Someone else has spoken up and affirmed JK’s leadership in an op-ed in the Boston Herald today. Jeff Lewis is a moderate Republican, former staff director for Sen. John Heinz and currently president of the Heinz Family Philanthropies.

He first outlines where he sees need.

The question that engages many of us – not as Democrats or Republicans but as human beings – is how to approach the project of restoring America’s place in the world.

America must find a path out of Iraq, rebuild our military, re-engage the fight in Afghanistan, restore our diplomacy - especially in the Middle East - and suture together the security coalitions that this administration tore apart with its preference for unilateral action and its disdain for our allies.

Our role, our responsibility, is to engage our allies - and our adversaries - on the problems that can no longer be confined behind borders. We need a fair trade policy with China and India that stops driving Americans’ jobs from our country. We need to keep our doors open to visitors without alienating our neighbors and further eroding simple common decency toward migrants.

We must lead, not follow, other nations in limiting carbon emissions to fight global warming. We must stop global trafficking in drugs and sex slaves in ways that honor the dignity of its victims and the sovereignty of the nations involved.

How do you accomplish all of these things in a world threatened by the proliferation of dangerous weapons and divisive ideologies, especially when our White House flexes its political muscle by declaring anyone unpatriotic when he or she dares to disagree?

Then he goes on…

The neo-conservatives led us into a morass because they saw the world as they wanted it to be, not as it was. The people who will help lead us out will be both more realistic and more idealistic. These internationalists, these patriots, are in short-supply, which is what brings me to John Kerry.

...

Hear then an inconvenient truth: At a national moment where foreign policy expertise is needed more urgently than ever before, Kerry offers this country a perspective on the world that is more sharply aligned with America’s interests than that offered by many of his Senate colleagues.

On a variety of key and core issues, he has been right on the merits and he has gotten to these positions long before the rest of the pack.

For example, long before the Baker-Hamilton Commission Report, Kerry had a plan for bringing the troops home from Iraq and forcing the Iraqis to fight for their own democracy.

He concludes with this…

We simply can’t wait for January 2009 for the leadership we need. There’s an important role for Kerry to play, now. For those of us who still hold on as moderate Republicans of the past, Kerry’s is the only voice making sense, presenting a strategy and talking honestly and openly about the challenges we face and the country he loves.

Well said, Mr. Lewis. Though it’s not only moderate Republicans who look to JK for leadership. There are many in the reality-based community who appreciate the leadership JK has shown for many years and continues to provide.

As JK said on the Senate floor on Jan. 24th:

I asked the question in 1971: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Although I knew going into public service I wanted to be in a place where I could have an impact should there be a choice of war in the future, but I never thought that I would be reliving the need to ask that question again.

We are there. Most of our colleagues understand this is a mistake. Most of our colleagues understand that 21,000 troops is not going to pacify Iraq. So all of us have a deep-rooted obligation, a deep moral obligation to ask ourselves what we can do to further the interests of our Nation and honor the sacrifices of those troops themselves. I think it is to get this policy right.

...

I don’t want the next President to find that he or she has inherited a nation still divided and a policy destined to end as Vietnam did, in a bitter or sad legacy. I intend to devote all my efforts and energies over the next 2 years, not to the race for the Presidency for myself but for doing whatever I can to ensure that the next President can take the oath with a reasonable prospect of success for him or her–for the United States. And I intend to speak the truth as I find it without regard for political correctness or partisan advantage, to advise my colleagues and my fellow citizens to the best of my ability and judgment, and to support every action the Senate may reasonably and constitutionally take to guide and direct the ship of state.

This mission, this responsibility, is something all of us must accept.

H/T to The Democratic Daily for the transcript

 

GV took the message seriously. Here’s the latest from GlobalVillage inspired by some of the recent blog posts and news reports.

And here’s links to the reports that inspired GV:

New York Times, Feb. 15, 2007 Not Supporting Our Troops

Washington Post, February 18, 2007 Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army’s Top Medical Facility

SetADeadline.com, February 8, 2007 Letter from John Kerry

and one more related link for good measure:

JohnKerry.com, November 14, 2006 Senate Passes Kerry Amendment to Increase Critical Funding for America’s Veteran Support Centers

 

The time for action is now. Start here. Be Heard.

 

It seems today is the day that the dam breaks on finding out about how we treat our soldiers who’ve returned from the battlefield, wounded in body and spirit. And the story isn’t pretty according to the Washington Post.

Let’s start with Jeremy Duncan.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But wait, you say, Walter Reed Medical Center is the best we have. Yes, if one is a surgical patient being treated as an inpatient shortly after arrival from Germany but as Dana Priest of the Washington Post describes so plainly for us, there’s a whole lot more going on.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of “Catch-22.” The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers’ families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

Now meet John Daniel Shannon...

Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed’s hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.

A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn’t even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions. ... But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.

“I thought, ‘Shouldn’t they contact me?’ ” he said. “I didn’t understand the paperwork. I’d start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: ‘I’m your case manager. Where have you been?’

“Well, I’ve been here! Jeez Louise, people, I’m your hospital patient!”

Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.

  <!-more-> Then there’s Jonathan Schulze... his story, as told by the Boston Globe, underscores what’s wrong.

It took two years of hell to convince him, but finally Jonathan Schulze was ready. On the morning of Jan. 11, Jonathan, an Iraq war veteran with two Purple Hearts, neatly packed his US Marine Corps duffel bag with his sharply creased clothes, a framed photo of his new baby girl, and a leather-bound Bible and headed out from the family farm for a 75-mile drive to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minn.

Family and friends had convinced him at last that the devastating mental wounds he brought home from war, wounds that triggered severe depression, violent outbursts, and eventually an uncontrollable desire to kill himself, could not be drowned in alcohol or treated with the array of antianxiety drugs he’d been prescribed.

And so, with his father and stepmother at his side, he confessed to an intake counselor that he was suicidal. He wanted to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.

But, instead, he was told that the clinician who prescreened cases like his was unavailable. Go home and wait for a phone call tomorrow, the counselor said, as Marianne Schulze, his stepmother, describes it.

When a clinical social worker called the next day, Jonathan, 25, told again of his suicidal thoughts and other symptoms. And then, with his stepmother listening in, he learned that he was 26th on the waiting list for one of the 12 beds in the center’s ward for post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers.

Four days later, on Jan. 16, he wrapped a household extension cord around his neck, tied it to a beam in the basement, and hanged himself.

Then there’s Tyler Jennings introduced to many via an NPR report. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling spent 5 months in extensive in-depth research on how the army treats PTSD. He focused in particular on the care given (or in many cases, denied) at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, CO. The special half-hour report on All Things Considered aired on December 4, 2006. Life got worse for those soldiers who participated.

There’s so much to read and listen to but, in particular, check out the story of Tyler Jennings. And listen to the follow-up report that Zwerdling made a couple of days later.

And then check the report Daniel Zwerdling made when it was discovered that the Army had decided to court martial Tyler Jennings, putting him at risk of a year in prison for having PTSD. Jennings’ Army-appointed lawyer indicated that he had done everything correctly to acquire care and had been denied by the system in place. The court-martial was averted after top Army medical people held private conferences at Fort Caron to determine the state of affairs.

JK has been paying attention. On November 14, 2006, “the Senate passed Senator John Kerry’s amendment, which provides $18 million in critical funding to the nation’s Veteran’s Administration (VA) Centers. Veteran Centers provide readjustment counseling and outreach services to any veteran who has served in a combat zone. Kerry’s additional funding will cut waiting lists and ensure that facilities are not forced to limit services as they respond to an increased workload caused by soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

On the floor of the Senate, JK said…

Mr. President, it is our obligation to do everything possible to ensure that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan can make the transition home successfully.

“Welcome home” must be more than something we say to our veterans. It must be measured in actions taken not just words spoken.

...The VA Vet Centers provide readjustment counseling and outreach services to all veterans who served in any combat zone. Our veterans earned these benefits through their service to country, and we must fulfill the nation’s commitment to them by providing the highest quality services possible.

... A recent report by the House Veterans Affairs Committee Democratic staff found that in nine months, between October 2005 and June 2006, the number of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who turned to Vet Centers for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) services doubled. The increased demand for services is beginning to affect access to quality care. In fact, one in four Vet Centers surveyed has been forced to limit services or establish waiting lists for critically needed services. After serving this nation and fighting for our country, our veterans should not have to fight for critical adjustment services.

In November of 2004, VA Secretary Nicholson approved a mental health strategic plan, acknowledging gaps in mental health services due to the surge in demand from veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress provided approximately $100 million to fund the VA Mental Health Strategic plan. However, a recent GAO report shows that the VA has diverted or failed to utilize money that was intended for staffing at Vet Centers and has not provided a full accounting of what has happened to the funding.

...The GAO is expected to issue a full report on these funding gaps later this year, but the preliminary results indicate a possible misuse of mental health dollars.

One-third of the veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan come to the VA with mental health concerns. We have seen the cases of PTSD rise sharply along with the need for readjustment care when veterans return home. It is imperative that our Vet Centers have enough trained professionals to offer quality mental health services. There are 207 Vet Centers across the country. They are currently unable to deal with the increasing demand for mental health services. Each of these centers needs additional funding to hire sufficient staff to deal with the recent influx of patients.

...Our soldiers have sacrificed greatly for their country, and we owe them the best care when they return. Many wounds of war are not visible, which makes it that much more important that Vet Centers have all the resources they need to serve those veterans who are suffering in any way.

JK continues to fight for the veterans of Massachusetts as well as all our nation’s veterans.

 

As JK noted during his appearance last week with the Iraq war veterans from the group VoteVets,

Nearly four years into this war, many of the men and women of our military are in Iraq without up-armored vehicles, without proper equipment, without sufficient radios or other supplies that they need to protect themselves. That’s simply unacceptable.

Remember Specialist Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, a Tennessee National Guard outfit? You probably don’t remember that name but I’m sure you remember his question which he asked Rumsfeld on December 8, 2004.

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” Wilson asked.

That was over 2 years ago and yet, just yesterday, the mom of a marine stationed in Fallujah wrote a diary on dailykos titled, “My son’s Humvee needs a FRAG Kit 5 NOW!!”. What. is. going. on?

Yesterday’s NY Times editorial asked the question this way,

How do you explain to the thousands of American troops now being poured into Baghdad that they will have to wait until the summer for the protective armor that could easily mean the difference between life and death?

It is nothing short of horrific that we are still asking why our soldiers are not better protected. And simultaneously adding grave insult to our brave soldiers, we are finding out about waste and fraud in the billions of dollars spent in Iraq but not on our soldiers.

As JK noted last week at the VoteVets event, “recent audits have shown that money intended to help stabilize Iraq instead went for – among other things – an Olympic size swimming pool, VIP trailers, vehicles that can’t be accounted for and a training camp for Iraqi police that hasn’t been used in months.” Yesterday JK stepped up to the plate again. Senator Dorgan, backed by Senators Kerry and Leahy, introduced the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006 at a press conference. JK said “the bill would make a series of immediate fixes to the procurement process, including punishing war profiteers with stiffer penalties, requiring more disclosure of contracting abuses, forcing more competition by eliminating sole-source contracts and restricting the ability of contractors to oversee one another.” <!-more-> Rick Jacobs at Huffpo noted the event:

While little noticed by the blogs or the main stream media, real leadership shined through Thursday morning in Washington when Senator Byron Dorgan, Chair of the Democratic Policy Committee, backed by Senators John Kerry and Patrick Leahy, followed through on his commitment to rein in contracting fraud and abuse that has been the hallmark of the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton outsourcing of their private war in Iraq.

...The bill follows months of hearings led by the DPC when the Republican controlled Senate patently refused even to hear that Halliburton, Blackwater, CACI, Titan and others were raping the taxpayers of this country while making an ill-planned invasion into a full-fledged disaster, assuring that the only real winners in Iraq would be those companies that had sufficiently close ties to the White House to earn them a free ride in a war that leads us daily closer to the brink.

In introducing the bill, Senators Dorgan and Kerry each referred to Brave New Films’ “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers,” as one of the key elements in demonstrating the outrageous abuses that these and other firms committed in Iraq.

In his introduction of the bill, JK also said:

We owe every man and woman serving in our military nothing less than complete transparency when we spend money in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq and the actions of companies like Halliburton and Custer Battles have become symbols for questions about government waste and a near total lack of accountability. It’s a disgrace that we have to answer to parents who ask how we can allow corporate cheaters to reap massive profits on the battlefield of Iraq when their sons and daughters are serving without proper equipment. This bill will help restore confidence in this process.

So what’s in the legislation?

Here’s a summary which outlines each section of the bill.

Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act

• Punishes War Profiteers – Sec. 101 establishes penalties of up to 20 years in prison and at least $1 million in fines for war profiteering. This provision is largely modeled on anti-profiteering legislation by Senator Leahy. Note that the penalties would apply to fraud by contractors in any place where the United States engages in military action – regardless of whether the fraud is against the United States or “the entity having jurisdiction over the place where the military action takes place.” So fraud against the Coalition Provisional Authority would have been covered by this provision.
• Cracks Down on Big Corporate Cheaters – Sec. 102 restores a Clinton Administration rule on suspension and debarment, which prohibited awarding federal contracts to companies that exhibited a pattern of overcharging the government or failing to comply with the law, including tax, labor, environmental, antitrust, and consumer protection laws. The Bush Administration repealed this rule in March 2001, one of its first actions upon taking office.
• Requires Full Disclosure of Contract Abuses – Sec. 103 provides for greater transparency in contracting. Specifically, this section would require agencies to provide to the chairman and ranking member of committees of jurisdiction a list of all agency audit reports that have found contractor misconduct. It would also require creation of a website listing (1) any instances where a major contractor has been fined or found guilty of misconduct, and (2) information on all sole source contracts in excess of $2 million.
• Forces Real Contract Competition – Secs. 201 and 202 would prohibit the awarding of umbrella contracts over $100 million on a “sole source” basis, so that such contracts would be jointly awarded to at least two companies, which would then compete with each other, under the umbrella contract, for all purchase orders worth more than $1 million. The provision would preclude a multi-billion dollar, sole source award like Halliburton’s LOGCAP contract, forcing some real price competition. Agencies would have waiver authority in cases where only a sole source contract was feasible, but would have to justify a waiver in writing and notify Congress.
• Bans Corporate Cronyism in Contracting – Sec. 211 requires that federal agencies conduct contract oversight, rather than paying contractors with conflicts of interest to oversee one another. (On March 10, 2004, the Pentagon awarded $129 million worth of oversight work to major Iraq contractors – essentially asking them to oversee each other. Some of the companies tasked with overseeing each other had huge conflicts of interest, like Parsons and Fluor, which had a $2.6 billion joint venture in Kazakhstan.) A Dorgan-Wyden amendment to the FY 2005 Defense Authorization bill prohibited the outsourcing of oversight, and was signed into law – but the Pentagon took the position that it had not outsourced oversight, but rather functions relating to oversight. Sec. 211 restates the prohibition on outsourcing of oversight, and clarifies that specific activities relating to oversight, including “services that involve or relate to the evaluation of another contractor’s performance,” could not be outsourced to companies that have a conflict of interest.
• Eliminates Conflicts of Interest for Federal Contracting Employees – Sec. 212 closes the perverse loophole that allows federal contracting officials to work as representatives for companies to whom they awarded contracts. Federal law currently prohibits federal contracting officials from being hired as employees, directors, or consultants of companies to whom they awarded contracts – but the law does not prohibit them from being hired as representatives. Sec. 212 would make it clear that procurement officials could not be employed by contractors in any capacity, including as representatives, within two years of leaving their government positions.
• Ends Cronyism in Key Government Positions – Sec. 301 stops unqualified political appointees like David Safavian and Michael Brown from holding key jobs relating to (1) federal contracting or (2) public safety. It specifies that political appointees for such positions must have relevant professional credentials, a record of accomplishment, and specific expertise in the field in question. Also, the nominee cannot have been a representative for any client having business before the agency in question in the previous two years. The provision explicitly lists certain jobs that this restriction would apply to, including the head of procurement at OMB and the director of FEMA, but would extend to all political appointments in the fields of federal contracting and public safety. This provision is modeled on the Waxman Anti-Cronyism Legislation in the 109th Congress.
• Strengthens Whistleblower Protections – Among other provisions, Sec. 302 makes it more difficult for federal agencies to retaliate against whistleblowers. Currently, only the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is allowed to review whistleblower retaliation cases; Sec. 302 would allow other federal courts to consider such cases. The bill would also create a mechanism to ensure that whistleblowers are able to come forward to Congress with classified information, in a way that protects both the whistleblower and the classified information.

 

During his chat with Ed Schultz on Monday, JK referenced the 16 coal-fired plants that are on the planning board in Texas—11 of them being proposed by one company, TXU. Ed didn’t know about it but said he’d look into it after JK noted that due to the Bush administration’s dismantling of environmental protections, they are all scheduled to be built under old pollution control standards. This, in spite of the incredible need for curbing carbon emissions.

Here’s another look at what’s going on in Texas from Fortune Magazine.

A $10.4-billion-a-year energy company based in Dallas, TXU is staking its future on coal-the dirtiest of all fuels used to generate electricity. Last spring the company announced plans to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas at a cost of nearly $1 billion apiece… One environmental group calculated that the new plants would generate 78 million tons of CO2 each year-more than the emissions of Sweden, Denmark, or Portugal. Texas already ranks first in the U.S. in carbon emissions.

...But TXU is just getting started. The company says it will soon unveil plans to build another eight to 15 coal-burning plants outside Texas, counting on economies of scale to hold costs down. TXU also operates strip mines, which supply 70% of the coal it burns.

Marc Gunther, the article’s author interviewed Mike McCall, “the company executive in charge of selling the coal plants to Texans. A burly, easygoing 49-year-old, McCall is a coal man to his core. He went to the college at the Missouri School of Mines with the financial help of Peabody Coal, the nation’s largest producer, worked in coal mines in Illinois, ran a private railroad that shipped coal, and climbed the ladder at TXU to become head of its wholesale electricity unit.”

When questioned about climate change, McCall responded:

...that it’s an “important and long-term issue” and says TXU’s plants will be designed so that someday they can be retrofitted to capture and store carbon. Right now, there’s no way to capture carbon from coal-burning plants. But, McCall says, “we have confidence that technology will come along.”

That, say TXU’s critics, is hokum.

TXU is fighting not just the usual activists from the Sierra Club and Public Citizen but environmental groups like Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which are ordinarily business-friendly. (With GE, DuPont, and others, they formed the coalition of big companies to lobby for carbon caps.) Opposing the plants, too, are the Democratic mayors of Dallas and Houston, Texas celebrities such as rocker Don Henley, and prominent businesspeople, including real estate scion Trammell S. Crow and Garrett Boone, the chairman of the Container Store. Albert J. Huddleston, a pro-business Republican who helped finance the Swift Boat television ads against John Kerry in 2004, is funding a lawsuit against TXU because he’s concerned about mercury contamination of lakes and fish.

...”TXU is becoming the poster child for why we need mandatory federal legislation,” says Jim Marston, who runs Environmental Defense’s Texas operations.

Someday? Someday will retrofit not-yet-built plants to curb carbon emissions? Someday?

Sounds like Mr. McCall should have been sitting in the Commerce Committee hearing on Climate Change Research & Scientific Integrity on 2-7-2007. Chris Mooney of scienceblog.com’s Intersection noted here:

The hearing ended on a very strong note, as Senator John Kerry essentially eviscerated a hapless representative of the Bush administration, acting Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) chairman Bill Brennan. With Kerry terming the administration’s approach to climate change science and policy “the most serious dereliction of public responsibility that I have ever seen,” Brennan-who tried to stick with talking points-was massively outgunned.

...Kerry’s cross examination towards the end of the hearing completely stole the show.

<!-more-> To watch the Climate Change hearing, go here, select the webcast and go 2:14:45 minutes into the hearing. Then watch the fireworks that happen over the next 15 minutes.

Note: This link has been working intermittently—so if it doesn’t work now, try again later. We are trying to get a video clip of the relevant portion and we’ll update here if/when we get it.

Just in case the video link isn’t working, here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the hearing:

KERRY: ... I was here with Senator Hollings and Senator Inouye was, when we passed the global change research bill, in 1990. And we specifically set out the following.

We said that at least every four years to give us the National Scientific Assessment, to integrate, evaluate, interpret research findings on climate change, scientific uncertainties; analyze the effects of global climate change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy, production use, land and water resources, transportation, human health, welfare, human social systems, biological diversity; analyze current trends in global change, both human inducted and natural.

Don’t you think that if the IPCC report comes out in 2001 if you guys were serious about this that you might have reported to the Congress after that your judgments about that report?

BRENNAN: Sir, as you know, the administration utilizing the CCSP process is advancing the 21 synthesis and assessment reports to advance our understanding of a science that is developing and evolving very rapidly, and it provides a very direct way to get advances to…

KERRY: Well, let me ask you about your understanding. Do you accept the scientific consensus that since the Industrial Revolution, the planet has warmed up by 0.8 degrees centigrade? Do you accept that?

BRENNAN: I accept the scientific consensus that unequivocally indicates that the Earth is warming and that there are anthropogenic causes for that.

KERRY: Do you accept the science that says that that carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere, coupled with other greenhouse gas will continue to do damage for its half-life of whatever, 70 years or more and that, therefore, no matter what we do there will be another add-on of temperature increase to somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 degrees centigrade, do you accept that?

BRENNAN: I accept that we are continuing to add emissions to our environment…

KERRY: Not what I asked you. I asked you whether or not the existing levels, no matter what is added up till now, just what is there now, preordains a continued increase in temperature up to about 1.5 degrees. Do you accept that?

BRENNAN: I accept that we have carbon increasing in our atmosphere, sir, yes.

KERRY: All right. So, you accept that we’re stuck with that increase in temperature, no matter what we do?

BRENNAN: No. I believe that the temperature will continue to increase.

KERRY: Fair enough. And, do you accept the consensus of the scientific community, now ratified by what was put out in Paris last week, that we can no longer afford the cushion of a temperature increase up to 3 degrees centigrade. We are now stuck with a 2 degree, sort of precautionary level, which leaves us now a margin of from 1.5 to 2 degrees, that everything manmade that we do in India, in China, here, the entire cushion available to us is a .5 degree, do you accept that science?

BRENNAN: I agree that the cushion available to us is narrow, sir. And the administration supports the IPCC report.

KERRY: If that’s the case, where is the plan for this administration to cut carbon, to cap carbon, to reduce carbon to the levels that will hold us to 450 parts per million, which is the scientifically agreed upon level that we must accept? Where’s the plan?

BRENNAN: Sir, the administration has been developing, and has a plan, and has been working to reduce greenhouse gas intensity, it has been working to address the fuel side, to reduce emissions, to stop emissions and then to reverse it.

KERRY: Sir, with all due respect, that’s just talk. There’s no real plan to hold carbon emissions to a 450 parts per million level. The president’s State of the Union message suggested some gasoline savings, and he suggests that that’s good. And he suggested some alternative fuels, none of which get you close to the level of 450 parts per million.

And, I just talked to a number of scientists last week who confirmed that we can no longer afford the 550 parts they thought we could. They’ve ratcheted it down. Why? Because of the evidence of the breakup of the ice and what is happening across the planet. Now, do you guys take that seriously, or don’t you?

BRENNAN: Absolutely, sir.

KERRY: Well, if you take it seriously, where’s the assessment to the American people of what we have to do to deal with this?

BRENNAN: Sir, as I said, the administration is producing the 21 synthesis and assessment products to advance our understanding of these impacts.

KERRY: With all due respect, it’s been five years since the last report. And, it is unclear when 19 further reports of those 20 whatever are going to be due. Totally unclear. Do you really believe that two reports on two separate areas is sufficient to say that after six years you’re doing the job here?

BRENNAN: Sir, these reports are on a schedule for completion that will be submitted to you in a timely fashion to address the issues that have been raised and to support the administration’s view that this is the most appropriate way to advance the scientific understanding.

KERRY: But, look, I will acknowledge that there is no computer model that tells us precisely what’s going to happen. I understand that. I also have read enough to understand that there’s a certain cooling that takes place, there are particulates in the atmosphere, the cooling is now neutralized and equals, if you take all the greenhouse gases, except for carbon dioxide, there’s sort of an equilibrium.

But then you’ve got the carbon dioxide outside of that. There’s been a 35 percent increase in carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

And, you know, I’m not a scientist but I know enough to sort of connect the dots here, that when I’ve got all these scientists screaming at me saying, precautionary principle, you got to do this, we’ve got to hold it to 450 parts per million, we’ve lowered our estimate we’re now looking at devastation, permafrost melting in Alaska, you know, a huge 66 square mile sheet of ice breaks off, creates its own island.

You know, it’s all accelerated. The glaciers of the planet are melting. Not just in our own park, all over the planet. And every indicator is leading to this. An Arctic bird was discovered down in San Diego a few weeks ago. I mean, you run the gamut.

You guys aren’t responding to it. I have to tell you this.

BRENNAN: Sir, I believe we share a common goal in reducing these emissions and the appropriate…

KERRY: No, I don’t think we do share that. Because you fought against McCain’s and my efforts to have CAFE standards a few years ago. The most we could get was 35 votes in the Congress. You weren’t there, you didn’t stand for it. The president didn’t. You’re not supportive of this. And I think it is the most serious dereliction of public responsibility that I have ever seen. Ever.

When scientists are told, “Don’t tell the American people the truth,” I mean, this is serious stuff. In all the years I’ve been on this committee, I’ve never seen something like this where an administration is unwilling to pull people together and say, “How are we going to do this?”

[...]

KERRY: [T]his is deadly serious stuff. This is the most serious thing that I’ve seen. I mean I, you know, this is what, how many years now of hearings on this committee, since 1987. Almost 20 years. Almost 20 years of hearings on this committee, when we’ve been talking this very science.

We need a carbon cap. We’ve got to reduce carbon. We’ve got to get serious about putting incentives in our automobiles to be hybrids and plug-ins and all kinds of things. We’ve got to move now to clean coal technology.

There are 16 coal-fired plants that they’re planning to build in Texas under TXU, without new source performance standards. They’re going to put 78 million tons of additional CO2 into the atmosphere. China’s building one coal-fired plant per week. That can’t happen. And we better show the global leadership to prevent it from happening.

And I don’t care if people get tired of me ranting on this, I am going to rant on this every day I can for the time I’m here, because this is the most serious issue we have.

Rant on, Senator. We’re listening.

 

JK is going to be speaking out again on Hardball and we’re all ready to do another live blogging session.

While we wait for JK’s appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball program at 5 pm EST, you can take a listen to JK’s chat on Monday with the bloggers on the Heading Left BlogTalkRadio show.

If you haven’t checked lately, the count at setadeadline.com is up over 31,000.

And just to confirm that we’re in good company with the rest of America, there’s this analysis from Jonathan Singer at myDD.com

There is a sense among the pundits and even many within the halls of Congress that while the American people are strongly opposed to the Iraq War and specifically to President Bush’s proposal to increase the number of American troops in the conflict, voters would not welcome the type of actions required to stop the escalation—either cutting off funds for new troops or passing legislation limiting the President’s ability to widen the war. Not so, however, says new polling (or other polling in the recent and somewhat recent past, for that matter).

A new CBS News survey of American adults in the field Thursday through Sunday with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points finds that a majority of Americans want to see Congress use the power of the purse to block the so-called “surge” in troops, with a 45 percent plurality favoring cutting off funding for more troops and an additional 8 percent backing a complete freeze on spending. This 53 percent combined figure compares favorably to the just 44 percent who support Congress passing a non-binding resolution on Iraq, though it is significantly lower than the 68 percent who disapprove of the President’s handling of Iraq, the 67 percent who believe the U.S. military can effectively stop violence between Iraqis and the 63 percent who oppose sending 20,000 more American troops into the country.

 

Yesterday’s round of radio talk show appearances brought more co-sponsors for JK’s bill at setadeadline.com.

Here’s a map of the 30,000+ co-signers of JK’s bill. We didn’t place dots in cities with less than 10 responses. If we had, the entire country would be covered.

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And here’s a little something extra…

For those of you who like to see JK’s leadership acknowledged, here’s a must-read item from Donna Brazile in RollCall today:   Why John Kerry’s Presidential Primary Endorsement Matters.

 

JK seemed to enjoy his chat with the I-man today. Our bloggers reported on the chat and you can check out their comments if you didn’t get a chance to tune in.

They enjoyed it so much that we’re going to do it again today between 2-3 pm when JK is scheduled to be on the Ed Schultz show and then the Heading Left show on BlogTalkRadio.

Here’s the details and links for both shows:

2:05 – 2:15 pm EST – Ed Schultz Radio Show – JK calls in, visit the website to find your local radio station or click on “ListenLive” to find an streaming internet site.

2:17 – 2:32 pm EST – The Heading Left Show on BlogTalk Radio – Hosted by James Boyce (Huffington Post blogger) and Nate Wilcox – JK will be interviewed on the show. Calls in, visit the website to get the phone number for call ins and listen to the show live via streaming or after the fact via podcast.

Want to catch up on the rest of JK’s appearances in the media this weekend?

On Saturday, JK delivered the Democratic response radio address. Audio Link | Transcript

You can also watch JK’s appearance yesterday on This Week. Check it out: ABC This Week video | Transcript

 

JK spoke out during the Democratic radio address on Saturday morning and again on This Week with George Stephanopoulos about our troops in Iraq.

Today he continues speaking out on Imus in the Morning, and then on the Ed Schultz Show and the Heading Left show on BlogTalk Radio. We’re going to live-blog this morning’s appearance with The I-man on MSNBC. While we wait, you can tune in to MSNBC if you have cable or check for Imus in the Morning on the radio dial here.

And here’s today’s complete lineup:

7:29 am EST- MSNBC – JK calls into “Imus in the Morning” TV and Radio – watch on MSNBC, or visit the website to find your local radio station.

2:05 – 2:15 pm EST – Ed Schultz Radio Show – JK calls in, visit the website to find your local radio station or click on “ListenLive” to find an streaming internet site.

2:17 – 2:32 pm EST – The Heading Left Show on BlogTalk Radio – Hosted by James Boyce (Huffington Post blogger) and Nate Wilcox – JK will be interviewed on the show. Calls in, visit the website to get the phone number for call ins and listen to the show live via streaming or after the fact via podcast.

JK spoke out strong and clear during Saturday’s Democratic radio address:

This week in Congress, a majority of Republicans prevented the Senate from holding a full and open debate on the issue of Iraq. Why? Because this so-called surge, which is nothing more than the escalation of a misguided war, is a bad idea. If there was a straight up or down, yes or no vote this week on whether the United States should keep up an indefinite presence in Iraq, it would be voted down.

Here’s what ought to happen. The Congress should tell President Bush to end this open-ended commitment of American troops. We must change the American mission in Iraq to training Iraqi security forces and focusing our efforts on removing the threat posed by foreign jihadists, not patrolling Iraqi neighborhoods under the threat of roadside bombs. The United States must get tough with Iraqi politicians - pressure them to meet tough benchmarks.

Here’s links to the complete address to peruse or listen to while we wait. Audio Link | Transcript

You can also watch JK’s appearance yesterday on This Week. Check it out: ABC This Week video

 

Anderson Cooper did a compelling and eye-opening interview with reporter Michael Ware on a Special Edition of Anderson Cooper 360 on January 31, 2007. Michael Ware is CNN’s Baghdad correspondent and he’s spent a significant portion of time in Iraq over the last 4 years. (H/T to dailykos diarist taraka das)

Ware outlined for Anderson and the rest of us the activities that are occurring in Iraq. He described 4 different wars with different factions in an extraordinary interview.

War #1 is the war of the Sunni insurgents. He identified it as the war the Americans expected to fight.

WARE: ”...with the disbandment of the military, with the lack of economic opportunity and with what was perceived to be a heavy focus on the Shia, all these former generals and colonels and officers and foot soldiers felt that they were left with no other choice.

Plus, one thing that’s being significantly underestimated from the beginning is the Iraqi sense of nationalism, particularly among the Sunnis. Or their sense of honor. These men were just sent home in what they felt was dishonor. They were no longer required and they were disempowered.

Now, the way it began is that essentially small groups would just pick up arms and take potshots at passing American convoys. But eventually one group started talking to another group. Then they’d start to coordinate, sharing weapons, sharing intelligence. Then command and control structures began to emerge.

In the transition from talking about War #1 to War #2, Ware discusses the relationship between the Iraqi Sunni insurgents, some of who have been absorbed into al Qaeda in Iraq, and the foreign fighters within al Qaeda in Iraq, and the conflict that exists between them and which is the reason that Michael is alive today. <!-more-> War #2 is the war with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organization, now known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which before the invasion, was known as Ansar al-Islam and was bunkered down in Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq, beyond Saddam’s reach.

Ware talked about what happened at the beginning of the invasion:

So what we saw even then during the invasion was two wars, the war against Saddam’s regime and a much, much smaller attack against an al Qaeda element in the north.

Now, I was there in the north. I was in the battle with U.S. Green Berets and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, essentially the Kurdish militia that the Green Berets used to go into this mountain stronghold of this al Qaeda linked group and drive them out.

I was there with the Green Berets as we all watched these fighters walk over the mountains into the safety of Iran. I was even there as a Green Beret was reporting back on his radio, they’re exfilling, they’re retreating, they’re escaping to Iran.

So while the administration is saying here’s al Qaeda and it’s being wiped out—no, the body of this group had been preserved. And we’ve since seen them and many others reemerge.

He went on to state that the invasion of Afghanistan had forced Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to scatter. But ”...in many ways, the invasion played directly into the hands of al Qaeda. ... it gave them a battle. It brought the enemy, America, to them.”

The American war in Iraq made Zarqawi. It turned him from a relative nobody into one of the superstars of global jihad, of global Islamic extremism.

Zarqawi’s plan, as we know from a letter he wrote to Osama bin Laden that was intercepted and since released by U.S. forces. What he wanted to do was use Iraq as the new platform to fight this global war. He wanted to use Iraq, much as we saw Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation, to create a whole new generation of al Qaeda and radical Islamic fighters. And that’s precisely what he did.

At the core of it, apart from the fight against the Americans, what Zarqawi wanted to do was to strike up a war between the Sunni sect of Islam and the Shia sect of Islam. He believed it was through this that his and al Qaeda’s Sunni branch of Islam would awake from its slumber and rise up to defend itself and eventually conquer all before it. And it was through Iraq that he saw that they would do that.

Anderson Cooper chimed in with this summary:

COOPER: It’s interesting because we in the West often view the battle as a battle between the United States or the West and this radical sect of Islam.

In fact, this radical sect of Islam, they want it to be viewed as that because they want to be seen as the champions of Muslims around the world, when in fact the people they are really fighting against ultimately are other Muslims. The people who they oppose are people who they believe are not Islamic enough.

War #3 is the civil war between Sunni and Shia forces in Iraq which is the war that Zarqawi wanted to foster and expand. Ware noted that “As [Zarqawi] spelled out from the very, very beginning, what he believed was that if we attack the Shia, they will be forced to respond. Then this sleeping giant, the Sunni sect of Islam, will be forced to rise up. He believed that was the key to the way forward.”

He also noted that Baghdad is the center of the sectarian violence because it’s the only place that the 2 groups live in very close proximity—“in the rest of the country, the sects essentially live alone. It’s only in the melting pot of Baghdad that we see, in a very concentrated way, the sects coming together… So Baghdad was always going to be the fault line in any such war.”

He then went on to talk about the geography of Baghdad and how it aligned with the 2 groups in general and what has happened with the involvement of the government and the police in the violence that occurs. That when “you’re confronted by police or army checkpoint, you have no idea who these men really are”. They could be legitimate “but they could quite simply be a death squad. So everyone who moves in this city is rolling the dice every time they set foot outside of their home. And, indeed, for many people, even sitting in their homes is not safe because police run death squads or Sunni extremist death squads can enter homes and drag people out. Nowhere is safe.”

Cooper asked about the impact of the elections and the elected government. Ware responded that the Shia-led government has allowed and participated in the attacks on the Sunnis. Many moderate Sunnis “waited for the prosperity and safety that we promised them to be delivered”. The failure to deliver means many now “drift towards al Qaeda and its affiliates” because they believe they have no choice.

War #4 is the proxy war with Iran. Ware noted that there are many tribes and families who live on both sides of the Iran-Iraq border. Then he reviewed Saddam’s 8 year war against Iran in the 1980’s and Iran’s resulting legitimate national security interests in the future government of Iraq.

He noted that “during the invasion, as U.S. and British forces advanced from Kuwait to the north, clearing Saddam’s forces as they went, we saw essentially an Iranian backed invasion at the same time that filled the vacuum that was left behind. It was extremely well organized and coordinated.” He also pointed out that “during Saddam’s regime, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shia fled to Iran. Iran saw many of these people not only as brethren and refugees to be protected, but as an asset. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of these Iraqi Shia who were in Iran were mobilized and used by the Iranians within its armed forces.”

So the Iranians had the assets to send in behind the US and British forces as they advanced on Iraq.

WARE: What they did is, in the chaos and the vacuum of power that was left behind the advancing coalition forces, they took power. They took the governor’s office, the police chief’s office, the Baath party headquarters, and they never really left.

And, indeed, what the British found, as we learned from the British army report into the execution killing of six of its military police in 2003 by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, is that when they arrived in one of these major border provinces here, they found that the militias were already so strong that the report said the British had a choice, to either confront them or to accommodate them.

And the report says that for the sake of stability and security, they felt they had no other choice but to accommodate these militias. So that entrenched the militias in power.

The Iranians have given militias such as Muqtada al-Sadr’s, money, arms and training. Ware went onto say that “many of these networks and these organizations that were in Iran… were kept in place and they moved into Iraq. And with them came what’s essentially Iranian green beret advisers. You had Iranian form of CIA advisers. All coming with them. To guide, direct, to channel them.”

Ware also noted that there is conflict among these groups to see who will be ascendant one over the other.

Ware concluded the interview with Anderson Cooper by saying that although US commanders had said it wasn’t completely hopeless, “it’s very hard to see any kind of alternative that is anything but ugly and difficult.”

Secretary Gates Agrees

Two days after Michael Ware’s interview was aired, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace gave a DOD briefing in which Sec. Gates also described the conflict in Iraq as 4 wars happening simultaneously though he numbered the wars slightly differently than Michael Ware did.

What I have said in my testimony is that I think that the words “civil war” oversimplify a very complex situation in Iraq. I believe that there are essentially four wars going on in Iraq.

One is Shi’a on Shi’a, principally in the south; the second is sectarian conflict, principally in Baghdad, but not solely; third is the insurgency; and fourth is al Qaeda, and al Qaeda is attacking, at times, all of those targets.

So I think I just - you know, I - it’s not, I think, just a matter of politics or semantics. I think it oversimplifies it. It’s a bumper sticker answer to what’s going on in Iraq.

The bottom line for US troops is that at any given time they don’t know if they are dealing with legitimate police or security forces who are also part of death squads. They don’t know if an outbreak of hostilities is jockeying for power between one of the many factions described above or civilian bystanders under attack by one of more of these factions to prompt them to move off the fence and make a choice about who they’ll support. Or it could be that someone that they encounter or work with plays 2 different roles in 2 or 3 of these different conflicts and the soldiers don’t know who they’re dealing with at any given time.

Please go read the complete CNN 360 transcript. It is eye opening.

JK talks about the Iraq War on This Week

This is why the plan that JK is putting together is so critical—as he pointed out this morning, the Iraq Study Group studied this carefully and laid out a plan commensurate with the complexity of the situation in Iraq. JK emphasized this point this morning in his interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Check it out: ABC This Week video