Conservative Salt

This is an Incredible story! ;-)

Grandpa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:51:01 -0800

This is an Incredible story!

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .....

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air.

The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully..

He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it.

As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife,

after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments.

Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled.

Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.

Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son.

As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and

walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing.

The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down..

The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant..

Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure.

He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.

The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs

and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

Mary Landrieu sold her vote on health care for $100 million it appears.

Grandpa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:45:20 -0800

ABC News' Jonathan Karl reports:

What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?

Here’s a case study.

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

Here’s the incredibly complicated language:

SEC. 2006. SPECIAL ADJUSTMENT TO FMAP DETERMINATION FOR CERTAIN STATES RECOVERING FROM A MAJOR DISASTER.

Section 1905 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1396d), as amended by sections 2001(a)(3) and
2001(b)(2), is amended- (1) in subsection (b), in the first sentence, by striking ‘‘subsection (y)’’ and inserting ‘‘subsections (y) and (aa)’’; and (2) by adding at the end the following new subsection:

‘‘(aa)(1) Notwithstanding subsection (b), beginning January 1, 2011, the Federal medical assistance percentage for a fiscal year for a disaster-recovery FMAP adjustment State shall be equal to the following:
‘(A) In the case of the first fiscal year (or part of a fiscal year) for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), increased by 50 percent of the number of percentage points by which the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), is less than the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the preceding fiscal year after the application of only subsection (a) of section 5001 of Public Law 111–5 (if applicable to the preceding fiscal year) and without regard to this subsection, subsection (y), and subsections (b) and (c) of section 5001 of Public Law 111–5.

‘‘(B) In the case of the second or any succeeding fiscal year for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the preceding fiscal year under this subsection for the State, increased by 25 percent of the number of percentage points by which the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), is less than the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the preceding fiscal year under this subsection.

‘‘(2) In this subsection, the term ‘disaster-recovery FMAP adjustment State’ means a State that is one of
the 50 States or the District of Columbia, for which, at any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President has declared a major disaster under section 401 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act and determined as a result of such disaster that every county or parish in the State warrant individual and public assistance or public assistance from the Federal Government under such Act and for which- ‘‘(A) in the case of the first fiscal year (or part of a fiscal year) for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), is less than the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the preceding fiscal year after the application of only subsection (a) of section 5001 of Public Law 111–5 (if applicable to the preceding fiscal year) and without regard to this subsection, subsection (y), and subsections (b) and (c) of section 5001 of Public Law 111–5, by at least 3 percentage points; and ‘‘(B) in the case of the second or any succeeding fiscal year for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the fiscal year without regard to this subsection and subsection (y), is less than the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the State for the preceding fiscal year under this subsection by at least 3 percentage points.

‘‘(3) The Federal medical assistance percentage determined for a disaster-recovery FMAP adjustment State under paragraph (1) shall apply for purposes of this title (other than with respect to disproportionate share hospital payments described in section 1923 and payments under this title that are based on the enhanced FMAP described in 2105(b)) and shall not apply with respect to payments under title IV (other than under part E of title IV) or payments under title XXI.’’.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vot...

OMG, MORE Acorn tapes.

Grandpa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:21:09 -0800

Eric Holder testifies, will it make it to the MSM?

Grandpa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:25:40 -0800

Reid Bill True cost

Grandpa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:21:23 -0800

Reid's fuzzy math

Comments: 2

'Reform' bill's true cost is twice advertised price

By JEFFREY H. ANDERSO

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is touting the Senate’s newest health-care bill as costing $849 billion over 10 years. But this uses the same accounting trick as past versions: 99 percent of the costs don’t kick in until the fifth year of that “10 year” period. And the true 10-year costs are well over twice what Reid's advertising: $1.8 billion.
The Democrats cite the bills’ projected costs from 2010-19. Yet, as the Congressional Budget Office reports, the bill would cost just $9 billion total from 2010 through 2013 - versus $147 billion in 2016 alone. In the first 40 percent of what the Democrats are calling the bill’s “first 10 years,” only 1 percent of its costs would yet have hit.
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As the CBO analysis indicates, the bill’s real 10-year costs would start in 2014. And in its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion - double the price Reid is advertising.
And that’s even though the CBO optimistically assumes the government-run “public option” wouldn’t cost a cent.
Over this same 10-year span, the 2,074-page bill would hike taxes and fines on Americans by $892 billion - more than the alleged price of the bill.
Just as problematic are the bill’s effects on entitlement spending and deficits.
Medicare is already teetering on the edge of insolvency. This year’s Medicare Trustees Report (signed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, among others) warns that the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund - the main funding channel for the largest part of Medicare - will become insolvent in 2017.
Worse, nearly four people are now paying into Medicare for every beneficiary - but, with the baby boomers’ retirement fast approaching, that number will drop over the next 20 years to about 2½. Fewer and fewer people will be paying higher and higher costs.
Yet, as CBO notes, in its real first decade, the Senate bill would siphon $802 billion out of Medicare to spend elsewhere. With its financial outlook already beyond bleak, Medicare is the last place to look to for “free” money.
Among the $802 billion that Reid would divert from Medicare is $431 billion in cuts in doctors’ pay (far more than the misleading figure for 2010-19). The bill says it would cut payments to doctors for services to Medicare patients by 23 percent in 2011 - and never raise them back up, ever.
No one who’s been in Washington for more than five minutes actually expects this reduction to occur - and if it doesn’t, then the Senate health bill would increase our deficits by $286 billion in its true first decade, according to CBO projections.
In his historic speech to Congress on Sept. 9, President Obama pledged not to support any health bill “if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.” This bill would raise the deficit by 2.86 trillion dimes - and yet the president is its most visible and audible supporter.
According to The Washington Post, the president has also stated “flatly that he won’t accept a bill that doesn’t ‘bend the curve’ on rising health-care costs.” Yet nothing in the CBO analysis suggests that the Senate bill would bend the cost-curve downward.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has just concluded that the House health bill - which the President also champions - would bend the curve upward, raising nationwide health-care costs by over half a trillion dollars by 2020 (and by $289 billion even in the unlikely event that doctors’ pay is actually slashed).
If Congress is to consider legislation to remake a sixth of the US economy and insert the government into the health-care decisions of every American, it should at least be honest about the costs. In its first 10 years of actually being in effect in any meaningful way, Sen. Reid’s bill would cost $1.8 trillion. And it’s a simple fact that every penny of that would have to be paid by the American people through some combination of three things: cuts to existing programs, higher deficits, and higher taxes.

Muslim Suffers Bruised Ego in Fort Hood Tragedy

Eleuthera — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:57:37 -0800

by Ann Coulter
11/11/09

The massacre at Fort Hood last week is the perfect apotheosis of the liberal victimology described in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America." According to witnesses, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan entered a medical facility at Fort Hood, prayed briefly, then shouted "Allahu akbar" before he began gunning down American troops. Now I don't know which to be more afraid of: Muslims or government-run health care systems.
President Obama honored the victims by immediately warning Americans not to "jump to conclusions" -- namely, the obvious conclusion that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. As conclusions go, it wasn't much of a jump.

But the mainstream media waited for no information -- indeed actively avoided learning any information -- before leaping to the far less obvious conclusion that the suspect's mass murder was set off by "stress." The day after the slaughter, The New York Times ran one editorial and two of three op-eds asserting as much -- which was at least one more than the Times usually runs about psycho-killer soldiers going on rampages.
Two days after the mass shooting, the Times' laughably predictable headlines about the Fort Hood bloodbath were: -- "Preliminary Inquiry Finds No Link to Terror Plot" -- "Painful Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists" -- "When Soldiers' Minds Snap"
The Los Angeles Times jumped to the exact same conclusion, running an article on the massacre titled: "Fort Hood Tragedy Rocks Military as It Grapples With Mental Health Issues." Time magazine followed suit, posting an article titled: "Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan." Inasmuch as Maj. Hasan had never been deployed overseas, much less seen combat, liberals seem to have discovered the first recorded case of "pre-traumatic stress syndrome."

Their point was: The real victim of was Maj. Hasan. Indeed, all Muslims were the victims that day.

The media quickly set to work assembling lachrymose accounts of taunts Hasan had been subjected to in the military for being a Muslim, the most harrowing of which seems to have been his car being keyed at his off-base apartment complex. I suppose we should be relieved that liberals weren't claiming Hasan snapped because of the dimming prospects for a health care bill by the end of the year.

The evidence for the manifestly obvious conclusion we were supposed to avoid jumping to is rather more extensive.

According to numerous eyewitness accounts, Hasan denounced the "war on terror" as a war against Islam, said Muslims should attack Americans in retaliation for the war in defended suicide bombers and said he was "happy" when a Muslim murdered a soldier at a military recruiting center in earlier this year. Stranger still, he wasn't auditioning for his own show on MSNBC when he made these statements.

Hasan shared a "spiritual adviser" with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, whose unseemly enthusiasm for jihad got him banned from speaking in Britain , even by video link. A few years ago, Hasan delivered an hour-long PowerPoint lecture to an audience of doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, arguing that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have burning oil poured down their throats. He had tried to contact al-Qaida, and at least one U.S. intelligence official says the Army knew it.
Despite being well aware of Hasan's disturbing views and conduct, the Army did nothing. Far less offensive speech has been grounds for discipline or even removal from duties in the military. In the aftermath of the Tailhook scandal, for example, two Navy officers were reprimanded and reassigned after putting up a sign with the words of a nursery rhyme altered to include a vulgar sexual reference to liberal congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. But a Muslim Army doctor can go around a military installation somberly advocating the beheading of infidels, and the girls running the military treat him like he's Nicole Kidman and they're press junket reporters.

The Army's top brass, Gen. George Casey, responded to the military's shocking decision to keep a terrorist-sympathizing Muslim in the Army by announcing: "Our diversity ... is a strength." And I thought gays couldn't openly serve in the military. On

Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims moved to the top of liberals' victim pantheon on the basis of having slaughtered 3,000 Americans. Muslims were "victims" of Americans' displeasure with them for the biggest terrorist attack in world history. The only American deserving of more coddling than a Muslim is the first African-American president.

So, now any dyspeptic expression toward a Muslim is grounds for calling in a diversity coordinator. And when the "victim" attacks, as at Fort Hood, the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty because Hasan's car got keyed once. As with all liberal "victims," it is the victim who is massively guilty.

Sorry, No Ladies Only Holidays

samantha999 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:46:23 -0800

Judge rules against women-only holidays

By Norrie Ross
Herald Sun
November 18, 2009 12:01am

A judge ruled that women-only holidays cannot be advertised because it could breach the human rights of men / File

Plans to start a women-only holiday service
Wanted exemption to Equal Opportunity Act
Judge refuses, say it is not necessary

A SINGLE-sex travel company for women who want to avoid boozy, bed-hopping mixed tour groups has been grounded.

A judge ruled yesterday that former tour guide Erin Maitland cannot advertise women-only holidays because it could breach the human rights of men.

Judge Marilyn Harbison refused to grant Ms Maitland an exemption to the Equal Opportunity Act, ruling that she had not proved it was reasonable or necessary, the Herald Sun reports.

"The exemption may well be convenient and practical in the establishment of her business, but it cannot be justified on human rights principles," said the vice-president of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

In her evidence to VCAT Ms Maitland said she wanted to set up Travel Sisters after hearing stories from her friends who would not travel in mixed tour groups because of "drinking and bed-hopping".

The judge said Ms Maitland believed Travel Sisters would provide security for women, re-assure male partners who could not travel and be used by women who did not want to mix with men for cultural or religious reasons or because they were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault.

Her application was opposed by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which said it would conflict with Victoria's Charter of Human Rights.

Judge Harbison said the commission argued that her application stereotyped men's behaviour.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/travel/vcat-rejects-womans-bid-to-set-up-wom...

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,26366101-5014090,00.html?ref...

The Rationing Commission

skb9850 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:55:33 -0800

This is from the Wall Street Journal
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870379230457450402002505504...

As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve-and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.

Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year-and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission "critical to our fiscal future" and "one of the most potent reforms."

On that last score, he's right. Prominent health economist Alain Enthoven has likened a global budget to "bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don't see the faces of the people you kill."

As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission-all 15 members appointed by the President-would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.

The theory is to let technocrats set Medicare payments free from political pressure, as with the military base closing commissions. But that process presented recommendations to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Here, the commission's decisions would go into effect automatically if Congress couldn't agree within six months on different cuts that met the same target. The board's decisions would not be subject to ordinary notice-and-comment rule-making, or even judicial review.

Yet if the goal really is political insulation, then the Medicare Commission is off to a bad start. To avoid a senior revolt, Finance Chairman Max Baucus decided to bar his creation from reducing benefits or raising the eligibility age, which meant that it could only cut costs by tightening Medicare price controls on doctors and hospitals. Doctors and hospitals, naturally, were furious.

So the Montana Democrat bowed and carved out exemptions for such providers, along with hospices and suppliers of medical equipment. Until 2019 the commission will thus only be allowed to attack Medicare Advantage, the program that gives 10 million seniors private insurance choices, and to raise premiums for Medicare prescription drug coverage, which is run by private contractors. Notice a political pattern?

But a decade from now, such limits are off-which also happens to be roughly the time when ObamaCare's spending explodes. The hard budget cap means there is only so much money to be divvied up for care, with no account for demographic changes, such as longer life spans, or for the increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.

Worse, it makes little room for medical innovations. The commission is mandated to go after "sources of excess cost growth," meaning treatments that are too expensive or whose coverage will boost spending. If researchers find a pricey treatment for Alzheimer's in 2020, that might be banned because it would add new costs and bust the global budget. Or it might decide that "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller," as President Obama put it in June.

In other words, the Medicare commission would come to function much like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rations care in England. Or a similar Washington state board created in 2003 to control costs. Its handiwork isn't pretty.

The Washington commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats, including a chiropractor and a "naturopath" who focuses on alternative, er, remedies like herbs and massage therapy. They consider the clinical effectiveness but above all the cost of medical procedures and technologies. If they decide something isn't worth the money, then Olympia won't cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.

So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain, and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer. This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a "high" efficacy but also a "high" cost.

Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents-simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes. If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he's covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don't, Washington will not reimburse them for "inappropriate care."

If Democrats impose such a commission nationwide, it would constitute a radical change in U.S. health care. The reason that physician discretion-not Washington's cost-minded judgments-is at the core of medicine is that usually there are no "right" answers. The data from large clinical trials produce generic conclusions that rarely apply to individual patients, who have vastly different biologies, response rates to treatments, and often multiple conditions. A breakthrough drug like Herceptin, which is designed for a certain genetic subset of breast-cancer patients, might well be ruled out under such a standardized approach.

It's possible this global budget could become an accounting fiction, like the automatic Medicare cuts Congress currently pretends it will impose on doctors. But health care's fiscal pressures will be even stronger than they are today if ObamaCare passes in anything like its current form. And that is when politicians will want this remote, impersonal and unaccountable central committee to do the inevitable dirty work of denying care.

The only way to take the politics out of health care is to give individuals more power to control medical dollars. And the first step should be not to create even more government spending commitments. The core problem with government-run health care is that it doesn't make decisions in the best interests of patients, but in the best interests of government.

Lindsay Graham support collapses in South Carolina (amongst Republicans AND independents).

Grandpa — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:18:49 -0800

Re: Graham Crumbles for Nothing

Jennifer Rubin - 11.15.2009 - 1:34 PM
When Lindsay Graham decided to support cap-and-trade - a position not even some moderate Democrats can stomach - I observed that this was not only bad policy but also bad politics. And sure enough, moves like that and his support for now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor have spelled trouble for him. This report explains:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s public support is collapsing in South Carolina - driven by a wholesale revolt among the GOP electorate and a steady erosion of his support amongst independents.
Already consistently loathed by a solid third of GOP voters, Graham’s recent leftward bent - including his co-authoring of a controversial “Cap & Tax” proposal supported by President Barack Obama and liberal Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) - has him locked in a “terminal free fall,” according one prominent Republican consultant.
“A chunk of the GOP has always detested him, but in the last month a damn has broken,” said the consultant, who was granted anonymity to discuss the impact of two recent polls that were conducted in South Carolina (one allegedly by Graham’s own advisors). “More Republicans now oppose Sen. Graham than support him. Independents are also deserting him in huge numbers.”

This contradicts the favorite narrative of Democrats and their media handmaidens, namely that in order to stay relevant, Republicans must compromise with Obama, move leftward, and adopt policies at odds with conservative principles. It turns out that doing so alienates not only Republican voters but also independents, who themselves are not enamored of Obama’s leftist agenda. Graham won’t face the voters until 2014, so he has time to recover. But his example may serve as a warning to other Republicans: mimicking Obamaism is a losing proposition
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/167771

L.A. Times: Obama strategy deliberations are starting to look like dangerous indecision.

Grandpa — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:09:31 -0800

Obama must rethink rethinking Afghanistan

His strategy deliberations are starting to look like dangerous indecision.

By Doyle McManus
November 15, 2009

Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name.The decision about whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan was never going to be easy, but events -- and a collision of egos in Kabul -- have conspired to make it even harder.Obama was right to insist on a full review of whether U.S. interests are better served by expanding the American military footprint in Afghanistan or shrinking it. But now, two months into his second "comprehensive policy review," after eight Cabinet-level meetings and several slipped target dates, the president still hasn't made up his mind.In George W. Bush, we had a president who shot first and asked questions later. In Barack Obama, we have a president who asks the right questions but hesitates to pull the trigger.Three weeks ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Obama of "dithering." At the time, the charge sounded premature and partisan -- but now some of Obama's own supporters have begun to wonder whether Cheney was right.Last week, the president's indecision became even more apparent after White House aides let it be known that he was asking the military for more "exit strategies" -- what one official called "off-ramps" -- in case things go badly.Those questions came after Obama's ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, sent two eleventh-hour memos questioning one of the basic premises of the war: whether the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai could ever reform itself enough to make success feasible.At the end of the week, officials said the president and his advisors weren't seriously considering reducing U.S. troop strength; they are still converging on a narrow range of options that would send tens of thousands of additional troops. The debate, instead, is over how to define the mission -- and how to build those "exit ramps" without undercutting it.Those are hard questions to answer -- harder still when a policy debate lasts for months and becomes public. These aren't just style points; the battle in Washington is causing real problems for U.S. foreign policy, beginning with mixed messages to both allies and adversaries. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described the dilemma succinctly last week: "How do we signal resolve -- and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment?" The long debate has made Obama look indecisive and uncertain -- because he has been. And the leaks of conflicting positions have given his critics ammunition for the postmortem debate over any decision he makes. If Obama chooses to go small, hawks will accuse him of ignoring the advice of his own military commander, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who asked for 40,000 additional troops. If he goes big, doves will accuse him of ignoring the advice of Ambassador Eikenberry, who said the additional troops wouldn't do much good.When he ran for president, "no drama Obama" prided himself on a campaign organization that never aired internal disputes and always closed ranks in common cause. Not in this process, which has turned into a very un-Obamalike battle of leaks and counterleaks. This much transparency, alas, creates a problem: Washingtonians love to keep track of winners and losers. A well-managed process gives losers a chance to lick their wounds in private, without suffering public damage to their reputations. This one is more likely to end in public recriminations.The debate has frayed relationships between the military officers who proposed the Afghan escalation and the civilian politicians (Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) who run the White House. White House officials were irritated when McChrystal's strategy proposal leaked in October, seeing it as an attempt by the military to box Obama in.The public friction between McChrystal and Eikenberry, himself a retired general, has now complicated things further. One of the keys to U.S. success in Iraq was the seamless partnership between military commander David H. Petraeus and civilian Ambassador Ryan Crocker. In Afghanistan, in contrast, the two top U.S. officials on the ground have repeatedly butted heads -- a situation that has much of Washington speculating whether, once Obama makes his decision, one of them will have to go.No president should commit troops to a war if he's not satisfied that the strategy is sound. No general should be given troops unless the premises of his strategy have been questioned. As Obama noted, he'd rather make a good decision than a fast one.Obama needed to reassure the American public -- especially his own Democratic Party -- that he had considered every alternative before deciding to escalate this unpromising war. That's one reason all these White House sessions have -- unusually -- been publicized in advance, photographed and described to reporters.At this point, Obama appears to be hesitating for reasons of both substance and politics. Last spring, he could hope for an Afghan government run by someone other than Karzai; now that hope is gone. He has read the history of the Vietnam War, so he's worried about getting in deeper without an off-ramp in case things go bad. He doesn't think he can sell escalation to skeptical Democrats without that off-ramp. Eliot Cohen, a military historian who worked in the George W. Bush administration (and who supports sending more troops), described the dilemma this way: "If he goes ahead with this decision, he's basically going to be a war president." That means devoting more budget money -- and even more important, more of his own time and political capital -- to waging the war. It could also mean paring back his domestic agenda, already slowed by economic and political adversity. It's no wonder he's hesitating. But in the end, he still has to make a choice. When Obama launched this review of his strategy in Afghanistan, it was a good thing. But the longer it goes on, the more costly it becomes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus15-2009nov15,0,381782.c...