Iraq, NASA and the old Whubba-whubba returns

January 5th, 2009, 4:18 pm · Post a Comment · posted by jhogg

I’m normally pretty lean on bat packs to the hulking giants of the media field. But the Washington Post has an unusually well-done piece on Iraq.

By Anthony Shadid

Friday, January 2, 2009; Page A01

Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD — Maybe it was the only shot heard for days in a neighborhood once ordered by the cadence of gunfire. Perhaps it was the smiles at checkpoints and the shouts of Iraqi policemen navigating the always snarled traffic. “God’s mercy on your parents,” they beseeched. “God’s blessings on you.” Maybe it was the music box still playing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” at a kiosk overflowing with Christmas tree decorations and heart-shaped red pillows.

For anyone returning to Baghdad after spending time here during its darkest days two years ago, when it was paralyzed by sectarian hatred and overrun by gunmen sowing despair, the conclusion seemed inescapable.

“The war has ended,” said Heidar al-Abboudi, a street merchant.

The war in Iraq is indeed over, at least the conflict as it was understood during its first five years: insurgency, communal cleansing, gangland turf battles and an anarchic, often futile quest to survive. In other words, civil war — though civil war was always too tidy a term for it. The entropy, for now at least, has run its course. So have many of the forces the United States so dangerously unleashed with its 2003 invasion, turning Iraq into an atomized, fractured land seized by a paroxysm of brutality. In that Iraq, the Americans were the final arbiter and, as a result, deprived anything they left behind of legitimacy.

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Let me be (probably not) the first to say I’m am adamantly opposed to this:

Obama considers linking Defense Dept. with NASA

President-elect Barack Obama appears to be gearing up for a space race 2.0, this time with China.

Obama’s transition team is considering doing away with some of the barriers that separate the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, according to Bloomberg.

Citing people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team, Bloomberg says they believe collaboration between the country’s civilian space agency and the military’s space program would speed up the time in which the U.S. is able to send people back to the moon.

The main–and very costly–goal is to build a rocket that can carry Orion, NASA’s next-generation spacecraft, to the International Space Station, the moon, and further out into the solar system. NASA has planned to use its new Ares I rocket for that purpose. Last year, it completed preliminary design review for the Ares rocket, which is slated to launch for the first time in 2015.

Which race, specifically, are we worried about losing with China? As I recall, the United States has a 40-year lead in the race to the moon. Do we think the Chinese will yank our flag from the soil and plunk their own down in its place?

As for combining NASA and DoD, I cannot think of any better example of what is commonly referred to as the “creeping militarization” of the nation. Are we a nation with a military or a military with a nation?

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Whubba Whubba!

Now if we can get those old Huey’s flying again then I say its time we refit the Phantoms and get the U.S. a proper interceptor.