The coming Crisis

I'll try to write more on this later but i am too busy to do the amount of reseach needed to get all of my facts and quotes straight. The big issue here, is Iran. And it might not be the US thats causes it. The problem we are looking at here is 2-fold. The first is Iran's running around the UN inspections, reported repeatidly by the IAEA. (International Atomic Energy Association). The only reason that Iran has not gone to the security council for discussions of sanctions or even resolutions is that Russia has said it will not support and will indeed veto anything of the kind and Iran will see it as an act of War. So what we have here is a messy situation from the get go. A authoritorian state, ruled by a bunch of religious crazies (again, my opinion but I have yet to find anyone that thinks the mullahs are anything less than certifiable) that hates the US and Israel, indeed the Western World with a passion. But that brings us the catalyist for good or evil. Israel has said they will not allow Iran to build a nuclear reactor. They have stated that because of Iran hiding its nuclear program and then running around the inspectors, they cannot verify that Iran will be try to create a nuclear weapon to use against it. The fears are pretty well founded in that both Khomeni (the Ayatollah, leader of the mullahs) and the newly "elected" president both have called for Israel's destruction. Its the offical position of the government. Israel has already bombed a reactor that was about to come online in Iran in 1982? (year might be off) and they have said they will not allow Iran to build one, so North Korea like relations seem unlikely at best. I don't know what the proper course of action here is and how it might even play out but it looks like this could be a really really big deal.

Economy looking good

215,000 jobs were added in November. I don't really know what this means in the grand sceme of things. However I do know that when the US was adding jobs at 120,000 in a month it was considered steady measured growth. So this does it 95,000 better and that says to me that the economy is looking good. Also, unemployment is down to 5%. To put this figure in context, it was at 5.4% during the economic boom of the 90s. Stay tuned for more updates on the numbers. Or, if you are feeling helpful, find them and post them as a comment.

Bias in the Iraq War

Well since the issue of Bias has come up several times in how i have seen the media, and the LA Times in particular, I thought it would be a good idea to look at what I mean by it and how i see it. Bias is when you favor one side over another because of preconceived ideas or dispositions. I have noticed it in the media lately alot and here is how.

Going back to the LA Times article, I see it has highly biased against the President. The LA Times uses facts that are outdated or only a snippit of the total information to refute or cast doubt on the points made by the president. It leads people believing what is not the whole truth. When the LA Times brings up the case of Fallujah in April 2004 to show the ineptitude of the Iraqi military, they are showing that the Iraqi military ran from combat, and the US was forced to lead and do the fighting. They completely leave out the fact that in the past month, 11 battalions of Iraqi fighters, with a few American observer attached, lead the assult on another Iraqi town, similar in size and scope to Fallujah. This battle is more recent by a good 18 months yet the LA Times chooses to reference a far older, and less representative operation. That is biased to me because it presents a false picture. Imagine that in December 1943, with the US island hopping all over the Pacific using massive air superiority of carriers to roll back the Japanese. Now think of the media reporting on the readiness of American power during the Coral Sea where they broke even at best trying to stop the assulting Japanese. Its just as dishonest and irrelevent because it uses technically true facts that are far outdated and mean very little at present.

The media reporting on the number of Iraqi battalions that be completely independent of the US is a red herring because we never expect them to. Since we are over there, we will always supply them with logistics and probably observers. There has never been a goal not to do this. So its technically true that only 1 battalion is completely independent, but we arn't trying to make them completely independent. To ignore the 40 battalions that conduct their own missions, do all their own fighting, and are having major success, just because we supply them with our massive amounts of recon distorts the actual reality of how effective they are. It misleads people into thinking, "Oh wow, the US is doing a shitty job if only 1 battalion can operate."

The media reported very frequently on how the military is missing its recruiting goals. However when the military, as it has in the past 2 months, met or exceeded goals, we hear nothing about that. Nor do we hear that the reenlistment rate is actually higher than it ever was during peacetime. At its highest of the soldiers in Iraq by the way. We hear frequently that the US is losing the battle of PR and that the Sunni people as a whole are against the Americans and Iraqi military. Yet we don't hear that in the past 6 months, the amount of tips coming from Sunni Muslims has increased 10 fold.

We hear lots of testamonials repeated from politicians and reporter that stay in the "green zone" but we don't hear almost any interviews with soliders who have actually been to Iraq and the facts that they come up with. The people on the ground are given almost no airtime while the people in the hotels get to make all the situation reports. We are told repeatidly that Iraq is "quagmire" with no exit stratagy and no hope of accomplishing our goals. Of course there is no fact checking to see actually how far we have come to meet our goals. Yet when the President puts out a brief on how far we have come and where we are going, so simple in fact that a 8th grader could understand it, we see fact checkers pop out of every hole in the media to hammer an insignificant point.

I am not saying that there are not problems in the war, but i am saying that the media disproportionitly covers them and sticks to the gloom and doom prophiscy in the face of facts that directly contradict them.

AP bias ALERT!

I didn't catch this today but Powerline sure did. Here are the two pieces they have on this crazy biasd reporting.

The AP Article

The first commenting

Cadets...NO!

National Security

Let me just point this out real quick. The LA Times has broken the story that the US may have been paying Iraqi media. If this is true, wouldn't it be bad for the US military. I mean they were doing it for a reason. They obviously didn't want it leaked that it happened, in fact I would be astonished if it was not classified SECRET at least. Well then didn't they out a clandistine operation? Against our national security too. Hmmmm, kinda hypocritcal since they have been one of the leaders of the Valerie Plame story. You know it really had a deleterious effect on our national security. So of course we should all be ready to see other media outlets to attack the LA Times for hurting our national security (Insert Sarcasm Here)

Iraq Papers Printing Military Stories

I think we all know about the story being put out that the military paid Iraqi papers to print stories. This is being reported in several papers but the original story was broke by LA Times. So we all know about how truthful that paper can be given the debunking I showed earlier. But lets say its true, cause it probably is. But so what? I mean is this really a bad thing, or something that should be stopped? For the life of me i can't see why. You have many Iraqi new agencies, example Al Jeezera, that do all they can to show the US in a bad light. That is not even limited to the truth and spinning but will print completely unsubstantiated rumors and sometimes even outright lies. Insurgents get massive media coverage whenever there is a beheading or kidnapping. During these times, the insurgents will tell as many lies as they can against the US troops. Given this, wouldn't it be irresponsible for the US military to NOT get involved in the media and making sure the other side is told. The LA Times even says that the stories are factual but they complain they are not one sided. ONE SIDED!?!?! What are they supposed to do, claim that the IED that blew up 6 Iraqi people on a bus was deserved? What other side is there to present? And speaking of which, perhaps the LA Times and other should practice what they preach. Let me see an article from the LA Times that talks about the great things the US military is doing. Or talking about the new schools going up. I mean, look at my link to the Army Corps of Engineers and just talk about some of that. I mean it is for our national security.

Today

I've got lots of project related work plus Army benefits stuff and a colorguard to take care of today so blogging will be light, enjoy the plethora of stuff from yesterday though.

Ass-Spelunker of the Week Award

Yep, that wonderful PAC named moveon.org got caught...again. This time what they did was they put an add on CNN and some cable channels saying "150,000 American men and women are stuck in Iraq," well thats where it starts.
Then they show this picture:



Notice anything? Well a Captain in the US Army did and I do after i look closer. Get it yet? No? Here is hint, any of ya'll ever seen an American soldier in shorts? Maybe? No? Well thats cause we don't freaking wear them. Still not convinced? Well don't worry, we got more for ya! The next one is look really close at the BDUs. Nope, we don't have desert camo over there like that. The Army and Marines now have pixalated camo and the airforce has a totally different pattern. So what are we looking at? British soldiers. Thats right, out lovely little PAC not only is engaged in Bush bashing by they can't even find a picture of American soldiers to post. I mean really, how dumb can you get to think that someone wouldn't catch this. They are such a friend of American soldiers and marines that they can't tell us from the Brits. Not tell us from the British...Brillient!

More Spin from a major media outlet

Apperently i am not the only one to pick on the spin from the media. That latest example is from the LA Times regarding two specific instances. The first point is really well made and something that i didn't immediately catch. The second is very similar to the post i made earlier about Joe Biden's speech where he refers to GEN Casey's speech about the level of support required for Iraqi Battalions. Noting yet again that Spin is not necessarily what you say (like regarding the .50 cal taking out tanks) but alot of times its just presenting one side of the story in a very misleading way to create an unfavorable impression.

Bill Hobbs

Kyoto or just a big blow?

Global warming! AHHHHH!

But seriously folks, what is the actual deal with Kyoto, its affects, and the general effects of global warming? Lets see if we can work on there one at a time. Now seems like a good idea since there is a conference about it going on in Canada right now (even though there was a no-confidence vote in the government, more on that later perhaps).

Well Kyoto was an amendment to the original treaty: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was designed in 1997 to the original agreement that was put in place in 1992, to which the US signed on. In order for the treaty to be legally binding to its signatories, it needed to be approved by enough countries adding up to 55% of the total emissions. Now here is where the media and some others are either distorted or mislead...or lie. The US never signed on to Kyoto. Clinton's delegate to the conference supported the treaty in 1997 but, the Senate (that has to ratify the treaty) expressed that it did not support the treaty. Actually they voted in a resolution that several of the Kyoto Protocol's points were not acceptable, the margin of the vote was 95-0. They did not support it because it did not put any limits on developing countries that are major polluters with industrial rates growing very rapidly. Chief here is China which is now the 2nd biggest pollutor in the world. Because of this, the Kyoto Protocol was never submitted to the Senate for ratification and the US never signed on. Clinton knew it would not pass, but he supported the treaty so he didn't want it voted down. He knew he could not get it passed. Bush, when he took office in 2001, agreed with the Senate position and, after consultation, withdrew the US officially from the treaty instead of leaving us in non-binding limbo. The Kyoto Protocol was never binding for the US under Clinton or Bush and the US never signed on to it.

Now we need to look at the effects of the treaty on the signatories and the US. Take Canada for example: They have signed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012 from the baseline of 1997 values. Okay, good target. So far, they are up 24.2%. Oops. Unfortunately almost none of the signatories are even close to where they would have to be at this point but are going in the entirely opposite direction. Canada is one of the worst in the world by going in the other direction but almost all other European countries are still emitting more greenhouse gases instead of less. The average for western Europe is on the order of 6-10% more. The US on the other hand, has reduced greenhouse gases by 1% in the first 3 years of Bush being in office. I would post more data but there isn't any that i can find that is more recent. 2004 is the best i can do right now. The US has passed several resolutions and laws to limit greenhouse gases independently. Now i will admit that the US is the world's biggets pollutor and needs to work to reduce emissions but Kyoto seems like a poor way to go about it.

The third subject to look at is the effect of global warming. Problem is this, we really don't know how much global warming is going on right now. I think that its pretty obvious that there is some global warming but we really don't know its affects or the degree of its severity. It has been theorized that when global warming does occur, it actually creates more rain which makes more plants grow thereby reducing greenhouse gases and global warming.

Its very easy to say that the hurricanes and the like are the cause of global warming and that "the signs are obvious" but the science doesn't support it with any verifiable evidence. In one of the most recent studies done by Dr. Emanuel from Georgia Tech, they have noted an increase in hurricane strength over the last 30 years. Already people are pointing to this as evidence that global warming is to blame. But just listening to Dr. Emanuel, there are beyond doubts:

"One of the big challenges for everyone trying to sort out the issue is a paucity of good hurricane measurements before about 1950, Dr. Emanuel notes.

For an estimate of storms before then, researchers have to run a backward forecast, known as a hindcast. These hindcasts suggest that prior to the 1940s and '50s, the number of hurricanes eases through about 1900, then remains flat before 1900, Emanuel says.

Thus, he continues, at best the proponents of the natural-cycle notion have as few as two "peaks" and a "trough" to work with - not enough to firmly establish that it's a set of cycles at all.

Moreover, he adds, during much of the time that the oscillation was in cool phase, air pollution was high. This could mean that the cycle in sea-surface temperatures could be an artifact of air pollution, as it blows off North America toward Europe and cuts the amount of sunlight available to warm the sea surface."

Since the generally accepted problem is a lack of measurements, we really don't know how to gauge the hurricane seasons of last year and this year. We don't have any evidence to support it. Most scientists have come out and said that the hurricane strength has nothing to do with global warming. The slight rise in ocean temps cannot have caused an increase in strength like that. In addition, over the past 20 years there has not been a rise in the number of storm in the atlantic from older data that we do have and also, there has not been an increase in number or strength of storms in other areas of the world where typhoons and hurricanes are common.

We have similar problems with the ice caps because we DO know that they go through cyclic periods of warming and melting. We however don't have enough evidence to show that the melting that has anything to do global warming. Its possible that these things are affected by global warming, but there is no where near the amount of statistical evidence to form even a tenuous conclusion at this point, much less a strong indicator. We simply don't know what causes natural climate change.

Global Warming and Hurricanes
Global Warming?

Democrats and Liberals; Republicans and Conservatives

One of the problems that i have noticed in some of the debates I have is the misuse of equating a political party with a certain lifeview. IE- interchanging the use of democrat with liberal and republican with conservative. They aren't necessarily the same thing and its silly to think that. The is highly important when attributing things to a party and then corrolating to all member of that party. If the Republican party says something, especially a face of that party, then that does not mean that is something a conservative would say. Ward Churchill is not an elected official so nobody should say that he speaks for the democratic party. I wouldn't even say that Jim McDermitt, a congressman from Washington St. speaks for them as he is not a face of the party. But even if he was, his views cannot be extrapolated to liberals as a whole.

Liberals are a diverse group of people, example being that Joe Lieberman and Ted Kennedy are both liberals. On the flip, Dick Cheney and John McCain and Rudy Guiliani are all conservatives and obviously they are very very different in their views. I don't think its fair to equate them all together. As conservatives. There are obviously lots of topics that break down by party line. But the use of conservative really only applies to the outlook on government involvment at a federal leval. Same with liberal. Now that mindset might be indicative to other areas to a degree, its not substantial enough that you can equate the two.

So in the future, don't talk about conservatives when you mean Republicans. I don't usually mean all democrats when i say democrats because there are exceptions. I do mean the majority of the establishment though.

Timetable - No, Plan - Yes

Well, it seems that the Whitehouse has come out with a detailed plan for how the US will work toward final victory and consequently withdrawl from Iraq. Imagine that, there is a plan. And of course now that we have this plan, we have to worry about whether having the enemy know our plan is a good thing. Perhaps there is something to be said for keeping things close to the vest. But thats not what we are looking at here really. Now the thing that i will wonder, is what responce will we have from the democrats as this is exactly what they were asking for. A detailed plan for what the reality on the ground is, how we will confront that threat and what are the specific short and long term goals. Also included is why the war is important and has far-reaching impact on our global stratagy.

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

Iraq supported Al Qaeda? Apperently

Apperent, the link between Osama and Saddam was there, if we bothered to look back just a few years. In fact, it seems that Iraq has been sponsering terrorism of one kind or another for a long time. You gotta wonder how all the governmental officals in the past 6 months forgot about stuff like is shown here.

Terrorism and Iraq

Seems like good news to me

Recruiting goals are being met and exceeded in some cases. Seems the army and marines, with boots on the ground the most, are doing the best. Isn't it odd that the place more people want to go is the front in a losing war...(insert wink and sarcastic eye roll here).

Recruiting Up

Nuclear protests

Thought this was pretty interesting events going on over in Britain. Prime Minister Blair was making a speech on energy (as well as many other topics) and he was interrupted by greenpeace protesters. Its intersting to me for 2 reasons.

The first is that nuclear power is being looked at a potential energy source for the futrue. Now, even as a fan of nuclear power, I admit that there are alot of concerns with it. The storage of nuclear waste, the security of the plants and i am sure there are a few more as well. Containment really isn't a problem as it used to be given the amount of development that went into failsafe measures after 3-mile island, during which the failsafes did work but they were massively beefed up anyway. Its a very intersting subject to me so over the next few months i really wanna see how it plays out.



The second is the protesting that happened. Pretty much it encourages my belief against greenpeace and these protesting. The main problem i have here is that they do not encourage debate at all but want to silence other people against their collective position. The speech didn't advocate switching to nuclear power or lay it out as a future plan but it did initiate a dialogue about it. There is no argument that the coal plants being used are not a sustainable option. It also presented renewable energy as the preferable option but logistical and practical reasons make it impossible to make up the energy shortfall. Instead of bringing up a debate or putting out reasons for why nuclear power is bad, they simply disrupted a speech. Their answer is to silence debate and attempt to keep silence the stance for nuclear power. Why would they have to do that if nuclear power is as bad as they say, it would come out in a debate?

BBC

UN Reform

This is a pretty decent article i feel from the Wall Street Journal on John Boltan. Everyone should remember the man that Bush wants to represent the US at the UN. Of course, if memory serves and it usually does, Boltan was made the UN rep in a recess appointment. John Boltan was not allowed an up or down vote on the floor of Congress before they adjouned and Bush made him a recess appointment. Apperently, the democrats' worse fears about him have been unfounded. He is not just going around and pissing everyone off by being an asshole. He is just tough about what needs to be done.

And here we come to the point. What is the purpose of the UN and how should it be run? How you answer this question is centrally important to whatever reforms you want to see out the UN anytime soon. We can look just recently in the news about all the corruption at the UN, ranging from minor stuff like ambassadors of countries getting their luxury cars duty free to skirt $7000 in tariffs (alot to some small developing countries) to the massive corruption in the Oil-for-Food scandel. Not quite a scandel but having Sudan elected to the Commission on Human Rights seems like a bad idea to, well, everyone. There are countless others, just google it and see for yourself. The problem is what do we do about it.

The first of the major problems is accountability. There are essentually 3 powers in the UN. The secretary general, the security council, and the general assembly. Problem is that most of the powers are not divided so one can very much be in the other's kool-aid. You can't point to one person or another for screwups. Also, in the councils, the member are all elected by their member countries. They can't be censored really or anything else. With 2 parties in this country, the RNC or the DNC can stop funding a candidate if they make an ass of themself or start doing stupid shit. Can't do that at the UN so you have member states doing whatever they please with no real way of restraint.

Also a fundamental problem is the idea of whether countries are like people, all created equal with one vote a piece. Is the vote of China the equal of Somalia? The US the equal of Denmark? Russia and Sudan are equal? Seems kinda silly when you put it like that but in the General Assemly thats how it works. The security council is similar but the 5 permanent members can all veto actions. So in essence, they are immune to any negative resolution or decisions because they can block all of them. Kinda the opposite problem. Some would think this balances them out but since almost all decisions can be taken to the Security Council if they need to be, then it creates an enourmously inefficient process that is downright unusable for many things. The general assembly can decide on so many of the day to day things that the major powers stay away from it mostly but if they do decide they can dominate any issue they want. Its almost like the only tool given to most countries is a tiny poke and the 5 permenant members have sledgehammers only. There is no middle ground and everyone has either too little or too much power but never the proper amount.

Funding is the same way. As stated in the article, the US and Japan provide just over 40%. Why is this? Should having more money invested give the US a larger role say in the how the UN works? I mean its accountability, eventually the US wants to feel that its money isn't being wasted at the UN, or else why should we keep funding it?

All the previous are complicated issues with no real correct answer. Opinions abound but we can't just prove one better idea vs another. The issue that gets me most however is how to deal with the problem that some of the countries (or a good deal depending on how you wanna look at it) stand for very different things. A dictator ruled country is treated the same as a representative democracy. This most glaring problem was seen as Sudan was put on the Human Right Commission. If you have seen the news there was, and depending on human rights reports, still is a genocide being waged in Darfur right now in Sudan. One that is not being met with any resistance, only implicit encouragement, by the government. So do we really give a damn about what Sudan thinks about human rights? I can't see that as sound policy. I see it as ridiculous.

John Boltan and the UN

Me...Praising a democrat...Oh...It's Joe again!

Okay, you wanna know whats going on in Iraq, take it from one of the only representatives to GO to Iraq. Since apperently what the troops on the ground think doesn't matter to someone because they don't see the big picture, here is a rep that sees the big picture and will actually get off his fat drunk ass to see what is really going on instead of just mindlessly droning on that the War is failed (cough...Ted Kennedy...cough...Barbara Boxer...cough...Joe Biden...cough...). Everyone enjoy one of the only democrats that i can stand to hear speak. Joe Lieberman reminds me of an old style democrat. What we are looking at here is a democrat from the same mold as a Skip Jackson from the pre-Vietnam era. You know before the democratic party became so concerned with special interests such as tree hugging, abortion, welfare, homosexuality, and other specialized projects and was actually focused on issues that matter to the whole country and would be of national importance. I don't agree with Joe on alot of stuff, he is still a liberal after all and I, obviously, am not. But Joe actually has some credibility because he offers solutions to problems and is in touch with national security being more important than petty politics or making being in power the most important thing. He "gets it." Oh yeah, love the money quote up top.

Joe Lieberman Speaks

This one is short

I don't really know a better way to say it than Ward Carroll. A 20 year vet who now is the editor of Military.com he has one of the most real looks at the war and what is going on with the people who actually have to fight it. This is only an excerpt:

"They're winning. Them, the ones who had options but chose to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. They're over there in that place you see on TV and the Internet. And they're winning in spite of the wrangling going on between the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon, the think tanks, the pundits and the celebs.

As a veteran I'm put off by the rhetoric (and the media's coverage of it) from the far ends of the political spectrum surrounding so-called “support” for the troops. On balance the dialectic is white noise, not to mention by in large disingenuous. The extreme conservative doesn't have the warfighter's best interest in mind any more than the radical liberal does. Sean Hannity is a poseur and Cindy Sheehan is an opportunist. Neither of them knows what its like to serve. (And, by the way, having service members email you does not count as service.)

The draw of service is an intangible, for the most part. You can't read it in a book or see it on a DVD and get it. It lives under lofty tenets like Duty and Honor but it comes down to climbing into the Humvees day after day because the rest of their squad is. Their mission isn't spreading Freedom; their mission is to keep traffic flowing along the airport road. They'll do it, not because the vice president gave them a pep talk from half a planet away, but because the captain told them to and he's a decent leader, even if he doesn't know a thing about hip hop. And they'll do it because a few weeks back a couple of their buddies died when an IED went off next to their vehicle and there's no way they're going to let those insurgent bastards get away with it."

I think thats about the best writing of how many of us feel that i have talked to in the my unit. Including me. I tend, on this blog, to go overboard a bit when responding to self-described communists but I get pissed by the misinformation i see in the Media and our Government officals. And it happens on both sides but i think that one tends to encourage while the other tends to be beat down the effort. This is a much more accurate picture i think of how it really works and what the reality is on the ground. Read the whole thing.

Military.com

Mary Mapes, How much can you lie?

Thought that instead of the BUSH LIED! bullcrap that we seem to get from all democrats lately, lets look at the BUSH IS A COWARD! from a year ago and see how well that worked. Hint: People got fired and it wasn't the President. Everyone remembers the infamous Microsoft Worded documents that were supposed to prove that Bush got preferential treatment to get into the Air National Guard. First of all, the ANG is not exactly like sitting on your couch driking beer all the time with no risk. Don't denigrate the guard. But i digress because the media seems to assume that it was not honorable to serve there. The big flap was about Bush getting preferential treatment. I do not have anywhere near the ability to take the time to read her new book, aka a good replacement for firewood, though i hear bullshit does smell when its burning. However, Powerline does a great job starting already and promises more to come later. Enjoy seeing a liberal hack get called out.

Powerlineblog

Iraqi News

Since certain people seem to be having problems finding good news in Iraqi, i will try to post some here. In additon i will show you some of the media bias. Here is an article dating all the way back a year ago that shows some of the double standard in reporting.

Disconnect in Iraqi and the reasons