Anatomy of a Beatdown Part 1

On August 6, 2009 two Service Employee International Union (SEIU) leaders and a volunteer for Organizing for America (OFA) assaulted Kenneth Gladney outside of Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town hall meeting on health care.  The perpetrators were arrested at the scene of the crime, and three months later charges have finally been filed.
Much has been said in the past three months about this incident.  Here at Big Government calls have been made for justice, for formal charges and mostly for the mass media to follow the story and delve into the government’s role in this violent attempt to intimidate and silence dissent.  We can no longer wait for the establishment journalists to connect the dots and bring to light the insidious relationships between the SEIU, OFA, Russ Carnaham’s office and the Obama Administration.

Was this assault merely a flare up of tempers during a heated exchange of rival political camps?  Or was it a coordinated attempt to silence the scores of protesters who had been so effective at swaying public opinion against the President’s health care scheme?  Today, Big Government will bring to light documents that read like an instruction manual for the SEIU forces in St. Louis the evening of August 6^th.  We will also show that on the very same evening of the St. Louis assault, an almost identical scene played out in Tampa Bay, Florida.  Also involving SEIU and OFA.  Also resulting in hordes of union members shouting down and physically evicting protesters from a U.S. Representative’s Town hall meeting.  Finally, we will introduce all of the various players in leadership roles at these organizations, what they said in instructing their members in how to fight back against the Town hall protesters, and how these individuals all connect to each other and to the Obama Administration.  As I said, we’ve been waiting for the “Real” journalists to do this, we’ve waited long enough.

On June 1, 2009 President Obama enjoyed a 64% Job Approval rating with a disapproval rating of 30%.  As Summer approached, the President began the plans for the roll out of his comprehensive plan to overhaul the entire distribution system for America’s health care services.  As the messaging began, the talking points were clear:  “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it”, “This plan will cover the 40 million Americans who have no insurance”, “This plan will not add to the deficit and not raise taxes”.  It all seemed too good to be true.   The House Committee on Energy and Commerce promptly passed the first version of a reform bill in June.  President Obama planned multiple town hall meetings across the country including an unprecedented event televised live on ABC and everything seemed moving toward a major victory for the President and the Democratic Party.
In late June and through the month of July, members of congress held scattered town hall meetings in their districts to get their constituents’ feedback on the proposed health care bill.  The clusters of semi-organized protesters who had rallied at “Tea Parties” earlier in the Spring took these meetings as opportunities to rejuvenate their energies with passionate opposition to these congressmen.  YouTube videos began circulating showing outraged citizens challenging their representatives and showing those representatives completely unprepared for any legitimate questions about the proposed bill.  It was clear in many cases that the representatives were not well versed on these bills beyond the boiler-plate talking points the administration had handed them.  They were not used to being questioned.
By the beginning of August Sarah Palin had caught headlines by describing certain policy discussions that evaluate a patients “level of productivity in society” and how it relates to the level of prioritized care they would receive as ‘death panels’ , Rep. Michelle Bachmann had delivered a stinging speech on the House floor tearing apart the President’s advisors on health policy, Sen. Arlen Spector was caught flat-footed at a town hall meeting and protests began cropping up all around the country at various town hall meetings of Senators and Congressmen.  President Obama’s job approval rating had now plummeted to  52% with a disapproval rating of 41% (an unbelievable 23% swing in approval loss and disapproval gain combined in 60 days).  The White House had seen enough.  It was time to take action and engage the opposition.

Somewhere between August 2^nd and August 6^th a strategy was devised that put all tools at the administrations disposal in line and firing at the protesters.  August 4^th seems to be an important day in the roll out of this strategy.  The White House famously posted a new aggressive offensive on their blog calling out what they described as “mis-information” about the proposed bill and directed true-believers to report any sources of these “lies” to a special e-mail address:  flag@whitehouse.gov.  Also on the 4^th, an organization called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released a document that became a blueprint for intimidation and, ultimately, violence under the guise of confronting the tea party protesters at these town hall meetings.
HCAN is an organization funded by various unions, most significantly SEIU, whose main purpose is to promote and push the effort for government-provided, universal health care.  (To understand the SEIU’s reasons for pushing for this government health care, read this post.)  The National Field Director for HCAN is Margarida Jorge.  Margarida Jorge used to work for the SEIU as an organizing director.
On August 4^th Margarida Jorge released a four page memo instructing members of HCAN on how best to combat the mounting opposition on display at the town hall meetings.  On the HCAN web site, the new tactics were filed on a post under the heading “Fight Back Against the Right”.  A subsequent HCAN call to action on August 5^th was under the benign headline “The Guns of August: A Call to Arms for Progressives and Obama Activists” likening the debate to World War I.
The entire memo can be seen here.

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The memo features instructions and tactics for the left on how to dominate the meeting and marginalize the protesters from the right:

• Their side will be smaller but noisier. You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive tactics.
• We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member, and we need to stake out the best spots for visibility and signs. Reconnaissance on the venue and an understanding of the staging will be important here. Make sure you do your homework so you can position your folks most effectively.

It features ideas on how to manipulate the media:

• Make sure you have people holding signs in every place where a TV camera is likely to be and that next to every right wing sign, there’s one of your signs with your message.
• Don’t wait for the reporter to approach you. You must approach the reporters and be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write. Have someone assigned to greeting the media or checking in media as they arrive. That way you will know who they are and be able to work with them both during the event and afterwards.

It has ideas about how to dominate the conversation by asking the congressman prepared, rehearsed questions:

• Line up a number of people who feel comfortable interrupting and prepare them with statements like:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • Excuse me, I came today to listen to Representative XXX explain how this bill is going to make health care more affordable for me and my family. We’re being gouged by insurance companies that just want to make more profits while we struggle to keep up with premiums and co-pays. Representative, how are you going to fix that?”
  • “I’m retired and can’t afford my prescription drugs because I’m on a fixed income. Representative, how is this bill going to affect me?”
  • “I want to hear the Representative speak. He’s the one voting on the bill. Representative, how will this bill help people who already have insurance at work?”
  • “What I’m worried about is how we’re going to keep the insurance companies from continuing to charge people more for being sick and keep them from taking away coverage when we need it most. What’s the plan for that?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

And, on page four of the memo written by Margarida Jorge of HCAN are instructions for hosting a town hall meeting.  These instructions include:

• One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
• Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to rsvp or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
• Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
• Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
• It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.

On August 5^th the DNC released a video advertisement calling the protesters an “angry mob” and showing a photo of one alleged protester hanging a congressman in effigy.  Also on August 5^th we had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi derisively calling the protesters “Astro-turf” and claiming that they were carrying signs with swastikas.
By August 6^th liberal web sites like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos were cheering HCAN’s instructions and the stance taken by Organizing For America (The left-wing volunteer web site evolved from the Obama Campaign) urging liberals to call congress (providing them instructions on how to do this) and then to register the call at the OFA web site.  Huffington Post celebrated the new bold move with a post urging the unions to get more involved (an astounding 11,000 comments appear on this post in just 6 days, many of them from early in the day on August 6^th show that the readers of HuffPo knew exactly what this union engagement meant and what the results would be).
Finally on August 6^th, hours before the Carnahan town hall meeting where Kenneth Gladney was assaulted by members of the SEIU, David Axelrod and Jim Messina gave a pep talk to Senators on Capitol Hill prior to their leaving for the August recess.  According to Politico:

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.  And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.
”If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting

Two days after the instructions on how to manage and control protestors at town hall meetings were released by Margarida Jorge at HCAN, one day after the Speaker of the House likened protestors to Nazis and mere hours after President Obama’s top political advisors assured Congressional Democrats that “If you get hit, we will punch them back twice as hard”, Kenneth Gladney lay beaten and bloody on the ground outside Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town Hall meeting.

Tomorrow we will show how the people who are now charged with assaulting him are connected to SEIU and HCAN, how they followed HCAN’s instructions perfectly which inevitably led to the violence, and we will show how St. Louis was not the only meeting that followed HCAN’s template and ended in much the same way.

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Random Thoughts

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Sometimes we seem like people on a pleasure boat drifting down the Niagara river, unaware that there are waterfalls up ahead. I don't know what people think is going to happen when a nation that already sponsors international terrorism has nuclear bombs to give to terrorists around the world.

Since this is an era when many people are concerned about "fairness" and "social justice," what is your "fair share" of what someone else has worked for?

Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it "brings down the cost of medical care." You pay $500 a year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved?

I seldom read fiction— and I tend to regard autobiographies as fiction.

In response to news of President Obama receiving the Nobel Prize for peace, an e-mail from a reader recalled a black classmate's comments upon graduating from high school many years ago. When asked to list the advantages and disadvantages of being black, the black student facetiously listed as an advantage "being praised for infinitesimal accomplishments."

Many colleges claim that they develop "leaders." All too often, that means turning out graduates who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do. There are already too many people like that, and they are a menace to everyone else's freedom.

Some people are so busy being clever that they don't have time enough to be wise.

No one likes to admit having been played for a fool. So it will probably take a mushroom cloud over some American city before some Obama supporters wake up. Even so, the true believers among the survivors will probably say that this was all George Bush's fault.

Stepping beyond your competence can be like stepping off a cliff.

Too many people with brilliance and talent within some field do not realize how ignorant— or, worse yet, misinformed— they are when talking like philosopher-kings about other things.

There has probably never before been as drastic a decline in the quality of vice presidents as there has been when Dick Cheney was replaced by Joe Biden. Yet the New York Times is lionizing Biden as a wise counselor to President Obama. When you support the liberal agenda, that makes you brilliant ex-officio in the media, whether or not you are vice president— and whether or not you have even common sense.

Government pressures on mortgage lenders to accept less than the full amount they are owed may win votes for politicians, since there are far more borrowers than lenders. But how much future lending can be expected when the lenders know that politicians are ready to intervene at any time to prevent them from getting their money back?

Some people think that the Obama administration is going to get rid of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, making him the scapegoat for its economics failures. This would be consistent with the President's acting as if the people under him are not carrying out his policies. But if they get rid of Geithner too early, that will not help if things still do not get better after he is gone and before the 2010 elections.

People who are urging us to do things to win the approval of other countries seem to put an excessive value on other country's approval, as distinguished from their respect that we can lose by such bowing to "world opinion." Do the world champion New York Yankees try to curry favor with teams that are also-rans? Can you name the only .400 hitter who never won a batting title during his whole career? Or a pitcher who stole home? If you are one of the first ten to answer either of these questions, you will receive a free copy of my most recent book, "The Housing Boom and Bust."

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

North Korean Currency Exchange Wipes Out Citizens Savings

By EVAN RAMSTAD

SEOUL – North Korean banks on Wednesday formally began a currency exchange aimed at wiping out much of the private savings people have accumulated through market activities.
The exchange process was supposed to start Tuesday but was apparently delayed by protests to officials of the ruling Workers Party, according to aid groups in South Korea with contacts in the North. Phones were cut off in the country on Monday and a curfew was ordered to quell potential trouble.
But on Wednesday, the exchange was underway in the capital of Pyongyang, which was calm and orderly, according to a person reached there by email. Shops have been closed this week so employees can reprice goods.
North Korea said Monday that new currency would be issued this week and said it would accept only a strict limit – amounting to around the equivalent of $40 – on the amount of old currency it would accept in exchange. The rest of the money would be scrapped in an apparent effort to make people more dependent on the government.
The step is the latest and most far-reaching of recent actions by the North Korean government to crack down on market activities perceived to weaken its power.
North Korea's official news agency, TV station and major newspapers, which are monitored in South Korea and Japan, by late Wednesday still had not announced the currency exchange. Instead, authorities continued to transmit information through a closed-circuit system that feeds into speakers in homes and on streets but can't be monitored outside the country.
The absence of information in official media adds to the unusual circumstances of the action. North Korea has reissued currency four times previously, all with great fanfare and explanation to the outside world.
Information about the effects of the action is trickling out from informants to aid groups, defectors and media in South Korea. The exchange process resulted in a surge in commodity prices, with rice prices up 20 times and corn up 30 times above their levels last weekend, according to Open Radio for North Korea, a radio service based in Seoul.
It also reported that the exchange restrictions did not apply to Chinese people inside North Korea and, as a result, some North Koreans were trying to exchange old money with Chinese.
Meanwhile, college students were told they could exchange old money totaling only around $9 in value for the new North Korean currency, reported Good Friends, a Buddhist charity group based in Seoul and Washington with an extensive network of contacts in North Korea.
It also reported instances of wealthy people from cities rushing to rural areas on Monday in hopes of buying commodities with the old currency before people in those areas heard about the exchange process.

Iranian Whistle Blower Poisoned

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer Lee Keath, Associated Press Writer – 

CAIRO, Egypt – A doctor who blew the whistle on the torture of jailed protesters in Iran died of poisoning from an overdose of an anti-hypertension drug in his salad, prosecutors say, fueling opposition fears that he was killed because of what he knew about the abuse.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether his death was a suicide or murder, Tehran's public prosecutor Abbas Dowlatabadi said, according to the state news agency IRNA.
The 26-year-old doctor, Ramin Pourandarjani, died on Nov. 10 in mysterious circumstances — with authorities initially saying he was in a car accident, had a heart attack or committed suicide.
Pourandarjani was a doctor at Kahrizak, a prison on Tehran's outskirts where hundreds of opposition protesters were taken after being arrested in the crackdown following June's disputed presidential elections. The facility became so notorious that it was ordered shut down by Iran's supreme leader as reports of abuse and torture became an embarassment to the clerical rulers and security forces.
Pourandarjani later testified to a parliamentary committee and reportedly told them that one young protester he treated died from heavy torture.
The young physician died from an overdose of propranolol in a delivery salad, Dowlatabadi said Tuesday. Propranolol is used to treat high blood pressure, rapid heart rate and tremors, and can be lethal in high doses.
Investigators questioned the restaurant delivery man but he is not under arrest, Dowlatabadi said. The delivery man said he gave the salad directly to Pourandarjani, describing how the doctor took it from him at the door of his room, then closed the door behind him.
Forensic tests showed that the doctor died of "poisoning by drugs" that matched the propranolol found in the salad, Dowlatabadi said. "A large number of these pills must be used for a person to pass away from them," he said.
Last week, Iran's top police commander, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, insisted the death was a suicide, saying a note was found with the doctor's body.
The doctor's father, Reza-Qoli Pourandarjani, told The Associated Press last month that he didn't believe any of the causes given so far by the government in his son's death. But he didn't go as far as accusing authorities of killing his son.
"Just the night before his death, my child talked to me on the phone, it was around 8 or 9 p.m. He sounded great, very dignified, displaying no sign of someone about to commit suicide," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tabriz in northwestern Iran.
"He was even full of hope," and making plans with friends, the father said.
The next day, the elder Pourandarjani received a call from the commander of Tehran's security forces informing him that his son was in a car accident with a broken leg and needed his consent to have surgery. When he traveled to Tehran, "we found out that that wasn't the case," the father said.
Several opposition Web sites raised concerns that Pourandarjani was killed because he knew the conditions of a number of torture victims at Kahrizak, including 24-year-old Mohsen Rouhalamini, the son of a prominent conservative figure. Rouhalamini's death in late July was the main factor raising anger among government supporters over the abuse.
Hundreds of protesters and opposition activists were arrested in the crackdown that suppressed protests following the disputed June 12 presidential election. The opposition says at least 69 people were killed while the government has confirmed around 30 deaths.
More than 100 protesters, activists and pro-reform opposition have been on trial, accused of fueling the protests and being part of a plot to overthrow the government.

Chechen Rebels Claim Responsibility For Terrorist Attack

By DAVID NOWAK, Associated Press Writer David Nowak, Associated Press Writer – 

MOSCOW – Chechen rebels claimed responsibility Wednesday for last week's Russian train bombing, which killed at least 26 people and injured scores of others, a Web site sympathetic to the militants said.
The claim, posted on the Kavkazcenter.com site, could buttress the suspicions of officials who are tracing the attack to Islamist separatists in Russia's North Caucasus region. It also raises fears of a fresh wave of attacks outside the region after a five-year break — a renewal of violence that would mirror the growing unrest inside the region.
The separatist statement, issued on behalf of Chechen separatist leader Doku Umarov, claimed Friday's bombing of a Moscow-St. Petersburg express train was carried out on his orders.
"We declare that this operation was prepared and carried out ... pursuant to the order of the Emir of Caucasus Emirate," or Umarov, the statement said.
Umarov is thought to head a network of separatist cells across Russia's volatile and mainly Muslim North Caucasus region that are fighting to break free from Moscow's rule. The rebels are blamed for regular attacks on law enforcement officials in the region's five autonomous republics since the end of two bloody separatist wars in Chechnya.
Russian authorities have said the train's derailment was an act of terrorism and traces of explosives and a crater were found at the disaster site. Government officials were among those killed in the train bombing.
The bombing was the first deadly terrorist attack outside the North Caucasus since the bombings of two airliners and a Moscow subway station attack in 2004.
The attack has struck a nerve in Russian society. About 1,500 people gathered for a state-sanctioned anti-terrorism rally in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Participants in the protest, organized by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party United Russia, held banners, with slogans including "Terrorists are not People and "Find and Annihilate."
Rights activists charge that devastating militant attacks in the Caucasus — such as August's bombing of a police station in the capital of Ingushetia, which claimed more than 20 lives — are the bitter fruit of a brutal counterterrorism campaign. The past year has seen a surge in suicide bombings and assassinations.
"The scariest thing is that this might not be an isolated attack," said political analyst Yulia Latynina in an online commentary. "It could be the start of a series."
Rights activists say government security services in the Caucasus have increased the use of kidnappings, killings and home-burnings directed at suspected militants and their relatives. The Moscow-based rights group Memorial issued a report this month accusing authorities of implementing "a policy of state terror."
The government has denied wrongdoing, blaming the separatists for trying to turn locals against Moscow.
There has been no official accusation of the southern separatists, but the country's top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, said in comments published Wednesday in the state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that the attack bore their hallmarks. Police released a computerized sketch of a suspect Monday.
Bastrykin's office said Tuesday that he had been injured when a second blast struck the scene of the bombing as sappers and rescue workers were sifting through the wreckage. Russian news agencies said the injury was not serious.
Leonid Belyayev, head of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's St. Petersburg branch, was quoted by Russian news wires as saying Wednesday that terrorists could have targeted two trains at once. The blast, he said, was timed to strike when a second train was passing the site in the opposite direction. Belyayev said the double disaster was avoided because the Nevsky Express was running a minute late.
No arrests have been made in connection with the attack on the luxury Nevsky Express, which occurred 250 miles (400 kilometers) northwest of Moscow and 150 miles (250 kilometers) southeast of St. Petersburg. It was the second attack in two years on the line, which is popular with civil servants and businessmen. A blast in 2007 injured dozens but killed no one. Two arrests were made following that attack but the main suspect, former military officer Pavel Kosolapov, remains a fugitive.
Russian media reports have quoted officials as saying the same group could be behind both bombings.

NATO Pledges 5,000 Troops For Afghanistan

By SLOBODAN LEKIC and DEBORAH SEWARD, Associated Press Writers Slobodan Lekic And Deborah Seward, Associated Press Writers – 

BRUSSELS – European and other U.S. allies will contribute more than 5,000 more troops to the international force in Afghanistan, NATO's chief said Wednesday, declaring that "this is not just America's war."
Still, with the exception of new combat troops from Poland, the pledges of additional troops came in small numbers from small nations. European powers like France and Germany praised President Barack Obama's speech on his new strategy for Afghanistan but were noticeably silent on the offer of new troops.
Reacting to Obama's call for more help, a Polish official said the government will likely send 600 combat-ready reinforcements, mainly for patrolling and training to beef up its existing 2,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan.
Albania said it would look favorably on increasing its 250 member unit, while Spain's El Pais daily said the defense ministry was considering sending 200 more soldiers to its 1,000 contingent. Italy declared it would do its part and Finland confirmed that it had been asked to consider sending more troops and would do so next week.
However, the largest contributors — Britain, France and Germany — held off on new troop pledges, waiting for an Afghanistan conference in London planned for late January. French presidential spokesman Luc Chatel said President Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to "give himself some time."
Earlier, Sarkozy commended Obama's speech as "courageous, determined and lucid."
In neighboring Germany, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle praised Obama's speech as supporting Germany's position that a political solution for Afghanistan backed by military support was the only way forward.
Speaking just hours after Obama announced the deployment of 30,000 fresh U.S. troops to Afghanistan, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued the strongest words of support.
"In 2010, the non-U.S. members of this mission will send at least 5,000 more soldiers to this operation, and probably a few thousand more," Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. "This is not just America's war, what is happening in Afghanistan poses a clear and present danger to the citizens of all our countries."
This will be in addition to the 38,000 troops allied nations have there now, he said.
Rasmussen did not specify where the troops would come from and how many would be from Europe.
Westerwelle praised Obama for making clear that there must be an end to the mission.
"We agree with the U.S. president, that there cannot be only a military solution, but what we need is a political solution that is supported by the military," Westerwelle said.
He and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, said their countries remained committed to building up and training the Afghan police force.
Poland's offer will beef up its existing 2,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan. Government spokesman Pawel Gras said the decision still needs approval from Prime Minister Donald Tusk's cabinet and from President Lech Kaczynski.
Italy, which has 2,800 troops in Afghanistan, said it would help without specifying any numbers.
"Italy will do its part, knowing that in the Afghan conflict that is at stake is not just the future of the Afghan people, but also NATO's credibility," Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in a statement.
The U.S. now has 71,000 troops in Afghanistan, while other NATO members and allies collectively have 38,000 service members there. With the added reinforcements, the international forces will grow to more than 140,000 soldiers.
The Afghan army has about 94,000 troops, and is slated to expand to 134,000. The Afghan police number about 93,000 members.
The U.S. and Afghan forces face an estimated 25,000 Taliban insurgents.
At the height of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, its forces in that country totaled 118,000 troops.
Finland said it had received a request to add to its 100 soldiers, which are part of a Swedish-led Provincial Reconstruction Team.
Dutch Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop welcomed Obama's speech, but it was not clear how the country would react to Obama's call. The Netherlands, the seventh largest force in Afghanistan, has some 1,600 troops in restive southern Afghanistan who are due to leave next August. The Dutch parliament has passed a nonbinding motion saying it does not support extending the mission.
France and other European countries have stressed the need for civilian efforts to be strengthened, including more training for teachers and medical personal.
However Sarkozy and Kouchner did leave the door open Wednesday for a possible new French troop commitment later.
France already has nearly 4,000 troops in Afghanistan, and media reports say the U.S. has asked France to commit 1,500 additional troops. Sarkozy has previously said no additional French troops would be sent.
Still, Henri Guaino, a special adviser to Sarkozy, told France-Inter radio "France is a responsible country and intends to assume its responsibilities."
"It doesn't make sense to say 'no, no, no' to everything straightaway," Guaino said. "For the moment, no decision has been made one way or the other, we'll see how the situation develops."
Sarkozy must weigh his choices carefully. The war is unpopular with much of the French left, and regional elections in March will be a key indicator of Sarkozy's popularity and chances to win a second presidential term.

Head of U. of East Anglia's CRU Steps Down In Wake Of Climate Scandal

This just in; Phil Jones, the British scientist in the middle of the growing ClimateGate scandal is temporarily stepping down from his position as head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit pending an investigation.As  reported on November 20, Phil Jones was one of the scientists on the sending and receiving end of many of the controversial e-mail messages obtained from the University's computer system.
The Associated Press reported moments ago (h/t Marc Morano):

Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

 Since this story first broke, most global warming-obsessed media have either ignored this scandal or downplayed its significance.
With the man in the middle of the controversy now stepping down from his position, will America's press pay more attention to this matter?