First Storms Approach Gulf Coast, Capping Would Stop, Cleanup Worsen

Relief well drilling, capping and cleanup crews will be forced to evacuate in as early as three days if the first tropical storms of the hurricane season find a path to the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Hurricane Center by mid-Friday placed a 70% chance one of the storms with winds in excess of 100mph will whip through the area where an oil well blowout of volcanic proportions has spewed an estimated 60,000 barrels of oil and gas daily since April 20.

However, computer models were divided evenly whether the storm would head directly to the blowout site 40 miles south of Grand Isle, La., or west to inland Mexico.

Usually, rig operators begin closing down as early as 120 hours before a storm of 40mph winds. BP engineers said crews and support ships at the blowout site will remain as long as possible.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, in charge of the government's response team, said on CNN this morning that contingency plans were well prepared.

No matter what the plans, the cap on the ruptured well will be removed from siphoning and the full force of the blowout estimated unimpeded at 100,000 bpd will directly enter the sea already blackened with oil plumes.

Drilling on the two relief wells will be terminated for the storm's duration and not resumed until at least a week after their crews return.

Storms or hurricanes will not disturb the capping and containment pipes and submersible submarines at the rupture point 5,000 feet below the surface. But all piping to the surface will be removed.

What is unknown is the volume of surface oil slick surged to inland beaches, marshes and drinking water sites from the force of the tropical storm or hurricane. Nor do experts agree on how much disturbance the storms will have on the gigantic oil plumes in shallower waters of 2,000 to 3,000 feet.

Earlier this week, the New York Times talked to industry officials about evacuation procedures in the event of tropical storms and hurricanes.

“An early hurricane season or a series of hurricanes could be a double whammy, disrupting both the relief-well process as well as the recovery of the leaking oil,” said Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of geoscience programs at the University of Houston.

Hurricane forecasters say as many as seven hurricanes and two dozen storms are predicted through the end of November.

Last season was rather benign, rarely interrupting work on the nearly 4,000 oil rigs in deep and shallow water in the Gulf.

Coast Guard offshore compliance officer Steve Sutton said oil companies have filed evacuation and return plans his office approves.

“But we don’t tell them when they have to leave,” Sutton said, and  “we don’t prescribe" when they return.

 Holly Hopkins, an expert on production operations with the American Petroleum Institute, said that of all its workers in the gulf, BP would probably want those at the well site — which in addition to the roughly 250 people aboard the relief-well rigs includes scores of engineers and technicians aboard large oil-processing vessels and smaller service ships — to be “the last ones out” as a storm approaches. “Obviously, safety’s first,” she said. “But they’re going to want to stay on location as long as possible.” 

She said last-minute evacuation by helicopters is complicated since they cannot operate safely in winds in excess of 45mph.

If any of the equipment encountered storm conditions it would have to be inspected before work could resume, adding to the delays, she said. 

Whether government inspectors are directly involved, the Times article did not say.

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EPILOGUE

The first hurricane will be put up or shut up time for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. After throwing public tantrums, the Army Corps of Engineers reluctantly authorized a prototype six-mile sand berm drudged from the Gulf inland shores constructed on his coast barrier islands. Whether the six-foot-tall, 25-foot wide berms of sand withstand the wind and ocean ferocity during the storm is crucial. Skeptics said the dredged Gulf floor would only accelerate the velocity and volume of surge action into coastal inlets.

Opening Salvos In Cal Gov Race: Didn't Vote vs. Chameleon

In the campaign to be elected California governor -- a job no one in their right mind would want -- the opening salvos between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown perfectly frame the candidates' Achilles heels.

The Republican Whitman paints Brown as a chameleon in a television ad released Friday. In a montage of old news video clips, one shows a 1992 debate where Bill Clinton says Brown "reinvents himself every year or two."

Brown's union supporters earlier blanketed the airwaves with a video showing Whitman explaining why she didn't vote for 28 years as she made her fortune as a corporate CEO. "But, why?" the reporter keeps asking. "I should have but didn't," she keeps saying.

The winner of the Nov. 2 election is saddled immediately with a $19 billion budget deficit. Whitman, 54, has spent zero minutes in government and only the last two years thinking about it. Brown, 72, was born in government and has lived his entire life in the trade, if one dares call it that.

"Jerry Brown is in many ways very unusual because he has been many, many things," Jack Citrin, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said. 

The opening Whitman ad is described by the Los Angeles Times:

The ad opens and closes with Brown's image on a 45 rpm record. The not so subtle message? That Brown is a relic of a bygone era, sure to be contrasted with Whitman's EBay resume. In between is a video collage of images ranging from Vietnam-era helicopters to peace march imagery of the 1970s to shots of Brown and Clinton on the campaign trail in the 1990s. 

Whitman campaign strategists say they will portray Brown, who served as governor from 1977-1983, as a typical free-spending Democrat who busted the state surplus with outrageous spending programs.

The Brown camp counters that as governor the surplus he took was shifted to cities and counties who lost revenue as a result of the Proposition 13 property tax curbs voters approved in 1978.

Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said: "If Meg Whitman had ever bothered to vote, she might know that Jerry Brown cut taxes by $4 billion, built up a surplus and created 1.9 million new jobs for Californians" before he bailed out counties and cities.

Brown, who has served as governor, attorney general, secretary of state and mayor of Oakland among his assortment of jobs on the public payroll, is by his Jesuit upbringing personally frugal.

As governor, he rented a cheap apartment rather than live in the governor's "mansion" and drove his own 1972 Plymouth in stead of a limousine chauffeured by a California Highway Patrol officer.

On the campaign trail, he flaunts his frugality compared to the lavish lifestyle of the vast personal wealth Whitman has achieved.

But it is a fine line he walks.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports he and his wife, former Gap executive Anne Gust, own a custom-designed, $1.8 million house, a Zen-inspired, five-level architectural gem perched high in the wooded Oakland Hills overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Slumish compared to Whitman's $3 million home in the Silicon Valley community of Atherton.

As Round One ends, Whitman is the ruthless tycoon too busy to vote and Brown the lizard of many colors.

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EPILOGUE

All I can say at this stage of the campaign is at least Brown knows what he's getting into.

Extra! Extra! Free Condoms For First Graders

Provincetown, Mass., school district now allows free condoms given to first graders upon request. This is serving a softball right up Bill O'Reilly's alley. Film at the click of your finger.

Judge Shoots Obama In The Foot, Again, On Gulf Moratorium

 In a game of chess, the Obama administration may appeal a federal judge's second order ending the government's six-month moratorium on some drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The government in effect is stalling for time as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar crafts a new moratorium that he hopes will pass the legal hurdles posed in the first one issued May 5.

Fifth District Judge Martin Feldman Thursday rejected to stay his decision June 15 when he ruled the government failed to prove its case shutting down exploratory drilling platforms in the Gulf was necessary for safety reasons just because one failed.


 No immediate word from the government that it take its case to the 5th District Court of Appeal.

The case involves only the moratorium applied to the 33 deepwater exploratory rigs in the Gulf. There are more than 3,600 wells now drilling in deep and shallower waters of 500 feet or less.

It is unknown whether work on the 32 rigs has resumed although industry experts said last week it would be unlikely until the path was cleared from legal stays, appeals and the now possibility of a new moratorium.

The moratorium designed to allow time for the government to assess the safety conditions on all drilling wells was invoked after the Deepwater Horizons platform exploded April 20 that killed 11 crew. The resultant blowout has dumped an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 barrels daily of gas, crude and dispersant chemicals causing what the government classifies as the worst accidental environmental disaster in the nation's history.

Salazar on Thursday told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee the Department is reviewing plans for BP, the leaseholder of Deepwater Horizons, to drill off the Alaska coast.

Interior's former Mineral Management Services agency waived environmental review of the Liberty Fields project in 2007.

"The whole process for approving Liberty was bizarre," one of the scientists said in a New York Times story Wednesday.

Liberty Fields is a 31-acre mound of gravel dumped three miles off the Alaska coast in the Beaufort Sea and is considered by BP and the government at that time a land-based oil drilling operation even though pipes would extend at least eight miles out to sea in search of a deepwater oil reserve.

The project has already received its state and federal environmental permits, but BP has yet to file its final application to federal regulators to begin drilling, which it expects to start in the fall, the Times reported.

 Rather than conducting their own independent analysis, federal regulators, in a break from usual practice, allowed BP in 2007 to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act, according to two scientists from the Alaska office of the federal Mineral Management Service that oversees drilling. 

BP said Liberty would provide about 400 jobs and add an estimated 100 billion barrels of oil produced from U.S. lands.

Welcome Back To Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus

 Besides my computer crashing and taking care of nasty business in my drug coverage caused by cutbacks in California's Medicaid bankrupt system, I was effectively muzzled by weariness yesterday to file a column on Afghanistan.

So a day late and many dollars short, I think what I began to write still holds true. Here's the first part.

 By naming Army Gen. David H. Petraeus the new military commander in Afghanistan, Barack Obama is failing to take advantage of a crisis -- his chief of staff's term -- and taking his eye of the ball -- his words during his successful presidential campaign.

"This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy," Obama said in public comments after he accepted Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's resignation.

"As difficult as it is to lose Gen. McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for our national security."

First of all, McChrystal's disparaging remarks of NATO, diplomats and politicians were ill advised but spoken out of a frustration for a failed mission in Afghanistan.

It is based on nation building and not national security.

And the president should review the policy he crafted with Petraeus and do what President Nixon did in Vietnam.

I can define the new policy in two words.

Back Off.


Vice President Joe Biden had it right from the beginning. Conservative columnist George Will had it right. And Richard N. Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, got it right Wednesday.

That's as far as I wrote until my little world crashed.

After sleeping on it, Obama's decision to remove a mouthy, almost insubordinate general was the correct option for it preserves the concept of civilian control over our military.

To "demote" Petraeus to replace McChrystal in Afghanistan was a political necessity because the former has the chops to carry out the mission and the support of Senate Republicans to confirm as easy as a slam dunk as Sen. John McCain might have said. That support extends to the far left of the Democratic Party.

Obama has chosen not to second guess his policy for the Afghan/Pakistan theater. Fair enough. His new miracle worker is Petraeus.

Lots of luck.

Let's review the Obama policy which now stands dead center of when it was launched and when the targeted pullout begins next summer.

The counterinsurgency concept is failing to win the hearts and minds of Afghans because its government remains corrupt and feeble in the provinces controlled by the Taliban. If the U.S. jerked its billions of dollars in support annually, the government would fall immediately probably into the hands of the Taliban.

Since our intelligence teams suspect only 100 or less Al-Qaeda operating in country now, we are fighting only the Taliban which in itself is fragmented on its goals, depending upon the local enclave.

So what if the Taliban retakes control. It would impose no worse conditions on women, using just one example, as the Karzai government has rendered.

Here is how Ariana Huffington on her website Oct. 19, 2009 described concerns expressed by Sen. Diane Feinstein:


"I particularly worry about women in Afghanistan," Feinstein said, "acid in the face of children, girl children who go to school, women who can't work when they're widowed, huddled on the streets, begging, women beaten and shot in stadiums, you know, Sharia law with all of its violence."
This is indeed very tragic, and I share her concern. But missing from the discussion was the fact that "Sharia law with all of its violence" has just been made the law of the land by President Karzai -- you know, our man in Kabul. The Sharia Personal Status Law, signed by Karzai, became operational in July. Among its provisions: custody rights are granted to fathers and grandfathers, women can work only with the permission of their husbands, and husbands can withhold food from wives who don't want to have sex with them. On the plus side, if a man rapes a mentally ill woman or child, he must pay a fine.
Of course, even with America standing guard, only 4% of girls in Afghanistan make it to the 10th grade, and up to 80 percent of Afghani women are subjected to domestic violence. As one of the Afghan women interviewed in Rethink Afghanistan sums up the current situation: "The cases of violence against women are more now than in the Taliban time."
So can we please put to rest the nonsensical rationalization that we're there for women's rights?

 It was Joe Biden who preferred a strategy on fewer troops, using covert special ops and CIA teams to eliminate militant leaders and call in drones to carry out the kill. He lost and as a good soldier in the Obama camp has kept his mouth shut -- a minor miracle in itself.

But, Biden to World: That is the exact policy the U.S. is using in Pakistan with some additional success by convincing the Pakistan government fighting Al-Qaeda in their country is to their benefit.

Although Adrianna Huffington wanted Biden to resign at that time in October 2009, she did link to a Newsweek cover story at the time about a Sept. 13 national security meeting at the White House.

"Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent.

Well, said, Mr. Vice President.

My favorite conservative, because he's a sports nut as I am, is George Will, the brains behind that ideology. He stirred the Afghan policy pot with this assessment in late August 2009:

[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote shortly after Obama revised his Afghan/Pakistan policy:

"If Afghanistan were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of effort," writes Haas. "It is not and does not. It is not certain that doing more will achieve more. And no one should forget that doing more in Afghanistan lessens our ability to act elsewhere."

As of Wednesday, he saw nothing to change his mind.

The United States has embarked on a policy of state-building in a country with little tradition of a strong state. Making matters worse is that the Afghan government is riddled with corruption and the Taliban has the benefit of a sanctuary in Pakistan, which remains as much of a problem as it is a partner. Such a policy offers little likelihood of enduring results that would come close to justifying the enormous costs -- all at a time the United States faces a looming fiscal crisis and mounting strategic challenges in Iran and North Korea.
The president was wise to act swiftly to replace his theater commander; he should act no less decisively in reviewing the policy. The focus should be on scaling back U.S. military presence, on what more can be done to induce some Taliban leaders and troops to reject working with al-Qaeda and join the Afghan political process -- and on what is to be done to those who refuse.

And that national security thing Obama proclaims is so essential to nation-build Afghanistan?

Consider this 2009 assessment by Robert Baer, a former CIA field operative but by no means an expert in foreign policy. It was quoted in the Huffington Post column I referred to earlier:

"The notion that we're in Afghanistan to make our country safer is just complete bullshit... what it's doing is causing us greater danger, no question about it. Because the more we fight in Afghanistan, the more the conflict is pushed across the border into Pakistan, the more we destabilize Pakistan, the more likely it is that a fundamentalist government will take over the army -- and we'll have Al-Qaeda like groups with nuclear weapons."

The only tangible evidence I see in the Obama Afghan/Pakistan counterinsurgency policy that military experts assured us would happen is the kill rate of our NATO coalition troops would increase.

Right they were. June is the bloodiest month in nine years in Afghanistan. With a week remaining, the death toll is 76 total forces, including 46 Americans.

Screw The Generals, It's The Foot Soldiers That Count

The frenzy whether Gen. Stanley McChrystal will resign, be fired or retained as commander of Afghanistan military forces for disparaging remarks about his civilian counterparts is misplaced.

The focus should be on the foot soldiers carrying out the counterinsurgency mission with rules of engagement that are "handcuffing" their efforts to defeat the enemy.

Indulge me for reprinting one paragraph from my column yesterday from the Rolling Stone article that I considered most revealing:

At one outpost, a soldier McChrystal had met earlier was killed in a house that the local U.S. commander had repeatedly asked to destroy. The request was denied, apparently out of concern that razing the house would anger locals whose allegiance the U.S. is trying to win.

"Does that make any (expletive) sense?" Pfc. Jared Pautsch asks. "We should just drop a (expletive) bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself, 'What are we doing here?'" 

I have more compassion for the life of Pfc Pautsch than the career of Gen. McChrystal. 

As if the gods were smiling on those forced to make the ultimate sacrifice, the New York Times Wednesday addressed that issue squarely.

“I wish we had generals who remembered what it was like when they were down in a platoon,” a sergeant said to a reporter in the back of an armored transport. “Either they never have been in real fighting, or they forgot what it’s like.”

It is McChrystal's rules of engagement that have made it much more difficult for troops to use air strikes and artillery in the fight against the Taliban.

“The troops hate it,” one army colonel said. “Right now we’re losing the tactical-level fight in the chase for a strategic victory. How long can that be sustained?”

Troops in the trenches are always bitching about the food, weather and conditions. But when more and more are questioning the sanity of their commanding generals, a serious morale problem becomes a cancer.

As the Times and Rolling Stone articles suggest, McChrystal or his successor faces a far more serious problem than keeping their civilian diplomatic and political leaders happy. A constituency no commander wants to lose is his own troops.

The natural instinct of a combat soldier when his buddy is killed, no matter how well trained, is to bomb the bastards that did it. That's a recipe for frustration and anger becoming redirected up the chain of command.

U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are playing by a set of rules of engagement. 

The enemy has no rules. They exploit those rules to blend, hide and shield themselves amongst the villagers to escape and fight another day. 

The Times:

Young officers and enlisted soldiers and Marines, typically speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs, speak of “being handcuffed,” of not being trusted by their bosses and of being asked to battle a canny and vicious insurgency “in a fair fight.” 

Rolling Stone:

“Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing...The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.” 

COIN is the abbreviation for counterinsurgency. 

The generals and diplomats have slapped the brakes on indiscriminate air and artillery strikes from lessons learned in Iraq. No need to remind anyone of some of those atrocities

It also is an effort to appease Afghan President Hamid Karzai who has lodged countless protests earlier in the 10-year war that too many innocent civilians were killed as collateral damage. For his local audience, he has threatened to negotiate with the Taliban for peace.

The way many sergeants and platoon leaders see it, some rules do not merely transfer risks away from civilians. They transfer risks away from the Taliban. 

The Times:

Now, with fire support often restricted, or even idled, Taliban fighters seem noticeably less worried about an American response, many soldiers and Marines say. Firefights often drag on, sometimes lasting hours, and costing lives. The United States’ material advantages are not robustly applied; troops are engaged in rifle-on-rifle fights on their enemy’s turf. 

From a tactical ground decision:

This has lead to situations many soldiers describe as absurd, including decisions by patrol leaders to have fellow soldiers move briefly out into the open to draw fire once aircraft arrive, so the pilots might be cleared to participate in the fight...

But restrictions that are popular in Kabul have often alienated soldiers and Marines whose lives are at stake, including rules that limit when Western troops can enter Afghan homes. Such rules, soldiers and Marines say, concede advantages to insurgents, making it easier for them to hide, to fight, to meet and to store their weapons or assemble their makeshift bombs.

The chilling KIA count in Afghanistan is 1,000 U.S. soldiers, a list growing daily now that the fight to capture Taliban strongholds in the south is escalating.

I end this story the same way the Times article concluded:

(No) one wants to explain whether the restrictions are increasing the number of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base, and seeding disillusionment among those sent to fight.

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EPILOGUE

Hitler boasted a 1,000-year Reich. I fear a 1,000-year war in Afghanistan at the rate events are progressing. It is not that I value an American life higher than an innocent Afghan civilian caught in a crossfire.

Meet Jessie, Detention Officer A La La

I needed a respite from talking generals and oil blowouts so what better than tell the story of an Arkansas detention officer who posed in the semi-nude for Playboy's on-line gig?

Jessie Lunderby, 21, was placed on administrative leave Sunday when her boss, sheriff Tim Helder of Washington County in Fayetteville, Ark., found out about it.


He said wearing a pink bra and panties in a photo shoot as Playboy's on-line "June 7th Cyber Girl of the Week" violated department policy.

"It's just kind of shady, the way they're doing the whole thing," Lunderby complained to Fayetteville's KFSM-TV.
 
What teed off the sheriff is that the detention officer listed the department on her Playboy bio and the distractions it will cause when the inmates she escorts to court start behaving badly once the video becomes widely distributed.


"In my view, taking your clothes off and making a private issue a public one has done nothing to aid us in our mission," Helder said.

The sheriff dropped kicked the problem onto the desk of the county attorney for any disciplinary action.

Just as generals talking out of school and oil rigs blowing out, Jessie is not the first young woman to get in job trouble for posing seductively in national pop media. Nor, the last.