The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a discussion with former Iraqi prime minister and current Parliament member of Iraq, Ayad Allawi. Allawi said the American military surge caused some successes, but the situation in Iraq is still very fragile. He said the Iraqi government needs to capitalize on whatever fleeting stability the surge may have caused to make progress towards peace and trust.

He said the current sectarian government will not be able to uphold the nation. He said the prevalent sectarianism in the Iraq only encourages the spread of terrorism and extremism. He hopes Iraqis will one day be seen as just Iraqis, and not by their ethnicities. He said activation of the UN and other regional organizations could encourage the international community to be involved in promoting stability. His most emphatic point was that stability must be established first, before bureaucratic details can be considered.

At a discussion hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Iraqi Prime Minister and current member of Parliament, Ayad Allawi, describes the failures of the Parliament to create democracy. He says millions of Iraqis would not be fleeing their country if it was a free democracy. He says fourteen-year-old Iraqi girls fled the country to be prostitutes in Syria rather than remain in unstable Iraq. (1:03)

 

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Republicans told the House Judiciary Committee that political disagreements, no matter how large, are not grounds for impeachment proceedings at a hearing discussing appropriate Congressional responses to Bush abuses of power. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said the hearing served no purpose other than anger management, stating that no evidence exists which supports grounds for impeachment and that the hearing’s lack of bipartisanship affected Congress’s already low credibility.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) said the Bush White House is unprecedented in its distortion of executive privilege, noting Bush’s alleged falsification of pre-Iraq war intelligence and approval of certain interrogation techniques. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) stated that the committee was attempting to solve an institutional problem,acting in a deliberative manner, not an accusatory manner. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) earlier had called Bush “the worst President our country has ever seen.”

In his testimony before the committee, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said pre-war justifications provided to Congress were untrue and that Congress had relied on the White House’s false statements while authorizing the Iraq war. Kucinich also said that Iraq posed no security threat to the United States and, since Iraq lacked a weapons program, Saddam Hussein was unable to harm the United States or arm terrorists. Congress’s decision now, Kucinich said, is whether it should defend the Constitution and prevent abuses of power in the Executive and Judiciary Branches.

Rep Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) said the White House has been dominated by corruption and incompetence, stating that the Bush administration ignored numerous warnings prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. He said the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to scale back troop levels in Afghanistan aided Osama bin Laden’s escape into the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan. Hinchey suggested that it would have been more difficult to justify an attack against Iraq if bin Laden had been apprehended by the US military. Recognizing that impeachment had been referenced by many, Hinchey said the Bush administration, through the ways it violated the law, is “probably the most impeachable administration in the history of America.”

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) asks Gordon England, Deputy Secretary of the Defense, about the absurdity of allowing Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR), the same company accused of improper electric wiring, to inspect the facilities in Iraq. England says that an independent group will be hired to assist KBR. (1:38)

 

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Chairwoman Susan Davis (D-Cali.) of the House Armed Services Committee describes the staff shortage in care centers for wounded soldiers. (1:15)

 

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Frederick Downs, Jr., chief prosthetics and clinical logistics officer in the Veterans Affairs Office of Prosthetics and Clinical Logistics, explains that at the beginning of the Iraq War, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had two problems: The gaps between the VA and Depart of Defense (DoD) that prevented veterans from being treated, and the VA’s reputation for not providing quality prostheses. (1:41)

 

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a speech on U.S. foreign policy, national security and strategy in Iraq at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. Obama was introduced by Wilson Center director Lee Hamilton who started jovially referencing an incident where Obama had to show ID at a DC gym. (more…)

Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign held a press conference with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann to discuss Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) Iraq position. Graham called Obama’s plan for withdrawal “brazen”, attacking the Illinois senator and his party for allegedly building an anti-war movement based on the idea that the conflict in Iraq has been lost and the Republican Party is to blame. (more…)

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) talks about how contractors hoard large amounts of cash. Sen. Dorgan says the saw a photograph of contractors standing in front a pile of $2 million.

 

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Jeffrey Bliss, former electrician for Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) in Iraq, reveals the general incompetence of the contractor to the Senate.

 

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