HEROES: Wounded Marine Prepares to Return to Iraq

Marine Corps Sgt. Jeremy F. Boutwell, 23, knows a thing or two about honor, courage and commitment.

An intelligence specialist with Headquarters and Service Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, Boutwell is planning for an upcoming deployment to Iraq after recovering from severe injuries suffered during an attack in Iraq’s Anbar province on March 14, 2004.

“Honestly, leaving Iraq was the worst time of my life,” he said. “It was nice being around home for about the first month, because I got to see my family and friends, but then it tore me up inside knowing my buddies were still heavily engaged at the time (in Iraq).”

Boutwell said he never lost his desire to be a Marine during the surgeries and his ensuing recovery, but quickly found himself in another battle: the fight to re-enlist.

“Headquarters tried to retire me from the Corps when I was stuck down in Texas for my surgeries. But I didn’t want to get out, so I fought the decision, and they finally let me re-enlist. You just really got to believe in being a Marine and believe in what you’re doing, and that’ll carry you as far as you want to go.”

Boutwell is now preparing for a second deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Boutwell said he is excited about seeing the positive changes between his last deployment and his upcoming deployment.

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Families Return to Iraqi Town After Security Gains

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq, Feb. 5, 2008 – About 1,000 residents returned to a town southwest of Baghdad last week after learning coalition and Iraqi forces had secured the area.

Al Qaeda in Iraq infiltrated Zambraniyah last year. Local citizens said those who refused to support the terrorists were killed. Now, citizens are standing up to protect their community, and coalition forces also have helped organize a “Sons of Iraq” group to aid with local security through a program formerly known as concerned local citizens.

More than 500 Sons of Iraq in the Zambraniyah area have been recruited and organized into a force that works closely with the Iraqi army and coalition forces. More than 100 improvised explosive devices have been disposed of with their help, officials said.

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Don't be surprised if terrorists stage a Tet offensive

This spring marks the 40th anniversary of Hanoi's offensive. It will also mark the umpteenth time American enemies have attempted to win in the psychological and political clash of an American election what they cannot win on the battlefield.
[snip]
At the operational level, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) suffered a terrible defeat. As NVA regiments emerged from jungle-covered enclaves and massed for attack, they exposed themselves to the firepower of U.S. aircraft and artillery. The NVA units temporarily seized many cities at the cost of extremely heavy casualties.

However, Tet achieved the grand political ends North Vietnam sought. Tet was a strategic psychological attack launched in a presidential election year during a primary season featuring media-savvy "peace" candidates.
[snip]
The terrorists will attempt a series of terror spectaculars, and kill several hundred civilians in the process, because — in the quadrennial turmoil of an American presidential contest — sensational carnage that even momentarily seeds the perception of defeat is their only chance of victory.

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AFP Revises History of 2006 Israel-Lebanon War

In an article previewing the possible damage to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a result of the Winograd Report into Israel's 34-day war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, AFP's Ron Bousso echoes a questionable claim about the 2006 Israeli War against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon:

"Major Tomer Buhadana was one of those wounded during the last 48 hours of war, which in all killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. "

The Lebanese killed were "mostly civilians?" -- The Daily Telegraph noted during the conflict:

But Hezbollah lost more than 500 men, even though it confirmed only some 60-odd killed. Israel identified 440 dead guerrillas by name and address, and experience shows that Israeli figures are half to two-thirds of the enemy's real casualties. Therefore, Amidror estimated, Hezbollah's death toll might be as high as 700.

A media analysis by Steven Stotsky of The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) which sought to provide an actual account of the Hezbollah and civilan dead, arriving at a rough estimate of 500-600 Hezbollah fighters among the roughly 1,000-1,200 Lebanese killed—roughly half of the total.

The conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 created roughly 1,000-1,200 fatalities in Lebanon, at least half of which were clearly Hezbollah fighters. Exactly how is that 'mostly civilians'?

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itsy bitsy action button email goes here ...

French deputies approve amendment permitting adoption of EU treaty

French MPs have voted in favour of amending their country's constitution to allow adoption of the EU Lisbon Treaty. Prime Minister Francois Fillon called the decision: "a vote that distinguishes the actors of history from the spectators."

The Versailles assembly, bringing together both the French Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, voted 560 to 181. Of the 893 voters present, 741 votes were cast

The opposition Socialists abstained in protest at the decision to "take the parliamentary road" to pass the treaty rather than hold a referendum.

[i.e., the French people voted against it - so the government took away their ability to have a say in it and passed it 'for' them...]

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Tax changes 'to drive out foreign super-rich'

More than half of Britain's wealthiest people plan to leave or scale back their UK investments after a tax clampdown on ''non-domiciled'' foreigners, a survey has found. The study, by the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners suggests the Government's plans to tax the foreign super-rich would be counter-productive, as tax revenues would fall and assets would be sold.

[so it has exactly the opposite effect than desired - but it feels good to soak the rich - lets do it anyway]

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China does not allow democracy

Taipei - A senior Taiwanese official said that Beijing's move to delay any direct election for Hong Kong's leader until 2017 underlined why Taiwan could not accept reunification with China. Tung Chen-yuan, a deputy chief of Taiwan's China policy-making body, known as the Mainland Affairs Council, said the decision sent a clear signal ''that the Chinese Communist Party does not allow genuine democracy''

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A CLEAR CHOICE

Meaningful health care reform has to be national. But the answer is not to subject the whole country to ideas that don't work at the state level. What the country needs is a shift in priorities, from extending coverage to attacking costs.

Once that decision is made -- to make affordability, not scope of coverage, the first objective -- then there's a clear choice to make. Policymakers have just two options if they want to reduce the cost of something: They can stimulate competition or impose price controls.

Controls can be in the form of regulations or take-it-or-leave it deals based on the government's buying power. The more they work to hold down costs, the more they limit services and choices for the consumer.

Control is the norm in most of the world's health care. Competition is the insurgent model. It's getting a test in the Medicare prescription drug program, which actually has cost less than expected.

Its key idea is to give every individual a real choice of insurers and plan types, with incentives for buying frugally and choosing the one that delivers the best coverage and care for the money.
The incentives could be provided by tax-favored savings accounts (HSAs, expanded to cover premium payments as well as out-of-pocket costs).

The harder part would be to provide the true competition, which is now being held back by a system of state-by-state regulations that load costly mandates on insurers and stands in the way of a national insurance market.

Congress created the current regulatory regime and could get rid of it (there's no constitutional barrier here), but the political climate would have to change first. Democrats will have to stop scoring cheap points by demonizing the insurance business. They'll have to recognize that insurers are part of the solution, not the problem, and that profit in health care is not a dirty word.

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Concealed-carry course graduates are armed but not dangerous

On a cold and early Saturday morning, the class at Scarlet Oaks in Sharonville begins the usual way. Students take their seats and the instructor makes an announcement: "No guns today."
--
The Great Oaks Police Academy Concealed Carry Course has a great deal. For $25, I can rent a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and get 200 rounds - cheaper than cartridges alone. The course is excellent. We start by naming the parts of a cartridge, a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol, then move on to 25 true-false questions on dozens of topics. "Being armed is a tremendous responsibility," it says. True.
--
If every gun owner took a class like this, we'd all be safer. But meth-heads, crack junkies and street muggers don't take classes. They don't get permits or certificates like the one Lengle gave me Sunday. They just grab a "nine" and use it against defenseless victims.

Each month another concealed-carry class graduates from Scarlet Oaks. And the bad guys are a little less sure their next victim is defenseless.

[it's disappointing and distasteful to think our populace needs to be armed to counter the armed bad guys. it's delusional not to recognize that that's indeed the case.]

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MSM Gives Brady Gun Banners The Stage

[meanwhile...]

Recently, the anti-Second Amendment group, The Brady campaign to Prevent gun Violence, came out with another of their "scorecards" where they rank states according to how bad or good gun laws there are -- according to their anti-gun reckoning, of course. Upon its release, the MSM warmed up its anti-gun machine and began touting this "scorecard" as if it were gospel. Headlines blared how "good" a state was because it restricted guns or how "bad" it was if it ranked as a state with fewer restrictions on guns according to Brady. Of course, all this assumes straight out that this Brady organization "scorecard" is the correct view of guns, that being that all guns are bad. Period.

I will feature two of those stories to show the point, here. One is from the Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio. The second is a story from the News-Times, Danbury, Connecticut. The first laments that its state ranks "low," in scores and the other happily touts that its state is "third-best."

[typical]

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Political Leaders Should be Jailed for Questioning Global Warming

Canada's National Post reported Thursday that David Suzuki, a Canadian scientist and high-profile television personality has called for the jailing of political leaders that ignore the junk science behind the anthropogenic global warming myth.

At a Montreal conference last Thursday, Suzuki exhorted a packed house of 600 to hold politicians legally accountable for what he called an intergenerational crime. Though a spokesman said yesterday the call for imprisonment was not meant to be taken literally, Dr. Suzuki reportedly made similar remarks in an address at the University of Toronto last month:

"What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act," said Dr. Suzuki.

Yet, for those actually interested in real science and not the inflammatory hyperbole folks like Suzuki and Nobel Laureate Al Gore are disingenuously peddling, the following statement by the Canadian was quite telling:

"It's an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years."

And therein lies the problem, Doctor: all you folks advancing this myth are only interested in recent statistics and data.

By contrast, those truly researching climate choose to look at numbers and measurements through the millennia to reach conclusions about how today's weather-related observations compare to the past. You should try it sometime, Doctor. It's called "Science."

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Report: Border Patrol Confirms Incursions by Mexican Officials Into U.S.

The U.S. Border Patrol confirmed 29 recorded incursions into the U.S. by Mexican military or other government agents in the last 12 months, according to a report made public Wednesday by Judicial Watch, a U.S.-based public interest group. The group obtained the information through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The report includes a description of a January 2006 confrontation between Texas officials and several armed men in military uniforms who were seen in a military Humvee near Fort Hancock, Texas. No shots were fired and the suspects fled back into Mexico. [snip]

"These documents not only show the dangerous and chaotic situation at the Mexican border, but also the complicity of some Mexican government agents in violating U.S. law."

Between 1996 and 2006, there were 253 confirmed incursions into the U.S by Mexican government officials, according to figures supplied by the Border Patrol.

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THE DEFICIT DECEPTION

The ink isn't even dry, but already the squawking can be heard about President Bush's new five-year budget plan and the "exploding" deficits it contains. As usual, it's a case of misdirection to keep the blame-game going so Americans don't focus on what's NOT being addressed in Washington. To put the 'exploding' deficits in perspective:

> The Bush-projected '08/'09 deficits will amount to about 2.9 percent and 2.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from about 1.2 percent this year, but about in line with the average -- 2.6 percent -- since 1980.

> If you take those projections seriously, then you have to look at what is predicted for the outlying years as well; the Bush budget has not only the budget deficit shrinking but disappearing and going into surplus by 2012.

Congress' failure to address our looming entitlements crisis, something that President Bush has brought up repeatedly only to be rebuffed, almost certainly will create a true fiscal crisis sometime in the next decade -- one that won't be papered over by one-time tax hikes, or bogus "spending cuts". This is what we need Congress to focus on and focus now.

Instead, their most likely action will be to repeal the Bush tax cuts, hitting the average taxpayer with a $1,800 tax hike in 2011 -- enough to sink the economy and drag down government revenues for years to come.

[the only real question is if we'll have a President who will veto such attempts, or encourage them...]

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Barack Oba-moderate?

It's one of the great MSM rituals of presidential politics: the labeling of leading Dems as "moderates" or "centrists." Gail Collins honors the tradition in her New York Times column of today. We'll do a reality check, but first let's look at the excerpt from Collins's column:

"Most Americans want a moderate government, but nobody has ever before been able to make moderate seem interesting, let alone sexy."

Newsweek's Richard Wolffe, a frequent Olbermann guest, did the same think back in July, calling Obama a centrist. I wrote about it at the time, so let me dust off that same list of some of the interest group ratings, culled from Project Vote Smart, that Obama has earned over the years.

0% from Americans for Tax Reform
100% from the NAACP
8% from the American Conservative Union
100% from the NEA [teachers union]
100% from NOW
88% from the American Immigration Lawyers Association
0% from the Federation for American Immigration Reform
100% from the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees
100% from Americans for Democratic Action [gold-standard of old lefty groups]
[and more...][snip]

Question: How would the MSM react if a conservative with ratings that were the mirror-image of Obama's tried to present himself as a 'moderate'?

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