Face of Defense: Soldier Returns to Service After Two-Decade Break

In a room lit only by sunlight streaming in, a soldier bites through the plastic wrapper of a package of pencils. With children waiting excitedly in the adjoining rooms, there is not time to waste pulling out a knife. ...

After separating from the Army in 1986, Wilkerson, a Las Vegas native, said he missed being in the military, and that during his break in service he carried on the values of discipline and upholding standards that he had learned during his first enlistment. Wilkerson decided to re-enlist after the Army raised its maximum enlistment age to 42 [he's 43].

“I’ve got a 21-year-old son, and there are kids (serving) who are younger than him,” he said. “I’m still in shape and capable of doing a good job. Maybe my service will mean that another young guy his age will be able to return to his family.”

In the long run, Wilkerson said, he plans to serve his country until retirement. Meanwhile, back in the Bayrk schoolhouse, smiling children swarm around Wilkerson and his fellow soldiers as they pass out school supplies and stuffed animals. The “Old Man” returns the children’s smiles with one of his own.

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US Forces Capture Militia Leader in Iraq

Via Ed Morrissey, we get the good news that a key militia leader has been captured by US forces in Muqtada al-Sadr's stronghold of Sadr City:

The main suspect detained Monday is believed to be in charge of criminal operations for "special groups" in the Iraqi provinces of Wasit, Babil and Najaf, the U.S. military said in a statement. He was allegedly involved in coordinating weapons shipments and planning attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, it said. It did not characterize the second suspect.

In fact, recent discoveries of weapons caches point to the fact that the Iranians may be once again arming their Shia allies after a pause of several months. Why, is not clear. But the capture of the militia commander will likely lead to some valuable intelligence on both the militia and their paymasters and suppliers in Iran.

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Poll: Pakistanis Turn Against Bin Laden

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Sympathy for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has dropped sharply in Pakistan amid a wave of deadly violence, according to the results of a recent opinion poll.

According to the poll results only 24 percent of Pakistanis approved of bin Laden when the survey was conducted last month, compared with 46 percent during a similar survey in August.

Backing for al-Qaida, whose senior leaders are believed to be hiding along the Pakistani-Afghan border, fell to 18 percent from 33 percent.

Support for the Taliban, whose Pakistani offshoots have seized control of much of the lawless border area and have been engaged in a growing war against security forces, dropped by half to 19 percent from 38 percent, the results said.

[wow]

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Two Myths About Afghanistan

As Western leaders and Congress debate NATO's responsibilities in Afghanistan, it's time to dissolve two great American illusions about Afghanistan. The first is that Hamid Karzai is a good president who looks after American interests. The second is that the situation in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse. Both of these unchallenged "facts" are dangerous errors.
--
Karzai manages by panic, with massive corruption and an absence of vision. It's a tribute to the Afghan people's energy and U.S.-implemented economic regulations and reforms that Afghanistan's gross domestic product has more than doubled since the invasion. But Karzai has sought to derail grass-roots efforts at building democracy and to stifle Afghanistan's nascent civil society, repeatedly siding with fundamentalists against progressives.
--
Today, most Afghans are living in the best conditions they have ever known, slowly growing their country out of poverty. Most of the north and west is peaceful. Much of the east is, too, except some areas that are very undeveloped and very remote or directly border Pakistan's lawless tribal belt. American estimates for the 14 provinces and 158 districts of Regional Command East show that 58 percent of the kinetic activity there last year (direct fire, indirect fire and detonations of improvised explosive devices) occurred in three provinces (Konar, Paktika and Ghazni). Fifty-two percent occurred in 12 of the 158 districts, and about 75 percent took place in 30 of the districts.
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Considering where it started, Afghanistan isn't doing too badly. It would be doing much better with a courageous, inspired president committed to honest and transparent government.

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Pentagon Chief Says NATO's Very Survival is at Stake in Afghanistan Mission

Survival of the NATO alliance, a cornerstone of American security policy for six decades, is at stake in the debate over how the United States and Europe should share the burden of fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.

"We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not. Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance,"

A central theme of Gates' speech was his assertion that al-Qaida extremists, either in Afghanistan or elsewhere, pose a greater threat to Europe than many Europeans realize.

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Can Germany muster the courage to commit to fighting in southern Afghanistan?

Munich - When someone asks Hans-Ulrich Klose if he is the only member among the Bundestag's 614 parliamentarians willing to openly call for a move by German troops into the fighting and dying of Afghanistan's south, he provides this gracious sidestep: ''We are six who believe things must change.'' But the others remain in the closet, right? Right, Klose answers. (Snip) the idea persists that Germany can go on providing materiel and a kind of uniformed alternative service at a noncombatant's distance from the battlefield.

[translation: 'no']

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Russia threatens gas cutoff

Moscow - Russia's state-controlled gas supplier Gazprom on Monday gave neighbouring Ukraine a reprieve of a few hours in a debt dispute, but still said it would stop sending gas to the country of 47 million people if an agreement isn't reached. The conflict is being watched nervously in European Union countries that get Russian gas through pipelines crossing Ukraine, fearing a repeat of the supply disruptions that hit during January 2006 when Russia halted gas to Ukraine for several days amid a fierce argument over price hikes.

[this is why Reagan fought (successfully) against any pipeline from Russia to Europe throughout his presidency - Europe will be little more than a Russian satellite once addicted to its energy.]

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WELFARE REFORM IN INDIANA

[government in acton]

Like many other states, Indiana's social services have been bureaucratic and fragmented. As a result, they are not convenient for the state's welfare recipients and are costly to operate. Under the state's system:

> Clients must apply for each social service in person at a state office during business hours, and each visit requires an average wait of two to three hours.
> In almost three out of four cases (72 percent), eligibility is not determined during the initial interview -- requiring additional verification and often additional office visits.
> Almost every action in the eligibility process requires a different form and/or notice, and each of the state's 94 counties has had its own set of procedures.

These conditions provide the following results:

Thirty-five percent of eligibility determinations for Medicaid long-term care in 2003 contained errors, costing taxpayers an estimated $10 million to $50 million per year -- and the federal government up to $100 million annually.
Twenty-six percent of TANF benefit determinations contained errors.
Twelve percent of food stamp benefit determinations were in error -- and Indiana ranks 48th among the states in recouping food stamp overpayments.


[Such abysmal performance can only evolve in the protected environment of government monopolies where there are no consequences for failure(can any of us image keeping our jobs {or a company surviving} with a 30% error rate?) - worse; it's not just possible but virtually inevitable in such circumstance. And this is the path some what to place our healthcare system upon?]

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Oops, Biofuels Actually Make Global Warming Worse …

Reporting what global warming skeptics have been saying for years, several media outlets on Friday acknowledged that biofuel production could do more harm than good when it comes to 'fighting' "global warming."

Two new scientific studies suggest clearing land to produce biofuel ingredients will contribute more to warming than sticking with fossil fuels because of the removal of carbon-consuming trees for farmland. The findings "could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels," The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reported February 8.

That's not a shock to anyone who's been paying attention. Biofuel has been criticized as an inefficient pollutant that negatively affects even grocery prices. The shocker is that some few in the American media are actually paying attention to it.

[forget it - there's too much money involved to let science interfere - if policy changes it will be because voters forced the issue. Et tu?...]

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Coldest Afghan winter in years claiming life and limb

Herat, Afghanistan – Several men lay side by side in hospital beds, the stubs of their amputated arms and legs wrapped in fresh bandages. They are not victims of war or land mines, but of frostbite. It's the coldest this impoverished, war-ravaged nation has been in at least a decade – that's as far back as Afghanistan's weather records go – and so far, the harsh weather has been blamed for more than 650 deaths.

[this isn't climate; it's weather - remember that when we've a warm year and the nets go nuts]

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YOUR $455,000 LOAN TO UNCLE SAM

The unfunded liabilities Uncle Sam has incurred on our behalf through already promised entitlements in programs such as Social Security, Medicare and the veterans benefits now exceed by $53 trillion, says Comptroller General David Walker, who heads the Government Accountability Office.

"I know it is hard to make sense of what 'trillions' means, one way to think about it is this: Imagine we decided to put aside and invest today enough to cover these promises tomorrow. It would take about $455,000 per American household -- or $175,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States."

Of course, every man, woman and child does not work ... when you divide the unfunded costs of promised entitlement benefits by the number of Americans who work full time, says Walker, it equals $410,000 per worker. A married couple making $80,000 per year would have to set aside all their income for more than five years to cover their share.

Of course, elected officials in Washington, D.C., have no intention of making Americans working today pay for the entitlement benefits these elected officials are promising to deliver, that would destroy one of the primary incentives politicians have for making these promises, which is to make the voters think that, on net, the politicians are giving them things rather than taking things away.

Some day Americans will look back across the wreckage of our coming fiscal catastrophe and ask: Why didn't our leaders see it coming? The answer will be: They did.

[if we don't demand, through communication and elections that our politicians address this issue, they won't - until after the disaster. Instead, we've presidential candidates promising yet more government entitlement programs being taken seriously...]

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MSNBC Says 'Conservative' 10 Times as Much as 'Liberal' on Tuesday

Imagine campaign events happening in 22 states at the same time, and that at such contests, two liberals, two conservatives, and one moderate candidate are vying for the public's votes.

You would expect the words "liberal" and "conservative" to be equally interspersed in media coverage of these events if indeed press outlets were impartial, right?

Well, count MSNBC out of this logical calculus, for on Tuesday evening, the unabashedly left-leaning cable news network actually used the word "conservative" tens times as much as "liberal."

In fact, the actual tally for these descriptives during MSNBC's Super Tuesday primary coverage was (h/t NBer Gary Hall):

Liberal -- fifteen
Conservative -- 155

Now, for the cynical that might think anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann used the code word "progressive" to disguise the real political leaning of those they clearly esteem, this word only showed up once in the entire transcript.

[Taken alone; border line trivial. Taken in the context of the frequency with which labels are disproportionally (if not misleadingly) applied, it's pervasive, and part of the liberal media's subtle {and sometimes not} manipulation of language to political ends]

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[PS: Bernard Goldberg asked an interesting question last night: if Michael Savage, an ultra consecrative (i.e., wing-nut from the right) is too extreme and politicized to anchor a national newscasts, how is it that Keith Olberman, an equally extreme wing-nut from the left, is permitted to do so? rhetorical...]