Al Qaeda and other extremist groups aren’t the only enemy facing U.S. troops stationed at this massive base in central Iraq. The Americans also are engaged in the mother of all battles — against gaining weight.

You’ve heard of the freshman 15. How about the Iraq 20?

Forget the K-rations of World War II and the chewy, tasteless MREs — “Meals, Ready-to-Eat” — that sustained U.S. Soldiers in more recent conflicts. With most of America’s 150,000 troops in Iraq living on large bases, the combat ration has given way to a smorgasbord of food that has some Soldiers bingeing and others in fits.

“You have to have an iron discipline,” said Sgt. Robert Carmical, a trombone player in the 25th Infantry Division Band, who arrived at Contingency Operating Base Speicher only days ago. “A lot of people turn to food for comfort, and the opportunity is there.”

Barbecue ribs, fried chicken, rib-eye steak, lobster tails, crab legs, roast turkey, stir-fry, cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings, egg rolls, breaded shrimp, buffalo wings, chili, crepes, pancakes, omelets, waffles, burritos, tacos, quesadillas, quiches, bacon, polish sausages, pulled pork, corned beef hash, milk shakes and smoothies — and that’s just for starters.

You name it, and American Soldiers are eating and drinking it, except alcohol.

Decorated with colorful college and professional sports banners and TVs tuned to sports and news, each dining hall has a pasta bar, a salad bar and a sandwich and wrap bar. There are short-order cooks and food cooked in bulk and served at long counters by workers in black and white uniforms, hats and bow ties.

Behind one counter, a worker carefully slices several loaves of bread, while another worker carves ham for the troops at breakfast.

What’s for dessert? Healthy eaters can choose apples, pears and other fruit, alongside relatively low-fat Jell-O. Soldiers with less discipline are in a world of hurt, or pleasure, depending on how you look at it.

At one dinner last week at Speicher, the dessert menu included — now take a deep breath — carrot cake, triple chocolate cake, strawberry cheesecake, black forest chocolate cake, devil chocolate cake, banana nut cake, apple pie, cherry pie, chocolate and vanilla pudding, three types of cookies, three types of ice cream bars, cones and popsicles, and five flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream with all the fixings, including caramel and chocolate syrup, crushed nuts, whipped cream, and blueberry and strawberry toppings.

“My favorite is the pecan pie,” said Staff Sgt. Jason Rodriguez, who was still on his first course, a heaping plate of spaghetti with marinara sauce.

What happens if a Soldier gets hungry between meals? No problem. The PX, or base store, has an aisle or two packed with snacks such as corn chips, potato chips, pretzels, beef jerky, cookies and bean and onion dip.

Next to Speicher’s PX are, guess what, a kind of mini version of Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway and Taco Bell.

This is not to say the troops don’t deserve a treat or two when they are on base, or as it’s known here, “inside the wire.” Many rise at dawn and spend hours armed to the teeth, patrolling in cramped armored vehicles, hunting for insurgents, looking for deadly roadside bombs or tracking down the next suicide bomber.

But the U.S. military also is fighting back in the latest Battle of the Bulge. At the buffet line, some offerings have a label that lists calories, fat, carbohydrates and other nutritional information. A sign stuck to the lid of a small freezer piled high with the ice cream bars warns Soldiers that two is the limit.

Every Soldier has a physical training program to stay fit and undergoes two weigh-ins a year. Those who get too fat are put on a strict diet and could potentially be booted out of the army.

On a recent day at Speicher, a handful of Soldiers jogged and power-walked around an asphalt track left over from when the base was an Iraqi military installation under Saddam Hussein. Nearby, at the base’s first-class gym, Soldiers dripping with sweat were pumping iron, running on treadmills, playing basketball and working out on elliptical machines.

A fit-looking Rodriguez said he limits his dessert to pecan pie and works out 90 minutes a day.

Carmical, the trombone player, also is determined to keep the weight off. “Yesterday I ran 4 miles and today I did sprints, and we have weight-training in the afternoon,” said Carmical, who also stays fit doing Hapkido, a Korean martial art. “You have to be real careful.”

Children in more than two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s counties are at moderate or high risk for educational failure, according to a report released today by the state departments of Education and Public Welfare.

Report authors calculated risk based on seven factors, including family income level, whether children lived in a single-parent family, parental educational levels, amount of government assistance to the area and local standardized-test scores.

In the midstate, Cumberland and York counties were judged to be at moderate-low risk, Lancaster and Lebanon counties were at moderate-high risk, and Dauphin County was classified as high risk.

The report spotlights the benefits early-childhood education programs can have for at-risk children. For example, children who attend these programs “are more likely to graduate from high school, to attend college or quality job-training programs, and be valuable members of the workforce,” the report states.

Workforce groups such as the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board and community groups such as YorkCounts recognize the role that early-childhood education plays in the development of a well-trained workforce.

An average of 38 percent of Pennsylvania children between birth and age 5 participated in federal- and state-funded “quality” early-childhood programs during the 2007-08 school year, according to the report.

Source: http://www.centralpennbusiness.com/article.asp?aID=69431

THEY have been lampooned for suffering from “man flu” at the merest hint of a sniffle.

But the nation’s men in fact appear to get very little TLC when they fall ill.

A wife’s sympathy for a partner with a cold lasts just five minutes, according to new research.

Most wives and girlfriends are happy to admit they are more cold hearted than cold curing. But when it is women who are suffering, men will not only mop their brow but will even take a day off to look after them, the study found.

The figures from cold remedy Lemsip Max All In One reverses the traditional image of females nursemaiding malingering husbands or boyfriends through the sniffles.

It found 52 per cent of women lose sympathy for their under-the-weather partner after five minutes of moaning. And 18 per cent don’t even last that long, admitting they start off being unsympathetic.

But in the cold war of the sexes, when the shoe’s on the other foot, men see themselves as Florence Nightingales at the first sign of a sneeze.

Seventy per cent claim to be sympathetic but many go further, with 60 per cent doing the housework and 64 per cent cooking dinner.

Lemsip surveyed 1,300 adults to launch a product it claims works after just five minutes. It found only 19 per cent of women have taken a day off to look after their man while 37 of men have done the same for their wife or girlfriend.

Women are also less likely to give up a night out to nursemaid their partner (56 per cent), while 73 per cent of men would.

A suburban Philadelphia woman suspected of dozens of graffiti tags was identified after she used her MySpace account name in her work, police said.Melanie Brockway, 23, of Norristown, included the contact name “Devient Art” on some of the dozens of properties she vandalized, according to police.

Investigators traced the account to Brockway and arrested her after a search turned up spray paint and other evidence at her Norristown home, authorities said.

Police suspect Brockway vandalized about 100 properties in the area, causing $10,000 in damage. She allegedly spray painted graffiti on homes, businesses, newspaper boxes, playground equipment and other property, tagging them with the letters “SKTCH” and “DVNC,” according to a criminal complaint.

“She calls herself an aspiring artist,” Norristown Police Chief Russell Bono said. “We want the public to know we take these things very seriously.”

Brockway, an unemployed mother of two, admitted she tagged 80 to 100 properties or more, according to police reports. Separately, a 17-year-old boy is charged as a juvenile with tagging 150 to 200 city properties.

A listed phone number for Brockway has been disconnected and it was not immediately clear if she had a lawyer or if she remained in custody.

President George W. Bush, nearing the end of his final term in office, says he most wants to be remembered as someone who came to Washington and didn’t lose his values.
 
Someone who didn’t sell his soul to the political process.
 
Somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace.
 
So he told his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, in an interview for StoryCorps, the national oral history initiative. An excerpt of the interview aired on National Public Radio on Thanksgiving Day and the White House released excerpts on Friday. The entire interview will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process,” Bush said in the interview. “I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.  And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values.”
 
“I’d like to be a president (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor,” the president added.
 
He mentions his HIV/AIDS and malaria initiatives in Africa, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit as two programs he is proud of.
 
Asked about his “No Child Left Behind” education law, Bush called it one of the “significant achievements of my administration.”
 
“We said loud and clear to educators, parents, and children that we expect the best for every child, that we believe every child can learn, and that in return for federal money we expect there to be an accountability system in place to determine whether every child is learning to read, write and add and subtract,” Bush said.

Bush hands over power to President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2009.
 
As he heads into the final weeks of his presidency, Bush’s job approval ratings remain low. Only about 26 percent approve of his performance, while some 70 percent disapprove.
 
Bush’s decision to take the United States to war in Iraq is widely unpopular. A Quinnipiac University poll in early November found that 58 percent disagreed with decision.