President Obama Orders 34,000 More Troops to Afghanistan

MoonHowler

President Obama has ordered approximately  34,000 more troops to Afghanistan.   In September General McCrystal requested 40,000 more in order to get the job done.  President Obama will surely have difficulty with his liberal base over sending more troops. 

The New York Times states:

Mr. Obama conveyed his decision to military leaders late Sunday afternoon during a meeting in the Oval Office and then spent Monday phoning foreign counterparts, including the leaders of Britain, France and Russia.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, declined to say how many additional troops would be deployed, but senior administration officials previously have said that about 30,000 will go in coming months, bringing the total American force to about 100,000.

 

President Obama will ask NATO nations to help fill in the additional 6,000 needed troops. While he has suffered criticism from the left, the President has also been criticized from the right for deliberating for what some see \as too long. He was accused of ‘dithering’ by some Republicans.  President Obama will address the nation tonight from the United States Military Academy at West Point at 8:00 PM.

What should happen here? Should a time line be announced? Should Obama have sent troops immediately without the many meetings with his military advisors?  Does it endanger the existing troops in Afghanistan if there are not enough boots on the ground?  Should generals always get what they ask for?  How many troops are still in Iraq?

Washington Post

The Great Global Warming Hoopla

MoonHowler

During the past week there has been a great deal of news, especially out of conservative blogs and media, about scientists at the Climate Research Unit who  may have cooked the books regarding data on global warming.  

According to US News:

Preliminary analysis of the contents of thousands of E-mails and documents taken from the computer archives of the Climate Research Unit at England’s University of East Anglia—possibly by a hacker, possibly by a whistleblower—indicate a number of the world’s most important scientists engaged in research designed to prove that global warming really does exist may have been cooking the books.

As columnist Michael Barone wrote in Sunday’s Washington Examiner, “The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals.”

If true, the cooking of the temperature data to provide support for the idea that man-made global warming is occurring is a scandal of most serious proportions. It should force policymakers to reconsider the role science plays in the formulation of policy if its conclusions can be manipulated the way those concerning climate change now appear to have been.

Well, maybe yes, maybe no.  Assuming that the books were cooked, does that mean we turn our backs on cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink and wash with?  Do we continue to squander our natural resources because some science jerks didn’t dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s?   Cities around the world are cloaked in a haze of pollution.  Our athletes had to get off the plane in Beijing wearing serious masks to block out pollution.  I had a friend who almost died while visiting the pyramids in Egypt.  The reason, air pollution and smog.  He is asthmatic. 

I hope all the doom and gloom was somewhat overblown.  It didn’t paint a pretty picture for the future.  We cannot continue to dump pollutants in our water supply and our air without serious consequences.  Millions of gasoline engines dump carbon bi-products into the air daily.  Again, common sense.  Forest must be replanted, streams protected from chemicals.  Mining must not ravage the earth.  Unfortunately, man cannot come to these conclusions on his own.  Just look around.  He has done a lousy job so far.