Our tax dollars and war effort at work: The U.S. military’s main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces has been sending ammunition that is more than 40 years old, much of it coming “from the aging stockpiles of the old communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed,†the New York Times reported. What’s more, AEY Inc. worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking and appears to have purchased some ammunition from China, which could be a violation of American law.
The Johnson County Commission hasn’t decided yet whether to cut off funding for two special prosecutors that District Attorney Phill Kline appointed to investigate former Attorney General Paul Morrison. The commissioners don’t like that one of the prosecutors used to work for Kline, which could make the public doubt the independence of the investigation.
“Citizens of the state are demanding we do something because they are frightened. They know we are a sanctuary state,†state Sen. Peggy Palmer, R-Augusta, said during the Senate’s seven hours of debate Wednesday on illegal immigration. “They are coming here and taking our jobs and using our welfare dollars.†Fortunately, the majority of Palmer’s colleagues recognize the truth — that undocumented workers are taking mostly jobs that citizens don’t want; that employers and the state economy need more workers, not fewer; that illegal residents cannot and do not collect welfare; and that this is the federal government’s problem to fix. As for Kansans being “frightened†— if so, it’s because of the fearmongering rhetoric of Palmer and others.
Another reason lawmakers should pay for their own travel: A prewar trip to Iraq by three anti-war members of Congress reportedly was paid for by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency. “Obviously, we didn’t know it at the time,†said a spokesman for Rep. Jim McDermott (in photo), D-Wash., who was accompanied on the trip by then-Rep. David Bonior of Michigan and Rep. Mike Thompson of California. The Democratic congressmen are lucky to come away from the flap with red faces. The Michigan charity official who allegedly set up the junket now faces federal charges.
To prove itself worthy of hosting the Olympics, China would lay off the human rights abuses and otherwise behave itself, or so the thinking went. But as the August games approach, the Chinese government seems intent on proving itself unworthy — violently cracking down on protests in Tibet and elsewhere, denouncing the Dalai Lama as “the devil,†censoring media and threatening to ban live television broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics. Other difficult issues have cropped up, too, including foul air, toxic toys, tensions over Taiwan and China’s support for the government of Sudan. A boycott seems an overreaction, but neither does it suffice for President Bush to argue, as his spokeswoman did last week, that the Olympics “should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics.â€
Maybe helicopter batteries look exactly like ballistic missile fuses. In any case, the U.S. military clearly needs to be more careful with its secret nuclear materials in the wake of news that Taiwan mistakenly received four such fuses instead of the batteries it ordered. Beyond the question of how such a mistake of importance to national security could happen: How could nobody in the United States miss the items for 18 months? Not surprisingly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered an inventory of all nuke-related materials.
Our tax dollars and war effort at work: The U.S. military’s main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces has been sending ammunition that is more than 40 years old, much of it coming “from the aging stockpiles of the old communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed,†the New York Times reported. What’s more, AEY Inc. worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking and appears to have purchased some ammunition from China, which could be a violation of American law.
