Renewable energy reduces military casualties and leads to a more effective fighting force. Those findings from an Army study are a big part of the reason the U.S. military is increasingly moving away from oil and investing heavily in clean energy. From 2003 to 2007, an astounding one out of eight U.S. Army casualties in Iraq was the result of protecting fuel convoys. That’s a total of 3,000 troops who died trying to transport oil:

From experimental solar-powered desert bases for the Marines to Navy robots that run on wave energy, the military is quickly becoming a leading buyer of cutting-edge renewable energy technology.

For the armed services, the benefits extend beyond reducing fuel convoy casualties. A fighting force that isn’t restricted by the reach of a tanker truck or weighted down by heavy batteries is more nimble and, as a result, more lethal.

For renewable energy companies, the military is proving to be a vital customer, buying the latest in clean energy gadgets and encouraging private investment. The hope is the armed services can shepherd this technology to the point where it becomes commercially viable, much like it did a generation ago for GPS systems or the Internet.

Being energy independent isn’t just a feel-good environmental issue for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are huge risks and logistical challenges involved in transporting oil around war zones. Fuel in Iraq generally arrives through tanker ships, while fuel in Afghanistan is delivered via truck convoy from Pakistan to distribution centers. Truck conveys then have to redistribute the oil to other bases, and sometimes fuel must be helicoptered in.

Not only are these conveys “big, slow-moving, explosive targets,” they are expensive. The military says it can cost up to $40-a-gallon to get fuel to some locations.

Bases that can use diesel or other fuels to run their everyday needs are safer and in a better tactical position. Several bases currently use clean energy for generators that power everything from air conditioning in tents, to computers running battlefield management software. Indeed, the U.S. Army is forming a task force to work with developers to spend as much as $7.1 billion over the next decade to build renewable power plants at U.S. military sites.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has a history of never missing an opportunity to criticize the White House, but her post today, “Obama tolerates terror operations run out of Syria’s embassy,” provides yet another example of Rubin’s loose relationship with the facts.

Today, Rubin, citing a Wall Street Journal article, is outraged that the Obama administration is “doing nothing” about claims that Syrian embassy officials are monitoring and photographing anti-Assad protesters in many countries, including the U.S. Rubin observes:

What has the administration done about protecting its own citizens and those already in peril in Syria? Well the FBI has investigated. But all we’ve done, as far as I can tell, is — you guessed it — taken “very seriously” these reports, according to a State Department flunky.

But that’s not what the WSJ article she cited reports:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, meanwhile, is investigating allegations that Mr. Moustapha and his staff have threatened or harmed Syrian-Americans, according to three individuals interviewed by the FBI in recent weeks. An FBI spokesman said the bureau won’t comment on any possible investigation into the Syrian embassy’s activities.

So while Rubin said the FBI “investigated” (past tense) the Syrian crackdown in the U.S., the Journal article — which provides the entire basis for her claim that the Obama administration is tolerating terrorists — says the FBI “is investigating” (present tense) the reports. Thus, it might be best for the White House to let the FBI conclude its investigation before it takes any action against the Syrian embassy.

With her post hinging on a falsehood — indeed the WSJ article would indicate that the Obama administration and the FBI are taking the allegations about the Syrian embassy very seriously — Rubin goes on to observe that “this suggest[s] a shocking dereliction of responsibility to protect our own citizens here at home” and concludes:

We sacrifice our own interests, our own citizens and other pro-democracy advocates for nothing. In the end, we lose respect, influence and our moral standing.

This stands as just one more example of Rubin’s willingness to overlook factual inaccuracies, but it begs the question of whether her interests lie with the protesters in Syria — who by all accounts are facing a horrifying crackdown — or launching attacks on the Obama administration at any and all opportunities.

Just last month, she was widely criticized for her faulty report that the massacre in Norway was the work of “jihadists.” She went on to use the deaths in Norway as an opportunity to attack politicians who support defense spending cuts and to denounce the White House for not taking the threat from al-Qaeda seriously.

Rubin’s factually inaccurate reporting and vicious partisanship is becoming a mainstay of the Washington Post’s “Right Turn” blog.

Her misreporting of the Oslo attack as the work of “jihadists” was left untouched for nearly a day. (She blamed her observance of Shabbat for her delay in correcting but the JTA’s Ron Kampeas raised suspicions about that explanation.) It will be interesting to see when, or if, her misrepresentation of the Obama administration’s investigation into the Syrian embassy will warrant a correction.

War hawk John Bolton is adamantly opposed to any cuts to the Defense Department’s budget, or military spending in general. In fact, he thinks the U.S. should spend more. Bolton recently argued that in order to put more in the Pentagon’s coffers, Congress should take funds from Social Security and Medicare.

On Fox News last night, Bolton cheered Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s — so far evidence-free — claim that further cuts in military spending would be “devastating.” “We have been under spending on defense. We should be spending more,” Bolton said, adding that the U.S. should be directing those additional funds toward weapons and “force levels around the world.” Yet Bolton does see an area where the military can trim the fat: veterans’ health care and retirement benefits:

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Nobody is talking about monitoring these contractors to see where our money is going. That’s the thing that is stunning. We’re talking about how much we need. But we are not doing anything it seems to make sure we really need it.

BOLTON: We should be. Look, there’s fraud and waste in the defense budget, of course there is.

VAN SUSTEREN: Why doesn’t anybody talk about that?

BOLTON: That’s part of the government. I think we can do more in military health care for example, to cut costs there, in the retirement system…

Watch the clip:

John Bolton isn’t wrong in saying that savings can be found in the military’s health care and retirement programs. Indeed, CAP’s Larry Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman recently noted that the U.S. can save $15 billion per year on military health care while continuing to meet its obligations to the nation’s veterans. However, that’s in addition to hundreds of billions of dollars in sensible cost reductions in military spending. But if Bolton had his way, he’d continue to line defense contractors’ pockets without scrutiny at the expense of the men and women fighting the wars he’s worked so hard to promote.

Earlier this month, a local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent Rep. Allen West (R-FL) a letter asking him to cut off ties with leading anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel with whom he had shared stages before. “Muslims protect and serve our great country and are afforded equal protection under law,” said the letter. “We shouldn’t have to defend our rights to worship freely or participate in the governing of our society.”

Now, CAIR has received a letter from West with a one-word response to their request. In what the Miami New Times is calling possibly “dumbest thing ever written on congressional stationery,” West simply wrote back, “NUTS!” Here’s a copy of the letter:

One has to wonder why West chose to respond in this bizarre way. One possible explanation is that West is channeling a famous line by an American general fighting the Nazis during World War II. During a battle with German troops in Western Europe, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe was told that the Germans wanted his men to surrender. He replied, “Us surrender? Aw, nuts!” Whatever he meant by his response, one thing West did not appear to offer is any sort of condemnation of the radical anti-Muslim company he has been keeping.

The dozens of coordinated attacks across Iraq this week that killed nearly 100 people — widely believed to be the work of al Qaeda in Iraq — reportedly has stoked “fears that the country’s security forces won’t be able to control al Qaida-allied extremists after the scheduled U.S. military withdrawal at year’s end.” Indeed, the news has encouraged those on the right who say the United States needs to stay in Iraq past 2011. War hawk Max Boot wrote yesterday:

It is becoming tiresome to keep pointing to fresh atrocities in Iraq as a reason why U.S. troops cannot afford to leave at the end of this year.

However, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, sees it differently. He told the USA Today editorial board yesterday that despite the attacks, the Iraqi security forces are capable of handing security after U.S. forces withdraw:

BUCHANAN: The Iraqis have had the lead for internal security since last summer and have been doing an incredible job by literally any measure you want to use. … The Iraqi security forces are doing a good job at maintaining the lead of security. … I think the Iraqi government understands the threat that both al-Qaida poses and that these militant groups pose and has the ability to defeat them.

Buchanan added that the Iraqis’ discussions about whether to ask the U.S. for a continued military presence beyond 2011 “have not yet matured to the point of negotiations,” but he added that “eventually our two countries will have that discussion and it could lead to something different than a complete withdrawal.” Watch clips from the interview:

“I was recently asked, after a speech, if the decision to invade Iraq was a terrible blunder,” Boot wrote in the same column, “I replied it was too soon to tell.” Even decades from now, Iraq war cheerleaders like Boot will most likely argue “it’s too soon to tell” whether the whole Iraq experiment worked out liked they’d hoped. But as CAP’s Matt Duss noted yesterday, “As my colleagues and I wrote in our May 2010 report, The Iraq War Ledger, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy.”

Appearing on Fox News, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told host Sean Hannity that President Obama has encouraged Israel’s enemies and made it more difficult for the Jewish State to make peace with its neighbors. Baited by Hannity into discussing one of his favorite topics — how anything short of right-wing orthodoxy is not pro-Israel enough — Lieberman jumped at the opportunity to accuse Obama of essentially giving moral support to opponents of Israel:

HANNITY: I worry about the President. I didn’t feel he treated the prime minister [of Israel] correctly, when he came to town the first time. I didn’t like when he sprung on him, they got to go back to ’67 borders. I wanted to get your thoughts.

LIEBERMAN: I agree with you. I think the President is not anti-Israel. I think he’s pro-Israel but I think he’s handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel’s enemies and really unsettled the Israelis. Because the Israelis have one really good friend in the world, it’s us, it’s natural and of course, they are very loyal to us too.

But when the President of the United States acts in a way that makes the Israelis wonder whether we are for them. Really what it does is to discourage them from taking the risk that they would ever have to take to have a peace agreement with the Palestinians or anybody else.

Watch the video:

It’s unclear why Lieberman didn’t like Obama’s 1967 borders statement. Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t see any problem with it. And Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak said recently that the President’s critics had misrepresented what he said. “I should tell you honestly that the President didn’t say that Israel should go back to the borders of ’67,” Barak said.

But Lieberman is no stranger to attacking Obama using right-wing inspired baseless charges that the President is anti-Israel. Perhaps that’s why he said yesterday that he’s considering voting Republican in 2012.