Prince Harry: I’m No Hero

Prince Harry has returned home to Britain after word leaked that he was serving in Afghanistan. But he is rejecting the title that the press and politicians are trying to hang on him. He is, he insists, no hero.

LONDON (AFP) - Prince Harry, pulled out of a 10-week tour of duty in Afghanistan for security reasons, wants a swift return to the frontline, he said an interview published Sunday, insisting he is not a hero.

But as the 23-year-old spent his first night on British soil since mid-December, the head of the British Army dealt his ambitions an immediate blow, saying he was unlikely to return to the fray in the near future.

Harry, third in line to the throne and a second lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry, was met by his father, Prince Charles, and elder brother, Prince William, at a British air base Saturday.

The young prince said he was "slightly disappointed" about having to come home early, after a US website broke an embargo agreed between British media and the defence ministry not to publish his whereabouts for security reasons.

And he said he was now waiting to hear from his superiors about his future role but was still keen to rejoin his regimental colleagues….

…."You do what you have to do, what's necessary to save your own guys. If you need to drop a bomb, worst case scenario then you will, but then that's just the way it is," he said.

"It's not nice to drop bombs… but to save lives that's what happens."

But he rejected the tag of "hero", amid fulsome praise for his work from British political and military leaders and the media.

"I wouldn't say I'm a hero at all. I'm no more a hero than anyone else. If you think about it there's thousands and thousands of troops out there," he said.

Two unconscious, badly injured soldiers — one of whom lost an arm and a leg to a landmine — were on his plane home, he told reporters.

"Those are the heroes," he said.

I would not know the prince if I passed him on the street. But I do know one thing. He is absolutely correct. He is not a hero. He did his duty. He wants to go back to his unit. He cares for his men. He is not a hero. He is a soldier.

A damn fine one. 

Obama: Busily Restoring America’s Place

Barack Obama has not managed to secure the Democratic nomination yet, despite the disarray in camp Clinton. But he is succeeding - spectacularly - at enraging American allies with his sanctimony. First he alienates Canada and Mexico with his increasingly strident anti-NAFTA rhetoric. Now he is figuratively urinating on Europe's shoes. Michael Van Der Galien is righteously furious.

This post is written by an angry European who has had enough of Barack Obama’s silly rhetoric. Perhaps Americans should elect a non-diplomatically disabled person?
Better late than never I suppose. Jeralyn reports that “[a]fter last week’s debate when Barack Obama acknowledged he hadn’t held a single hearing on Nato and Afghanistan during his year as chair of the European Affairs subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because he was running for President, he’s now giving lectures to Europe in his campaign speeches.”

Yeah, we won’t notice that you never mention us nor that you ever held a hearing on this subject Barack. We’re like that: we tend to ignore bad information like that coming from America.

We don’t of course.

And then when he finally mentions us look at what he has to say:

[He said] European governments had to pull their weight in Afghanistan and not rely so much on the United States to do the “dirty work” against Taliban fighters…..

He said the US needs more support from its NATO allies in Afghanistan and implied Germany should lift its ban on combat operations in the dangerous south.

He’s great diplomatically isn’t he? “pull their weigh”? “not rely so much on the United States to do the dirty work”?

Michael is very, very angry, trust me. No, better yet, go read it all so you can savor the full flavor of his rage. The left loves to accuse George W. Bush of being a cowboy. If anything, Barack Obama is quite a lot worse at diplomacy. At the rate he is going, the only place he'll put the US in international circles is in the doghouse. Heck, he's already alienating our most important friends while promising to meet with our worst enemies. 

Ending Badly, But Ending

Eleanor Clift at Newsweek pronounces the Hillary Clinton campaign dead. She opens with a visit to Clinton headquarters by an unnamed visitor. What the visitor saw is a demoralized campaign in utter disarray. 

The day of reckoning for Hillary Clinton is almost here. The voters in Ohio will either deal a final blow to her campaign or provide a much needed victory that at best will give her a reprieve in the long march to the nomination. A visitor from another country recently paid a call on the Clinton campaign headquarters in Ballston, Va., a place just over the bridge from Washington but light years away. He imagined he would be present at a moment of great triumph. Instead he found a campaign on the verge of imploding. Phone bank tables were unmanned. Bins full of mail sent over from the Senate sat unattended. A lot of young women, fanatical Hillary fans all, rushed about, seemingly unclear about what they were supposed to be doing. Other aides sat in front of computer screens, gloomily reading coverage of the campaign. Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer, the campaign's communications team, weren't speaking with anybody else, just doing their own thing, whatever that might have been. In short, it was not a happy family.

That is not a portrait of a campaign that is in the groove and feeling good about itself. The description Clift gives more closely resembles a badly organized wake, minus the black bunting. I predicted a few days ago that Clinton would get pounded in Texas and Ohio. I wonder how bad it is going to be - I think her campaign expects the worst.  If she does lose badly, expect the calls from Democratic leaders for her to drop out to begin as soon as the disastrous numbers start posting. Read the rest of Clift's column - it actually gets worse from that opener. That was the high point.

How Ahnold Got His Tank Back

Arnold Schwarzenegger has reclaimed his tank and plans to offer rides to schoolchildren in the M-47 as an incentive to stay in school. Why does he have an M-47 tank? Because he can.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator star and Governor of California, has been reunited with the tank he drove during his time as a member of the Austrian army.
    
Arnie gets Austrian army tank back
Schwarzenegger plans to give disadvantaged children rides in the M47 tank

The M47 American-made tank has been on loan to the Motts Military Museum in Ohio for the past eight years, but "the Governator" recently decided he wanted it back so that he could offer disadvantaged inner-city schoolchildren rides in it.

Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria, said he plans to give children from the Los Angeles area rides in the tank rewards for staying in school, avoiding drugs and working hard.

The governor said he used to offer trips to his movie sets as an incentive to kids.

But since he became governor and stopped making movies in 2003, he hasn't had anything enticing to offer. He said kids just aren't that excited about a tour of the state Capitol.

Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, said the governor plans to store the tank at a private location.

"He's going to have it closer to home, in California, so he can enjoy it," Mr McLear said. 

Personally, we wonder if he's actually gearing up for the next legislative session. It would be much harder for the legislature to argue with a man in a tank. 

Backfire

Yet another Clinton campaign backfire. Her version of the "Daisy" ad helped bring about an unintentionally humorous moment during a campaign phone conference with reporters. Well, the press was amused, anyway. The Clinton campaign is likely not laughing at this one. Especially since the story is out about what happened.

It was, in this reporter's opinion, the most interesting moment in today's Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.

Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak — that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.

You really have to go over and listen to it. It's hysterical listening to them try to come up with something, anything to answer with. What they did spout comes across as a mad scramble with them fumbling to dredge up something that sounds intelligent. And failing. 

Reckless Pandering

Even the Washington Post is appalled at the anti-NAFTA rhetoric issuing forth from The Great Left Hope and Her inevitableness. They slam the promises of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as pandering at best, reckless at worst.

NEVER illuminating, the Democratic presidential primary debate over trade policy took an especially dim turn this week. In their final head-to-head meeting before Tuesday's Ohio and Texas primaries, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) declared that they would opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico unless those two countries renegotiated the pact's labor and environmental provisions to the United States' liking. For two candidates who pledge to repair U.S. standing in the world, it was an odd swipe at our next-door neighbors. Not surprisingly, Mexican and Canadian officials recoiled at the prospect of overturning settled political and economic expectations in their countries.

What could the Democrats mean? Labor and the environment are covered by "side agreements" to NAFTA, negotiated by President Bill Clinton, that call on all three countries to make and enforce good laws. The more recent U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement went further, requiring Peru to change its labor laws to meet International Labor Organization standards. Both Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton, who supported the Peru deal, see it as a model for a NAFTA renegotiation with Mexico, according to their advisers. But if that's all the candidates have in mind, they are wildly overpromising: The Peru pact's labor and environmental standards are only incrementally stronger than the NAFTA side agreements. Meanwhile, the risks of renegotiation are huge. NAFTA is controversial in Mexico, too; farmers there are outraged by American agricultural imports. If the Mexican side asked that tariffs be reimposed on U.S. grain as part of a renegotiation, would President Obama or President Clinton sacrifice American farmers whose votes they were seeking only yesterday in Iowa? Or would he or she pull out of NAFTA? If the latter, the tariffs on both sides would revert to the levels of 14 years ago. 

So the two candidates who pledge to "restore" America's place in the world are both promising to unilaterally impose their will on our two closest sovereign neighbors and undo 14 years of progress for all three nations. That is a pretty funny way to accomplish their stated goals. Both Canada and Mexico are very unhappy with this kind of talk. And the voters being pandered to are in for a rude shock when they finally figure out that neither one of these to can deliver on such promises. Gutting, abandoning or even "renegotiating" NAFTA would be an enormous hit on the credibility of the United States as a reliable partner.  

Let The Howling Begin

Actually, the howling has already started. The decision by the US Air Force to award a new aerial refueling tanker contract to a Northrup-Grumman/EADS consortium instead of to Boeing is actually uniting lawmakers from both parties. There is bipartisan outrage at the decision.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Air Force decision awarding a $35 billion aircraft contract to a team including the European parent of Airbus landed like a bomb in Congress on Friday, drawing howls of protest from lawmakers aligned with the loser, America's Boeing Co.

The Congressional delegation from the Seattle area said they were "outraged." Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt vowed to seek a review of the decision "at the highest levels of the Pentagon and Congress" in hopes of reversing it.

Boeing has big facilities in both Seattle and Wichita, which stood to gain from the long-term project to build up to 179 aerial refueling tankers. Although Boeing was favored to win the contract, the Air Force awarded it to a partnership between Northrop Grumman and Europe's EADS.

Conventional wisdom was running so strongly against Northrop-EADS in some corners of Capitol Hill that Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's office issued a statement late on Friday declaring Boeing the winner. It was swiftly retracted.

Lawmakers from Alabama, where Northrop and EADS plan to do some tanker work, were effusive in praising the Air Force.

Lawmakers are demanding investigations, reviews and just about everything else under the sun over this. It would seem to be a case of being caught in their own rhetoric, however. This one will be interesting to watch.  

“I won’t Be In Today….

…I had a friend shoot me." A Washington man had a friend shoot him in the shoulder so he could take some time off from work.

Sheriff's detectives in Franklin County, Wash., say a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn't have to go to work.

When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch (KOOCH) told them he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid a drug test.

The friend has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch is expected to be charged with false reporting.

We have never tried that particular ruse to take a day off. Nor had it ever - remotely - crossed our minds to do so. We prefer the more rational excuses, like: "I was hit by a falling St. Bernard ." Or the ever popular, "There are snakes coming out of the toilet." 

Las Vegas Ricin Mystery

Still more confusion is coming out about the ricin discovered in a Las Vegas hotel room. Weapons and a textbook described as anarchist in nature that described how to make ricin were also discovered. But the narrative by police is increasingly weird. It seems police had searched the room and found the weapons and book at an earlier date than the ricin finally turned up.

Adding to the mystery, police said firearms and an "anarchist type textbook" were found in the same room where the ricin was discovered two days later.

Capt. Joseph Lombardo said at a news conference late Friday that the book was tabbed at a spot with information about ricin. Police found the firearms and books on Tuesday after a manager at the Extended Stay America motel called police upon discovering weapons, he said, without elaborating.

After authorities seized the book and weapons, tests for ricin were conducted but came back negative, Lombardo said.

He said a 53-year-old friend or relative of the sick man contacted motel management on Feb. 22 to inform them about pets in the room.

Earlier Friday, police Deputy Chief Kathy Suey said the friend or relative found two vials of ricin on Thursday after going to the motel to retrieve the hospitalized man's belongings. Authorities on Friday confirmed that the vials contained ricin.

It was unclear how long the vials were in the unoccupied motel room, and whether they might have been overlooked when ricin tests were conducted on Tuesday. Lombardo did not address such questions during the brief news conference.

Officials continue to insist that there is no terrorism involved. But absent any information on the man who is still in a coma, it's getting more murky as news trickles out. With the news that the book and weapons were found in addition to the ricin, it certainly does not look like some sort of harmless prank, does it?

Heels, Makeup And A Blow-dried Muskrat

In a story that will likely give PETA a case of apoplectic hysterics, the Washington Post covers the annual Miss Outdoors pageant held as part of the Eastern Shores festival in Maryland. One of the contestants combined the two biggest aspects of the festival into one: for the talent portion, she demonstrated how to skin a muskrat while dressed to the nines in her pageant outfit . It's actually quite a charming story about a changing culture. 

GOLDEN HILL, Md. — Contestant No. 1 sashayed down the catwalk, her hair bouncing in blonde curls, and smiled a radiant beauty-queen smile. She picked up a furry dead rodent about the size of a football.

Then she took out a very sharp four-inch blade and stuck the point in just above the animal's tail.

"Then," she said, narrating the incision as sweetly as a Miss America contestant talking about world peace, "you're going to want to take your knife . . . "

This was the "talent" portion of the 2008 Miss Outdoors pageant, part of an improbable Eastern Shore festival that combines the worlds of beauty contests and competitive muskrat skinning.

For years here, young women have paraded in glittery evening gowns, and then — on the same stage — skinners in camouflage hats have separated small animals from their pelts.

This year, two girls chose to do both.

Their story played out less than 60 miles from Washington, in a place where time is slowly eroding a culture built around the Chesapeake Bay's boot-sucking marshes. These teenagers were afraid that, without their participation, both the pageant and the skinning races might decline even further.

So they sought to take on a hybrid role, one foot in their world and one in their grandparents'. In one weekend, they would be both modern princesses and old-time, blood-covered 'rat-skinners.

" . . . You want to take your knuckles," 17-year-old Samantha Phillips, Contestant No. 1, was saying. One of the pageant judges squinched up her face in shock. "And separate the meat from the hide, just like this."

"Oh my God!" a boy in the audience yelled, at the sight of a woman in perfect makeup with her hand inside a muskrat.

Then, from another part of the crowd: an older woman's voice: "She's good." 

It's a fairly long piece, but well worth taking the time to read. Documentary filmmaker Amy Nicholson made a film about the quirky festival and beauty pageant called Muskrat Lovely in 2004 (or I would have used that for the title of this post!). You can see the trailer for that movie here. Oh, and Samantha Phillips did actually blow-dry her muskrat before her performance. It was noticeably fluffy. Go over and have a read (they have a video as well). 

Looming Hunger

The United States Agency for International Development, USAID, will have to significantly reduce the amount of food aid it distributes to many of the neediest countries due to soaring food prices. With increasing amounts of food being diverted into biofuel production, prices are skyrocketing. Already operating at a budget shortfall, USAID will have to cut back sharply on food purchases. 

The U.S. government's humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world's poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.

USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year's end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.

Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency's emergency programs — which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan's Darfur region — to decide how and where the cuts will be made.

"We're in the process now of going country by country and analyzing the commodity price increase on each country," said Jeff Borns, director of USAID's Food for Peace, the organization's food aid arm. "Then we're going to have to prioritize."

The reductions, international relief agencies say, will seriously complicate already strained efforts to combat global hunger, particularly in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. Poor countries in those regions are struggling to cope with record food price surges, which have made it difficult for aid groups to sustain their operations in some countries.

The cuts will likely have a direct impact on major USAID partners, including aid groups and the United Nations World Food Program, the largest international provider, which counts on U.S food aid for 40 percent of its distribution. 

Wheat prices alone rose by 25% in one day last week. There have been no significant droughts or major disruptions that have caused this. To add to the worries, the US Congress is working on a new agricultural subsidy bill that would restrict USAID from tapping into non-emergency food stocks in a disaster like the Asian tsunami.

Many people, myself included, have been warning that this would happen. The diversion of corn into ethanol production and the diversion of croplands and resources into biofuel production is having a cascade effect in the food markets. If their is a widespread series of crop production problems in the future, things will get infinitely worse. Rapidly.  

Meanwhile, people will begin starving soon in many of the most vulnerable countries.