Five Things ACA Supporters Don't Want You To Know About UnitedHealth's Withdrawal From Obamacare

(Hat tip: KimR) - UnitedHealth is withdrawing from most of the 34 ObamaCare Exchanges in which it currently sells, citing losses of $650 million in 2016. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report indicates UnitedHealth’s departure will leave consumers on Oklahoma’s Exchange with only one choice of insurance carriers. Read more at Forbes Read More......

UPI: Bush Praises Troops As They Leave Iraq

As the last U.S. combat troops leave Iraq, former President George W. Bush expressed thanks to the U.S. military for its service in Iraq. Read more at UPI... Read More......

Education: Math & Science

The United States has quietly withdrawn from an international study comparing math and science students.
Newsweek Web Exclusive, August 2007 - Peg Tyre wrote,

Americans took note when Bill Gates said last spring that American schools needed to beef up science and math standards if the country was going to maintain a competitive edge in the new century. So did Congress, which last week approved legislation called the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science) Act, which carves out a whopping $43.6 billion for science education and research.

So why did the federal government quietly decide last year to drop out of an international study that would compare U.S. high-school students who take advanced science and math courses with their international counterparts? Continued...

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Quick US Exit From Iraq: Seven Scenarios

Austin Bay Blog, August 12, 2007 - Austin Bay wrote,

[...]
Here are seven “scenarios” sketching “potential outcomes” of a quick withdrawal from Iraq. They are not mutually exclusive. They could well “blend.” In fact, an amalgam of the first six could occur.

These are speculative dramas. The US and the Iraqi governments have their own scenarios. I am certain that Iran, Al Qaeda, Syria and Turkey have also analyzed potential outcomes and made plans accordingly.

THE SCENARIOS

(1) THREE NEW COUNTRIES: Kurdistan in the north becomes an independent country – and immediately begins to wrestle with Turkey over the Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK) which is waging a secessionist struggle in southeastern Turkey. Kurdistan has oil. Southern Iraq—a predominantly Shia – area, becomes a Shia state—with oil. Parts of Anbar province become a Sunni state (Iraqi Sunnistan) – which has few oil fields. But what becomes of Baghdad? Does it divide like a desert Berlin into Shia and Sunni sectors? Baghdad remains a source of continuing conflict.

(2) REGIONAL SHIA-SUNNI WAR: Iran sees a chance to recover not only the Shaat al Arab region – the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates, but a chance to extend its border into the economically productive areas of southern Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait immediately react to Iran’s drive into southern Iraq. Iraq has served as a “buffer” between Sunni Arabs and Shia Iranians, and the buffer is dissolving . Jordan and Egypt prepare for action. The War Over Mesopotamia could last for weeks, it could grind on for years.

(3) TURKEY EXPANDS :Turkey reclaims control of territory all the way to Kirkuk, creating a new Southern Turkey: The Ottoman Empire once controlled Mesopotamia. Turkey has a lingering claim to areas of northern Iraq. For almost two decades Turkey has fought with the Kurdistan Workers Party – a Kurdish secessionist group in Turkey which has bases in northern Iraq. Turkey could conclude the way to end the war with the PKK would be to absorb Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey would pay a huge political price. It would lose all chance of joining the European Union. Ties with the West would deteriorate –and as a resultTurkey might become less secular and more Islamic in both identity and in political orientation. The Iranians would be glad to see their “Kurdish issue” disappear, but would be wary of a militant Turkey.

(4) SHIA DICTATORSHIP: Shia Arabs conduct an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Sunni. They create a condominium state with the Kurds. Iranian influence increases . Iraq’s Sunnis either die (a genocide) or flee to other Sunni controlled states – or move to the US.

(5) CHAOS: The region becomes a cauldron. Iraq shatters into ethnic enclaves, a few “new Mesopotamian city states” managing to control oil fields. Iran and Turkey exert “regional influence” over eastern Iraq and northern Iraq, respectively, but concerned about confrontation between themselves or provoking sanctions from Europe and the US, neither send their military forces in large numbers beyond current borders . Terror attacks and intermittent fighting afflict neighborhoods throughout Iraq. Local warlords rule by fear and make money either smuggling oil, drugs, or arms. This tribal hell is a perfect disaster—the kind of disaster that allows Al Qaeda to build training facilities and base camps for operations throughout the Middle East and Europe.

(6) “GANG UP”: Shia Arabs in Iraq are numerous, well armed and increasingly well organized – at least enough to expel all of the Sunni Arabs. The Shia and Kurds, who are now over 80 percent of the population, decide to eliminate their main enemy, and the source of most of the terrorism—the Sunni community. Neighboring Sunni Arab nations are kept out with the threat that Iran will intervene. Arguably, this scenario is already happening, though in slow motion.

(7) SURPRISE—THE IRAQI CENTER HOLDS: The democratic government proves to be resilient and popular. The assumption behind this scenario is that Iraq’s new democratic government is just responsive enough and its security forces are just strong enough to withstand attacks by extremists and give Iran pause. After several months of brutal warfare, the Iraqi Army destroys insurgent groups.

Out of seven possible “rapid withdrawal” scenarios only one –number seven– clearly benefits the majority of Iraqis. And the US. And the civilized world.

Bay writes a national security column for Creators Syndicate. His commentaries run on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He has appeared as a guest analyst on CNN, C-SPAN, and ABC News Nightline. He is now retired from the US Army Reserve, but was recalled to active duty and served in Iraq in 2004. For this tour of duty in Iraq, he was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service.

Bay has a B.A. from Rice University and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College. He currently teaches for The University of Texas' Plan II Undergraduate Honors Program. Read More......

The eye-roll

Has anyone noticed that Democrats and pundits advocating pulling out of Iraq have started rolling their eyes back and saying, "Oh, that old thing," in response to "... they'll follow us home if we leave."? This seems amazing, since the terrorists have told us that that is exactly what they will do. They want to destroy Western philosophical values. The jihadists' want to kill us. Was 9/11 not enough to make this understanding clear? We weren't in Iraq on 9/11. Read More......

How to Win in Iraq

And how to lose.
Opinion Journal FEDERATION, Commentary, March 29, 2007 by Arthur Herman,

Historian, Arthur Herman, who has taught history at George Mason University and Georgetown University, is the author of a number of historical books including The Idea of Decline in Western History and To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World. In his article, How to Win in Iraq and how to lose, Herman gives his assessment of the war in Iraq. He uses the French military’s late 1950’s experience in Algeria and America’s experience in Viet Nam as historical comparatives and ties together the necessary elements for successfully fighting a war against a gorilla-style insurgency including the role ‘home front’ perceptions play. In part, Mr. Herman writes,

[...]

In fourth-generation warfare, whoever seems to own the future wins. To this day, thanks to Gille Pontecorvo's celebrated and highly propagandized 1967 film, most people assume that "the battle of Algiers" was an FLN [insurgency’s] victory when in fact it was anything but. Similarly, most people believe that the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam was a major setback for the United States, for so it was successfully portrayed in the media; in fact, it crippled the Viet Cong as an insurgency. The same happened more recently in the battle of Falluja in 2005, where our eradication of a vicious jihadist network was presented almost entirely in terms of too many American casualties and too much "collateral damage."

Thus far, the antiwar forces in both the United States and Europe have been greatly successful in presenting the Iraqi future in terms of an inevitable, and richly deserved, American defeat. Not even positive results on the ground have deterred them from pressing their case for withdrawal, or from winning influential converts in the heart of the U.S. Congress. If they succeed in their ultimate goal of forcing a withdrawal, they will take their place in another "long line," joining the shameful company of those who compelled the French to leave Algeria in disgrace and to stand by as the victorious FLN conducted a hideous bloodbath, and of those who compelled America to leave Vietnam under similar circumstances and to similar effect.

Unlike the French in Algeria, the United States is in Iraq not in order to retain a colony but to help create a free, open and liberal society in a part of the world still mired in autocracy and fanaticism. Will we stay long enough to defeat the jihadists, to engage Iraqis in the process of modern nation-building, and to ease the transition to a free society? Or will we quit before the hard work is done, leaving this vital part of the world to become an al Qaeda sanctuary, bathed in chaos, anarchy, and blood? As the polls suggest, a large constituency at home is waiting to learn the answer to this question, and so is a much larger constituency abroad.

But time is running short."Act quickly," Gen. Petraeus wrote in January 2006, "because every army of liberation has a half-life." This is true not only in the field but at home. James Thurber once said that the saddest two words in the English language are "too late." Terrible as it is to think that our surge may have come too late, it is much more terrible to think that feckless politicians, out of whatever calculation, may pull the plug before the new approach is fully tested.

And terrible not only for Iraqis. For the French, the price of failure in Algeria was the collapse of one Republic and a permanent stain on the next--along with the deep alienation of the French military from the political establishment that it believed (with considerable justification) had betrayed it. Here at home, it took the American military almost a decade and a half to recover its confidence and resiliency after the failure and humiliation of Vietnam. How we would weather another and even more consequential humiliation is anybody's guess; but the stakes are enormous, and the clock is ticking.

Read the entire article. Read More......

Bad Democratic Reasoning

National Review Online, March 30, 2007 - Charles Krauthammer counters Speaker Pelosi’s March 8th statement, “Our bill calls for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq so that we can focus more fully on the real war on terror, which is in Afghanistan,” and the Democrats canard that Iraq is the "wrong war at the wrong time”, by setting up a creative analogy using ‘Martians’ to drive home his point on the importance of Iraq in the war against radical Islamic aggression. See Krauthammer's "Thought experiment" in Afghanistan Isn't a Reason... Read More......

'Backlash for Speaker Pelosi'

From Bill Bennett's Morning in America: Quotes & Statements, March 29, 2007
From Iraq: An Open Letter to Speaker Pelosi, From Gunnery Sgt. Stephen F. Krueger

"How can you even think of pushing forward legislation to set a withdrawal date for US forces from Iraq? Do you know how much you embolden the insurgency here in Iraq? YOU ARE JEAPARDIZING THE LIVES OF US SERVICEMEN AND WOMEN WITH YOUR ACTIONS. You and your fellow Democrats are causing the Al Qaeda supported insurgency to use more catastrophic attacks against us and Iraqi forces. You will see more SVBIED's with chlorine gas, more VBIED's against civilians and security forces every time you and other Democrats open your mouths. You will have to live with yourself and try to sleep at night knowing all the defeatist propaganda you have spewed forth is nothing more than ammunition for Islamic extremist groups around the world and more US deaths.

The unsuspecting people who support you know nothing of what goes on over here; you fill their heads with nonsense and talk of pullout to appease them. The only thing that will happen is the establishment of an extremist Islamic state where sharia law is the law of the land and no one is safe.

Sunni Moslems here are coming to our side and joining forces with the government to defeat Al Qaeda (AQI) here in Iraq, but they need our help and they need us to stay. I have spent the last 7 months(3rd tour) in Iraq. I have watched Iraqi citizens pick up weapons and form militias in areas to join forces with Iraqi police/Army. Common citizens who fight and die because we are standing next to them. Not cutting and running or talking of withdrawal. This started after the surge forces the President sent here arrived. We have lost Marines also and it hurts more than you will ever know but we have made a commitment to these people. And I for one will not abandon them and I have of a platoon of Marines who feel the same. I have no control over what happened in 2003 and why we invaded Iraq. That is another discussion, but we are here and they need our help to rid their country of these terrorists.

Yes eventually we will leave but we need to do a phased withdrawal without a timeline. At least without a timeline that is published for the world to know. The citizens of Iraq need to see some solidarity in our government, Democrats and Republicans coming together and supporting our President in this war. There is a middle ground here for both parties, you all need to come together and work towards a solution. What we don't need is more theatrics and clashes between the parties. AQI loves to see that it causes them to do more attacks and continue with the murder and intimidation campaign against Iraqi citizens.

Someone needs to step forward and bring the two parties together. Meet and talk about what you all can do and come to an agreement on the war. Like I said before we need a unified front to present to the world on the Iraq war. The Iraqi people need a morale boost, they need to see we are behind them and we will support them and not cut and run. The insurgency needs to see our resolve is strong and we will endure and defeat them. Extremist Islamist terror groups use our perceived weakness against us. They misunderstand our kindness for weakness. Weakness shown to the world brings more recruits to their cause; it causes more civilian deaths and violence.

Please I implore you to not push this agenda. I have watched you on television and you seem to be using this as a steppingstone to further your political career. STOP!!! More is at stake here. Our country's word is on the line, my word to many Iraqi citizens is on the line. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines lives are at stake. We know the risks and we face them daily. Don't make our mission more difficult."

Gunnery Sgt. Stephen F. Krueger
Platoon Sgt 3rd Recon Bn

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