Senator Carl Levin Will Approve Trool Level Increases
On a conditional basis.Â
“The American people are sceptical about getting in deeper,” he said. “But if it’s truly conditional upon the Iraqis actually meeting milestones and if it’s part of an overall program of troop reduction that would begin in the next four to six months, it’s something that would be worth considering.”
Bush will be moving forward in Iraq without Casey
The message: The president has lost confidence in the strategy and tactics designed and implemented by the generals running the war. They have, as the Times put it, “become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.”
The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James T. Conway, told the Times that the president went to the Pentagon a few weeks ago and said flatly, “What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave.”
And that’s basically why, according to the Times, “Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that Gen. Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq.”
Meanwhile, Murtha plans to de-fund the troops.
To this end, Murtha, the incoming Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, is planning to hold wide-ranging hearings, starting January 17th, that will focus on the depleted state of our military readiness , as well as contractor corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan. The goal is to turn the spotlight on how drained the military has become, and on how any talk of a troop surge is utterly irresponsible (as well as strategically misguided). “The public,” he said repeatedly, “is already ahead of us on all this.
He says he wants to “fence the funding,” denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq “as soon as we can.”
How funny that Murtha will investigate contractor corruption!
Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother’s lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee.The calls come as Murtha, a former Marine and pro-military Democrat, has made headlines this week by coming out in support of a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
According to a June 13 article in The Los Angeles Times, the fiscal 2005 defense appropriations bill included more than $20 million in funding for at least 10 companies for whom KSA lobbied. Carmen Scialabba, a longtime Murtha aide, works at KSA as well.
KSA directly lobbied Murtha’s office on behalf of seven companies, and a Murtha aide told a defense contractor that it should retain KSA to represent it, according to the LA Times.
In early 2004, Murtha reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A company called Lennar Inc. had right to the land, and Laurence Pelosi, nephew to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was an executive with the firm at that time.
Murtha also inserted earmarks in defense bills that steered millions of dollars in federal research funds toward companies owned by children of fellow Pennsylvania Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D).
January 4, 2007 - 08:59 PM on January 4th, 2007
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