Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2004, 01:53:23 PM
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A Call to Action:
Our troops are out there for us. From today's WSJ, here's something we can do.
Woof,
Crafty Dog
Want a piece of the action? Spirit of America's project with the First Marine Division, and how to donate, is at www.spiritofamerica.net, or directly at www.spiritofamerica.net/req_12/request.html or 800-691-2209.
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Spirit of America
Here's a way you can help the cause in Iraq.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 16, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Thus spake George W. Bush this week: "The people of our country are united behind our men and women in uniform, and this government will do all that is necessary to assure the success of their historic mission." Still, many Americans who support the war don't much like sitting on their hands doing little more than watch it on TV. Some have written here, asking what they can do to help. This column will describe a real project that lets the folks at home lend a hand to the soldiers in Iraq.
Over the past year, a successful technology entrepreneur named Jim Hake has been working with the Marine Corps to help their reconstruction projects in Iraq. The Marines identify local equipment needs, and Mr. Hake's organization, Spirit of America, after raising the money, acquires the stuff, typically for schools and medical clinics. It flies directly out of Camp Pendleton in California. Jim Hake and the Marines are a coalition of the can-do, bypassing the slow U.S. procurement bureaucracy. More on that effort in a moment. Here's where you come in:
The First Marine Expeditionary Force and U.S. Army in Iraq want to equip and upgrade seven defunct Iraqi-owned TV stations in Al Anbar province--west of Baghdad--so that average Iraqis have better televised information than the propaganda they get from the notorious Al-Jazeera. If Jim Hake can raise $100,000, his Spirit of America will buy the equipment in the U.S., ship it to the Marines in Iraq and get Iraqi-run TV on the air before the June 30 handover.
Now we are getting somewhere. Since day one, the Coalition Provisional Authority's weakest suit has been the war of ideas, images and public relations. Into this use-it-or-lose-it void stepped Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV operation that somehow has wires running to every camcorder in the Arab terrorist world. Punch in english.aljazeera.net for a look at "news" from Iraq spun tirelessly against the coalition. Its photos of "Falluja after the siege" are preposterous, depicting nothing but "destroyed homes" and ominous GIs. The text: "As we drive through the back roads on the way to Falluja, U.S. jets are pounding the area around the tiny village of Garma."
If this hooey is what they feed to the English-language audience, imagine the daily TV diet Al-Jazeera trowels on for Iraqis. Al-Jazeera's Web site Wednesday said it wouldn't air the video of an Italian hostage's murder "in order not to upset viewers' sensitivities." Hours later, I heard an all-news radio in New York recite verbatim Al-Jazeera's tender account.
If the Marines can get these moribund stations back on the air, the coverage area would include Fallujah and Ramadi. The VHF/UHF stations are owned as cooperatives by TV-competent Iraqis already vetted by the Army. Some broadcast Al-Jazeera for lack of other content. In return for the upgrades, the Iraqi operators would be asked two things: Criticism is fine, but don't run anti-coalition propaganda; and let the Marines buy air time to broadcast public-service announcements, such as the reopening of schools or clinics--or indeed, pending military operations.
I can hear the chorus of lamentations about "independence" and "objectivity." Get real. We're in Iraq, not Kansas, Toto. These Iraqis, aided by American soldiers, are manifestly engaged in a death-struggle for their nation. Anyone who has the courage to produce daily television at odds with the goals of the homicidal "insurgents" doesn't need tutorials on journalistic piety from us.
Jim Hake's organizational insight is to deploy the best practices of the modern U.S. economy--efficiency and speed--around the margins of the Iraqi war effort. The Amazons, Best Buys, FedExes and DHLs can get anything anywhere--fast. Why not use the same all-American skill at procurement efficiency and quick distribution to get the soldiers in Iraq (and Afghanistan) the stuff that government red tape will never provide in time?
His operation, in Los Angeles, is wholly New Economy. For past projects he's gotten the word out via Web loggers such as Glenn Reynolds's InstaPundit.com, windsofchange.net and hughhewitt.com. Mr. Hake finds low-cost suppliers on the Internet and negotiates prices. His donor network also suggests suppliers.
Earlier projects for the Marines flew over cargo planes of school supplies, basic medical equipment and toys (turns out Iraqi children love Frisbees). One anecdote: The day before the school equipment was to ship, they found that all the pencils broke easily. On a hunch, Mr. Hake made a morning call to a Staples manager in southern California. By midafternoon the Staples man lined up sources for 120,000 pencils--cheaper than the original buy. Mr. Hake bought and shipped them. Spirit of America is all-volunteer. The accounting for its projects, down to the penny, is listed on the Web site.
Spirit of America's buy-list for the Marines' TV-stations project includes digital video camcorders, desktop PCs for video editing, video editing software, televisions, 21-inch satellite dishes, KU-band universal transponders, satellite decoder/receivers, Philips audio/video selectors (4-in/2-out), VCRs (PAL and NTSC compatible), DVD players (multiregion compatible), step-down voltage converters (220 to 110) and lighting sets. The cost of this equipment is about $100,000.
Mr. Hake, incidentally, insists on paying for all the goods in his projects. He says donor relationships with big companies waste time getting sign-offs by senior management. I asked if he thought they could get the TV stations under way by the June 30 handover: "Absolutely. My goal is to have the gear at Pendleton by May 7. The Marines will fly it over and they are ready to get going on this. Needless to say, plans can always change in a combat zone but this is an undertaking to help turn the tide there." If this works, the Marines and Spirit of America hope to rebuild TV stations elsewhere around Iraq.
Want a piece of the action? Spirit of America's project with the First Marine Division, and how to donate, is at www.spiritofamerica.net, or directly at www.spiritofamerica.net/req_12/request.html or 800-691-2209. It's brand extension of the Marines' now-famous saying: "No better friend, no worse enemy."
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
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BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 30, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
The photograph below was taken at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base 38 miles north of San Diego. It shows Col. Robert Knapp and Spirit of America's Jim Hake in front of the television equipment that was bought with contributions from readers of this newspaper and others. It will be in the air tomorrow, bound for Al Anbar province in Iraq. There, Marines from the First Expeditionary Force will help Iraqis restore seven local TV stations.
This is a remarkable story of can-do. I think it is also the story of a nation willing to do more than it has been asked by the Bush administration. It is about the need for an Iraqi homefront.
The column describing Spirit of America's effort to raise $100,000 for the TV stations appeared in this space 14 days ago. Since then, the following has happened:
Jim Hake, Spirit of America's entrepreneur founder, says they have received $1.52 million. Some 7,000 donations have come from every state, and one from . . . France.
Mr. Hake purchased all the needed equipment and had suppliers ship directly to Camp Pendleton. Federal Express donated domestic shipping costs.
Stanley Hubbard at Hubbard Broadcasting Inc. in Minnesota has offered several hundred thousand dollars in state of the art digital television equipment. That equipment would provide satellite uplink and downlink capability, allowing the Iraqis' TV stations to get program content from elsewhere in the world.
Mr. Hake has received five new requests from military in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, the live war that faded from view until Pat Tillman, the former NFL player, was killed there. A Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan requested soccer equipment for a village team: "They compete regionally but have no equipment save a couple of soccer balls." The team's equipment will soon be shipped.
Sounds like small potatoes. But in the relatively alien worlds the U.S. now finds itself, represented by its soldiers, this is what must be done if we hope to extinguish terrorism and restore self-government in lands taken over by terrorist networks.
Tellingly, Mr. Hake has also received a request from a Coalition Provisional Authority office in Iraq. The CPA of course is the U.S. government agency officially tasked with restoring Iraq, and funded by Congress (i.e., the American people). That the CPA itself would ask Jim Hake for help suggests that peacetime rules and red tape are smothering a wartime effort--whether by the CPA, private contractors or the military. This is a good subject for another time (horror stories of bureaucracy run wild welcome at the address below).
Let us downshift a moment from this tale of real people giving their own money to do real good in Iraq to survey how the war appears more familiarly in the life of America. Just in the past week, amid televised scenes of U.S. soldiers fighting to defeat their killers and the killers of Iraqi innocents in Fallujah and Najaf, the homefront consisted of:
John Kerry sitting down Monday with ABC's Charles Gibson to parse "medals" and "ribbons" in panicked syntax that recalled Ralph Cramden's famous "hummina-hummina-hummina" routine; a debate over televising covered coffins; an appearance before the all-partisan September 11 commission by the President and Vice President; and tonight's scheduled naming by Ted Koppel of every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq the past year. Mr. Koppel said, "We felt that the impact would actually be greater on a day when the entire nation is not focused on its war dead." Not focused on its war dead?
The war as it is presented in the U.S. and the war as it exists in Iraq seems to occupy separate spheres of reality. The political class and media treat the war as something whose "policy" details can somehow be revisited, even rethought. At home, the war is a political event, a normal partisan phenomenon. Its metaphors are borne out of Vietnam--quagmire, bogged down, body counts, Ted Kennedy.
Guess what? Vietnam isn't coming back. The people of this country tore the nation's fabric terribly over Vietnam. They are not going to do it again.
The grand response to the Spirit of America request says to me that the public understands that we are there in Iraq and the job now isn't to debate its value but to get the job done. Most Americans don't want to be one of the partisan bobbleheads on television. They want to be part of a genuine homefront, helping. One who responded to the Spirit of America appeal, Dick Kampa of Tucson, Ariz., put it this way:
"My sense is that there are many who would support civilian, home-front activity that would bolster troop morale and communicate to the Iraqi people that we really are their friends. Putting a political label on such activity would be counterproductive. I think Democrats and Republicans should, and many would, unite in these activities. Perhaps we need rallies or community meetings linked to constructive actions like funds for impactful projects in Iraq, adopt-a-communities, collection of goods, bandage rolling, etc., things that involve people across America."
You know for a fact that if Laura Bush undertook any such homefront effort, it would be dissected and mocked as hokey and irrelevant. Too bad. I don't think most Americans want to debate woulda, coulda, shoulda just now. They want to win. Spirit of America is a start, but someone high in the Bush administration ought to start thinking of ways to let more people pitch in.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
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All:
This man seems like a fine "point of light" worthy of our support. See the website at the end of the article.
Woof,
Crafty Dog
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Dentist Sinks His Teeth Into Relief
Jim Rolfe has spent weeks and about $50,000 trying to fill a big void in Afghanistan. Now he is planning to set up his own clinic in Kabul.
By Steve Chawkins, Times Staff Writer
At 65, Jim Rolfe has been a dentist for a long time, but his practice in downtown Santa Barbara hardly prepared him for what he found in Afghanistan.
"There was a continuous flow of problems you couldn't imagine even existing in the U.S.," he said. "It's like coming onto an auto accident with bodies lying all over the street. That's how it is when a person opens his mouth to be treated."
Like numerous other medical professionals who pitch in at Third World clinics for brief periods, Rolfe wanted to spend a few weeks simply doing what he could. What he didn't count on was his spark of altruism turning into a full-fledged mission.
So far, Rolfe has spent more than $50,000 of his own money to provide dental care in Afghanistan. What he has in mind, though, is far grander in scope than simply writing a check.
Rolfe could be the only Santa Barbara dentist currently looking to buy land in Kabul. When he finds it, he will plunk down a used shipping container he purchased as the hub of his future clinic. He will rig it up with a generator and running water, outfit it with dental equipment, recruit U.S. professionals, train Afghan dental assistants, and, practically overnight, give Afghans in sore need of dental work an opportunity to get it.
Rolfe has a gray beard, rock-star-length hair, and a down-to-earth style. It's not hard to picture him as what he once was: the official dentist ? as well as goat tender and truck driver ? for a Santa Barbara commune called Brotherhood of the Sun.
Decades later, his office is as distinctive as his background. Conga drums and bongos sit in the waiting room for patients anxious to take the edge off their visit to the dentist. Patients recline to view TV sets mounted in the ceiling as a fountain cascades in the background. Designed and built by Rolfe, the treatment areas are cozy beige nooks with curved walls, a style Rolfe calls "Southwestern Eskimo."
Such comforts are a world away from the grim certainties of a country torn by war over the last 30 years. Sitting in his waiting room, Rolfe wearily reels off the statistics: The average male dies at 44. One in four children die by age 5. Ten percent of the population are orphans. Only one in seven people can read.
And the number of people in a land of 27 million who have ever seen a dentist is too small to measure.
"I'd look into mouths and just see a disaster," he said. "Instead of teeth, I'd see abscessed roots. These people had never had their teeth cleaned; I'd pull out tartar in huge rocks."
In 2002, Rolfe read about an orphanage in a remote mountain province and volunteered there for three weeks. He worked from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., using the children he treated as his "assistants."
"When I saw how grateful they were, I cried," he said. "They couldn't wait to get treatment."
Two years later, he returned for another couple of weeks, this time setting up shop at a women's clinic in Kabul.
For this trip, Rolfe had made a portable wooden dental chair, pocked with a Swiss-cheese pattern of holes to reduce its weight.
He also had some help. A recent graduate of Kabul's medical university acted as translator for $20 a day. He was jobless, as were all of the other 314 graduates in his class. And one of Rolfe's Santa Barbara patients, yoga instructor Hayley Parlen, came along as well. She had hoped to teach yoga techniques to children in Kabul but wound up assisting Rolfe.
Parlen, 29, had learned about Rolfe's plans when she was getting her teeth cleaned. She had no idea that within months, she would be able to soothe frightened women by intoning, in the local dialect, standard dental bromides such as "Just breathe" and "It'll only hurt for a second."
"With one hand, I'd suction blood from their mouth and with the other, I'd squeeze their hands or massage their forehead," she said. "My calmness translated to them that they'd be OK."
Rolfe is looking for donations and volunteers to help him on his planned trip in April. Setting up a booth at a recent state dental conference in San Francisco, he already has recruited Ike Rahimi, an Afghanistan-born dentist who treats farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley.
"The need is enormous," said Rahimi, whose mother might accompany him on the trip to see sisters still in Afghanistan. "Life is not so forgiving there."
In January, the secondhand shipping container that Rolfe bought for $2,500 will be stuffed with equipment and placed on a freighter to Rotterdam. From there, it will travel by rail to southern Russia, and then by truck through Uzbekistan, and, finally, to Kabul.
When it's set up, it will house a lab and three dental chairs. Westerners now fly four hours to Qatar for dental treatment. With his new facility, Rolfe hopes to treat them for fees that will subsidize treatment of the poor.
He hopes to eventually add simple accommodations for visiting professionals and classrooms where Afghan hygienists and technicians can be trained.
His is not the first such plan in Afghanistan. Other dentists have volunteered as well, and the American military has worked on restoring the nation's only dental hospital. Still, Rolfe said he has to focus on not being overwhelmed.
"I feel like a drop of water in the desert," he said.
For more information, see Rolfe's Afghanistan Dental Relief Project website at http://www.adrpinc.org .
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An organization for Paralyzed veterans:
http://www.pva.org/index.htm
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LOOKING for a cause with a difference? Adopt a sniper. A Texas police SWAT officer is running a charity for frontline snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan, supplying everything from baby wipes to body armour.
The brainchild of Port Arthur detective and police sniper Brian Sain, Adopt
a Sniper (www.adoptasniper.org) has raised thousands of dollars in cash and gear to supplement the kit of sharp shooters in up to 75 US combat platoons. "Being aware that police snipers often face the same logistical problems as their military counterparts, I assumed correctly that they were doing without things they needed to get their jobs done," Mr Sain said. He contacted US military sniper schools and began sending supplies, tailored to the needs of each sniper, in January.
"People from every walk of life are helping. Once the word got out that a
group of policemen was helping the military and inviting civilian
assistance, it really took off," he said.
Some US soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan spend their own money to supplement equipment issued by the military.
"Snipers need gear that is different than the average airman, marine,
sailor, or soldier," Mr Sain told Reuters via e-mail. "When the snipers
desperately need mission specific gear ... we just try and fill that void."
From the frontlines, snipers are writing to say thanks.
"Your package arrived ... and was met with great fanfare," said a Marine
platoon commander from Afghanistan. "The mini binos (binoculars) will help lighten our load as we continue to spend most of the time chasing the Taliban between 7000-10,000 feet (2100-3050m)."
He went on to ask for supplies of protein bars, Gatorade and dry cleaning
lubricants for guns. Sergeant John, who has been in the army for four-and-a-half years, wrote from Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, where rebels took over some districts this week. "I am always trying to improve my knowledge as a sniper and improve my lethality," he said. "I am proud to be a sniper when I see fellow snipers in the community are back home looking out for us snipers overseas fighting this horrible war on terrorism."
Some write of having to spend their own money buying gear, and of the lack of quality ammunition. "I hate asking for stuff," said one anonymous soldier seeking small binoculars and spotting scopes, "but if you have the means, we can damn sure put them to good use.
"Miscellaneous gear and morale type stuff is of course always welcome. My platoon has 16 guys from all over. Some eat kimchi (Korean national dish), some chew Redman (tobacco). "I can't tell you how much this means to all of us." Adopt a Sniper fills a need for civilians who want to help soldiers in combat but don't know how to, Mr Sain said.
"Unfortunately, due to the enormity of the commitment in Iraq and
Afghanistan, many American snipers are having to spend their own money and have their families try and procure gear and get it to them," Mr Sain said. Supplies are sent directly to individual soldiers and Adopt a Sniper spends as much on shipping as it does on supplies.
"We have been sending everything from baby wipes to body armour and
everything in between. Most of the items are sniper specific such as laser
rangefinders ... wind metres, rifle scopes, weapons maintenance gear, youname it," Mr Sain said.
"www.adoptasniper.org has become a full time secondary job for us," he said.
Reuters
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THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW!!!
http://www.spiritofamerica.net/site
http://www.uso.org/pubs/93_325_1391.cfm
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/
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AAFES Gift Certificates
http://www.aafes.com/docs/homefront.htm
The Army and Air Force Exchange Services is where most servicemen and women do their shopping. You can purchase gift certificates for those in Iraq and those hospitalized.
Adopt a Platoon
http://www.adoptaplatoon.org/
Adopt a Platoon has several ongoing projects to ensure that every soldier overseas does not walk away from mail call empty-handed.
AnySoldier
http://www.anysoldier.us/index.cfm
Any Soldier is a non-profit organization that helps people send care packages to members of the armed services in Iraq.
Appreciate Our Troops
http://www.appreciateourtroops.org
Purchase a Support Our Troops mug and a free personalized mug will be given to a current or former service member.
Blue Star Mothers
http://www.bluestarmothers.org
The Blue Star Mothers was founded by service members' moms during World War II. Any mother with a son or daughter in the military can join.
Books For Soldiers
http://www.booksforsoldiers.com/
Help the troops escape boredom by donating some books. You can also donate DVDs and CDs requested by soldiers.
Camp Doha
http://www.campdoha.org/
Camp Doha provides valuable information for those about to deploy, their friends and families and anyone who wants to support the troops.
Cell Phones for Soldiers
http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/pages/1/index.htm
Donated cell phones are recycled and turned into cash. The cash is used to purchase calling cards for soldiers in Iraq.
Defend America
http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html
Thank any service member stationed throughout the U.S. and the world with an e-mail.
Fisher House
http://www.fisherhouse.org/
The Fisher House Foundation donates comfort homes, built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one during hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.
Freedom Calls
http://www.freedomcalls.org/
The Freedom Calls Foundation is helping families videoconference with their loved ones in Iraq. You can donate money to help keep this project going.
Groceries for Families
http://www.commissaries.com/certificheck/
The men and women who lay down their lives for us are terribly underpaid. Help a family by purchasing gift certificates to the commissary.
Homes for Our Troops
http://www.homesforourtroops.org/
Homes for Our Troops assists injured veterans and their immediate families by building new or adapting existing homes with handicapped accessibility.
Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund
http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/foundation_heroesfund.html
The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund provides grants to the families of servicemen and women who died in Iraq. You can donate online, through mail or by calling a toll-free number.
Military Moms
http://www.militarymoms.net/index.html
This site provides support to all of the moms out there who has a son or daughter in the military.
Operation Air Conditioner
http://www.operationac.com/
Operation Air Conditioner provides not only air conditioners but space heaters (the desert is cold in the winter) for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Operation Call Home
http://www.platoonphone.com/
Operation Call Home's mission is to provide each platoon with their own satellite phone.
Operation Dear Abby
http://anyservicemember.navy.mil/
The U.S. Navy and Dear Abby have teamed up. Their site allows you to send e-mail messages of support to service members.
Operation Give
http://www.operationgive.org/
Operation Give provides toys, clothing and school supplies primarily to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Operation Hero Miles
http://www.heromiles.org/
You can donate your unused frequent flier miles to help soldiers travel on emergency leave. They are also used to help families fly to hospitalized soldiers.
Operation Iraqi Children
http://www.operationiraqichildren.org/
Many soldiers are rebuilding schools in Iraq and scrounging around for school supplies. Help by donating a school supplies kit.
Operation Military Pride
http://operationmilitarypride.org
Operation Military Pride is a volunteer organization that sends cards letters and care packages to troops.
Operation Uplink
http://www.operationuplink.org/
Donate money to Operation Uplink. The money is used to purchase phone cards so servicemen and women can call home.
Soldiers' Angels
http://www.soldiersangels.org/heroes/index.php
Become some soldier's angel by adopting a service member.
Treats for Troops
http://www.treatsfortroops.com/
Treats for Troops helps get you provide packages to your loved ones overseas. If you don't know anyone, the Foster-A-Soldier Program matches you with a registered soldier by branch of service, home state, gender, or birthday - or you can choose to sponsor a group of soldiers.
USO Cares
http://www.usocares.org/
You can sponsor care packages provided by the USO with a $25 donation.
Voice from Home
http://voicesfromhome.org/home.html
Voices From Home allows military members and their families and friends to send and receive immediate voice e-mail messages in remote locations around the world.
-
AAFES Gift Certificates
http://www.aafes.com/docs/homefront.htm
The Army and Air Force Exchange Services is where most servicemen and women do their shopping. You can purchase gift certificates for those in Iraq and those hospitalized.
Adopt a Platoon
http://www.adoptaplatoon.org/
Adopt a Platoon has several ongoing projects to ensure that every soldier overseas does not walk away from mail call empty-handed.
AnySoldier
http://www.anysoldier.us/index.cfm
Any Soldier is a non-profit organization that helps people send care packages to members of the armed services in Iraq.
Appreciate Our Troops
http://www.appreciateourtroops.org
Purchase a Support Our Troops mug and a free personalized mug will be given to a current or former service member.
Blue Star Mothers
http://www.bluestarmothers.org
The Blue Star Mothers was founded by service members' moms during World War II. Any mother with a son or daughter in the military can join.
Books For Soldiers
http://www.booksforsoldiers.com/
Help the troops escape boredom by donating some books. You can also donate DVDs and CDs requested by soldiers.
Camp Doha
http://www.campdoha.org/
Camp Doha provides valuable information for those about to deploy, their friends and families and anyone who wants to support the troops.
Cell Phones for Soldiers
http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/pages/1/index.htm
Donated cell phones are recycled and turned into cash. The cash is used to purchase calling cards for soldiers in Iraq.
Defend America
http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html
Thank any service member stationed throughout the U.S. and the world with an e-mail.
Fisher House
http://www.fisherhouse.org/
The Fisher House Foundation donates comfort homes, built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one during hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.
Freedom Calls
http://www.freedomcalls.org/
The Freedom Calls Foundation is helping families videoconference with their loved ones in Iraq. You can donate money to help keep this project going.
Groceries for Families
http://www.commissaries.com/certificheck/
The men and women who lay down their lives for us are terribly underpaid. Help a family by purchasing gift certificates to the commissary.
Homes for Our Troops
http://www.homesforourtroops.org/
Homes for Our Troops assists injured veterans and their immediate families by building new or adapting existing homes with handicapped accessibility.
Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund
http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/foundation_heroesfund.html
The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund provides grants to the families of servicemen and women who died in Iraq. You can donate online, through mail or by calling a toll-free number.
Military Moms
http://www.militarymoms.net/index.html
This site provides support to all of the moms out there who has a son or daughter in the military.
Operation Air Conditioner
http://www.operationac.com/
Operation Air Conditioner provides not only air conditioners but space heaters (the desert is cold in the winter) for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Operation Call Home
http://www.platoonphone.com/
Operation Call Home's mission is to provide each platoon with their own satellite phone.
Operation Dear Abby
http://anyservicemember.navy.mil/
The U.S. Navy and Dear Abby have teamed up. Their site allows you to send e-mail messages of support to service members.
Operation Give
http://www.operationgive.org/
Operation Give provides toys, clothing and school supplies primarily to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Operation Hero Miles
http://www.heromiles.org/
You can donate your unused frequent flier miles to help soldiers travel on emergency leave. They are also used to help families fly to hospitalized soldiers.
Operation Iraqi Children
http://www.operationiraqichildren.org/
Many soldiers are rebuilding schools in Iraq and scrounging around for school supplies. Help by donating a school supplies kit.
Operation Military Pride
http://operationmilitarypride.org
Operation Military Pride is a volunteer organization that sends cards letters and care packages to troops.
Operation Uplink
http://www.operationuplink.org/
Donate money to Operation Uplink. The money is used to purchase phone cards so servicemen and women can call home.
Soldiers' Angels
http://www.soldiersangels.org/heroes/index.php
Become some soldier's angel by adopting a service member.
Treats for Troops
http://www.treatsfortroops.com/
Treats for Troops helps get you provide packages to your loved ones overseas. If you don't know anyone, the Foster-A-Soldier Program matches you with a registered soldier by branch of service, home state, gender, or birthday - or you can choose to sponsor a group of soldiers.
USO Cares
http://www.usocares.org/
You can sponsor care packages provided by the USO with a $25 donation.
Voice from Home
http://voicesfromhome.org/home.html
Voices From Home allows military members and their families and friends to send and receive immediate voice e-mail messages in remote locations around the world.
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My bro will be in Iraq in Jan. Thanks for the posts. Military families will know about this resource; Military.com. It has the news straight from the horse's mouth. Also I read post on there and of course I could not find it when I went back. However, it is top 10 needs of Marines. Think about this when sending stuff over there.
1. Baby wipes- multi purpose. clean yourself and equipment
2. AA batteries.
3. knee and elbow pads
4. really nice sweat head bands. Keeps sweat out of goggles
5. power bars and more power bars
*The rest are news and things I have heard
6. If you can swing it- the lighter cavlar plates
7. books are cheap to send - media mail. Also Apo are as cheap as mailing to US destinations
8. Any scrap metal or bullet proof glass :)
Please add to this list.......
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My brother in law's sister, Kristin Duarte, just arrived in Tikrit, Iraq. She and her National Guard unit were brought there to escort truck conveys (a very dangerous job).
Her Father forwarded this to me from their unit commander's wife:
"If anyone knows anyone who is in a position to donate such items, or has contacts with the major computer companies Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.. and can make a request for donation, please contact me and we will make sure they get them."
Does anyone have any resources or connections in this area?
Thanks,
Russ
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"I just wanted to let you know that our unit has arrived safely in Tikrit. Two of our soldiers are in route with equipment, but the bulk of the band have arrived.
The band is staying in their own palace. They have electricity and running water. At this time there is no computer access, but they will be requesting to have the building wired for access.
Unfortunately, two of our soldiers have had their personal laptops stolen and one soldier left a mini DVD player on the plane. If anyone knows anyone who is in a position to donate such items, or has contacts with the major computer companies Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.. and can make a request for donation, please contact me and we will make sure they get them. Most companies have been very generous to soldiers serving in Iraq, and it can't hurt to make a request.
I will let you know when the band has arrived in total."
Contact Info:
r_iger@hotmail.com
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http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/tikrit-cc.htm
This link has photos, maps, and the different camps including FOB Danger where Kristin and her unit are stationed.
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This from the February 4th Boston Herald. The headline reads; "Band of brothers, sisters can fight as well as play." There's also an interview of Kristin and picture of her in front of one of Saddam's palaces.
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=66844
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In the last two years, nearly one million U.S. service-members have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of how you may feel about the war, most of us agree that those service-members deserve the best possible care and treatment our country can provide.
Unfortunately, in some cases, things haven't worked out so well. Some of our service-members have fallen through the cracks, with reports of homelessness, trauma and suicide. According to the NEJM, as many as 15% of returning service-members from Iraq will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Thousands have been wounded, and those who were killed left families behind who must bear the trauma of losing a loved one. Further, despite the dramatically increased demands on the VA healthcare system, the VA is slated for cuts of up to 15% over the next ten years.
Veterans for Common Sense has made available on the internet, and soon in print, a guide for returning veterans to help them navigate the available benefits and assistance available. Our goal is to make it as comprehensive as possible, to let returning veterans know of where they can get assistance if there are any issues with readjustment on their return home.
The guide also contains a section for people who are looking for ways to support the troops, with links to organizations who are directly supporting the troops in the field.
We're trying to let as many people as possible know about the guide, and so we're sending you this note in the hope that, if you are a veteran, you will find it useful, and if not, that you will pass it on.
The guide is available here:
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/files/vcs/guide.cfm
Or on our home page at http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org
We hope you'll visit, and pass this on to friends, family, and others in your community. In particular, please pass it on to anyone you know who is a veteran or works with veterans in the community.
Thank you,
Veterans for Common Sense
P.S. Unless you actually subscribe to one of our mailing lists, you have been permanently unsubscribed and will never receive another email from us again. You can contact us directly at contact@veteransforcommonsense.org or at 202-558-4553.
P.P.S. If you know of resources which should be in the guide, and aren't, please feel free to suggest them by clicking on the "add resource" link.
Veterans for Common Sense
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ABOUT VETERANS FOR COMMON SENSE
Veterans for Common Sense seeks to inject the element of Common Sense into debates over war and national security. In an age when the majority of public servants have never served in uniform, the perspective of war veterans must play a key role in the public debate over national security issues in order to preserve the liberty veterans have fought and died preserving.
Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) was formed in 2002 by war veterans who believe that we, the people of the United States of America, are most secure when our country is strong and responsibly engaged with the world. Two years later, our organization has over 12,000 members throughout the United States.
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Military.com launched a new online employment and education resource last week in support of the Department of Defense Military Severely Injured Joint Support Operations Center (24/7 Family Support). The new Career Center, located online at www.Military.com/support and accessible via 1-888-774-1361, builds on efforts by the Military Severely Injured Joint Support Operations Center to ensure that Servicemembers with severe injuries have easy access to all available resources to assist with their recovery and rehabilitation. The Career Center offers an extensive job board powered by Monster, the leading global online careers property, as well as employment assistance, education options and benefits information for severely injured Servicemembers and their families. The Career Center also enables employers to express their interest in hiring people from this exceptional talent pool. Resources are drawn from the Office of Military Community and Family Policy as well as from every branch of military service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Labor and private organizations. Go to the new Career Center at www.Military.com/support
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Military Amputees Find Camaraderie
Associated Press
March 29, 2005
FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas - Cpl. Isaiah Ramirez endured the rigors of Marine Corps basic training and two tours of high-risk duty in Iraq.
But since his lower right leg was shot off in January, Ramirez says he'll be happy just to walk again.
Ramirez, 21, took his first steps toward that goal this month at Brooke Army Medical Center, where two dozen amputees wounded in the Iraq war have become a tightly knit group as they adjust together to life-altering injuries.
The medical center's amputee center, which opened this year, is the second such facility created by the Defense Department to treat service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I love being around here - it makes you feel more normal," said Ramirez, who grew up in Long Beach, Calif.
Ramirez was on foot patrol in Ramadi on Jan. 11 when he was hit above his right ankle by an anti-tank round. He said he was alert while a combat medic quickly performed a crude amputation on the city street.
"I've learned that I've got to stop thinking about the things I could have done," said Ramirez, who had planned to be a career Marine. "I'm just glad to be here."
Army Spc. Albert Ross sat with Ramirez recently to answer his questions while the Marine was fitted for a prosthesis. Ross is a good role model for Ramirez: He lost the same part of his right leg to a rocket-propelled grenade in Baghdad last summer and has recovered well enough to run a quarter-mile on a treadmill.
In turn, Ross, from Baker, La., takes inspiration from Sgt. Chris Leverkuhn, an Army reservist from Logansport, Ind.
Leverkuhn, 21, had his right leg amputated just above the knee after an improvised bomb exploded under the floorboard of the fuel tanker he was riding in. The truck's driver was killed in the Jan. 2, 2004, attack outside Ramadi.
Leverkuhn has endured three dozen surgeries with more to come. He has progressed from bed to wheelchair to walker to crutches to cane. Now he can jump foot-high hurdles and dribble a basketball around small cones on the floor.
"Half the time when I'm wearing pants, people don't know that I'm an amputee," Leverkuhn said.
The workout room is the amputee center's social hub, where patients pump out a steady stream of wisecracks and PG-rated insults between sets on the weightlifting machines.
"We all give each other a hard time, but we don't do any of that until we know a person and know how they'll take it," said Leverkuhn, who has laminated a picture of a chopper-style motorcycle to his prosthesis.
Col. Robert Granville, an orthopedic surgeon who performs amputations and subsequent operations, is constantly awed by the casual, can-do atmosphere.
"I can't imagine being a 19, 20-year-old guy and facing the life challenges they have to face," said Granville. "We attempt to empathize, but we can't."
Army 1st Sgt. Daniel Seefeldt, a 22-year veteran, said the camaraderie at the amputee center got him past the nightmares he had after losing his lower left leg to a homemade bomb in Baghdad in September.
"A lot of the reason I'm not thinking about it is being with the other amputees," said Seefeldt, 41, of Manitowoc, Wis. "We're all close, like a family. If you're depressed, you have people here to lift your spirits."
During weekend visits to see his wife and two children, Seefeldt does laundry and straightens up around the house. In late November, barely six weeks after his amputation, he cooked Thanksgiving dinner.
"I do it every year," Seefeldt said matter-of-factly, "and this year was no different."
Ramirez, whose wife gave birth to the couple's first child in late February, is months away from rattling any pots and pans. He first needs to learn how to balance himself and re-establish the rhythm of his gait.
The support he's getting at the amputee center will shore him up on his upcoming return to Southern California to see family and his old surfing buddies.
"I worried when I saw them that they would have pity for me," Ramirez said. "I want them to see me and think, 'He's doing pretty good.'"
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Woof:
The number of reads for this thread has been dead for a while, probably due to it alwyays being in the same Announcement spot on the Forum and additional posts to it being infrequent.
Thus, to break the pattern, I am removing the "announcement" feature for now. Any one with some to post to this thread should please do so and I will be glad to restore it to Announcement status.
Woof,
Crafty Dog
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Woof All:
Today is a fine day to bring this thread back to the top. While the stirring speeches of this weekend are a good thing, ultimately they are just words. Please read through this thread and see what you can do to help.
Woof,
Crafty Dog
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There are dozens of organizations listed here that enable anyone who is interested to help soldiers and their families in very practical ways, everything from needed equipment for the soldiers themselves to commissary gift certificates to help their families with grocery shopping.
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/
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TTT
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Awesome fotos of this firefight at http://www.michaelyon.blogspot.com/
Mosul, Iraq
Combat comes unexpectedly, even in war.
On Monday, while conducting operations in west Mosul, a voice came over the radio saying troops from our brother unit, the 3-21, were fighting with the enemy in east Mosul on the opposite side of the Tigris River. Moments later, SSG Will Shockley relayed word to us that an American soldier was dead. We began searching for the shooters near one of the bridges on our side of the Tigris, but they got away. Jose L. Ruiz was killed in action.
Although the situation in Mosul is better, our troops still fight here every day. This may not be the war some folks had in mind a few years ago. But once the shooting starts, a plan is just a guess in a party dress.
The only mission I've seen unfold close to what was planned was a B Company raid a few months back. It actually went so close to perfect that we could hardly believe it. The sole glitch occurred when a Stryker hit an IED, but since nobody was hurt, we just continued the mission. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine why I didn't write about it. But times are busy, and, apart from it going nearly perfectly according to plan, it just seemed like any other old raid.
I had been talking with Captain Matt McGrew about the "The Battle for Mosul IV" dispatch, intending to spend the night with him and some Iraqi troops at one of their combat outposts, to glean additional insight, but the on-going battles in Mosul kept getting in the way. On the night before the planned ride-along, the obstacle was a big and sudden push of operations and tasks bundled in a "surge operation." Operation Lancer Fury was launched without notice even to the unit commanders here.
When I'd sat in on the "warning order" (notice of impending operations) for Lancer Fury last week, the plan was so cleverly contrived that the leadership at Deuce Four had to grudgingly acknowledge its excellence, even though the idea had originated from higher-up. In every military unit I have seen, there is a prevailing perception that good ideas trickle down from the top about as often as water flows uphill, so Lancer Fury apparently was a wunder-plan.
As a "surge" operation, Lancer Fury is sort of a crocodile hunt, where our people do things to make the crocodiles come out, trying to flush them into predictable directions, or make them take certain actions. And when they do, we nail them. The combat portion of the Surge amounted to a sophisticated "area ambush" that would unfold over the period of about one week.
This Surge is a complicated piece of work, with multidimensional variables and multifarious moving parts. Those parts range literally from boots on our feet to satellites zipping overhead. So, of course, glitches and snags started occurring the first day. Among other things, key gear failed; but overall, the Surge was going well. A few terrorists had already been caught in the first 24 hours.
Thursday night, a revised plan had me following some Deuce Four soldiers on a midnight raid. They had night vision gear, so they moved quickly. I had only moonlight, so I nearly broke my leg keeping up. Sleeking around Mosul under moonlight, we prowled through the pale glow until we came upon a pond near a farmhouse. Recon platoon had already raided one house and snagged some suspects, then crept away in the darkness to another target close by.
Five soldiers from Recon?Holt, Ferguson, Yates, Welch and Ross?were moving through moon-cast shadows when an Iraqi man came out from a farmhouse, his AK-47 rifle hanging by his side. Suddenly encircled by the rifles, lights and lasers of four soldiers, the man was quickly disarmed. A fifth soldier radioed for the interpreter and together they sorted out that he was a farmer who thought the soldiers were thieves skulking around his property. Recon returned the man his rifle, and started making their way back, umbral and silent across the ploughed fields.
During a halt in some trees at the edge of the field, I overheard the voice of LTC Kurilla, the commander of the Deuce Four battalion, quietly praising one of the soldiers for showing discipline in not shooting the farmer. After loading the other suspects onto Strykers, we returned to base, where I fell, exhausted, at about 3AM Friday morning.
The Surge continued while I slept.
Alpha Company had deployed during the early hours and was conducting operations around Yarmook Traffic Circle. SGT Daniel Lama, who is as much respected as he is liked, was pulling security in an air guard position of his Stryker, when a bullet flew straight at his neck, striking him. As he collapsed into the Stryker, his body clenched in seizure, fingers frozen, arms and legs rigid.
I seldom get letters in Iraq, but waiting for me in the mailroom while I slept was a card. The return address sticker, an American flag on it, was from Jefferson, Pennsylvania. The postage stamp had an American flag waving. The card inside had a picture of an American flag for its cover. The sweet and heartfelt message inside ended with--
Please tell our soldiers we care so much for them. --Dan and Connie Lama.
I was still asleep when medics brought their son Daniel to the Combat Support Hospital, or "Cash." It's a familiar place for Deuce Four soldiers, who've seen some of the most sustained and intense urban combat of this war, receiving over 150 Purple Hearts in the process.
Bap bap bap! on my door. I jumped up and there was CSM Robert Prosser, the top enlisted soldier at Deuce Four. Prosser is always professional, always direct: "Sergeant Lama's been shot. We're rolling in ten minutes," he said.
"I'll be there in ten," I answered, instantly awake.
Within minutes, I was running out my room, still pulling zips and fastening buttons, when I came sweating into the TOC. LTC Kurilla was there asking a soldier for the latest report on Sergeant Lama, now in surgery.
When a soldier is killed or wounded, the Department of Army calls the loved ones, and despite their attempts to be sympathetic, the nature of the calls has a way of shocking the families. There is just no easy way to say, "Your son got shot today." And so, according to men here, the calls sound something like this: "We are sorry to inform you that your son has been shot in Mosul. He's stable, but that's all we know at this time."
LTC Kurilla likes to call before the Army gets a chance, to tell parents and loved ones the true circumstances. Kurilla is direct, but at least people know they are getting an accurate account.
We loaded the Strykers and drove down to the Cash, and there was Chaplain Wilson, who might be the most popular man on base. Everybody loves him. Often when Chaplain Wilson sees me, he will say, "Good morning Michael. How are you today?" But sometimes he asks me, "Are you okay?" and I think, Do I look stressed?
"Of course I feel okay Chaplain Wilson! Don't I look okay?"
He just laughs, "Yes, Michael, you look fine. Just checking." But secretly, every time he asks, I feel a notch better.
Chaplain Wilson came out from the hospital smiling and explained that Daniel (Sergeant Lama) was fine. The seizure was just a natural reaction to getting shot in the neck. It was just a flesh wound. As if offering proof, Chaplain Wilson said: "When they rolled Daniel over, the doctor stuck his finger in Daniel's butt to check his prostate, and Daniel said, 'Hey! What are you doing?!'" Everybody laughed.
I changed the subject by snapping a photo of CSM Prosser while LTC Kurilla got Mrs. Lama on the Iridium satellite phone. I heard the commander telling this soldier's mother that her son was fine. Daniel just had some soft tissue damage, nothing major. Kurilla told her that he and some other soldiers were at the hospital now with Daniel, who was still too groggy to talk. "Really, Daniel's okay, and don't worry about it when the Army calls you."
We loaded the Strykers and headed downtown.
Some Strykers were scouting for the shooters, while others were working details at Yarmook Traffic Circle. Major Craig Triscari from the 1-17th Infantry from Alaska was with Major Mike Lawrence, "Q," and other soldiers, when he noticed a car with its hood up. The 1-17th will relieve the 1-24th soon, so Triscari has been conducting operations with Deuce Four. The vehicle struck Triscari as odd: it hadn't been there a few minutes earlier.
Automatic weapons fire started coming from at least two places. Bullets were kicking up the dust, and we got a radio call that troops were in contact at Yarmook Traffic Circle. Sitting inside the Stryker with LTC Kurilla and me were two new faces. A young 2nd lieutenant who had only been in Iraq three weeks, and hadn't seen any real combat; and a young specialist, who, per chance, is one of the few Deuce Four soldiers who is not a seasoned veteran, though he has seen some combat. Also in the Stryker was "AH," the interpreter, whose courage under fire I had seen before. But the more battle weathered fighters were not there.
Chris Espindola, the Commander's radio operator, a respected and very experienced fighter, was down in Baghdad at the Iraqi Criminal Court testifying against two terrorists caught by Deuce Four months earlier. Like the card in the mailroom, the circumstances behind their capture were more germane to the events about to unfold than anyone might have guessed at the time.
Kurilla's reluctance to allow anyone outside Deuce Four ride with his soldiers--including writers--is well known. Partly because of writers, people hearing about Deuce Four in the news might think of Mosul as some kind of thrill ride where everything will end okay after a few hairpin turns. This is not true.
Newcomers, even soldiers, unaccustomed to this level of hostility, can only burden the men with added danger. So Kurilla makes sure they can be trusted by mentoring new officers and having them spend three weeks with him before they are allowed to lead men in this unit.
Some months back, a new lieutenant named Brian Flynn was riding with the Kurilla for his first three weeks, when Kurilla spotted three men walking adjacent to where Major Mark Bieger and his Stryker had been hit with a car bomb a week prior. The three men looked suspicious to Kurilla. who's legendary sense about people is so keen that his soldiers call it the "Deuce Sixth-Sense." His read on people and situations is so uncanny it borders the bizarre.
That day, Kurilla sensed "wrong" and told his soldiers to check the three men. As the Stryker dropped its ramp, one of the terrorists pulled a pistol from under his shirt. Mark Bieger was overwatching from another Stryker and shot the man with the first two bullets, dropping him to his knees.
LT Flynn was first out of the Stryker, and both he and the airguard CPT Westphal, saw the pistol at the same time and also shot the man. The other suspects started running. But all Kurilla saw was LT Flynn stepping off the ramp, and then there was a lot of shooting. Kurilla yelled F L Y NNNNNNNNNNN!!!! and was nearly diving to stop Flynn from shooting, thinking the new lieutenant had lost his mind and was shooting a man just for running from Coalition forces. Soldiers can't just shoot anyone who runs.
Chris Espindola also shot the man. Amazingly, despite being hit by four M4's from multiple directions, the man still lived a few minutes. Soldiers out ran and tackled his two associates when they made a run.
During their interrogation on base, both admitted to being Jihadists. One was training to be a sniper, while the other was training for different combat missions. They also admitted that the terrorist who was shot down was their cell leader, who had been training them for three months. They were on a recon of American forces when Kurilla sensed their intent.
The cell leader had a blood stained ?death note? in his pocket stating he was a true Mujahadeen and wanted to die fighting the Americans. He got his wish; and now, Chris Espindola, Kurilla's radio man, was down in Baghdad testifying against the two surviving co-conspirators. Despite their sworn confessions, Kurilla was left with a young radio operator with little trigger-time.
Flynn had now been a platoon leader for six months, but today Kurilla had another 2nd lieutenant who being mentored before he became a platoon leader. Our Stryker did not contain the normal fighters that I saw with LTC Kurilla, but we also had a section (two squads) of infantrymen in Strykers from Alpha Company. This section was led by SSG Konkol.
We were searching the area for the source of that automatic weapons fire when Kurilla spotted three men in a black Opel and his sixth sense kicked. When Kurilla keyed in on them, he pointed his rifle at the car and signaled them to get out. The driver tucked his head and gunned the gas. The chase was on.
Strykers are fast, but Opels are faster. We were roaring through little streets and along roads, horn blaring, cars zipping off the sides, the steady chatter of multiple radio channels colliding inside the Stryker. A Kiowa helicopter pilot radioed that he spotted the car. As the chase continued, the Kiowa pilot said, "It's going about 105 mph."
How can the pilot know it's going 105 mph? I thought.
This Kiowa shot the Opel
As if in reply, the pilot radioed that the Opel was outrunning his helicopter. Captain Jeff VanAntwerp came on the radio net saying he was moving his section into position to intercept the Opel.
"Watch out for that kid!" yelled Kurilla over the intercom to our driver as we made a hard turn, managing to avoid hitting the child.
Opels may be faster than Kiowas on straight-a-ways, but when the car made turns, the helicopter quickly caught up. Kurilla ordered the Kiowa to fire a warning shot, then quickly authorized the Kiowa to disable the vehicle.
Kiowas are small, carrying just two people; they fly so low the two flying soldiers are practically infantrymen. The pilot swooped low and the "co-pilot" aimed his rifle at the Opel, firing three shots and blowing out the back window. The Kiowa swooped and banked hard in front of the car, firing three more shots through the front hood, the universal sign for "stop."
The car chase ended, but the men fled on foot up an alley. We approached in the Strykers and I heard Kurilla say on the radio, "Shots fired!" as he ducked for a moment then popped back up in the hatch. Kurilla continued, "Trail section clear the car and clear south to north! I'm going to block the back door on the north side!"
About fifteen seconds later our ramp dropped. We ran into combat.
Folks who haven't done much urban fighting might take issue with the wild chases, and they might say that people should always "stack up" and do things this or that way, but men in Delta Force, SEALs and the like, all know that when chasing wild men into the labyrinth, soldiers enter the land of confusion. If soldiers don't go fast, the bad guys simply get away. Just a few minutes ago, these three guys were going "105 miles per hour," and outrunning a helicopter.
There were shops, alleys, doorways, windows . . .
The soldiers with LTC Kurilla were searching fast, weapons at the ready, and they quickly flex-cuffed two men. But these were not the right guys. Meanwhile, SSG Konkol's men were clearing towards us, leaving the three bad-guys boxed, but free.
Shots were fired behind us but around a corner to the left.
Both the young 2nd lieutenant and the young specialist were inside a shop when a close-quarters firefight broke out, and they ran outside. Not knowing how many men they were fighting, they wanted backup. LTC Kurilla began running in the direction of the shooting. He passed by me and I chased, Kurilla leading the way.
There was a quick and heavy volume of fire. And then LTC Kurilla was shot.
Last steps
LTC Erik Kurilla (front right), the moment the bullets strike.(2nd LT front-left; radioman near-left; "AH" the interpreter is near-right.)
Three bullets reach flesh: One snaps his thigh bone in half.
Both legs and an arm are shot.
The Commander rolls into a firing position, just as a bullet strikes the wall beside 2nd lieutenant's head (left).
Kurilla was running when he was shot, but he didn't seem to miss a stride; he did a crazy judo roll and came up shooting.
BamBamBamBam! Bullets were hitting all around Kurilla. The young 2nd lieutenant and specialist were the only two soldiers near. Neither had real combat experience. AH had no weapon. I had a camera.
Seconds count.
Kurilla, though dowm and unable to move, was fighting and firing, yelling at the two young soldiers to get in there; but they hesitated. BamBamBamBam!
Kurilla was in the open, but his judo roll had left him slightly to the side of the shop. I screamed to the young soldiers, "Throw a grenade in there!" but they were not attacking.
"Throw a grenade in there!" They did not attack.
"Give me a grenade!" They didn't have grenades.
"Erik! Do you need me to come get you!" I shouted. But he said "No." (Thank God; running in front of the shop might have proved fatal.)
"What's wrong with you!?" I yelled above the shooting.
"I'm hit three times! I'm shot three times!"
Amazingly, he was right. One bullet smashed through his femur, snapping his leg. His other leg was hit and so was an arm.
With his leg mangled, Kurilla pointed and fired his rifle into the doorway, yelling instructions to the soldiers about how to get in there. But they were not attacking. This was not the Deuce Four I know. The other Deuce Four soldiers would have killed every man in that room in about five seconds. But these two soldiers didn't have the combat experience to grasp the power of momentum.
This was happening in seconds. Several times I nearly ran over to Kurilla, but hesitated every time. Kurilla was, after all, still fighting. And I was afraid to run in front of the shop, especially so unarmed.
The Commander fights...
...and fights, as more bullets kick up dust.
And then help arrived in the form of one man: CSM Prosser.
Prosser ran around the corner, passed the two young soldiers who were crouched low, then by me and right to the shop, where he started firing at men inside.
A man came forward, trying to shoot Kurilla with a pistol, apparently realizing his only escape was by fighting his way out, or dying in the process. Kurilla was aiming at the doorway waiting for him to come out. Had Prosser not come at that precise moment, who knows what the outcome might have been.
Prosser shot the man at least four times with his M4 rifle. But the American M4 rifles are weak--after Prosser landed three nearly point blank shots in the man's abdomen, splattering a testicle with a fourth, the man just staggered back, regrouped and tried to shoot Prosser.
CSM Robert Prosser goes "black."
Then Prosser's M4 went "black" (no more bullets). A shooter inside was also having problems with his pistol, but there was no time to reload. Prosser threw down his empty M4, ran into the shop and tackled the man.
Though I have the photo, I do not remember the moment that Prosser went "black" and ran into the shop. Apparently I turned my head, but kept my finger on the shutter button. When I looked back again, I saw the very bloody leg of CSM Prosser inside the shop. It was not moving. He appeared to be shot down and dead.
I looked back at the two soldiers who were with me outside, and screamed what amounted to "Attack Attack Attack!" I stood up and was yelling at them. Actually, what I shouted was an unprintable string of curses, while Kurilla was also yelling at them to get in there, his M4 trained on the entrance. But the guys were not attacking.
I saw Prosser's M4 on the ground, Where did that come from?
I picked up Prosser's M4. It was empty. I saw only Prosser's bloody leg lying still, just inside the darkened doorway, because most of his body was hidden behind a stack of sheet metal.
"Give me some ammo! Give me a magazine!" I yelled, and the young 2nd lieutenant handed over a full 30-round magazine. I jacked it in, released the bolt and hit the forward assist. I had only one magazine, so checked that the selector was on semi-automatic.
I ran back to the corner of the shop and looked at LTC Kurilla who was bleeding, and saw CSM Prosser's extremely bloody leg inside the shop, the rest of him was still obscured from view. I was going to run into the shop and shoot every man with a gun. And I was scared to death.
What I didn't realize was at that same moment four soldiers from Alpha Company 2nd Platoon were arriving on scene, just in time to see me about to go into the store. SSG Gregory Konkol, SGT Jim Lewis, and specialists Nicholas Devereaux and Christopher Muse where right there, behind me, but I didn't see them.
Reaching around the corner, I fired three shots into the shop. The third bullet pierced a propane canister, which jumped up in the air and began spinning violently. It came straight at my head but somehow missed, flying out of the shop as a high-pressure jet of propane hit me in the face. The goggles saved my eyes. I gulped in deeply.
In the tiniest fraction of a second, somehow my mind actually registered Propane . . . FIREBALL! as it bounced on the ground where it spun furiously, creating an explosive cloud of gas and dust, just waiting for someone to fire a weapon.
I scrambled back, got up and ran a few yards, afraid that Kurilla was going to burn up if there was a fire. The soldiers from Alpha Company were heading toward him when LTC Kurilla yelled out that he was okay, but that CSM Prosser was still in the shop. The Alpha Company soldiers ran through the propane and dust cloud and swarmed the shop.
When the bullet hit that canister, Prosser?who I thought might be dead because of all the blood on his leg?was actually fighting hand-to-hand on the ground. Wrapped in a ground fight, Prosser could not pull out his service pistol strapped on his right leg, or get to his knife on his left, because the terrorist?who turned out to be a serious terrorist?had grabbed Prosser's helmet and pulled it over his eyes and twisted it.
Prosser had beaten the terrorist in the head three times with his fist and was gripping his throat, choking him. But Prosser's gloves were slippery with blood so he couldn't hold on well. At the same time, the terrorist was trying to bite Prosser's wrist, but instead he bit onto the face of Prosser's watch. (Prosser wears his watch with the face turned inward.) The terrorist had a mouthful of watch but he somehow also managed to punch Prosser in the face. When I shot the propane canister, Prosser had nearly strangled the guy, but my shots made Prosser think bad guys were coming, so he released the terrorist's throat and snatched out the pistol from his holster, just as SSG Konkol, Lewis, Devereaux and Muse swarmed the shop. But the shots and the propane fiasco also had brought the terrorist back to life, so Prosser quickly reholstered his pistol and subdued him by smashing his face into the concrete.
The combat drama was ended, so I started snapping photos again.
CSM Prosser, his leg drenched in the terrorist's blood, as 2nd Platoon Alpha Company arrives
CSM Prosser drags the terrorist into the alley ...
...into the light.
The propane canister at rest (left), the terrorist in view of the Commander
CSM Prosser flex cuffs Khalid Jasim Nohe
Prosser stands above the crocodile who bit his watch.
SFC Bowman shields the eyes of his Commander.
When Recon platoon showed up about a minute later, SFC Bowman asked LTC Kurilla to lie down. But Kurilla was ordering people to put out security, and directing action this way and that. When the very experienced medic, Specialist Munoz, put morphine into Kurilla, the commander still kept giving orders, even telling Munoz how to do his job. So SFC Bowman told Munoz to give Kurilla another morphine, and finally Kurilla settled down, and stopped giving orders long enough for them to haul him and the terrorist away to the Combat Support Hospital. The same facility where Daniel Lama was recovering from the earlier gunshot wound to the neck.
Combat Support Hospital
The Surge operation continued as we returned to base. The Commander and the terrorist were both being prepped for surgery, when LTC Kurilla said, "Tell Major Bieger to call my wife so she doesn't get a call from the Army first." But someone gave the Commander a cell phone, and I heard Kurilla talking to his wife, Mary Paige, saying something like, "Honey, there has been a little shooting here. I got hit and there was some minor soft tissue damage." The X-ray on the board nearby showed his femur snapped in half. "I'll be fine. Just some minor stuff." That poor woman.
The doctors rolled LTC Kurilla and the terrorist into OR and our surgeons operated on both at the same time. The terrorist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been captured by US forces (2-8 FA) on 21 December, the same day a large bomb exploded in the dining facility on this base and killed 22 people.
That December day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two compatriots tried to evade US soldiers from 2-8 FA, but the soldiers managed to stop the fleeing car. Then one of the suspects tried to wrestle a weapon from a soldier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pistols, a silencer, explosives and other weapons, and had in their possession photographs of US bases, including a map of this base.
That was in December.
About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe's case had been dismissed by a judge on 7 August. The Coalition was livid. According to American officers, solid cases are continually dismissed without apparent cause. Whatever the reason, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shooting at American soldiers.
LTC Kurilla repeatedly told me of--and I repeatedly wrote about--terrorists who get released only to cause more trouble. Kurilla talked about it almost daily. Apparently, the vigor of his protests had made him an opponent of some in the Army's Detention Facilities chain of command, but had otherwise not changed the policy. And now Kurilla lay shot and in surgery in the same operating room with one of the catch-and-release-terrorists he and other soldiers had been warning everyone about.
When Kurilla woke in recovery a few hours after surgery, he called CSM Prosser and asked for a Bible and the book: Gates of Fire. Kurilla gives a copy of Gates of Fire to every new officer and orders them to read it. He had given me a copy and told me to read it. In my book, there is a marked passage, which I thought rather flowery. But I have it beside me on the table by the map of Iraq.
"I would be the one. The one to go back and speak. A pain beyond all previous now seized me. Sweet life itself, even the desperately sought chance to tell the tale, suddenly seemed unendurable alongside the pain of having to take leave of these whom I had come so to love."
A short time after he gave me the book, following the death of one of his soldiers,when Kurilla said to me, "I want you to write about my men. You are the only one who might understand," the passage finally registered in my mind.
I asked CSM Prosser if I could go with him to see the Commander. Carrying both books, we drove to the Cash. Major Mark Bieger arrived alongside Kurilla's hospital bed, paying respect. After spending some time with the Commander, CSM Prosser and I drove back to the unit.
The Deuce Four
The truest test of leadership happens when the Commander is no longer there. Kurilla's men were taking down and boxing up his photos of his wife and children, and his Minnesota Vikings flag, when they decided to keep the flag so everyone could autograph it. It wasn't long before there was no room left to sign, but I found a place to scratch. I wanted my name on that flag.
The place suddenly felt hollowed-out.
When I came back into the TOC, Major Michael Lawrence--who I often challenge to pull-up contests, and who so far has beat me (barely) every time--looked me square and professionally, in the direct way of a military leader and asked, "Mike, did you pick up a weapon today?"
"I did."
"Did you fire that weapon?"
"I did."
"If you pick up another weapon, you are out of here the next day. Understood?"
"Understand."
"We still have to discuss what happened today."
Writers are not permitted to fight. I asked SFC Bowman to look at the photos and hear what happened. Erik Kurilla and CSM Prosser were witness, but I did not want the men of Deuce Four who were not there to think I had picked up a weapon without just cause. I approached SFC Bowman specifically, because he is fair, and is respected by the officers and men. Bowman would listen with an open mind. While looking at the photos, Bowman said, "Mike, it's simple. Were you in fear for your life or the lives of others?"
"Thank you Sergeant Bowman," I said.
I walked back to the TOC and on the way, Chaplain Wilson said, "Hello Michael. Are you feeling all right?"
"Yes Chaplain Wilson!" Why does he always ask that? Do I look stressed? But suddenly, I felt much better. Chaplain Wilson might be the only man in the universe with a chance of getting me into the chapel of my own free will, but I have resisted so far.
Only a few hours had passed since Daniel Lama and the Commander were shot. It was around 9PM when I heard Captain Matt McGrew was going to see Kurilla. I asked to come along. We entered the hospital, and saw that Erik Kurilla's bed was beside Daniel Lama's. Kurilla went from asleep to wide awake in about a quarter-second, said "hello" and asked us to sit down. After some conversation, the Commander looked over at the next bed and asked, "How are you doing SGT Lama?"
"Great, sir."
"Good," the Commander said, "You are my new PSD." [Personal Security Detachment: Body guard.]
Daniel Lama smiled, got out of bed and I shot a photo of him reporting for his "new duty."
Sgt Daniel Lama: less than one hour from flying out of Mosul
It was near 10 PM when the airplane that would start their journey back to America landed outside, its engines rumbling the hospital floor. The terrorist who shot Kurilla, and who was now a enuch in a nearby bed, might well have been the same terrorist who, after being released, shot Lama and Thompson and others. Kurilla could see Khalid Jasim Nohe, but made no comment.
As Captain McGrew and I drove through the dusty darkness back to the Deuce Four, the Commander and SGT Lama, along with other wounded and dead soldiers from around Iraq, began their journey home.
The next day, Iraqi Army and Police commanders were in a fury that LTC Kurilla had been shot. Some blamed his men, while others blamed the terrorists, although blame alone could not compete with disbelief. Kurilla had gone on missions every single day for almost a year. Talking with people downtown. Interfacing with shop owners. Conferencing with doctors. Drinking tea with Iraqi citizens in their homes. Meeting proud mothers with new babies. It's important to interact and take the pulse of a city in a war where there is no "behind the lines," no safe areas. It's even dangerous on the bases here.
In order for leaders of Kurilla's rank to know the pulse of the Iraqi people, they must make direct contact. There's a risk in that. But its men like Kurilla who can make this work. Even and especially in places like Mosul, where it takes a special penchant for fighting. A passion for the cause of freedom. A true and abiding understanding of both its value and its costs. An unwavering conviction that, in the end, we will win.
Make no mistake about Kurilla--he's a warrior, always at the front of the charge. But it's that battle-hardened bravery that makes him the kind of leader that Americans admire and Iraqis respect. Like the soldiers of Deuce Four, Iraqis have seen too much war to believe in fairy tales. They know true warriors bleed.
Iraqi Army and Police officers see many Americans as too soft, especially when it comes to dealing with terrorists. The Iraqis who seethe over the shooting of Kurilla know that the cunning fury of Jihadists is congenite. Three months of air-conditioned reflection will not transform terrorists into citizens.
Over lunch with Chaplain Wilson and our two battalion surgeons, Major Brown and Captain Warr, there was much discussion about the "ethics" of war, and contention about why we afford top-notch medical treatment to terrorists. The treatment terrorists get here is better and more expensive than what many Americans or Europeans can get.
"That's the difference between the terrorists and us," Chaplain Wilson kept saying. "Don't you understand? That's the difference."
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http://atlas.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE05/Kilner05.html
Comments?
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To All Who Serve:
On this day I want to take a moment to express my deep and profound gratitude for what you do for us in the most difficult and trying of circumstances.
You are the edge of the sword that seeks to cut the Gordian's knot so as to open a part of the world to the same opportunities that most of us take for granted and by so doing drain the swamp that breeds a pestilence of religious fascism, thus making our homeland safe once again.
From where I sit here in safety, it looks like we can win and we can lose. If the latter, it will not be because of you but rather because of those of us here at home who sabotage and undercut your work and give up, seeking Chamberlin's "peace in our time" with fanatics with whom such is not possible. From where I sit in my armchair, I wish our President would step up to the political consequences of increasing your numbers (and pay and budgets!) so that the burden could be spread out, but please know that we are with you and that we count upon you.
Strength and Honor,
Marc Denny
PS: http://www.mikeyonopenforum.blogspot.com/?BMIDS=17137839-4e534328-78899
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http://www.bandsforfreedom.com/en/
We created Bands for Freedom? in order for Americans to make a unified statement in honor of the sacrifice and patriotism of the men and women of our Armed Forces. While many of us, on occasion, will pay lip service to these brave souls, in the rush of our daily lives we often take for granted the dedicated individuals who protect our freedom. And so we decided to develop a tangible emblem which each of us could wear and show that the people who risk their lives for us are always in our hearts, the Band for Freedom.
After extensive research and discussion with military officials and the loved ones and respected friends of our military service personnel, we concluded that the Armed Forces Relief Trust (AFRT) is the right organization to receive our support. The AFRT raises money to support men and women of our Armed Forces and their families and, unlike many other charitable organizations, distributes 100% of the money it raises among the five divisions of our military.
After covering the cost of manufacturing and the administrative costs (such as maintenance of our web site) of running this program, Bands for Freedom, Inc. will donate 100% of its revenue to AFRT.
While many of us may not have the words to express our gratitude, the Band for Freedom lets all of us show our troops how much their dedication means to us, and how proud we all are that there are wonderful men and women among us to make this sacrifice for America.
Bands for Freedom Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
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Perhaps misfiled, but it does have some MA parallels, and hey, who knows, maybe someone out there is looking for a gig. . . .
Collecting and Distributing Combat Experience
November 3, 2005: The U.S. Army believes it has figured out the best way to run a war in Iraq, and is scrambling to find enough instructors so that commanders headed there can be shown all this accumulated wisdom and experience. The U.S. Army likes to count things. In Iraq, it counts what the troops do. For commanders of combat units, those totals turn into several scores. It?s not, officially, supposed to amount to a grade, or an evaluation of how well the officer did. But it does. And it?s been noted that some officers have done better than others. What these officers did is examined as well, and those techniques are noted. The third "rotation" of units are in Iraq now. That means over fifty combat battalions, and as many combat support battalions, have served in Iraq. Lots of successful commanders, and lots of tips on what to do, and what not to do.
Previously, email and video conferences had done a good job of getting the new guys up to speed. But, as fast and efficient as this was, it did not get everyone?s useful experiences transmitted to all the new commanders that needed it. The new training program, a one week course, will be held in Iraq for all new battalion and company commanders. While many of these leaders will also get emailed (often from the people they are replacing) information specific to the area they will be operating in, it?s the larger number of generally useful tips, from commanders in other parts of Iraq, that the new course will bring together. Now all this stuff could just be emailed, and much of it has been in the past. But it?s been found that having a good instructor present the material, and create some dialog, the lessons are absorbed more effectively. This is particularly true when it comes to things like civil affairs (dealing with civilians and negotiating with local leaders.)
The major problem is finding qualified instructors. The best source has been retired officers, especially those with Special Forces experience (which includes lots of teaching other soldiers). This talent pool has already been worked over by the commercial firms that provide instructors for the new Iraqi (and Afghan) armed forces, as well as special training courses for American troops headed for Iraq. It?s getting hard for many officers and NCOs, retiring after 20, or 30 years service, to stay retired. The money for these instructor jobs is good, the risk is low, and it?s a chance to get involved in one more war.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20051103.aspx
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OUR PROFOUND THANKS AND GRATITUDE ON THIS DAY
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I don't know how much impulse there is behind this , , ,
====================================
RED FRIDAYS ----- Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing
Red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to
be called the "silent majority". We are no longer silent, and are
voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers.
We are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing.
Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to
recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our
idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and
respect starts this Friday -and continues each and every Friday until
the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that.. Every
red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear
something red.
By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every
Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the
bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this
with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family. It will not be long
before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the
once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more
than the media lets on.
The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things
better for you?" is...We need your support and your prayers. Let's get
the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example; and wear some
thing red every Friday.
IF YOU AGREE -- THEN SEND THIS ON. THEIR BLOOD RUNS RED---- SO WEAR RED!
--- MAY GOD HELP AMERICA TO BECOME ONE NATION, UNDER GOD.
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Wow, an amazing piece.
November 11, 2005, 8:22 a.m.
I Never Knew His Name
The true face of Muslim martyrdom.
By Chaplain Carlos C. Huerta
Mosul, Iraq ? It is October 11 as I write this, the day before Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement is supposed to be a day of fast, reflection, and prayer for the Jews: a time when I reflect on my own actions and intentions from the previous year. But the images I carry into my fast are sad ones, of someone else?s child, a Muslim child. There is blood spattered on my uniform despite the fact that I haven?t been hit or wounded. And yet it is B-positive blood, my own blood, mixed with the blood of a nine-year old Iraqi boy who was observing his fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Today there was a terrorist attack at a place most people have never heard of. Unless you?re a soldier stationed here, the name Tal Afar would probably be insignificant to you. But Tal Afar means a lot to me.
Today some terrorists decided to kill some Iraqi citizens ? good Muslims ? in order to discourage them from voting on Saturday on the new constitution. These terrorists called themselves Muslims and claimed that what they did was for Allah. But their connection to Islam is about as true and strong as Timothy McVeigh?s connection to Christianity. What they did is so contrary to the holy teachings of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) that to say their name in the same breath as Islam is considered sacrilege.
I was at the Combat Support Hospital ? known as CASH ? when the call came: Terrorists had hit, no American casualties, but 22 Iraqis wounded, five of whom were children under the age of twelve. I stood on the tarmac watching as the MEDEVAC choppers came in one at a time to deliver the wounded. Many of the wounded had no legs, or deep chest, head, and abdominal wounds. I noticed the children, two in particular who had severe head trauma. I followed them into the ER and then watched our physicians struggle in the OR to stabilize them. After the physicians did what they could, the children were taken to the ICU. I helped carry their stretchers into the ICU and stood by to see if I could help. I had a serious conversation with G-d and pleaded with him to take care of these kids ? kids who should be playing soccer, or doing their homework for school the next day, or helping their parents get ready for supper. Both of these children had skulls so badly shattered that their heads needed to be bandaged to keep their brains in. I watched as the nurses and medics gave them pint after pint of blood and as their head bandages turned from white to red. I held the youngest one?s hands, reassuring him to the extent I could.
As they were giving the youngest his third pint of blood, I heard the nurse say that they were running low on O Positive, the universal donor, and that due to the tremendous internal bleeding, this child would need more. I asked what blood type he was, and it turned out both children were B Positive, my own blood type. I went to the head nurse and asked if I could donate blood for the youngest child and they quickly hooked me up and took a pint. After giving it, I went back to see him; he already my blood hooked up to him and surging in his veins.
I held his tiny hand and watched as the monitors told the story: His heart was in trouble owing to the brain trauma. I watched as he fought for his life, fighting to breathe. But I knew he was dying and there was nothing I could do. This innocent Muslim child, who had been observing Ramadan the way a child does, was now dying despite the fact that my blood was moving though his veins, despite the fact that I pleaded with G-d to do what I thought was right, to keep him alive. But G-d had other plans.
I didn?t want this boy to die hearing the strange sounds of a hospital and a foreign language. I wanted him to be comforted by the last sounds he heard, by words that were close to his heart, words that spoke of home and faith. I started to recite the Holy Koran to him.
My close friend, a fellow clergyman, Imam Burgos, the imam for the United States Military Academy, had helped me learn Surahs of the Holy Koran, and I chanted these out to the boy in Arabic. As I chanted, I heard the monitor go flat-line. I held his little hand, as my blood moved through his tiny pure heart that could no longer bear the evil of this world.
I held his hand and cried ? cried for a boy whose name I didn?t know, for an innocent Muslim child who gave his life for his G-d, Allah, for his country. He was the true face of Muslim martyrdom. With tears streaming down my face, I looked down and noticed blood on my uniform. His blood, my blood, our blood had dripped from his open head wound onto my uniform.
An hour or so later I walked away into the waiting area as they prepared his body for transport. There I met Chaplain Mark Greschel, a Catholic priest. He looked at me and knew that I was in trouble. He sat with me, somehow knowing that the pain we felt was best not mixed with words. He quietly put his arms around me, and we both sat there in silence. I thought to myself, isn?t this the kind of world we are fighting for ? a world where an Imam teaches a Rabbi words from the Holy Koran to comfort a young Muslim boy, and that rabbi himself is comforted by a Christian, a Catholic priest.
On this day before Yom Kippur, the Jewish Fast Day, the Day of Atonement, I ask myself: What is Ramadan all about? Is it about killing, or is it about seeking out G-d through fasting and prayer? For those of us who choose not to carry hatred and prejudice in our hearts, the answer is simple. For the holy Islamic community, Ramadan is a time of introspection, of hope, of belief that if we all work together, we can truly build a better world for all our children, even those whose names we don?t know. There is so much that we can learn about faith and G-d through other religions; there is so much that our Muslim brothers and sisters can teach us about our Creator, about personal sacrifice and selfless service. But if we consider their faith only with mistrust, hatred, and indifference, then this nine-year-old angel with his faith in G-d means nothing. Then we have diminished our own faith in G-d. If we objectify the Muslim people as well as those who don?t share our exact views on the nature of G-d, if we see them as less than our brothers and sisters, then we as a human race are lost.
There are many Americans who ask why we?re here. Why are we sacrificing so many American lives and placing so many in harm?s way? What is the purpose of it all? Well, I don?t really know the big picture. But from my small sector of the battlefield, the reason I am here is to give ?the least of these,? my children over here, a shot at ?life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? ? just like my other children living in America.
I didn?t give birth to him, but on this fast day in Ramadan, on this day before Yom Kippur, I lost a son, someone who had my blood coursing through his body. And for him, I choose not to hate, I choose to follow the path that the great Sheik Ibn Arabi followed when he said, ?Love is my Faith and my religion and wherever its caravans take me, that is where I shall follow, for love is my religion and faith.? Let us join hands with our Muslim brothers and sisters and let this be the message of Ramadan that we carry in our hearts and take with us. G-d has a new Muslim angel in Paradise. I hope to tell you his name one day when I meet him again.
? Chaplain Carlos C. Huerta is Jewish Community chaplain in Mosul, Iraq.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/huerta200511110822.asp
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http://www.michaelyon.blogspot.com/?BMIDS=17137839-4e534328-90123
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Local Knowledge
In Iraq, One Officer
Uses Cultural Skills
To Fight Insurgents
While Talking Like a Bedouin
He Sees Smuggling Routes;
Spotting a Phony Kurd
Army Has Recalled His Unit
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 15, 2005; Page A1
MOSUL, Iraq -- Last summer, two dozen U.S. Army Rangers headed for the Iraq-Syria border to figure out how foreign fighters were slipping through western Iraq's barren deserts.
As they had done in the past, the Rangers took positions around each village and Bedouin encampment. At one village, an officer named David, accompanied by a small security team, strode into the center looking for someone who would talk. Unlike the clean-shaven, camouflage-clad Rangers, David wore a thick goatee and civilian clothes. The Rangers carried long, black M-4 carbine rifles. David walked with a small 9mm pistol strapped to his leg. The Rangers spoke English. He spoke Arabic tinged with a Yemeni accent.
As he recounts the day, David met a woman with facial tattoos that marked her as her husband's property. As they chatted, the pale-skinned, sandy-haired North Carolina native imitated her dry, throaty way of speaking. "You are Bedu, too," she exclaimed with delight, he recalls.
From her and the other Bedouins, the 37-year-old officer learned that most of the cross-border smuggling was carried out by Shamar tribesmen who peddle cigarettes, sheep and gasoline. Radical Islamists were using the same routes to move people, guns and money. Many of the paths were marked with small piles of bleached rocks that were identical to those David had seen a year earlier while serving in Yemen.
Col. H.R. McMaster, who oversees troops in northwestern Iraq, says David's reports allowed his regiment to "focus our reconnaissance assets upon arrival" in Iraq's vast western desert last summer and immediately begin to intercept smugglers.
David is part of a small cadre of cultural experts in the Army known as foreign-area officers. The military would only allow him to be interviewed on the grounds that his last name and rank be withheld. U.S. officials say he'll be spending the rest of his career in the Middle East, often operating alone in potentially hostile territory. Naming him, they say, would make him more vulnerable to attack.
His colleagues in Iraq say his presence has been invaluable. "We ought to have one of these guys assigned to every [regional] commander in Iraq," says Col. John Bayer, chief of staff for Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, the commander of U.S. forces in the northern third of the country. "I'd love to say 'assign me 100 of these guys.' "
That's not happening. Instead, the military is pulling David out of Iraq later this month along with seven other officers who make up his unit. Before the end of the year, David will resume his previous post in Yemen.
The decision to disband the Iraq unit is part of a continuing debate within the Pentagon about how best to fight unconventional wars that don't lend themselves to the Army's traditional reliance on firepower and technology. The issue: How should the Army use officers who specialize in accumulating historical, political and cultural knowledge.
Earlier this fall, the U.S. embassy and the military's main headquarters in Baghdad concluded that the work of David and his colleagues was duplicating the efforts of other personnel. David's team is part of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. It was sent to Iraq to advise U.S. military and State Department officials.
"While it's regrettable to lose experienced people, overall there are many more Arabic speakers working for us [in Iraq] than you might think," says one U.S. embassy official in Mosul.
To some in the Defense Department, the foreign-area teams offer a model for how all types of future officers should be trained. A report approved by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in January, specifically ordered the military to beef up its linguistic and cultural capabilities.
"Language skill and regional expertise have not been regarded as warfighting skills and are not sufficiently incorporated" into war plans, the report concluded.
In Iraq, cultural misunderstandings have contributed to mistakes. The decision to disband the Iraqi Army, which the U.S. saw as a tool of Saddam Hussein and a symbol of oppressions, created ill-will among Iraqi soldiers, who saw it as a source of national pride and pensions. As they battled an insurgency, U.S. commanders also struggled to understand Iraq's deep tribal and sectarian divisions. American officers working with Iraq's fledgling security forces frequently complain that police officers and soldiers sometimes put tribal allegiances ahead of their duty as officers.
'A Cold War Mindset'
Col. John D'Agostino, who oversees David and his colleagues and has also been recalled, says he disagrees with the decision to close the Iraq foreign-area officer unit. He says these officers are often overlooked, for which he blames "a Cold War mindset in which we are still fighting the hordes in Eastern Europe." When David leaves, the U.S. embassy's regional office in Mosul won't have a single Arabic speaker or Middle East expert on its staff.
In total, there are currently about 1,000 foreign-area officers in the Army. Currently, 145 of them specialize in the Middle East, the fourth-largest number devoted to a single region. The biggest concentration is in Europe. Typically, they spend big chunks of their careers working as the military's eyes and ears in remote and dangerous outposts. They coordinate military exercises and gather intelligence about the forces in their region. "They operate at the ends of the earth," says retired Col. Jack Dees, a longtime foreign area officer. "Often they are the one military guy out there representing their nation."
David decided he wanted to be a foreign-area officer even before he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point because he wanted to live overseas. He grew up in rural North Carolina, shuttling between an orphanage and several foster homes after he was taken away from his parents by the state. He chose West Point because it was free. "I was also looking for a sense of family and belonging...you know, all that psycho-babble stuff," David says today.
After commissioning as an officer, he flew Apache attack helicopters for a decade, in Iraq and along the border between North and South Korea. He then spent six months in Bosnia as the American liaison officer on a French division staff. In 1999, as soon as he was eligible, David applied to become a foreign-area officer.
The military dispatched him to Morocco where he spent part of his time coordinating U.S.-Moroccan military exercises. His main job was to travel the region and learn about its culture and people.
On returning to the U.S. in 2001, David spent 18 months learning Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. He then earned a master's degree in Arabic studies from Georgetown University, focusing on the co-existence of Yemen's tribal culture with its fledgling democratic institutions.
In preparation for a position at the U.S. embassy in Yemen, he learned all he could about qat, a narcotic leaf that's chewed in the region. He says he's never actually chewed it -- an act that would get him bounced from the Army -- but he quickly developed an ability to talk about it.
"The three books you have to read are: 'The Flowers of Paradise: The Institutional Uses of Qat in North Yemen'; 'Qat in Yemen: Consumption and Social Change'; and 'Eating the Flower of Paradise: One Man's Journey Through Ethiopia and Yemen,' " he says.
This knowledge allowed him to initiate conversations when nothing else worked. By the end of his two-year tour in the country, he could talk fervently about qat's cultivation, its aphrodisiac qualities and its price fluctuations.
David's mission was to keep senior U.S. military officials abreast of what was going on in Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral home, specifically within its military. He traveled extensively, building a network of contacts with tribal leaders who would ensure safe passage through their areas. He became legendary for hosting elite receptions at his home in the capital Sana where he gathered gossip and information. Yemenis worth talking to won't set foot in the U.S. embassy for fear of being labeled imperialist lackeys. David's house had a lower profile.
When Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, visited Yemen in January 2004, David set up a dinner with its political elites as well as military attach?s from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. They discussed elections in Iraq and smoked cigars on David's back porch. Gen. Abizaid's staff confirms the event took place.
David's biggest coup was convincing Sana's most-important sheik to attend one of his receptions. "He brought his wife and daughter, which was huge because they never take their women anywhere," David says. The sheik, Abdullah Mohammed Abdullah Al-Thor, says in an interview he attended several events at David's house and that the officer is a "very, very good friend."
Posted to Iraq
In May, after two years in Yemen, David was dispatched to Mosul. His role was to help senior commanders build relationships with Iraqis the U.S. would be able to trust in advance of any reduction in the U.S. military presence. "If things are going bad, it is my responsibility to know who we should call," he says.
In Iraq, he prepped Gen. Rodriguez, the chief of staff for northern Iraq, for meetings with senior Iraqi leaders. He also gave State Department employees extensive tutorials. The current State Department staffers in the Mosul office, who cover most of northern Iraq, are South America and Asia experts. A key lesson involved the proper etiquette of arguing with Arabs. David goaded the diplomats to be less diplomatic. When Arabs yelled, David told them to yell back.
One recent day, David sat down with a Foreign Service civilian who had arrived from Santiago, Chile. He started by explaining how one became a sheik and that not all sheiks are equal. He briefed him on the major ethnic groups and political parties in the region.
After two hours the State Department official seemed lost. "How do you keep all this stuff straight in your head?" he asked.
David discovered that many of the U.S. interpreters, including that of Gen. Rodriguez, spoke poor Arabic because the people doing the hiring didn't speak the language. "When Gen. Rodriguez spoke he was articulate. His interpreter made him sound like an eighth grader," David says.
The general's interpreter was re-assigned and David began screening new hires. A few weeks later, he figured out that one interpreter -- who had access to intelligence about U.S. operations -- had lied about his background. The tip-off: The interpreter said he was from Suleimaniya in northern Iraq. Based on the Kurdish dialect he spoke, David could tell he was from a village outside Mosul. "We don't know his agenda; we just know he was deceitful," says an intelligence officer who works with David. The interpreter was fired.
David made his biggest impact supporting the 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops who assaulted Tal Afar, a city in northwestern Iraq that had become a major insurgent haven. In 2004, the U.S. tried to drive insurgents from the city. The operation was a disaster. Two days into the assault, Turkey, which has historic ties to the Sunnis in the city, complained publicly to U.S. authorities in Ankara and Washington that the attack was too heavy-handed. Turkey threatened to close a border crossing with Iraq through which more than 30% of Iraq's gasoline moves. The U.S. abruptly halted the attack after two days.
Before a renewed attack this September, David, working with officials at the U.S. embassy in Ankara, hatched a plan to placate the Turks. Each night, after traveling through the area, he emailed photos with a time, date and GPS stamp to the U.S. embassy in Ankara. He also sent along the U.S. military's major-incident reports. That allowed the embassy to give Turkish military officials meticulous daily briefings.
Turkey's foreign minister complained about the attack in a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but didn't ask the U.S. to call it off, says a U.S. official in Ankara.
David's biggest contribution in Tal Afar drew on virtually all of the skills he had amassed in five years as a foreign-area officer and a close friendship he'd forged with the city's mayor.
Three months before the attack on Tal Afar, U.S. and Iraq officials had installed Najem Abdullah, a senior official from nearby Mosul, to run the city. During his brief tenure, the Sunni mayor earned the grudging support of Tal Afar's warring Sunnis and Shiites. Without him, U.S. commanders feared Tal Afar would slip into all-out war.
Helping the Mayor
David and Mayor Najem had become close in the weeks leading up to the invasion. David teased him about his purple-tinted, rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses. He stood with him in tougher times as well. When Shiite sheiks, through their allies in the police, physically blocked key Sunni sheiks from attending a meeting, David stormed out, earning the mayor's respect.
"I consider David like an Iraqi in the city," Mayor Najem says today. "When he discusses things with the tribal leaders he does it like an Iraqi. He raises his voice. He is passionate just like the Iraqis."
In early September, as U.S. and Iraqi forces readied their second assault on Tal Afar, the mayor began to doubt whether he could continue in the job. The pressure of running the divided city had become unbearable. Death threats from Sunni extremists forced the mayor's family to flee their home. The Sunni mayor worried that Tal Afar's Shiite-led police would use the invasion to settle scores with Sunnis.
Midway through rancorous meetings in the mayor's office, the two men stepped out into a dimly lit side room. "Why should I stay here? What is the point?" Mayor Najem recalls asking David.
In this moment of doubt, David and the 49-year-old Iraqi held hands -- a common sign of affection among Arab men. David promised to move the mayor's wife and children to a new city. (They're currently in hiding.) He also pledged to make sure that U.S. commanders acted on the mayor's concerns about the city's Shiite security forces.
"David talked to me as a friend and a brother and convinced me to stay," the mayor says. "He is like Lawrence of Arabia."
Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com
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Wow, quite an interesting story. As a former cultural anthropology student I have frequently wondered why the military didn't make use of this kind of thing. I'm glad to know that they, in fact, are.
I wish the article went more into why the unit is being reassigned since they seem to be so effective. Seems like some sort of typical bureaucratic SNAFU. The embassy official who equates them with being just another group of arabic speaking personnel obviously just doesn't get it.
Thanks a bunch for posting this Guro Crafty.
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http://www.michaelyon.blogspot.com/?BMIDS=17137839-4e534328-90938
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The Mayor of Ar Rutbah
By James A. Gavrilis
Shortly after the fall of Saddam, the American military had an opportunity to set Iraq on the right course. One team of U.S. Special Forces seized it, bringing electricity, safe streets, and bustling markets to the Iraqi town of Ar Rutbah in a matter of weeks. Today, this Sunni city is overrun with foreign insurgents. Now, in an exclusive photo essay, the team's commander reveals images of nation-building's early promise- and what slipped away.
Amid the chaos in Iraq, one company of U.S. Special Forces achieved what others have not: a functioning democracy. How? By relying on common sense, the trust of Iraqis, and recollections from Political Science 101. Now, their commander reveals the gritty reality about nation-building in Iraq, from the ground up.
As our long column of tan trucks rode down Iraq?s Business Highway 10 at 6 o?clock in the morning on April 9, 2003, I focused on my instincts and battle training, keeping an open mind and preparing for whatever lay ahead. After three weeks of intense firefights, the Fedayeen Saddam fighters had finally slithered away. The last thing I expected to do once we entered Ar Rutbah, a Sunni city of about 25,000 in the Anbar province near Jordan and Syria, was to begin postwar reconstruction. I had not planned or prepared for governing, nor had I received any guidance or assistance in how to do so. But then, nothing in war is expected.
With just six 12-man teams and an area of desert about the size of New Jersey, we viewed the city as a major complication in our mission to stop the ballistic missile launches from western Iraq. A town the size of Ar Rutbah could easily swallow the entire company. And in this conflict where special ops forces were in high demand, we had to move to Baghdad as soon as possible. Civil administration would have to be the responsibility of conventional troops following in our tracks. Of course, the Fedayeen were not interested in our itinerary. For weeks, they had entrenched themselves in the city, using civilians as shields. Every time we approached, Ar Rutbah became a hornet?s nest, and small-arms fire turned into machine gun and rocket fire. Although we overwhelmed the enemy each time, it became clear that the Fedayeen had to be forced out. So on that day in early April, as the rest of the world watched a statue of Saddam fall in Baghdad, we began our own small revolution.
Long before we entered, we had developed channels of communication with people inside the city. Every time we encountered civilians on our patrols or used loudspeakers, we would announce, ?We are at war with Saddam, not you.? We were friendly and respectful whenever we met a Bedouin or farmer, often sharing tea with them in the middle of the open desert. Our behavior sent the clearest message: We cared more about the people of Ar Rutbah than did the Fedayeen. After all, we had done everything possible to limit damage to civilian infrastructure and private property. We didn?t bomb schools or mosques, even though they were used as military bases. We treated enemy wounded and distributed contraband food. I stopped our final assault to institute a day-long cease-fire as a gesture to the people of the city. Our early signals of respect would prove to be vital in earning the trust of the people of Ar Rutbah.
Yet we still didn?t know what to expect as we rolled into town. All our intelligence predicted no resistance, but we were still bracing for a fight. Ar Rutbah was tan and dusty, with connected concrete buildings that displayed battle scars from our bombs and firefights. As we entered, street traffic came to a standstill. Iraqis gathered along the main and side streets. Most people just watched, a little apprehensive. Some were glad we were there and shook our hands. We asked them to stay out of the way so no one would get hurt. We cleared known enemy positions, scouring each sandbagged bunker, room, and compound to ensure that all hostile fighters were gone. Finally, we located the police station, a fort built by the British in 1927. The police chief had locked it when the enemy fled. It would be the perfect location for my company?s headquarters.
Our next move was to summon the civil administrators, chief of police, and tribal leaders. Two hours after we arrived in Ar Rutbah, a dozen Iraqis, the company warrant officer, and I gathered in the dark, dusty office lined with Saddam photos and plaques, and began to plot out the civil administration of the city.
Securing Their Homeland
I considered security the top priority; for me, the functions of security and governance were inseparable. So, at that first meeting, I made it very clear that U.S. troops retained the monopoly on the use of force. I prohibited all weapons. Any civilian carrying a firearm would be considered a threat. We established checkpoints on the main roads on the outskirts of Ar Rutbah to protect the city from regime elements, as well as any lingering criminals. As soon as possible, we would integrate the local police into our checkpoints; it would garner trust and cooperation?plus, they knew who was from the city and who had legitimate business there.
The sooner I involved and empowered the Iraqis, the better. I asked the group to select one of them to be interim mayor and by noontime prayers on the first day, we had an acting Iraqi mayor of Ar Rutbah, a lawyer from a dominant tribe who?d had a falling out with the regime. He, the city officials, and tribal sheiks left the station as the city?s new leaders.
The police were essential for restoring local security, for protecting the city from outsiders, and for our disengagement. Although I had only a few dollars, we spent $700 to pay the police first, and a month in advance. The highest-ranking policeman to return to duty was a lieutenant. He was very sharp, receptive to our guidance, and people followed his orders, so I appointed him interim chief of police. It wasn?t long before the previous chief returned. He was suspect because he had fled with the enemy and most people identified him as a regime thug. But I gave him the opportunity to start with a clean slate. Unfortunately, he tried to subvert our authority by ordering a police strike, and within two days, we had to detain him. By the end of the first week, we armed the police, first with pistols, and then with AK-47s. Soon, we had more than 30 officers back in uniform.
Of course, it takes more than just a uniform to wash away years of subjugation and oppression. Each individual that was going to participate in the interim government of the new, free Ar Rutbah would have to sign a pledge renouncing Baath Party loyalty, affiliation, and favoritism. It would include a pledge of allegiance to a free Iraq, to protect the rights of its citizens, and to serve the people of Ar Rutbah. Our company warrant officer wrote the pledge, I reviewed it, he translated it, and the interim mayor approved it. We even held a small ceremony in the police station?s courtyard, where the interim mayor, city officials, the police, a few tribal sheiks, and an Iraqi army colonel pledged their allegiance to this new Iraq. We were not very formal. It was more of a commencement where we congratulated each person for their courage in turning over a new leaf. There would be no more abuse of power, no more corruption, and no more coercion. If others were truthful and willing to be part of the new Iraq, they could sign the form and move on. As word spread, someone came in to sign almost every day.
I viewed anyone who subverted security as a threat, Baathist or not. When intelligence reported individuals committing crimes or working with enemy combatants, we acted. We didn?t pursue anyone for what they had done during the fighting; we did not continue the war ourselves. High-level Baathists did have to come in for questioning, but only those identified as war criminals were detained. We asked people to tell us where guns and munitions were, but we did not ask who shot at us last week. I was not going to pursue the teenagers who had been directed to shoot at us by the senior Fedayeen. As long as they did not take up arms again, they could go on playing soccer in the streets. By quickly establishing an effective Iraqi alternative to the regime, we made resistance irrelevant. We skipped over the gap where insurgency would grow. Had we remained idle, we would have missed the opportunities in front of us.
Restoring the Basics
After noontime prayers that first day, the informal city council gathered together again to work on the next priority, public works. I asked the interim mayor and the council what the city?s priorities were. They agreed electricity was the most important, then water, fuel, and the market. We worked day and night, and in only a couple of days, we turned 60 percent of the power back on in Ar Rutbah. Once, I remember being awakened at 4 a.m. by the sound of morning prayers blaring from the city?s minarets. It was a hopeful sign; it meant the power was back on, the city was getting back to normal, and, more practically, we could now use the minarets for public announcements. We strove to show respect for local culture by using their customary means of communication: minarets, murals, and word of mouth. The interim mayor made the first announcement about electricity that very morning.
Our days were incredibly busy. The city?s only hospital was mostly destroyed in the fighting, so I offered to turn the local Baath Party headquarters, the nicest building in the city, into the new hospital. The complex was large, clean, and freshly painted, with a walled courtyard and smaller buildings for hospital administration. I thought it fitting that this symbol of oppression would now be dedicated to the health of the people. The mayor and the doctors loved the idea, and I liked that it would represent the new kind of polity that was being established in Ar Rutbah.
Around the city, the Fedayeen had knocked out windows, stockpiled weapons, and sandbagged rooms for fighting positions in the schools. We cleared these buildings the first day, but earlier looting had rendered them a mess. Cleaning and preparing the schools for students again was a high priority, but we couldn?t start right away. Because I had only a few troops and fewer dollars, the mayor and I decided to hold a city volunteer day. Teachers and everyday citizens got together and cleaned up the schools themselves. It was a good day at the end of a long week when the minarets announced that school would start again.
The economy was in even worse shape than the schools. Once we got the power on, a couple of merchants requested to use our cell phones to contact business partners in nearby Jordan to import food and goods. We jumped on that. In one day, the market had fresh fruit and vegetables and fish and meat for the first time in months. The market street was bustling again, quickly becoming a traffic jam of people, goats, and goods.
Both security and electricity sustained the market. But there was also a need for a stability that was more than just policing the streets and turning on the lights. After the market and shops opened, questions arose: Would they adopt the U.S. dollar? What is the exchange rate? What is the price of gas? I had to make some quick decisions. The Iraqi dinar would remain the city?s currency, at the prewar exchange rate. I purchased a grocery bag of dinars and paid the police in their own currency to show I had confidence in it. I allowed the mayor to open gas stations to get fuel to the people and to generate revenue for Ar Rutbah. Gas stations were owned by the government prior to the war and I kept it that way. I set the price of gas at prewar rates, and punished any price gougers. I convinced the bank manager to open the bank and operate normally. Then I reopened the city?s account so the interim mayor had control over the books and could pay city employees. Otherwise, I had a hands-off approach to economics.
Although I focused more on security and governance than on economics, the three were interdependent. A thriving market was the product of effective governance, and it increased support for the administration. Good governance provided the services such as electricity, law and order, and the stability needed for the market to function. And security forces fostered the economic and political development of the city. Because the three were interconnected, we acted on them simultaneously. As a result, the Iraqis became interested in democracy because that balance met their needs.
All Politics Is Local
My initial approach to governing was very authoritative; it eliminated anarchy and allowed Iraqis to debate the details of democracy rather than survival. What the Iraqis needed was an interim authority to get them back on their feet. While the interim mayor and I provided this stability, the city council?s role was to oversee the mayor and to provide input, not necessarily to make policy. The laws and values of their society and culture were just fine. All we needed to do was enforce them. The city council was an important body for dialogue, debate, and legitimacy. But by initially limiting its decision-making power, we made sure the council couldn?t paralyze our progress.
Representatives in the city council included teachers and doctors, lawyers and merchants. At one town-hall meeting, a few of these professionals asked me about elections. They said the tribal sheiks and imams did not represent their interests, and they wanted to have a say in their government. I explained that they couldn?t vote right away because we had no election monitors or ballot boxes. Still, they insisted. Two rudimentary elections were held in the grand mosque to reconfirm the interim mayor?and Americans were not involved in either vote.
As an alternative to Saddam?s regime, the particular form of democracy was not as important as the concept of a polity that provided for the individual. That was really what Iraqis missed under Saddam. Good governance had to precede the form or type of democracy. Because we were effective in providing services, were responsive to individual concerns, and improved their lives, the Iraqis gravitated toward us and the changes we introduced. However, we didn?t have to change much. Ar Rutbah already had a secular structure that worked. We just put good people in office and changed the character of governance, not the entire infrastructure.
A Role for Religion
Under the old regime, the imams and tribal sheiks in Ar Rutbah had defined their roles in relation to the dictates of Saddam and the Baath Party. As we quickly set up the new government, the sheiks and imams found themselves defining their roles in response to the new order we established. That was good news for us; it kept the structure of relationships in balance and prevented a power shift to them. To earn their trust, I included these leaders in the political process. I met with them regularly, and they were members of the city council. Clerics and tribal leaders functioned in ways that were both constructive and traditional for their culture. Early on, we decided to give humanitarian rations to the imams and sheiks for distribution because they knew who the neediest people were.
In addition, we instituted an open-door policy. One day, a few tribal sheiks came to complain of looting at night in some parts of the city. So, knowing that some of the sheiks were behind some of the looting, I established a neighborhood watch. I put them in charge and had their men act as the watchmen. And the sheiks were held accountable if the looting continued. I also had a team patrol those areas at night at random. The stealing ended abruptly.
The tribal sheiks were important because they transmitted information by word of mouth. But by far, the most effective way we communicated with the people was through the mosques. Public service announcements were made over the loudspeakers in the minarets, and when the Iraqis gathered in the mosque for prayer, the interim mayor explained what we were doing. A public announcement emanating from the mosques signaled their approval and gave legitimacy to our efforts.
Working Ourselves Out of a Job
I spent long days in the police station courtyard or in the police chief?s office, meeting with an endless procession of tribal sheiks, city officials, the army colonel, policemen, merchants, and anyone else that wanted to speak with me. I listened to their issues, problems, and needs, and satisfied their curiosity about us. I would make decisions, pass judgments, resolve disputes, issue guidance, and direct resources. We were very cordial and followed their customs with tea, cigarettes, and small talk. But in the end, I made a decision and we acted on it.
Eventually, I passed the decision making to the interim mayor, the city council, and then to issue-area councils, until security was the only thing I still controlled. By day nine, I was no longer the focal point for governance. I moved my command post to our logistics compound on the edge of the city. Up until the last day, I kept an open-door policy to keep in touch with the Iraqi people.
In the end, I spent only about $3,000. This sum included the salaries of the police, the mayor, the army colonel, and a few soldiers and public officials. We paid for the crane and the flatbed trailers to move the generators to the city for electricity, and for fuel to run the generators. And we picked up the tab for other necessities, such as painting, tea, and copies of the renunciation form. But the change did not depend on the influx of funds; the Iraqis did a lot themselves. The real progress was the efficient and decent government and the environment we established. Without a lot of money to invest, we made assessments and established priorities, and talked with the Iraqis, exchanging ideas and visions of the future.
We intended to work ourselves out of our jobs, and when conditions were right we took steps back. We were preparing to move eastward; Iraqi tank divisions had not capitulated yet, and there was Saddam and others to capture and weapons of mass destruction to find. Civil administration was a secondary mission for us, and we had only limited time to spend on local politics.
And so, in the middle of the night on April 23, I rode to the eastern edge of the city in a white SUV on loan from the interim mayor. Leaving a few teams behind for another couple of weeks, I flew out of Ar Rutbah on a black Chinook helicopter. The darkness and the noise of the helicopter insulated me and I was able to look back on the past two weeks. These accomplishments were all possible because the Iraqis wanted them, but also because of the amazing teamwork and competence of the men in our Special Forces company. We made remarkable progress in only 14 days. But civil development takes much more time.
Reflecting on it now, and on so much of what has happened in Iraq since we left, I can point to the reasons we succeeded so early on where many others have not. First, we lived modestly, and we did not occupy any private houses or regime buildings. We did not limit ourselves to certain functions or tasks, or fail to adjust to the realities on the ground such as stopping looting, providing electrical power, and other nation-building tasks. When nation-building became our mission, we performed without any hesitation. In addition, our immersion in the city fostered mutual understanding. Because we worked with and through Iraqis in all endeavors, they had a sense of ownership toward the new Ar Rutbah, and our success became their success. We behaved as if we were guests in their house. We treated them not as a defeated people, but as allies. Also, our forces ensured that political decisions were binding. Anyone that interfered with any part of government, public works, or a supply delivery was considered an enemy, just as if they had threatened security. In that environment, security and governance were intertwined at every level.
In the end, though, we left. Although the Iraqis continued the work we started, the follow-up coalition forces did not. The distance between the locals and the troops widened. The Iraqis were eventually exposed and vulnerable to regime loyalists? retribution and intimidation by foreign fighters. The local Iraqi security forces never developed to the point where they were stronger than the gangs of insurgents; they were never brought into a larger political or security framework of an Iraqi government so that they could be part of a collective security system. Left alone, the Iraqis simply couldn?t hold off the foreign fighters who passed through the city, using Ar Rutbah as a way station en route to Baghdad and Ramadi.
For the brief time I was mayor of Ar Rutbah, I knew we were the real revolutionaries there. Change had to come from the top down. Because we didn?t receive any guidance for governance or reconstruction, and certainly not for spreading democracy, I had to make up everything as I went, based on the situation on the ground and what I remembered from my Special Forces training and a handful of political science classes. I entered the city with only our strategic objective for Iraq in mind: to establish a free, democratic, and peaceful Iraq without weapons of mass destruction. And that is what I tried to achieve in my own microcosm of the war.
Maj. James A. Gavrilis is a career Army Special Forces officer who has served two tours in Iraq. He is currently a political-military planner in the Iraq Division of the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. This article reflects the views of the author and does not reflect the position or policy of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
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and the work continues:
http://www.michaelyon.blogspot.com/?BMIDS=17137839-4e534328-91434
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http://www.specialops.org/
Help the families of the fallen and this
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/
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The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
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Army recruiting tops new goals
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published December 13, 2005
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The Army has exceeded recruiting goals in the first two months of this fiscal year, reversing a trend that had some Iraq critics saying the armed services branch was "broken."
The Pentagon yesterday said the Army signed up 5,856 recruits in November, 5 percent above its goal. It previously announced the Army also exceeded its target in October, the first month of the 2006 fiscal year.
The Army has that hit its recruiting mark for six straight months, a promising development for the Bush administration. President Bush's critics had cited the Army's failure to achieve its recruiting goals in fiscal 2005 as proof that the war in Iraq is breaking the force.
Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat and one of the party's chief Iraq war critics, has called the Army "broken" and urged the White House to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.
But Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the service is more confident of filling the ranks as the recruiting year unfolds.
"Part of the reason is it's like steering a boat," he said. "The changes we made in the last year take a while to take effect."
Those changes included putting more recruiters on the street and offering specific assignment incentives. If a high school graduate was willing to commit to the 3rd Infantry Division bound for Iraq, for example, he could receive a bonus of several thousand dollars. Enlistees can receive up to a $20,000 bonus depending on the length of commitment and their job skills. The Army also changed its ad campaign to focus more on patriotism.
"I think the Army as a whole is working harder at recruiting," Col. Hilferty said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials explained the 2005 recruiting shortfall this way: the active-duty Army is growing by 30,000, making the sign-up goal larger, and parents in some cases are counseling against joining the combat arms at a time when more than 2,000 American service members have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.
Soldiers typically spend a year in Iraq or Afghanistan, and then a year at home before deploying again. In contrast, Marines spend six months overseas and six months at home.
The Army fell far behind its goal of 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, but made up much of the lost ground during the summer, when high school graduates typically decided their next step. By Sept. 30, recruiters had brought in 73,000 future soldiers, a number the Army said was sufficient to sustain the force the next year. The Army last missed its mark in 1999.
Col. Hilferty said he "can't guarantee" the Army will meet its end goal of 80,000 by next Sept. 30, noting the winter and spring are traditionally difficult recruiting seasons. The Army has 492,728 active-duty soldiers in the 1.4 million-member armed forces.
The Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force all met their November enlistment quotas.
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I've not been able to find a second source for this story and indeed as it makes clear the military powers that be have yet to verify it. Moreover, the web site reporting this, DefenseWatch, was founded by David Hackworth, by all accounts an amazing soldier, but someone prone to military muckraking IMO. Be that as it may, if this proves true--and it has that twisted command logic embedded within--then it's time to start howling at our congresscritters.
01.14.2006
Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits
By Nathaniel R. Helms
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. 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.
"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.
Recently Dragon Skin became an item of contention between proponents of the Interceptor OTV body armor generally issued to all service members deploying in combat theaters and its growing legion of critics. Critics of the Interceptor OTV system say it is ineffective and inferior to Dragon Skin, as well as several other commercially available body armor systems on the market. Last week DefenseWatch released a secret Marine Corps report that determined that 80% of the 401 Marines killed in Iraq between April 2004 and June 2005 might have been saved if the Interceptor OTV body armor they were wearing was more effective. The Army has declined to comment on the report because doing so could aid the enemy, an Army spokesman has repeatedly said.
A U.S. Army spokesman was not available for comment at the time DW's original report (Friday - 1700 CST) was published. DefenseWatch continues to seek a response from the Army and will post one as soon as it becomes available. Yesterday the DoD released a news story through the Armed Forces News Service that quoted Maj. Gen. Steven Speaks, the Army's director of force development, who countered critical media reports by denying that the U.S. military is behind the curve in providing appropriate force protection gear for troops deployed to Iraq and elsewhere in the global war against terrorism. The New York Tiimes and Washington Post led the bandwagon of mainstream media that capitalized on DefenseWatch's release of the Marine Corps study. Both newspapers released the forensic information the Army and Marines are unwilling to discuss.
"Those headlines entirely miss the point," Speaks said.
The effort to improve body armor "has been a programmatic effort in the case of the Army that has gone on with great intensity for the last five months," he noted.
Speaks' assessment contradicts earlier Army, Marine and DoD statements that indicated as late as last week that the Army was certain there was nothing wrong with Interceptor OTV body armor and that it was and remains the "best body armor in the world."
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.
Pinnacle claims more than 3,000 soldiers and civilians stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are wearing Dragon Skin body armor, Chopra said. Several months ago DefenseWatch began receiving anecdotal reports from individual soldiers that they were being forced to remove all non-issue gear while in theater, including Dragon Skin body armor, boots, and various kinds of non-issue ancillary equipment.
Last year the DoD, under severe pressure from Congress, authorized a one-time $1,000 reimbursement to soldiers who had purchased civilian equipment to supplement either inadequate or unavailable equipment they needed for combat operations. At the time there was no restriction on what the soldiers could buy as long as it was specifically intended to offer personal protection or further their mission capabilities while in theater.
Nathaniel R. Helms is the editor of DefenseWatch Magazine. He can be reached at natshouse1@chater.net. Please send all inquiries and comments to dwfeedback@yahoo.com .
http://www.sftt.org/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpDefense&htmlCategoryID=30&htmlId=4514
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TTT!!!
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Soldiers' Angels needs you to adopt a soldier.....(or airman, Marine, etc)!
Every year after the holidays we have a shortage of angels and an abundance of soldiers. Here is proof of what your help does for our service members:
To All That Have Supported Us,
My name is SGT A. and I am currently deployed to Kuwait and have been receiving packages and letters from many of your volunteers. I want to take this time to say Thank You from the bottom of my heart. Your support is unparalleled and means so much to us soldiers in our toughest times. You have been there through it all with us. You are in our thoughts and prayers as well as our loved ones. Your group is what keeps us going through rain, cold nights, hot days and everything in between. You have been a shining light to help guide many a soldier. Once again I would like to say Thank you for your unwavering support. Sincerely, SGT A
What angels do:
1) Send two packages a month. These do not have to be expensive. The key to sending support is that they will know someone cares and they get their name called at mail call, or come home to mail on their bunk. If you can send some toiletries and some snacks each month, that's great. Once you sign up, you will get a mentor who can walk you through customs forms and flat rate packages. It's addictive, actually! You'll find you won't be able to go into a store without remembering Dave, who likes Old Spice aftershave, etcetera!
2) Send two letters a week. This seems like a lot but if you sit down to write a quick note to say hi, how are you, and talk a little about things at home, you would be amazed how quickly a letter gets written. Another thing you can do is buy postcards wherever you visit and send one of those each week. Again, it's about getting the names called and letting them know that while they are "over there," those of us "back home" are thinking of them.
If you can do this, please go to soldiersangels.org and click on "Adopt a Soldier." You will receive a soldier's name and address within a couple of days, as well as an orientation letter.
IT MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE!
We hope everyone who reads this can adopt one soldier!!
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By Rush Limbaugh:
I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can't let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the
entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4.7 million.
If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.
Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a screeching halt.
Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers.
We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.
You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?
However, our own U.S. Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system.
If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.
I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now fighting.
"When do we finally do something about this?" If this doesn't seem fair to you, it is time to forward this to as many people as you can.
==========================================
How many people CAN YOU send this to?
How many WILL YOU send this to?
How many WILL write your congressman?
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TTT
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Hello Crafty Dog,
I am inspired by the Dog Brothers philosophy as presented in your video clips, however I am disappointed to find that political aims are being presented here. . . . I realise that you are a tribe, and that as a tribe you have a patriotic and political bent, but I must say that it is one that I disagree with strongly.
I find that by extending your excellent fighting philosophy into the global political realm you weaken it
:idea:
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Woof Bowser:
I speak only for myself. I see my positions as completely consistent with DB philosophy, but I know that you are not alone in your reaction to expressing my views here. My view on this is that our country is under attack by a world-wide fascist movement and it seems to pretty logical to me we should discuss what to do about this. I think that overall, whether you agree with them or not, that the threads related to the war of are well-above average content and with well-below average level of personal rancor.
Woof,
Crafty Dog
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Growl woof Crafty Dog,
I agree that we are under attack by a world wide fascist movement, however I have two points which I must humbly present:
1) That we must 'activate our watchers' very well indeed in order to determine where the fascism really is . . . . and by that I mean our internal watchers. . . . not our television and newspaper watchers.
2) That war is often the result of personal aggression problems suffered by those in power . . . . they have no personal outlet for aggression, and they have not anchored theor warrior instincts in morality by actually fighting . . . . . those in power have not activated their watchers sufficiently. . . . they don't even know what it means to do so.
. . . so be very wary of following the media and entering wars started by people who won't and can't actually fight in them. . . . they are not worthy of your support. . .
Regards,
Bowser.
PS I still want to slap your ears... . that's what it's all about !
:D
3)
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B:
I'll get to your worthy points later, but for now, this "slap my ears" bit, smiley face or not, ain't part of the culture of this forum and it ain't working for me. Please drop it.
Also, this thread is not the place for this discussion. This thread is about the troops. I will either start a new thread or answer you in the WW3 thread. This may take a couple of days.
CD
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I hear you crafty dog, this thead is, as you say, about the troops.
Perhaps I should have said:
" I would like to learn from you by fighting with you in the spirit of the Dog Brothers, using wet towels as a weapon"
:wink:
Regards,
Bowser
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http://objflicks.com/GladiatorAmericanStyle.htm
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Yeah right, war can certainly be glorious, but I prefer the Dog Brothers method of fighting, The US Army is too techno for my taste and takes up too much of other people's space.
Individuals on both sides need support, and just like in the Vietnam war are likely to need more support after it is over.
Just a personal dislike here but images of C Rice and G Bush posing as warriors doesn't ring true. . . i wonder why ?
:!:
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Cry Bias, and Let Slip the Blogs of War
By MIKE SPECTOR
July 26, 2006; Page B1
J.P. Borda started a Web log during his 2004 National Guard deployment in Afghanistan to keep in touch with his family. But when he got home, he decided it was the mainstream media that was out of touch with the war.
"You hear so much about what's going wrong," he says. "It gets hard to hear after a while when there's so much good going on."
Mr. Borda, a specialist, read other soldiers' blogs and found he wasn't alone. Hundreds of other troops and veterans were blogging world-wide, and many focused on a common enemy: journalists.
Military blogger J.P. Borda, center, during his 2004 National Guard deployment to Afghanistan.
The 31-year-old software analyst, who now lives in Dallas, wanted to make it easier for people to read soldiers' accounts. So he started a Web site, Milblogging.com, to organize as many blogs as possible by country, military branch and subject matter. Today, the site links to more than 1,400 military blogs world-wide and was recently purchased for an undisclosed amount by Military.com, a Web site catering to soldiers that is owned by Monster Worldwide Inc.
Now, Mr. Borda finds himself at the center of a growing blogging movement. Military bloggers, or "milbloggers" as they call themselves, contend that they are uniquely qualified to comment on events in armed conflicts. Many milbloggers also argue that the mainstream media tends to overplay negative stories and play down positive military developments. For many of these blogs, says Mr. Borda, "the sole purpose is to counteract the media."
There have always been at least some soldiers who have wanted to go to battle against Big Media. Some in the military blamed coverage of the Vietnam War for turning American public opinion against it. What's changed? The Internet now allows frustrated soldiers and veterans to voice their opinions and be heard instantly and globally.
POPULAR LINKS
These are a few of the top sites on Milblogging.com. (Links open in a new window. Some content could be offensive to readers.)
? 365 and a Wakeup
? A Soldier's Perspective
? Blackfive
? Michael Yon: Online MagazineThe backlash takes many forms. Some bloggers point out what they see as inaccuracies and post lengthy critiques of current reporting. Others post their own stories. Some simply sling arrows.
Matthew Burden, an Army veteran, started his blog, "Blackfive," in December 2003 after he learned that an Army buddy, Maj. Mathew Schram, had been killed in an ambush near the Iraq-Syria border. Mr. Burden, 39, felt his friend received short shrift in media coverage and decided to blog about military stories he felt weren't getting the attention they deserved.
"Does Abu Ghraib need to be told 40 times above the fold in the New York Times when half your readers couldn't name the guy who won the Medal of Honor?" Mr. Burden says.
Michael Yon, a 42-year-old Army Special Forces veteran, is perhaps the most attention-grabbing blogger, with appearances on MSNBC and CNN. In December 2004, he embedded himself with troops in Iraq and posted dispatches online for the next several months.
Most of Mr. Yon's writings related heroic acts by American troops and Iraqis. Mr. Yon also praises some media coverage of Iraq. But in an interview, he says many reporters "haven't stayed long enough to see what's going on. Most of the reporting is not deep enough." According to Mr. Yon, Iraqis are determined to fight insurgents and embrace a new government, a storyline he says he doesn't see in mainstream news coverage.
Not all milblogs wave the flag. Some have drawn attention for posts that irk the chain of command. Jason Hartley, a National Guardsman from New Paltz, N.Y., caught flak for posting comments on his blog, "justanothersoldier.com" that he said were satirical. Mr. Hartley, who served in Iraq, wrote that he loved dead civilians and wished he could shoot children. He claimed the comments were meant to highlight what he sees as the military's nonchalant attitude toward civilian casualties, but his superiors weren't amused. Mr. Hartley was eventually demoted to specialist from sergeant, and his commander, Capt. Vincent Heintz, wrote in a sworn statement that the blog "disparaged the Army in a manner unbecoming of an NCO (non-commissioned officer)."
Mr. Hartley says the military displayed "a neo-conservative, knee-jerk reaction" to his blog. "I'm a bleeding heart liberal in the guise of a soldier, and sometimes it comes out in my writing," he says.
Other milblogs are critical of the Bush Administration. An Army blogger in Iraq who calls himself "Godlesskinser," has a clock on his Web site noting how many days, hours, minutes and seconds have passed since President Bush vowed to capture Osama bin Laden.
The Pentagon, taking notice of the impact of such writings, has a committee studying military blogs over the next several months. In the field, the Army has issued formal guidance about blogging, reminding soldiers not to post information that might tip off the enemy. And U.S. Central Command officials in Florida have started contacting bloggers -- military and civilian -- when they come across posts that contain what they view as inaccurate or incomplete information. But overall, military blogs remain independent, with little organized oversight.
Military blogs receive a fraction of the hits generated by mainstream news Web sites. Mr. Burden's site, for example, receives about 210,000 unique visitors per month, he says. In comparison, Nielsen/Netratings data shows MSNBC.com got 24 million unique visitors last month.
But milbloggers, who only began online postings in earnest within the past three years, have become increasingly energized and organized in their efforts to counteract existing media coverage. In April, bloggers convened in Washington, D.C. for the first ever milblogging convention.
The frustration of milbloggers is understandable, says Alex S. Jones, a former New York Times reporter who heads the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. But he adds, "If the overall picture is one of continued violence and a significant lack of stability in many parts of Iraq, the individual shards of good news could be more of a distortion than a reflection of the truth."
When Milblogging.com launched in October, Mr. Borda stayed up until 5 a.m. on some nights maintaining the site. He says he sleeps more now, but his wife still has to tear him away sometimes for family events with their two sons, ages 5 and three months. "It's different," Angelica Borda, 26, says of her husband's passion, but "I'm used to it now."
Mr. Borda receives an undisclosed monthly stipend to maintain the blog (he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Military.com). He's currently working with Military.com to attract advertisers. The site's most notable paid advertisement so far is from a group called the Iraqi Truth Project, which has made a documentary that it says "exposes the atrocities committed by the former Iraq dictator."
In the mornings and evenings, Mr. Borda scours the Net for new blogs to add to his site and responds to emails from bloggers, fans and critics. He also interviews milbloggers and posts the transcripts in a feature called "Milblogger of the Week." Mr. Borda had collected just 50 blogs when he started Milblogging.com. Today, that number has increased nearly 30-fold, and Mr. Borda believes there are thousands more blogs out there.
Mr. Borda says he isn't able to fact-check the bloggers he publishes, or to verify their identities beyond using common sense. "I do a sanity-check of the milblog, making sure it deals primarily with a military subject matter, and I also rely on readers to let me know," he says. "That said, no matter how much research you do it's unlikely you could ever verify without a shadow of a doubt that any blogger is 100% legit."
What's the future of military blogs? Mr. Borda would like to see milbloggers get their own TV shows or have their entries printed in major newspapers. The goal, he says, is to "continually be blurring that line between the media and blogging."
Write to Mike Spector at mike.spector@wsj.com
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Those troops are not out there for you, they are out there for Bush and his cronies. . . . and Bush and co, they don't care a jot for you, as you will one day realise when you have to confront them yourselves.
:idea:
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TTT
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Woof All:
I have been very concerned, indeed angry, about things I have been reading recently about our government taking advantage of our troops and not fully stocking them or resting them so it seems like a good time to bring this thread back to the top. Please take a look through it and see what you can do.
CD
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> >
> >By Rush Limbaugh:
> >
> >I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the
> >September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform
> >are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just
> >don't criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can't
> >let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing
> >about the
> >entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in
> >the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000.
> >The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4.7
> >million.
> >
> >If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in
> >action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half
> >of which is taxable.
> >
> >Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse,
> >you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211
> >per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those
> >payments come to a screeching halt.
> >
> >Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of
> >$1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough.
> >Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong
> >place at the wrong time. Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF
> >US, and they and their families know the dangers.
> >
> >We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the
> >Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same
> >deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that,
> >some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for
> >compensation as well.
> >
> >You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel
> >of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just
> >really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they
> >usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in
> >combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food
> >stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?
> >
> >However, our own U.S. Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you
> >don't know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a
> >pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to
> >being millionaires plus.
> >
> >If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an
> >E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people
> >who placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.
> >
> >I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join
> >ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our
> >sons and daughters who are now fighting.
> >"When do we finally do something about this?" If this doesn't seem fair
> >to you, it is time to forward this to as many people as you can.
> >
> >How many people
> >
> >CAN YOU
> >
> >send this to?
> >
-
TTT
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Woof All:
In the military and overseas? All you have to do is put the words "Only a man who does nothing makes no mistakes." in the comments section when placing your order and you will automatically receive 25% off your order total.
It's our way of saying thanks and Happy Holidays!
The Adventure continues!
Dog Brothers Martial Arts
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That's great! How long is the offer good for?
Keith
Woof All:
In the military and overseas? All you have to do is put the words "Only a man who does nothing makes no mistakes." in the comments section when placing your order and you will automatically receive 25% off your order total.
It's our way of saying thanks and Happy Holidays!
The Adventure continues!
Dog Brothers Martial Arts
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SOP from here forward.
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Woof All:
This man's work (see e.g. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/desolate-roads-part-one.htm ) needs to continue! Normally we don't discuss such things but I will say we have just sent the best donation we can.
The Adventure continues!
Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny
=================================
Greetings:
After spending most of 2005 in Iraq, five months of which were in Mosul, I am back to report on the progress and obstacles. There remain only a handful of US soldiers in Mosul, and they continue to fight every day. The Iraqi Security Forces here are vastly improved from 2005. Mosul is a key and critical city in this war. The terrorists want it badly. Practically the only thing standing between Mosul and the terrorists are the Iraqis who are tired of the violence, and the small group of American soldiers who are vastly outnumbered.
I am again with an American infantry unit, this time it is the 2/7 Cavalry, based in Texas. During the first week of my embed, the battalion lost 6 soldiers killed in action, and 1 interpreter. Others were severely wounded. They also were fighting back and inflicting worse damage on the enemy. "Desolate Roads Part 1 of 2," the dispatch now posted on the site, chronicles singular moments from the past two weeks in Mosul.
My request to extend the embed with the 2/7 Cavalry has been approved and I am looking forward to being able to observe and report on the dynamic situation on the ground here. Already, two of my camera lenses, my ballistic goggles and other expensive gear have been damaged beyond repair. The support of readers will determine how much longer I will be able to continue this work.
Very Respectfully,
Michael
Michael Yon
P O Box 416
Westport Pt MA 02791
PS: Our apologies for two server melt-downs that crashed the site after recent dispatches were published. We switched to a dedicated server and new company.
==============================
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Part of military service is that for some, they return to civilian life. There is a law concerning the rights of those who have served to return to the jobs that they held:
http://dogbrothers.com/adobedocs/4A. USERRA POSTER.pdf
The Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act:
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From blackfive.net
I've got permission to go hot with this. This is typical of what I've been hearing.
It's a manifesto of sorts from a Staff Sergeant in the fight in Afghanistan. He had an experience recently while on mid-tour leave to see his wife and baby boy that was the last straw:
Things that I am tired of in this war:
I am tired of Democrats saying they are patriotic and then insulting my commander in chief and the way he goes about his job.
I am tired of Democrats who tell me they support me, the soldier on the ground, and then tell me the best plan to win this war is with a “phased redeployment” (liberal-speak for retreat) out of the combat zone to someplace like Okinawa.
I am tired of the Democrats whining for months on T.V., in the New York Times, and in the House and Senate that we need more troops to win the war in Iraq, and then when my Commander in Chief plans to do just that, they say that is the wrong plan, it won’t work, and we need a “new direction.”
I am tired of every Battalion Sergeant Major and Command Sergeant Major I see over here being more concerned about whether or not I am wearing my uniform in the “spot on,” most garrison-like manner; instead of asking me whether or not I am getting the equipment I need to win the fight, the support I need from my chain of command, or if the chow tastes good.
I am tired of junior and senior officers continually doubting the technical expertise of junior enlisted soldiers who are trained far better to do the jobs they are trained for than these officers believe.
I am tired of senior officers and commanders who fight this war with more of an eye on the media than on the enemy, who desperately needs killing.
I am tired of the decisions of Sergeants and Privates made in the heat of battle being scrutinized by lawyers who were not there and will never really know the state of mind of the young soldiers who were there and what is asked of them in order to survive.
I am tired of CNN claiming that they are showing “news,” with videotape sent to them by terrorists, of my comrades being shot at by snipers, but refusing to show what happens when we build a school, pave a road, hand out food and water to children, or open a water treatment plant.
I am tired of following the enemy with drones that have cameras, and then dropping bombs that sometimes kill civilians; because we could do a better job of killing the right people by sending a man with a high powered rifle instead.
I am tired of the thousands of people in the rear who claim that they are working hard to support me when I see them with their mochas and their PX Bags walking down the street, in the middle of the day, nowhere near their workspaces.
I am tired of Code Pink, Daily Kos, Al-Jazzera, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, the ACLU, and CAIR thinking that they somehow get to have a vote in how we blast, shoot and kill these animals who would seek to subdue us and destroy us.
I am tired of people like Meredith Vieria from NBC asking oxygen thieves like Senator Chuck Hagel questions like “Senator, at this point, do you think we are fighting and dying for nothing?” Meredith might not get it, but soldiers do know the difference between fighting and dying for something and fighting and dying for nothing.
I am tired of hearing multiple stories from both combat theaters about snipers begging to do their jobs while commanders worry about how the media might portray the possible casualties and what might happen to their career.
I am tired of hearing that the Battalion Tactical Operations Center got a new plasma screen monitor for daily briefings, but rifle scope rings for sniper rifles, extra magazines, and necessary field gear were disapproved by the unit supply system.
I am tired of out of touch general officers, senators, congressmen and defense officials who think that giving me some more heavy body armor to wear is helping me stay alive. Speed is life in combat and wearing 55 to 90 pounds of gear for 12 to 20 hours a day puts me at a great tactical disadvantage to the idiot, mindless terrorist who is wearing no armor at all and carrying an AK-47 and a pistol.
I am tired of soldiers who are stationed in places like Kuwait and who are well away from any actual combat getting Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay and the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion when they live on a base that has a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, a Subway, a Baskin Robbins, an internet café, 2 coffee shops and street lights.
I am tired of senior officers and commanders who take it out and "measure" every time they want to have a piece of the action with their helicopters or their artillery; instead of putting their egos aside and using their equipment to support the grunt on the ground.
I am tired of senior officers and commanders who are too afraid for their careers to tell the truth about what they need to win this war to their bosses so that the soldiers can get on with kicking the ass of these animals.
I am tired of Rules of Engagement being made by JAG lawyers and not Combat Commanders. We are not playing Hopscotch over here. There is no 2nd place trophy either. I think that if the enemy knew some rough treatment and some deprivation was at hand for them, instead of prayer rugs, special diets and free Korans; this might help get their terrorist minds “right.”
I am tired of seeing Active Duty Army and Marine units being extended past their original redeployment dates, when there are National Guard Units that have yet to deploy to a combat zone in the last 40 years.
I am tired of hearing soldiers who are stationed in safe places talk about how hard their life is.
I am tired of seeing Infantry Soldiers conducting what amounts to “SWAT” raids and performing the US Army’s version of “CSI Iraq” and doing things like filling out forms for evidence when they could be better used to hunt and kill the enemy.
I am tired of senior officers and commanders who look first in their planning for how many casualties we might take, instead of how many enemy casualties we might inflict.
I am tired of begging to be turned loose so that this war can be over.
Those of us who fight this war want to win it and go home to their families. Prolonging it with attempts to do things like collect “evidence” or present whiz bang briefings on a new plasma screen TV is wasteful and ultimately, dulls the edge of our Infantry soldiers who are trained to kill people and break things, not necessarily in that order.
We are not in Iraq and Afghanistan to build nations. We are there to kill our enemies. We make the work of the State Department easier by the results we achieve.
It is only possible to defeat an enemy who kills indiscriminately by utterly destroying him. He cannot be made to yield or surrender. He will fight to the death by the hundreds to kill only one or two of us.
And so far, all of our “games” have been “away games,” and I don’t know about the ignorant, treasonous Democrats and the completely insane radical leftists and their thoughts on the matter, but I would like to keep our road game schedule.
So let’s get it done. Until the fight is won and there is no more fight left.
-D
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USA Today
December 21, 2006
Pg. 13
Does The Next Generation Value The Sacrifice Of War?
By Jack Valenti
There is a piece of sadness that the election failed to debate. It is the lamentable detachment by the young among us to freedom's history.
The press has reported that Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, his masterly recreation of courage and fidelity to duty and country exhibited by young Marines in the bloodiest battle of World War II, has gone largely unattended by the youngsters of this day.
Watching this movie, watching ordinary young men performing extraordinary feats of heroism, broke my heart. They put to hazard their own lives not to win medals, but because their country was in danger. Why, then, a casual indifference to this story by so many young people? Maybe it's because we have been so benumbed by war, particularly this Iraq war, and because so few youngsters have worn a uniform. A movie about a battle a half a century ago carries no umbilical connection to them. That's understandable. But it ought not to be.
Perhaps some parents might want to do what I did years ago. When my son was about 14, I took him to Omaha Beach and the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France. We stood on the bluff above the beach in the same spot where Nazi troops had dug in. They had poured rifle, mortar and machine gunfire onto the U.S. troops clambering out of their landing crafts. They cut them down on the sand and in the water that seemed to still run red with the blood flowing so wantonly on that invasion day, June 6, 1944.
My son was struck with how close it was from the bluff to the beach. I said, "John it was very close, but remember those young boys never turned back, not one of them. They never turned back. They kept coming."
Then we walked a short distance to the American Cemetery. It is on land a grateful France granted to the United States for use in perpetuity. The Stars and Stripes flies over this cathedral of the dead. We turned our gaze to the grave markers, row upon row upon row, as far as the eye could see. There, I told my son, were buried 9,387 young men, many of whom were in between the ages of 18 and their early 20s, "just a few years older than you are right now," I said.
We walked among the markers laid out in serried ranks. I asked my son to read the inscriptions on those grave markers, the bland finalities of a young warrior's life — name, rank, outfit and the day he died — lives ended before they could be lived.
Finally, I stopped and looked full face at my son. "John, I want you to know why I brought you here." He looked puzzled. I said, "I wanted you to understand that these boys, who never knew you, nonetheless gave you the greatest gift one human can give another. They gave you the gift of freedom. They bought and paid for that gift in blood and bravery. They made it possible for you and millions like you to never have to test your own courage to see how you would react when the dagger is at the nation's belly and death stares you right in the face. You owe them a debt you will never be able to repay."
My son seemed genuinely moved. We never spoke about this again until one day years later, he phoned me. "Dad, last night I saw Saving Private Ryan. You were right. They never turned back, not a one. They kept coming." His voice trembled as he spoke.
Somehow, my own voice cracked a bit with gratitude. My son remembered. May God grant that every boy and girl in this free and loving land never forget the gift of young boys so long ago, a gift given to generations of Americans who were yet to be born.
Jack Valenti flew 51 combat missions in World War II as a pilot commander of a B-25 twin-engine attack bomber with the 12th Air Force in Europe. He also is former chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.
//signed//
Tom Valentine
Counterintelligence Analyst
Office of Intelligence (IN-20)
U.S. Dept of Energy
Phone: (202) 586-5871
Fax: (202) 586-0342
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Greetings From Rancho Mirage
Ben Stein | February 05, 2007
Dear Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, National Guard, Reservists, in Iraq, in the Middle East theater, in Afghanistan, in the area near Afghanistan, in any base anywhere in the world, and your families:
Let me tell you about why you guys own about 90 percent of the backbone in the whole world right now and should be happy with yourselves and proud of whom you are.
It was a dazzlingly hot day here in Rancho Mirage today. I did small errands like going to the bank to pay my mortgage, finding a new bed at a price I can afford, practicing driving with my new 5 wood, paying bills for about two hours. I spoke for a long time to a woman who is going through a nasty child custody fight. I got e-mails from a woman who was fired today from her job for not paying attention. I read about multi-billion-dollar mergers in Europe, Asia, and the Mideast. I noticed how overweight I am, for the millionth time. In other words, I did a lot of nothing.
Like every other American who is not in the armed forces family, I basically just rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic in my trivial, self-important, meaningless way.
Above all, I talked to a friend of more than forty-three years who told me he thought his life had no meaning because all he did was count his money. And, friends in the armed forces, this is the story of all of America today. We are doing nothing but treading water while you guys carry on the life or death struggle against worldwide militant Islamic terrorism. Our lives are about nothing: paying bills, going to humdrum jobs, waiting until we can go to sleep and then do it all again. Our most vivid issues are trivia compared with what you do every day, every minute, every second.
Oprah Winfrey talks a lot about "meaning" in life. For her, "meaning" is dieting and then having her photo on the cover of her magazine every single month (surely a new world record for egomania). This is not "meaning."
- Meaning is doing for others.
- Meaning is risking your life for hers.
- Meaning is putting your bodies and families' peace of mind on the line to defeat some of the most evil, sick killers the world has ever known.
- Meaning is leaving the comfort of home to fight to make sure that there still will be a home for your family and for your nation and for free men and women everywhere.
Look, Soldiers and Marines and Sailors and Airmen and Coast Guardsmen, there are six billion people in this world. The whole fate of this world turns on what you people, 1.4 million, more or less, do every day. The fate of mankind depends on what about 2/100 of one percent of the people in this world do every day and you are those people. And joining you is every policeman, fireman, and Emergency Medical Technician in the country, also holding back the tide of chaos.
Do you know how important you are? Do you know how indispensable you are? Do you know how humbly grateful any of us who has a head on his shoulders is to you? Do you know that if you never do another thing in your lives, you will always still be heroes? That we could live without Hollywood or Wall Street or the NFL, but we cannot live for a week without you?
We are on our knees to you and we bless and pray for you every moment. And Oprah Winfrey, if she were a size two, would not have one millionth of your importance, and all of the Wall Street billionaires will never mean what the least of you do, and if Barry Bonds hits hundreds of home runs it would not mean as much as you going on one patrol or driving one truck to the Baghdad airport.
You are everything to us, as we go through our little days, and you are in the prayers of the nation and of every decent man and woman on the planet. That's who you are and what you mean. I hope you know that.
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COWARDS GIVE UP ON GIS - & GIVE IN TO EVIL
By RALPH PETERS
February 17, 2007 -- PROVIDING aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime is treason. It's not "just politics." It's treason.
And signaling our enemies that Congress wants them to win isn't "supporting our troops."
The "nonbinding resolution" telling the world that we intend to surrender to terrorism and abandon Iraq may be the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.
The vote was a huge morale booster for al Qaeda, for Iraq's Sunni insurgents, and for the worst of the Shia militias.
The message Congress just sent to them all was, "Hold on, we'll stop the surge, we're going to leave - and you can slaughter the innocent with our blessing."
We've reached a low point in the history of our government when a substantial number of legislators would welcome an American defeat in Iraq for domestic political advantage.
Yes, some members voted their conscience. But does anyone believe they were in the majority?
This troop surge might not work. We can't know yet. But we can be damned sure that the shameful action taken on the Hill while our troops are fighting isn't going to help.
And a word about those troops: It's going to come as a shock to the massive egos in Congress, but this resolution won't hurt morale - for the simple reason that our men and women in uniform have such low expectations of our politicians that they'll shrug this off as business as usual.
This resolution has teeth, though: It's going to bite our combat commanders. By undermining their credibility and shaking the trust of their Iraqi counterparts, it makes it far tougher to build the alliances that might give Iraq a chance.
If you were an Iraqi, would you be willing to trust Americans and risk your life after the United States Congress voted to abandon you?
Now that Donald Rumsfeld's gone, the Democrats are doing just what they pilloried the former Secretary of Defense for doing: Denying battlefield commanders the troops and resources they need.
Congresswoman Pelosi, have you no shame?
As a former soldier who still spends a good bit of time with those in uniform, what infuriates me personally is the Doublespeak, Stalin-Prize lie that undercutting our troops and encouraging our enemies is really a way to "support our troops."
As for bringing them home, why not respect the vote the troops themselves are taking: Sustained re-enlistment rates have been at a record high.
And our soldiers and Marines know they'll go back to Iraq or Afghanistan. And no, Senator Kerry, it's not because they're too stupid to get a "real" job like yours or because they're "mercenaries." Some Americans still believe in America.
If our troops are willing to fight this bitter war, how dare Congress knife them in the back?
On Thursday night, I was in Nashville as a guest of the 506th Regimental Combat Team - with whom I'd spent all too brief a time in Baghdad.
The occasion was their welcome-home ball, complete with dress uniforms spangled with awards for bravery. Proud spouses sat beside their returned warriors.
Of course, those soldiers were glad to be home with their loved ones. But they also know they'll go back to one theater of war or another - and no one complained.
They share a value that Congress has forgotten: duty. They're willing to bear the weight of the world on their shoulders. Because they know that freedom has a price.
As you entered the ballroom for the event, the first thing you saw was a line of 34 photographs. A single white candle softly lit each frame. Those were the members of the 506th who didn't come home.
Soldiers honor their dead. It's the least Congress could do to honor the living men and women in uniform.
You don't support our troops by supporting our enemies.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Never Quit The Fight."
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COWARDS GIVE UP ON GIS - & GIVE IN TO EVIL
By RALPH PETERS
February 17, 2007 -- PROVIDING aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime is treason. It's not "just politics." It's treason.
And signaling our enemies that Congress wants them to win isn't "supporting our troops."
If Ralph genuinely believes that this (or basically any) congressional action to end the war is in effect "providing aid and comfort to the enemy" and therefore qualfies as treason, then clearly the only solution is to shut down congress and have rule by executive fiat. Or perhaps Ralph would be more comfortable with a military dictatorship.
That the views of somebody like Ralph are considered "supporting the troops" while people who want to bring them home and let them return to their lives are guilty of treason is pretty absurd. it's not like getting into this war was "the troops" idea. The troops do what they're told, and I don't see how ordering them to come home is any different from ordering them to go to war...
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I'll agree that the use of the legal term "treason" is over the top, but IMHO as our troops, who have strong re-enlistment rates, are finally being unleashed to apply a different approach, that the actions of the Democratic majority are for the most part despicable. They are telling the enemy AND those who would be our friends, to just wait it out a few months and we will be gone. This dramatically reduces the chance of success of the mission for which our troops fight.
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I'll agree that the use of the legal term "treason" is over the top, but IMHO as our troops, who have strong re-enlistment rates, are finally being unleashed to apply a different approach,
Can you elaborate on what exactly this "different approach" is?
that the actions of the Democratic majority are for the most part despicable.
Didn't voters put the Democrats in charge precisely because they wanted the war brought to an end regardless of whether or not we win? Before the election, just about every poll was showing a clear majority in favor of withdrawing some or all of the troops from Iraq.
They are telling the enemy AND those who would be our friends, to just wait it out a few months and we will be gone. This dramatically reduces the chance of success of the mission for which our troops fight.
I understand that the troops would prefer that the war end with a US victory, but wars have never been about what the troops want or how they feel about the political decisions that are made. And frankly, I'm not convinced that most of the military itself is as gung-ho about fighting the war as you and other war supporters think.
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Woof Rog:
Answering these questions does not fit with the subject of this thread. If you would like, please take them over to the "WW3" or "Iraq" threads.
Marc
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March 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Valor and Squalor
By PAUL KRUGMAN
When Salon, the online magazine, reported on mistreatment of veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center two years ago, officials simply denied that there were any problems. And they initially tried to brush off last month’s exposé in The Washington Post.
But this time, with President Bush’s approval at 29 percent, Democrats in control of Congress, and Donald Rumsfeld no longer defense secretary — Robert Gates, his successor, appears genuinely distressed at the situation — the whitewash didn’t stick.
Yet even now it’s not clear whether the public will be told the full story, which is that the horrors of Walter Reed’s outpatient unit are no aberration. For all its cries of “support the troops,” the Bush administration has treated veterans’ medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can.
What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans’ health care — like the Federal Emergency Management Agency — became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program. By the early years of this decade the Veterans Health Administration was, by many measures, providing the highest-quality health care in America. (It probably still is: Walter Reed is a military facility, not run by the V.H.A.)
But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration’s misgovernment became obvious to everyone.
The problem starts with money. The administration uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend that it has been generous to veterans, but the historical data contained in its own budget for fiscal 2008 tell the true story. The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans’ medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.
To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services. For example, in 2005 Salon reported that some Walter Reed patients were forced to pay hundreds of dollars each month for their meals.
More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care to those who defend our nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq the V.H.A., which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system. As the agency’s Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack “special eligibilities such as a compensable service connected condition or recent combat service,” will be turned away.
So when you hear stories of veterans who spend months or years fighting to get the care they deserve, trying to prove that their injuries are service-related, remember this: all this red tape was created not by the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracy, but by the Bush administration’s penny-pinching.
But money is only part of the problem.
We know from Hurricane Katrina postmortems that one of the factors degrading FEMA’s effectiveness was the Bush administration’s relentless push to outsource and privatize disaster management, which demoralized government employees and drove away many of the agency’s most experienced professionals. It appears that the same thing has been happening to veterans’ care.
The redoubtable Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, points out that IAP Worldwide Services, a company run by two former Halliburton executives, received a large contract to run Walter Reed under suspicious circumstances: the Army reversed the results of an audit concluding that government employees could do the job more cheaply.
And Mr. Waxman, who will be holding a hearing on the issue today, appears to have solid evidence, including an internal Walter Reed memo from last year, that the prospect of privatization led to a FEMA-type exodus of skilled personnel.
What comes next? Francis J. Harvey, who as far as I can tell was the first defense contractor appointed secretary of the Army, has been forced out. But the parallels between what happened at Walter Reed and what happened to New Orleans — not to mention parallels with the mother of all scandals, the failed reconstruction of Iraq — tell us that the roots of the scandal run far deeper than the actions of a few bad men.
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I think this piece would have been stronger if Krugman had not sought to tie in the Katrina disaster-- which in my opinion should place most of the blame on the local and state level (Bush's incompetence consisting more in stumbling into being the fall guy for them :roll: )-- and his general dislike for the Bush Administration, but from what I have seen so far there is considerable merit in the accusations of shameful budgeting priorities on the part of the Bush Administration.
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Today's NY Times
GTON, March 8 — Staff Sgt. Gregory L. Wilson, from the Texas National Guard, waited nearly two years for his veterans’ disability check after he was injured in Iraq. If he had been an active-duty soldier, he would have gotten more help in cutting through the red tape.
Allen Curry of Chicago has fallen behind on his mortgage while waiting nearly two years for his disability check. If he had filed his claim in a state deploying fewer troops than Illinois, Mr. Curry, who was injured by a bomb blast when he was a staff sergeant in the Army Reserve in Iraq, would most likely have been paid sooner and gotten more in benefits.
Veterans face serious inequities in compensation for disabilities depending on where they live and whether they were on active duty or were members of the National Guard or the Reserve, an analysis by The New York Times has found.
Those factors determine whether some soldiers wait nearly twice as long to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs as others, and collect less money, according to agency figures.
“The V.A. is supposed to provide uniform and fair treatment to all,” said Steve Robinson, the director of veteran affairs for Veterans for America. “Instead, the places and services giving the most are getting the least.”
The agency said it was trying to ease the backlog and address disparities by hiring more claims workers, authorizing more overtime and adding claims development centers.
The problems partly stem from the agency’s inability to prepare for predictable surges in demand from certain states or certain categories of service members, say advocates and former department officials. Numerous government reports have highlighted the agency’s backlog of disability claims and called for improvements in shifting resources.
“It’s Actuary Science 101,” said Paul Sullivan, who until last March monitored data on returning veterans for the V.A. “When 5,000 new troops get deployed from California, you can logically expect a percent of them will show up at the V.A. in California in a year with predictable types of problems.”
“It makes no sense to wait until the troop is already back home to start preparing for them,” Mr. Sullivan said. “But that’s what the V.A. does.”
Veterans’ advocates say the types of bureaucratic obstacles recently disclosed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are eclipsed by those at the Veterans Affairs division that is supposed to pay soldiers for service-related ills. The influx of veterans from the Iraq war has nearly overwhelmed an agency already struggling to meet the health care, disability payment and pension needs of more than three million veterans.
Stephen Meskin, who retired last year as the V.A.’s chief actuary, said he had repeatedly urged agency managers to track data so they could better meet the needs of former soldiers. “Where are the new vets showing up?” Mr. Meskin said he kept asking. “They just shrugged.”
Agency officials say they have begun an aggressive oversight effort to determine if all disability claims are being properly processed and contracted for a study that will examine state-by-state differences in average disability compensation payments.
“V.A.’s focus is to assure consistent application of the regulations governing V.A. disability determinations in all states,” the department said in a written statement.
Many new veterans say they are often left waiting for months or years, wondering if they will be taken care of.
Unable to work because of post-traumatic stress disorder and back injuries from a bomb blast in Iraq in 2004, Specialist James Webb of the Army ran out of savings while waiting 11 months for his claim. In the fall of 2005, Mr. Webb said, he began living on the streets in Decatur, Ga., a state that has the 10th-largest backlog of claims in the country.
“I should have just gone home to be with family instead of trying to do it on my own,” said Mr. Webb, who received a Bronze Star for his service in Iraq. “But with the post-traumatic stress disorder, I just didn’t want any relationships.”
After waiting 11 months, he began receiving his $869 monthly disability check and he moved into a house in Newnan, Ga. About three weeks ago, Mr. Webb moved back home to live with his parents in Kingsport, Tenn.
The backlogs are worst in some states sending the most troops, and discrepancies exist in pay levels.
Illinois, which has deployed the sixth-highest number of soldiers of any state, has the second-largest backlog. The average disability payment for Illinois veterans — $7,803 a year — is among the lowest in the nation, according to 2005 V.A. data.
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In Pennsylvania, which has sent the fourth-highest number of troops, the claims office in Pittsburgh is tied for second for longest backlogs, where 4 out of 10 claims have been pending for more than six months. Veterans from this state on average receive relatively low payments, $8,268 per year, according to 2005 V.A. data. Comparable 2006 data were not available.
The agency’s inspector general in 2005 examined geographic variations in how much veterans are paid for disabilities, finding that demographic factors, like the average age of each state’s veteran population, played roles. But the report also pointed to the subjective way that claims processors in each state determined level of disability.
Staffing levels at the veterans agency vary widely and have not kept pace with the increased demand. The current inventory of disability claims rose to 378,296 by the end of the 2006 fiscal year. The claims from returning war veterans plus those from previous periods increased by 39 percent from 2000 to 2006. During the same period, the staff for handling claims has remained relatively flat, a problem the department highlighted in its 2008 proposed budget. The department expects to receive about 800,000 new claims in 2007 and 2008 each.
“It’s clear to everyone here that the system over all is struggling and some veterans are waiting far too long for decisions,” Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, said Wednesday at a hearing before the Senate veterans affairs committee.
The growing strains on the veterans agency have affected some soldiers more than others.
While the Reserve and National Guard have sent a disproportionate number of soldiers to the war, the average annual disability payment for those troops is $3,603, based on 2006 V.A. data for unmarried veterans with no dependents. Active-duty soldiers on average receive $4,962.
Though the V.A. acknowledged that there were discrepancies, officials also said they believed that a significant factor might be length of service. Active-duty soldiers generally serve longer, and therefore more suffer from chronic diseases or disabilities that develop over time. Many who served in the Guard think they are losing the battle against the bureaucracy.
“We take a harder toll,” said Mr. Wilson, the Texan, referring to the fate of reservists and Guard troops compared with active duty soldiers.
He said that last month he received his disability check for his back injuries but only after a 21-month wait and the intervention of a congressman and a colonel.
When active-duty soldiers near discharge, they have access to far more programs offering assistance with benefits than do reserve and National Guard soldiers, according to veterans’ advocates.
“The active-duty guys, they get those resources,” Mr. Wilson said. “We don’t.”
He said that while active-duty soldiers often received medical disability evaluations in about 30 days, many reservists he knew waited two years or more to get an initial appointment. Active-duty personnel also routinely received legal advice about appeals and other issues from military lawyers, while reservists had to request those hearings, he said.
For years, the V.A.’s inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, members of Congress and veterans’ advocates have pointed out the need to improve how the V.A. tracks data on soldiers as they are deployed and when they are injured. That would help prepare for their future needs and ease delays in processing health and benefit claims.
In 2004, a system was designed to track soldiers better, prepare for surges in demand and avoid backlogs. But the system was shelved by program officials under Secretary Jim Nicholson for financial and logistical reasons, V.A. officials said Thursday at a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
The V.A., which has said it has an alternate tracking system nearly operational, depends on paper files and lacks the ability to download Department of Defense records into its computers.
President Bush has appointed a commission to investigate problems at military and veterans hospitals.
For Mr. Curry, the reservist from Chicago who has fallen behind on his mortgage payments, his previous life as a $60,000-a-year postal worker is a fading memory. “It’s just disheartening,” he said. “You feel like giving up sometimes.”
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Richard G. Jones contributed reporting from Trenton, Bob Driehaus from Cincinnati, and Sean D. Hamill from Pittsburgh.
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Free Walter Reed
The wounded deserve more than political recrimination.
Wall Street Journal
Saturday, March 10, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
The reports of poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have set off a political firestorm. It remains to be seen whether the system that created the problem is capable of fixing it.
The Walter Reed facility is located inside the District of Columbia. While the press reports have been dramatic, it strains credulity to think these problems are suddenly news to Congress and all its staff, the executive branch, the Pentagon (across the Potomac), the rest of the Washington press divisions or servicemen and their families.
So now Congress is holding hearings, the White House is setting up an independent commission and Vice President Dick Cheney has pledged "there will be no excuses, only action." Arguably "only action" is a federal-government oxymoron. The action so far has consisted of firings and recrimination. If this continues, the incentive for anyone in government to think innovatively about Walter Reed will fail.
Not surprisingly, the story beneath the Walter Reed mess is a morass. It is government, in its inevitable sprawl, working at cross purposes with itself. For starters, Walter Reed is scheduled to shut down in 2011 as part of the base-closure commission process. No surprise that resources going into Walter Reed would not rise under this circumstance.
Meanwhile, President Bush has proposed spending $38.7 billion on military health care in the coming year--double what the military spent in 2001. Over the past six years the military has expanded health coverage for reservists and for military families and has added a more generous prescription drug benefit.
What has happened is that for more than a decade military health care has shifted away from long hospital stays in favor of increased outpatient care, mirroring the private-sector trend. The military and the entirely separate Department of Veterans Affairs--which itself spends tens of billions of dollars on health care--have shuttered large in-patient facilities and opened hundreds of outpatient clinics.
By and large this has been for the good. The military in fact is a pace-setter in medical procedures to treat the severely injured; it drives advances in prosthetic limbs, trauma care and reconstructive surgery. Approximately 98% of those wounded on the battlefield who reach a hospital survive. Consider the following comparison: The ratio of those wounded to killed today is seven to one; in Vietnam that ratio was closer to three to one. And the VA is excelling at outpatient care. The Rand Corporation recently found that on nearly every measure of quality of care--preventive services, follow-ups, chronic care--VA patients receive better care than most civilians.
But the problems are real and significant. The military provides health care to more than nine million people. The VA runs the largest unified health-care program in the country to cover an additional five million people. It's predictable that patients will get lost inside a government system this vast. In recent weeks veterans from the Korean and Vietnam wars have stepped forward to tell their own stories of fighting the health-care bureaucracy.
More than three million people eligible for cheap prescription drugs through the VA are opting instead to pay a little extra for Medicare drug coverage. Why? Because, as a Manhattan Institute study recently found, only 22% of the most important drugs released in recent years are covered by the VA.
These manifest problems will now tread water while we await the president's commission, Congress's hearings and on into the darkness. We have some shorter-term ideas to get help where it's needed.
For starters, free the patients captive inside this system. Congress should give these wounded soldiers vouchers to pay for out-patient care anywhere in America they wish--near home and family, at innumerable state-of-the-art rehab facilities, at specialized care institutions. Army word-of-mouth would quickly transmit data on best care, location, cost and family support. The professionals and staff in these places would move heaven and earth to help the service men and women.
To make this work, give a primary role to nonprofit foundations. The Fisher House program of comfort homes for families is perhaps the most famous. There are others more than willing to help.
Certainly the government needs to right its own battered programs. But in the meantime, let the American people--the world's greatest reservoir of medical, financial and volunteer skills--at last get involved helping those who've been fighting on our behalf in Iraq and in the war on terror.
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http://s75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/ChrisFry/?action=view¤t=02_FEB_07_ABC_DFW_Welcome.flv
Some of us may need a tissue for this one.
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I'm not able to view the one Crafty just posted in my browser, but this one is pretty powerful:
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/index.php?option=com_photogallery&task=view&id=875&Itemid=146&bandwidth=high
I'm not sure which of them I feel sorrier for.
Rog
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And here is an example of hurting our troops and our cause-- this from this weekend's WSJ:
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'A Triumph for Pelosi'
March 24, 2007
That's how the Associated Press described yesterday's vote by the House to demand a U.S. retreat from Iraq, and in the perverse calculus of Capitol Hill we suppose it was. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated she can pile on enough pork to bribe enough Democrats to cobble together a bare, partisan majority to "send a message" that has no chance of becoming law. Congratulations.
"Today is an historic day," Ms. Pelosi said on the House floor. "The new Congress will vote to end the war in Iraq." But of course the bill does nothing of the sort. If she truly wanted to end the war, the Speaker and her fellow Democrats could simply have used their power of the purse to refuse to fund it. But that would have meant taking some responsibility for what happens in Iraq, which is the last thing Democrats want to do. So they have passed a bill that funds the war while claiming it ends the war.
The bill's "benchmarks" and deadlines certainly have nothing to do with achieving victory in Iraq, or assisting General David Petraeus's campaign to secure Baghdad. They are all about the war inside the Democratic Caucus. On the one hand, they appease the antiwar left by pretending to declare the war illegal if certain goals aren't met by Iraqis or U.S. forces. But on the other, they allow "moderates" from swing districts to claim they are nonetheless "supporting the troops." Acts of Congress don't get much more cynical than that.
This is not to say the vote won't do considerable harm. It will be noted by our enemies in Iraq and will encourage them to inflict more casualties to further sour American support. It will make it harder for Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disarm Shiite militias, who can point to the vote and say the Americans will soon be leaving. And most disgraceful, it will send a message to U.S. troops that they can fight on -- albeit without much chance of success and without Congressional support.
The lengths that Democratic leaders had to go to win their "triumph" betrayed its cynicism. To get her narrow majority of 218 votes, Ms. Pelosi and Appropriations Chairman David Obey had to load it up like a farm bill: $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers, $283 million for dairy farmers -- all told, some $20 billion in vote-buying earmarks of the kind Democrats campaigned against last year.
Even at that price, they could win over a mere two Republicans: antiwar Members Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Walter Jones of North Carolina. We hope GOP primary voters note those votes well. Given how the war hurt so many Republicans last November, this GOP solidarity is notable and a credit to the minority leadership.
President Bush was quick to denounce the vote yesterday, promising a veto. And we hope he keeps it up. By bowing to their antiwar left, Democrats are once again showing that they can't be trusted on national security. The President should drive that message home until Congress gives him a clean war bill that gives our troops the money to fight our enemies without having to take orders from MoveOn.org.
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Yep, let it never be said that Col. Ralph Peters doesn't support the troops 100% and unconditionally.
WHERE'S WINSTON?
By RALPH PETERS
April 3, 2007 -- THE greatest shock from the Middle East this year hasn't been terrorist ruthlessness or the latest Iranian tantrum. It's that members of Britain's Royal Marines wimped out in a matter of days and acquiesced in propaganda broadcasts for their captors.
Jingoism aside, I can't imagine any squad of U.S. Marines behaving in such a shabby, cowardly fashion. Our Marines would have fought to begin with. Taken captive by force, they would've resisted collaboration. To the last man and woman.
You could put a U.S. Marine in a dungeon and knock out his teeth, but you wouldn't knock out his pride in his country and the Corps. "Semper fi" means something.
And our Aussie allies would be just as tough.
What on earth happened to the Royal Marines? They're members of what passes for an elite unit. Has the Labor government's program to gut the U.K. military - grounding planes, taking ships out of service and deactivating army units - also ripped the courage from the breasts of those in uniform?
The female sailor who broke down first and begged for her government to surrender was pathetic enough. But when Royal Marines started pleading for tea and sympathy . . . Ma, say it ain't so!
Meanwhile, back at No. 10 "Downer" Street, British politicians are more upset that President Bush described their sailors and Marines as "hostages" than they are with the Iranians.
Okay, Lord Spanker and Lady Fanny - what exactly are those sailors and Marines? Package tourists?
Naturally, the European Union has praised Britain's "restraint." We've now got another synonym for cowardice.
I've always respected the Brits and quite liked those I worked with when in uniform . . . but I'm starting to wonder if I bought into a legend. While criticizing our military's approach to everything, the Brits made an utter balls of it in Basra - now they're bailing out, claiming "Mission accomplished!" (OK, they had a role model . . .) In Heaven, Winston Churchill's puking up premium scotch.
The once-proud Brit military has collapsed to a sorry state when its Royal Marines surrender without a fight, then apologize to their captors (praising their gentle natures!) while criticizing their own country. Pretty sad to think that the last real warriors fighting under the Union Jack are soccer hooligans.
Of course, bravery isn't equally distributed. One or even two collaborators might be explicable. But not all 15.
Yes, journalists and other civilian captives routinely make embarrassing statements on videos, chiding their governments and begging to be swapped for a battalion of mass murderers. One expects nothing better. But military men and women in the English-speaking tradition historically maintained high standards over long years in brutal captivity - and this hostage situation has barely lasted long enough to microwave a bag of popcorn.
Think about Sen. John McCain with his broken limbs undergoing torture in that Hanoi prison - and refusing an early chance to be repatriated because he wouldn't leave his comrades behind. Think he'd do a Tokyo Rose for Tehran?
The Iranians judged their victims well: The British boat crews didn't make even a token effort at defending themselves. Now their boo-hoo-we-quit government isn't defending them, either. Was Margaret Thatcher the last real man in Britain?
The correct response to the seizure of 15 British military hostages - if not released promptly - would've been to hit 15 Revolutionary Guards facilities or vessels along the Iranian coast, then threaten to hit 30 deeper inland the next day.
By hammering the now-degenerate Revolutionary Guards, the Coalition would've strengthened the less-nutty and less-vicious regular military and emboldened President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's growing number of opponents within the government. (It was telling that the Revolutionary Guards could only muster about 200 demonstrators to harass the British embassy - it didn't look much like 1979.)
Instead, we allowed the Iranian hardliners to humiliate a once-great military and encourage hostage-takers everywhere.
At the very least, the British naval officer commanding in the zone of operations and the vocal collaborators among the hostages should be court-martialed. And the Royal Marine company to which those wankers belong should be disbanded and stricken from the rolls.
John Bull has been cowed. By a pack of unshaven thugs. And the Britannia that ruled the waves is waving goodbye.
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:roll:
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The American soldier's code of conduct
By Michelle Malkin · April 05, 2007 01:43 PM
Apropos of the British sailors and marines' release and their humiliation at the hands of Iran, an American officer in Iraq sent me this link to the DoD's code of conduct for US soldiers:
I
I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
II
I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.
III
If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
IV
If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.
V
When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
VI
I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.
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My Army friend writes that the release of the British servicemen "was no coincidence, and was Iran's response to the escalation of measures against its nuclear program." He urges that we open our eyes:
The world was distracted by the captured sailors incident, when it should have been focused on Iran's nuclear intransigence. Instead Britain lost face and Iran became the benevolent captor. In my view, the incident on the border on September between US forces and border-violating Iranian forces was an earlier attempt by Iran to achieve a similar IO effect by capturing US forces, staging video in Iranian territory, parading them around on TV, and acting magnanimous in their release.
This would, of course, forced us to deal with them face to face immediately before the GWB spoke to the UN (as well as Ahmadinejad). The problem is, of course, that US forces fight back and we don't allow ourselves to be paraded like fools for the world to see (see below).
Britain's shame is Iran's gain. Iran failed in September, but not this time, yet no news source has come to the conclusion that Iran had perhaps tried this before (even though they've been doing it for 30 years).
***
Reader A. e-mails about the code of conduct:
"We had to memorize it in basic. When I got to my unit, we had to recite it whenever we saw the Battalion Commander and he asked us to. I can still recite it to this day and I got out in 1992."
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Britain Was Once Great Britain
By Dennis Prager
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 10, 2007
It is painful to see the decline of Great Britain.
Greatness in individuals is rare; in countries it is almost unique. And Great Britain was great.
It used to be said that "The sun never sets on the British empire." That is how vast Britain's influence was. And that influence, on balance, was far more positive than negative. Ask the Indians -- or the Americans, for that matter. The British colonies learned about individual rights, parliamentary government, civil service and courts of justice, to name of few of the benefits that the British brought with them. Were it not for British involvement, India might still have sati (burning wives on the funeral pyre of their husband), would have no unifying language, and probably no parliamentary democracy or other institutions and values that have made that country a democratic giant, now on its way to becoming an economic one as well. But today, the sun not only literally sets on an extinct British empire; it is figuratively setting on Britain itself.
Two recent examples provide evidence:
One is the way Britain handled the recent act of war against it by Iran. Everything about the British reaction revealed a civilization in decline.
Whether the British sailors and marines should have put up more resistance -- i.e., any resistance -- to the unprovoked Iranian military attack is something for military and other experts to decide. Whether the captured sailors and marines offered more information and more cooperation, and more smiles than was necessary to the leader of their kidnappers, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will also be determined in ongoing investigations. Whether the British government engaged in appeasement of Iran or ineffective diplomacy will also have to be judged.
What does seem clear, however, is that the British government did not confront the Iranians in any way reminiscent of a great country, let alone of Britain's great past. If we judge the British government's reaction alone -- without any reference to the behavior of the British sailors and marines -- Iran was the feared power, not Great Britain, which acted like the supplicant.
But what really makes one weep for Britain's lost greatness is what has happened since the sailors and marines were released.
The UK Minister of Defense, Labor MP Desmond Browne, announced that the released sailors and marines were all free to sell their stories to the media, "as a result of exceptional media interest." If this is not unprecedented, it would certainly be difficult to find anything similar in the annals of military history. Some of the captured sailors and marines have already earned large sums of money. The Guardian newspaper said the one woman who had been captured, Faye Turney, agreed to a deal with The Sun and ITV television for approximately $200,000. (American soldier Jessica Lynch, who was captured when her Army convoy was ambushed in 2003, received a $500,000 advance for her book, "I Am a Soldier, Too." But that was a book published later and she had never charged the news media when interviewed by them.)
And John Tindell, the father of another of the hostages, said the marines were planning to sell on eBay the vases given to them by the Iranians.
As The Australian reported, "Some of the sums being offered to the captives are higher than the money paid to service personnel maimed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The standard tariff for the loss of an arm is 57,500 pounds."
The Labor government's decision was described well by the mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq. As reported by Reuters: "The mother of a 19-year-old British soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq at the weekend said she would be 'very shocked' if any of the detainees were paid for their stories. 'If you are a member of the military, it is your duty to serve your country,' Sally Veck, mother of Eleanor Dlugosz, told the Times. 'You should do your duty and not expect to make money by selling stories.'"
That pretty well sums up the revulsion many feel at the British government's decision.
The other current example of Great Britain's decline is the widely reported (in the UK) decision of schools in various parts of that country to stop teaching about the Holocaust in history classes. The reason?
As reported by the BBC, "Some schools avoid teaching the Holocaust and other controversial history subjects as they do not want to cause offence, research has claimed. Teachers fear meeting anti-Semitic sentiment, particularly from Muslim pupils, the government-funded study by the Historical Association said."
No comment necessary.
But a word of caution: If Great Britain can cease to be great in so short a time span, any country can. All you need is an elite that no longer believes in their country, that manipulates history texts to make students feel good about themselves, that prefers multiculturalism to its own culture, and that has abandoned its religious underpinnings. Sound familiar, America?
Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Los Angeles. He is the author of four books, most recently "Happiness is a Serious Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com. To find out more about Dennis Prager, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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http://www.hopeforthewarriors.org/
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This chickenhawk warmongering keyboard commando suspects the Rumbo DOD to have been miserly with the troops.
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From FoxNews:
WASHINGTON —
The struggle to entice Army soldiers and Marines to stay in the military, after four years of war in Iraq, has ballooned into a $1 billion campaign, with bonuses soaring nearly sixfold since 2003.
The size and number of bonuses have grown as officials scrambled to meet the steady demand for troops on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and reverse sporadic shortfalls in the number of National Guard and Reserve soldiers willing to sign on for multiple tours.
Besides underscoring the extraordinary steps the Pentagon must take to maintain fighting forces, the rise in costs for re-enlistment incentives is putting strains on the defense budget, already strapped by the massive costs of waging war and equipping and caring for a modern military.
The bonuses can range from a few thousand dollars to as much as $150,000 for very senior special forces soldiers who re-enlist for six years. All told, the Army and Marines spent $1.03 billion for re-enlistment payments last year, compared with $174 million in 2003, the year the war in Iraq began.
The Associated Press compiled and analyzed the budget figures from the military services for this story.
"War is expensive," said Col. Mike Jones, who oversees retention issues for the National Guard. "Winning a war, however, is less expensive than losing one."
The soaring budget for re-enlistment bonuses — particularly for the Guard and Reserves, which have seen the most dramatic cost increases — has prompted some observers to question whether the country can still afford its volunteer force.
"I believe the whole issue of the affordability of the volunteer force is something we need to look at," said Arnold Punaro, who heads an independent panel established by Congress to study the National Guard and Reserves.
The higher bonuses come as support for the war continues to wane both in Congress and with the American public. That decline is fueling concerns that more soldiers will leave the military under pressure from families who fear the rising death toll and are weary of the lengthy and repeated overseas deployments. The Iraq war has claimed the lives of at least 3,280 U.S. troops to date.
Incentives for Army Guard and Reserve members combined have skyrocketed from about $27 million in 2003 to more than $335 million in 2006.
The active Army, meanwhile, poured more than $600 million into these payments last year, a six-fold increase from $98 million in 2003. The Army gave two out of every three soldiers who re-enlisted a bonus last year, compared to less than two in 10 who received one during 2003.
Those who don't get bonuses are generally in jobs that are not in high demand or are not in war zones. For example, certain artillery crewmembers who re-enlisted outside Afghanistan or Iraq would receive no bonus, said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty.
Bonuses for Marines have nearly doubled, from about $50 million in 2003 to nearly $90 million in 2006.
The incentives help the military compete with private employers who often pay much higher salaries, Hilferty said.
"Soldiers with valuable skills and experience are aggressively sought after by industry," Hilferty said. He said while the extra money is important, "people don't re-enlist in a wartime Army for $13,000. ... If soldiers didn't think they were doing the right thing for the right reason, they would get out and get a job back home."
He said soldiers with special skills can get bonuses between $10,000 and $30,000, with a select few eligible for payments up to $50,000. Only very few highly qualified special forces soldiers would get the top bonus of $150,000. Nearly all soldiers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait get a maximum of $15,000 for re-enlisting, just a bit more than the average.
Bonuses for Marines in certain critical specialties can go as high as $60,000 for a new four-year tour. On average a Marine who re-enlists this year can receive as much as $24,000. About eight in 10 Marines with up to six years of service will get a bonus this year, as will more than half of those with six to 14 years in the Corps.
Punaro, chairman of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, calls the soaring costs "a ticking time bomb."
"My instinct tells me ... that the Guard and Reserve will continue to be a real bargain for the taxpayer" because the costs for the active duty military have gone up a lot more, he said.
So far, the extra cash appears to be working. The active Army, the Guard and the Army Reserve are all on track to meet their re-enlistment goals for the fiscal year that will end Sept. 30.
Sgt. 1st Class Richard Doran, who works full-time for the Guard, signed on for another six-year tour late last year, just before he returned home from Iraq. That not only gives him the $15,000 bonus but also makes it tax-free because he was on the battlefront when he re-enlisted.
"It helps a lot of guys out," said Doran. "And I think it does sway some of the decisions to stay in when guys are on the fence trying to decide."
But for some who have been sent to war as many as three times, the money isn't enough.
"We had some that, once we got back, opted to say goodbye and just leave. Some guys said the money did play a part in their decision to stay, others said the $15,000 wasn't worth it."
Jones of the Guard said boosting the maximum re-enlistment bonus from $5,000 to $15,000 caused most of the budget increase. And, he said, more soldiers signed up than anticipated.
"When we're at peace, and when we're not deploying units, the bonuses probably don't need to be what they are today," said Jones. "When the risks are lowered, the reward would be lowered. But one of reasons we struggled in 2005 and 2004 is because we were slow as a nation to increase the rewards at the same time as we increased the risk."
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Security Deposit
Want to support the war on terror? Pull out your checkbook.
BY NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
Friday, May 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
WEST POINT, N.Y.--On a stormy night here a couple of weeks ago, a group of men and women gathered at the U.S. Military Academy to discuss the future of national security. Nothing unusual about that. The group included military brass, naturally, and a few scholars. But it also included--how to put this?--some rich people.
No, this wasn't a top-secret meeting of Halliburton executives. It was a conference called "National Security Studies and Military History: How Philanthropists Can Make a Difference." The point of the evening, sponsored by the Philanthropy Roundtable, wasn't to learn how to profit from government largess, Halliburton-style, but the other way around: to discuss how the government--or at least the Pentagon and its mission--might be helped by the efforts of America's philanthropic citizens.
As it happens, there is a long tradition of the private sector bolstering national security. Hayim Solomon, an 18th-century New York City merchant, invested $350,000 in government securities to pay for Gen. George Washington's Yorktown campaign. During World War II, Henry Ford transformed his factories to manufacture B-24 bombers. These days, no one is suggesting that private donors sponsor, say, the troop surge in Ramadi, Iraq, but as Mark Smith, the conference's director, told me later, such help makes perfect sense: "It is really the American way for the private sector to roll up their sleeves and get engaged."
But where to begin? Stephen Rosen, a professor at Harvard and a conference participant, believes that people in the national-security areas of government are focused too much on day-to-day "crisis management." They don't stop to think about the next decade or two. That is where philanthropists can step in, by sponsoring researchers who might think about--and write about and talk about--the long-term challenges we face: our relationship with, say the Islamic world, the use of nuclear weapons and the behavior of China. It is true that any number of scholars spend time thinking about the larger geopolitical dimensions of these questions and the diplomatic options for resolving them. But few devote themselves to the actual military issues involved.
It is futile to expect universities to produce such people, at least so the conference participants believed. "A number of subjects subsumed under the subject of national security are looked down on or ignored by academia," said Josiah Bunting, a retired officer and the president of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. In his keynote address, he contrasted the meager study of military history on university campuses with the shelves of Barnes & Noble, which are "groaning" under the weight of books on military subjects.
Mr. Bunting traces the current situation to the 1990s, with the retirement or death of the last college professors who served in World War II. "There was a much larger receptivity in that group toward military and strategic studies than in the generation that followed them." To revive that area of inquiry, Mr. Bunting recommends that patrons give money to a particular professorship or program that has a limited lifetime. Permanent endowments are likely to be misdirected.
Another possible focus for philanthropy is the Combating Terrorism Center, based at West Point itself. Started in February 2003, the center is headed by a military officer but most of the people who work there--about 20 in all--are civilians, specializing in everything from bioterrorism to intelligence-gathering. As Mr. Smith explains, the center can "serve as a bridge between the military and the academic community." It can, for example, thanks to its high security clearance, "take documents that Special Operations has and translate them."
Walter P. Stern, one of the conference participants, told me that he was interested in giving money to the center. "The resources are there in the private sector for this sort of thing." But aren't the resources there in the public sector as well? Yes and no. The Defense Department can spend millions of dollars on strategic studies, but the National Security Council and other agencies in the White House are more likely to rely on reports coming in from outside scholars and analysts.
I asked one senior administration official who knew about the conference just how he would like to see philanthropists direct their money. He offered a short list, beginning with strategies for "the war of ideas in the war on terror." He wants some positive suggestions, though. "I could find you 30 critiques of the way we're conducting the war of ideas."
Ms. Riley is The Wall Street Journal's deputy Taste editor.
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This from today's always suspect NY Times:
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Fighting the Terror of Battles That Rage in Soldiers’ Heads
By DAN FROSCH
Published: May 13, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS, May 8 — The nightmares that tormented Sgt. Walter Padilla after returning home from Iraq in 2004 prompted extensive treatment by Army doctors, an honorable discharge from the military and a cocktail of medication to dull his suffering.
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
Specialist Alex Lotero said he was belittled when he sought help for anxiety attacks after serving in Iraq.
Still, Sergeant Padilla, 28, could not ward off memories of the people he had killed with a machine gun perched on his Bradley fighting vehicle. On April 1, according to the authorities and friends, he withdrew to the shadows of his Colorado Springs home, pressed the muzzle of his Glock pistol to his temple and squeezed the trigger.
Sergeant Padilla had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder at Fort Carson Army base here, where concerns over the treatment of returning soldiers struggling with the condition, compelled members of Congress last month to ask the Government Accountability Office to reassess the military’s mental health policies.
A letter signed by nine senators refers to “a number of upsetting allegations” at the base regarding a lack of treatment for soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and the stigmatization of those with the condition. On Monday, some of those senators’ staff members will visit Fort Carson to meet with soldiers, families and commanders, the fourth time this year Congressional staff members have traveled to the base.
The Army, reeling from fallout over its poor handling of outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, dispatched Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker to Colorado to speak with the base’s leaders and soldiers on Tuesday.
General Tucker, the deputy commander of Walter Reed, commended Fort Carson for its treatment of post-traumatic stress and said he viewed the Congressional visits as a means of highlighting the base’s programs that deal with the condition, said an Army spokesman, Paul Boyce.
But Veterans for America, an advocacy group that has lobbied the Army and Congress on behalf of returning soldiers, said the Army must do better, particularly at Fort Carson, where soldiers with the stress disorder have spoken of being punished by their commanders.
The base has 17,500 soldiers assigned to it, and about 26,000 of its soldiers have been deployed to Iraq since the war began.
“Fort Carson is overwhelmed with men and women coming home from Iraq with psychological injuries from war, and there are unit commanders here who don’t understand these medical conditions,” said Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs for the group.
Col. John Cho, the base’s chief medical officer, said Fort Carson had treated 1,703 soldiers for post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D., since 2003. Colonel Cho disputed the assertion that problems at Fort Carson were widespread. “We’re never going to fully eliminate the stigma associated with P.T.S.D., but the leadership at Carson has been fully supportive of getting soldiers they help they need,” he said.
The Army reports seven suicides of active duty soldiers at Fort Carson since 2004 but says it does not know if any were linked to the disorder. Sergeant Padilla was not included among the seven because he died after being discharged.
Most recently, Staff Sgt. Mark Alan Waltz, who was being treated for post-traumatic stress, was found dead in his living room on April 30. An autopsy of Sergeant Waltz, 40, is pending, but his wife, Renea, believes her husband died from a reaction to the antidepressants he was taking for stress and painkillers prescribed for a back injury. Ms. Waltz is also convinced that the psychological wounds he carried from battle played a part in his death.
Ms. Waltz said her husband was reluctant to seek treatment after returning from Iraq in 2004 because he thought a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder would cost him his rank. She said the condition was eventually diagnosed and he was referred for treatment. Even then, she said, he was “picked out, scrutinized and messed with continually” by his commanding officers.
“It’s not right that our guys are going over to Iraq, doing their job, doing what they’re supposed to do, and they when they come back sick, they’re treated like garbage,” Ms. Waltz said.
Army officials at Fort Carson said Sergeant Waltz’s death was still under review and, citing privacy laws, would not comment further.
Mr. Robinson, of Veterans for America, said the group’s research indicated that since 2004, there had been at least six incidents in which Fort Carson soldiers with stress disorder have died, either from suicide or from accidents involving narcotics or medications.
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(Page 2 of 2)
In addition, the veterans group is investigating some 30 cases of Fort Carson soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury or personality disorders who have complained of mistreatment.
One case involves Specialist Alex Lotero, who returned from Iraq late last year suffering from anxiety attacks and nightmares after dozens of combat missions, including one in which his convoy was struck by a roadside bomb.
Specialist Lotero, a thick-muscled 20-year-old from Miami, said his superiors treated his diagnosis disdainfully, showering him with obscenities and accusing him of insubordination when he missed training for doctors’ appointments.
“They belittled my condition,” he said. “They told me I was broke, that I didn’t have anything left.”
Specialist Lotero eventually checked himself into nearby Cedar Springs Hospital for a few days and is waiting for his medical discharge request to be processed. He points to his forearm, draped in a tattoo of a machine-gun wielding, Vietnam-era soldier. The soldier’s face is ghoulish, his body gaunt and rotting. “This is how I feel right now,” he said.
In an interview, Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, the acting Army surgeon general, said Fort Carson had taken “the bull by the horns” in combating the stigma associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
General Pollock said the Army was developing initiatives to lessen that stigma and cited examples of officers publicly seeking treatment for combat stress as a means of encouraging their soldiers to follow suit.
“We have to reinforce it again and again,” she said. “I talk with patients, and many of them have looked at me through cheerful eyes and said, ‘You mean I’m not crazy?’ ”
Lt. Col. Laurel Anderson, a psychiatric nurse in charge of behavioral health at Fort Carson’s soldier readiness center, said the number of soldiers referred for mental health screenings had risen from about 12 percent of those seen at the center to 25 percent over the past year.
Colonel Anderson said soldiers sometimes refused her referrals to psychiatrists. “They don’t want anyone to know,” she said.
This year, Colonel Anderson began training officers to de-stigmatize post-traumatic stress disorder within their units. Another training session, this one for noncommissioned officers, is scheduled for Monday.
The Army is also considering sending a unit to Fort Carson and other bases to help soldiers navigate the administrative tangle of medical treatment. But Sergeant Padilla’s death showed that even when a soldier feels comfortable enough to seek treatment, that may not be enough.
Friends and family say Sergeant Padilla complained that antidepressants and painkillers were no substitute for talking with someone who understood what it was like to kill.
“He told me that the doctors weren’t helping him,” said his mother, Carmen Sierra, in a telephone interview from her home in Puerto Rico. “He told me that they couldn’t understand him, that he was still having those nightmares.”
A few months ago, Sergeant Padilla told his girlfriend, Mia Sagahon, that maybe it was time he start speaking with a doctor again. He never did.
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NY Times
Gas May Have Harmed Troops, Scientists Say
By IAN URBINA
Published: May 17, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 16 — Scientists working with the Defense Department have found evidence that a low-level exposure to sarin nerve gas — the kind experienced by more than 100,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 — could have caused lasting brain deficits in former service members.
Possible Sarin Exposure in Iraq, 1991 Though the results are preliminary, the study is notable for being financed by the federal government and for being the first to make use of a detailed analysis of sarin exposure performed by the Pentagon, based on wind patterns and plume size.
The report, to be published in the June issue of the journal NeuroToxicology, found apparent changes in the brain’s connective tissue — its so-called white matter — in soldiers exposed to the gas. The extent of the brain changes — less white matter and slightly larger brain cavities — corresponded to the extent of exposure, the study found.
Previous studies had suggested that exposure affected the brain in some neural regions, but the evidence was not convincing to many scientists. The new report is likely to revive the long-debated question of why so many troops returned from that war with unexplained physical problems. Many in the scientific community have questioned whether the so-called gulf war illnesses have a physiological basis, and far more research will have to be done before it is known whether those illnesses can be traced to exposure to sarin. The long-term effects of sarin on the brain are still not well understood.
But several lawmakers who were briefed on the study say the Department of Veterans Affairs is now obligated to provide increased neurological care to veterans who may have been exposed.
In March 1991, a few days after the end of the gulf war, American soldiers exploded two large caches of ammunition and missiles in Khamisiyah, Iraq. Some of the missiles contained the dangerous nerve gases sarin and cyclosarin. Based on wind patterns and the size of the plume, the Department of Defense has estimated that more than 100,000 American troops may have been exposed to at least small amounts of the gases.
When the roughly 700,000 deployed troops returned home, about one in seven began experiencing a mysterious set of ailments, often called gulf war illnesses, with problems including persistent fatigue, chronic headaches, joint pain and nausea. Those symptoms persist today for more than 150,000 of them, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than the number of troops exposed to the gases.
Advocates for veterans have argued for more than a decade and a half that a link exists between many of these symptoms and the exposure that occurred in Khamisiyah, but evidence has been limited.
The study, financed by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first to use Pentagon data on potential exposure levels faced by the troops and magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of military personnel in the exposure zone. It found signs of brain changes that could be due to exposure, showing that troops who had been exposed at higher levels had about 5 percent less white matter than those who had little exposure.
White matter volume varies by individual, but studies have shown that significant shrinkage in adulthood can be a sign of damage.
The study was led by Roberta F. White, chairman of the department of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. Dr. White and other researchers studied 26 gulf war veterans, half of whom were exposed to the gases, according to a Defense Department modeling of the likely chemical makeup and location of the plume. The researchers found that troops with greater potential exposure had less white matter.
In a companion study, the researchers also tested 140 troops believed to have experienced differing degrees of exposure to the chemical agents to check their fine motor coordination and found a direct relation between performance level and the level of potential exposure. Individuals who were potentially more exposed to the gases had a deterioration in fine motor skills, performing such tests at a level similar to people 20 years older.
Dr. White says this study and the results of research from other studies provide “converging evidence that some gulf war veterans experienced nervous system damage as a result of service, and this is an important development in explaining gulf war illnesses.”
Phil Budahn, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs, said the research required further examination.
“It’s important to note that its authors describe the study as inconclusive,” Mr. Budahn said, adding, “It was based upon a small number of participants, who were not randomly chosen.”
Dr. White said she did not describe her study as inconclusive, though she said it would be accurate to call it preliminary.
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Lea Steele, a Kansas State University epidemiologist and the scientific director of the veterans department’s advisory committee on gulf war illnesses, said she thought the study was extremely important. Dr. Steele said that gulf war illnesses had been described by their symptoms, but that until now scientists had struggled to find physiological conditions that corresponded with those symptoms.
Possible Sarin Exposure in Iraq, 1991 But the new research, Dr. Steele said, used previously nonexistent brain scanning technology to, essentially, “look into the brain to evaluate the difficult-to-characterize problems affecting gulf war veterans.”
Thus, she said, it is “the first to demonstrate objective indicators of pathology in association with possible low-level sarin-cyclosarin exposures.”
Dr. Daniel J. Clauw, professor of medicine and director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, said that while the study indicated that the veterans had not imagined their illnesses, more research was needed.
“Future studies need to compare the results of brain scans of gulf war veterans with individuals with chronic pain and other symptoms who were not deployed to the gulf war before concluding that any changes are due to wartime exposures,” Dr. Clauw said.
For more than five years after the explosions at Khamisiyah, the Pentagon denied that any American military personnel had been exposed to nerve gas. Confronted by new evidence in 1996 and 1997, it acknowledged that up to 100,000 troops might have been in the path of the plume and exposed to low-level doses that produced no immediate effect. In 2002, it released a report saying the exposures had been too low to have caused a long-term adverse effect on health.
Now, the government is straining to handle the health and rehabilitation needs of soldiers returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lawmakers say they are concerned that veterans facilities will soon need to provide brain scans and treatment to soldiers from the 1991 war who learn of the new research.
On May 2, after learning about the research, Senators Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, wrote the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments, asking about their plans for outreach and expanded benefits for exposed troops.
The new research, the senators wrote, finally provides “comfort to the thousands of gulf war veterans who have fought for answers and now know that there is a ‘significant association’ between gulf war illnesses and nerve agent exposure in Khamisiyah, Iraq, in 1991.”
The Pentagon has not decided whether to inform veterans about the possibility of a link between exposure and brain damage.
Dr. Michael E. Kilpatrick, deputy director of the Force Health Protection and Readiness Initiative at the Defense Department, said that while Dr. White’s study represented an important finding, he did not believe that his department would send letters to potentially exposed veterans alerting them of it.
The impact of the study was limited, Dr. Kilpatrick said, because it did not establish a direct causal connection between sarin exposure and gulf war illnesses, and it depended on Defense Department data that was at best an estimate and at worst a guesstimate of exposure levels by troops.
“But I’m sure we will be talking with members of Congress about it in deciding how to go forward,” said Dr. Kilpatrick, who has handled much of the department’s work on Khamisiyah and troop health issues.
In 2005, the Pentagon notified about 100,000 gulf war veterans who had been exposed that a study showed a link between brain cancer and gas exposure. Ms. Murray said the Pentagon needed to send similar letters about the new research, expressing concern that many veterans might not know that something might be wrong with them.
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Woof All:
An article in today's NY Times about a solar flashlight caught my attention and I posted it on the SC&E forum. While checking out this related website http://bogolight.com/ I saw it mentioned that the company who sells these flashlights has a "buy on give one" program for designated worthy people e.g. poor people in Africa and our troops in Iraq/Afghanistan.
Apparently the light will run for 5 hours on a single day's charge and is supposed to last over 20 years.
TAC,
CD
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Washington Post
June 12, 2007
Pg. 1
Amid The Chaos Of War, Gifts Of Music
Thanks to Couple's Efforts, Troops in Iraq Get Instruments
By Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writer
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. -- The e-mail from Iraq started this way:
"So, a friend in my battalion received a Fender Stratocaster from you guys. It was amazing! . . . It's been about 6 months since I have played and it was so awesome playing the guitar my friend got. He told me about you guys, so I thought I would see if maybe I can get my own guitar."
And that is how Sgt. Jason Low received an acoustic guitar from Steve Baker, a Vietnam veteran of modest means and powerful purpose. Baker and his wife, Barb, run Fergus Music, a shop here in a rural patch of Minnesota not far from the North Dakota line. Together, they have shipped more than 300 guitars, mandolins, harmonicas, drums and wind instruments to Iraq to ease the strain of the soldiering life.
Fifty more will soon be on the way, thanks to $800 raised at an Elks club spaghetti dinner and $1,500 chipped in by two local businesses. In response, the Bakers receive notes such as this one, sent April 17 by Luis Rivera:
"Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I have something to look forward to. Thank you very much."
Steve Baker served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. Wiry and mustachioed at 62, and tending toward T-shirts and jeans, he moves between the music shop and the crowded back room where he keeps guitar-ready cardboard boxes and his computer, which seems constantly abuzz with e-mails from Iraq.
"This started as a fluke," Baker said.
In 2004, his stepson, a soldier in Iraq, requested a guitar, so he sent one. The stepson's friend wanted one, so he dispatched another. Pretty soon, the requests were coming faster than the newly christened Operation Happy Note could respond. The waiting list is now more than 150 names long.
The store does not generate enough income to do all the things the Bakers would like to do, but they manage. Steve Baker, who says he previously owned a music store before losing it in a divorce, had been repairing commercial refrigerators before he bought Fergus Music in 2003.
"I didn't realize how much of a going concern this wasn't," he says now. And that was before Happy Note.
"When you do something like this, you're not making money, you're losing it," Baker said of the volunteer project. He added, "I don't care."
The operation to send free instruments has benefited from the generosity of others, such as a woman in Elbow Lake who printed posters, no charge. Then there was the lucky moment when Barb Baker spotted a garage door company giving away bubble wrap. She filled their Jeep with it. In March 2005, the Bakers held their first fundraiser, and have brought in about $13,000 since.
The Bakers have boxed up violins, clarinets, bongos, harmonicas and stringed instruments, along with picks, extra strings and teaching guides created by Steve, who gives lessons in Fergus Falls and has a weekly band gig. When someone asked for cymbals for a military chapel, he took an $800 pair from the shop's wall and packed them up.
A soldier wrote to say that his wife wanted to buy him a Bach Stradivarius trumpet as an anniversary present. The Bakers found one and shipped it off. The acoustic guitars come from the factory, six to a box, for $31 apiece. The Bakers repack them in individual cartons. Postage is $20.80 and travel time is seven to 15 days. Attempts to find a political sponsor to lobby for free postage have so far failed.
"If we didn't have so much postage," Steve Baker said, "we could send more instruments."
As for who receives them, all he knows is that they're American fighting men and women: "I don't care where they're from. They're wearing the uniform. They're protecting us."
Baker's passion for the project has its roots in his experience in the Vietnam War and the years that followed.
"When I was in, nobody cared. I mean, Vietnam, my God," he said, recalling how some Americans swore at troops. "All I got was hooting and hollering, and I remember that to this day. There's no way I'm going to allow that to happen to these kids."
Happy Note is hardly the sole provider of musical instruments. Army Sgt. 1st Class Charles Covey, who asked the Bakers for help, explained in an e-mail that budget constraints have made it necessary for his 25th Infantry Division unit to appeal to private organizations for donations to support base recreation centers.
Between Baghdad and Tikrit, Covey said in response to e-mailed questions, soldiers have received about 100 acoustic guitars, "along with a couple of electric guitars, a bass and an old drum set. They were donated by Fender and the Charlie Daniels Band. (He is a big supporter of the Troops.)" Recent requests range from mandolins to a piano.
Camp Speicher, a military base north of Baghdad, holds informal jam sessions on Wednesdays and Fridays, Covey said, and the division band performs. He reported an increasing desire for electric guitars and keyboards, bass guitars and fiddles, and large amplifiers.
Alas, "these instruments are neither cheap nor easy to store," Covey wrote.
Robert Thierfelder filled one of the more unusual requests relayed to the Bakers. He sent to Iraq three practice chanters, similar to recorders, that bagpipers use to perfect their craft, along with instruction CDs and books. Thierfelder, who runs a bagpipe company, said, "It's the least I can do."
Army Spec. Nathan J.J. Hoskins sent word to the Bakers that two guitars had reached the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade at Camp Taji and were gratefully received. He told the Bakers they were doing "an awesome job. You bring joy to many troops that otherwise may be down in the dumps."
One glad recipient was Spec. Mark Gordon, who could hardly believe that a stranger thousands of miles away would send him a gleaming guitar just because he had asked. "Yet here I sit with mine," he wrote in an e-mail from Baghdad. To relieve stress, he said, he had played every day before he deployed -- so often that he felt it had become a way of life. But when he mobilized, carrying a guitar was out of the question.
After learning of Happy Note from an officer in his unit, he e-mailed the Bakers and quickly received an affirmative reply. He had to read it twice before it sank in. When the guitar arrived in a 3-foot-by-2-foot box, he considered it "satisfying and overwhelming that the kindness of the world has not diminished and people still care about us over here."
Now that he has the guitar, Gordon wrote, friends and battle buddies cram into his room to listen and play.
"The uplifting rhythm of all jazz and blues riffs calm my soul and warm my heart," he said. "It only takes one song to feel like I'm at home."
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Woof to my fellow fathers who now protect us in faraway and dangerous places:
I want to thank you for the wonderful Father's Day that I had here at home and to let you know that you are remembered, honored and appreciated.
Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny
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A Wary Veteran Patrols the Daunting Home Front
NY Times
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
Published: June 18, 2007
“I was kicking down doors, driving Humvees,” is the terse way Rob Timmins summarizes a year in Iraq. His description of his new job — roaming the American home front trying to get Americans to care about other returning soldiers — is more complicated. “The Support Our Troops magnets on people’s cars will eventually come off, and 5, 10 years from now, who will remember the veterans?” asks the 25-year-old Mr. Timmins, outspoken as the Staten Island bartender he used to be.
As outreach director for a nascent veterans group, Mr. Timmins engages the casualty wards at veterans hospitals, addresses public hearings and lobbies Congress, all the while sensing the insufficient traction of his cause. “We live in an MTV-“American Idol” culture where you can change the channel and not have to be engaged in this war,” he says.
There’s only fitful attention to the resettlement problems of more than one million men and women who have been cycling home all too anonymously from two war fronts, wounded and otherwise damaged and not making much noise yet.
Their troubles range from the mushrooming brain traumas from roadside explosions to outdated benefits pegged to the costs and cares of World War II. The veterans’ hospital scandal that uncovered a legion of outpatients foundering in a sea of bureaucracy gave little comfort to Mr. Timmins’s organization, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Sure, the headlines prodded a bit of public attention, he says, but they only hinted at costly problems that will haunt the nation and its casualties long after the war and the Bush administration are finished.
More than 26,000 returning fighters are dealing with war wounds, 45,000 with post-traumatic stress disorder. The government’s backlog of benefit claims reaches to the hundreds of thousands, with the data transition from soldier to veteran status a computer disaster between the Pentagon and Veterans Administration.
Mr. Timmins tries to make the public grasp that troops are being returned to second and third combat tours with untreated mental disorders. At home, there’s homelessness on the rise for veterans who also discover that the G.I. Bill can’t cover the cost of public college. Their unemployment rate is three times the national average. The old veterans’ movie, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” is ready for a grim remake.
And day after day Mr. Timmins has to grind his teeth at how swiftly, how vapidly the occasional news of troubled veterans is bumped aside by a deluge of bulletins about Paris Hilton or some other this-just-in frippery. “It’s staggering, sickening,” he says. “There are days I scream at the television — lives are being taken, families left in heartbreak.”
He half apologizes for being so properly obsessed. He muses that “compassion fatigue” is one of the risks of paying attention to veterans of a failed war now longer and far less glorious than World War II. A once pro-war public would sooner forget about it. “The point is we got to galvanize this generation of veterans now, and not several years from now,” he reminds himself. “Other national themes and issues will quickly follow this war — health care, whatever — and the vets better have a voice in the public dialogue.”
But new veterans typically want to get deeply lost again in civilian life, not organize and beg for their rights. The three-year-old nonprofit group employing Mr. Timmins is one of the stronger veteran groups, and it has signed up 3,200 actual veterans as opposed to the 70,000 donors and other supporters looking for ways to help.
“In this war, you don’t really engage a single enemy, so everybody becomes the enemy,” Mr. Timmins explains, speculating that a warier veteran is returning, branded with the dark battlefield anomie of Iraq. “You have a generation of vets coming home from a fight where everybody was a threat. The mental health challenge is going to be tremendous.”
As he works the home front, the Support Our Troops bumper stickers eat at Mr. Timmins. He concludes lip service is better than nothing, but fantasizes asking bumper-sticker patriots exactly how they support the troops. “I figure they’d fumble, without an answer,” he says. Then again, he hardly looks forward to the day the stickers fade entirely from sight.
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I just went through 40 hours of "Crisis Intervention Training" and in the simulations we went through included a vet with PTSD and TBI. The USG hasn't done enough for the veterans of the GWOT. Serious money needs to be put into rebuilding the VA.
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Couldn't agree more.
What's TBI?
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Traumatic Brain Injury. Most often happening from IEDs. The concussive force causes injury even if there is no externally visible trauma.
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Disabled soldier feels abandoned by Army
Ordeal crushed his body, then his spirit
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, July 22, 2007
Nancy Montgomery / S&S
Sgt. Archie Hennessey, crushed by a piece of rebar he was ordered to lift during an Army Special Forces selection course in September and now being medically separated from the Army, leans against a pillar for support in an unguarded moment as his daughter, Summer, plays hide-and-seek.
Nancy Montgomery / S&S
Sgt. Archie Hennessey, with his daughter, Summer, says he feels betrayed that the Army classified him as only 10 percent disabled.
Related story: Veterans, advocates: Army shortchanges on disabilities
HEIDELBERG, Germany – If you’re a soldier reporting to Special Forces Assessment and Selection, “You should be at 100 percent physical ability with zero percent stress level,” the Army says.
Sgt. Archie Hennessey was.
He had trained for months before going on temporary duty from the Heidelberg Military Intelligence Detachment, 2nd MI Battalion, 66th MI Group, to the monthlong selection program at Fort Bragg, N.C., in September and was ready for the challenge.
“I could put 70 pounds on my back and run for 20 miles,” he said. “I could pick up [my daughter] with one arm and my wife with the other.”
But a week or so into the course, an accident changed everything.
Hennessey and other soldiers were ordered to hoist thousands of pounds of rebar from a construction site onto their shoulders and clear it away.
“Finally, we get it lifted up,” Hennessey recalled. “I was the third guy on it. The first guy tripped. I tried to hold it up, and it sort of crushed me.”
Hennessey stayed at Fort Bragg four more days.
“At that point, I needed help getting up. I didn’t have control of my bladder,” he said.
As bad as that sounds, it was just the beginning of a health decline that’s changed Hennessey’s body, his sense of himself and his future.
Hennessey, 34, not only won’t become a Special Forces medic as he had planned, but he’s also soon to become a civilian with what he says is chronic back pain and disability. He’s made a dozen trips to the emergency room in past months, needs a cane to get around and takes handfuls of painkillers daily.
“Sometimes I can walk, but sometimes I can’t get out of bed,” Hennessey said. “My leg will just give out. The pain gets to me. It does.”
Worst of all, he said, is what he views as the Army’s abandonment of him: a classification that he’s just 10 percent disabled, entitling him to a medical discharge and severance pay of about $10,000.
“I guess I’m just dumbfounded,” he said. “ ‘Here’s 10 percent. Get out of the Army.’ ”
Hennessey’s medical records say he suffers from “lumbar neuritis,” or inflamed nerve tissues in the low back as a result of the injury that he says is debilitating.
But an Army Physical Evaluation Board in Washington, D.C., this month decided that while he was unfit for duty because of the injury and should be discharged, his disability rating was 10 percent. That meant he would receive severance pay calculated on his base pay and three years’ active-duty service.
Hennessey said an official told him, “ ‘You’ve only invested three years in the Army. What do you expect them to do?’ ”
“I said, ‘I expect them to do what’s right.’ I said, ‘What about me not being able to walk sometimes, not being able to work?’ ”
His commander, Capt. Darren A. Spaulding, wrote in a letter to the Physical Evaluation Board that, prior to the injury, “Sgt. Hennessey’s performance was superb. But now, Sgt. Hennessey experiences continuous pain during the day.”
If Hennessey had been classified as 30 percent disabled, he’d have received much more compensation. Thirty percent is the threshold for troops with less than 20 years of service to receive retirement disability pay and the other military benefits that come with it.
“If you receive 30 percent or higher, you get a disability check for the rest of your life,” said Maj. Orlando Rummans, patient administration chief for the Europe Regional Medical Command, Command Surgeon.
Hennessey said the most important thing for him would have been health-care benefits for him and his family.
“I feel like I’ve done every single thing that’s been asked of me. You expect them to take care of you,” Hennessey said. “But then it turns out, it’s a business.”
Hennessey is appealing his rating at a formal Physical Evaluation Board in Washington on July 30.
http://stripes.com/article.asp?secti...&article=47551
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The NYTimes takes the tone that one would expect. Still, the issue is important and so I post the article.
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WASHINGTON, July 25 — A presidential panel on military and veterans health care released a report Wednesday concluding that the system was insufficient for the demands of two modern wars and called for improvements, including far-reaching changes in the way the government determines the disability status and benefits of injured soldiers and veterans.
Commission’s Web SiteThe bipartisan commission made 35 recommendations that included expanded and improved treatment of traumatic brain injuries and the type of post-traumatic stress disorders that overwhelmed public mental health facilities during the Vietnam era but remain stigmatized to this day.
President Bush told reporters at the White House late Wednesday that he had directed Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and Jim Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs, “to take them seriously, and to implement them, so that we can say with certainty that any soldier who has been hurt will get the best possible care and treatment that this government can offer.”
The commission said fully carrying out its recommendations would cost $500 million a year for the time being, and $1 billion annually years from now as the current crop of fresh veterans and active military members ages and new personnel is in place.
The report was spurred by a series of embarrassing news reports about the substandard treatment returning soldiers received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which for years had been held up by politicians, including the president, as providing unparalleled care to American troops.
Mr. Bush named the nine-member President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors in March, with Bob Dole, the former Republican Senate leader, and Donna E. Shalala, the former Clinton administration health and human services secretary, as its leaders.
The commission’s report went beyond just the problems at Walter Reed. It proposed fixes for longstanding concerns about disparities in treatment and benefits at Department of Defense facilities, for active-duty military personnel and the Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, which treat the retired. It also recommended cutting the red tape that frustrates military families.
“This is a major overhaul and a simplification and a rationalization of the disability system in this country for our veterans,” Ms. Shalala told reporters Wednesday.
The report also focused on treatment, calling for more aggressive attention to potential brain trauma caused by roadside bombs.
Even as it called for change, the report avoided harsh assessment of the administration’s handling of the military and veterans health care systems. Rather, it portrayed many of the problems it was seeking to fix as resulting from advances in modern medicine that have allowed soldiers to survive injuries that would have killed them in previous wars.
“While numerous aspects of U.S. medical care are excellent, problems in coordination and continuity of care are common,” the report said. “Our overall health system is oriented to acute care, not long-term rehabilitation.”
And, it acknowledged, “Many of the concerns already are being addressed by Congress and in the two departments.”
Indeed, the panel’s recommendations came on the same day the Senate approved several related measures. The chamber approved a 3.5 percent pay raise for military personnel and the creation of programs to improve the oversight of injured service members as they move through the system, and to improve the treatment of brain injuries and stress disorders.
The most far-reaching of the commission’s recommendations involve restructuring the Defense Department’s disability and compensation system, which has provoked complaints from many military personnel. Currently, injured service members go through an elaborate process to assess whether their conditions are serious enough to prevent them from returning to duty.
If they are unfit, Defense Department doctors assign patients a rating that determines what level of benefits they receive.
After retiring, a service member can choose whether to receive benefits from Veterans Affairs or the Defense Department, evaluating which package is better — a choice that would be eliminated under the new recommendations.
When the commission met in April, Col. Allan Glass of the Army talked about the case of a sergeant with 18 years of active duty to illustrate the disparity in disability ratings.
Colonel Glass said the sergeant was found to have stomach cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes and underwent surgery at Walter Reed. The colonel said the Army’s physical evaluation board said the soldier was unfit for service but gave him a disability rating of zero percent. The Army reopened the case at the behest of the soldier’s senator and changed his rating to 4o percent. Yet when Colonel Glass spoke in April, he said the soldier had still not received a final disability rating from Veterans Affairs.
The commission report on Wednesday called for a change in the system that would leave the Defense Department responsible for determining if a service member is fit for duty, but transfer the responsibility for determining disability ratings and compensation to the V.A.
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Ms. Shalala said the shift could provide savings by reducing the bureaucracy, though she said the savings had not been calculated, and were not accounted for in the plan’s overall price. And carrying out that recommendation, the report acknowledged, would require Congress to pass legislation.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Text: The Commission’s Report (Microsoft Word)
Commission’s Web SiteThe commission also recommended creating a “recovery plan” for seriously injured military personnel and assigning one coordinator for each patient and their family to help them navigate the process of recovering and returning to duty or retiring from active service.
Patients are now assigned case managers, but the commission said it found that patients “typically have several case managers, each concerned with a different component of their care.”
In addition, the report said, patients complained that some managers “did not understand” how to treat people with traumatic brain injuries, a condition that can affect soldiers injured in roadside bomb attacks.
When 35,000 apparently healthy returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan were screened, 10 to 20 percent “had apparently experienced a mild T.B.I. during deployment,” the report noted, using the military abbreviation for traumatic brain injury.
Soldiers and their families complained in the wake of the Walter Reed revelations — first disclosed in The Washington Post — about delays in receiving benefits and treatment because of delays in sharing data between the Defense Department and the V.A.
Democrats noted that the administration had not embraced previous reports and their recommendations, including the recent Iraq Study Group report and those of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But Mr. Bush has spent his presidency pledging support for the troops, and reports of problems in their care has exposed political and policy vulnerabilities that the Democrats have seized upon.
After a brief run Wednesday on the White House South Lawn with two veterans who were using prostheses, Mr. Bush said: “The spirit of that report is, any time we have somebody hurt, they deserve the best possible care, and their family needs strong support. We’ve provided that in many cases, but to the extent we haven’t, we’re going to adjust.”
(Aides said the jog, with one veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan and one who lost a leg in Iraq, had been scheduled earlier, independent of the report’s release.)
Asked if she thought Mr. Bush would follow through on his pledge, Ms. Shalala said, “Senator Dole and I are going to keep an eye on him.”
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Is anyone familiar with this group? http://www.woundedwarriors.org/ Do they make effective use of the monies the receive? Any other recommended groups?
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WSJ
Will You Answer the Call?
By BOB OKUN
August 28, 2007; Page A13
Stop what you're doing and simply listen for a moment so you may hear a conversation that is going on across America. It is not about who will be the next president, but about why average citizens aren't more fully engaged in the war on terror.
Why haven't we all been asked by our leaders to give more of ourselves as in previous wars? And most importantly, what can and should we all do about the national disconnect between citizen and soldier?
In part, most of us have gone on with our lives with minimal interruption because we are fighting an intensive, protracted two-front war with an all-volunteer force. Only a relatively small slice of American society, myself included, has any real connection to the brave men and women in uniform protecting our freedoms every day. Fewer still have any idea what their families are going through as they wait for their service members to come home.
We as citizens have seemed content that we've contributed to a care package or applauded someone in uniform. But with so little asked of us in terms of personal commitment, it is our responsibility, our obligation, to rally around those whose loved ones sacrifice their time, their safety and even their lives for our country.
Two years ago, my daughters opened my eyes to this national disconnect between average citizens and soldiers, and to how we may repay the burden military families assumed on our behalf. They had sent care packages to the troops overseas through church and Girl Scouts, but they wanted to do more. Then a classmate's father returned from Iraq with severe injuries. The girls wanted a way to show support for their classmate's family, and for all military families.
What started as a kitchen-table idea evolved into ThanksUSA, a national nonprofit dedicated to providing post-secondary school scholarships to the children and spouses of those serving on active duty, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 1,000 military family members in all 50 states and D.C. have already received vocational and college scholarships, and another round will be awarded this year. Hundreds of thousands of other military families need and deserve a variety of support from community members, civic leaders, corporate leaders and all Americans as they set out to reclaim and reassemble their lives in the coming years.
Since the war began, there have been some shining examples, "best practices" in corporate-speak, of businesses supporting the troops and their families.
Home Depot, CVS and Dell have reached out to hire military spouses. Freddie Mac, purchaser of residential mortgages, has helped injured soldiers and their families to manage their finances upon re-entry to civilian life. Entrepreneurs such as Dan Caulfield (a veteran) recently created Hire a Hero, using the Internet to help returning service members connect with eager businesses seeking skilled workers.
Other service organizations are involved, including Fisher House, which provides housing near hospitals for families of wounded veterans, and information clearinghouses for military families such as America Supports You, as well as the modern USO, all doing their part daily to help military personnel.
Our family just completed a 7,000-mile cross country road trip in an overcrowded SUV this month, visiting military bases and military families and touring historical sites that define America's greatness. We can anecdotally report that more and more people recognize the national disconnect between average citizen and soldier, and are beginning to take action, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community to help military families whose loved ones are abroad.
Those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 answered their country's call to duty with no questions or hesitation. When they and their families need your support in the coming years, will you answer the call?
Mr. Okun is president and CEO of ThanksUSA.
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Sent to me by a friend.
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Baghdad, IRQ
Clear, 109°
· Tuesday
121° / 95°
· Wednesday
120° / 90°
· Thursday
115° / 88°
· Friday, Saturday, Sunday
114° / 87°
According to the weather reports, it is my understanding that it is 115 degrees in Iraq right now - and the low will be 90! Our troops need our prayers for strength, endurance, and safety. If it be God's will, give these men and women the strength they need to prevail.
I am sorry but I am not breaking this one.....Let us pray.
Prayer chain for our Military...please don't break it... Please send this on after a short prayer.
Pray for our soldiers...
Prayer
"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands.
Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.
I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen."
Prayer Request: When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our troops around the world.
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The subject of this article is exactly the sort of thing where the NY Times often becomes the NY Slimes so caveat lector.
That said, I post it here precisely because it leaves me utterly flabbergasted. Aren't we supposed to be killing enemy combatants?!? Why on earth are these men on trial?! :x :x :x
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Hearing in Killing of Afghan Puts Army War Effort on Trial
By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER
Published: September 20, 2007
FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 19 — At the close of a two-day hearing on charges that Special Forces soldiers murdered an Afghan man near his home last October, it is increasingly evident that the Army is also examining itself and how it is fighting the war in Afghanistan.
A Special Forces colonel presiding over the hearing must determine whether sufficient evidence exists to recommend courts-martial for the two soldiers accused of killing the man, Nawab Buntangyar, who had been identified as an “enemy combatant,” while he walked unarmed outside his home near the Pakistan border.
But the focus of the hearing frequently shifted from the soldiers’ actions and toward the Army’s decision to bring charges against them. It also shifted to the effect on the Afghan people of Special Forces soldiers being allowed to kill some Afghan fighters more or less on sight.
From the beginning of the proceeding, Col. Kevin A. Christie, the presiding officer, seemed pressed to figure out why a military lawyer pursued murder charges after an Army investigation cleared the two soldiers of wrongdoing when they killed Mr. Buntangyar, who as a designated enemy combatant was subject to attack under the Special Forces’ classified rules of engagement.
In questions to several witnesses, Colonel Christie indicated that the Army was aware of the risks of trying to win the tactical battle in Afghanistan by aggressively pursuing the enemy in an unconventional war, as balanced against the potential expense of losing the larger strategic battle for the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians.
The decision by the general in charge of Special Forces to allow limited public access to the hearing was itself a sign of the Army’s desire to be seen as reflective and open to scrutiny, specialists in military justice said.
In an exchange that reflected the underlying issues of concern to the Special Forces command here, Colonel Christie asked Maj. Matthew McHale, the company commander in charge of the assault team that included the two accused soldiers, about the repercussions of how his men had killed Mr. Buntangyar.
Mr. Buntangyar was killed on Oct. 13, 2006, when Master Sgt. Troy Anderson, acting on orders from Capt. Dave Staffel, shot him in the face from a distance of about 100 feet. The order to shoot came after Afghan Border Police officers had surrounded Mr. Buntangyar’s home, exchanged a friendly greeting with him and asked him twice to confirm his identity. Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson were charged with premeditated murder in June, two months after an Army investigation determined Mr. Buntangyar’s “enemy combatant” status justified killing him.
“Would you tell your teams to do things that had limited tactical effects if they had potential strategic negative effects?” Colonel Christie asked Major McHale.
The major said assault teams continually weigh the two goals during missions.
The colonel asked if he thought the “strategic effect” of shooting a man whom the Afghan police had essentially lured out of his home “adds to the credibility of the police,” an institution that the American military is desperate to make independent and trustworthy in the eyes of local residents.
Major McHale conceded that the killing could undermine the public perception of the police. But, he added, they were unreliable and often sloppy. At the home, the police had to gesture to communicate with Special Forces soldiers because the police had accidentally locked their radios and car keys in their vehicles.
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I don't get it-- why are these men being prosecuted? AND WHY WAS THIS SECRET PROGRAM BEING DISCUSSED IN OPEN COURT AND PRINTED IN THE WASHINGTON POST?
New York Times
September 24, 2007
Soldiers Describe Baiting of Insurgents
By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER
Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, planting fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks up them up, according to testimony presented in a military court.
The existence of the classified “baiting program,” as it has come to be known, was disclosed as part of defense lawyers’ efforts to respond to murder charges the Army pressed this summer against three members of a Ranger sniper team. Each soldier is accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi in three separate incidents between April and June near Iskandariya.
In sworn statements, soldiers testifying for the defense have said the sniper team was employing a baiting program developed by the Pentagon’s Asymmetrical Warfare Group, which met with and gave equipment to Ranger sniper teams in Iraq in January.
The Washington Post first described the baiting program in an article Monday.
An Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, said on Monday that the Army does not discuss specific methods for “targeting enemy combatants” publicly, and that no classified program authorizes the use of “drop weapons” to make a killing appear justified.
The court martial of one of the accused soldiers, Spec. Jorge Sandoval Jr., is scheduled to begin in Baghdad on Wednesday. The two other soldiers facing premeditated murder charges are Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley, the sniper team squad leader, and Sgt. Evan Vela. All three are part of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.
None of the three soldiers deny that they killed the three Iraqis they are charged with murdering. Through their lawyers and in court documents, the soldiers argue that the killings were legal and authorized by their superiors. A transcript of the hearing was provided by a member of an accused soldier’s family.
Snipers are among the most specialized of soldiers, using camouflage clothing and makeup to infiltrate enemy locations and high-powered rifles and scopes to stalk and kill enemy fighters. The three snipers accused of murder had for months ventured into some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, said lawyers for Sgt. Vela.
“Snipers are special people who are trained to shoot in a detached fashion, not to see their targets as human beings,” said James D. Culp, one of Sgt. Vela’s lawyers. “Snipers have split-seconds to take shots, and he had a split second to decide whether to shoot.”
After visiting the sniper unit in Iraq, members of the Asymmetrical Warfare Group gave soldiers ammunition boxes containing so-called “drop items” like bullets, plastic explosives and bomb detonation chords to use to target Iraqis involved in insurgent activity, according to Capt. Matthew P. Didier, a sniper platoon leader who gave sworn testimony in the accused soldiers’ court hearings.
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This is where "lawfare" is leading us. :roll:
I'm sure our "legal model advocates" here would require that any alleged insurgent our military might want to engage would be required to be served with a legal notice for a hearing to determine if the person is indeed a combatant and can be shot as such on the field of battle. This of course would require an independant judiciary, legal representation and translators to ensure due process.
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Warfront with Jihadistan: Berets and Blackwater
In last week’s witch hunt, “unbiased journalism” attempted to convict two from among America’s most elite fighting force, despite conclusive evidence that both were blameless. In Afghanistan last October, under the direction of Army Special Forces Capt. Dave Staffel, Master Sgt. Troy Anderson killed insurgent leader Nawab Buntangyar with a single, 100-yard sniper shot, thus “rehabilitating” the architect of countless suicide and roadside bombings. Incredibly, rather than being awarded medals for ridding planet Earth of this vermin, these two Green Berets were charged with premeditated murder, on the basis that Buntangyar was unarmed when he was shot. Apparently, SOCOM must now deploy lawyers when it sends out its finest, along with primers on Miranda warnings.
Two official Army investigations each concluded that Staffel’s seven-man team had fully complied with U.S. rules of engagement. Further, the reports noted that having been classified as an enemy combatant, Buntangyar was “fair game” as a target, armed or not. Finally, of considerable weight was the nontrivial issue that Buntangyar happened to showcase on the Special Forces’ “Top Ten” list of individuals to be killed or captured.
Evidently more convinced by media trials than he was by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, however, the recently-pinned-on Army three-star charged with Special Forces oversight in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney, convened yet another hearing to weigh evidence against the two soldiers. As the attorney for Capt. Staffel noted, Kearney’s charges carried an air of “military politics” about them. Fortunately, the American justice system trumped media jurists in this case, but only barely. Although the two soldiers were exonerated earlier this week, neither Lt. Gen. Kearney nor any within media circles offered so much as an oops-we-goofed comment to clear the soldiers’ good names.
In this week’s witch hunt, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Left Coast) leads a House investigation into Blackwater, a private security firm providing protection for State Department members in Iraq and Afghanistan. At issue is the culpability of Blackwater agents on 16 September, when at least 14 Iraqis were killed following a shootout occurring while the agents were protecting U.S. Embassy staff in a Baghdad convoy. Though Rep. Waxman had agreed not to probe for specific information because of ongoing FBI investigations, his promise apparently didn’t weigh too heavily on his conscience, as he pressed on, unhindered, with his inquisition, er, investigation. We note that Rep. Waxman has a history of hounding Blackwater for everything from war-profiteering to 2004’s ambush at Fallujah (ironically, Waxman cites the cause as—wait for it—Blackwater’s cost-cutting!), so we’re not surprised by this latest move.
We should also note that we’re not asserting that Blackwater is without fault in this incident (U.S. military reports say they fired without provocation), however, like last week’s Green Beret incident, both the media, as well as key individuals in power, have made such a determination for themselves—and apparently for everyone else, if they can get away with it—before all the evidence is in and before ongoing investigations are complete
Patriot Post
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Caveat lector, its the NY Times. That said, as Commander in Chief, the ultimate responsibility on this matter does fall to the President.
Editorial
Published: October 6, 2007
It’s more painfully clear that wounded soldiers who seek disability care and benefits face bureaucratic chaos worthy of an infernal ring from Dante. Seven months after news accounts detailed the appalling neglect of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, Congressional investigators have found promised repairs already lagging at the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs.
It still takes almost half a year for the average veteran’s claim for disability benefits to be decided in a tortuous process that can involve four separate hearings. The promised pilot program to make a single efficient system out of dueling military and veterans bureaucracies — the knotty heart of a mammoth backlog running into hundreds of thousand of cases — should have begun last month. Now the promise is slipping into next year. At the same time, the Army’s plan for creating special “warrior transition units” to deliver more personalized care at 32 national centers is bedeviled by staff shortages that mean close to half of the eligible troops are unable to get the service.
A dozen Congressional and executive agencies and blue-ribbon commissions are investigating. Unfortunately, there has been no comparable surge of creativity or commitment from the White House.
Worthy remedies are being proposed. The latest is from a Congressionally created commission that is urging wholesale changes in the veterans’ benefit system, which hasn’t been modernized since 1945. Chief among its recommendations is that the signature disabilities of the current war — severe brain damage and the post traumatic stress syndrome already afflicting 45,000 veterans — be accorded top priority for improvement. The commission is also recommending an immediate increase of up to 25 percent in benefits — above economic disability payments — for the lost quality of life that scarred veterans suffer.
With the number of wounded mounting daily, the White House needs to fix these problems. For many veterans, their disabilities will endure their remaining lifetimes, outlasting the politicians who now proclaim them heroes while shortchanging them in the care and support they desperately need.
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Second post of the morning. Here the NY Slimes' reporter's disappointment is almost palpable.
The Erosion of a Murder Case Against Marines in the Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: October 6, 2007
BAGHDAD, Oct. 5 — Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a generation ago.
But on Thursday, a senior military investigator recommended dropping murder charges against the ranking enlisted marine accused in the 2005 killings, just as he had done earlier in the cases of two other marines charged in the case. The recommendation may well have ended prosecutors’ chances of winning any murder convictions in the killings of the apparently unarmed men, women and children.
In the recent case, against Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the investigator recommended that he be charged with negligent homicide if the case moved ahead to court-martial. In the other two cases, the investigator recommended dropping all charges.
Experts in military justice say the Haditha prosecutions were compromised by several factors having to do with the quality of the evidence, including a delayed investigation and the decision to conduct hearings in the United States, far from the scene of the killings and possible Iraqi witnesses.
The cases also reflect the particular views of Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, who presided over the hearings and concluded that all three cases lacked sufficient evidence. He made clear in his recommendations to the commander who ultimately decides the cases that he felt that the killings should be considered in context — that of a war zone where the enemy ruthlessly employed civilians as cover.
Perhaps nothing handicapped military prosecutors more than the delay in investigating the killings, on Nov. 19, 2005, because battalion officers initially decided the case did not require an inquiry. The attack began after a roadside bombing of the marines’ convoy killed a comrade; led by Sergeant Wuterich, a group of marines then killed 24 people over several hours. Nineteen of the 24 were killed in their homes.
By the time the Marine Corps announced murder charges against the infantrymen, 13 months had passed. Evidence vanished, witnesses evaporated and memories paled.
Those problems with collecting evidence were further complicated because Haditha remained a combat zone. When forensic experts traveled there last year to interview family members of those killed, heavily armed Marine infantrymen had to guard them, and even then, insurgent fire forced the investigators to abandon the scene after an hour.
Beyond that, Islamic custom dictates that families bury their dead within hours. Relatives of those killed in Haditha refused American requests to exhume the bodies for forensic analysis.
In addition, the collection of evidence was hurt by the decision to hold evidentiary hearings for the marines in the Haditha case at Camp Pendleton, Calif., rather than in Baghdad, where some other cases have been heard.
“In the Vietnam era, you often had the lawyers, the witnesses, the scene, the victims’ families — you had them right there,” said Gary D. Solis, a former Marine judge who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University Law Center. “If you happened to have a witness who had rotated back to the United States, you could call them back.”
In the end, in Colonel Ware’s view, expressed in dozens of pages of analysis and opinion in his reports on all three cases, the Haditha prosecutors failed to amass enough evidence to win a conviction.
In his latest report, in which he recommended dismissing 10 murder charges against Sergeant Wuterich and reducing seven others to negligent homicide, Colonel Ware wrote that the evidence presented to him “is simply not strong enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He made similar conclusions in his reports on the cases against two other infantrymen for whom he urged the dismissal of all charges: Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, whose murder charges were subsequently thrown out by the commanding general overseeing the case, and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, who is still waiting to hear the general’s decision. Commanders usually follow investigators’ recommendations.
“When you have an investigating officer like Ware, who says ‘don’t go there if you can’t prove,’” your case, Mr. Solis said, “we’re left with what appear to be very reduced charges.” He added: “He’s aggressive, and he seems to make his judgments without regard for anything but the law. He must know that people — civilians, primarily — are going to howl about this, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern.”
Other military law experts also noted that in his two reports on the charges against Lance Corporals Sharratt and Tatum, Colonel Ware revealed a willingness to give the men the benefit of the doubt, and to consider the impact of the prosecutions on the morale of troops still fighting in Iraq.
“It does surprise me to see that the killing of seven women and children by grenades and rifles, for the purposes of clearing structures, is being treated the way this investigating officer has treated it,” said Eugene R. Fidell, an expert in military law in Washington.
In an unusual departure from the analysis of the facts in Lance Corporal Sharratt’s case, Colonel Ware warned that putting marines on trial for murder without having the evidence to prove it could “erode public support of the Marine Corps and mission in Iraq.”
Michael F. Noone, a law professor at Catholic University and a retired Air Force lawyer, said Colonel Ware was right to assume that rulings in the Haditha cases might have an impact on the overall war effort. Last week, he noted, testimony in a Baghdad military murder trial suggested that an Army sniper, a member of one of the most highly trained infantry units, had planted evidence on the remains of a dead fighter — as insurance against second-guessing.
“That’s somebody who doesn’t trust the system,” Professor Noone said. “Do you want kids out there representing the United States who don’t think they’re going to be treated fairly?”
More Articles in International »
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Second post of the day:
This seems worthy of President Bush's intervention:
By Rhonda Erskine
MINNEAPOLIS, MN (NBC) -- When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.
1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.
"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."
Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.
Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.
"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.
That money would help him pay for his master's degree in public administration. It would help Anderson's fellow platoon leader, John Hobot, pay for a degree in law enforcement.
"I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home," Hobot said.
Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.
Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
Anderson said the soldiers he oversaw in his platoon expected that money to be here when they come home.
"I had 23 guys under my command," Anderson said. "I promised to take care of them. And I'm not going to end taking care of them when this deployment is over, and it's not over until this is solved."
The Army did not respond questions Tuesday afternoon.
Senators Klobuchar and Coleman released a joint statement saying the Army secretary, Pete Geren, is looking into this personally, and they say Geren asked a review board to expedite its review so the matter could be solved by next semester.
Minnesota National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson said the soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice."
Source Drudge
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Sorry to have to report this, but we search for Truth.
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Probe finds Army charity is hoarding millions
Military's biggest charity is stockpiling cash, rather than using it for aid
Feb. 22, 2009
FORT BLISS, Texas - As soldiers stream home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Between 2003 and 2007 — as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures — Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.
Tax-exempt and legally separate from the military, AER projects a facade of independence but really operates under close Army control. The massive nonprofit — funded predominantly by troops — allows superiors to squeeze soldiers for contributions; forces struggling soldiers to repay loans — sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and too often violates its own rules by rewarding donors, such as giving free passes from physical training, the AP found.
Founded in 1942, AER eases cash emergencies of active-duty soldiers and retirees and provides college scholarships for their families. Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals, and the like.
Army charity lent out emergency aid
Instead of giving money away, though, the Army charity lent out 91 percent of its emergency aid during the period 2003-2007. For accounting purposes, the loans, dispensed interest-free, are counted as expenses only when they are not paid back.
During that same five-year period, the smaller Navy and Air Force charities both put far more of their own resources into aid than reserves. The Air Force charity kept $24 million in reserves while dispensing $56 million in total aid, which includes grants, scholarships and loans not repaid. The Navy charity put $32 million into reserves and gave out $49 million in total aid.
AER executives defend their operation, insisting they need to keep sizable reserves to be ready for future catastrophes.
"Look at the stock market," said retired Col. Dennis Spiegel, AER's deputy director for administration. Without the large reserve, he added, "We'd be in very serious trouble."
But smaller civilian charities for service members and veterans say they are swamped by the desperate needs of recent years, with requests far outstripping ability to respond.
While independent on paper, Army Emergency Relief is housed, staffed and controlled by the U.S. Army.
That's not illegal per se. Eric Smith, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, said the agency can't offer an opinion on a particular charity's activities. But Marcus Owens, former head of IRS charity oversight, said charities like AER can legally partner closely with a government agency.
However, he said, problems sometimes arise when their missions diverge. "There's a bit of a tension when a government organization is operating closely with a charity," he said.
Some reserves are prudent
Most charity watchdogs view 1-to-3 years of reserves as prudent, with more than that considered hoarding. Yet the American Institute of Philanthropy says AER holds enough reserves to last about 12 years at its current level of aid.
Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said that AER collects money "very efficiently. What the shame is, is they're not doing more with it."
National administrators say they've tried to loosen the purse strings. The most recent yearly figures do show a tilt by AER toward increased giving.
Still, Borochoff's organization, which grades charities, gives the Army charity an "F" because of the hoarding.
The AP findings include:
*Superior officers come calling when AER loans aren't repaid on time. Soldiers can be fined or demoted for missing loan payments. They must clear their loans before transferring or leaving the service.
*Promotions can be delayed or canceled if loans are not repaid.
*Despite strict rules against coercion, the Army uses pushy tactics to extract supposedly voluntary contributions, with superiors using language like: "How much can we count on from you?"
*The Army sometimes offers rewards for contributions, though incentives are banned by program rules. It sometimes excuses contributors from physical training — another clear violation.
AER screens every request for aid, peering into the personal finances of its troops, essentially making the Army a soldier's boss and loan officer.
"If I ask a private for something ... chances are everyone's going to do it. Why? Because I'm a lieutenant," says Iraq war veteran Tom Tarantino, otherwise an AER backer. "It can almost be construed as mandatory."
Neither the Army nor Sgt. Major of the Army Kenneth Preston, an AER board member, responded to repeated requests for comment on the military's relationship with AER.
AER pays just 21 staffers, all working at its headquarters at Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va. AER's other 300 or so employees at 90 Army sites worldwide are civilians paid by the Army. Also, the Army gives AER office space for free.
AER's treasurer, Ret. Col. Andrew Cohen, acknowledged in an interview that "the Army runs the program in the field." Army officers dominate its corporate board too.
Officers must recommend soldiers for aid
Charities linked to other services operate along more traditional nonprofit lines. The Air Force Aid Society sprinkles its board with members from outside the military to foster broad views. The Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society pays 225 employees and, instead of relying on Navy personnel for other chores, deploys a corps of about 3,400 volunteers, including some from outside the military.
Army regulations say AER "is, in effect, the U.S. Army's own emergency financial assistance organization." Under Army regulations, officers must recommend whether their soldiers deserve aid. Company commanders and first sergeants can approve up to $1,000 in loans on their own say-so. Officers also are charged with making sure their troops repay AER loans.
"If you have an outstanding bill, you're warned about paying that off just to finish your tour of duty ... because it will be brought to your leadership and it will be dealt with," says Jon Nakaishi, of Tracy, Calif., an Army National Guard veteran of the Iraq war who took out a $900 AER loan to help feed his wife and children between paychecks.
In his case, he was sent home with an injury and never fully repaid his loan.
The Army also exercises its leverage in raising contributions from soldiers. It reaches out only to troops and veterans in annual campaigns organized by Army personnel.
For those on active duty, AER organizes appeals along the chain of command. Low-ranking personnel are typically solicited by a superior who knows them personally.
Spiegel, the AER administrator, said he's unaware of specific violations but added: "I spent 29 years in the Army, I know how ... first sergeants operate. Some of them do strong-arm."
Many violations uncovered
Army regulations ban base passes, training holidays, relief from guard duty, award plaques and "all other incentives or rewards" for contributions to AER. But the AP uncovered evidence of many violations.
Before leaving active duty in 2006, Philip Aubart, who then went to Reserve Officer Training Corps at Dartmouth College, admits he gave to AER partly to be excused from push-ups, sit-ups and running the next day. For those who didn't contribute the minimum monthly allotment, the calisthenics became, in effect, a punishment.
"That enticed lots and lots of guys to give," he noted. He says he gave in two annual campaigns and was allowed to skip physical training the following days.
Others spoke of prizes like pizza parties and honorary flags given to top cooperating units.
Make no mistake: AER, a normally uncontroversial fixture of Army life, has helped millions of soldiers and families. Last year alone, AER handed out about $5.5 million in emergency grants, $65 million in loans, and $12 million in scholarships. Despite the extra demands for soldiers busy fighting two wars, AER's management says it hasn't felt a need to boost giving in recent years.
But the AP encountered considerable criticism about AER's hoarding of its treasure chest.
Jack Tilley, a retired sergeant major of the Army on AER's board from 2000 to 2004, said he was surprised by AP's findings, especially during wartime.
"I think they could give more. In fact, that's why that's there," said Tilley, who co-founded another charity that helps families of Mideast war veterans, the American Freedom Foundation.
Accumulates stocks and bonds with its wealth
What does AER do with its retained wealth? Mostly, it accumulates stocks and bonds.
AER ended 2007 with a $296 million portfolio; last year's tanking market cut that to $214 million, by the estimate of its treasurer.
Sylvia Kidd, an AER board member in the 1990s, says she feels that the charity does much good work but guards its relief funds too jealously. "You hear things, and you think, "`They got all this money, and they should certainly be able to take care of this,'" she said. She now works for a smaller independent charity, the Association of the United States Army, providing emergency aid to some military families that AER won't help.
Though AER keeps a $25 million line of bank credit to respond to a world economic crisis, its board has decided to lop off a third of its scholarship money this year. "We're not happy about it," Spiegel says.
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This is where "lawfare" is leading us. :roll:
I'm sure our "legal model advocates" here would require that any alleged insurgent our military might want to engage would be required to be served with a legal notice for a hearing to determine if the person is indeed a combatant and can be shot as such on the field of battle. This of course would require an independant judiciary, legal representation and translators to ensure due process.
http://weaponsman.com/?p=34483
How Anti-Soldier Lawyers Banned a Kind of Ambush
41 Replies
(File photo of Navy Recon Doc Michael Conti firing a sniper rifle in training).
(File photo of Navy Recon Doc Michael Conti firing a sniper rifle in training).
Two men from the IED cell padded silently down the road. Abdul and Roshanullah had two 107mm rocket warheads, a cell-phone detonator, and detailed instructions, including a sketch map of their emplacement point. The rest of their cell waited for them to return.
At a point where the road crossed a filled area, the two HIG men — many Afghans changed allegiances more frequently than their shalwar kameez, but once you were Gulbuddin Hekmatayar’s man, you were always Gulbuddin’s man — slipped down the side of the fill to the mouth of the culvert. This one hadn’t been fitted with a grating yet, but even if it had, they had been prepared.
There was just enough starlight for Abdul to see Roshan’s grin. This was going to be easy! First, the blessing: “Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem,” In the Name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful…
High on a hill facing the culvert, nearly half a mile away, a sniper team leader whispered, “Send ’em.”
The wind was fortuitously towards the hill, and at the culvert, all that there was to hear was the thwack of bullet impacts. Then one of the men — Roshanullah, not grinning any more — groaned and moved.
Thwack.
All was still.
An hour before sunrise it was visibly getting light in the valley, and the five armed men who came down the road moved from cover to cover, nervously. They were breaking every tactical rule that had kept them alive this long, but their leader wanted to lay his own eyes and hands on the IED team.
They all died within the span of one and a half seconds. With five targets, both snipers, the spotters, and the team leader had all taken one. That was breaking a tactical rule too, but the difference was, the rulebreaking worked for the ISAF snipers. They recovered their 360º observation as soon as the shots were sent, also.
The team met the road clearance unit for a ride into the FOB. Intelligence collected from the dead laid bare the workings of the cell, and the telephone carried by the deceased IED cell leader allowed the Afghan NDS to identify two key HIG facilitators; one fled to Peshawar and the protection of ISI, but the other was reputed to be singing like a canary.
It was a successful operation until the Staff Judge Advocate spoke up, taking, as usual, the side of the enemy, and demanded the snipers be charged with war crimes — for shooting armed unlawful combatants carrying out combat operations!
Believe it or not, Army lawyers have defined this tactic as a “baited ambush” and have worked hard, if not to make it a “war crime,” at least to create a grey area in which it is the slightly less felonious “violation of the laws of war” and possibly a “war crime.” Lawyers, of course, love grey areas which take decisions out of the hands of decision-makers and deliver them, instead, to the captivity of cabals of, what else, lawyers.
For example, Army judge advocate LTC Chris Jenks — clearly, from his writing, the sort of SJA who joined the Army for personal gain, hostile to the guys with guns who make up the actual Army part of the Army — wrote in The Army Lawyer1 that this tactic “comes close to, if not enters, the law of war violation continuum….”2
Certainly this is an example of why it is impossible to win a war without first staking out the enemy’s fifth columnists, to wit, about 95% of SJAs, on culverts like the ones in our hypothetical, and letting the enemy have their way with them.
Jenks also doesn’t think the troops should enjoy a victory:
Members of the unit filmed the artillery strike and can be heard laughing and cheering, which presents additional challenges to a command.3
One gets the impression that his spectator sport is golf or tennis, not football or hockey. And he grew up in the age of scoreless soccer, and participation trophies.
Jenks makes a few clumsy gropes in the direction of understanding military necessity, a concept he, not surprisingly, has not picked up by osmosis merely by donning a bestowed uniform bearing an unearned rank. But he still concludes that hunting over bait is outside of the fish and game regulations of scoreless-soccer SJA war:
Ultimately, in the absence of an armistice or suspension of fire, engaging combatants attempting to recover their dead and wounded is not a per se violation of the law of war, but utilizing known—or even suspected—enemy wounded and dead as “bait” for such targeting enters the continuum and, at some point, will constitute a violation of article 15.
(The reference is to Article 15 of the First Geneva Convention of 1949). Jenks continues:
The more time that passes following the engagement, the closer the engagement is to U.S. forces, and the more control U.S. forces have over the “field of battle,” the more likely the failure to search for enemy wounded and dead becomes to violating the Geneva Convention.4
We bet we can guess what Scoreless Chris Jenks thinks about whether pirates should be held hostis humanae generis or treated with kid gloves in Article 3 courts, just based on the way he reasons himself into coming down on the side of our hypothetical decedents Abdul and Roshanullah here.
Army lawyers are entertaining, if you don’t have to operate like Combat Houdini, kicking off every patrol with their manacles and straitjacket on you.
Sources
Jenks, Chris “LTC”. The Law and Policy Implications of “Baited Ambushes” Utilizing Enemy Dead and Wounded. The Army Lawyer, June 2010. DA PAM 27-50-445. pp. 91-94.
Notes
The Army Lawyer is a monthly magazine in which the judge advocate fifth column coordinates their attacks on combat troops.
Jenks, p. 91 fn 1.
Ibid.
Jenks, p. 93.