>I'm listening to the House of Representatives committee hearing on global climate change. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD-8th) has raised some serious questions about how the White House tried to control what was being said. Dr. James Hansen said that science was being controlled by politics. Now Rep. Darrell Issa (tel. phone: 202-225-3906), a Republican, is attacking Dr. Hansen. Issa is a jerk. Issa would rather have scientists lie than tell the truth. Dr. Hansen said that when he talked to the press he had to have someone on the phone listening to him to make sure he didn't say the wrong thing that would go against the administration's views. Also, the Republican put in charge of controlling the message on global warming is George Deutsch, a 23 year old twit who had no expertise about global climate change. Philip Cooney had to "fix" documents to go along with the White House's views! More lies from this Bush administration, as usual!
>Four years ago, Bush started his war in Iraq. Our men and women in uniform have suffered tremendously. MSNBC has an article about the stress put on our military and their readiness:
Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge.
More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a "death spiral," in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.
The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the U.S. military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said....
....Pace said the unexpected demand for more troops in Iraq -- from the 10 brigades that commanders projected last year they would need by the end of 2006, to the 20 brigades scheduled to be there by June -- prompted him to recommend permanently adding 92,000 troops to the Army and Marine Corps, saying it would "make a large difference in our ability to be prepared for unforeseen contingencies."Indeed, the recent increase of more than 32,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has pushed already severe readiness problems to what some officials and lawmakers consider a crisis point. Schoomaker said last week that sustaining the troop increase in Iraq beyond August would be "a challenge." The Marines' commandant, Gen. James T. Conway, expressed concern to defense reporters last week that it would bring the Marine Corps "right on the margin" of breaking the minimum time at home for Marines between combat tours. U.S. commanders in Iraq say they may need to keep troop levels elevated into early 2008.
It is time to bring our troops home. This administration and the Republican enablers have allowed this disaster to go on too long.
