The Cool Blue Blog

Major Brent Clemmer

U.S. Army Major Brent Clemmer, a soldier who served with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team) during its 15 months in Iraq, received the Silver Star, the third-highest military award for combat valor.

“I’m very humbled,” Clemmer said. “Most soldiers don’t think what we do is in any way special. We’re doing our jobs.”

Clemmer added that the award is a reflection of the performance of the nearly 170 soldiers in his company.

Clemmer received the award for his actions on Jan. 28, 2007 when he commanded Charger Company of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment.

Clemmer was notified that a helicopter had been shot down near Najaf, south of Baghdad, and coalition forces responding were receiving significant gun and mortar fire, according to the award’s citation.

After moving his company about 60 miles, he linked up with a Special Forces team that had suffered casualties and established a perimeter between the wreckage and insurgents.

He then directed the recovery of the wreckage and the bodies of the two pilots who died in the crash.

“I’m really proud we didn’t let anything happen to those guys,” Clemmer said.

According to the award’s citation:

“During the night, Clemmer directed his unit to repel several enemy counterattacks as the fighters were based in a nearby fortified town surrounded by a deep trench. Air Force gunships and Army attack helicopters assaulted the town.

At daybreak, Clemmer again moved his company to support a sister company’s ground assault of the town. Wounded women and children emerging from the town signaled the insurgents’ surrender.”

The imminent assault transformed into a humanitarian mission, Clemmer said.

He accepted the surrender of several hundred people, insurgents and civilians. He established a landing zone for medical evaluation and the delivery of medical supplies, water and other supplies.

The actions of Clemmer and his soldiers resulted in about 250 insurgents being killed, 81 being wounded and more than 400 being captured. They recovered stockpiles of enemy ammunition, medical supplies, food and hundreds of weapons.

Clemmer was promoted to major in February 2007 and transferred to a job in brigade headquarters. He has deployed to Afghanistan and twice served in Iraq.

I don't find climategate surprising at all

I really don't know what the hubbub is about climategate. It's been obvious for a very long time that the data upon which the arguments for anthropogenic global warming is wrong. And it has bee obvious for a long time that the most political scientists advocating for AGW have been hiding the source data.

Let's recap: in science you have a theory if and only if you have a model that can be tested against actual phenomena: In other words, you have to be able to predict some behavior in the real world. The models constucted by AGW proponents have never predicted anything which means they do not have the data necessary to create theory.

Due to the stunning failure of the AGW models, scientists have been asking since the 90's for the source data upon which the models were based and no data have been forthcoming.

Now in science, it is important and routine to share data. This is because a basic tenent of science is that experiments (i.e. testing the theory against reality) must be replicable by other scientists. This is how basic science is conducted. This is how scientific knowledge is advanced.

As an example, back in the 80's the Fleischmann-Pons announcement that they had achieved "Cold Fusion" (nuclear fusion achieved at something resembling room temperature, or minimally fusion achieved at something below temperatures of millions of degrees Celsius). This announcement excited many people about the promise of very cheap energy production. Now in this case, Fleischmann and Pons published their data and their experiments as they should. Scientists around the world attempted to duplicate their results and failed. Ultimately it was determined that Fleischmann and Pons had made an error and life moved on without Cold Fusion.

And that is how science is done. Of course, there was no politics involved here and we had ethical scientists who, though wrong about their discovery, acted honorably.

With AGW, the models have been demonstrably wrong for so long with no one on the the AGW side sharing data that the only conclusion one could reach was that they were hiding something: that they weren't really doing science at all. They were in fact politicians.

And the only thing climategate did was reveal this fact in a concrete way.

Now those who continue to support the exaggerated claims of AGW calls us doubters AGW deniers, but that's not the case.

It's not the case because I at least, and I suspect most who understand and respect scientific inquiry, are not deniers of anything other than phoney theories.

I do not deny that Global Warming is occuring; it clearly is occuring.

I don not deny that humans are contributing to Global Warming; it would be very surprising if we were not.

But, in order to make policy decisions we need to know how we are contributing to global warming, how much we are contributing, what the effects of our contirbution are on climate, and how much our actions can affect the outcome.

And, of course, we have to know what it means to "stop" global warming. I mean what are we talking about making the global climate colder? What would the effects of that be? Do we think we can adjust the climate so it is always the same? What are we talking about?

Policy, or at least good policy, needs to be informed policy. And the rabid proponents of Global Warming do not help the serious issues we must confront.

The idea that human produced "greenhouse" gases are the primary cause of Global Warming is clearly wrong. If it were correct, the models produced from this theory would be correct as well.

And we need to know the facts because if it turns out there is nothing we can do to "stop" Global Warming then we need to start to put in place policies that will deal with the inevitable.

In fact, the unproven idea that we can do something about Global Warming is effectively preventing us from mitigating the effects of Global Warming.

Which brings us to the importance of realistically predicting the effects of Global Warming is important from a policy point of view. If we don't know what were really talking about we don't know what we should do.

Now none of this should be construed to mean that we should stop our effort to control things like carbon dioxide emmissions; we should and not just for climate reasons but for national security reasons as well. But knowing more about Global Warming will tell us what the extent of our committment needs to be and over what period of time.

This bad science being propogated by AGW evangelists is dangerous from a number of points of view. First, it degrades the public's appreciation and valuation of real scientists and science and people will be more unwilling to believe correct information in any field when it is presented.

Second it prevents us from good realistic policy decisions as mentioned above.

And third, it restricts funding for real climate science because if you already think you know the answer to a question, why would you pour more money into researcing the answer?

The actions of the "scientists" at the University of East Anglia and elsewhere are deplorable and are anti-science.

But that wasn't anything new that was revealed in these emails.

We've known they have been bad actors for a very long time. I suppose, the new thing, is that now, maybe people will believe us and now, maybe, people will start doing the science again instead of trying to make everyone shut up.

Greed is unseemly in a recession

Saturday night, the President took a poke at an easy, populist target: Wall Street.

"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," Mr Obama said. "They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad at the banks. Well, let's see. You guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year in decades and you guys caused the problem."

He plans on meeting with the "industry leaders" with the intent of taking them to the woodshed.

Now this is great theater and there is no doubt that ordinary people are plenty mad at the captains of industry, especially since the Government has been so ardent at making them the scapegoat for problems government itself created. There is no doubt that "Wall Street" and banks played a role, but there is also little doubt that both the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch encouraged banks and other lenders to back mortgages for people who could not afford it.

Last week, USA Today reported that

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

What?! Bonuses? Greedy bastards. Does the President know?

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector....

The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

And yesterday, the Senate passed the House's omnibus appropriations bill in which the government agenies who are the recipients of the funding grew by an average of 10%.

Yes, that's right, while private industry is downsizing and doing with less (which includes workers), the Federal Government which is in debt to China increased spending.

The 1,088-page, $1.1 trillion measure would provide $447 billion in operating budgets for 10 Cabinet departments, awarding increases averaging almost 10 percent. On top of that comes more than $600 billion in payments for federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

(The bill also allows Guantanamo detainees to be imprisoned within the US, but that's another post)

$1.1 trillion and they have yet to fund defense.

Or health care.

So is the President going to take Congress to the woodshed?

I'm thinkin' not.

Staff Sergeant Philip Crosby

Staff Sergeant Philip Crosby exhibited extraordinary leadership and courage during his deployment from November 2007 to October 2008 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Crosby, assigned to 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, was serving as the assistant effects advisor for Military Transition Team 133, Multinational Force West.

His Military Transition Team and he were embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division, and were assigned to protect the Iraqi people and support the local government in the Diyala and Baghdad provinces.

“Our main role was to support the Iraqis by controlling air assets, gathering intelligence, planning operations and organizing support from units, such as AH-64 Apache helicopters and explosive ordinance disposal,” said Crosby.

On February 17, 2008, Crosby was assigned to a group of 20 Iraqi scouts when their unit was ordered to join 20 members of a U.S. Army team to conduct a combined raid on the Iraqi village of Bodija.

After capturing multiple enemy suspects, Crosby and the Iraqi scouts set out on foot with U.S. Army soldiers in pursuit of possible insurgents that had been spotted by U.S. air assets.

After a two-kilometer chase, the U.S. and Iraqi forces encountered a fierce ambush from insurgent forces.

During the ensuing battle, Crosby demonstrated unwavering heroism by exposing himself to enemy fire all the while maintaining constant communication with his forces

Ultimately he organized and coordinated a counter-attack with the U.S. Army forces.

While the team continued to receive sporadic enemy attacks, Crosby once again exposed himself to enemy fire, assisting wounded soldiers and transporting them to a helicopter landing zone for evacuation to a medical facility.

“He stepped up to the occasion, and exhibited some incredible bravery that day,” said Lt. Col. John Orille, who worked with Crosby in Iraq. “He intuitively thinks on his feet and executes with confidence. His judgment is spot-on at the snap of a finger. No matter what you throw at home, he’s able to assess the situation and take action.”

“The last time I’d been to Iraq was during the invasion,” said Crosby. “I saw a lot of differences from before. Mostly with the people in the towns we went and cleared. You could see the difference two or three days later, because there would be kids playing in the street that weren’t there before.”

For his outstanding bravery, Crosby was awarded the Bronze Star with combat distinguishing ‘V’ device.

Profile written from 6/16/2009 article by LCpl. John Faria, II MEF, Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Obama proves Bush right yet again

President Obama has at this point conceded a number of policy issues to his predessor. He has maintained the so-called "domestic wiretap" program in place. He has used the "state secrets" defense. He has continued the practice of rendition.

And although he famously made a pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, he has now all but conceded that Bush's solution was the best available. And in the exception that proves the rule, no one is happy that 9-11 perpetrators are being tried in US Courts instead of military commissions.

And it goes without saying that Obama is sticking to the plan for Iraq laid out by Bush.

Now, it turns out, that Bush was right about Iran as well, but only now is the President figuring out that talking to Iran is not going to work very well.

Iran has defied international pressure to halt its nuclear program, announcing it will build 10 new enrichment plants.

State television says work on the new facilities will begin in two months.

When the US and Iran talked a while ago, the President thought he had convinced Iran to cease and desist. Everyone was all smiles when Iran agreed to ship their nuclear material to Russia and China for enrichment.

Then Iran backed out. Publicly.

And when the UNs International Atomic Energy Agency then rebuked Iran, Iran decided to rebuke the UN by announcing the new nuclear facilities.

Now the thread upon which the Obama Administration can hang its hat is that both Russia and China joined in the rebuke.

But the rebuke is non-binding.

We'll see what happens when the Security Council takes up the matter of sanctions. I'm thinking Russia and China will show the President what else he's missing with regards to Foreign Policy savvy.

Perhaps he needs to consult with Bush on how to proceed...