Politics of Fear – Page 32 – The Wrongologist

Hawks Ignore a Key Point in Iran Deal

One of the big objections by Israel and the GOP hawks to the Iran deal is that release of sanctions enables Iran to purchase advanced weapons that the sanctions have prevented for 30 years. And with the release of Iran’s $100 billion in blocked funds, it will have big bucks to spend on them. Robert Farley reports that both Russia and China have been looking forward to this moment. Some say they pushed hard for the nuclear deal, since they had much to gain in the form of weapons sales.

The fact that Russia and China didn’t break the sanctions regime a long time ago should be considered almost a miracle, but Farley thinks that despite their interest in tweaking the US, neither favors a nuclear Iran. In the past, Iran acquired weapons from both Russia and China, as well as from the US. We can expect them to look to Russia and China, since Iran is a tempting buyer in the emerging arms export competition between Moscow and Beijing.

But, Matthew Weybrecht at the Lawfare blog thinks that most arms sales to Iran could still be a few years in the future. He reports that, according to the Implementation Plan (Annex V), sanctions relief will begin upon IAEA-verified implementation of (specified) nuclear-related measures. It is not entirely clear when “IAEA-verified implementation” will begin, but Weybrecht thinks it will probably be sometime in early 2016.

Why? Because a copy of the proposed UN Security Council Resolution (UNSC) has been leaked to the press. The Resolution terminates the previous Iran sanctions, but also immediately imposes a new regime that retains certain arms restrictions, including continuing the arms and ballistic missile embargoes for five and eight years, respectively.

These new (really continuing) restrictions came in a separate “statement” (which the UNSC requires all states to comply with) and actually takes the form of permitting specific purchases, but only with the advance, affirmative permission of the UNSC.

In effect, this amounts to an embargo from which the UNSC can grant exceptions on a case-by-case basis, and the US can use its veto to block transfers it does not like. The Obama administration gets to claim that the arms embargo will stay in effect for years after Implementation, and that it can veto any Iranian purchases it worries could destabilize the region.

It is now possible to see a little into the future: Iran gets its $100 billion back, but they will have trouble getting approval to purchase advanced weapons like cruise missiles, which would be deeply worrying to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Gulf States. And the international restrictions probably mean that neither China nor Russia will want to take the risk of exporting them to Iran.

Iran has a relatively impressive air defense network, but it will require an infusion of new technology to provide real protection from Israel or US air attack. Approval from the UN for new air defense weapons may prove impossible to get in the near term.

Farley indicates that Iran has other needs, including modern ground combat vehicles, modern small naval vessels, and a host of support equipment. Those probably would be approved by the UN.

Iran would probably be permitted to purchase low-end aircraft from either China or Russia. Planes from either country would represent an improvement over current Iranian capabilities. In the longer term, depending on how well the nuclear deal holds together, Iran could purchase aircraft on par with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

So, who won the negotiation?

The US and the rest of the P5+1 get to retain the most important military restrictions for at least a few more years.

Iran gets significant economic relief from the sanctions and gets to claim it got all the sanctions immediately eliminated.

Yet, it bears noting that if China and Russia didn’t break the arms embargo before, there is little reason to think they will do that going forward. And if they did, would they continue down that path after the UN Security Council said “no” to a specific arms deal?

But, Iran with access to modern military weapons could pose a greater threat to the region than an Iran with a few crude nuclear devices it could never use. That potential risk, along with the nuclear risk, is now postponed for a few years in the future.

This is the agreement we’ve got. Implementation will be challenging, even if all parties are acting in good faith, not just because its constraints are complicated, but because irreconcilable parties in Iran and the US, including most Republicans, favor its demise.

Monday Wake-Up Call – July 20, 2015

The Wrongologist is like many who tried to read “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon back in the day, and could not finish it. However, there is a wonderful thought in the book: “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”

That thought describes the campaign by those who are against the Iran deal. Get people thinking about anything but the deal, and there is a good chance it will not be approved in Congress.

But this isn’t only a US-Iran deal. Our Congress can’t derail the deal, it can only nullify US participation in it. If that happens, we will be the ones left out. For more than a decade, Iran has been near the top of our Middle East agenda. Along the way, the risks inherent in Iran’s nuclear program have been inflated, in part because it helps drive the prevailing Western view of Iran as a rogue state; in part, because it was crucial to the sanctions regime that the Western countries constructed, and ideally, it might have helped to topple the regime.

This view prevails today in Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as among Washington’s neo-cons, all of whom see Iran as the major source of disorder in the region.

Before getting bogged down in the debate about the deal, stop and appreciate the single most important accomplishment here. We live in a world where nuclear weapons are easy to develop or to purchase, which is a huge potential problem. We must have a non-proliferation program that the international community agrees on and will make every effort to enforce.

What’s key in the Iran deal is that the world united to say that it’s very important that we don’t sit back and do nothing while new countries get nuclear weapons. In this sense, the accomplishment isn’t really specific to Iran. The most significant thing is that we can agree that non-proliferation is the goal, and come together to prevent the spread of nuclear weaponry. If Turkey or Saudi Arabia decide tomorrow that they want a nuclear weapons program, there will be a credible system in place to deter them.

And if blocking Iran from making a nuclear bomb was the real goal, this deal offered the best choice. Despite what Netanyahu and American chicken hawks believe, we cannot eliminate their nuclear program by bombing Iran. The West cannot invade Iran and succeed with that goal. either. If you take Netanyahu and the neo-cons at their word, sanctions won’t work.

So, it is not surprising that the deal’s opponents offer NOTHING as an alternative.

Time will tell if the deal delivers on what it’s supposed to do. Iran has been an implacable foe of the US (and vice-versa) for 36 years, and that isn’t going to change overnight. But there is the real potential for a thaw in the hostile relations between our two countries, and this makes Israel and our (Sunni) Arab friends and enemies very uncomfortable. This deal also gives us a chance to take a look at the mess in the ME within a new paradigm. The old paradigm has not worked. It created a hole so deep that the region is at risk of never being able to crawl out of it.

While our traditional allies are understandably anxious, they’ve come by their anxiety honestly. And, if we take Einstein’s definition of insanity being the belief that doing the same thing over and over again will give you a different result, then our allies and their friends in Congress are insane.

The most prominent arguments against the deal aren’t really arguments at all. The people making them don’t like the deal because they don’t like Iran, and because the deal has some upside for Iran. That is, of course, the nature of deal-making. The chicken hawks don’t want to come out and say they oppose diplomacy in all forms and simply want a war with Iran, so we get their reframing and bluster instead.

Peacemaking has risks. War also brings risk.

The one lesson Americans never ever seem to learn is probability assessment. Our politicians always lock into one factor they are sure will predict the future with certainty.

Well, it’s time for them to grow up. If the Iran deal is a curtain, it is a deal that allows us a good amount of time to figure out what’s behind the curtain.

Behind every curtain is another curtain, the future, and nobody knows what’s back there. So, wake up Congress, debate the deal, but approve it.

Here to help wake them up is #3 in our songs of summer series, here is “Summertime” by Janis Joplin from 1969:

If your daddy’s rich and your mama’s good lookin’, you better not cry.

If you read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 19, 2015

We live in an amazing time. Donald Trump is again running for President, and the Huffington Post has decided it will not cover his run, because they consider him to be a joke.

Yet, the Republican base is happy with Mr. Trump. WaPo reports that 57% of Republicans now have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 40% who have an unfavorable view. That is a complete reversal from a late-May Post-ABC poll, in which 65% of Republicans saw Trump unfavorably. The Donald has pushed some candidates polling numbers down to the point where it could affect their ability to raise money.

Since Trump is currently polling at the top of the big group of Republican presidential candidates, the media shouldn’t assume his candidacy is a joke. They should be taking him seriously. Trump’s approval numbers with Republicans is currently the biggest story in the political campaign, and the reasons why he’s so popular deserves to be front and center.

He is the Cliff’s Notes version of today’s Republican Party.

What he is saying resonates with many in their base, which has been diligently cultivated and grown for the last 40 years. Now, their crop is coming in. Consider that Sen. Ted Cruz is only in his third year of his first term in office and Sen. Rand Paul is only in his fifth year. Except for Scott Walker, not one of them has a political record they can run on. The rest are bottom of the barrel careerist pols.

Once, we thought that no one could be lower in that barrel than Nixon. Then we had Reagan. And then, GWB. Hard to believe that the next Republican presidential candidate could be lower in the barrel than GWB, but if there is someone, the GOP will find him/her, and about 45% of the electorate will vote for him/her.

So, don’t focus simply on the media’s carping about Trump’s comments on Mexicans, because 55+% of American Republicans agree with him.

Trump’s bombast actually helps the others:

Pluto is clearer to us than the 2016 Super PACs:

Obama now has to deal with our domestic Ayatollahs about Iran:

Iran deal will never be good enough for some on the Right:

Harper Lee’s book has startling revelation:

The Greek deal is mythic:

The Story Behind Iran’s Nuclear Story

Reuters reported last night that Iran and major powers extended the deadline to negotiate an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program to at least Friday. The comprehensive deal under discussion is aimed at curbing, and reversing in some cases, Iran’s nuclear work for the last decade or more, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions that have slashed Iran’s oil exports and crippled its economy.

It is unclear whether an agreement will be reached, but it is sure that few in Congress will be happy with the outcome, regardless if there is an agreement or not.

It may be useful to remember that Iran’s Nuclear Program was a child of Washington in the first place. It is possible to date the start of Iran’s nuclear program to December 8, 1953, the date that President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered what was later called his Atoms for Peace speech to the UN.

Eisenhower laid out a program to use atomic energy “to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.” Under the program, the US would provide research reactors, fuel, and scientific training to developing countries eager to harness the power of the atom.

Among the first countries to take the United States up on its offer was Iran.

In 1957, Tehran and the US signed a nuclear cooperation agreement, called the Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms. Two years later, in 1959, the Shah of Iran created a Nuclear Research Center at the University of Tehran, and in 1967, the US delivered a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor and the enriched uranium needed to fuel it. In addition, the Atoms for Peace program offered Iran a chance to study in the US, since they had no homegrown nuclear experts. This lack of nuclear engineers meant that Iran could not use the US-delivered Tehran research reactor for nearly a decade.

Needing nuclear experts, Iran turned to MIT in 1975 to create a special program to provide Iranian experts with scientific and technological training on nuclear energy. This program gave Iran its first group of professional nuclear engineers. The first nuclear reactor that we provided would later be used by Tehran to carry out some of its more controversial work, including some of the country’s earliest experiments with uranium enrichment.

Iran later admitted to using that same reactor in the early 1990s for the production of small amounts of Polonium-210, a radioactive substance that could be used to start a chain reaction inside a nuclear weapon.

Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in July 1968, on the first day it was opened for signature. Tehran ratified the treaty in 1970, putting it among the first states to do so and on paper, giving it the right to enrich uranium.

It is useful to remember that Israel, the most vocal critic of a nuclear deal with Iran, remains one of just four nuclear capable states (India, Pakistan and North Korea) that have not signed the NPT.

But despite early cooperation, signs of distrust between Washington and Tehran emerged early. Like today, Washington was concerned with Iranian plans to reprocess used (“spent”) nuclear fuel. The separated plutonium from this process can be used to fuel reactors, but also can be used to make nuclear weapons. To make sure nuclear materials were not diverted to making weapons, Mr. Eisenhower proposed establishing a watchdog within the UN. That watchdog would later become the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that we rely on today for nuclear inspections.

Juan Cole reports that, according to declassified national security documents, from 1975 and 1976, Washington opposed Iranian plans to build a nuclear reprocessing facility, and the issue became a major sticking point in negotiations to sell US nuclear power reactors to Iran:

The US used to have a policy of promoting reprocessing because it was a way of recycling useful atoms…But this policy changed right at the end of the Gerald Ford administration and then reinforced by Jimmy Carter…to no longer support, and, in fact, to oppose reprocessing.

Washington’s nuclear cooperation with Iran came to an abrupt halt in 1979, swept away by the Iranian Revolution that ended the rule of the Shah. With the capture of our embassy in Tehran and the holding of American hostages for 444 days, all formal ties between Washington and Tehran were cut off until the start of the current nuclear negotiations.

Atoms for Peace provided Iran with a foundation for its nuclear program. It offered both key technologies along with education in nuclear engineering and physics. The program clearly helped Iran move up the nuclear learning curve.

Now, the question is, can Secretary of State Kerry put the toothpaste back in the tube?

Symbolism Weakened in South Carolina

On Monday, South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley announced a plan to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the SC state house. That got many Republican presidential candidates off the hook after a weekend in which most delivered waffles about the subject.

But, everything you need to know about the conservative Republican position on the Confederate flag in 2015 was summed up by Bill Kristol on the very same day:

OK. Time to talk about history. The South seceded, and then fought a war to preserve slavery. It was not a war of Northern aggression. It was a war of Confederate choice, and the choice was made first by South Carolinians, who were the first to announce their secession.

SC’s Declaration of Causes of Secession was issued on December 20, 1860, after the election, but three months before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office. If you choose to read at the link, you’ll see the entirety of their complaint had to do with slavery. They were angry:

• That slaves were escaping from their territory and Northern States were refusing to send them back
• That blacks had been granted citizenship in some Northern states
• That the election of Lincoln would lead to slavery’s exclusion from the new territories

Here is a snippet: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Lincoln was explicit during the early years of the war that he fought back, not for slavery, but to preserve the union. Today, some modern “confederates” use those quotes from Lincoln to argue that the war wasn’t about slavery, but that is revisionist history.

The people who started the war, in every confederate state, were explicitly doing so to preserve slavery. Read the other secession statements. Read the speeches of leading confederate politicians. Read the founding CSA documents, in which the CSA states were free to do anything they wanted except end slavery. In fact it’s clear that the main purpose of even having a confederation was to preserve slavery.

The Confederate flag was basically forgotten after the civil war until the civil rights movement when the battle flag was resurrected by those in the south who were against the federal laws prohibiting lynching, segregation, and vote blocking. In other words, that flag has been used only by those promoting white supremacy. Heritage? Of course, but for a flag that represents something that existed for four years?

The flag is just a start. Why are there Civil War reenactments in the South? Battle field reenactments where they honor their defeat of the north, focused on battles they won in a war that they lost. Imagine if Mexican Americans had an Alamo reenactment where they storm the Alamo and kill Davy Crockett.

Taking down the Confederate flag over the South Carolina Capitol, along with Walmart and EBay stopping sales of the flag, and the number one Confederate flag manufacturer ending production are all important steps, but they are the just a few steps on a long road.

The next big question is will country music follow the lead of Governor Haley and distance itself from the Confederate flag? The rebel flag is deeply interwoven into country and southern rock music, that relationship is both deep and wide.

This stuff is symbolic, and a very important symbol is being phased out.

This is meaningful.

See you on Sunday.

Monday Wake Up Call – June 22, 2015

Wrongologist reader Rene asks: “why doesn’t the Wrongologist say something about the Greek crisis”?

Most people believe that Greece needs debt relief. The creditors should discount some of the amount that Greece owes, since there’s no way they can pay it all back. But, that hasn’t happened and it’s unlikely that it will, since it’s politically impossible. Why? It is very hard to explain in a short post, but Forbes has a great summary of the facts:

The money is owed to the taxpayers of other European Union and Euro Zone countries. And what’s more, [their] taxpayers know this.

So, this is the issue: To solve the Greek debt problem, something like 50% of their debt has to be written off. That would equal 1.5% to 2% of GDP for each country in the Euro Zone. So it’s not happening.

Even though the money has already been lost by lending it to Greece in the first place, the response by the Euro Zone is troubling. From Ambrose Bierce in the Telegraph:

The European Central Bank, the EMU bail-out fund, and the IMF, among others, are lashing out in fury against an elected government that refuses to do what it is told. They entirely duck their own responsibility for five years of policy blunders that have led to this impasse.

Worse, Europe is now provoking a Greek bank run in their effort to force Greece to its knees, issuing a report that warned of an “uncontrollable crisis” if there is no creditor deal, followed by soaring inflation, “an exponential rise in unemployment”, and a “collapse of all that the Greek economy has achieved over the years of its EU, and especially its euro area, membership”.

So Europe’s guardians of financial stability are deliberately accelerating a financial crisis in an EMU member state, saying they are out of the Euro Zone if they don’t comply.

The IMF is forcing a contradictory austerity policy in Greece – with no debt relief, exchange cushion, or offsetting investment. Moreover, they are applying a completely different standard in Ukraine, announcing on Friday, that it will: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Continue to support Ukraine through its Lending-into-Arrears Policy even in the event that a negotiated agreement with creditors in line with the program cannot be reached in a timely manner.

This despite the fact that the IMF, by its rules, does not lend to nations that are likely to default.

In the case of Greece, the creditors are acting in concert. They are doubling down, assuming (possibly rightly) that terror tactics will cow the Greeks at the last hour.

The European governments must approve any bailout extension, but we are now so close to the expiration of the second bailout on June 30th that it is too late to get a deal approved by then. But IMF Chief Christine Lagarde has 30 days before she has to report a Greek non-payment of €1.5 billion on June 30th to her board, the real drop dead date appears to be July 20th, when a €3.5 billion payment is due to the ECB.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to see how the two sides will agree to anything other than a short-term deal before the July 20th date. Any “third bailout” of restructuring Greek debt as suggested in the Forbes article above, may be impossible.

In the words of Woody Allen:

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

So wake up Euro Zone! To help with a gentle wake-up, here as we start summer, is the last in our series of spring bird visits to the fields of Wrong. Here is the Song Sparrow:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

Dispatches from the Clown Car:

Rick Santorum says Iranians can’t be trusted because they are theocrats. Sure. We all know that Christian theocrats are trustworthy.

Jeb Bush says a tolerant country should allow religious discrimination. Day is night. Black is white. Discrimination is tolerance. Welcome to the fun house that is Conservative politics today.

Rick Santorum Argues Heterosexual Parents Are Every Child’s ‘Birthright. Really? Aren’t caring, loving parents a birthright? Why should we care about parents’ sexuality as long as they’re committed to loving and protecting their children?

Chinese physicists have developed a laser-based deep space propulsion system that harnesses more power than conventional solar sails. China is actually developing/investing in science, technology and innovation. Has anybody alerted our misleaders in Congress? Maybe we can find something else to develop besides military weapons.

Cambodia is training an elite squad of African rats to sniff out landmines. A team of 15 rats were imported from Tanzania with the help of a Belgian NGO, which trains rats to sniff out mines. The rats will try to locate the huge quantities of unexploded mines that have killed nearly 20,000 people since 1979.

Heinz says they’re sorry for a code on a ketchup bottle that links to porn site. A Heinz Ketchup buyer was exposed to porn from a website similar to www.watchmygf.xxx after Heinz allows a domain to lapse, and an adult entertainment firm buys it.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 21, 2015

We know that when faced with a tragedy, some people exploit it for narrow ends. But we got to see just how low Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) could go. Appearing on The View, Senator Graham at first said a couple of things that seemed mainstream:

It’s not who we are, it’s not who our country is, it’s about this guy…and this guy’s got tons of problems and to kill people in a church after sitting with them for an hour shows you how whacked out this kid is.

Fine. He’s going with the lone wacko meme instead of the domestic terrorist meme.

Then he goes further. Despite the fact that the Justice Department had labeled the attack a “hate crime,” Graham wouldn’t go there: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

There are real people who are organized out there to kill people in religion and based on race, this guy’s just whacked out…But it’s 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians [in order] to kill them.

Excuse us Mr. Graham, there hasn’t been anything so far to indicate that this was a hate crime against Christians for being Christian. And when you suggest that it is about that, two bad things happen:

• It denies the legitimacy of the trauma this caused black people in and outside South Carolina, irrespective of their religious beliefs
• It feeds the paranoia of white Christians, many of whom already have a borderline persecution complex

He ignores that the killer’s roommate said he was “big into segregation” and wanted to start a race war, and that he had Confederate Flag vanity plates. The eyewitness survivors of the attack said that he complained about black people raping white people.

Under the circumstances, it is safe to say that this was a hate crime, and also that it was a hate crime directed against black people for being black. This guy turned his anger on black people. The next guy might target secularists because politicians like Mr. Graham use this tragedy to say that people are out to get Christians.

A primary job of our leaders is to tamp down paranoia when it appears. But, Sen. Graham isn’t interested in calming people’s fears, he is a merchant of the politics of fear. He wants you to be afraid all the time, which is how he builds support for his domestic policies and his foreign adventures.

That he is consistently re-elected speaks volumes about South Carolina. Only 672,941 people of South Carolina’s roughly 3.8 million voters voted for him in 2014. Since he is now a GOP presidential candidate, he wants to win the SC GOP primary. So he is only speaking to those 672,941 SC voters.

That implies that he has no moral compass.

On to cartoons. South Carolina was the dominant story, but we heard from Pope Frank, Obama’s trade deal passed the House, and there is a new $10 bill on the way.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves about root causes:

The usual suspects offered the usual denials:

The Pope’s faith-based climate teaching met resistance:

Pope Francis has difficulty reading right-wing signals:

Obama rides Republicans towards a trade deal:

There should be no debate on who will be on new $10 bill:

Republicans Vote Their Conscience

The “lawgivers” in DC moved forward on two deeply held Republican ideas this week, and neither stand up to close inspection.

Yesterday, the Senate passed a bill banning torture. It is an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that will permanently bar the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were used by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration. It passed 78-21. It limits the interrogation of detainees by any US government employee or agent to only using techniques that are listed in the publicly available Army Field Manual on human intelligence collection. This is a good thing.

The 21 no votes, which are really a vote for torture, were all by Republicans. That’s 21 US Senators, all from one political party, including the Senate Majority Leader and his Majority whip, who voted to continue torture as an official policy of the US government.

Presumably, these 21 will run on their support for torture the next time they come up for re-election. Interestingly, the vote split Texas’ two Republican Senators, with Cruz voting for the bill, and Cornyn voting against it. The Houston Chronicle quoted an aide to Cornyn:

The senator is concerned that limiting intelligence professionals and law enforcement to interrogation techniques detailed in publicly available manuals would give would-be terrorists the ability to train and prepare against them.

Really? You think it is possible for the average jihadist to “prepare” for the techniques described in the Army Field Manual? And that preparation will compromise our intelligence gathering? As Charlie Pierce said:

This country can be America, or it can be a country that tortures. It cannot be both.

Next, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday released a fiscal year 2016 funding proposal that, among its provisions:

• Dismantles the Affordable Care Act
• Eliminates funding for the Title X family planning program
• Includes something called the Health Care Conscience Rights Act that is essentially more Hobby Lobby, although on steroids

It would eliminate Title X funding unless the program meets a certain ideological (read: abstinence-focused) criteria:

None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be made available to any entity under title X of the Public Health Service Act unless the applicant for the award certifies to the Secretary that it encourages family participation in the decision of minors to seek family planning services and that it provides counseling to minors on how to resist attempts to coerce minors into engaging in sexual activities.

And here’s the part of the proposal that would let your school or boss determine whether or not your insurance covers contraception or any other form of healthcare they may not like:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, no provision of this title (and no amendment made by any such provision) shall… require a sponsor (or, in the case of health insurance coverage offered to students through an institution of higher education, the institution of higher education offering such coverage) to sponsor, purchase, or provide any health benefits coverage or group health plan that includes coverage of an abortion or other item or service to which such sponsor or institution, respectively, has a moral or religious objection, or prevent an issuer from offering or issuing to such sponsor or institution, respectively, health insurance coverage that excludes such item or service.

Yes, it enables more unwanted pregnancies, less breast and cervical cancer screenings, more undiagnosed sexually transmitted diseases, and more economic burdens pushed onto the states.

According to a data from the Guttmacher Institute, each dollar invested in Title X saves $3.80 in Medicaid expenses related to pregnancy and childbirth. Another Guttmacher analysis found that the services provided by Kansas’ Title X clinics in 2010 helped save the state more than $61,000,000 in public funds. According to the report:

That accounts for savings from reduced maternity and birth-related costs, along with reduced costs related to miscarriage and abortion and savings related to [sexually transmitted infection] screening and cervical cancer prevention services.

You can certainly count on Republicans. If there is an efficacious solution to a problem, as in this case, you can disregard it for a faith-first solution that costs more, while creating unnecessary cruelty and inhumanity.

Republicans want to stand the First Amendment on its head.

This is who they are. They will piss on the Pope if he speaks about climate change. And their leadership, plus a total of 39% of Republicans in the Senate support torture, since torture seems mas macho.

You have a chance on Election Day to tell them what you think about their “conscience”!

More Iraq??

We have solved nothing in 12 years in Iraq. As Tony Wikrent says at Naked Capitalism,

The sheer imbecility of American leaders is brought into glaring light [by] Bush’s attempt at the transformation of Iraq from among the Middle East’s most repressive states to a multiparty democracy.

As Col Lang says, we own it [Iraq], but cannot fix it.

So naturally, we will send more troops there in the next month or so. And to a new location. This will bring American troop levels to 3,500 since we left Iraq in 2011. The air base where the additional US forces are to deploy is al-Taqqadum, which sits about halfway between ISIS positions in Ramadi, about 40 kilometers (24 miles) to the west, and Fallujah, to the east.

Pat Lang reminds us that al-Taqqadum was originally a British air force base called RAF Habbaniya, which later became an Iraqi air force base. It had been abandoned for a long time when US forces occupied it in March, 2003. We initially called it Forward Operating Base (FOB) Ridgway before settling on the more Iraqi-friendly Camp Taqqadum in 2004. Pat Lang on our plans:

Former RAF Habbaniya was the center of the…British presence in Iraq. Look at the pictures of chapels, cemeteries, and swimming pools for the British troops… Habbaniya is the place we will defend and try to make Sunni tribesmen and Shia cowards into fighters? The omens for this are not good.

Think about it: It is an airfield we know well and maintained for years, but it’s only 24 miles from the ISIS lines. We are by design putting our newest effort right where the enemy could take out our planes and our soldiers. Makes you think that it is a trip wire of sorts, leading to a large re-deployment to Iraq when ISIS crosses our wire. We will have to fortify and defend this place very heavily. Otherwise, ISIS will see it as a place to engage us directly in battle.

Da Nang anybody?

The idea behind the new site is to provide greater support for Sunni tribal fighters, who have yet to receive all of the backing and arms promised by the Shiite-led government. But there may be a glitch. The Guardian quotes Mr. Obama at the close of the G7 summit, saying that there were not enough recruits to train:

We’ve got more training capacity than we’ve got recruits…It’s not happening as fast as it needs to.

The Guardian also quoted Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar and expert on ISIS that:

Only 1,100 Sunnis had taken part in the US training program, and none of them have graduated from it. In total, about 9,500 fighters have completed the training.

Washington wants to revive the “Sunni Awakening” strategy that we used in 2007 when large numbers of Sunni tribal fighters joined with US troops to help defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised us that he would incorporate the Sunni fighters into Iraq’s standing security forces and pay them regular salaries, but failed to do so, sparking the sectarian anger across Anbar Province that left some Sunni tribal leaders amenable to working with ISIS.

Mr. Obama originally said that we did not have a strategy, now, a year later, he sends an additional 450 troops to train Iraqi recruits that he himself says don’t exist. The Wrongologist has supported President Obama, however, this has the makings of a fool’s errand.

Why do we keep talking about training Iraqis to fight? The evidence shows that lots of Iraqis already know how to fight, and many of them are fighting very effectively against the very government that America installed.

This is almost like early days in Vietnam. We dribbled in more and more advisers and support. But it’s not what’s in the hands of the soldiers, it’s what’s in their hearts, and we have no control over that.

The NYT says this will cost us $8 million per week, or $47,619.05 per hour, which is more than many people earn in one year. Do the American people want their tax dollars spent in this way? When our infrastructure is falling apart? When our kids have to take out onerous loans to go to college? When Social Security, which we paid for, is under threat from the right side of the aisle?

Thomas P. M. Barnett has advised US leaders on national security since the end of the Cold War, including the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, Central Command and Special Operations Command. Barnett said in a TED talk:

We field a 1st half team in a league that insists on keeping score until the end of the game

Barnett is correct. We have not learned how to play the 2nd half in Iraq.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 7, 2015

This week, mass surveillance by the USA Freedom act replaced mass surveillance by the Patriot Act.

It’s as if Kafka and Orwell collaborated on a novel that was too unrealistic to publish. The plot shows how the NSA operates a $multi-billion program in violation of the Constitution. But, EVERY element of that program is protected by national security secrecy, so no one knows about it. In addition, the managers of the program lie to Congress and hide the extent of the program from lawmakers.

Then an NSA contractor informs us that the illegal program exists. As the story unfolds, the contractor is pursued, is forced into asylum, and faces prosecution if he returns home. And he can’t use the fact of that illegal program to defend himself because of state secrecy. Here is Charlie Pierce on the new legislation:

The ambivalence about Edward Snowden, International Man of Luggage, all clears away at one simple point — without him, none of this happens. Without what he did, nobody looks closely enough at the NSA and its surveillance programs even to think of reforming them even in the mildest way, which is pretty much what this is. Without what he did, the conversation not only doesn’t change, it doesn’t even occur.

Without Edward Snowden, this timid effort to roll back from the politics of fear created in the wake of September 11, 2001 would not have happened last week in Washington. Instead of thanking Snowden for his public service and inviting him to come home, the US government is still seeking to arrest him and try him on charges that carry long prison sentences. Bring this hero home.

Is the new Act the same, or better than the old act?