Birth cover up

First thing first, I believe Obama, being a child of an American citizen, has a legitimate angle to be president of the US. Second thing, he already is president of the US. However, I find the following tibits from a circulating email interesting as they suggests a cover up of sort.

1.Back in 1961 people of color were called 'Negroes.' So how can the Obama 'birth certificate' state he is "African-American" when the term wasn't even used at that time?

2. The birth certificate that the White House released lists Obama's birth as August 4, 1961 & lists Barack Hussein Obama as his father. No big deal, right ? At the time of Obama's birth, it also shows that his father is aged 25 years old, and that Obama's father was born in " Kenya , East Africa ." This wouldn't seem like anything of concern, except for the fact that Kenya did not even exist until 1963, two whole years after Obama's birth, and 27 years after his father's birth. How could Obama's father have been born in a country that did not yet exist ? Up and until Kenya was formed in 1963, it was known as the "British East Africa Protectorate".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya

3. On the Birth Certificate released by the White House, the listed place of birth is "Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital." This cannot be, because the hospital(s) in question in 1961 were called KauiKeolani Children's Hospital" and "Kapi'olani Maternity Home," respectively. The name did not change to Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until 1978, when these two hospitals merged. How can this particular name of the hospital be on a birth certificate dated 1961 if this name had not yet been applied to it until 1978? http://http://www.kapiolani.org/women-and-children/about-us/default.aspx
http://www.kapiolani.org/women-and-children/about-us/default.aspx

Why hasn't this been discussed in the major media ?
4. Perhaps a clue comes from Obama’s book on his father. He states how proud he is of his father fighting in WW II. I'm not a math genius, so I may need some help from you. Barack Obama’s “birth certificate” says his father was 25 years old in 1961 when he was born. That should have put his father’s date of birth approximately 1936—if my math holds (Honest! I did that without a calculator!!!) Now we need a non-revised history book—one that hasn't been altered to satisfy the author’s goals—to verify that WW II was basically between 1939 and 1945. Just how many 3 year olds fight in wars? Even in the latest stages of WW II his father wouldn't have been more than 9. Does that mean that Mr. Obama is a liar, or simply chooses to alter the facts to satisfy his imagination or political purposes (still qualifies as a “liar”)?

ACORN is Despicable

Previous I posted about ACORN and Fraud. The revelation documented by Hannah Giles, James O'Keefe, and Andrew Breitbart at Big Government deserves big applause. Both the House and the Senate now have taken steps to stop funding ACORN. I am sure they will find a way (both the Democrats in bed with ACORN and ACORN themselves) will find a way to continue their activities. The key though is that their taint is now in the public domain.

What is exemplary about this episode isn't just about breaking open how despicable and corrupt ACORN is, but also how corrupt and lazy the main stream medias are. In the process it also underscores how new media, as well as concerned citizens can make a difference that shame and make irrelevant the legacy media. Again, kudos to the folks at Big Government! Happy hunting.

I Support the Current and Constitutional Government of Honduras

Despite what the MSM may be reporting, and our pittiful ZerObama president is saying, there was no coup in Honduras.

From Honduras:

I write this report to try to explain the situation from my point of view, and try to clear the scenario for as many international eyes and ears as possible.

Mr. Zelaya was elected president of Honduras through popular election on November 2005, for the 2006-2009 period. He was elected on a narrow margin, mostly due to the ruling party's candidate desire to push for the death penalty in our country, which is not allowed in our law. We are a peaceful and tame people, and do not like such drastic penalties.

Mr. Zelaya was elected because he opposed death penalty, and he promised to continue his party's work on improving the situation on our country's education, health and social situation, while promoting democracy and swearing to protect our Constitution. He also promoted a so called "Citizen's power", which was supposed to be a channel for the people to express their thoughts to the government.

In the first 2 years of his term, he seemed to be trying to fulfill his promises, but then we see him starting to engage in relations with Venezuela's leftist president Hugo Chavez, which per se is not a bad thing, but he starts to support his ideologies.

This is where Mr. Zelaya stabbed the Honduran people in the back. He makes an unpredicted turn to the left, which the majority of the population is against, but nevertheless, he goes on with the integration of Honduras to the ALBA, Hugo Chavez's initiative, which has caused nothing but civil unrest on countries that have joined. This mostly motivated by promises of easy money by Chavez.

Zelaya starts also to take a populist stance, first approving a huge increase in government workers' wage, then approving a general increase to the minimum wage to levels where small and medium business were not able to cope with. He uses his "Citizen's power" initiative to promise the poor areas of Honduras a thousand and one benefits with the integration to the ALBA. This all seems good, but in the background, he is asphyxiating our country's air-thin budget with these initiatives, and forgoing such responsibilities such as the fight of crime, drug trafficking, diseases, the World's economical crisis, and many other social matters.This is Zelaya first crime.

With this strategy, Zelaya "purchased" the support of some in-country blocks, such as peasant and indigenous organizations.This all would have been good, until you see Zelaya's true intentions.

His purpose was of gathering support for his new project: to dispose of the current Constitution, over which he was sworn in, and create a new one, similar to ones crafted by Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, with which he would be allowed to be re-elected. This is Zelaya's second crime.

In trying to create a legal and "democratic" facade for his project, Zelaya used one of the statutes of his "Citizen's power" initiative, which is the "Law of Citizens' participation", in which the people can put request to the government to conduct surveys about the peoples opinion. The problem is that no one to be asked about their will to change the constitution. This was fabricated by Zelaya, by threatening public employees to fire them, if they do not bring in a quota of "voluntarily" signed requested for this inquiry. So public employees, trying to safeguard their jobs, started forcing people to sign this if they wanted to be treated at hospitals, sold needed medicines, and even have a phone line repaired. This is Zelaya's third crime.

After gathering a certain number of "requests", he started moving for the installation of a popular inquiry, in which he would ask if the people wanted a new constitution, and which was going to take place today. The issue here is that this "popular inquiry" was not sanctioned by any independent and legal body, such as the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and, furthermore, was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Justice, on the grounds that our Constitution forbids anyone on changing the basic, or petrous, articles of it, which state the form of government and the impossibility of re-election. This was his fourth and last crime, against the Republic of Honduras.

This day's event, where just a consequence of Zelaya moving on with this illegal inquiry. After his stubbornness to continue with it, his arrest was ordered by the Supreme Court of Justice, arrest which was conducted by the brave men in the military.

HT Right Wing Sparkle.

more from Powerline Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Obama channels W

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Internet Boycott

I have decided to boycott some of the more liberally biased media. I will no longer post any link or follow any link to the NYT, LAT, or CNBC/NBC. I am contemplating CNN, FN, and WaPo as well. Everytime anyone goes to one of their web page, they gain in ad revenues. I cannot support that. I encourage all of you to boycott them as well.

Since they have no idea whether I am watching their TV network, this naturally does not affect that medium.

Palin & Earmarks

From the WSJ Palin's Project List Totals $453 Million

It does state that prior to Palin's first year as governor, $350 millions was requested. Her first year it was cut to $257, and for her second year, cut again to $197.
But the rest of the article was rather superficial (surprisingly so for the WSJ).

These projects include more than $130 million in federal funds that would benefit Alaska's fishing industry and an additional $9 million to help Alaska oil companies. She also has sought $4.5 million to upgrade an airport on a Bering Sea island that has a year-round population of less than 100.

Perfunction reveals that "an airport on a Bering Sea island that has a year-round population of less than 100" is

According to this document (PDF; thanks, Ed), the Aleutian backwater that needs an airport upgrade is Adak Island. (Example of more WSJ sloppiness: the amount is $3.2 million, not $4.5 million).

OUTRAGE! How dare Palin attempt to pork up some ghost town speck of rock in the Pacific? Airport to Nowhere indeed! There's no good reason for this federal spending.

Or is there?

Adak Island is the new home port of the newest sensor in the US ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, the one-of-a-kind Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX):

The SBX has been on station off the coast of Adak since early 2007, and played a key role in tracking/targeting the toxic spy satellite shoot-down this past February. Positioned in the North Pacific, the SBX is ready to detect ICBMs launched from Asia towards the US:

[Missile Defense Agency Director] Obering said this radar is so powerful that if it were located in Chesapeake Bay, it could track an object the size of a baseball over San Francisco.

While stationed off Adak, the SBX's crew of 85 will be frequently transiting through the island's airport. With Adak's harsh weather and usually socked-in conditions, it seems that $3.2 million is a small price to pay for the safe transport of this important crew.

Patterico tells us what the other earmarks are for:

“Meets the increased needs under the Magnuson-Stevens Act for developing regional fishery coordinated databases.”

“This is an ongoing effort to collect data on the recreational hailbut fishery that is conducted by federal agencies though relying on the state for data.”

“Provides state funding for management of federal fisheries, including Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands king crab and tanner crab, weathervane scallops and groundfish.”

“To meet federal obligation to enhance Sockeye salmon production, the state operates an enhancement unit at an existing hatercy and conducts fish monitoring. The work is completed cooperatively with the Canadian government.”

“Provides ongoing funding for programs that mitigate that impacts of harvest reductions imposed by the Pacific Salmon Treaty on Alaskan fisheries and coastal communities.”

“Funds Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Northwest Treaty Indian Tribes in meeting federal obligations under Pacific Salmon Treaty.”

“Funds monitoring of ice seal populations in Native Villages, research on species delineation and genetics of harbor seals to understand the declines in population and provide for population restoration, and continues research into Stellar Sea Lion population decline.”

“Allows State of Alaska to monitor Yukon River salmon and provide information necessary to support negotiations between US and Canada under Yukon River Salmon Agreement.”

“To continue necessary airport upgrading after transfer of the Naval Air Station (Adak) to the State.”

“Continued funding to address the challenges of NCLB (No Child Left Behind) as it relates to teacher quality and student achievement. It provides trained, full-release mentors for beginning teachers and principals.”

“Funds State of Alaska for implementation of federal obligations under Yukon River Treaty.”

“To complete a communication facility to support the 168th Air Refueling Wing’s 8 PAA KC 135 aircraft.”

The more I look into her beyond what the MSM are reporting, the more I like her candidacy.
btw, Governors cannot request earmarks, only Congress can.

See also Earmarks, Palin & the Bridge to Nowhere

Palin v Gibson/MSM 2

Some additional thoughts on Palin interview with Gibson this past week as well as with Hannity this comming week.

Bush Doctrine. All head-of-states believe in pre-emption when you have good info that you are about to be attacked (unless you believe the conspiracy that FDR let Pearl Harbor get bombed in order to enter WW2). The difference with W is two fold. Firstly, "if you harbor those who attack us, we have a right to attack you." This is a much more aggressive stance than pre-emption alone. This was his doctrine in his first term but this was a reactive doctrine. Secondly, W's doctrine now also includes support of Democracy as the counter for islamofascist radicalism. He amended it in his second term to include a proactive arm. Whether Palin knew this I cannot say with certainty, but it was clear that Gibson did not.

Gibson. He was likely chosen from the big 4 (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) because he might have been viewed as the most fair. There has been suggestion that Gibson was chosen by the McCain camp because he was a Republican. Whether he is a Republican or not is irrelevant, or at least too simplistic. Two things should be considered. Firstly is that he is a Washington insider and well entrenched in MSM. Even if he was conscious of elistism from being both I doubt he could counter it. I thought he was more elitist than biased. The fact that Palin is an outsider has rattled the establishment on the right and the left. The Left is just more shrill about it. Secondly, there was significant editing of the interview and what complete transcript is available so far, the broadcast edit clearly suggest bias of the producer, which may not have been clearly anticipated by the McCain camp.

Hannity. I don't think he interviews. He either confronts or re-inforce his own bias. But this interview is not meant to inform the independent voters like the Gibson interview (which was more an introduction to the voters). The Hannity interview is more about rallying the base again as well as reassure the hold out on the right that she is still better than Obama. Both really are just warm up for her real interview which will be against Biden in the VP Debate.

Palin v Gibson/MSM

For those who wondered why the interview was so choppy, it was obviously from editing. And if you wondered what was edited out, here is some of what was edited out.

GIBSON: Let’s start, because we are near Russia, let’s start with Russia and Georgia.

The administration has said we’ve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

PALIN: First off, we’re going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain’s running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep…

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals. That’s why we have to keep an eye on Russia.

And, Charlie, you’re in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. They’re very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

Sarah Palin on Russia:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We’ve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

There is much more from the link, as there are much more we haven't even seen. Palin's answers are even better then I had thought!
Stupid MSM and their bias.

HT: Newsbuster

Palin Links

From Palin herself:
on Congressional earmarks

Defending Palin:
Palin rumors clearing house
Palin sexism watch
countering Palin smears

the Bush Economy

Do not let the press or the left disuade you otherwise, the economic outlook is sound.

Economic growth. U.S. output has expanded faster than in most advanced economies since 2000. The IMF reports that real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 2.2% over the period 2001-2008 (including its forecast for the current year). President Bush will leave to his successor an economy 19% larger than the one he inherited from President Clinton. This U.S. expansion compares with 14% by France, 13% by Japan and just 8% by Italy and Germany over the same period.

The latest ICP findings, published by the World Bank in its World Development Indicators 2008, also show that GDP per capita in the U.S. reached $41,813 (in purchasing power parity dollars) in 2005. This was a third higher than the United Kingdom's, 37% above Germany's and 38% more than Japan's.

Household consumption. The ICP study found that the average per-capita consumption of the U.S. population (citizens and illegal immigrants combined) was second only to Luxembourg's, out of 146 countries covered in 2005. The U.S. average was $32,045. This was well above the levels in the UK ($25,155), Canada ($23,526), France ($23,027) and Germany ($21,742). China stood at $1,751.

Health services. The U.S. spends easily the highest amount per capita ($6,657 in 2005) on health, more than double that in Britain. But because of private funding (55% of the total) the burden on the U.S. taxpayer (9.1% of GDP) is kept to similar levels as France and Germany. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 84.7% of the U.S. population was covered by health insurance in 2007, an increase of 3.6 million people over 2006. The uninsured can receive treatment in hospitals at the expense of private insurance holders.

While life expectancy is influenced by lifestyles and not just access to health services, the World Bank nevertheless reports that average life expectancy in the U.S. rose to 78 years in 2006 (the same as Germany's), from 77 in 2000.

...

Investment has been buoyant under President Bush. According to the ICP, outlays on additions to the fixed assets (machinery and buildings, etc.) of the U.S. economy amounted to $8,018 per capita in 2005 compared to $4,963 in Germany and $4,937 in the U.K. Higher taxes on the upper-income Americans, as proposed by Mr. Obama, are likely to result in lower saving and investment, less entrepreneurial activity and reduced availability of bank credit. Lower-income Americans would be among the losers.

...

Employment. The U.S. employment rate, measured by the percentage of people of working age (16-65 years) in jobs, has remained high by international standards. The latest OECD figures show a rate of 71.7% in 2006. This was more than five percentage points above the average for the euro area.

The U.S. unemployment rate averaged 4.7% from 2001-2007. This compares with a 5.2% average rate during President Clinton's term of office, and is well below the euro zone average of 8.3% since 2000.

Debt interest payments. The IMF reports that the interest cost of servicing general government debt in the U.S. has averaged 2.0% of GDP annually from 2001-2008, compared with 2.7% in the euro zone. It averaged 3.2% annually when President Clinton was in office.

The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been largely absorbed in a relatively small increase in the defense budget (to 4.1% of GDP in 2006 from 3.8% in 1995). A much higher proportion of U.S. income was devoted to the military during World War II and the Korean War.

Negative U.S. media reports on Iraq linked to increased insurgent attacks

Somewhat obvious but I am glad that a reputable institution has studied this

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable "emboldenment effect" on insurgents there.

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government.

The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq."

The researchers studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November, tracking what they called "anti-resolve statements" by U.S. politicians and reports about American public opinion on the war.

"We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases," says the study, published earlier this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading U.S. nonprofit economic research organization.

The Last Letter Home

In 1864, with the nation wracked by civil war, President Lincoln wrote a letter1 expressing his condolences to a grieving Boston woman, mother of five men all believed at the time to have been killed in battle. (The letter is a replica.)











From the WSJ.

When a soldier falls, commanders face a profound task: Accounting for a lost life to the family
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
March 8, 2008; Page A1

ORGUN-E, Afghanistan -- "How do you start a letter like this? How do you end it?"

On a raw November morning here, along the wild frontier bordering Pakistan, Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel spoke those words as he sat down to write to a father who would never see his son again.

Images ran through the colonel's mind. His own two toddler boys, growing up quickly every day he is away at war; the parents of Private First Class Jessy Rogers, whose own child would be forever 20 years old, his age when insurgents detonated a bomb under his Humvee.

Lt. Col. Fenzel, commander of the 1st Battalion (Airborne) of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, started writing, then stopped again. He pressed his forehead into his palms. "Jesus, this is hard," he said.

Many things have changed during hundreds of years of American warfare. But much as they did during the Revolution, Army commanders still write letters, often by hand, to soothe the bereaved, share stories of the good times and -- perhaps -- describe the circumstances of death.

The letters began as a common courtesy among militiamen fighting for independence from England in the 18th Century. Shortly after World War II, the task became obligatory. After the next of kin is notified, via telegram or a knock on the door, the dead soldier's commander is to write a detailed letter explaining what happened.

"The letter should show warmth and a genuine interest in the person to whom it is addressed," instructed the 1948 Bureau of Naval Personnel Manual, in its concise, six-paragraph passage on the matter.

These days, Chapter Eight of Army Regulation 600-8-1, "Preparation and Dispatch of Letters of Sympathy, Condolence, and Concern," has grown to eight pages. The rules can be chillingly specific. "Avoid unfitting compliments and ghastly descriptions," they say. "Do not send photographs depicting casualties."

That's not much help to a commander who sent a soldier to his death.

Each time a man goes down, Lt. Col. Fenzel finds himself struggling for words to ease the pain. Was the death meaningful? Was a life cut short still lived to its fullest? Had the Army turned boy into man? What consolation is there in knowing that a son or husband died not alone, but surrounded by friends?

"Sir, we are so very fortunate to have known and served with your son," the colonel wrote to PFC Rogers's father, David Rogers, a 46-year-old construction worker in Alaska. "We all know the irreparable loss you and your strong family have suffered, and we also know there is very little any of us can say that will provide you any comfort."

Lt. Col. Fenzel, the 40-year-old son of a suburban Chicago car dealer, has already notched tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. On previous deployments, he was the No. 2 in his unit. This time he's in command.

Crested Stationery

So before coming here from his battalion's home base in Italy, he bought some parchment stationery bearing the wing-and-sword crest of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He knew he would likely have to write letters such as these. He didn't want to use printer paper.

His 800-strong battalion has lost 12 men since it arrived last May. The U.S. has lost 485 troops overall in Afghanistan since 2001. Last year was the coalition's most deadly since the war began.

PFC Rogers died in July, along with three of his comrades, in a roadside bombing -- one of the most common causes of death here. A fifth soldier in the Humvee, badly burned, later died from his injuries.

Lt. Col. Fenzel routinely greets his men as "brother" at combat outposts and in chow-hall lines. But he didn't know PFC Rogers very well. In fact, the social distance between a young private and a battalion commander is vast. Officers are prohibited from friendships with enlisted soldiers that could create the appearance of favoritism.

Soon after the death, Lt. Col. Fenzel invited four of PFC Rogers's squad-mates to his office. They crowded onto a small sofa, where they talked about their friend for an hour and a half.

It gave the colonel a better sense of the young man. He and other soldiers had already phoned the family to offer immediate comfort. Still, months passed before the colonel was ready to write the letter that would stand as a more permanent record.

"I wait to find the words, and they will come," he says.

Leaders have long struggled with the ambiguity of simultaneously commanding and consoling. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln wrote to Lydia Bixby of Boston, whose five sons were believed killed in the Civil War. "I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming," President Lincoln wrote. "But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save."

Lt. Col. Fenzel found his words in November. One evening he returned from a mission, eased off his body armor and savored some new photos of his two boys sent by his wife. He was struck by how much they had grown since he had left for Afghanistan just six months earlier.

The next morning, he knew it was time to give PFC Rogers's parents a glimpse into their son's military life.

PFC Rogers grew up in Chickaloon, an Alaskan village of 200 people, 12 of whom were his brothers and sisters. He was the fourth child, home-schooled with his siblings by their mother, Donnetta.

The family lives on a mountainside, 450 steps above the glacial Matanuska River. As a child, Jessy and his siblings would play on the riverbank.

"Jessy always enjoyed the double-take any of us would give him the first time we found out just how big his tight-knit family really was," Lt. Col. Fenzel wrote to Mr. Rogers.

In his letter, the colonel described PFC Rogers's adventures with his D Company buddies, snowboarding in Italy's Dolomite Mountains, forging the bonds that would carry them into combat together.

Mountains, Memories

The Italian slopes reminded the private of home, Lt. Col. Fenzel wrote. "We all knew that Jessy's heart was right there in Alaska."

Jessy joined the Army because he was angry about the Sept. 11 attacks. But he also hoped to see a bit of the world. "I want to do something different," his mother remembers him saying after he returned from the recruiter.

He always told his mother that, after his eventual discharge, he would return to Alaska, build a cabin on the family property and work construction with his father and four brothers, who roam the state from project to project, living in rustic camps.

"The only thing that gives any of us any real comfort -- and I've said this to myself over and again -- is knowing that he gave his life fighting for our great country, as a hero and alongside men that he loved and respected," Lt. Col. Fenzel said in his letter.

As he wrote that morning, the colonel stopped and read his own words aloud. His voice broke.

After Jessy's death, the Rogers family received a boxful of condolence letters. The ones that meant the most came from Lt. Col. Fenzel and other servicemen.

"They're in a war, and he takes the time to write a hand-written letter to us," says Mrs. Rogers, 46. "That's what I noticed right off the bat."

The letter helped her envision her son's Army life, his friends, pleasures and hardships. "We are Christian, and we believe in a living God. ... Death is something that doesn't bother us," Ms. Rogers says.

"This leaves a huge gap, but I know where he's at," she says. "I had this fear for Jessy, and I'm glad he's out of harm's way now."

The Army assigns responsibility for writing condolence letters to battalion commanders such as Lt. Col. Fenzel. But other individuals, up and down the chain of command, are free to send notes of their own.

The most intimate ones are often penned by younger, lower-level officers who knew the fallen soldier best. Officers such as 30-year-old Capt. John Gibson of Shreveport, La.

Capt. Gibson, a West Point graduate whose cheeks are sunburned from the Afghan sun, commands a company of 180 or so of the soldiers in Lt. Col. Fenzel's 800-strong battalion.

Ever since he first saw combat in Iraq five years ago, Capt. Gibson says he has prayed that he would never have to write a condolence letter. In his fatigues he carries a piece of paper that reads: "A dead soldier who has given his life because of the failure of his leader is a dreadful sight before God."

His first and, so far, only such letter was sent to the mother of PFC Thomas Wilson, a quick-witted 21-year-old from Woodstock, Va., who dropped out of a college wildlife-and-fisheries program to enlist.

PFC Wilson was in charge of the armory at Orgun-E, maintaining the unit's rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and other weapons. It's a job that could keep a soldier in the relative safety of a well-defended base.

Instead, PFC Wilson talked his way onto patrols. On one occasion he asked his sergeant to go on a mission with the scouts. He started readying his gear even before he got a reply, pre-empting a possible "no" with a loud "Roger, first sergeant."

The paratroopers patrol along dried riverbeds and steep mountainsides, a landscape painted in every shade of brown. Just 20% of the 300,000 residents of Paktika province are thought to be literate, and most of those can only read verses of the Koran. The troops try to win good will by providing mosque-refurbishment kits that include solar-powered speakers and new prayer rugs for the mullahs.

But the Americans also engage in frequent firefights with insurgents who cross the border from nearby Pakistan.

Ambush Near Orgun-E

When PFC Wilson's convoy was ambushed near Orgun-E last summer, he was manning the turret machine gun in a Humvee. He fired off two cans of ammunition. When he bent over to grab a third, an insurgent's armor-piercing round drilled through the Humvee's protective metal and into his head.

The private died at the scene. His fellow soldiers placed a blue tarp over his body.

Capt. Gibson is keenly aware that his decisions carried PFC Wilson to the place where he died. He doesn't doubt his own orders. But the shock of losing his first man was sharp.

The captain recalls pulling back the tarp and putting his hand on PFC Wilson's forehead to gently close the private's eyes. "I feel like I've let you down," he remembers saying.

Later, he decided to write to PFC Wilson's mother, Julie Hepner. His intention was to describe what a fine soldier her son had been. Yet he wasn't comfortable describing the precise circumstances of his death.

"Do you include the little things? The smell?" he says. "Do I include that I still have a pair of gloves that have his blood on them?"

Capt. Gibson says he decided to leave those details out. Instead, he told Ms. Hepner, a single mother with four children, that the other paratroopers spent five days hunting down the insurgents responsible for the ambush.

Capt. Gibson says he read his letter aloud to himself, and crunched up two drafts before feeling he had struck the right tone.

Only later did he learn that Ms. Hepner had never received the letter from him. So, recently, Capt. Gibson sat down to write it again.

'Your Brave Son Thomas'

Meantime, last October, Lt. Col. Fenzel had written his own letter to Ms. Hepner, 47, who owns a small office- and house-cleaning business in Woodstock. "It has been almost a month since we lost your brave son Thomas to enemy fire," it began. "And the days that pass in between don't make it any easier to be without our brother, your son."

The colonel went on to describe how, during the fatal ambush, PFC Wilson manned his machine gun "bravely and brilliantly" in an intense, 30-minute firefight, before he was shot. His actions saved the lives of 10 other paratroopers, the colonel wrote.

"Please also know that you have gained nearly 800 of Thomas's brothers as your sons, if you'll have us," he wrote to Ms. Hepner.

It was the message she wanted to hear. "What more can a mother ask for," she says, "than knowing that he died in the arms of people who loved him?"

Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com

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Tet

Tomorrow is Tet, the Vietnamese new year. I plan to celebrate it with hope and optimism for a new year, a new life. But I will also remember the past, and past Lies of Tet.

On January 30, 1968, more than a quarter million North Vietnamese soldiers and 100,000 Viet Cong irregulars launched a massive attack on South Vietnam. But the public didn't hear about who had won this most decisive battle of the Vietnam War, the so-called Tet offensive, until much too late.

Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes -- such as the Petraeus surge -- minimized and glossed over.

In truth, the war in Vietnam was lost on the propaganda front, in great measure due to the press's pervasive misreporting of the clear U.S. victory at Tet as a defeat. Forty years is long past time to set the historical record straight.

The Tet offensive came at the end of a long string of communist setbacks. By 1967 their insurgent army in the South, the Viet Cong, had proved increasingly ineffective, both as a military and political force. Once American combat troops began arriving in the summer of 1965, the communists were mauled in one battle after another, despite massive Hanoi support for the southern insurgency with soldiers and arms. By 1967 the VC had lost control over areas like the Mekong Delta -- ironically, the very place where reporters David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan had first diagnosed a Vietnam "quagmire" that never existed.

The Tet offensive was Hanoi's desperate throw of the dice to seize South Vietnam's northern provinces using conventional armies, while simultaneously triggering a popular uprising in support of the Viet Cong. Both failed. Americans and South Vietnamese soon put down the attacks, which began under cover of a cease-fire to celebrate the Tet lunar new year. By March 2, when U.S. Marines crushed the last North Vietnamese pockets of resistance in the northern city of Hue, the VC had lost 80,000-100,000 killed or wounded without capturing a single province.

Tet was a particularly crushing defeat for the VC. It had not only failed to trigger any uprising but also cost them "our best people," as former Viet Cong doctor Duong Quyunh Hoa later admitted to reporter Stanley Karnow. Yet the very fact of the U.S. military victory -- "The North Vietnamese," noted National Security official William Bundy at the time, "fought to the last Viet Cong" -- was spun otherwise by most of the U.S. press.

As the Washington Post's Saigon bureau chief Peter Braestrup documented in his 1977 book, "The Big Story," the desperate fury of the communist attacks including on Saigon, where most reporters lived and worked, caught the press by surprise. (Not the military: It had been expecting an attack and had been on full alert since Jan. 24.) It also put many reporters in physical danger for the first time. Braestrup, a former Marine, calculated that only 40 of 354 print and TV journalists covering the war at the time had seen any real fighting. Their own panic deeply colored their reportage, suggesting that the communist assault had flung Vietnam into chaos.

Their editors at home, like CBS's Walter Cronkite, seized on the distorted reporting to discredit the military's version of events. The Viet Cong insurgency was in its death throes, just as U.S. military officials assured the American people at the time. Yet the press version painted a different picture.

To quote Braestrup, "the media tended to leave the shock and confusion of early February, as then perceived, fixed as the final impression of Tet" and of Vietnam generally. "Drama was perpetuated at the expense of information," and "the negative trend" of media reporting "added to the distortion of the real situation on the ground in Vietnam."

The North Vietnamese were delighted. On the heels of their devastating defeat, Hanoi increasingly shifted its propaganda efforts toward the media and the antiwar movement. Causing American (not South Vietnamese) casualties, even at heavy cost, became a battlefield objective in order to reinforce the American media's narrative of a failing policy in Vietnam.

Yet thanks to the success of Tet, the numbers of Americans dying in Vietnam steadily declined -- from almost 15,000 in 1968 to 9,414 in 1969 and 4,221 in 1970 -- by which time the Viet Cong had ceased to exist as a viable fighting force. One Vietnamese province after another witnessed new peace and stability. By the end of 1969 over 70% of South Vietnam's population was under government control, compared to 42% at the beginning of 1968. In 1970 and 1971, American ambassador Ellsworth Bunker estimated that 90% of Vietnamese lived in zones under government control.

However, all this went unnoticed because misreporting about Tet had left the image of Vietnam as a botched counterinsurgency -- an image nearly half a decade out of date. The failure of the North's next massive invasion over Easter 1972, which cost the North Vietnamese army another 100,000 men and half their tanks and artillery, finally forced it to sign the peace accords in Paris and formally to recognize the Republic of South Vietnam. By August 1972 there were no U.S. combat forces left in Vietnam, precisely because, contrary to the overwhelming mass of press reports, American policy there had been a success.

To Congress and the public, however, the war had been nothing but a debacle. And by withdrawing American troops, President Nixon gave up any U.S. political or military leverage on Vietnam's future. With U.S. military might out of the equation, the North quickly cheated on the Paris accords. When its re-equipped army launched a massive attack in 1975, Congress refused to redeem Nixon's pledges of military support for the South. Instead, President Gerald Ford bowed to what the media had convinced the American public was inevitable: the fall of Vietnam.

The collapse of South Vietnam's neighbor, Cambodia, soon followed. Southeast Asia entered the era of the "killing fields," exterminating in a brief few years an estimated two million people -- 30% of the Cambodian population. American military policy has borne the scars of Vietnam ever since.

It had all been preventable -- but for the lies of Tet.

American "Decline"

is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House. Broadly speaking, declinists divide between those who merely accept America's supposed diminishment as a fact of life, and those who celebrate it as long overdue. As for the causes of decline, however, they tend to agree: declining (relative) economic muscle, due in large part to the rise of China; an overextended military bogged down needlessly in Iraq and endlessly in Afghanistan; the declining value of America's "brand" on account of Bush administration policies on detention, pre-emption, terrorism, global warming -- you name it.

Yet each of these assumptions collapses on a moment's inspection. In his 2006 book "Überpower," German writer Josef Joffe makes the following back-of-the-envelope calculation: "Assume that the Chinese economy keeps growing indefinitely at a rate of seven percent, the average of the past decade (for which history knows of no example). . . . At that rate, China's GDP would double every decade, reaching parity with today's United States ($12 trillion) in thirty years. But the U.S. economy is not frozen into immobility. By then, the United States, growing at its long-term rate of 2.5 percent, would stand at $25 trillion."

Now take military expenditures. Yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal for 2009, which includes $515.4 billion for the regular defense budget. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this would be the largest defense appropriation since World War II. Yet it amounts to about 4% of GDP, as compared to 14% during the Korean War, 9.5% during the Vietnam War and 6% in the Reagan administration. Throw in the Iraq and Afghanistan supplementals, and total projected defense spending is still only 4.5% of GDP -- an easily afforded sum even by Prof. Kennedy's terms.

Finally there is the issue of our allegedly squandered prestige in the world. There is no doubt America's "popularity," as measured by various global opinion surveys, has fallen in recent years. What's striking, however, is how little of this has mattered in terms of the domestic political choices of other countries or the consequences for the U.S.

In the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War, nearly every government that joined President Bush's "coalition of the willing" -- Australia, Great Britain, Denmark and Japan -- was returned to power. France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, the war's two most vocal opponents, were cashiered for two candidates who campaigned explicitly on a pro-American agenda. The same happened in South Korea, where the unapologetically anti-American President Roh Moo-hyun has been replaced by the unapologetically pro-American Lee Myung-bak. Italy's equally unapologetic pro-American Silvio Berlusconi seems set to return to office after a brief holiday.

From today's WSJ . As always, there is the hype and there is the truth. In medicine, one is always cognizant of this distinction with different emphasis on subjective complaints and objective findings. Too bad the media isn't so honest about the difference.

The Media Violence Project