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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (80227)	5/18/2010 6:27:37 PM
From: Broken_Clock	1 Recommendation Respond to of 89467

Bill for Afghan war could run into the trillions rawstory.com By Inter Press Service Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 -- 9:09 am By Eli Clifton WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate is moving forward with a 59-billion-dollar spending bill, of which 33.5 billion dollars would be allocated for the war in Afghanistan. However, some experts here in Washington are raising concerns that the war may be unwinnable and that the money being spent on military operations in Afghanistan could be better spent. "We're making all of the same mistakes the Soviets made during their time in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and they left in defeat having accomplished none of their purposes," Michael Intriligator, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, said Monday at a half-day conference hosted by the New America Foundation and Economists for Peace and Security. "I think we're repeating that and it's a history we're condemned to repeat," he said. Intriligator also argued that the real, long-term cost of the war in Afghanistan may completely overshadow the current spending bill. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes estimated that the long-term costs - taking into account the costs of taking care of wounded soldiers and rebuilding the military - of the war in Iraq will ultimately cost three trillion dollars. Intriligator suggested that a similar calculation for the costs of the war in Afghanistan would indicate a long-term cost of 1.5 to 2.0 trillion dollars. "Why are we putting money into Afghanistan to fight a losing war and following the Soviet example rather than putting money into [our] local communities?" he asked. The Senate has been under pressure to approve the spending bill before the Memorial Day recess at the end of the month. On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the 59-billion-dollar bill drafted by the committee's Chairman Daniel Inouye and Sen. Thad Cochran. Gaining the approval of the Senate Appropriations committee may be the easy part in the push to get the bill to Obama's desk by the end of the month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already indicated that the spending bill will face more intense opposition in the House as congressional Democrats are predicted to offer put up some resistance to the funding for Obama's 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan. Experts at the event today expressed their concern with both the physical cost of the war as well as the tradeoffs in spending required by the ongoing costs of fighting the Taliban insurgency. "The climate bill, for all its defects, if it has a prayer of passing, might provide some of the money we need to keep the momentum on building a green economy going. But so could the savings from an Afghan drawdown," said Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Intriligator emphasised the human cost of fighting a counterinsurgency campaign not just for U.S. soldiers but for Afghan civilians. "We can't distinguish the insurgents or Taliban from the rest of population so we kill a lot of innocent civilians," he said. A number of think tank events this week and the Obama administration's push to gain support in Congress for the supplemental appropriations bill coincided with a high-profile visit last week by Afghan President Hamid Karzai who spent four days in meetings with Obama and members of his cabinet as well as with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Karzai's trip to Washington and the warm reception afforded to him by the White House and lawmakers appeared to be part of a public relations offensive to build support in Washington for Karzai's government and Obama's troop surge. Karzai's visit came as polls have shown a major downturn in U.S. support for the war in Afghanistan and support amongst NATO allies has been dwindling. In early April, news emerged that Karzai, in a closed door meeting, threatened to drop out of politics and join the Taliban. A senior Obama administration official retorted that Karzai might be sampling "Afghanistan's biggest export" - a reference to the widespread opium cultivation in Afghanistan. The publicity campaign is facing an uphill battle this month but the administration has much to gain by putting a good face on the U.S. relationship with Karzai. Indeed, the White House will need Karzai's cooperation if it is to get Congressional support for passing the spending bill and will require Karzai's assistance if Obama is to meet his goal of beginning U.S. troop withdrawals by mid-2011. Karzai's trip appears to have made some progress in showing off a "reset" relationship between the Obama White House and the Karzai government but a number of voices here in Washington are raising concerns over whether a U.S. victory in Afghanistan is possible by mid-2011 or at any time in the near future. "The fear was that if we withdraw from Afghanistan there will be civil war and external great powers will take sides. Is that worse than losing American soldiers day after day? So there's a civil war. So the regional great partners take sides. Why wouldn't they? It's their neighbours. It's their borders." said Michael Lind, policy director of the Economic Growth Programme at the New America Foundation, at Monday's conference.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (80227)	5/18/2010 6:36:50 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Clowns on Sioux's thread and PBO have been defending these ass wipes from day one. Good luck. No better than Bush as it turns out. ++++++++++ Atlantic coast now under threat as current spreads Gulf oil slick Scale of disaster becoming apparent as tar balls reach Florida and Gulf of Mexico no-fishing zone doubles in size guardian.co.uk There was mounting evidence tonight that the scale of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has grown beyond all the initial worst-case scenarios, as thousands of gallons of oil continued to gush from the sea floor. In Key West, coastguard officials said about three tar balls an hour were washing up on the beaches at a state park at the southernmost point of the Florida Keys. Such evidence suggests the damage wreaked by the spill – which began with an explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April – could now grow larger, with crude oil caught up in the powerful loop current that travels a much wider course through the Gulf and up the Atlantic coast. In response to the tar sightings, Washington doubled the no-fishing zone to 19% of the waters in the Gulf. The Obama administration admitted today it had underestimated the risks of offshore drilling. In a highly charged hearing in the Senate, Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, conceded failures in oversight by the agency responsible for policing offshore drilling. "We need to clean up that house," he told the energy and natural resources committee. The administration was for the first time held to account by Congress for the rigour of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), its regulatory body for offshore drilling. The agency was notorious in the George Bush era for sex-and-cocaine fuelled parties in Colorado. Earlier, the oil spill disaster claimed its first resignation as a veteran official from the MMS brought forward his retirement. Salazar, under heated questioning from some Senators, was forced to concede that the agency had not been entirely cleansed in the 15 months under his charge. "We need to have the right regulatory regime in place and we will work hard to make sure that happens," he said. He admitted that the disaster had been a "wake-up call" and had persuaded him that policing of safety and environmental regulations on offshore oil rigs may have been inadequate. "My initial read on that is there should be additional safety requirements," he told the committee. Salazar also conceded there were "a few bad apples" among the inspectors of the MMS, and promised that if they over-ruled environmental advice from other government agencies – as alleged by some senators – they would be punished. "If there is someone in the department who ignored the science, then heads will roll," he said. But Salazar was adamant that the administration had been right to seek an expansion of offshore drilling last March, and made it clear there would be no revisiting that decision. "The reality of it is we will be depending on oil and gas in the transition to a new energy future," he said. He also refused multiple requests to provide a firm estimate for the size of the spill. The focus on the administration's actions before the disaster is inconvenient for the White House, which this week intensified its efforts to limit the potential political damage on November's mid-term elections. Senators have also stepped up their pressure, with Barbara Boxer, the head of the environment and public works committee, demanding a criminal investigation into the spill, and pressing BP to produce video of the ruptured well. BP said it would comply. But such defensive actions by the administration did not entirely shield Salazar and other officials of the interior department from the senators' wrath today. Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and longtime opponent of drilling, said: "MMS has dramatically underestimated the potential risks here." For the past 48 hours, administration officials have resisted reports by scientists that the spill could have entered the loop current or downplayed its significance. "By the time the oil is in the loop current, it's likely to be very, very diluted. And so it's not likely to have a very significant impact. It sounds scarier than it is," said Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. Today, Lubchenco took the decision to double the no-fishing zone.