I have found these useful in dealing with the I-P discussions, considerably reducing typing. I have applied an Air Force method of efficiently expressing displeasure and comments, called the Falcon Code, at least to I-P threads. If you are a Naval Aviator, Falcon Codes are equivalent to Echo Charlie. Continual adjustment is typical.

1. the person named is an [anti-semite] [hater of Arabs]

2. you aren't complaining about Lower South Slobovia doing this; why are you picking on [Israel][Palestine]?

3. designated politician is defying [AIPAC] [CAIR] and will pay the US domestic penalty thereof.

4. There will never be peace with [Arabs][Israelis].

5. The weapons being used offer an immediate threat of [war crimes] [genocide].

6. What [person] said is garbage and irrelevant.

7. Country X presents an immediate threat to the existence of [Israel] [Palestine] and must be dealt with harshly

8. That was a silly comment.

9. Somewhere, a village is missing its idiot

10. [Person] diverted by asking a superfluous question, rather than addressing the substance of what was posted. If, for example, someone had a plan, would they not have posted it, or just waited shyly to be asked

11. Criticism of the nation-state of Israel represents bias against Jews of any citizenship. That there are Jews of other citizenship that have no special loyalty to Israel, as they find their religion and culture respected where they live, is irrelevant to the argument. Perhaps they are self-hating.

12. I don't care if you are making a relevant comment about the general topic of the thread; my purpose here is to attack the guest poster/member of the proletariat that I hate.

Michael Gerson, in the August 10 WaPo, speaks of

"The United States has immediate responsibilities as well -- to provide airlift support through NATO, training for command staff, communications and computer equipment, and generators. America is obligated to pay 27 percent of the cost of the peacekeeping force, which will probably require a supplemental funding bill from Congress in 2008."

In my response (below), I suggest that anyone blithely suggesting this needs to look at transportation maps.

I’m afraid that quite a few national and international leaders are ignoring realities of a Darfur intervention. It’s a cliche that amateurs talk tactics, dilettantes talk strategy, and professionals talk logistics, but the point is very relevant here.

You wrote, "The United States has immediate responsibilities as well -- to provide airlift support through NATO, training for command staff, communications and computer equipment, and generators. America is obligated to pay 27 percent of the cost of the peacekeeping force, which will probably require a supplemental funding bill from Congress in 2008."

Please look at what would be required to provide that airlift support. Right now, the US is providing airlift to the African Union force in Darfur. These flights now go from Nigeria to El Fasher, which is the best airport in Darfur. There is, however, no regular supply of aircraft fuel to El Fasher, which means that the C-130 transport aircraft in use have to carry fuel for the return trip. This is a huge restriction on the amount of cargo they can carry. Darfur is not Berlin, where airlift can shuttle from nearby bases well supplied with fuel. There are alternatives, but none are trivial.

Ignoring political considerations and the possibility of sudden interruptions, one alternative would be to stage airlift out of Khartoum International Airport. There is a Sudanese oil refinery near Khartoum, and, even if it does not now make aircraft fuel, it’s plausible to have tankers unload at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, and then to ship it by rail to Khartoum International.

A creative approach to minimizing interference by the North Sudanese part of the coalition government might be to change the approach from overall economic sanctions on Sudan, to active investment in South Sudan. Remember, the Power-Sharing Agreement includes a 2011 referendum in which the South can vote for independence. South Sudan is already issuing its own currency and conducting foreign relations, which cannot help but be a major concern to the Northern factions under al-Bashir.

An example of creative investment could be encouraging the speculative railroad-building effort of the German consortium, led by Thormaehlen, from South Sudan into Kenya and/or Uganda. Connecting to Kenya would provide an alternative export route, not dependent on Khartoum, for the oil fields in South Sudan, linking to the Kenyan pipeline to oil facilities (in need of improvement) at Mombasa. Connecting to Uganda would provide access to the World Food Programme logistic center outside Kampala. The Kenyan branch could put extreme economic pressure on the North. The Ugandan branch would help get relief supplies into Darfur, although the railroad is out of service, and the roads to central Sudan and Darfur are mined.

To avoid dependence on the heart of the Khartoum government, a more desirable alternative would be to get an independent fuel supply to El Fasher, and probably improving other airports (very minimal ones) starting with Nyala. Nyala is on a currently insecure railroad that runs from Babanusa in central Sudan, and on into Chad.

While shipping from Babanusa has advantages in building infrastructure in Darfur, there are several major downsides. As with Khartoum International, the staging area is in the main part of Sudan, and could easily be interrupted by the government. A railroad line stretching for several hundred miles is very easy to sabotage, either by free-lancers or proxies for the North Sudanese factions of the national government.

Another alternative would be to try to secure the railroad from Nyala into Chad, which takes most of it out of Sudanese control. There is fighting in western Chad, presenting the same sort of railroad security problems. While Chad has oil, the present capabilities are limited to shipping crude oil, by pipeline, to Cameroon. Again ignoring political considerations, the most direct supplier of jet fuel to Chad would be Libyan refineries or seaport. There are, however, no heavy-duty roads, rail lines, or pipelines between Libya and Chad, and these are not going to be built overnight.

I’m sorry, but I do not see any simple way of providing immediate logistical support, by air, for peace enforcers or humanitarian organizations in Darfur. Even if security of transportation routes can be maintained, construction of adequate links would take months to years.

Being informed you have a blind date with either Ann Coulter or Paris Hilton.

Medpagetoday, a site targeting medical professionals, reports:

John Edwards, the former senator, announced today that his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, 57, has had a recurrence of breast cancer, a bony metastasis, but he is continuing his campaign to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Elizabeth Edwards had a lumpectomy in 2004 and adjuvant chemoradiation. He and his wife called the malignancy treatable. "The campaign goes on," he said.

There are a few comments on the website, but it is a relatively new development that even metastatic breast cancer, especially in postmenopausal women, is moving to become a manageable chronic disease. I do not suggest it is trivial or can be managed without excellent care and drugs. In the context here, this personal tragedy may be able both to draw attention to research, participation in clinical trials, and the need for access to the appropriate level of care for all patients.

Several consecutive clinical trials managed the "hole in one" status of being stopped by the safety monitoring board, and the experimental treatment made available to all participants. This is done when the experimental treatment demonstrates statistically significant improvement over the best standard treatment, and it is considered unethical to withhold it.

The first such stop was with tamoxifen. Several years later, trials with aromatase inhibitors, with tamoxifen as the control arm, also were stopped.

At present, one of the research frontiers is to find out which aromatase inhibitor is best, or, as is suspected, different variants work better in different women. There's a possibility that drug selection should be based on body fat percentage.

Other research is exploring whether there are good reasons to use tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors together.

According to Reuters Medical News, with reference to using embryonic stem cells,

"I think it is important for us not to fight with one hand tied behind our back,"

This is not exactly Bush Administration policy, which is interesting to see argued by an appointee who, to a reasonable extent, represents a good deal of thinking in medical research. Zerhouni has more of a constituency than most political appointees.

Much of this was Senate testimony.

"So from my standpoint as the NIH director, it is in the best interest of our scientists, our science, our country that we find ways -- that the nation finds a way -- to allow the science to go full speed on both adult and embryonic stem cell research,"

Remember Bush's first veto affected this area of research.

Over a century ago, Sen. Carl Schurz said (my emphasis):

“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

In the current situation, the wrong to be put right is the Constitutional contempt of the Bush Administration. Thinking back to the Nixon resignation, as I listened to Ford being sworn in, I mused on the irony that I was driving past the Watergate.

Just after swearing in the new President, some microphones caught Chief Justice Burger muttering, "It worked. The system worked." Regardless of the views of activists on both extremes, it is my belief that a great number of Americans do trust the system to put things right.

On Friday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took testimony related to the violations, centered around White House and OVP activity, of national security in the matter of the CIA employment of Valerie Plame Wilson. As Chairman Waxman put it, the job of the committee is not to determine criminality, but to identify what went wrong and how to correct it. A first step in determining criminality already took place with Scooter Libby. It may well be that the eventual findings of these hearings may well recognize that, especially, the Vice President committed impeachable activities.

Impeachment is the thermonuclear weapon of American politics. It is far more drastic than a Vote of Confidence in a parliamentary democracy. IMHO, it should be reserved for offenses uniquely made possible by the nature of the office, which was not the case with the Clinton impeachment -- which failed to convict. That Articles of Impeachment were about to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee was enough to have Richard Nixon resign.

In the Watergate affair, it took multiple hearings, as well as criminal proceedings, to build the ironclad case for impeachment. Those hearings, those investigations, were unquestionably within the system. They built a consensus in the Congress and with the electorate, brick by brick. It was never possible, in any of the impeachment hearings going back to 1789, to "impeach now". The process, sometimes more and sometimes less, involved procedural safeguards.

In the hearing and afterwards, I have seen at least three examples of how the process was trivialized. While the Washington Post did report the facts, I am disgusted with Mary Ann Akers' blog:

Forget about her testimony. Let's talk about the fashion statement Valerie Plame made today when she went before Congress.

Most responders to the blog, appropriately, blasted the inappropriate sexism and general trivialization of the CIA operations officer. Yes, she is an attractive, well-dressed woman. What does that have to do with the substance of the matter?

Next, I am disgusted with Midge Potts of Code Pink, who constantly moved, at the back of the hearing room, so that her pink T-shirt emblazoned "Impeach Bush Now", was in virtually every frame of other than tightly focused video of Valerie Plame Wilson. The hearing was about the national security implications of actions taking place in the White House, that may well be key bricks of a foundation of impeachment, or Nixonian resignation.

Did Potts and her cohorts believe that Waxman would suddenly order the committee, regardless of its authority, to report out Articles of Impeachment? Did Potts and her cohorts think that a T-shirted slogan would better help build consensus than a serious inquiry?

Yet another aspect of trivialization came with the kiss of death of being taken seriously by CNN: Jeannie Moss did a feature on Code Pink activists' intruding into hearings to get coverage of their impeachment message. Jeannie Moss' reporting tends to label its subject as material for humor and the appeal of geek shows, not serious reporting and discussion.

It's been hard enough to get the Republican majority voted out, and a Democratic effort to, to try, as Schurz put it, to put our country right. Administration political operatives will take every opportunity to trivialize those attempts, when those attempts reveal Constitutional and ethical failings of Bush, Cheney, and those they appointed and supervised.

The nation does not need trivialization in healing a wound. It does not need trivialization whether from Karl Rove, Code Pink, Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Jeannie Moss, Ann Coulter, or Mary Ann Akers. Code Pink may reinforce the view of activists that want what they want now, rather than the large number of Americans that will want due process and full disclosure.