Dawn Patrol 03/15/2010
[Greyhawk]
Welcome to the Dawn Patrol, our daily roundup of information on the War on Terror and other topics - from the MilBlogs and various sources around the world. If you're a blogger, you can join the conversation. If you link to any of these stories, add a link to the Dawn Patrol too and your trackback will be added to the list. Hat Tips to the Dawn Patrol are greatly appreciated.Refresh for updates.
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More Marjah Madness -- [The Quatto Zone - in Afghanistan]
One of the things that most disturbs me about my job is how otherwise thoughtful people somehow manage to jump off the Reason Train short of Plausible Junction, taking a sizable number of otherwise sane bloggers with them.
Case in point this week is Gareth Porter at Anti-War.com, who has somehow managed to convince himself and a bunch of people repeating his post that briefings and press accounts describing the rural community of Marjah as a "town" or "city" was somehow a misinformation campaign by the evil militarists of 40-plus nations who are committed to eroding their political support by duping the public into extending an unpopular war in the hopes of killing as many brown people as possible. Or something like that. A search for clear motives tends to muddle an otherwise pristine paranoia.
Gareth's argument is supported by an ISAF official "who asked not to be identified" confirming that Marjah is a "rural community" -- which adds to the air of a secret plot revealed. Except there's no secret. The official was me, and I didn't ask to be quoted anonymously.
The rest of my dismay is in my email to Gareth, quoted here in full...
Downrange: An Informal Report on a trip to Afghanistan with Marine Gen. James N. Mattis -- [Steven Pressfield - in Afghanistan]
Jim Mattis is a four-star Marine general. He doesn't go out of his way to be quotable; he just can't help himself. Here, from Iraq 2004, are his instructions to the Marines under his command on how to conduct themselves with the natives they will encounter.
Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
...It's February 24th and Gen. Mattis has invited me to accompany his party on a four-day burst to Afghanistan. I've never been there. I want to go. So I've flown to Norfolk from Los Angeles, where I live. We take off in the morning...
Blast From the Past -- [Rajiv Srinivasan - in Afghanistan]
I stood in the shower with my head hanging low and eyes closed. The flowing lukewarm water soothed my skin as I felt it splash upon my shaven scalp. Drops rolled down my forehead, off my nose and splattered on the plastic floor. I stood alone and relaxed, pondering the luxury of hygiene. God this feels amazing...it was a wonderful end to a rather busy day.
My meditation broke with the sound of the wooden door slamming the trailer frame. At this hour, there was no question in my mind what was coming.
"Hey LT!" Shouted SGT Lays from the entrance, "We're gettin' spun up! Big XO needs you in the TOC!"
"Ah fuck!" I cried, banging my fist on the wall..."Aright, I'm moving!"
AAR -- [Riding Shotgun with Team Zombie Killer - in Afghanistan]
After a few training cycles here we can definitely see some trends--some good, some bad. Naturally, some of these things are just plain frustrating.
The Afghans can definitely fight.
The Deep End of the Pool -- [Knights of Afghanistan - in Afghanistan]
So, a while back one of the locals comes to me and says, "Sir, we have a problem."
...The tone of his voice and his body language immediately put me on my guard, hushed whisper, glancing nervously around, etc. I thought he was going to say that someone had been stealing, or that he was convinced one of my guys was a Taliban sleeper agent. Afghans love to maneuver themselves into the good graces of Westerners by speaking ill of other Afghans.
Not in this case.
The Economics of Insurgency -- [270 Days in Afghanistan - in Afghanistan]
It should be a simple enough mission, right? Teach them how to grow wheat instead of poppies. After all, wheat is a sustainable crop, it feeds people, and it doesn't hurt anyone. The Ministry of Defense in Afghanistan has been a willing partner, publishing public service messages in the paper. The comic below shows a child walking in a field of wheat with a piece of bread next to a different field with plants that have skulls as flowers. The caption reads: Wheat is food. Poppies are poison.
Unfortunately, it isn't as simple as showing them how to farm other crops.
A true Cavalry officer -- [Mob 2009 Blog - in Afghanistan]
A while ago, I was told about this neat place where I could ride a horse here in Kabul. I went there a few weeks ago and I totally forgot to post about this (all the other problems started happening shortly after and it slipped my mind.)
Anyway, when I got there, I found that these are no "mild mannered" horses like the ones that you can ride in the US.
Excess Humvees to BAF -- [Afghanistan my Last Tour - in Afghanistan]
It has been quite awhile since our last convoy trip to BAF. The roads are in much worse shape than I remember and the potholes have spread like a bad disease...
Details -- [Sgt Danger - in Afghanistan]
As I've mentioned before, we're pretty much done running missions on the Afghan highways. For a while that meant lots of time to hang out and play. Then the Army found some things for us to do.
Man Versus Afghanistan -- [A Major's Perspective - in Afghanistan]
Great article about Afghanistan in The Atlantic: Divided by geography, cursed by corruption, stunted by poverty, staggered by a growing insurgency--Afghanistan seems beyond salvation. Is it? From Somalia and the Balkans to Iraq, the U.S. military has been embroiled in conflicts that reflect an age-old debate: Can individual agency triumph over deep-seated historical, cultural, ethnic, and economic forces? Drawing on his experiences in Iraq, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, has his own answer to that question.
Tracking New Blog -- [My View, Our Mission - in Afghanistan]
Check out the new blog on my list on right...it's called Afghan Police Development. It was just set up at the direction of Brigadier General MacDonald, the senior Police Advisor here at Eggers and my big boss on the Police side...
Friday Motivator -- [The Sniper]
(Click image for larger version)
Jambo! -- [Ramblings from a painter - in Iraq]
Just in the past few days, though, we have had something develop that's kinda cool. One of my new projects was to provide training to workers in an Iraqi governmental organization. However, it was pretty much dead due to funding limitations, two changed deadlines, and the impossibility of getting it on contract using our normal procedures...
<...>On to another topic. The USO has been bringing more music acts through here lately. Last night, several of us went to see a concert by Bad Company... They didn't do a bad job, really. The lead guitarist's amp blew up during the first song...
Maliki has shaky lead in Iraq vote count -- [LA Times]
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's slate had an early lead Saturday as partial results trickled in from the parliamentary elections last weekend...
Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya slate, an alliance of secular-minded Sunni Arabs and Shiites, has posed the biggest challenge to Maliki and is running second nationally.
Iraqi PM Remains Ahead After Partial Vote Count -- [Voice of America]
Despite the fact that under a third of the vote has been officially counted, Iraqi leaders are reportedly scrambling to negotiate to form a new government. Prime Minister Maliki will not necessarily remain in power, even if he wins a plurality of votes.
Iraq vote signals shift from hard-line leaders -- [Washington Times]
Partial results released by the Independent High Electoral Commission showed the State of Law coalition with about a 60,000-vote edge nationwide over its main moderate challenger, the secular Iraqiya coalition. The Shiite fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance was in third place.
The partial Baghdad vote was released amid utter disarray in the election commission's headquarters, where the results were flashed on big-screen TVs but yanked down moments later, only to be released yet again. It was the latest in a series of blunders marring the counting process as results have trickled out slowly.
Issue of Presidency Endangers Iraq's Tenuous Balance -- [NY Times]
...in negotiations that could last months, the presidency, a largely ceremonial post, has emerged as a growing quarrel, threatening to upset Iraq's still tenuous and ambiguous arrangements of sect, ethnicity and power.
Panic in Georgia over Russian 'invasion' report -- [Times (UK) Online]
A spoof television report that President Mikheil Saakashvili had been assassinated in a new Russian invasion of Georgia led to mass panic and furious opposition protests yesterday.
Justice, CIA clash over probe of interrogator IDs -- [Washington Times]
The CIA and Justice Department are fighting over a secret investigation into a controversial program by legal supporters of Islamist terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay that involved photographing CIA interrogators and showing the pictures to prisoners, an effort CIA officials say threatens the officers' lives.
Soldier Rocks with Bad Company
(See also "
Jambo!" from
Ramblings from a Painter, milblogger in Iraq.)
The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done: A Series of Screw-Ups and Lessons Learned -- [Andi/Spouse Buzz]
In January, on the day my husband deployed, I received a phone call informing me that we would have to move while my husband was deployed. It's a long story, and has nothing to do with orders, or the Army. Basically, the house we were renting was sold.
I had to find a house, buy a house, pack a house and move a house. Without my husband. Pronto. I knew this would be challenging of course, but I also thought it was fairly doable. Bwahahahahaha.
LZ Lambeau seen as overdue welcome home for Vietnam veterans -- [Green Bay Press-Gazette]
When Wisconsin Public Television began to interview Vietnam veterans for a documentary about the war, the film crew heard a recurring concern: Many vets felt they never had a warm welcome home.
The sentiment was repeated enough to push Wisconsin Public Television to partner with the Wisconsin Historical Society and the state Department of Veterans Affairs to launch LZ Lambeau: Welcoming Home Wisconsin's Vietnam Veterans, a weekend-long welcome home event set for May at the Packers' stadium.
Time to refresh your memories... -- [Castle Argghhh]
I first published this list of helpful websites back in December of '08. It has a permanent link to it over in the right sidebar. I see it's making the rounds again in email, and people didn't remember we had it, so it's clearly time to publish it again - with a small update, that of the Federal Government's stab at it, the National Resource Directory.
Below are web-sites that provide information on Veterans benefits and how to file/ask for them. Accordingly, there are many sites that explain how to obtain books, military/medical records, information and how to appeal a denied claim with the VA.
Please pass this information on to every Veteran you know.
Nearly 100% of this information is free and available for all veterans, the only catch is: you have to ask for it, because they won't tell you about a specific benefit unless you ask for it.
Saving Abel to Perform at the 2010 MilBlog Conference -- [Andi/milblogging.com]
Troop supporting rockers Saving Abel will be in town during the Milblog Conference and have volunteered to stop by the Friday evening Cocktail Reception for a brief, acoustic performance...
We've had no less than three bands offer to perform at The MilBlog Conference...
Liveblogging The Pacific -- [Jules Crittenden]
Watching the "Pacific" previews now, it looks like Hanks is determined to lecture us on how bad war is, through a lot of preachy scriptwriting, rather than simply using film-making skills to do the job. So far this thing is mediocre. Too bad. Memo to producers Hanks and Spielberg, director Tim Van Patten: Sometimes you need to trust your audience.
Prelude to The Pacific -- [Comment from Bill D]
Just finished premier episode of The Pacific. What a bunch of leftist crap! insulting to every single member of the Pacific Theater Operations, makes us to be blood-lust killers, unsure of why we are there, and disrespect to superior officers. Hidden "alternative" lifestyles, only thing missing was an on-camera shot of a GI kicking an animal!
'The Pacific' review: Brilliant, brutal, and, yes, very enjoyable -- [Entertainment Weekly]
Unlike Band of Brothers, made by many of the same people and led by producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, The Pacific doesn't often offer the comfort of triumphant surges and comradeship under fire. It does something much trickier to pull off: It creates marvelous drama from a highly chaotic, confusing series of battlefields, and follows men who aren't best buddies, but who are complex combinations of heroes, innocents, cynics, and damaged goods...
I don't claim to have a lot of knowledge about this area of history, and the filmmakers can't assume many viewers do. What I get from The Pacific strikes me as being "realistic" in the sense that, without having done research, I was convinced of it...
EOD on standby -- [Greyhawk]
...On the other hand, early reports on Jason Bourne's fourth identity (The Green Zone) might have movie execs glancing nervously at the protective gear...
Weekend Box Office -- [Box Office Mojo]
PA12 GOP: Burns over Russell -- [Greyhawk]
I follow elections when veterans are candidates. This one, for example: GOP chooses Burns for special election in 12th.
"Among 131 votes cast at a Republican convention held at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Burns won 85 and easily defeated the only other GOP nominee - William Russell of Johnstown, who had 46... Russell, who spent his career in the Army, ran a spirited but unsuccessful campaign against Murtha in 2008.
Kokesh's final delegate count? -- [This Ain't Hell]
As Sparky pointed out the other day, Kokesh can still get on the ballot for the primary by collecting 2,000 signatures. But really, what would be the point? Obviously New Mexico Republicans won't vote for him - overwhelmingly.
Much Ado? -- [Neptunus Lex]
So, when I read this NYT headline I have to admit to being a little perplexed: "Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants"
Contractors ought not to be in the wetwork industry, at least not those working for DoD.
French Counterinsurgency in Algeria:
Forgotten Lessons from a Misunderstood Conflict -- [Small Wars Journal]
...the Algerian conflict offers an indispensable insight, truly relevant to the conduct of counterinsurgency operations (COIN) in today's security environment. While avoiding the political debate over the validity of France's claim over her North African possession, this article will demonstrate that French military forces actually waged a successful campaign in Algeria, virtually eliminating the insurgent forces in the field but losing the war at home.
The CDS goes to war -- [Greyhawk]
Exclusive: we've just obtained this newly-released, first look photo of a device being deployed in Afghanistan...
U.S. Army Spc. Louis Phay, with Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, installs a culvert denial system along Highway 601 in the Helmand province of Afghanistan on March 6, 2010. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Jones, U.S. Air Force. (Released)
- via email, facebook, twitter, etc.
I suppose you realize the judge's opinion was bogus?
It is common practice to have to prove you are what you say you are. I couldn't join the American Legion without presenting my 2 DD214s. I couldn't get VA disability without the same documents to prove I served when I said I served and was injured when I said I was injured.
Even though it was long ago, I believe I had to produce a photostatic copy of my birth certificate, not a certificate of live birth, for my first enlistment. My DD214 was sufficient for my second enlistment, but it was based on having produced proof of citizenship previously.
Congressman Joe Wilson was right, the President did lie and he seems to have a propensity for that action. Even though the President has said we have 57 states, I'm pretty sure it can be proven that we don't have that many, even if Texas decided to exercise their right to divide into 5 states.
Since there's a Constitutional mandate for a president to be a natural born citizen, what's extraordinary in an expectation of some sort of physical proof?
The birthers, the tea baggers, the screamers, and the deathers continued extreme minority presence will become tiresome to mainstream America, if it has not already done so. To all the birthers in La, La Land, it is on you to prove to all of us that your assertion is true, if there are people who were there and support your position then show us the video (everyone has a price), either put up or frankly shut-up. I heard Orly Taitz, is selling a tape (I think it’s called “Money, Lies and Video tape”). She is from Orange County, CA, now I know what the mean when they say “behind the Orange Curtain”, when they talk about Orange County, the captial of Conspiracy Theories. You know Obama has a passport, he travel abroad before he was a Senator, but I guess they were in on it. In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”. I heard that she now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC).
I'm not sure who your characterizing as "tea baggers", but I consider the Tea Party movement a legitimate form of political expression. That there are varying motivations for individual involvement (from sincerity to insanity to agents provocateur) seems historically (and perhaps hysterically) typical of our democracy - perhaps any democracy.
That Tea Parties can be blurred by comparison to the Birthers speaks more to the utility of the Birther movement to the opposition. My interest in the Birthers extends to the potential attraction of their position to military folks who want to avoid deployment, but other more political aspects are hard to deny. In briefest terms: they are the best thing to happen to the Democrats this year. If I were a Democrat who couldn't afford to fund them, I'd at least go around to web logs and post comments pretending to be one of them and stating their case as clearly as possible. There used to be a troll here who never missed a chance to put a "Chimpy McHitlerburton" sort of comment on virtually every post - I could never be completely certain he wasn't working for Karl Rove.
I have to wonder if there's much membership overlap between the Birthers and the Truthers - they look very much the same to me.
It may come as a surprise, but the purported Certification of Live Birth has no resemblance to a Certificate of Live Birth issued by the State of Hawaii in the same time period. An example of a Certificate of Live Birth is used as an example on www.passportsusa.com [img]http://passportsusa.com/wp-content/gallery/passportusa/edith_front.jpg[/img]. This one is said to be an example of proof of citizenship that shouldn't have any problems being approved.
The same site uses President Obama's Certification of Live Birth as an example of a document that would probably experience some difficulties in being approved. The problems? [quote] * Birth certificate should show a doctor’s signature, a midwife’s signature, the parent’s signature or the signature of a witness who was present at your birth.
* The name of the hospital you were born at or taken to after your birth at home, in the car or where ever you happened to be born but later seen by a doctor at a hospital.
* A raised registrar’s embossed, impressed or multicolored seal. Some older birth certificates may not have all of these elements on certificates from the 1970’s or earlier.
* The paper itself should have a print pattern or emboss style that is sometimes raised again on some older certificates this may not be present.
* Birth certificate should have been issued within one year of your birth.[/quote]
I have at least two grandchildren that were born at home. The only verification is the midwife's statement and the parents statement. All of my grandchildren have Birth Certificates, regardless of the institution they were born in. However, it would have been easy enough to falsify the information to indicate a later or eariler birth date that what was fact.
Illegal aliens fully understand the benefits of American citizenship, so I have little doubt many children born in Mexico are issued American birth certificates regardless of where they were born.
Maybe I should also clarify my position. I am not a "birther". I feel pretty sure the security check, that I assume and hope was done, would have revealed any abnormalities.
My concern is the transparency, that was part of the presidential campaign run by President Obama, is lacking.
That transparency issue is much of the blame/cause for the situation Greyhawk is trying to bring to light. With true transparency, the Rhodes, and others of that ilk, have no grounds to stand on to make it another issue to avoid deployment.
"That transparency issue is much of the blame/cause for the situation Greyhawk is trying to bring to light. With true transparency, the Rhodes, and others of that ilk, have no grounds to stand on..."
No.
Nothing the President - son of an American mother, as am I - could possibly do would stop nutters from being nutters.
You see, Paul, as a guy who's lived all over the world with fellow military folks, I constantly worked, lived, deployed, and interacted in a thousand ways with men and women who'd married men and women of other nations and races. Many of them were products of such marriages themselves. My kids played and went to school with their kids, and shared the agonies of their parents deployments to places from which some didn't come back.
When we came back to the States from Germany I told my youngest daughter to always answer the question "where are you from?" with "well, I just moved here from Germany, but I was born in Korea." The population of her High School here had a bit too many military kids for that to really shock them, though.
Words can not adequately express my contempt for the birthers and everything they stand for.
To this point she has not been successful because she does not have any proof, documentation supporting her claims except her wild rants. You are backing the wrong horse on this one. Get someone with real credentials (Harvard, Yale Law School) not a Russian immigrant with dual US/ Israel citizenship (where are her allegiances?). Have you even thought of who is paying for all her travel, or are you telling me she independently wealthy? Sorry she has no juice because she does not have any proof, documentation supporting her claims except her wild rants. That might work for “Fake News” but not in a Court of the United States.
"You are backing the wrong horse on this one"
I'm not choosing horses, I'm pointing out horse shit.
"Have you even thought of who is paying for all her travel..."
Apart from the legions of the gullible who will gladly contribute what they can? The marks have always been the motivation for the huckster, and always will be.
Speaking of thought about -
Passport.com is registered to one James Coats, a former post office employee who's initial assessment of Obama's birth certificate first appeared on the fringe-racist ("immigration") website V Dare - from there it spread rather swiftly to Stormfront - the outright home of American White Supremacists/Aryans/Nazis on the web.
I suppose that qualifies as "viral" in a certain crowd, but "diseased" seems a more appropriate term.
(By the way - for those who haven't noticed there are two Pauls in this thread).
I agree, I should have read further before I used passportusa.com as a reference. As usual, I assumed a straightforward and truthful assessment, and as usual, I got burned.
That still doesn't negate what I said after that quote from a highly questionable source.
There are certainly benefits to having an American citizenship and many go to great lengths to acquire that status.
I've been to every country from Beruit, Lebanon to Gibraltar (except Albania), including Cyprus, Malta and on around to Holland and England, but I didn't see anything that would entice me to give up my citizenship in the greatest nation on Earth.
It is unfortunate that we no ,longer are the greatest country on this globe but a laughing stock of the world commmunity.We have a president who has no backbone and who believes that his flowery speeches impresses some of our adversaries.He gave in to russian demands about the defense shield in the chec repbublic and poland and we goT nothing in return.He made 5 times.He flowery speeches trying to engagae the Iranians.WHAT WAS THEIR REPLY ? up yous ! I urge all american to say enough is enough and vote him out of office and make certain that this incompetent president never again will lead this ocuntry
"we no ,longer are the greatest country on this globe"
Sorry to hear that.
Who has the title now?