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What do the Battle of Salamis, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, some U-boat sinkings, a dry dock in France and the Battle of Okinawa have in common?
Some old ideas that never quite fade away.
As set out here.
via The Center for Public of Integrity
Research Triangle Institute is an independent, non-profit research organization based on a 180-acre campus in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. RTI is the fourth-largest non-profit contract research organization in the United States. From 1990 to fiscal year 2002, the company received slightly more than $1.2 billion in U.S. government contracts
Board of Governors member Gordon R. Sullivan served as the chief of staff to the U.S. Army from 1991 to 1995
Global Warming is going to be a another big government trough to feed from. General Sullivan is just making sure his benefactors get more than their fair share of the pork. Let's not assign to him anything as nobel as "being part of a political cause".
First it started with various retired generals uttering public denunciations against the Iraq war. Of course, the MSM loved it and promoted these men to no end. This raised the spectre that some of these retired brass really liked being taken seriously again. So it was almost inevitable that this would prompt some of these same people to use whatever "authority" they had engendered to speak on decidedly non-military issues. Accordingly, I give you:
US generals urge climate action
Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts.
They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions.
Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni.
Can anything good come from this? Does this do anything but further REDUCE the perception that the military is above and beyond the petty policy squabbles that so frequently infect domestic politics? If the military become increasingly seen to be "taking sides" in decidedly non-military/non-defense issues, doesn't that turn us into nothing more than another special interest group that has opinions on EVERYTHING--and hence--can be ignored on most of them?
Kind of like a uniformed People for the American Way.
Yes, I realize that the report attempts to shoehorn the climate change argument into a "national security" argument, but that just underscores the damage to the military's credibility as a "neutral" actor when groups like Zinni, et al. try to define everything within the context of national security.
Don Ho, an entertainer who defined popular perceptions of Hawaiian music in the 1960s and held fast to that image as a peerless Waikiki nightclub attraction, died yesterday in Honolulu. He was 76.The cause was heart failure, his daughter Dayna Ho said.
Mr. Ho was a durable spokesman for the image of Hawaii as a tourist playground. His rise as a popular singer dovetailed with a visitor boom that followed statehood in 1959 and the advent of affordable air travel. For 40 years, his name was synonymous with Pacific Island leisure, as was “Tiny Bubbles,” his signature hit, which helped turn him into a national figure.
Okay, Chap got an interesting discussion started here. My response started as a comment, but the original is sliding down the front page and I think this might be worth continuing as it addresses broader issues than the single post. We're on the tip of an iceberg here, I suspect Chap is aware of that, too - his subtle link is a well disguised grenade, and I don't think it's a dud.
On political activity in the military: We have obvious rules that limit us - can't participate in events or solicit funds in uniform, can't use government resources, can't call for violent overthrow, can't disparage certain elected officials, etc. But obviously, as with any rules, there are black, white, and grey areas. I'm about to wade into those, making some generalizations based on my experience.
An interesting essay on Al Qaeda's Maritime Threat can be found here.
And some additional stuff here.
Update: Fixed first link.
The Doc says, "I've got good news and bad. Which do you want first?"
"Define bad", says the patient, who turned out to be a newspaper reporter, so none of the remainder of the conversation mattered.
Press conference with Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander, Multi-National Corps - Iraq, April 13, 2007
Last week in Ramadi, there were nine attacks total. During the same week a year ago, there were over 84 attacks.
I think it is safe to say that a Profound shift in the nature of the insurgency in AlAnbar has occurred.
The newly ascended Democrat majority in Congress have obviously decided to make their fabled “cooked intelligence” trope the centerpiece of their legislative legacy. Senator Carl Levin plays Brother Grimm in their myth-making in the Senate, and shows no sign of having any interest in truth (or full disclosure).
Thomas Joscelyn, writing at Weekly Standard, summarizes the facts, long-in-evidence, that refutes Levin’s untruthful crusade against “pre-war intelligence.”
This will of course make no difference to the willfully or constitutionally ignorant. Levin, oddly, can’t really be numbered among these, since he knew the factual basis for Intelligence behind our decision to invade Iraq, back when we did so, and has only changed his tune for political opportunity since.
Joscelyn finds startling the Post lead-in on the story:
"Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides 'all confirmed' that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq."Joscelyn rightly dismisses the notion that we should put any stock in denials by Hussein and his top aides that they had any truck with or cooperated in any way with Al Qaeda. Hussein also denied gassing Kurds and Iranians, draining the marshes, conducted ethnic cleansing throughout Iraq, or having any designs on acquiring or developing nuclear weapons. He also insisted Kuwait was rightfully part of Iraq. Surely Levin wouldn’t rather believe Saddam and his goons, than those legitimate voices of the Intelligence Community who believed (and still do) that links were significant?
If critics want to take that route, there’s no point in further discussions, at least if you want to keep them rational or logical.
But what of the documents that somehow “confirmed that Hussein’s regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq"?
Several of my colleagues have the great good fortune (in my opinion) of monitoring open source intelligence sources as part of their paid, full-time job. One passes along a heart-rending story that somehow never appeared in major mainstream media (MSM), although elements of the basic story have been reported elsewhere.
The story passed on to me was reported by Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN). According to their website, “IRIN is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but its services are editorially independent. Its reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations and its agencies, not its member states.” I admit to being astounded that a UN-associated entity is publicizing this story. I would be even more astonished if human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International ever paid any attention to crimes of this kind.
So what does IRIN convey in its report that could break your heart? That al Qaeda intentionally targets handicapped children and their families to use as fodder for their terrorism. Nothing the MILBLOGGERS haven’t heard before, but about as far away from the image conveyed by the MSM for how cruel and inhuman are the enemies of a free Iraq.
Suffice it to say that AQ resembles nothing more completely than the monsters in Nazi Germany who dreamed up the Final Solution as a means of ridding their Ideal society of undesirables and the “impure.” (There’s a very good reason many of us call them Islamofascists, after all.)
Greyhawk already took Senator Joe Biden to task over the latest of his usual foolishness (Washington Post, April 12), but I noted yesterday that Fred Kagan did so as well over at the Weekly Standard.
Biden, readers may recall, recently fell upon what he views as the inevitable partitioning of Iraq into its respective sectarian parts, ethnic and religious, as the answer to all questions about Iraq. Biden was long been one of those lesser lights who has had to seek attention in the shadow of his more prominent peers.
Biden, ever lugubrious in speechmaking, nevertheless has been much less adept at politicking, at least as measured by media attention. I am sure he thinks he’s stumbled upon the winning differentiator among his Democratic Presidential rivals, by seizing as strategy, the net result he thinks will happen anyway. This will make him look wise and prescient in one pseudo-policy, or so he must think.
The problem is, Biden gets it wrong, according to Kagan. As demonstrated visually by the inapt metaphor of the “water balloon” of our current surge efforts in Iraq, Biden wears only a lip gloss deep comprehension of the situation in Iraq.
(Excerpts from Kagan's fine rebuttal, and more commentary, over at Dadmanly)
This dude really needs to be reading guys like us more often. Maybe then he'd stop bugging guys in chat rooms.
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