Pelosi Credits Iran’s “Goodwill” for Surge Success

Full post (here).

In an interview yesterday with the San Francisco Chronicle, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed the U.S. troop surge failed to accomplish its goal. She then partially credited the success of the troop surge to “the goodwill of the Iranians,” claiming that they were responsible for ending violence in the southern city of Basra.

Asked if she saw any evidence of the surge’s positive impact on her May 17 trip to Iraq she responded:

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Global warming sceptics in an unholy row

Full story (here).

I wonder when people last got widely and publicly ridiculed for not believing in God: probably not for several hundred years.

Nowadays, you'd get a slightly odd look for doing the opposite and expressly stating your faith. But, if you really want to know what it's like to be a 16th-century heretic, try saying you're a bit sceptical about man-made global warming.

Temperatures do seem to have gone up a little, even though environmentalists acknowledge that we might be in for a cool spell now. And we've certainly had our fair share of tsunamis, hurricanes and typhoons recently. Still, no one has convincingly proved that all this is definitely man's fault. Try saying that in polite circles and it's like saying you're partial to roasted babies.

I understand people disagreeing with global warming sceptics, but not the jeering, ridiculing way they do it. I'm not sure I'm right; they're convinced I'm wrong. They're convinced, too, that they have the moral high ground, that all sceptics are sworn enemies of nature, flowers and puppy dogs.

Environmentalism is the new secular faith - school prayer for liberals, as an American philosopher put it. The faith is a strict one. You're not allowed to join if you think that it's sensible to keep an eye on the environment but don't think that man is to blame for changes in world temperature.

You must believe in the full package. If you do, you are blessed, free from sin and allowed the pious smugness you find in the worst sort of religious believers. It's not enough to believe in these things yourself; you must condemn others for not sharing your belief.

Global Warming Skeptics Plot 'Carbon Belch Day'

Full story (here).

Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by "hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars."

The point: the group wants to "help Americans break free from the 'carbon footprint guilt' being imposed by Climate Alarmists."

Grassfire.org says it's skeptical over claims that man-made sources of carbon dioxide emissions -- from automobile exhausts to manufacturing plants -- are raising the Earth's temperature at a dangerous rate. Theories about global warming were highlighted by former Vice President Al Gore's 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Grassfire.org president Steve Elliott, in a statement, said such theories are off the mark. "It's time for Americans to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us," Elliott said.

Grassfire.org said it chose June 12 as the day it wants Americans to rev up their SUVs because it coincides with expected debate in Congress over a $1.2 billion carbon tax rebate program. "Carbon Belch Day will have at least as much impact on the so-called 'planetary emergency' of man-made global warming as the goofy save the earth mandates telling us to turn our lights off for an hour," said Elliott.

Dem. Representative Condemns UCI Anti-Semitism

Full post (here).

In mid-May, I wrote a letter to Chancellor Michael Drake expressing my concern with the University of California at Irvine's (UCI) Muslim Student Union's campus event entitled "Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust," which was held on the campus from May 7th to May 15th. This event appears to have intended to encourage violence against the State of Israel and propagate the spread of anti-Semitism.

The title of the event itself is particularly inflammatory. Comparing current Israeli policies to the Holocaust, the systematic murder of the Jewish people of Europe, is clearly anti-Semitic. It wholly demeans the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and vilifies the Jewish citizens of Israel. The United States Department of State has officially declared that such a comparison is a prototypical example of anti-Semitism. In a recent report to Congress, the State Department adopted the following definition of anti-Semitism:

"Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. Such manifestations of anti-Semitism could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity . . . . Contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to: Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis." [emphasis supplied] (Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism Report, Released by the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, U.S. Department of State, March 2008).

The titles of some of the lectures at the event -- "Death to Apartheid: A Farewell to Zionism" and "Silence is Consent: Stop the Palestinian Holocaust" -- are also disturbing. And, the guests invited to give these lectures have a record of making anti-Semitic statements. As is observable on YouTube, one of the lecturers, Amir Abdel Malik Ali, stated in a speech at UCI in May 2006, "The truth of the matter is: [Israel's] days are numbered. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious." It should be of concern that a speech given at UCI calls for "martyrdom" - the euphemism for suicide bombing.

Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards', say MPs

Full article (here).

Every adult should be forced to use a 'carbon ration card' when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.

The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.

Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.

Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven't used up their allowance. The amount paid would be driven by market forces and the deal done through a specialist company.

MPs, led by Tory Tim Yeo, say the scheme could be more effective at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than green taxes.

But critics say the idea is costly, bureaucratic, intrusive and unworkable.

(Video) Three Heroes on Board

This seemed appropriate for Memorial Day.



The video is from an Apache helicopter performing over-watch for a medevac mission in the mountains of Afghanistan.

In the video, the term "hero" refers to a soldier who was killed in action.

The mother of one of the "heroes" in the video, would later post this:

We believe in fighting to keep all people safe and free to be themselves, because it is the right thing to do.

Some people don't think that we have to fight just yet, that we can wait and the crazies will go away and not harm our little tribe.

They are already harming our little tribe. All of humanity is our tribe.

We have to fight and die to protect people that don't believe in our perspective.

It has always been this way. It always will be this way, until the slaughter begins and people see their own personal lives in jeopardy.

...

We are in a righteous fight that we must win overwhelmingly.

Convince the enemy that they can't win and they will quit. The more people on the ground, the faster we win.

The full letter can be found (here).

(Video) Marcus Luttrell

Marcus Luttrell was a Navy SEAL whose team got ambushed by a large number of Taliban in 2005. He was the only survivor of the ensuing firefight and he wrote about his experience in the New York Times bestseller Lone Survivor (which is being turned into a movie).

In this video, he describes some of his experiences in the War on Terror.

New Urban Outfitters Shirt

This is not a joke.
Urban Outfitters Fresh Jive Victimized Tee

German Special Forces in Afghanistan Let Taliban Commander Escape

Full story (here).

German special forces had an important Taliban commander in their sights in Afghanistan. But he escaped -- because the Germans were not authorized to use lethal force. The German government's hands-tied approach to the war is causing friction with its NATO allies.

The wheat is lush and green in the fields of northern Afghanistan this spring. A river winding its way through the broad valley dotted with walled houses completes the picturesque scene. Behind one of these walls, not far from the town of Pol-e-Khomri, sits a man whose enemies, having named him a "target," would like to see dead. He is the Baghlan bomber.

The Taliban commander is regarded as a brutal extremist with excellent connections to terror cells across the border in Pakistan. Security officials consider him to be one of the most dangerous players in the region, which is under German command as part of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan. The military accuses him of laying roadside bombs and of sheltering suicide attackers prior to their bloody missions.

He is also thought to be behind one of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan's history, the Nov. 6, 2007 attack on a sugar factory in the northwest province of Baghlan. The attack killed 79 people, including dozens of children and many parliamentarians and other politicians, as they celebrated the factory's reopening.

Germany's KSK special forces have been charged with capturing the terrorist, in cooperation with the Afghan secret service organization NDS and the Afghan army. The German elite soldiers were able to uncover the Taliban commander's location. They spent weeks studying his behavior and habits: when he left his house and with whom, how many men he had around him and what weapons they carried, the color of his turban and what vehicles he drove.

At the end of March, they decided to act to seize the commander. Under the protection of darkness, the KSK, together with Afghan forces, advanced toward their target. Wearing black and equipped with night-vision goggles, the team came within just a few hundred meters of their target before they were discovered by Taliban forces.

The dangerous terrorist escaped. It would, however, have been possible for the Germans to kill him -- but the KSK were not authorized to do so.

Caterers find eco-standards tough to chew

Full story (here).

Fried shrimp on a bed of jasmine rice and a side of mango salad, all served on a styrofoam plate. Bottled water to wash it all down.

These trendy catering treats are unlikely to appear on the menu at parties sponsored by the Denver 2008 Host Committee during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

Fried foods are forbidden at the committee's 22 or so events, as is liquid served in individual plastic containers. Plates must be reusable, like china, recyclable or compostable. The food should be local, organic or both.

And caterers must provide foods in "at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white," garnishes not included, according to a Request for Proposals, or RFP, distributed last week.

The shrimp-and-mango ensemble? All it's got is white, brown and orange, so it may not have the nutritional balance that generally comes from a multihued menu.

"Blue could be a challenge," joked Ed Janos, owner of Cook's Fresh Market in Denver. "All I can think of are blueberries."

The Lost Art of War

This is an extensive examination of current Hollywood attitudes.

Locked in an echo chamber of fashionable leftism, our filmmakers have lost the ability to question those discredited assumptions. Only in fantasy war films—films like Spielberg’s undervalued War of the Worlds, Michael Bay’s amusing Transformers, or Peter Jackson’s wonderful Lord of the Rings trilogy—does the truth of our present situation emerge. Here, filmmakers don’t have to confront the deathblow that radical Islam deals to the logic of leftist ideology. They can portray evil without giving it a human face and affirm our values without paying too particular a tribute to the nation in which those values become flesh. The warrior’s sacrifice makes sense again, martial virtues can be openly honored, and those who protect us are given back their glory.

That glory, however, is not the stuff of fantasy alone. The threat of global jihad is all too real, and the stakes are all too high. Liberty, tolerance, the harmony of conflicting voices—these things didn’t materialize suddenly out of the glowing heart of human decency. People thought of them, fought and died to establish them, not in the ether, but on solid ground. That ground has to be defended or the values themselves will die. The warriors willing to do this difficult work deserve to have their heroism acknowledged in our living thoughts and through our living arts. We should hear their voices every day, saying: Earn this. Earn it.

Full article (here).

Welcome To Irvinistan

This is a recap of the last day of this year's MSU anti-Jew week at UCI. There is too much information for me to try and summarize, so you will have to follow the link.

Day 5 - Welcome to Irvinistan

Cartoons lead to arrest of Dutch artist

Full article (here).

A Dutch cartoonist has been arrested following a lengthy investigation into allegations his work was discriminatory to other races, authorities say.

Radio Netherlands said Friday that the artist, who works under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot, was arrested and had a number of his materials seized as part of the ongoing investigation.

The investigation into Nekschot, who has kept his identity hidden since 2005, was initially brought about after an imam complained about the artist's works.

The imam alleged the works were insulting and discriminatory against both Muslims and individuals of other races, Radio Netherlands said.

Book Review: Moment of Truth in Iraq

I pre-ordered this one.

Full review (here).

Moment of Truth in Iraq isn’t the journalistic equivalent of a war movie, but parts of it could surely be used as the starting point for a screenplay. (Such a film might easily perform better at the box office than Hollywood’s string of gloomy, axe-grinding Iraq flicks have.) Still, Yon’s book isn’t just about explosions and carnage. It’s also about the new counterinsurgency strategy and, more important, the Americans and Iraqis who risk their lives to make it work. When Iraq was degenerating into its worst levels of violence, American soldiers spent too much time behind their bases’ walls, hoping to keep casualties to a minimum and to avoid being seen as occupiers by the Iraqis. Today, they live and work inside Iraq’s cities and neighborhoods, where they tend to be welcomed, if not as liberators then as protectors. Counterinsurgency is as much about nation building and community policing as it is about war making.

“The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world,” Yon writes, “and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier helping to build a school or to make a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention.” Images of the despicable abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib have become iconic for many around the world. But anyone who has spent significant time with American troops in Iraq, as I have, will recognize the truth in Yon’s descriptions of U.S. soldiers as usually decent and caring. “There are lots of kitchen accidents in Iraq,” he points out. “Kids get burned. American soldiers can’t take it when they see a kid get burned. If they are in the neighborhood on a mission and they see a burned kid, they will cancel the mission to get the kid to an American aid station, which, technically they shouldn’t be doing.”

Obesity contributes to global warming: study

Full story (here).

Obesity contributes to global warming, too.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

"We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a key part of the big picture."

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

In their model, the researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese with a body mass index of near 30. Many nations are fast approaching or have surpassed this level, Edwards said.

Pro-Hamas Propaganda from UC Irvine

Taken from (here).

A Day in the Life of a Guantanamo Guard

Full article (here).

Detainee 632 did not get his Bowflex machine. The guard who was bitten is fine. We are working on the parsley and onions request, but not too hard. The feces battles never end. In fact, the latest detainee tactic is to grow their fingernails long, put feces underneath the nails and then try to scratch a guard’s face.

Meanwhile, I happen to know the female guard who was verbally abused. Coincidentally we both went to Valley High in Albuquerque, N.M., albeit about 30 years apart. Still, we are both Vikings.

After the briefing, I saw this young soldier and said, “Hey Viking, I heard you had quite a night last night … are you OK?” She said, “Yes sir, I’m fine.”

I looked at her with some skepticism to see if what she was saying were true. What I saw in her eyes surprised me, but shouldn’t have. She really was fine. That detainee’s comments did not bother her in the least.

She is more than he will ever be and she is not alone. Rest assured if the guards at GTMO are any indication, the generation that is now coming of age will do its duty; they will defend our nation with courage, honor, and integrity. So don’t elevate the detainees to sainthood and don’t talk to me about unprofessional behavior, mistreatment or abuse at GTMO, because, frankly, I am more than a little sick of it.

(Video) Muslim Student Union Speaker at UCI

From May 7th 2008.

Photo Essay: A Bay Area Celebration of Israel's 60th Anniversary

http://www.zombietime.com/nakba-60/

Here's a sneak peak:

Amputee vets see eye-to-eye on Segways

Full story (here).

U.S. Army Sgt. Jacque Keeslar lost both legs in Iraq nearly two years ago. To get around, he relies on a wheelchair and a pair of artificial legs, which help him walk in short bursts.

"If I have to do a half mile or mile of walking, it just exhausts me," Keeslar said.

Now, thanks to a specially designed Segway, the battery-powered transporter, Keeslar says he can ditch his wheelchair and get around without people looking down on him.

Keeslar was among 30 vets who received their own modified Segways this week, courtesy of Disability Rights Advocates for Technology.

The nonprofit group presented its latest batch of Segways to the veterans in a ceremony Wednesday at the Army-Navy Country Club in Arlington, Virginia. That brings the number of Segways they have donated to vets to about 150.

Leonard Timm, who founded DRAFT in 2005, calls the mission "Segs-4-Vets."

"[The Segways] provide them with another mobility option that will increase their distance, and will give them a way to communicate with the world standing up," Timm said.

U.S. Climate Summary April 2008

Taken from (here).

The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

2.39 inches of precipitation fell in April. This was -0.04 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 54th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.01 inches per decade.

"Windfall" Profit Taxing

Full article (here).

Some have suggested taxing the “windfall” profits of oil producers. So let’s look at those profits.

It’s true that as crude prices have surged, so have profits for the companies that produce the stuff. Exxon Mobil last week posted a $10.9 billion profit for the latest quarter — the second-biggest U.S. quarterly corporate profit ever. It may help to put that number in perspective. (Many readers don’t really want to do that, but here goes anyway.)

The reason big oil companies post such huge profits is that there are only a handful of them left after the price crash of the late 1990s sent crude prices to $10 a barrel, below the cost of production.

Major U.S. oil companies also found themselves bidding against bigger and better-funded state-owned competitors. (Today, U.S. oil companies produce about 10 percent of the world’s crude oil.) To fund those projects they needed lots of capital; getting bigger by merging was one way to do that.

But, hey, $11 billion for three months' work? Isn’t that a little much? On the next page, let’s look at how that compares with profits reported by other industries.

Let’s start with drugs. There are eight major drug makers in the Standard & Poor's 500; collectively they made $36.2 billion over the past 12 months on revenues of $237.2 billion. That means they pocketed about 15 cents of every dollar’s worth of product sold. Not bad.

How about software? The seven big companies in the sector (including Microsoft, which jointly owns msnbc.com with NBC Universal) took in $92.3 billion in revenues and earned $23.6 billion in profits, or about 25 cents on every dollar.

Banking? Despite their problems with subprime loans, the eight big “money center” banks in the S&P 500 took in profits of $41.3 billion on revenues of $267.3 billion, about 15 cents on the dollar.

Now let’s look at the three oil majors in the S&P 500. In the last 12 months, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips took in $833.7 billion in revenues but reported profits of $71.8 billion. That works out to about 8.6 cents of profit for every dollar's worth of crude.

Refiners fared even worse. They sold $293.6 billion worth of gasoline and other fuels and made $11.9 billion in profits, or about 4 cents on the dollar.

We got our data from MSN Money's Stock Screener.

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

This one is from the liberal Huffington Post.

Full article (here).

A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin--Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating--but add to these indiscretions the surpassing evils of honor killing, female "circumcision," widespread support for terrorism, a pornographic fascination with videos showing the butchery of infidels and apostates, a vibrant form of anti-semitism that is explicitly genocidal in its aspirations, and an aptitude for producing children's books and television programs which exalt suicide-bombing and depict Jews as "apes and pigs."

Any honest comparison between these two faiths reveals a bizarre double standard in our treatment of religion. We can openly celebrate the marginalization of FLDS men and the rescue of their women and children. But, leaving aside the practical and political impossibility of doing so, could we even allow ourselves to contemplate liberating the women and children of traditional Islam?

Cleaner air to worsen droughts in Amazon: study

Full article (here).

Curbing a notorious form of industrial pollution may ironically harm Amazonia, one of the world's natural treasures and a key buffer against global warming, a study released Wednesday has found.

Its authors see a strong link between a decrease in sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and a rise in sea temperature in the northern Atlantic that was blamed for wreaking a devastating drought in western Amazonia in 2005.

University of Exeter professor Peter Cox and colleagues created a computer model to simulate the impact of aerosols -- airborne particles that, like sulphur dioxide, are also spewed out by fossil-fuel power plants -- on Amazonia's climate.

The aerosols, while a bad pollutant, indirectly ease the problem of global warming as they reflect sunlight, making it bounce back into space rather than warm the Earth's surface.

In the 1970s and 1980s, according to Cox's model, high concentrations of aerosols over the highly industrialised northern hemisphere had the effect of buffering the impact of global warming on north Atlantic surface waters, which led to more rain over Amazonia.

But tighter curbs on sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants led to a reduction in aerosol levels, causing these Atlantic waters to warm. This changed patterns of precipitation, leading to the 2005 drought.

Photo: Piglets adopted by tiger that lost her cubs

Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming

Full article (here).

Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming.

Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback.

“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.

Afghanistan Update from Lt. Mark

This came to me via e-mail. Lt. Mark is a friend of my brother-in law.

Friends and Family,

Though we haven’t done anything really exciting yet, I wanted to give those of you who are interested an idea of how things are going for 2/7. So, this is basically an update about why you don’t need an update from me yet. The battalion is spending its days in Kandahar as we prepare to begin the mission we were sent here to accomplish. The base here is a large, NATO base that plays host to the militaries (used loosely) of some 43 countries. This is a new experience for all of us and it has been very interesting to see how some of the other militaries conduct business. As far as the base is concerned, apparently US Marines are not the most popular folks stationed here. I know, I had a hard time believing it, too. I know what you’re thinking; these people clearly don’t base popularity on combat efficiency. Clearly. At any rate, our involvement in this conflict makes us all proud members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which, as you may have guessed from the lame title, is not a very impressive organization. The Marines have re-designated ISAF (pronounced eye-saf) as “I Suck At Fighting” and “I Saw Americans Fight.” Both of which can accurately be applied to the majority of the other countries whose involvement in this circus puts a multi-national face on the organization. That said, the British are pretty good. You should take comfort knowing that the men and women you sent over here are taking this whole counterinsurgency thing pretty seriously. (With a few exceptions, most of whom can be found lurking around the music room looking like criminals on karaoke night, hip hop night, salsa night, and during whatever other kinds of bullshit events they hold over on the other side of the camp. It’s what we call a “shit show” and I’m embarrassed to admit there are Marines over there at all). For most of the other countries, their military involvement here is indistinguishable from a civilian corporation that opened a branch in a foreign country. I think they probably do some kind of work, but setting up hockey rinks and volley ball courts down at the boardwalk (an actual place) is definitely the focus of effort. Many of the other nations are even more focused on personal amenities and comfort based resource allocation than the United States Air Force, if you can imagine that. I couldn’t before seeing it in person.

While there hasn’t been much going on here for the battalion, Toby Keith came to Kandahar to sing as part of a USO sponsored “support the troops” effort. (And no, Steph, I know what you’re thinking, but supporting the troops does not involve bringing them home. No, really, it doesn’t. Nice try). Anyway, I couldn’t name a Toby Keith song if you spotted me half the title, so I did not attend. But, for the first time since the USO began sending people to entertain the troops in the 1940s, an infantry unit actually got to see the performance. That is, until the “rocket attack” siren went off and everyone had to leave. This sounds far more sensational than it really was and I can assure you we weren’t in any danger. Though, much like in Camp Fallujah, I have seen several exaggerated accounts of this traumatic event that were no doubt written in an effort to make the author sound like he has a cooler job than he actually does, all while unnecessarily frightening his friends and family back home. Ridiculous. The two other XOs and I were joking that having an enemy mortar team adjust their rounds onto the house you’re occupying is a relatively terrifying event; hearing a siren and a muffled voice over a barely functional loudspeaker in the distance and asking your buddy, “Dude, is that the one for mortars?” is really not. Anyway, I thought the relative safety of this base was worth mentioning because I know some people on the list (my Mom) are inclined to overreact to news stories about rocket attacks on the places I live. You know Moms.

That’s really all I have for now. I will have more interesting things to report in the coming months as we begin conducting combat operations in zone, which really can’t come soon enough. Until then, take care and send updates.

Always Faithful,

Mark

Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say

Full article (here).

Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

``Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

The Leibniz study, co-written by Noel Keenlyside, a research scientist at the institute, will be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.

``If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,'' Keenlyside said in an interview. ``There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''