Serenity

With the Iraqi SOFA going into place soon, as well as limited jurisdiction over PMC's agreed upon in Iraq, BW in particular has indicated it's eventual withdrawal from doing any type of work that might put it's people in harms way. In short BW is going to be gradually leaving Iraq. Their business plan has changed to reflect the changing situations. Furthermore, the whole paradigm of DoD/DSS contractors is evolving, and has been for a few years now. Currently DoD contractors are subject to UCMJ, and DSS contractors in some cases are subject to local laws and jurisdiction. All DSS contractors have always been under the RSO's overall control at various embassies. Accountability has increased, as well as oversight. Pay has been declining for quite some time, and there is no guarantee of work for anyone, anywhere. However, the fact remains that despite a presidential change, that enemies of the United States are still flexing, and moving to position. PMC's will continue to play their part in the overall scheme while providing support and SME expertise to the various agencies that employ them.

Look at the proportion of taxes in this country paid by the highest 2% richest people in this country. And to further increase that proportion? I don't make that much but I believe that the drive to make yourself better and to better your situation is what runs this country (or did in the past) to take that away can only derail our progress as a nation and the foundation that made us the Superpower that we are/were. We won't be a SUPERPOWER anymore? OH NO! I think we became a SUPERPOWER! by surviving WWII: the luck of geography, a very progressive tax policy, and a strong middle/working class made that possible, not a bunch of speculative Wall Street assholes. Asshole. Ok, I don't log in here that often, and choose to engage in these senseless debates even less. However, whenever I do I find you spewing out an endless list of insults. Take this post for example. "Asshole" etc. You seem to have carte blanche around her to rain down "F bombs, idiots, assholes, morons, etc". It goes both ways. Or does it moderator?

a. 7-8 depending on the season. Hitting a ten would require a more intense lifestyle change, that is unlikely with a 3 year old, and my work schedule. b. Yes, it's probably the most sensible approach to a long term training regimen. For me switching to macro/micro cycles has been a great way to prevent injury, and just as importantly, burnout. It also provides a framework for focus. When all I did was climb I never really trained, or had any direction other than 'do this route, or try this boulder problem'. Skiing really didn't help me focus any better, because I would often hit a series of powder days that were impossible to pass up, and would just go until my legs wouldn't work anymore. A lot of fun, but hard on the body. For my main athletic interests I maintain a sport specific training paradigm throughout the year, but vary the intensity, time, and EXACT type of training. As competitions come closer I train specific to the event, and in the off season take a more general approach. I also throw in a good dose of various styles of yoga to *connect* the various seasons. c. I modify to suit my personal goals in racing, or work related physical necessities. In racing your micro cycles equate to previewing courses at or near maximum efficiency.

Captain Caveman and I did it in 1999 car to car from the closed road. Moonlight ski out was sick! Wallowing in bottomless powder was not...

Nothing to see here, move on along...

Come to think of it, so is spray. Later.

Politics is boring period.

Here ya go Porter. Be sure to burn your monitor, delete your harddrive, and get one of those "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" memory burns afterwards! http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1594109

It is refreshing to see that LA popular culture slash MTV networks drivel has not pierced the bastion of CC.com user base. Stay strong!

I hope I have come to the right place, and that we could all collectively hate on this show together. It is my wish that this show go off the air forever, and all episodes, originals, DVD's, digital reproductions, etc, be burned or destroyed forever. Furthermore, I think symbols of this show should be banned, or at least held in the same regard as the Swatiska. Former cast members should be ostracised from society forever and forced to endure isolation from one another. Leaving them together on an island together would have no effect, as they effectively live in a bubble as it is. Please discuss.

I remember following you up to Snocrummy Pass one winter day about 9 years ago thinking you drive like a madman. Drive safe!

Greenhorn

The most shocking thing was when my girlfriend started yelling at me that she wanted to 'go down' while I was in the middle of a lead. After yelling angrily that there was no way I was going to downclimb the crux, I traversed off to the side so I could see the ledge she was on. It was then that I realized she was crying, and had peed all over herself on the ledge. We finished the climb, but all the fun had gone out of the day.

It's basically a green side SOF wet dream, but conventional side came in, along with NATO (useless), and dicked it all up. As usual...

Knowing your love for skiing, I know you'd get a good buzz from Dh mountain biking.

And cigarettes!

Thanks for taking a peek. It Takes a School, Not Missiles By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 13, 2008 Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s. Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11. Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times. The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools. Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot. Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains. Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school. Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls. To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact. Mr. Mortenson has had setbacks, including being kidnapped for eight days in Pakistan’s wild Waziristan region. It would be naïve to think that a few dozen schools will turn the tide in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Still, he notes that the Taliban recruits the poor and illiterate, and he also argues that when women are educated they are more likely to restrain their sons. Five of his teachers are former Taliban, and he says it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban; that is one reason he is passionate about educating girls. So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism. “Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran. Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban. The Pentagon, which has a much better appreciation for the limits of military power than the Bush administration as a whole, placed large orders for “Three Cups of Tea” and invited Mr. Mortenson to speak. “I am convinced that the long-term solution to terrorism in general, and Afghanistan specifically, is education,” Lt. Col. Christopher Kolenda, who works on the Afghan front lines, said in an e-mail in which he raved about Mr. Mortenson’s work. “The conflict here will not be won with bombs but with books. ... The thirst for education here is palpable.” Military force is essential in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban. But over time, in Pakistan and Afghanistan alike, the best tonic against militant fundamentalism will be education and economic opportunity. So a lone Montanan staying at the cheapest guest houses has done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration.

Fully Paid Outward Bound Wilderness Excursions for OEF/OIF Veterans Outward Bound, an international non-profit outdoor education program, is offering fully funded outdoor adventure excursions to all OEF/OIF veterans. It doesn’t matter what your current military status is (active, inactive, discharged, retired) – you’re eligible to attend as long as you deployed in support of OEF/OIF combat operations while in the military. These five-day excursions offer adventure activities such as backpacking, rock climbing, canyoneering, canoeing, and dog sledding in beautiful wilderness areas in Maine, Texas, Colorado, California, and Minnesota. Scheduled courses from Sep 08-Feb 09 are listed below, and future courses will be scheduled soon. All expedition costs for lodging, equipment, food, and instruction are completely funded by a multi-million dollar Sierra Club grant, including the participants’ round-trip transportation between home and the wilderness site. The excursion is offered at no cost to the participant. To sign up for one of the prescheduled courses, please contact Doug Hayward at 1-866-669-2362, ext. 8387, or simply e-mail him at obvets@outwardbound.org. To learn more about the OEF/OIF program, visit the website at www.outwardboundwilderness.org/veterans.html. You can also contact two of our retired Judge Advocates, Joe and Amy Frisk, who are working for Outward Bound on this incredible program at vetsor@outwardbound.org, or at (303) 968-4420. OPEN ENROLLMENT COURSES FOR 2008/2009 OUTWARD BOUND OEF/OIF WAR VETERANS EXPEDITIONS Leadville, Colorado: Backpacking and Rock Climbing in the Colorado Rockies • September 3-7, 2008 • October 4-8, 2008 Newry, Maine: Backpacking and Canoeing • October 7-11, 2008 • October 19-23, 2008 Big Bend, Texas: Back packing and Cayoneering • November 2-6, 2008 • November 15-19, 2008 Joshua Tree National Monument, California: Backpacking and Rock Climbing • December 3-7, 2008 • December 14-18, 2008 Ely, Minnesota: Dog Sledding • February 3-7, 2009

Best trip of the year, except for maybe the guy who slept in the fumarole at the top of Rainier.

War is hell after all. Having Geraldo around just brings it to the 7th level.

After 6 years downrange in either of the boxes, I can tell you that embeds are almost universally despised and distrusted. It was a foolish program that has cost good people lives and careers.

I informally interviewed several Vietnam veterans in the eighties and early nineties, all of which had a HUGE disdain for the then in vogue crop of post Vietnam films (AKA Oliver Stone's Platoon) which purported to tell the 'real' story of what it was like in "the Nam'. Over the course of 2 decades I have come to the conclusion that they (veterans) were indeed right. Hollywierd gets it wrong everytime, and another generation will be left with a warped sense of what the reality was. If you want to know what it's like then sign up. WARNAG deploys here shortly for a nice long 15 month rotation in 'the sandbox'. Embedding should never have been allowed. Everyone I know hates reporters. When Geraldo asked us if we wanted his picture taken with him, my buddy loudly said "phuck no", and we all walked away laughing at his sorry a$$. I guess the only men who will know how good or how bad it is are the men of 1/1 who served during that time period.

You do that when you have to put your hand IN the rock to hold on. You don't see too much of that at the gym, crimpmaster.

Open Source Intel Analysis Summary Poland and the United States reached an agreement July 1 on the ballistic missile defense system the United States will place in Poland. The base puts the U.S. military closer to the Russian border — a move which sends a message to Moscow that the United States is closing in and will not be pushed back from Russia’s periphery. Analysis Poland and the United States have reached an agreement on the ballistic missile defense (BMD) system to be placed in the former Eastern Bloc nation. Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said July 3 that the negotiations were completed July 1 and the deal now awaits approval from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make the deal official when she visits Poland on July 10. The final agreement comes quickly after the United States announced June 18 that Lithuania would be considered as an alternate site for the BMD system, a strategy Washington used to spur Poland into the final agreement. The positioning of 10 ground-based midcourse defense interceptors in Poland moves the U.S. military closer to the Russian border. While the stated purpose of the BMD system in Poland is to intercept nuclear attacks from rogue states in the Middle East, namely Iran, the U.S. military’s overall strategic goal is to focus even closer on Russia, tightening the noose around former Soviet territory and firmly entrenching itself in the countries once behind the Iron Curtain. Russia cannot do anything directly to prevent the United States from encroaching on its previous line of defense, but it can shore up its control over its periphery — in particular Central Asia, the Caucasus, Belarus and Ukraine. Over the past six months, Warsaw had wavered on what the terms for the agreement would be. Tusk was willing to let the deal collapse unless Washington committed to helping Poland upgrade its military, particularly its air force and ground-to-air capabilities. Warsaw’s demands for military upgrades were intended to counter the threat from Russia, which sees the U.S. presence in Poland not as a deterrent to an Iranian attack, but as a direct challenge and encroachment on its former sphere of influence. The Poles understand well that the U.S. attention span can often waver and that Washington is halfway around the world, whereas Moscow is right at Poland’s (often crossed) doorstep. Meanwhile, the U.S. administration wanted the negotiations wrapped up so that actual construction can begin before the new president takes office in 2009 and before the Democrat-controlled Congress has a chance to stall the deal. Therefore, Washington placed pressure on Warsaw by suggesting in mid-June that Lithuania could also serve the purpose of hosting the missiles. Tusk’s government understood the message, as Stratfor predicted it would. Moscow has also received a message from Washington — one that has nothing to do with threats from Iran. Russia sees clearly that the United States is encroaching on its former buffer states and that it is there to stay. The United States already has bases in Kosovo, training facilities in Hungary, lily pad bases in Romania, monitoring facilities in Lithuania and proposed radar facilities for BMD in the Czech Republic. This signifies a shift in U.S. military stationing in Europe - one that has taken the United States from its former bases in Western Europe (traditionally in Germany and Italy) toward and sometimes within the former Soviet Union. Russia is limited in how it can respond because it cannot actually force the U.S. military out of its new facilities. Former Russian President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has stated that Russia’s nuclear arsenal will target the U.S. facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic and that missiles would be placed in Kaliningrad, which is nestled between Lithuania and Poland. More importantly, Russia is now aggressively looking to consolidate its periphery. It is now more vital than ever for Moscow to assure full control over its immediate sphere of influence. Moscow has been forced to clearly draw a new line and will not allow anyone to cross it.

You're no Rob Furlong, that's for sure.