Washington File

Most people believe it was former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli who first said "there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics."

Mark Twain popularized the saying, of course. But my favourite quote has always been that of Lawrence Lowell, a former president of Harvard, who said statistics "are like veal pies, good if you know the person that made them and are sure of the ingredients."

In any event, on Monday, six American soldiers were killed in Iraq. That brought this year's American death toll in that poor country to 852, making 2007 the deadliest year for American troops since the conflict began in 2003.

Yet for some time now, President George W. Bush has been saying "freedom's happening in Iraq and we're making progress," adding Iraqi troops have been "taking their country back."

Ignoring the annual figures, Bush and the White House press machine have been stressing U.S. fatalities for the month of October. At just 38 dead, it was the lowest of the year and the lowest since March 2006.

The administration argues that this is not only good news but, even better, an improving trend. It may have a point.

In April 2007, when the big troop buildup — the so-called surge — was completed and the fighting against insurgents was the toughest, the American death toll was 104. In May, that shot up to 126 and it has been dropping steadily ever since.

More than numbers

These are all verifiable statistics compiled by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a respected website that tracks military deaths.

There are also reassuring claims coming from within Iraq itself.

The first and only other time I heard the expression "directed assignment" was during the last months of the Vietnam War.

At the time, U.S. diplomats were not volunteering to serve in Vietnam in the numbers that were needed and the mandarins at Foggy Bottom, as the U.S. State Department is somewhat fondly called, were forced to order certain individuals to go where they were told or leave the service.

The directives came amidst news stories that suggested U.S. diplomatic personnel were getting wimpy and that the zeal to serve Washington was wavering in the face of personal danger.

That sentiment couldn't have been more wrong. As a news reporter who took one of the last helicopters out of Saigon that final day, I can tell you a great many U.S. diplomats, particularly the younger ones, had to be forced to leave that country.

Many were working in humanitarian areas and they left only very reluctantly. They were as brave as they come, but they had stopped believing in the overall mission.

I have been going over that period in my mind these past few days as once again Washington is resorting to directed assignments to send its foreign service officers to a war zone, this time in Iraq.

No longer a career-advancer

As is the case in most countries, American foreign service postings are highly competitive. The bidding for jobs in the embassies that count, those in the headlines, is fierce.

In the case of Vietnam, there was a time when everyone wanted a job there. It was a campaign ribbon that would count toward future advancement and it was also a cause that mattered.

That changed when the protests grew stateside. When failure jumped out, not only in every news story from Vietnam, but also in every diplomatic cable back to Washington.

"Not worth it," became the mantra of the day. I would be surprised if it wasn't making the rounds again.

This was the week that Canada's auditor general, Sheila Fraser, reported on defence and border protection.

As usual, she found financial wastage and government ineptitude, though not on a scale that shook any foundations.

Contrast that with her U.S. counterpart, Comptroller General David Walker. He was telling Americans, among other things, that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "are going to cost $2 trillion by the time we are done." So far, he calculates, the cost has been a half-trillion dollars, which works out to $500 billion and counting.

That was just one snowflake in a blizzard of bad news that Walker laid out Wednesday as he testified before the Senate budget committee.

Future generations ought to be terrified.

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker before a Senate committee (Dennis Cook/Associated Press)

Among his calculations: By the year 2034, Medicare and Social Security payments will eat up 20 per cent of the gross national product and will amount to the equivalent of the entire 2007 federal budget.

He also noted that the current value of unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Social Security and other entitlements down the road is $53 trillion. And that the current $9 trillion national debt is eating away at the country's resources "through the miracle of compound interest."

As Walker puts it, the longer the U.S. waits to deal with these issues, the more taxes tomorrow's adults will have to pay. And that buck-passing, he says, is nothing short of immoral.

The wake-up tour

Walker is an unusual bird in Washington. He was appointed by former president Bill Clinton to a 15-year term and can't be fired. He also heads up the all-powerful GAO, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, so you can't hide anything from him.

Most important, he's angry at the moment and there is nothing official Washington can do about it.

It was an impressive scene at the U.S. State Department on Wednesday, even if it was a little tattered around the edges. George W. Bush was there to update American policy on Cuba.

To the president's right was a roomful of specially invited Cuban dissidents. On stage, he was surrounded by the wives and children of four Cuban activists who are currently in jail on the island for what might be called dubious political crimes.

Also in attendance was the cream of the Latin American diplomatic corps, minus Venezuela. As its president, Hugo Chavez, is a particularly close friend of Cuban Leader Fidel Castro, Venezuela wasn't invited.

Filling out the scene were a bevy of flags, a rostrum with the presidential seal and a host of State Department officials. The occasion? Waiting for Fidel to die.

Everyone here is expecting the ailing Castro to die soon and the official American thinking is that an exuberant Cuban population will to take to the streets, democracy rising as Castro is lowered into his grave.

For nearly 50 years, Washington has practised a policy of isolation towards the island nation. It has never worked but now the moment the White House has been waiting for appears tantalizingly close.

On October 12th, Verizon Communications, the second largest telecom company in the U.S., sent a letter to investigators at the House committee on energy and commerce.

The contents of that letter surprised the investigators. It ought to scare the rest of us as well.

In the letter, Verizon admitted that it had provided the telephone records of its customers to federal authorities on hundreds of occasions since 2005 and did so without having received any court orders.

From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon gave personal data to federal authorities, without legal cover, 720 times. That works out to at least once every working day.

Verizon defended its action by saying that it had been told by authorities these were emergencies and that it was not Verizon's role to second-guess these government requests.

The company also said it turned over information to authorities armed with court orders or subpoenas a total of 94,000 times during that same two-year period.

Verizon said police and intelligence agencies also asked not only for information about the person making the call, but on all the people that person called and the names of all the people these recipients called as well.

Pawns or partners

This revelation came as the energy and commerce committee continues its investigation into telephone companies' compliance with government surveillance programs.

The country's largest carrier, AT&T;, also replied to the committee's requests. The telephone giant provided no detail of its surveillance activities but it agreed with Verizon that telephone companies were not equipped nor prepared to determine the legitimacy of federal requests for customer information because resisting might slow efforts to save lives.

Legal experts say that is nonsense since, if lives are at stake, there is a provision in the law that gives the feds the ability to get a legal tap as quickly as they want.

Let's check the statistics first.

According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, fully five per cent of the U.S. workforce was composed of illegal workers in the most recent year for which statistics are available, 2005.

Pew also listed those occupations with the highest proportion of illegal workers: agriculture, roofing, construction, landscaping, painting and cooks, all with at least 20 per cent.

In sum, according to Pew, 7.2 million illegal immigrants account for at least 10 per cent of all low-skilled U.S. workers and five per cent of the total American workforce.

That's one set of statistics. The second set deals with social security numbers.

Right from the time he took office, President George W. Bush has struggled with the problem of illegal immigration. His proposed overhaul of the law was rejected by Congress this past summer. So, to appease his supporters, he stepped up enforcement by, among other things, using social security numbers to verify an employee's status.

An employer would send a newly-hired worker's SSN to Washington to make certain the number matched with the employee's name and background. If there was a discrepancy, the employer must resolve it or fire the worker within 90 days.

Employers soon found out that attempting to resolve an error was time consuming and that the bureaucracy could seldom deal with any case within 90 days. So it became a matter of ignore Washington or fire the worker. Most ignored Washington.

It was just after five in the morning when the phone rang.

The CBC desk in Toronto was on the line telling me to get to the White House immediately: Al Gore had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

A couple of minutes were spent telling me when our first TV item would be aired and a few other technical details, then came the question: would Gore run for the presidency?

I've had that question all day, from the Secret Service guys at the White House gate, other journalists and presidential staffers, even the groundskeepers. It's on everyone's mind.

I don't know the answer, but I doubt it.

There is pressure on him, to be sure. Many Americans felt he was robbed of the presidency in 2000 by the supreme court decision that put an end to a full recount. And there is no shortage of voices telling Gore that this is his chance.

But the man is too smart now to succumb to that siren call.

You see, the man I have watched for years, and with whom I have a nodding acquaintance, is finally a free man.

The two Al Gores

Years go, when I covered the U.S. Congress for an American network, I saw the two Al Gores that many journalists and his staffers knew. One Gore, in private moments, was affable, funny, smart and with it. The other Gore, in public view, was stiff, wary and often pretentious.

You know the jokes.

Only in America can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

Only in America do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille on the key pads.

There is a new one: only in America do they have primaries.

The punch line isn't as obvious but it's just as odd.

Elsewhere in the world there have only been two provinces in Italy, Apulia and Calabria, that tried the primary system; that was in 2005. Apparently the Italians didn't like the result and have little enthusiasm for doing it again.

Of course, there are several kinds of primaries, which are essentially elections to select who the candidates will be in an upcoming election and that only adds to the confusion of the process.

In every marathon there is a point when the eventual winner makes his move and pulls away from the pack.

Finding that point, when you have the strength to make it happen, defines the real champions. And over the next few days, two Republican contenders with real chances to win their party's nomination, will have to make that breakaway decision.

The candidates are Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Fred Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, better known to many for his role on the hit series Law and Order.

First Romney.

The former governor has solid Republican credentials and also proven, crossover appeal: Massachusetts is arguably the most liberal state in the union and Republican successes there are as rare as white buffaloes.

There are a number of reasons for Republicans to like him.

Among them, he is a fiscal conservative, the only candidate to sign a pledge not to increase taxes. He supports the war in Iraq and the president's policy on the "surge" of American troops there as well as charter schools, tougher immigration laws and the death penalty.

On some social issues, his record is more grey than black or white, which is a problem for the party's religious base.

At one time, he supported pro-choice for abortion as well as (limited) stem cell research. But he has dramatically changed his positions on those issues, telling critics in a famous exchange with reporters that he is "sick and tired of the holier than thou" attitude of those of have been pro-life longer than him.

While he was governor, same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, but Romney fought that ruling and succumbed only after it was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

His biggest political problem is that he is a Mormon. And that has been sinking his fortunes in polls among the GOP.

In November 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson's aides told him the American public needed a confidence boost on Vietnam.

That year, you may recall, was the real beginning of public protests against the war. Mainstream America was beginning to join with the, until-then, largely hippie and campus-inspired opposition.

It was at that point that Johnson gave birth to the famous phrase, "Light at the end of the tunnel." The president was saying victory was possible and a corner was being turned.

At the same time in 1967, Johnson sent his top military commander, Gen. William Westmoreland to Congress to spread the word.

Westmoreland told lawmakers American forces were making progress and would prevail. The White House talked about their strategy of "Vietnamization," which was the term for South Vietnamese soldiers being trained to take the place of U.S. soldiers, who could then come home.

It never happened. There was no light. And no fight.

Flash forward to 2007. You must admire George W. Bush and the political strategy his administration has followed these past few days in Washington. The White House won the headlines it wanted.

Still surging

Without using the light-in-the-tunnel analogy, both the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and Washington's ambassador to that country, Ryan Crocker, told Congress that success in Iraq was possible but it needed time and patience.

But unlike 1967, this president and this general added the ultimate inducement: troops would be coming home and soon. You could hear the air going out of the withdrawal arguments used by war critics.