Asylum for Iraqi Translators: Good or Bad?

Yesterday’s Morning Edition (NPR) included a story about Iraqi translators:

“Congress is opening the door to America a little wider for Iraqis who served as translators for the U.S. military. Thousands of Iraqis risked their lives in those jobs. Congress boosted the number of visas authorized from 50 to 500 a year, and there are bills to expand that number up to 5,000.”

My immediate response was “it’s about time.” There have been too many stories about the difficulties of Iraqi refugees entering the United States. According to Refugees International, approximately 2 million Iraqis have fled their country since we invaded in addition to another 2 million displaced within the country. This is a massive human crisis, we’re largely responsible, yet we’ve allowed fewer than 1,000 inside U.S. borders. We should be doing more, especially for Iraqis who worked for us as translators.

Commanders must protect their interpreters. They should emplace security measures to keep interpreters and their families safe. Insurgents know the value of good interpreters and will often try to intimidate or kill interpreters and their family members. (Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Section C-19)

We need to protect the Iraqis who help us, for both moral and strategic reasons. However, I wonder about the wisdom of setting up a pipeline to get them out of the country.

Candidate Views: Iraq

I’ve only recently started to pay attention to the presidential primaries so I was delighted to see my local newspaper start a series about the candidates’ platforms. The first issue they covered was Iraq.

Having a short paragraph on each candidate is useful but I also wanted to know who shares viewpoints and whether or not polling numbers fall into the same clusters. I was able to group 15 of the candidates into six different positions.

Lies My Advertiser Told Me

I was delighted to discover ConsumerReports.org started a new series called Ad Watch, meant to critique direct-to-consumer advertisements. The first video, “Relief from restless legs hype“, comments on an advertisement from GlaxoSmithKline for Requip.

The Consumer Reports video is wonderful and makes some great points, even if the tone might seem a bit smug to some, but I’m surprised they made it. Its style and message remind me of Adbusters, a very different organization, magazine, and website.

Charlie LeDuff: Stay-at-home writer (and father)

I don’t read Men’s Vogue, but via Judith Warner at The New York Times I read Charlie LeDuff’s essay about being a stay-at-home father.

In his essay, LeDuff attempts to redefine his identity from a Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent to a stay at home father. He’d like readers to believe it’s courageous of him to give up the prestige and excitement of his old job.

They say the number of stay-at-home fathers in America has doubled in the past decade, but this statistic gives me no particular pleasure. I’m committed to my decision, but I feel lonely again—only now it’s for the old days on the job.

It’s true his days of “scampering around Iraq” or the Arctic are temporarily over and he won’t be “drinking beer with a Mexican smuggler” in the near future. But his sacrifice isn’t as grand as he claims.

The Death of Ryan Shay

Last Saturday Ryan Shay died during the New York Marathon. He wasn’t unfit. He wasn’t a novice. He was a world class athlete and an occasional training partner of Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist.

I learned about his death first in the San Diego Union Tribune and then on Good Morning America. The difference in coverage was both shocking and disturbing.

The marathon may have been in New York but Mark Ziegler covered it in the Union Tribune like a local story; Keflezighi and Shay trained at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista and Keflezighi graduated from San Diego High. Even while reporting a death, the UT’s story was as upbeat as possible and about reactions of other top athletes.

Laying Blame for a National Crisis

The November/December issue of Foreign Policy recently arrived on newsstands and in my mailbox. In the cover story, The War We Deserve, Alasdair Roberts makes a thought provoking, but deeply flawed, argument.

Roberts is correct in his premise. The United States can’t take on a major national challenge without a major national commitment. Duh. The War is currently showing on PBS stations and it’s hard for anyone to forget the sacrifices made during that conflict and the resulting changes to society.

Most of what follows that premise is flawed. Roberts compares the national commitment we made during World War II with a lack of commitment in fighting the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq and says we should be willing to do more.

John Philbin: Media Manipulator

Are we living in Bizzaro World?

On Tuesday, October 23, FEMA called a press conference to talk about their response to the Southern California wildfires.

Reporters were given only 15 minutes’ notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA’s Southwest D.C. offices.

They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a “listen only” line, the notice said — no questions.

Vice Admiral Harvey E. Johnson, FEMA’s number two, took the podium ready to answer questions from an absent press corps. Instead of postponing the briefing and waiting for the press to actually show up, FEMA staffers played the part.

We’re told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of external affairs, and by “Mike” Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.

What were they thinking?

What was so important they needed to hold the press briefing with only 15 minutes notice? Couldn’t they have waited an hour or two to allow the press to show up?

Information Technology and the FBI

Few FBI employees will be able to read this posting

USA Today’s On Deadline blog claims the FBI is a disconnected organization far behind the times.

If you’re reading this posting via the Internet, chances are you don’t work as a special agent or intelligence analyst at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Willie Hulon, the executive assistant director in charge of the bureau’s national security branch, just told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that the vast majority of FBI employees still don’t have a computer on their desk that can be used to access the Internet.

That means no Google searches, no personal e-mail and no blogs like On Deadline.

Things Fall Apart… But They Can Be Fixed

Local Events

Life became very chaotic on Sunday. My wife and I were driving through Los Angeles and Orange Counties on our way home to the San Diego area. We ran into the first fires north of Los Angeles and were in and out of smoke for the next 3 hours. When we went to sleep, San Diego County had two fires.

The next morning I turned on the television, curious about the fires in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. I couldn’t find any news coverage because everyone was talking about San Diego. Overnight the two fires became 6 or 7, several communities had been evacuated, and officials were warning it was going to get worse. The winds were strong, the air assets couldn’t fly, all the fires were at zero percent containment, and they were rapidly spreading.

Now, Wednesday, the winds have died down and it looks like the worst is over. Air assets are flying and additional help from surrounding areas and states are arriving. The Federal Government is also involved. DHS Secretary Chertoff is here. The FEMA Director is here. President Bush is reportedly on his way. Things fell apart but they’re starting to get better.

Negotiating Reality

I’m not a good consumer. I question claims made by marketers. I don’t believe higher cost merchandise is always better, nor do I believe the lowest cost product is always the best deal. I sometimes disregard statistics as unhelpful when making a decision. Sometimes I believe it’s more important how something is done, not just that it gets done. I’m a skeptic.

Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas — no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. When we say we are “skeptical,” we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe.