From Iraq fallback plan to tomatoes....

From American Progress:

Think Fast

The Pentagon has “begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters” in case the President’s escalation fails. The new strategy is more in line with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and is “based in part on the U.S. experience in El Salvador in the 1980s.”

Tourism to the United States has dropped by 17 percent since 2001. “Two-thirds of respondents worried they could be held back at airports because of a mistake in form filling or a misstatement to immigration officials. Half said officials were rude and that they feared them more than the threat of terrorism or crime.”

Some officials within the White House are calling on President Bush to uphold his pledge to “have the highest of high standards” when it comes to granting pardons. “What you saw was a vice president’s office that was out of control,” a former White House staffer tells Newsweek, arguing against pardoning Scooter Libby.

“A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship.”
The Army expects to have an “annual shortage of 3,000 [midlevel] officers through 2013 as it increases its ranks by 40,000 soldiers.” The Government Accountability Office notes that “officer retention has been a problem for the Army, in part because it “continues to remain heavily involved in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.’”

Former U.S. attorney John McKay tells Newsweek that after he was fired in December, he received a call from the Justice Department asking if he intended to go public: “He was offering me a deal: you stay silent and the attorney general won’t say anything bad about you.”

And finally: They don’t have habeas, but they do have hibiscus. “A select group of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been allowed to plant gardens for the first time, a military spokesman said. Prisoners in Camp 4, which holds the ‘most compliant’ detainees, started growing tomatoes several weeks ago in concrete soil-filled planters.”

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