Despite President Bush’s repeated calls to support the troops by staying the course in Iraq, some U.S. combat troops harbor growing doubts about the mission and their Iraqi "allies," as revealed in a New York Times article.
Staff Sgt. David Safstrom — on his third tour of duty — said that his earlier support for the war has been shaken by incidents such one in February, when soldiers killed a man planting a bomb. He turned out to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
"I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’" he said. "We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us."
Safstrom said that 95 percent of his platoon now agrees with him.
The Army is probably glad that soldiers can no longer write online blogs.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
It seems extreme that China sentenced the former head of its food and drug safety agency to death until you consider how many people and animals have died from contaminated Chinese products. But the problem is much bigger than one person who took bribes.
Recent scandals involving phony medicine and tainted food, cough syrup and toothpaste have revealed how few controls there are on what China exports. But as columnist Harold Meyerson argued on today’s Opinion page, the United States shares some blame from this lack of regulation. Some American businesses are so eager to sell to the Chinese market that they pressure U.S. policymakers not to place many barriers on Chinese exports — including meddlesome safety inspectors.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before,” Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary. “And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.”
Kerrey continued: “The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically ‘yes.’
“This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified — though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in public services and assistance, a Wall Street Journal editorial argued. In addition to paying sales taxes, most immigrants pay federal and state income taxes as well as property taxes, which are factored into housing rental rates. Yet they often aren’t eligible to receive many of the benefits those taxes pay for. In fact, payroll taxes paid by illegals are helping keep Medicare and Social Security solvent. As the editorial noted: “The Social Security actuaries recently calculated that over the next 75 years immigrant workers will pay some $5 trillion more in payroll taxes than they will receive in Social Security benefits.”
The state of Kansas also makes money from illegals, the Kansas City Star reported. It requires them to pay state income taxes but refuses to refund any overpayments if the Social Security numbers they use aren’t accurate. What a deal.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Producing more students with math and science skills is a matter of national security, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., recently told an advisory committee of the University of Kansas School of Engineering, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. Roberts hopes that legislation passed by the U.S. Senate can help. The America Competes Act would provide $16 billion over four years to recruit and train tens of thousands of math and science researchers and to provide more teachers in those fields.
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and author of the best-selling book “The World Is Flat,” thinks Congress also should seek to retain foreign students studying at U.S. universities. He wrote in a column last week: “It is pure idiocy that Congress will not open our borders — as wide as possible — to attract and keep the world’s first-round intellectual draft choices. . . . I think any foreign student who gets a Ph.D. in our country — in any subject — should be offered citizenship. I want them. The idea that we actually make it difficult for them to stay is crazy.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
