Window on Washington
News, analysis, color and photography from Cox Newspapers' Washington BureauRSS feed
What's on this page →
All the entries posted on December 06, 2006.
Categories
| RSS | |
| RSS | |
| RSS | |
| RSS | |
| RSS | |
| RSS | |
| RSS |
Commenting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F
Recent entries
Home > Window on Washington > Archives > 2006 > December > 06
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Smith to be Judiciary Ranking Member
After a long day behind closed doors with other Republican members of the Republican Steering Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith emerged as the first Texan to serve as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.
During the steering committee meeting Wednesday, each member who wanted a ranking position had to submit paperwork to the committee outlining his or her experience and goals for the committee, then give a 10-minute speech.
Smith had been up for chairmanship of the whole committee, but that changed when Democrats took the House in November. The committee will be chaired by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Smith, who initially faced competition by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., for the post, ended up uncontested.
He told the fellow Republican members that he saw opportunity in the post, because Conyers is more liberal than the Democratic Congress overall. Conyers has previously pushed to vote to impeach President Bush.
“I think they (the Democrats on the committee) will pull the committee to the left, and open up opportunities for counter proposals that are more popular and appeal to the American people,” Smith said.
Smith said overall he is looking forward to working with the new chairman, and some of the oversight initiatives the committee may consider early next year.
“Oversight is good as long as it is not partisan,” Smith said.
He is also looking to return to legislation he pushed last year, including patent and intellectual property reform bills.
In a release late Wednesday, Smith’s office said as ranking member, he “will serve as a spokesman for the Republican Party and is responsible for forming the party’s policy on issues before the Committee.” Smith has been a member of the committee since 1987.
Permalink | |
Despite late efforts, 2007 MilCon Bill Unlikely to Pass Lame Duck Session
House Republican aides familiar with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s last-minute push to get the 2007 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill funded before the lame-duck session ends said it’s unlikely House conferees will be named, effectively ending the effort.
Hutchison told Texas reporters late Wednesday that she couldn’t accept losing $4 billion in construction and operations money for VA hospital and military bases she’d worked on during the year, that will be lost if this session ends without passage.
“I want this bill,” Hutchison said.
On Tuesday, Hutchison got short-timer Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist to green-light her idea to name Senate conferees and push hard in the last 24 hours of this Congress to pass the bill.
If it doesn’t pass, the VA will still get funding through a “Continuing Resolution,” but at last year’s levels — which are not enough to cover the increased workload at VA hospitals.
A CR can’t include new projects or funding. So increased funding in the 2007 bill for the state’s VA Hospitals, like the Waco VA Mental Health Center of Excellence, or new money to study Gulf War Syndrome symptoms, or any of the state’s new military construction projects — would be lost because continuing resolutions can’t include new projects or spending, they can only maintain last years’ activity.
“I just took a stand,” Hutchison said. “It started a lot of people twittering. Our goal is to have the bill printed out and ready to go.”
But the House has to agree to move to conference too, and as of late Wednesday, aides close to the situation on the House side said it wasn’t going to happen, which disappointed Waco representatives.
“Unfortunately, Majority Leader Boehner has not appointed House conferees on the bill at this point,” said Josh Taylor, a spokesman for Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco. “Congressman Edwards is very appreciative of Sen. Hutchison’s efforts to break the logjam in the Senate and will continue to urge Republican leadership to bring up the bill and pass it before Congress adjourns. America’s veterans deserve the benefits they have earned through their service.”
Permalink | |
How About Immigration?
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, chair of the National Governors Association, said she is disappointed that House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has not included immigration in early plans for the next Congress.
Pelosi has announced an agenda to kick off the new legislative session that includes raising the minimum wage, implementing all the recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission, and giving more aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Napolitano, a Democrat, said that immigration needs to be added to the list of priorities and will be a hot topic of discussion at the National Governors Association annual meeting in February. She supports a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“This is not going to be solved by a wall. This needs to be dealt with comprehensively,” she said, in a breakfast meeting with reporters. “I think immigration needs to be on the table. We can’t ignore it. It’s not going away.”
Napolitano also said that sending National Guard troops to the border has decreased the flow of illegal immigration into Arizona, in part because the press in Mexico has strongly publicized the effort.
In a wide ranging discussion, Napolitano also weighed in on why it has proven difficult for members of Congress to win the presidency. “The longer people are in Congress, the harder it is for them to speak in short, declarative sentences,” she quipped.
Permalink | |
Key weaknesses in U.S. Arabic skills, Iraq institutional knowledge remain, report finds
Despite efforts in the last few years to increase the number of Arabic speakers in the nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, the Iraq Study Group’s report released Wednesday carried a sobering fact: Of the 1,000 staff serving in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, only 33 speak Arabic — and only 6 of those fluently.
Language skills are central to the U.S. mission in Iraq. By speaking a regional dialect, soldiers improve their ability to gather accurate and potentially life-saving human intelligence — or HUMINT. But HUMINT levels in Iraq have only improved from 10 percent to 30 percent, according to the report.
“We rely too much on others to bring information to us, and often we don’t understand what is reported back because we do not understand the context of what we are told,” the Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and 9-11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton reported on page 94 of the report, quoting an intelligence analyst.
Recognizing that strategic weakness, the Defense Intelligence Agency and Central Intelligence Agency have been aggressively recruiting linguists with critical language skills in Arabic, Pashto, and Farsi over the last few years. The Defense Department began doubling the size of its Arabic instruction program at its California-based Defense Language Institute in 2004.
But the department was also widely criticized that year for dismissing 26 Arabic and Farsi linguists for violating its “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality.
Beyond the language barriers, the report questioned how the agencies are handling their Iraq expertise.
The Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, is rotating seasoned analysts of the Iraq desk, costing it institutional knowledge and the ability to provide continued context for new data, the report found.
“We were told that there are fewer than 10 analysts on the job at the Defense Intelligence Agency who have more than two years’ experience analyzing the insurgency,” the report found on page 94. “Capable analysts are rotated to new assignments, and on-the-job training begins anew.”
Permalink | |
HBO Iraq
A popular HBO show gets a reference in the report released today by the Iraq Study Group:
“Criminality also makes daily life unbearable for many Iraqis. Robberies, kidnappings, and murder are commonplace in much of the country. Organized criminal rackets thrive, particularly in unstable areas like Anbar province. Some criminal gangs cooperate with, finance, or purport to be part of the Sunni insurgency or a Shiite militia in order to gain legitimacy. As one knowledgeable American official put it, ‘If there were foreign forces in New Jersey, Tony Soprano would be an insurgent leader.’”
Another reference Americans can grasp:
“As one Iraqi official told us, ‘Al-Qaida is now a franchise in Iraq, like McDonald’s.’”
And here’s more in the report about crime in Iraq:
“The judiciary is weak. Much has been done to establish an Iraqi judiciary, including a supreme court, and Iraq has some dedicated judges. But criminal investigations are conducted by magistrates, and they are too few and inadequately trained to perform this function. Intimidation of the Iraqi judiciary has been ruthless. As one senior U.S. official said to us, ‘We can protect judges, but not their families, their extended families, their friends.’ Many Iraqis feel that crime not only is unpunished, it is rewarded.”
And in the oil fields:
“Corruption is also debilitating. Experts estimate that 150,000 to 200,000 - and perhaps as many as 500,000 - barrels of oil per day are being stolen. Controlled prices for refined products result in shortages within Iraq, which drive con- sumers to the thriving black market. One senior U.S. official told us that corruption is more responsible than insurgents for breakdowns in the oil sector.”
And the final words in the “conclusions” part of the “assessment” section of the report:
“Despite a massive effort, stability in Iraq remains elusive and the situation is deteriorating. The Iraqi government cannot now govern, sustain, and defend itself without the support of the United States. Iraqis have not been convinced that they must take responsibility for their own future. Iraq’s neighbors and much of the international community have not been persuaded to play an active and constructive role in supporting Iraq. The ability of the United States to shape outcomes is diminishing. Time is running out.”
Permalink | |
Iraq Study Group: Conditions Grave and Deteriorating
Conditions in Iraq are “grave and deteriorating” and there is no certainty of U.S. victory in a war that has taken the lives of 2,900 American soldiers and more than 50,000 Iraqis, a bipartisan study group told President Bush on Wednesday.
The high stakes the conflict poses for this country and the oil-rich Middle East, however, call for a new strategy to improve the prospects there, rather than a policy of trying to quickly withdraw, concluded the group - headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican, and former House International Relations Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat.
The group recommended that Bush overhaul his diplomatic approach to the volatile region - including opening direct talks about Iraq with two of its neighbors, Syria and Iran, that Bush has so far shunned. And the group called for a shift in the U.S. military mission, from one of spearheading combat against increasingly lethal insurgent groups to one of supporting Iraqi forces trained and equipped to take the brunt of the fight.
“This report gives a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq,” Bush told reporters at the White House after receiving the report - the contents of which he had been periodically updated on by Baker - at a morning meeting in the Cabinet Room. “We will take every proposal seriously and we will act in a timely fashion.” Bush made clear that he did not intend to adopt each of the group’s 79 recommendations. “We probably won’t agree with every proposal,” he said. Bush welcomed the suggestions, though, as a starting point for finding “common ground” with his Democratic opponents - as well as his Republican critics - on how to address the deeply troubled U.S. efforts in Iraq.
“We can achieve long-lasting peace for this country, and it requires tough work,” said Bush. “It also requires a strategy that will be effective.”
Eight months in the making, the report immediately began shaping the Iraq debate on Capitol Hill, where Democrats regained control of the Senate and House in Nov. 7 elections largely seen as a referendum on the war.
“This is the only bipartisan advice you’re going to get,” Hamilton told Bush, according to White House spokesman Tony Snow, who was in the room during the meeting.
Permalink | |