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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40308)	8/6/2007 2:54:00 PM
From: Suma	Respond to of 543258

When I was as teacher I used to cringe at Study Hall duty. This is the time when the students who could not fit something in that period into a schedule were relegated to spend a period of time sitting at a desk and hopefully doing homework or reading. In a classroom of about 40 kids maybe a third were doing something constructive. The other's were just sitting there throwing spitballs, notes and if they didn't like the teacher in charge being down right disrespectful. WHAT a waste of energy and time was my thinking.. AND would it not have been better to have used this time constructively for the students.. Have a debate.. spelling bee.. Something .... Same thing today for the prisons.. The prisoners are a great source of labor. Here in Boone they are along the road in their orange suits with guards of course weed watching and picking up garbage which they deposit in like colored bags and leave for a later pick up. Utilizing resources is what I call it. Why not take small groups of prisoners from prison and use them to do jobs at work sites.. HAVE ARMED guards of course but only those who EARN the work detail can go outside the prison for a change and work. INCENTIVES AND REWARDS... This is how I see life in having cooperation from those with whom I am in charge and why not take the illegal immigrants and put them in a special branch of the ARMY and have them serve in Iraq.... Those young men who were called Negroes at the time had a unit that performed better than any group of airmen. The Tuskegee pilots.. It takes incentives but after a term in the army well served the illegal would be a confirmed American Citizen..... They are doing nothing constructive in prisons but using out tax dollars for KEEP. Any other ideas out there ?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40308)	8/6/2007 2:59:22 PM
From: Sultan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543258

Go home, apply and we will let you in will never work.. Folks who are illegal are not dumb.. They have enough smarts to make it here and survive and know the game.. A blanket amnesty for folks based on some criteria followed by a lot tougher new rules may be one way to do it..

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40308)	8/6/2007 6:51:16 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543258

Gates Points To Strategic Reassessment In Iraq But Will Retain Residual US Force spacewar.com by Staff Writers Washington (AFP) Aug 06, 2007 Iraq's failure to make political progress will lead to a strategic reassessment next month but the United States still envisions a residual US military presence for a protracted period, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday. Gates called national reconciliation efforts "disappointing," and said he had warned Iraqi leaders that leaving on vacation was unacceptable because "every day we buy you ... we are buying with American blood." But in television interviews, Gates said the US "surge" strategy had succeeded in dampening violence and that progress was being made in places like Iraq's western Al-Anbar province, where former opponents of the US occupation have "flipped." Moreover, Gates said he told regional leaders during a trip to the Middle East last week that the United States anticipates working out arrangements with the Iraqis to keep a residual force in Iraq "at some fraction of the current level." He said in an interview with CNN that it would be "a stabilizing and supporting force in Iraq for some protracted period of time." "So I think that that's generally the view of almost anybody who is looking at this, that some kind of residual force for some period of time will be required beyond when we begin a drawdown," he said. Gates admitted that the US administration had underestimated the depth of mistrust between Sunni and Shiite factions, and said the leadership's failure to pass legislation to further reconciliation was "disappointing." Asked in an NBC television interview whether there would be a strategic reassessment if Iraq did not pass legislation to unify the country by mid-September, Gates said: "I think we would have to, Yes. That's the whole point of the Crocker-Petraeus effort." He was referring to US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, who are scheduled to report to Congress by September 15 on whether a surge in US forces was working and what the next steps should be. The lack of political progress by the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has fueled calls for a timetable for a US withdrawal from Iraq. Gates gave no indication what will come out of the September reassessment. He said it was "possible" that there could be a reduction in the 155,000 US force in Iraq. Gates said that, as a former member of the Iraq Study Group, he probably would have supported its recommendation that support for the central government be withheld if it failed to meet political benchmarks. But he said the turnabout in Al-Anbar province and other Sunni areas had changed the circumstances. "So it is a disappointing picture for the central government right now, but there are some positive things happening at the local level. And obviously in the security arena," he said. He went on to say, "At some point there has to be reconciliation at the national level." "I think we all perhaps underestimated the depth of the misunderstanding and mistrust among these sections in Baghdad over time," he said.