Defense Solutions Holding Incorporated is a company that is on the rise. Founded in 2001 in Exton, Pennsylvania, Defense Solutions is known as being one of the few American companies that does business in the U.S. and Iraq. Today, the company announced that one American refinery and two Asian refinery groups have asked them to secure oil contracts in Iraq.

One of the most unique aspects of Defense Solutions is how far their business has branched out. In 2005, when the company was merely four years in their history, Defense Solutions supplied 77 T-72 tanks to the Iraqi Army whom were under contracts with NATO at the time and the U.S. Army. Since then, Defense Solutions has entered into joint development agreements to produce the NATO-compatible armored personnel carrier, the BTR-4.

Leading the way at Defense Solutions is Colonel Timothy D. Ringgold, PhD who formed Defense Solutions upon

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It's September again, and that means the children are heading off to school, and the birds - heading south. And, as tradition goes, Comandante Chávez has embarked on a world tour. This time, the Lt. Col. - the leader of the Bolivarian revolution - visited Libya, where he observed the 40th anniversary in power of another colonel, Muammar Qaddafi. Then - Algeria. Then - he went to Iran. Then - popped into Turkmenistan, which, it seems, turned out to have been a surprise for president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow [We are using the spelling the Turkmens themselves use as they switch from Cyrillic to Latin script, instead of "Berdymukhamedov", which is actually a transcription from Russian--Ed.].

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Recently, I had the unique opportunity to tour two different oil sands operations near Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta. I saw a massive open-pit oil sands mine, and the associated reclamation effort, operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd. I also visited an in situ oil sands recovery project called Surmont, operated by ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP).

The trip was sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute (API), which paid for the airfare and accommodations. Managers at both Syncrude and ConocoPhillips granted me access to any parts of their operations I wanted to see (within allowances for safety). And everyone answered any and all questions I asked.

Post-trip, I have complete editorial freedom to write about what I saw and learned. And I learned a lot. So this is Part I of a two-part series. Watch for Part II.

The Past and Future of Oil and Oil Sands

The first thing that struck me about visiting

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Wow, it is really starting to feel like military Thursday.  Here's another story from Wired's Danger Room reminding us that why Washington isn't really all that concerned over Russia's frequent gestures of hostility:

Depending on whom you ask, Moscow's bomber threat is about to get a lot more dangerous -- or it was never all that dangerous to begin with.

Lately, Russia has had to make do with aircraft left over from the 1980s. The Russian strategic bomber force -- 16 Tu-160 Blackjacks and 64 Tu-95 Bears -- is roughly half the size of the U.S. bomber force, but more importantly, the Russian birds have not been significantly upgraded in 20 years. Most of them cannot use any kind of precision-guided bomb, making them mostly useless

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Though Chechnya often gets the street cred, Ingushetia is a pretty rough place as well, and one of the most bloody war zones of the Caucasus.  Before his untimely death, the last article that lawyer Stanislav Markelov contributed to this blog was about the murder of journalist Magomed Yevloyev, and the lack of a legal opposition in Ingushetia.  Following Markelov's murder, throughout the first seven months of 2009 the situation has dramatically worsened.  On June 22nd, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was very nearly murdered in an assassination attempt (photo of Medvedev visiting him in the hospital).  Nameless dead bodies, supposedly of militants or government opponents, are regularly found in various hiding places.  On July 4th, nine Chechen ...