Top commander wants U.S. to figure out what it wants to do in Afghanistan

Well, it certainly is nice to hear some common sense now and again. We're speaking, of course, of Sunday's broadcast of an interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who has urged U.S. President Barack Obama to commit tens of thousands more soldiers to battle to stabilize the country and defeat the Taliban, according to Cable News Network (CNN). McChrystal said the key to winning in Afghanistan is gaining the support of ordinary Aghanis, many of whom have turned against the United States and its allies over what they see as indiscriminate bombings and high civilian casualties. "The greatest risk is . . . to lose the support of the people here," McChrystal said on the CBS show "60 Minutes," CNN said. "If the people are against us, we cannot be successful," McChrystal said. "If the people view us as occupiers and the enemy, we can't be successful and our casualties will go up dramatically." The United States has supplied 60 percent of the combined force of nearly 100,000 soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. U.S. and allied forces were dispatched to Afghanistan after determining that the radical Islamic group al-Qaida was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Al-Qaida was under the protection of another radical Islamic group, the Taliban, which was then in control of Afghanistan. The troops drove the Taliban from power but were unable to locate al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden despite years of searching. Obama has called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" and has authorized 21,000 additional soldiers to be sent there to battle a resurgent Taliban, but he has started a process of re-evaluating the U.S. engagement. McChrystal is expected to ask for as many as 70,000 more troops when he makes recommendations to the president in the coming weeks. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates told CNN on Sunday that Obama could turn down his generals' requests for more troops, as urged by some Democratic Party leaders in Congress. "The reality is, do we need additional forces. How many forces? And to do what?" Gates told CNN. "It's the 'to do what' that I think we need to make sure we have confidence, we understand, before making recommendations to the president." What's that? The administration is still figuring out the "to do what" in Afghanistan? Yes, it certainly would be nice to know what the troops are fighting and dying for in Afghanistan before risking any more lives -- ours and theirs.

Water on the moon changes a lot of assumptions

This week's realization that there probably is water on earth's moon raises a lot of questions -- not the least of which being, "what other things don't we know about space that we think we do know?" NASA scientists reached the startling conclusion about the presence of water after analyzing data from an instrument they supplied to to India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite, that country's first unmanned moon mission, according to the New York Times. The device detected the widespread presence of hydroxyl, a molecule composed of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of water, on a celestial body long considered completely dry. The discovery was published this week on the Web site of the journal Science. What may be even more surprising is that the finding actually replicates earlier findings of the Apollo missions, which brought back lunar soil containing evidence of water decades ago but were attributed to contamination from the moist earth atmosphere, the Times said. The data also confirms findings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which passed the moon 10 years ago on its way to Saturn, and the Deep Impact spacecraft sent to study the comet Tempel 1, the Times said. “It’s so startling because it’s so pervasive,” Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told the Times. "It's like somebody painted the globe." Taylor co-wrote a paper analyzing the Chandrayaan-1 data. NASA scientists now are examining the possibility that the moon's hydroxyl could be used to supply water and even oxygen for future manned missions to the moon, or for a permanent installation there, the Times said. But that's just like humans to see this new discovery in terms of human beings. Maybe it means that there is or was another type of life on the moon or on other planets in our solar system, life that we don't even begin to understand or know how to recognize. And maybe, just maybe, it means that a lot of our other assumptions about earth and space are incorrect.

The condition of the preconditions for Arab-Israeli talks

Word from the United Nations in New York is that U.S. President Barack Obama appears to have signaled a shift in policy and is no longer insisting that Israel freeze all home building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In a speech delivered after meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama said talks between the governments should resume immediately "without preconditions." Obama had been hoping to announce the resumption of peace talks but apparently was unable to convince either leader to return to the negotiating table, according to the Reuters international news service. U.S. officials said Saturday that they are still hopeful of putting a deal together that would involve steps toward normalization of relations between Israel, the PA and other Arab states in the region, even if a settlements freeze is not possible now, Reuters said. "We don't want to have the perfect be the enemy of the good," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman told Reuters. "We're not going to wait for the perfect package before we start negotiations." The PA has insisted on a freeze before it returns to talks, but Israel has pressed ahead with housing developments in East Jerusalem, which the PA wants as its capital despite Israel's objections. Abbas apparently believes a freeze is necessary to convince his people to support negotiations, still a highly controversial prospect among Israel's Arab neighbors. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also met with officials from nine Arab countries this week to discuss the Middle East peace process as well as issues involving Iran, Iraq and Yemen, Reuters said. She said she was "pleased" by the reaction of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- and what she heard from leaders of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, but would not specify what that was. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel but the rest have not. But Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal was pessimistic on Saturday, Reuters said. "No real results or notable signs of progress have been achieved in spite of the commendable endeavors of the United States of America (and) the evident personal desire of President Barack Obama and his team to further the peace process," he said. Feltman suggested that other Arab states should back Abbas in resuming peace talks even if Israel has not agreed to a freeze. Readers of this Weblog know that the settlements freeze issue has been raised in an effort to discourage a peace deal, since the PA stands only to gain from such development. Peace is probably only possible if the parties return to negotiations without forcing Israel to agree to a freeze, since that will demonstrate that the PA and the Arab nations have been able to elevate their desire and need for peace over the obviously powerful instinct for revenge over centuries-old grievances.

Nothing from nothing leaves $100 million

Rich people still are different from the rest of us. Perhaps that's the best explanation yet for why venture capitalists ponied up an additional $100 million on Thursday for a bit of Twitter, the wildly popular Internet microblogging service. Twitter, a Web startup that lets people express themselves in 140 words or less, has attracted millions of users in its three and a half-year existence but no known revenue. The new cash infusion is expected to raise the value of the company to $1 billion, even though it only has 60 employees and does not plan to begin accepting advertising revenue until next year, according to the New York Times. Twitter's valuation is apparently based in large part on the numerous takeover offers it has received, notably from its chief rival, Facebook, and as well from Google and Microsoft. “Twitter is so likely to be successful at this point, it is almost impossible to envision a way in which Facebook can truly monopolize online content-sharing,” Keith Rabois, the vice president of strategy at Web social entertainment firm Slide, told the Times. Facebook has more than 300 million users but its continued domination of Web social networking appears to face a serious challenge from Twitter. “There have probably been less than five examples of companies that have grown like Twitter has,” John Borthwick of Betaworks told the Times. Betaworks created the link-shortening service Bit.ly. Twitter is "a new layer of innovation on the Internet," Borthwick said. “This investment is happening because it represents a shift.” And just who are the new investors? They include Insight Venture Partners, a New York company, mutual fund giant T. Rowe Price and current backers Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners, the Times said.

Effects of G.M bankruptcy still roiling San Francisco Bay

Did the State of California get the raw end of the deal along with thousands of autoworkers when the Toyota-General Motors joint venture in Fremont shut down last month? That's what a state panel that gave New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. a $2 million training grant in February is investigating, now that the automobile facility is scheduled to close early next year. The acting chairman of the Employment Training Panel, the little-known state agency that awarded the grant, has asked NUMMI to withdraw its request for the money in light of Toyota's announcement in August that the facility would be closing, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. "We would never have approved this if they had told us they were closing this factory in a year," said the acting chairman, Barry Broad, a labor union attorney. But NUMMI and the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which helped train the workers, said the facility deserved the money because the training had been ongoing for months before the decision to close the plant was made. "We were hopeful that (Employment Training Panel) funding, along with other state and local programs, would enable Nummi to continue production at its Fremont facility," CMTA President Jack Stewart said, according to the Chronicle. "We expect that contractual obligations regarding completed employee training will be met." In fact, panel rules permit the agency to recover training funds when the company that gets money closes down or leaves the state. But a panel official said the $2 million was an indirect contract with CMTA, not NUMMI, so the recapture provision did not apply, the newspaper said. NUMMI received more than $18 million in training funds prior to the dispute. A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told the Chronicle that the governor's office requested the investigation.

Bush-era wiretapping goes on trial in San Francisco

Today's start of a court hearing on the federal government's post-9/11 wiretapping could herald a major step in undoing the years of constitutional mayhem of the Bush administration. A federal judge in San Francisco could decide that a now-defunct Islamic charity declared a terrorist organization in 2004 can proceed with its damage suit against the government for listening in on phone conversations with its attorneys without a warrant, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. The Bush and Obama administrations have tried, and failed, to get the case dismissed on national security grounds. U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has already ruled in the case that public statements by the government indicated that the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation had probably been wiretapped, the Chronicle said. The case is only the second in the country to challenge the Bush-era wiretapping program, instituted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. In the first case, a federal judge declared the program unconstitutional but was overruled on appeal because the plaintiffs could not prove they had personally been wiretapped. But the Al-Haramain case is different in that the government already released documents apparently showing the charity had been wiretapped. The Bush administration said the documents had been improperly released, requested their return and declared them confidential. The foundation's attorney, Jon Eisenberg, argued before Walker that the president did not have the power to override a 1978 law requiring a special national security court to approve wiretapping of suspected terrorists, the Chronicle said. "May the president of the United States break the law in the name of national security? ... We're asking this court to say, 'no,'" Eisenberg argued at the hearing. Eisenberg also quoted now-President Barack Obama's statement while a candidate in 2007 that "warrantless surveillance of American citizens in defiance of (the 1978 law) is unlawful and unconstitutional." Walker told a government lawyer that the foundation had presented strong evidence that it had been wiretapped, the Chronicle said. The New York Times revealed the existence of the program in 2005 and Bush confirmed it. But Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino contended Al-Haramain's case had to be dismissed because the program, and everything connected to it, were protected secrets. Any ruling to the contrary would be "simply inappropriate," he argued, because it could reveal confidential information about "intelligence sources and methods," the Chronicle said.

California utility quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce in dispute over climate policy

In a dispute that highlights the disconcerting dichotomy of views on global warming, the Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a major California utility, announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn from the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce. PG&E's chairman told the chamber that it was leaving because of "fundamental differences" with the group's approach to climate change, according to the New York Times. “We find it dismaying that the chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored,” PG&E Chairman Peter Darbee said in a letter to the chamber. The letter was published in a PG&E blog on Tuesday, the Times said. The chamber said it supports greenhouse gas emission reductions in principal, but has been critical of President Barack Obama's new regulatory proposals because it believes they could drive up energy prices and force U.S. jobs overseas, Reuters said. The chamber recently threatened to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its climate change conclusions, Reuters said.