Hey guys, looks like we are back up.

I may try again to write a blog...
 
2 comments (Latest Comment: 12/18/2009 13:06:41 by wickedpam)

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,463rd day in Iraq and our 2,991st day in Afghanistan.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4371
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4232
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3908
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3512
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 143

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 325
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 934
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 604
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,395
Journalists - Iraq: 335
Academics Killed - Iraq: 431

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:

$ 942, 936, 000, 000 .00


Here at "Ask a Vet", we've spent the last 5 years focusing almost exclusively on Iraq, with the ocassional story about Afghanistan almost as an afterthought. Iraq isn't going away anytime soon, but as the war in Afghanistan continues to 'surge', you'll be seeing more stories in this space.

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28 comments (Latest Comment: 12/16/2009 02:18:14 by TriSec)

Delegates to the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen held informal talks yesterday during a one-day break from negotiations aimed at crafting a new global climate change treaty.

Amid a sea of protesters, this conference could be the cornerstone of President Obama's commitment to once again being a member of "the believers". That is, that the United States will acknowledge Global Climate change and be a part of the solution to solving our planets dire problem.

However, As the 12-day conference entered its second week, analysts reported little progress in replacing the current treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
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4 comments (Latest Comment: 12/14/2009 01:53:00 by AuntAzalea)

By now, we've all become pretty inured to the grandstanding and faux outrage from politicians. It's annoying and counter-productive, but it seems to be part and parcel to the political process. Every once in a while though, there seems to be a perfect storm of mental midgetry and hypocritical hyperbole on the political stage. So today we look at some of these stories.
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43 comments (Latest Comment: 12/12/2009 03:00:41 by velveeta jones)

When the notion of health care reform was first tossed around, the precepts were simple: everyone in this country should have access to affordable health care. The mechanics of how that was going to be accomplished were the subject of considerable disagreement, but it seemed that everyone agreed on the goals. Some people pushed for "socialized medicine", and some pushed for a "single-payer" system. What Congress went for instead is a system of more tightly regulated private insurance. The big question: does the system they're trying to create meet the simple goal of affordable health care for everyone?
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86 comments (Latest Comment: 12/10/2009 10:53:37 by Scoopster)