Via today’s Agonist we learn that US military officials have decided that Afghanistan is going to be easy pickings this Spring.
The Taliban are unlikely to launch a spring offensive in Afghanistan this year because all their energies will be focused in Pakistan, United States military officials said. But as that battle heats up, US officials added that they do not have enough intelligence on the ground in Pakistan.
KARACHI - With the Taliban's spring offensive just months away, the Afghan front has been quiet as Taliban and al-Qaeda militants have been heavily engaged in fighting security forces in Pakistan's tribal regions.
But now Taliban leader Mullah Omar has put his foot down and reset the goals for the Taliban: their primary task is the struggle in Afghanistan, not against the Pakistan state.
Mullah Omar has sacked his own appointed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, the main architect of the fight against Pakistani security forces, and urged all Taliban commanders to turn their venom against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, highly placed contacts in the Taliban told Asia Times Online. Mullah Omar then appointed Moulvi Faqir Mohammed (a commander from Bajaur Agency) but he refused the job. In the past few days, the Pakistani Taliban have held several meetings but have not yet appointed a replacement to Mehsud.
Maybe you ought to pay attention to what your enemy says. So far, they've done exactly what they have declared they would do. I dunno, it just seems easy to me, although I lack a degree from Army Vo-Tech and advanced training from the glamor school.
2. From the same article, here’s some on-the-ground intelligence for US military officials:
This major development occurred at a time when Pakistan was reaching out with an olive branch to the Pakistani Taliban. Main commanders, including Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the main Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan, Sirajuddin Haqqani, signed peace agreements. But al-Qaeda elements, including Tahir Yuldashev, chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, undermined this initiative.
"We refused any peace agreement with the Pakistani security forces and urged the mujahideen fight for complete victory," Yuldashev said in a jihadi video message seen by Asia Times Online. Yuldashev's closest aide and disciple, Mehsud, last week carried out an attack on a Pakistani security post and then seized two forts in the South Waziristan tribal area.
I know you’re really aching to get stuck in combat in yet another country, but look – you can’t handle the two countries you’re stuck in now. Why not allow Pakistan, a sovereign country, to handle its own internal affairs?
Pakistan bombed South Waziristan and sent in heavy artillery and tanks for a major operation against Mehsud. Other important commanders are now in North Waziristan and they support the peace agreements with the Pakistani security forces.
Pakistan's strategic quarters maintain the planned operation in South Waziristan is aimed particularly at eliminating Mehsud.
"While talking to government representatives in the jirga [peace council] we could clearly discern a grudge against Baitullah Mehsud and the Mehsud tribes by the security forces. And there are signs that the government is obsessed with a military operation to make Baitullah Mehsud a martyr," a leading member of the peace jirga in South Waziristan, Maulana Hisamuddin, commented to Voice of America.
Yes, we’re all concerned about the possibility that Pakistan might fall to a fanatical Islamist movement, and thereby the nukes might come under their control. Well, leaving aside the fact that George Bu$h engineered this danger by his refusal to properly prosecute the Taliban and al-Qadeda (headed by O b L, scion of a family the Bu$h family has done business with for 30 years) it might be a good idea to use the nuclear bunker busters that Mr Cheney has been slavering to use in Iran on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons instead.
By the way, gentlemen, if, as MG David Rodriguez suggests, you’re not concerned with the Taliban making a spring offensive, why is GEN Dan McNeill asking for another 3,000 troops?
As NATO forces struggle to contain a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, the US is expected to send 3000 more marines to that nation in advance of an anticipated spring offensive.
U.S. Army General Dan McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, made the formal request for reinforcements this week. It has already received the backing of Central Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is likely to get quick approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
However, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company, the move has already been under consideration by the Pentagon for the last three months, while the Bush administration "has dragged its heels," partly out of fear that it would be seen as "an admission the US was far too absorbed in Iraq, while it left Afghanistan to dangerously deteriorate."
Isn’t this actually a reversal of your decision last year to not allow the Marines to concentrate in Afghanistan?
A confused man might not be able to decide whether you gentlemen have no frickin idea what to do with the mess the neocons left you with, or whether you just have too many uniformed PR flacks practicing public diplomacy through misrepresentation.
Back in last October, the Marines asked to be excused from the Anbar province of Iraq and sent instead to Afghanistan where things are…. problematic might be a diplomatic word to use. The logic was that it would simplify troop rotation to have the Army responsible for Iraq, with their 15 month tours, and the Marines in Afghanistan, with their seven month deployments.
Additionally, since Marines are all riflemen, wherever they go they bring along riflemen temporarily assigned to Super Cobra helicopters, Harrier jets, and F/A-18 Hornet fighter bombers. Being able to deploy with your own air force makes things a bit neater.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) methodology.... so at first glance I'm liking this plan. Marines in Afghanistan, Army in Iraq, and the Air Force out somewhere in middle America reminding everyone of how important they are.
Sarcastic irony in the Air Force. Who could have guessed?
There was some credible sense to the proposal, since the Army could rotate its troops out of Afghanistan and into Anbar, a province that is presently the great showpiece for the Bu$h malAdministration. They’re bribingpaying tribute paying the $300 per month salaries of somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 tribesman, designated as “concerned local citizens” to keep them quiet and keep the supply lines open from Kuwait and Aqabah.
Picture credit: Moon of Alabama
Only cynical people would claim that the Marines wanted to get out from under a situation (Iraq) that has been a complete failure, and especially to get out of Anbar before it blows up. I’m sure the Commandant and his staff felt they could contribute something significant to the fight in Afghanistan.
At the time it was decided that no, the Marines should stay just where they were. I can’t help feeling that decision wasn’t made in the Pentagon, but rather within our White House. After all, Anbar is the only bragging point they’ve got in the Global War On Terror ™ and why fix it if it ain’t broke?
Then last week we saw Secretary Gates going off (unfairly) on our NATO allies in Afghanistan, an attack he apologized for the next day.
Also last week we learned that GEN David McKiernan, presently CG, US Army, Europe, is slated to be assigned to command all NATO forces in Afghanistan. His predecessor, GEN Dan McNeill, asked for an additional 3,200 troops to be assigned to his command. There are presently about 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, including 14,000 Americans. There is also a separate command of about 12,000 US troops tasked on a counter-terrorism mission.
The Army is pretty well strapped, with all of its ready forces (including the Strategic Reserve) in Iraq. The surge escalation planned and enacted last year has tied the Army’s hands by forcing it to deploy brigades ahead of schedule (and in one case delaying a brigade’s return in order cover the planned in-country deployment around Baghdad.) The five “surge” brigades are now out of the Army’s inventory for a year or more, and as I mentioned, the Army had to dig deep into its Strategic Reserve, which is a serious matter. That’s the immediate follow-on reinforcement after the one ready brigade of the 82nd Airborne division is dispatched to whatever hot spot suddenly flares up. Those units that have recently returned to their home bases are currently combat-ineffective as they replace positions emptied by retirement, death, wounds, or soldiers released from active duty.
Finding 3,200 more US troops for Afghanistan could become a problem. Fortunately, the Commandant suggested last year that Army troops in Afghanistan be supplanted by Marines.
With the Corps currently in the process of expanding from its active duty strength of 175,000 to a planned 202,000 it will become larger and more vigorous. The reserve force provides about 40,000 additional troops. It seems quite possible the Commandant will get his wish.
This will make the proposed complete failure in Iraq the fault of the Army, and not the republicans and Mr Bu$h.
While discussing the V-22 Osprey in the past I noted that it’s a bit light in the self-defense department.
The machine itself is a big step forward for the Corps and I know we’re all rooting for it to deliver the snuffies somewhere near the crash and clangor of battle – but not too close, since they only carry one .30 machine gun for defensive fire, and the rear ramp has to be lowered to use it. [emph added]
The immediate image I had was the mandatory requirement to land four of these babies at a time, nose in, with their rear ramps facing out in order to provide some fire suppression. This was not a happy picture. It seems some other people had the same stomach griping I did.
Air Force and Marine Corps V-22 Ospreys may get a turret-mounted machine gun, fulfilling a long-sought requirement for a forward-firing defensive weapon and making it unique among today’s U.S. transport aircraft.
…
A nose gun was considered early in the tilt-rotor’s two-decade gestation but was branded too costly, Air Force requirements officials said.
The fiscal 2008 supplemental request includes $82 million for research, development and testing of an “all-quadrant,” or 360-degree, defensive weapon to augment the ramp-mounted 7.62mm machine gun the Marines use for now.
Navy program spokesman James Darcy said there is no timetable for finding such a gun, and the search will be bound by finances and the plodding acquisition process.
“SOCom is looking at a faster turnaround,” Darcy said. “But Air Force Special Operations Command is flying a different mission than the Marine Corps.”
I suppose that SOCOM feels that, unlike the Marine Corps, they are sent into areas where they’re not welcome. Imagine that: the Marines not having opposed landings.
There are 10 Marine Ospreys in Iraq right now, and they’re hauling troops and trash (supplies) around on logistical missions, although I have heard reports that the biggest use of Ospreys has been to haul around VIPs rather than supplies or troops. As I said, “trash.”
SOCOM put out requests for program solutions last September seeking an “all-quadrant” defensive weapon system to be ready within 120 days of contract signing.
But for the most part, those requirements are intentionally vague, he said, leaving the door open for industry to be as innovative as possible. It is not even specified whether the system should be fully integrated into the aircraft in the future or if a drop-in solution is the best plan.
“There are advantages and disadvantages to total, permanent integration,” said Air Force Maj. Rob Pittman of the Air Force acquisition office. “The quick-and-dirty solution that gets the job done might be the answer.”
One contractor, BAE Systems, has started design work already on such a system.
[…] BAE Systems has been spending its own money to develop the Remote Guardian System, a turreted, remote-operated, retractable weapon that could be fielded in the third quarter of 2008 and fitted aboard the V-22 and other aircraft, said Clark B. Freise, vice president and general manager of defense avionics for BAE.
“We’ve been investing for two years and created our own program to develop the capability,” Freise said.
While Freise would not say how much BAE has spent or how much it would charge per weapon, he did say the price would be low enough to appeal to the Pentagon and high enough to recoup its investment.
“We spent a lot of money on it,” he said. “We found a hole in their protection, we’re covering it for now, and we’ll get it back. We’d rather not say how much we’ve invested. We have shared with the Marine Corps what we think it will cost to go into production, and it is significantly lower than other solutions.”
Before the Marine Corps gets too deeply invested in new technology (and BAE'$ $olution will be an inve$tment) it might be wise to point out that the Army feels it has already recognized and resolved this problem.
The U.S. Army plans to outfit thousands more vehicles with Common Remotely Operated Weapon Stations (CROWS), which allow gunners to fire on targets from the safety of armored crew compartments.
In August, Army officials intend to choose one firm from among several competitors to receive a contract for 1,500 CROWS stations. In total, the contract could grow to as many as 6,500 CROWS, Army officials said.
“The Army is looking at the CROWS system for the up-armored Humvee, Fox [reconnaissance vehicle], RG-31 [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles] and the Abrams [tank], so right now the Army is trying to finalize the basis of issue regarding how many CROWS to order and who gets them,” said Richard Audette, deputy project manager for soldier weapons at the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.
It takes one week to train soldiers.
Now, I know I get active duty readers from the Corps, and from CENTCOM and the Pentagon, and I have been hard on your bosses. It’s not that I hate officers, gentlemen. I understand they think differently, that’s all. The CROWS system has been test-driven in the sandbox, and the GIs seem to like it.
Not only can you bring along your best friend (Ma Deuce) and you don’t have to carry it! And you can fit out the installation with the Mk 19. That has got to be a popular feature.
The US general in charge of training the Afghan police has criticised British-backed plans to arm local militias in an attempt to defeat the Taliban. The remarks by Maj-Gen Robert Cone, the second most senior US soldier in Afghanistan, are likely to deepen the row between London and Washington over how to counter the insurgency.
General Cone, who is in charge of rebuilding the Afghan police force, is the second US commander to condemn the initiative. He said: "Anything that detracts from a professional, well-trained, well-led police force is not the answer."
Last month, Gordon Brown said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai". The arbakai system involves arming untrained Afghani men, who agree to come running at the beating of a drum if their village elders feel threatened.
British diplomats and military strategists in the restive southern province of Helmand hope the idea might bolster Afghanistan's fledgling police force, which is unable to defend itself against attacks by Taliban insurgents. At least 10 officers died yesterday in a Taliban attack on a checkpoint in Kandahar. But US officials fear that arbakai fighters would fall under the command of warlords disloyal to the Afghan government. Their reluctance to endorse the plan follows a disastrous international initiative to build an "auxiliary" police force, which was scrapped last year.
Auxiliary officers were given assault rifles and uniforms after just a few days of rudimentary training, on the understanding that they would be required only to police the area they came from. "The auxiliary police was an attempt to take short-cuts," said General Cone, warning that there were similarities between the doomed auxiliaries and Mr Brown's arbakai plan. "It is very important to understand why the Afghan National Auxiliary Police Force did not work, as we look at any informal programme that doesn't promote professional policing," he added.
Analysts also fear the introduction of arbakai would undo years of effort by the United Nations to disarm illegal militias.
General Cone's remarks follow earlier criticism of the idea by the commander of the 37-nation Nato coalition in Afghanistan. General Dan McNeill said the plan would work only in small parts of the countryside which did not include Helmand, where most of Britain's 7,700 troops are stationed. He said: "My information, from studying Afghan history, is that arbakai works only in Paktia, Khost and the southern portion of Paktika, and it's not likely to work beyond those geographic locations."
General Cone is leading a root-and-branch reform of the Afghan police force, which has been ill-equipped, badly paid, poorly trained and dogged by corruption since 2001. The US government has pledged $7.4bn (£3.7bn) to improve Afghan security forces between now and October. But General Cone admitted there was no "model of what policing should be" in the country. "When Afghan people understand what well-trained, well-paid police do, they will demand it," he added. "But right now they are just not familiar."
He said he backed greater community involvement in the police if it meant "neighbourhood-watch type programmes" rather than arming and paying local people.
Britain has faced increasing criticism from allies in recent months for championing alternative tactics to defeat the Taliban. The Prime Minister promised more "tribal engagement" during a recent visit to Kabul. But last month the Afghan government expelled two UN and EU diplomats for meeting commanders sympathetic to insurgents.
There has been a lot of recent criticism of NATO efforts in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Gates fired off a broadside claiming that the NATO allies who agreed to come to Afghanistan after Mr Bu$h screwed it all up with his childish ego-war in Iraq in search of oil and his mother’s approval have in fact not been killing and dying enough.
British commanders were outraged after the US defence secretary criticised other Nato troops for their role in the bloody conflict in Afghanistan.
Robert Gates said the 30,000 US troops in Afghanistan were "doing a terrific job" in confronting the Taliban insurgency.
He added, however: "I think our allies over there, this is not something they have any experience with."
Mr Gates's comments caused an international outcry following months of simmering tensions between the U.S. and its allies over strategy in Afghanistan.
Senior British officers in Afghanistan said he should "wind his neck in".
…
Mr Gates told the Los Angeles Times he believed America's allies lack the skills to pursue successful counter-insurgency operations against Taliban guerillas.
It’s accurate to say that Denmark, Germany and Canada do not have the COIN experience that the US has purchased so expensively in Iraq. However, Mr Gates might have forgotten that Britain has had the only successful counter-insurgency campaigns in the history of the NATO member states. Even though Saint David Petraeus got to put his name on a book written by others, in true American military/management style, Britain defeated an uprising in Malaya and a particularly brutal and long-running insurrection in Northern Ireland. (My good friend A.E, might disagree with me that Northern Ireland was an apt example of COIN.)
Just because we’re in the middle of a pissing contest with the UK because they feel they’ve accomplished their mission in Southern Iraq and we wanted them to be tied down for 50 years like us is not a good reason to play Calvinball with them. They did what we asked them to, with a proportionately larger slice of their Army than we have stuck into the tarbaby.
What’s your problem, Mr Gates? Not enough Germans dying in Afghanistan? It was an American general who put them in the quiet part of Afghanistan.
Plus, no fair saying the Brits are not allowed to do in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq! We’ve taken civilians in Iraq who are kinda-sorta ex-brigands, thieves, murderers and all-around not nice people and given them lots of guns, lots of money, and lots of free fire zones because they have a better dislike of Saudis than our government. We called that a great success, although in reality it’s only a temporary marriage of convenience. The Bu$h malAdministration was just seeking a propaganda victory. Sooner or later the US is going to stop paying these Anbaris baksheesh and then it will be Katie bar the door, with 70,000 well-armed and pissed off locals out of work.
The Shiite central government has decided that no more than 20% of these Iraqi mercenaries concerned local citizens will be permitted to join the army or national police forces and the other 80% are going to be left kicking the curb.
While there might be a legitimate concern that some of the Afghan police auxiliaries might be Talibani moles, we have seen that there are takfiri moles in the Iraqi Army. It’s going to happen when your colonialization policy includes kicking crates of rifles and bags of ca$h off of helicopters in a desperate attempt to stop them killing US troops in the runup to a national election.
I know I’m right, you know I’m right, and less importantly, but better-publicized, is the fact that Secretary Gates pulled in his horns the next day.
WASHINGTON - U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates scrambled Thursday to praise Canada and other NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan, saying reports that he's unhappy with their efforts don't "reflect reality" or the views of the American government.
Countries like Canada that are committing combat troops are "playing a significant and powerful role," Gates told a news conference called to quell an international furor after he told the Los Angeles Times he's worried some allied forces weren't trained in counterinsurgency operations.
…
Asked whether his comments this week fit "the Washington definition of a gaffe, which is accidentally telling the truth," Gates replied: "No, I don't think so."
And he insisted the additional U.S. marines, something Canada has been requesting for some time, doesn't "reflect dissatisfaction" with the military performance of allied forces.
U.S. military analyst Bruce Riedel said Gates was venting growing unease about a badly stretched U.S. military which is facing two serious insurgencies - in Iraq and Afghanistan - without the resources to fight them both effectively. [emph added]
If Mr Gates is unhappy with the flavor of his soup he’d do better to complain to the chef, who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The tireless Erdla, the better two-thirds of Gorilla’s Guides Dubhaltach, supplied this new Traumatic Brain Injury resource.
LegalView Relaunches Traumatic Brain Injury Portal To Include Information About the Injury Affecting Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan
Denver, CO (PRWEB) January 15, 2008 -- LegalView.com, the number one resource for everything legal on the Internet, relaunches its traumatic brain injury (TBI) information portal to aid soldiers returning from the Middle East who suffer from this debilitating injury.
One of the most common injuries that American soldiers returning home after serving time in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, is TBI. American soldiers are exposed to a number of situations where they may encounter danger and experience TBI. Reports of IED explosions plague the headlines of daily news reports alongside reports of ineffective armor for soldiers. If a family member or friend has been injured and suffers from TBI, it is important that a traumatic brain injury lawyer is contacted to provide resources on the victim receiving help as well as compensation for their injury.
TBI is a serious and debilitating injury that can adversely affect an individual by disrupting motor and speech functions as well as contribute to a loss of hearing, an inability to walk or use appendages, a loss of social skills and balance. TBI can also cause paralysis, loss of sight as well as mental disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. Millions of Americans experience a brain injury or deal with a friend or family member who suffers from TBI and its many side effects. It is imperative that a victim of this injury contacts a brain injury lawyer who can offer insight into potential compensation for an individual.
There are far too many links within this article to brong them all forward. If you want to learn more about this pernicious result of George Bu$h’s instability, I would encourage you to explore the piece and look for yourselves.
I like to check the Sitemeter stats – see who’s visited, what interested them enough to visit, how long they stayed, and what brought them here. That’s how I learned how many visitors I get from pentagon.mil, CENTCOM.mil, and the various services. It’s curious why they would pay attention to a little pishker of a site like this. I find they usually arrive here after googling for a photo and that brings them here.
I had a morning visit that intrigued me because it came from a technorati hit, and that lead me to a TBI survivor who apparently had trouble placing a comment on yesterday’s story about the VA’s uphill battle to respond to the massive number of vets with PTSD and TBI problems. I liked the comment. The lady has a blog. It’s interesting reading, because those of us who are not challenged really have no comprehension of how difficult simple every-day things can be.
Thanks so much for this excellent post! It brings together some great into that people really need to know. I’m a long-term (35 of my 43 years) traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivor, who never received assistance or help (or even acknowledgement) of my condition. I was head-injured when I was 8 years old, and when people didn’t see any immediate physical problems, they just assumed things would work themselves out. Well, they didn’t. I had to work them out, myself. That’s the bad news — years and years of isolation, confusion, false-starts, problems with peers and teachers and parents and family… problems at every turn, with no explanation of what was going on with me. Growing up with a TBI taught me a lot — most of it thanks to the school of hard knocks.
But I have to say, there has been light at the end of the tunnel. Recovery from and successful living with a TBI is possible! I’m living proof! I’ve been through the darkest of valleys, and today I’m in a stable marriage of 17 years, I have a long and productive career history with some of the top businesses in the world, I have a satisfying social life, a healthy emotional balance, and peace of mind. All this, despite living on the margins and having tremendous difficulties over the years with this TBI.
In spite of all the difficulties (perhaps because of them), I have learned to live successfully on my own terms, drawing on my own resources and making sure my own needs are met. If I had depended on folks around me to help me out, I don’t think they could have done nearly as good a job as I’ve done. That’s one of the problems with TBI — it impacts the very part of you that you depend on to identify your needs and communicate them to others.
Even though the VA and the current administration are NOT living up to their responsibilities, there is hope. Each person can find their own way to health and balance… so long as they’re not locked away in a prison of ignorance and fear. TBI survivors are all too often on their own, but it doesn’t need to be the end of the story. Each and every one of us can live up to our true potential, even in the face of limitations. Even in the face of government neglect, PTSD, and brain injury!
I’m glad you liked the post. I noted you have a great deal of information about this injury, and some very helpful links to resources. If any of my readers want further information I hope they’ll visit your corner of blogtopia (y!sctp) and learn about how we’re treating this problem.
Broken/Brilliant has a great mission statement, and I wish her all the success possible.
Soldiers get killed and wounded in combat. That’s what war is. Some die quickly, screaming, their life’s blood spurting out, staining their buddies as they try desperately to save them. Others die slowly, inch by inch, day by day once they get home. They have no visible wounds, so amputated limbs. Their minds are dying.
Saving them is the job of the VA, which hasn’t done well in the past. The professionals at the VA are trying to win that battle.
The only outward sign of something amiss at Garry Naipo's household in this community of well-tended homes south of Fort Lewis is the ragged, yellowing lawn.
"It used to be like Safeco Field out there," Paoakalani "Paoa" Naipo said of the lawn his father no longer trims every three days. Before, Garry Naipo would forgo watching football on the weekend until the grass was cut. Once he started so early on a Saturday morning, his wife, Alii, rushed out, as she put it, "to save him from the neighbors."
Then Garry Naipo, a grandfather of three, went to Iraq -- boomeranging from cul-de-sac to combat and back in 15 months, a journey that would change his life -- and that of his family -- in subtle, corrosive ways.
Naipo, 51, is one of thousands of National Guard citizen soldiers who have left established jobs and families to answer a call and come back altered men and women. On the outside, they look fine, the same even. They blend in at work, in the grocery line, at their children's soccer games. People tell them they're lucky. They're not dead.
They don't bear the grim signatures of combat, the missing limbs or shattered skulls. Their wounds, though, are as insidious as they are invisible. Many return with brains and psyches damaged by chronic exposure to the hammering of blast waves and the afterimages left by bodies blown apart.
They come home, but not back to themselves.
“This portrait of Garry Naipo and his extended family was taken just before he left for Iraq in January 2004, when his National Guard unit was deployed. Alii Naipo says her husband came home from Iraq ‘a different man.’ She's been his main advocate in seeking help for him for post-traumatic stress disorder from the VA.”
This citizen-soldier answered his country’s call and came back a changed man. Combat changes many of us, and we don’t revert back to the person we were before.
In Iraq the exposure to significant bomb attacks has created a huge new class of wounded soldier: the Traumatic Brain Injury.
Veterans Affairs doctors estimate 60 percent to 65 percent of soldiers have experienced a significant explosion, or multiple detonations, by the time they leave the service. "Our mouths drop sometimes at how many blast events our servicepeople have been exposed to," said Jay Uomoto, a neuropsychologist with the VA Puget Sound.
That, in turn, has likely left many with undiagnosed mild to moderate brain injuries, a prognosis that some fear is setting a long fuse that could eventually swamp the system with disabilities as they emerge in the months and years to come.
There are pages of research information about this consequence of combat in Iraq, but not a great deal has reached the public about the scandal of the Army’s disgraceful soughing off of this injury.
Surprisingly, the VA recently announced that only six percent of GIs suffered from TBI. They must have been working from figures supplied from the Army. Soldiers with brain problems that were obvious to their buddies were certified as sound, and discharged into civilian life with no VA referral and no chance for disability payments for their wounds.
A VA mandatory screening program that took effect in April has looked at 61,285 veterans of the wars. Of those, 19.2 percent were identified on the screening questionnaire as potentially suffering from traumatic brain injuries and were referred for more tests.
While evaluation continues, VA spokeswoman Alison Aikele said officials believe, based on a smaller sample, that the final result about 5.8 percent will be diagnosed with TBI.
Just a few months ago, as Mr Bu$h was preparing to address the VFW, telling them what a Great Warrior Leader he was and how Islamofascism is the greatest danger ever facing the country, a group of real patriots was demanding the Bu$h malAdministration deal honestly and completely with the human consequences of its policies.
As President Bush prepares to address the 108th annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City tomorrow, Democrats today called on the President to offer more than the same empty rhetoric and broken promises on the issues that matter to America's veterans and military families. Despite years of promises, on President Bush's watch the Administration has allowed conditions at VA hospitals and medical centers like Walter Reed to deteriorate to appalling levels, has failed to accurately project the cost of treating thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and has jeopardized the personal financial information of America's 26.5 million veterans. Worse, the President's budget proposals have consistently shortchanged the VA, with his 2008 budget including a two percent cut.
Garry Naipo’s been home for two years. He has trouble with his memory, trouble with his speech centers, his fingers are going numb, and he spends his days sheltering in his garage, which he sweeps out daily.
“Since returning from Iraq, Garry Naipo leaves his house less and less. His routine is to go to work, then come home to the bunker of his garage, which he cleans on a daily basis. "My safe place," Naipo calls his garage. "I just want to feel normal," he said recently. "I want to stop looking over my shoulder."
And he’s had little help.
Although he suffers ringing in his ears, is going deaf, has memory lapses, difficulty retrieving words, problems concentrating, anxiety and anger outbursts, he has yet to be medically evaluated for concussive brain injury. A few weeks ago, more than two years after his return, he got a questionnaire in the mail regarding blast wave exposure, but he said he hasn't been able to organize his thoughts enough to answer it.
Regardless of how the symptoms are labeled, his family is sure of one thing: Iraq transformed the man they knew as husband, father and grandfather -- and he's come back to a culture that, for the most part, has hardly noticed.
Those of us who have watched the trainwreck that is George Bu$h and his elitist policies realize he has no thought for soldiers once they have been expended, physically or mentally, in the ego-war of Iraq. They make great backgrounds for his political photo ops, but beyond that their deaths and maimings mean nothing to him.
Last year I featured a few articles written by CPT Jeff Leonard, a California-based Army Reserve officer who served in Iraq with the 114th Medical Detachment as a combat stress specialist. They deal with his life in Iraq, and his duty traveling around a portion of the country, talking with GIs who’ve found the stress level of combat high enough to affect their performance, which is a major concern of the Army. A good soldier, CPT Leonard worked hard to relieve the stress by working with soldiers to overcome the natural fears a man develops when his life is in danger on a daily basis. Along the way, we learned of CPT Leonard’s own fears, and that was a very personal, revealing look into a man trained to help others.
He wrote of the pain felt by men who were supposed to be professional healers and who conducted memorials for dead soldiers, agonizing over the deaths of men they respected and loved. He wrote of soldiers second-guessing themselves after failing to save a life, and of his task to help these men get past combat’s inevitable consequences. He wrote about how to make contact with a wounded man, a bit of “us guys together” – not stage fakery, but the honest and open expression of caring about the troops.
In one of my articles I called CPT Leonard one of the bravest men I have ever heard of, and I stand by that statement today.
Waiting to go back to his family, CPT Leonard wrote openly and honestly about what he had learned about Iraq, combat, and himself. As I recall he came in for some disapproving comments in that piece. Combat and killing is very glamorous to those who’ve never been there.
DefenseLink published an article several days ago that I‘ve wanted to feature for several reasons. It deals with a similar section of counselors in Afghanistan. Company C of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Support Battalion deals in shattered nerves and minds, as CPT Leonard did. The Sky Soldiers have a long and treasured reputation as a fine unit and have earned the (sometimes grudging) respect of the paratrooper community.
They operate from Forward Operating Base Fenty somewhere up in Afghanistan, where the real war against terror – the Taliban and al Qaeda, continues unwon. The Combat Stress Control Detachment works with an Air Force Detachment doing the same job at FOB Fenty. This is a good thing for the 173rd because everyone knows the Air Force is a glide outfit: they get three hot meals a day, clean underwear every other day, clean sheets, and if they run out of ice cream, they fly a load in on a C5 Galaxy. It’s true. Really. Just ask any soldier. Plus they always load their beer pallets on a C-130 and test fly the bird up to around 15,00 feet for an hour. Makes the beer r e a l cold.
A small team of airmen and soldiers work hand in hand to help deployed servicemembers battle stress here and at some 20 surrounding forward operating bases.
The issues troops for which troops seek help vary, team members said.
“It depends a little bit on where the individual is based out of,” said Air Force Lt. Col. (Dr.) Jeffrey Wiser, a psychiatrist with the Combat Stress Control Detachment. “I think a lot of people in the forward locations deal with combat stress reactions. FOB Fenty and some of the areas south and east of here tend to be more operational stress, home-front issues and difficulties within the unit.”
OK, all kidding about the Air Force aside, working on a base in Afghanistan is not a skate job. Dull, unchanging days of 16 hour shifts, seven days a week, bitter cold winters and nasty hot summers with the unending threat of rocket or mortar attacks do not make a happy trooper. While out in the boonies you have a better chance of getting killed, the boredom on a base like that creates its own problems. Things happen at home and you’re not there to deal with them. Wives are forced to do double duty, handling the tasks that are “Daddy’s job.”
And let’s not forget that women also serve in Afghanistan and they also have issues.
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Laurie Wienclawski, a mental health technician on the team, said the team sometimes helps troops hours or days after they have witnessed tragic or shocking events. “The 173rd has lost a lot of people. Being back home, you hear about soldiers being killed and wounded in action. Until you are deployed and actually live it and see it and hear about it, it doesn’t seem real until you are actually there,” she said.
…
Wienclawski said she hoped being a woman would make it easier for troops to talk to her. When she hit the ground, she found out that was not the case. Now, she said, she can best relate to troops by finding things in common with them, like family situation or background.
Not all soldiers realize they’re suffering from stress. Some, wrapped up in that macho “super warrior” syndrome refuse to believe combat stress exists.
Servicemembers don’t always come out to seek help with their problems. Some internalize issues, and only people who really know them notice a change in their behavior, daily routine or sleep patterns, the combat stress experts said. It is important for everyone to know the typical behavior of their battle buddies, or to know their “baseline,” the experts said.
Back in 1999 the DoD realized the dangers of combat stress and developed a program to deal with it. This program has undergone continuing change as adaptation to the realities of war became apparent.
Recently the Army developed the “Battle Buddy” program, given to each soldier as part of his training to teach GIs to watch each other or signs of stress or depression. (Power Point presentation)
Like CPT Leonard, the teams travel to outlying bases because some soldiers are prevented by circumstances or inner reluctance to ask for help.
Since not everyone comes running with their issues, the Combat Stress Control Detachment sends out a small team to surrounding FOBs to “canvas” the neighborhood and see if someone needs their assistance. Weiser said Army Spc. Christopher Truax, a mental health specialist with Company C, is great at “mixing with soldiers and engaging them in conversation and prompting them to come in for evaluations or a more extensive interview.”
Truax, who studied psychology in college, learned about his military occupational specialty on the Internet. He said he finds his job rewarding. “We don’t wait for someone to come and see us; we go see them,” Truax said.
He usually travels with Army Capt. Bryan O’Leary, a 173rd Airborne Brigade psychologist working with the Combat Stress Control Detachment.
…
Team members travel for three to four weeks at a time visiting remote locations. Since some places are really hard to get to, the team spends a lot of time at flightlines and trying to jump on convoys. There is no way to give out actual appointments, but they always notify command elements and aid stations that they are on the way so servicemembers can get the word.
In addition to their physical health, soldiers must be mentally healthy to complete the mission and – the most important duty – come home to their families.
It’s a good thing the 173rd has decided its troopers aren’t iron men.
A representative of the VA sent Jesse Wendel of the Group News Blog an email after reading his carrying my original story about the “MkII Pencil test” of body armor. The email denied the truth of assertion by military officials that soldiers who wore Dragon Skin armor into combat would be penalized if they died. It was claimed that the soldiers beneficiaries would be denied the SGLI payment.
Jesse Wendel sent me a copy of an email he received regarding the SGLI denial story.
Folks:
My title is below. One of my responsibilities is managing the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI) program on behalf of the Department of Veterans Affairs. I have been involved in the SGLI program for nearly 30 years.
I can assure you, there is ZERO truth to the statement about SGLI not being payable if the service member is injured or killed while wearing or not wearing that Dragon body armor or any other item.
99% of active duty service members have elected to be insured under SGLI. Except for extraordinarily serious situations, such as treason, desertion, etc. SGLI death proceeds are always payable for those individuals. SGLI is 24/7 coverage, everywhere in the world, and is payable whether the death is combat-related or not.
Please correct your story, or at least advise your staffs to not repeat the erroneous information in the future. Thank you very much.
Steve
Jesse and I have taken it as accurate and honest in tone and tenor. There is no need to contact jim by phone or email and discuss the matter with him. It goes without saying there is no need to appoint oneself a soldiers’ collective representative and abuse him in anyway at all.
Obviously, the next step was to backtrack the SGLI denial story. This story emanates from a January 14, 2006 article written by Nathaniel Helms under the DefenseWatch subsection of the pro-soldier Soldiers For The Truth which was started and inspired by COL David Hackworth, one of the greatest infantry soldiers the US was ever honored to have wear its uniform.
Go read the original, which I have excerpted, and decide for yourself. Remember: the issue here is not whether soldiers were actually denied their SGLI benefits, but whether or not the Army intentionally, mendaciously and dishonorably lied to troops going into combat.
Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.
The soldiers asked for anonymity because they are concerned they will face retaliation for going public with the Army's apparently new directive. At the sources' requests DefenseWatch has also agreed not to reveal the unit at which the incident occured for operational security reasons.
On Saturday morning a soldier affected by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that "all" commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. [editor: Special Ops soldiers are usually not given to telling tall tales unless it is at a bar.] It arrived unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The soldier said the order was deeply disturbiing to many of the men who had used their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their mobility and ballistic protection. [emph added]
"We have to be able to move. It (Dragon Skin) is heavy, but it is made so we have mobility and the best ballistic protection out there. This is crazy. And they are threatening us with our benefits if we don't comply." he said.
The soldier reiterated Friday's reports that any soldier who refused to comply with the order and was subsequently killed in action "could" be denied the $400,000 death benefit provided by their SGLI life insurance policy as well as face disciplinary action.
As of this report Saturday morning the Army has not yet responded to a DefenseWatch inquiry.
…
One of the soldiers who lost his coveted Dragon Skin is a veteran operator. He reported that his commander expressed deep regret upon issuing his orders directing him to leave his Dragon Skin body armor behind. The commander reportedly told his subordinates that he "had no choice because the orders came from very high up" and had to be enforced, the soldier said. Another soldier's story was corroborated by his mother, who helped defray the $6,000 cost of buying the Dragon Skin, she said.
The mother of the soldier, who hails from the Providence, Rhode Island area, said she helped pay for the Dragon Skin as a Christmas present because her son told her it was "so much better" than the Interceptor OTV they expected to be issued when arriving in country for a combat tour.
"He didn't want to use that other stuff," she said. "He told me that if anything happened to him I am supposed to raise hell."
At the time the orders were issued the two soldiers had already loaded their Dragon Skin body armor onto the pallets being used to air freight their gear into the operational theater, the soldiers said. They subsequently removed it pursuant to their orders.
Currently nine U.S. generals stationed in Afghanistan are reportedly wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin body armor, according to company spokesman Paul Chopra. Chopra, a retired Army chief warrant officer and 20+-year pilot in the famed 160th "Nightstalkers" Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), said his company was merely told the generals wanted to "evaluate" the body armor in a combat environment. Chopra said he did not know the names of the general officers wearing the Dragon Skin. [emph added]
While searching to track down the original story which emanated from the Solders For The Truth webpage I happened upon this interesting tidbit:
Former Head of Army's Body Armor Program Under Criminal Investigation
Retired Army Colonel John D. Norwood (West Point '80), former head of the Army office responsible for body armor, is reported to be under criminal investigation for alleged violations of federal law related to his taking a post-retirement job with Armor Holdings, Inc., one of the major providers of Interceptor Body Armor to the Army .
Two sources aware of the investigation have told DefenseWatch that at least three federal agencies are investigating Norwood's transition from being the Project Manager for Soldier Equipment under PEO-SOLDIER (from 2003 until his retirement in the summer of 2006) to his post-retirement job as a Vice President of the Aerospace & Defense Group of Armor Holdings.
Editor's Note: Effective August 1, 2007 BAE became the owner of Armor Holdings, Inc., and the new owners assigned components of former Armor Holdings to already existing divisions within BAE. A representative of BAE confirmed to DefenseWatch that Col. Norwood is a current employee with the title of "Vice President for Business Development" of a BAE component. This representative stated that he was "unaware of any investigation involving Col. John Norwood."
(DefenseWatch first exposed Norwood's trip through the revolving door from a senior position in the Army's body armor program responsible for Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) to a senior position with Armor Holdings.)
A third source, a long-time member of the personal protective equipment industry, has told DefenseWatch that one of the specific allegations for which Norwood is being investigated involves possible illegal actions with regard to classified information.
DefenseWatch will continue to pursue this story and keep its readers informed as more information becomes available.
Editor's Note: It is important to emphasize: (1) that Norwood is entitled to the presumption of innocence. To this point a criminal investigation is underway. And, (2) that an investigation means only that federal law enforcement agencies are gathering evidence that will be presented to a US Attorney for determination as to whether the evidence is sufficient to move forward to the next level of legal proceedings, i.e., presentation of evidence to a federal grand jury. A DefenseWatch email to Norwood's personal/home email account has not been answered.
By the way, that interior link to Defense Watch, in which they state they first learned of the investigation, is worth quoting too. It is dated March 23, 2007.
A Sad Reality - Four West Pointers At The Heart Of The Body Armor Scandal
Those readers of DefenseWatch who have followed SFTT's efforts over the past year and a half to get honest and completely transparent comparative testing of all available both armor, including, but not necessarily restricted to both Dragon Skin and the currently issued Interceptor Body Armor system, know that from time to time there's been a tad -- okay, maybe more than a tad -- of anger in my writings on this subject. After all, it's truly an issue of life-or-death importance to America's Grunts.
This column is however, written much more in sadness and sorrow than in anger.
West Point graduates have contributed so much, for so many years, to the defense of our great nation, and in other areas as well. Two have been presidents.
But, it is on our country's many battlefields over the last two centuries that The Long Gray Line has earned the respect and gratitude that distinguishes West Point from all other institutions in our nation.
Two of the warriors that Hack respected most are West Point grads who continue to serve their country by being members of the SFTT Advisory Board: Lt. Gen. Henry E. "Hank" Emerson USA (Ret.), Class of 1947, and Lt.Gen. Harold G. "Hal" Moore, USA (Ret.), Class of 1945. Their records of distinguished and heroic performance as combat leaders speak for themselves, and need no repeating here.
Consequently, to have discovered that several West Pointers have played key roles in ensuring that inferior body armor continues to be issued to our great troops is a particular and sharp disappointment to this writer.
Before I get into the specifics of who are these "disappointments," and what just what were their roles in continuing the status quo when undeniable evidence proves a better body armor is available, I want to quote from an email received just this morning.
Like the combat leadership achievements of Hank Emerson and Hal Moore, this email speaks for itself.
I will identify the sender as a father of an sergeant of infantry, with one combat tour in Iraq behind him, and another tour coming up later this year. (Due to this father's diligence, SFTT has recently obtained some amazing information that will be shared with our readers in the next few weeks. Stand by.)
There’s much more to this story of apparent corruption within the US Army’s body armor criterion and selection board.
The letter referred to above must be read since it forms a pertinent part of this ongoing story.
As the editor notes above a presumption of innocence must be made. Are any of you familiar with how a military investigation is conducted? Early on you’re given an “Article 32” hearing, which often includes the proceedings required under Article 31, and is the military’s equivalent under UCMJ and is approximately analogous to the civilian law enforcement agencies conducting an investigation, issuing a Miranda warning, and performing the sort of detailed collection and consideration of evidence done by a grand jury in the civilian world.
Having granted COL Norwood his due right to be considered innocent, it’s noteworthy to remember that by the time the military gets to Article 32, there is an assumption that the matter will go further, and that’s all I’m going to say about the matter for now.
Most military summoned to an Article 32 hearing bring a defense attorney with them for very good reason.
[P]onying up to save Afghanistan isn't going to happen. It's not just a matter of "the population" of NATO countries being unhappy, the governments haven't shown the willingness to pay either. In large part that's because while it's a NATO war officially, the US made it clear that Afghanistan wasn't a priority for Washington when the US invaded Iraq. Since Afghanistan isn't a priority for the US, why should it be a priority for anyone else? Sure, there are reasons -- it isn't just the US that has had al-Qaeda inspired attacks, but at the end of the day, Afghanistan was invaded because of 9/11 and if the US, which was attacked that day doesn't take it seriously, no one else is going to massively contribute either.
It is also the case that the money that would be required to win in Afghanistan has been thrown away in tax cuts for the rich, and on domestic pork, corruption and financial bubbles. Massive bonuses for hedge fund managers and record profits for corporations are a choice that America has made about where money should be spent and the refusal to tax that money is likewise a choice.
The people that George Bu$h used as an excuse to loot our Treasury, kill off and maim some of our best and brightest, destroy our Army, and shit on the Constitution will likely win back Afghanistan while the Republicans plan how to turn a probably 2008 Democrat electoral victory into accusations of treason so they can win in 2012.
While the US is fulminating over Iran, and the possibility it might get nukes it would never use in a first strike, the possibility of a real nuclear power, which already has nukes, falling to people much more radical than the Mullahs seems to be only peripherally on Washington's radar.
Unless they’re counting on it as part of their 2012 strategy. Creating a corporate dictatorship has a higher priority than national security.
The country of Afghanistan is currently divided into two parts: the south and east, which have seen a resurgent Taliban and thus are quite dangerous, and the north and west, which are much quieter.
The dangerous part of Afghanistan is occupied by troops from the US, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. Principally centered in Helmand province, there is a daily grind of patrol, ambush by IED, rifle and RPG. There are constant casualties, although not on the level of Iraq.
In the north and western parts of Afghanistan, occupied by NATO forces of Germany, Spain and Italy, it’s rather calm, and the daily patrolling is not resisted as fiercely. Reconstruction and improvement efforts continue apace, and there seem to be real signs of progress.
Man, those Germans sure have it easy. Remember when they used to be the most frightening army in the world? Why aren’t they out in the south and east, kicking ass?
Thus whines Roger Cohen in an Op-Ed in today’s NY Times.
Remember the Wehrmacht? It was a formidable fighting force. The modern German army, the Bundeswehr, is also very effective. Thing is, it is reluctant to fight or even place itself in danger.
Given history, that may seem just fine. The United States helped frame the institutions of today’s Germany precisely to guarantee peace over war. But in Afghanistan, where 3,200 Germans serve in a hard-pressed NATO force, a touch of “Bundesmacht” would be welcome.
Yes, incredibly enough, Mr Cohen yearns for the days of blitzkrieg and Panzer Vorwärts!, armored monsters crashing through village walls, machine gunning any human being standing up, and all to the stirring strains of “Ich hatt’ einen Kamerad” or perhaps the “Panzerlied.”
Mr Cohen describes the divided areas of tactical responsibility as:
“The split gives a rough guide to parts of the world that still see military force as inextricable from international security and others that are now functionally pacifist.”
I spent a little bit of time rubbing shoulders with the Bundesheer, and they seemed quite prepared to kick the Scheisse out of the Red Army juggernaut if it ever crossed the Inter German Border. There was no lack of patriotic motivation for that fight. That was more than 30 years ago, and perhaps a new generation doesn’t feel as martial as Mr Cohen requires them to be.
“In Afghanistan, NATO solidarity collapses at the point of danger,” said Julian Lindley-French, a military expert at the Netherlands Defense Academy. “There’s no point planning robust operations worldwide if the burden is not shared. A lot of the German troops are little more than heavily armed traffic cops.”
I can almost hear Mr Lindley-French sniffing in disdain. Those heavily-armed traffic cops were assigned to the north by the ground commander at the time, who was an American.
I suppose it would be useless to point out that NATO became involved in Afghanistan on behalf of the UN Security Council after Mr Bu$h decided “What the hell. I’ve got the troops over here, thanks to 9/11. Now I might just as well knock off Iraq, as my buddies at PNAC and Big Oil want me to”? It would probably not matter to Mr Cohen that NATO was convinced, inveigled and bribed to pick up the slack in Afghanistan when the bulk of the US Army was busy conquering Iraq’s oil deposits.
Mr Cohen might be surprised, if he had taken the time to more thoroughly research his opinion, to learn that NATO got involved in the south in the place of a US-led mission that had seen quite a bit of fighting:
On July 31 NATO will take control of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan's volatile south, where six British soldiers were killed in the last month. This will be the most demanding operation ever undertaken by the alliance in in [sic] its 58-year-old history, and an important test for its relevance in a post cold-war world. The NATO commander, British Lieut. General David Richards, sat down with TIME's Aryn Baker in the garden at his headquarters in Kabul for a conversation about his new responsibilities.
Prior to this point, NATO had operated as the ISAF and its contribution in Afghanistan had mainly been in the area surrounding the capital Kabul. An October 2003 resolution (requested by the US) extended ISAF responsibility throughout Afghanistan.
So, NATO apparently took over a bad area which had seen combat, and US and British deaths, and now it’s calm. (Well, if you had “heavily armed traffic cops” in your town wouldn’t you behave?) And so Mr Cohen wants Germany to take over the south and east which is heavily contested by the Taliban, who had a good long rest in Pakistan’s Waziristan, thanks to US refusal to close the gap at Tora Bora in 2001. It seems to me that Mr Cohen is resorting to name calling and taunts to persuade the Germans to finish the job the “A” team blew six years ago.
[W]ith the Taliban regrouping, and support for it still arriving from Pakistani border areas, security has become inseparable from eliminating insurgents. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the American commander of the NATO force, said “thousands” of Taliban had been killed this year; other officers put the figure around 5,000.
Wow – I wish we could kill 5,000 al Qaeda in Iraq. I’m having a problem imagining the Taliban fielding what is effectively the better part of a division of fighters. A cautious observer might well wonder about whether we’re using Viet Nam rules in Afghanistan, too.
Some of this counterinsurgency toll is the work of U.S. and other special forces in the separate American-run Operation Enduring Freedom — the more secret of the Afghan campaigns. Still, NATO is at war here.
That, however, is a fact Europeans are reluctant to accept, just as the link between slaughter in Madrid, London or Amsterdam and the Afghan-Pakistani terror nexus seems unconvincing to many Europeans floating on an Iraq-comforted wave of moral smugness.
I’d recommend Mr Cohen talk with some Europeans. That “smugness” is more likely an unwillingness to walk where Americans have been because there’s doo-doo all over the ground.
This morning’s NY Timesreports that some Marine leaders, with the concurrence of some Army generals, have suggested the Corps take over US responsibility in Afghanistan under NATO command, leaving the occupation of Iraq to the Army.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.
The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.
The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.
Some have suggested the significantly shorter deployment time of the Marines has created coordination problems with the Army. In addition, the recurring “relearning” problem faced by the Marines with each unit’s seven-month deployment has been criticized, since Army units tend to cycle back to Iraq faster, due to the larger number of troops fighting there.
With 26,000 Marines currently stationed in Iraq, and about 25,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, such a plan could be seen as an even trade-off. It would have the advantage of making the scheduling deployments for Army brigades somewhat easier.
As the Times article points out, advantages would accrue to each service, although the Air Force is believed to be unhappy with the suggestion, since its role in Afghanistan would be curtailed due to the Marines having their own fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons.
Military officials say the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come. “At the end of the day, this could be decided by parochialism, and making sure each service does not lose equity, as much as on how best to manage the risk of force levels for Iraq and Afghanistan,” said one Pentagon planner.
Tensions over how to divide future budgets have begun to resurface across the military because of apprehension that Congressional support for large increases in defense spending seen since the Sept. 11 attacks will diminish, leaving the services to compete for money.
Those traditional turf battles have subsided somewhat given the overwhelming demands of waging two simultaneous wars — and because Pentagon budgets reached new heights.
Sooner or later sanity will break out in the United States, and voters will start firing the assholes currently representing the defense industry, and hiring people interested in representing the taxpayers.
The Army Times has an article about some soldiers from the 3rd Special Forces Group receiving awards.
A ceremony to recognize the actions of valor of 52 soldiers from 3rd Special Forces Group is scheduled for today at the unit’s headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C.
The soldiers are being honored for their actions during operations in Afghanistan, according to an Army press release.
…
They will recognize the soldiers with six Silver Star medals, eight Purple Hearts, 15 Bronze Stars and 23 Army Commendation Medals for valor, the release said.
Congratulations and a “Good Job Well Done” to these soldiers.
In military/political/medical terms Iraq is a sucking chest wound, a traumatic amputation, and is on deathwatch. The greed, foolishness and malign incompetence of the Bu$h malAdministration has turned the cradle of civilization into a charnel house of proportions not seen since WWII.
Proportionally, Operation Enduring Freedom – our “good” war against the Taliban, which has always been the red-headed stepchild of Bu$h foreign policy, has once again turned septic, and the infected wound of bad policy and foolish American strategy is threatening its life also. Opium has once again become an ascendant crop in the Taliban-influenced South and has become the principle means of financing their offensives. The number and seriousness of Taliban attacks against Coalition forces are up, as well as their lethality.
Iraq Casualties.org also tracks deaths by nationality and month in Afghanistan. As you can see, we’re also losing the war of numbers there.
Some of our nitrogen-breathing brethren on the never-right might consider this a “great victory” because US numbers are down for 2007. Well, they are sometimes mathematically-challenged. This represents two-thirds of 2007; we’re on track to break a new record of 240+. Watch for things to heat up after Ramadan – our Taliban enemy is very observant, and more adaptive than we are.
Here’s another view of who’s doing the bleeding in Afghanistan – the war Mr Bu$h ignored because he didn’t have an emotional stake in it.
Today’s NY Timespoints out that our Afghan allies have been unable to stem the Taliban flow in the South because of a shift in tactics.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area in southern Afghanistan that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.
A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south’s largest city.
The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer. NATO and Afghan Army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern cities than they did last summer.
Last year saw an increase in suicide bomb attacks. They served their purpose of forcing Allied forces to fall back upon reinforced and barricaded bases, which allowed the Taliban, revitalized by their rest in the tribal areas of Pakistan, to carry out their own little surge, reverting to classic guerrilla form by overrunning isolated and poorly defended police posts. A number of posts fell to the attacks because they were unsupported by the Afghan Army because of fear of IEDs.
Syed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief, said Canadian and Afghan Army forces began withdrawing from four checkpoints and two small bases in Panjwai in early July. The withdrawals coincided with the rotation of Canadian military units serving in Kandahar in August, he said.
The pullback left two Afghan police posts in Panjwai largely unprotected, he said. On Aug. 7, the Taliban attacked the posts simultaneously. For several hours, the police held them off and called for help from Canadian forces, he said, but none arrived. Sixteen policemen were killed.
“The Canadians didn’t support them,” Mr. Saqib said. “Then, we went to collect our dead.”
General Laroche, the Canadian commander, said an Afghan Army unit was immediately sent to aid the police but it returned and asked for Canadian assistance, citing fears of roadside bombs. Canadian troops then arrived as quickly as they could.
The Taliban… wage intimidation campaigns against the population. Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring them spies.
“The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. “They were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there.”
We saw this tactic at work for 12 years in Viet Nam. Our preferred counter-tactic there, “bombing the brutes into the Stone Age” won’t work here in Afghanistan. Actually, it didn’t work in Viet Nam, either, although it did make frustrated American military leaders think they were making progress. Rampant and heavy-handed violence just does the g’s job for him. The only method that works is “clear-and-hold” accompanied by strong rural security measure.
By all accounts the Afghan Army is competent and aggressive enough to push the Taliban back with the assistance and backing of the better-equipped Coalition forces.
Afghan Army units have performed well, according to Western officials. The trouble has come when the army and foreign troops withdraw, leaving lightly armed Afghan police forces struggling to hold rural areas. Corruption is rampant among the police, and some units have exaggerated casualty rates or abandoned checkpoints.
You can’t beat an enemy without a coordinated and consistent strategy. When you see something that works you stick with it, and a skilled leader begins rethinking his enemy’s response and formulates his next tactic.
America’s military figureheads have been away from handling troops for so long they are more aware of political wish-thinking than of real-world necessity.
The UN has released its 2007 opium report, noting that production has soared to a “frightening level” this year, as poppy growth increased to a record level last year.
Opium production in Afghanistan, a $3-billion-a-year trade accounting for more than 90 per cent of the world's illegal output, soared to frightening record levels this year, concentrated mainly in the strife-torn south where the ousted Taliban, which once banned poppy cultivation, now profits from the drugs trade, the United Nations reported today.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2007 Annual Opium Survey showed that the area under opium cultivation rose to 193,000 hectares from 165,000 in 2006, while the total opium harvest will soar by more than a third to 8,200 tonnes from 6,100 tonnes last year.
The amount of Afghan land used for growing opium is now larger than the combined total under coca cultivation in Latin America - Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. No other country has produced narcotics on such a deadly scale since China in the 19th century, the report said.[emph added]
That incredible change in growth is only in the southern part of Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban has swept back out of the Waziristan tribal regions where they retreated during invasion of the country in the aftermath of 9/11. As we know, after Messers Bu$h and Cheney decided to go after the oil in Iraq rather than the terrorists in Afghanistan, things have changed in Afghnistan.
In the centre and north, where the Government has increased its authority and presence, cultivation is dropping. In Balkh province cultivation collapsed from 7,200 hectares last year to zero. By contrast, 80 per cent of opium poppies were grown in a handful of southern provinces on the border with Pakistan, where instability is greatest. In volatile Helmand, where the Taliban insurgency is concentrated, cultivation rose 48 per cent to 102,770 hectares.
With a population of just 2.5 million, Helmand has single-handedly become the world's biggest source of illicit drugs, surpassing the output of entire countries - like Colombia (coca), Morocco (cannabis) and Myanmar (opium) - which have populations up to 20 times larger.
That’s why this Afghan farmer is smiling: Mr Bu$h’s ego-war in Iraq is making him a wealthy man (relatively.) As you can imagine, the real profit is in production and distribution of the opium, either as is, or after conversion to morphine and heroin. But Afghan farmers double and triple their income when they put in poppies.
This increased production will show up in America’s streets next year, as thousands more of our countrymen become addicted to this pernicious drug.
I can’t say enough bad things about the narcotics trade; anyone with a basic imagination can estimate the misery and degradation that follows behind the needle.
We will probably see a lot more poppies on American streets, too, as Mr Bu$h and Mr Cheney get their woodies on when they decide to attack Iran later this year or early next year.
He has vowed that he will not leave office without first ensuring that Iran cannot become a nuclear power. He has probably given the leaders of Israel a similar promise --- privately and perhaps explicitly. That means that he is effectively committed to attack Iran militarily before January 2009 if all other means of accomplishing the objective fail --- which they will. He believes deeply that Iran poses an existential threat to our ally Israel and an extremely dangerous threat to the American people, as well. Bush also believes that Iran is determined to sabotage American hopes of establishing a "new Middle East" ---- by covert support of anti-American terrorist elements such as Hizballah and Hamas --- backed up by the added power implicit in its eventual possession of nuclear weapons. Given Bush’s overarching dedication to “winning the Global War on Terrorism”, the neutralization of Iran has become a sine qua non, equal if not higher on his list of priorities than “victory” in Iraq --- another impossibility that he is stubbornly unwilling to recognize, even privately --- much less acknowledge publicly.
I admit to be entirely cynical about Mr Bu$h’s “overarching dedication to ‘winning the Global War on Terrorism’.” I frankly think he doesn’t give a Chinese fart about whether terrorists kill 15 or 15 million Americans – once he’s out of office. If he had cared he wouldn’t have turned his back on the “real fight” in Afghanistan. He would have bent his prodigious will to the effort to protect our cities, rather than frittering away anti-terrorism funds protecting petting zoos and carousels. He has consistently dodged logical and consistent measures to roll back the resistance in Iraq, allowing things to spin out of control. And then there’s the remarkable amount of attention he gave to the August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing.
Bush presently intends (with little faith or sincerity) to exhaust all opportunities to achieve his objectives by diplomatic means or through economic sanctions. Failing those, he will attempt to achieve his purposes by intimidation --- by raising the threat of military attack. This will only stimulate more internal support for the regime inside Iran and more international opposition to U.S. policies, especially in the Muslim world. Without question, moreover, an escalating danger of US-Iranian military confrontation will greatly intensify internal and regional opposition to US objectives in Iraq. (Note: A mystifying disconnect in logic persists on this point in Bush’s mind.)
To think that an attack on Iran will not bring the internal dissidents of the country to rally around the flag is stupid. Has he forgotten his rather Orwellian propaganda campaign to get his own dissidents to rally after 9/11?
After the attack in Iran, we will see more poppies on the streets of America.
When I was a man-child (thank you, Mr Waters) my mother found a copy of Playboy and was scandalized, although I protested that I preferred the articles to the pictures. I still live in the same alternate universe and make a daily visit to Swedish Meatballs to learn something new, reading the articles rather than the pictures.
Effwit picks up the proverbial thematic and discusses the serial military disasters of the Bu$h malAdministration as exemplified by the Tillman killing, and ties a neat bow around the empty package of The Greatest Military in the World™ by showing how propaganda public perception has surpassed military skill in achieving results by citing an ongoing series by Stan Goff.
Many readers here are probably familiar with the fact that perception management activities suddenly become necessary after an unanticipated politically sensitive event such as the death of CPL Pat Tillman.
Stan Goff -- in the first part of a three-part series -- argues that it was the Pentagon's institutional emphasis upon domestic influence that led to decisions on the ground that resulted in Tillman's death itself.
The context for everything that happened after Pat's death requires this Pentagon propaganda-emphasis be center stage. Some people already understand this. What is not well understood is that this propaganda-emphasis likely played a central role in creating the conditions for Pat's death in the first place. Let me give that special emphasis, too:[emph added]
Awake observers have long understood that everything the Bu$h people do, every decision, initiative, proposal, program and public statement is done with no other thought than that of domestic political consumption. When your primary goal is the consolidation of domestic political power and the complete marginalization of political opponents so as to create a 21st century thousand-year-reich, it matters little what the peasantry in other countries think. The only concern is the fealty of the media to enable your lies. Why would anyone be surprised that the military would be susceptible to such a corrosive environment? They’re already pre-disposed to insularity by virtue of maintaining a culture within a culture. Civilians – the taxpayers, let me remind you, their employers – are to be avoided, to be suspicious of. The Enemy Within. And with the widening cultural chasm developing because of the Republican Party’s deliberate politics of destruction, that enemy is Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, and more and more, non-evangelical Christians and others. We dress differently, cut our hair differently, think differently and hence are dangerous.
One of the ostensible reasons Pat Tillman died is because his platoon leader, faced with an unexpected event, violated one of the prime dicta of military thought. His platoon was tasked to reach an objective by a specific time point. When one of the HumVees in the convoy broke down, he split his force, planning to defend the disabled vehicle with one part, and sending the other part on ahead to complete the mission. There is a record that he contacted “higher higher” to advise them of the problem and that the mission parameters would have to be changed.
The decision to split the Blacksheep Platoon on April 22 was forced on a platoon leader who stated to his superiors that splitting the platoon in this terrain would require a half-assed preparation cycle and potentially create a dangerous break in inter-platoon communications. This directive was designed with one purpose in mind: to be able to state that the platoon had reached their "target" on time. A timeline (a bureaucratic checklist) drove this decision -- not the intelligence. The push to provide evidence of "progress" in Afghanistan -- using the Rumsfeldian "metrics" of quantification -- as a counterweight to the bad news from the Fallujah-Najaf rebellions and the breaking Abu Ghraib scandal, created the sense of urgency throughout military commands there to send reports confirming that X number of missions were completed in X amount of time. [emph added]
It was more important to “prove” that we were winning by presenting some statistics than to consider soldiers’ lives.
There’s a great deal of “inside baseball” in the Goff article which highlights just how our military has morphed into Billy Crystal’s “Fernano Lamas” character from Saturday Night Live.
“It is better to look good than to feel good.”
Briefly: Only “outstanding” officers and EM are worthy of promotion, and while on the Planet Earth one might find one in 30 or 40 to be outstanding, within our military the ratio is apparently somewhat lower, notwithstanding the “up or out” policy which has probably been put to death since the Iraq qWagmire. In this promotion program a soldier’s previous six months or one year are quantified by his supervisor (“rater”) and compared to all the other officers under that rater’s supervision. Missing any command-designated target can be a career-killer.
Thus, the stage was set for poor Lieutenant Blacksheep Platoon Leader to be pressured to split his force in Injun Country, and to cause CPL Tillman’s section to be ambushed. There’s much more to learn, and it would be time well-spent.
I look forward to Goff’s followup articles, and might well have something more to say about the disgraceful state of the World’s Greatest Military Power.™
Last month I wrote about the fighting around Tarin Kowt, quoting off one of David Axe’s dispatches. David’s done some excellent work on Iraq and in this, his first embed in Afghanistan, he’s tried to showcase the double job of pacification and reconstruction that NATO is involved with.
David has a short post today, mentioning that C-SPAN is showing a 20 minute video report of his on the Tarin Kowt battle. You can pick it up in Real Player straight from his site. Some good, basic reality reporting – the kind of thing you won’t get from Bu$hCo stenographers like Michael Gordon at the NY Times, Peter Baker at WaPo, or Brian Ross at ABC News.
A photo of Kinga Ilyes appeared on the cover of last month’s University Student issue of Maclean’s a weekly Canadian news magazine. Apparently there were some pinup pictures and Ms Ilyes became an instant favorite of Canadian forces serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan, One soldier was so taken with Ms Ilyes that he sent a handwritten letter to Macleans to thank them for the photos.
Sgt. Chris Karigiannis was pretty sure that nobody at Maclean’s would even open the envelope. At the very most, he hoped a few lines of his handwritten note would end up on the “Mail Bag” page at the front of the magazine. “I really doubted that this letter would have been acknowledged at all, to be honest,” he said later.
By now, our loyal readers already know the story. Last month, halfway through his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Karigiannis dropped us a line from the front lines, saying how much he enjoyed and appreciated Maclean’s — especially the “extremely attractive young lady” featured on the front of this year’s University Student Issue. “The very refreshing image on your cover, given this girl’s natural beauty and incredible sexiness, had most of us in agreement that she is the best pin-up in our collection,” he wrote. “Who would have thought that our most impressive female photo would come from Maclean’s?”
Within days, the once-anonymous cover girl — 24-year-old Kinga Ilyes — was a household face. Media outlets across the country reprinted the sergeant’s heartfelt letter, and in Ottawa and Toronto, Sun newspapers plastered Kinga’s pretty face on the front page. “DARLING OF KANDAHAR,” the headline screamed.
On Tuesday, Karigiannis sent us another note, this time via e-mail. “I am astonished at the reaction,” he wrote.
Most soldiers like to see a pretty face. During the past 60 years, soldiers have collected photos, sometimes reckless pinups, of women. They’ve graced barracks lockers, hooches, and rucks for years. Why would the Canadian soldiers in Kandahar be any different? We even found Playboy pinups in NVA rucks
