Face of Defense: Engineer Sees Hospital as ‘Once in Lifetime’ Project

The Basra Children’s Hospital project can get its hooks into people. Take Army Lt. Col. Kenneth McDonald, for example. He’s extended his tour in Iraq to two years from one to help bring the project to a successful conclusion. [snip]

“My first day after arriving in Tallil and then driving to Basra, we were hit,” he recalled, adding that he wondered what he’d gotten himself into. The city had more than its share of indirect fire attacks, with more than 1,000 mortar rounds landing on Contingency Operating Base Basra over the summer. [snip]

Before extending his tour, McDonald said, he did a lot of soul searching. He concluded with respect to the hospital job that “something as significant as this comes only once a lifetime.”

[ in·dom·i·ta·ble]

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Media's Basra Narrative Falls Apart. What's the Effect on the Election?

the New York Times and the rest of the drive-by press had determined in late March and early April that Basra was yet another Iraqi and U.S. failure. But it was the predictions which were failures; [a few of the examples given]:

New York Times on March 27th, 2008 -
Iraqi Army's Assault on Militias in Basra Stalls:
New York Times on March 31, 2008 -
Firsthand Look at Basra Shows Value of White Flag:
World Politics Review from April 3, 2008 -
Was Basra Failure Due to Maliki's Poor Planning?:
New York Times from April 4, 2008 --
More Than 1,000 in Iraq's Forces Quit Basra Fight:

And here's the New York Times on page A1 yesterday, May 12th, 2008 -

Drive in Basra by Iraqi Army Makes Gains:

Three hundred miles south of Baghdad, the oil-saturated city of Basra has been transformed by its own surge, now seven weeks old...

One can't help but wonder if the public were presented with the actual narrative of what is going on today in Iraq, good and bad, they'd be able to determine for themselves that the fight is worth winning. And conversely, they'd be able to determine that failure in Iraq would make any of the problems we see today in that region pale in comparison.

[it's ok NYT; you gave it your best try {thanks so much}]

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Ex-Gitmo prisoner carries out suicide attack

The U.S. military confirmed Wednesday that a former Guantanamo detainee from Kuwait carried out a recent suicide attack in northern Iraq. A spokesman for U.S. military's Central Command told The Associated Press that Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in an attack in Mosul. U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye said authorities don't know the motive for the attack, which was reported last week by Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

[motive? did he say that with a straight face?]

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How Lebanon was lost

Hizbullah's successful overthrow of the pro-democracy forces in Lebanon this past week was eminently foreseeable. But that doesn't make the violent overthrow of the forces of freedom in that country any less of a tragedy. And the fact that Hizbullah's coup was predictable does not mean that it was inevitable. A great many forces had to turn their backs on Lebanon's democratic forces in order to enable Hizbullah's easy triumph.

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Pentagon Seeks to Fund University Research in National Security

– The Defense Department is developing a proposal to finance university research on national security-related issues, Thomas Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planningsaid yesterday. The Minerva Consortia, as it’s called, would have the academic and intellectual communities focus on certain physical and social sciences... [snip]

“We, as a Defense Department, don’t have the expertise that we really need,” Mahnken said. “We, as a nation, need to cultivate that expertise.”

Mahnken said that although the government already uses organizations such as the National Security Agency for social-science research, the goal in the DoD proposal is to bridge a fundamental gap between academia and the government in social sciences.

That gap, he explained, puts the government at a disadvantage in understanding some of the challenges the United States faces worldwide and as a nation, Mahnken said.

“We see this as being able to fund kind of a new generation of scholars,” he said. “I’ve gotten a lot of letters of support from the university community."

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Hamas rejects Israeli truce terms

Hamas has said that the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured in 2006, will not form part of any truce agreement with Israel. Israel has said a ceasefire deal must include the release of the soldier. Cpl Shalit was seized in a cross-border raid two years ago...

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Hamas Needs Shrinks Without Borders

To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day this month, the homicidal maniacs of Hamas outdid even their most deranged Islamic brethren by putting out a film claiming that the Jews secretly planned and carried out 6 million deaths of their own people. [snip]

In some other-worldly dimension, in whatever kind of perverted reality these people share, this insanity must make some sort of sense. Evidently, Jimmy Carter's latest form of diplomacy therapy was not terribly effective.

So, it's time for every liberal, Palestinian-supporting leftist in the country to drop whatever she is doing, to stop in her tracks and contact every shrink on her rolodex. Every single one of these specially trained docs is needed immediately by these dangerous lunatics calling themselves Hamas.

Oh, and the shrinks need to be armed to the teeth; our soldiers are needed at the moment elsewhere.

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Iranian leader Ahmadinejad in Rudd's sights

THE Rudd Government is preparing a case to take Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the International Court of Justice for "inciting genocide" and denying the Jewish Holocaust.

Australia is the only nation pursuing Iran's despotic leader, who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", through international laws.

The Labor leader said it was "strongly arguable" that Mr Ahmadinejad's conduct - statements about wiping Israel off the map, questioning whether Zionists were human beings and a conference that he convened on the veracity of the Holocaust - amounted to incitement to genocide, which was criminalised under the 1948 genocide convention.

[won't this be instructive. Still, kudos to AU for pushing the point so the ICJ can answer for itself]

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Greens Going for the Green

Even with the human tragedy of Cyclone Nargis still unfolding in Burma, environmentalists aren't wasting any time linking the disaster to global warming. Or at least one isn't: Al Gore.

"We're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."

There's just one problem -the number of big storms has been falling, not rising. As for intensity, researchers led by Christopher Landsea of the National Hurricane Center have found that earlier hurricane-watchers incorrectly classified many storms as weaker than they actually were. After correcting for this mismeasurement, the "increase" in storm intensity since the 1970s disappears...

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Hurricane forecaster's dispute with school focuses on global warming debate

By pioneering the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting and teaching 70 graduate students who now populate the National Hurricane Center and other research outposts, William Gray turned a city far from the stormy seas into a hurricane research mecca.

But now the institution in Fort Collins, Colo., where he has worked for nearly half a century, has told Gray it may end its support of his seasonal forecasting. As he enters his 25th year of predicting hurricane season activity, Colorado State University officials say handling media inquiries related to Gray's forecasting requires too much time.

But Gray, a highly visible and sometimes acerbic skeptic of climate change, says that's a "flimsy excuse" for the real motivation — a desire to push him aside because of his global warming criticism. Among other comments, Gray has said global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children"...

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Congress and High Oil Prices

[or: 'Cause and effect']

Investor's Business Daily has a continuing series on "Breaking the Back of High Oil", and today's edition has a fascinating breakdown of some of the actions that the Democrats have taken over the last three decades or so to ensure that our country has no defense against the effects of rising oil prices. While doing so, they've made us all captives of OPEC and such tinpot dictatorships such as Venezuela.

Today's editorial in the series, Who Is Really Responsible For The High Prices You Pay For Gasoline?, points out that we have attempted to get Congressional approval for drilling in Alaska's ANWR region for the last 28 years. Remember that the next time a Democrat brings up the "fact" that it will take 10 years to get ANWR on line... [snip]

The offshore drilling debacle is particularly goading. Cuba made a huge offshore discovery of oil in 2006, 50 miles or less off the coast of Florida. As it's in Cuban territory, that country has sold off blocks for development to Venezuela and China. Correctly assuming that the United States was best equipped to drill responsibly in that area (thus protecting Florida's coastline), Republicans in Congress introduced the "Western Hemisphere Energy Security Act of 2006", which would have allowed US companies to lease that land in Cuba's territorial waters. The bill was killed before hearings were even held on it.

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WINDFALL TAX -- ON YOU

The last time the United States had a windfall profits tax on oil companies, the results were disappointing:

• Over the entire 1980-1986 period, the (windfall profits tax) reduced domestic oil production from between 320 million barrels . . . and 1,268 million barrels according to the Congressional Research Service.
• Oil companies were hit hard by the tax, and in line with basic economic theory, they produced less oil, not more.

The effect of reducing domestic oil production was to increase the level of imported oil:

• At the time, the United States imported about 30 percent of its oil; today, we import about 60 percent.
• In part, that jump in oil dependency was due to the huge tax advantage we gave foreign oil companies in the 1980s -- and to the continuing advantage we give them today by refusing to let our oil companies produce more crude from our own reserves.

Revenues from the windfall tax were far less than expected, because producers pumped less and nontaxed imports flooded our market.

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Bill Targets Oil Firms and OPEC

Democratic leaders in Congress unveiled energy legislation yesterday targeting oil companies and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The package drew sharp criticism from Republicans, oil firms and foreign policy experts.

The legislation, dubbed the Consumers First Energy Act, features a 25 percent windfall profits tax on oil companies operating in the United States, a rollback of existing tax breaks for oil and gas companies worth $17 billion over 10 years, and an authorization for the U.S. attorney general to bring price collusion charges against OPEC members. [snip]

Republicans countered with their own proposals for boosting U.S. oil production by opening protected areas on the Outer Continental Shelf and in Alaska to oil and gas drilling.

"Americans don't need more taxes and more investigations. They need more oil and lower prices," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "Yet nothing in the Democrats' plan will produce a single drop of oil."

[Q: and if we 'win' a collusion case and go after assets and OPEC nations withold their oil? insanity]

"Consumers First Energy Act"
US President president@whitehouse.gov
YOUR Congressman https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml


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Credit where it's due
The Australian [Sydney], by Janet Albrechtsen

THERE is a certain familiarity to the concomitant series of actions and reactions when disaster strikes in the world. The US stands ready, willing and able to offer assistance. It is often the first country to send in millions of dollars, navy strike groups loaded with food and medical supplies, and transport planes, helicopters and floating hospitals to help those devastated by natural disaster.

Then, just as swift and with equal predictability, those wedded to the Great Satan view of the US begin to carp, drawing on a potent mixture of cynicism and conspiracy theories to criticise the last remaining superpower. When the US keeps doing so much of the heavy lifting to alleviate suffering, you'd figure that the anti-Americans might eventually revise their view of the US. But they never do. And coming under constant attack even when helping others, you'd figure that Americans would eventually draw the curtains on world crises. But they haven't. At least not yet.

So it was last week... [snip] The resentment that comes from needing the military and economic might of the US translated into the most absurd criticism. Jan Egeland, the former UN boss of humanitarian affairs, cavilled about the stinginess of certain Western nations. His eye was on the US. Former British minister Claire Short was equally miffed, describing the initiative by the US and other countries as "yet another attempt to undermine the UN", which was, according to her, the "only body that has the moral authority" to help... [snip]

The US has had isolationist periods in the past and it must be enormously tempted sometimes to have another one soon. The consequences of that possibility deserve some serious thought. If the neighbours worry about Russian bullying over oil and gas, just imagine a Russia unfettered by a US military presence in Europe. How long would South Korea, Israel or Taiwan last if the US decided it wanted to spend on itself the money it presently devotes to military spending in the Middle East and Asia?

No country has as many or as strident critics - internally and externally - as the US. The US actually promotes such debate. But just occasionally we should moderate that criticism when circumstances demand a dose of fairness.

Indeed, why not break into a standing ovation every now and again? As more US C-130s and helicopters stand waiting on Burma's doorstep, desperate to help a shattered populace and stymied only by an appalling anti-US regime, this is one of those times.

Let's hear it for America.

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