House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday it was “unthinkable” for a mostly-Republican audience to “jeer a person who’s serving the country.”
Pelosi was responding to the boos that followed a video of a gay soldier asking the Republican presidential candidates whether they would reverse the “progress made on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’” at the most recent GOP debate in Florida.
Pelosi also expressed dismay that the Republican presidential hopefuls on stage did not address the crowd’s response.
“None of the people who would be serving as commander in chief [called] a halt [to the booing],” she noted to daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
Pelosi’s response took a similar tack to that of Vice President Biden, who earlier this week called the booing “reprehensible.”
Pelosi said the conversation should “go on from there,” however.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was the policy instituted under President Clinton that prevented gay and lesbian service members from serving openly in the U.S. military. President Obama repealed the policy earlier this year.
She said she was proud of the repeal of the legislation, and took some credit for the accomplishment.
“I don’t want to sound partisan, but it took a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president to get it done,” she said.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen took to Twitter to publicize a new online initiative called "Ask the Chairman" designed to solicit questions from the public on a wide range of military issues, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to project's YouTube site, Mullen will select questions submitted on the video site before August 31 then respond to them in a "podcast" at a later date.
Trying something new called Ask the Chairman and looking 4 YOUR video questions on YouTube @ http://tinyurl.com/kw59xy
"Got a question about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, military families, warrior care, the new GI Bill, or anything else about the U.S. military? Just click video response and upload your question," asks the page. "This is your chance to get the straight scoop from the man at the top of the U.S. military...record your question and send it in today."
At the urging of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Pentagon this year has expanded its presence in online social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Mullen and Price Floyd, a top Pentagon public relations official, are both on Twitter. The Defense Department also launched its redesigned website on Monday.
While the Pentagon is using the web to engage with more Americans and reach a younger audience, some concerns have arisen that the efforts could pose security issues.
The U.S. Strategic Command issued a "warning order" in July that suggested the military should ban social networking sites due to security concerns. A day later, the Marine Corps enacted a unilateral social media ban in response to the report.
In the wake of these actions, Mullen reassured his Twitter followers that he would continue to use the service.
The Department of Defense announced on Monday that they overhauled their website to accommodate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in order to interact with younger Americans who use these tools.
The announcement comes at a time when the Pentagon is reviewing the use of social media within its own ranks. Some reports have indicated the military is considering a service-wide ban of the sites. The Marines have already banned access to social media earlier this month.
Nonetheless, the Pentagon still sees social media as an important means to reach the public. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen uses Twitter and the U.S. forces in Afghanistan have an official Facebook account.
"We need to embrace these technologies. We need to use them because thats what the young people use these days. We need to communicate with them," Price Floyd, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said in a statement. "If we just stick to the traditional ways of communicating, we leave out a huge portion of society."
Floyd, who also uses Twitter, said the Pentagon is also changing the name of its site from "DefenseLINK.mil" to "Defense.gov."
"Most people on the outside wouldn't have guessed that DefenseLink was the Web site for the Defense Department," Floyd said. He also noted that these changes were encouraged by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
"Unlike most Web sites, more people over 45 go to DefenseLINK than under 45," he added. "This was another reason why we needed to change the Web site and rebrand it was to reach that younger audience. But we also don't want to lose the audience we have now."
The re-design's timing alongside the social media review shows the underlying tension in the Pentagon between using social media as an outreach tool and the safety concerns posed by the openness of the sites.
Here is a screen grab of the site. Note the social media links on the left sidebar and the "We Want to Hear From You" section on the right:
The U.S. Navy has lifted a suspension on government work on Kuchera Defense Systems, a contractor with ties to Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) whose offices were raided by the FBI earlier this year.
The agreement comes even though the Justice Department seems to be intensifying its investigation, according to a report in the Associated Press.
An attorney for Kuchera told the AP that the firm was removed from the Navy's Excluded Parties List System because Kuchera made some accounting adjustments that satisfied the Navy.
The larger investigation is focused on campaign donations from defense contractors to members of Congress and the earmarks that those firms, in turn, receive.
Murtha has directed millions of dollars in earmarks to Kuchera and several other Pennsylvania-area defense contractors, and he those same firms have showered him with campaign donations.
The White House is considering an executive order asserting the President's authority to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects, the Washington Post reported this morning.
Were the order to be signed by the President, it would effectively validate the policies of George W. Bush, who claimed expansive executive authority over detainees.
The move is also sure to enrage civil libertarians, who are already upset at the President for adopting or defending a handful of Bush's more controversial national security policies, such as denying habeas corpus to enemy combatants held overseas.
The White House is considering the executive order because Obama's advisers are reportedly pessimistic that Congress will agree on a new detention policy for the inmates currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The order would assert the President's authority to take a more unilateral approach to the problem.
Though civil liberties groups are sure to despise the prospect of indefinite detention, the Post reports that an executive order is least likely to anger them:
"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the chairman of the House Armed Services indicated that he will hold hearings on the repeal of the controversial ban on openly gay people serving in the military.
Skelton responded to some pressure from other Democratic members who want to see the law, known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, repealed. President Obama promised during the campaign to reverse the law, but Congress has to pass legislation for that to happen.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund issued a statement praising the Democrats who challenged Skelton:
"We applaud Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) for respectfully challenging the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), to take action on the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which repeals 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and replaces it with a policy of nondiscrimination. DADT needs more attention in the House (and Senate)," said Aubrey Sarvis, the executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "Rep. Polis was joined in the colloquy by Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), who also called for action on repeal. We are pleased Chairman Skelton agreed to hold additional hearings and to engage the Pentagon and White House."
Vice President Dick Cheney said he had signed off on the waterboarding of three top al Qaeda leaders at Guantanamo Bay, part of a group 33 put through what he called "enhanced interrogation" at the U.S. detention center in Cuba.
"I think there were a total of about 33 who were subjected to enhanced interrogation; only three of those who were subjected to waterboarding--Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and a third, [Abd al-Rahim] al Nashiri," Cheney told the Washington Times in an interview released by the vice president's office.
Cheney said he had personally signed off on the interrogation tactics, and had been briefed by the CIA, Department of Justice, and Office of Legal Counsel on the practices.
"I signed off on it; others did, as well, too," Cheney said. "I wasn't the ultimate authority, obviously. As the Vice President, I don't run anything. But I was in the loop."
Cheney termed Guantanamo, the often-criticized detention center for captured terrorists in Cuba, a "first-rate facility."
Retiring Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) said President-elect Obama should work to overthrow the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once he assumes the presidency next year.
"I believe that there will never be peace in Iraq, there will never be peace in the Middle East as long as the present regime in Iran is in place," Tancredo said during a teleconference before the Iran Policy Committee Tuesday morning at the National Press Club.
Tancredo told a reporter he advocated Obama trying to force an overthrowing of the government of Iran, but said that he doubted the incoming adminsitration would take such a position.
"I see absolutely nothing that would lead me to believe that they are willing to change their designs on the Middle East," the Congressman, rumored to be considering runs for either the governorship or Senate seat available in 2010, added.
Tancredo chalked his hard-line stance up to his experience in the real world, and said he doesn't really deal in the "world of diplomacy."
Vice President Dick Cheney said that the Obama administration will see the benefits of keeping open the terror detainee prison on Guantanamo Bay.
Cheney, during an interview with Rush Limbaugh on Monday, said that the prison has been "very, very valuable."
"And I think they'll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition," he added.
Cheney agreed with the suggestion by Limbaugh that President-elect Obama could go back on his pledge to shut down the prison once he enters office.
"Is that an example of things that you've put in place to help defend the country, and they're going to be appreciative of once they get there and see it?" Limbaugh asked Cheney.
"I think so," the vice president replied. "I think Guantanamo has been very well run. I think if you look at it from the perspective of the requirements we had, once you go out and capture a bunch of terrorists, as we did in Afghanistan and elsewhere, then you've got to have some place to put them. If you bring them here to the U.S. and put them in our local court system, then they are entitled to all kinds of rights that we extend only to American citizens."
Cheney added that the prisoners there are unlawful combatants and aren't afforded the same rights as U.S. citizens.
"If you're not going to have a place to locate them like Guantanamo, then you either have to bring them here to the continental United States -- and I don't know any member of Congress who's volunteering to have al Qaeda terrorists deposited in his district," he said.
The other option would be turn the prisoners over to a foreign government, Cheney said. "And we found lots of times when you do that that a number of them have gone back... on to the battlefield and tried to kill Americans again."
Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Democrats in Congress have called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison. They've been highly critical of the Bush administration's interrogation tactics on detainees there, noting that they violate the Geneva Conventions and that some of them amount to torture. The prison's critics have also called for detainees to have the chance to challenge their legal status outside of the military commissions set up by the Bush administration.
Cheney said in the same interview that Obama will appreciate the executive power that the Bush administration worked to expand.
The vice president also said that the most significant accomplishment of the Bush administration has been its ability to block terror attacks on the U.S. homeland.
"That doesn't mean there won't be some in the future, but I think the extent to which we've kept the country safe and secure now for the last seven-and-a-half years has been probably the achievement that I'm proudest of," he said. "I think it required some very tough decisions by the President, and some remarkable work by some very capable military and intelligence folks that worked with us."
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai joked that U.S. forces won't be able to leave his country any time soon -- or at least not until his country has received more U.S. money.
During a news conference with President Bush in Kabul on Monday, Karzai was serious in saying that Afghanistan, the United States and the world community will continue to fight against terrorism and extremism.
"And Afghanistan will not allow the international community leave it before we are fully on our feet, before we are strong enough to defend our country, before we are powerful enough to have a good economy," Karzai said.
He then added that the world community can't leave "before we have taken from President Bush and the next administration billions and billions of more dollars."
"No way that they can let you go," said Karzai, whose remarks drew laughter.
As of last summer, the United States had spent about $200 billion on the war in Afghanistan, according to congressional officials. Both Bush and President-elect Obama have made continued U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan central to their foreign policies.Read below the transcript of the news conference in which Karzai talks about the United States' future role in Afghanistan.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. If I could ask President Karzai first -- we just came from Iraq, where they've signed an agreement outlining a security arrangement, and it includes a withdrawal of American forces within three years. I wonder if you envision a similar kind of arrangement where -- would you like to see a scheduled withdrawal or a timetable of withdrawal for the foreign forces who are in Afghanistan.
KARZAI: Sir, Afghanistan is in a cooperative arrangement with the United States and the rest of the international community. The decision in Afghanistan is to continue our cooperation with the international community until we have defeated terrorism and extremism and the threat that emanates from them to us, to our neighbors, and to the rest of the -- rest of the world. And Afghanistan will not allow the international community leave it before we are fully on our feet, before we are strong enough to defend our country, before we are powerful enough to have a good economy, and before we have taken from President Bush and the next administration billions and billions of more dollars -- (laughter) -- no way that they can let you go.
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