointment, made sharper by Young’s allusion to a similar, more confident query at the end of The Star-Spangled Banner.

The disappointment turns into rage in Let’s Impeach the President. This long impassioned outcry begins with a trumpet flourish from the Last Post and ends with a 100-voice chorus shouting Young’s angry responses to numerous clips of Bush’s own words about Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the case for war in Iraq.

“Let’s impeach the president for lying / and leading our country into war,” Young hollers, “abusing all the power that we gave him / and shipping all our money out the door . . . Let’s impeach the president for spying / on citizens inside their own homes / breaking every law in the country / tapping our computers and telephones.”

The text alone can’t convey the sense of gasping outrage in Young’s singing, and his forceful arrangements for guitar, bass, drums and sometimes trumpet. His electric guitar’s gnarly, saturated tone has an almost drunken quality, as if it too were reeling from the great betrayal.

But the music throughout the album feels sparse and tightly controlled, as if these statements were too important to be gussied up with ornament. The trumpet, when it appears, does so only briefly, with a different character each time, evoking the sounds of a border town in Bush’s native Texas (in Shock and Awe), or doubling the guitar melody like a quasi-human voice (in Living With War).

Likewise, the choir plays several roles, and offers much more than backing vocals. It’s the sound of the people, whether represented as a church congregation (in the title song) or a chanting crowd of protesters (in Let’s Impeach the President).

Mostly, it’s a big-tent collection of ordinary citizens, which at the end of the album sings an a cappella version of America the Beautiful, recalling in a more robust key the final scene of Michael Cimino’s devastating Vietnam film, The Deer Hunter.

The title song makes the most powerful use of core American themes and symbols, and the rhetoric of the religious right. Both the melody and the lyrics (”I join the multitudes, I raise my hand in peace . . . I take a holy vow never to kill again”) feel hymn-like, in spite of the song’s rock idiom. The voices rise as Young inserts a line from The Star-Spangled Banner (”the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air”) and it seems at first as if the reference is purely ironic. But he goes on with another line from the anthem, and suddenly the meaning is more ambivalent, more complicated by a sense of bedrock patriotism.

At bottom, this is a profoundly patriotic record. Its predominant theme is spoiled hopes, and the list is long, including hopes for a safe environment, for economic justice at home and abroad, for peace between nations. But a few songs make it clear that Young isn’t finished with hoping. Looking for a Leader, which comes right after Let’s Impeach the President, is an unvarnished call for a new authority figure who can right the wrong, clear out the corruption, and make the nation’s symbols feel pure again. “Some one walks among us, and I hope he hears the call,” Young sings, “Maybe it’s a woman, or a black man after all.”

Young supported Reagan, and was one of the first major rock musicians to lend support to the so-called war on terror, in his 2001 song Let’s Roll. It would seem to be a challenge for Bush’s allies to brush off his attacks on “the shadow man running the government.” But the struggle is already skewed in their favour, because most of these songs probably won’t make it on to American radio, which is heavily dominated by the ClearChannel empire. Those are the folks, you may remember, who yanked the Dixie Chicks from the airwaves after Natalie Maines dared to criticize the President in front of a microphone.

Young knows all about that, which is why this album will be streamed for free on his website (http://www.neilyoung.com) for a week starting Friday, before a commercial release on Reprise/Warner. It’s going to spread on-line, and on college radio, and by word of mouth. It’s a media virus, and it’s also Young’s strongest record in years.

Angry Young Man

Sample lyrics from Neil Young’s upcominga album, Living With War:

Back in the days of shock and awe
We came to liberate them all
History was the cruel judge of overconfidence
Back in the days of shock and awe
Back in the days of “mission accomplished”
Our chief was landing on the deck
The sun was setting on a golden photo-op
Back in the days of “mission accomplished”
– from Shock and Awe

Don’t need no Madison Avenue War
Don’t need no more boxes I can’t see
Covered in flags but I can’t see them on TV
Don’t need no more lies
– from The Restless Consumer

Won’t need no shadow man
Runnin’ the government
Won’t need no stinkin’ WAR
Won’t need no haircut
Won’t need no shoeshine
After the garden is gone
– from After the Garden

Lookin’ for a leader
To bring our country home
Reunite the red white and blue
Before it turns to stone . . .
Yeah maybe it’s Obama
But he thinks that he’s too young
Maybe it’s Colin Powell
To right what he’s done wrong
– from Lookin’ for a Leader
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side note: i love the line, “I don’t even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I’m a free-marketeer. So long as the polluters are cheating, none of us will get the benefits of the efficiency, prosperity and democracy that the free market promises America.” We too at NT, are free-marketers.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President of Waterkeeper Alliance
www.waterkeeper.org

Corporate polluters, their phony think tanks and political toadies like to marginalize environmentalists as ‘tree huggers,’ or ‘radicals.’ But there is nothing radical about clean air or water. Environmentalists are battling for the very mainstream values that right-wing fanatics so often herald in their rhetoric: property rights, law and order, local control, and free market capitalism. Too often these are only hollow facades that mask the radical agenda of the White House’s doublespeakers whose only real value seems to be corporate profit taking.

These federal officials have taken the “conserve” out of conservatism. They only embrace property rights when it is the right of polluters to use their property to destroy their neighbor’s or the public property. (Where is their clamor when industrial hog syndicates and mountaintop mining conglomerates destroy the properties of their neighbors?) While proclaiming law and order, they let corporate polluters off the hook. (As President Bush did when he ordered the Justice Department and EPA to drop dozens of lawsuits against coal-burning utilities and corporate hog farms that had contributed millions to his campaign.) ‘Local control’ is only invoked to dismantle the obstacles to corporate dominion at the local level. And while proclaiming Christianity they routinely violate the manifest mandates of Christianity that we act as stewards of the Earth and exercise responsibility toward our children. Rather than honoring the free market, they fight for corporate welfare and envision a system of capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

In a true free-market economy you can’t make yourself rich without enriching your neighbors and your community. A true free-market properly values natural resources and promotes efficiency and the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So the free market eliminates pollution. But polluters subvert the discipline of the free market. Corporations are externalizing machines – ever seeking ways of foisting their costs on the public, and pollution is perhaps the most common method for loading production costs onto the rest of us. You show me a polluter, I’ll show you a subsidy—a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.

All our federal environmental laws were intended to promote free market capitalism by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true costs of bringing their products to market. The Waterkeepers enforce these laws. We go into the marketplace, and catch cheaters. “We are going to force you,” we tell them, “to internalize your costs the same way you are internalizing your profit.” I don’t even consider myself an environmentalist anymore. I’m a free-marketeer. So long as the polluters are cheating, none of us will get the benefits of the efficiency, prosperity and democracy that the free market promises America.

Pollution threatens all of our national values. It violates the free market, diminishes property rights, mocks law and order, promotes corporate rather than local control and shatters the duties of responsibility mandated by the Judeo-Christian and other religious traditions. It is pessimistic, defeatist and anti-democratic. It contradicts America’s historical ties to wilderness and the American tradition of responsibility, resourcefulness and commitment to community. It is unpatriotic and un-American and threatens our public health and national security far more than any terrorist. Our battle is a battle for those values and for all the things that make us proud of our country.
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By Congressman John Conyers
The DailyKos.com

As some of you may be aware, according to the President and Congressional Republicans, a bill does not have to pass both the Senate and the House to become a law. Forget your sixth grade civics lesson, forget the book they give you when you visit Congress – “How Our Laws Are Made,” and forget Schoolhouse Rock. These are checks and balances, Republican-style.

As the Washington Post reported last month, as the Republican budget bill struggled to make its way through Congress at the end of last year and beginning of this year (the bill cuts critical programs such as student loans and Medicaid funding), the House and Senate passed different versions of it. House Republicans did not want to make Republicans in marginal districts vote on the bill again, so they simply certified that the Senate bill was the same as the House bill and sent it to the President. The President, despite warnings that the bill did not represent the consensus of the House and Senate, simply shrugged and signed the bill anyway. Now, the Administration is implementing it as though it was the law of the land.

Several public interest groups have sought to stop some parts of the bill from being implemented, under the theory that the bill is unconstitutional. However, getting into the weeds a bit, they have lacked the ability to stop the entire bill. To seek this recourse, the person bringing the suit must have what is called “standing,” that is they must show they were injured or deprived of some right. Because the budget bill covers so many areas of the law, it is difficult for one person to show they were harmed by the entire bill. Thus, many of these groups have only sought to stop part of it.

After consulting with some of the foremost constitutional experts in the nation, I determined that one group of people are injured by the entire bill: Members of the House. We were deprived of our right to vote on a bill that is now being treated as the law of the land.

So, I am going to court. With many of my Democratic Colleagues (list appended at the bottom of this diary), I plan to file suit tomorrow in federal district court in Detroit against the President, members of the Cabinet and other federal officers seeking to have a simple truth confirmed: a bill not passed by the House and Senate is not a law, even if the President signs it. As such, the Budget bill cannot be treated as the law of the land.

As many of you know, I have become increasingly alarmed at the erosion of our constitutional form of government. Whether through the Patriot Act, the President’s Secret Domestic Spying program, or election irregularities and disenfranchisement, our fundamental freedoms are being taken away. Nothing to me is more stark than this, however. If a President does not need one House of Congress to pass a law, what’s next?

The following is a list of co-plaintiffs on this lawsuit. I would note that I did not invite every Member of the House to join in the suit, and I am certain many, many more Members would have joined if asked. However, this was not possible for various arcane legal reasons.

The other plaintiffs include Rep. John Dingell, Ranking Member on the Energy and Commerce Committee; Rep. Charles B. Rangel, Ranking Member on the Ways and Means Committee; Rep. George Miller, Ranking Member on the Education and Workforce Committee; Rep. James L. Oberstar, Ranking Member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Rep. Barney Frank, Ranking Member on the Financial Services Committee; Rep. Collin C. Peterson, Ranking Member on the Agriculture Committee; Rep. Bennie Thompson, Ranking Member on the Homeland Security Committee; Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, Ranking Member on the Rules Committee; Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark, Ranking Member on the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee; Rep. Sherrod Brown, Representing Ohio’s 13th District.
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side note: Specter talks a good game, but everytime it comes down to it, he balks. So Sen. Spector, when are you going to grow some balls and stand up for us once and a while. Oh I forgot, your a repub., too scared of the president to say anything.

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
yahoo.com

Noting that Congress holds the power of the purse, a frustrated Senate chairman threatened to try to block money for President Bush’s domestic wiretapping program.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Thursday he delivered a message to Bush that cut to the heart of the debate over executive power.

“I made the point that the president doesn’t have a blank check,” Specter said about their meeting Wednesday. “He didn’t choose to engage me on that point.”

Without a pledge from Bush to provide more information on the surveillance program, Specter filed an amendment to a spending bill Thursday that amounted to a warning to the White House.

The amendment would enact a “prohibition on use of funds for domestic electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes unless Congress is kept fully and currently informed.”

Specter also said he would turn the amendment into a bill and hold hearings.

“Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment,” Specter said. “If we are to maintain our institutional prerogative, that may be the only way we can do it.”

Specter made clear that, for now, the threat was just that.

“I’m not prepared to call for the withholding of funds,” he told reporters later.

“But I think that it is important to elevate the public consciousness as to what is going on,” Specter said. “The four hearings we have had and the way the matter is drifting, in my view, is insufficient to safeguard civil liberties.”

The move got the White House’s attention, but not its immediate cooperation. Bush has insisted that the program falls within his authority and has refused to allow Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other officials to answer many of Specter’s questions.

“The appropriate members of Congress have been and continue to be informed with respect to the Terrorist Surveillance Program,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

“The administration remains confident that a majority of members of Congress continue to recognize the importance of protecting Americans through lawful intelligence activities directed at terrorists,” Perino said.

Specter said he hoped to jolt the public’s awareness and “an inert Congress … which has not stood up to the executive branch.”

“You have a Congress which candidly is more concerned about re-election and fundraising and who controls the House and the Senate than about asserting constitutional prerogatives,” Specter said. “That’s not the way it ought to be. These are matters which require some active congressional action and that’s what I’m looking toward.”

For now, Specter said he will not bother having Gonzales return to the committee “because he won’t tell us anything.”

Threatening to withhold money from the wiretapping program is not unprecedented.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee tried to attach an amendment to the 2007 intelligence authorization bill to withhold money from the National Security Agency if the White House did not disclose information about the cost of the warrantless surveillance program.

The figure was given to a select group of members who have been briefed more fully on the NSA program, and is classified.
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side note: Alright, Jesus has make his choice in Ohio…………. man, i don’t know about you, but i think Jesus needs to start doing a little research before he picks candidates he’s backing.

NOW
t r u t h o u t | Programming Note

Airdate: Friday 28 April 2006 at 8:30 p.m.
(Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)

Have they gone too far? This time on NOW.

The wall between church and state is being stretched once again in Ohio, this time not just by politicians, but by church leaders themselves. So-called “patriot pastors” are mobilizing to deliver one-sided messages about social policy, secular laws and even political candidates before the state’s May 2nd gubernatorial primary. On April 28th, NOW takes a closer look at the “Ohio Restoration Project,” a campaign being criticized for using Evangelical Christianity as a vehicle for political advocacy and for their strong support of conservative gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell. “When it came time to find a leader, we found one, Ken Blackwell, who said yes, marriage is defined by the Bible as one man and a woman, and I will stand with you,” says Russell Johnson, not a professional politician, but a senior pastor at Ohio’s Fairfield Christian Church.

Such strong support for a single candidate violates IRS rules, say some 30 religious leaders who’ve filed multiple complaints against two Ohio mega-churches for misusing their influence. With the election just around the corner, the Buckeye State is once again bracing for a political storm of biblical proportions. This time on NOW.
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side note: Welcome to the two face world of the Religous Politicians.

By Rebecca Clarren, Ms. Magazine
www.alternet.org

What role did Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff play in allowing American companies to profit by exploiting tens of thousands of female workers in the Northern Marianas Islands?

Were abusive garment sweatshops, forced abortions and sex trafficking in Saipan, one of the Northern Mariana Islands, protected by Tom DeLay? How did congressional leaders and the Bush administration succeed in blocking labor and immigration reforms there? And how did Jack Abramoff figure into all of this?

Those are some of the questions we answered after sending an investigative team to Saipan, the main island in the Northern Marianas chain. There, 30,000 “guest workers” — predominately women — from China, the Philippines and Thailand sew clothing for top-name American brands, which are then allowed to label them “Made in USA” because the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is a U.S. territory. But workers in these factories are not covered by U.S. minimum-wage and immigration laws.

Coming from rural villages and the big-city slums of poor Asian countries, these garment workers arrive in Saipan with a huge financial debt, having borrowed money (at interest rates as high as 20 percent) to pay recruiters as much as $7,000 for a one-year contract job. In a situation akin to indentured servitude, workers cannot earn back their recruitment fee and pay for housing and food without working tremendous hours of overtime.

At its peak, the factories in the Northern Marianas exported garments worth $2 billion retail annually to the United States. Considering that the success of the industry was tied closely to its low wages and exploitative guest worker program — and the fact that it was exempt from tariffs or quotas on exports to the U.S. mainland — it’s not surprising that both the Marianas’ government and the garment manufacturers have fought long and hard to maintain the deal.

Enter Jack Abramoff, the formerly high-flying Republican lobbyist. First at the Washington, D.C., law offices of Preston, Gates, Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds — and later at Greenberg Traurig — Abramoff and his team brought in nearly $11 million in fees from the Northern Marianas government and Saipan garment manufacturers to block congressional efforts to raise the minimum wage and eliminate the islands’ exemptions from U.S. immigration laws. His efforts focused on the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. territories. And he also cultivated powerful allies in the House leadership — notably Tom DeLay, who, as Majority Whip at the time, could keep a bill off the House floor even if the Resources Committee voted in its favor.

One of Abramoff’s favorite tactics for influencing Congress was to arrange Saipan junkets for members of Congress and their staffers. As many as 100 people connected to the U.S. Congress — members themselves, or their staffers — traveled to the islands. Among the islands’ visitors were DeLay, his wife and daughter, and six of his aides. At a New Year’s Eve dinner on Saipan in 1998, he lavishly praised the CNMI governor — a moment caught on camera by ABC’s “20/20:” “You are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we’re trying to do in America in leading the world in the free-market system.”

But the dark underbelly of DeLay’s “shining light” is right across a busy Saipan street and a few yards down a dirt road. That’s where garment workers live in tiny, corrugated-tin-roofed homes, with three women sharing a queen-size bed. Their “kitchen” is a few hot plates and water-filled plastic buckets set outside on a concrete counter. Nine people share one toilet.

If they get pregnant while working in Saipan, workers face another nightmare. According to a 1998 investigation by the Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs, a number of Chinese garment workers reported that if they became pregnant, they were “forced to return to China to have an abortion, or forced to have an illegal abortion” in the Marianas. These days, many pregnant workers still feel they have little choice but to visit one of Saipan’s underground abortion clinics — or else lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, the garment industry on Saipan has begun to decline with the expiration of worldwide quotas on apparel exports to the United States. Garment makers are moving off Saipan to even lower-wage countries such as China, Vietnam and Cambodia. Desperate to earn money and pay back their recruitment fees, some unemployed garment workers have found themselves turning to another lucrative industry on Saipan: sex tourism. There are no reliable statistics, but an estimated 90 percent of the island’s prostitutes are former garment workers.

Tom DeLay insists that he’s never heard such stories. “Sure, when you get this number of people, there are stories of sexual exploitation,” he told the Galveston County Daily News in May 2005. “But in interviewing these employees one-on-one, there was no evidence of any of that going on. No evidence of sweatshops as portrayed by the national media. It’s a beautiful island with beautiful people who are happy about what’s happening.”

When we contacted DeLay during our investigation, his spokesman Michael Connolly said, “He stands by the things he has said in the past, and he stands by the votes he’s made that pertain to the islands.”

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who has championed efforts to raise the minimum wage in Saipan, hopes that Abramoff’s recent indictment offers a chance for real change in the Marianas. He has requested that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the House Resources Committee chair, Richard Pombo, R-Calif., launch a full investigation of Abramoff’s dealings in the Marianas.

“It’s so ironic that people who talk about themselves as having family values are allowing these guest workers to be exploited in the harshest possible ways,” says Miller. “Their money and lobbying allowed the continuation of the worst of human behavior.”

Rebecca Clarren is an investigative journalist based in Portland, Ore.
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