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September 2008
How can gas shortage be fixed?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In an AJC oped piece on Wednesday, Tex Pitfield, president and CEO of Saraguay Petroleum in Atlanta, argued that the gas shortage in the region would have been avoidable with quicker response from the governor’s office.
On Friday, Chris Clark, executive director of the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, and Carol Couch, director of the environmental protection division at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, responded that it was not accurate for Pitfield to blame state government for our current fuel shortage. They noted that the state was on top of the crisis and urged motorists to do their part.
In response, Pitfield has written an ajc.com online-only piece saying that the mess will probably continue for a while. He implores”the retail stores to limit sales to eight gallons, not only to conserve what you have, but to make your few available gallons available to a broader cross section of the general public.
“And I ask the same of you, the general public. You do not need to top off; we are not going to run out of gas. And if you wait until you are at a quarter tank, and only buy eight gallons, many of you will be good for several days, and it will make it so much easier to buy gas for us all, and make more to go around.
“We need to slow the system down, and we, the public need to do it, not the government and not big oil.”
What do you think can be done to fix the gas shortage in the region?
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Did the debate change your mind?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Did the debate change your mind?
Did it cause you to rethink your earlier support of John McCain or Barack Obama?
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Who do you think won Friday’s debate?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Who won Friday’s debate in your opinion? John McCain? Barack Obama?
Why do you think so?
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Do you plan to watch all the debates?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday’s 9 p.m. face-off was the first debate scheduled before the Nov. 4 election. Held at the University of Mississippi, it is moderated by Jim Lehrer, host of “The NewsHour” on PBS. Topics include national security and foreign policy.
Other debates scheduled:
Oct. 2: Vice presidential debate moderated by PBS correspondent Gwen Ifill at Washington University in St. Louis.
Oct. 7: Town hall debate moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw at Belmont University in Nashville.
Oct. 15: Debate on domestic and economic policy will be held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Moderator is Bob Schieffer of CBS.
The vice presidential debate will be and held Oct. 2 The debate formate won’t be resolved until the vice presidential nominees are chosen.
Do you plan to watch them all and which are most important for you?
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Who do you expect to win tonight’s debate?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An Associated Press-Knowledge Networks poll out Friday just before John McCain’s announcement that he would participate in the debate in Oxford, Miss., showed the public overwhelmingly wanted the candidates to debate, 60 percent to 22 percent, with the rest undecided.
Now that Barack Obama and McCain will face off at 9 p.m., who do you expect to win tonight’s debate — Obama or McCain?
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Airpower is not the panacea to fighting insurgencies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Comment on this entry and two other articles
Charlie Dunlap seems to be the 21stCentury doppelganger of Billy Mitchell and Curtis LeMay combined. His op-eds intone an unvarying paean to the supreme glories of airpower as being the solution to all of America’s military issues. Well, almost.
In his September 17, 2008 op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he takes the Taliban to task for their efforts (understandable) to emasculate our vast air power capability by giving it a bad rap in the press. Many of our foes fear our arsenal, and rightly so, thus they will naturally do anything to mitigate its effect. The People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) called it “grasping the belt;” when engaged with US forces they tried to establish themselves as close as possible to our troops, knowing that any artillery or close air support called in would be “danger close.” According to Dunlap the Taliban has begun “frenzied efforts of their propaganda machine” to excoriate the US Air Force and its supposedly indiscriminate use of bombs to kill innocent women and children. He quips that “the Taliban’s depraved moral code helps. They shamelessly intermingle with civilians in order to use them as human shields. Their lack of morality also gives them license to falsely allege civilian casualties when they can’t orchestrate them.” Dunlap seems to miss the point that they must do that to mitigate our superiority in weaponry.
“Unfortunately, the media seems quick to report whatever claim is made.”
Unfortunately the media also reports real civilian casualties, which are often incurred during air strikes. Whether it is 1 or 100, civilian deaths in a COIN campaign only strengthen the insurgents.
While I agree with the point of his overall assessment, Dunlap then backs his argument by making a false analogy in which he equates the Taliban’s strategy to the sieges of Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sahn. An interesting metaphorical usage, considering these were two very conventional battles that albeit were in part lost or won due to airpower, they were also set piece battles in wars which both had strong counterinsurgency aspects and in which the counterinsurgents ultimately lost.
As Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story:
The genesis of DBP was a year earlier, November 1952, when the French had executed a similar operation at Na San, 150 air miles west-northwest of Hanoi. They established it as a ‘base aero-terrestre’ to support Operation Lorraine. Giap attacked the camp during two nights but the French were able to successfully defend the post, inflicting heavy casualties upon the Viet Minh battalions. Later the French withdrew the garrison, mostly by airlifting them out.
Giap learned that he needed heavier artillery (he employed mortars and 75mm recoilless rifles at Na San) and that unless he could seize high ground around the post (Na San was on a plateau) he should avoid attacking entrenched camps. The French believed they had found ‘la formule’ for enticing Giap to attack these type posts, whereupon French firepower would annihilate the Viet Minh units.
Operation Castor was Na San writ large. It was launched in November 1953 in the mountainous northwestern region of Tonkin to interdict the Viet Minh LOCs for their offensive in northeastern Laos. The French also were hopeful that they could bring about a battle on their terms, one in which they could bring the full power of their air and artillery against Giap’s main force.
On 20 November an airborne drop into the valley of Dien Bien Phu, the aim of which was the capture of an old Japanese airstrip. The French set up the DBP ‘base aero-terrestre’ to serve as an anchor for mobile strike operations against the Viet Minh sanctuary as well as a supply point for GCMA units operating in the mountains (GCMAs were French Special Forces units).
The French expected that Giap’s reaction to this incursion would be to attack the base, where upon, as at Na San, the French would crush him. They believed that the aerial lifeline between Hanoi and DBP would be sufficient to sustain the forces in place.
However, several factors doomed the French strategy at DBP. In the first place the distance between Hanoi and Na San was 150 air miles while the distance between Hanoi and DBP was 180 miles, which meant longer transit times for aircraft. Na San’s airfield was on a plateau with few high points nearby whereas DBP was in a valley, with several dominating high points. In 1952 Giap’s artillery consisted mostly of mortars, recoilless rifles and old Japanese 75mm howitzers. By 1954 the Viet Minh had received from China 105mm howitzers (also the primary artillery piece used by the French) and Soviet 12.7mm and 37mm anti-aircraft guns.
The French were aware of these massive increases in Viet Minh fire power but were confident that their counter battery efforts and air support would quickly neutralize any Viet Minh artillery, which they believed would be easily spotted in their reverse slope positions. This was not to be. At DBP Giap had defied convention by placing his artillery in positions on the forward slopes of the overlooking hills. Plus, he had them placed in positions dug into the slopes from the rear, so only the barrel protruded from the aperture. By not disturbing the foliage the Viet Minh artillery was perfectly hidden from French observation.
The actual “siege” commenced on 13 March 1954 with a massive bombardment of the French positions (the French artillery chief, Col. Piroth, who had assured his leadership that his guns would silence the enemy’s, committed suicide shortly thereafter). In the ensuing weeks the Viet Minh tightened the noose by systematically capturing French hilltop positions. 26 March proved the last day French aircraft could use the airfield, from then on re-supply would be by parachute drops. Viet Minh anti-aircraft fire forced the French transports to drop from higher altitudes (around 600 to 900 feet was most accurate, the new altitude was set at 8,000), thus decreasing the accuracy of the drops. As the perimeter shrank more and more supplies dropped into Viet Minh hands. French attempts at aerial interdiction of the Viet Minh supply lines were no more effective than similar US efforts to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail a decade later. On 7 May, after 54 days of grueling combat, the garrison was over run.
The defeat broke the French government’s will to continue the Indo-China War and peace accords were signed dividing Vietnam into a communist dominated north and a democratic south. The two countries were separated by a “Demilitarized Zone.” Thirteen years later, in the fall/winter of 1967, the PAVN, under Giap’s command, began a series of assaults against US Marine positions near the DMZ. By mid-January 1968 the PAVN had several division sized units in the vicinity of the Marine’s airfield at Khe Sanh, located in northwestern South Vietnam, near the DMZ. This was viewed by Gen Westmoreland and others as an attempt to repeat DBP. However, there were those, in particular Marine Corps Gen Krulak, who viewed the operation as an elaborate feint to draw US military attention and resources away from the Tet Offensive, which commenced 1 February.
Unlike DBP, at Khe Sanh the PAVN were successfully repulsed in their attempts to capture the high ground located north and northwest of the main base. Westmorland committed a huge amount of air power to relieve pressure on the Marines, and kept forces ready in I Corps for relief of the post. Giap broke off his attacks after 77 days of combat. Again, while it was an American tactical victory, the strategic result has come under considerable debate.
Yet at Khe Sanh several factors were significantly different from the siege of DBP. Khe Sanh was much closer to supply bases (45 miles versus 180 miles at Dien Bien Phu). At Khe Sanh the Marines held onto the high ground, and their artillery and air support forced the PAVN to position their own artillery at a much greater distance, decreasing their accuracy. At Dien Bien Phu the French artillery (six 105mm howitzer batteries and one battery of four 155mm howitzers plus mortars) were only sporadically effective while the Viet Minh had the advantage of providing nearly direct fire into the French encampment.
What was airpower’s ultimate contribution to these battles? At Dien Bien Phu primarily it was logistical. The Viet Minh were careful not to attack the French in broad daylight, choosing instead to attack at dusk and fighting through the night, thus mitigating the effects of French close air support. By employing their anti-aircraft assets closer and closer to the airfield, the Viet Minh shut it down, forcing the French garrison to rely on airdrops. With a shrinking perimeter and drops from higher altitudes fewer supplies reached the French troops, although Giap’s forces certainly benefited from many miss-drops.
At Khe Sahn tactical air was certainly a force multiplier, as was the strategic employment of air strikes against the PAVN supply routes (which the French employed too little effort to at DBP), but the “air bridge” of supplies was also key, and the PAVN were never able to completely shut down the airfield. Regardless, in both cases, the combat was predominantly infantry fighting hand-to-hand on hilltops around the posts.
So what do the air power lessons of Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh have to do with our present COIN operations in Afghanistan (and Iraq): In my opinion pretty much nothing. Dunlap does correctly discern that the Taliban’s tactics are so designed that “they will achieve a tremendous victory on the battlefield of public opinion.” Exactly, this is why COIN operations are as much political as they are military. John Paul Vann in Vietnam observed: “This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I’m afraid we can’t do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worse is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle — you know who you’re killing.”
The Air Force’s contribution to COIN is predominantly in the ISR realm (and logistical) and is certainly invaluable. Tactical air has its use as well, but must be employed very judiciously in order to avoid any non-combatant injuries. Ultimately, by using examples of set piece battles in arguing his case for airpower’s use in COIN, Dunlap is metaphorically comparing apples to oranges. Web Bridges is at the Directorate for Organizational & Management Planning in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
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Spirited debate on military tactics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recent opinion articles in the AJC have sparked a spirited debate on military tactics in Afghanistan.
On Sept. 17, the Air Force’s second ranking attorney, Major Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr. argued that strong airpower will keep the Taliban at bay.
His comments drew an angry rebuttal from John Robinson, an Army targeteer who has done three tours in Afghanistan. Citing the risk of Afghan civilian casualties, Robinson argued for a beefed up ground presence in Afghanistan.
The latest opinion comes from Web Bridges, a senior official in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Read up on their arguments, and weigh in with your own.
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Universal school vouchers for Georgia?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Sen. Eric Johnson is abandoning his plan to ease Georgia into school vouchers. Instead, he wants the state to jump into the voucher pool with both feet.
In January, the Savannah Republican plans to introduce a voucher bill in the General Assembly that would give tax dollars to all parents to pay for all or part of their children’s private school tuition. Until now, Johnson relied on a piecemeal approach, first winning approval in 2007 for vouchers for students with special needs and then trying unsuccessfully this year to extend vouchers to kids whose schools lost accreditation or earned a repeated “needs improvement” rating.
Johnson is forsaking his slow march and racing ahead with a universal voucher bill. If he prevails, Georgia would offer the first statewide school voucher program open to all children, regardless of whether their parents drive a BMW or a bus. Utah almost held that distinction until its voters came to their senses last year and killed a voucher law enacted by their state Legislature nine months earlier. Unlike the voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland that target low-income students, Utah’s program was open to all families. While the most a family could receive per child was a $3,000 voucher, even Utah’s richest households would have received at least $500. Despite the assumption that conservative Utah offered the ideal climate for vouchers, voters killed the program by a 62 percent to 38 percent margin. And those results mirror other national referendums. Voters in 11 states have turned down vouchers, doing so twice in Michigan, Colorado and California.
There’s no evidence that Georgians would be any more willing to subsidize private schools. Even those inclined to flee public schools realize that a $4,000 voucher would fall far short of the tuition at the top private schools. Those parents also know that it’s not quite true that students choose their schools under vouchers; in the competitive metro Atlanta market, it’s the private schools who get to choose.
Johnson would likely have a challenge convincing the Republicans in suburban Atlanta to join his crusade. Cobb, Gwinnett, Fulton, Forsyth and Fayette boast some of Georgia’s highest-performing schools. It’s hard to imagine those parents endorsing a voucher program that could undermine a Walton High School in east Cobb, a North Forsyth Middle in Cumming or a Riverside Elementary in Suwanee. Not all of the state’s 1.5 million students are as well-served in their schools, but the research doesn’t support the notion that they will do better with vouchers.
At best, the findings are mixed that students in voucher programs fare any better academically than their peers in public schools. To combat the complaint that the research has been tainted by bias, the U.S. Department of Education — which warmed to vouchers under its current leadership — reviewed a federal voucher initiative in Washington, D.C., this summer and concluded that there was no significant improvement in student achievement. Proponents urge patience. They claim that if vouchers are in place long enough, students using them will show marked improvement. But why does Georgia have to wait for vouchers to prove themselves when there are reforms already yielding results that we have yet to try?
Johnson is looking to Milwaukee, where achievement still lags, when he should be studying Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut and North Carolina. Those states lead the nation in educational gains, and they’re doing so without razing the public school system in favor of vouchers. They are investing in preschool and teacher quality, raising rigor and adopting and sticking to whole school reform plans.
Let’s follow suit and see what happens before we dismantle our public schools in favor of the voucher pipe dream.
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Fannie, Freddie rescue bad news?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“U.S. taxpayers will soon be active participants and financial stakeholders in the U.S. mortgage market, thanks to the Bush administration’s move to seize control of lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When a homeowner decides to walk away from their mortgage obligation, you and I will be obligated to help,” writes Chris Ciovacco in an opinion column.
He concludes: “The government’s takeover of Fannie and Freddie does not make things much better, but it does prevent them from getting worse in terms of further constraints on Fannie’s and Freddie’s ability to support the mortgage market. While this may be good news for short-term stock traders, it is most certainly bad news for longer-term investors and taxpayers.”
What do you think?
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Global warming fueling hurricanes?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tropical storms and hurricanes are lined up across the Atlantic Ocean like aircraft on final approach to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, writes J. Marshall Shepherd in an opinion column.
Tropical Storm Fay produced prodigious rainfall, and Hurricane Gustav prompted the largest evacuation in Louisiana’s history. With six to eight weeks left in the hurricane season, storm activity has reignited a debate that began after the 2005 hurricane season on whether global warming is fueling stronger or more numerous hurricanes.
What do you think about hurricanes and global warming?
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Should candidates write own speeches?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An opinion columnist writes in today’s AJC:
“Today, selling term papers to students to use as their own is still illegal, but selling speeches to politicians to use as their own remains legitimate. How can that be?
“The fact that the writers give permission to the speakers to pretend it’s their own work does not make it okay.
“Nor can second-party speechwriting be justified because it isn’t journalism or scholastic scholarship. Some speechwriters have likened their profession to screenwriting, penning dialogue to be spoken by others. But in the entertainment world, the audience knows the actors don’t write their own material, and authors are acknowledged in screen credits or theater programs.
“When was the last time you saw or heard a writer credited at the end of a speech by John McCain or Barack Obama?
“Nor can the difference be that political audiences are already aware that politicians employ speechwriters. Granted, it can be easy to determine when President Bush is reciting from someone else’s script and when he is ad libbing in his own fractured English. But how can we know whether a line, or an entire speech, comes from the brains of McCain or Obama, or from hired staffers?”
Should politicians write their own speeches?
Read the full opinion column by David McGrath
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Mental health services need more money
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposal to pry mental health services out of the bloated and ineffective bureaucracy of the Georgia Department for Human Resources clearly ought to be approved by the state Legislature when it convenes in January.
However, the change will make little or no difference in protecting the state’s most vulnerable residents unless Perdue and the Legislature back up the move by appropriating more money for needed services.
Advocates for the mentally ill and a handful of state legislators have been pointing out for years that mental health services have been shortchanged within DHR. Time after time, the needs of mentally ill Georgians have taken a back seat to the needs of other expensive programs administered by the huge agency.
Over the summer, for example, DHR officials diverted $6.6 million in spending originally planned for mental health services for children to other agency programs that were running short of money. And the only reason that move was noticed was because Georgia had already been under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for possible civil rights violations of mentally ill patients. The federal investigation was launched in the wake of reports by this newspaper documenting more than 135 suspicious deaths among patients since 2002.
As those articles pointed out, Georgia is far behind other states in per-capita spending on mental health services and ranks 42nd in spending for community mental health services. That is critical, because ineffective and underfunded outpatient services at the community level invariably drive chronically ill patients into state hospitals, where the care is even more expensive.
Because mental health services have been folded into the giant DHR and its $1.6 billion budget, it can be difficult to track relatively minor spending adjustments such as the one that occurred this summer. Yet those changes mount up over the years, producing a pattern of neglect that invariably gets the state in trouble and does a disservice to Georgians who have no other way to get care.
Creating an independent agency to provide services to the mentally ill should improve accountability in how and where the money is spent. If carried out properly, the decision to split DHR into three separate agencies —- each with a distinctive mission —- could help state leaders prioritize social and health services and better connect spending to the performance of doctors, hospitals, clinics and others providing those services.
It makes little sense, for instance, that Medicaid —- the government-funded insurance program for the state’s poorest residents —- is administered out of the Department of Community Health, while DHR administers the Division of Public Health, which provides money for county health departments that often serve the same population. Under the new structure, a new Department of Health would coordinate both programs, as well as regulate medical providers.
Some current programs under DHR —- child welfare, the Division of Family and Children’s Services, as well as programs for people with development disabilities —- might also benefit from the restructuring. For example, the state continues to endure one crisis after another in child protection. B.J. Walker, who now serves as commissioner of the entire DHR, would take over as head of a more tightly focused Department of Human Services, and would perhaps be a more effective manager in dealing with those issues.
However, a mental health professional, not a career bureaucrat, should be appointed to oversee a new Department of Behavioral Health, the agency proposed to administer mental health services. Even after separating from DHR, the new department will be responsible for dozens of programs that ought to be examined carefully for effectiveness, and each of those programs will be championed by advocacy groups demanding more money for their cause.
While substance abuse and mental retardation may be considered “behavioral” fields, spending on those programs must be balanced carefully against the state’s years of neglect in spending for state hospitals and community mental health services. For the time being, the state must place its highest priority there.
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