Heroes

This is a blog I was going to do quite a while ago. In fact, I was going to do it at the beginning of the month. I opted not because I didn't want to jinx it.

Today Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour De France in a row. Also his last one. Lance is retiring to the easy life of dating Sheryl Crow. What this man has done is truly inspirational. We all know how he was diagnosed with cancer and how that cancer was pretty severe. Always left out of the story was the fact that (and not to be mean here) he wasn't all that great before his sickness. It is one thing to be great, face a struggle and comeback again. It is a totally other thing to be "average," face what he did, and THEN win seven straight of one of the most grueling sporting competitions around. His story and what he has done for cancer research and done for the spirits of millions (yes millions) of people makes him an icon and a hero.

Funny thing about heroes though. Sometimes, even though you admire them so much, certain things can make you cringe. In Lance's case it is his faith, or lack thereof. I myself am not all that faithful sometimes and certainly not as faithful as I would like to be. I struggle everyday with this; my relationship with God. That fire is there though and I can feel it, now I just need to let it burn more. Problem with my hero is that I think that fire may have been put out long ago. In a biography about him called "Lance Armstrong's War," Lance is quoted as saying that "too many people use religion as a crutch." There are also various articles (if you were to do a google search) about Lance's "here and now" philosophy as opposed to any belief in God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit. I watched the Tour this morning despite the fact that I have no idea how the whole system actually works (how do you not win every stage but retain a 2 minute 30 second lead every day?!?) and I think his story is one of a kind, but it kinda hurts when a hero doesn't believe in what you do. I believe he was given another chance (by the way, we all get second chances, even if our first one isn't faced with a dieases) to make an impact on lives. He has, but he doesn't understand his second chance came from God. He doesn't understand that he has a chance to also influence even more by sharing the Word.

In the end, I guess that is between Lance and God. I am not judging him because of the fact that I question myself lots of times. I guess I was just a little let down by a hero.

Vote Here

So I'm making some changes to my blog page. Who likes the new format and who doesn't? Let me know.

I was watching the daily round of nightly pundit shows tonight (Hardball, The Countdown, O'Reilly, Hannity and Colmes) trying to gain myself some more information about this whole Karl Rove leak to the press thing. I am not particularly fond of Karl Rove, but I want to gain more "facts" which in this age of blogs and "media biases" can be hard to find. It is clear that Rove told Matthew Cooper (of Time magazine) that Joseph Wilson couldn't really be believed because some of his info was error-laden or half-truths (which I believe is true) by saying that Wilson's wife who is with the CIA investigating WMDs headed the operation. Not entirely true. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, did not hire Wilson or head up his mission. Plame was also an undercover CIA agent (or we are led to believe...apparently you are no longer "covert" after five inactive years and it is possible that Plame was no longer under that cover). Anyways, what piques my attention to this is Why did Rove use Plame in discrediting Wilson? He could have done this without outing a suppposed undercover CIA agent (which is treason). I don't think Rove is guilty of that, cause even if he meant to, he actually didn't use the name "Valerie Plame." What he is guilty of though, in my opinion, is another round of dirty tricks. Rove may be the master of them and admittedly damn good at them too. I've read some allegations that he was fired from the Bush I/Quayle Re-election campaign because he planted a negative story with Robert Novak (suprise suprise! the same guy who wrote this Plame article) in 1992. Yet, he was brought back. The Bush II White House early on in this case (which has been going for a couple years now almost) said that if the leak came from within the White House that person would be fired. I highly doubt that "Bush's Brain" gets fired. Which is disturbing in its own right. I thought this administration was ethical and unlike the previous administration. The sad fact is that no adminstration is really that different from each other these days. Rove will keep his job and hailed as a hero for discrediting partisan hacks Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

What was interesting tonight though was the O'Reilly factor. They didnt cover it AT ALL! Instead they spent roughly 15 minutes of his hour long show (maybe more, 2 segments for sure though) on the Natalee Holloway case in Aruba. A story that is now two months old and now just repeating itself. I feel sorry for the Holloway family, but why all the attention? I think O'Reilly and Fox News just likes to pick on Aruba. No, their justice system isn't great, but we are the country that has OJ Simpson walking the streets. And, forgive me for this, no one has pointed out the obvious fact that Miss Holloway was by most accounts partying a little too much in a foreign country and going clubbing with boys from this country she had just met. I think I learned not to do that in 1st grade. That certainly doesn't make it okay for what happened to her to have happened. And those responsible will pay sooner or later. Hopefully for the sake of the family this all gets settled soon though, and I think the Aruban authorities are close...this Joran Van der Sloot is still being held in jail after a new court hearing today and will likely crack before long.

Details

In response to some questions/curiousness into "My Plan" I thought I would try my hand at some more in-depth details. Mind you I am NOT a policy analyst or formulator. That is my downfall as a "politician."

We currently have roughly 150,000 troops in Iraq, not counting special forces. Today, some Democratic Senators (including H. Rod Clinton) proposed sending 80,000 more over in the course of the next couple years. Bad idea...first that shows we may be there a couple more years, and second enrollment numbers probably won't support that type of movement.

Currently we are also spending a LOT of money in Iraq. Hey, I would tell you what the number really is, but I CAN'T FIND IT! Our budget is so messed up that any real conservative would have voted for anyone but Bush. Since when are the Democrats the fiscally sound ones? Anyways, reports are that since a new bill in 2004 providing MORE money, we have spent $360 million on top of that the billions we have spent as far as troops and American business contractors.

So here's the deal. We start pulling troops out SLOWLY. We want Iraq to fight for themselves right? A kid doesn't learn to ride his bike with dad always hanging on, they will never fight for themselves with us holding their hand. Well we make our bases solely training and prep for the Iraqi soldiers while starting the removal of our troops (probably looking at a two year process for that). Those who have remaining time left to serve or have signed up again will start protecting the homeland. We also start advertising this in recruitment offices. Our troops will have the opportunity to serve in a new branch of the services...Civilian Patrol (or something like that). They will be assigned positions at airports, subways, railroad stations, nuclear plants, monuments. They are there to help serve the cops/security hired at these places. This will help fill a gap in homeland security and help raise recruitment levels. Those who enter the Army and Naval academies and want to be "real" troops will still go through their training and be assigned overseas where we need them (including Iraq, I think a small number may have to be there for awhile). This way, Johnny (from Mankato, MN) signs up, recieves benefits of money for school, etc AND can be close to home serving at Minneapolis International Airport. These "troops" will be armed but not with big military rifles, etc., nor will they be wearing fatigues. Just extra security.

With money we save, we pump it into the FBI/CIA/other intelligence. We fund them properly and use President Bush's restructure (which was needed). These guys search deep into ANY threat, we use our intelligence to freeze funds for terrorist groups, and we immediately deal diplomatically (by sending the Pres. or Sec. of State) with countries that have any terror connection. If, in last resort, we use our "normal" military. We use our special ops and top secret military groups to go directly after our "hit list" of terrorists. I don't have much more to say here because I don't think any of us really know how the infrastructure of the CIA/FBI works.

Change is a big deal and this wouldn't be an easy sell. Most politicians are afraid for their political careers of trying something new like this. The way I would pitch it is follows: We are not giving up the War on Terror, we are refocusing our attention. Iraq will not be forgotten (with a two year removal program and some troops remaining). The actual terror groups will be focused on more here rather than countries that may be associated with them and creating more terrorists. Money will be more appropriately used so U.S. citizens can see what's being done.

Would we be claiming defeat in Iraq? Again, probably not. Just a "refocus." I believe we would be fighing Terror (remember, it isn't a person or a country) more efficently. This may or may not make sense. If any more questions are out there, let me know.

My Plan

Sorry everyone, it has been a long time since I last blogged. Good news is that the move to Marshalltown is complete and next week I can begin work in the classroom.

Before getting into the main idea of my blog, I would like to quickly review Mr. and Mrs. Smith which I saw tonight. Not totally what I expected from previews, a couple more twists than I thought there would be, but overall I liked it. Lots of action and lots of little funny scences. The whole idea of two assassins married to each other is original and I would recommend the movie.

Now...onto today's news. I woke up this morning and in my first ten minutes of being awake and watching the news I heard that the little girl from Charles City that had been missing was found dead AND that London had been attacked by terrorists with a series of subway bombs...at that point it was definately time to go to work.

After work and listening to more stories about the bombings and what this all means I started thinking. What really got me thinking was Anderson Cooper's 360 show tonight. My sister loves that show and I happened to catch a couple stories. One was done awhile ago but dealt with safety at U.S. train/subway stations. In the story they left a backpack just sitting there to see how long it was before a cop/security checked it out. 20 minutes in Philly, NEVER in NYC. The producer just ended up grabbing the bag instead of waiting for someone to check it out. They then interviewed the police chief in NYC. He said that he wouldn't say another attack within the U.S. was "inevitable," but did say that we are open for attacks because government can't assure us safety everywhere. EVERYWHERE is pretty broad, but the preamble of the U.S. Constitution does say that in our "more perfect union," we will be provided a "common defense."

I know that we have a military and they do provide a common defense. A couple problems here though. 1) There are lots of safety gaps all over in our country, and 2) Recruitment in the armed services is dropping because of the fear of being sent to Iraq. It is becoming more apparent that Iraq is a mess (no WMD, no connection to 9/11, no exit plan) and that Afghanistan (the one I did agree with orginally) is still flooded with members of the Taliban. Obviously if we just packed up and left, it would be a mess. I say, start to pull troops out slowly...and to continue fighting terrorism (and hopefully gain more recruits) give these courageous young men and women jobs as security at our nation's airports, train stations, borders, etc. I don't want to sound like it would be a military state, but it would be like another branch of defense that is simply good, abled men and women working as security. Kinda like a National Guard without the military uniforms and what-not. NYC's police chief said there weren't enough guards/etc., so we use our "civilian" army. These people would be given the same benefits as troops, like money for school/etc. As for Iraq and Afghanistan, like I said, we pull out slowly. We continue to do our job there and get the Iraqi and Afghani people to fight for themselves.

I was saddened this morning by the news of the London bombings. I send my thoughts and prayers to them. Right afterwards we started hearing the old rhetoric of "we will hunt these barbarians down and do justice to them." Yeah, just like we did with Osama. Let's face it, a War on Terror CANNOT be fought by invading countries. Terror is NOT a country. It is not Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. This is a group of people from all over, probably some within the U.S., that we are fighting. Here is how we fight them. We solve our security issues here. We beef up our intelligence with the money saved from not fighting wars in places like Iraq (can anyone say 1 billion a day?) and we team up with other countries' intelligence communities. We fight with covert operations (if we know where Osama is, just drop some troops in quick and get him, it isn't like we've never done this before). Finally, we fight financially. We know, or would know with good intell., where a lot of this money is coming from that funds terror groups. Freeze it, take it, call out those countries like Saudi Arabia that send government money to terror groups. Play Hardball without the nukes or weapons. It can be done, instead we insist on not stepping on the toes of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. For as tough as Bush acts, he is a real weeny. His answer would just be to invade a country that had little or nothing to do with 9/11. Bin Laden is reportedly in Pakistan, but we don't want to upset them any. If they know we mean business (money, aid, etc.) we can get what we want. A War on Terror is unwinnable the way we are fighting, cause even if we do succeed here or there we never know we win.