The Cool Blue Blog

MAJ Robert Nesbit Jr.,

In the military you adapt to the mission and the hours. For Army MAJ Robert Nesbit Jr., that meant performing about 99% of his missions at night. He was deployed to Iraq from June 2006 to September 2007, as a troop commander.

"Over the course of the tour there were more than a few tough nights,” said Nesbit. "But there was one single night that stands out.” That incident led to him being awarded both an Army Commendation Medal with Valor device and a Purple Heart. It also was part of the reason he received the Bronze Star.

In October 2006, Nesbit was stationed in Baghdad with the 1-14th Cavalry. His squadron was in a neighborhood known as Abu-Dichir, and his mission was to "create a ‘safe neighborhood’ in the squadron’s battle space.”

"At the time there was a lot of violence directed by the insurgents against the local population and we were trying to protect them,” explained Nesbit.

One of the things Nesbit and his team of about 80 soldiers did was place concrete barricades across streets to prevent vehicle access.

"Emplacing concrete barriers always attracted a lot of attention which was part of why we normally operated at night,” he continued.

"On Oct. 22, 2006, we [the Troop Team Task Force] were en-route to start our mission for the night when the Stryker I was on was blown up in an ambush. There were four of us on board who were wounded, said Nesbit.

"Long story short, I got the other three soldiers medivaced off of the battlefield. Even though I was hurt, I chose to stay in the fight. Not for any sense of heroics, but rather, I felt as the commander as long as I physically could still move the soldiers deserved for me to stay and command,” Nesbit continued.

"A lot went into it, and it was a long night, but we got the ambush defeated,” he said.

All of the unit’s equipment was recovered, and they were able to return to their Forward Operating Base.

"The next night I was back out leading the mission. I was awarded the Purple Heart for being wounded that night, and I was awarded the ARCOM w/V for continuing to fight while wounded,” he stated. "There were other nights and other fights, but that one certainly stands out for me personally,” Nesbit concluded.

He received the Bronze Star for his service, work ethic and leadership as the troop commander during this deployment.

 

Radical encouragement

I noticed during the Presidential campaign Mr Obama's distain for free speech; or at least speech that was critical of him anyway. I asked at the time

Is this what we are in for with an Obama Presidency? A systematic attack on the Bill of Rights?

Now that he has become President, we have seen the trend continue with the White House's open attack on Fox News. When called on it by "friendly" media, that is media perceived as friendly to the White House, their words need to be recalled so they are not branded the next Fox News-like organization.

On National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Wednesday, NPR political editor Ken Rudin said the White House campaign against Fox News is a bad idea. "It's not only aggressive, it's almost Nixonesque," Rudin said. "I mean, you think of what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list and their attacks on the media; certainly Vice President Agnew's constant denunciation of the media. Of course, then it was a conservative president denouncing a liberal media, and of course, a lot of good liberals said, 'Oh, that's ridiculous. That's an infringement on the freedom of press.' And now you see a lot of liberals almost kind of applauding what the White House is doing to Fox News, which I think is distressing."

It's not the usual thing you hear from NPR analysts. Reaction from the NPR audience was negative, and within 24 hours, Rudin was in backtrack mode. "I made a boneheaded mistake yesterday," Rudin wrote on his NPR blog. "Comparing the tactics of the Nixon administration -- which bugged and intimidated and harrassed journalists -- to that of the Obama administration was foolish, facile, ridiculous and, ultimately, embarrassing to me. I should have known better and, in fact, I do know better. I was around during the Nixon years. I am fully cognizant of what they did and attempted to do."

"I apologize for a dumb comparison."

Rudin's full-180 earned warm praise from NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard. "While it was a dumb thing to say, I applaud Rudin for quickly apologizing," Shepard wrote. "Journalists are going to make mistakes -- not intentionally but they will happen. Acknowledging them goes a long way to maintaining credibility."

And thus, disaster was averted.

But it doesn't stop there. In a less well publicized move, the Obama Administration voted to encourage blasphemy laws at the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva a few weeks ago.

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any "negative racial and religious stereotyping." The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. Though the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism. It is viewed as a transparent bid to appeal to the "Muslim street" and our Arab allies, with the administration seeking greater coexistence through the curtailment of objectionable speech.

Recall the UN Human Rights Council for a moment

The Geneva-based Human Rights Council was established in March 2006 to replace the 60-year-old Human Rights Commission, which lost international credibility after countries with abysmal rights records, such as Sudan and Zimbabwe, were allowed to join and thwart criticism of their actions.

The Bush administration refused to join the new rights body, saying it was not convinced that it represented much of an improvement over its predecessor. John R. Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations when the council was created, said at the time that the United States would have more "leverage in terms of the performance of the new council" by not participating in it and thus signaling a rejection of "business as usual."

Reached Tuesday, Bolton denounced the Obama administration's decision. "This is like getting on board the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg," he said. "This is the theology of engagement at work. There is no concrete American interest served by this, and it legitimizes something that doesn't deserve legitimacy."

The Obama administration and rights advocates concede that the Human Rights Council has failed to emerge as a powerful champion of human rights, saying it has devoted excessive attention to alleged abuses by Israel and too little to abuses in places such as Darfur, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

Participating is one thing, actively endorsing blasphemt laws is something else entirely.

But it seems to be consistent with the current Administrations apparant disdain for free speech.

Hope you're not an atheist.

Or a Fox News employee....

It ain't just Iran

It's not surprising to find that Iran is again backing away from a deal that would have helped ease the fears that they are attempting to become a nuclear power. The original agreement had holes you could drive a starship through but even that apparently was unacceptable to them.

But what makes them so bold? Perhaps the knowledge that even though Russia was at the negotiating table, their very reminded Iran that no significant action against them would be taken at the UN Security council because Russia still maintains that they will veto any attempt to place sanctions on the country.

Russia is supplying not only arms to Iran, but nuclear material and expertise. All of this would end if sanctions were imposed. In fact Russia, if it wanted to, could severly cripple Iran's nuclear progam all by itself by simply refusing to supply expertise and material. It could threaten to do so unless Iran yielded demands of rigorous monitoring of their nuclear facilities.

But Russia does none of these and publicly maintains it will veto sanctions.

Meanwhile, Russia itself is stomping on the the President's rhetoric of attaining a nuclear-free world by testing a new multiple-warhead missile that if deployed would be in violation of the existing START treaty.

The missile in question is the SS-27

The Russian SS-27, or Topol-M, is an intercontinental-range, ground-based, solid propellant ballistic missile. It represents the pinnacle of ballistic missile technology, incorporating modern fuel and warhead designs, as well as being capable of being launched from both missile silos and Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) vehicles. Current Russian accounts stress that the SS-27 is invulnerable to any modern anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defenses. Yuriy Solomonov, director of the Moscow Institute of Heat Technology and designer-general of the Topol family of missiles, has stated that the SS-27 will be the foundation of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal by 2015.

Now in exchange for the Hope that Mocow would help with Iran, the President gave away the missile defense shield for Eastern Europe. The Bush Administration had always claimed that the missile shild was not aimed at Russia, but at rogue nations who would acquire nuclear missiles.

But you know what? They knew about the SS-27 too.

And Russia knew that such a shield would counter the SS-27 as well as missiles from, say, Iran.

When the President threw away the missile shield in Eastern Europe, he got nothing from Russia on Iran and Russia removed the counterbalance to the SS-27 as well as Iran's missiles.

Back in September, The President lauded a UN non-poliferation agreement, but other world leaders took a more cautious view as expressed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy:

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, came close to mocking his American counterpart for the good intentions, which Mr Obama had heralded as an "historic" step towards nuclear abolition, even though it set no specific targets or fresh mandates.

"We live in a real world not a virtual world," the Frenchman told the 15-member council. "And the real world expects us to take decisions.

"President Obama dreams of a world without weapons ... but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

"Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

"I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map," he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama's resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

"If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons," he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president's disarmament crusade "naïve".

The Russians have expressed the same sentiment with their deeds because such words from the Russians would be counter-productive to their cause.

Who are those folks?

The whole TEA Party thing is very confounding to the Left, but it shouldn't be. I and others have been pointing out since the beginning that this was not a "Republican" thing. In fact, the situation that allowed the Democrats to take control of Congress was more about the failure of Republicans to give people what they want (less government and less government spending) than it was about any attraction people had to the Democratic Party.

All that has obviously changed. The budget deficit has surged to an all-time high of US$1.42 trillion and that is without health care "reform" or Stimulus II. People feel burdened  while the Left likes to disparage these folks by calling them tea baggers, they forget that what they call themselves is Taxed Enough Already.

But some Democrats and Leftists (in general) have deluded themselves thus far into thinking that these people were shills for the Republican Party; they called their demonstrations "astroturf". But then it became obvious to even the main stream media that these folks were not Republican shills; they're a movment all their own.

The rise of conservative "tea party" activists around the country has created a dilemma for Republicans. They are breathing life into the party's quest to regain power. But they're also waging war on some candidates hand-picked by GOP leaders as the most likely to win.

But even here the media doesn't have things exactly right. When does "Conservative" mean in this context? Sure some are social conservatives, but not most. So some are say anti-abortion, but not most. Some are anti-gay marriage but not most.

What does unite these Republicans, Democrats and Independents is they are all more fiscally conservative and more Federalist than Congress; and in many cases this means Republicans as well.

Begun as a loosely affiliated groundswell of Constitution-waving protesters in tri-cornered hats, the Tea Party movement is now starting to rock the political establishment in key arenas.

The growing numbers of Americans coming out to the Tax Day Tea Party, the Fourth of July Tea Parties, and then the 9/12 Tea Party march on Washington are going back to their home districts and keeping up — even intensifying — the fight for smaller government and more transparency on spending and taxation.

As the evidence mounts, opponents of small government and a restrained Federal Government has come up with a new delusion: That the movement the Republicans started are now turning on their masters.

And they continue with their delusion that any and all criticism of the President and the Democratic majority is racially based. The latest instance refers to a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple. He was referred to as a right-wing hate-monger.

But it turned out this guy was a life-long Democrat until 2008. I wonder what happened in 2008 that made him change parties?

Here's the situation that has the Left worked up: They are going to lose seats in Congress next year and they are doing their best to blunt that embarrassment now. They are even more fearful that they will lose control of one or more chambers of Congress and they need to do something to prevent that from occurring.

I've got an idea: How about not spending so much, pass legislation that addresses our runaway spending, and pass health care legislation that actually addresses the issues?

I'm afraid that Congress just can not go there the way it is currently configured.

So change is gonna come.

And if Republicans do again get control of Congress, they had better heed the lessons or change is gonna come again.

And again.

Until we get a political class that has some respect for the constiutional limits of federal power.

SSG Jamyn Peterson

SSG Jamyn Peterson wouldn’t describe himself as a hero, he said. But during his last deployment to the remote Oruzgan province in Afghanistan from December 2006 until January 2008, the Army Reservist repeatedly demonstrated his dedication to his comrades and to his duties. Peterson was recognized for his service with a Purple Heart and two Bronze Star Medals, one with ‘Valor.’

The second Bronze Star recognized his performance as team leader as “absolutely phenomenal,” according to the award citation. But it was the bravery he demonstrated during an ambush that earned him the Bronze Star with ‘Valor.”

 “I was honored,” Peterson said of receiving the medal, “but I was more honored that my guys got them.”

SSG Matt Winters and SGT Ben Mogenson were riding with him on June 16, 2007 when their convoy was ambushed on the road home. When a bomb exploded just feet from their truck, the truck leading the convoy sped ahead to avoid the blast. But they took a wrong turn.

Peterson and his team had a choice: stay on the road that led back to camp or follow their comrades the wrong way into enemy territory. They decided to follow their comrades. 

It wasn’t long before the first truck was hit by a rocket propelled grenade that went right through it, forcing everyone out of the truck. And while there were only six soldiers between their two trucks, “there were over 100 bad guys. They were only 90 feet away. You could see them. They were just lined up,” he said.

“It was like hail coming down on the truck. It was like incessant bullets raining,” Peterson said. That’s when he directed his vehicle right into the middle of the ambush to provide cover and support to the disabled vehicle.

“The one thing I remember was that I could have stayed in the truck and gotten killed, but if I got out of the truck I was going to get killed. Pretty much we were going to die,” he said. “Life flashes before you.”

But Peterson did get out of the truck, and was able to set up behind the hood of the disabled vehicle so he could provide cover while the other soldiers tended to the injured. They were able to hold the enemy at bay until Afghan Army soldiers arrived on the scene to help. When the enemy saw the two trucks with 15 Afghan soldiers in it, they started to flee, Peterson said.
 
“They kind of saved our lives,” Peterson said. “We’d built enough of a rapport,” he said, “that they came to help us.” It was an act which demonstrated not only their loyalty, but also their bravery, he said.

Peterson spoke as highly of Winters and Mogenson.

“They were more aware of what was going on. That’s more brave than me,” he said. “Those guys were aware what was going on and still kept at it. They did a great job.”

Peterson, however, said he is most proud of his work with the people of the Oruzgan province. Working with the local community, he and his team set up the only local health clinic for miles around, a radio station, as well as a primary school for the local children that teaches reading, writing, arithmetic and Islam.

“Any good we wanted to do, we were able to do it,” Peterson said. “Being out in the middle of nowhere, I thought I was in a place where I belonged.”

Despite the enemy’s opposition to the school, the students would get up at five in the morning to walk five miles to school. They would have to skirt Taliban checkpoints to avoid getting beaten, Peterson said.

“They are worried if they’re going to get beaten with sticks on the way to school, and they’d still come,” Peterson said. The enemy “rocketed us twice while the students were in there, but they kept coming.”

“It was a pretty amazing experience. A good learning experience,” he said of the deployment. “That’s one thing that I take away from this, how the human being can adapt to any situation.”

Peterson is still an active reservist training troops heading to Afghanistan.

“That’s what I have a passion for now, making sure that these troops are ready to hit the ground when they go down range,” he said.

Peterson, who will likely redeploy shortly, said it’s important to remember that the army is made up of individual men and women.

“If I don’t go someone less experienced will have to go. There’s an obligation there,” he said. “Somebody’s got to do it.”

Towards a costlier health care system

People, that is Republicans, Democrats and Independents want health-care reform as a general goal. And regardless of your "orientation" you want that reform to accomplish a number of basic goals:

1) reduce costs, or minimally do something to flatten the upward trend of costs

2) make it so preexisting conditions do not exclude one from obtaining affordable insurance

3) make health care affordable for people regardless of their work situation.

Now the fact of the matter is these three goals do not not require a "public option" though that is an improbably but possible solution.

The problem currently is that the package being voted on in the Senate today does not accomplish these goals.

Now back when all of this was still being kicked around, the Insurance companies were brought in to help craft the legislation and some give and take was negotiated. The Insurance companies all said that sure, we can do what you want, but you have to get all Americans involved because we need premiums from a large population of healthy people who are not likely to use their insurance to cover the cost of people who are chronically using their health care insurance. And if you free us from state mandates for minimum coverage and allow us to compete nationwide, we will be able to provide lower costs and more options for people.

And for a while, it looked like at least some of that might happen.

But then Congress got involved in the nitty gritty and things got screwed up royally.

The mandate for everyone to be all in got diluted to the point where the insurance companies were no longer able to support the legislation. As a result, they issued their own report to counter the overly-rosy CBO report that was supporting the current legislation and factuallu support their position.

Key Findings

• Health reform could have a significant impact on the cost of private health insurance coverage.

• There are four provisions included in the Senate Finance Committee proposal that could increase private health insurance premiums above the levels projected under current law:

o Insurance market reforms coupled with a weak coverage requirement,
o A new tax on high-cost health care plans,
o Cost-shifting as a result of cuts to Medicare, and
o New taxes on several health care sectors.

• The overall impact of these provisions will be to increase the cost of private insurance coverage for individuals, families, and businesses above what these costs would be in the absence of reform.

• On average, the cost of private health insurance coverage will increase:

o 26 percent between 2009 and 2013 under the current system and by 40 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
o 50 percent between 2009 and 2016 under the current system and by 73 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
o 79 percent between 2009 and 2019 under the current system and by 111 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.

Supporters of the current Senate Legislation got all upset

Democrats and their allies scrambled on Monday to knock down a new industry-funded study forecasting that Senate legislation, over time, will add thousands of dollars to the cost of a typical policy. "Distorted and flawed," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. "Fundamentally dishonest," said AARP's senior policy strategist, John Rother. "A hatchet job," said a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Harsh word for folks who were their former partners.

"The misleading and harmful claims made by the profit-driven insurance companies are politicking for corporate gain at its worst," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

But this is a misleading claim in and of itself.

...in 29 of the 43 states that data are available for in the American Medical Association report mentioned earlier, the dominant company in the “full” insurance market is a non-profit company. In state after state, Blue Cross and Blue Shield hold the largest market share. On average, the largest non-profit hold over half of the “full” market share in those 29 states.

And when you calculate out the premiums people will pay with or without this legislation, this is what you get.

What people want is real solutions.

And while the half-hearted attempt to get everyone involved in health insurance is not going to cut it, at least an attempt was made.

Right now there is nothing in the legislation allowing insurance companies to compete nation-wide which would save costs and there is nothing in the legislation that deals with tort-reform which would save $54 billion according to the CBO.

People want health care reform.

What they don't want is smoke and mirrors promoted by Congressfolk with hidden agendas.

Don't capture - Kill

Back in July, there were those on the Left who were upset to discover that we at one point had a plan in place to kill al Qaeda leaders wherever they might be.

Since 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency has developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists, according to current and former government officials.

The Obama Administration quickly let it be known that current CIA director Leon Panetta nixed the program as soon as he found out about it. The Left was assuaged and Dick Cheney was reaffirmed as a villain. All was right with the Left.

But under the covers, the Obama Administration had a problem. The President vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as well as the CIAs "Black sites" where terrorist suspects were whisked away so as not to allow other terrorists the knowledge that a high-value information-provider had been captured.

So the question became, with these tools off the table, what does the Obama Administration do with new terrorist suspects they may hunt down or otherwise run across?

The solution appears to be kill them where they stand.

Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.

"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."

Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.

Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.

No messy detention. No icky interrogations. Just good clean blood on the tracks.

Now Leon Panetta may have nixed targeted assassinations of the al Qaeda leadership, but his boss sure hasn't. Predators continue to kill terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere when it is inconvenient for a ground team to be present, and, it seems, we kill them even when we do have ground teams present.

It's better than capturing them given the environment the President has created.

There are a few drawbacks, however.

One is, we don't get to find out if the terrorist knows something that we should know.

Two, if the guy was innocent, we'll never know and he'll never be released.

But hey. It's the price you pay for winning a Nobel Peace prize.

Colonel Thomas Cathey

For Army Colonel Thomas Cathey, April 10, 2007, started out like a typical day. Stationed in Baghdad, he was chief of a Military Transition Team, a group of U.S. soldiers serving as military advisors to an Iraqi Army Division. Together they had been running cordon and search missions in Baghdad, setting up perimeters around small areas of the city and then searching within that area.

“We had been conducting these missions since January. This was in April,” Cathey said. “I thought it was just going to be another typical day in that area.”

But by 7 a.m. everything had changed. The Iraqi Army soldiers running that morning’s mission had encountered enemy fire before the sun was up, Cathey said. And the situation escalated from there.

“We thought it was going to be a normal operation here,” he said. “It was the first time that we’d had this volume of resistance for sure.”

Before long an Iraqi Army squad had radioed for reinforcements, and had taken protective cover in an abandoned building.

“We are down to our last magazines. We are out of ammunition. We’ve got to have help now,” they told Cathey again via radio.

“There was no time. They were out of ammo. There was no one else who could get them. So I made the decision to go get them,” he said. The day’s mission changed from a cordon and search mission to an extraction mission, he said.

Cathey prepared a team of 14 soldiers in four vehicles. While the Iraqi Army soldiers weren’t far, Cathey knew getting to them was going to be difficult. They would have to take narrow alleyways to cross city blocks held by the enemy.

“We did know that as soon as we left …and started down this alley that we would be surrounded 360 degrees, and we would be significantly out-numbered.  But we also knew that we couldn’t sit and do nothing and take a chance on these soldiers being overrun by Al-Qaeda,” Cathey said.

“I knew it was going to be tough. But we’d been in the country. We were seasoned guys. We had a lot of confidence in each other,” Cathey said. “I don’t think we ever thought we couldn’t do what we needed to do to get those soldiers out.”

The convoy set out, their vehicles moving cautiously forward down a narrow alleyway. At each intersection they crossed they encountered adversaries. A grenade exploded just feet from the left from tire of Cathey’s vehicle, taking out the power steering. At a subsequent intersection, “as soon as our bumper touched the opening of the alleyway, it turned red with tracers,” Cathey said, describing the dust trails some bullets leave behind  to help the gunmen know where to aim. Seeing so many tracers was a signal to Cathey that there were even  more bullets on their way.

“I thought we couldn’t stop the mission, we couldn’t turn around. We knew that what behind us was worse,” he said. “We kept pushing forward to find these Iraqi soldiers.” 

But as the convoy moved down the alleyway towards safety, Cathey saw another Iraqi soldier waving to him from inside another building. It was a second Iraqi Army squad that had also been forced to take cover.

There was no way to fit the other squad into their vehicles, Cathey said, so they used the vehicles to shield the building from attack while they radioed for help, and then waited for a second convoy to reach them. 

But by that time the enemy had figured out their plan, Cathey said. The Iraqi Army Brigade deputy commander made one attempt to send vehicles to pick up the second squad, but they were forced back by the insurgents. Over the radio, Cathey convinced him to try again. But they were forced back again.   

Cathey finally had to make a decision. He chose to move the first squad to safety, but promised the second squad that he would come back for them. With his vehicle compromised, he led his convoy all the way through the insurgent-held area and on to safety.

The Iraqi deputy brigade commander was so inspired by what they had done, that he made a third attempt to get the men out, Cathey said. That third attempt was successful. 

“They all made it out safely, too,” Cathey said.
 
“For me personally it was just a very humbling, sobering day,” Cathey said. It was only later on when he’d had a chance to be by himself and clear his head that he realized that they “had been able to pull off a very dangerous mission with no injuries, no casualties at all,” he said.

“Several of my guys were awarded Army Commendation medals for that day,” he said.

The biggest thank you, however, was the next morning when Cathey met with Iraqi Army leadership in the Iraqi General’s office.
 
“Iraqi Colonel Munam stood there with tears in his eyes hugging and thanking me for getting his guys out,” Cathey said. “I didn’t need any thank-yous, but to me that was the greatest thank you I ever got.”

“It was just doing the right thing to do for those Iraqi soldiers,” Cathey said. “If someone hadn’t helped them, they couldn’t have got out.”
 
Cathey received a Bronze Star with Valor for his actions that day.

A record of appeasement

"When I think of America, I think of the idea -- concept of freedom, liberty, equality. I think these are real human values," the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying today

"I think American weapons, military forces, of course some people take seriously," he said

"But the real greatness of America is your ancestors' principles," he said. "In any case, you must preserve these principles."

Every President since 1991 has met with the Dalai Lama when he came to the US. Today, the Dalai Lama was in town to receive the the first-ever Lantos Human Rights Prize.

Mr. Obama's slight is the first time a sitting president will not meet with the Dalai Lama during a Washington visit since President George H.W. Bush met with him in 1991. No meeting was ever formally on the agenda for this week, but the exiled Tibetan's trip had been planned for years, and earlier this year he had expressed his hope to meet with the President. Last month, White House aide Valerie Jarrett and Maria Otero, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, traveled to Dharamsala to confer with the Dalai Lama. The next day, the Dalai Lama's office announced that he hoped to meet with Mr. Obama only after November, when Mr. Obama will visit Beijing.

No other President prior to Mr Obama owed their soul, and the price of their social agendas, to China as Obama does.

The Dalai Lama didn't mention the lack of a White House meeting as he received an award in memory of the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a longtime champion of human rights who died last year of cancer.

The Tibetan spiritual leader did, however, entertain the audience with stories of his past brushes with American presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt once sent him a letter, a signed photograph and a gold watch. He joked that he "developed an affection to America" because of that watch and brought it with him when he was given the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony with President Bush in 2007.

Clearly the President does not want to piss off China. But prior Presidents managed to maintain relations with China and meet with the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has met with the sitting U.S. President a dozen times, as well as with Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle (including a certain Senator Obama in 2005). Although Beijing complained about these meetings, there were no serious costs to the U.S.-China relationship. George W. Bush met with the Dalai Lama in May of 2001, in advance of his first trip to China, and thereafter made clear that meetings with him were nonnegotiable.

Wow! Walk AND chew gum.

But this is not the first time for President Obama. Canceling the Eastern European defense shield was clearly done for Russian, not American interests.

And talking to Iran is something the Iranian government wants. And speaking of Iran

Obama Cuts Off Funding for Iranian Human-Rights Documentation

For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers.

But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed - its federal funding request had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’

So whose interest is served by defunding these folks?

Let me recall to you the words the Dalai Lama said: "When I think of America, I think of the idea -- concept of freedom, liberty, equality. I think these are real human values."

Unfortunately, it appears, that we have a President who has a record of appeasing the enemies of these human values.

I hope I'm wrong.

The Afghanistan Shuffle

Here is the timeline for events in Afghanistan as I see it.

1. 2001: Taliban and al Qaida are driven from Afghanistan by Afghan forces with the support of the CIA, a few hundred Special Forces and a whole lot of US provided air power; they take up residence in Pakistan's Waziristan region.
2. 2003: US invades Iraq and al Qaida declares Iraq to be the front line of their global Jihad:“the most serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq.” - Osama bin Laden
   Iraq “is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.” - Ayman al-Zawahiri
3. 2007: After a stunning defeat in Iraq, al Qaeda retreats to Pakistan and begins to expand their influence and steps up attacks in Afghanistan
4. 2008: President Musharraf is ousted in Pakistan and after a while, Pakistan steps up to the plate and begins to seriously attack al Qaida and Taliban in Pakistan: violence increases in Afghanistan

It seems to me what has happened is clear: Al Qaida, after being pushed out of Afghanistan, decided to confront America directly in Iraq and started an insurgency there. America and its allies, after a while, began a counter-insurgency program which ultimate forced al Qaida back to their safe-haven in Pakistan. Pakistan, after a while, began seriously crimping al Qaida's style in Pakistan and now have no where left to go but back to Afghanistan.

And if we are not there to stop them, that's precisely what they will do: move back to Afghanistan.

Yet, the very fact that the US, now joined by Pakistan has degraded al Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan, forcing them to relocate is now grounds for not doing what it takes to deliver the coup de grace.

Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistani and U.S. officials.

So this is half right, because it is very clear from General McChrystal that

In the war assessment he delivered to the Pentagon, he struck a note of urgency, saying that if the troop increases he had recommended were not in place within 12 months, the allied effort risked failure.

If al Qaida and the Taliban are no longer welcome in Iraq, and are forced out of Pakistan, where will our military failure in Afghanistan leave them?

I mean, please, this isn't rocket science.

Right now, at this time we have the chance to catch al Qaida and the Taliban between the hammer of Pakistan and the anvil of of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

If we don't exploit this opportunity we will regret it as much as we now regret not having had the forces in place to eliminate OBL and his crew at Tora Bora in 2001.

Let's instead make the commitment to crush the enemy now when we have the opportunity.