ABC News’ Terry Moran came armed to this morning’s presidential press conference with a gotcha question of sorts for George W. Bush. About Bush’s goal of bringing freedom and democracy to all the world, as he articulated in his inaugural address, and convincing allies of the need to “continue to work together to help liberate people,” as Bush stated during his press conference this morning, what about our ally Jordan, Moran wanted to know. Here’s the exchange:
Q: Last month in Jordan a gentlemen named Ali Hattar was arrested after delivering a lecture called “Why We Boycott America.” He was charged under Section 191 of their penal code for slander of government officials. He stood up for democracy, you might say. And I wonder if here and now you will specifically condemn this abuse of human rights by a key American ally. And if you won’t, sir, then what in a practical sense do your fine words mean?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I am unaware of the case. You’ve asked me to comment on something that I didn’t know took place.
I urge my friend His Majesty to make sure that democracy continues to advance in Jordan. I noticed today that he put forth a reform that will help more people participate in future governments of Jordan. I appreciate His Majesty’s understanding of the need for democracy to advance in the greater Middle East. We visited with him at the G-8. And he has been a strong advocate of the advance of freedom and democracy.
Now let me — let me finish. Obviously, we’re discussing a process. As I said in my speech, not every nation is going to immediately adopt America’s vision of democracy, and I fully understand that. But we expect nations to adopt the values inherent in a democracy, which is human rights and human dignity, that every person matters and every person ought to have a voice. And His Majesty is making progress toward that goal. I can’t speak specifically to the case. You’re asking me to speak about a case that I don’t know the facts — (chuckles).
Q Fair enough. But if I can just follow up, will you then — does your inaugural address mean that when it comes to people like Mr. Hattar, you won’t compromise because of a U.S. ally and you will stand —
PRESIDENT BUSH: Again, I don’t know the facts, Terry.
Here is the Human Rights Watch statement on the Ali Hattar case. President Bush may not know the facts yet on this one, but one can only imagine how many more Ali Hattars are out there. Is Bush willing to demand that even our allies respect human rights and democratic principles? Or are some governments exempt from such scrutiny? If Bush hasn’t considered the answers to this questions yet, he should start.
There will be lots to say about the press conference President Bush just gave, but since we started off today bringing you news of yet another pundit paid to pimp for a Bush administration policy, we’ll first share this little exchange.
Q Mr. President, do you think it’s a proper use of government funds to pay commentators to promote your policies?
PRESIDENT BUSH: No.
Q Are you going to order that
PRESIDENT BUSH: I expect my Cabinet secretaries to make sure that that practice — there needs — doesn’t go forward. There needs to be independence. And Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake. And we didn’t know about this in the White House. And there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press. And — so no, we shouldn’t be going forward. Yes, sir?
Q So Mr. Williams made a mistake, but —
PRESIDENT BUSH: Who?
Q Mr. Williams made a mistake. Did the Department of Education make a mistake?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes. They did.
Q And what will happen to the people that made this decision?
PRESIDENT BUSH: We’ve got new leadership going to the Department of Education. But all our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying, you know, commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet. And I’m confident you’ll be, over the course of the next four years, willing to give our different policies an objective look. Won’t you? Yes. I can see that.
So, at first, the president wanted the buck to stop with “Mr. Armstrong Williams,” as if the Bush administration were not also a party to the unethical — and probably illegal — deal. Then, when asked if the education department was not also responsible, Bush brushed off the notion that anyone will be held accountable. Rod Paige has left the education department, so problem solved! Given the administration’s record of not holding high-level officials responsible for their blunders, we shouldn’t be surprised. But with the news that the department of health and human services had a similar arrangement with Ms. Maggie Gallagher, you have to wonder just how many more federal agencies have pundits on their payrolls.
There are others — one other syndicated columnist, at least, who, like Armstrong Williams took thousands of taxpayer dollars to write glowing reviews of administration policies and defend government programs in interviews and TV appearances. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports that Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist, had a $21,500 contract with the department of health and human services to help promote President Bush’s initiative to convince poor people to get married. As a paid representative of the administration, she wrote columns for National Review Online, among other outlets, promoting the pro-marriage program. On other occasions, Gallagher was working more directly for HHS, writing brochures and other literature.
Gallagher says her deal wasn’t anything like Williams’ (she has a point, in a way, he got a lot more money than she did.) And according to Kurtz, Gallagher says that if she had remembered the financial arrangement she had with the administration, she would have disclosed it to her readers. But she wants us to believe that the thousands of additional dollars in her checking account were so insignificant to her, it just never occurred to her to mention it. “Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?” Gallagher said to Kurtz. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Later in the piece, Wade Horn of HHS says he hired Gallagher because she’s a “well-known expert” in the field. Certainly, “experts” write op-eds all the time, but readers deserve to know if the expert opinion they’re reading in the newspaper is paid for by the federal government. Government officials and employees also write op-eds, but they should, and usually do, make clear to readers that they are writing in an official capacity. Maggie Gallagher, it appears, didn’t disclose in her opinion pieces or interviews that she was a government employee and not an impartial analyst, and if she doesn’t know what’s ethically murky about that, there’s a problem.
Remember when Lawrence Lindsey suggested the Iraq war would cost $100 billion to $200 billion, and he was practically run out of town? The Bush administration plans to ask for $80 billion more to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (This includes, as Atrios points out, $1.5 billion for a U.S. embassy in Baghdad. If anyone’s looking for an area fertile for cost-cutting, we’d suggest starting here.)
On the war tally so far, the AP says: “Not including the latest package, lawmakers have so far provided the Defense Department with $203 billion for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorists, according to the Congressional Research Service. That includes $121 billion for the war in Iraq, $53 billion for Afghanistan and $29 billion for improved security and anti-terror efforts in the United States and abroad.”
And apparently, the Congressional Budget Office is supposed to release new projections today of what the ongoing wars will cost us in the coming years — last time the CBO did this, the 10-year costs of the wars, if they’re fought at current levels, were set at $1.4 trillion.
Recently, we told you about Lt. Gen. James R. “Ron” Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, who warned senior Army officials that his command “is rapidly degenerating into a ‘broken’ force,” thanks to Pentagon policies that over-commit the reserves and fail to attract enough new recruits. Today, a Washington Post front page story shows that things could get much worse for the reserves before they get better.
“The U.S. Army expects to keep its troop strength in Iraq at the current level of about 120,000 for at least two more years, according to the Army’s top operations officer,” the Post reports. To maintain the current commitment for that long, the military leadership is “looking for ways to dip even deeper into reserve forces — even as leaders of the reserves have warned that the Pentagon could be running out of such units.”
Later in the story, you get more details on how overtaxed the reserves are — and how the Pentagon can even think about tapping further into a command that is, by its own chief’s admission, rapidly deteriorating. The proposal: By cutting training time and considering extending reservists’ total active duty tours.
“As the Army reaches farther down in the reserve force, Lovelace said, the amount of ‘pre-mobilization’ time necessary to get the troops ready to send to Iraq is likely to increase. ‘We’re not going to send anybody into combat who is not trained and ready,’ the three-star general said. But he noted that already in each rotation, the amount of pre-mobilization time required has increased.”
“To continue to be able to draw on the better trained reservists, Army officials have said they are considering petitioning Rumsfeld to extend the 24-month limit on the total time a reservist could be called to active duty.”
If you needed more reasons to believe that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was not just the work of a “few bad apples” acting alone — and that not enough has been done to hold anyone accountable — the Army has released documents (and the ACLU posted them on its Web site) showing even more widespread abuse, at sites other than Abu Ghraib. In only a fraction of the cases did the military investigate and recommend any kind of serious penalties. “Most led to administrative fines or simply withered because investigators could not find victims or evidence,” according to the Washington Post. The New York Times story on the same subject includes some of the harrowing and stomach-turning details of these abuse cases that have become distressingly familiar. But it goes way beyond Abu Ghraib.
“The documents list several sites where abuses are reported to have taken place, many of them at the detention center at Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam Hussein’s villas in Baghdad. The documents contain allegations from detainees about being abused and statements from American contractors who said they saw the effects of beatings.”
“In one case, a detainee said that while at Adhamiya Palace, his nose was pinched while water was poured down his throat, a wooden stick was inserted forcefully into his anus and electric shock was applied to his genitals. Some of the allegations were directed against Iraqi policemen. One contractor who said he was assigned to screen detainees brought to Abu Ghraib said that many who had come from Adhamiya arrived with serious injuries, including one boy with a bleeding rectum. He said the boy had told him that an Iraqi policeman had sodomized him with a soda bottle and that American soldiers were present.”
And in a report out today, Human Rights Watch says Iraqis are still being tortured in Iraqi jails. Says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watchs Middle East and North Africa Division: “The people of Iraq were promised something better than this after the government of Saddam Hussein fell.”
