= Obama introduces Pay-Go — Pay as you go rules for congress and a deficit commission to try to reign in spending. Whitehouse.gov

=Amy Bishop, a neuroscientist denied tenure, murdered three faculty members at the University of Alabama. MSNBC.com

=John Mayer finally shuts-up about saying the N-word and ridiculous over-sharing about his sexual predilections. LA Times.com

=MySpace.com, the site that modeled itself after BlackPlanet, then slowed and inverted BlackPlanet.com’s growth seems to be entering a death spiral. [admin notes -- it couldn't have happened to a nicer company (Fox heh)] Wired.com

Update I:

= According the USA Swimming Tennessee Volunteer Diver Michael Wright became the first African American to win a diving championship in USA Diving history. CBS Sports

According to a Bush speechwriter Obama is choosing to kill too many terrorists, as opposed to placing an emphasis on capture.

President Barack Obama’s escalation of drone strikes is one area in the counterterrorism fight where he has earned plaudits from even his most vocal critics on the right. Hold the applause. Obama’s escalation of the “Predator War” comes at the very same time he has eliminated the CIA’s capability to capture senior terrorist leaders alive and interrogate them for information on new attacks. The Predator has become for President Obama what the cruise missile was to President Bill Clinton — an easy way to appear like he is taking tough action against terrorists, when he is really shying away from the hard decisions needed to protect the United States.

Foreign Policy

On the surface, asside from the unstated bias of partisan positioning Thiessen’s thesis is interesting, and perhaps worth some thought.  However, on inspection, Thiessen’s evidence is primarily conjecture and misleading false choices.

Yet when Obama orders a Predator or Reaper strike, he is often signing the death warrant for the women and children who will be killed alongside the target — individuals whose only sin is that they are married to, or the children of, a terrorist. Is this not a choice between security and ideals? And why is it a morally superior choice?

Umm, of course it is a choice, but one that has been made since at least World War II when the United States firebombed Dresden and used atomic weaponry on civilian targets in Japan.  It’s perhaps a sad part of modern warfare — with its “rules” and all — that civilians are acceptable casualties in order to preserve the lives of a country’s soldiers. Of course, if you lose the war you might be brought up on war crimes — but that’s the trade off.  So, Thiessen’s moral choice is actually quite false, Americans (and most of the worlds’ militaries) have already decided civilian casualties are simply unimportant as long as the target is justified.  As a result, Thiessen’s plea to spare civilians is not only out of place, its use shows the partisan nature of his argument.

Beyond the false concern for civilians (consider the loss of civilian life in the Iraq war — which of course had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but of course Thiessen ignores this massive folly) there is another larger hole in Thiessen’s argument — he’s making huge assumptions about the value of the individual targets of the drones relative to other on-going operations.

Obama has made significant contributions of troops in the AF-Pak area, and has renewed cooperation between NATO and Pakistan — while pushing a rapprochement between Pakistan and India. As a result of this strong commitment beyond Bush, there is likely to be greater ability to use CIA forces to capture high priority targets while killing lower priority targets.

Thessien also ignores the implicit calculations that must be made as far as the return on investment of capture v. kill.  Remember there is a fierce loyalty in the region — so loyal that the United States rewards of millions and millions of dollars for OBL have gone unrewarded. Remember it was the Iraq conquest that diverted resources from the Battle of Tora Bora.  Given the commitment of thousands of new troops into the AF-Pak region, many more resources on the ground than Bush provided, I would think Thessien would wait a bit longer to critique a strategy that provides more resources to the area.

Dead Terrorists don’t tell tales

– but, the theorem is more important –

Dead Terrorist are dead.