It was reported today that the Hershey factory in Oakdale, CA. was planning on laying off all of its 600 employees.  Due to Hershey finding another location south of the border in Mexico.  Oakdale is not a very big town to begin with.  A city of 15000 residents and 600 of them out of work so Hershey can save some money paying lower employee wages in MEXICO.  What is it going to take to make companies stay in America and pay fair wages to Americans.  It brings my blood almost to a boil to think that this American Icon would sell out to out-sourcing American jobs. 

Shame on you Hershey.....  Makes me want to go out and buy 10 bags of Hershey Kisses to try to keep money flowing in to feed a AMERICAN worker.

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House Rejects Escalation

This afternoon, after four days and three nights of debate, the House of Representatives voted 246 to 182 to approve a resolution expressing support for our brave men and women serving in Iraq, and rejecting the President's escalation proposal. Today’s vote signaled a change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home safely and soon. Democrats are urging the President to adopt a strategy for success that changes the mission from combat to training, counter terrorism activities, and force protection and logistics; redeploys our troops; builds political consensus; engages in diplomacy; reforms reconstruction; and refocuses on the war on terror.

Success in Iraq requires more than military force. It requires a political and diplomatic solution that engages Iraq’s neighbors and produces an inclusive political system in Iraq. By placing so much emphasis on dealing with the problems in Iraq militarily and not enough emphasis on sustained political and diplomatic engagement, the President’s escalation plan repeats past mistakes. The stakes in Iraq are too high to recycle proposals that have little prospect for success.

The longer it takes us to resolve the situation in Iraq, the longer resources and attention will continue to be diverted from the war on terrorism. Our ability to respond to the escalating conflict in Afghanistan and other potential crises in the world is constrained severely by the deterioration in military readiness to levels not seen since the Vietnam era.

According to recent news reports, the Army lacks thousands of advanced armor kits for Humvees that could protect against roadside bombs, the cause of 70% of American casualties in Iraq. In addition, existing shortages of trucks and other crucial equipment such as jamming devices, radios and other gear will only be exacerbated by the troop surge. Lodging and logistical support is also reportedly in short supply for the newly deployed forces. It is wrong to deploy troops until they have the up-armored Humvees, equipment, lodging, training and other support required to carry out their mission. Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid wrote to President Bush this week, urging him to take the necessary steps to ensure that the tens of thousands of soldiers being sent to escalate the war in Iraq have the armor and equipment needed to perform their mission and protect their lives.

We owe our troops a course of action in Iraq that is worthy of their sacrifice. Today's vote sets the stage for additional Iraq legislation, which will be coming to the House floor.

 

Remember the days reading about all the Great Generals in history? We all know who they are; Alexander, Napoleon, Patton, Rommel, Genghis Khan and so on. Do we have the same caliber of generals running the U.S. military today? Why is it that so many people can see that the war in Iraq is being handled wrong on so many different fronts but no one can make the decisive decision to change the coarse of battle. Could it be that battle planning is being handed down from above the general’s heads as it was in Vietnam? One factor that all the great generals had to their advantage was total of troops and equipment. They were made to think on their feet. They had access each and every move they made from step one to the end.

Battlefield commanders of today are all given orders of what they are to do and told when and where to do it. One of last great generals of the U.S. military was Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. He knew his history when it came to war planning. I’ve never personally talked to him but I believe he used the same reasoning that another great U.S general used during the Civil War here in America. Stonewall Jackson believed that the "mystify, mislead and surprise" the enemy was the way to beat his foes. General Schwarzkopf applied this classic doctrine to defeat the 500,000-man Iraqi army in a hundred hours. While "fixing" the main Iraqi force in Kuwait in place by threatening an amphibious invasion from the gulf and by launching two U.S. Marine divisions and other forces directly on Kuwait, he sent two mobile corps nearly two-hundred miles westward into the Arabian Desert. These corps then swept around behind the Iraqi army, cutting off its line of supply and retreat to Baghdad and pressed it into a tight corner between the Euphrates River, the gulf and the marines advancing from the south. Iraqi soldiers surrendered by the thousands and resistance collapsed. Classic textbook planning.

I think the author Bevin Alexander put it best in his book How Great Generals Win when he said;

The purpose of every belligerent is to impose his will on his opponent. Trying to induce others to abide by one's wishes is a common human aim, applicable to individuals and groups as well as nations. The only distinction between ordinary human disputes and war is that war is an act of violence in which one side exerts force against the other side. If a side could attain its purpose without force it, of course, would do so, since no nation will attack unless there is resistance. For this reason the nineteenth-century Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined war as the continuation of national policy by other means.

It may appear obvious that every individual, group and nation engaged in any conflict should always apply the policy of Paris in the Trojan War and strike only at the Achilles’ heel. Yet the history of human relations, as well as of war, shows conclusively that human beings more frequently ignore or do not see the opportunities for getting around an enemy or opponent and instead strike straight at the most obvious target they see.

So I call on everyone who wants to see Iraq come to a quick end to ask our true military leaders to stand up and put it on the table and do as your great generals before you did and think outside of the Washington Box.

 

Democrats need to make their new slogan this: Pullback not Withdraw! With the glorious vote today in the House, Democrats need to define what they want to do in Iraq now.
Why is security so bad in Baghdad? Why is there such sectarian violence in and around Baghdad and in the other larger cities? Two key factors I believe have caused this. One is that on a day to day basis Iraqis see the American military driving around their cities imposing law. Second, is the lack of the ISF (Iraqi Security Force), police and military doing what the Americans are doing. This is causing a vacuum effect. The fact that the U.S. military is there day to day right in the midst of the population of the big cities is drawing the anti-American factions into counter acting anything we do there. The continued lack of well trained Iraqi forces is what is keeping this problem growing. Yes there are other factors such as the Iraqi government’s stumbling around with getting their political structure together. Plus the oil sharing issue is still hanging in the balance. But those aren’t things that our military should have to put on their shoulders. What we need to worry about is our force security.

The solution for this isn’t to withdraw from Iraq in a hurried manner as a lot of people have suggested but to change strategies on how we conduct operation in the theater. The President is the “Decider” when it comes to the final word on how it should be waged, not that it should be that way or is the right way but he is the person who gets the final blame then. We’ve all read in the news and heard the stories on the MSM that military leaders on the ground in Iraq don’t necessarily agree with the orders they are given from the Pentagon when it comes to the whole military format in Iraq. What the on the ground leaders in Iraq want right now is to put a large scale force of ISF in the green zone to protect that quadrant and get the majority of U.S. personnel out of there and have them move to a more wide open base of operations between Baghdad and the Iranian border to handle that other problem we are facing. I might get more in that later. This idea would give us better force protection and draw out anti-American insurgents and bring them out in the open. We also need to have at 3 large scale training facilities to train ISF personnel, not the makeshift ones that we’re using now. There are a few reasons for these facilities, first they need more in depth training, they need better screening of cadets and it helps protect from reprisals on their families.

With regards to the Iranian factor, we need to strategically position large and small bases to operate out of along both the east and west sides of Iraq for both Iraqi security from within and from outside factors mainly Iran and Syria. And this also helps us to better protect our forces by having a buffer zone from insurgents working out of urban environments and it will cause them to either be drawn out to the open areas to attack the our fortified bases or lose interest in their cause. Key here is force protection. The option also gives us a better theater of operation to monitor the borders against outside meddling by other factions. Now these are just the basics of what the leaders on the ground propose needs to be don’t to turn the tide of violence in Iraq. But what needs to be done first is for the Administration to listen and hear the needs of troops on the ground. So it’s not about withdraw it’s about being smart with what we have and what the Iraqi people need. The war is over, now it’s about the PEACE.

 

Has the intelligence community in the U.S. changed since the war in Iraq began? First, don’t forget that the Pentagon Inspector General issued his report this week debunking 50 percent of the intelligence that the White House used to justify the war in Iraq showing that it was flawed. Now with the U.S. set to assert evidence against Iran in Baghdad today by U.S. officials giving evidence supporting administration's claims of Iran's meddling and deadly activities in Iraq.

With all the intelligence agencies that the United States has such as the CIA, NSA, NRO, NGIA, DIA, NCTC and the NCIX all being lead by the Director of National Intelligence who happens to be Ambassador John D. Negroponte former ambassador to Iraq. Are we going to be able to put together better than a 50 percent flawed intelligence report about Iran? We should all hope that they get it right this time.

Iran is theocratic republic which means that it is a theocracy, since the elected president and legislature are constitutionally subject to the supervision of two offices reserved for Shiah clerics: the Supreme Leader of Iran and the Guardian Council, which even decide who may run for office. Iran is also considered a "semi-democracy", like China or Russia. However, Iranian authorities themselves consider Iran a Theo-democracy or religious democracy.

The Supreme Leader is considered as the ultimate head of state and government, whereas the President is granted as the prime executor of policy. However, in the recent years Mohammad Khatami has called Iranian political system as an alternative democratic model so called religious democracy.

Why is this important you may ask? Because, they have the opposite type of democracy that we have. In the United States we have what we claim a separation of church and state and what Iran has is a religious ran state.

Intelligence has got to be right on everything this time. The United States can not and should not be manipulated in to believing that it is to our best interests that we enter in to a conflict in which there can be such repercussions such as another nuclear cold war. Congress and the Senate need to be more critical of every word spoken by every Administration leader and spokesperson. Stability in the Middle East can’t be achieved by overzealous heads of state with a proven tract record of manipulations of facts to achieve oil resources in the region. It is time the U.S. enters into a new era of talking with nations we consider threats to our nations security. The military option didn’t work in the ongoing conflict we are faced with today. Over 3300 troops dead and over 22,000 more wounded and the only thing we have for sure to show for it is no more Saddam. But what we have now is a country trying to pull itself together after we made a mess out of it.

Iran has reached out to us many times over the last year to talk about issues important to them and to us. Why don’t we reach out to them and try to solve these issues that could come to be life or death issues with us sooner than later. I think the government owes it to the all of us Americans to do what is best for the U.S. and not for a few political figures in Washington. It will be on the shoulders of the Congress and the Senate to change how America is seen around the world.

 

According to the Pentagon’s Inspector General, Douglas J. Feith the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy used unreliable sources to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq. The Inspector General described his activities as “an alternative intelligence assessment process.” When Feith was reporting this all to the White House administration, the CIA had concluded that the only relationship between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was from evolving sources of varying reliability. This is quite different from what Feith was reporting as a close relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney told America on television that there was evidence of a meeting between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001. This we know today has been discredited. But we still today are wrapped up in a war that has killed over 3100 troops and wounded more than 23,000 others. Can we blame Douglas Feith? Or should we blame his boss who authorized his activities?