Blog:Obama sends Marines to spearhead surge into the Taleban’s heartland

President Obama has ordered his top military commanders to begin carrying out his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, the White House announced yesterday, a move that will mean the deployment of at least 30,000 additional US troops.

Now that Mr Obama has formally set in motion an expansion of the war, attention turned to what his new strategy will actually look like on the ground and the chances it has for success, given the unreliability of the Afghan Government and growing opposition to the conflict at home. The first wave of new troops is expected to comprise 9,000 US Marines and an additional 500 British troops in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, a Taleban stronghold and heart of the opium industry, which funds much of the Taleban’s war effort.

“The first troops out the door are going to be Marines,” General James Conway, the Marines’ top officer, told troops in Afghanistan at the weekend. “We have been leaning forward in anticipation of a decision. And we have got some pretty stiff fighting coming.”

The Marines are expected to be followed quickly by about 1,000 US Army trainers. They will land in Afghanistan early next year to hasten the growth of the Afghan Army and police force, another critical component of Mr Obama’s new strategy.

The additional 30,000 US troops will deploy to Afghanistan over the next 12 to 18 months. The first priority will be to dislodge the Taleban from the Helmand town of Marjeh. Despite months of often intense fighting, the 9,000 Marines already there have failed to retake the city, which is a hub of the country’s opium trade. It is also a Taleban stronghold where many of the roadside bombs, the biggest killer of foreign troops, are made.

Another focus will be to build a security cordon around the southern city of Kandahar, another Taleban hotbed. The aim will be to protect the civilian population from Taleban attacks, part of the classic counter-insurgency strategy that General Stanley McChrystal, the ground commander, has already begun pursuing.

Mr Obama is also expected to lay out in a prime-time speech tonight an aggressive goal for greatly increasing the size of the Afghan Army and police force. It will call for increasing the size of the Army to 134,000 troops by next October, four years earlier than the initial goal of 2014.

The accelerated training of Afghan forces is central to Mr Obama’s hopes of handing over responsibility for the country’s security to the Afghans themselves as quickly as possible.

Analysts also believe that another crucial element of the new strategy will be to use the additional troops to secure the main highway between Kandahar in the south and the capital Kabul. This central road is currently not controlled by Nato forces.

“When the allies couldn’t secure the route between Baghdad airport and Baghdad, that told you everything you needed to know about Iraq,” said Peter Bergen, an Afghan expert at the Washington-based New America Foundation. “The fact that you cannot take the road from Kandahar to Kabul tells you everything you need to know about Afghanistan right now.”

Mr Obama told America’s senior military leadership about his long-awaited decision on troop numbers and strategy at a 5pm Oval Office meeting on Sunday, said the White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Mr Obama conveyed his decision, which has been more than three months in the making, to Robert Gates, his Defence Secretary, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, and General David Petraeus, chief of US Central Command.

The meeting was immediately followed by a secure video conference with General McChrystal and Karl Eikenberry, the US Ambassador in Kabul, when they were also formally instructed about the new strategy.

Mr Obama held a series of calls yesterday with foreign leaders, including Gordon Brown, to brief them about his decision. He also called President Sarkozy of France, President Medvedev of Russia, and personally briefed Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, who is in Washington on an official visit.

In tonight’s speech Mr Obama will attempt to convince a sceptical American public that the surge of troops, which will bring the number of American forces in Afghanistan to 100,000, is the right option.

The decision brings to an end weeks of deliberation by Mr Obama, including ten meetings with his war Cabinet, about how to proceed in a war that is now onlysupported by only a third of the US public, and where any troop increase is strongly opposed by much of his own Democratic Party.

In his address, delivered from the US Military Academy at West Point, Mr Obama will focus heavily on the importance of an exit strategy, and will make clear that there is no open-ended commitment in Afghanistan.

He is planning to set lay out a “time frame” for scaling back the US involvement there, US officials said.

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Obama spares turkey life!

i came across this article a few days back when surfing news in my itouch.. and manage to find it online.. and i feel that is good to share what president obama had did during thanksgiving!

“‘And then there are moments like this when I pardon a turkey and send it to Disneyland” this is what obama has said.. and i hoped he won’t be eating turkey for christmas too!

full article here 

a way to promote vegetarian? and what humanity is all about.. because in the first place.. human is not part of the food chain.. or food cycle.. whatever you call it..

[Via http://kahwoon.wordpress.com]

Obama Thanksgiving Proclamation Evades God

President Obama’s brief proclamation of Thanksgiving Day on November 26 was unique among all recorded Thanksgiving proclamations by his predecessors: it is the first one that fails to directly acknowledge the existence of God.

The beneficence shown by God to America is a theme that traditionally defines the Thanksgiving holiday, and this theme is strongly emphasized in the original Thanksgiving Day proclamations and consistently acknowledged even by modern presidents.

Obama’s unprecedented proclamation, however, only makes indirect mention of God by quoting George Washington, stating: “Today, we recall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed ‘by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.’”

The proclamation goes on to call Thanksgiving Day “a unique national tradition we all share” that unites people as “thankful for our common blessings.”

“This is a time for us to renew our bonds with one another, and we can fulfill that commitment by serving our communities and our Nation throughout the year,” it continues.

All other presidential Thanksgiving proclamations directly refer to “God,” “Providence,” or another appellation for the divine being.

[Via http://aconservativeedge.com]

World Government because of alleged Climate Change? . . . MY ROMPUY!

In the wake of a wealth of leaked documents and emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain that demonstrate a conspiracy of fraud and racketeering in order to foist a massive hoax upon the world, Obama is nevertheless about to engage in an act of high treason by delivering our country in December to the Globalists via the Copenhagen “Climate Treaty” in December.

The following is the offending language within the “Climate Treaty” draft that sabotages our nation’s Constitution, and surreptitiously obliterates the autonomous free market by potentially burdening commercial enterprise as well as private citizens with “carbon” taxes to be owed to the new “Conference of the Parties” (COP) of the United Nations. Will Obama acknowledge the leaked emails before Copenhagen? Not if he wants to be able to claim ‘plausible deniability’, he won’t.

Call the Senators of the entire Senate and tell them, “This shall not pass!!”:

“38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:

(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

(b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts, including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.

(c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange.”

Part 1 of interview of Lord Christopher Monckton:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

[Via http://amadon606.wordpress.com]

the president and his pie

President Obama’s Thanksgiving dinner featured 6 different kinds of pie. I’m so jealous. I really like pie. The Obamas’ menu: Banana cream pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, sweet potato pie, huckleberry pie, cherry pie. Oh, yeah, and they had turkey, stuffing and some other stuff, too. I’m just going to let you sit with that for a while and salivate.

I can't even be mad that it's a vegetable...it's too good.

Michelle spent today welcoming an 18 1/2 foot Douglas fir tree to be decorated for the season’s revolving door of holiday parties, while Mr. President himself made a turkey sandwich and sat down to work on his upcoming speech regarding his Afghanistan policy. He probably also had some more pie. And thought about the state dinner crashers, presumably with a little chuckle. Pie does that to people. It makes you happier.

What does this have to with public relations you might ask? Truthfully, very little. I just really love pie and thought that it was awesome that the leader of the free world agrees with me. But let’s see if I can make this connect, if for no other reason than this is my last post for my class grade. Hmm….

Our country has a curious fascination with the goings on in the White House, what the President and his family do, and the traditions that are part and parcel of his position. We wait each Thanksgiving season to see our nation’s top elected official pardon a turkey. Yep, a turkey. We also can’t wait for details like the White House menus for important holiday and state dinners to be released. “Turkey and ham? Gee, maybe we should do that next year, honey.” Communicators can use this to their benefit, especially during the holiday season.

Here’s how: consumers don’t want to hear about serious issues in sombre tones, they want to hear fluff that lifts their spirits and incites holiday cheer. For nonprofits, especially, this can be hard. When the holidays are the season when need is highest, how do you get the average American to reach into their wallet and give up on a Black Friday deal in order to donate to your worthy cause? Well, you certainly don’t reach them with begging and pleas. You reach them by telling them what Obama’s favorite kind of pie is at the Thanksgiving table. Well, not literally, but as communicators we have to start thinking beyond the “we need – you give” mentality during the holidays. We have to find how to help our consumers “keep up with the Joneses,” or more appropriately the Obamas. If you can tell me how I can get the satisfaction of 6 pies on my Thanksgiving table by donating to your nonprofit, or make giving a family holiday tradition to rival Black Friday – I’m in.

Sure, that sounds easy. Ha. Here I go, off to change American holiday thinking! That, and eat some pie.

[Via http://claireistheword.wordpress.com]

Climate Gate – All the manipulations and lies revealed 15

As I wrote in my post Climate Gate – All the manipulations and lies revealed 9

“Slowly, VERY SLOWLY at least some of the Global Warming Hysterics are BEGINNING to understand the scope of Climate Gate. But of course they still vehemently denies that this changes anything. One example below from The Guardian, one of the High Priests of this hysteria.”

Well, my respect for George Monbiot is growing. I don’t agree one iota with him or his “science”. And his role as a high priest in this religion.

But he’s honest when it comes to the consequences of Climate Gate. Even calling for the resignation of Jones. And demandig and end to secrecy.

That has my respect, regardless of everything else.

But of course he has to revert to the old tune of “skeptics” being bought by the oil industry, calling all of us liars etc.

Which is double hypocritical and ironic. Se my post Climate Gate – All the manipulations and lies revealed 14

“But the REAL story as shown by these emails is that these guys REALY ARE IN BED WITH ALL THE BIG BUSNIESSES.  Receiving BIG MONEY and ACTIVLY PURSUING IT.”

And if there where manipulations, lies etc these emails show very clearly from which side it come.

Here in Sweden the so called “science editors” of the “news” papers DN and SVD (BOTH big promoters of the Global Warming Hysteria), aptly fit Monboits description “Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial.”

“When it comes to his handling of Freedom of Information requests, Professor Jones might struggle even to use a technical defence. If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit.

I feel desperately sorry for him: he must be walking through hell. But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. He has a few days left in which to make an honourable exit. Otherwise, like the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, he will linger on until his remaining credibility vanishes, inflicting continuing damage to climate science.”

“But the deniers’ campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.”

Article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response

Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away.

Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That’s why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science

Posted by  George Monbiot Wednesday 25 November 2009 17.23 GMT

I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We’ll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.

It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.

Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren’t going to follow or understand them. Jones’s statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp.

In this case you could argue that technically he has done nothing wrong. But a fat lot of good that will do. Think of the MPs’ expenses scandal: complaints about stolen data, denials and huffy responses achieved nothing at all. Most of the MPs could demonstrate that technically they were innocent: their expenses had been approved by the Commons office. It didn’t change public perceptions one jot. The only responses that have helped to restore public trust in Parliament are humility, openness and promises of reform.

When it comes to his handling of Freedom of Information requests, Professor Jones might struggle even to use a technical defence. If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit.

I feel desperately sorry for him: he must be walking through hell. But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. He has a few days left in which to make an honourable exit. Otherwise, like the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, he will linger on until his remaining credibility vanishes, inflicting continuing damage to climate science.

Some people say that I am romanticising science, that it is never as open and honest as the Popperian ideal. Perhaps. But I know that opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science. There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the university’s handling of it, which has been a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond. RealClimate reports that “We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.” In other words, the university knew what was coming three days before the story broke. As far as I can tell, it sat like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting for disaster to strike.

When the emails hit the news on Friday morning, the university appeared completely unprepared. There was no statement, no position, no one to interview. Reporters kept being fobbed off while CRU’s opponents landed blow upon blow on it. When a journalist I know finally managed to track down Phil Jones, he snapped “no comment” and put down the phone. This response is generally taken by the media to mean “guilty as charged”. When I got hold of him on Saturday, his answer was to send me a pdf called “WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999″. Had I a couple of hours to spare I might have been able to work out what the heck this had to do with the current crisis, but he offered no explanation.

By then he should have been touring the TV studios for the past 36 hours, confronting his critics, making his case and apologising for his mistakes. Instead, he had disappeared off the face of the Earth. Now, far too late, he has given an interview to the Press Association, which has done nothing to change the story.

The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline. They appear to have no idea what they’re up against or how to confront it. Their opponents might be scumbags, but their media strategy is exemplary.

The greatest tragedy here is that despite many years of outright fabrication, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry, documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore’s brilliant new book Climate Cover-up, it is now the climate scientists who look bad. By comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones is pure as the driven snow. Hoggan and Littlemore have shown how fossil fuel industries have employed “experts” to lie, cheat and manipulate on their behalf. The revelations in their book (as well as in Heat and in Ross Gelbspan’s book The Heat Is On) are 100 times graver than anything contained in these emails.

But the deniers’ campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.

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On Thanksgiving eve, Obama issues special message to world's Muslims on hajj

The hajj in Mecca – where intolerance of non-Muslims and anti-American sentiment runs rampant. And where Obama’s “Christian” grandma (from Kenya) will be a guest of Saudi king Abdullah. Headline courtesy of the LA Times Top of the Ticket blog, hat tip to exposeliberals.

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
November 25, 2009

Statement by the President on Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha

Michelle and I would like to send our best wishes to all those performing Hajj this year, and to Muslims in America and around the world who are celebrating Eid-ul-Adha.  The rituals of Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha both serve as reminders of the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world’s major religions.

During Hajj, the world’s largest and most diverse gathering, three million Muslims from all walks of life – including thousands of American Muslims – will stand in prayer on Mount Arafat.  The following day, Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid-ul-Adha and distribute food to the less fortunate to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son out of obedience to God.

This year, I am pleased that the Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with the Saudi Health Ministry to prevent and limit the spread of H1N1 during Hajj.  Cooperating on combating H1N1 is one of the ways we are implementing my administration’s commitment to partnership in areas of mutual interest.

On behalf of the American people, we would like to extend our greetings during this Hajj season – Eid Mubarak.

###

Note: Translations available at whitehouse.gov in Arabic, Persian, Dari, Urdu, Pashto, Russian and French.

Of course, Michelle could never go to hajj, unless she is a “Christian” like Obama’s grandma. And from the sources we checked, Eid al Adha isn’t until after Thanksgiving, but hey this president has priorities.

Last year’s message, heard by attendee Minnesota’s Muslim congressman Keith Ellison, urged Muslims to reject capitalism in favor of sharia:

Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has used his annual sermon to Muslim pilgrims assembling for hajj to urge Muslim countries to renounce capitalism and form an Islamic economic bloc that adopts interest-free finance.

Ellison (D-MN), who stated he forgot he was American while becoming a haji, shared a similar message via Twitter months later, where he recommend an anti-capitalism movie in two separate messages, indicating he had already seen the film twice.

Ayatullah Khamenei also gave a message to the Hajj pilgrims which we reported in a December 15, 2008 post:

…the defeat of warmongers in America in the political and economic arenas and Muslim minorities’ regaining their true identity and dignity in most of the Western countries. These are all clear indications of the triumph and advancements of Islam in its struggle against its enemies in this century that is the 15th century of Lunar Hegira.

Brothers and sisters! These victories are all the fruits of jihad and sincerity…The wounded enemy is now resorting to anything and will spare no effort to strike back. We need to be resourceful, wise and to take advantage of opportunities. This way all the efforts of the enemy will fail. In the last thirty years, the enemies, mostly the US and Zionism, have been utilizing all their capacities but have failed miserably. The same thing will happen in the future, too, inshallah.

But yeah, happy hajj to the millions of anti-American, anti-capitalism Muslims who believe America is the enemy.

[Via http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com]