Like the recent case of US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, are the pending courts-martial of three US Navy SEALs for allegedly punching captured terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, the purported planner of the 2004 Fallujah killings of four Blackwater security guards, another case of political correctness displacing common sense?

In Hasan’s case, fear of accusing a Muslim officer of highly questionable behavior allowed him to escape the scrutiny common sense dictates he should have gotten before it was too late. Now, many suspect that fear of detainee-abuse allegations may have led to charges against the SEALs that are not warranted.

The first unit of the 30,000 troops President Obama has ordered into Afghanistan, 1500 Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will arrive before Christmas. Many of them have spent Christmas away from home before in Afghanistan or Iraq. They'll join thousands of others who have done the same. It goes with the territory. It's no big deal, unless it's your first time.

For me that first time was Christmas 1966. A brand new 2nd LT assigned to the reactivated 9th Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kansas, six months earlier, I deployed on 2 December with the 3rd Brigade aboard the USNS General William Weigal out Oakland, California. Twenty-one days later we moved by truck convoy from the port of Vung Tau, South Vietnam, to the 9th's new base camp at Bearcat southeast of Saigon. I spent Christmas eve sitting on a sandbag wall, cleaning my M-16 rifle, looking up at the stars, and thinking about my family 11,000 miles away. I'll never forget that lonely night because it made me aware of what Christmas is really all about--family, friends, and shared beliefs.

A lot has changed in 44 years--the troops today have have email, cellphones, digital pictures, and video. What hasn't changed is that America's young men and women must still go in harms way to defend our freedom. Remember our troops this Christmas. They'll be thinking about us.

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By now, unless the only place you get your news is from ABC, CBS, or NBC, you know what “Climategate” is all about. The hacking and dissemination of more than a thousand emails from the influential Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, revealed wholesale deception and data manipulation to support global-warming trends that don’t exist. Curious minds want to know, what impact will it have?

Considerable impact; more I suspect, than most people believe, not only on the climate-change establishment, but on the scientific community in general, the alternative energy industry, the so called mainstream media (MSM), and Democrats. The emails themselves were explosive enough; however, their full effect will take time to play out.

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On December 1, President Obama will announce his decision on troop levels and the way forward in Afghanistan in a speech to the nation from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Media reports indicate that he will approve something less than, but close to, the optimal 40,000 troops that General Stanley McChrystal requested more than three months ago. He also likely will announce “benchmarks” for measuring success and an “exit strategy” for getting US forces out of Afghanistan. But if this is all he does, even if he gives McChrystal most of what he asked for, our prospects for winning the war in Afghanistan aren’t good.

We hear conflicting reports about troop morale in the US armed forces. High-profile people who visit our troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places report that morale is high. After eight years of war since 9/11, however, years more of war ahead, and the US strategy to win it uncertain, others report that troop morale is low. Whatever the situation, now, more than ever, it’s important that American leaders and the American people not take troop morale for granted and exercise great care not to squander this most precious commodity essential to success.

President Obama's criticism of Cambridge police officer Sgt. James Crowley temporarily eclipsed healthcare reform as the top news story. Next week, as legislators return home to their states and districts for Congress' August recess, healthcare reform will be back on top.

Democrats will continue their efforts to convince their constituents that we need a wholesale replacement of the current system with a new one run by the federal government. That system, they will argue, will guarantee healthcare to everyone, pay for itself, and lower costs to American families. They will play down the tradeoffs--bureaucrats involved in the relationship between patients and doctors, inefficiency, and rationing.

Republicans will point out the negative aspects of the Democrats' plan, and they will argue that it will only further swell the deficits and hasten bankrupting the country. They will point out that the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the healthcare they receive and the insurance plans that cover them. It's not necessary to swap the current system for a worse one, only target what needs fixed in the current system.

It should come as no surprise that I side with the Republicans on healthcare. You don't trade in a Cadillac for a gas-guzzling Suburban when the Cadillac is cheaper to own and operate and all it needs is a tune up and a new set of tires.

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For a while it appeared that Democrats would resist the overwhelming desire of those on the far left of their party to investigate members of the George W. Bush administration, including the president, the vice president, and the CIA. President Obama quickly realized what a bad idea that was when he saw the reaction to his release of top secret Bush administration memos on CIA interrogation techniques. He said he wanted to look forward, not backward.

Apparently, however, the temptation has proven too great. Now, Democrats want to investigate Cheney and the CIA over a statement by current CIA Director Leon Panetta that Cheney directed the CIA not to brief Congress on a program to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders after 9/11 that credible sources say was never operationalized. At the same time, Attorney General Eric Holder is seriously considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate CIA personnel who may have gone “too far” in their interrogations of terrorist detainees. Like all special prosecutors, once empowered, he won’t stop there.

Wise heads in both the Democratic and Republican parties understand that pursuing these investigations might satisfy those who believe Bush, Cheney, and many people in their administration are war criminals, but it will do more damage to Democrats than to Republicans. Those who suffer from Bush/Cheney-derangement syndrome already think that way. They don’t need an investigation to confirm what they believe.

Fair-minded Americans, however, don’t what to see any US presidential administration prosecute its predecessor for what amounts to policy and political differences. President Obama is already losing airspeed and altitude with his out-of-control spending that isn’t curbing unemployment. Investigations of Bush, Cheney, and the CIA will only drive his approval numbers lower and lose more seats for Democrats in the House and Senate in 2010.

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President Obama went further today in criticizing the government of Iran in his news conference than anytime since protests broke out following the Iranian election 11 days ago. Still, he modulates his words, concerned about how the Iranian government might use them, and he won’t disinvite Iranian diplomats to US Embassy July 4 celebrations. Is it that easy for the Ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad to turn the president’s words against him by invoking memories of the US involvement in the 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh and the US support of the Shaw? I doubt it.

Certainly there are Iranians, Ahmadinejad supporters and members and families of the Revolutionary Guard, who harbor ill will for America. But the Iran of 2009 is not the Iran of 1979. The Shaw’s oppressive secret police, Savak, has long been replaced with the Ayatollahs’ secret police. The anti-American fervor that allowed “students” to hold American diplomats hostage in their own embassy for 444 days has long passed. The Internet and digital cameras didn’t exist then, making it much harder for the outside world to know the truth. And most Iranians weren’t even born then. Their unpleasant memories are of the devastating Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and the continuing oppression by religious clerics and their henchmen.

Attempts by the ruling regime to shift blame for the uprising to America by making accusations that CIA agents are behind it would have no credibility. The world and Iranians on the streets would see them for what they are--feeble attempts to change the subject. Protesters carry signs in English not to criticize America but to plead for America’s and the English-speaking world’s support. Let’s not let them down; and if any Iranian diplomat has the courage to show up at a July 4 celebration let’s hope he gets an ear full.