The Silver Star is the Army’s third highest award for valor. It is awarded in recognition of outstanding effort and courage in combat and is not come by easily. Some say that it is an award much easier to gain posthumously than standing up, and that’s probably true.
Two soldiers at Ft Lewis were recently awarded the Silver Star and a brief look at the circumstances of the awards are educational. An award citation is a brief and sometimes a too-brief narration of the situation. The scenes recounted here are not necessarily unique. Similar sights might happen anywhere in the country on any day. The valor certainly isn't unique. The only unusual thing is that the actions of these men were somehow pointed out for well-deserved recognition.
Who They Were
SFC Ismael Iban and SSG Jon Hillard, who returned from Iraq in September, are both members of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. At the ceremony, held at 1:30pm Pacific Time at the Sheridan Gym at Fort Lewis, both Soldiers were honored for their valorious actions in combat.
The Citation
“SFC Iban’s steadfast leadership and dauntless presence was instrumental in leading his 12-man platoon to overcome incredible odds presented by the enemy,” according to the narrative. “With absolute decisiveness, calmness under pressure and personal courage, SFC Iban’s performance on 19 February 2007 directly contributed to saving his fellow soldiers’ lives in Tarmiya, Iraq.”
The Narration
SFC Iban, a platoon sergeant with 3rd Platoon, C Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment was recognized for actions that he took on February 19, 2007. That day, a suicide car bomber destroyed the Tarmiya Joint Security Station, located near Taji, Iraq. Iban and his platoon were conducting a patrol about 6 miles from the station, when they were called to provide assistance.
Iban ordered his platoon to respond. As they entered the outskirts of Tarmiya, they were attacked by small-arms fire and rocket propelled grenades, coming from alleys nearby, as well as rooftops. The Soldiers returned fire and continued on to the badly damaged Joint Security Station. As they approached, they saw that it was engulfed in flames and smoke, with a huge pile of debris from the explosion blocking the road. It was then that Iban and 4 of his Soldiers got out of their Stryker vehicle and moved on foot the 250 feet it took to get to the JSS, under constant enemy fire.
When they arrived, Iban established a command and control point, and he and his men began to prepare for medical evacuation of 21 wounded US Soldiers. The rest of the platoon, meanwhile worked diligently, while under enemy fire, to clear a path on the roadway, so that a defensive perimeter could be created.
Iban loaded the more seriously wounded Soldiers into his Stryker vehicle and began moving them to the nearest helicopter landing zone. As they arrived, they were hit by an attack, with the enemy firing 7 RPGs and multiple machine guns from the nearby woods and buildings. Iban ordered his Soldiers to set up a perimeter and engage the enemy. He meanwhile dismounted and provided additional suppressive fire, to enable 4 medivac helicopters to land. The team moved while receiving intense fire, to load 9 critically wounded Soldiers into the helicopters. These actions were repeated by Iban and his men until all 21 wounded Soldiers were safely aboard the helicopters.
The citation tells none of the drama and fear of the moment, when the conscious mind might freeze, but training and instinct take control and soldiers rise to a threat. Oftentimes you have no idea whatsoever what you did, that they’re now praising so highly. You might remember the gut-griping and the tunnel vision created by adrenalin and later you might have noticed the shakes. You just somehow did what you’d been trained to do, and no country can ask more than that of a man soldier.
On March 24, 2007, while conducting clearance operations in a Baqubah neighborhood, Hilliard and his Soldiers from 3rd Platoon, B Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, were hit by a buried IED. The explosion was massive enough to catch the rear of their Stryker vehicle on fire and disable it. 7 Soldiers on board were injured.
The Citation
“Single handedly, he exposed himself on top of the burning Stryker while under accurate machine gun fire for approximately three minutes while the platoon maneuvered to establish a defensive position for the [casualty evacuation]… “SSG Hilliard’s bravery in the face of fire, tireless efforts and selfless service were instrumental in the successful recovery and evacuation of men, weapons and equipment, as well as the destruction of numerous [anti-Iraqi forces],” according to the narrative. “His actions and his demeanor were truly inspirational to those present throughout these actions.”
When the explosion occurred, Hilliard, who was riding in the rear right air guard hatch, was ejected onto the top of the Stryker vehicle. He suffered multiple injuries to his left leg. Despire his injuries, Hilliard, who is a squad leader, immediately focused his attention on his Soldiers. He saw that the ramp door has been blown off in the explosion and smoke had filled the Troop compartment. The explosion that ejected him from the vehicle, also caused him to lose his weapon. As other Soldiers arrived to provide support, they came under a sustained volley of accurate and deadly machine gun fire. Hilliard saw a M204B Machine Gun that was tangled in a sniper camouflage netting nearby. He used his knife to cut the weapon free and grabbed a box of ammunition.
…
As the other wounded Soldiers were evacuated, Hilliard suppressed multiple enemy machine gun positions. After a defensive perimeter was established, Hilliard got off of the Stryker vheicle and gained control of the remaining men in his squad, as well as grabbing his weapon which had been blown off the vehicle during the explosion. He then realized that the M204B he had been using was now with 1st Platoon.
He then raced across 165 feet of open terrain to retrieve the weapon, under small arms fire and and RPG. He retrieved his weapon and then turned to rejoin his platoon, when he collapsed from his injuries and was no longer able to walk. He was then medically evacuated to FOB Warhorse to receive treatment for his injuries.
I despise this evil and dishonest occupation of a conquered country and I have nothing but the spit from my mouth and the contents of my bladder for the cowards who lied us into this catastrophe that is destroying two nations.
However SFC Iban and SSG Hilliard might personally feel about the terrorists we are creating in Iraq they kept their obligations to their men and fought to save them, and they have honored all of us by their loyalty.
I know most of my readers agree with me about the catastrophic results of 14 years of republican management of our country, topped off with George Bu$h. (For all I know, all you readers from the .mil sites sit there at your consoles saying, “Yeah, you olde farte! Get some!”) And I do mean the last 14 years. When Newt Gingrich’s Contract On America brought a swarm of new r’s into Congress, the machinery of government stopped like a transmission full of sand. Bill Clinton might have been President, but the only legislation that got passed was something the republicans wanted, and that group of people wanted government to fail. If you recall they shut down the government several times by refusing to find it.
Now we’re stuck in a republican-engineered eternal war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve got an exhausted Army with inadequate armor, troops rotating in and out of the catbox * soldiers and officers pulling the pin in numbers not seen in many years, and the divorce rate and suicide rate are up dynamically.
The Air Force has deadlined their entire fleet of F-15s because the damned things are breaking up. They want lots of new expensive planes to horse around the sky at 5 G’s playing Terry and the Pirates until those start to fall apart and then they’ll be back with their hands out for ever more ca$h. (And if they don’t get it, the evil terrorists will slip over our undefended borders and cut our throats in our sleep. The only thing that can keep us safe is $300 million fighter planes that are sort of stealthy!)
Thank any deity you like for the Navy. They’ll keep us safe, right?
Well, maybe not. Meatball One channels the War Nerd:, but first a word of warning.
I’ve mentioned Swedish Meatballs before. No one has a defense/ IO webpage quite like them. Actually, most defense-oriented webpages are work safe. And Meatballs may not be.
The War Nerd discusses the greatest Navy in the world and its chances in the Persian Gulf:
You might wonder, if you were real, real naive, why the Navy hasn't tried to learn from what van Ripen [sic] did to them six years ago in the same waters. Well, the truth is that no big, well-funded armed service learns or changes until it absolutely has to, which usually means when it starts to lose a war. And of all services, navies are by far the most stubborn, old-fashioned, snobby, retarded of all. I don't mean the submarine force, which is pretty much God. I mean the brass in their ridiculous floating targets, aka carriers, frigates, tankers and other dive-sites-in-the-making.
If they had any sense they'd realize that the way to deal with big overloaded targets is to saturate their defenses with a swarm of low-cost attackers. If you've got lives to spend, and the Iranians sure do, you spend lives to sink hardware. It's a good trade, when you consider what a carrier costs, and how little the average Iranian life is worth. They're Shia! These guys can't wait to give their lives away. The Kamikazes were squeamish moderates compared to the Revolutionary Guard. And thanks to Silicon Valley and its Chinese knockoffs, you can fire swarms of unmanned rockets instead of Shia martyrs, so you don't even need to spend one life per blip on the US fleet's little screens. You can even send empty rocket tubes as part of the swarm, because in the few seconds the surface vessel has to react, it can't determine which threats are nuke, which are conventional HE and which are decoys.
Of course the Navy insists their ships are safe, because they’ve got great ship-to-ship missiles and Aegis radar and the Phalanx last-resort close-in defense gun.
Hmmm… yes….
[T]he Phalanx was never meant to handle swarms of low-tech attackers. That's not the clean, temperate-zone war the computer dweebs in the Pentagon planned for. See, the original Phalanx only had 1000 rounds in its magazine. The newer models have 1.550, meaning even the USN realized that it was too easy to saturate the target with decoy attacks and deplete the magazine. But 1550 rounds isn't much at that rate of fire--and the Achilles heel of the system is reloading. It's not that easy to hoist 1550 20mm rounds into position, and I don't think either van Riper or the Iranians would be likely to agree to a 15-minute reloading break.
If it was me, and maybe I'm too "cynical" or something, I'd send all my empty missile tubes and expendable suicide squads in the first wave, all at once like van Riper did. I'd count to 90, because 90 seconds would be enough to empty every Phalanx magazine--and you can bet that those scared Navy computer nerds down in the Operations Room would be holding the red buttons down till the barrels were melting when they realized they were under a real attack. Then, while the grunts below deck were hauling the ammo into position, I'd send the second wave with the real stuff. And that, as they say, would be that. A trillion dollars of US Navy hardware becomes an artificial reef.
There’s a good argument to be made that when our Navy ships were teased in the Gulf two weeks ago they were there because someone hoped they would be attacked. Yes, I know – unthinkable. It was also unthinkable that the entire air defense forces of the United States were ordered to stand down on September 11, 2001. It’s a historical fact that they were, but there seems to be no record of who gave the order.
It all makes me wonder just why someone hasn’t had the sense and the testicles to demand these clowns be removed before they cripple us even more.
It seems America is in a lot of economic trouble. The economy is suffering, and we could all sit around and play the blame game, or we could do something about it. (I know, I know, throw out the r’s and vote in Democrats.) That always used to work, and might work this time. But that will put off the recovery until sometime late in 2009, or maybe even 2010.
We need to do something now. Right away. So Mr Bu$h has decided that he’s going to give everyone some incentive- some walking around folding ca$h to just go out and spend, just like he wanted everyone to do after 9/11. We sure showed them Saudis then, didn’t we? We spent like drunken sailors, but somehow the economy got overheated and we have this recession thing – that’s the second one for Mr Bu$h’s occupation of our White House, but as I said this is the time for action, and we can do all the recriminations later.
He’s going to send out these checks - $300 for single people, $600 for couples, and as I understand up to $1600 for people with children. So I decided to write Mr Bu$h and suggest a better plan.
Dear Mr Bu$h,
I know Presidenting is hard work. I’ve watched you now for seven years and you’ve made a royal fuckup of the job. Now, I know you’ve been to college, and to graduate school, so I know you’re a smart guy. So to have a smart guy like you screw up the job is surprising, but I’m not here to lay blame. As I said we need to fix the country and we can do the recriminating later.
I just wanted to point out that, as a widower I’m only supposed to get $300, hut here’s the deal: I’m retired, and don’t work, so I have lots of free time on my hands, and I’m a real patriotic American.
So I want you to send me a check for $3,000. Since I don’t work, I’ve got lots of free time to go shopping and I’ll do everything I can to help you end this second recession of yours.
No need to thank me. I figure it’s my patriotic duty, now that so many multi-millionaire CEOs are out of work, what with the catastrophic collapse coming our way because of the unregulated mortgage things causing our unregulated banking system to fall apart.
The sooner you send me my $3,000 check, the sooner I can get started saving the country.
Your friend,
Lurch
PS: what kind of stuff do you want me to buy? I could use a new TV. Should I buy a TV made in Japan or one made in Korea? I could also use a new computer. I guess they're all just about Japanese now. Should I buy one of those computers the Chinese are making? You know, the ones an American company sold to China? I hear those are pretty good, even if they do have that special doo-dad in there that sends a recap of my day's work overseas every night while I'm sleeping.
WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD Blue.
The fine is for a scene where a boy surprises a woman as she prepares to take a shower. The scene depicted "multiple, close-up views" of the woman's "nude buttocks" according to an agency order issued late Friday.
ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Co. The fines were issued against 52 stations either owned by or affiliated with the network.
FCC's definition of indecent content requires that the broadcast "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities" in a "patently offensive way" and is aired between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The agency said the show was indecent because "it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs , specifically an adult woman's buttocks."
The agency rejected the network's argument that "the buttocks are not a sexual organ."
This is such a target-rich paragraph…
This happened in 2003. Now it is 2008. Our FCC is just now waking up from its long slumber and discovering that a woman took a shower in 2003. Apparently taking showers is offensive to the Miss Prudes at the FCC. They’re OK with Michael Savage’s and John Gibson’s obscenities, but showers are right out of the permissible box.
Note also that Disney, that wonderful republican company that brought you the 9/11 film lies, is involved in sexual pandering. How horrible! What will Mickey say?
By the way, the FCC has now officially endorsed the republican position that buttocks are in fact a sexual organ. Just in case all the pederasts and perverts among the republican politician class hadn’t known that.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Police faced a difficult if not impossible task Thursday as they tried to stop the spread of pornographic video and photos of two high school girls, images that were transmitted by cell phone to dozens of the girls' classmates and then to the wider world.
District Attorney James B. Martin said at least 40 Parkland High School students believed to have received the images would not face prosecution as long as they show their phones to police by Tuesday to ensure the images have been erased.
But students at the school said the distribution was far more widespread.
"Most people got it and kept passing it along for fun to everyone in their phonebook," said Jon Gabriel, 16, a junior who said he received and deleted the images.
Apparently teeners in Allentown no longer engage in cow-tipping. Maybe they’ve been watching too much NYPD Blue, or too many half-time shows of NFL championship games. They’re doing exactly what teenagers have done for about 4,000 years, but it seems they’re not ashamed of it.
And that is probably what has the authorities all hysterical, because they seem to believe sex is dirty, and shameful, and has to be hidden away, lest the kids’ bestial natures come to the fore.
Let me add this as a troll prophylactic: I don’t endorse teenage sex. I don't need to; teenagers find out about it all by themselves, and if I had a teenaged child I’d try to discourage it, because it does distract you from other things, like school, and studying, and chores, and authorized extra-curricular activities like team sports and band and such. Failing that, I’d make damned sure they knew about the marvels of latex.
Despite the best efforts of parental figures I did it, and was damned glad I could. (Thank you, Regina West, Leslie Newman, and Jillian Kauffman. Wherever you are today let me hope you are happy.) And if my school grades suffered a bit I think I was a happier young man for it.
A state trooper was sent to the school Thursday and will return for two more days to ensure that images were erased from the cell phones of students whose parents got letters from prosecutors. The letter explained what had happened, set a deadline for erasing the images and asked the parents to sign consent forms.
Martin said students who fail to comply by the deadline could be prosecuted in juvenile court for possession of child pornography.
One of the girls in the pictures is shown engaging in a sex act with an unidentified boy, Martin said. The other girl took and transmitted a photo of her bare breasts, he said.
Martin said he was not certain if the girl shown having sex had known she was being photographed. As for the other student, "she's a victim and she's not a victim," he said.
"Our thrust has been to get the kids to come forward and we've indicated we will not charge them for possessing the images," Martin told The Associated Press. "I'm not sure what we're going to do with the participants at this point."
This is just stunning. Is there no crime at all in Pennsylvania? Don’t they understand that blowing this up to such an incredible extent just makes everybody more curious about it all?
I’m sure District Attorney James B. Martin is a very effective prosecutor, and I’m certain he’s hell on wheels with serious crime. I know he worked very hard to get to the bottom of the Charles Cullen matter, but I am glad I’m not one of his children. I will wonder whether his kids are required to have their cell phones examined every night.
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.
One of the great dreams of the Osprey was that it would deposit Marines with their own organic support weapons, ready to support the assault. It looks as if the Marines might be able to assault with the Osprey, but without mortar support.
When the Marines shipped their V-22 Osprey aircraft to Iraq last year, they had to leave behind the assault vehicles and mobile mortar system that fit inside the planes.
The Marines' new mortar system can't safely carry its ammunition.
That conclusion, from a government audit, is the most recent bad news for the Marines' attempt to ferry firepower inside the Osprey. The Defense Department inspector general is investigating the program, which is two years behind schedule and $15 million over budget.
The system consists of a jeeplike vehicle called the Growler that pulls trailers carrying mortars and ammunition.
Infantrymen who’ve made a combat assault, or dealt with a swiftly-developing meeting engagement, understand just how useful organic mortars can be. They’re right there, on the spot, and can provide the artillery support you need, usually much dater than tubes or heavier artillery, at a distant fire base.
That Growler sounds like a jim-dandy little gadget to schlep round your tubes and ammo. Looks kind of cute, too. Doesn’t it remind you of those Jeeps your grampaw used to drive waay back in “the big one” ? Looks like kind of a short wheelbase, though, doesn’t it?
The Growler, made in Robbins, N.C., costs $127,000 each and cannot safely pull its ammunition trailer, according to interviews and the report from the Government Accountability Office. The trailer has a tendency to bounce or tip over, which could crush a Marine riding in the back of the Growler. A Growler, not pulling a trailer, was reported to have tipped over last summer when it swerved to avoid a turtle in the road.
Oops.
One of the reasons the Army sent away their little Jeeps, and went with the Hummer was the wider stance, thereby ensuring a more stable platform.
Should I infer from the article that the Marines are buying the puppies at $127,000 per, just because they’re tiny enough to fit inside the Osprey?
Didn’t they – you – know – test-drive them first?
Apparently not.
The problems were predictable, said Philip Coyle, who directed the Pentagon's weapons testing from 1994 to 2001. The Marines decided to start production before testing the vehicle and mortars, Coyle said.
"It is a sign of rushing to failure," he said.
Some sailor-boy in green landed on shore with a pocket full of ca$h and said “Now I need me a ride.” And an obliging salesman was right there to show him this cute little go-cart with the macho name.
“Son, what do you do?”
“Sir, I’m a mortarman.”
“Well, son, I’ve got just the thing for you. You know how heavy those mortar tubes are? And how hot and nasty it can be some places? Son, you’re gonna love this unit. It’s got a small wheelbase, so you an turn around in tight corners, and it’s narrow enough that you can fly this thing anywhere you want to. And look! It’s got a trailer hitch so you carry around trailers for your tubes and ammo! And I gave it this great name, ‘Growler.’ Chesty would have loved it.”
“Gee, that sounds great, Sir. How much is it?”
“Well, son, how much have you got?”
“Ummmmm….. about $17 million, sir.”
“Son, you just bought yourself a bunch of go-carts. Your buddies are gonna love them. No need to dirty your nice clean greens test-driving this now. I’ll send it on to your base. No you go have a nice time on shore leave.”
Now I can’t guarantee the conversation went exactly like that, because I don’t really know. Sure, there might have been a bit of poetic license. And the Marines aren’t talking because the Inspector General is really interested in the entire purchase.
The Marines won't discuss the program, known as the Expeditionary Fire Support System, because of the Defense Department's investigation.
Now, that DOD IG might not say anything harsh about the whole matter. That office has a spotty record, after all.
But they probably can’t miss this:
The contract award was controversial because the founder of Carolina Growler, Terry Crews, is a retired Marine colonel with strong connections. The Defense Department received an anonymous complaint claiming that Crews was a close friend of Brig. Gen. William Catto, who headed the agency that awarded the contract, Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va.
The complainant, who identified himself as a career procurement professional, said Catto steered the contract to Carolina Growler and General Dynamics.
After demonstrations from three companies, the selection committee recommended the contract go to a team of United Defense, which supplied the mortar, and Rae-Beck Automotive of Michigan, which built a new vehicle from scratch. According to the complaint, the United Defense bid was technically superior and cost less, while the Growler flunked crucial tests and was coupled to a much more expensive mortar system.
Gasp. Shocking, simply shocking. I also liked the part about buying a mortar system from General Dynamics, because, you see, the Marine Corps apparently doesn’t own any mortars.
One of the basic principles of Generalissimo Field Marshal Fred Kagan’s escalation was to send a lot more troops into Iraq to kill as many Iraqis as possible, (although truthfully males of fighting age were preferred to woman and children) and to die and bleed, and be wounded and maimed in order to allow the Shiite Maliki central government to have some room to make political changes with a view towards some sort of reconciliation.
Of course, many people with working brains can see that the real goal was to raise enough dust to quiet those who had the bad taste to note that the tar baby is just soaking up our blood and treasure, and to ensure some vague resemblance to “success” so that more criminals could be elected in 2008 under the banner of the republican Party.
Many wondered whether arming Sunnis and ex-Baathists was a wise solution, but they were willing to kill Saudis and Yemenis, and so the Army went ahead and put ‘em on the payroll – all 70-80,000 of them, at $300 each per month. Just don’t call them “Saudis and Yemenis” though because Mr Bu$h’s family has this long, profitable, on-going business relationship with the House of Saud.
Suddenly, if you were anti-occupation and wore a keffiyah you were automatically “al-Qaeda” (unless you were on the payroll as a ”concerned local citizen.”)
Hell, even this guy would have been “a-Q” because he fit the profile: foreigner, hated Western occupation, had the headdress and the robe, even.
The fly in the ointment is that the Shiites have just about zero interest in joining hands with the Sunni for anything, unless it’s to help the Sunni climb the steps to a gibbet. So political reconciliation was unlikely unless it was forced upon them, and in a confusing change in policy, our alleged Russian expert Condoleeza Rice doesn’t want to dictate to the Maliki government about stepping up the pace of reconciliation.
Despite the almost-universal distaste for change, something has snuck through. I know you will join me in applauding it.
The three stars that represented Saddam Hussein's Baath Party will be removed, to address the concerns of Iraqi Kurds.
They have refused to fly the flag since the fall of Saddam Hussein, saying it is too closely associated with a regime that repressed and killed their people.
The flag was also changed in 2004, when a line of script, allegedly in Saddam Hussein's own handwriting, was changed to Kufic script.
But the latest change - passed by 110 votes to 50 - is only temporary, as a design for a new flag will be sought after one year.
Well, that was momentous, wasn’t it?
The Arabic phrase shown above is pronounced as Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, and is a beautifully poetic phrase which offers both deep insight and brilliant inspiration. It has often been said that the phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim contains the true essence of the entire Qur'an, as well as the true essence of all religions.
Muslims often say this phrase when embarking on any significant endeavor, and the phrase is considered by some to be a major pillar of Islam. This expression is so magnificent and so concise that all but one chapter of the Qur'an begins with the words Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.
The common translation:
"In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate".
fails to capture either the true depth of meaning or the inspirational message of this beautiful phrase. So, let's look deeper into the meaning of these wonderful words.
The rest ought to be a snap now that they’ve straightened out that flag thing.
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.
Friday was the beginning of the feast of Ashura, a festival holy day for Shiites, which commemorates the martyrdom of Husseyn, grandson of the prophet Muhammed at the battle of Karbala in 680, C.E.
Shiite pilgrims traveling to celebrate the holy day in Karbala included some members of a millenialist sect called the Soldiers of Heaven who believe that the 10th Imam is about to return to end injustice in the world. Comparisons to some of our more remarkable christianist lunatics just can’t be avoided.
The country was spotted by violence and death: a two-hour running gun battle between a group believed to be the Soldiers of Heaven in Basra and Nasariya in the South brought about the deaths of dozens, including several prominent Iraqi central government figures as Naji Rustum, the commander of the Special Operations, and Zamil Rumayid, head of Dhi Qar Governorate Intelligence Department.
The deaths of these two men is significant because it indicates that they were prepared to go out into the street fighting in order to take personal control of the fighting.
Unless you want to take the position that they didn’t trust their men to fight properly, you’d be forced to the conclusion that these men died of leadership. Reports that the fighting was quelled within two hours in the south seem to hint at the abilities of the Iraqi Army and National Police in that area.
The fighting, which started off with small gun battles in the vicinity of the Basra corniche, quickly spread to other areas of the city. There has been speculation that other groups took advantage to try to pile on, yet were apparently smothered pretty quickly.
I can’t help but recall that this is the area where MNF-I was claiming the British screwed the pooch and failed to train the security forces properly. A cautious man might think the MNF-I could be wrong.
A rocket attack killed seven people and wounded 20 in Tal Afar, a northern city. The attack marred an otherwise uneventful Ashura celebration, said Maj. Gen. Najim Abdullah, the mayor of Tal Afar.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar Province, suffered some of its worst violence in months when three suicide car bombers attacked a police station just outside the city. Five policemen were killed and seven were wounded, Lt. Col. Thamir Ali Suleiman said.
A Marine Corps spokesman in nearby Falluja said there was a report of a suicide attack late Saturday afternoon about five miles from Ramadi, but further details were not immediately available.
Two Shiites celebrating Ashura were killed in Kirkuk, the northern city where Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen are vying for control. They were killed by two improvised bombs hidden in trash near a Shiite mosque. Seven others were wounded.
In Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a restaurant in Sadr City, killing one person and wounding 13, an Interior Ministry official said.
Weren’t all these areas declared pacified in the wake of the surge escalation designed by Generalissimo Field Marshal Fred Kagan, and carried out so superbly by GEN Saint David Petraeus? Here we have quite a few separate incidents of violence. I get so confused when reality doesn’t agree with Bu$h malAdministration pronouncements…
The NY Times article quoted immediately above tries to make the MNF-I point that the fighting in and around Basra shows the South is not pacified, and the Iraq national forces are vulnerable. I’m not sure that statement is supportable. They were faced with a tough situation, reacted, and squelched the gunmen. Of the 66 dead in the Basra area, 50 are reported to be gunmen.
Professor Juan Cole, in writing about these incidents yesterday, makes a point worth considering:
Some will say that it is good news that the Iraqi security forces were able to put down the uprising by themselves. This is true, though how much help the US gave, exactly, is shrouded in mystery on these shores. But it is also true that the cultists were able to kill one high ranking army officer and to wound two others, and to kill several police and military troops. And it is further true that this group is relatively tiny, whereas if the Mahdi Army really did launch a challenge to the government, it is not clear whether it could survive.
Ah, yes. The “radical Muslim cleric” Muqtada al-Sadr. His six-month mandated stand down period for the “Mahdi Army” is almost over, and many wonder what he will do.
When discussing fighting and deaths in Iraq you have to keep an open mind about the accuracy of reports. This may be one of these glass-half-full moments, but if in fact the object of the exercise is to enable the Iraqis to stand up for themselves, and thereby facilitate our standing down (and unassing the George Bu$h ego-war) then it appears at first reports that the central government forces did what they were supposed to do.
UPDATE: Frequent reader and good friend Dubhaltach, of Gorilla's Guides has smacked my hand for forgetting we're waiting for the 12th Imam and not the 10th. He has also pointed out that some news stories have made the argument that the millenialist gunmen were not disposed of as easily as first reports would indicate, but we don't know for sure since Iraq is in electrical blackout for 12 hors pf the day\.
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.
Frequent commenter Tim brought this Gulf Newseditorial to our attention and it’s perhaps noteworthy since it appeared in an independent but government-approved newspaper in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
Dear Mr. President;
Lest you forget. Invasion of Iraq. Thousands of dead. Looting the National Museum. Disbanding the Iraqi army. Donald Rumsfeld. Shock and Awe. Jay Garner. Paul Bremer. Inciting sectarianism. Abu Ghraib. Thousands of detainees without charges. Torture. Oil. Ghost WMDs. The Niger connection. Halliburton. Blackwater. Deadly security contractors. Mercenaries. Fallujah. Haditha massacre. Blind support of Israel. Instigating the suffering of Gaza. Ignoring the expansion of illegal colonies. Defying United Nations resolutions. Securing "a Jewish State". Allowing Israelis to extend the destruction of Lebanon in the 2oo6 war. Providing Israel with new Bunker Buster bombs to attack Lebanese towns. The War on Terror. "The Crusade". Clash of civilisations. Where is Osama Bin Laden? Afghanistan. Bagram massacre. Bombing media offices. Guantanamo Bay. Kangaroo courts. Indefinite detention. Presidential orders to ignore Geneva Conventions. "Unlawful enemy combatants". Illegal National Security Agency wiretapping. Fingerprinting visitors. Black prisons. Kidnapping foreign citizens on foreign lands. Khalid Al Masri. Abu Omar. Maher Arar. Central Intelligence Agency. "Aggressive interrogation techniques". Destroying the torture tapes. Iran tension. Isolating Syria. Embracing Syrian opposition Iraq style. The Chavez coup. Denial of global warming. Rejecting Kyoto Protocol. Marginalisation of the United Nations. John Bolton. Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank. Carl Rove. Alberto Gonzales. Firing attorneys. Nepotism. False democracy promises. Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney.
Mr President;
The list goes on. You might not be able to recall some of it. But the people around you, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice especially, would. And they realise that on the subject of human rights, your administration has had the worst record of all, surpassing most Third World countries. The tension and the misery in parts of this region can very well testify to this.
Mr President;
In a famous speech in 2003 you announced an "historic" shift in US foreign policy. You pledged to support democracy and liberty while declaring "victory" in Iraq. More than four years later, Iraq is in chaos. It has virtually disintegrated and "the surge" did little to stop the killing or ease the sectarian tension. At the same time, you gave up on your freedom-for-all prophecy. We are all back to the old ways of doing business - arms and oil. The agenda of your current tour is evident.
Mr President;
This is your first official trip to a land you long claimed has a very special place in your heart. The land of the Prophets. However, you started out wrong. By maintaining your support of an Israeli "Jewish State", you are flouting your own ideals upon which your great country was founded more than two centuries ago. So much for the promise of democracy. What you advocate in fact is the creation of states on religious and racial lines, thereby justifying the atrocious actions of terrorists who hate and seek to eliminate the followers of other religions: The same terrorists you like to blame for every ill on earth and every failure of yours.
Mr President;
It has been reported that you are here to "lecture" us on democracy and human rights. But with a record like yours, you will not be very convincing. The people you are addressing have greater respect for human rights and dignity.
You also said that your current tour aims to realise the long neglected peace in the Middle East. Regional peace, Mr President, will not be achieved by escalating tension and threatening to change regimes. And most importantly, it will not be achieved by supporting Israel, which continues to defy international law, occupy Arab lands, oppress the Palestinians and rebuff peace initiatives.
Mr President;
We hope you have enjoyed the trip so far. The scenery is great. The food is exotic. As for the more "serious" things, it is unlikely you will make any difference.
It’s said that in the UAE, it’s all about business. It appears the businessmen that own this paper might consider Mr Bu$h’s life and times far too expensive. Before you all go getting too smiley-faced about this, let’s remember that it was “businessmen” in the UAE who financed 15 Saudi Arabian terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001.
Mr Bu$h has been taking a premature victory lap in the Middle East lately and apparently still warning everyone about the evil Iranians.
Speaking in Israel, he’s been especially solicitous, remembering that country is in charge of our foreign and military policy in the Middle East and the hard right barking dogs over there are very quick to shut down the flow of ca$h to the republican Party if it looks like there’s any sort of tendency to stop paying attention to the region. Facing a really tough election in November, the r’s need all they can get because the most important allies, the Billionaire’s club and Wall Street can’t carry it all themselves, and many of the lower-level supporters are disenchanted by what the party is offering this year by way of Maximum Leader.
While visiting Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust in Israel, Mr Bu$h apparently teared up while viewing an aerial photograph of Auschswitz. This happens. I’ve visited Dachau several times and the effect is horrible. My wife had never seen me cry before, and I think that is the response of most people.
Apparently Mr Bu$h took a cue from Avner Shalev, the head of the museum commission, and after discussing the matter with our alleged Russian expert Condoleeza Rice in front of the photograph, our Great Warrior Leader decided that President Roosevelt should have given the order to bomb Auschwitz in order to stop the exterminations. Not bomb the camp, but rather the railroad tracks leading to the camp because that would have somehow stopped the slaughter.
Considering the inaccuracy of US bombing during that war, the bombing would probably have crept to the camp and that would have been doing the German government of the time a favor. And if somehow they Americans had managed to hit the railroad tracks and not killed the prisoners in the camp, what would have happened? They Germans would have unloaded the cars short of the bomb point and walked the prisoners into the camp.
So this happy little bit of Bu$h mental wandering and pandering wasn’t about saving the Jews on Auschwitz, but rather about saving the Jews in Israel by stopping the Greatest Evil The World Has Ever Seen ™ Maumoud Ahmadinejad.
(If you talk to the oldest Germans you can find, you will learn that none of them were Nazis, they all hated Hitler and deplored the Holocaust, and you come away wondering how Adolph Hitler held off the Allies for 6 years all by himself.) In much the same way
we are being told today that this one man, Ahmadinejad, all by himself, is compelling a nation of 70 million people to destroy Israel. This man who has no authority to order the transfer of one soldier from one camp to another, whose job is to talk to the international community, who has no voice in the decision of items of national importance, has been inflated by the Bu$h malAdministration into some great monolithic commander-in-chief dedicated to one goal. And the government of Ehud Olmert has been happy to cooperate in this lie. Mr Ahmadinejad has been falsely elevated to the position that Mr Bu$h secretly desires for himself.
Led by the lies and siren call of Big Oil’s greed and the loyal treason of the Likudnik agents of PNAC, America has been dragged into the tarpit of Iraq , which of course is only the first step in enabling Israel’s expansion to the Litani River which Israel needs to continue to grow.
Led by the lies and siren call of Big Oil’s greed and the loyal treason of the Likudnik agents of PNAC, America has been dragged into the tarpit of Iraq , which of course is only the first step in enabling Israel’s expansion to the Litani River which Israel needs to continue to grow. An expanding Israel needs not only new land, but more important, more water resources.
The danger for America is two-fold: the continuing drive to serve Israel’s interests in the Middle East by eliminating its potential enemies does serve America’s long-term strategic interests. A strong military position in that region ensures control of the oil, thereby denying it to economic rivals such as Russia China and India. But the rising cost of this military posture and power projection is becoming a crippling economic threat to the middle class, which is the only basis for democracy. The ongoing and soon to be permanent tax cuts for the millionaires like Messers Bu$h and Cheney (and many if not most of Congress) impose a growing strain on a drowning middle class as the nation struggles to pay for a Defense Department consuming more money than all the other countries in the world combined.
The second great danger for America is in that Mr Bu$h dearly loves his position as dictator-in-all-but-name. He is not the stupid dolt that many think he is, but rather a sly, scheming man with a badly damaged psyche.
He has said it at least twice. (This clip’s audio is very poor and you will have to pay close attention to hear the sound bite.)
America should be seriously considering whether Mr Bu$h will actually leave the White House in January 2009.
The constant (and rising) drumbeat of war against Iran would provide him with the perfect reason to “postpone” the November elections due to a self-created “national emergency.”
Can you seriously imagine the Democratic “leaders” in Congress stopping him?
After a prolonged period of imprisonment, a deranged blogger has finally broken free of his captors. Advise the FBI to call off the search. (Unless, of course, you believe that….)
Note to my lawyer: don’t pay the ransom. I did manage to find this in a newspaper on the floor of the cell, however, and it might explain a lot about the CIA’s “send George a copy” torture tapes controversy.
MADERIYAH, Iraq -- Saad Mahami wanted more firepower. He didn't trust the Iraqi government to give him support, so inside Patrol Base Whiskey, at the edge of this village south of Baghdad, he told U.S. commanders that his 71 Sunni fighters needed additional weapons to fight the insurgent group [Saudis of] al-Qaeda in Iraq.
As he listened to Mahami's demand, Capt. David Underwood reminded his superiors that Mahami's men -- all members of a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary movement called Sahwa, or "Awakening" -- were already buying arms with U.S. reward money for finding enemy ammunition dumps. "And as we confiscate weapons, we hand them to Saad Mahami," Underwood told Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top commander in the region, during their meeting with the Iraqi.
The United States is empowering a new group of Sunni leaders, including onetime members of former president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, intelligence services and army, who are challenging established Sunni politicians for their community's leadership. The phenomenon marks a sharp turnaround in U.S. policy and the fortunes of Iraq's Sunni minority.
The country was awash in guns when Saddam ruled the land (a time many Iraqis now refer to as “the good times” I believe. Doesn’t it sound like the NRA is in charge of things in Iraq? Three guns for every man? It’s like one of those first person shooter games you can theoretically carry four or five different weapons at the same time and switch from one to the other as needed.
Sunni Security Unit Leader, Colleagues Killed in Attack Encouraged by Bin Laden
BAGHDAD, Jan. 7 -- A suicide bomber killed the leader of a U.S.-backed neighborhood security force in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district Monday, his aides said, the latest in a string of attacks against such forces.
The blast, along with a second explosion, killed Col. Riyadh al-Sammarai and at least 10 others, witnesses said.
The campaign against the so-called Awakening groups began after Osama bin Laden called on Muslims late last month to attack such "dangerous conspiracies."
"They are sending a message to the Awakening fighters that we must leave the movement," said Riyadh Hadi, field commander of the Adhamiyah Awakening, as he stood among the corpses of his colleagues. "But this will only increase our will to fight against them more and more."
Oh, but –wait!
Safa Hussein, Iraq's deputy national security adviser, said al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to both attack the Awakening and penetrate its ranks. "Al-Qaeda's policy is in two directions," he said.[emph added-
One is immediately reminded of Caesar/ Qaisar Saadi al-Jubory , the Iraqi soldier who killed two GIs and wounded three others after allegedly watching the GIs manhandle/mistreat/beat up an Iraqi female during a house search in the al-Haramat area, western Mosul, on December 26th.
Naturally, the immediate (automatic) reaction from MNF-I was “the guy’s an al Qaeda mole.” Somehow it seems staff pukes are incapable of understanding what happens out in the boondocks. Maybe it’s the fact that high speed, low-drag ring knockers are impervious to the shit, and always seem to get the best assignments.
As it turns out, there’s quite a bit more to the story than what the Bu$hCo drones at MNF-I admitted, but you have to read an non-bought-out press to learn what happened. See the excellent report from our friend Siun at FDL for the grits.
Special stringer support from new Daddy Dubhaltach of Gorilla's Guides.
For dessert, instead if leechee nuts, I was trying to find a report from MNF-I about the mythical [Saudi} al Qaeda being on the run, but they’re hard to find,
Nethoggers’ Cernig has picked up on Larissa Alexandrovna’s echoing of my commentary 10 days ago regarding the post-shooting bomb blast at the assassination of the Bu$h malAdministration’s beard, Benazir Bhutto. (I’m not being harsh about Ms Bhutto. Her death was a tragedy for Pakistan, despite her family’s rather spotted record of corruption and alleged skimming of that country’s national treasury.)
Three former US intelligence officials have told Raw Story that not only is the gunman dead, he was likely the actual target of the suicide bomber.
According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination.
"He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there," said this source. "We don't know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to."
I certainly don’t know anything about political assassinations, because I will deny that’s a skill set the US Army teaches its soldiers. But if I wanted to take a very important political target I wouldn’t use just one hitter. I might have a gunman in close in case the opportunity presented itself, and I might back him up with a dedicated zealot willing to kill himself (and the target) with a bomb. (This would also ensure the gunman couldn’t talk later.)
The fact that Ms Bhutto was in what is reported to have been an armored vehicle might well have mandated the bomb, should the pistol attack have failed. Providentially (or unfortunately) the pistol worked, and the bomb created further death and chaos, as well as silencing the shooter. It’s probably just coincident that the person with the vest bomb just happened to be standing right next to the shooter, eh?
Never one to leave a healing scab on a wound, I speculated further,
In case of failure I’d also have a couple of teams along the route of retreat, possibly with sophisticated anti-vehicle weapons, like RPGs. And I would need a spotter at middle distance to advise the cutoff teams whether the first attack failed, to alert them of the target’s approach.
While the suspicion of the world community has rightly settled on President Musharraf, having an inconvenient competitor eliminated in what can be passed off as a regrettable terrorist incident saves a lot of face for the Pakistani government. Face they promptly lost when they initiated an on-again, off-again series of speculations and laughable explanations about car roof levers and such. Shutting up the doctors after the fact was a nice touch, because it immediately switched the focus of the news cycle buzz from the killing to the cover up.
The danger in all this lies with the possibility that the USG might lose confidence in Musharraf, or at least more confidence than they had lost as evidenced by the insistence of Mr Bu$h and our alleged Russian expert, Ms Rice, that only Benazir Bhutto could save Pakistan from a fate worse than death. Or something.
And the only thing that could have pushed the Bu$h people to change course in Pakistan would have been the commentariat and punditocracy figuring it all out, spurred by a lot of questions from the man in the street inside the US.
Fortunately the only news audience that the Bu$hies ever pay attention to is domestic consumption. Propaganda Public diplomacy at its best, Bu$h-style. And the US corporate media has cooperated magnificently, speculating endlessly about neck wounds and moon roof levers and fortunately ignoring the first rule of political assassination: cui bono? How lucky.
As I said at the time,
I’m not saying anything. I‘m just saying eventually the truth will surface.
It should be obvious to any conscious mind that Ms Bhutto in exile was a minimal threat to President Musharraf. She was out of the country and has been noted in many places she was basically the heart and soul of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. While it is true that any exiled politician with strong domestic support is a danger to incumbents, the simple fact is that she could not have re-entered the country without the state’s permission, and the PPP was sufficiently neutered so that there was no chance of a “students’ rebellion” a la Iran, 1979, which would gave paved the way for her triumphant return to replace the incumbent President.
I still find it hard to believe that the Bu$h malAdministration really believed they were going to get President Musharraf to shuffle off into retirement so easily, so they must have figured that they could prevail on Musharraf to allow Ms Bhutto to be Prime Minister and actually allow US forces to operate in the NWFP and FATA in order to somehow to something to distract the Taliban and al Qaeda from operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we have seen before that, they take counsel from their dreams, rather than from their fears.
Cernig ends his piece on a high note.
Can Bush at least stop selling the General-in-plainclothes advanced weaponry (e.g. nuke-capable fighters, anti-tank missiles, airborne early warning platforms) more useful against his neighbours than extremists, even if it does help line US arms manufacturers pockets with US taxpayers' money?
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.
Gorilla’s Guides discussed missing children yesterday, starting with a 2007 UNICEF report on the subject. (Story originates with Al Jazeera, no link to UNICEF)
- An estimated 2 million children in Iraq continue to face threats including poor nutrition, disease and interrupted education.
- Many of the 220,000 displaced children of primary school age had their education interrupted.
- An estimated 760,000 children (17 per cent) did not go to primary schools in 2006.
- An average 25,000 children per month were displaced by violence or intimidation, with their families seeking shelter in other parts of Iraq.
- In 2007, approximately 75,000 children had resorted to living in camps or temporary shelters.
- Hundreds of children lost their lives or were injured by violence and many more had their main family wage-earner kidnapped or killed.
That’s the big picture.
For a closeup:
Abu Muhammad, a Baghdad resident, found it difficult to let go of his daughter’s hand but he had already convinced himself that selling her to a family outside Iraq would provide her with a better future.
“The war disgraced my family. I lost relatives including my wife among thousands of victims of sectarian violence and was forced to sell my daughter to give my other children something to eat,” he told Al Jazeera.
In 2006, Abu Muhammad and his family were forced to leave their home in Adhamiya, a district of Baghdad, after militia fighting claimed the streets in his once tranquil neighbourhood.
They began living in a makeshift refugee camp on the outskirts of Baghdad, but he soon lost his job and the children, unable to make the daily trek, quit school.
“There wasn’t enough money to spend on books, clothes and transport,” he said. His daughter, Fatima, the youngest of four children, began to show signs of malnourishment and a local medic said she had become anaemic.
Desperation
By mid-2007, conditions for his family had become desperate and his children, once healthy and bubbling with life, had become gaunt and lethargic.
It was then that a translator and a Swedish couple claiming to be part of an international NGO arrived in the makeshift refugee camp.
“They heard about my situation and the woman, who said she could not have babies, offered some money to give her my youngest daughter of two years old,” he said.
“I refused in the beginning but the Iraqi translator was constantly coming at the camp and insisting with the same question. One day I found that my children would die without food and a clean environment and the next time he came to my tent, I told him that I agreed.”
He gave the translator all personal documents and after a week the couple came with new documents for Abu Muhammad to sign, authorising the adoption and to pick up his daughter.
Abu Muhammad, who received $10,000, believes he is now damned by God, but he says his inner turmoil is allayed somewhat by his belief that Fatima will have a better life than many in Iraq.
“I could see her love in the first time she looked at her,” he said of the adoptive mother.
I usually like to comment on stories like this. I’m too ashamed of what my country has wrought to say anything.
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.
