advertisement
Friday, November 6, 2009
advertisement
Defense Secretary Roberts Gates on Wednesday appeared on Capitol Hill to unveil the Administration's supplemental funding request for $190 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Media coverage highlighted the increasing price tag for the two conflicts. CNN's Situation Room reported Gates "acknowledged the price of the prolonged war is steep," and he "withstood a flurry of broadsides from committee chairman and ardent war critic Robert Byrd, who railed against what he called the nefarious infernal war in Iraq." The Washington Post says on its front page that the Democrats "have failed to force a shift in policy on troop rotations or the adoption of withdrawal timelines, but the debate over war funding offers them another chance to push for a change in course."
The story ran on all three networks, with ABC World News reporting, "If the money is appropriated, that would bring the official cost of the war to over $650 billion. Some outside analysts say when all costs of the war are computed, Iraq and Afghanistan represent a trillion-dollar war." NBC Nightly News reported, "The request is nearly $50 billion more than the original estimate." What NBC calls "nearly" $50 billion, according to media accounts USA Today and the CBS Evening News, among others, is actually $42 billion.
The CBS Evening News also put the figure at $42 billion, and noted Gates "said the additional money is needed to pay for thousands of mine-resistant vehicles and to replace damaged equipment." The AP said, "More specifically, the request includes some $11 billion for 7,000 mine-resistant vehicles." This is "in addition to the 8,000 vehicles already planned for fielding." McClatchy reports Byrd "said the total for Iraq didn't include indirect costs such as veterans' care or the ultimate costs of long-term involvement, which the Congressional Budget Office has said could exceed $2 trillion."
Gates Envisions Long-Term US Presence The New York Times reports Gates "told Congress on Wednesday that he envisioned keeping five combat brigades in Iraq as a 'long-term presence.'" He added, "When I speak of a long-term presence, I'm thinking of a very modest US presence with no permanent bases, where we can continue to go after Al Qaeda in Iraq and help the Iraqi forces." He also said that "'in my head' he envisioned a force as a quarter of the current combat brigades."
Anti-War Base Pressures Democrats The Hill reports that for Democrats, the "debate over the spending bill could prove trickier than the debate over the defense authorization bill." With "an angry anti-war base insisting that funds be spent strictly on redeploying troops from Iraq, Democrats are weighing how to restrict war operations without appearing to delay money for troops on the ground." But "at the same time, they are trying to avoid the same fate that greeted them with the fiscal 2007 supplemental war bill, when they failed to override a presidential veto and were forced to drop restrictions on the war and send a clean spending bill to President Bush." Roll Call notes "House and Senate Democratic leaders insisted Wednesday that no final decision has been made on the timing of the next supplemental spending bill to fund the Iraq War, one day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told liberal lawmakers that the measure is not likely to reach the House floor until 2008." But "across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) spokesman Jim Manley said House and Senate leaders have not agreed to delay war funding until next year."
The Los Angeles Times reports when Byrd, who "turns 90 in November, denounced...Bush and vowed not to rubber-stamp the administration's request for nearly $200 billion more in war spending," there was loud "cheering" from "war protesters from the group Code Pink, now a fixture at every Washington hearing even tangentially related to Iraq." In his "Washington Sketch" column for the Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes, "Emboldened, two dozen hecklers in the audience from the antiwar group Code Pink continued to shout at the witnesses and wave signs for the better part of an hour."
Senate Backs Biden On Soft Partition NBC Nightly News reported in an "extraordinary vote," the Senate voted "on an idea by Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware to split up Iraq into three sections, Kurds, Sunni and Shia. The vote is nonbinding, but 75 out of 100 US Senators voted to split up Iraq." On MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked Biden about his resolution for a "soft" partition of Iraq. Biden said, "I think it's the first ray of hope...in the sense that there was a total refutation of the President's strategy of a strong central unified government. And secondly, you know, I got 26 Republicans to cross the aisle. And we can't get this done unless you're going to be able to cross the aisle, unless you're going to be able to get a consensus." The AP reports, "The 75-23 vote marked the first agreement on Iraq among lawmakers in months, although it would have little practical effect." The Hill calls the vote "a minor rebuke to the Bush administration and a major boost" to Biden's "long-shot White House run." The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times also report the story.
House Condemns MoveOn Ad The Hill reports, "The House on Wednesday passed by a wide margin a resolution that condemns an ad from liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org that referred to Gen. David Petraeus as 'General Betray Us.'" House Minority Leader John Boehner "hailed the outcome of the 341-79 vote and praised GOP lawmakers for taking the lead on the issue." The AP reports that while House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer "voted in favor of the measure, several top Democrats did not." Among the Democrats voting against the resolution were "Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (Calif.), Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (Calif.), Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Mass.), Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), Small Business Committee Chairman Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (Calif.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee."
The Washington Post reports, "Less than a month before the US invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein signaled that he was willing to go into exile as long as he could take with him $1 billion and information on weapons of mass destruction, according to a report of a Feb. 22, 2003, meeting between President Bush and his Spanish counterpart published by a Spanish newspaper yesterday." A senior Administration official "knowledgeable about the meeting said he doubted the $1 billion claim -- an offer reportedly transmitted through Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- but said he could not be sure."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
In an exclusive report, NBC Nightly News reported on "a battle that took place last month in Tora Bora in Afghanistan," where Osama bin Laden "may have been once again in the sights of the US military just last month." US intelligence and military officials said "overhead surveillance from an unmanned US drone spotted a large al Qaeda security detail -- the kind of protection that would normally surround al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden or his number two Ayman Al Zawahiri." US officials say, however, that last month's video "did not provide positive identification of either Bin Laden or Zawahiri, but some intelligence and military officials believed there was a high probability that one of the two al Qaeda leaders was there." The US "launched a major assault on Tora Bora," which "killed 19 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, but no Bin Laden."
The Financial Times reports Congress "is poised to approve a $35bn expansion of government health insurance for children in the face of opposition from President George W. Bush, drawing the battle lines for a broader debate on healthcare ahead of next year's presidential election." The expected veto showdown "involves political risks for the president and the Republican party, with Democrats accusing them of denying healthcare to millions of children while spending billions of dollars in Iraq." The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, says "expanding health care for poor children was supposed to be easy -- or at least easier than a lot of other health-care issues facing Congress." But "tension between lawmakers and the White House is bogging down efforts to renew the Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP."
Analysts continue to view the situation as politically advantageous for Democrats. David Broder, in a Washington Post column titled "Following Bush Over A Cliff," writes, "The spectacle Tuesday of 151 House Republicans voting in lock step with the White House against expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was one of the more remarkable sights of the year. Rarely do you see so many politicians putting their careers in jeopardy." Morton Kondracke writes in Roll Call that congressional Democrats "hold the political high ground in their battles with...Bush over the budget and children's health -- and plan to press their advantage to the hilt." And Robert Novak writes in a syndicated column appearing in today's Washington Post that "Democrats will eagerly pummel Republicans for 'voting against kids' by refusing to sanction a long step toward Hillarycare."
The Washington Post reports, "As a candidate, George W. Bush once asked, 'Is our children learning?' Now he has an answer. 'Childrens do learn,' he said Wednesday." The Post adds, "The setting was, yes, an education event where the president was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law." It was "a classic malapropism" for Bush, "the sort of verbal miscue that occasionally bedevils him in public speaking and provides critics and the media easy fodder for ridicule." The "gaffe" came "a day after a White House draft of his speech to the UN General Assembly was mistakenly posted on the UN Web site, complete with phonetic guides to the names of various foreign countries and leaders." The Los Angeles Times notes that "the official transcript distributed by the White House cleaned up his grammatical infelicity, printing the statement without the S on 'children.'"
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
Top
The Democratic presidential candidates met last night for a major debate in New Hampshire, and media coverage is focusing on Clinton as the target of the others, and the backpedaling among the top candidates on US troop withdrawals from Iraq. USA Today titles its report "Clinton Debates As Front-Runner -- And Target," and says Clinton "was center stage all evening," as her "rivals tried to portray her as weak on ending the war in Iraq, too cautious on reforming Social Security, and unable to achieve reform on her signature issue, health care." The Washington Post, in a front-page story, reports Clinton "found herself on the defensive," although "the two-hour debate featured...few fireworks." Clinton "drew steady criticism, but her seven rivals couched their disagreements with respect rather than scorn or sharp words."
The New York Times adds that Clinton "found herself under direct and oblique attack from her opponents over everything from her husband's legacy to her handling of health care reform in the 1990s. John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, fired the most arrows at Mrs. Clinton, particularly on national security issues, while Senator Barack Obama of Illinois kept his criticism to a single reference to the way she managed the Clinton health plan 14 years ago."
The Chicago Tribune adds, "By the end of the faceoff at Dartmouth College, Clinton had worked to fend off several points of criticism from most of the field, most notably from" Obama and Edwards. The debate "was the sharp-edged confrontation analysts have been expecting for weeks, and it came on the heels of a new poll suggesting that Clinton has widened her lead over the field in New Hampshire."
A number of other news sources took a similar view of the event, including Bloomberg, The Hill, the Concord Monitor, the New York Post, Newsday, the Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant
Top Democrats Don't Guarantee All US Troops Will Leave Iraq By 2013 The AP reports, "The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013." Obama said, "I think it's hard to project four years from now." Clinton agreed, "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting." Edwards said, "I cannot make that commitment." The AP adds, "Sensing an opening, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson provided the assurances the others would not." The New York Times also notes the "three leading Democratic presidential candidates refused on Wednesday night to promise that they would withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of their first term, saying in a televised debate here that they could not predict the future challenges in Iraq."
The Washington Times runs a similar story under the headline "Democrats Split On Total Pullout," in which it notes the candidates also "addressed immigration in response to a question about whether they would allow 'sanctuary cities' that provide safe haven for illegal immigrants. Most essentially said that they would allow sanctuary cities in the absence of 'comprehensive immigration reform' and better law enforcement." Said Clinton, "I don't think there is any choice." Richardson said, "The answer is yes. The problem we have is the lack of a comprehensive immigration policy. ... But what you don't do is basically deport everybody; that makes no sense." Other media outlets, including the New Hampshire Union Leader and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette also focused on the Iraq withdrawal question in their debate coverage.
Candidates Said To Have Few Differences On Major Issues Two major papers are breaking from the pack, however, perceiving a lack of differences on the issues at the debate last night. The Los Angeles Times reports, "Although there were some sharp moments on the stage at New Hampshire's Dartmouth College -- particularly over the war in Iraq -- the debate illustrated yet again how closely the candidates are aligned on policy issues, suggesting that the nomination fight will probably come down to who Democratic voters believe is the most electable."
TheWall Street Journal ) reports the candidates "did little to shake up the race at a party-sponsored debate last night, despite mounting evidence that front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to pad her substantial lead in polls. Bickering over style but doing little to rise from the pack on major issues such as war, health care, Social Security overhaul and immigration, the candidates submitted to two hours of questioning in an event at Dartmouth College that was notable for its civility and scant fireworks."
Yepsen Pans Clinton Performance. While there are few media outlets this morning declaring the debates winners and losers, most stories this morning, such as this analysis piece in the Boston Globe, are saying that Clinton held her own. However, one dissenter stands out noted Iowa political columnist David Yepsen, who had little good to say about Clinton's performance. In his Des Moines Register column, Yepsen writes, "It wasn't a good night for Clinton. Her weakest moment in the debate was when she repeatedly ducked the sensitive question of just how she'd make Social Security sound and Joseph Biden pounced: 'Presidents are supposed to lead,' he said as he looked at her."
CNN reports that a new CNN/WMUR poll shows Mitt Romney narrowly edging Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire. Romney leads with 25%, followed by Giuliani, 24%; John McCain, 19%; and Fred Thompson, 13%; the remainder of the field is in the single digits. A similar poll in July showed Romney up by 14 points over Giuliani. On CNN's The Situation Room, Paul Begala said, "If this holds over the next couple polls, very bad news for Mitt Romney. In the past, everywhere he's run hard and run ads, he's run well. ... This is the first time we have seen him begin to falter, and in a place where he should be doing very well." Begala added John McCain is "doing a Lazarus act here. Look it, McCain is up six points since our last survey. So, it could be that -- you know, that he is still back in this." Bill Bennett added New Hampshire is "a neighboring state" for Romney, and "he needs to do well. He's put a lot of money in Iowa and New Hampshire. Everybody knows he's put a lot of money in Iowa and New Hampshire. He needs to do well. He needs to meet expectations."
The Boston Globe adds, "Sixty-six percent of respondents said they were still trying to decide whom to vote for. Only 13 percent said they had definitely decided. 'There is absolutely no clear frontrunner in this race,' Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, which conducted the poll, told WMUR. Giuliani has the best favorability rating, with 71 percent viewing him favorably and 22 percent viewing him unfavorably. They also rate Giuliani as the most likeable candidate and the one with the best chance of defeating the Democratic nominee. But Romney's attempts to portray himself as the candidate who represents change in Washington -- the main emphasis of his recent TV ads and a key speech in Michigan last weekend -- appears to be sinking in."
The AP reports Rudy Giuliani's "top finance official is out in a staff shake-up just days before the fundraising deadline for the White House hopefuls." Anne Dunsmore, "deputy campaign manager for finance, has left the operation," but Giuliani aides "said the departure was unrelated to fundraising. The third-quarter deadline for all campaigns, Republican and Democrat, is Sunday." Republican fundraiser Jim Lee "will now serve as national co-chair and head the finance operation, with day-to-day responsibility for all fundraising operations."
The Washington Post adds that Dunsmore, who has worked for the campaign since May, "departed abruptly" "four days before the next deadline." Meanwhile, "one top Giuliani fundraiser said his colleagues around the country...had chafed at Dunsmore's aggressive management style. 'There was a tremendous amount of blowback from the state voluntary leadership about her style,' said the fundraiser, who requested anonymity to talk openly about the campaign's finances."
The New York Daily News calls the move "a sign of potential money woes," and calls Lee "a top rainmaker for President Bush." The Daily News suggests that Dunsmore's "departure suggests that Giuliani is less than happy with his most recent haul." However, "insiders...suggested that Dunsmore's departure was less about money and more about personality differences and strategic visions within the campaign." The Daily News speculates that Dunsmore may offer her services to Mitt Romney's campaign.
The Des Moines Register reports, "A total of 107 Iowa homeowners were foreclosed upon by subprime mortgage companies owned by Fortress Investment Group while" John Edwards "was associated with the equity company, court records show. Fortress foreclosures have occurred in other states, but the Iowa cases bring Edwards' tie to subprime lending to the leadoff presidential nominating state, where he has staked his political future. Most Iowa Democratic activists interviewed by The Des Moines Register say the foreclosures by themselves do not undermine Edwards' anti-poverty message. However, some say he should have known that his tie to Fortress, which paid him $479,500 for 14 months of work, would be scrutinized in the campaign."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
Top
Jay Leno: "Folks, it's official. Congress now has the lowest approval rating of any Congress in the history of the United States -- 11%. In fact," their "approval rating is so low, today they are invited to speak at Columbia University."
David Letterman: "By the way, you folks are here on an historic night. The entire balcony is filled with gay Iranians."
Conan O'Brien: "All the world leaders in town right now for the U.N. General Assembly. ... Yesterday, President Bush met with President Valdis Zatlers of Latvia, and President Festus Gontebanye Mogae of Botswana and President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania. Yeah, yeah. Or as Bush calls them, 'Buddy, Slim and Big Guy.'"
Conan O'Brien: "Yesterday, controversial Iranian President Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran has freedom of the press. He says there are 30 newspapers published there that oppose his government. Yeah, so, if you are keeping track, that's 30 opposition newspapers and zero gay people."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
Top
Click image for larger view.
Smart analysis, insightful reporting, in-depth perspective—in a new, digital format.
Log in | Buy Now | See sample
View sample page 2View sample page 3View sample page 4View sample page 5advertisement
Get your POLITICALBULLETIN
Click image for larger view.
Smart analysis, insightful reporting, in-depth perspective—in a new, digital format.
Log in | Buy Now | See sample
View sample page 2View sample page 3View sample page 4View sample page 5Embed exclusive U.S. News headlines, rankings, columns, and blog postings to your Web site, blog, or social network.
advertisement
Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policy.
