HOMELAND SECURITY
Fighting The California Fires
Wildfires continue to burn in southern California for the fifth
straight day today, as at
least half a million residents have been forced to
flee their homes. By Wednesday, the fires had burned at least 645
square miles, an
area twice the size of New York City. Over 1,500 homes have
already been destroyed, and officials estimate the cost of damage at $1
billion or more. The strong and unpredictable Santa Ana winds
continue to fan the flames, though by yesterday afternoon the wind
began to shift, giving Californians hope that the worst was
over. On Wednesday, President Bush declared the fires a
major disaster, which set in motion long-term federal aid, and
today, he will
visit California. San Diego fire chiefs said they had learned
from the devastating fires
of 2003.
"The communication between different agencies has significantly
improved," Danny Mastro, division chief of the Coronado Fire Services
Department, said. "Emergency operations were set up a lot more
quickly." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) also expressed confidence in
his
state's
response to the fires. "Trust me when I tell you -- [if] you are
looking for mistakes and you won't find it," he said. "It's good news.
Trust me."
KATRINA'S LESSONS LEARNED: Indeed, state and federal officials deserve credit for their efforts
combating the fires and keeping injuries to a minimum. In San Diego
county, local officials placed more than 200,000
reverse 911 calls to residents, urging them to evacuate their
homes. California's "state and local coordination, communication and
planning for fires and
other events are well
advanced, built on decades of experience." White House Press
Secretary Dana Perino pointed to the
swift evacuation order as one of the "lessons
learned" after Hurricane Katrina. "There's increased
coordination and communication and earlier
communication and coordination between the federal, state and local
governments," she said. "We have learned those lessons and
those
lessons are being applied." Thousands of Californians who took refuge
at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium had an experience far different from
refugees who fled to New Orleans' Superdome in the wake of Katrina. Californians were greeted there by clean cots,
tents, pillows, and blankets. "Volunteers
offered massage therapy, yoga, kosher food, and art projects for
kids," and others arrived in clown suits to entertain the children. "We
have the
luxury of being able to count on our neighbors," San Diego Mayor Gerald
Robert Sanders said. "The folks in
New Orleans didn't have that luxury, because everybody was
impacted."
WAR STRETCHES DISASTER RESOURCES: Despite the proactive and immediate response by the local officials,
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
continue to eat up resources and thus limit disaster response
efforts. "Right now, we
are down 50 percent in terms of our National Guard equipment because
they're all in Iraq,
the equipment, half of the equipment," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said.
"What we really need are those firefighters, we need the equipment, we
need, frankly, we need
those troops back from Iraq," said Lt. Gov. John
Garamendi (D). California was forced to pull
200 guard members from the Mexico border and deploy
state prison inmates to fight the fires.
This is not the first time that the war in Iraq has diverted resources
from natural disasters at home. Last May, when
tornadoes slammed into Kansas, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) said
that National Guard's response was made "much
slower" because so much of its force was deployed to Iraq. "I have
said for nearly two years, and will continue to say, that we have a
looming crisis on our hands when it comes to National Guard equipment in Iraq and our
needs here at home," she said. A January report by the Government
Accountability Office reported that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drained stateside
resources for the National Guard,
possibly hampering its ability to react effectively to a natural
disaster.
THE RIGHT POINTS FINGERS: The
right wing spent this week looking for people to blame for the forest
fires. Fox
News pointed the finger at al Qaeda terrorists. CNN's right-wing
pundit Glenn Beck said the fires were hitting some "people
who hate America" and later blamed the fires on the "damn
environmentalists" and their "bad environmental
policies." Michelle Malkin, a leading conservative blogger, echoed
the complaint, pointing to "litigious
environmentalists"
for "standing in the way" of Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative. In
fact, environmentalists don't oppose removing
brush and trees that serve as tinder in wildfires, but the so-called
Healthy Forest Initiative was more concerned with giving
logging companies free reign over forests than enacting sensible
forest-fire prevention. Chris Horner,
a senior fellow at the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, derided the supposition that global
warming has
played a role
in the wildfires, mocking it as something "alarmists
are talking about." But as Center
for American Progress's Daniel J. Weiss points out, "massive,
destructive wildfires could occur even more
frequently and with greater ferocity due to global warming. Earlier
this year, the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change noted that 'a warming
climate encourages wildfires through a long summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier
ignition and faster spread.'"
IRAQ -- BLACKWATER URGES
SUPPORTERS TO 'INFLUENCE' CONGRESS WITH MISLEADING SPIN: In the
past few weeks, Erik Prince, CEO of embattled private security
firm Blackwater
USA, has orchestrated an
aggressive public relations campaign in efforts to save his
company's reputation in the face of multiple scandals, giving
interviews to The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS
News, and PBS, amongst others. Yesterday, Blackwater
sent an e-mail blast to supporters, encouraging them to
contact "elected Congressional
representatives" with "letters, e-mails and calls" with the goal of
"influencing the manner in which they gather and present information."
Blackwater "suggested themes" for supporters to follow,
such as "Cost efficiency of Blackwater -- saving
the US taxpayer millions of
dollars." But Blackwater's
cost-saving claims are specious at best. In fact,
"[i]t costs the U.S. government a
lot more to hire contract employees as security guards in Iraq than
to use American troops." The average Blackwater employee makes
more on a per-day basis than Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S.
commander in Iraq.
CONGRESS -- SENATE BILL WOULD INCREASE
RESOURCES FOR CORRUPTION INVESTIGATIONS: Today, the Senate
Judiciary
Committee will review a bill introduced by
Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) that would stiffen
anti-corruption laws and finance federal investigations into public
corruption.
The legislation would "[pump] an additional $100 million into
corruption
investigations and prosecutions over the next four years" and would
also extend the statute of limitations on the amount of time that
investigators are permitted to investigate acts of public corruption.
The bill follows a string of high-profile
corruption investigations among federal
officials, including one investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
that has suffered from a lack of
funds and manpower. Leahy outlined the importance of the
bill: "If we are serious about addressing the kinds of egregious
misconduct that we have recently witnessed in high-profile public
corruption cases, Congress must enact meaningful legislation to give
investigators and prosecutors the tools
and resources they need to enforce our laws." Similar legislation
recently gained support in the House, and advocates are attempting
bring the legislation to a full vote.
ADMINISTRATION -- WHITE HOUSE 'NOT
WORRIED' ABOUT $2 TRILLION IRAQ WAR: The Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) reported yesterday that "total
spending for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other
activities related to the war on terrorism would amount to between $1.2
trillion and $1.7 trillion for fiscal years 2001 through 2017."
With $705
billion in interest, the cost of the wars could amount to $2.4
trillion -- with $1.9 trillion in Iraq. White House Press Secretary
Dana Perino attacked the report as "a
ton of speculation." "It's a hypothetical. ... What I can tell you
is I'm not worried about the number," she said. The CBO's projection is
not "pure speculation." In fact, the report considers a range
of predictions about the U.S. military presence in Iraq, consistent
with the administration's desire for a Korea-like,
"enduring"
occupation of Iraq. "[I]t's clear under analysis that the
nation is on an unstable fiscal path,"
CBO Director Peter Orszag told Congress yesterday. The "higher debt and
interest costs, is going to cause severe economic dislocation, which
are exacerbated by war costs." Orszag also said yesterday that the real
costs of the war could be higher than anticipated.
|
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson will announce "new sanctions against Iran"
today that "accuse" the Quds division of the Revolutionary Guard Corps
of supporting terrorism and "the entire Revolutionary Guard Corps of proliferating
weapons of mass destruction."
The Washington Post reports that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "has
become the Bush administration's worst nightmare: a Democrat in
the majority with subpoena power and the inclination
to overturn rocks." Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice is scheduled to testify before his committee.
"President Bush embarks this morning on a tour of the wildfires ravaging California to showcase his administration's ability to respond
better to natural disasters than it did after Hurricane Katrina two
years ago."
In a letter to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey yesterday, Sen. Arlen
Specter (R-PA), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined
with his Democratic colleagues "in questioning the basis for"
Mukasey's assertion that the
president "can act outside the law" on national security issues.
After yesterday denying that it "watered down" congressional
testimony by the head of the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, Bush administration officials are now acknowledging that "they heavily edited [her] testimony on global warming."
For example, officials took out the line: "CDC considers climate
change a serious public concern."
"The U.S. Embassy on Wednesday began offering tens of thousands
of dollars in payments to victims and families of victims of the Sept. 16
shootings in Baghdad involving security guards from the firm
Blackwater." Several family members turned down the compensation,
saying they still wanted "to sue
Blackwater in an American court."
Secretary Rice acknowledged that the administration may have mishandled the case of Maher Arar.
"We do not think that this case was handled as it should have been. We
do absolutely not wish to transfer anyone to any place in which they might be tortured,"
she said.
Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and William Delahunt (D-MA) will soon
introduce legislation -- the "American Anti-Torture Act of 2007"
-- to "ban torture of detainees by any
U.S. government agency, including the CIA or other intelligence
units."
And finally: "Sen. Larry Craig is still traveling back to his
home state of Idaho these days. ... But one thing about his travel
plans is different since his widely publicized arrest. ... [H]e's now
connecting through the Denver airport. He's apparently had enough
embarrassment in Minneapolis to last a lifetime."
|
|
|
According to a new report from The
Sustainable Endowments Institute, more than two out of every three
colleges have improved their standing on campus
greening efforts.
NEW
JERSEY: New poll finds that "by a 56%-37% margin, likely voters
would support a $450 million bond referendum question to fund stem cell
research."
COLORADO:
"Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper on Wednesday called on Denverites to
reduce the city's per-capita greenhouse-gas emissions by 10 percent by
2012 ."
VIRGINIA:
Latino immigrants urge people to "stay and defend their rights in the
aftermath of new county measures aimed at keeping out illegal
immigrants."
THINK
PROGRESS: Fox News's Bill O'Reilly: Harry Potter author J.K.
Rowling
is a "provocateur" for "the gay agenda" of "indoctrination."
SCIENCE
PROGRESS: The potential negative effects of President Bush's
anti-family planning appointee Susan Orr.
WAR
ROOM: With no basis for her assertion, White House Press Secretary
Dana Perino claims, "Congress is being run by Code Pink."
CARPETBAGGER
REPORT: In an Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week speech,
former Sen. Rich Santorum (R-PA) says Islam is "not just something you
do on Sunday."
"I can tell you unequivocally that the ongoing war-fighting
activities...have had no negative effect at all (on) our ability to
provide sufficient forces to assist civilian authorities in fighting
the wildfires."
-- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale, 10/24/07
VERSUS
"Right now we are down 50 percent in terms of our National Guard
equipment because they're all in Iraq. The equipment -- half of the
equipment, so we really will need help."
-- Sen. Barbara Boxer, 10/23/07
|
Topic Cloud
