Working to suppress the protesters in Syria, the army there, the New York Times reports, is "gathering confidence":
Gathering confidence after forcing rebels out of strongholds in the north, the Syrian government on Wednesday launched its biggest raid in months on the southern city of Dara’a, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began a year ago, opposition activists said.
The activists feared that the government was now emboldened after seizing most of the northern city of Idlib on Tuesday amid faltering international efforts to stop the violence and was turning its attention to crushing centers of the rebellion in the south as the symbolically important one-year mark of the uprising approached.
Thursday is the anniversary of protests in Dara’a that followed the killing of schoolchildren who had scrawled anti-government graffiti. Those demonstrations turned what had been sporadic protests into a nationwide uprising.
"Confidence," one gathers, means a renewed willingness to employ whatever means necessary to suppress the protesters. More deaths will be a result of this, undoubtedly, as Bashar al-Assad's regime tries to maintain its control.
In Annapolis today, Air Force and Navy met on “the fields of friendly strife.” With 10:00 left in the game, Air Force led 28-10, having more or less dominated play for the first 50 minutes. With 2:09 left, the Falcons still led 28-17. Then Navy nailed a must-make 37-yard field goal, recovered the ensuing onside kick, scored a touchdown on 3rd-and-goal with 0:19 left, and made the subsequent 2-point conversion on an option pitch just inside the left pylon: 28-28, overtime.
When Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, accused of plotting planning a deadly bombing and shooting attack on soldiers at Fort Hood, made his first appearance in court in Waco, Texas, today, he yelled the name of accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan.
Hasan is facing the death penalty for allegedly killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 in an assault on Fort Hood in November 2009.
Pfc. Naser Abdo, the soldier arrested yesterday for planning an attack on Fort Hood in Texas, last year requested that he be given conscientious objector status so that he wouldn't be deployed to fight in Afghanistan. CNN Headline News seemed enthusiastic, at the time, fawning over Abdo's request :
The university senate at Columbia just passed a resolution, 51-17-1, expressing support for inviting the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back to campus.
For those of us who have been arguing against cutting the U.S. defense budget and, indeed, arguing instead that it’s too low as is, we’re used to our critics saying that we never have met a defense expenditure we don’t like, that we have no ideas for how defense monies can be better utilized, or that we never seem to find a program that ought to be cut.
I saw this yesterday. It's a lot of fun, and fit to go viral, so here it is for your enjoyment. My favorite part is the info posted by Aaron Melcher, who uploaded the video: "We have more scenes to cut, and edit, however with guys always on mission it is harder to film than you think." I can imagine it is.
We have today an aging and shrinking Air Force and Navy, an Army that is overstretched, reserve forces that are far too ‘active’ in their rate of deployment, and too few dollars to rebuild and modernize.
