Iraq Veteran: Why Is McCain ‘Fighting To Kill’ ‘My One Hope And Dream,’ To Go To College After War?

Today, nine members of Iraq Veterans Against the War testified before the Congressional Progressive Caucus about their experiences fighting in the Iraq war. Kristofer Goldsmith, who served Sadr City and was stop-lossed after returning home, revealed that he had attempted suicide and was discharged. The discharge forced him to forfeit the educational benefits promised under the GI bill and thus his “one hope and dream” to go to college:

I was stop-lossed. My one hope and dream in the military was to go to college after I went through Iraq. I attempted suicide. I never deployed a second time. Because of that I received a general discharge. I lost my college benefits, the $40,000 promised to me in the Montgomery GI Bill, I will not be eligible to receive. And currently there is a Senator in Congress currently running for president, who is fighting to kill our Webb GI bill. And I’m one of the soldiers who will never get that money.

Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/15/vetera... /

Of course, Goldsmith is referring to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has steadfastly opposed Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) bipartisan attempt to dramatically expand educational benefits for returning veterans. In fact, McCain’s own watered-down alternative, which reserves the most generous benefits to those who serve at least 12 years, would exclude soldiers like Goldsmith who suffered physical or psychological problems that made serving 12 years impossible.

The Pentagon also sees no problem with excluding soldiers like Goldsmith from reaping educational rewards. Just recently, a Pentagon spokesman criticized Webb’s bill for providing full educational benefits to soldiers “after only two years of service.” He said that “six years would show a commitment to service” — a commitment the Pentagon apparently thinks Goldsmith, who could not serve for a full six years, never demonstrated.

Regulations Would Make It Easier to Build Power Plants Near U.S. National Parks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

The Bush administration is on the verge of implementing new air quality rules that would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas, according to rank-and-file agency scientists and park managers who oppose the plan.

The new regulations, which are likely to be finalized sometime this summer, rewrite a provision of the Clean Air Act that applies to "Class 1 areas," federal lands that currently have the highest level of protection under the law. Opponents predict the changes will worsen visibility at many of the nation's most prized tourist destinations, including Virginia's Shenandoah, Colorado's Mesa Verde and North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt national parks.

Nearly a year ago, with little fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed changing the way the government measures air pollution near Class 1 areas on the grounds that the nation needed a more uniform way of regulating emissions near protected areas.

Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who now heads the environmental strategies group at the law firm of Bracewelll & Giuliani, helped initiate the rule change while leading EPA's air and radiation office. He said agency officials became concerned that EPA's scientific staff was taking "the most conservative approach" in predicting how much pollution new power plants would produce.

Jerome Starkey in Kabul
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/as...

Secret Afghan death squads are acting on the orders of foreign spies and killing civilians inside Afghanistan with impunity, a senior UN envoy has claimed. Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on illegal killings, said "foreign intelligence agencies" had used illegal groups of heavily armed Afghans in raids against suspected insurgents.

He said the attacks were beyond the legitimate military chains of command, and they were "completely unacceptable" and "outside the law".

At the end of a 12-day fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, Professor Alston said: "There have been a large number of raids for which no state or military appears to take responsibility. I have spoken with a large number of people in relation to the operation of foreign intelligence units. I don't want to name them but they are at the most senior level of the relevant places. These forces operate with what appears to be impunity."

(snip)
He refused to name the spies behind the secret units, or their nationality, but most of the provinces he identified where these raids have been mounted fall under American command. He also refused to rule out the possibility that raids may have been made in Helmand, where British troops are in command.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/us/polit...

The Republican defeat in a special Congressional contest in Mississippi sent waves of apprehension across an already troubled party Wednesday, with some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall.

The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.

Republicans had sought to link Mr. Childers to Mr. Obama in an advertising campaign there. Republican leaders said they were looking to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, as a model whose independent reputation appears to allow him to rise above party in a year when the Republican label seems tarnished.

(snip)
Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia and former leader of his party’s Congressional campaign committee, issued a dire warning that the Republican Party had been severely damaged, in no small part because of its identification with President Bush. Mr. Davis said that, unless Republican candidates changed course, they could lose 20 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/14/bushs-... /

In an interview with Politico’s Mike Allen, President Bush claimed he gave up golf after UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in Iraq. “I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad…I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do,” Bush said. De Mello was killed on Aug. 19, 2003. The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin reports today: “Bush’s story doesn’t hold water“:


(T)he Associated Press reported on Oct. 13, 2003, that he’d spent a “cool, breezy Columbus Day” playing “a round of golf with three long-time buddies.

“Bush played at Andrews Air Force Base with Clay Johnson, Office of Management and Budget deputy director, Richard Hauser, Department of Housing and Urban Development general counsel and another friend, Mike Wood.”

On that outing, he was typically full of what passes for good humor at the White House. The AP reported: “‘Fine looking crew you got there. Fine looking crew,’ Bush joked to reporters. ‘That’s what we’d hope for presidential coverage. Only the best.’

“He hit a couple of practice balls before flaring his tee-off shot into the right rough.”

Bush's Idea of Sacrifice
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

Thank you KO for bringing this out in your comment

Big-ticket items would get axed in favor of personnel growth

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/obam...

Goldman Sachs said Tuesday they expect a Barack Obama presidency would cut into earnings for many military contractors by reducing funding for large weapon platforms in favor of increasing soldier recruitment.


"If victorious, we think an Obama administration's policies will result in modest increases in overall defense spending, significant growth in readiness spending and reduced investment spending," Goldman Sachs analyst Richard Safran wrote in a note.


(snip)
Goldman Sachs's Safran noted that Obama has received little campaign funding from military contractors, which chose instead to shower Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., with the most cash. Among the original field of declared candidates, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had been the third biggest beneficiary of the contractors' money, with Obama coming in seventh.

"In our view, political contributions afford access to politicians, and we have to wonder how supportive an Obama administration would be, given that defense companies favored Clinton in terms of political contributions," Safran said

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capitol-bri...

Democrats have completed a trifecta of special election victories in GOP-held House seats, narrowly winning a hard-fought contest in Mississippi's 1st district Tuesday and raising the specter of an expanded playing field in November.

The Associated has called the contest for Democrats, and with 80 percent of the votes recorded, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers (D) was leading Southaven Mayor Greg Davis (R), 51 percent to 49 percent, in the race to replace Roger Wicker (R), who has been appointed to the Senate.

Following on the heels of Democratic victories in special elections in Illinois' 14th district in March and Louisiana's 6th district 10 days ago, Republicans pulled out all the stops to try to hold on to Wicker's seat, which should be a GOP stronghold. President Bush won the district by 25 points in 2004; he won the Louisiana seat by 19 points and the Illinois seat by 11 points.

Vice President Cheney visited the district to drum up support Monday. The cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee shelled out at least $1.3 million on the contest -- more than it spent on the Illinois seat, which falls in the expensive Chicago media market -- and the conservative group Freedom's Watch also ran several hundred thousand dollars worth of ads.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080513/ap_on_...

Highlights from preliminary results of exit polls in the West Virginia Democratic primary on Tuesday. The polls were conducted for The Associated Press and television networks:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/T...

Arctic ice is melting fast and the area covered by ice sheets in ocean could shrink this summer to the smallest since 1978 when satellite observation first started, Japanese scientists warned in a report.

Ice sheets in the Arctic Ocean shrank to the smallest area on record in late summer in 2007, researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said in a report on the website


Total area of sea ice in Arctic Ocean smallest
since observations started
- Much faster pace of ice melting than forecasted -
Overview
The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC, led by President Yasuhiro Kato) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, led by President Keiji Tachikawa) cooperatively analyzed oceanic and atmospheric observation data and sea ice data acquired by satellites, and found that the sea ice area in the Arctic Ocean has been decreasing at a much faster pace than expected compared to the previous worst record in the summer of 2005. After satellite observations started in 1978, the observed area shrunk to its lowest level on August 15, 2007. Ice melting normally continues until mid September, thus further shrinkage of the sea ice area is expected. The observed phenomenon significantly exceeded the forecasted model submitted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth Assessment Report, and the big difference tells us that the model may not precisely reflect the actual situation in the Arctic Ocean.

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/08/20070816_...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/us/polit...

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.

Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.

Voting experts say the Missouri amendment represents the next logical step for those who have supported stronger voter ID requirements and the next battleground in how elections are conducted. Similar measures requiring proof of citizenship are being considered in at least 19 state legislatures. Bills in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina have strong support. But only in Missouri does the requirement have a chance of taking effect before the presidential election.

Patrick Cockburn in Mosul
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/mi...

Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.

Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements".

Mosul, on the Tigris river, is inhabited by 1.4 million people, but has been sealed off from the outside world by hundreds of police and army checkpoints since the Iraqi government offensive against al-Qa'ida began at 4am on Saturday. The operation is a critical part of an attempt to reassert military control over Iraq which has led to heavy fighting in Baghdad and Basra.

The besieged city is now difficult to reach; we began the journey from the Kurdish capital Arbil in a convoy of white pick-up trucks, each with a heavy machine gun in the back manned by alert-looking soldiers, some wearing black face masks, that were escorting Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, to his office in the city.

(snip)
I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080510/ap_on_...

If there's one thing Congress and the Bush administration can agree on, it's that they've got a fight of historic proportions on their hands.

The House Judiciary Committee is demanding documents and testimony from President Bush's closest advisers about the firing of federal prosecutors.

When the White House refused, the Democrat-led committee went to court. Lawyers called the president's actions the most expansive view of presidential authority since Watergate.

Late Friday night, the Bush administration responded with court documents of its own, similarly steeped in history. Lawyers called the lawsuit unprecedented. Citing George Washington and Grover Cleveland, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, they said these types of clashes get resolved without going to court.

Source: Bloomberg

Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow attacked the Republican Bush administration's energy policy and tax breaks for the oil industry, urging investment in alternative energy.

Gasoline prices have risen as high as $4 a gallon, from $1.50 when President George W. Bush took office, Stabenow said today. The rise in energy costs has gone from ``annoyance'' to ``crisis,'' affecting everything from the price of groceries to home-heating bills.

``Republicans want more drilling, more consumption, and more tax giveaways for the big oil companies,'' Stabenow, from Michigan, said in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address. ``Democrats say that those are exactly the policies that got us into this mess to begin with.''

A plan backed by Democrats, who hold a majority in the House and Senate, ``ends the billions of dollars in tax breaks for big oil companies whose executives have been hauling record profits while we pay record prices,'' Stabenow said.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...

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Senator Debbie Stabenow Delivers the Democratic Radio Address
"This fight won't be easy. The President and his oil buddies have gotten used to the spoils of plunder, and they won't give up without a fight. Democrats will fight just as hard - but we need your help. Call President Bush. Call your members of Congress. Tell them that you're fed up with record gas prices, and you want a plan that puts people first. A plan that puts people first is long overdue.
http://www.dnc.org/a/2008/05/senator_debbi...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20080509/pl_u...

PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The leader of the nations preeminent veterans organization criticized Congress for delaying a needed GI Bill because of cost. Improvements to the current GI Bill, like its predecessors, will serve as the ultimate stimulus package for veterans, their families, and for the nation.

When The American Legion championed the original Servicemens Readjustment Act of 1944, even some veterans groups complained that it would break the treasury,' National Commander Marty Conatser said. Instead, the GI Bill transformed the economy and has been widely hailed as the greatest domestic legislation Congress ever passed. The critics were wrong then and they are wrong now.

Conatser pointed out that while the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill, S-22, would cost $51.8 billion over 10 years, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sacrifices made by Americas servicemembers and their families.

(snip)

Concerns that the new GI Bill, proposed by Sen. James Webb, D-Va., would hurt military retention are unfounded, according to The American Legion. This bill would encourage young men and women to join the military, Conatser said. As far as retention goes, the CBO estimates that a simple $8,000 bonus to personnel at their first enlistment point would increase reenlistments by 2 percentage points. Another way to encourage mid-level servicemembers to stay in the military is to transfer GI Bill benefits to family members so the servicemember can remain in the military and still benefit from the program.

Conatser had a suggestion to critics who believe the GI Bill is too expensive. Visit Walter Reed. War is expensive indeed and the bulk of that cost is paid for by the men and women who wear the uniform. Benefits are just a small, small cost of war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/opinion/...

The fight for the Democratic nomination seems to be winding down. It’s not completely over, but the odds now overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama.

Assuming that Mr. Obama is the nominee, he’ll lead a party that, judging by the usual indicators, should be poised for an easy victory — perhaps even a landslide.

Yet Democrats are worried. Are those worries justified?

Before I try to answer that question, let’s talk about those indicators.