First we had sailors trying on some new ACUs for duty in Iraq, now it looks like some Air Force officers may get to try on some ACUs as well:
The service has determined it has too many officers who received their commissions in 2002 and 2003 and a board met in April to determine who will stay in. According to a press release issued by the Air Force Personnel Center, 843 officers ?or just more than 40 percent of those who joined in the two-year period ?will be let go.
Judy Grojean, a spokeswoman for AFPC, said Tuesday from Randolph Air Force Base in Texas that officials were reluctant to answer further questions until those affected had been notified.
(…)
Those who aren’t retained are eligible to seek positions in the reserve or Guard or submit packages to transfer to the Army. They also may apply for civil service jobs. They’re also eligible for variable separation packages.
According to the press release, the officers will be separated no later than Sept. 29. It was not stated how soon the departures might begin.
There are going to be some pissed off Air Force officers in the coming weeks, but the Pentagon is trying to cut fat where ever it can in order to boost the number of junior officers into the Army.
The War on Terror is being fought on more than the streets of Baghdad, but also on computer screens in the bedrooms of Islamic youths:
Tech-savvy militants from al-Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that US troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, US Defence Department official and contractors told Congress.
The games appear on militant websites, where youths as young as seven can play at being troop-killing urban guerrillas after registering with the site’s sponsors.
“What we have seen is that any video game that comes out … they’ll modify it and change the game for their needs,” said Dan Devlin, a Defence Department public diplomacy specialist.
This really isn’t a surprisng inovation, but it does show the lengths that Islamic extremist are having to go to now in order to recruit more youths to waste their lives trying to stop democracy in Iraq, while the recruiters like Zarqawi roll in the dough and buying new tennis shoes.
I wonder if the anti-US hate groups in Korea like Hanchongryun or the Korean Federation of Trade Unions has thought about making a video game mod of the Battle of Pyeongtaek yet?
The first group ever of North Korean refugees allowed asylum status in the United States has arrived:
Six refugees from North Korea, including four women who say they were victims of sexual slavery or forced marriages, have fled to the United States, a senator said Saturday.
The group is the first from North Korea to be given official refugee status since passage of a 2004 law that makes it easier for North Koreans to apply for such status.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, said the six refugees arrived at an undisclosed U.S. location Friday night from a Southeast Asian nation. He would not identify from which nation they came because of worries about security for their families and to avoid diplomatic complications with the country that sent them.
“This is a great act of compassion by the United States and the other countries involved,” said Brownback, a co-sponsor of the law. He said that the refugees’ arrival in the United States showed “the act is working” by making the refugees’ human rights a part of U.S. policy toward the North.
It is very common for North Korean women who are hiding secretly in northern China to become victims of sexual slavery and forced marriages because if they don’t agree to such practices than they can be turned over to the Chinese authorities which means deportation back to North Korea and from there the gulag.
Hopefully this will be more than just a one time event because this will give refugees hiding in China and other Asian countries another outlet to seek asylum besides South Korea. This news is not going to make South Korea to happy though. South Korea is actively trying to prevent North Koreans from defecting in order to appease the Kim Jong Il government in North Korea. Appeasing the North Koreans is of more interest to the current South Korean government than human rights of refugees.
Like I said before, I will be more impressed when she actually wins something:
Michelle Wie slid to a two-over-par 74 at the rain-shortened SK Telecom Open in South Korea to finish 14 strokes behind winner Prom Meesawat of Thailand.
Hawaiian teenager Wie, who made the cut in a men’s tournament for the first time, was disappointed by her final day display.
“It just didn’t really go the way I wanted today,” she said.
Wie mixed two birdies against four bogeys at the Sky 72 Golf Club course for a three-round, three-under 213. The event was re-scheduled for three rounds after Saturday’s washout.
“I did my best, but the result was not as satisfying as I would have liked,” Wie said after her final round. “But the most important thing is that I tried my best,” she added.
I still maintain she should worry more about winning an LPGA event before tackling these PGA events.
Michelle Wie has finally done it, she has made the cut in a major mens tournament, in Korea no less:
Sixteen-year-old Michelle Wie on Friday became the first women to make the cut in a major men’s tour event for 61 years at Incheon, South Korea.
Wie fired four birdies on her way to a three-under 69 in the second round of the Asian Tour’s SK Telecom Open to put at her at five under.
The last woman to make the final two rounds of a senior men’s event was Babe Zaharias at the 1945 Los Angeles Open.
The Hawaiian schoolgirl had been bidding to make her first halfway cut in eight appearances against the men.
I will be more impressed when she win’s a major women’s tournament. It just seems to me that she should be focusing more on being the best LPGA golfer which she is not, before taking on the PGA tour.
The Chosun has an interesting article on the revenue that Michelle Wie is bringing in for the appearance in Korea:
SK Telecom levered the golf tour to the international level in terms of scale and significance by inviting Choi, last year¿s champion, and global sports star Wie. But the cost was steep. In addition to the US$700,000 appearance fee for the pair, the company had to fork out for air tickets, accommodation and security for Wie, her parents and her four staff.
But the company seems happy, having already recovered the appearance fee for Wie with the W700 million(US$700,000) MBC paid for the broadcasting rights for all four rounds.
Kia Motors offered more than W100 million to SK Telecom for golf lessons from Wie for its customers. Unlike past golf tours, the event is expected to break even from ticket sales alone.
All this money for someone who hasn’t won anything unlike the Korean female golfers that have multiple major LPGA tournament championships. The marketing of Michelle Wie is really amazing. I bet very few people even know she hasn’t won anything yet.
I had to watch this video again because I was so shocked that a TV news reporter was openly defending the terrorist mastermind of Al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but that is exactly what CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre does in the video.
I am going to summarize and put in quotes exactly what McIntyre had to say in regards to the bumbling al-Zarqawi trying to fire an American M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in a propaganda video:
The M249 machine has a “heavy trigger and is not easy to fire” making it “understandable” why he would “have trouble firing it” because the weapon requires “specific training” and “he is probably not trained to fire American weapons.”
To see the video for yourself you need to go to the CNN.com website and go to the Watch Video section and select the US Mocks al-Zarqawi Video in that section. Sorry there is no specific link to access the video that I could find. You will have to use the CNN.com website.
Anyway the M249 is not that difficult to fire. In the Army we teach 18 year old privates who’s only weapons knowledge is playing Duck Hunt on the Nintendo, how to fire this weapon in no time. Plus people with weapons experience know that if your weapon is jamming to pull back the charging handle to clear the chamber. Zarqawi had to get someone to show him how to pull back a charging handle on the weapon. This just makes me wonder how often he is actually handling weapons? He is probably just like all the other Al Qaida big wigs, sending out kids filled with propaganda about 72 virgins to do their dirty work while they sit back make propaganda videos, collect the money coming in, and in Zarqawi’s case, buy new American made tennis shoes.
This report though just begs the question of who’s side are these US reporters on? How in world can any journalist, especially an American journalist defend a brutal killer like Zarqawi and keep a straight face like Jamie McIntyre does? I think these reporters are so used to watering down anything positive that CENTCOM puts out that he doesn’t even realize how ridiculous he sounds. Is CNN becoming another Al Jazeera?
Some how I just don’t see this happening any time soon:
Korea, China and Japan have agreed to start joint research at government level on introducing an Asian single currency comparable to the euro. Finance Minister Han Duck-soo made the agreement with his Chinese counterpart Jin Renqing and Japan¿s Sadakazu Tanigaki on the sidelines of the 39th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in India.
This is the first time governments have decided to make concrete efforts toward the launch of the Asian currency unit (ACU), which only exists as a theoretical construct. So far, calls have mostly come from the private sector.
These guys can’t even agree on who owns what worthless rocks in the middle of the ocean or who did what to who historically much less agree on sharing a common currency. I’m fairly confident that a combination of xenophobia and nationalism will sink this idea for quite some time.
A statement like this one from the new (anti)Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok definitely qualifies you to be a useful idiot (from the Korea Liberator):
¿At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death,¿ Lee said.
¿ UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok
Read the rest of the Korea Liberator report on the other fibs Lee has been caught passing. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this guy may actually be worse than former Unification Minister Chung Dong-young.
The Chosun Ilbo featured an article in Foreign Policy magazine that has rankings for the sustainability of the different countries in the world:
North Korea has been ranked 14th on a list of ¿failed states¿ compiled by the U.S. global policy journal Foreign Policy together with the Fund for Peace. The two gave countries number grades in areas like government authority, legitimacy, public peace and basic public services.
In the results published Monday, Sudan topped the list for being in the middle of a civil war. It was followed by the similarly afflicted Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Iraq and Zimbabwe. Among the 148 countries, 11 in the top 20 were African nations.
Take a look at this map:
I have to wonder about the data to create this map when the US and most of Europe are not considered sustainable governments?
