The Cool Blue Blog

Showing the flag on Mercy

USNS Mercy Provides Relief in Southeast Asia
By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2008 – After a floating hospital known as USNS Mercy steams away from ports across Southeast Asia, the ship’s presence will live on in the host countries it helped along the way.

The ship is about halfway through a four-month humanitarian mission that, once complete, will have taken the crew to the Philippines, Vietnam, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Mercy now is wrapping up a 10-day stay in Vietnam, where Navy Capt. Bill Kearns, commander of the Mercy Pacific Partnership mission, and Navy Vice Adm. Doug Crowder, the U.S. 7th Fleet commander, today held a news conference via video teleconference with Pentagon reporters.

“The lasting impact,” Kearns said, “is in the people-to-people exchanges that we've had -- the interaction with the people of the port where we're operating.

“I believe that the infrastructure improvements that we're making at the clinics will have a lasting effect,” he continued, “or at the orphanages or at the children's rehabilitation center.”

Prior to helping the Vietnamese, the Mercy spent two weeks providing aid to the Philippines, where the official death toll from the June 21 Typhoon Fengshen stands at 163, with about 800 more missing after a ferry capsized off Sibyauan. The typhoon also damaged more than 600,000 acres of farmland.

Medical personnel and other crewmembers aboard the ship already have seen tens of thousands of patients, performed hundreds of surgeries, and also have trained doctors and nurses, and assisted in rebuilding infrastructure.

In addition to training local medical practitioners, the crew of Mercy is helping to repair hospital equipment in host nations, the captain said.

“We have biomedical equipment technicians in hospitals conducting repairs of equipment that might just be sitting in a pile, broken,” Kearns said. “And so they're able to restore them to operation, and it increases the capacity of that local hospital or clinic.”

The crew’s composition -- with representatives from more than 50 nations aboard -- is an example of effective multilateralism, as U.S. personnel operate alongside their counterparts from Australia, Canada, India, South Korea and Singapore, to name a few.

Crowder said that the Mercy’s Pacific Partnership mission also is a cornerstone of the Defense Department’s overall maritime strategy.

“Building relationships and trust, understanding each other, these are the underpinnings to ensuring security and stability in Asia-Pacific,” he said. “That's why this mission is so very important.”

Echoing Crowder, Kearns highlighted the importance of partnership in humanitarian assistance.

“That partnership really pays off when the disaster occurs and we need to come together and we need to understand each other, so that we can get the job done and help people,” he said.

Heller and the Constitutional Right to keep and bear arms

Today, in the final decision issued by the Supreme Court for this session, Justice Scalia and the majority of the Court affirmed, in Washington DC v. Heller, that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual not a collective right, that the government can not infringe.

In parsing the language of the Second Amendment Justice Scalia writing for the majority notes

The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the people.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.5

...Before addressing the verbs “keep” and “bear,” we interpret their object: “Arms.” The 18th-century meaning is no different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined “arms” as “weapons of offence, or armour of defence.”

...We turn to the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms.” Johnson defined “keep” as, most relevantly, “[t]o retain; not to lose,” and “[t]o have in custody.” Johnson 1095. Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or possession.” No party has apprised us of an idiomatic meaning of “keep Arms.” Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

...At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” See Johnson 161; Webster; T. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1796); 2 Oxford English Dictionary 20 (2d ed. 1989) (hereinafter Oxford). When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose— confrontation.

Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.”

Thus, with more justification and refutation of dissenting arguments, Justice Scalia makes a compelling and iron-clad case for a Constitutional right of individuals to own and carry weapons for the purposes of self-defense. Many have tried to truncate the meaning of the Second Amendment by allowing for the use of guns for hunting or sporting purposes, but for nothing else. Here, the Supreme Court puts the focus clearly where it belongs: for self defense and the defense of the community. Hunting and other recreational activities are a bonus. And this right can not be infringed by the Government.

With regards to the "preamble" of the Second Amendment, Justice Scalia wrote

The prefatory clause reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . . .”

In United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, 179 (1939), we explained that “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” That definition comports with founding-era sources.

...Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise . . . Armies”; “to provide . . . a Navy,” Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” §8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence, ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force.

...Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.

...The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued,... ...There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” See 3 Story §1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

So here we see that "the Militia" is not the National Guard which was not even in existence at the time. And that Militia was not just to provide security for a State, but security against the tyranny:i.e. an out of control government

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the ablebodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents. This is what had occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.

...It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution.

So the Court has now affirmed an individual and Constitutional Right to defend oneself, one's home, and one's community for criminals, invaders and an out of control government.

Clearly cities like New York, Chicago, and most obvious Washington DC will have to rewrite their laws and finally allow law abiding citizens to protect themselves from criminals.

They have, in this decision deemed unconstitutional any law that outlaws self defense.

Avoiding sanctions

When President Bush began his final tour to Europe, one of the things he hoped to bring home was a more united stand on Iran.

And he got it.

The European Union approved new sanctions against Iran on Monday, including a freeze on the assets of its largest bank, in a continuing effort to force Tehran to curtail its nuclear development programs and fully cooperate with international inspectors.

The new measures signal growing impatience among European leaders with what they see as Iranian foot-dragging in negotiations over halting uranium enrichment. Iran says the program is purely peaceful, but many Western countries contend that it is secretly geared toward developing nuclear weapons.

The E.U. sanctions, approved Monday at a meeting of the 27-nation bloc in Luxembourg, come on top of three sets of sanctions against Iran imposed by the U.N. Security Council in the last 18 months and a slew of sanctions levied unilaterally by the United States over the last two decades.

This is good news and will help. The problem is that it took so long for the political climate in Europe to change that Iran has had plenty of time to prepare for just such a move as was taken by Europe. At the same time that Europe was announcing their new sanctions against Iran

...the Iranian media revealed that in the past few months, Iran, anticipating this move, had withdrawn close to $75 billion of deposits from European banks.

...Iran's main conduit in avoiding sanctions has been Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

...Dubai is not only a great trade hub for Iran but also a financial one. In recent years, Dubai has become the main place for Iranian capital. According to one economist, Dubai received 50 percent of the $20 billion that left Iran in the past 10 years. Dubai is literally the cash cow for Iran in the sense that it accepts billions of dollars of Iranian deposits in cash.

Recently a diplomat said regarding Dubai: "One can show up at a bank with $300 million in cash in a suitcase, the bank will accept the deposit without any problems."

And Dubai is not Iran's only partner

Apart from the U.N. sanctions, the U.S. Treasury has led an aggressive campaign to apply targeted financial sanctions. It has succeeded in getting help from various governments and more importantly from large Western banks. This had promising results and it has been tougher for instance for Iranian industrials to obtain letter of credits.

But once again, Iran is finding a way around. In fact, letter of credits are now opened by Pakistani banks, second-rate banks in China, or Arab banks in Dubai or even Western banks such as German saving banks or Swiss cantonal banks, for instance.

In fact, these banks that have no commercial interests in the United States are happy to do business with Iran by increasing their usual fees by 10 percent to 15 percent.

And then, there's Venezuela

Iran and Venezuela will launch a joint bank to fund development projects, as ties between two of the fiercest critics of US ”imperialism” continue to strengthen.

It is the latest in a string of almost 200 co-operative ventures worth more than $20bn signed since 2001 in an attempt to circumvent international isolation.

...Other agreements between OPEC’s biggest price hawks, which together account for around a fifth of the oil cartel’s output, include oil and gas exploration deals, as well as building factories for products as diverse as tractors, bicycles and corn flour.

Financial sanctions are not the only things Iran is avoiding. Before Israel destroyed a Korean supplied nuclear facility in Syria, Iran was hoping for it to deliver nuclear material to it's weapons production facility.

And Venezuela is playing its part in this drama as well

There have already been reports--refuted by the Venezuelan ambassador in Tehran--that Venezuela has enabled Iranian scientists to conduct some nuclear work in the South American state, out of the view of international inspectors.[24]

And Iran is trying to form a "coalition of the Sanctioned" which, of course, includes Sudan and Zimbabwe

Here, Sudan and Zimbabwe especially have been beneficiaries. Both European governments and Washington have sought to isolate Sudan for what many international human rights groups deem genocide in Darfur. As the international community sought to tighten diplomatic sanctions on Khartoum, Ahmadinejad moved to embrace Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.[54] Ahmadinejad was forthright: Iranian-Sudanese ties should be built around the understanding that both governments would defend each other in international settings.[55] Just this month, Iran's defense minister visited Khartoum and called the African state "the cornerstone" of the Islamic Republic's Africa policies.[56]

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's longtime president, has been as poisonous for his country as Bashir has been for Sudan. Mugabe's government demonizes racial and ethnic minorities, and his economic policies have forced the breadbasket of southern Africa to face famine.[57] But as the international community has isolated Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, Tehran has reached out to fill the gap. Iranian politicians may speak of their commitment to social justice, but their crass indifference to social issues and public health and well-being are on display as they work to transform Africa's most brutal dictatorship into a pillar of Iranian influence in Africa.

The new European sanction against Iran will be a big impediment to Iran's nuclear ambitions, and they must be allowed to work before taking any further action. But we also must be prepared to turn up the heat if Iran's ability to circumvent these are successful. And one place where Iran is weakest is their dependence of foreign gasoline. A blockade of gas shipments, while an act of war, still falls short of actually bombing the place.

But one thing we can not do is go backwards in terms of solidarity with Europe

European officials are increasingly concerned that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.

The U.N. Security Council has passed four resolutions demanding that Iran stop enriching uranium, each time highlighting the offer of financial and diplomatic incentives from a European-led coalition if Tehran suspends enrichment, a route to producing fuel for nuclear weapons. But Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said he would make such suspension a topic for discussion with Iran, rather than a precondition for any negotiations to take place.

European officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they are wary of giving up a demand that has been so enshrined in U.N. resolutions, particularly without any corresponding concessions by Iran. Although European officials are eager to welcome a U.S. president promising renewed diplomacy and multilateralism after years of tensions with the Bush administration, they feel strongly about continuing on the current path.

"Dropping a unanimous Security Council condition would simply be interpreted by Iran and America's allies as unconditional surrender, and America's friends would view this as confirmation of America's basic unreliability," said François Heisbourg, a Paris-based military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "A hell of a way to start a presidential term."

Obama, the Unilateralist, is a dangerous gamble.

Captain Kent Solheim

On July 27, 2007, Captain Kent Solheim, United States Army, participated in Operation VOLCANO II, an operation designed to capture a senior leader of the infamous Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army in the city of Karbala, Iraq.

Solheim’s team "fast roped" from helicopters into the area, and set up their position near the target building. Insurgents viciously attacked the American forces from three sides with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and AK-47s. As the enemy fire got heavier, combat air support was called in to eliminate some of the aggressors, but a significant number of attackers remained to the north of Solheim and his unit. These insurgents used the dust that the assault force’s helicopters had kicked up to conceal their movements.

With the insurgents targeting one of the American positions, Solheim aggressively maneuvered his men to reinforce the beleaguered soldiers. It was then that he noticed an insurgent armed with an RPG, less than ten meters away from his position. Disregarding any concern for himself, he bravely charged forward, shot and killed the insurgent, saving the Americans in the nick of time. Realizing that the US forces in the building were in grave danger, Solheim exposed himself to enemy fire in order to gain a better position to cover the other soldiers in his unit. From this location, he managed to limit the insurgent fire on his team. In the final moments of the engagement he rounded a corner and he found himself face to face with an AK-47-wielding Mahdi fighter. Solheim made a split second decision, firing at and killing the insurgent. However, as the terrorist fell to the ground fatally wounded, he let loose one last burst from his AK-47, which wounded Solheim in the legs and back. 

Thanks to Captain Solheim’s selfless and heroic actions, dozens of American lives were saved. His actions demonstrated how he placed the lives of his men over that of his own, earning him the Silver Star.   

Not page 1

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that

Violence in all of Iraq is the lowest since March 2004. The two largest cities, Baghdad and Basra, are calmer than they have been for years. The third largest, Mosul, is in the midst of a major security operation. On Thursday, Iraqi forces swept unopposed through the southern city of Amara, which has been controlled by Shiite militias. There is a sense that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government has more political traction than any of its predecessors...

While the increase in American troops and their support behind the scenes in the recent operations has helped tamp down the violence, there are signs that both the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government are making strides. There are simply more Iraqi troops for the government to deploy, partly because fewer are needed to fight the Sunni insurgents, who have defected to the Sunni Awakening movement. They are paid to keep the peace.

Last week, The Guardian admitted al Qaida has been all but defeated in Iraq

Evidence of al-Qaida's problems in Iraq is weighty and convincing. It has been badly hit by the fightback from the American-backed Sunni "Sons of Iraq" and the US troop "surge". Western intelligence agencies estimate that the number of foreign fighters is down to single figures each month. The border with Syria is now harder to cross.

Iraq-watchers point, too, to financial strain caused by the arrests of al-Qaida sympathisers in Saudi Arabia, mafia-like disputes over alcohol licences and difficulties recruiting the right calibre of people. Last month, a sympathetic website carried a study showing a 94% decline in operations over a year. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed 334 operations in November 2006 but just 25 a year later. Attacks dropped from 292 in May 2007 to 16 by mid-May this year.

Dia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on radical Islamists, says recent al-Qaida propaganda footage from Iraq is old and cannot mask the crisis it is facing. "They have not got new things to say about Iraq though they are trying to give the impression that they are still alive. The material isn't convincing." Nigel Inkster, former deputy head of MI6, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees: "Al-Qaida is starting to prepare their people for strategic failure in Iraq."

When the security situation began to improve soon after the "Surge", those who supported defeat in Iraq moved the goalposts to the famed "Benchmarks". But now, even those have been fulfilled

...if the benchmarks were all-important to Democrats in the fall of 2007, they have become meaningless to them in 2008. When is the last time you’ve heard a benchmark reckoning from Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? The reason for the deafening silence on this matter is simple. The military and political progress in Iraq has proved so monumental that the majority of the benchmarks have now been met.

Seven of the 18 benchmarks relate to Iraq’s national security. We can just about put a check next to each one. We can even look at some of those and marvel at the low expectations behind them. Number 9, for example: “Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.” There are far more than three battle-ready brigades in Baghdad. The galvanization of Sunni Awakening groups who have wrested their country back from al-Qaeda and the decisive efforts of Iraqi forces in Basra and Sadr City have been the two most vital developments of the entire post-Saddam period.

The other eleven benchmarks are the political ones. And these are not so easily sniffed at. However, with Iraq’s parliament passing three critical laws in February and the Maliki government’s surprising tenacity, the four most challenging of these benchmarks have been met: a plan for provincial governance, de-Baathification reform, an amnesty for former insurgents, and legislation on the procedures to form semiautonomous regions.

Of the remaining benchmarks, some were always too ill-defined to be worthwhile. (Consider 18, for example: “Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi Security Forces.” Can we even say with confidence that America’s political authorities are not making false accusations against our own armed forces?) Others are also subjective, but admittedly important — equality under the law being one. And on these there is continued and demonstrable progress.

These types of stories are not page 1 news. What makes page one is American soldiers dying, scenes of civil war, Abu Ghraib. But there has been a dearth of such stories so Page One is mostly not about Iraq.

Progress is demonstrated by lack of news because news of success is not News at all.

And perhaps this is OK. Americans expect to succeed at everything we put our minds to. So perhaps not succeeding is news, and succeeding is not out of the ordinary; i.e. not news.

One thing is for certain, no matter what impression the media attempts to perpetrate, the fact is that Americans believe in our men and women in the Armed Forces. We not only believe that will succeed at anything we ask them to do (if politicians don't interfere), but we believe in their inherent goodness. And we believe that any instances outside these expectations are aberrations.

And except for the extreme Left, people understand that bringing freedom to a country is a noble undertaking. And as a result, the people who bring freedom to a whole country are brave and good people. And such is the case in Iraq.

Iraq is no longer just about fighting terrorism.

Yet, Senator Obama still maintains that he wants to withdraw troops from Iraq. First, he denies the facts stated above:

At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war.

Had he been President, we would not have had the security situation we have today

In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.

In their new report, Brookings fellows Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack who were anti-war back when Obama claims he was, have recognized the facts on the ground have changed

Both indicated that it would be a mistake with critical provincial and national elections upcoming in 2008 and 2009 to begin an abrupt withdrawal in 2009. O’Hanlon offered that Democrats could take credit for having pressured Iraqis on a political front with the clear message that our presence would not be indefinite and that they should accept that “the good news is you may be able to leave earlier than proposed based on progress and not on defeat.”

Continuing with the answer, Pollack said that “our support is absolutely critical” in the short term and that “a massive withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2009 is not a good idea.”

Yet, Senator Obama continues to ignore reality. His campaign website continues to be clouded by outdated news

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

Clearly Senator Obama has no regard for the people of Iraq nor does he solicit input from the Iraqi Government. The Senator is a unilateralist.

Now that's a headline for Page 1.

Would We Get The Immigration Policy That We Need?

If you too remember McCain as a supporter of  a comprehensive immigration reform and can even recall his promise to make such a reform once he is elected president then I guess you don't really trust him to serve the needs and interests of America and the American people and lead much stronger policy on borders safety.

I know that I'm not alone in the expectation that the future president would solve the open borders situation with all the implications that it has on our society and economy. As Obama is certainly not the answer to the ongoing problem of the illegal immigration, I was really relived to hear that McCain decided to change his stance on the immigration issues and is now promising to act for securing the borders first.

From CNN Analysis:

On Wednesday night, McCain held a private meeting with more than 150 Chicago, Illinois-area Hispanic leaders.

According to The Associated Press, several people who were at the meeting said McCain assured them that he would push for comprehensive immigration reform if he's elected president.

In 2007, McCain's sponsorship of comprehensive immigration reform angered conservatives and very nearly derailed his presidential campaign.

At a Republican debate at the Reagan Library in January, McCain was asked whether he would still vote for his original measure.

"No, I would not ... because we know what the situation is today ... that people want the borders secured first," he said.

McCain's critics were reassured.

"The original proposal, I opposed. Sen. McCain's new proposal, I support, which is to ensure you have border security before you have any other type of reform," L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said.

I know McCain is actually the only choice for all of the republicans out there and I agree with most of his positions. But if the immigration policies are deer to your heart I feel that we need to make sure that if and when he gets to the White House the actual policies that he leads on immigration issues would be the right ones.

written by Beverly from The Republican Online blog

Wrong, wrong, wrong

Senator Chris Dodd voted to go to war in Iraq. Then, when it became fashionable among Democrats to oppose every single thing Bush did, he was against the war. Then he was against the "Surge".

Now, when asked about getting preferential treatment from a home mortgage lender, he said he thought this occurred not because he was the Chairman of the Banking Committee in the Senate, but because he was a good customer.

I think he might be wrong about that. I mean what does it take to become a "good customer"? Does it take paying your mortgage on time? I do that and I'm not a VIP. Does it take buying lots of homes financed through Countrywide? How many homes has Senator Dodd bought using Countrywide as his lender?

Or maybe you become a VIP through legislation

A broad bipartisan coalition supporting a massive foreclosure rescue beat back GOP efforts to gut it yesterday, defying a White House veto threat and quashing a bid to make it a victim of revelations about two senators' VIP mortgages.

 

Administration officials said they oppose the inclusion of $4 billion in the measure to help states buy and rehabilitate foreclosed properties, and a plan to have government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pay for the rescue.

They voiced those and other objections as two GOP senators said they would try to block the package until a committee can investigate how much Countrywide Financial Corp. and other lenders stand to gain from it.

House and Senate Republicans are voicing reservations about the bill in light of allegations that Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, one of its architects, and Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, got cut-rate home loans through a VIP program at Countrywide, a leading subprime lender at the center of the mortgage meltdown.

Now it seems to me that people in such important positions can not get by with merely avoiding impropriety, but need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Because, you know, Senator Dodd may be wrong about why it was Countrywide gave him such favorable interest rates.

It's not like Dodd has never been wrong in the past.

But "special friends" of Countrywide's co-founder Angelo Mozilo extends further than just the Chairmen of the Senate Banking and Budget Committees

"James Johnson, one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday."

More: "The Journal said at least two of the mortgages, among a series of loans made available to people Countrywide officials called "friends of Angelo," were at rates below market averages, though it is difficult to predict a market rate without access to nonpublic information about a borrower's credit history and other factors that can reduce interest charges on a loan."

James Johnson is

part of the permanent government of this country, a long-time Democratic fixer (Mondale and Kerry campaigns), former CEO of Fannie Mae, and as such a big buyer of Countrywide loans. He's a guy who sits on a bunch of corporate boards, etc.

In 2006, Democrats promised to end Republican Rule and what they called the Culture of Corruption.

That failed to come to pass.

But the current situation would seem to qualify as a full blown scandal, but the media doesn't seem to think so.

I think they might be wrong.

Change you can believe in

It appears that Senator Obama wants nothing to do with being photographed with Muslims

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

Clearly just another example of what the Senator means by "change"

...for Obama, the old-fashioned image-making contrasts with his promise to transcend identity politics and to embrace all elements of America. The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also highlight an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that he himself is Muslim. But the denials at times seem to imply to some that there is something wrong with the faith, though Obama occasionally adds that he means no disrespect to Islam. The campaign has apologized to the women, both Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.

“I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to,” said Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer who lives in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. “The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters.

Well this should set the stage just fine for when the Senator meets with the leaders of Syria and Iran.

An Independent streak

Even as Shell Oil in Nigeria averted a strike, oil exports from this important country were threatened by a bold attack from Islamic terrorists.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc said it shut down the Bonga oil field in Nigeria because of a militant attack, the first time the deepwater facility 120 kilometers (75 miles) offshore has come under assault.

``There has been an armed attack on the Bonga field production unit,'' Shell spokesman Rainer Winzenried said in an interview from The Hague. Bonga crude shipments were scheduled to average 190,000 barrels a day in June, based on loading schedules. Attacks by militants previously focused on onshore and shallow fields in the creeks of the Niger river delta.

``It's certainly of a different tactical order,'' Antony Goldman, an independent U.K.-based analyst specializing in Nigeria, said by telephone from London. Goldman said he was surprised the militants had the ``hardware'' to carry out such an attack.

As much as 400,000 barrels of oil a day from Nigeria alone has been removed from the market due to these al Qaida supported attacks.

Attacking oil is a specific strategy of al Qaida as I have noted in the past. They know that we, especially, are vulnerable to oil supply disruptions. The attack on the World Trade Center was as much an economic attack as an attack on the homeland, and so is this. Not as spectacular, but an attack that is slow, steady, and flys under the RADAR is more likely to succeed. Especially when combined with the politics of their useful idiots, the Democrats, in power.

And I'm not the only one who has noticed.

We need energy independence and we need it now.

Senator Obama promises change. Well time and time again Democrats in Congress have thwarted any and every attempt at energy independence for the US, leaving us vulnerable. Our enemies; Iran, Russia, Venezuela; rake in huge bucks as oil prices increase. Al Qaida aids this by interdicting oil supply lines.

Had President Clinton not vetoed legislation to exploit ANWAR, we would have that oil coming on line right now, just when we need it. But instead, it is still sitting in the ground.

Off shore energy will be mined by China, but not us.

Clean, green, nuclear power is being exploited by Italy and other EU nations, but not us.

We need a change alright, but is Obama really offering us a change, or is he offering us the same old politics a usual?

What is Senator Obama's solution to the higher costs of energy?

"Instead of giving oil executives another way to boost their record profits, I believe we should put in place a windfall profits tax that will help to ease the burden of higher energy costs on working families, and we should invest in the affordable, renewable sources of energy that Senator McCain has opposed in the past,"

Tax the oil companies. Who does the Senator think pays for that tax? We do. Because a tax on a business is just another expense, like the price of oil and infrastructure and employees, that gets passed along to the consumer.

And such a tax does not a single thing to lessen the threat of oil supply interruptions by al Qaida, nor does it reduce the huge amounts of cash being transferred from US citizens to countries that are our enemies.

So Senator Obama's solution is to continue to raise gas prices on American consumers, something which, apparently, Senator Obama is in favor of.

CNBC’s John Harwood: So could the (high) oil prices help us?

Barack Obama: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more rapidly, particularly U.S. automakers.

And given that Democrats will likely continue to dominate Congress, higher prices for gas and heating oil is what Americans can look forward to if he is elected.

It seems, that in everything from the War in Iraq to energy, Democrats and al Qaida want the same thing.

McCain, the candidate known for his Independent streak is getting on board. He still has a way to go, i.e. regarding ANWAR, but his position is a whole lot better than Obama's. Not only is McCain supporting off-shore drilling, but additionally

Republican presidential candidate John McCain will push to almost double the number of nuclear reactors in the U.S. as part of a plan to lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil.           

On the second day of a two-week tour to promote his energy security proposal, McCain told an audience in Springfield, Missouri, yesterday that he would increase research in so-called clean-coal technology and push to add 100 new nuclear reactors, almost double the 104 nuclear plants now in use.

All of this combined with alternative energy solutions will go a long way in making America energy independent and more insulated from attacks by al Qaida.
    

 

Tortured logix

So I'm reading in my local newspaper today, The Burlington Free Press, about a group who says they have proof that US Servicemembers perpetrated physical torture on inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The small side piece, which is not available on their website.

The piece did include these statements:

"We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse, often causing lasting suffering," said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical evaluator for the study....

"There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes," Taguba says. "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account."

Now this sounds serious. But the article left out a number of important details. So I went looking for a lengthier article. I found this.

So I went looking for the answers to my questions.

One was, how did they determine that the evidence of torture was not pre-existent? I mean Saddam used Abu Ghraib and other prisons to torture criminals and other people. How did they know that it was not Saddam who did it? According to this piece

...the authors did not have access to the detainees' medical histories. Therefore, there's no way to know whether any of the inmates may have had medical or mental problems before being detained.

Oh. Well.

So what kinds of physical torture did the "Massachusetts-based Physicians for Human Rights" find? One of the prisoners claimed

According to the report,

In a 121-page report, the doctors' group said that it uncovered medical evidence of torture, including beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sodomy and scores of other abuses.

Sodomy? Beatings?

But the newsreport does not include any examples of sodomy and beatings

"They took off even my underwear. They asked me to do some movements that make me look in a very bad way so they can take photographs. ... They were trying to make me look like an animal," Laith told examiners, according to the report.

According to the report, Laith said the most "painful" experiences involved threats to his family: "And they asked me, 'Have you ever heard voices of women in this prison?' I answered, 'Yes.' They were saying, 'Then you will hear your mothers and sisters when we are raping them.' "

I guess this guy wasn't sodomized if the most painful experience he endured were threats to his family.

The other prisoner the report chose to highlight

Another detainee, Youssef, was detained by U.S. soldiers nearly seven years ago when he tried to enter Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan without a passport, the report says. He initially was held in an Afghan prison, where he describes "being stripped naked, being intimidated by dogs, being hooded and being thrown against the wall on repeated occasions," the report says.

So why did they not choose someone who had been sodomized and beaten over someone who was hooded and intimidated by dogs?

So I went to the report which can be found on their site and searched for the word Sodomy. This is what I found

the evaluators suspect that he was also subject to sodomy pg 24

Laith described being threatened with sodomy on several occasions but said he was not sodomized. pg 26

Although Laith maintained that he was only threatened with sodomy, the physical examination revealed
scarring at both the inferior and superior poles of the anus. pg 26

Yasser estimated that he was penetrated five or six times during this initial sodomy incident and saw
blood “all over my feet” through a small hole in the hood covering his eyes. pg 29

Although his refusal to permit a complete physical examination limits the degree of evidence available to corroborate his reported sexual assault and sodomy, pg 31-32

Following the reported sodomy, Amir described having rectal bleeding and painful bowel movements that lasted approximately two weeks. pg 43 [in the case of Amir, no metion is made of an actual or attempted physical examination to corroborate his story]

There are other references but all relate to these two cases: on in which not sodomy was claimed but the authors "found evidence" and in the other, sodomy was claimed but no evidence was found.

Perhaps it's just me, but it would seem that the authors would need a bit more than this to be indicting people with a accusations of "sodomy".

But more importantly no evidence whatsoever is presented that the alleged abuse was condoned by US policy, therefore the logic that leads to the conclusion "There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes" is deeply flawed.

What's more, the report itself states that since only 11 detainees were examined "the findings of this assessment cannot be generalized to the treatment of all detainees in U.S. custody."

But newspapers can so generalize.

And do