Raytheon's fighting obesity : Melbourne Indymedia

Raytheon Recognized for Promoting Healthy Lifestyles for its Employees
Wednesday June 22, 11:00 am ET

WALTHAM, Mass -- The Raytheon Company received a Gold Award today for its commitment to combating obesity and promoting healthy lifestyles for its employees from the National Business Group on Health.

Raytheon was among 22 employers who received the "Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles" award at the Obesity Leadership Summit sponsored by the Business Group's Institute on the Costs and Health Effects of Obesity, Tuesday, June 21.

Launched in 2002, the Raytheon Health and Wellness Program focuses on evidence-based programming to reduce health risks by encouraging healthy behaviors including proper nutrition, physical activity, tobacco cessation, stress management, and healthcare consumerism. Raytheon drives a healthy culture by leveraging the expertise of both internal and external partners, providing an integrated and targeted approach to programming. The company's goal is to optimize healthy behaviors and to link those behaviors to an improved health status for employees.

The Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles awards program was created by the Institute on the Costs and Health Effects of Obesity to honor those who recognize the urgent need to improve their workers' health, productivity and quality of life. The underlying goal of the program is to serve as a catalyst to encourage all employers to take action.

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN - News), with 2004 sales of $20.2 billion, is an industry leader in defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services, and business and special mission aircraft. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 80,000 people worldwide.

With the awarding of $13,172,200 in Common Missile contracts, the PEO for Tactical Missiles is moving forward in its CM development efforts. Raytheon, Tucson, Ariz., Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando, Fla., and the Boeing Company, Huntsville, began risk reduction, concept and technology development work which was completed in fiscal 2003. At that time the Program Executive Office evaluated the capabilities to build the Common Missile. The Army's inventory of TOW 2A, TOW 2B and Hellfire missiles will be replaced by 73,000 Common Missiles, with low-rate initial production scheduled for fiscal 2008 and first unit equipped in fiscal 2010.

The Joint Common Missile (JCM) program will be the first Missile program to reach a Milestone B decision without conducting a live fire test. This is due to the dependence they have placed on Modeling and Simulation (M&S) as opposed to a full prototype test. Previously in 2002 Ahmed Hijazi and five other suspected al Qaeda operatives were killed by a five-foot long Hellfire missile launched from a remote controlled CIA Predator aircraft as they rode in a vehicle 100 miles east of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Hijazi held U.S. citizenship and was also a citizen of an unidentified Middle Eastern country, a senior administration official confirmed.
In some cases since Sept. 11, American citizens have been arrested and afforded traditional legal rights in the criminal justice system. In others, they have been captured and held indefinitely in military brigs as "enemy combatants." Now, at least in Hijazi's case, a citizen has been killed in a covert military action.

What's more, Hijazi was killed in a country considered at peace with the United States, although U.S. officials say the strike was carried out with the approval and cooperation of Yemen's government.

"This is an extraordinary change of threshold," said one former intelligence operative who praised the tactic as particularly effective.

"Raytheon is honored to accept this award," said Keith Peden, Raytheon senior vice president of Human Resources. "We believe that promoting healthy lifestyles for our employees helps to create a healthier, more productive workforce."

Much-needed experience in killing Americans

NEW YORK At the daily White House press briefing Wednesday, reporters raised with Press Secretary Scott McClellan a bombshell story from Iraq carried earlier Wednesday in The New York Times and wire services, based on a CIA report. Essentially, the questions at the White House boiled down to: Has the invasion and occupation of Iraq actually created more terrorists than it has crushed, and also given them much-needed experience in killing Americans and others?

According to the classified CIA report, the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

“The assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, was described in recent days by several Congressional and intelligence officials,” Doug Jehl wrote in The New York Times. “The officials said it made clear that the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.”

The report says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of deadly skills, from car bombings and assassinations to tightly coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets. If and when the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.

Vice President Dick Cheney has recently argued that the insurgency is in its last throes, despite reports that the guerrillas have grown more sophisticated and more deadly.

Naturally, McClellan was asked about all this today at his daily press briefing. Here is the relevant part of the official transcript:

**
Q Scott, how concerned is the administration about the potential for Iraq to become a sort of training ground for Islamic extremists who may go back to their home countries and use these techniques to destabilize their governments? There's a new report on that recently.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let me mention a couple things. As the President has said for some time now, Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. Wherever you stood before the decision to go into Iraq, I think we can all recognize that the terrorists have made it a central front in the war on terrorism. That's why, as the President said earlier today, we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them here at home. And that's where things are. And that's why the terrorists understand how high the stakes are ...

Q The report suggested that there's concern that Egyptians, Jordanians and others will go back to their home countries, using the techniques they've learned in Iraq to destabilize those countries.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I don't know what your question is.

Q Are you concerned about that? Do you think there's potential for that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. In terms of what's your question on it, I think you're making the assumption that these individuals would just be sitting around sipping tea, as Secretary Rice likes to refer to in her previous comments. So I don't know what your question is regarding that.

Q Just following up on that question, you said at the outset of that, the terrorists have made it a central front in the war on terrorism. I thought it was a central front in the war on terrorism before we invaded.

MR. McCLELLAN: It is. It's part of the war on terrorism, yes.

Q It was.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, it is.

Q It is now --

MR. McCLELLAN: Both.

Q Was it prior to --

MR. McCLELLAN: Both. It's part of the war on terrorism, David.