They forgot to mention what it was for & Afghanistan was part of the trip-a lot for 1 wk

Indeed, in a February 17 article, the ANSA English Media Service reported (accessed from the Nexis database): "Since arriving in Italy on Saturday, Pelosi has visited the American air base at Aviano in northeast Italy and the American military cemetery in Florence and is due at the NATO Joint Forces Command in Naples Wednesday." Further, a February 19 press release issued by Pelosi's office stated: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional delegation today were briefed by U.S. Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, and Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Naples. Admiral Fitzgerald and his NATO staff provided information on NATO activities in the Balkans, the ongoing training of Iraqi Security Forces, and operations against pirates off the coast of Somalia." The release further stated: "On Saturday, Speaker Pelosi and the Congressional delegation visited Aviano Air Base where the Speaker pinned the Bronze Star Medal on Technical Sergeant Phoebus Lazaridis for extraordinary service in Afghanistan. The delegation paid their respects to the more than 4,400 American World War II soldiers buried at the Florence American Cemetery on the outskirts of Florence on Sunday."

On February 21, Pelosi released a statement about her trip to Afghanistan, in which she said, "For the past two days, I have led an eight Member House delegation to Afghanistan to visit U.S. troops," during which the delegation "met with U.S. military leaders, and the U.S. Diplomatic team in Kabul to better assess the best course of action to further our national security interests in preparation for the completion of President Obama's strategic review of the Afghanistan policy" and "met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is sending his own advisors to Washington as part of the review process."

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our school districts are allowed to appeal the tax assessments. The district I live in has taken just about everybody to court on appeal. A home assessed at $41,000 and sold for twice that is taken to court as soon as they find out...which they can do because all deeds are posted in the newspaper plus our county put all the properties on line along with the history of who owned the home before at what price and what it sold to the next person and the amount.

Obama stated many, MANY times during his campaign that we need to focus on Afghanistan and that he would send more troops there if he was elected president. He said it was a mistake to put our resources into Iraq when bin Laden most likely was hiding out in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border somewhere.

Maybe I'll send him some money because I can't believe he's not spending more. Oh maybe he's frugal... Darn it!

the human cost of war and consequences of our foreign policies. It is too bad that it took an election campaign to prompt the media to abandon previous censorship of these images. If we can wage wars and perpetuate policies that bring this kind of unfathomable misery and human suffering down on village civilains(who up until now have carried the monolithic media moniker of "collateral damage") then I believe it is the media's job to report this side of the story and present these images every single time they occur.

The Vietnam war was the first televised war. The images that visited our living rooms nightly during the evening newcast compelled Americans with a conscience to oppose that war and call for its end. Better late than never, I guess, but who knows what kind death and destruction could have been prevented on both sides of the conflict if we had access to these images all along?

As a postscript observation, the images show us exactly why the tradition why diplomacy matters. Some of us have been following this side of the story for years now. For those voters, the war and the absence of EFFECTIVE international diplomacy and alliance building strategies are every bit as focal as the national issue of the economy.

Munich - President Obama's national security team gave a dire assessment Sunday of the war in Afghanistan, with one official calling it a challenge "much tougher than Iraq" and others hinting that it could take years to turn around.

U.S. officials said more troops were urgently needed, both from America and its NATO allies, to counter the increasing strength of the Taliban and warlords opposed to the central government in Kabul. They also said new approaches were needed to untangle an inefficient and conflicting array of civilian-aid programs that have wasted billions of dollars.

"NATO's future is on the line here," Richard C. Holbrooke, the State Department's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told attendees at an international security conference here. "It's going to be a long, difficult struggle.... In my view, it's going to be much tougher than Iraq."

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, said the war in Afghanistan "has deteriorated markedly in the past two years" and warned of a "downward spiral of security."

In addition to more combat troops, Petraeus called for "a surge in civilian capacity" to help rebuild villages, train local police forces, tackle corruption in the Afghan government and reduce the country's thriving opium trade. He also suggested that the odds of success were low, given that foreign military powers have historically met with defeat in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of empires," he said. "We cannot take that history lightly."

The White House is conducting a strategic review of the war in Afghanistan and says it will unveil the results before NATO holds a 60th-anniversary summit in early April.

Obama administration officials have said they expect to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total U.S. deployment there to about 66,000. U.S. allies have a combined 32,000 troops in Afghanistan operating under NATO command. NATO officials have pressed European members of the alliance to send more, but few countries have been willing.

Germany, which has 3,500 troops in Afghanistan, the third most of any country, has questioned the need for more combat forces. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said more attention should be paid to training Afghan forces and to reconstruction projects.

"We won't win with military alone," he said at the conference. "There will be no development without security. But without development, we won't have security, either."

The debate over troops has led to a split within NATO. Jaap DE Hoop Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, told conference attendees on Saturday that European members of the alliance needed to do more of the "heavy lifting" in Afghanistan.

British Defense Secretary John Hutton openly disagreed with his German counterpart, saying the need for more combat troops was the highest priority in Afghanistan. Reconstruction efforts, he said, would fail if the Taliban remains strong.

"We kid ourselves if we imagine that other contributions right now are of the same value, because they're not," he said. Britain has 8,900 troops in Afghanistan and has said it will probably send more.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his country had made large strides since the U.S.-led military invasion in 2001. He said Afghanistan was home to a thriving free press, 17 universities, and schools for thousands of girls who had been barred by the Taliban from receiving an education. In 2001, he said, Afghanistan had no paved roads; now it has 2,500 miles of new highways.

U.S. officials said one of the thorniest problems in Afghanistan is its flourishing drug trade, which accounts for an estimated 90 percent of the world's heroin supply. But Karzai, who faces reelection in August, dismissed portrayals of Afghanistan as being run by drug barons.

"Yes, we produce poppies. Yes, we are insecure because of that," he said. "Are we a 'narco-state,' as we've been called the past few years? No, we are not."

Karzai said the only way to bring stability to Afghanistan is to eventually negotiate a deal with the Taliban. He also blamed Afghanistan's slow recovery on a lack of coordination among donor countries.

U.S. and European officials agreed that poor coordination is a major obstacle. "I've never seen anything remotely resembling the mess we've inherited," Holbrooke said.

Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, cited a fumbled attempt by the United Nations last year to name Paddy Ashdown, a British diplomat, as the overseer of international aid projects in Afghanistan. Ashdown's appointment was torpedoed by Karzai, who saw it as an infringement on Afghanistan's sovereignty.

Holbrooke replied that the Obama administration would revisit the idea of a development czar with Afghan officials. "The Paddy Ashdown fiasco - and there's no other word for it - really set back the international community."

Last week, in an open letter to Holbrooke published in the Times of London, Ashdown expressed some sympathy for "poor President Karzai" and said NATO members were chasing different goals in Afghanistan, depending on where their forces operate.

"The British think Afghanistan is Helmand, the Canadians think it's Kandahar, the Dutch think it's Uruzgan, the Germans think it's the Panjshir valley and the U.S. thinks it's chasing Osama bin Laden." He added, "Someone needs to bash heads together out there and if anyone can, you can."

Also Sunday, Vice President Biden held talks in Munich with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, a day after Biden said the White House wanted to "press the reset button" in its relations with the Kremlin. Ivanov praised Biden's speech, telling reporters that it was "very positive," and adding: "It is obvious the new U.S. administration has a very strong desire to change."

Most high school kids don't get a chance to see a presidential until they are of voting age.

I don't put any faith in anything MSNBC writes or talks about. They are are for the O.

I know you've been real busy with sniper fire and 3:00 a.m. phone calls, etc., but have you ever seen that commercial for AT&T internet service, where the guy says he's on the road between "King City and Coalingo" (sp?) (There are several commercials out there for this product, and the theme for them is people's "moments.")

In the one I'm referring to, there's a guy is standing near a big field with a bunch of cows, explaining how his service lets him do business anywhere, and after he's through explaining how it works and how his bid was the first one in, he gets a text message and says, "It looks like I got the account."

Hillary, PLEASE ~~drive yourself~~ have your chauffeur drive you (with or without your cell phone) to that field "between King City and Coalingo" and take a L-O-N-G walk through that field. (Be sure to ~~fill up~~ have one of your servants fill your gas tank first.) Pet a cow or two. Resist the urge to whip out that gun yer granddaddy taught you how to shoot if you become hungry for a filet mignon; maybe you could ~~make a~~ have your maid make a PBJ before your departure (you know, the kind of food that more and more of us hard-working white people are forced to rely on in today's economy). Along the way, don't be afraid to step into the very thing that comprises your soul. Take a deep breath (lots of them). Try to place yourself into Barack Obama's shoes (sans cow dung) and explore WHY it is that YOU believe you must control everything -- even when you're the loser. Why is it that YOU think YOU get to dictate the terms of everything, even if you don't have the right to do so?

You have repeatedly said you're "in it to win it." You didn't win it. Now pretend to have some grace and/or just some personal decency and do NOT try to strong-arm the person who DID win it. There are a lot of women who would be good Vice Presidential candidates, all of whom believe in and would be loyal to President Obama, none of them potential orphan-makers.

Take a good, long look at those cows, Hillary. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two about "moments." Hopefully, you'll even learn a thing or two about yourself.

Not to mention the half mil or so those execs spent on a luxury vacation just hours after they got the bail-out money. This is INSANE. I think to a large degree things are playing out just as dubya and his side-kick Cheney had planned. Those two, in my humble opinion, are a couple of EVIL men.

I say no bail out for anyone. What's done is done. The idiots in Washington need to SHUT UP and in particular, the sensation-seeking talk shows need to also SHUT UP. They all need to start talking about bringing jobs back to AMERICA and if there was no demand for credit from consumers, there would be no credit crunch. Live without your means. If you bought a $100,000 house you couldn't afford and it's now worth $50,000, tough toenails! People who bought into the "home equity line of credit" BS deserve what they got. I don't believe I would care to subsidize their stupidity. Now it's about the seniors, TV ads for reverse mortgages for them. Seniors who buy into that garbage, I'd like to sell them the Garden of Eden!!!!!

I don't know the answer to immediately get rid of all these bums in the government. I wish we could have a general election and fire every single one of them....DEMOCRAT AND REPUBLICAN!!!!

of God being involved in this election. I do think that God will be involved in this election. However, our country has pushed Him out of our lives so much that it wouldn't surprise me if He let us fall flat on our faces. I hate to say that, but you can't pray in schools. People don't want to say the pledge to the flag because of His name being mentioned. The 10 commandments are being removed from court houses. Seriously....what have we become? I understand the concept of keeping church and state separate but it seems more to me like we are removing Him totally and that upsets me. The mere mention of him by a candidate, particularly a repubican one, gets people in an uproar about religious fanatics and Bible thumpers, etc. It is just sad.

I hope that we pick the candidate who will get us out of this crisis, but maybe that just isn't in His plans. Whatever may happen, I just pray that God gives us the strength to take on any challenge that may face us....because let's face it people....we are going to have major challenges if either candidate is president.

WASHINGTON -- A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may -- may not, I hope not -- but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.

Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.