The World Around You

The New York Times reports on Congress’s return from summer recess today. Indications are that the Bush administration is going to be pressured to outline a plan for bringing stability to Iraq.

“I hope and I assume the president is going to address the American people in some sort of forum in the next couple of weeks to outline where we are and where he thinks we need to go,” said Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican and former Senate majority leader. “And we are going to have to look to the cost.”

Mr. Lott is among a number of Republicans who are returning to the Capitol with a long list of questions for the White House on Iraq. Others include Senator John McCain and Representative Jim Kolbe, Arizona Republicans who recently visited the region on an official fact-finding trip.

“They are going to lose their credibility with the Iraqi people if we don’t get services up,” like electricity and water, Mr. Kolbe said. “But they are going to lose their credibility with the American people if they are not up front and tell us what the cost is, what we can expect.”

Of course, none of what has occurred in Iraq should have been unexpected, though it appears the administration never considered it. The tunnel vision that appears to exist throughout the Bush team is appalling. Potential scenarios are ignored if they don’t fit the party line. This is no way to run a large operation.

A Birmingham News report this morning appears to confirm the worst fears of some about the weapons incinerator in Anniston,

Two sarin leaks were detected within the incinerator complex at Anniston Army Depot when a furnace was fired up for the first time Sunday, a spokesman for the Army said.

Incinerator officials also now say that another alarm activated two weeks ago, said to be false at the time, also was positive for the deadly nerve gas.

In one of the Sunday cases and the 2-week-old case, the alarms detected the sarin vapor only within confines of a room with no inhabitants, said Army spokesman Mike Abrams. He said he did not know the details of the third alarm, which took place sometime after the Army began burning sarin at 1:55 p.m. Sunday.

However, Abrams also indicated these types of scenarios were not unforeseen, in fact, they were expected. If that is true, were citizens warned of this possibility beforehand?