House Armed Services Committee Kept in Dark on War Planning

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During today’s Petraeus-and-Crocker congressional showcase, Representative Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Texas) asked the esteemed witnesses what they felt about increasing our diplomatic engagement with the Middle East’s regional powers. Ortiz supports our initial efforts at diplomacy, but would like to see vastly more of it used in the region.

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker signaled their approval, but Ortiz stopped them short to follow up: are we engaging players in the region diplomatically, he asked. I know you support it, he said, but are we actually doing it?

I called Ortiz up to ask why a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee doesn’t know if the United States is using diplomacy as part of our war effort. He told me it has to do with the administration and the secrecy it has repeatedly used, often with no good reason, over the last six years. Perhaps they are supplying the House Foreign Affairs Committee with more information on the subject, he said, but they certainly aren’t giving us any.

Ortiz has been in Congress a long time. Elected in 1982, he’s served with four presidents. He said he has a hard time remembering one who was less inclined than George W. Bush to treat Congress as a separate but equal branch of government.

So if any Republicans give you the old line about Republicans running government more efficiently, tell them that the House Armed Services Committee doesn’t know the extent to which we are using diplomacy in the Middle East. That should fix their misconception.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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