40,000 More Troops To Fight 300 Al-Quada?

As President Barack Obama deliberates -- no, Dick, he's not "dithering" -- a revised strategy and troop levels in Afghanistan, some people in the White House and Pentagon have loose lips and leaked some startling news this past week. If true, consider these developments:

The president has rejected four options on strategy and troop levels from his military intelligence team and instructed them to start over.

The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, a former commander of troops in the Asian countries, has bucked the now top general and Secretary of State by claiming additional troops to Afghanistan would be a mistake because it would play into the hands of the corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai.

Some intelligence experts believe there are only 300 active al-quada fighters in the Afghan provinces at a time our NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is recommending a troop increase of 40,000 soldiers. An earlier report indicates military experts believe the influence of al-quada in Afghanistan is waning and a return of the Taliban would reject the more radical Islamic extremists. Admittedly, that's a minority opinion.

While Obama insists in previous speeches the purpose of our forces is to prevent militants from taking over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Seymour Hirsch, writing in the New Yorker Magazine, quotes Pakistani military leaders that security arrangement between the two countries is tenuous at best.

A report from the military today describes our troop morale in Afghanistan is low and deteriorating rapidly.

If you read these dispatches as I did you will forgive our president for pondering what's the best course of action. There is speculation that Obama will end up with a middle-course solution which I can't imagine will please anyone.

The one thing I did find positive was the relative success of our drone missiles taking out suspected al-quada leaders in the Af/Pac region despite collateral damage to the civilian population.

The entire military-political purpose of our war efforts in the two countries is to prevent al-quada or any other radical group from gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Which is why I found this paragraph from Hirsch's New Yorker Magazine article so remarkable:

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to (Pakistan President Asif Ali) Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

I'll say it for the umpteenth time. Mr. President, send our troops home.

An Abortion Carried Too Far

I'm facing a moral crises over some fundamental issues regarding health reform legislation.

First, I believe a woman has the right to choose an abortion, not the government nor any religious organization. At the same time, I would not encourage my wife to abort our child unless it would save her life.

Second, as a policy issue, I have no moral grounds to oppose the Hyde Amendment which essentially prohibits taxpayers' money to pay for an abortion. The reasoning in itself is contradictory and unfair to women who cannot afford abortion procedures. My bias is directed at those women who lack responsibility and willy nilly get themselves pregnant as often as a tree bears fruit. Why should I living in Southern California pay for an abortion for some tart in South Florida? No where does it say some things in life are not fair.

I applaud the Catholic Church for running a network of hospitals and promoting universal health care coverage. At the same time, I am appalled that representatives of Catholic bishops successfully lobbied the House of Representatives to take its anti-abortion issue to the ultimate extreme. One threat they have used is closing down all the Catholic hospitals in America if they don't get their way.

The bill passed by the House prohibits a woman from getting an abortion even if she pays for it if any of the insurers involved receive federal subsidies. That, my friends, is a step too far since every carrier for a woman with modest income is subsidized.

From here, the debate goes downhill in a hand basket. It renews the ugly argument of the role religion plays in politics. My basic principle is to keep religion out of politics yet the Catholic bishops as well as the far right Protestant fundamentalists have every right to exercise their powers to our Congress. Complicating matters is many if not most Catholic laypeople quietly do not condone abortion.

Good politics is the art of compromise and doing what's best for the common good. It will be needed if Congress ever passes health reform. As of now, the abortion issue is more volatile than any tangent of a public option.

This article from National Public Radio sums the issue well.

Health Reform Looking Like An Old Western Movie

From the very outset of the health reform legislation debate, I had this premonition that when the House and Senate bills reached the conference committee for reconciliation, President Barack Obama would come charging to the rescue like the hero wearing the white hat in those old western movies.

He still may do that if the Senate manages to actually pass a bill but he is quickly running out of ammunition. He did fire a silver bullet by sending Tonto disguised as former President Bill Clinton to the Senate today to rally the troops.

Rep. John Conyers, the veteran congressman from Detroit, also fired a shot not at the Senate but at the president himself. Essentially, Conyers told the president to get off his duff, take names and kick some butt exactly the way former President Lyndon Johnson did to get crucial civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s.

The advise from both seasoned pols has its drawbacks. Clinton's health reform plan failed. While Johnson won the civil rights battle, he lost The South to the Republicans for generations still counting.

Clinton's advise seems to be to do nothing is failure. The man could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Conyers's pitch is to strike out the Republicans and do everything short of bribing the Democrats to stand as one.

Obama has backed himself in a corner giving the impression that his health reform agenda is his number one priority that must be passed in his first year of his first term. For an issue that could make or break his presidency, Obama is not acting like it. Yet.

He's facing overwhelming odds in igniting sentiment from his core supporters -- blacks, youth and independents. The exit polls from last Tuesday's off-year elections and national polls place health care reform far behind jobs, deficit spending and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For more on this click here and here.

My analysis is never underestimate Bill Clinton. The question is whether Obama will keep Clinton as his point man in the senate deliberations. As for the impact of Conyers' statements, he's just another liberal voicing wishful thinking.

Fate of the health reform legislation is in Obama's hands and answers the question whether he can actually govern or just talk the talk.

Forensics Key To Single-Shooter Theory

What bothers me is the time frame and number of shots fired from one if not two pistols by Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan in Thursday's shooting spree at Fort Hood, Tex.

News reports and eye witnesses said the shootings lasted nearly 30 minutes. Army investigators said more than 100 shots were fired. Local police were quoted as saying all the shell casings were recovered from the same gun.

If that is true, what about the shell casings fired by police officer Kimberly Munley who is credited for gunning down Hasan? In all, 13 people (12 soldiers and one civilian) were killed and 38 wounded. Most of the victims were shot multiple times. Based on those numbers, the shooter fired at least 110 rounds without a miss.

I'm not a forensic expert or gun enthusiast or conspiracy freak nor a math major, but the scene reconstructed in words and video do not add up. Of course, we are relying on initial investigation reports. Most important is the confined space in which about 300 soldiers were lined up waiting for their processing papers.

Federal officials said the gun thought to be used is an FN Herstal Five-seveN tactical pistol known as "the Cop Killer" because the impact can pierce so-called bullet-proof vests. It was purchased legally from a gun store in nearby Killeen in August. David Cheadle, the store manager, said it can fire 31 rounds with an extended clip before reloading.

It is unclear whether Hasan purchased the gun in his name and whether it was registered to carry on the sprawling military base which houses 50,000.

The second gun Hasan had with him was a .357 S&W Magnum revolver, federal law enforcement officials told ABC News. Ballistics are still being run to determine if he used the revolver in the shooting.

Because of the close range, it probably doesn't matter if Hasan was a proficient marksman. No news has surfaced yet as to his being certified with military weapons. Eye witnesses said he "fumbled" with the magazines in his efforts to reload.

The heroine cop, 35, confronted Hasan, fell to the ground for cover and at least one of her rounds struck the assailant in the chest. She suffered gun shot wounds to both thighs and one wrist.

The scene at the hospital ER was mayhem, according to this report from Fox News:

Emergency room physician Capt. Reis Ritz was in Darnall, the base hospital, when the loudspeaker came on: "Mass casualties. Mass casualties."

He said the first few to arrive were soldiers with multiple gunshot wounds who had driven themselves to the hospital. Others arrived soon after, some of them carrying friends who were more severely wounded. Many of the victims came into the emergency room with multiple gunshot wounds.

For Maj. Stephen Beckwith, the Emergency Medical Response director at Darnall, the sheer number of gunshot wounds struck him immediately, reminding him of blast injuries he'd seen in combat.

He and other ER personnel told FoxNews.com that the gunshot wounds appeared to have been inflicted by semi-automatic pistols loaded with long bullets more often used with a standard M16 rifle. (The FN Herstal Five-seveN fires .57-caliber rounds.)

"Just so many gunshot wounds — gunshot wounds to the torso, the belly, the chest," he said. "It's similar to what you'd see down range."

Ritz has not yet been deployed overseas, and he said it was like nothing he'd ever seen.

"The worst part," he said, "there's all these multiple gunshot wounds, all the victims shot in multiple places, and they keep coming in and I have no idea who's shooting, where they're shooting from, or why.

"The worst part, not knowing when it would end, not knowing how many more, not knowing if it's only going to be gunshots or something else."

"It's not like we're in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in anything — it's home. It's like you'd expect in war, but it's home."

The Fort Hood massacre is a tragic, horrific story with a heroic ending. But many details during the shooting spree have yet to be clarified by a rigorous investigation. It must be established that Hasan was the lone shooter to quiet the conspiracy theorists who always raise their ugly heads in these events.

I have no problem with the military policy forbidding guns being carried by soldiers on base except for training purposes.

It just goes to show that if a person decides to commit a crazy act, there's not much in the way to stop him. That is the constant scenario of almost every mass murder episode.

The Fox In The Hen House

I've given President Barack Obama a long leash in his efforts at governing and now must concede his biggest mistake in changing how Washington works is his staff's petty feud with Fox News. This running story has legs and they must be chopped off at the knees. This dog must sit, lie down, whacked on the behind with a rolled newspaper and go to obedience school.

The latest bark from the White House is troubling because the source of the story is a third party who works for Fox and claims an anonymous Democratic consultant was threatened by an unnamed White House staffer not to appear on the Fox cable channel.

The source is Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and a former pollster for President Carter. He said he has spoken to Democratic consultants who have been told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names. Over the years, I have believed Caddell is credible even though I don't agree with most of his policy positions.

Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House. "They know better than to tell me anything like that," he said sounding as egomaniac as some of the opinionated anchors on Fox.

Caddell added: "I have heard that they've done that to others in not-too-subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own party, it hurts itself."

Caddell's brief was reported this way in the Los Angeles Times:

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, " 'We better not see you on again,' " said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."

The White House contends Fox is an extension of the Republican Party and a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration. They fear certain issues framed by Fox compels the other media to follow along making subjects as ACORN and so-called presidential czars legitimate news stories.

The White House's pugnacious approach to the network leaves some Democrats troubled.

Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, said in an interview: "This approach is out of sync with my conception of what the Obama administration stands for and what they're trying to do. I think they'll think better of it and this will be a passing phase."

The Obama administration is falling into the gutter as did the Nixon administration by placing reporters out of favor on an enemy's list.

Say what you want about Fox, it is a legitimate news organization. Its opinions are no more or less slanted against the Obama administration than its weaker rival MSNBC slanted more favorably towards the White House.

Get over it, Mr. Obama, chief of staff Raum Emanuel, communications director Anita Dunn, and the rest of your minions. You're fighting a foe beneath your pay grade. Just ignore the bastards.

It is said that newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst shouted us into the Spanish-American war. Is Fox taking us in a direction we do not want to travel? Me thinks the Obama administration gives them too much credit.

Putting The Elections In Perspective

While Americans tuned into the political gyrations of a handful of elections yesterday and political operatives pontificating what it all means today, it remains dwarfed by what happened in Afghanistan.

Five British soldiers embedded with locals were shot and killed by an Afghan policeman with whom they were mentoring at a security outpost in Helmand Province. The embedded NATO troops were carrying out a key part of the counter-insurgency strategy to train Afghan army and police. The assailant escaped in the confusing firefight that followed. British newspapers voiced the outrage by its people back home in not-so-jolly England.

I join in their outrage which is compounded by a stay-the-course mentality of British and U.S. leaders who insist the murders were an isolated incident.

“Partnering and mentoring is more and more the way we are training the Afghan units,” Col. Wayne Shanks, a NATO public affairs officer, said. “You have to be there: work with them, live with them and it makes you safer in the long run. It’s a fundamental tenet of counterinsurgency strategy.”

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, issued a statement saying: “We will not let this event deter our resolve to building a partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces to provide for Afghanistan’s future.”

The attack Tuesday was not the first nor last, said Haji Muhammed Anwar Khan, a Helmand tribal leader and member of Parliament.

Last month an Afghan policeman killed two U.S. soldiers in Wardak Province during a joint patrol.

Polls in Britain are split but support is slipping for that country's participation in Afghanistan where 92 of its troops have been killed this year. Britain has a force of 9,000 troops in that country among the 73,000 NATO forces that include 43 nations.

Britain's leadership remains resolved. Reports the New York Times:

But both the Labor party government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the opposition Conservatives led by David Cameron, who are strong favorites to win a general election next spring, have stood firmly by the British commitment.

Both leaders have said that Britain’s role in the NATO coalition in Afghanistan is essential to safeguarding Britain’s security against Islamic extremist attacks of the kind that the United States endured on Sept. 11, 2001, and Britain on July 7, 2005, when 56 people, including four suicide bombers, were killed in attacks on London’s transit system.

After the killing of the five British soldiers, that message was reaffirmed by the British defense minister, Bob Ainsworth. Speaking in a BBC interview during a visit to Saudi Arabia, he rejected the arguments of those in Britain who have said that the country should abandon its military role in Afghanistan and concentrate on guarding against attacks by Islamic militants at home.

British intelligence chiefs have said that three-quarters of all terrorist plots uncovered in Britain in recent years have had links to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is the ancestral homeland of the majority of Britain’s 1.5-million Muslims. “If Afghanistan is not secure, then Pakistan is not secure, and if Pakistan is not secure then Britain is not secure,” Ainsworth said.

The situation in the U.S. does not appear that sensitive because of a lack of large Muslim populations in U.S. cities. However, that in itself does not diminish the threat of clandestine terrorists cells infiltrated by al quada.

President Barack Obama is still holding back his decision to send up to 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan recommended by McChrystal.

I've said it before and say it again. There is no end game in Afghanistan nor is there a will among the American people to spend billions of dollars a month and the loss of lives -- for another decade at least -- for a people who do not want us there and a government that is for the most part inept and corrupt.

It's a steep price for national security when other options are available.

But no, we on the homefront slobber and salivate over the Republicans taking over two governorships and the comeuppance of Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Fred Thompson and Rick Santorum for endorsing an independent conservative over a Republican in an obscure congressional district in upstate New York.

A Tiny Ripple Does Not Mean A Tsunami

Tell your friends you read it here first. Don't bother watching the wall-to-wall cable television coverage of today's handful of odd-year elections.

Robert McDonnell, the Republican candidate, will be elected governor of Virginia. Barring a minor miracle, incumbent New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine will lose to Republican Chris Christie. Douglas Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, will trounce Democrat Bill Owens in the 23rd Congressional district of New York.

Those are the highly publicized races across the nation. Don't believe for a minute the clucking you hear from Republican faithful. Give them their due and hand them a broom for the clean sweep. Too early for a trend, guys.

The significance of these races are not the epicenter of a tsunami. It is more like a gentle storm wave lapping on the shores of a political chapter written in stone years ago. That is, the party in power in Congress invariably loses seats during the mid-term elections which, by the way, won't occur until a year from now for the rest of the nation.

Virginians are especially in lockstep with that axiom, again invariably electing a governor from the opposite party in power in the nation's capitol. McDonnell could see a sea change in his favor in the 100 members of the Virginia House of Delegates, its lower house. The current make-up is 53 Republicans, 44 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 1 vacancy. The senate's 40-members are not up for reelection until 2011. There, the Democrats hold 21-19 majority. If you are looking at trends, forget McDonnell and look at any party shuffling in the House of Delegates.

By last weekend, Corzine pulled within two points of the Republican Christie and will need a flat-out blitz by Democratic voters in Newark to eke out a victory. The New Jersey legislature now consists of 23 Democrats and 17 Republicans in the senate and 48 Democrats and 32 Republicans in the General Assembly. New Jersey, a solid blue state, is unlikely to witness a change in power in its legislature. Chalk this up to Corzine's unpopularity of raising taxes, job approval ratings below 40%, state unemployment and his former association with one of the nation's bailed out financial institutions, Goldman Sachs.

Other than the bizarre way it unfolded, the fact a conservative independent would win the 23rd congressional seat in New York is not surprising. A Democrat hasn't won in that district since the Civil War, or at least a very long time. The most pressing question is whether Hoffman will remain an independent but you can bet your week's paycheck he will join the Republican caucus in the House.

The general thinking among the pols is these elections are a referendum on President Barack Obama. I say it's a bit premature to cast doubts on the president's agenda at this early stage. Next November is a different story. By then we will have a clear picture on the success or failure of the health reform movement, climate change, Afghanistan and the economy.

As of now, the biggest drawback to Obama and the Democratic congress is unemployment and excessive government spending programs. The New York Times offers these thumbnail sketches of other races around the nation, including several involving same-sex marriage which is a test to see how much clout the conservatives swing.

In the coming months, it will be exciting to watch conservatives flex their muscles -- actually it's more like outshouting their more moderate Republican brethren. Reports the Los Angeles Times:

The rebellion that drove a moderate Republican (Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava in New York's 23rd) off the ballot in a special House election today is sending a clear message to the party leadership and its candidates: Ignore the conservative grass roots at your peril.

I find the conservative civil war with Republicans intriguing. You can bet that proverbial paycheck by next year there will be more than the reported 20% registered voters considering themselves Republicans. But even registration in the high 30 percentile rarely wins elections.

Their propaganda machine is in full throat and framing the national debate in their favor in which we see Newt Gingrich as the voice of reason and the Sarah Palins and her faithful "me too" follower Tim Pawlenty hammering away from the far right.

The biggest thing about midterm elections is apathy. Those millions of new voters thrilled by the campaign of the first black president will be sitting this one out. Why? I don't know other than there's no presidential standard bearer. It's always been that way.

This midterm election cycle is even worse, especially in the rural areas. The reason? It's the economy, stupid. Again the Los Angeles Times gives us a clue from rural America.