Delayed Reaction  

The SMH has a feature article on the Rodent's lost decade for dealing with climate change while he preferred to do the bidding of the greenhouse mafia.

For most of the past 10 years, John Howard's ideas on climate change were influenced more by business than science. Marian Wilkinson explains how Australia was dealt out of the greenhouse revolution.

Reassuring cool air greeted David Kemp as he entered the Nusa Dua hotel on a hot Bali morning in June 2002. Inside, the leaders of the World Wildlife Fund were assembled to celebrate World Environment Day by bestowing their most prestigious honour on Australia's environment minister - the "Gift of the Earth" award for preserving the natural beauty of the wetlands. A gracious Kemp, who was sharing the honour with his counterparts from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, remarked with pleasure that the award "highlights the fact that the environment is everybody's business throughout the world".

But in Canberra, the Prime Minister, John Howard, was about to deliver a World Environment Day message of his own that would ricochet around world capitals. Rising to his feet in Parliament he pronounced that Australia had formally decided not to ratify the Kyoto agreement on climate change. "For us to ratify Kyoto would cost us jobs and damage our industry," Howard said. "The national interest does not lie in ratifying Kyoto."

Almost five years on, that single decision still defines Australia's stand on climate change in the eyes of many. Internationally, Australia is lumped alongside the US as a rogue state in the fight against global warming. We are attacked for being, per head, the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world.

Today, as Australians look anxiously at their parched landscapes, evaporating rivers, declining rainfall and record temperatures, Howard is facing a national revolt over his stand on climate change. In the past year, the public, prominent business leaders and the state premiers have all rejected the simple, immutable doctrine he pursued for almost a decade: that he would not act to put a price on greenhouse gas pollution caused by the industries that have enriched Australians as surely as they have caused global warming.

Paul Anderson, who once led the resources giant BHP and now sits on the board of BHP Billiton, warns bluntly that Australians will soon have to face reality. "The first step is we want less carbon dioxide and there is going to be a cost," he told the Herald from his home in Maine, in the US. It is a warning echoed by the head of the Australian energy giant AGL, Paul Anthony, and the Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, who now spends his days briefing Australian companies, including mining companies, on climate change.

"You can see the social licence to operate conventional coal-fired power stations around the world being withdrawn virtually by the week," says Flannery. "Mining companies see what is happening. The world has moved on and Australia finds itself in the position where it is very vulnerable because there's been no action. We've lost a decade." ...

A Greens proposal for Australia to sign the Kyoto treaty has been rejected by the government.

The federal government has rejected an attempt by the Australian Greens to introduce measures to slash greenhouse gas emissions. The Democrats backed the Climate Change Action Bill 2006, put forward by Greens senator Christine Milne, which includes provisions for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

The bill sought to implement a wide range of actions to accelerate Australia's transition to a low-carbon economy. The private member's bill would set greenhouse gas emission, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets and prohibit logging in old-growth forests.

Labor failed to declare whether it supported the bill and it did not proceed to a vote.

Senator Milne said climate change was a global problem and Australia should do its bit to set binding emissions reduction targets. "(The bill) would be the greatest boost to re-energising Australia that this parliament could deliver to the current generations of Australians and the future generations of Australia," she told parliament. "It's clear that history judges political leaders by whether or not they respond to the great issues of their time, and in my view, history is going to judge Australia's political leaders very harshly."

Crikey reveals that the plunge in Government popularity has been deliberately achieved as part of an agreement with the ACCC and the Electoral Commission.

Re: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission/AEC joint working party into anti-competitive electoral preactice
Subject: How to Lose votes

Obsessed with the key Australian value of "a fair go", and mindful of the poor ratings achieved by the previous one-sided federal election in which Latham was hosed in straight sets, the Howard government has decided to make the race more even this time, to make for more interesting viewing.

It has therefore been decided that the Opposition will select a new, younger, vibrant and exciting leader and that the government will sacrifice several million votes between now and the election.

Accordingly, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have been in their roles for some months and are going along nicely. The government has now begun divesting itself of votes and we will keep you informed as to how this is being achieved.

Further auditing by the AEC and ACCC reveals the Howard government has also divested itself of the following votes:

* Doing nothing about global warming at all, ever. (2 million votes)
* Denying the existence of global warming altogether (this figure included in the above)
* Stating repeatedly that the government knew nothing about the way AWB did business in Iraq (278,000 rural votes)
* Helping AWB do business in Iraq (this figure included in the above). Allowing Downer and Vaile to speak publicly about why, as the responsible ministers, they were not responsible (179,000 urban votes)
* Appearances by Howard in the bush in an Akubra hat and RM Williams gear. (91,000 rural votes and a stern letter from R M Williams clothing division)
* Assertion by Howard (see also H Morgan, R Walker etc) that to be anti- nuclear is to be anti-green (40,000 votes and amusement on all sides)
* Arranging for media coverage of Howard's frequent 'surprise visits' to Iraq and Afghanistan (this to include footage of Howard running from a smoke filled aircraft, filmed by a cameraman set up outside the plane to allow for a nice panning shot of the war hero in action) (426 votes)
* Any statement made by B Nelson concerning defence, history, equipment, women or education (120,000 votes per statement)
* Everything about Tony Abbott (260,000 votes. Women)
* Delivery by Australian Federal Police of young Australian drug mules into hands of Indonesian authorities (2,870 votes)
* Howard government's new Workplace Legislation (739,000 votes and firming of opposition resolve)
* Ian Thorpe's retirement and subsequent loss of Howard photo opportunities (287 votes)
* Hyacinth (800 votes)
* Appointment of Downer's daughter to position in her father's Dept. (683 votes).

The SMH also has a report that Antarctic melting is speeding up.

Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data. A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59cm this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 degrees Celsius.

"Observations are in the very upper edge of the projections," leading Australian marine scientist John Church said. "I feel that we're getting uncomfortably close to threshold," said Church, of the CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research. Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of metres, he said.

There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion tonne iceberg as big as Luxembourg. But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat. "There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there's six metres of sea level in west Antarctica," says Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist at the Hobart-based Australian Antarctic Division.

Doomsday has not yet arrived.

But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 metres over 15-16 years.

Scientists say massive glacier retreat at Heard Island, 1,000km north of Antarctica, is an example of how fringe areas of the polar region are melting. The break-up of ice in Antarctica to create icebergs is also opening pathways for accelerated flows to the sea by glaciers. Church pointed out that sea levels were 4-6 metres higher more than 100,000 years ago when temperatures were at levels expected to be reached at the end of this century. Dynamic ice-flows could add 25 per cent to IPCC forecasts of sea level rise, van Ommen said.

Australian scientist John Hunter, who has focused on historical sea level information, said that to keep the sea water out, communities would need to begin raising sea walls. "There's lots of places where you can't do that and where you'll have to put up with actual flooding," he said. ...

About 100 million people around the world live within a metre of the present-day sea level, CSIRO Marine Research senior principal research scientist Steve Rintoul said. "Those 100 million people will need to go somewhere," he said.

Ex BHP boss Paul Anderson has made some blunt statements about the fantasy land "clean coal" proponents are living in.

THE former head of BHP has punctured the optimism of the Howard Government about clean-coal technology by saying the long-term storage of the carbon waste may be as difficult as dealing with nuclear waste.

Paul Anderson, who ran BHP-Billiton in 2002 and still sits on its board, told the Herald: "People can't believe you're safe putting nuclear waste five miles under the ground when it's petrified in glass. How are they going to feel safe putting pressurised gas under the ground? "I think it's as big as the issue of nuclear waste. What are you going to do with millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that is not nearly as compact as nuclear waste?"

The Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, are strong supporters of clean-coal technology as a long-term solution to greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the country's dependence on coal-fired power stations and coal exports. While Mr Anderson is a keen backer of strategies to lower greenhouse gas emissions, he is concerned that the debate over clean coal has been steered more towards the capture of the carbon dioxide emissions at the power station rather than the problems that may arise from long-term storage.

Australia is testing several storage sites at present. However, the long-term stability of carbon storage is not known. So far, little is known about how much clean-coal technology will cost and whether it will be feasible on the large scale needed.

Time has a report on the trouble global warming is causing for Japanese planners of events centred around the annual blooming of the cherry blossoms.

Who knows the days and hours of the flower, the lifespan of the petal, the very moment when the cherry blossoms burst forth?

Actually, someone does know: Masaru Kida, of the global meteorological agency Weathernews. Kida is in charge of predicting when the cherry trees across Japan will begin their annual spring blossoming, or sakura — the cue for millions of Japanese office workers to crowd city parks for boisterous sakura parties, or hanami. There, they'll savor the beauty and brevity of the delicate pink blossoms, so much like life itself, by getting extremely drunk.

The trees generally bloom in March and April throughout Japan, but because people around the country plan festivals, tours and company parties around the blossoming, they need a precise forecast in advance.

The official Japanese Meteorological Agency, which bases its forecasts on a databank of more than three decades of climate statistics, confidently predicted that the model tree in Tokyo — located in the Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto place of worship better known for the controversy over its enshrinement of Japan's war dead — would begin to blossom on March 18. But that forecast had to be hastily revised last week, when officials discovered that a computer glitch had thrown off the prediction. As programming errors go, this was just slightly less catastrophic than the NASA mistake that caused the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter to take a header into the Red Planet in 1999. Chastened officials apologized on national TV, and changed the forecast to March 23.

Wrong again. Tokyo cherry trees began blossoming on Tuesday,March 20. ...

Neither is the havoc that global warming may be inflicting on the cherry blossoms. This has been the warmest winter on record in Tokyo, and, perhaps not coincidentally, March 20 was also the third-earliest blossoming ever recorded in the capital. Because cherry trees require a period of cold weather in January and February to break their dormancy, Kida worries that if the climate continues to warm, the blossom dates could become even more erratic, or blossoming could even cease altogether. That would certainly drive home the reality of global warming for ordinary Japanese. "Rising sea levels and a depleting ozone layer are hard to grasp," he says. "But a week's difference in when the cherry blossoms bloom is a huge change for the Japanese."

Leanan from TOD and PeakOil.com has posted an article from Discover on Terra Preta - Black Gold of the Amazon.

Fertile, charred soil created by pre-Columbian peoples sustained surprisingly large settlements in the rain forest. Secrets of that ancient "dark earth" could help solve the Amazon's ecological problems today

On August 13, 2005, American archaeologist James Petersen, Brazilian archaeologist Eduardo Neves, and two colleagues pulled up to a restaurant on a jungle road near Iranduba in the Brazilian Amazon to have a beer. At about 6:45 p.m., two young men, one brandishing a .38 revolver, entered the restaurant and demanded the patrons' money. The archaeologists turned over their money and the bandits started to leave. Then, almost as an afterthought, one of them shot Petersen in the stomach. Neves and the others raced Petersen to the hospital, but their friend bled to death before they could reach help.

State and municipal police reacted quickly to the news, cordoned off roads, and brought suspects to the restaurant for identification. Within 24 hours the police had arrested the two armed bandits and their driver and learned there were two others involved. The crime was front-page news in Manaus, the capital of the state, a city of more than a million about an hour north of the study site, across the Rio Negro. After a 21-day manhunt through the jungle, the remaining two fugitives were captured, and when the state poke brought the criminals back, the Iranduba chief of police, Normando Barbosa, says, "there were hundreds of people lined up on the road that wanted to lynch the killers."

This outrage reflected a response not only to the crime but also to the victim. Over the past decade, Petersen, Neves, and their band of archaeologists had become local heroes, earning the appreciation of the surrounding community during seasonal digs conducted on the peninsula that separates the Rio Negro and Amazon rivers. At more than 100 sites across the peninsula, Petersen and his colleagues had unearthed evidence of early civilizations that were far more advanced, far more broadly connected, and far more densely occupied than that of the small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers previously hypothesized for the region. Before the Europeans arrived, this peninsula in the heart of the Amazon was home to communities with roads, irrigation, agriculture, soil management, ceramics, and extended trade. These civilizations, Neves says, were as complex as the southwestern Native American cultures that inhabited Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. But due to the scarcity of stone in the Amazon, the people built with wood, and over time the structures disintegrated, leaving little evidence of the culture.

One legacy remains, however: their soil. Terra preta de Indio - Portuguese for "Indian black earth" - is prized among local farmers, and it is a direct contribution of the vanished Amazonian cultures. While most Amazonian earth is notoriously nutrient poor, yellowish, sterile, and unscented, there are extensive patches of soil that are mysteriously dark, moist, fragrant, and filled with insects, microbial life, and organic matter. Scholars have come to realize that by devising a way to enrich the soil, the early inhabitants of the Amazon managed to create a foundation for agriculture-based settlements much more populous than scholars had thought possible. ...

Luis De Souza at TOD Europe has an interesting post on the history of the sugar industry. The Oil Drum has now turned 2 as well - happy birthday guys.

Sugar Cane is back in the news. With oil prices resembling those of the early 1980s, it seems that all those efforts made by then in Brasil to step-up ethanol production make sense again. With the promise of a high energy return and a renewable production cycle, the cane culture might be set for a return.

It won’t take long to start hearing about sugar cane successfully planted and converted to ethanol closer to home than expected. But before the cane hype gets installed, please take a dive into the fascinating history of a plant that shaped the World.

...

Among the things to learn from sugar cane’s history, the most positive one is probably its relative success outside the Tropics. On a negative side is its destructive power and non sustainability when cultivated intensively; although the industrial revolution would bring some ease to that.

The plant promises a high energy return on investment, and if successful at higher latitudes can be an important element of world energy stability. But care must be taken, neither Europe nor North America offer the same kind of environment that allows natural cane growth in Brasil, the Caribbean or Indonesia. At least irrigation is a factor reducing energy returns, to be considered at higher latitudes.

One other aspect not to oversee is the cane culture high reliance on hand labour. Despite advances in mechanization, the cane harvest is still widely made by hand, hence its survival in low wage countries. If sugar cane is set to come back to wealthier nations, this issue has to be addressed.

The sugar cane industry that formed in the XVI century was, by its geographic, economic and social size, something unprecedented, which would only find parallel in the Whaling and Coal industries of the XIX century.

While during its migration from the Pacific to the Indic and the Mediterranean sugar cane kept a background role, in its migration to the Atlantic sugar cane assumed the dominant role in economy and society. Sugar cane triggered an unprecedented environmental disruption and provoked the largest migratory phenomenon at the global scale, with the enslaving of millions of Africans. For these reasons sugar cane can be regarded as one of the most important cultures in our Civilization.

Is sugar cane on the brink of making History once more?

Grist has gotten themselves a write up in Outside Magazine (long one of my favourites, though I don't read it often lately - for that matter, I don't seem to get outside as much as I used to either - the perils of middle age...).

Actually ... global warming, solar power, baby seals, carbon dioxide -- and that's just for starters. Thanks to the cheeky enviro-news site Grist.org, greens finally have a funny bone. Now these upstarts want to lead the movement into the mainstream. Seriously.

By Tim Dickinson

IMAGINE THAT WRITERS for The Daily Show staged a hostile takeover of Sierra magazine. Earnest reports on climate change and organic foods would get repackaged with devilish irreverence. There would be jokes about Superfund sites, tree huggers, and the plight of endangered species. Al Gore would be a huge fan-and a favorite whipping boy. People under 40 might actually read it.

Which is to say, you'd probably end up with something a lot like Grist.

An online magazine published out of a 1920s high-rise in downtown Seattle, Grist.org is reshaping green journalism by luring a younger and wider audience with an approach that's not so much dumbed down as smart-alecked up. The site's offerings include feature stories, interviews, an advice column, and a blog, though it's best known for the Daily Grist, which summarizes the top environmental news from the mainstream and alternative press in snackable blurbs.

Each is slugged with a trademark punny headline, which range from goofy ("Hey, Poacher, Leave Those Squids Alone") to painful ("It Takes a Pillage to Raze the Wild"). When Yao Ming, the seven-foot-six-inch NBA star from China, took a stand against his country's shark-fin harvesters last August, Grist declared, "No Soup for Yao!" In June, UPS's announcement that it was testing hybrid delivery trucks inspired "Nice Package."

The point behind the gags, says Chip Giller, Grist's tousled 36-year-old founder and president, is to get past the "crust of cynicism" that often surrounds environmental problems. Grist doesn't aim to make light of the issues -- indeed, Giller seems personally weighted by them -- but to make their details (and solutions) more palatable. As Giller puts it, "Humor is an effective way to get people to engage."

Adam Werbach, the former wunderkind president of the Sierra Club who now runs a nonprofit promoting sustainable living, agrees, likening Grist to "a gateway drug." Readers hooked by the Onion-y headlines find themselves reading serious reports on such unfunny subjects as biofuels and environmental justice-stories that would seem right at home in the pages of The Ecologist or Mother Jones. ...

TreeHugger has a report on an Israeli company that claims to have a process called "plasma melting gasification" for safely making many types of waste inert and generating power while doing so. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out, but I'm a skeptic for the time being.

Last week at a press conference, we sat apprehensively beside a piece of shiny, lava-like stone wondering if it really was as inert as the company investors and president claimed. There we met with Israeli company Environmental Energy Resources (EER) which unveiled for the first time results of its industrial waste reactor in Israel’s north – where the company has been demonstrating how it “plasma-sizes” huge quantities of undesirable waste into a pile of black rocks. Garbage in. Garbage out. Right? In EER’s case – garbage goes in and clean energy, water and glass goes out. Sound too good to be true? The Ukrainian Government doesn’t seem to think so. In 2004 it contracted EER to build a waste reactor, which is in operation similar to the one in Israel; the government most recently contracted the company to begin handling clean-up of low-radioactive waste resulting from the Chernobyl explosion.

Suited for low-radioactive, medical and industrial waste – EER provides the cheapest and most environmentally friendly solution for waste transformation, says the company. They also claim that their technology: plasma melting gasification (PGM) produces its own energy – 30% of which can be used for other purposes. "We are not burning. This is the key word," said Itschak Shrem from the investment house managing EER in an interview with Israel21c. "When you burn you produce dioxin. Instead, we vacuum out the oxygen to prevent combustion...In effect, we are combining two of the most exciting markets in the US - the environment and clean energy...We also reduce the carbon footprint."

Portugal is planning for the country to collect 45% of the country's energy consumption from renewable sources by 2010.

Portugal plans investments of €8.1 billion (US$10.8 billion) in renewable energy projects over the next five years, a government official said Thursday. Antonio Castro Guerra, assistant secretary of state for Industry and Innovation, said in a speech to a renewable energy conference that the investments would create about 10,000 new jobs. He did not specify whether the investments were private or public.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates said in January that his Socialist government was aiming to collect 45 percent of Portugal's total power consumption from renewable sources by 2010, putting the country at the forefront of alternative energy use in the European Union, alongside Austria and Sweden.

Portugal is almost entirely dependent on imported energy, but is developing major wave and solar power projects and building wind farms to power 750,000 homes. It also is exploring new hydropower projects.

The Guardian reports that Google is offering free bikes to staff in Europe.

Google is improving its green credentials by offering all of its employees a free bike to ride to work. The bikes, manufactured by Raleigh Europe, will be offered to around 2,000 permanent employees of the search engine giant in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All of the bikes - plus free helmets - will be branded with the Google name.

Holger Meyer, Germany's first Google employee, came up with the idea and staff will be able to choose from a range of models including a "cool cruiser" - a folding bike for those that only make part of their trip to work under pedal power - and men's and women's hybrids.

"We try to innovate not just in technology for users but in the benefits we give our employees," Liane Hornsey, director of human resources and staffing for Google Europe, Middle East and Africa, told MediaGuardian.co.uk. "We think that these amazing bikes will help Googlers keep fit and healthy, get to know their city better and reduce the environmental impact of their journey to work." ...

Google recently announced plans to begin installing solar panels on the roof of its Mountain View HQ campus. The project, which will provide the "Googleplex" HQ with green energy, will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the US - and possibly one of the largest on any corporate site in the world, according to the company. Google Europe has also this week been given an award for using free-range eggs by the Compassion in World Farming organisation.

US Senators Dodd, Leahy, Feingold and Menendez are trying to drag America forward into the 19th century or so by overturning some of the dark age laws put in place by the Bush Administration - just imagine - people being entitled to trial by jury, no torture and adhering to the Geneva convention - isn't this against everything "conservatism" stands for ? The Democrats have also managed to pass a bill through the House of Reps demanding the US withdraw its forces from Iraq next year.

The “Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007” restores Habeas Corpus rights, bars evidence gained through torture or coercion and reinstates U.S. adherence to the Geneva Conventions in order to protect the nation’s military personnel abroad.

“I take a backseat to no one when it comes to protecting this country from terrorists,” said Sen. Dodd, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and an outspoken opponent of the MCA. “But there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. It’s clear the people who perpetrated these horrendous crimes against our country and our people have no moral compass and deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But in taking away their legal rights, the rights first codified in our country’s Constitution, we’re taking away our own moral compass, as well.”

“The Military Commissions Act is a dangerous and misguided law that undercuts our freedoms and assaults our Constitution by removing vital checks and balances designed to prevent government overreaching and lawlessness,” Sen. Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said. “This bill and legislation I have introduced with Senator Arlen Specter to restore the habeas corpus protections to millions of legal residents are crucial to righting the wrong done by the Military Commissions Act. In standing up for American values and security, we can restore the checks and balances that are fundamental to preserving the liberties that define us as a nation.”

“Protecting the American people is our most sacred responsibility, therefore we must do all we can to destroy those who would try to destroy our way of life,” Sen. Menendez said. “In doing so, however, we must not compromise the values and virtues of our nation and Constitution. This act will give us the tools to defend America from her enemies, while never ceding our standing as a nation of freedom and justice.”

“The Military Commissions Act enacted last year was a stain on our nation’s history,” Sen. Feingold said. “I agree with the President that we should bring terrorists to justice but we should do it in a way consistent with the basic values and principles of our constitutional system of government.”

Meanwhile Ron Paul is recommending Congress stop funding the Iraq war.

The $124 billion supplemental appropriation is a good bill to oppose. I am pleased that many of my colleagues will join me in voting against this measure. If one is unhappy with our progress in Iraq after four years of war, voting to de-fund the war makes sense. If one is unhappy with the manner in which we went to war, without a constitutional declaration, voting no makes equally good sense.

Voting no also makes the legitimate point that the Constitution does not authorize Congress to direct the management of any military operation-- the president clearly enjoys this authority as Commander in Chief.

But Congress just as clearly is responsible for making policy, by debating and declaring war, raising and equipping armies, funding military operations, and ending conflicts that do not serve our national interests. Congress failed to meet its responsibilities four years ago, unconstitutionally transferring its explicit war power to the executive branch. Even though the administration started the subsequent pre-emptive war in Iraq, Congress bears the greatest responsibility for its lack of courage in fulfilling its duties. Since then Congress has obediently provided the funds and troops required to pursue this illegitimate war.

We won’t solve the problems in Iraq until we confront our failed policy of foreign interventionism. This latest appropriation does nothing to solve our dilemma. Micromanaging the war while continuing to fund it won’t help our troops.

Here’s a new approach: Congress should admit its mistake and repeal the authority wrongfully given to the executive branch in 2002. Repeal the congressional sanction and disavow presidential discretion in starting wars. Then start bringing our troops home.

If anyone charges that this approach does not support the troops, take a poll. Find out how reservists, guardsmen, and their families--many on their second or third tour in Iraq--feel about it.

The constant refrain that bringing our troops home would demonstrate a lack of support for them must be one of the most amazing distortions ever foisted on the American public. We’re so concerned about saving face, but whose face are we saving? A sensible policy would save American lives and follow the rules laid out for Congress in the Constitution—and avoid wars that have no purpose.

The claim that it’s unpatriotic to oppose spending more money in Iraq must be laid to rest as fraudulent.

We should pass a resolution that expresses congressional opposition to any more undeclared, unconstitutional, unnecessary, pre-emptive wars. We should be building a consensus for the future that makes it easier to end our current troubles in Iraq.

It’s amazing to me that this Congress is more intimidated by political propagandists and special interests than the American electorate, who sent a loud, clear message about the war in November. The large majority of Americans now want us out of Iraq.

Our leaders cannot grasp the tragic consequence of our policies toward Iraq for the past 25 years. It’s time we woke them up.

We are still by far the greatest military power on earth. But since we stubbornly refuse to understand the nature of our foes, we are literally defeating ourselves.

In 2004, bin Laden stated that Al Qaeda’s goal was to bankrupt the United States. His second in command, Zawahari, is quoted as saying that the 9/11 attack would cause Americans to, “come and fight the war personally on our sand where they are within rifle range.”

Sadly, we are playing into their hands. This $124 billion appropriation is only part of the nearly $1 trillion in military spending for this year’s budget alone. We should be concerned about the coming bankruptcy and the crisis facing the U.S. dollar.

We have totally failed to adapt to modern warfare. We’re dealing with a small, nearly invisible enemy--an enemy without a country, a government, an army, a navy, an air force, or missiles. Yet our enemy is armed with suicidal determination, and motivated by our meddling in their regional affairs, to destroy us.

And as we bleed financially, our men and women in Iraq die needlessly while the injured swell Walter Reed hospital. Our government systematically undermines the Constitution and the liberties it’s supposed to protect-- for which it is claimed our soldiers are dying in faraway places.

Only with the complicity of Congress have we become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrollable spying on the American people. The greatest danger we face is ourselves: what we are doing in the name of providing security for a people made fearful by distortions of facts. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home. More likely the opposite is true.

Surely we can do better than this supplemental authorization. I plan to vote no.

The capture of 15 British troops by Iran has been widely reported. While the March 21 "Ides of March" date has slipped by it seems this pot is going to keep on boiling...

Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned what called the illegal entry of British sailors into Iranian waters as a ``suspicious act'', the official IRNA news agency said today. Iranian forces seized 15 British servicemen yesterday in the mouth of the waterway that separates Iran and Iraq, triggering a diplomatic crisis at a time of heightened tension over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. ...

Iranian state television said yesterday Iran had summoned the British charge d'affaires to protest over the incident. Britain said the servicemen were seized in Iraqi waters and demanded their release. ...

The United Nations Security Council was expected to vote later on Saturday on imposing new arms and financial sanctions on Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which the West suspects is designed to make atom bombs. Tehran denies the charge, saying it is only aimed at generating electricity.