Friday, February 5, 2010
In Harm’s Way: Obama’s Shell Game Puts Troops In Danger
Subject: txt gwot - heroes -
... The commander in question is the commander-in-chief, who has made it the policy of his administration to reduce troop deployments in the “bad war” (Iraq) while increasing the number of boots on the ground to fight the “good war” in Afghanistan. While the President has followed through on the latter, the former has yet to happen in any substantive way and our troops have paid the price for this political sleight of hand...
One of the 5th Stryker’s units, the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment (1-17) has been particularly hard hit since arriving in Afghanistan last fall, suffering twenty-one combat deaths in one battle in the Arghandab district alone. One of the battalion’s company commanders, Capt. Joel Kassulke was replaced after that action, a move that angered some of the Captain’s troops, according to this Army Times article. The problem, some soldiers said, was not their commander, but mismatched training:
The battalion had spent much of the previous two years training for combat, but preparing for the wrong theater — until February, when it got orders for Afghanistan, 1-17 was scheduled to deploy to Iraq.
However, 1-17 soldiers said their training, which had been focused on highly “kinetic” urban warfare drills such as room clearing, did not change much to accommodate the change in mission. “The COIN-intensive fight here … isn’t so much what we trained on,” said 1st Lt. Kevin Turnblom, Charlie Company’s fire support officer.
“We trained [in] urban fighting in Iraq and then they give us Afghanistan,” said Staff Sgt. Jason Hughes, Weapons Squad leader in 1st Platoon, Charlie Company. “The principles are the same but the details are day-and-night different, and we’ve learned that the hard way over the last almost five months.”
The story did not go unnoticed by military bloggers, many of whom expressed disgust over the transfer. Greyhawk, a popular military blogger among veterans and those currently serving in uniform, seethed with contempt:
Those months of training and preparation were scrapped (one example: they don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan) so the phrase “Barack Obama diverts 17,000 soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan” could appear in newspapers.
Not only was moving the 5th Stryker ill-considered, it was also unnecessary, at least as far as military (rather than political) necessity was concerned...
“Bush lied – people died” was a popular leftist mantra for the better part of the last decade. Given the mismanagement of the current commander-in-chief, perhaps it should be replaced in 2010 with an equally pithy, and more honest, couplet: Obama shilled – soldiers were killed.
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MSNBC Helps Soldier-smearing Cartoonist to Raise Money to Go to Afghanistan
[HT:MG]
It ain't easy being a laid-off hack leftist cartoonist with a penchant for slandering 9/11 widows and equating U.S. soldiers with suicide bombers.
But Ted Rall got a big break on Friday when he got a chance to do a fundraising pitch for his planned trip to Afghanistan as an "unembedded" journalist.
On his January 29 program, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan introduced Rall as "an award-winning cartoonist who caught our eye with cartoons like this one showing some Wall Street types chatting about President Obama's bank tax."
But Ratigan must be ignorant of or apathetic regarding Rall's penchant for soldier-smearing left-wing screeds. After all, he all but personally endorsed Rall's fundraising pitch (audio available here):
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Rosie O’Donnell: Avatar Is the ‘Story’ of U.S. in Middle East; We’re the Bad Guy Characters
Subject: txt msm bias gwot -
[Who?]
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Pakistani woman Aafia Siddiqui found guilty of attacking US Soldiers
Subject: txt islm -
An American--educated Pakistani woman has been found guilty of trying to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 37, a neuroscientist trained at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was found guilty on all charges by a jury in a federal court today.
A family lawyer immediately announced an appeal, citing ''prejudice and bias'...'
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Muslim chaplain 'smuggled' box-cutter blades into jail
Subject: txt islm -
Muslim chaplain for the city Department of Correction was arrested this morning for allegedly trying to smuggle in three box-cutter blades and a pair of scissors to a lower Manhattan jail, The Post has learned.
The chaplain, Zul-Qarnain Shahid, has worked as a DOC jail chaplain for the past three years...
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Media Oversight: Is GM Stakeholder Federal Government Playing Politics with Toyota Recall?
Subject: txt mny sclm bbro crpt msm -
The government's traditionally enforced safety standards on automobiles sold in the United States. But the government didn't always own a competing car company. So you'd expect the media to take a hard look when the government's roles as regulator and competitor converge.
But unless you saw tCNBC's "Power Lunch," you might not realize that this is exactly what has happened. In an interview with CNBC "Power Lunch" co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was asked about the Toyota recall, which involves 2.3 million vehicles since a Toyota manufacturing facility had recently located in Alabama.
As Caruso-Cabrera pointed out, it was the Obama administration's Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood who determined that Toyota had to recall these vehicles over reports of sticky acceleration pedals.
"Ray LaHood is on the record saying that he told them they had to do this," ... "They had to stop selling. Are you looking into whether or not that was absolutely necessary? Are you convinced this was necessary?"
Sessions expressed his concern over that possibility and noted the amount of money the federal government had recently pumped into GMAC, the auto financing arm of General Motors. Sessions replied:
"I worry about those kind of things. I worry about Ford working hard and having to compete against the federal government. With an unlimited - they just gave $3 billion more to GMAC. The President's got to be careful here. He can not be playing politics and union politics or regional politics with the economy of this country."
Good point. You'd think the major media would be watching this situation like a hawk, being the watch-dog entities they constantly claim to be, but except for this single not-prime-time piece, nothing...
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Obama Submits Largest Budget in History, But Networks Portray Him as Fiscal Conservative
Subject: txt mny msm =
President Obama just submitted a $3.8 trillion budget proposal, the largest federal budget ever, which will come with a "record amount of red ink." The projected deficit of that budget would be $1.6 trillion, yet the networks didn't criticize him for being spendy.
Despite the "staggering" size of Obama's budget, which broadcast networks admitted was "dripping with red ink," the reports managed to paint him as a fiscal conservative and deficit slasher.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie portrayed all the excess spending as a way to get the economy back on track saying: "He's asking for $100 billion to spur job growth". But Guthrie highlighted only a tiny fraction of the overall budget and failed to criticize the administration for not finding ways to cut more waste.
CBS's Bill Plante also agreed with Obama's spending priorities for the $3.8 trillion budget Feb. 1 when he said the president "needs" to spend right now...
[And on and on...]
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More scientific frippery from the IPCC
Would you believe publishing anecdotal "evidence" from mountain guides as scientific proof of retreating ice?
The Telegraph reports that the UN's IPCC pawned off another bit of frippery as scientific evidence of global warming:
The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.
In its most recent report [published in 2007], it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.
On this level of nonsense we 're expected to hand these guys trillions of our hard earned dollars to ameliorate a condition they cannot even prove exists?
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Pentagon's Climate Change Command
Subject: txt nsec grn -
President Obama is hurrying to create military climate change command, apparently planning to spend a big chunk of increasingly scarce Defense Department funds on monitoring global warming.
Even though climate change science is questionable, Obama and the Democratic Congress are setting the stage to focus the Pentagon on doomsday environmentalism.
Such dangerous diversion of Pentagon resources set off alarm bells for retired Adm. James Lyons, the former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Lyons wrote Obama encouraging the president to form a review panel to study the purported links between climate change and national security
“…before we adopt policies that affect military preparedness and national security.”
“…it is imperative that we act on honest assessments of the best available information.”
“…when it comes to the climate change-national security link …
"any confidence in scientific pronouncements that may have existed in 2009 does not exist in 2010.”
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Typical politician two-step...
Subject: txt grn engry -
A study by Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), a nonpartisan organization "that works to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, supports opening up the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling 45 miles from shore.
A 2006 law put those waters off limits.
Senator Byron Dorgan, (D-ND) began a push in the U.S. Senate for an alternative to proposed "cap-and-trade" legislation -- began in earnest on the day of the Massachusetts special election. Dorgan's plan is the typical politician two-step; give the right-wingers a little drill-baby-drill, and give the libbies lots of green power... [snip]
In support of this goal the Department of Energy coincidentally released 'research' claiming that generating 20% of the eastern U.S.'s energy from wind is as easy as printing $90 billion.
Just what most American's oppose: more massive spending by the bank of Uncle Sam... [snip]
America should be drilling within 45 miles of shore -- that's a no-brainer.
However, mandating that 20% of our energy come from renewable resources, and particularly wind?
That's brainless...
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