Imperial Presidency or Not?

Shift on executive power lets Obama bypass rivals By Charlie Savage WASHINGTON — 4/23/12, MSN.com One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.  “We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.” For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals. [When the Congress was all Republican under Bush, he did not flout the role of Congress, he did not bypass Congress.  Only when the Democrats took control of Congress did he feel forced to bypass Congress.  That's when Obama opened his big mouth and started to shriek.  Back in 1994 when the Republicans took over Congress, they worked with Bill Clinton.  They passed more legislation during those years than when the Democrats had control.  Yet Obama shrieked about the flouting of Congress, the separation of powers ... and now, he does it everyday, violates those powers delegated to Congress and not given to the Executive, and he does it with a smile.] But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more. Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.” Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress. Many conservatives have denounced Mr. Obama’s new approach. But William G. Howell, a University of Chicago political science professor and author of “Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action,” said Mr. Obama’s use of executive power to advance domestic policies that could not pass Congress was not new historically. Still, he said, because of Mr. Obama’s past as a critic of executive unilateralism, his transformation is remarkable. “What is surprising is that he is coming around to responding to the incentives that are built into the institution of the presidency,” Mr. Howell said. “Even someone who has studied the Constitution and holds it in high regard — he, too, is going to exercise these unilateral powers because his long-term legacy and his standing in the polls crucially depend upon action.” Mr. Obama has issued signing statements claiming a right to bypass a handful of constraints — rejecting as unconstitutional Congress’s attempt to prevent him from having White House “czars” on certain issues, for example. But for the most part, Mr. Obama’s increased unilateralism in domestic policy has relied on a different form of executive power than the sort that had led to heated debates during his predecessor’s administration: Mr. Bush’s frequent assertion of a right to override statutes on matters like surveillance and torture. “Obama’s not saying he has the right to defy a Congressional statute,” said Richard H. Pildes, a New York University law professor. “But if the legislative path is blocked and he otherwise has the legal authority to issue an executive order on an issue, they are clearly much more willing to do that now than two years ago.” The Obama administration started down this path soon after Republicans took over the House of Representatives last year. In February 2011, Mr. Obama directed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages, against constitutional challenges. Previously, the administration had urged lawmakers to repeal it, but had defended their right to enact it. In the following months, the administration increased efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions through environmental regulations, gave states waivers from federal mandates if they agreed to education overhauls, and refocused deportation policy in a way that in effect granted relief to some illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. Each step substituted for a faltered legislative proposal. But those moves were isolated and cut against the administration’s broader political messaging strategy at the time: that Mr. Obama was trying to reach across the aisle to get things done. It was only after the summer, when negotiations over a deficit reduction deal broke down and House Republicans nearly failed to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, that Mr. Obama fully shifted course. First, he proposed a jobs package and gave speeches urging lawmakers to “pass this bill” — knowing they would not. A few weeks later, at the policy and campaign strategy meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president told aides that highlighting Congressional gridlock was not enough. “He wanted to continue down the path of being bold with Congress and flexing our muscle a little bit, and showing a contrast to the American people of a Congress that was completely stuck,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, a deputy chief of staff assigned to lead the effort to come up with ideas. Ms. DeParle met twice a week with members of the domestic policy council to brainstorm. She met with cabinet secretaries in the fall, and again in February with their chiefs of staff. No one opposed doing more; the challenge was coming up with workable ideas, aides said. The focus, said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, was “what we could do on our own to help the economy in areas Congress was failing to act,” so the list was not necessarily the highest priority actions, but instead steps that did not require legislation. Republican lawmakers watched warily. One of Mr. Obama’s first “We Can’t Wait” announcements was the moving up of plans to ease terms on student loans. After Republican complaints that the executive branch had no authority to change the timing, it appeared to back off. The sharpest legal criticism, however, came in January after Mr. Obama bypassed the Senate confirmation process to install four officials using his recess appointment powers, even though House Republicans had been forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions through its winter break to block such appointments. Mr. Obama declared the sessions a sham, saying the Senate was really in the midst of a lengthy recess. His appointments are facing a legal challenge, and some liberals and many conservatives have warned that he set a dangerous precedent. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, who essentially invented the pro forma session tactic late in Mr. Bush’s presidency, has not objected, however. Senate aides said Mr. Reid had told the White House that he would not oppose such appointments based on a memorandum from his counsel, Serena Hoy. She concluded that the longer the tactic went unchallenged, the harder it would be for any president to make recess appointments — a significant shift in the historic balance of power between the branches. The White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, said the Obama administration’s legal team had begun examining the issue in early 2011 — including an internal Bush administration memo criticizing the notion that such sessions could block a president’s recess powers — and “seriously considered” making some appointments during Congress’s August break. But Mr. Obama decided to move ahead in January 2012, including installing Richard Cordray to head the new consumer financial protection bureau, after Senate Republicans blocked a confirmation vote. “I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Mr. Obama declared, beneath a “We Can’t Wait” banner. “When Congress refuses to act and — as a result — hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.” The unilateralist strategy carries political risks. Mr. Obama cannot blame the Republicans when he adopts policies that liberals oppose, like when he overruled the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to strengthen antismog rules or decided not to sign an order banning discrimination by federal contractors based on sexual orientation. The approach also exposes Mr. Obama to accusations that he is concentrating too much power in the White House. Earlier this year, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, delivered a series of floor speeches accusing Mr. Obama of acting “more and more like a king that the Constitution was designed to replace” and imploring colleagues of both parties to push back against his “power grabs.” But Democratic lawmakers have been largely quiet; many of them accuse Republicans of engaging in an unprecedented level of obstructionism and say that Mr. Obama has to do what he can to make the government work. The pattern adds to a bipartisan history in which lawmakers from presidents’ own parties have tended not to object to invocations of executive power. For their part, Republicans appear to have largely acquiesced. Mr. Grassley said in an interview that his colleagues were reluctant to block even more bills and nominations in response to Mr. Obama’s “chutzpah,” lest they play into his effort to portray them as making Congress dysfunctional. “Some of the most conservative people in our caucus would adamantly disagree with what Obama did on recess appointments, but they said it’s not a winner for us,” he said. Mr. Obama’s new approach puts him in the company of his recent predecessors. Mr. Bush, for example, failed to persuade Congress to pass a bill allowing religiously affiliated groups to receive taxpayer grants — and then issued an executive order making the change. President Bill Clinton increased White House involvement in agency rule making, using regulations and executive orders to show that he was getting things done despite opposition from a Republican Congress on matters like land conservation, gun control, tobacco advertising and treaties. (He was assisted by a White House lawyer, Elena Kagan, who later won tenure at Harvard based on scholarship analyzing such efforts and who is now on the Supreme Court.) And both the Reagan and George Bush administrations increased their control over executive agencies to advance a deregulatory agenda, despite opposition from Democratic lawmakers, while also developing legal theories and tactics to increase executive power, like issuing signing statements more frequently. The bipartisan history of executive aggrandizement in recent decades complicates Republican criticism. In February, two conservative advocacy groups — Crossroads GPS and the American Action Network — sponsored a symposium to discuss what they called “the unprecedented expansion of executive power during the past three years.” It reached an awkward moment during a talk with a former attorney general, Edwin Meese III, and a former White House counsel, C. Boyden Gray. “It’s kind of ironic you have Boyden and me here because when we were with the executive branch, we were probably the principal proponents of executive power under President Reagan and then President George H. W. Bush,” Mr. Meese said, quickly adding that the presidential prerogatives they sought to protect, unlike Mr. Obama’s, were valid. But Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, said the Obama administration’s pattern reflects how presidents usually behave, especially during divided government, and appears aggressive only in comparison to Mr. Obama’s having been “really skittish for the first two years” about executive power. “This is what presidents do,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s taken Obama two years to get there, but this has happened throughout history. You can’t be in that office with all its enormous responsibilities — when things don’t happen, you get blamed for it — and not exercise all the powers that have accrued to it over time.” This story, "Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals," first appeared in The New York Times.

Iran: Amadinejad and Bush - throw the shoes and see where they land.

I can't remember.  What happened to the guy who threw shoes at Bush?  You know, Muntadar al-Zeidi.  The guy who threw his shoes at Bush in December 2008. 

Defiant Iranian Likely to Face Execution for Tossing Shoes at MahmoudAhmadinejad

By Perry Chiaramonte

Published December 29, 2011

FoxNews.com

The man who was arrested for tossing his shoes at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech earlier this month could face execution for his act of defiance.

Rashid Shahbandi, who has been in custody since his arrest at the time of the incident, has been tortured and is facing heavy punishment with a strong possibility of a death sentence, opposition groups told the Iran Khabar Agency, an independent news service.

The former textile worker, who had recently lost his job at the factory in the city of Sari, was in attendance there when Ahmadinejad was speaking to workers about the great achievements of his government.

Sources say Shahbandi, who is under financial distress due to the high medical cost of his son’s burn injuries, grew angry while listening to the speech and hurled his shoes — considered an ultimate insult across the Middle East — at Ahmadinejad.

Shahbandi has a history of defiance; he has previously insulted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and thrown eggs at former President Sayyid Mohammad Khatami when he was in office.

It was not immediately clear when and if Shahbandi will have a trial.
At the time of his arrest, Western observers speculated that Shahbandi might have started a movement to ignite public discourse in Iran.

“Iran is an autocratic society. If people start to lose fear of that autocratic regime, then it collapses,” Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank, told FoxNews.com at the time of the incident.

“He might unfortunately be a little bit of a martyr. But Iranians rally around a martyr, which could make him a hero. The fact that someone doing this in public shows that there is cracks in the regime. Perhaps the Supreme Leader has no clothes.”

iran 

What's Good for the Goose ...

Obama -

"I just miss - I miss being anonymous," he said at the meeting in the White House. "I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks. I can't take a walk."



He says he enjoys golf but is not the fanatic that some have portrayed.


"It's the only excuse I have to get outside for four hours at a stretch," he said.



I have no problem witrh this ... BUT, if HE gets this excuse, then the same applies to any Repulican president who played golf or may golf - during war, after war, between wars ... even on the day he starts a war that Congress did not approve and costs us $4 million a day and will not see a major change when we withdraw.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
libya

Canada: We are Morally Straight. It's You Americans who are flawed.

This attitude helps explain several other articles posted about Canada - the snide comments their legislators have made, the rude behavior of their citizens. 



Canadian PM Admits to Major Differences with Bush Reuters



Tuesday, May 27, 2003; 7:08 PM
By David Ljunggren



ATHENS (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, whose rocky relations with the White House hit a new low over the Iraq war, admitted openly on Tuesday for the first time that he disagreed on many issues with President Bush.

Chretien's comments only served to underscore the gulf between the leaders of the world's two largest trading partners. The two men have not met since last September and on Monday they spoke by phone for the first time in three months.

Until now, the veteran Canadian leader, who plans to step down next February, has said the only major disagreement between Canada and the United States was over Iraq. Washington was angered by Ottawa's refusal to commit troops to the war.

But Chretien -- on the left of the ruling Liberal Party -- went much further on Tuesday, saying he little in common with the Texas Republican.

"Of course we don't think alike, particularly on social matters. He's a conservative from the southern United States and I'm a liberal Canadian," Chretien told reporters in a long and unusually frank conversation during a flight to Athens.

"I'm for gun control, he's against it. I'm against capital punishment, he supports it. I'm for the right to abortion -- even though I'm a Catholic -- :rolleyes: and he's against it," said Chretien.

Chretien's relations with Bush deteriorated after the U.S. leader walked away from the Kyoto accord on curbing global emissions of greenhouse gases, scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and generally poured scorn on the multilateral diplomatic approach favored by Ottawa.

Canada's refusal to back what it called the "unjustified" war on Iraq because it lacked U.N. authorization prompted Bush to put off an official visit to Ottawa planned for early May.

Bush pleaded pressure of work, but at the same time he was supposed to have been in Canada, he entertained Australian Prime Minister John Howard -- who backed the Iraq war -- at his Texas ranch. Chretien has never been invited to the ranch.

[Why on earth would Bush invite a cretin like Chretien to his ranch.  The ranch was for friends and allies - not insolent shitheads like Chretien.]


Chretien and Bush will see each other later this week in Russia at celebrations to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg.

Despite the Chretien-Bush differences, the prime minister insisted there would always be good relations between Ottawa and the White House, and stressed his close ties to former Democratic President Bill Clinton.


"I think I will always have good personal relations with the president," said Chretien.

That said, Canadian officials say there are no specific plans for a bilateral meeting between the two leaders, who will also attend a summit of the Group of Eight leading nations next week in France.

Chretien's domestic policies are also at odds with current U.S. thinking. He is currently pushing controversial legislation through Parliament that would effectively ban big corporate and union contributions to political parties.

He says this is to avoid the problems seen in the United States, where candidates need to raise many millions of dollars before running for office.

"It's only 'Money, money, money, money' in the States. It's not healthy," Chretien said on Tuesday, taking the opportunity to boast about the performance of Canadian economy.

"In the United States they're going to have a budget deficit of around $500 billion U.S. dollars this year. If that were the case in Canada (which has a population roughly 10 percent of that in the United States), our budget deficit would be C$75 billion," he added.

Preliminary figures for this year show Canada will record a budget surplus of around C$8 billion ($5.8 billion).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
canada

One Shrink You Don't Want to See: How Long in Practice Means Nothing

Opinion

Diagnosing Dubya

Is the US President nuts taking the world on a suicidal path? As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology.

Carol Wolman
Outlookindia.com
10/4/2002

Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology. He's a complicated man, under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large. So the following is offered with humility and questioning, in the form of a differential diagnosis.


From the Freudian point of view:

Dubya may be acting out a classical Oedipal drama--overcome Daddy to get Mommy. By deposing Saddam, when his father did not, he may want to prove himself more worthy of his mother's love. His rationale that he is avenging the assassination attempt on George, Sr., may be a reaction formation- his way of hiding the true motive from himself.

From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition:

Antisocial Personality Disorder--301.7

There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others since age 15 years as indicated by at least three of the following: 1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; 2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; 5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others; 7) lack of remorse by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others.

Another possibility from DSM IV:

Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) 300.14

A) The presence of two or more distinct identities, each with its own enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the environment and self.

B) At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior.

This disorder is typical of people raised by satanic cults, and might explain how Dubya can think of himself as a born-again Christian and yet worship money, oil and profit, and sanction killing thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani children.

Another possibility:

Narcissistic personality disorder 301.81

1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance- exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements;

2) in preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love;

3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or

high-status people;

4) requires excessive admiration;

5) has a sense of entitlement- unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her

expectations;

6) is interpersonally exploitative;

7) lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others;

9) shows arrogant, haughty behavior or attitudes.

This set of characteristics may describe Rumsfeld and Cheney better than Dubya.

Or, for those who feel that he's just a puppet for others:

Dependent Personality Disorder 301.6

1) has difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others;

2) needs others to assume responsibility for most major areas of his life;

3) has difficulty expressing disagreement with others because of fear of loss of support or approval;

4) has difficulty initiating projects or doing things on his own because of a lack of self-confidence in judgment or abilities.

5. goes to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support from others, to the point of doing things that are unpleasant.

From a Jungian point of view:

Dubya may be identifying with an archetype (as Hitler did with the ubermensch) -- something out of Revelations, perhaps, whereby he sees himself as an instrument of God's will to bring about Armageddon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Carol Wolman is a board certified psychiatrist, in practice for 30 years.

*******************************************************************

Ms Wolman - I understand eight years later, but better late than never - you should lose your certificate to practice psychiatry, you should lose your subscription to the DSM, should receive a reprimand from the board of psychiatry wherever it is you prey upon people, and you should be forced to retake 4 courses you supposedly had to have taken to get the degree in psychiatry - 101 to begin with.

You are wholly unqualified madam, in addition to violating several tenets of your profession by using the DSM out of context and on someone who you do not have as a patient.  Your manner of  pontificating indicates you suffer several tendencies listed in the DSM, suggesting you need to go into therapy.  In the alternative you should recognize these same qualities in Obama, perhaps evaluate Clinton and you should find the same results, maybe every president, and every prime minister of Canada and England - in fact, use these same tests on Jung and Freud and let's see the results.

You are a very sad person and worse, a quacksalver.










 
 
 
 
 
 
 
liberals

Obama and his use of time

Do I care if what a president does on his own time, in the privacy of his residence or room or wherever he is physically located - onvacation or on tour -  nope.
Do I care if the president does not report everything to us every day - nope.
Do I care if the president is just not interested in all the bullshit on any given day/week - nope.
Do I care if a president plays golf everyday - nope.
Do I care if a president goes on one vacatiuon to Hawaii and costs the American taxpayers many millions of dollars - nope.
Do I care if the president goes to a Broadway play and costs the American taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars - nope.
Do I care if a president doesn't keep every promise he makes when he campaigns to become president - nope.
What I do care about is hysteria and for eight years Democrats, and to be honest not all Democrats, mostly the ones on the left side, were apoplectic everytime Bush was in the news.  They kept track of how many balls he hit, how many days he spent at his ranch, how often he snickered or drooled, how many times he slurred or guffawed or ... and it was hysteria.  It was as if the anti-Christ was in residence, ironic given the far left are rarely if ever religious, however much they feign obeisance to some form of religious idea.

Yet their standard-bearer behaves more like Bush on some issues than Bush and I have never read any expression of outrage over the time Obama has spent golfing.

Bush played golf about 24 times in 8 years.  Obama has played 57 up through 12/31/10.  Doubled in less time.



The following from the English Telegraph, April 2010


Barack Obama plays golf eight more times than George W Bush



President Barack Obama has played golf 32 times since he took office, eight more than his predecessor George W. Bush - who was mocked by the Left for his fondness for the game - did in his entire presidency.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
19 Apr 2010


Mr Obama's latest outing on the links came on Sunday, when an opportunity opened up on his schedule after flying bans over most of northern and central Europe forced him to cancel his trip to Krakow to attend the funeral of Lech Kaczynski, the Polish president.

Mr Bush was shown in the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11 condemning "terrorist killers" in the Middle East when asked a question on the golf course in 2002. Barely pausing for breath, he added: "Thank you. Now watch this drive."

Mr Bush later gave up golf, saying in a 2008 interview: "I don't want to some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf... And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

The golfing figures were compiled by Mark Knoller of CBS Radio, the unofficial White House statistician.

Mr Obama's Sunday golf game prompted anger in Poland, where the Warsaw Business Post carried a headline reading: "Obama goes golfing instead of attending Kaczynskis' funeral".

















obama

Bush, Iran, and Iraq

• THE WASHINGTON TIMES


• October 25, 2010

WikiLeaks papers back Bush claims of Iran role in Iraq war

The largest unauthorized disclosure of classified government documents in U.S. history confirms a long-standing assertion of President George W. Bush at the start of the 2007 troop surge: Iran was orchestrating one side of the Iraqi insurgency.

Field reports made public by the website WikiLeaks on Friday show that U.S. military intelligence agencies had many strands of evidence revealing that Iran provided paramilitary training to Shiite Muslim insurgents at the height of the civil war in Iraq.

In one case, the military circulated a Dec. 22, 2006, warning that a group known as Jaish al-Mahdi planned to kidnap U.S. troops. The man planning the operation, Sheik Azhar al-Dulaimi, was trained by Hezbollah terrorists near the Iranian city of Qom, the document stated. Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based militia that was founded, trained and funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“This confirms the degree of operational involvement the Iranian Revolutionary Guard used in anti-U.S. operations in Iraq,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Gulf affairs specialist at the Congressional Research Service. “It confirms the degree to which Iran was involved in operations that directly targeted U.S. forces.”

The disclosures about Iran’s role in the Iraqi insurgency were first reported by the New York Times. That newspaper, along with the Guardian and Al Jazeera, were given access to the Iraq war logs before the documents were placed on the Internet on Friday.

Analysts today generally do not dispute Iran’s role in providing covert political and weapons support to insurgents in Iraq, but it was a major political issue in 2007. In September 2007, Sen. Jon Kyl, In September 2007, Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, proposed a resolution condemning the Iranian role in subversion in Iraq. The amendment called for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to be officially designated a foreign terrorist group, something Mr. Bush did in 2008.

Barack Obama, as a Democratic senator from Illinois, opposed the resolution at the time but also used the vote in support of the measure by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a Democratic senator from New York, to attack her antiwar credentials during public debate in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses.

In a letter to Iowa voters from October 2007, Mr. Obama said the resolution was dangerous because “George Bush and Dick Cheney could use this language to justify keeping our troops in Iraq as long as they can point to a threat from Iran. And because they could use this language to justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.”

Other disclosures from WikiLeaks include reports showing that U. S. troops intervened in some cases to halt abuses of detainees by Iraqi security forces.

In Iraq, the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the release of the documents was politically motivated.

“There are some political interests behind the media campaign who are trying to use the documents against national leaders, especially the prime minister,” Mr. al-Maliki said in a statement.

Iraq’s high court ordered the Iraqi parliament to convene on Sunday to try to break the political deadlock in choosing a new government. Last month, Iraq’s United Iraqi Alliance, comprising major Shiite parties not affiliated with Mr. al-Maliki, reluctantly agreed to give Mr. al-Maliki a second term as prime minister.

Nick Clegg, British deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, told the BBC that some of the disclosures from WikiLeaks warranted investigation.

Pentagon officials stressed that the disclosures did not reveal new information about the Iraq war and condemned the unprecedented leak of classified data.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on his Twitter account: “Another irresponsible posting of stolen classified documents by Wikileaks puts lives at risk and gives adversaries valuable information.”

WikiLeaks’ last major release of documents was related to the war in Afghanistan and included the names of Afghans who helped coalition forces, potentially endangering their lives. Although the Taliban has said it was combing through the documents to find those Afghans, an assessment from the Pentagon provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee found that no one had been killed as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosure.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
iraq

Obama Golfed while the Debt Escalated, the Market Fell, and Consumer Confidence Sank.

It is sad to watch as liberals lose all their ammunition they stored up for Bush - born to wealth (poor compared to Gore or Kerry), a guy who played golf while soldiers died (Obama has been golfing quite a bit and presumably some of that time American  soldiers were being shot at, at the very least) - or the claim that Bush was golfing all the time - and now, Obama, who, not even two years in, has outpaced Bush. 

AMAZING.

Is Obama getting any work done, with all that golf?  Apparently so or we would have liberals rioting in the streets claiming that he was neglecting his responsibilities (as they did when Bush would golf) ... and yet, when Bush golfed (much less than Obama) he was attacked for failing to be on duty, to be in the office, in charge ... listen liberals, if Bush was neglecting his responsibilities, Obama abdicated his responsibilities a long time ago.


Here is an idea Mr. Obama - INCREASE taxes on ANY golf related material 180%.  Country clubs with golf courses, golf clubs, golf balls, golf fees ...

There are about 30,000,000 golfers in the United States of which 9 million are regular and frequent players.  They also tend to range toward the top of the economic pile.  Golfers spend more than $26 billion each year (including equipment) with the median gree fee hovering around $34.  Golfers spend about $26 billion a year on travel to go play golf at various courses.  Over $50 billion.  Now tax it.  double the green fees, double everything, tax anything related to gold and you have just scored $50 billion you can use to pay for more things you can't afford - and when you play golf Mr. Obama, you should be paying.














Obama Has Shot 41 Rounds of Golf as President



by Keith Koffler on July 16, 2010, 3:30 pm



President Barack Obama has played a remarkable 41 rounds of golf since becoming president, easily outpacing his predecessor and possibly damaging his ability to portray himself in 2012 as a populist advocate of average folks.

With the excursions lasting on average at least five hours, the president has devoted a total of more than 200 hours to golf, not counting time spent on the White House putting green. That’s the equivalent of twenty five eight-hour work days, or five work weeks spent smacking golf balls.

The former community organizer’s 41 trips around the links – a standard of recreational activity well beyond the budgets of most Americans – compares to only 24 total outings for former President George W. Bush, according to statistics compiled by White House chronicler Mark Knoller of CBS News. Bush, whose golf outings were used to help deride him as a callow, lazy, rich boy, played his 24th and last round on Oct. 13, 2003, saying he was ending the practice out of respect for the families of Americans killed in Iraq.

Since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 rig workers and started the Gulf oil spill, Obama has teed up seven times, according to White House Dossier’s count. This includes back to back sessions April 23 and 24 while on vacation at the Grove Park Resort & Spa in Asheville, NC, just days after the crisis began.

Obama’s focus on golf borders on obsession. Startled reporters follow him out to the course in the motorcade in the broiling Washington heat and then wait in the air conditioning while he puts in 18 holes. Rarely does he play any less.

On June 19, he dragged the 67 year old Vice President Biden onto the course for a sweltering 18 holes, calling into question whether he was trying to commit murder-by-golf in order to free the 2012 VP slot up for Hillary.

From a period stretching from April 3 to May 22 of this year, the president went golfing eight of nine weekends. WOULD YOUR WIFE LET YOU DO THAT?? WOULD YOU LET YOUR HUSBAND? Michelle, what gives?

He went out only once in June when, with the Gulf of Mexico slowly becoming the new U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and accusations of presidential inattention at their height, White House image counselors appeared to think the golf needed scaling back. But he’s back with a vengeance, having made his way out on the course both weekends so far this month.

Since he’s officially on vacation this weekend in Bar Harbor Maine, there appears to be little holding him back from heading out to the greens at least once.

While on the course, Obama for the most part likes to keep it nice and light, often playing with a youngish crowd. No deep discussions of policy on the links.

One of his companions on nearly every outing is Marvin Nicholson, the affable, White House trip director. Nicholson, a former “body man” to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), is the perfect guy for getting away from it all, having worked as a golf caddy, a bartender, and in a windsurfing shop – where he met Kerry.

Also generally on hand is David Katz, a former Obama campaign photographer.

Emphatically not invited for the most part are members of Congress or senior White House aides.

The White House is of course sensitive to the awkward look of the whole thing. A search of the word “golf” on the White House page or the photo sharing site Flickr brings back only nine official White House photo results, three of which are neither of Obama nor golf. A search for “basketball,” the everyman’s game, brings back 39 photos.

But who wants to be the White House official to tell the president to cut back on golf? Somebody with another job offer, one would presume.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
obama plays golf

True: THEIR BIGGEST mistake - not defending themselves against ... well, people with no honor, respect, or loyalty.

My Biggest Mistake in the White House


Failing to refute charges that Bush lied us into war has hurt our country.



By KARL ROVE

July 15, 2010
Wall Street Journal



Seven years ago today, in a speech on the Iraq war, Sen. Ted Kennedy fired the first shot in an all-out assault on President George W. Bush's integrity. "All the evidence points to the conclusion," Kennedy said, that the Bush administration "put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth." Later that day Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Mr. Bush needed "to be forthcoming" about the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Thus began a shameful episode in our political life whose poisonous fruits are still with us.

The next morning, Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards joined in. Sen. Kerry said, "It is time for a president who will face the truth and tell the truth." Mr. Edwards chimed in, "The administration has a problem with the truth."

The battering would continue, and it was a monument to hypocrisy and cynicism. All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. Of the 110 House and Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against his regime, 67 said in congressional debate that Saddam had these weapons. This didn't keep Democrats from later alleging something they knew was false—that the president had lied America into war.



Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham organized a bipartisan letter in December 2001 warning Mr. Bush that Saddam's "biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs . . . may be back to pre-Gulf War status," and enhanced by "longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." Yet two years later, he called for Mr. Bush's impeachment for having said Saddam had WMD


On July 9, 2004, Mr. Graham's fellow Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, charged that the Bush administration "at all levels . . . used bad information to bolster the case for war." But in his remarks on Oct. 10, 2002, supporting the war resolution, he said that "Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose real threats to America."

Even Kennedy, who opposed the war resolution, nonetheless said the month before the vote that Saddam's "pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated." But he warned if force were employed, the Iraqi dictator "may decide he has nothing to lose by using weapons of mass destruction himself or by sharing them with terrorists."

Then there was Al Gore, who charged on June 24, 2004, that Mr. Bush spent "prodigious amounts of energy convincing people of lies" and accused him of treason, bellowing that Mr. Bush "betrayed his country." Yet just a month before the war resolution debate, the former vice president said, "We know that [Saddam] has stored away secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Top Democrats led their party in making the "Bush lied, people died" charge because they wanted to defeat him in 2004. That didn't happen. Several bipartisan commissions would later catalogue the serious errors in the intelligence on which Mr. Bush and Democrats relied. But these commissions, particularly the Silberman-Robb report of March 31, 2005, found that the "Bush lied" charge was false. Still, the attacks hurt: When they began, less than a third of Americans believed the charge. Two years later, polls showed that just over half did.

The damage extended beyond Mr. Bush's presidency. The attacks on Mr. Bush poisoned America's political discourse. Saying the commander-in-chief intentionally lied America into war is about the most serious accusation that can be leveled at a president. The charge was false—and it opened the way for politicians in both parties to move the debate from differences over issues into ad hominem attacks.

At the time, we in the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past. That was wrong and my mistake: I should have insisted to the president that this was a dagger aimed at his administration's heart. What Democrats started seven years ago left us less united as a nation to confront foreign challenges and overcome America's enemies.

We know President Bush did not intentionally mislead the nation. Saddam Hussein was deposed and eventually hanged for his crimes. Iraq is a democracy and an ally instead of an enemy of America. Al Qaeda suffered tremendous blows in the "land between the two rivers." But Democrats lost more than the election in 2004. In telling lie after lie, week after week, many lost their honor and blackened their reputations.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
liars

Bush had no experience to lead. Obama was a community organizer.

Democrats in 2000 and 2004 - Bush had no experience.  he was a part time governor, a drinker, alcoholic, drug user, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and played golf all the time (unlike Obama who, after a short time, has played more golf than Bush ever did in 8 years).

Then they ran Al Gore, who from age 2 wanted to be president and with his father's backing, support, and money he tried very hard to be president - and he failed.  Then they ran John F. Kerry (JFK) and he too wanted to be president from the time he was 8, and with his family fortune (exceeding that of every Bushie combined) and then the wealth of his wife (who inherited it from a dead husband) he was the definition of wealth and born with a golden spoon in his mouth - and he failed.

George Bush didn't want to be president.  He was not interested in public adoration nor fawning and preening as were Gore and Kerry.  This is the odd part about Democrats - as a group they tend to hold in disdain the kiss-ass types, the odd ball who is just not clever enough to catch on to the joke, the guy who doesn't fit in because they are the cool group who smoke and get high - well that guy was Kerry and Gore.  Yet, for political purposes they suck up and embrace the two biggest losers their party have put forward. 

We are a bit scizophrenic when it comes to selecting a president or a leader of any type.  We want someone capable, but not too nerdy.  We want someone charismatic and brigfht, but not too bright.  George Bush was that guy.  Yet they scoffed at his candidacy as he was a light-weight, an interloper, a loser.  Yet, he is exactly the type the early leaders of this republic would have chosen - someone disinterested (he never wanted to be president), yet someone who could manage a business (he did that), and had some political experience (Governor of a large state), and was bright enough to know he didn't know everything and would hire people who were qualified (and he did that).  He really is their ideal - if not in policy.   Obama is busy agitating, not uniting.  Obama is out of his ... well, he has been out of his league for nearly two years.




Spill reveals Obama's lack of executive experience


By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
Washington Examiner
June 8, 2010


In mid-February 2008, fresh from winning a bunch of Super Tuesday primaries, Barack Obama granted an interview to "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Croft. "When you sit down and you look at [your] resume," Croft said to Obama, "there's no executive experience, and in fact, correct if I'm wrong, the only thing that you've actually run was the Harvard Law Review."

"Well, I've run my Senate office, and I've run this campaign," Obama said.

Seven months later, after receiving the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama talked with CNN's Anderson Cooper. At the time, the news was dominated by Hurricane Gustav, which was headed toward New Orleans and threatening to become a Katrina-like disaster. "Some of your Republican critics have said you don't have the experience to handle a situation like this," Cooper said to Obama. "They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience. ..."

"Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees," Obama answered. "We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years."

Obama ignored Palin's experience as governor of Alaska, which was considerably bigger than the Obama campaign. But his point was clear: If you're worried about my lack of my executive experience, look at my campaign. Running a first-rate campaign, Obama and his supporters argued, showed that Obama could run the federal government, even at its most testing moments. He could set goals, demand accountability, and, perhaps most importantly, bend the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.

Fast forward to 2010. The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing out of control. The Obama administration is at first slow to see the seriousness of the accident. Then, as the crisis becomes clear, the federal bureaucracy becomes entangled in itself trying to deal with the problem. "At least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response," the New York Times reports, "making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes."

For example, it took the Department of Homeland Security more than a week to classify the spill as an event calling for the highest level of federal action. And when state officials in Louisiana tried over and over to win federal permission to build sand barriers to protect fragile coastal wetlands from the oil, they got nowhere. "For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore," the Times reports, "officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach."

The bureaucracy wasn't bending to anyone's will. The direction from the top was not clear. And accountability? So far, the only head that has rolled during the Gulf crisis has been that of Minerals Management Service chief Elizabeth Birnbaum. But during a May 27 news conference, Obama admitted he didn't even know whether she had resigned or been fired. "I found out about it this morning, so I don't yet know the circumstances," the president said. "And [Interior Secretary] Ken Salazar's been in testimony on the Hill." Obama's answer revealed that he hadn't fired Birnbaum, and he couldn't reach a member of his Cabinet who was a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Given all that, perhaps candidates in future presidential races will think twice before arguing that running their campaign counts as executive experience.

A few days before Obama won the White House, Bill Clinton joined him for a late-night rally in Kissimmee, Fla. Clinton, who became president after 12 years as a governor, told the crowd not to worry about Obama's lack of executive background. Given the brilliance of Obama's campaign, Clinton said -- and here the former president uncharacteristically mangled his words a bit -- a President Obama would be "the chief executor of good intentions as president."

Chief executor of good intentions? Perhaps that's what Obama is now. But with oil gushing into the Gulf, that's just not good enough.




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
obama

The Tragedy of Walter Reed and the Failure of Bush

It was quite evident in the days following the revelations of treatment at Walter Reed, that the left would use this as a stick to beat Bush with - his failing to live up to standards he defined for himself as a war president.  The left still use this stick - in an email I posted some time ago titled Now You Get Mad.  One point in that long list of whining is Walter Reed, Bush fault.

And when it was discovered, people were fired, removed, and new people put into place.  It could be argued that it had nothing to do with Bush (and properly it didn't), but he was the Commander-in-Chief and ...  just like Obama is now.



In Army’s Trauma Care Units, Feeling Warehoused



By JAMES DAO and DAN FROSCH
April 24, 2010
The New York Times




COLORADO SPRINGS — A year ago, Specialist Michael Crawford wanted nothing more than to get into Fort Carson’s Warrior Transition Battalion, a special unit created to provide closely managed care for soldiers with physical wounds and severe psychological trauma.

James Agee, who served two tours in Iraq, said officers in the Fort Carson transition unit verbally abused medicated soldiers. “They would say, ‘These guys can’t do this because they are crazy.’ ”

A strapping Army sniper who once brimmed with confidence, he had returned emotionally broken from Iraq, where he suffered two concussions from roadside bombs and watched several platoon mates burn to death. The transition unit at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs, seemed the surest way to keep suicidal thoughts at bay, his mother thought.

It did not work. He was prescribed a laundry list of medications for anxiety, nightmares, depression and headaches that made him feel listless and disoriented. His once-a-week session with a nurse case manager seemed grossly inadequate to him. And noncommissioned officers — soldiers supervising the unit — harangued or disciplined him when he arrived late to formation or violated rules.

Last August, Specialist Crawford attempted suicide with a bottle of whiskey and an overdose of painkillers. By the end of last year, he was begging to get out of the unit.

“It is just a dark place,” said the soldier, who is waiting to be medically discharged from the Army. “Being in the W.T.U. is worse than being in Iraq.”

Created in the wake of the scandal in 2007 over serious shortcomings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Warrior Transition Units were intended to be sheltering way stations where injured soldiers could recuperate and return to duty or gently process out of the Army. There are currently about 7,200 soldiers at 32 transition units across the Army, with about 465 soldiers at Fort Carson’s unit.

But interviews with more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals from Fort Carson’s transition unit, along with reports from other posts, suggest that the units are far from being restful sanctuaries. For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers. Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.

Some soldiers in the unit, and their families, described long hours alone in their rooms, or in homes off the base, aimlessly drinking or playing video games.

“In combat, you rely on people and you come out of it feeling good about everything,” said a specialist in the unit. “Here, you’re just floating. You’re not doing much. You feel worthless.”

At Fort Carson, many soldiers complained that doctors prescribed drugs too readily. As a result, some soldiers have become addicted to their medications or have turned to heroin. Medications are so abundant that some soldiers in the unit openly deal, buy or swap prescription pills.

Heavy use of psychotropic drugs and narcotics makes it difficult to exercise, wake for morning formation and attend classes, soldiers and health care professionals said. Yet noncommissioned officers discipline soldiers who fail to complete those tasks, sometimes over the objections of nurse case managers and doctors.

At least four soldiers in the Fort Carson unit have committed suicide since 2007, the most of any transition unit as of February, according to the Army.

Senior officers in the Army’s Warrior Transition Command declined to discuss specific soldiers. But they said Army surveys showed that most soldiers treated in transition units since 2007, more than 50,000 people, had liked the care.

Those senior officers acknowledged that addiction to medications was a problem, but denied that Army doctors relied too heavily on drugs. And they strongly defended disciplining wounded soldiers when they violated rules. Punishment is meted out judiciously, they said, mainly to ensure that soldiers stick to treatment plans and stay safe.

“These guys are still soldiers, and we want to treat them like soldiers,” said Lt. Col. Andrew L. Grantham, commander of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Carson.

The colonel offered another explanation for complaints about the unit. Many soldiers, he said, struggle in transition units because they would rather be with regular, deployable units. In some cases, he said, they feel ashamed of needing treatment.

“Some come to us with an identity crisis,” he said. “They don’t want to be seen as part of the W.T.U. But we want them to identify with a purpose and give them a mission.”

Drugs and Addiction

Sgt. John Conant, a 15-year veteran of the Army, returned from his second tour of Iraq in 2007 a changed man, according to his wife, Delphina. Angry and sullen, he reported to the transition unit at Fort Carson, where he was prescribed at least six medications a day for sleeping disorders, pain and anxiety, keeping a detailed checklist in his pocket to remind him of his dosages.

The medications disoriented him, Mrs. Conant said, and he would often wander the house late at night before curling up on the floor and falling asleep. Then in April 2008, after taking morphine and Ambien, the sleeping pill, he died in his sleep. A coroner ruled that his death was from natural causes. He was 36.

Mrs. Conant said she felt her husband never received meaningful therapy at the transition unit, where he had become increasingly frustrated and was knocked down a rank, to specialist, because of discipline problems.

“They didn’t want to do anything but give him medication,” she said.

Other soldiers and health care workers at Fort Carson offered similar complaints. They said that most transition unit soldiers were given complex cocktails of medications that raised concerns about accidental overdoses, addiction and side effects from interactions.

“These kids change their medication like they change their underwear,” said a psychotherapist who works with Fort Carson soldiers and asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the transition unit. “They can’t even remember which pills they’re taking.”

Some turned to heroin, which is readily available in the barracks, after becoming addicted to their pain pills, according to interviews with soldiers and health care professionals at Fort Carson.

“We’re all on sleep meds, anxiety meds, pain meds,” said Pfc. Jeffery Meier, who is in the transition unit and said he knew a dozen soldiers in the unit, including a recent roommate, who had used heroin. “The heroin is all that, wrapped into one.”

Fort Carson officials said that addiction to prescription drugs was no more prevalent in the Army than in the civilian world, and that medication was just one element of a balanced treatment that includes therapy.

But they acknowledged that they had found heroin abuse in the transition unit and said they were trying to reduce the use of opiates and synthetic opiates to prevent addiction, not always with success.

“There is active resistance, because they are addicted,” said Lt. Col. Joel Tanaka, the Warrior Transition Battalion surgeon at Fort Carson. “We’ve learned if we don’t assist them and wrap our arms around them, then they go off post and get these drugs illegally.”

Jess Seiwert offers a cautionary tale. A staff sergeant and sniper who was knocked unconscious by roadside bombs in Iraq, he returned to Fort Carson in late 2006 with post-traumatic stress disorder, burns and a variety of aches. Prone to bouts of rage, he often drank himself to sleep and began abusing the painkiller Percocet.

Medical records show that Sergeant Seiwert’s captain thought he was a danger to his wife and needed inpatient psychiatric care. Instead, the sergeant was transferred into Fort Carson’s transition unit in 2008.

In a recent interview, Mr. Seiwert, now discharged from the Army, said he received minimal therapy in the unit but was given ample medication, including the painkillers he abused. “I should have been in inpatient rehab to get me off the drugs,” he said.

Last summer, just months after being medically discharged, he badly beat his wife while bingeing on alcohol and Percocet. He pleaded guilty to a second-degree assault charge and is likely to face five years in prison.

‘Making Things Worse’

Like private outpatient clinics, Warrior Transition Units aim to provide highly individualized care and ready access to case managers, therapists and doctors. But the care is organized in a distinctly Army way: noncommissioned officers, known as the cadre, maintain discipline and enforce rules, often using traditional drill-sergeant toughness with junior enlisted soldiers.

At the top of the command are traditional Army officers, not health care professionals: Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, head of the Warrior Transition Command, was an artillery officer, and Colonel Grantham an intelligence officer.

Beneath them is what the Army calls its triad of care. Members of the cadre keep a close eye on individual soldiers, much like squad leaders in regular line units. Nurse case managers schedule appointments and assist with medications and therapy. And primary care managers — doctors, physicians’ assistants or nurse practitioners — oversee care and prescribe medicines.

The structure is intended to ensure that every soldier gets careful supervision and that Army values and discipline are maintained. But many soldiers at Fort Carson complained that discipline and insensitive treatment by cadre members made wounded soldiers feel as if they were viewed as fakers or weaklings.

James Agee, a former staff sergeant who transferred into the transition unit after returning from his second tour of Iraq in 2008, said he frequently heard cadre members verbally abuse medicated soldiers who were struggling to get out of bed for morning formation or stay awake for all-night duty.

“They would say, ‘These guys can’t do this because they are crazy,’ ” said Mr. Agee, who received a medical discharge from the Army. “It would make you feel like you were inferior.”

One Army specialist in the unit, who received diagnoses of post-traumatic stress syndrome and traumatic brain injury, said he was ordered to perform 24-hour guard duty repeatedly against the orders of his doctor. The specialist, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared repercussions, said he experienced flashbacks to Iraq during the long hours by himself.

In many cases, the noncommissioned officers have made it clear that they do not believe the psychological symptoms reported by the unit’s soldiers are real or particularly serious. At Fort Hood, Tex., a study conducted just before the shooting rampage there last November — which found that many soldiers in the Warrior Transition Unit thought their treatment relied too heavily on medication — also concluded that a majority of the cadre believed that soldiers were faking post-traumatic stress or exaggerating their symptoms.

Christina Perez, the wife of a transition unit soldier from Fort Carson, said she got into an ugly fight with a member of the cadre who was furious that she had gone over his head to request additional therapy for her husband, a sergeant first class who had sustained a brain injury during one of two tours in Iraq as a tank gunner.

In a meeting, the noncommissioned officer shouted that Ms. Perez’s husband did not deserve his uniform and that he should give it to her instead, Ms. Perez said in a police complaint. No charges were brought.

Eventually her husband, who has headaches and memory loss, was transferred to an inpatient psychiatric clinic in Denver while he awaits a medical discharge. “All they do is make things worse,” Ms. Perez said of the transition unit.

Last year, The Associated Press reported that the transition unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina had a discipline rate three times as high as the 82nd Airborne Division, the base’s primary occupant.

General Cheek said the Army’s own survey of other major posts showed that discipline rates in transition units were about the same as in regular units.

He asserted that most cadre members, who receive extra pay and training for the job, do their jobs well, working long hours and spending weekends checking on soldiers. Discipline, he said, is a form of tough love.

“If we are going to maintain safe discipline, all rules must apply,” the general said. “We do have an expectation that our soldiers want to get better.”

Bureaucratic Delays

Sgt. Keith Nowicki was an intelligence analyst who was sent back early from his second deployment to Iraq in April 2008 because of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, said his wife, Ashley. Assigned to the Fort Carson transition unit, he spent nearly a year waiting for his medical discharge.

Instead of getting the help he hoped for, he spent much of the time in the unit alone, growing increasingly angry, drinking heavily and abusing Percocet. In early 2009, he separated from his wife. While on the phone with her in March 2009 he shot himself to death. He was due to be discharged at the end of the month.

Though Ms. Nowicki does not attribute her husband’s suicide to the long wait for his discharge, she said the slowness of the process and the lack of support from the transition unit added to his sense of hopelessness.

“It was just a bunch of red tape,” Ms. Nowicki said. “He would spend days trying to track down his own medical records.”

Army officials acknowledged that wait times for medical discharges at Fort Carson had grown. A major reason is that Fort Carson is part of a pilot program with the Department of Veterans Affairs in which the Army and the V.A. collaborate in evaluating soldiers’ injuries. The collaboration between the two bureaucracies is expected to speed up veterans benefits once a soldier leaves the Army, but it can lengthen the initial evaluation period, officials said.

Michael Crawford has been waiting more than a year for his medical discharge. As his anxiety and depression have worsened, so have his problems in the unit. His rank was recently reduced to private in punishment for overstaying leave and using marijuana.

But things are looking up, his mother believes: he will be able to stay with her in Michigan while awaiting his discharge. His mother, Sally Darrow, has already seen one son commit suicide. She believes that Michael would become the second if he had to return to Fort Carson and the transition unit.

“At home, with family and schoolmates, he’s dealing with things better,” Ms. Darrow said. “He’s not safe there.”





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
bad things

When it gets tough - go golfing.

Glad to know everything is prioritized.


Obama skips Polish funeral, heads to golf course


By Joseph Curl
April 18, 2010


A massive volcanic plume covering most of Europe forced President Obama to cancel a Sunday trip to Poland to attend the funeral of the nation's president. But the last-minute change left an opening in his schedule, so the president headed to the links for a round of golf instead.

On a cool but sun-drenched Sunday, the president and three golfing companions went to Andrews Air Force Base to play 18 holes. It is the 32nd time Mr. Obama has played golf since taking office Jan. 20, 2009, according to CBS Radio's Mark Knoller.

After canceling the Poland trip on Saturday, the White House announced that Mr. Obama had no public schedule for Sunday. He was to have arrived in Krakow in the morning, attend the 2 p.m. funeral and leave for home by 5 p.m., arriving back at the White House after midnight.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, along with dozens of top Polish government officials were killed April 10 when their airplane went down in heavy fog after clipping a tree on approach to Smolensk, Russia.

Mr. Obama has not gone to the Polish Embassy in Washington since the accident, but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. both have. There, they signed a condolence book.

Mr. Obama was not the only world leader to miss the funeral because of the expanding volcanic ash cloud. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also canceled.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, however, flew by plane from Moscow for the funeral.

Other foreign leaders used different modes of transportation to get there. Slovenian President Danilo Turk decided to drive the 500 miles to Krakow. Romanian President Traian Basescu traveled to northwestern Romania by helicopter and then continue by car through Hungary and Slovakia.

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip made the 18-hour drive to the funeral, while Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus made the trip by car and train. Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko left Kiev with his wife at 7 a.m. Saturday for the long road trip.

Mr. Obama has played golf far more often than former President George W. Bush. In his eight years in office, Mr. Bush played just 24 times. His last time as president was Oct. 13, 2003.

He said in 2008 that he gave up golf "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Mr. Bush said in a White House interview Saturday with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

He stopped playing after he received word of a deadly attack in Iraq while playing golf during a stay at the family ranch near Crawford, Texas.

"They pulled me off the golf course, and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do," Mr. Bush said in the interview.

Since Mr. Obama took office, 397 soldiers have died in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Another 151 have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
golf

I think we're in trouble.

The State of the States -


Venezuela (everyone) is mocking Obama - they hated Bush.

Cuba mocks Obama - they hated Bush..

Canada (govt) doesn't care much for Obama - they liked Bush.

Britain - (govt) really does not much like Obama - they liked Bush.

France (govt) really really do not like Obama - they liked Bush.

Germany (govt) do not like Obama - they liked Bush.

Ukraine (everyone) very much do not like Obama - liked Bush.

Poland (everyone) really really do not like Obama - liked Bush.

Israel (everyone) have grown to really not trust or like Obama - liked Bush.

Syria (govt) mocks Obama - afraid of Bush.

Jordan (govt) do not care about Obama - respected Bush.

Egypt (govt) don't care one way or another about Obama - respected Bush.

Lybia (govt) mocks Obama - respected and feared Bush

Russia (govt and people) are indifferent to and disdain for Obama - respected Bush and as between Putin and Bush, friendly.

Iran - mocks Obama - feared Bush

Australia - disdain for Obama's arrogance - respected Bush.

Honduras - universally loathe Obama and the US admin - liked Bush

Brazil - indifferent to Obama - respected Bush

Mexico - totally indifferent toward Obama - respected Bush

Japan - indifferent toward Obama - respected Bush.

China - contempt for Obama - respected Bush as best China can respect anyone not Chinese.

India - disdain for Obama - respected Bush.

Turkey - indifferent toward Obama - tolerated Bush.

Italy - indifference toward Obama - liked Bush.

Spain - like Obama - indifference toward Bush.

Portugal - like Obama - indifference toward Bush.

Algeria - like Obama - indifference toward Bush.

Morocco - like Obama - indifference toward Bush

Iraq - distrust of Obama - respected Bush

Afghanistan - distrust of Obama - respected Bush.

Pakistan - disdain and distrust of Obama - respected Bush.

Switzerland - do not care about Obam - tolerated Bush.

Georgia - do not like Obama - liked Bush.

Kuwait - are concerned about Obama - liked Bush

Taiwan - concerned about Obama - liked Bush

Palestinians - leaning toward liking Obama - hated Bush.

Ecudaor - like Obama - disdain for Bush

Bolivia - like Obama - disdain for Bush

Colombia - concerned about Obama - liked Bush

Costa Rica - like Obama - disdain for Bush

Sweden - like Obama - disdain for Bush

Norway - like Obama - disdain for Bush

Finland - ?

Lithuania - concerned about Obama - liked Bush

Sudan - indifferent toward Obama - concerned about Bush

Somalia - indifferent / leaning toward concerned about Obama - respected Bush

Soutrh Africa - indifferent toward Obama - respected Bush

There are many more, but Micronesia is not as significant to world affairs as, say, Russia or Iran.

We are in trouble.









Obama