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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mannie who wrote (181403)	12/2/2009 4:32:51 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361973

Dear Mr. President... dailykos.com. by forgetaboutit Wed Dec 02, 2009 at 12:53:18 AM PST Dear Mr. President... I watched your speech tonight. You know, it's funny how I was such an avid supporter of you until I heard the speech. Ironically, it wasn't what you said so much as it was what you didn't say. I fully expected you to announce that you were going to deploy more troops. What I didn't expect was the ill-thought reasoning behind the decision. To summarize, Mr. President, you failed to convince me. You failed to convince me that you "...have no choice..." but to put our troops in harm's way. For the first time since you were elected, I am ashamed of my President. You were supposed to know better. Below I have included some of my reasons for my complete disappointment in your decision. I was hoping that your speech would have resolved these things, but it didn't. That speech fell WAY short of what I have come to expect from you. Indeed, I felt much of the speech was hyperbolic, irrelevant and just plain fake. Here are my reasons below... 1) If we can not afford to take care of our homeless, our sick, our unemployed, our elderly and our uninsured, then we certainly cannot afford to escalate a war. 2) If Afghanistan is such a threat to us, why have there been no attacks since 9/11? Obviously, the status quo has kept us safe at home. Wasn't that the reasoning behind the Patriot Act? What has changed so radically in the last few months that we suddenly need to send 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan? 3) I do not accept the argument that 9/11 happened because of a lack of security in Afghanistan. The reason 9/11 happened was because of a lack of security in America. Do I need to remind you, Mr. President, that terrorists were able to fly our skies for over an hour without being intercepted by NORAD. If you're looking for reasons on how 9/11 was able to happen, you don't need to travel all the way to Afghanistan to find them. 4) Why does this responsibility fall primarily on the United States? Where is Europe? Where is Asia? Do they not have just as much to lose from terrorism as we do? Yet, of the 43 nations, America is bearing the brunt of the dirty work. Why do we always have to be the world's primary police force? 5) By sending troops overseas, you weaken our homeland security. I remember Katrina. I remember there was no National Guard to perform rescue work because they were all in Iraq. I remember that it took SEVEN DAYS to get help in OUR OWN COUNTRY! Now you want to send them away again??? Good grief! 6) What makes you think you can save Afghanistan with 30,000 troops and 1.5 years of effort? There is no evidence to support this. There isn't even a 50/50 chance. They are a region full of people that have only known war since they were born. They aren't going to suddenly embrace democracy. They'll spit it out because it will taste foul and foreign to them. Nothing will change for them. However, America will surely suffer for this. 7) You cited the numbers of Congressional votes to go to war, taken soon after 9/11. We all know those numbers would be vastly different today. Why are you reciting these outdated numbers to me? Doing so makes me think that you need to really reach to make your points. Frankly, Mr. President, if the truth was really on your side, you wouldn't need to reach like this. 8) There has been a lot of press about how hard it is for you personally to order troops to be deployed. You talk about the letters you have to sign, you visit the graves of dead soldiers, you witness the flag draped coffins, you visit Walter Reed, you gave the speech at Fort Bragg - and, then you turn around and send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. This is on top of the 17,000 or so you sent when you first began this job. I'm starting to feel like I was set-up by the media to think that you care about these soldiers, when obviously you don't. 9) When we first attacked Afghanistan back in 2001 & 2002, we were able to make a lot of progress very quickly with a lot of surgical air-strikes. Why has this method been abandoned when it worked so well in the past? 10) McChrystal. Enough said. Most of these, by themselves, are forgivable. But taken as a whole ...sorry, I don't buy it. The only solace I have is in knowing that I don't know everything and that maybe I'm way off base here. But my gut tells me differently.

To: Mannie who wrote (181403)	12/2/2009 9:49:51 PM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361973

Global warming threatens food supply: Vietnam (AFP) – 18 hours ago HANOI — Vietnam, the world's second-biggest rice exporter, said Wednesday it needs help to safeguard the world's food supply from the consequences of global warming. "The rice bowl of Vietnam will be severely affected" without action, Nguyen Khac Hieu, deputy director general of the government's climate change agency, told reporters before key global climate talks next week in Copenhagen. "It's not only for Vietnam's sake but also for the world's food safety," said Hieu, calling for help to enable the country to adapt. He will be part of Vietnam's delegation at the December 7-18 conference tasked with framing a new deal for tackling global warming and its impact beyond 2012, when existing commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expire. Vietnam is planning for a one-metre (3.3 feet) rise in sea levels by 2100, which would inundate about 31,000 square kilometres (12,400 square miles) of land -- an area about the size of Belgium -- unless dykes and drainage systems are strengthened, says a United Nations discussion paper on climate change in Vietnam, presented at a meeting on Wednesday. "The inundation threat is greatest in the Mekong Delta," the country's main rice production and export area, the paper said. Many billions of dollars will be needed for Vietnam to address sea level rise and other climate change effects, the paper said, adding that the funding cannot only come from aid. Public finance would also have to be made available, but the first step should be large investments in studies and designs over the coming decades, the paper said. "The scale and time-span of these projects is unprecedented," it added. Mobilising funds to help developing countries shore up defences against climate change, and to switch to an economy with low emissions of damaging greenhouse gases, will be one of the key issues in Copenhagen. google.com