Psyche, Science, and Society

Iran to run out of oil soon?

Reuters reports that a Johns Hopkins researcher has published an analysis which states that Iran may experience a shortfall in oil to export within eight years. Of course, I have no idea if this analysis is correct, but, of course, it does shed new light on Iran’s determination to develop nuclear power:

Iran’s claim to need nuclear power may be genuine, given that it could run out of oil to export as soon as eight years from now, according to an analysis published on Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences.

The study’s author, Roger Stern, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said investment in Iranian oil production had been inadequate to offset oil field declines and the explosive growth in domestic demand.

“I’m not saying that Iran will have no oil in eight years,” Stern said in a telephone interview. “I’m saying that they will be using all of it for themselves.”

The analysis, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the Iranian government could become “politically vulnerable” from declining exports.

Oil exports account for about 70 percent of Iranian government revenue, said Stern, of the university’s department of geography and environmental engineering.

He projected that in five years, Iranian oil exports may be less than half their present level, and could drop to zero by 2015.

“It therefore seems possible that Iran’s claim to need nuclear power might be genuine, an indicator of distress from anticipated export revenue shortfalls,” he wrote. “If so, the Iranian regime may be more vulnerable than is presently understood.”

Add comment December 27th, 2006

Music: Phil Ochs — The Cannons of Christianity

Phil Ochs sings The Cannons of Christianity on a 1968 TV show, “The Sound is Now”:

Add comment December 24th, 2006

Christmas in the Trenches

In this year, like so many other years, in which the latest war grinds on, we should remember there was a time when, for a brief while, the soldiers refused to kill one another:

Christmas in the Trenches

by John McCutcheon (1984)

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
“There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ‘em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same

Here is my article , written for last year’s Christmas season:

The 1914 Christmas Truce and the Possibility of Peace

A new French film, Joyeux Noel , brings the 1914 Christmas truce, that moment when a world of peace could be imagined, to a wider audience.

An article on the truce and the film from the Telegraph has this nugget:

Some viewers might find a certain sentimental excess in the scene in which a Scottish bagpiper spontaneously joins in when German soldiers began singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night). There are records of such an event. “All the acts of fraternisation had one thing in common: music and song,” says Carion. “I loved the idea that these could stop a war for a few hours.”

Perhaps we should learn something from this experience about the importance of music to peace. After all, the 60’s peace movements were infused with song, whereas today’s movements are silent. Music and song can unite, they can inspire, but they also can soothe. Movements for peace need all three.

The Telegraph article continues to point out that the reality of peace is beyond what audiences can believe:

The film also features a foraging ginger cat adopted as a mascot by both the French and the Germans. The cat existed, and, in real life, it was arrested by the French, convicted of espionage and shot in accordance with military regulations. “It was an era of madmen,” says Carion, who filmed this scene - to the great distress of his extras - but decided not to include it in case his audience didn’t believe it.

A Scottish bishop’s sermon, which includes references to a “crusade” and a “holy war”, seems like a thumpingly obvious effort to find parallels with more recent discourses about Iraq. In fact, these words were, Carion says, taken directly from a sermon preached by an Anglican bishop at Westminster Abbey. Here, too, the truth was toned down: Carion excised the real bishop’s references to German soldiers “crucifying babies on Christmas Day” in order to make it credible.

Perhaps the propensity toward war is aided by our unwillingness to imagine the depths to which people can sink when captured by the lure of war, the fantasy of perfect union with the state, that idealized perfect mother, and the ability to extrude all evil onto the enemy, that poisonous cannibalistic bad mother. As Christopher Hedges points out in War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, in more normal times we disown this desire for union and extrusion and cannot remember or imagine how destructive it can be.

Perhaps this dynamic also helps explain people’s passivity toward the threats to democracy facing us in the United States today. For those identified with their country, to truly accept the danger puts the evil, the bad, inside the union, where it is especially terrifying.

A resolution for many is the demonization solution, to view George W. Bush and his administration as absolute evil, destroying the country and the world. While tempting, and certainly not without evidence, the problem with this outlook is that it is the mirror image of that attitude which leads us into the nightmare. To those adopting this view, evil resides in Bush, in Cheney, in the Republicans. If only they could be removed, impeached, tried, the world would be saved. The problem with this notion is that it encourages only destruction of the enemy, not construction of something better. History has repeatedly demonstrated that movements guided by hatred do not end up producing a better world.

The Christmas truce, in its magnificence, gives us a tiny glimpse of a true alternative, a world in which we are all simply human, in which that which we have in common is greater than that which divides us. For the brief moment of that truce, lasting days or weeks, the soldiers on all sides embodied the wisdom of peace through union, a union without an all-bad enemy (though the officer class trying so hard to restore their respective killing machines surely could have qualified). A union of fun, of games, and of song. A world dominated by eros.

The challenge, so far unsolved, is how to take such a moment and make it last, or at least not turn into its opposite, a renewed carnage of destruction. This challenge, as pacifists and nonviolent activists have repeatedly discovered, requires us to find a way to accept and tame the capacity for destructiveness in each of us, so as not to need to attribute it to an enemy. At the same time, we need to find a way to continue peace and unity in more normal, less extraordinary times, beyond the moment of fusion. For eventually the excitement fades and we remember all our irritations, our gripes and our fears. To bring peace into daily life is the need upon which the future of the human race may well depend.

This is the utopian challenge for our day.

Peace on Earth! Goodwill to Men and Women!

For more information on the 1914 truce, see the book Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub.

Add comment December 23rd, 2006

Music: Phil Ochs - There But For Fortune — 1967

In this holiday season, let’s remember that ‘There but for fortune go you or I”:

Add comment December 23rd, 2006

Remembering Haditha

As announcement comes that eight US marines are indicted for the massacre at Haditha, here is an interview with one of the victims, a little girls whose family was murdered. As you view it, remember these words chanted during basic training:

“Bomb the village, kill the people
Throw some napalm in the square
Do it on a Sunday morning
Kill them on the way to prayer

“Ring the bell inside the schoolhouse
Watch the kiddies gather round
Lock and load with your 2-40
Mow them little motherfuckers down.”

I guess they were trained well:

Add comment December 23rd, 2006

American Psychological Association versus Army Colonel on the moral issue of our time

As the American Psychological Association (APA) continues its campaign of obstruction, deflection, and obfuscation in order to keep psychologists participating in “interrogations,” aka torture, at Guantanamo and elsewhere, the APA President visited the prison camp there. Afterwards, the APA issued a Press Release to demonstrate to the world the organization’s concerns about the human rights violations occurring there:

November 15, 2006

APA President Joins group visiting Guantanamo Bay Naval Station

(WASHINGTON, DC) — APA President, Dr. Gerald Koocher, was part of a group of national health leaders to visit the Joint Task Force facilities at Guantanamo Bay Cuba on November 13, 2006 upon the invitation of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. The visit afforded an opportunity to review detainee operations at the detention facility for several individuals including the presidents of the American Nurses Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association, as well as experts in correctional services and medical ethics. A primary focus of the trip was on health care operations. Participants had an opportunity to hear about and ask questions regarding detainee health care and to tour health-care related facilities. The trip also afforded an opportunity to speak with medical care providers and behavioral consultants, to hear about the roles of medical, mental health, and behavioral consultants at the facility, and to ask questions regarding what mechanisms are in place to ensure that detainees are treated in a safe and humane manner.

Contrast this tepid response to the recent call by US Army Col (Retired) and long-time diplomat Ann Wright to close the gulag down:

5 Years of Infamy: Close Guantanamo!
by Ret. Col. Ann Wright

On January 11, 2002, the first detainees from Afghanistan arrived at the prison in the US Naval Base, Guantanamo, Cuba. In the succeeding five years, Guantanamo has symbolized to the world the Bush administration’s abandonment of international and domestic law and the development of a policy of inhumane treatment and the use of torture in military and CIA operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and in an unknown number of secret prisons.

Over 775 detainees have been held in Guantanamo since January 11, 2002. After five years, no Guantanamo detainee has been convicted of a criminal offense. According to an American Forces Information Service News article dated October 17, 2006, “Bush Says Military Commissions Act Will Bring Justice”, the majority of the detainees held in Guantanamo will not face military commissions. “Only detainees who will be charged with law-of war violations and other grave offenses, about 75 detainees, officials estimated, will be subject to the commissions.”

So what has happened to the other 700 detainees during these five years, those that will not be prosecuted by military commissions?

Finally, after over two years of detention, between August 2004 and March 2005, Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT), composed of three US military officers, reviewed the cases of 558 detainees. However, the detainees had no access to lawyers or to secret evidence used by the CSRT. The CSRT could use coerced evidence. The CSRT’s judged 520 detainees to be “enemy combatants.”

What is an enemy combatant? The general definition of an enemy combatant is “a person engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners during an armed conflict.” But as September 5, 2006, DOD directive on the Detainee Program added another sentence to the definition of unlawful combatant: “For the purposes of the war on terrorism, the term Unlawful Enemy Combatant is defined to include, but is not limited to, an individual who is or was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States of its coalition partners.”

According to Amnesty International, in an analysis of 500 detainees, a remarkably low number, only 5 percent, or about 25 detainees, were captured by US forces; 86 percent, or about 430 detainees, were arrested by Pakistani forces or the Afghan Northern Alliance and turned over to US custody, often for a reward of thousands of dollars. The other 9 percent are not discussed in the Amnesty report. Many were sold to the United States to even scores or just for the money. Anyone living in Afghanistan, young or old, was fair game for selling to US forces. The oldest detainee shipped to Guantanamo was 75 and the youngest 10.

It is an understatement to say that the majority of those sent to Guantanamo were sent due to poor interrogation and investigation by US forces and the CIA during their detention in Afghanistan. Once at Guantanamo, they remained for years because of pressure for interrogation “results” from the civilian political leadership at the Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency and the White House.

As of December 18, 2006 almost half, about 379 of the 775 detainees, have been released after years in prison and sent home without being charged with a crime or being told why they were detained. About 396 detainees from 35 countries are still held at Guantanamo, including the 14 detainees that were transferred there in September, 2006 after being held incommunicado in secret CIA prisons for up to 4 and one-half years. (When President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) into law, he said the MCA authorizes the CIA secret prison program to continue and that the 14 cannot reveal to their lawyers or the International Committee of the Red Cross the location of the detention facilities, conditions of confinement and interrogation techniques.)

16 detainees from Saudi Arabia were released on December 14, 2006 after King Abdullah summoned Vice-President Cheney to Saudi Arabia and took him to the woodshed over the plight of Sunnis if the United States withdraws from Iraq. Another 75 Saudis remain in Guantanamo. More detainees were released on December 17 according to a Department of Defense news release with the same date: 7 detainees were transferred to Afghanistan, 6 detainees returned to Yemen, 3 to Kazakhstan, one to Libya and one to Bangladesh, resulting in 34 detainees released in three days. The news release said that 114 detainees have been released in 2006 and 85 detainees whom the US government has determined are eligible for transfer or release are still held at Guantanamo.

17 detainees were under 18 years old when they were taken to Guantanamo. The youngest detainees were 10, 12 and 13 when they were “captured.” At the end of 2006, four of juveniles still are detained and now have spent one-fourth of their lives in Guantanamo. There was a fifth, but he was one of three detainees who committed suicide in June 2006. Over 40 detainees have attempted suicide and up to 200 detainees have staged hunger strikes to protest the conditions of detention.

Incredibly, at the end of five years of being in the world’s human rights doghouse, the US Congress in October, 2006, again trusted and complied with President Bush’s wishes and passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA). The MCA denies detainees habeas corpus (the right challenge the lawfulness or conditions of detention), denies the presumption of innocence, denies the right to trial within a reasonable time, denies the right to a lawyer of choice and denies the right to challenge and present evidence. The MCA allows the admission of evidence coerced by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

While co-authoring memos on torture, Presidential legal advisor, now Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales in January, 2002, advised President Bush that a benefit of not applying the Geneva Conventions to detainees coming from Afghanistan and imprisoning the detainees outside the United States would be to make more difficult prosecution of US personnel under the US War Crimes Act. The administration’s “gloves off” attitude toward interrogations resulted in inhumane treatment in Bagram, Kandahar and other prisons in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo. That abusive environment led to painful incidents at Abu Ghraib, Iraq as Guantanamo prison commander Major General Geoffrey Miller went to Iraq to teach more aggressive interrogation techniques to the interrogators. Gonzalez continued to make prosecution difficult of US personnel involved in prisoner abuse under the War Crimes Act by convincing the US Congress through the Military Commissions Act to provide a free-pass for criminal acts dealing with detainees committed before December 31, 2005.

As a retired US Army Colonel with 29 years of service on active duty and in the US Army Reserves, and as a US diplomat for 16 years, I firmly believe that there must be accountability and responsibility for criminal actions that we know have occurred, whether the perpetrators are in the Pentagon, CIA, Justice or the White House. Speaking as a military officer, our military is not served well by escaping responsibility for criminal acts. Our military soldiers and officers are taught what is legal behavior and what is not. I would think the same distinction also is taught to CIA personnel. When the Bush administration and the Congress retroactively protects those who knowing commit criminal acts, they undermine the “order and discipline” of the military and of the CIA and ultimately undercut the foundations of our rule of law.

I firmly believe that to regain some respect in the international community, for the sake of our national spirit and soul, and for the integrity of the US military, the prison in Guantanamo must be closed and the US military must be removed from adjudicating “enemy combatants” cases. Instead, I believe the federal courts must administer the laws of the United States against persons charged with “terrorist” crimes, as the courts have done in the past. For the United States to ever hope to salvage some modicum of its stature in the area of human rights, the legal process for those accused of criminal, terrorist acts must be transparent and fair. The “Guantanamo process” is neither. I call on the new Congress to acknowledge the capabilities and history of our civilian legal system, abolish the Military Commissions Act, designate the federal courts to hear the cases and close Guantanamo.

On January 11, 2007, the fifth year that detainees from Afghanistan have been in Guantanamo, organizations all over the world will call for Guantanamo to be closed. For the sake of our integrity and conscience, each one of us must take action: organize vigils, show the movie “The Road to Guantanamo”or have readings of “Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” (www.bordc.org).

Act on January 11 to end torture, stop violations of international law and CLOSE GUANTANAMO! (Check www.witnesstorture.org for events.)

Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright spent 29 years in the Army and Army Reserves and 16 years as a US diplomat serving in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US Department of State in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.

We see in the contrast between Col. Wright’s response and that of the APA President the difference between a person committed to human decency and one committed to pandering to power, especially the dark power of the interrogators, at all costs.

1 comment December 22nd, 2006

Will the Democrats Save our Civil Liberties?

Anthony Gregory of the (right-wing) libertarian Independent Institute isn’t sanguine about the Democrats doing much to improve our civil liberties picture. Let’s hope he’s wrong. In any case, we have to keep the pressure up:

Will the Democrats Save our Civil Liberties?
December 20, 2006
Anthony Gregory

Many commentators have called the Democratic victory in the November elections a referendum on the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. They have also noted that the voting public is concerned by the attacks on civil liberties so loyally defended by nearly all the Republican lawmakers in fighting the war on terror. The Democrats, presumably, now have a mandate to reverse current trends in domestic as well as foreign anti-terror policy.

There is little reason for optimism that the Democrats will follow through on this supposed mandate, and deliver us from the evil of the growing police state of warrantless searches, indefinite detentions, sweeping surveillance, and other attacks on civil liberties.

For one thing, Democrats have supported the worst of Bush’s policies. Only one Democrat in the Senate, Russ Feingold, opposed the Patriot Act when it was first proposed. Just this year, Democratic members of the House overwhelmingly, and Democratic Senators unanimously, approved the Defense Authorization Act for 2007, which contains frightening modifications of the Insurrection Act and new exceptions to Posse Comitatus, empowering the president to summon the National Guard, without gubernatorial authority, and to enforce martial law during “emergencies” ranging from natural disasters to health crises. More than 25 percent of Senate Democrats even voted for the Military Commissions Act, marking the first time since the Civil War that the federal government suspended Habeas Corpus.

Although the Democrats will sometimes attack an egregious Bush proposal, they have not used the power of the purse or the filibuster to do anything about it. Nor should we assume they will be so mindful of civil liberties now that they are in the Congressional majority and have their eyes set on the presidency. Power corrupts, and Democrats in power have long shown a willingness to shred the Bill of Rights.

Woodrow Wilson arrested hundreds of antiwar Americans, including a presidential candidate, for protesting the draft; deported anarchists to Communist Russia; and imprisoned a movie producer for depicting the British as an American enemy in his film about the American Revolution. (Under the 1918 Sedition Act, it was a federal crime to criticize a U.S. ally, which Britain was.) Franklin Roosevelt oversaw an Office of Censorship, made plans to detain hundreds of peaceful political enemies, imprisoned war opponents, and interned 110,000 innocent Japanese Americans. Lyndon Johnson had the FBI spy on reporters and used the FBI and CIA to wiretap, monitor, and infiltrate the campaign of his presidential rival, Barry Goldwater.

But we don’t need to go back so far to indict the Democrats on civil liberties issues. Under Bill Clinton, the police state grew perhaps as much as it feasibly could during a relative time of peace. According to the ACLU, Clinton expanded stealth surveillance of the citizenry far beyond anything seen under any prior administration. Clinton sought to allow the feds to peek at everyone’s bank account, have a key to all private encryption and e-mail, and censor the Internet. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton signed the draconian Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, expanding the authority of secret courts, unleashing the FBI to investigate First Amendment–protected activities, and allowing the INS to deport American citizens.

Under Clinton, there was also the military operation on American soil just outside Waco, Texas, where about 80 American civilians died when a 51-day standoff culminated in a fire breaking out after a federal tank rammed through a religious sect’s home and gassed its women and children with poisonous and flammable CS gas. In this case, an imaginary meth lab was the original rationale to circumvent Posse Comitatus’s prohibitions on military involvement in law enforcement—the drug war, which the Democrats have consistently and enthusiastically upheld, has also been a disaster for civil liberties and the rule of law.

When the Democrats controlled both the presidency and the legislature, as they did during much of Wilson, all of FDR, and all of Johnson, civil liberties suffered greatly. When, under Clinton, they split the government with Republicans, the police state nevertheless grew—meaning neither the GOP nor partisan gridlock is our salvation, either.

If the Democrats want to win points as better guardians of American liberty than the Republicans, they can begin by abolishing huge portions of the war on terror infrastructure—the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the new presidential powers over martial law. They should then challenge Bush on the principle of the unitary executive, block funding for warrantless military surveillance of the population, and strip away the Justice Department and military’s power to indefinitely detain people without due process.

The Democrats, however, have had about as shameful a record on all this as the Republicans, even when they were the opposition party. Now that they have a better seat at the table of power, who thinks they’ll do anything to curb the police state they helped so much to build?

Add comment December 22nd, 2006

Krugman: Don’t reduce the deficit. It only enables them

Paul Krugman points out a major flaw in Democrat’s attempts at balancing the budget: they only enabled the right-wing’s class warfare for the utra-rich against all the rest. To his credit, Krugman says spend any savings on improving our welfare, not on reducing the deficit:

Democrats and the Deficit

Now that the Democrats have regained some power, they have to decide what to do. One of the biggest questions is whether the party should return to Rubinomics — the doctrine, associated with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that placed a very high priority on reducing the budget deficit.

The answer, I believe, is no. Mr. Rubin was one of the ablest Treasury secretaries in American history. But it’s now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics.

And the lesson of the last six years is that the Democrats shouldn’t spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down. They should refrain from actions that make the deficit worse. But given a choice between cutting the deficit and spending more on good things like health care reform, they should choose the spending.

In a saner political environment, the economic logic behind Rubinomics would have been compelling. Basic fiscal principles tell us that the government should run budget deficits only when it faces unusually high expenses, mainly during wartime. In other periods it should try to run a surplus, paying down its debt.

Since the 1990s were an era of peace, prosperity and favorable demographics (the baby boomers were still in the work force, not collecting Social Security and Medicare), it should have been a good time to put the federal budget in the black. And under Mr. Rubin, the huge deficits of the Reagan-Bush years were transformed into an impressive surplus.

But the realities of American politics ensured that it was all for naught. The second President Bush quickly squandered the surplus on tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy, then plunged the budget deep into deficit by cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains even as he took the country into a disastrous war. And you can even argue that Mr. Rubin’s surplus was a bad thing, because it greased the rails for Mr. Bush’s irresponsibility.

As Brad DeLong, a Berkeley economist who served in the Clinton administration, recently wrote on his influential blog: “Rubin and us spearcarriers moved heaven and earth to restore fiscal balance to the American government in order to raise the rate of economic growth. But what we turned out to have done, in the end, was to enable George W. Bush’s right-wing class war: his push for greater after-tax income inequality.”

My only quibble with Mr. DeLong’s characterization is that this wasn’t just one man’s class war: the whole conservative movement shared Mr. Bush’s squanderlust, his urge to run off with the money so carefully saved under Mr. Rubin’s leadership.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that conservatives who claimed to care about deficits when Democrats were in power never meant it. Let’s not forget how Alan Greenspan, who posed as the high priest of fiscal rectitude as long as Bill Clinton was in the White House, became an apologist for tax cuts — even in the face of budget deficits — once a Republican took up residence.

Now the Democrats are back in control of Congress. They’ve pledged not to be as irresponsible as their predecessors: Nancy Pelosi, the incoming House speaker, has promised to restore the “pay-as-you-go” rule that the Republicans tossed aside in the Bush years. This rule would basically prevent Congress from passing budgets that increase the deficit.

I’m for pay-as-you-go. The question, however, is whether to go further. Suppose the Democrats can free up some money by fixing the Medicare drug program, by ending the Iraq war and/or clamping down on war profiteering, or by rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts. Should they use the reclaimed revenue to reduce the deficit, or spend it on other things?

The answer, I now think, is to spend the money — while taking great care to ensure that it is spent well, not squandered — and let the deficit be. By spending money well, Democrats can both improve Americans’ lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government. Deficit reduction, on the other hand, might just end up playing into the hands of the next irresponsible president.

In the long run, something will have to be done about the deficit. But given the state of our politics, now is not the time.

Add comment December 22nd, 2006

PTSD no big deal, says military

According to Stars & Stripes, the military has issued new guidelines that allows troops with PTSD to be redeployed. Of course, they completely ignore the potential for long-term damage to the soldier’s psyche:

Troops with bipolar and psychotic disorders cannot deploy into Iraq or Afghanistan but those recovering from traumatic stress disorders still can, under new defense guidelines released this week.

Defense health officials said the new guidance is designed to clarify existing policy, not to replace any current practices dealing with deploying servicemembers with mental health issues.

“What we found was that [health officials] had some questions about exactly what the regulations were,” said Terry Jones, spokesman for Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “These are much more specific guidelines to help them evaluate troops.”

The new policy guidance states that any condition that “limits the physical or psychological ability of a servicemember” must be evaluated before troops are sent downrange, since it could hurt both them and the mission.

It specifically states that troops with psychotic or bipolar disorders, and those taking anti-psychotic or anti-convulsant drugs, should not be deployed. Troops who suffer from any mental disorder for more than a year should also be considered “unsuitable” for military duty.

But servicemembers with “a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance” may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a “treatable” problem.

That decision is left to mental health professionals, under the guidelines. If troops do not improve after three months of therapy and medication, the guidance prohibits their deployment.

Jones said officials do not expect the new guidelines to significantly change the practices of mental health evaluators or the numbers of troops being deployed.

Earlier this month, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Kit Bond, R-Mo., sent a letter to Winkenwerder blasting reports that soldiers stationed at Fort Carson, Colo., were discouraged from seeking treatment for PTSD.

The senators asked the Pentagon to investigate whether mental health officials were denied access to soldiers or pressured into approving their deployment. They also noted the stigma still associated with PTSD “must be changed if we hope to ensure the mental health of our country’s brave servicemembers.”

Defense officials are still investigating the Fort Carson case.

In a statement, Winkenwerder said the new guidelines will help military doctors “make the best possible decisions regarding the deployment of service members,” noting that the document was co-authored by a number of mental health officials.

1 comment December 22nd, 2006

Music: Mindy Smith performing Dolly Parton’s Jolene

Mindy Smith performing Dolly Parton’s Jolene:

Add comment December 22nd, 2006