Afghanistan | 06.05.2007
Six German Soldiers to Deploy to Southern Afghanistan DW
Germany currently has about 3,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan
After refusing to station 19 German troops to Afghanistan's volatile south, the defense ministry confirmed six soldiers would be sent to the region for up to a month, but said they would not be part of combat missions.
Germany has come under pressure from its NATO allies to transfer some of its 3,000 troops from the relatively safe north to the south to support their mostly US, British and Canadian allies in fighting Taliban-led insurgents.
But the troops' very presence in Afghanistan has caused unease in Germany six decades after the end of World War II and a parliamentary mandate limits their activities to areas such as logistics and first aid.
Three of the soldiers now being sent will work to win over local support for the deployment of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The others will assess conditions in the south for a possible deployment of an Afghan battalion currently in the relatively safe north of the country and decide what equipment they will need.
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ReplyDeleteBad news for those who see Iraq as lost
ReplyDeleteMay 14, 2007
The Missing Context in Media Reporting on Iraq
By Gerd Schroeder in the American Thinker
The US mainstream media are failing to provide the public the context it needs to accurately understand both the successes of our progress in Iraq. They do this either purposely or through incompetence and/or lack of intellect.
I came to this harsh conclusion after studying the ongoing Brookings Institution Report titled "IRAQ INDEX Tracking Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq" for several months. The Brookings Institution is a left-of-center think tank, led by Bill Clinton's close friend Strobe Talbott. But its information in the Iraq Index is generally accurate and reliable. The information mainly comes from the US Military and other US governmental agencies' official statistics. It is updated at least weekly to provide in one place the most up to date information on the war that I have been able to find. Two small examples will suffice to show how neglect of context creates a misleading public impression.
Read on to be crestfallen that things are going so well
American Thinker
There you go, habu.
ReplyDeleteAll the more reason we can claim victory and prepare to draw down.
By this time next year we could start, unless ...
Announce the Iraqi have the ball, come 1 Jan 08. We will continue to run blocking interference for them, but are handing over authority and responsibility, to the Government we helped the Iraqi people empower.
All the more reason, there is some sign of quantifiable success, with the ISF at Bn levels and below.
The Dems have said we can leave military behind to train, advise and protect. As well as run offense against aQ.
It's a game of semantics, the President should take the inititive and go on offense.
ReplyDeleteThe settlements are going to be political, not military. The Generals have all agreed, we should take them at their word. It'll be a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Righteous DR,
ReplyDeleteThat's the deal..if they're doing better than we're being told then unless common sense and logic fail me simultaneously we should be able to draw back to those redoubts with a smaller force, etc.
Have I lost my mind on this logic?
What am I missing? It would appear we're doing ok so turn it over for G-ds sake.
I mean if the left wants us out why isn't Nancy Pelosi shouting this from the rooftops?
Heck, it even comes from a left of center think tank so why isn't the Left using this stuff for victory lap?
ReplyDeleteCould it be they want us seen in the light of having failed and having to leave as opposed to having succeeded and leaving with our committment fulfilled?
A loser not a winner?
If you're smokin' you're Helping Them Out
ReplyDeleteAnyone from Minnesota listening?:)
bobalharb,
ReplyDeleteI saw that and thought, now is the time to regulate it and tax it.
Talk about a war we haven't won and never will..The War On Drugs, mainly pot. Something like 40% of our current prison population is in jail on pot related charges.
If the government sold it and taxed it I'm sure our revenues would increase since cannabis is THE leading cash crop in the USA.
Meanwhile drunk drivers kill what 50,000 a year? Abortions 50 million dead since Roe v. Wade?
Death by Rap Music..gotta be in the millions...
Well, Here We Go
ReplyDeleteRight again, amigo mio.
ReplyDeleteThe object is to control the politcal narrative, as they say at the BC. They want all the aspects of victory, but call Mr Bush a loser on the way. They can do it, since Mr Bush never defined the Enemy, let alone what victory would look like. This is it.
For sure by the end of the year, all police work, after that. If aQ or the Sunni formed a conventional force, we could always kill it from the air. We should not be leaving, but standing down as the Iraqi stand up.
That is the only priority mission, and it does not matter what goes on, on the ground. Mr al-Hakim is getting prepped, let's hand off to him and his.
Mr Bush and Maliki could do that, but Mr Rove is a direct mail specialist, from Texas.
No one is thinking "outside" the box. Just like at the CIA, CYA has become the prority, not victory.
0 defects allowed.
Officers managing battlespace.
That was another phraseology that caught my eye, three years ago, or so. "Managing battlespace".
Like it was a K-Mart and they were prepping for a "Blue Light Special"
ReplyDeleteAs a wheat farmer it always pisses me off when I read cannabis is numero uno. I don't beleive it, however.
ReplyDeleteIf we could get some of these pot smokers off their asses, and clean, and help around the farm, things might be a little easier.
old rufus swore by the Index, last summer and early fall. Showed steady oil production, increasing revenues.
ReplyDeleteThen the death tolls started raising and we didn't reference it so much. Started counting bodies, instead of barrels.
It reads a bit mixed, overall, but there are plenty of ups. Bing West reported that at Bn levels and below the ISF was/ is operating well.
Depending on quality, bob, $600 per pound for a commercial grade Mexican grown product.
ReplyDeleteFrom northern Cal (Eureka) and British Columbia, $6,000 per pound product is not unheard of. Profiled as a business and lifestyle choice in Forbes , a year or two ago.
High quality spare bedroom home grown Phoenix bud at $4,800 per pound.
I'm told it is similar to growing orchids, but easier.
Ah, hell, maybe Habu is right. It just really ticks me off, the criminals making more than the honest boys, and paying no taxes. But I have to admit, I like the sounds of those jail cell doors closing.
ReplyDeleteThe slippery slope argument carries some weight with me. If we legalize pot, what next?
ReplyDeleteIf the government is out of the bedroom, what about the north american men boy love association, or whatever it is called?
Bobalharb: The slippery slope argument carries some weight with me. If we legalize pot, what next?
ReplyDeleteWe go back to the way it was in the days of Washington, Lincoln, and Coolidge. Until 1937, consumption and sale of cannabis was legal in most U.S. states.
bobalharb,
ReplyDeleteI know how you must feel about the dopers making all that untaxed illegal money but recreational drugs have been around in one form or another since the dawn of mankind.
But here's part of the reality of the situation. We're not going to STOP dope smokers, ever..we've spent billions and billions on it over the last 45 years and the yield and THC content keep going up and up..
Then the jail door slams shut and you, the taxpayer are now footing the bill for some 23 year old whose been caught three times smoking dope..cost to taxpayer per year per inmate..I don't know but I'd bet it's way over 100k per year. Now the 23 year old is learning a new culture in the slammer also, the hard core criminal world.
Instead why not have the government regulate it just like liquor and wine..tax the hell out of it and MAKE some money instead of continuing to do what has failed forever.
If you planted a crop year after year that cost you a fortune to plant just because you wanted to plant it .. well you wouldn't do it you'd change approaches.
I'd be willing to bet that 30-40% of Congress has smoked reefer in their lifetime.
I'm not talking about legalizing cocaine or heroin and I'm familiar with the "marijuana is a gateway drug argument" but it's not even in the same league as the other drugs.
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ReplyDeleteSorry..that's old 2002 info and the link is bad.
ReplyDeleteNewer info:
Friday, December 22, 2006
America goes to Pot and Prisons
Marijuana is now America’s number one cash crop despite the decades-old war on drugs.
America can no longer keep the course on the war on drugs. It has been a waste of money while wasting too many lives. It costs three times as much to fight drugs as a criminal problem as the actual cost of damage done by illegal drugs and yet the level of use remains the same. Despite an astronomical increase in prisoners serving harsh sentences for drug offenses since the early 80s, American domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold during the same time frame so that pot is now America’s biggest agricultural product with revenues of around $35 tax-free billion dollars annually.
So concluded Jon Gettman, a researcher and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, in a report that found California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Washington each produce more than a billion dollars worth of pot a year. California alone produces almost $14 billion.
Gettman used government estimates that growers produce more than 10,000 metric tons of marijuana annually. Multiply 10,000 metric tones by the average price per pound of $1,606 and that equates to $35.8 billion. That figure does not include the amount Americans spend on imported reefer.
The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, estimates that total American drug use is $200 billion annually. Divide that by an estimated 300 million Americans and you get the average American - man, woman, child and all points in between - spending an average of $666.66 each on illegal drugs. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that in 2003 worldwide retails sales were $322 billion. The UN estimated that 44% of that market was mostly in the United States. In other words, Americans, who account for 5 percent of the world’s population, account for roughly 44% of the world’s money spent on illegal drugs. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, worldwide illegal drug revenue is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of 163 countries, or 88% of the countries in the world.
Revenue generated from American grown marijuana is more than that of corn which averages annually around $23 billion; corn $17.6 billion; soybeans $12 billion; vegetables $11 billion, and $7 billion of wheat. Worldwide, illegal drugs account for 14% of agricultural exports.
If American marijuana growers were a single business entity, it would rank number 72 on the Wikipedia list of the top 100 businesses in terms of revenues. American pot growers don’t come close to number one, ExxonMobil, with its revenues of $370.6 billion. Yet pot farmers can take pride that their revenues in America exceed worldwide that of Pepsi at $32 billion and Coca-Cola at $23 billion.
There has been a 10-fold increase in American pot production since 1981 even though the incarceration rate has also rocketed until now there are more people in federal prison for pot than for violence. Approximately one out of every six federal inmates is in prison on pot related charges.
While the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of the world’s prison population. The United States puts more people in prison than western Europe puts in prison on all offenses. America has more people in prison than China or Russia, and that America’s incarceration rate of 737 people per 100,000 is the highest in the world.
In 2005, American authorities arrested 786,545 people on pot charges. According to a study in the Harm Reduction Journal, 88% of the approximate 700,000 arrests for marijuana were for possession in 2002. Since 1990, there has been an 82% increase in arrests on marijuana charges with
“virtually all of that increase . . . in possession offenses.” However, the study found that only one in 18 of such arrests resulted in a felony conviction, which meant that roughly $4 billion per year was being spent alone on busting people for minor pot violations. One estimate is that the state and local costs per arrest for pot violations average each $10,400.
Yet, American authorities keep busting away despite the substantial evidence that growing arrest rates and harsh sentences do nothing to lower the use or production of marijuana. In fifteen states a nonviolent marijuana offense can result in a life sentence. A single pot plant in Montana can draw a life sentence for a first offense. That’s nothing compared to the feds who can execute a first time offender for growing or having enough marijuana plants (60,000).
In 2004 the Office of National Drug Control Policy issued a report entitled “The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States.” That report had estimates for the costs of fighting drugs versus the negative monetary impact of drug use as measured by premature death, health care, productivity, institutionalization, health care, and property damage. Nearly 70% of the actual monetary costs of drug use were lost productivity and wages from incarceration, being sick, turning to crime and dying.
What the study found was that over a ten-year period from 1992 to 2002 that it cost approximately three times as much money to wage a war on drugs as the actual monetary negative costs of drug use. For example, in 2002 it cost an estimated $148.62 billion to fight drugs while the negative economic impact was estimated to have only been $44.73 billion. That’s more than $100 billion difference. For the ten-year period study, there was more than a trillion dollars difference between the cost of war on drugs and the actual monetary damage done by illegal drugs in America. Or, given the current estimate of the American deficit at a tad more than $ eight and a half trillion, wasted money on the war on drugs accounts for approximately 11-12% of the record deficit.
On the other hand, economic professor Jeffrey A. Miron estimated that legalizing and taxing pot like any other product would yield $2.4 billion annually. Tax pot like booze or cigarettes and that the tax revenue would be $6.2 billion annually. Of course, pot advocates could argue that the medical research on marijuana show it to be nowhere as medically harmful as either alcohol or tobacco.
Right now, the United States faces prison overcrowding, largely due to proliferation of people for drug offenses. Other prisoners, including violent offenders, are being paroled early or having their sentences shortened to make room for drug users and dealers. Peoples lives are being ruined, the cost is out of hand, and people are spending more than ever on drugs. Meanwhile, demagogic politicians, the religious right and big drug dealers all agree on one thing: keep the course.
Here in AZ every few months some hiker stumbles across a grove of plants, usually tended by a few infiltrators, in the National Forest. USDA Grade AAA.
ReplyDeleteTens of acres cultivated in each plot. Irrigation systems set in place. The infiltrators to dumb to know better, get sent home.
Damn, I know what you mean by all that, Habu, but I just don't want the young ones to grow up sleepy, zonked, and with that give a shit attitude.
ReplyDeleteThey won't milk the cows, they won't plant the crops, they will die, and after all, life is a serious business.
They ain't goin' to a goddamn thing on drugs, and I think we'd be better off like Singapore, in the long run.
ReplyDeleteThey ain't goin' do...
ReplyDeleteThey don't graduate from college, they don't get a job, they don't enter the military, my attitude, the hell with them.
ReplyDeleteI rent apartments. I call tell almost in the first interview what I am up against.
80% of them are great, 20%, I know what is going to happen. Nothing.
BobL
ReplyDeleteYou read the report. Have things gotten better in the war on drugs?
They're letting rapists and 2nd degree murders out early to make room for people who smoke dope..that doesn't seem prudent.
It's been in the mainstream for almost 50 years now.
Is our per capita GDP higher?
Do we work longer hours than any nation on Earth?
Do we win more Nobel prizes?
Is our standard of living higher than it's ever been?
Who are the computer whizzes?
Who designs our new stealth stuff?
Who occupied the WH?
Who makes the best movies?
Who makes the best of almost everything when we want to?
How many home runs did babe Ruth hit in 1927?
I'll bet you a dollar to a donut hole that somewhere in America there's a farmer plowing his fields in the air conditioned cab of his tractor stoned on his ass on reefer.
Reread the article and weigh the costs of what it's costing this country, not only in dollars and cents but in respect for the law when a dope smoker is going in the can while he/she watches a rapist walking out on short time.
Anyway it doesn't appear s though in 45 years the war on drugs has done a damn thing but eat huge gobs of taxpayer dollars with negative results .. I say it's time to reexamine the approach. Taxation on par with liquor.