Spencer Ackerman describes an on-going debate on the future direction of the military. It begins:

In the spring of 2007, as the first wave of new combat brigades arrived in Baghdad to execute President George W. Bush’s troop surge, an Army lieutenant colonel named Paul Yingling booted up his computer at Ft. Hood, Tex. He received an email accusing him of moral cowardice. It was from Yingling’s friend, a fellow Iraq veteran and Army lieutenant colonel named Gian Gentile.

Gentile was concerned about a highly influential article that Yingling had written for the magazine Armed Forces Journal titled “A Failure In Generalship.” The piece was incendiary. Yingling, barely 40 and an Iraq veteran twice over, had issued a j’accuse to the entire general officer corps for failing, over the previous 15 years, to anticipate low-intensity conflicts with insurgents and prepare U.S. troops accordingly. He further contended that the generals failed to deliver their best military advice to the Bush administration about the true costs of the war in Iraq, preferring not to challenge the White House’s optimistic fantasies. “Failing to visualize future battlefields represents a lapse in professional competence,” Yingling had written, “but seeing those fields clearly and saying nothing is an even more serious lapse in professional character.” The people he criticized have the power to end his career.

But to Gentile, Yingling was the lapsed officer. In his email, and then in a volley of op-eds and blog posts over the next year, Gentile derided Yingling for failing to call any general out by name. Worse yet, Gentile now contends that blaming the generals represents a myopia on the part of Yingling’s fellow counterinsurgency enthusiasts—until recently, he counted himself one—to accept the U.S. failure in Iraq. “By not naming names,” Gentile, now a history professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said in a phone interview, “he has left it open for the generals themselves to interpret who’s in the Yingling-screw-up crowd. The way that comes out, until the early months of the surge, he doesn’t want to say who but he really means [former Iraq commander and now Army Chief of Staff Gen. George] Casey, only a few units got it right and finally, maybe, we’re on the right track with Gen. Petraeus and the surge.” Both Yingling and Gentile claim to have received heaps of supportive email from soldiers.

In this argument between two respected senior officers, the next major debate over U.S. defense policy can be gleaned. Yingling speaks for an ascending cadre of young defense intellectuals, most of whom are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, who assert that the U.S. military must embrace principles of counterinsurgency if it is to triumph in the multifaceted fight against global terrorism. Gentile, formerly one of those theorist-practitioners, believes the military has already moved too far in the direction of counterinsurgency, which he contends allows analysts to ignore the limits of U.S. military power. Both arguments represent an attempt to answer a searing question: What are the lessons of Iraq?

Continue reading.

What’s happening in the US Senate:

Here’s an update on the CPSC bill (S. 2663) on the Senate floor this week. The short story is, consumers are doing very well in the Senate so far this week. Here are some highlights:

• On Tuesday, pro-consumer senators fought off the first attack on a strong CPSC bill: an attempt to replace the current Senate bill with weaker bill that passed the House in December. You can view our comparison of the House and Senate bills here. The attempt lost 57-39. Not only did this stop a broad frontal assault on the Senate bill; it showed that opponents of the bill cannot muster the 40 votes they would need for any major blocking action.

• Next, on Wednesday, the Senate defeated by a vote of 51-45 an amendment to weaken the bill’s attorney-general enforcement provision. (The amendment was sponsored by Sen. Cornyn (R-TX).) The attorney general provision in S. 2663 has drawn some of the strongest attacks from industry, the White House, and certain Senate Republicans because it would put more “cops on the beat” to enforce federal consumer product safety laws and recalls. In light of the CPSC’s gross lack of resources and notoriously lax enforcement, the attorney general enforcement provision is a major improvement for consumer protection.

• Immediately after the Senate rejected the Cornyn attorney general amendment, Senator Kyl (R-AZ) withdrew an amendment to strike whistleblower protections from the bill. Like the attorney general provision, the whistleblower provision in S. 2663 offers strong new protections for consumers. This provision would make it illegal for companies to punish employees who speak out about potential hazards or violations of safety rules. By withdrawing this whistleblower amendment right after the defeat of the attorney general amendment, opponents of S. 2663 sent a clear signal that they are losing this fight, and they know it.

• About an hour ago, the Senate rejected another attack on the attorney general provision — an amendment by Senator Vitter (R-LA) that would have added a “loser-pays” rule. This amendment would have required state attorneys general seeking injunctions against safety violations to reimburse private businesses for their legal expenses if the injunction is not granted. This type of loser-pays rule is virtually unprecedented in American law, and it had the potential to weaken attorney general enforcement severely. State attorneys general are already over-burdened and under-resourced, and they would be far more hesitant to bring actions to enforce safety rules if they might have to pay a private company’s attorneys’ fees at the end of litigation.

It’s been a great week for consumers so far, and it might end in a Senate victory today! Senate Democrats and their Republican allies on this bill — such as Senator Stevens (R-AK) — hope to pass the bill by the end of the day.

The reports, in various formats, are based on 2005-2006 national surveys on drug use and health and constitute the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, State Estimates of Substance Use from the 2005-2006 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. OAS Series #H-33, DHHS Publication No. (SMA) 08-4311, Rockville, MD, 2008.

Some highlights:

The report is based on 136,110 people aged 12 and older who were interviewed for a national survey in 2005-2006.

Illicit Drugs
North Dakota had the lowest percentage of people who reported using an illicit drug during the previous month (5.7%). Rhode Island had the highest percentage (11.2%).

Marijuana use was reported by 10.4% of participants in 2005-2006. Vermont had the highest rate of marijuana use in the past month (9.7%). Utah had the lowest rate (4.3%).

Cocaine use was reported by 2.4% of participants in 2005-2006. Cocaine rates were highest in Washington, D.C. (4.9%) and lowest in North Dakota (1.6%).

Nonprescription use of painkillers was reported by 5% of participants, up from 4.8% in 2004-2005.

About 2.8% of participants were dependent on or had abused illicit drugs in the past year, the report shows.

Tobacco
About 30% of participants said they had used tobacco during the previous month. And 25% said they had smoked cigarettes during the previous month.

West Virginia had the highest rate of past-month tobacco use (40.6%) and cigarette use (32.5%). Utah had the lowest rate of past-month tobacco use (22.1%) and cigarette use (19.3%).

Among youths, 10.6% reported smoking cigarettes in the previous month, down from 11.3% in 2004-2005.

Alcohol
Utah residents were the least likely to report drinking alcohol in the past month (32.4%). That’s nearly half of Wisconsin’s rate (63.1%).

Nationwide, binge drinking was most commonly reported by young adults aged 18-25. But binge drinking rates dropped among youths aged 12-17, compared to the previous year’s data.

Underage drinking among people aged 12-20 was rarest in Utah (21.5%) and most common in Vermont (38.3%).

Nationwide, 7.7% of people age 12 or older abused or were dependent on alcohol.

Depression, Psychological Distress
Depression rates were lower in 2005-2006 than in 2004-2005, according to the report.

Among adults, 7.3% experienced an episode of major depression in 2005-2006, down from 7.7% the year before.

Major depression struck 8.4% of youths aged 12-17 in 2005-2006, down from 8.9% the year before.

Nevada had the highest rate; 9.4% of adults were depressed. Hawaii had the lowest adult depression rate (5%).

Overall, 11.3% of U.S. adults had serious psychological distress in 2005-2006. Utah had the highest rate (14.4%) and Hawaii had the lowest rate (8.8%) of adults with serious psychological distress.

The usual suspects are behind it:

An article in the Independent links funding for the “2008 International Conference on Climate Change” held in New York earlier this month to tobacco and oil companies. As an earlier Spin noted, the global warming skeptics conference was organized by the Heartland Institute think tank. Heartland has opposed scientific consensus on both secondhand tobacco smoke and climate change. Heartland claims on its website that no energy industry money was used to support the conference, but did not address tobacco industry funding. Still, a substantial number of conference sponsors — including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Independent Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, Frontiers of Freedom and Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy — have received support from energy or tobacco companies, or both. The Heartland Institute itself has received funding from Exxon and Philip Morris.

Source: The Independent (United Kingdom), March 3, 2008

A chicken leg and thigh: browned in a little olive oil, two small onions chopped added to it, several dashes of Maggi seasoning (liquid MSG, in effect), salt, pepper, and juice of two lemons and a splash of mirin into the pan, cover, put into a 350º oven for 45 minutes. Will be served on top of leftover wild rice cooked in the chicken broth I made.

From the Center for American Progress:

On Nov. 26, President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship.” The contentious issue has been the subject of five congressional hearings; the administration is attempting to pass the agreement in the wake of an expiring U.N. mandate without Congressional approval. During a hearing this week, the State Department Coordinator for Iraq, Adm. David Satterfield, refused to say whether it was “a constitutional requirement” for the administration to “consult with Congress…in the commitment of U.S. forces in a battle zone.” As conservative columnist George Will noted, “Hundreds of such agreements, major (e.g., NATO) and minor (the Reagan administration’s security commitment to the Marshall Islands and Micronesia), have been submitted to Congress.” Frustrated with the administration’s power grab, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) said that the Bush administration’s rhetoric “creates the basis for a constitutional confrontation.” Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to bar the White House from making any such long-term deals with Iraq without congressional approval.

HOW WE ARRIVED HERE: The administration has repeatedly attempted to muddle the exact parameters of its commitment to Iraq. Initially, the Declaration of Principles committed the United States to helping “deter foreign aggression against Iraq” as well as “defending its democratic system against internal and external threats.” After congressional outrage, the administration removed the “security guarantee.” While the administration publicly opposes permanent bases in Iraq, Bush issued a signing statement to a defense authorization bill in January, saying he would disregard a provision that “bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq.” Furthermore, last month, the White House said it does not view any U.S. military installations overseas as “permanent,” even those present since World War II. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in the Washington Post this month that the agreement with Iraq was routine, used with “more than 115 nations.” But as Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) noted, “there is nothing routine about it or the situation in Iraq.” Curiously, the agreement “won’t prohibit combat missions either,” he added.

AVOIDING CONGRESS: “It’s the position of this Administration that they do not need to come before Congress to receive authorization?” Delahunt asked in the hearing. Satterfield replied, “That’s correct.” While there may no longer be a “security guarantee” in the agreement, “[s]uch an accord necessarily implicates the authority to fight” in Iraq and should thus be authorized by Congress, Delahunt observed. “The Iraqi/U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) would give the United States the ‘authority to fight,’” explained Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, making it broader than SOFAs with other nations. Oona Hathaway of the Yale Law School said that anything that includes an authority to fight — which Satterfield implied the administration’s agreement with Iraq would do — “becomes an agreement that really must be submitted to Congress for approval either as a treaty or as a congressional-executive agreement.” She added that the Strategic Forces Agreement, also part of the administration’s Declaration of Principles, should be approved by Congress as an Article II treaty, as it “permits U.S. and coalition forces to assist in restraining extremists and outside actors.”

IS IRAQ STILL A ‘THREAT?’: In a follow-up letter to Satterfield’s testimony, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Bergner “reaffirmed the administration’s position that it does not need international or congressional approval to conduct military operations around the world, particularly when going after terrorists.” Bergner explained to Ackerman that Iraq military operations can continue past 2008 without a U.N. mandate “under the laws passed by Congress and the president’s authority as commander in chief,” referring to the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Saddam Hussein and the resolution passed after 9/11. These authorizations, Bergner said, permit “use of force” to “defend the national security of the United States,” allowing indefinite combat operations in Iraq. Ackerman observed, “I don’t think anybody argues today that Saddam Hussein is a threat. Is it the government of Iraq that’s a threat?”

I long ago posted a recipe for a quick and easy way to cook a steak, and now here’s Bittman’s version:

Seared Steak

Yield 4 servings, Time 20 minutes

Timing here is imprecise, as it always is, but if your steaks are at room temperature, about eight minutes per inch for medium rare will get you pretty close. Skirt steaks cook much faster — maybe five minutes total — and thicker steaks longer. With practice, you can judge doneness by look and feel, but until then, cut into the steak or use an instant read thermometer; medium-rare is about 125 degrees.

• 2 steaks (sirloin strip, rib-eye or other), 8 to 10 ounces each and about 1 inch thick

• Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat the oven to 500 degrees (550 if possible), and set a rack in the lowest position, unless skillet can be placed directly on oven floor. Place a cast-iron skillet large enough to hold the steaks without crowding over high heat, and heat until smoking. Sprinkle surface of pan with coarse salt, and put the steaks in. Smoke will billow up; immediately transfer skillet to oven.

Roast steaks, turning once, about 4 minutes a side for medium rare, or until browned and cooked to preferred doneness. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and let rest 3 to 5 minutes. Slice steaks or cut each into two pieces, and serve.

From Balloon Juice, by Tim F.:

I can’t wait for the day when stories like this drive Hugh Hewitt into paroxysms of righteous outrage again.

Edgar A. Domenech says he thought Justice Department officials would welcome information about mismanagement at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.Instead, the 23-year ATF veteran says, Justice officials ignored his complaints and later retaliated against him by demoting him, denying him a bonus and attempting to give him a poor job review.

And again and again. I emphasize this kind of story because there really is a best practices for running a functional government. People do a more competent job under the threat of transparency and adversarial oversight. Take that away and you eliminate the disincentive for slack, graft and letting mistakes of every magnitude slide uncorrected. To the degree that whistleblowers are actively protected, shitty managers and government programs that fail for whatever reason can be exposed and corrected. Strict ethics rules enforced by zealous and independent oversight keep away the stink that almost always goes along with political power. If these things disappear it hardly matters who is in charge; shitty management will follow like water flows downhill. Tax money will disappear down unaccountable holes, important programs will stop working. National security will be less secure. Idiots who can’t do their job will be appointed to important positions. Said idiots, justifiably fearing exposure of their crappy management, inevitably commit increasingly stupid mistakes in an effort to cover up earlier mistakes.

The country works better under Democrats because as a whole they have a better grip on best practices. That’s it. If you think I’m wrong, I encourage you to revisit the unlivable hell that was the Eisenhower administration. Despite their loopy policy agenda Republican leadership doesn’t have to run the country into the ground, it’s just a historical accident that Republican presidents since Eisenhower have had a crappy notion of how to make government work. Bushies just represent the ultimate defeat of competence after a decades-long, losing battle with ideological purity.

I wonder whether a shamed and defeated GOP can defy the purity trolls in their the base and give some capable young John Cole types a chance to build a national party again. Sounds tough, after all first they’ll have to stop driving those guys to the Democrats, but it’s either that or try taking power back by some means other than electoral politics.

Mastic. Read more about it here. Has anyone had this?

The US Southwest already faces a serious water problem, and with global warming combined with population growth, it’s going to get worse and worse: the pie is shrinking and there are more demands on it. Inexpensive desalinization of ocean water is far off, so far a I can tell. There is not enough water now, and the supply is dropping:

Southern California farmer Chris Hurd is worried. As it is, the tomato crops on his family farm are struggling because of a dwindling water supply. Farmers in Southern California receive only two-thirds of the water promised the state, according to the California Farm Water Coalition, a statewide organization representing the agriculture industry. Now their water supply could be cut back even more. The state Dept. of Water Resources announced last week that water contractors must reduce pumping to the central and southern parts of the state by 11 to 30 percent. This was decided after a December 2007 court order to reduce pumping in order to protect the endangered delta smelt.

This could be bad news for the country’s food supply. With more than half of America’s fruits, vegetables and nuts coming from California—and nearly all the nation’s tomatoes, garlic, avocados, lemons, strawberries, grapes, almonds, as well as other crops—water battles in California may leave the rest of the country a little hungrier.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could be part of the answer to California’s water woes—if it wasn’t such a big part of the problem. A world of debate surrounds the delta and its potential to supply California with water. Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, made of state legislators and stakeholders. The group was supposed to balance water needs against the problems of a deteriorating ecosystem. The current debate over the delta involves a controversial plan to build a peripheral canal around it. The canal would bring water to the central and southern parts of the state. But it would further degrade the delta’s ecosystem, harming not only the environment but also the water supply for farms and residents in the delta region. Farmers in the delta region worry a canal could end their livelihood. Farmers south of the delta say a canal could send much needed water their way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Take, but never give:

No private contractor has financially profited from the Iraq war more than Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which until last year was a subsidiary of Halliburton. The firm currently has more than 21,000 employees in Iraq, and between 2004 and 2006, received more than $16 billion in government contracts — far more than any other corporation.

Yet KBR hasn’t been passing on these enormous profits to American taxpayers or even its own employees, thanks to a plan that Vice President Cheney helped establish. Today, the Boston Globe reports that KBR has avoided paying more than $500 million “in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies” based in the Cayman Islands. A look at the costs to KBR employees:

While KBR’s use of the shell companies saves workers their half of the taxes, it deprives them of future retirement benefits.

In addition, the practice enables KBR to avoid paying unemployment taxes in Texas, where the company is registered, amounting to between $20 and $559 per American employee per year, depending on the company’s rate of turnover.

As a result, workers hired through the Cayman Island companies cannot receive unemployment assistance should they lose their jobs.

KBR’s practices are extreme, even compared to its competitors. Other top Iraq war contractors — including Bechtel and Parsons — pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their employees.

The Bush administration has aided this tax dodging. One of KBR’s shell companies is Overseas Administrative Services, which was set up two months after Cheney became Halliburtion’s CEO in 1995. Since at least 2004, the Pentagon has known about KBR’s practices, but chosen to ignore the issue.

Of course, KBR is more than happy to claim workers as its own in one instance: when seeking “legal immunity extended to employers working in Iraq.”

Fascinating, interesting, humorous, and thought-provoking. And notice at the beginning he opens a Moleskine notebook. Worth watching

from www.designverb.com posted with vodpod

Here’s today’s data point:

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.

As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a “one-stop shop” enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.

Although Americans have become accustomed to seeing dazzling examples of fictional crime-busting gear on television and in movies, law enforcement’s search for clues has in reality involved a mundane mix of disjointed computers, legwork and luck.

These new systems are transforming that process. “It’s going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age, that’s what it’s like,” said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink.

With Coplink, police investigators can pinpoint suspects by searching on scraps of information such as nicknames, height, weight, color of hair and the placement of a tattoo. They can find hidden relationships among suspects and instantly map links among people, places and events. Searches that might have taken weeks or months — or which might not have been attempted, because of the amount of paper and analysis involved — are now done in seconds.

Read the rest of this entry »

This recipe looks terrific:

Carrots: cut into matchstick size, stir fried in sesame oil until crisp-tender with some red pepper flakes, and finished with a scatter of sesame seeds. It’s crunchy, salty and spicy. It’s really tasty at room temperature, which makes it a great bento filler.

Recipe: Carrot kinpira

Note that I don’t add any sugar or mirin here, unlike most traditional kinpira recipes. I just let the natural sweetness of the carrots speak for itself.

• 2 medium carrots
• 1 Tbs. dark sesame oil
• a pinch of red pepper flakes (about 1/8 tsp, or more if you want it spicier)
• 1 Tbs. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. sesame seeds

Cut the carrots into matchstick size. (Cheat alert - you can use pre-shredded carrots meant for salad if you like, but then lessen the cooking time.)

Heat up a frying pan or wok with the sesame oil. Add the carrots and toss around until crisp-tender, about 4 to 5 minutes depending on how skinny the matchsticks are. Add the red pepper flakes and toss some more. Add soy sauce, toss toss. Add the sesame seeds near the end.

This does theoretically keep in the refrigerator for a couple of days, though around here it never does.

From Bob Slaughter on the Razor and Brush messsage board, this useful tip: the AZZ Cardfile program (Windows only). It looks useful, and the price isn’t bad: $19.

AZZ Cardfile is Windows program that helps manage any personal information like addresses, phone numbers, references, notes, recipes.

It can serve as personal organizer, contact manager, address book, rolodex, personal information manager (PIM) or small database software. Replaces Microsoft Cardfile.

Modern customizable user interface, ease of use and extensive features makes this information management software equally suitable for business office or home use.

Simple and powerful, totally customizable organizer software without predefined fields, Recipe Software, Contacts Database, Address Book, Rolodex, Contact Management Software, Simple Database, Organizer for Notes, References or any other items.

It’s always lovely to experience a novelty—one reason we enjoy trying new restaurants, new dishes, new shaving products, and the like.

This morning began with the tried and true: Honeybee Spa Lilac shea-butter shaving soap and the G.B. Kent BK4 brush. The Lilac has a lovely fragrance—and it was a request from me that led to it.

I picked the Edwin Jagger ivory-handled Chatsworth, which has the Polsilver blade still in it. I haven’t used the blade for a couple of days, but it’s still as sharp and smooth as ever. A great blade. Three smooth passes, and then….

The novelty: Rituals Skincare shaving oil for the Oil Pass:

Tamanu oil provides the unique antiseptic properties that initiate the healing of nicks and cuts as they occur. Tamanu acts to kill the bacteria that causes inflammation of ingrown hair and acne often associated with shaving.

In addition to Tamanu oil, the list of ingredients includes Vitis Vinifera (Grape Seed Oil), Persea Gratissima (Avocado Oil), Macadamia Ternifoilia Seed (Macadamia Oil), Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba Oil), Calophyllum Inophyllum (Oil of Tamanu), Morinda Citrifolia (Noni), and Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E, Grapefruit).

The fragrance is very citrusy—orange, I thought, but perhaps grapefruit. Extremely pleasant: light oil, good protection, lovely fragrance. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. They designed it as a pre-shave oil, something I don’t especially like, but as an oil for the Oil Pass it’s extremely good. At $21 for 4 oz, it’s not expensive as these things go. Mine is in a one-ounce container with the treatment pump dispenser that produces just the right amount for the Oil Pass.

The aftershave was Master Lilac Vegetal. Excellent start to the day.