Rumsfeld takes issue with Obama's remark about Afghan troops

LA Times "There was a saying when I got there: If you're in Iraq and you need something, you ask for it," McKiernan said in an interview after being fired this year. "If you're in Afghanistan and you need it, you figure out how to do without it."

A military mother's take on the president's speech

Beverly Gunn "I wonder, has our President ever thought of the price of duty that he asks of us today, with no end game or victory in sight, and whether anyone serving wants to give a life so cheaply? For if we are not in this war to win, and see to it that our enemies are clear about the cost of attacking the freedom of our nation, then we would be much better off not having begun the battle. And yet as I write those words I think of all who purchased my freedom and how I desire that my children and grandchildren live in freedom.You see, Mr. President, that is why we serve. We only ask that you do not see our children and our family members as good photo op!"

A Disservice to the Truth

Randall Hoven "Responding to President Obama's address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement:"

Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming, Too?

by Ann Coulter "Most disturbingly, the CRU-affiliated "scientists" were caught red-handed conspiring to kill the careers and reputations of scientists who dissented from the religion of global warming. Indignant that scientific journals were publishing papers skeptical of global warming, the cult members plotted to get editors ousted and the publications discredited."

Why We Will Not Make the Soviets’ Mistakes in Afghanistan

Max Boot "If these Red Army veterans think that NATO forces are repeating their mistakes, they haven’t been paying attention. The methods they describe are completely different from those being employed by General McChrystal. The reason he has requested more troops is so his forces don’t get into a pattern of entering areas and then leaving them. He wants to stay and provide population security. He has also imposed tight clamps on the use of firepower so our troops don’t cause the kind of collateral damage that can turn the population against them."

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

UK Telegraph "Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age."

Climategate: it's all unravelling now

UK Telegraph "So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarise, instead. After all, it’s not like you’re going to find much of this reported in the MSM."

The Open-Ended War

Warning Signs Hat tip to Alan Caruba "While Obama’s speech was delivered well and met with polite applause from the cadets and others at West Point, its real message was that America will not shoulder the burdens of an open-ended war by itself or with the desultory support of NATO allies."

Dean Obama

Victor Davis Hanson "That was such a strange speech. Deploring partisanship while serially trashing Bush at each new talking point. Sending more troops, but talking more about when they will come home rather than what they will do to the enemy. There was nothing much new in the speech, yet apparently it took the president months to decide whether even to give it."

Barnes: A Disappointing Speech in Support of the Right Policy

Fred Barnes "And Obama praised the military for the success of the “surge” in Iraq without mentioning the person who -- against the advice of nearly everyone in Washington -- ordered that troop increase, Bush. Obama tacitly acknowledged the surge had worked, though he didn’t seem to remember that he’d insisted that it would worsen conditions in Iraq."

A war president

William Kristol "At the press briefing this afternoon by two senior administration officials, a questioner pointed out that the government of Iran “regards the U.S. government's policy of surging forces as following Bush policy” and that the Iranian regime sees “no change in U.S. policy.”"

Obama Afghanistan Speech – Transcript

Sweetness&Light "Mr. Obama has the troops slated to come home from Afghanistan just in time for his 2012 re-election campaign. Good thing he isn’t politicizing this. By the way, Mr. Obama only used the pronoun ‘I’ 36 times in this speech. He’s getting better."