Think Progress

AFGHANISTAN -- McCAIN BACKS AWAY FROM HIS 2003 COMMENT THAT U.S. 'MAY MUDDLE THROUGH' THE WAR: Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on Afghanistan at the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. The Wonk Room's Matt Duss attended the event and asked McCain, "In November 2003, in discussing Afghanistan, you said that given everything else that was going on, we'd probably just 'muddle through' in Afghanistan. Now given the rather ambitious set of goals that you've set out for us today, it seems that you've come to a conclusion that muddling through is not an acceptable outcome. Could you just briefly describe the kind of process in your thinking by which you arrived at this conclusion?" McCain disputed the premise of the question, claiming, "Well, obviously you are taking that statement out of context." This statement was not taken out of context. In 2003, McCain said, "I am concerned about it, but I'm not as concerned as I am about Iraq today...but I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that he is making, that in the long term we may muddle through in Afghanistan." McCain's new position is that the Afghanistan war is necessary. "I know Americans are weary of war," he said yesterday. "I'm weary of it. But we must win the war in Afghanistan." The larger issue, of course, is that McCain -- like the Bush administration -- was so feverishly eager to go to war with Iraq after 9/11 that he largely neglected the issue of Afghanistan.


HUMAN RIGHTS -- LEAHY ANNOUNCES HEARINGS PROBING BUSH MISDEEDS SET FOR NEXT WEDNESDAY: Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) reiterated his call to form a truth commission to investigate Bush administration wrongdoings, and announced that the committee would hold hearings on the matter next Wednesday. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) rose after Leahy to support the call for investigations into "this past carnival of folly, greed, lies, and wrongdoing." "If we blind ourselves to this history, we deny ourselves its lessons," he said, warning that such an investigation will not be comfortable or easy. "We are optimists, we Americans. We are proud of our country. Contrition comes hard to us," Whitehouse added. Last night on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that she believed Leahy's truth commission model might not be strong enough. "What I have some concern about though is it has immunity. And I think that some of the issues involved here, like the services part, politicizing of the Justice Department, and the rest, they have criminal ramifications, and I don't think we should be giving them immunity," Pelosi said. Asked if she supported "a call for criminal investigations," Pelosi responded, "Absolutely." A recent poll found that more than 60 percent of Americans favors investigations into Bush wrongdoings, including warrantless wiretapping and torture.

JUSTICE -- LAWYERS FOR DETAINEES WRONGLY HELD AT GUANTANAMO APPEAL TO OBAMA FOR RELEASE: A landmark decision by the Supreme Court in June 2008 granted detainees the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. As a result, 23 detainees "have been declared in court not to be enemies of the United States." But the New York Times reports today that 20 of those men still remain in a "strange limbo" as they wait to be released. Today, the detainees' lawyers on Thursday appealed directly to President Obama for their release from the prison, urging Obama to "restore liberty to these men." "These are innocent men, held in a prison that has become a national shame," the lawyers said. "It's very hard to explain how they could be free men and still be imprisoned." Samuel Issacharof of New York University Law School "said the standoff showed the limitations of the legal system in dealing with the prison set up seven years ago on the naval base in Cuba, partly to be remain clear of American courts." Returning from a visit to Guantanamo, Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday confirmed plans to close the detention facility. Closing Guantanamo, he acknowledged, "will not be an easy process."

"About two-thirds of Americans support President Obama's decision to send approximately 17,000 additional U.S. military forces to Afghanistan," a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds. At the same time, however, "[n]early four in 10 who said the war has not justified its costs back the new troops."

"In addition to his morning national-security briefing, President Barack Obama has, starting today, begun to receive a daily economic-intelligence document, put together by several U.S. intel agencies." The briefing follows recent comments by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who said that America's "primary near-term security concern" is the global financial crisis and the turmoil it could ignite.

In the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove writes, "The Bush tax cuts were not targeted to 'the wealthiest few.'" The facts beg to differ.

President Obama will propose tax increases on the rich to help pay for a $634 billion downpayment on health care reform. "Overall, the fund is a good start, but it's certainly not enough to reach universal coverage."

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told PBS yesterday that bank nationalization is "the wrong strategy for the country, and I don't think it's a necessary strategy. What we need to do is to make sure that these institutions have the resources necessary to perform their critical function on an ongoing basis in our economy as a whole."

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told Congress yesterday that Guantanamo must be closed because "[c]ountries won't deal with us. Our popularity's down. We don't have blue chips to trade."

Members of Congress are "already shooting down President Obama's plan to cut farm subsidies." Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said that "it is premature to make any sweeping changes to the makeup of the farm safety net," while Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-MN), the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said, "[W]e just finished the farm bill last year, and I don't think we'll open it up."

A new study from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy due to be released later this week will urge the Obama administration to "work within Muslim communities in the United States to counter extremism and prevent Islamic militant groups from gathering new recruits." One of the coauthors of the study, J. Scott Carpenter, said, "We need to get beyond killing our way out of the problem."

In what some see as "signaling a potential thaw in relations between Damascus and Washington," the State Department has invited the Syrian Ambassador to the U.S. to meet with a top diplomat at the Department today. The United States has not had its own ambassador in Syria since 2005.

"In his second reversal of a Bush administration decision," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday that he is "scrapping leases for oil-shale development on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.” The leases would have led to “oil-shale exploration on 1.9 million acres in the three states."

And finally: Politico has a new interview with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), asking him, "What is your favorite body part (on yourself) and why?" Kerry says that it’s definitely not his "face," because it has been compared to "New Hampshire's 'Old Man in the Mountain' (before it fell)." Instead he chooses his "better-than-Rod-Blagojevich hair." When asked "what types of products do you never go cheap, for the sake of quality,” the husband of Teresa Heinz Kerry replied, "Ketchup."