IRAQ – Security and Spending
Last week the Senate passed a supplemental funding bill (S.965) to assure our soldiers have the resources they need to go into battle. The bill makes a good start at funding security at home, e.g.,
· $96 billion in war funds to ensure troops have necessary resources
· $4.3 billion to ensure that returning troops receive the health care they deserve
· $2 billion in port, mass transit, and airport security
· $6.7 billion to help rebuild the Gulf Coast and put people back to work
· $4.2 billion for multi-year disaster drought relief for farmers.
The bill also provides additional support for our troops above and beyond necessary funding for weapons and supplies. This legislation also offers a new strategy for ending the ongoing war and American occupation in Iraq, and gives the President a new direction so that the U.S. might more effectively fight terrorism in Afghanistan and redeploy our troops out of the Iraqi civil war.
For details, go to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee website. Then click “03/29/2007 Senate Passes Funding for Troops, Vets, Katrina, Homeland Security.”
It’s also worth noting the National Farmers Union strongly supports disaster aid for producers.
“NFU: Senate Passes Much-Needed Disaster Relief” Southwest Nebraska News, 3-30-2007
BUT WHAT’S THE IRAQ DEBATE REALLY ABOUT?
In the U.S. Senate, the choice on paper looks like this:
· S.J.Res.9 – a joint resolution to revise U.S. Policy on Iraq (sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Reid, D-NV)
· S.Res.107, to express the sense of the Senate that no action be taken to undermine the safety of the Armed Forces (sponsored by Senator Murray, D-WA)
· S. Con.Res.20, to express the sense of Congress that no funds be cut off or reduced for American troops in the field (sponsored by Senator Gregg, R-NH)
In detail, the differences between Murray’s and Gregg’s bills look like this:
S. Con. Res.20 – Gregg:
1. Stops Congressional authority to make decisions in support of our troops;
2. Defines Congressional authority as funding President Bush’s policies that so far have resulted only in prolonging the war;
3. Declares only the President has authority over our troops, but skips over any obligations to our veterans when they come home;
4. Creates a “Rubberstamp Congress” whose only role is to ratify Presidential decisions, and in doing so, misinterprets the U.S. Constitution.
S.Res.107 – Murray
1. Reinforces U.S. obligation to provide veterans with appropriate medical care when they come home;
2. Defines Congress’ role in policy as well as funding decisions that support the troops;
3. Supports the troops by definition – proper training is necessary before they go to war, and suitable medical care and other support is mandatory when they come home;
4. Clarifies the President’s role, i.e., that the President and the Congress have shared responsibilities involving our armed forces;
5. Protects the U.S. Constitution – making clear that the Constitution gives Congress responsibility to take action on a continuing basis to help both active duty troops and veterans.
In summary, the difference begins and ends with satisfaction about the war:
· If you’re like Senator Gregg, you want the Iraq war to continue as it is;
· If you’re like Senator Murray, you want to give our veterans the support and medical care they deserve, and you want to change the strategy and the direction of the war.
As you decide which you support, we urge you to remember the wisdom of Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
OOOPS! Could Privatization be the Cause of the Breakdown in Taking Care of our Veterans at Walter Reed?
KBR – Halliburton subsidiary IAP Worldwide Service is getting the blame for at least some of the neglect of housing and services for veterans seeking outpatient care at Walter Reed.
The Congress is investigating, but preliminary examination shows that IAP won a contract from the Army only when political pressure was applied, changing the original Army proposal to add workers and add cost to its original bid.
“Privatized Walter Reed Workforce Gets Scrutiny … Army Facility Lost Dozens Of Maintenance Workers” by Steve Vogel and Renae Merle. Washington Post. 3-10-2007
Heartbreaking … How the Military is Treating Our Wounded Soldiers!
In 2005, the House Republican Majority supported an Administration push to cut veterans’ health care benefits. Now, despite the failure of Republicans to get the cutbacks they wanted, the men and women wounded while fighting in Iraq are still getting shortchanged! A two-part Washington Post series, below, explains in heartbreaking detail how we as a country are failing our troops, especially the most vulnerable, our injured soldiers and Marines and their families.
The two articles -- “The Other Walter Reed … Mologne House Guests Find Recovery Is Slow” and “The Other Walter Reed … The Hotel Aftermath … Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons” -- ran on the front page of The Washington Post February 18 and 19, 2007. Anne Hull and Dana Priest are the reporters.
Rural Americans Are Paying the Ultimate Sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan
According to a recent Carsey analysis of U.S. Department of Defense data, a higher percentage of rural soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan than urban soldiers. This higher death rate makes sense considering that rural areas have higher rates of military recruitment, reflecting the lack of good rural employment and educational opportunities. Vermont, a primarily rural state, has the highest rural death toll at 61 killed per million adults. Since 2001, 825 rural recruits have been a casualty of war, representing a death rate of 24 per million. Urban soldiers are dying at a rate of 15 per million. Putting a face on the numbers is the Carsey Institute's list of rural soldiers killed, by name and county. There is also an accompanying fact sheet.
Missing Weapons in Iraq – DOD fails to keep track?
Rep. Ike Skelton, Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, has made a formal request to House Armed Services Committee Chair Duncan Hunter (R-CA 52) for a hearing to look into a report that the Defense Department (DOD) has failed to track hundreds of thousands of weapons purchased for Iraqi security forces.
Skelton (D-MO 4) wrote today, “The unstable security situation in Iraq and the threat poised to our military service members make a congressional oversight of arms transfers incredibly important.”
The problem of the missing weapons was first identified by DOD's Special Inspector General. Skelton, joined by Rep. Jane Harmon, Ranking Member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, emphasized in the letter how violence was only “getting worse” in Iraq, while thousands of unaccounted weapons could be used against U.S. troops.
At this point, it is unclear whether Chairman Hunter will allow a complete investigation. For more information on the request, click here.
Afghan War & Occupation in Iraq
… But the U.S. Veterans' Administration Can't Figure Out the Cost of Caring for our Brave Military Men and Women. Why?
May 18, 2005: We remember that shameful day when the Majority in the House first voted to cut veterans' health care benefits at a time of war.
September 22, 2006: Now, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports the Veterans Administration (VA) failed to estimate how much it would cost to make sure our returning war veterans have adequate health care. The reason? Our Defense Department (DOD) did not give the VA accurate information! What happened? They forgot to account for Iraq and Afghanistan.
War in Afghanistan … Continuing Occupation in Iraq . Our soldiers, who bravely risk their lives for us, must suffer even more for these tragic mistakes.
For more on this story, see "GAO Report: VA Underestimated Care Costs." Jennifer Talheim, The Associated Press, 9-20-2006, as reported in the Fayetteville (NC) Observer.
At My Rural America, we believe achieving energy independence is a very big step toward real national security. Making energy independence a national goal, and achieving this goal, will make us safer as a nation. It also means as a nation that we can promise our soldiers that never again will we send them to war over someone else's oil. We offer this op-ed by Larry Mitchell as a way for all of us to really focus on how important it is that our nation make this commitment.
America Needs a Liberty Fuel Program
It Is Time to Review the Past and
Build a New Arsenal of Democracy for America’s Liberty
An Editorial Comment on Biofuel Production by
Larry Mitchell, Chief Executive
American Corn Growers Association
November 2006
As our nation struggles through its fourth war year, with gasoline prices surpassing three dollars a gallon this past summer and with other energy set backs such as the damage to the Alaskan pipeline, it is time to once again review the lessons of the past in order to chart a new future for America’s Liberty. To do so, we must review the past in order to understand how to chart our future. We need to review our nation’s previous war efforts as well our previous energy systems.
During this time of war, what is desperately needed is a wartime effort to ensure the nation’s Liberty. The U.S. currently has about 100 ethanol plants, concentrated, for the most part, in the Midwest, using corn and other feed grains as the source for feedstock required. What America needs is 1,000 ethanol plants located throughout America, using a many other feedstocks as possible - such as biomass and cellulosic ethanol technology - in order to ensure our continued Liberty.
One thousand Liberty refineries, producing 60 million gallons of Liberty Fuel each, per year, should be our goal. The production of 60 billion gallons of Liberty Fuel will replace all of our nation’s energy requirements currently being filled by oil from the Middle East. At that level of production, the U.S. will not be totally energy independent, but we will enjoy our energy Liberty without any requirements from the Middle East.
FDR built an Arsenal of Democracy in order to win a previous war for Liberty. He reached out to people like Henry J. Kaiser who orchestrated the development of many components of the Arsenal of Democracy, including the Liberty ship. During 1943, the nation launched three Liberty ships every day. He built one Liberty ship in less than five days and built just under 3,000 during our nation’s efforts for that war.
It is possible and critical that our new Arsenal of Democracy includes the commissioning of at least two Liberty refineries per week. In less than a decade the United States would have in place the 1,000 Liberty refineries required for the continuation of our nation’s Liberty.
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) have already taken inventory of the feedstocks required to produce 60 billion gallons of Liberty fuel per year in a report issued in April 2005 titled Biomass Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply ( http://feedstockreview.ornl.gov/pdf/billion_ton_vision.pdf ). The analysis demonstrates the fact that the nation does have an ample supply of biomass available to produce the 60 billion gallons of Liberty fuel required for America’s Liberty.
It should be of no surprise to those who remember and/or study the history of the nation’s energy evolution. In the early part of the last century, our nation utilized a farm-based power system as its main source of energy. Most farms used over half of their production to fuel their own energy needs. This was done by the use of horse, mule and other animal power. It usually took over half of the farms production to feed these animals. Farms were also much more labor intensive, and the food to feed that labor force was also raised right on the farm. The water for the farm was most likely hauled from a nearby stream, pulled from a hand-dug well or pumped from the ground with wind power.”
In addition, much of what was raised on our farms then went to feed the livestock which powered much of the transportation needs of the other sectors of the economy. The ice wagon, the coal cart, the doctor’s buggy, the preacher’s mount, the horse drawn street cars, the tow animals of the canals – you name it, it was most likely pulled with animals fed with feed off of our nation’s farms.
It is estimated that it took over 80 million acres of cropland and another 80 million acres of pasture to feed the over 25 million draft animals at that time. But then came the nation's dramatic conversion to a fossil-fuel economy. The street cars were electrified and later replaced with busses. The ice man got a truck and was later put out of business by the home refrigerator. The doctor got a car and then quit making any house calls at all. On the farm, horses and mules were replaced with the internal combustion engine and the people were replaced with ever bigger and faster machines of all forms.
We have to realize that we must reverse the pendulum that has swung so far to a fossil fuel economy and back it up just a bit to a bio-fuel and renewable-fuel economy. Our farms can once again be an essential component to our nation’s energy needs. Biodiesel and ethanol can be made from soybeans, corn and other surplus grains. These same fuels can also be made from many other feedstocks and they do not have to be just a soy, corn based, Midwestern industry. There is biomass in every state of the union and renewable fuels should be produced in every state.
I would not suggest that we return to the horse and buggy days of the past, but I do highly recommend and strongly support programs and initiatives to advance this nation’s Liberty though the advancement of our renewable energy resources.
MRA recognizes that protecting our nation must mean protecting both rural and urban America from terror; however, we also believe that care must be taken to assure that the Department of Homeland Security's targets are realistic.
MANY RURAL SITES LISTED AMONG TERROR TARGETS
Most rural residents don't think of their small communities as being on the radar screens of the terrorists. But your local tackle shop, ice cream parlor or donut shop might be included on the "National Asset Database" maintained by the Department of Homeland Security which determines how anti-terrorism grants are divvied up.
The Inspector General at DHS cited a "lack of guidance to states" in submitting their key resources for federal protection as responsible for producing "distorted results." Indiana submitted more than 8,500 "critical assets" - including a popcorn plant - more than any other state. You can find out if your local petting zoo or Mule Day Parade is on the feds' watch list by checking out the Inspector General's report: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/OIG_06-40_Jun06.pdf
COLLEGE BENEFITS DENIED TO GUARD AND RESERVISTS
When the more than 500,000 citizen-soldiers in National Guard and Reserve units have returned to their communities after serving on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, most believed that they were eligible for educational benefits that previous combat veterans had received. Not so.
Some members of Congress are pressing for legislation which would place these veterans on the same footing to receive G.I. benefits as active duty service members.
Click on the link below for more on this story.
- MRA Staff
Citizen soldiers want equal access to GI Bill benefits
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (July 9, 2006) |
