New reports on Iraq confirm previous reports. Further reports coming. The best report, by Larry Korb, goes unreported.

While we're waiting for the Petraeus report — which will be written by the White House, as previously buried in an L.A. Times story — the press is playing up a new report to Congress that says the Iraqi national police force (its army, kind of) won't be ready to handle the chaos until later this century.

But that's old news. The freshest report wasn't commissioned by Congress or the White House or the Pentagon. And it didn't have anything to do with the Senate Democrats trying to "reframe" the "Iraq debate," as the New York Times put it in a detailed story yesterday about that irrelevant bluster.

The most dynamic and relevant report comes from Larry Korb, a high-ranking Defense official under Ronald Reagan, and it's going unreported. Now a senior fellow at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, Korb released on August 27 an actual plan for pulling out of Iraq. Read "How to Redeploy: Implementing a Responsible Drawdown of U.S. Forces from Iraq" or listen to Korb talk about it, or do both.

More than a week after its release by the mainstream and highly visible think tank, Korb's report hasn't even hit the news pages and has gotten only a little play on op-ed pages. But it's detailed and realistic, compared with all the other pullout plans — of which there are none, except for the Bush-Cheney regime's current strategy, pictured above.

Seriously, Korb's plan is pretty damn good reading, and it comes from someone who's no flaming liberal pinko. But, then, veteran Iraq watcher Tony Cordesman's reports have been consistently ignored since before the 2003 invasion.

Here's what Korb's report says:

That's nice, but how do we do it?

And not only maps. Korb and his collaborators lay out a detailed month-by-month schedule, division and brigade by division and brigade — which equipment to leave and which to take with us, and doing it all with the least danger to our troops and to the Iraqis who haven't already fled their country.

Now that's a report worth reading. Meanwhile, we're deluged in the press with old news and report upon report upon report that say the same things and don't offer solutions, except to "disband" or "start over." Too late for that talk. Stuck in a bad place, our big wheels are spinning and not getting us or our troops anywhere.

Treating the latest of such reports as fresh, the Washington Post puts it this way this morning.

Yes, but the New York Times broke that very report last week, saying:

The Times played the breakdown of the police as a scoop, and the rest of the media followed right along. But that, too, was mostly old news.

Yet another report, way back on June 7, made the same points, as was reported at the time — or, rather, underreported.

That June report was, and is, readily available from the Pentagon. Check it out yourself (PDF). Its details are devastating, especially for a document just sitting there on the Pentagon website. For instance:

Corruption? Oh, brother. The details reported three months ago were staggering:

And who knows how many instances have gone unreported and haven't been investigated? That's because even the investigators are deathly afraid:

But the Pentagon's June report went relatively unnoticed, maybe because of how it ended:

With such a bland summary of explosive facts, further fact-finding was clearly needed. You'd think enough facts have been found. But do we really need to point out that it's always safer for politicians to either "reframe debates" or commission their own studies and reports than to listen to people like Korb and Cordesman and then hammer out hard decisions?

It's going to be a hilarious and a frighteningly twisted presidential campaign, judging by the Iowa "debate" moderated by George Stephanopoulos.

The former senior White House adviser (remember this newsmag cover from April '94?) really set it up well in the show, which aired yesterday on ABC:

Heads I win, tails you lose.

You'd never guess that Stephanopoulos was Bill Clinton's former senior adviser, would you? The first question, about whether Obama is experienced enough, was legit — assuming you count Bill's stint as Arkansas governor, while Hillary was Wal-Mart's First Lady, as experience. The second question was ludicrous, nothing more than a slam at Obama — not to mention the bit about who can "bring the country together" — pap left over from Stephanopoulos's long stint as a political operative.

His intro avoided the real questions about Hillary: For one thing, what is her experience? Has she done much during her years in the Senate? Other than vote in October 2002 for the Bush regime's war, that is. The only thing she's run is the health-care task force during the first Clinton administration, and she handled it in the same secretive and business-friendly way that Dick Cheney handled the energy task force during George W. Bush's first term.

The first thing Hillary did when Bill gave her health care to futz with was take the idea of national health care off the table and lock in the heavy, bureaucratized participation of the insurance industry.

So here's another question: Is Hillary anything more than just the carefully groomed and handled representative of the right-of-center Democratic Party establishment?

As for "bringing the country together": It's a democracy. We're not all supposed to agree. And as a republic, we're supposed to hammer out solutions and deals. That's supposed to be the beauty of it.

Stephanopoulos is still a political operative, and he's still marketing the Clintons.

George W. Bush nicknamed Karl Rove "The Architect," but the POTUS isn't much of a reader, so we need a better definition of the guy who always relished his role as Rasputin.

My dictionary says "rove" is the past tense of "rive":

(Yes, I know that "My dictionary says …" is a hackneyed device, but my dictionary is the OED on CD-ROM, and Rove himself is a hackneyed device, so do me a favor and keep reading.)

The fact is that Rove is definitely not past tense on Capitol Hill, as I noted early yesterday. Later in the day, New York senator Chuck Schumer spoke the obligatory words:

That ship has sailed. As a verb by its intransitive lonesome, "rove" takes on another meaning:

Unfortunately, this political plunderer's shredder is probably overheating right now. We already know that thousands of juicy e-mails describing his plots are out there. But shredding is Rove's name, if you believe the OED, and I do:

For the sake of history, though, Rove is "rove" in a broader sense:

What's the use. Rove's already in transit out of D.C. If issues make you reach for tissues, this definition (of "rive" and thus "rove") is for you:

Whether or not he's ever called back from Texas to testify — and it would probably take a stint at Gitmo to get him to do it — Rove could very well end up as a memorable, if improper, noun. This 15th century usage fits, but it's obsolete:

No, forget "architect," scabs, and all other nouns. To me, Rove will always be a verb, especially in this sense:

Kind of a Robin Hood, except that Rove, as I pointed out yesterday, robs the poor to give to the rich.

What a con he pulled on us marks. Yes, that is true "roving." The OED elaborates:

Weekly report: There's no fuel, but flames intensify.

We're probably too busy getting killed, but couldn't we spare the time to drag ex-SecDef Don Rumsfeld back up to Capitol Hill to answer more questions about Iraq?

We certainly can't wait for General David Petraeus to file his progress report next month with Congress — the "coalition" commander promises he won't "pull any punches." But the current Iraq Weekly Status Report — reports prepared by the State Department that I've written about many times and that try to put the best possible light on the situation — already contains some staggering blows. Especially to Iraqis.

Keep in mind that an increasing number of Iraqis are getting blown up or otherwise killed. The Washington Post's Meg Greenwell rounded up those figures in her August 6 story, "Spike in Mass Bombings Against Civilians." My favorite paragraph of spin — not by Greenwell but by the Pentagon:

The news for Iraqis who are still alive is almost as bad. Why the press — especially in the U.S. — ignores the State Department's own weekly reports is beyond me. From the August 8 status report:

• Fuel: The bad news is that oil production is falling. The good news is that we've lowered the target for oil production. Oil-rich Iraq imports 58 percent of its gasoline, 27 percent of its natural gas, and 26 percent of its diesel.

Current fuel supplies? The target is 15 days' worth of fuels. Diesel supplies have fallen from 3 days' worth in June and July to only 2 days' worth in August, kerosene from 4 days' worth previously to 3, and gasoline from 3 days' worth in June to 2 days' worth in July to 1 day's worth of gasoline on hand right now. Thankfully, supplies of LPG (natural gas) have held steady: There was 1 day's supply in June, 1 in July, and 1 in August.

• Electricity: The August 1-7 daily demand is 20 percent higher than during the same period last year. The daily supply is 12 percent lower. 43 percent of the total electricity demand is being met this year, compared with 58 percent last year. While temperatures are triple digit, Baghdad residents have only 4.9 hours of electricity a day right now, compared with a whopping 6.3 hours a day last August. Nationwide, Iraqis get 9.3 hours of power a day, compared with 10.7 last year.

Imagine the political hell that's raised in this country when the trains stop running, the bridges fall down, or the power goes out. Multiply that by a thousand and you'll understand why outside of Baghdad, major trouble is brewing, especially in the Shi'ite stronghold of Najaf. Even the U.S. State Department's deliberately sunny weekly reports can't put a smile on what's going in northern and southern Iraq, where all the oil fields are. Quoting from the August 8 report:

What about north of Baghdad, in the supposedly more stable Kurdish areas? More from the report:

The power outages and oil struggles are helping cause Iraq's government to short out. Once upon a time, Iraq's central government officials in Baghdad were firing subordinates. Now they're firing themselves.

• Government: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government is grinding to a halt. It can't even summon a minyan. Ayad Allawi, the ex-prime minister, announced August 7 that three of his party's cabinet ministers would no longer attend meetings. From our own State Department's August 8 report:

We've spent $450 billion on the Iraq Debacle — wait a sec, it's closer to $451 billion.

Now climb aboard the Wayback Machine and go back just before the invasion of Iraq. These are the first two paragraphs of a February 28, 2003, New York Times story by Eric Schmitt:

In those heady days, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld displayed hubris that took your breath away. Now it's taken thousands of lives away. Neither would brook any criticism:

Now, however, it's useful.

Another bankrupt government policy aimed at college students.

Attention, students: Here's some material the federal government does not want you to study and learn: the latest Congressional Research Service report on the sorry history of why your student-loan debt is such an unreasonable burden.

Good luck reading the entire report. Congress further screws the public by not making its CRS reports (including this one) readily available.

Anyway, two crucial bills currently before Congress would help ease the ridiculous current situation in which student-loan borrowers can't get out from under their debt even when they formally declare bankruptcy. The better of the two bills, S.511, was introduced by presidential contender Hillary Clinton this past February 7 in the Senate. The July 26 CRS report, Student Loans in Bankruptcy, says in its summary:

"Consumer Protection." Yeah, right. Corporations regularly use bankruptcy to discharge debt — they even matter-of-factly talk about it in their government filings as just another helpful tool to increase profits — but you students can't use it. You used to be able to, but as the report says, "over the years, the scope of student loan dischargeability has been steadily narrowed."

As Congress considers these bills, the CRS prepared the report in language that even the dumbest Congress member can understand. All the sorry history of how Congress has steadily screwed students over recent years — especially the onerous tightening imposed by the Bush regime and GOP-ruled Congress in 2005 of the rules under which you human beings can declare bankruptcy — is in this report. All you can see is the report's brief summary. Why not the rest? Here's how the admirable OpenCRS project explains it:

And most of them don't release them. When they do, the reports are not made available in any orderly way, and you often have to pay for them.

Oh, you'll pay in other ways. The bankrupt and onerous bankruptcy laws are just one part of the sad story of unreasonable student-loan burdens. A very good recent take on student loans — particularly regarding politicians' hype about how they're "fixing" the problems — is "No Justice for Student Borrowers," in Port Folio Weekly, out of Hampton Roads, Virginia. Reporter Jennifer C. O'Donnell (talking about other bills, not Clinton's) notes in the July 31 piece:

O'Donnell's savvy, smoothly done story goes on:

As I said, O'Donnell's story doesn't talk about Clinton's bill or the other Senate bill. Here's the summary of the July CRS report:

Apparently that's all the government wants you to know.

The performance of Britain's new PM gives a hint of what the post-Bush era may be like.

George W. Bush's British manservant, Tony Blair, is someplace in the Middle East doing little more than meets-and-greets with Israelis and certain selected Palestinians. It's nothing more than Blair's trying to sweep the shards of broken Iraq under the rug — he helped break it, so he should try to clean it up.

"Manservant" is too distinguished an image. Much of the world will continue to see the bubbly Blair as the Bush regime's loyal little puppy. But now that Gordon Brown is the new British PM, we've entered an era of what John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies calls "post-poodle politics."

Brown (left, with Bush) is a different animal. He won't faithfully yip with joy around Bush. He's known to be sober and reserved, more of a St. Bernard than a feisty, cute terrier like Bush's pal Barney.

More importantly, Brown may be more like a St. Bernard, but he won't be coming to the Bush regime's rescue. The British PM is more likely to take several dumps on Bush's carpet.

The way Brown practices foreign policy — even what he's already done as he tries to extract his country from the Iraq debacle — gives us a preview of what a post-Bush regime could look like.

Unfortunately, one step Brown has already taken — halting the influence of his advisers on career civil servants — will probably never happen in U.S. presidential politics. As Ian Davis notes in Foreign Policy in Focus:

In Dick Cheney's Bush regime, a small coterie of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove, and the like ran roughshod over more pragmatic types like generals Eric Shinseki (on the number of troops needed to "conquer" Iraq) and Tony Zinni (who believed that the road to peace led through Jerusalem instead of Baghdead).

Brown's more likely to rely on his military people in the field than has Blair, let alone the Bush regime. And that means a quicker exit by the Brits from Iraq. Davis says:

Blair's regime didn't seem to have much faith in its people on the ground. Back in 2005, Blair thought so much of his Foreign Office career diplomats that he immediately canned his ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, after Murray — a boil on Blair's butt — had the audacity to denounce Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov's torture tactics.

Don't expect to see any photos of Gordon Brown chatting about the "war on terror" with Cheney on the steps of 10 Downing Street, as Blair did in 2002 during the secret plotting of the Iraq invasion.

And as for Iran? No matter how much Cheney and his crew are itching to pull the trigger, this dog Brown won't hunt. As Davis says:

Finally, Brown won't be stirring up the populace to support the current war on Terra. More from Davis:

Which U.S. presidential candidate sounds the most like Gordon Brown? Well, it ain't Hillary Clinton, who's in thrall to the right-wing American-Israeli lobby. Is it Barack Obama? At least he talks about talking with our dastardly enemies. Like Brown, Obama has little experience in directing foreign policy.

For once, a newspaper editorial — a British one, in the July 30 Daily Mail — sums things up nicely when it comes to the shift from Blair to Brown:

By the time our presidential election rolls around, Brown will have been in office for about a year. His performance should at least give us an idea of what — and who — it may take to start undoing the damage of the Bush era.

If you build it, they will come be shanghaied.

Shanghaied to build to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Working on the construction site without safety equipment — or even shoes. The story of the alleged kidnapping of Filipino workers who thought they were going to Dubai but instead were flown to Baghdad to help build the $500 million embassy is stunning.

But it's likely to be all for naught. Congressman Henry Waxman should haul Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney before the House Oversight Committee to explain.

Waxman exposed the embassy scandal on July 26, but a full-fledged investigation of this particular Cheney regime scandal probably won't happen. And even if it does, the final result of our having built this super-expensive supermax embassy will be reminiscent of Saigon in 1975: civilians fleeing a U.S. embassy by helicopter.

In case you've forgotten about the little-publicized new embassy in Baghdad, it's already officially insane. As I noted in September 2004:

Great. Americans already had to have counseling just to work in the old embassy in Baghdad. Because the Green Zone gets bombed so often, the new one will be much more of a prison. Think of the shrink work that will entail. Just building it can cause one to freak out. Here's yesterday's story in the Times (U.K.):

Mayberry's full statement, courtesy of the hard work of Waxman's House Oversight Committee, is riveting. Here's an excerpt:

How's that construction going? You need a telephoto lens (see the AP pic below).

You won't see photos of it on the websites of the White House or the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

But Martin Kemp of the Guardian (U.K.) wrote in May:

Whoever will rule Iraq, or that part of Iraq, or that strip of land in Baghdead, will be able to use the embassy as a supermax because it already is one.

Here is something to snack on while you watch the main course, Don Rumsfeld, get grilled at today's Tillman hearing.

Thanks to Henry Waxman, we have not only a copy of Rumsfeld's statement today but also some letters that shed light on who knew what when where and how. Well, a little light anyway.

Rumsfeld to Tillman: I luv ya, guy.

Rumsfeld to Tillman's family: Zip.

Rumsfeld to investigators: I don't recall.

See the last one below.

The grilling of Don Rumsfeld about the Tillman coverup was delayed just long enough, thanks to George W. Bush's re-election, so that Rumsfeld could use the most popular excuse these days.

Sounding a lot like AG Alberto Gonzales (only with much more confidence), Rumsfeld is relying on the "I don't recall" defense, according to an attachment to his written testimony released at today's hearing.

The "I don't recall" bit is in a letter to the inspector general of the department that Rumsfeld once ran. Rumsfeld is saying he doesn't recall when he was told that Pat Tillman actually was killed by friendly fire.

Rumsfeld's excuse doesn't pass the smell test. He avidly followed Tillman's decision to abandon an NFL career, as his personal letter to Tillman in 2002 shows. He knew then, of course, that Tillman's decision was a potential p.r. bonanza for the Bush-Cheney regime.

Tillman was not just another soldier to Rumsfeld, and the Defense Department's handling of his presence in uniform was followed every step of the way — even after his death and the subsequent coverup of how it happened.

Check out the 2006 "I don't recall" letter and the 2002 personal congratulations letter, but better yet, tune into the hearing.

Or even better yet, read "Army Spun Tale Around Ill-Fated Mission," the second part of Steve Coll's brilliant unmasking in late 2004 of this sordid p.r. tale.

We're listening to Connecticut GOP congressman Chris Shays actually congratulate Don Rumsfeld for "calling the bluff" of "critics" by appearing at today's hearing on the Pat Tillman coverup. Shays makes Rumsfeld's behavior sound like a profile in courage.

Tune it in yourself.

Now Dennis Kucinich is grilling the hell out of Rumsfeld. Too bad he has only five minutes.

Rumsfeld tells Kucinich: "I have not been involved in any coverup whatsover."

Kucinich replies: "Well, thank you for acquitting yourself. But we were talking about the Department of Defense."

You know, the department that Rumsfeld was running?

Even under friendly fire just before Kucinich stepped in for Rumsfeld's five minutes of hell, Rumsfeld said he never had a discussion with anyone in the White House about "press strategies" regarding Tillman's death and the spin the regime put on it.

Well, what about Rumsfeld's aides and George W. Bush's aides? They were all talking about it via e-mail — see the incontrovertible proof in this four-page PDF made available by House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman.

It shows that Rumsfeld's speechwriter Heddie Henderson and Bush speechwriter John Currin were in close touch with the same Army flack in April 2004 to nail down details of how they were going to handle the Tillman references. This was just before Bush's speech at a reporters dinner.

At the time, the Pentagon knew that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire. They were keeping it from Tillman's family so the regime could continue to score p.r. points by portraying Tillman as a hero killed by enemy fire.

Rumsfeld is trying to say that all this stuff took place so far under him that he didn't know. Yeah. Like his speechwriter is so far, far under him.

Former SecDef goes to Capitol Hill to finally answer for Tillman coverup — or at least face some unfriendly fire. Watch it live.

Three years after the Pentagon covered up the circumstances of soldier Pat Tillman's actual death by fratricide in Afghanistan so it could falsely portray it as a death by hostile fire, thus taking the country's mind off Abu Ghraib, Don Rumsfeld finally has to answer questions about it.

The hearing's going on right now, thanks to dogged California congressman Henry Waxman — and only because of the 2006 midterm elections that wrestled control of the House from the GOP.

Why C-SPAN isn't televising it on its main channel is beyond me, but you can catch it right now on Waxman's excellent site, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which he is now chairman. For background, read Waxman's opening statement and Waxman's hearing this past April on the Tillman coverup.

As the ranking minority member during the first six years of the Bush-Cheney regime, Waxman lobbed shell after shell at the disgraceful conduct before and during the war on Terra — and on many other issues as well. Now Waxman has the power to put Rumsfeld in his sights.

Just a few minutes ago, Rumsfeld began his opening statement by saying, "I want to extend my deepest sympathies to the Tillman family."

Well, he said the same thing to them in the spring of 2004. But what he forgot to tell them at that time — although he knew it — was that Tillman was actually killed by his fellow soldiers in a terrible screwup. The Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal covered up the real circumstances, even from Tillman's family, so that it could score p.r. points. The cabal trotted out Bush to make the point that the dastardly enemy killed Tillman and that his was a noble sacrifice.

Steve Coll of the Washington Post (now at the New Yorker) first uncovered this sordid public-relations maneuver, which has enraged Tillman's family. Check out Coll's brilliant work from December 2004.

The current Pentagon, under Bob Gates, has continued to cover up the actions of top officials. Only a few days ago, Richard Sisk of the New York Daily News wrote:

Oh, now former Joint Chiefs chair Richard "Quag" Myers is talking about the "heartbreak" suffered by the Tillman family. But Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is saying to Myers, "Why didn't you tell the Tillman family the truth?" All they're doing right now is trying to get them to apologize. Maybe it'll get better. Check it out.

Already under attack by religious conservatives and censors in the United States, Muslim congressman Keith Ellison apparently survived a trip this weekend to Iraq without his own faith's religious conservatives and censors issuing a death fatwa against him.

The Minneapolis progressive Democrat got into trouble with conservatives and religious extremists over here on July 8 when he threw in a Nazi reference as he ripped the Bush regime for using 9/11 as an excuse for war.

Where were they when it was revealed three years ago that fellow black man Secretary of State Colin Powell — in the same context, thinking the same thing — had branded dual-disloyalist Doug Feith's Pentagon pre-war agitprop operation a "Gestapo office"?

Ellison is the first U.S. congressman known to be a Muslim, but he's no terrorist in thrall to the conservative mullahs of his own religion. They're more likely to condemn him to death for his support of gay rights and other progressive issues than embrace him.

Religious conservatives and censors in the U.S. claimed that Ellison compared George W. Bush with Hitler — he didn't. All it shows is how much religious conservatives have in common with one another, no matter which religion they claim to speak for. All of them regularly condemn one another and kill in the name of their faiths.

The latest of several ridiculous freakouts by conservatives over Ellison stemmed from something else that conservative Muslim mullahs would stone him for: his speech to a bunch of humanistic atheists. Reporter Mike Kaszuba of the StarTribune wrote it like this:

Ellison, a lawyer who landed a spot on the House Judiciary Committee even though he's only a freshman, also had this to say:

The ADL's Abe Foxman came unglued over the Reichstag reference, blasting Ellison for using a reference to Hitler and the Nazis.

Well, let's go to page 292 of Bob Woodward's 2004 book, Plan of Attack, in which he described meetings just before Powell's February 2003 U.N. speech:

Powell had used a Nazi reference to Feith, a fanatical Jewish conservative who desperately wanted a war with Israel enemy Iraq. But Powell didn't catch hell for it. Earlier this year, Michigan senator Carl Levin (who's Jewish) blasted Feith for having spread disinformation in the run-up to the war:

In other words, the Cheney-Bush regime used 9/11 to justify the invasion of Iraq, just as Hitler had used the Reichstag fire 70 years earlier (February 27, 1933) as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, a key moment in the Nazification of Germany. If you doubt that the Reichstag fire could be compared with the 9/11 attacks, just imagine an arsonist's burning down Congress and the political power that a regime like Cheney's would seize as a result.

For now, extremists are just trying to burn down a congressman.

Regarding my July 13 item, "A Different 'Gut Feeling': Israel Attacking Iran," Martin Gensler, a former aide to the late senator Paul Wellstone, writes:

Thanks for reading, Martin. But last things first: That wasn't my speculation that Israel has the green light to attack Iran.

As I noted before, it was a report on Israeli warmonger Avigdor Lieberman's recent chats with NATO. Israel Today wrote on July 11:

Now, it depends on how that is spun. Lieberman supposedly said he got the "tacit blessing" of Europe and the U.S. Another Israeli news org saw it another way:

I noted that there was more than a whiff of conspiracy theorizing at work. And Rice's cancellation of her trip, in any case, wouldn't have been her decision. Cheney makes the decisions, as I've been saying for years.

And it's undeniably scary that Avigdor Lieberman, a very high Israeli official, is beating the war drums, as he has done so often. The guy was Bibi Netanyahu's chief of staff, for G-d's sakes. Lieberman (very high indeed) is infamous for proposing an ingenious apartheid plan for cleansing Arabs from Israel. That was too extreme even for Ariel Sharon, who dismissed him in 2004. Now Sharon is dead, and Lieberman is back in the government as a deputy prime minister.

Speaking of reckless, you could call the Bush-Cheney "team" Feckless and Reckless, kind of a horror/vaudeville duo.

"Feckless" is better applied to Bush, but as for Rice, yes, she's strictly from hunger. The only pro Bono action the fluffy major domo has ever taken is to bask in a photo-op with that rock star.

Poor New Orleans, poor Iraq vets. Trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina, the city is trying to build a medical complex downtown that includes the fabled Charity Hospital and a VA hospital, but Congress took a step backwards yesterday on the plan.

And wouldn't you know — the only House member standing up for the city during a hearing yesterday in D.C. was a guy with no cred, William Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat indicted on corruption charges.

The city wants a rebuilt hospital complex to help revitalize its downtown. Care of New Orleans' people is also a consideration. But others want the hospital complex, which would include a VA hospital that was destroyed during Katrina, moved to the suburbs.

This is more than the continuous whitening strikes raining down on New Orleans. Some in Congress want the VA hospital put in Pensacola, Florida. Congressman Bill Miller from that area argues that New Orleans is too prone to flooding. He doesn't mention that Pensacola was ravaged by two hurricanes in 2004.

Some representatives of veterans have mixed feelings about putting a new VA hospital in downtown New Orleans. But one is desperately needed somewhere. As Kate Moran reports this morning on the excellent Times-Picayune site, nola.com:

We can't afford much else than the war in Iraq, thanks to our unjustified invasion four long years ago.

A far more serious case of corruption than the William Jefferson case is that the U.S. Corps of Engineers was busy building dams, levees, hospitals, and health clinics in Iraq when Katrina ravaged New Orleans in the summer of 2005.

The city became a charity case, and its Charity Hospital, founded 250 years ago, was the exemplar, a huge hospital already crumbling when Katrina hit. Read Clayton James Cubitt's elegy from October 2005:

And a horror house during Katrina: Hundreds of patients, along with doctors and staff, were trapped by Katrina's floodwaters for nearly a week with no food, power, or water. Patients who died were moved into stairwells. Other hospitals were evacuated before rescuers focused on Charity.

Bush Beat reader Jeffrey Schwartz up at MIT, who tipped me off to this latest indignity to New Orleans, neatly sums up the political realities of the current situation: