Sunday, February 18, 2007

Hillary demands retreat within 90 days.

ABC News: Clinton urges start of Iraq pullout in 90 days:
Feb 17, 2007 — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,
the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential
nomination, has called for a 90-day deadline to start pulling
American troops from Iraq.


This is completely unacceptable behavior. There is no disengaging from this war. I for one would much rather fight in Iraq than let our enemies use it as a base to plan future attacks against my family here on U.S. soil




Join the Victory Caucus and help us standup to those who prefer a political sound bite to actual victory.

hat tip to Captain Ed

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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Pentagon's New Map Hugh Hewitt

Have you read

"The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century" (Thomas P.M. Barnett)
If not stop right now and order it. While you are waiting for it to arrive read the interviews at Hugh Hewitt's. He is interviewing Dr Barnett every tuesday. Audio and transcripts are posted.

This book will be noted as the most influential of the Long War.

Dr Barnett clearly lays out the factors that allow for the growth of terrorist like Al Queda and what we can to do win.

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Staff Sergeant in Afghanistan Responds to Critics

Staff Sergeant in Afghanistan Responds to Critics:
In my area of operation alone, these are the side effects of our success that you will never see on the evening news or highlighted in a Democrat TV appearance:
  • 43 modern schools have been opened
  • 5 modern district centers have been opened, with 13 more on track for completion
  • 13 cobblestone roads in local bazaars built
  • 70 kilometers of improved roads built (that is a big deal here)
  • 215 solar street lights installed (Taliban hate the light, like cockroaches)
  • 5600 Afghans employed directly or indirectly on projects sponsored by Coalition Forces
  • 3 mobile phone companies competing for coverage in our area of operation (yes, even here there are cell phones)


That sounds like success and progress. Be patient and let us win.

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MARINE CORPS END STRENGTH INCREASE

ALMAR (008/07):
MANY OF YOU JOINED THE CORPS AFTER OUR NATION WAS ALREADY
AT WAR; YOU JOINED EXPECTING TO GO INTO HARM'S WAY AND HAVE
SHOULDERED THAT DUTY WITH COURAGE AND DETERMINATION. YOU ARE A
SPECIAL BREED OF AMERICA'S WARRIORS AND I SALUTE YOUR STALWART
SERVICE AND SACRIFICE. SEMPER FIDELIS,

JAMES T. CONWAY, GENERAL,
U.S. MARINE CORPS, COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS
If congress approves 27,000 more will join the few and the proud.

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

America Alone

I just finished reading
"America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" (Mark Steyn). The book was excellent but depressing.

The Styen's main points are:
  • In the end the young win and Islam is out breeding the west.
  • Only the US is keeping it population levels up.
  • Europe is lost, it will become Islamic.
  • America can still resist and win, but only if it believes in it self. Only if it believes it is better.
  • The United States and Western Civilization is better than Islam.
The book list the many problems that the United States faces but does not provide much in the way of solutions. This book should be read, but we also need a book to help guide us to Victory. The "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century" (Thomas P.M. Barnett) has part of the answer but we need more. Barnett talks to Washington and the Pentagon. Steyn only list the problems.

I am still looking for the book that will layout not just the rational for long war, but the path we need to take for the next year and the next decade.

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The NRSC Pledge

Join me in taking the NRSC Pledge:
If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.
As Hugh Hewitt says, not one dime.
General Petraeus testified that the Biden/Warner resolutions and those like them encourage the enemy.
Not one dime to any politician that encourages the enemy, nothing but scorn.

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Monday, January 15, 2007

A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy (SWJ Blog)

Dave from the Small Wars Journal lays out a A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy (SWJ Blog):
If we were to draw historical analogies, we might say that the problem in Iraq is like trying to defeat the Viet Cong (insurgency) while simultaneously rebuilding Germany (nation-building), keeping peace in the Balkans (communal conflict) and defeating the IRA (terrorism). And, oh by the way, these all have to be done at the same time, in the same place, and changes in one part of the problem significantly affect the others.
This is a excellent explanation of the intertwined difficulties in Iraq.

Feeds for ALMARs and MarAdmins

I recreated my screen scraper to create a feed of AlMars and MarAdmins
You can find the links at http://csm.chalko.com/scrape/.

For those of you interested I did this as an excuse to learn some ruby. The code is available at
http://chalktools.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/chalktools/Scraper/

Clearly I need to learn a lot more about ruby, I am still just using like a shell script.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Change America's course in Iraq

President's Addressed the Nation calling for a change in course. 20,000 additional troops to secure Baghdad. Not just clear, but clear and hold. I really appreciated the President's honest assessment of the risk this increase will entail. There will be increased casualties, but victory not casualty avoidance is the goal.

I am sure there will be additional call-ups for the Reserves. I just joined a new reserve unit, the 23rd Marine Regiment. I am the assistant communications officer. As always I am ready to serve.

Back home on the Information Warfare front there are plenty of battle to be fought. Later this week I will publish my thoughts on how a distributed network can keep the pressure on the enemy in the information battle space.

But the task for today. Is to support the course set by the President, and continually and thoroughly refute all attempts to sway America from it's path to victory.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Hollywood and the MSM are a Shame Based Culture

Hollywood and the Main Stream Media act like a shame based culture. Since much of the Long War, will be an Information War it is important we understand the rules of a shame based society.

Here is the key point for shame based societies:
The desire to preserve honor and avoid shame to the exclusion of all else is one of the primary foundations of the culture. This desire has the side-effect of giving the individual carte blanche to engage in wrong-doing as long as no-one knows about it, or knows he is involved. -- Dr Sanity
The main stream media acts the same way, caring more about appearances than truth or justice. Whether it is the tabloids claiming Angelina stole Brad from Jennifer or the Red Cross falsely accusing Israeli of shooting ambulance, what matters most to the main stream, sound bite driven society, is what others are saying about someone. The complication is that Arab and by extension Muslim society is a shame based also.

The Jihadi's seem to have a natural understanding of how to fight a popularity contest. Like the Iraqi Information Minister (M.S.S), they will say whatever is good for them regardless of the facts.

I think it is important that we fight and win the battle of public opinion. One of the important steps to fighting this battle is finding the appropriate metaphor. The one that comes to mind is a Jr High cafeteria. The battle in MSM will very much be a battle of the lowest common denominator. It will be important to be prepared to respond on that level. There are already plenty of Finders, Thinkers and Linkers in the blogsphere at war, and their importance is understood. We also need Satirists and Hecklers. Everywhere you turn Radical Islam must be seen as the weak horse. Impotent. A joke.

Short and visual may be best. The blogosphere can do that (Halp us Jon Carry), but the amount of lies and distortions to battle seem endless.

However in the end it may be just pure numbers that count. Page rank, buzz, and getting across the gap into the wider audiance. We must produce more You Tube fodder than our opponents. We must quickly expose their lies, and ridicule all their efforts.


Concrete plans and actionable tasks to follow.

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Monday, December 11, 2006

McCain: U.S. may have to confront Iran militarily

JTA - Breaking News:
A nuclear Iran poses an “unacceptable risk” and may have to be confronted militarily, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said.

Sen. McCain continues to impress me with his clear and concise opinions on the war, and the path to victory,

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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

I am not interested in "bringing the troops home"

I am only interested in the safety and well being of America. I am only interested in victory.
I am glad to see Sen McCain stand tall.
"In war, my dear friends, there's no such thing as compromise. You either win or you lose."
- Sen. John McCain

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Don't Close Your Blinds

SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse: Don't Close Your Blinds:
"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and
pretend you see Saddam come out of his house with his wife, he has her
by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He hits
her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to kick her
to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him, they are
screaming and crying, they are watching this but do nothing because they
are kids and they are afraid of their father. You see all of this,
son....what do you do?"

Read it all. Read it to your children. This war won't be over on our watch. I want to finish it now, but that is not going to happen. So I do my part and train a new generation.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Build/Test is part of software design.

In "What is Software Design?", Jack Reeves asserts

... the only software documentation that actually seems to satisfy the criteria of an engineering design is the source code listings.
I love it and quote it often. He goes on to assert
We in the software business are close to being engineers, but we need a couple of perceptual changes. Programming and the build/test cycle are central to the process of engineering software. We need to manage them as such. We need to manage them as such. The economics of the build/test cycle, plus the fact that a software system can represent practically anything, makes it very unlikely that we will find any general purpose methods for validating a software design.

Put these two together, and the engineering design includes the build code, the test code, and the source code that automates the builds and the tests.
In my experience, if the build and test cycles are too expensive, then developers will try to do the design without including the results of the build and test cycles in their analysis. Every meeting I have ever been in with QA, someone always says "we need to get QA involved early in the process". This can only happen if the cost of building and testing software is cheap.

Here is the point I have been dancing around. If you have to ask someone to "build the product" for QA, and then have to ask QA to run this or that test, developers are going to avoid doing it. If you want QA involved in the Design Process, then building and testing must be automated. Every developer must be able to build the entire system and run any or all of the tests himself.

It doesn't have to be cheap to make the tests, making good test is often harder than writing the code, but it must be inexpensive to actually run the tests or it won't happen as part of the design cycle. Developers will delay paying that cost as long as possible.

Continuos integration tools like cruise control can help, but only if you commit your code often.

This more than just Test First Design. I am encouraging the automation of the entire build and test cycle as much as possible.

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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Flags of our Father's

It is about the men, not the battle.
"Flags of Our Fathers" (Clint Eastwood)

Makes all of my sacrifices seem small, because small they are. We either buy war bonds, and win the war, or we get fatigued and instead find "peace with honor" or "peace in our time". The kind of peace that brings devestation.

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Thursday, July 20, 2006

What one word describes Black Belt to you?

The Family Academy of Martial Arts (aka FAMA) held black belt test last Friday. I was there as the Uke or training partner for Gary Price. One of the questions the board asked was
What one word describes Black Belt to you?
DO

That is what black belt means to me. I am still a year or two away from black belt. For me getting there, testing, learning is all about doing. Doing is actually the largest struggle I am facing personally, and that is one of the things I enjoy about working out at FAMA. Doing. Punch, Kick, Throw, Choke. DO.

[posted with ecto]


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Monday, July 17, 2006

A Prayer for Israel

Psalms 83:

1 O God, do not keep silent;
be not quiet, O God, be not still.
2 See how your enemies are astir,
how your foes rear their heads.

3 With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.

4 "Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation,
that the name of Israel be remembered no more."

5 With one mind they plot together;
they form an alliance against you-

6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
of Moab and the Hagrites,

7 Gebal, [a] Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia, with the people of Tyre.

8 Even Assyria has joined them
to lend strength to the descendants of Lot.
Selah

9 Do to them as you did to Midian,
as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,

10 who perished at Endor
and became like refuse on the ground.

11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,

12 who said, "Let us take possession
of the pasturelands of God."

13 Make them like tumbleweed, O my God,
like chaff before the wind.

14 As fire consumes the forest
or a flame sets the mountains ablaze,

15 so pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your storm.

16 Cover their faces with shame
so that men will seek your name, O LORD.

17 May they ever be ashamed and dismayed;
may they perish in disgrace.

18 Let them know that you, whose name is the LORD—
that you alone are the Most High over all the earth.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Pres Ahmadinejad invites Pres Bush to Islam

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Thursday that his letter to President George W. Bush did not concern the nuclear dossier, but rather was an invitation to Islam and the prophets culture.

President says his letter to President Bush was invitation to Islam - Irna

This should clear up the purpose of Ahmadinejad letter to Pres Bush and it's relevance.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Home

This post is a little bit late. But I am home at last.

Nick's Home

And here is why I am smiling all the time now.

DSC01475