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News from my current nation-of-residence
Apparently the Americans had it coming: "The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina -- in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures -- can visit on his country." Who wrote this? None other than J?Trittin, Germany's minister of the environment.But who calls him on the carpet for it? Germany's own Speigel Online - and in no uncertain terms:
Bullshit. Trittin's article is a slap in the face to all the victims. Let's just assume that the environment minister is right, that there is a direct relationship between greenhouse gases and Hurricane Katrina. Even still this would hardly be the time for yet another round of America bashing and finger pointing. Three years ago, just before the US election, former Minister of Justice Hertha D䵢ler Gmelin compared US President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. This time, with German elections looming, the environment minister is using a natural catastrophe as an excuse to once again campaign with subtle anti-Americanism and to unabashedly pat himself on the back. A "Kyoto Two" is "desperately needed" screamed the headline over his insensitive attack.Call me proud to be an American in Germany.
<...>
It's not the American people's fault that the storm hit and they couldn't have stopped it. The Germans, on the other hand, could have done a lot to prevent World War II. And yet, care packages still rained down from US troops. Trittin's know-it-all stance is therefore not only tasteless, it is also historically blind.
(It's in the German language version too.)
...But not for long:
Well friends, my time here is reaching an end. I am in my final days in Baghdad. This will be my last post from Iraq.He hasn't left yet - you have time to say "thanks for a job well done." (Read it all, and leave comments here)
The AP reports on Louisiana Guard members in Iraq
BAGHDAD ? Since Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, National Guard troops from Gulf Coast states serving in Iraq have followed the disaster, worried about families and friends back home.There are, of course, thousands of Guard, reserve, and active duty forces on scene or mustering for deployment to the Gulf Coast even now."It's a significant emotional event. Their families are on the forefront of the disaster," said Lt. Col. Jordan Jones of the 141st Field Artillery of the Louisiana National Guard.
<...>
Asked how his troops felt being in Iraq while their state was in such difficulty, Jones replied: "Well, we all know our primary mission is the federal one."The secondary mission is to serve at the pleasure of the governor in disaster relief and other missions," said Jones, 44, who works for a company that manages the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
National Guard troops in Louisiana have been busy rescuing people from the deluge.
But it's a cruel irony that some of these soon to be returning GIs might have a homecoming without the home.
Trendspotting: The Washington Post is now including technorati trackbacks to blogs on their individual stories.
Newsweek added the same feature a few weeks back.
I think they're following the Mudville open-trackback lead...
Update: Looks like the server problems are ongoing. Trackbacks and comments are currently not available - the site itself is up and down. Visit and bookmark our back-up location.
Apparently there may be Denial-of-Service attacks ongoing against this and several other blogs. We'll be cross-posting at the original Mudville Gazette site today, you may want to bookmark it in case we "disappear" here. There have been several instances where the site has been available but our ability to post new items has not, so it's posssible you may be reading this site and there are new posts there.
Hopefully this problem will be cleared soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, the MilBlogs are proud to present the first review of "Over There" from a soldier actually over there.
From Iraq, former Saddam army "strongman" Colonel Watban Jassam:
Tips On How To Beat US From Insurgents' ConsultantHis customers respond:To gauge US public opinion, he has become an avid watcher of satellite news channels, and never misses the White House press briefings
<...>
To win the war against the US military and Badr, Colonel Jassam advises the Omariyun to follow two short-term goals - to cement mujahideen control over the Ramadi area, and to stage operations that will increase pressure on US opinion to withdraw troops.
<...>
To achieve their second goal, turning Americans against the war, the mujahideen need to shape their operations "to support anti- war sentiment in the west", he says.
Soldier formerly from Syracuse killed in IraqSYRACUSE, N.Y. A 23-year-old soldier formerly from Syracuse has been killed in Iraq.
Charles Rubado says that his son, Second Lieutenant Charles "Charlie" Rubado, was killed by a sniper Monday night while leading a patrol.
Rubado graduated in 2000 from Corcoran High School, where he played soccer, and moved to Florida with his parents to attend college. He graduated from the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in southern Florida in 2004 and trained at Fort Carson in Colorado before heading to Iraq in March.
His father, a Vietnam veteran, tells the Syracuse Post-Standard, "He's safe now, but there's a hole in my heart."
But even before the family had been notified Cindy Sheehan had completed the circle:
While George golfed yesterday, the worst hurricane ever struck New Orleans; oil went up to over 68.00/barrel; and an American soldier was killed in the charade and cataclysmic occupation of Iraq. The soldier's family doesn't even know what's going to hit them yet. The death is "Pending Notification." I continually ask myself: "How do George Bush and other death-mongers live with themselves?" While George vacations and bikes and golfs his way to the lowest poll numbers since Richard Nixon, other "patriots" are wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes and going along with the farce that the mission from hell: Killing more people in Iraq, because so many have already been killed" is somehow a good thing ordained by God. I can live with myself, but trust me, sleep does not come easily to me these days.And the ball goes back to the "insurgents"...
The military response to Hurricane Katrina will offer the first operational test of the newest Unified Command.
In the US Military, Unified Commands are the agencies responsible for command, control, and coordination efforts between the various branches of service. The Unified Commands exercise authority over military ops in specified geographical areas of responsibility - EUCOM covers the European and African theaters, PACOM the Pacific, SOUTHCOM most areas of the western hemisphere south of the US, and CENTCOM the highly visible middle eastern area including Iraq and Afghanistan.
NORTHCOM is the junior sibling of the crowd. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, NORTHCOM was formed with a goal of coordinating military efforts in homeland defense.
The historical insularity of the U.S. has given way to an era of new vulnerabilities, and enemies will strike the U.S. in new and unsuspecting ways. Northern Command takes the homeland defense missions being performed by other Department of Defense organizations and puts them under a single command.Aside from human threat, there's an obvious civil service mission that NORTHCOM can fulfill (emphasis added below):
In addition to defending the nation, U.S. Northern Command provides defense support of civil authorities in accordance with U.S. laws and as directed by the President or Secretary of Defense. Military assistance is always in support of a lead federal agency, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).Today would be that day, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina NORTHCOM gets its first large, operational test. The Colorado Springs Gazette (feature currently not available on line):Military civil support includes domestic disaster relief operations that occur during fires, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Support also includes counter-drug operations and consequence management assistance, such as would occur after a terrorist event employing a weapon of mass destruction.
Generally, an emergency must exceed the management capabilities of local, state and federal agencies before U.S. Northern Command becomes involved. In providing civil support, the command operates through subordinate Joint Task Forces.
Military Moving In To Lend A HandNORTHCOM has more on their home page, and you'll find updates there as time permits.NorthCom will organize task force
By News Services
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon?s U.S. Northern Command plans to set up a task force to help federal disaster authorities bring relief by military aircraft and amphibious vehicles to communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The task force plans to have its headquarters at Camp Shelby, Miss., said Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for Colorado Springs-based Northern Command. It has established Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., as a staging area for supplies and personnel.
The task force will assist federal disaster-relief authorities primarily with aircraft and other logistical support. The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested it, Kucharek said.
The command already has sent two helicopters and crews that will enable federal disaster experts to assess the extent of the damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
More than 9,000 National Guard members have been called to duty for hurricane relief work in those three states, Kucharek said.
Late Tuesday, the Pentagon ordered five Navy ships and eight maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations.
One Navy amphibious assault ship, the Bataan, with six Sea Stallion and Sea Hawk helicopters that could be used for search and rescue missions, was en route from Texas. Four other vessels from Norfolk, Va., were expected to sail within 24 hours and take four days to reach the gulf, Northern Command Kucharek said.
The ships will carry food, fuel, medical and construction supplies, as well as hovercraft that can be used for evacuation and search-andrescue missions.
Also Tuesday, the Coast Guard called back to duty 500 reservists as part of the hurricane response. ?The biggest challenge is getting enough resources ? especially helicopters and small boats ? to the area for the rescue work we have to do,? said Lt. Gene Maestas, a Coast Guard spokesman in Washington.
We'll hope and pray there efforts are rapid, effective, and successful. As noted, this is the first big operational test - and what looks good in planning often must be adjusted on the fly in reality. As a wise man once said, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy". Likewise, because this effort will prove a point about "over stretched military" you might see some naysaying from certain quarters regarding the effectiveness of the effort, perhaps bolstered by that unavoidable truism noted above. Time will tell.
More early stories give an indication of the enormity of the task, and the initial chaos confronting those responsible for coordinating the effort:
State's military presence aids in storm reliefSidebar to same story:
While some Guard members fight in Iraq, others battle elements.
August 30, 2005Though thousands of its members are half a world away, gearing up in Iraq to begin their journey home from war, the Louisiana Army National Guard this week is tackling its other primary mission, disaster relief.
It's no surprise. In June long before the 2005 hurricane season shifted into overdrive, the state military's second-in-command, Brig. Gen. Hunt Downer, told The Times the Louisiana Army National Guard was practiced and ready to handle the big storms.
"We have enough troops remaining here in the state," Downer said. "We've always done that. And as in all cases, we move troops around to meet where the need's going to be. Not many really appreciate and understand the uniqueness of the National Guard, (that) we have a dual mission."
Barksdale Air Force Base (Greyhawk notes: in Shreveport, La.) has been tagged to be the Federal Mobilization Center for Hurricane Katrina relief by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA representatives started arriving Saturday. The base's East Gate is now reserved for official FEMA and commercial vehicles only -- all other traffic, including all privately owned vehicles, must use alternate gates. Visitors entering the base should also allow extra time as increased traffic is expected, base officials said.
Flooding Forces Relocation Of National Guard's New Orleans Command CenterNavyTimes.com:By Joseph R. Chenelly, Times staff writer
NEW ORLEANS ? The rescuers had to be rescued early into Hurricane Katrina relief operations as sudden flooding forced the Louisiana National Guard to airlift 150 troops out of its command center here.
The flooding wiped out the Joint Force Headquarters on Monday night as Black Hawk helicopters moved the troops 10 miles away to the Louisiana Superdome, where they re-established the command center.
The troops quickly rejoined rescue efforts. At daylight Tuesday the extent of the havoc wreaked on the region began to come into focus even as levies continued to fail and water continued to rise. Soldiers carved their way through the city by boats, trucks and Humvees, while National Guard helicopters kept noisily busy in air rescues.
All brought a steady stream of civilians in from the devastation to the Superdome, the massive arena in the heart of downtown. As of Tuesday night, at least 11,000 people were taking refuge in there. Civilians were not being allowed to leave the Superdome, which was without main power or air-conditioning as temperatures hit 95 degrees Tuesday.
Still, civilians continued to flow into the shelter as flood waters made their homes inhabitable.
Since Saturday, at least two have died in the dome and two have been born there, said Guard spokesman Maj. Ed Bush. The deaths were believed to have been caused by pre-existing conditions, he said.
The Joint Force Headquarters working out of the Superdome is responsible for coordinating the thousands of soldiers and other service members responding to one of the worst natural disasters to hit the United States in generations.
The relocated center, operating on emergency generators, is relying on radio communications only, as the hurricane has rendered all land-line and cellular phones useless within the city.
Marines Rescue Stranded Hurricane VictimsDefenseNews.com:By Christian Lowe and Christopher Munsey, Times staff writers
Marines rescued more than 100 people stranded by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina Monday after tides and high winds pummeled cities along the Gulf of Mexico coast.
Leathernecks with the Reserve?s reinforced 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, based in Gulfport, Miss., navigated the debris-filled streets of Biloxi late Aug. 29, plucking dazed citizens from their battered homes.
About 130 people were rescued by the Marines, who drove two AAV7 Amphibious Assault Vehicles through the destruction.
The amtrackers took the flood victims ?to a designated drop-off point where they were returned to safety by civilian authorities,? according to a news release from Naval Construction Battalion Center Gulfport. One amtrac in the operation rescued 100 people, making four trips with 25 victims crammed into the crew compartment, a Navy spokeswoman said.
Navy Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalions 1, 7 and 133 ? based in Gulfport ? are clearing a 10-mile-long stretch of road to the nearby town of Pass Christian so civilian authorities could rescue stranded citizens there, the spokeswoman said.
Two U.S. Navy Destroyers Damaged in StormThe Washington Post notes that America's veterans aren't forgotten either:
By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVASTwo U.S. Navy destroyers were damaged when Hurricane Katrina struck their Mississippi shipyard Aug. 29, but by the following afternoon, the most serious damage had been repaired.
?There was some damage and flooding on the Kidd,? a Navy source told DefenseNews.com. ?When the ship rose up, it banged up against the pier, causing a small gash which caused some flooding.?
But Brian Cullin, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, said Aug. 30 the damage had been made good.
?Northrop Grumman welders ballasted up the ship and got access to the breach,? Cullin said. ?They were able to weld it and it was repaired and made watertight.?
The Forrest Sherman, another destroyer under construction at Northrop?s Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., also suffered some damage, a Navy source said, when a drifting barge bumped into the ship. The barge came to rest on a pier without puncturing the side of the warship.
The Sherman?s crew of about 300 sailors rode out the storm on the ship, tied to a pier along with the Kidd, whose crew has yet to move aboard.
Armed Forces Retirement Home Opens Doors To Displaced BrethrenGXonline - an online magazine of the National Guard, has numerous reports. Here are just a couple of them.By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer
They got extra beds from storage, aired out unoccupied rooms and opened up an unused dormitory. Floors were mopped, bathrooms scrubbed and light bulbs replaced.
There was a buzz yesterday among residents at the Armed Forces Retirement Home on North Capitol Street and a sense of urgency among the staff: Company was coming. Lots of it.
Officials of the Northwest Washington retirement facility learned it was getting as many as 416 new residents from its storm-damaged sister home in Gulfport, Miss., which was rendered uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina.
Most of the newcomers would be making the 1,000-mile trip aboard 10 chartered buses, which were scheduled to leave Gulfport last night, officials said. The buses were to arrive in Washington late today or sometime tomorrow, after at least one overnight in the Atlanta area.
"We get them up here, we're going to get them comfortable," said Chuck Dickerson, chief of resident services at the historic Washington home that houses about 1,000 retirees. "We're going to give them the medical care they need. We're going to get them a bed. We're going to get them a shower. We're going to feed them. We're going to take care of them, because they're ours."
Guard, NORTHCOM Respond to Hurricane AftermathMeanwhile, Keesler AFB, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and in the direct path of the storm, has this announcement on their home page:
Twenty-four hours after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, an estimated 7,500 National Guard troops from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi were on duty today, supporting civil authorities, distributing generators, providing medical care, and setting up shelters for displaced residents.In addition, National Guard units and members in 17 more states were on standby, ready to provide assistance as required in the wake of extensive damage, rising floodwaters, and power and communications outages throughout the region, Air Force LTC Ellen Krenke, a DoD spokeswoman, said.
AR Guard Mobilizes 350 Troops for Disaster Relief in MS
8/29/05, Camp Joseph T. Robinson, AR ? At the direction of the governor, the Arkansas National Guard has called approximately 350 personnel to state active duty to assist with hurricane relief efforts in Mississippi. An Arkansas National Guard Task Force is scheduled to begin deploying Tuesday to an initial staging area at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, Miss., and is expected to be mobilized for 10 to 14 days, or longer as needed.
Keesler Air Force base has survived a direct hit by a Hurricane Katrina a Category 4 hurricane. Initial assessment shows extensive damage to our industrial and housing areas. We are deploying assessment crews and are in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and with commanders of many military bases who have offered assistance. The damage is severe enough that we are unable to leave our shelters until Thursday at the earliest in order to assure our recovery teams have cleared debris and made it safe for us and our families to return home. Brigadier General Lord and your leadership promises to keep you apprised of the progress of our recovery teams and release you to go home and assess your own damage as soon as it is safe for your family to travel. All pets at the Keesler pet shelter are in good health and weathered this extremely dangerous storm safely. We are doing everything within our power to clear the way and provide the best immediate and long term assistance to help each one of us in order to recover from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Brigadier General Lord wants you to know we are not alone and will do everything we can to keep you safe and get you home as soon as possible. Please be patient. We all need to pull together and help us all make it through this difficult time safely.Keesler is predominantly a training base, but is ironically also the home of the Air Force Reserve's Hurricane Hunters, who fly specially modified C130 aircraft into off-shore hurricanes to obtain vital measurements on intensity and position for the National Hurricane Center. Their aircraft were most likely re-located to inland locations well prior to landfall.
More to come. In the meantime, Glenn Reynolds has a list of charities if you're inclined to help the relief efforts.
(Pre-post update: after completing this but just prior to posting, this example from the Washington Post dashes any hope that politics could be left out of the relief efforts. On their online front page the link to this story reads War Strains Military's Ability to Help.)
Still experiencing difficulties with MT.
Possibility Dawn Patrol will be here tomorrow.
Cross your Fingers.
Email from SMASH
Greyhawk,Well, this is a puzzler! I think I'll have to give up and click on over...You'll never guess who stopped by my "support the troops" demonstration in San Diego yesterday.
(Hint: His name rhymes with "Ronald Mumsfeld")
Cheers,
SMASH
Having ridden out our share of hurricanes and tropical storms along the Gulf Coast, we tend to notice the quality of media coverage these events receive.
Last month we noticed the ludicrous reporting on "Hurricane" Dennis as it passed through Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That bit of sensationalist journalism led to our watching closely as the storm struck the Florida Panhandle, causing damage to the immediate beachfront, snapping a few trees, and causing other damage consistent with a strong tropical storm, or perhaps a weak hurricane. However, no hurricane level winds were reported by any observing stations as Dennis made landfall.
None the less, the media insisted that the storm was a category 3 hurricane, and the National Hurricane Center went along for the ride.
Our final post on the topic explained why this was a problem:
But what about next time? Sensational type reporting - and exaggeration of minor storms into major stories - contributes to the lack of response on the part of many to a major storm when one does come along. People who erroneously believe they've survived a cat 3-4 storm will be in for a rude surprise when a real one moves in.As postscript, I'll add that I sincerly hope this didn't contribute to the death toll from Katrina - a number far too high for an event like this in an age of modern technology and communications. (Comparison, Andrew killed 26 while striking both Miami and the New Orleans area. Historical totals here.)
Hugh Hewitt and Glenn Reynolds suggest a day of blogging for Hurricane relief efforts. I'm on board.
Smash has a report from an "infiltrator" at Camp Casey:
There I found a well funded, well orchestrated public relations campaign, run by media professionals complete with the highest quality electronic equipment available. From Satellite trucks and cell phone to wireless computer access, every modern convenience to enhance the ?message? was there?and being used by left wing, socialist and Marxist (self-described) media representatives and Bloggers.Read it all....Everyone had to be on message, and the message was the point of everything?stray from the message and you are out. Even the protesters? signs were monitored less they distract from the message.
Cindy Sheehan spent most of her time huddled with VIPS in and air-conditioned trailer. When she ventured out it was for a scripted and often televised moment. She was always trailed by her media people, and they were quick to keep her on point. During one conversation I had with her I tried to ask her a pointed question about how much time she would actually be on the bus tour to Washington (I had discovered she would only be on the tour for two days, and would be away giving speeches during the rest of the trip?and I wondered if she were being paid for these speeches) Her media person grabbed her arm and led her back to the trailer, and away from me. The message was protected. I was left standing there?alone, and feeling a little less secure about my status at Camp Casey.
"Luke" - a Code Pink protestor outside Walter Reed, on wounded troops:
?"If I went to war and lost a leg and then found out from my hospital bed that I had been lied to, that the weapons I was sent to search for never existed, that the person who sent me to war had no plan but to exploit me, exploit the country I was sent to, I would be pretty angry," Luke told Cybercast News Service. "I would want people to do something about it and if I couldn't get out of my bed and protest myself, I would want someone else to do it in my name," he added.CPT Z, wounded troop at Walter Reed, on protestors: "...club them like a baby harp seal on coat-making day."
Guess the brass doesn't need to worry about him posting "sensitive information" on his blog. (He's on meds, of course.;) - read the whole thing anyway.)
Holly Aho is a member of Soldier's Angels (and also a MilBlogger). She has an audio interview with Chuck here.
It includes tons (well, at least lots of bytes) of info on what it's like at Walter Reed (including more of his thoughts on protestors) - how families are treated, quality of care, attitudes of the patients - it's awesome. (And timely!)
Chuck has been blogging his recovery via voice activated software - provided by Soldier's Angels. This has now grown into a full scale project to provide the same to as many wounded as possible. There's info on that at Holly's post too - you can help.
Just think - with enough donations all the troops can "speak for themselves", Luke can go home, and Chuck won't have to wear out his arm. It's a win-win.
(Hat tip to Mrs G - who finds awesome stuff even for a very brief Dawn Patrol.)
Interesting coverage of the recent OPSEC memo from Gen Schoomaker from UPI:
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker circulated a memo to all Army personnel last week, saying that "we must do a better job" at operational security -- "OPSEC" in military parlance.The article is interesting in that it's a near complete misrepresentation of the General's actual words. Note the portion of the quote that actually appears in quotation marks - those are the General's words. Then note the reporter's added fabrication: ...and especially on their Web logs or online diaries, wrote Gen. Schoomaker. No he didn't."Some soldiers continue to post sensitive information" on the Internet, and especially on their Web logs or online diaries, wrote Gen. Schoomaker, giving as examples "photos depicting weapon system vulnerabilities and tactics, techniques and procedures.
Here's the only reference to blogs in the memo:
SOME SOLDIERS CONTINUE TO POST SENSITIVE INFORMATION TO INTERNET WEBSITES AND BLOGS, E.G., PHOTOS DEPICTING WEAPON SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES AND TACTICS, TECHNIQUES, AND PROCEDURES.(Apologies for the ALLCAPS - in original.)
"Especially blogs" is an embellishment from the reporter. That bloggers would key on the term is understandable - it's a big red flag to them. However, comma, in the world of GI's on the internet bloggers represent a very small tip of a very large iceberg. Perhaps one of every 2,000 GIs in Iraq has a weblog (that's an educated guess, btw, it could be as few as one in 4,000, perhaps as many as one in 500) - but rest assured that at least 90% of the troops post pictures to one of the many non-blog sites designed to host them, or have some sort of web site or space they can call their own.
Want to guess what percentage have email access? At least one "Army Leader" does - the message was labeled for distribution to "all army leaders" (an earlier message included with the current one was addressed to all O5s and above) - and although the message in question is marked "FOUO" (for official use only) it's now readily available via the internet. Ooops.
Just putting things in perspective here - the "Army declares war on blogs" theme is perhaps interesting fodder for bloggers (and apparently UPI reporters) - but it doesn't approach the reality of the situation, and from reading the actual memo "the Army" knows it. The problem is most likely too large for any but two possible solutions. One: deny internet access to deployed troops (major morale blast there) or two: train, educate and insist on strict adherence to security standards. Looks like which option is implemented is in the hands of lower level commanders. As noted here before, their responses may vary.
(Bonus error in linked article: Blackfive is mis-identified. Heh. The New York Times did the same to me last week.)
Arthur emails:
Dear friends
Katrina has pretty much taken Iraq off the front pages, and constitutional debates have in turn overshadowed all the other events in Iraq (not a bad development in itself, if only the spin wasn't so generally negative).
Here's my second last good news round-up:
Chrenkoff
Opinion Journal
Winds of Change
Thanks for your help over the past year and a bit in publicizing the under-publicized.
Arthur
Mudville is experiencing technical difficulties. The Dawn Patrol was lost due to this. Insert four letter words here.
Let's hope they fix the problem soon.
Just to hold you over I'm going to do some quick links to look at.
365 and a Wake Up has 3 new post, don't let the dates confuse you, they're new.
Dadmanly has a new post about a visit with the Iraqi Army.
Many of the other MilBloggers in Iraq have not posted yet, but most of you know who they are so check in on them.
Iraq the Model talks about relationship between the Shiite clergy and the government.
The Counterterrorism Blog is always a must read.
Don't miss Holly's latest Podcast where she interviews Capt Z.
Which brings me to Capt Z's post on the protester outside Walter Reed hospital where he is recovering.
And I have a few congrats. First go wish Baldilocks a Happy Birthday and then congratulate Wayne from Waynes world on his recent wedding proposal done while on R&R from Iraq.
For future reference to all you readers, we have our old Blogspot blog that we use as a Backup for these rare occasions. so you might want to bookmark it.
Mrs G caught this NPR interview with Cindy Sheehan on the radio today. She say's it's one to listen too - though Ms Sheehan seemed to be a reluctant guest. Apparently there's some question as to the quality of her hearing, or perhaps of her phone. Unfortunately, the audio isn't up yet - looking forward to it.
One thing that should be noted about the Cindy Sheehan story. Those opposed to "her" cause have adopted the nefarious tactic of ensuring everything she says gets widest possible dissemination - sans media filters.
Here are some photos from on scene with the "pro Bush" side at Crawford.
More here (video too).
And you'll find continuous updates here
The numbers on the Sheehan side of the street are small, but her message is being heard, and those ranks will soon swell.
Meanwhile, over at Walter Reed...
Updates on the counter-protests here and here.
One of those individuals also left this comment on our recent post about GIs recording songs in Iraq:
As luck would have it, my CD arrived Friday afternoon. I popped it in the player in my car as I drove downtown to Walter Reed to join the DC Freepers in support of the wounded troops. I cried and laughed for an hour and a half and cannot imagine a more perfect way to get psyched up for such an event.He's on to something there. There's a movement developing in Crawford and in DC, and as with all such grass roots efforts this one has it's anthems. This song should be played at both locations - straight from the heart of a GI in Baghdad.THANK YOU JR and Nick for this wonderful music! You guys rock!!!!
I am a Patriot
(Words and music by JR Shultz and Nick Brown, Baghdad Iraq)
Twilight ends, and I'm alone
On a battlefield so far from my home
My wife is running through the fields of my mind
My only prayer is to see her again some time
It's been a year now since I've seen your face
A beautiful thing that all my dreams could never replace
Oh how I long to feel your touch and hear your voice
And God knows how I want to hold my little boy
But I am too proud to be forgotten
I've given too much to be forsaken
Just keep that American flag in our yard flyin'
Cause I'm a patriot and don't mind dyin'
Well I don't know what God has in store for me
But if I don't return I only ask one thing
Don't let my memory fade too far away
And tell my son how much I love him every day
'Cause I am too proud to be forgotten
And given too much to be forsaken
Just keep that American flag in our yard flyin'
Cause I'm a Patriot and don't mind dyin'
It's getting closer now I can hear the sounds of home
Seems like forever here, the time it passes slow
Too many men came here who will never leave
A sad reminder of the cost to be free
Cause I am too proud to be forgotten
I've given too much to be forsaken
Just keep that American flag in our yard flyin'
Cause I'm a Patriot and I don't mind dyin'...
The definition of "Kenning". It's amazing what you can learn on the innernets.
On a related note, did you know that the word "gullible" does not appear in any dictionary of the English language?
The Washington Post:
K. Daniel Glover writes in National Journal's Beltway Blogroll that some conservative bloggers think that Scott Ott, the conservative voice behind the ScrappleFace blog, should be hired by the White House as a speechwriter.Mr Ott could not be reached for comment. A spokesman at his family's compound said he was out having his suit dry cleaned."Their praise came this week after Ott penned the response that Ott's fans think President Bush should give to grieving mother and anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan.
Two posts from fellow MilBloggers:
One.
Two.
Check out the posts immediately following those at each site too.
More on this topic later.
There are two types of Iraq war veterans that have a tremendous appeal to the anti-war crowd - the fictional and the dead. Both types have a common, irresistible trait - others can claim to speak on their behalf.
Dan Kennings is both types. And his daughter Kodee was in a position to become the next Cindy Sheehan.
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Word that Sgt. Dan Kennings had been killed in Iraq crushed spirits in the Daily Egyptian newsroom. The stocky, buzz-cut soldier befriended by students at the university newspaper was dead, and the sergeant's little girl--a precocious, blond-haired child they'd grown to love--was now an orphan.
They all knew that Kodee Kennings' mother had died when Kodee was about 5. The little girl's fears and frustrations about her father being in harm's way had played out on the pages of the Daily Egyptian for nearly two years, in gut-wrenching letters fraught with misspellings, innocent observations and questions about why Daddy wasn't there to chase the monsters from under her bed.
It turns out Daddy didn't exist. And neither did Kodee.
There are elements to the story that would reveal it as an obvious fake to anyone remotely familiar with the US military or the war in Iraq, but apparently few folks at Southern Illinois University qualify in that regard. The fictional Kennings was stationed in Mosul, Iraq, with the 101st Airborne Division, and apparently had been since the war began. He was only able to phone home and speak with his daughter on rare occasions, because calls from Iraq cost him $2 a minute.
Both of these claims are obviously false to anyone who's either "been there" or has been paying attention to those who are. But this sort of stuff is taken at face value by the same anti-war crowd that insists the media isn't telling them the "real truth" about Iraq.
More about "Kennings", from the Southern Illinois Daily Egyptian (kudos to them for admitting the truth and leaving the stories in place with disclaimer):
Kennings is extremely sensitive compared to the typical American stereotype of soldiers. He is not afraid to cry, does not mind being sentimental and writes poems about his daughter.
All this needs to be hidden from those he fights with, though, at the risk of ridicule. The teddy bear Kodee gave him that said "daddy's girl" is kept out of sight, and Kodee said she understands.
"He keeps it in his bag because the other soldiers might make fun of him," Kodee explained.
I can't tell you the number of GIs in Iraq who openly carry such gifts from their children - and woe upon anyone who would ridicule them for doing so. But feeding stereotypes is a great way to deceive the willing.
As noted, "Kodee" was in a position to become the next Cindy Sheehan, perhaps an even more powerful "voice for peace" - but our intrepid little heroine was not an anti-war orphan initially...
But one day her feelings began to change...To Kodee, Bush is her father's boss and she does not understand why people think he is evil. She has also has a very difficult time understanding the war protesters and has begun to fear them the way most kids fear the boogeyman or monsters.
She calls them "the bad people," and is convinced they are going to come to her house at night to hurt her or camp out on the lawn and make her father not want to come home.
Every night, Matt and Colleen have to check under Kodee's bed and in the closet for "the bad people." They also have to double check to make sure the window is locked and investigate any sound that comes from outside.
Colleen said Kodee routinely wakes up at night screaming, fearful that "the bad people" are going to get her.
"To you and I, it's a crazy thought, but in her mind, it's as real as the telephone you're holding," Colleen said during a phone interview. "The fear is just so real."
Finally, plucky little Kodee found the true courage to turn against Chimpy McHitlerburton's Oil War:"I have some good news and I have some bad news," Kennings told his daughter. "Which do you want me to tell you first?"
"I want to hear the good news," Kodee replied.
"The war is over," he said.
Forgetting everything else in the world, Kodee jumped up and down, screaming yay! She was beside her self with joy.
But then came the hard part.
"I still have some bad news," Kennings continued.
"Well, I don't want to hear it," Kodee said.
"Well, I still have to tell you," her father insisted.
"No you don't. I just want to hear good news from you," Kodee replied.
"I really have to tell you," Kennings said.
"No you don't," Kodee repeated.
The two exchanged the same argument a few more times before Kodee gave in. It was at this point Kennings delivered the bombshell.
"I probably won't be home for summer," he said.
Kodee was devastated, even when her father told her the reason he had to stay.
"He said he had to stay and help rebuild the country cause it was all destroyed," Kodee said. "He said he had to build hospitals because otherwise people would die. There is no medicine or doctors."
She wanted to speak to his superior to interrogate him on why her father was being forced to stay. But eventually, she had to accept the news and spent the rest of the day moping around, refusing to engage in two of her favorite past times - going to the park and hitting balls at the batting cages.
"When she heard all that, to be quite honest, she just crumbled into pieces," Colleen said.
As her father's time increases in Iraq, so does Kodee's anger at George W. Bush. She is attempting to raise enough money bring her father home herself -- her most recent money-making plot is to get a job as an officer in the army -- but she is also attempting to petition the U.S. government. Kodee has been inquiring about whether Uncle Sam has a wife so she could plead to "Aunt Sam" to bring her father home. Kodee knows her father is sick of Iraq, and that he has recently seen two of his friends die.
To her, Bush's reasons for the War in Iraq are not good enough for him to take her father away, and she is not afraid to express her disdain for current U.S. policy. It has nothing to do with politics. She wants her father, who is her only living blood relative, back in her life.
The following are her uncensored thoughts on our 43rd president.
This letter was written to Kodee's mother, who died when she was 5. She recently made a copy of this letter, put it in a balloon and released it into the heavens in hopes it would reach her mother.Dear Mr. Presadent,
I'm rily mad at you and you make my hart hurt. I don't think your doing a very good job. You keep sending soldiers to Iraq and it's not fair.
Do you have a soldier of your own in Irak? Why can't our soldiers come home? They don't like it over there and they are sad. They never smile in pickshurs you kno.
Why did you call Ryan (a friend of a friend who is in the national guard) for duty? It's not fair cant you see? Hes got a life here and you made his mom cry. Angie (Ryan's fianc驠cryed to. Why do you want to make pepole cry? I miss my dad and he misses me. His job is done he says so. Why can't you send him home? I think your mean and I don't like you. You shold have a hart.
Dear mommy,
I miss you. Did you get your wings yet? I ring lots of bells. Ive been trying to be good mom. Are you watching me?
Me and you need to talk mom. Can I see you agin? I got to explane something. Ryan got called to duty and he has to go to Iraq. Tell God to fire the Presadent. It's not fair. Can you wach over him like you woch daddy? Promiss not to let him die okay mommy.
Daddy says he misses you. Me to. Daddy says your still in his hart. Mom I love you. When you walk with God today tell him to make Ryan stay alive. Wach out for rockets mommy. I love you.
Love, Kodee
Kodee also wrote a letter to her father, who she has seen on television at least once. Normally, her guardians try to keep her away from the news, but she has managed to get around their rules a few times.
Her single greatest complaint about her father's living conditions in Iraq is that he looks dirty and needs a shower.
Dear Daddy,
I miss you and I love you. How are you? Are you still coming home dad? I'm still here without you.
I saw you on our dreme date you need a shower daddy. Next time can we go where its snowy. Are you still hot?
Ges what dad I lost a tooth. The tooth farys rates haven't gone up so I'm holding out. I figyer she'll evenchly have to give up and give the extra quarter.
We went to pops and we went to a honted harvest house. Daddy it was scary I didn't like it. I think the content was macher for me. Hey dad I gug a fox hole. It is regulashin. It is hooah.
Can I have my rank back now? I've been good. Daddy I love you. Can you kill all the bad guys now so Air Force One can bring you home? I love you. Don't die okay dad.
Love, Kodee
By the way - the spelling errors are in the published originals, and part of the fiction behind "Kodee" is that she was home schooled.
But in spite of her pleadings, the ultimate tragedy struck. Kodee's daddy came home in a box:
But even then the story was unravelling.On Saturday morning, cars began pulling into the gravel parking lot of a one-story American Legion hall in Orient, Ill., about 30 miles northeast of Carbondale, for a memorial service. Hastings and Kodee got out of a red Pontiac Grand Am, the little girl wearing an Army uniform shirt that hung down to her knees.
People inside the memorial service said both Hastings and Kodee were in tears. A video showed Kennings in his fatigues speaking with a group of children at a church, and there was a scrapbook filled with pictures of Kennings straddling a tank cannon or huddling with other soldiers.
A professor in the university's journalism school who was familiar with the Kennings story called the Tribune Aug. 17, and the Tribune had a reporter on the road to Carbondale that night.
But instead of taking the story to a national level, the Tribune reporters checked one of the widely available list of Soldiers killed in Iraq, and it all began to fall apart.
Read the whole thing here. Finger pointing, accusations, and counter-accusations are flowing freely now. It looks like it will be a while before the full truth is known - until then we'll refrain from assigning blame. We will note that it's easy to deceive those who so eagerly wish to be deceived.
A simple story revealing the lack of standards at college newspapers? Perhaps. But the AP provides an interesting epilogue in their recounting of the tale. They avoid detailing the substance of "Kendee's" letters - but imply the hoax was perpetrated as some sort of pro-war propaganda:
Kim Treger, owner of a women's shoe and accessories store, said she followed the story from the start but was not surprised to learn it was fake.
"As long as people dig those sentimental stories and have that yellow-ribbon mentality, there are going to be these hoaxes," she said.
I think "yellow ribbon mentality" conveys a message that doesn't apply - and I believe that's obvious to anyone who's read this far. Of course, if most stories from the AP include a quote from an "owner of a women's shoe and accessories store" I'll admit that my suspicions as to their motives for including that comment are unfounded.
But it reads to me like a nasty little trick they might have learned in journalism school.
(Hat tip: Florida Cracker)
Update: The definition of "kenning". . (Must read.)
The Folded Flag?
His Mother held the folded flag,
It was a somber day.
A mosaic of tears and memories,
As she heard the bugler play
The last song for a soldier,
As she held his folded flag
And memories of the letter
He wrote her from Ft. Bragg.
He wrote, "Please Mom, don't worry.
I have to see this through
Make your world a safer place.
It's something I just had to do!
It's not just Nine-Eleven Mom,
That stirred my warrior soul,
Not screaming words of Jihad,
A hero's words, "Let's Roll!"
Scenes of Dark September, Mom,
As people fell like snow.
For me, it was the tattered flag
Raised high...at Ground Zero.
Remember how I waved her Mom
When I was only ten?
I waved and waved her on The Fourth,
And Veterans Day...waved her again!
It was the words that grandpa said,
"She stands for all that's true.
Her red is for the blood men shed.
Son, that's what soldiers do!
Guard her well and wave her high.
Let no one treat her bad.
Honor the men who died for her,
They gave her all they had.
A gift of home and family,
Golden memories as they grew old.
A fine young grandson...like I have.
Son, Freedom's bought....not sold!"
So Mom, If I should pay the price
To keep her waving high,
And you receive the folded flag-
Mom, be proud of me.....don't cry!
Place my flag on grandpa's shelf
With his medals from World War II
And the folded flag.....he got last year
That grandma gave to you."
His Mother held the folded flag.
It was a somber day.
She placed it high on "grandpa's shelf",
Then bowed her head to pray.
-unkn
You've probably noticed the Dawn Patrol here is divided into various topical sections - Iraq, Afghanistan, Support the Troops, etc. This is why the stories about Cindy Sheehan go into the "Politics" section. Anyone who thinks the folks behind the scenes are concerned about Iraq is sadly mistaken. They love having her, of course, but only because it makes it look like they give a damn about Iraq. (Have doubts? See also here and here.)
Speaking of Code Pink...
Meanwhile, over at Walter Reed, Code Pink demonstrator Luke delivers the message (for the full impact watch the video):
?"If I went to war and lost a leg and then found out from my hospital bed that I had been lied to, that the weapons I was sent to search for never existed, that the person who sent me to war had no plan but to exploit me, exploit the country I was sent to, I would be pretty angry," Luke told Cybercast News Service. "I would want people to do something about it and if I couldn't get out of my bed and protest myself, I would want someone else to do it in my name," he added.Boy, I would be too. And that's where Luke's argument defeats itself. I'd be cheering him from the window if what he said was true. Interesting that Luke has convinced himself he's defending the wounded troops. Guess he feels they lack the courage to do it themselves. No Luke, you are not acting "in their name". Yes, Froggy, Luke is a coward.
The "no WMD" issue was done to death in the blogosphere two years ago, but I suppose there are those for whom it remains a compelling argument. I can state that WMD's had little real bearing on my thoughts on going to war in Iraq - I thought the issue was a bit overblown by the media in the months leading up to the invasion. I went on the record here long before the issue was resolved. April 6, 2003 to be exact. (A side note: note that at the same time the press was building the "no WMD = failure" theme they were also clamoring for President Bush to declare "victory". Eventually he did, and how they responded is well known, but that's a story for another day...)
Bearing in mind that I'm on the record as not giving a damn about WMDs I'd offer two series of questions to the Code Pink crowd at Crawford or Walter Reed (and if anyone there can do this and get video of the interview please let me know.)
Series one: For those who claim they were deceived into supporting the war because "Bush lied": Are you frequently so deceived? Do you consider yourself a generally gullible person? Are you certain? How can you be sure someone's not misleading you now? In short, why should I trust your current position, if you demonstrably lack good judgment? Do you question the "facts" that Code Pink offers you, or are they beyond reproach? How have you researched the facts supporting your current position? If you weren't deceived before the war, can you offer an example of someone who was? Someone specific, not a group or a hypothetical person. And can we ask them the same questions?
Series two: For those who claim they were or were not deceived into supporting the war because "Bush lied": Do you believe WMDs are a valid reason to go to war against another nation? Let's be more specific - WMDs and a known desire to use them against your nation. If that were a proven fact would you be willing to "support the war"? And if so, would you "support the war" only if there were a direct threat to you personally - whether WMD or non-WMD? What if there was a direct threat to your country? If so, would you "support the war" only in so far as not protesting while allowing other peoples' sons and daughters go fight for you, or would you actually join the military yourself? And if you were indeed deceived about the whole WMD/personal threat against you issue, why didn't you join? Are there any circumstances in which you would join the military?
Bearing in mind I'm an Iraq war vet, I know there were no WMDs in Iraq, don't give a damn, have actually read what the President actually said during the run-up to the invasion, and have seen quotes from every politician on both sides of the aisle stating that Saddam had WMDs the comments are open for anyone with on-topic answers.
You go girl.
Update: On the other side of the fence: here, here, here (you've bookmarked The Buzz by now, right?)
And definitely don't miss this .
This must be noted as some sort of blogospheric holiday. I suggest pie for everyone, with a blended puppy chaser.
CNS has a video report on the protests at Walter Reed.
If these events get increasing attention and subsequent growth, expect to see the area declared off limits for such gatherings. Legally off limits, that is. It's all ready morally off limits.
Had to pull this from the Dawn Patrol for special attention.
Remember this?
Been to see Noah, the son of "Some Soldier's Mom". Was able to pass on a hug from mom. He's doing well.
More Later.
The Seattle Times updates us on LTC Erik Kurilla. They also mention Mike Yon:
In his blog, Iraqi insurgents are "terrorists" and the United States is making progress in its nation-building efforts.Funny - it's that way in Iraq too.
(Via Powerline, who note the "admiring tone" of the article. The above quote could be read that way - a reporter wishing he could use the same terms.)
Michael Gilbert had an earlier story on LTC Kurilla too.
And there are lots of updates from Mosul at Stryker Brigade News.
Not long ago the NY Times bemoaned the "lack of heroes" in the War on Terror:
Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.Attention Times (and other) editors and writers: here's your big chance. Yon has probably got the book deal wrapped up, but you don't have to wait for the military, the White House and the culture at large. Take the ball and run.
You were being serious, weren't you?
Here's LTC Kurilla rescuing his troops from a burning vehicle:
When a soldier on the radio announced that the Stryker was burning with men trapped inside, the troops inside our Stryker began un-strapping fire extinguishers. We stopped and the ramp opened. The soldiers burst out running. Fires burned in several locations. Most of the tires were blown off the Stryker, while smoke poured from the hatches. The Stryker was filled with ammunition, but the back ramp had been jammed shut in the initial explosion. Four injured soldiers had gotten out, while two were trapped inside.Here's LTC Kurilla rescuing a terrorist from an exposed position in a crossfire - then later refusing to turn him over to the Iraq security forces for "softening up"LTC Kurilla ran to the burning Stryker, threw off his protective gear and helmet, leading a swarm of soldiers atop and over the burning hulk, in a determined push to get their buddies out. Kurilla dropped himself down a top hatch, to get into the burning Stryker, while men passed up fire extinguishers and even bottles of water. Major Mark Bieger and others were also atop the vehicle, alongside one gutsy Private First Class that everyone calls "Q."
We had left the prisoner in the open. Bullets are snapping, and I'm crouched on a knee behind a Stryker. When I look back again, I see Kurilla standing out there, alone, next to the terrorist on the sidewalk. Bullets are kicking up dirt and Kurilla gives us a look: What the hell! You left the prisoner!And here's the story of his latest battle - the one that brought him home.For a moment, I nearly ran back out to drag the terrorist behind the Stryker, but then I thought, Nope, he's a terrorist! If Kurilla gets shot, I'm definitely going to get him. But the terrorist can get shot to pieces and I don't care.
Instead of doing something useful--and I feel marginally guilty about this, but not too much--I start snapping photos as the Commander drags the guy by the collar to get him to the cover of the Stryker. I can't believe Kurilla is still alive after nearly a year of doing this.
If it makes you feel better, you can rest assured he doesn't want the hero treatment. So go ahead, let him have it.
By the way - you can get those stories at the Palestine Hotel - if you've got a good internet connection.
Update: Hugh Hewitt has the mailing address for the hospital where LTC Kurilla and one of his men are recovering.
And have you hit Yon's tip jar lately?
Part I is here, part II here, part III here.
The Bottom of the Scrap Heap
Blonde Sagacity describes a recent episode of HBO's Six Feet Under:
The last episode that I saw had a legless and armless soldier (apparently at a military medical facility) who has his sister bring him Phenobarbital in a syringe and stabs it into his heart to kill himself.Well of course! What else could one do in such circumstances? After all, as Princeton University professor Uwe Reinhardt said to his son upon learning of his intention to join the Marines, "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." He wrote it in the Washington Post, so it must be true.
Yesterday Drudge made an amazing announcement: CNS, an online conservative news site, was going to tell the world that there were anti-war protestors outside Walter Reed Medical Center!!!!
Anti-war protestors besieged wounded and disabled soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C, a new web report will claim!Later the CNS story appeared!!!!!CNSNews.com is planning to run an expose on Thursday featuring interviews with both protestors and veterans, as well as shots of protest signs with slogans like ?Maimed for a Lie.?
Yes - those exclamation points I used are sarcasm, because I first read about this story in a milblog nearly two months ago, and even then the demonstrations were nothing new:
Thirteen weeks ago, a group called Code Pink began hosting demonstrations outside of Walter Reed. Code Pink is a radical anti-war organization who oppose military action in both Afghanistan and Iraq. While they claim to host these demonstrations to highlight the transport of wounded warriors in the dark of the night, and claim to fight for VA benefits, their history proves that they are anything but concerned about the plight of our troops.That's from Andi's World - and on that July 4th weekend she went to a counter-protest at Walter Reed (photos included in her post) organized by the folks at Free Republic. Their report is here, also with photos - including this one:
Code Pink protestor, Walter Reed, July 4th weekend
(From Free Republic)
But now back to the present. Here's a quote from the CNS story:
But the anti-war activists were unapologetic when asked whether they considered such signs as "Maimed for Lies" offensive to wounded war veterans and their families.He doesn't care if he offends them! Their wounds offend him more! And we can only wonder how the intrepid Kevin "Columbo" McCarron was able to discover there were wounded veterans being treated at Walter Reed, since they've been kept out of the news."I am more offended by the fact that many were maimed for life. I am more offended by the fact that they (wounded veterans) have been kept out of the news," said Kevin McCarron, a member of the anti-war group Veterans for Peace.
Speaking of "left out of the news", here's something else that wasn't - a different way to support the wounded troops:
Sgt. Robbie Doughty motors around his hometown of Paducah, Ky., in his retrofitted pickup with a big to-do list: drop off his 20-month-old son, Derek, at the day care center; open a pizzeria; learn to live with artificial legs.More
<...>
USA TODAY first wrote about Doughty in a story in November 2004 about wounded Iraq veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Even then, he was looking forward to his future, never back to the desert. But he was unsure what lay ahead."I'll try to figure out what my new life will be," he said then.
<...>
On July 8, Doughty was in the passenger seat of the lead Humvee in a three-vehicle convoy on a mission about 50 miles south of Samarra. A mortar shell exploded just behind his seat. The blast obliterated his legs. Tourniquets applied by medics at the scene saved his life, but he lost his left leg just below the knee, his right just above.Doughty spent time in military hospitals overseas before he was taken to Walter Reed. He spent four months there learning to walk with prosthetic legs.
It was painstaking rehabilitation. But he said he saw others worse off than him. And more important, he saw amputees from Korea, Vietnam and World War II who had lived good lives despite their disabilities.
<...>
For a time, Doughty worked as a substitute teacher and thought about joining the Kentucky State Police. A call from Little Caesar's Pizza changed his mind.The company read about his service to the country and offered him an opportunity to open his own restaurant. Doughty and a partner hope to open a franchise in Paducah by year's end.
<...>
It's not that he hasn't had dark moments. Just not that many."I did have a few bouts in the hospital," he says, "usually when I was alone. I'd have difficulty sleeping. I'd stay awake a lot, and a few times felt sorry for myself.
"I saw miracles on a daily basis there," he says. "Just seeing people who wouldn't quit. Just seeing the look on people's faces after they've taken that first step.
Mike Ilitch built his reputation as a feisty businessman with a flair for promotions as owner of Little Caesars pizza and two of Detroit's beloved sports teams."...flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded."Few would think of Ilitch as an impulsive, heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy.
Ilitch offered a Little Caesars pizza franchise to Sgt. Robbie Doughty, 30, of Paducah, Ky., after reading a USA Today report about him last fall. Ilitch was moved and wanted to help the war veteran who lost both legs in a roadside bombing in Iraq.
Ilitch said Doughty's sense that his injuries were not the end of the world impressed the founder of one of the nation's largest pizza chains.
<...>
Neither Doughty nor Ilitch would talk about specifics on the financial arrangements. Little Caesars franchisees usually pay an initial $20,000 fee and an ongoing 6% of gross sales. The company estimates the cost of building a new store is $109,000 to $299,000. It also requires franchisees to have a net worth of $180,000 with a minimum of $60,000 in such liquid assets as cash, the Little Caesars Web site shows.Privately held Little Caesars has 3,085 locations across the country with $946 million in annual sales, according to Nation's Restaurant News. It is the fourth-largest pizza chain.
<...>
Doughty and Allard hope to eventually open several Little Caesars restaurants in the area.The International Franchise Association has made helping veterans get into franchises one of its top priorities this year, said spokeswoman Amy Bannon.
"The reason, beyond giving something back to the veterans, there also is a practical reason for franchisers to work with veterans," she said. "Veterans tend to be very good franchisees. They usually have a history of being a leader in a system, are more disciplined and more mission-oriented. That is the kind of franchisee you want."
Looks like Ilitch thinks there are better ways to support the troops than marching in front of Walter Reed with a "Wounded for Lies" sign.
Let's return to that discussion of Six Feet Under - perhaps we can take Mr McCarron somewhere he's never been.
The soldier portrayed was exactly how I thought they would be before I had the honor of meeting a group of them. I thought they would be depressed and despondent. I was prepared for that...for anger and regret. The reality was humbling... During the course of the day I couldn't help but ask how (and why) they were all so upbeat and their spirits so strong (the only thing they seemed to bitch about was that fact that their superiors wouldn't let them go back overseas!). A handsome 23 year old, with both legs missing from above his knees and a huge cast from soldier to fingertips on his left arm, said to me "Before you deploy you tell all your friends and family that if this (he points to himself) ever happens to me I will kill myself. You can't imagine ever wanting to live like this. But when this happens and you wake up and you're alive... (He pauses) You just can't imagine how happy you are to be alive. I woke up with my foot lying next to my head, but some of my buddies didn't make it. I'm still here and I have a second chance. It's awesome to be here." Wow. At that point I believe I went and bought another round of beers so they didn't tease me for the tears in my eyes...Enough standing around laughing at the Code Pink folks - let's go somewhere they never will. Ready to venture inside Walter Reed Army Hospital? MilBlogs can take you there too.
Part 5 to follow.
That's a misleading headline (but it got your attention.). Via comments, news from Seattle:
Two soldiers who just returned from a year in Iraq were badly beaten in an attack outside Pioneer Square. But believe it or not, someone caught the beating on videotape. Now, police are asking for your help identifying the suspects. Police say the victims were with two women who'd been groped by the suspects. One of the women threw a hot dog at the suspects and walked away.Rest here, with suspect photos. (And video.)
Jason Van Steenwick reviews Over There, and finds it lacking. Nail that coffin shut.
A wry comment on the background situation for this episode, in which our heroes must provide cover for a convioy of toilet seats moving through a dangerous town:
And so the semi trucks come over the hill, with their precious cargo of toilet seats. Smoker, a tough street kid from Compton, doesn't think the cargo of toilet seats is worth the risk.In case you're wondering, Jason was "over there" (and blogging it) for OIF I. You can read some of his early archives here.Smoker apparently missed the OIF I rotation, but I digress.
A quote I stumbled across while looking back at those entries:
I don?t know what else to do, if anything. Except, again, confront ignorance where it arises. I can?t fight it on every front. But I can fight it in front of me.Words to live by. I might make a milblogs banner with that motto. "I can?t fight ignorance on every front. But I can fight it in front of me."
Anybody good with Latin?
(Note to self: If the caller ID says, "Fort Benning", do not answer phone -- IT'S BAD NEWS. Of course, I didn't have that thought... and the Rear Detachment (they're the guys that stay behind and make sure things are going good back home) and I have the following conversation (as best I remember but forever seared in my brain)RD: Hello is this _________?
Me: Yes... (tentative)
RD: This is Sgt. F with the Rear Detachment.
Me: Yes... (still tentative)
RD: I'm calling about your son, Noah...
Let's hope and pray no one else receives the call that "Soldier's Mom" received and that all our soldiers stay safe.
Keeping you close to our hearts.
Colonel Thomas Spoehr is annoyed with New York Times reporter Michael Moss, for what I think is a good reason.(Hat tip: Instapundit)Spoehr is the director of materiel for the Army staff. He had a good news story to tell Moss, which Moss converted into a bad news story.
The story is that of the improved body armor (read it all here) - and it's also one that MilBlogger Mustang 09 responded to quite effectively here Read that one if you want a street-level view.
Last week Col Spoehr also "appeared" on NPR's Talk of the Nation. You can listen here, or read the transcript below. At first read of Cohen's questions it seems he chose to follow the Time's lead, but listening online you hear he's actually not hostile (there's a lesson to be learned in that), and the result is a that the Colonel got the opportunity to set the record straight. Kudos once again to NPR.
Jihad "is an Arabic word that means "striving in the way of God." This striving can take a number of forms, including the daily inner struggle to be a better person. However, jihad is often used to refer to an armed struggle fought in defense of Islam."
Greg Mitchell calls for jihad:
At this critical moment, it's time for newspapers -- many of which helped get us into this war -- to use their editorial pages as platforms to help get us out of it. So far, few have done much more than wring their hands. Now, it's literally do-or-die time.Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher, "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry".
An al-Qaeda linked-group has launched what it calls a media jihad, or holy war, to "terrorise" United States-led forces in Iraq and their families by bombarding them with e-mails and by posting gruesome photos online.Cindy Sheehan calls for jihad:The group, calling itself the "Brigade of Media Jihad", called on its militants to "post terrifying pictures on the internet in order to terrorise the enemy", said a statement on an Islamist website whose authenticity could not be verified.
"Our objective is to undermine the morale of our enemies, dash their hopes and dreams and reveal the truth of what is happening in Iraq. The media war is an integral part of the war on the ground," said the statement.
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Last week, it posted a film, Top Ten, in which it showed a selection of attacks on US troops carried out by the Islamic Army in Iraq and the al-Qaeda organisation in the Land of Two Rivers, the group of al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.The footage showed the bodies of alleged US soldiers, mutilated and burnt.
I'm coming back to Crawford for my son. As long as the president, who sent him to die in a senseless war, is in Crawford, that is where I belong.... Because every death is now a meaningless one. And the vast majority of our country knows this. So why do more young men and women have to die? And why do more parents have to lose their children and live the rest of their lives with this unbearable grief?Well, one answer is, because of you...
Former Saddam army "strongman" Colonel Watban Jassam calls for jihad:
Tips On How To Beat US From Insurgents' ConsultantRead that as "we're gonna kill a few for Cindy."To gauge US public opinion, he has become an avid watcher of satellite news channels, and never misses the White House press briefings
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To win the war against the US military and Badr, Colonel Jassam advises the Omariyun to follow two short-term goals - to cement mujahideen control over the Ramadi area, and to stage operations that will increase pressure on US opinion to withdraw troops.
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To achieve their second goal, turning Americans against the war, the mujahideen need to shape their operations "to support anti- war sentiment in the west", he says.
Guess it's time for Jihad.
Sheehan is a damaged idealist; her pain is genuine, and obviously more than she can bear. But watch this documentary of her original bus trip to Crawford (large file, long load time). Note the gang's less-than-enthusiastic response to her call for non-violent protest. And pay close attention to the early scene of the discussion she has with a smiling young man on the bus, who notes "It's like the lady from the Peace and Justice center said, polls are plummeting, people are dying, now's the time!"
He shows no sympathy for those "people" or their families - he sees only opportunity in their deaths.
Sheehan is a dupe for these folks - her pain is real and they use it as they do the deaths of soldiers in Iraq - for personal or political gain. Later in the video she refers to terrorists crossing into Iraq from neighboring countries as "freedom fighters" - those same folks sharing photos of corpses of other mother's children.
Don't think for a minute that Col Jassam is bluffing - soon Sheehan will have to accept responsibility for a few deaths of American soldiers too. Wonder if their mothers will demand a meeting with her?
By the way, in spite of the best efforts of these groups, I'm still convinced the combined strength of the US military and the majority of the people of Iraq will prevail. I've been there. I've seen the jihad.
** What started as a small gathering grew to more than 52 groups signed up to be in the procession honoring a local area Hero! **
Gateway Pundit has this hero's story with video.
There are lessons to be learned in this story from The Washington Post:
The U.S. public's confidence that the military and the media keep them informed about national security issues has eroded significantly over the past six years, according to a new poll that shows 60 percent of Americans believe they do not get enough information about military matters to make educated decisions.I say that implies a rather large potential audience for military blogs - assuming that those who don't trust the media or the military news sources actually want another source.According to a McCormick Tribune Foundation/Gallup poll scheduled for release today, Americans are more interested in national security than they were in the past. But only 54 percent of Americans say they feel the military keeps them well informed, down from 77 percent in 1999 -- before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And military leaders should take note. Pay special attention to this incident. (Allow video to load, if you haven't seen the whole thing you really should.) When the troops speak for themselves the results are usually overwhelmingly positive in terms of a potential PR boost. A young enlisted guy speaking proudly and smartly of his mission in Iraq after being shot in the chest (and saved by his armor) is more effective than the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff on stuff like this.
One of my favorite bloggers gets a mention in the article too:
Cori Dauber, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said, "One of the most important findings here is how interested the public is and that both the military and the media underestimate how many national security topics the public cares about."Her blog is here. Her additional comments on this story are here.
Iraq the Model:
Right now there are bloody clashes in Najaf between the supporters of Muqtada Al-Sadr and the residents of the city.More here.
The clashes started after Al-Sadr men tried to reopen their office which has been closed for months but the locals attacked the office, set fire in it and clashed with Sadr's men.The police forces intervened and the casualties till now are 7 killed and tens wounded.
I have received news saying that a curfew has been imposed in the city.
The Open Post is Mudville's message board for bloggers and others to post anything they want on topics not covered elsewhere in this site.
Blog links and comments below are placed by the respective authors, and are not selected by The Mudville Gazette. Opinions expressed in the sites linked to this section are those of their authors only - and because this is an open forum should not be considered as endorsed or shared by the Mudville Gazette.
We will delete any links or comments referencing or directing readers to obscene or illegal material. Please report any such items to greyhawk @ mudvillegazette.com.
That said, please note that I fight for free speech (literally), and am not afraid of ideas. The exchange of such is the purpose of this daily feature. We encourage your participation.
And I do mean yellow.
From time to time you hear people complain that supporting the troops means more than yellow ribbons on cars. That's true - but no reason to vandalize the cars of those who display them.
And in case you wonder which gesture the troops appreciate...
A gung-ho Newton soldier home from Iraq and nursing his wounds took off after two ``rugrats'' ripping off ribbons supporting the troops.More at the Boston Herald.
Army Spc. Richard Busa hobbled down the street in a cast, catching one of the teens.
``I caught these two little rugrats pulling (the yellow `Support the Troops') ribbons off cars,'' Busa said. ``You can be against the war, but you have to make it clear that you support the troops. If you don't, keep your mouth shut. There are men and women over there that are being shot at and dying.''
Vietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the latest installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq.
Things I'm tired of hearing
Dear Warrior in Iraq . . .
The loudest racket on the Internet these days is about whether the press is reporting fairly on Iraq. Is the news is intentionally negative and undermining the war effort in general and you soldiers in particular?
This debate has been going on at full volume for months, actually, rising to the level of furious during the election--but more on the election later.
I'm feeling a bit owly, so this week's letter is going to sound more like a rant. I don't know, some things you just get tired of hearing.
American television thought it proper to send the Today Show's Matt Lauer to find the answers to the questions on Iraq, a kind of "where in the world is Matt Lauer's stand on all of this?"
Turns out Matt is astonished to see a positive attitude among the troops, a genuine belief in what they're doing and a palpable feeling of resentment that the press is trivializing the service of American men and women in uniform in Iraq. Which astonishment is insulting enough in its own right. To discover that you're not brain-dead ogres? What? You're not the drug-diminished, baby-killing, officer-fragging soldiers portrayed in Oliver Stone's movie "Platoon" or Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now"?
You're patriotic, not brainwashed? You're intelligent and motivated, not robots answering to a chain of command that can be traced to an unjust war president? I'm tired of hearing about that.
But let's get back to the substantive questions at hand.
Is the press reporting on negative events more frequently than positive events? Of course. Put yourself in the news producer's Dan Rather jacket and make the calls on your own. Which goes first in the newscast? The new school built by soldiers of an infantry task force? Or the bombing that killed the Iraqi minister of education? If you choose the new school, turn in your Dan Rather jacket--you're looking at this question with your heart instead of your eyes. These guys are going for the bombing every time.
But I'm tired of hearing nothing but that.
Well. Is the negative news aiding and abetting the enemy to the detriment of soldiers? Yes. Absolutely. A chief terrorist aim is to demoralize and, yes, terrorize, hence the name. Reporting bombings and killings of the troops will demoralize civilian populations back home and terrorize moms everywhere.
Does that make the reporting unfair? Is it unjust simply because it helps the enemy to your detriment?
The journalist would say no. The journalist would place himself above the debate and argue that she only covers the news like a goddess above the fray and superior to soldiers with dirt beneath their fingernails in the tone of: "We only report; you decide." I'm all out of patience for hearing it.
The arrogance of that position was betrayed not long ago by White House reporter Helen Thomas, who was outed by another journalist for saying that if Vice President Dick Cheney were to run for president she would kill herself. Forget that her declaration alone is grounds enough for a draft-Cheney movement. Ms. Thomas went on to say, "We don't need another liar." Meaning another liar like President Bush.
Now. I ask you. When Ms. Thomas gets up in the morning, showers and puts on her cloak of super-humanity, the mantle of journalism, and goes out to write about Mr. Bush or the war in Iraq, is she going to report fairly? Is she going to treat him justly? You decide.
Ask a cop about the nature of his fellow man. I went on an all-night ride with an officer in the inner-city of Indianapolis. Except for me and his fellow officers, that cop never spoke to a single citizen who was not reeling drunk or reeking of alcohol. Two were carrying weapons. Several he arrested on outstanding warrants. Several were involved in heated domestic disputes.
Day in and day out, he dealt with drunks and criminals. What's his picture of humanity, do you suppose?
Well. No wonder the press is negative on the war. All they report on is killings and bombings.
They all need to pull a Matt Lauer tour once a week and talk to soldiers like you.
Till next week . . .
God bless you and Godspeed.
John is a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam and a member of the American Legion. His novel, Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword is a fictional account of the 9/11 attacks and the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom.
And today we're proud to announce the publication of the second of John's Delta books, Prelude to War
Naval Reservist OIF veteran returns from two weeks annual training time and learns "there's a 99 percent chance that there won't be room in the new budget for your position".
Their loss is possibly your gain, but I'd act fast. Contact him here.
The NY Times covers OIF vet responses to the television program Over There.
Note: In the article I'm mistakenly identified as John Harriman. John is a Vietnam veteran and weekly contributor to Mudville - he writes a series called Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq. (His latest entry will be up shortly.) I, on the other hand, go by the name "Greyhawk" here. I'm the founder of this site, still on active duty, and returned earlier this year from a tour of duty in Baghdad.
If you're interested in the views of the real GIs who are or have been "over there" - or those of their family members - on virtually any topic this is the place. This is an "off duty" endeavor, we're unofficial, our opinions are solely our own, and should not be considered in any way endorsed by or representative of those of the DoD. Keep scrolling, you'll meet folks deployed all over the world - including Iraq and Afghanistan. TV reviews aren't our main focus.
However, if you're just interested in how GIs feel about the TV program "Over There" here's an earlier post on that topic.
If you've wandered in for the first time, perhaps pointed this way from any of the recent media coverage of milblogs or elsewhere, welcome to Mudville. Welcome to the world of military weblogs. I'm a career military guy, earlier this year I returned from a tour of duty in Baghdad. My wife is a career wife and mom. The site is ours, is not official or registered with the DoD in any way shape or form, and the opinions expressed are those of the authors, etc. etc.
For those new to blogs, a word of explanation. Links appearing in the text of a post were placed there by the author of that post. Content of the linked document is the property and responsibility of its author.
Links and comments below the "posted by" line are placed by the respective authors, and are not selected by The Mudville Gazette. Opinions expressed in the sites linked to this section are those of their authors - and because this is an open forum should not be considered as endorsed or shared by the Mudville Gazette.
We will delete any links or comments referencing or directing readers to obscene or illegal material. Please report any such items to greyhawk @ mudvillegazette.com.
That said, please note that I fight for free speech (literally), and am not afraid of ideas. The exchange of such is the purpose of this site. We encourage your participation.
As noted, I recently returned from my own tour of duty in Iraq - I was able to maintain this site from there too. Some of my earliest posts from my days in Baghdad can be found here. There are now (and have been since before the invasion) a growing number of military folks (and Iraqis) blogging from Iraq - and from Afghanistan too. Bookmark us and visit as often as you can and you'll meet most of them. The main purpose of the Mudville Gazette has been to amplify as much as possible the voices of those troops by providing pointers to their blogs. The Mrs handles most of that part of the effort now - likewise she manages the MilBlogs Ring, a group I started on Veteran's Day 2003. There are almost 300 blogs in the ring at this time.
I suppose she's the "play by play", and my contribution to the effort is to provide the color commentary. You'll find a significant contrast between the Iraq described by those who've been (or are now) there and the Iraq you read about in your newspapers or see on TV. (There are both good and bad reports from that sector, by the way - I point out the good ones too.) Scroll down this main page and you'll see the past week's worth of stories. Or click here for a recent series that probably captures the essence of what we're all about.
We also have daily "Open Posts" where any other blogger can place a link back to their site, whether they are military or not. We are all about free speech - and you can add your comments to anything here - whether you agree or disagree with what's said. Once again, I fight for free speech, so feel free to exercise it here. The only exceptions would be classified information, extremely foul language, and references to home loans or card games or other things that are automatically banned to prevent an overwhelming amount of "spam" comments - mostly from online porn and gambling sites.
Many of our recent stories best illustrate the depth of information you'll only find on milblogs. Here are some from just the past few weeks.
- Blogger and freelance journalist Steven Vincent was recently kidnapped and killed in Iraq. You can "get to know" this remarkable man via the following stories:
And Then There Were None
Who Killed Steven Vincent?
Searching For Steven Vincent
Not all the news is that heavy though.
- We looked at music written and recorded by GIs in Iraq here and here, with a follow-up here. (Yes, you'll be able to hear the songs.)
- A roundup of milblogger reviews of the television program "Over There" can be found in its own special section of The Dawn Patrol here.
- A look at other media distortions of quotes from troops can be found here.
- A story on politicians (and others) campaigning at the funerals of American GIs is here.
- Real numbers on casualties from Iraq can be found here.
- Results of recent opinion polls of Iraqi people are here.
- Did you know that the US House of Representatives last month voted in favor of a measure "...to enhance the security of the U.S. by making it the policy of the U.S. to pursue a transfer of responsibility for Iraqi forces only when they are ready to assume such responsibility and not to withdraw prematurely the U.S. Armed Forces from Iraq."?
Additionally, the House determined "...to express the sense of Congress that the capture, detention and interrogation of international terrorists are essential to the successful prosecution of the Global War on Terrorism and to the defense of the U.S., its citizens, and coalition partners from future terrorist attacks; and that the detention and lawful, humane interrogation by the U.S. of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is essential to the defense of the U.S. and its coalition partners and to the successful prosecution of the Global War on Terrorism." Full coverage is here.
- Did you know that the Pentagon's new chief defense counsel for the Guantᮡmo Bay, Cuba, war-crimes trials is a Marine reservist called to active duty from a six-year stint at the American Civil Liberties Union? Mudville readers knew.
- Likewise they know that the US has been airlifting troops into the Darfur region of Sudan. (US security forces are still in place there.)
As noted, those are just from the past few weeks. We've been here over two years, and we aren't going away any time soon.
We update several times a day - come back often, and thanks for stopping by.
Blue Star Mom and fellow MilBlogger of "Some Soldier's Mom" son, Noah, has been seriously injured by an IED.
Send her a hug and some prayers
The Open Post is Mudville's message board for bloggers and others to post anything they want on topics not covered elsewhere in this site.
Blog links and comments below are placed by the respective authors, and are not selected by The Mudville Gazette. Opinions expressed in the sites linked to this section are those of their authors only - and because this is an open forum should not be considered as endorsed or shared by the Mudville Gazette.
We will delete any links or comments referencing or directing readers to obscene or illegal material. Please report any such items to greyhawk @ mudvillegazette.com.
That said, please note that I fight for free speech (literally), and am not afraid of ideas. The exchange of such is the purpose of this daily feature. We encourage your participation.
Colby Buzzell tips us to a video interview with Jonathan Finer - writer of the MilBlogs article in the Washington Post.
The video is here. Finer gets it right.
Tim Blair exposes a phony Vietnam veteran in the Cindy Sheehan camp. (See this entry too.)
Holly Aho interviews Beth of Fuzzilicious Thinking , co-creater of a new project within Soldiers Angels , Project Valour-IT
This podcast is about the project, how it got started, how much has been accomplished already, the goals long and short-term for the project, as well as how you can get involved and help.
Well done Holly and Beth.
Project Valour-it has reached the halfway point to their goal, after only 12 days of operation. Congratulations to all who helped make that happen, but more is needed in order to make this dream a reality.
According to Valour-it Blog we should be looking for a milblog fundraising competition to develop soon. We'll be sure to get in on that.
Doc in the Box throws a Blog B Que. He made his famous curry and MilBloggers from all around came running. So what do you do when you have so many esteemed Millbloggers in one room, like Doc and his new bride, the Smashes, Captain Lex, Kevin from Primary Main Objective, John and Beth Donovan and a couple of friends? Well, watch Team America of course.
It sounds like fun was had by all. Times like these, we truly wished we were stateside . Sorry we missed it, maybe next time.
Email:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Greyhawk,Ain't technology wonderful?Just wanted to let you know that I put up a pretty cool video of America shooting the hell out of a terrorist fighting position that attacked our base last night.
The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government collected 25 reports by major federal departments and agencies to Congress and the Department of Justice for 2004 and found the vast majority of Freedom of Information Act requestors are private individuals.They'd probably be faster if there wasn't a war on.Journalists account for a miniscule proportion of the record more than 4 million FOIA requests submitted to federal agencies last year, according to the CJOG study. The Defense Department answers requests for expedited processing on average in only one day, which is much faster than other federal agencies.
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The CJOG study notes that federal law requires agencies to assess a request for expedited appeal within five days. The Defense Department's media response time for such requests was one day, compared to the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, which had 36 expedited review requests pending for more than 195 working days, or nearly 10 months!
Hugh Hewitt, in an excellent (and broader than this quote) essay on blogs right and left:
First, let us now praise Day by Day's Chris Muir, the funniest and sharpest three panel political cartoonist at work in America today. Muir's timeliness and productivity have created a large audience for him online, which is growing wider and wider as new blog consumers arrive in record numbers. Many bloggers routinely cite or even carry the Muir strip of the day (an innovation I first noticed at Captain's Quarters), and Muir's popularity further strengthens the center-right blogosphere's vast humor advantage over the relentlessly profane, vulgar and snarling left. With James Lileks, Scrappleface, Fraters, and ProteinWisdom also at work on a near daily basis, Muir makes the center-right's funny folks the blogosphere's Globetrotters to the left's Washington Generals. It is a very great thing to have the advantage in the humor corner. Ask Joe Lieberman about his 2000 debate with the Dick Cheney. The left has to pretend to like Ted Rall. The center-right gets the real thing.(Hewitt also notes that snarling, profanity, and vulgarity are not absent from the Right.)
But his point is valid - and amplified by another aspect of right-wing parody. All too often, yesterday's Scrappleface post becomes today's news - and this week it happened again. As Wizbang notes here.
Just a mile from President George Bush's Texas ranch, America's favorite protest-mom, Cindy Sheehan, today got a surprise visit from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Country Joe McDonald and several members of Sly and the Family Stone.The Washington Post, today:The impromptu Woodstock reunion was sponsored by the Democrat National Committee and Coca-Cola
They are stardust, and in TexasWell, there's certainly one recent war that's over, but for some the 60's live on.Folk singer Joan Baez gave a free concert Sunday night for a crowd of 500.
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"It's kind of like if Woodstock was really organized," said Chris Voigt, 51, an architect from Fort Worth who was volunteering in the spacious kitchen tent, scraping a frittata pan. "The war's over. Somebody needs to tell Bush."
No word on whether Joan dreamed she saw Casey Sheehan last night, alive as you or me.
The Tehran Times and World Socialist Website have more.
...revisited.
From Andi's World:
Wednesday night, I attended a Support Our Troops demonstration, which was held in front of the White House and hosted by FreeRepublic. It was intended to counter the Cindy Sheehan candlelight vigil, and it was quite an event.Kevin is a double amputee, the result of combat in Iraq. Mrs G wrote about him here.After running the gauntlet of approximately 300 MoveOns, CodePinks and other various and sundry anti-war types, I finally reached the staging area for the FReepers, which was about thirty or so feet away from the "vigil". In the photo below you see someone holding a flag, this was one of two that we counted. MoveOn could assemble 300 people, but only two flags.
Once I was in friendly territory, I met Kevin Pannell, an OIF Veteran, and his bride-to-be, Cindy. Both are amazing individuals. Kevin was in great demand by the media, as well as the Sheehan supporters, who couldn't wait to approach him and ask him if the war was worth it. I recorded part of a conversation Kevin had with one of the more polite anti-war types.
"When I signed up, it was knowing that this might happen. I knew that. I wasn't forced to sign up." Kevin continued, "Saddam was a shi**y dog and needed to be thrown out."
The gentleman went on to ask Kevin if he thought that war was inevitable, and if he thought there would be more of it in the future.
"Yeah, oh yeah" says Kevin and he went on to explain why we're not speaking German at this very moment.
Be sure to read the whole thing at Andi's (with pictures).
Update: More story and photos at Free Republic - the group that organized the counter demonstration. Among other things you'll see a photo of Kevin Pannell being interviewed by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. Note that Pannell was not the leader or organizer of the group - thus Milbank's finished story is a bit misleading:
That's what worries Kevin Pannell, whose knot of a dozen conservative counterdemonstrators was outnumbered 50 to 1 on Pennsylvania Avenue last night. Pannell, part of the Army's First Cavalry Division, lost both calves in Iraq last year when his patrol was ambushed in a grenade attack. He said he had never been to a political rally before, but he is worried about Sheehan's ability to spark an antiwar movement."Worried"? I didn't get that impression of this combat vet, but Milbank uses it twice. An interesting choice of quotes, too."She's stirred up a wasps' nest," he said, leaning on a flagpole to support his prosthetic legs. "It's definitely getting bigger. They're getting a little out of hand."
Soldier's Angels and Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss, on page D2 of the Washington Post. Read about it at Holly's, follow the links. (I'm glad they published it, but let's make the good folks at the Post wonder why this buried story is so popular...)
Soap gets in your Eyes
Foxnews reports on the appearance of the Iraq war as guest star in several recent television programs:
Peace generally prevails in television's fairy-tale world of sitcoms, soap operas and dramas.Wonderful. The Soaps are bringing the war home. Not having seen any of them I won't pass judgment on the result - but I have to wonder about this:But several TV shows are incorporating the War on Terror into their storylines.
"Days of Our Lives", "Las Vegas" and "Law and Order", all on NBC, have characters who have been involved in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan ? or something resembling it. And one new program, FX's "Over There," is actually about soldiers fighting in Iraq.
"We never, ever said that it was Iraq because of sensitivity," said ("Days" executive producer Ken) Corday. "We never showed people of Iraqi descent or people with Iraqi accents. But it was scenes with a lot of sands, so that's obviously what we were doing."And this from Corday:Similarly, Gary Scott Thompson (executive producer and creator of "Las Vegas.") had to wrangle with network execs before he got them on board, because they didn't want to be perceived as making any statements about the war.
"It was a tough sell to the network ? they said, you can't be making comments like this," he said. "I said, it's not a comment, it's the reality. Once I'd written the script and they'd looked at it, they knew what I was trying to do."
"I thought it was important because it's going on out there," he said. "This was not a liberal or conservative approach. We're talking about a deployment of 300,000 of our brothers, sisters, children, parents. ? We need to re-remind the American people that they're still there."I have no idea how "real" the depictions are, or what those undefined "approaches" are, but I'm curious where that 300,000 number came from. On any given month there are 130-140,000 US troops in Iraq, and the total from the past 2.5 years is probably far above 300k.
Of that total, around 6651 have sustained wounds requiring greater than 72 hours recovery time, and less than 300 have lost limbs. (Data here.) None have been "captured" since the invasion. But here's a description of the "Days" plotline:
The character engaged in battle in the desert (created using sand and bunkers on the set), was captured and taken hostage, said goodbye to his family in a video and lost his leg on a land mine before being discharged and sent home early this summer.That's quite a lot of drama. But we are addressing Soap Operas, after all. Expectations weren't high. That's not a comment - it's the reality.
Over Where?
From the same article:
The trend of shows tackling a current war is a far cry from how entertainment TV handled Vietnam in the '60s, according to Robert Thompson.Yes, for years now due to media exploitation most Americans have held the "Gomer Pyle" concept of Vietnam veterans. "Realistic" films like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and Rambo have failed utterly to change that image to the mediaccurate one - Vietnam vets are deranged psychotics wounded in mind, body and spirit, and a tragic threat to society. But here's why TV Iraq isn't another TV Vietnam:"The philosophy of network television back then was you presented a parallel universe and ignored it entirely," he said. "You provided an anesthesia from all that was going on in the world."
The program "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," for example, was about a Marine and took place on a military base but never mentioned the Vietnam War.
"Days," "Las Vegas" and "Over There" have all consulted with the Marines in doing their war-themed storylines so as to be as accurate as possible within their fictional parameters. They've gotten positive feedback from real-life soldiers about the end result, their producers say, but reaction from viewers has been mixed.Which brings us to "Over There". "Reaction from viewers has been mixed" is code for "the show is swirling in a ratings toilet", but the next quote is one I've seen elsewhere: "They've gotten positive feedback from real-life soldiers about the end result, their producers say,"
If Over There actually did consult with Marines on their story lines that would explain a lot. The show is about the Army, and Marines might have set them up as a joke. But I doubt that really happened. I haven't seen the program, so I hold a neutral opinion on it, but I've read countless reviews from fellow milbloggers, and the results are not good for any television exec trying to sell his show as "more real than Gomer Pyle." In fact, from what I've read the program might be best described as a Soap Opera too; perhaps more real than "Days of Our Lives" but somewhat lacking when compared to Combat, Rat Patrol, Gomer Pyle, or Hogan's Heroes.
Being far, far removed from anyone who would actually serve their country for any reason whatsoever, media folks have a very strong and incorrect stereotype of "soldiers" in their minds. Likewise they are completely unfamiliar with the reality of Iraq - they only know what they read in the papers and see on TV. Most of the media reviews of "Over There" applaud it because it reinforces that stereotype, and confirms their imaginary view of Iraq. But they also condemn the program for failing to point out that Bush is Hitler. The New Yorker review is typical of the sort:
The show isn?t front-loaded with too many easy explanations for why the characters have enlisted, but it does make it clear that none of them really get what they bargained for.It's possible that this was a planned compromise - try not to offend the left by presenting the story as they imagine it to be, and try not to offend the actual soldiers by not touting the leftist dogma about the reasons behind the war. Todays left is uncompromising though, you swallow their teachings all the way or you just stay home. Portray soldiers as innocent but ignorant victims of a tyrannical and misguided foreign policy established by George Bush - because simply portraying them as ignorant victims is not enough.
<...>
To judge by the first three episodes, ?Over There? seems to be saying only, or mainly, that war is hell. There?s an overall pointlessness to the show that?s rather shocking, considering the outrageous lies and arrogance that got us into the war.
But the milblog reviews (developed independently and not in response to the media's efforts) contradict them very strongly. To real GIs the characters, an element reporters consider the strong point of the story, are laughable (see a comparison of the two positions here). No GI has joined the media in condemning the program for failing to promote the left wing view of Iraq. This is telling - GIs don't actually write about it because they don't see the problem - they are the "dog that doesn't bark".
Still I've yet to read an MSM review of the program that fails to mention that "Soldiers" give positive feedback to the show. I can, however, personally vouch for at least one newspaper (I'll leave it nameless at this time) reporter (ditto) who contacted me seeking some feedback from milbloggers. Fortunately Mrs G had been compiling them as part of her daily Dawn Patrol.
Original email:
Greetings, My name is _____ and I am a reporter for the _____. I am working on a story about how returning soldiers feel about the authenticity of 'over there', Stephen Bochco's recently debuted fx series. Judging from some of the posts on the site, they haven't been too impressed. I would love to talk to some of these men and women. any idea of how I might get in touch with some folks who have been and done that and have now see the show? I realize that a lot of your folks don't live to read or collaborate with MSM, but I thought it might be worth a shot. Thanks for any help.Next day, from the reporter:Me: I'm in Germany and it's late my time. I'll get you the list tomorrow.
Actually, I think a closer working relationship with the MSM would be mutually beneficial - and I'll do what I can to help.
gh
Have had some luck getting soldiers on the line, but would really like wider array of opinions. any help would be vastly appreciated.It's been two weeks since that exchange, and the story has yet to appear. (See update below) There are any number of reasons for that - I could only speculate as to why. But I do note that the show is in the ratings sewer anyway and a report of what actual soldiers think of it a) contradicts previous media reports and b) just hastens it's demise.Me:
The reviews from GIs I've seen are 100% negative. There is no array. I have not seen the show myself, and am completely neutral - I was hoping it would be good.The gist of most of the comments are:
The characters are stereotypes.
Dope smoking GIs get busted fast - but apparently not on TV
Units are formed long before deploying, but on program they are formed "Over There"
The equipment is wrong - a Vietnam-era helicopter got a lot of laughs
Al Jazeera is banned from Iraq
Tactics are wrong
ROE is wrong - we can and do fire on mosques if the enemy are using them.John Cole has several memorable quotes and ends with this: "I couldn't even finish the show, and as I write this it is playing in the background, and I hear someone screaming in agony. I wasn't aware the show was filmed in front of a live studio audience."
OVER THERE REVIEWS
But here's a point that must be made. Viewership of Over There is still in the 2-million plus range, and readership of the many papers and magazines that review it are likewise large. So that's the version of reality in most American homes - a realistic portrayal of war, soldiers like it, but it doesn't condemn the government enough. Later, when it's cancelled, you'll read that it was because "Americans are too detached from the horrible reality of war, don't really support the troops, and don't want Iraq in their living rooms". And "soldiers" will agree.
That's not reality, it's just a comment.
Update 24 Aug: The story in mentioned above has been published. You can read it here, and it does indeed contradict those previous stories. Note: I'm mistakenly identified as John Harriman. John is a Vietnam veteran and weekly contributor to Mudville - he writes a series called Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq. I'm the founder of this site, still on active duty, and returned earlier this year from a tour of duty in Baghdad.
Yesterday I posted the excerpt from the recent Wired article on MilBlogs featuring Mudville. I requested readers comments on what they thought it implied about this blog and its author. Thanks to those who took time to respond - you've confirmed a number of things I suspected, not the least of which is the insightfulness of readers here. Here's a quote from Corrie I found particularly affirming:
The article came across as snarky. If the reader knows you, the writer looks snarky. If not, it makes you look snarky. But who cares, if it drives eyeballs here.And yes, the eyeballs are welcome. Whenever Mudville gets an all-too temporary boost like that I redouble my efforts to offer the full spectrum of MilBlog opinion, point to various charitable efforts, and generally try and behave like a good "gateway" to the blogosphere as a whole for those who might be only vaguely familiar with this new media.
By the way, here's the Wired passage in question:
One important milblogger who weighed in on the Jordan affair is a secretive 20-year-career Army GI who goes by the handle Greyhawk. His blog, the Mudville Gazette, investigated the incident and concluded that Iraq-based reporters disputed Jordan's claim. He's unhappy that a more thorough news investigation wasn't conducted. Other bloggers call Greyhawk "the father of us all" and credit him with coining the term milblogger shortly after he started Mudville in March 2003. In an email interview - Greyhawk wouldn't agree to "voice-com" or a "face-to face" - he writes proudly of his lifetime pageviews, which recently exceeded 1.7 million (700,000 of those have come in 2005): "Mudville is far and away the largest, oldest, widest-read active-duty MilBlog in the World. It's all in how you make the words line up and dance."And I like Corrie's response because it sums up the mild disagreement that the Mrs and I had over the article. Her position is summed up in the first three sentences of that comment, mine by all four.
All that by way of introduction to what follows. John Hockenberry and I exchanged emails early this year as he was preparing that article. Just about everything said in that paragraph above was something I wrote in one of those emails. I'm not unhappy with his use of them, I knew from the get go that I was giving him my words to use as he saw fit. But the quotes in their full context are, perhaps, of interest to those who might wonder about how such stories are constructed.
We had a much longer discussion than what follows, these are simply the questions that led to the paragraph above. (I'll likely address several topic areas that most reporters covering milblogs seem to leave out of their stories in a future post.)
Invariably, the questions I get include queries about those military bloggers who've "run afoul" of their command, or "had their sites shut down." After discussing that, Hockenberry offered this question:
What does the DoD think of your site?So there's that quote - a reference to how you avoid running afoul of your leadership while still blogging happily away.Me: I don't know - they don't know who I am, to the best of my knowledge, and I've never asked. I'm sure after running the site for 2 years I've got something to offend anybody though. Mudville is far and away the largest, oldest, widest-read active-duty MilBlog in the World. I got there by not being stupid about comsec, opsec, and other such issues that end a lot of other guy's aspirations early on. It's all in how you make the words line up and dance.
Next
Hock: QUESTION FROM THE HATED MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Do you have specific tallies of your hit rate average and peak to get a sense of your traffic? Your ads suggest that someone must be watching and I suspect that you are just borderline enough of an ego-maniac to check every couple of hours or so. WIRED wants some kind of official quantification of your hits. Can-do?Am I proud, or just willing to answer obnoxious questions? The key to the next passage is the timing - Eason Jordan was a hot story at the time. I'll add bold emphasis to something crucial in my response.Me: I don't hate the mainstream media. I've got a story now from Jules Crittenden on Mudville. I correspond with a number of reporters, editors, etc. Is Wired mainstream?
Hit counters are open to the public, the links are in the right column of the blog. Mudville gets around 4k visitors a week day, with weekends falling under 3k. Top days will see 20k+. Jan 05 was a peak month, (I was in Iraq and the elections were looming) with over 200k page views. Through the winter there were 150 - 180k page views a month. Lifetime we just went over 1,700,000 visits - it took almost two years to hit a million but the 700k visits were all in '05.
Hock: One other thing... any suggestion for a person (besides Eason Jordan) who might have observed the influence of the milbloggers in his crash and burn. Looking for an outsider quote without getting into too much detail. It's a sideline story in what has become a much larger piece.Then later I remembered another bit of info:Me: I wasn't much of a player in the Eason Jordan story. I thought the way it ended was unfortunate - it certainly wasn't what I wanted for an outcome. I don't know of any others and I sincerely hope no other stories end that way. I'd rather see the truth about any issue determined than to just have someone slink away.
Me: Almost forgot this one. While everyone else was shouting about Eason Jordan I was interviewing Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald, who was an imbed with the Army in the Thunder Run into Baghdad. Jules was a few meters away when a tank gunner fired a round into the Palestine Hotel killing two journalists and starting the myth that would later cost Jordan his job. In other words - while everyone else was demanding an investigation, I was investigating.In case you're wondering, I was concerned a "bloggers attack journalists" angle was forthcoming. To Hockenberry's credit, that was not the case. (The post I was referencing is here.)
There you have it. How sausage is made. Again, I have no complaint, and I thank John Hockenberry for the eyeballs that wandered this way.
But one final point. " Greyhawk wouldn't agree to "voice-com" or a "face-to face" " Yup, true. I prefer the absolute truth of the written record.
Well, when I agreed to do a column here I was worried about the kinds of personal attacks I would get by way of thanks. I thought by avoiding politics and the war I would avoid such response, so I chose to confine myself to a column about football. I shouldn't let it surprise me that no sooner had I made my first contribution then I immediately became victim of a right-wing smear campaign aimed at me personally instead of what I was saying. All over the internet now they are scrambling faster than Fran Tarkington behind the Bill's crumbling offensive line. Everyone's talking about "Bambi said this" and "Bambi said that". Well, "offensive line" is a good word for it, because none of it is true.
Let's clear this up first. Here's my actual quote from my last column.
I don't like football, it's excessively violent, discriminates against women and abuses minorites and insults ethnic groups like the Redskins.Notice that in spite of what many "spinmeisters" are claiming, I did not say I didn't support the football players. My problem is with the NFL. This is immediately obvious to anyone who isn't a binary thinker. (See this outrage, for example.)
The reality is that many NFL players are from the many American ghettos, the shame of our nation. The NFL offers one of the very few escapes from that environment. These young people have been "recruited", often by recruiters coming on to their high school campuses seeking players who are willing to perform for the wealthy Americans who refuse to send their own sons and daughters off to compete for our amusement on Sunday afternoons but who gamble their tax savings on the outcome of the games.
If you want a perfect example of what I mean, look no further than our own King George. He owns a pro sports team himself, and although he was all in favor of winning at all costs he never actually suited up his daughters in little pink jock straps and batting helmets and trotted them out onto the field.
So, how about instead of spending money for big league sports we start taxing the wealthiest of Americans and do something about the poverty in this country? Oh no, can't do that! We have to subsidize stadiums so a certain somebody's gambling cronies can make money on the games.
Anyhoo, let's make this clear: I support the players, not the game.
Next: I was accused by several commenters of putting up the scores of last week's games and calling them this week's games. This is a bold faced lie, put out by people who want to avoid losing money on my predictions. Who might those people be? Hmmmmm... somebody's gambling cronies, perhaps?
Finally, let me make this clear: I will not stop. I will continue to write about football, and only football. I will not let this forum become political. And I will not let any right-wingnuts attack me personally without responding.
I will exercise my freedom of speech.
Update: A minor correction is in order. I double checked and the games I predicted were actually already played. But if you look carefully you'll notice that 1) I was exactly right about the scores and 2) many of the games were played on Sunday, making them "this weeks" games. That's one of the problems with the NFL. With Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday games played in all kinds of different time zones they intentionally make it difficult to determine what "this week's" games are. Further, if you think this weekend's games will be any different than last weekends, you are sadly mistaken. This is a dose of reality that I know will be hard to swallow, but there you go.
I'll update later with the scores for games I haven't predicted yet.
Update 2: okay, here goes. First, my predictions for the games I haven't predicted yet.
Tennessee 24, Atlanta 21
Cincinnati 24, Washington 17
N.Y. Jets 28, Minnesota 21
These games were already played, so after I made these predictions I checked and I was exactly right. This brings my record for the season so far to 24-0. Now before one of you bean counters starts wise-cracking about how there's only been 22 games played so far, let me assure you that I predicted that Hall of Fame Game twice, so I'm counting that as two.
Cleveland at Detroit: There are lots of Muslims in Detroit. To show my support I say Cleveland loses. Detroit, 27-4, Inshallah.
Green Bay at Buffalo: Too cold. Neither of these towns is very diverse. But Buffalo looses. Green Bay, 6-4
Jacksonville at Tampa Bay: Both these teams are from Florida, so I suppose this is the Florida Superbowl. The original score will be Tampa Bay 14-13, but a recount will reveal that Jacksonville won 15-14. This will be appealed, but Katherine Harris will declare the game final before the courts can act. We all lose.
Miami at Pittsburgh: I'm torn on this one. Miami is the most diverse town in America, but Pittsburgh is a big Union City. I support both. No one wins! Tie 21-all.
Carolina at N.Y. Giants: This is a no-brainer. Carolina loses. Giants, 47-1.
Chicago at Indianapolis: Chicago is much larger, more metropolitan, and capitol of a Blue State. Colts lose, 25-6.
Oakland at Houston: I want Houston to lose big. Raiders over the Oilers, 23-13. (No wins for Oilers!)
Philadelphia at Baltimore: Tough call. These teams are both powerhouses, and don't oppress their players the way many others do. I'm going to support Philly, because they feature Terrel Owens, a man who isn't afraid to speak truth to power. But I don't want Baltimore to lose, they've already lost so much. Eagles, 23-22. (And also, they are named after a Rock Band, while Baltimore's team is named after a bird. This stuff matters.)
Arizona at Kansas City: Ho hum. The only good thing about Arizona is John McCain, and Kansas City abuses Native Americans with their arrowhead symbol. So they lose. Arizona, 4-3.
San Francisco at Denver: Some people say advantage Denver because they are high. I say San Fran is unbeatable this year. As a tribute to one of my favorite cities I say SF, 40-9.
St. Louis at San Diego: I'm tired. Bolts lose. Rams 7-0.
Dallas at Seattle: As much as I support Seattle over the National Capital of red state America, I'm afraid the fix will be in for this game. No way the government will let the "Cowboys" lose. Plus, the Seahawks are owned by Microsoft, and their on-line playbook was hacked into by hackers. Dallas, 112-17.
And please note: Before I'm attacked again, I don't want any of these teams to lose.
Via email, another milblogger book:
New Book Detailing the Everyday Life of an American Soldier's Experience with The War on Terror from LBF BooksOver at his blog he's requesting that anyone interested in getting a copy please let him know.PITTSBURGH, PA , Aug. 18 - LBF Books to publish Soldier Life: A Day in the Life of an American Soldier (ISBN 1-885093-44-6 ). The book details the author's experiences while deployed and back home, weaving a gut-wrenching, heartfelt tapestry of experiences and emotions unique to soldiers' living and dying in this war. American Soldier's work comprised of elements drawn from his critically acclaimed and widely read weblog (www.soldierlife.com), aims to bring the grim, yet human face of war to readers everywhere.
The author, writing under a pseudonym to protect his identity, delivers a first-person account of the constantly changing world of an American Soldier attempting to balance both family and responsibility while enduring the reality of war. Soldier Life: A Day in the Life of an American Soldier chronicles the events engulfing modern day patriots, and the hardships he willingly endured to ensure safety and security of family and country left behind.
Soldier Life: A Day in the Life of an American Soldier is required reading for those looking for an intimate insight into the minds of fathers, husbands, and warriors serving in this war.
LBF Books plans to release Soldier Life: A Day in the Life of an American Soldier in December, 2005.
American Soldier & LBF Books will be donating a large portion of the proceeds to Soldiers Angels (www.soldiersangels.org) and Operation Troop Appreciation (www.operationtroopappreciation.org). Both organizations are federally recognized programs that assist Troops abroad with care packages and items needed while deployed.
The Open Post is Mudville's message board for bloggers and others to post anything they want on topics not covered elsewhere in this site.
Blog links and comments below are placed by the respective authors, and are not selected by The Mudville Gazette. Opinions expressed in the sites linked to this section are those of their authors only - and because this is an open forum should not be considered as endorsed or shared by the Mudville Gazette.
We will delete any links or comments referencing or directing readers to obscene or illegal material. Please report any such items to greyhawk @ mudvillegazette.com.
That said, please note that I fight for free speech (literally), and am not afraid of ideas. The exchange of such is the purpose of this daily feature. We encourage your participation.
From the recent Wired article on MilBlogs:
One important milblogger who weighed in on the Jordan affair is a secretive 20-year-career Army GI who goes by the handle Greyhawk. His blog, the Mudville Gazette, investigated the incident and concluded that Iraq-based reporters disputed Jordan's claim. He's unhappy that a more thorough news investigation wasn't conducted. Other bloggers call Greyhawk "the father of us all" and credit him with coining the term milblogger shortly after he started Mudville in March 2003. In an email interview - Greyhawk wouldn't agree to "voice-com" or a "face-to face" - he writes proudly of his lifetime pageviews, which recently exceeded 1.7 million (700,000 of those have come in 2005): "Mudville is far and away the largest, oldest, widest-read active-duty MilBlog in the World. It's all in how you make the words line up and dance."I'm interested in honest feedback via comments below; reader opinions good, bad, or indifferent. What's that passage above make you think about Mudville, or it's author?
And if anyone found this place via Wired, please let me know.
Via Hit and Run, a look at the view from the...
(Though both blogs are actually closer to center than most.)
Via email:
Dear Greyhawk,
I was just looking at your website and thought you might be interested in submitting an essay to This I Believe, National Public Radio's series of personal essays that airs Mondays, alternating between Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
The goal of this project is to inspire reflection and deep thinking about one?s beliefs and core values. The aim is not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs, but to encourage respect for beliefs different from one's own, something especially critical in our divided nation right now.
Here's a link to our website, where visitors can read or listen to essays that have already aired, and get information on how to write and submit one themselves:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138
Submitting an essay does not guarantee that it will be chosen, but we want to encourage many different people, with diverse beliefs and interests, to submit essays for consideration.
Please consider posting this invitation on your website, and feel free to spread the word to any acquaintances you feel would be interested in the project. I hope to read an essay from you soon. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Joanna Richards
This I Believe
First by way of introduction some questions I'm often asked.
1. Why are you hear?
Well, Greyhawk invited me for balance. I won't be talking about politics though.
2. Can you explain your name?
Well, my mother was a Stokes and my father was a Hymington.
3. No - your first name. Is it true you are a man?
I don't know why this is so important to some people. My life partner doesn't care, in fact, most of my life partners haven't cared. Many people assume I'm a female, even though I'm named after one of the most famous male cartoon characters ever.
3. Who are you?
I'm the offspring of two prominent east coast families. I don't need to "work" for a living. For a long time I commented on blogs and for a little while I had my own, but the stress was too much so I gave it up. My nerves were already shot from the war and I just couldn't fight the good fight anymore. After Dean was defeated in the primaries I realized the Democrats had sold out to the Wingnuts too, and that was the last straw. Anyhoo, say it loud, I'm back, and I'm proud!
I won't be talking about politics though. So that explains the title of the post. I'll be talking about football. I don't like football, it's excessively violent, discriminates against women and abuses minorites and insults ethnic groups like the Redskins. But last year I was able to predict the outcome of every game all year correctly - including the Super Bowl. Not only that, but I did it before the season started. I'll be giving my predictions here at least weekly.
I'm especially looking forward to this season. There will be a lot of pivotal games. Let me tell you what that means. This occurs when the left side of the offensive line is much stronger than the right side of the defense - its that way in all football teams just like in America the left is stronger, smarter, and faster than the right. But the left side of the other teams defense is stronger than the right side of the opposing offense, of course. So what happens then is the overpowering force of the lefts forces the rights backwards. The result is a circular motion around the quarter back (who is a democrat because republicans only think the world revolves around them) called a pivot. This is what we NFL insiders refer to as a "pivotal" game.
Anyhoo, let me tell you straight up the Patriots will be undefeated. Just like the patriots who oppose the war in Iraq will be undefeated.
Now here's my picks for this upcoming weekend's games.
Green Bay 10, San Diego 7
N.Y. Jets 10, Detroit 3
New England 23, Cincinnati 13
St. Louis 17, Chicago 13
Minnesota 27, Kansas City 16
Seattle 34, New Orleans 15
Tampa Bay 20, Tennessee 17 (OT)
Atlanta 16, Baltimore 3
Jacksonville 27, Miami 17
Buffalo 17, Indianapolis 10
Denver 20, Houston 14
Cleveland 17, N.Y. Giants 14
Carolina 28, Washington 10
Arizona 13, Dallas 11
San Francisco 21, Oakland 13
Pittsburgh 38, Philadelphia 31
You'll notice I picked some "upsets". This means people will be upset when I am proved right. I always am. They always are.
New readers might appreciate a look back at some other deployed milbloggers from the earlier days of the war in Iraq, while those who've been around a while will likely enjoy re-visiting some old friends. Many of these sites are gone, others are no longer maintained but still available (for now, at least) for those who know where they are. Others are still updated, and you might have to drop into their archives to find their deployed posts.
The Ghost Batallions are those from the early days in Iraq who've stopped blogging.
Here's our list of milbloggers from Christmas '03.
And here's the list from Christmas '04.
And since I'm now thinking of Christmas, here's a nice Christmas picture to cool off you folks sweltering in 100+ degree heat:
I'll close this with the poem I wrote in Baghdad last Christmas, dedicated to all those who've deployed.
Tending Distant Fires
Far from hearth and home, watching
Cold alone but not alone
On distant shore and only wanting
Safe return and little more
What tales we'll tell
When that time comes
When tales can be told
When things grim
Seem far away
When other fires go cold
Some distant sunset, vision fading
Memories remain
And tired eyes gaze 'pon folded flags
While distant drums beat their refrain
Saluting fallen friends whose names
And youth will never fade
Here's to those on other shores,
for them live well, the price is paid
- Greyhawk,
-- Baghdad, Iraq, December 2004
New York Times to surviving family members of WTC victims: Shut up, and stop threatening free speech!
From Tim Sumner:
Greyhawk:
The NY Times has twice more come after us. The most recent one was just yesterday when they singled out Debra Burlingame and pointed their entire editorial, The Governor's Proxy, at her. Now 22,000 active and retired FDNY firefighters stand with all these folks.
-- Tim Sumner
From the editorial Tim mentioned:
No one questions the emotional legitimacy of Ms. Burlingame's cause, or the fact that for most families of victims, ground zero will never be anything but the place where their loved ones died. The relatives have rightfully been the central voice in the planning of the memorial that will be built on the site. But neither Ms. Burlingame nor her followers can be allowed to dictate the future of the entire area. That has a place in the heart of the nation as a whole, and its use must reflect not only the nation's spirit, but its commitment to its basic principles.The Freedom Center will have an auditorium, you see. And if you oppose an auditorium, well..., you oppose free speech!!! If I were to make such a feeble argument on this blog I would lose every reader I ever had - and deservedly so. But I, an avowed peacemaker, now see the perfect compromise and solution to this issue. Reduce the Freedom Center to just an auditorium, without the other political clap-trap planned to encircle it, and you'll probably see the 9/11 families endorse the effort. Deal?
At the core of the attack on the Freedom Center is the assumption that any debate or dissent near ground zero will dishonor the dead. One of the concerns about the center's plans, for instance, is whether it will include an auditorium - in other words, a place where people will be able to engage in free speech. To us, this attempt to stifle discussion at the site of the 9/11 attacks is utterly at odds with the spirit that should be embodied in this sacred place. It also ignores the fact that the memorial itself, with or without the center, will inevitably become a locus of debate and even protest. The Take Back the Memorial group seeks to void the public process that led to the current master plan for ground zero.
Ms. Burlingame, by the way, is the sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77. The plane was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The 9/11 Families group (dismissed as "a vocal cadre of families of 9/11 victims" in the editorial) consists of those who lost relatives on that day - sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers... you get the picture.
Interesting that the stated position of the Times is that relatives of the fallen in the war on terror have no more validity than anyone else when discussing the issue.
That same day, over in the news section of the Times:
Memorial to Troops Killed in Iraq Is Vandalized in TexasMs Sheehan is the mother of Spc Casey Sheehan, a US soldier killed while fighting terrorists in Iraq.CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 16 - Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who has set up a vigil near President Bush's ranch here, said today that she was "very disturbed" that hundreds of small crosses bearing the names of dead American troops had been knocked down, and that her now 10-day protest was "only the beginning" of national movement to bring all American forces home from the war.
(See also our previous entry on 9/11 families here.)
Update: For those who play the numbers game -
Here are the relatives of the approximately 3,000 9/11 victims who've endorsed that "vocal cadre of families" - "9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America".
And here are the relatives of the approximately 405,399 GIs killed during WWII, 36,574 killed in the Korean war, 58,200 fallen in Vietnam, 383 dead in the Persian Gulf War, 220 fallen in Afghanistan, and 1,852 killed in Iraq (as of Aug 16, 2005 - all figures via CNN) that have joined Sheehan's "Gold Star Families for Peace".
Via email, from Tim Sumner of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America:
Greyhawk:
You may have seen this already in the Stars & Stripes or via Michelle Malkin.
James Cartier is named in the article as one of those murdered on 9/11. His entire family has signed our petition to take back the memorial at Ground Zero and his sister, Jennie Farrell, is one of our group's leaders (15 groups and 2,055 total 9/11 family members to date, as well as 38,000 of our fellow Americans).
ARLINGTON, Va. ? From rubble to avenging angel: The U.S. Navy is using steel from the World Trade Center in a new ship, according to the Navy.Ten tons of steel from the World Trade Center?s twin towers will be used in the construction of the USS New York, according to a Navy official.
<...>
New York City firefighter Bill Butler also praised turning the steel from the World Trade Center into a fighting vessel.?It?s a great testament to the strong will of the people who died that day,? said Butler, who was in the North Tower when it collapsed.
Butler was in a stairwell on the fourth floor when he heard what he said sounded like two freight trains roaring by in opposite directions.
It took him five hours to get out of the collapsed tower, he said.
Butler said the New York Fire Department supports U.S. troops. ?Our thoughts and prayers are with them every single day and we appreciate them defending our freedom, and we?re doing our best on the homefront,? he said.
"The union representing New York's Bravest yesterday demanded that the controversial International Freedom Center be removed from Ground Zero.And we will hold a Take Back the Memorial rally at the corner of Church & Liberty Streets adjacent the World Trade Center site from 9:30 to 10:30 am, Saturday, September 10th. America was attacked on 9/11 at that memorial is America's. We'd be honored to stand with our fellow Americans, first responders, and 9/11 family members that morning to ensure a fitting memorial, minus the rancorous political debates, is built on that hallowed ground.In another blow to the cultural plans for Ground Zero, Uniformed Firefighters Association President Stephen Cassidy said the Freedom Center would "diminish the sacrifices that the 343 members of the FDNY made on 9/11. That is unacceptable."
Cassidy sent a letter announcing the UFA's position to Memorial Foundation director Gretchen Dykstra on July 27, but union officials made it public only yesterday.
"We cannot help but feel that if the International Freedom Center is to be located alongside the memorial, our membership, along with our 9/11 families, will come out strongly in opposition to supporting your foundation," Cassidy wrote."
Greyhawk here: Funny - while the Washington Post withdrew it's support for the Freedom Walk commemorating the attack on the Pentagon and the WTC in fear that it might become too political the NY Times continues it's unabashed opposition to the 9/11 families trying to keep the ground zero site from becoming completely political.
That's pathetic.
With congratulations and best wishes for Mr and Mrs Reynolds.
UPDATE:
The Open Post is Mudville's message board for bloggers and others to post anything they want on topics not covered elsewhere in this site.
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...then and now. A thoughtful must-read from Riding Sun, gaijin biker in Tokyo.
It's eerie how much this enemy propaganda from six decades ago resembles the New York Times op-ed page.He doesn't just say it, he demonstrates it. Read it all (with pictures too.)
Spend any time here at all and you'll notice a few things about our coverage of the media:
1. When media reports on the War on Terror are demonstrably biased, bogus, or unbalanced to the point of violating any reasonable definition of neutrality I'll point them out, state my case, and support with as many links and facts as I can.
2. In the Dawn Patrol we present a list of links to stories on the war from traditional (or "legacy" if you prefer) media and non-traditional (or "modern") media sources. We offer no editorial comment on any of those stories - and they are selected only on the basis of being the latest news on the subject. If there's a noticeable contrast in coverage from those "traditional" and modern sources (often folks actually on the front lines) we think our readers are sharp enough to notice and draw their own conclusions.
3. When I see an example of a praise-worthy stance made by a traditional media source I'll also note that. (Read on, however, and you'll find why I won't be so quick to do so again).
4. When I'm proven wrong, I'll acknowledge and correct as soon as possible. This is one of those cases.
Just a few days I noted what I thought was a bit of backbone on display from the Washington Post. In spite of complaints from "peace activists" the Post would seemingly stand their ground and sponsor the Freedom Walk - an event commemorating 9/11, a day on which the Pentagon (a large, 5-sided building generally considered to be part of "Washington") was hit by a hijacked plane.
From the Freedom Walk site:
Q1: What is the America Supports You Freedom Walk?Back to the Washington Post story:
A1: The America Supports You ?FREEDOM WALK? is an event on September 11 that allows citizens the opportunity to remember the victims of September 11, honor our American servicemen and women past and present, and commemorate our freedom.The America Supports You ?FREEDOM WALK? is a walk of remembrance and support. Remembrance of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, and support of the many American men and women in uniform past and present who protect the freedom the walk is commemorating.
Q2: When is the ASY Freedom Walk being held?
A2: The Freedom Walk is being held on September 11, 2005, beginning at 10 a.m. at the Pentagon South parking lot and is free and open to anyone who registers.Q3: What is the ASY Freedom Walk route?
A3: The America Supports You Freedom Walk is a two-mile walk that will begin near the Pentagon crash site, proceed over the Memorial Bridge, pass several National memorials, and conclude adjacent to the National Mall and Reflecting Pool. For more information, visit www.AmericaSupportsYou.com and click on the Freedom Walk icon.Q4: What other events are associated with the ASY Freedom Walk?
A4: Prior to the FREEDOM WALK the Pentagon will be holding a private ceremony for the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon. Immediately following the FREEDOM WALK, country superstar singer and songwriter Clint Black will hold a concert on the Pentagon Mall.
"The Pentagon has done some kind of event on 9/11 ever since it happened because we came under attack," said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense for communications. "It's to commemorate the victims of 9/11. It's to honor our veterans past and present."But as the Post's headline above that story noted: Antiwar Activists Decry Media's Role in Promoting Pentagon Event.
And here's the first decryer they quoted:
"No common person will see this as not taking sides in this war," said Adam Eidinger, a promoter of the antiwar concert being called Operation Ceasefire. "This is clearly support for the war because it's being organized by the U.S. military."Those who are interested can read more about Adam at his homepage.
One of his passions is baseball. You can read his own words on that topic at Indymedia, where he describes his reception at a recent event celebrating the arrival of the Washington Nationals in the DC area:
What I Tried to Say to Major League Baseball
by Adam Eidinger
I was thrown out of Major League Baseball's naming of DC new baseball team today for just trying to speak (from the podium ;-) )The $614 million give away to baseball billionaires must be stopped. There are better spending priorities like education, housing and healthcare. So when I saw a bunch of fat cats from Major League Baseball at Union Station today pat each other on the back as they do their heist of DC taxes I decided to take action and tell them what 70% of DC citizens want - No Taxes for Baseball.
Eidinger was dragged off the stage by 76-year old Charlie Brotman, as the Washington Post reported here.
"I'm a lover, not a fighter," said the 76-year-old Brotman, adding that he tried at first to "tenderly" remove Eidinger, 31, from the podium."He jerked his arm away and continued his remarks," PR man Brotman, former announcer for the Washington Senators, told us. "So I grabbed his elbow a little harder and said, 'You're going to have to leave so we can get our news conference going.' The third time I used both hands on his elbows and arms and started to pull him away, and that's when he started pulling very hard -- and I pulled back very hard. . . . I didn't realize how big this guy was. I'm 5-6 1/2."
Some people have the brass to stand up to publicity-seeking buffoons. Not so the Washington Post.
The Washington Post announced yesterday that it will back out of a controversial co-sponsorship of a Pentagon-organized event next month to remember the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and support the troops in Iraq.The ellipses in the final paragraph above were in the original.
<...>
The Post's corporate officials emphasized that distinction after its involvement was the subject of a Post story Friday. But The Post's participation was criticized by members of the antiwar movement and by journalists in the paper's own newsroom who posted messages on an internal electronic discussion board. These critics said the co-sponsorship could hurt the paper's credibility in covering the war and antiwar demonstrations."Post news employees are subject to disciplinary action for participating in political activities that may be perceived as revelatory of personal opinions or bias," said a resolution passed earlier yesterday by the leadership of The Post unit of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. "The Washington Post itself should be held to the same high standard. . . . The Guild supports The Post's stated intention of honoring the nation's veterans, including those who have served in Iraq. But the Post undermines this goal by lending its support to a political event that links the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to the war in Iraq -- a link that The Post, in its reporting, has shown to be false."
And if you're curious about what was chopped from the Guild's memo by the editors of the Post, don't fret. Via Media Blog, we find a more complete version of the text at Editor and Publisher.
"Post news employees are subject to disciplinary action for participating in political activities that may be perceived as revelatory of personal opinions or bias. The Washington Post itself should be held to the same high standard. Moreover, arguments that the Freedom Walk is anything other than a political activity -- and indeed, a political activity in support of the war in Iraq -- should be put to rest by the prominent participation of country music star Clint Black, best known of late for his war-glorifying song 'Iraq and I Roll.'The Post doesn't even have the brass to acknowledge their writers attitudes towards Clint Black have played a rather bizarrely large role in this entire affair - which, if you haven't noticed by now, is ridiculous and pathetic to the point of utter absurdity.
Another quote from a "Peace Activist" - this one in the Post's capitulation story:
Peace activist Bill Dobbs yesterday welcomed the Post's change of heart.Note the ellipses before "people". We have no idea what was edited out of that quote."The reason why this was the right thing to do is that the press needs to have an arm's-length relationship with the government to hold them accountable," said Dobbs, a spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, a national coalition participating in three days of antiwar activities -- also including a concert and march -- scheduled to begin Sept. 24. "This is a victory for . . . people who cherish The Post's reputation."
But at this point in time, we strongly urge you to visit fellow MilBlogger Neptunus Lex, who picks up the story from here. It's not just baseball and America these guys are opposed too. Mom's Apple Pie is probably equally outrageous to them.
Oh, by the way, Kudos to the Post for refusing to stop covering the Nationals.
...I was listening to Mike Yon's radio interview while reading this story.
Try it yourself.
Hat tip to NR's Media Blog for the story. If you aren't reading that site every day you should be. Expect more hat tips in that direction to follow.)
Being a GI in Germany, this Christian Science Monitor story got my attention:
A Rush To Make Room For Returning TroopsThat's alarming! Though it's no surprise to me that I'd never heard of this expert group before - even though I'm planning on returning Stateside next year too, there's no reason for me to expect to know everything. I am but a little cog in a big, big wheel, after all.Substandard housing and overcrowded schools could pose problems at home as military downsizes abroad.
WASHINGTON ? As the military moves forward on historic plans to return to American soil some 50,000 troops stationed in Europe and the Far East, a panel of experts convened to monitor the process will Monday tell Congress that perhaps the Pentagon is moving too quickly - to the detriment of the soldiers that are coming home.
The final report of the Overseas Basing Commission (OBC) is expected to agree with the Pentagon's general aims - to reorganize America's military footprint abroad to support the more flexible needs of the war on terror. But at a time when the Army is already stretched, the concern is that a too-hasty return of thousands of troops to the United States - regardless of its tactical merits - would leave communities with little time to prepare and would cost Congress more than it is willing to pay.
The result, panelists worry, could be substandard temporary housing for soldiers' families and overcrowded schools for their children, further alienating some troops and driving them from the force.
"Stress on families and the receiving communities and the potential consequences on recruitment and retention is a significant factor of the commission's final report," says Patricia Walker, executive director of the commission. "A major concern ... is that the Department of Defense time things properly as not to adversely affect the military members and their families as they return home."Indeed! But...
...the OBC is merely an advisory board, and its recommendations carry no authority.Good! Someone influential in Congress will have the courage to do something in response to this looming disaster...Ultimately, though, Congress controls the Pentagon's budget, and several influential members of Congress have already expressed concern about issues raised by the OBC. These concerns range from the tactical to the political, but few stir more uncertainty than the question of the soldiers' experience when they come home.
"The movement of troops from Europe and Korea back to the United States will have a huge impact on the communities to which they're returning," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California during a June Senate hearing. "Quality of life is a key element of the global rebasing strategy, so the department needs to be very careful to avoid returning American troops and their families to bases in communities that are not ready to receive them."Good for her! The last thing I, a well-paid veteran of the Iraq war needs after returning from years of service overseas is to find myself living in a house made of used toilets, tarpaper, and mud while my children share splintered desks and broken pencils at a substandard school in some ghetto. But wait! Oddly enough, the communities aren't worried...
For their part, the communities aren't complaining about the prospect of thousands of new jobs and a spike in homebuilding. Among the bases receiving the most troops will be Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and Fort Carson near Colorado Springs, Colo. El Paso is so eager for new troops that it has already made preparations for the growth.Not according to a panel of experts you don't!!"We think we've got a pretty good plan in place," says Jean Offutt, a spokeswoman for Fort Bliss.
But wait a minute, I think to myself... who is this Overseas Basing Commission? The Monitor story says nothing about their background, how they started, who runs it... fortunately, I have a very powerful device called a "web search engine"at my disposal. I'm not going to reveal all my secrets, but suffice to say all I do is go to this "search engine", type the words Overseas Basing Commission into a little window there, click the "Google Search" button, and hey, presto! What a surprise - I'm at Diane Feinstein's Homepage!
Senators Hutchison and Feinstein Introduce LegislationBless her heart! Not only did Ms Feinstein agree with the committee, she formed it too! Surprisingly, the Christian Science Monitor didn't mention that in their story. And, equally surprisingly, one of Feinstein's committee's first reports apparently took a few swipes at Donald Rumsfeld:
Creating an Overseas Military Base CommissionApril 29, 2003
Washington, DC - Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, today introduced legislation establishing a congressional panel to conduct a detailed study of United States military facilities overseas.
A government commission studying overseas military bases sent Congress a report that included criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's strategy, then removed the document from the commission Web site after the Pentagon complained that it divulged classified information.I wonder who leaked that story to the press?The congressionally appointed panel contends that the 262-page report is based only on public sources, and several commission officials say they believe the Defense Department was annoyed because their conclusions include harsh criticism of some elements of Rumsfeld's plan for streamlining the military.
That story fails to mention Feinstein's heroic formation of the committee too, but we here at Mudville certainly know where credit is due. Bottom line, kudos to all involved for showing the courage to form a committee that can later present results they agree with to keep GIs and their dollars over in Europe where they belong - while US bases are closed - for the sake of the children.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim August 16, 2005, as National Airborne Day. I encourage all Americans to honor those who have served in the Airborne, and I also call upon all citizens to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.Blackfive has a list of perfectly good MilBloggers who jump out of perfectly good Airplanes.
He's got lots of posts about National Airborne Day - hit his main site and scroll scroll scroll...
Or "One Day in the Life of the News From Iraq"
From the NY Times, August 15 2005:
Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year.Now, rather than body count, lets play a game called word count. The word of the day is "perception"."Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?"
"Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't tell us!"
Ms. Goudreau's newspaper, like most dailies in America, relies largely on The Associated Press for its coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally forwarded the e-mail message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of The A.P., asking if there was a way to check these assertions and to put them into context. Like many other journalists, Mr. Silverman had also received a copy of the message.
Ms. Goudreau's query prompted an unusual discussion last month in New York at a regular meeting of editors whose newspapers are members of The Associated Press. Some editors expressed concern that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.
"The bottom-line question was, people wanted to know if we're making progress in Iraq," Ms. Goudreau said, and the A.P. articles were not helping to answer that question.
"It was uncomfortable questioning The A.P., knowing that Iraq is such a dangerous place," she said. "But there's a perception that we're not telling the whole story."Did you count three? I counted three.Mr. Silverman said in an interview that he was aware of that perception. "Other editors said they get calls from readers who are hearing stories from returning troops of the good things they have accomplished while there, and readers find that at odds with the generally gloomy portrayal in the papers of what's going on in Iraq," he said.
Mr. Silverman said the editors were asking for help in making sense of the situation. "I was glad to have that discussion with the editors because they have to deal with the perception that the media is emphasizing the negative," he said.
Mr. Silverman also said the wire service would make more effort to flag articles that look beyond the breaking news. As it turned out, he said, most of the information in the anonymous e-mail message had been reported by The A.P., but the details had been buried in articles or the articles had been overlooked.Indeed - as they were intended to be. I first wrote about that technique last January. And yes, we're going to demonstrate the same thing again.
But first, another point from the Times story:
Before the meeting, The A.P. collected three articles by reporters for other news organizations who were embedded with American troops and sent them out over the wire to provide "more voice."Well, I for one applaud the effort.
But just for fun, I also used the search window at the Times web site to look for every article containing "Iraq". Here are all the AP articles dated August 15, 2005 that the NY Times chose to place on it's website - (I don't think I found any of those three...):
A Daily Look at U.S. Military DeathsAnd, from the NY Times sports section, the Kansas City news from Seattle:
As of Monday, Aug. 15, 2005, at least 1,854 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,440 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include five military civilians.Canadian Man Abducted and Killed in Iraq
OTTAWA (AP) -- A Canadian man pursuing a business venture in Iraq has been abducted and killed, Prime Minister Paul Martin said Monday.He urged Canadians in Iraq to leave, saying ''the situation remains volatile and the government of Canada cannot provide consular assistance to Canadian citizens in distress.''
Honored Iraq Veteran Accused of Firing at Crowd From Home
LAWRENCE, Mass., Aug. 14 (AP) - A veteran recently named "Marine of the Year" for his service in Iraq has been charged with attempted murder, after the police said he fired a shotgun on Sunday from his apartment as a group of noisy revelers stood outside a nightclub.Bush Approval a Low for Recent 2 - Termers
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's standing with an American public anxious about Iraq and the nation's direction is lower than that of the last two men who won re-election to the White House -- Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- at this point in their second terms.Sen. Biden Says Bush Should Fire Rumsfeld
DOVER, Del. (AP) -- President Bush needs to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and level with the American people about the situation in Iraq, said U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, who is testing the political waters for a possible White House run in 2008.
Bell Misses Game for Nephew's ServiceWhat's your perception?
SEATTLE (AP) -- Kansas City Royals manager Buddy Bell missed Monday night's game against the Seattle Mariners to attend services at Arlington National Cemetery for his nephew, a Marine killed in Iraq.
Oddly enough, that same day, August 15, 2005, CENTCOM made this press release available to the world:
August 15, 2005And this one too:
Release Number: 05-08-19FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SUCCESSES THIS WEEK IN IRAQ (5-11 AUG)
BAGHDAD, Iraq ? Reconstruction projects strengthened Iraq?s infrastructure this week, while community leaders showed their commitment to rebuilding. Iraqi Security Forces continue to be an essential part in working to increase the country?s security.
Approximately 18,000 Iraqi schoolchildren will sit in freshly refurbished schools when their new school year starts in about six weeks. Iraqi and U.S. government agencies announced Aug. 6 that renovations of 43 schools in the northern and southern provinces are funded for repairs, and contracts have been awarded for the work. As part of the Iraq Relief Reconstruction Fund, over $1.3M was set aside to continue a nationwide school repair program that addresses rehabilitating sanitary facilities, electrical and mechanical systems, and structural repairs to schools in Karbala, Dahuk, Najaf, Basrah, and Qadisiyah.
More than 200 Iraqi children received medical screenings from Coalition Forces, with support from Iraqi Police, during an operation Aug. 5 in western Mosul. Soldiers and medics handed out soccer balls and hygiene products to the local children while they conducted the screenings. More than 1,000 children have received medical screenings during this and four similar operations over the last three weeks.
In Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad attended the handover ceremony of the International Press Center (IPC) to the Iraqi Government Communications Directorate (GCD) on Aug. 9. The IPC is a hub of activity for Iraqi and International journalists during press conferences, National Assembly sessions, and other media events. To mark the handover, USAID/Iraq provided a grant to the IPC for technical and office equipment that includes 20 desktop computers, 30 laptop computers, licensed software, printers, a scanner, a copy machine, CD writers, desks, chairs and other necessary office equipment. A group of Iraqi journalists who have used the IPC since its opening in February 2004 received the 30 laptop computers yesterday.
Iraqi and U.S. officials unveiled a special monument to honor four Iraqi Army Soldiers who gave their lives for the security of Iraq during the Ashura holiday. Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, Iraq?s Deputy Prime Minister, said the country owed a great debt to the four Soldiers and their families, and promised the Iraqi government would care for them in gratitude for the Soldiers? gift to the country.
Officials from both countries also signed a charter to detail plans to bring much-needed projects to the people of Husseiniya, an agricultural town north of Baghdad whose population boomed during the previous regime. Coalition Forces are working with the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works to build storm drainage projects, water-quality improvements, and most importantly, sewage treatment facilities. The Husseiniya Charter is the first of its kind in the area, and will serve as the test-bed and guide for other projects in impoverished areas in and around Baghdad.
Reconstruction projects around the country are in progress, and this week, construction started on a Police Facilities project in the Samarra District of Salah Ad Din Province. This 250-officer station in the northeast part of Samarra, which is a $4.3 million investment, will provide a presence in the city to help stabilize law and order. The contractor employs 25 Iraqi workers, and the project is scheduled for completion in November.
Iraqi workers in Baghdad finished the $3.6M Al Amari Water Distribution project this week. The project can produce approximately 250 cubic meters of potable water daily and service about 2,000 families in the Al Amari and 9-Nissan areas of Baghdad.
Iraqi Security Forces continued to prove themselves as they strive toward assuming security operations around the country.
Iraqi Army soldiers discovered five improvised explosive devices placed around a building in Rawah August 9. The soldiers located the five IEDs connected with wiring and secured the area to prevent any injuries while a coalition explosive ordnance disposal team neutralized the threat.
Iraqi Security Forces EOD teams were also busy ? clearing three IEDs in separate cities the same day. Iraqi Police discovered an artillery shell wired for command detonation in Baqubah, a more complex IED rigged for remote control detonation in Tikrit, and another in Hit. An Iraqi EOD team eliminated the threat while an Iraqi Intervention Force secured the area, protecting community members from the terrorists? weapons.
Citizens in Baghdad and Ramadi were just some of the Iraqi citizens who assisted Coalition and Iraqi Forces in locating weapons caches this week, taking an active part in securing their communities and creating an environment that will foster more reconstruction and increased stability.
MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE ? IRAQ PROVIDED THE CONTENT FOR THIS RELEASE. FOR ADDITIONAL DETAILS ON SPECIFIC EVENTS, PLEASE CONTACT THE COMBINED PRESS INFORMATION CENTER?S PRESS DESK AT CPICPRESSDESK@IRAQ.CENTCOM.MIL.
August 15, 2005Oh my, here's another
Release Number: 05-08-17FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NAJAF MATERNITY HOSPITAL UNDERGOING RECONSTRUCTIVE REBIRTH
Najaf, Iraq ? U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region South District estimates a Dec. 25 completion of a refurbishment and renovation project for the Najaf Maternity Hospital.
Engineers report the $8.2 million project is 30 percent finished.
The project began Oct. 25, 2004.
Renovations include a new sewage system, a new boiler for heating, ceramic tiles throughout all of the renovated portions of the facility and a new residents? office. A reverse osmosis water treatment plant for the hospital is finished and is ready to be turned over to the hospital. An incineration system is also in the works.
Similar renovations continue at Najaf teaching hospital two kilometers away from the maternity hospital.
The 266-bed hospital continues patient care even while renovations continue.
Doctors there see 250 pediatric and 125 maternity outpatients a day, more than the Najaf Teaching Hospital. It also takes overflow patients from the teaching hospital as long as they are female. Males treated there must be under 14 years old.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS RELEASE, CONTACT the Gulf Region South District PUBLIC AFFAIRS. Tommy.G.Clarkson@tac01.usace.army.mil
August 15, 2005And we already linked a fourth one yesterday.
Release Number: 05-08-15FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TASK FORCE FREEDOM SOLDIERS FIND CHEMICAL PRODUCTION FACILITY
MOSUL, Iraq - Coalition Forces, acting on intelligence from detainee interrogations, raided a suspected insurgent chemical production facility and chemical storage locations on August 9th. The early morning raids, conducted by Task Force Freedom, uncovered what technical experts assess to be a ?clandestine chemical production facility? and possibly related storage sites.
August 15, 2005I'm sure those stories are covered somewhere by the AP too, but I really don't have time to see if those details had been buried in articles or the articles had been overlooked. I've been to Iraq, and read the blogs from the guys that are still there today.
Release Number: 05-08-18FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AL QAEDA LIEUTENANT KILLED IN IRAQ
BAGHDAD, Iraq ? Terrorist Abu Zubair, also known as Mohammed Salah Sultan, was killed August 12 by Iraqi Security Forces in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul.
Zubair was a known member of Al Qaeda in Iraq and a lieutenant in Abu Musab Zarqawi?s terrorist operations in Mosul who was being sought by Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces for his involvement in a July suicide bombing attack of a police station in Mosul resulting in the death of five Iraqi police officers. He was also suspected of resourcing and facilitating suicide bomber attacks against Coalition, Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi citizens throughout the country.
When Zubair was killed he was wearing a suicide device consisting of an explosive pack across his stomach armed with pellets.
Here's The Dawn Patrol for August 15th.
Here's the latest from Mike Yon.
And here's Arthur's latest "Good News from Iraq"
To be fair though, I'll give the last word to the AP/NY Times - a final quote from the first story linked above:
Before the meeting, The A.P. collected three articles by reporters for other news organizations who were embedded with American troops and sent them out over the wire to provide "more voice." Mr. Silverman said he wanted to do more of that but the opportunities were limited because there are only three dozen embedded journalists now, compared with 700 when the war began more than two years ago.Yep, that's my perception too.Ms. Goudreau, for one, found the discussion useful. By the end, she said, editors were acknowledging that even in their own hometowns, "we're more likely to focus on people who are killed than on the positive news out of a school."
Update James Taranto at Best of the Web:
And indeed, here's an AP Baghdad dispatch that moved yesterday on the AP wire:The capital's Sadr City section was once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest, but it has become one of the brightest successes for the U.S. security effort.A Google News search--which is wide-ranging but not comprehensive--turned up only two newspapers that have published the Sadr City story: the Chicago Sun-Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The story is not terribly time-sensitive, so let us hope that other papers will pick it up.So far this year, there has been only one car bombing in the neighborhood, and only one American soldier has been killed.
A year ago, militiamen garbed in black and armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades roamed the streets in open revolt against the American presence. But U.S. troops quelled the uprising, and today calmly patrol the district, aided by loyalists of the radical cleric who spurred the violence.
Powerline offers a look at an internal memo from St Paul Pioneer Press senior news editor John Welsh, exhorting his news staff to "cover the home front". An excerpt:
I'm following up on a conversation during this morning's editors meeting. I feel we could be doing a better job covering the Iraq War on the home front. Like most newspapers, we do a good job of covering the extremes, such as the deaths of Minnesotans in this war. But we often fall short in covering the daily stress and drama that the war produces in our community.In other words, they don't have the full, bleak picture that any hard working reporter wanting to establish a name for him/herself could provide with ease. Certainly that should light some fires, or at least spark some dreams of Pulitzers dancing in more than a few little heads. You can read the rest here.
The memo closes with a (sort of) question:
We've done good work. The coverage of the three Minnesota deaths in one day was superb. So was Jeremy's story on soldiers recovering from brain injuries at the VA. The soldier surprising mom at school made a terrific photo and was a great slice of life. I'm just wondering if there is more we can do.Funny you should "ask". For those Minnesotans wanting a bit of real news from Iraq I suggest a daily visit to one of your own deployed GIs. He's not going to win any Pulitzers (I mean that as praise - he'll more than earn one), but at least he can bring you the reality of the front, from the front. Here's his latest:
This headline in the NYTimes caught my eye : U.S. Struggling to Get Soldiers Updated Armor. This is the opening sentence: For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents.Read it all, whether you're from Minnesota or not.Now I would hate to accuse the ?newspaper of record? of displaying bias in it?s reporting, but it would have been equally as accurate to say this: U.S. upgrading Body Armor to protect servicemembers.
For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is upgrading what is already the best body armor in the world to further protect American troops. The current armor, which has saved countless soldiers lives, is being upgraded with better protective inserts, in response to the increased lethality of insurgent attacks, primarily from weapons being provided to the insurgents by Iran.
Then bookmark his frontpage, read his previous entries, and tell a friend.
Did I mention the pictures?
If you've got a minute to spare, leave him a comment at his site, too.
"Thanks" would be a good start.
Vietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the latest installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq.
Your mother has a right to ask
Dear Warrior in Iraq . . .
The anti-war sentiment these days is centered on a mother of a soldier killed in Baghdad. Here name is Cindy Sheehan, and she says she'll stay outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, until she gets to meet with the president.
Nobody has more of a right to express an anti-war view than a mother, I think. It seems perfectly reasonable for mothers to ask an administration whether their sons and daughters were put at risk needlessly or recklessly. Just as it does not seem excessive for a mom to camp out in a public place to call attention to her plea.
Contrast that with the Vietnam era, when so-called peace activists bombed buildings and set fire to offices to show their peaceful intentions. Killing people at home is a way of protesting war abroad? I didn't get it then, and still don't.
Or, maybe I do get it, after all.
A peaceful protest, especially the first one on the media news budget, will get some headlines and face-time on the evening news hour. Soon enough, though, the media gets weary of that old tune, say, by the third protest.
Which calls for an escalation of tactics. Drawing a large crowd with signs to block a sidewalk peacefully will get the movement back on the map for 30 seconds of air time. But soon you'll have to stop traffic. In a week or so, you have to overturn cars and smash windows. Before long, you need fire to provide the pictures. Then explosions. And so on, and so on.
As I have written before, the movement back then wasn't so much anti-war as anti-draft. Lots of young men did not want to serve. Combat is a dangerous occupation, and voluntary service in harm's way is a most unpleasant pastime made even worse by involuntary service. Some went north into Canada. Others, led by charismatics, rioted to make their point. Before long, it became obvious that anti-warism was a movement with opportunities for celebrity. So you had your charismatics becoming more outrageous than ever.
This celebrity status was so alluring that bona fide celebs sought to increase their face recognition by going the extra mile--into the camps of the enemy. Jane Fonda and John Kerry for two. If you give this notion much brain-time, it will turn your stomach. The idea of traveling to encourage the enemy who is killing your soldiers; the attempt to defeat the fighting men and women who serve your country; the betrayal of your own nation to further your own career? Arguably, these things are worse than bombing buildings.
In the last year Jane and John tried to capitalize on a perceived anti-war sentiment to build their own celebrity again. Kerry failed in his attempt to ride the wave to the White House. And Fonda is trying to get some mileage for her faded, jaded career--and her book with an anti-war book-bus tour.
For both, the anti-war try was--and is--a huge miscalculation. Because, just as in Vietnam, the movement is not about the war for most people. Then it was about the draft, putting yourself in harm's way. Now it is simply an anti-Bush sentiment in the press and on the political landscape.
For Cindy Sheehan, it's all about the loss her son--give her all benefit of doubt--hers is a genuine anti-war interest.
But watch out for all the rest. Look for the self-interest in the protests and bus tours. And keep your eyes open for signs of violent peace movements. They may not so much anti-war as attempts to get attention to build a new-old kind of celebrity status.
Above all, don't let these attempts at self-aggrandizement deter you from your job. Keep your eye on the ball. Do not take risks.
And in those quiet hours between missions, spend a few minutes to write home. Let your mom know you're safe. Tell her that what you're doing is worthwhile.
Above all, tell her you love her.
Till next week . . .
God bless you and Godspeed.
John is a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam and a member of the American Legion. His novel, Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword is a fictional account of the 9/11 attacks and the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom.
And today we're proud to announce the publication of the second of John's Delta books, Prelude to War
MilBlogger Xenophon, in Ohio:
I?ve spent all this last week attending the services and funerals of the six Marines killed in Iraq on August 1st. I knew two of them well, LCpl. Montgomery and LCpl. Deyarmin. The rest I did not know, but they are brothers just the same.Those last words are too kind by far for what was done to the families of the 3/25. The rush to be the first to shove cameras and microphones into their faces is inexcusable. Read the whole thing.
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The incident on August 1st made the news, but when 14 more 3/25 Marines were killed on August 3rd the media, both local and national, paid much more attention than any of the other incidents involving 3/25. Here in Ohio you could not escape talk of the fourteen Marines killed, and that is all the information the media had. They broke this story so fast that the Marines could not even notify the families before hand. This led to absolute panic among the 3/25 families. I was able to find out pretty early that the casualties came from Lima Company (based in Columbus, OH), and so began contacting as many family members from Weapons Company and Headquarters Company (based in Akron, OH and Brookpark, near Cleveland, OH, respectively) as I could to mitigate the damage. But the damage had been done. My phone calls were answered by crying wives and mothers, sitting in front of the TV hoping for any information, horrified that I was calling with the worst of news.This was media irresponsibility at its worst.
AL QAEDA LIEUTENANT KILLED IN IRAQThere's very little US coverage of the story thus far - perhaps stopping a suicide bomber isn't newsworthy in the States. But Al Jazeera is all over it:BAGHDAD, Iraq ? Terrorist Abu Zubair, also known as Mohammed Salah Sultan, was killed August 12 by Iraqi Security Forces in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul.
Zubair was a known member of Al Qaeda in Iraq and a lieutenant in Abu Musab Zarqawi?s terrorist operations in Mosul who was being sought by Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces for his involvement in a July suicide bombing attack of a police station in Mosul resulting in the death of five Iraqi police officers. He was also suspected of resourcing and facilitating suicide bomber attacks against Coalition, Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi citizens throughout the country.
When Zubair was killed he was wearing a suicide device consisting of an explosive pack across his stomach armed with pellets.
?Abu Zubair?s death, as well as recent captures of terrorists in northern Iraq, is making a difference in Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces efforts to disrupt terrorists operating in this part of the country,? said Col. Billy J. Buckner, spokesman for the Multi-National Corps. ?Terrorists are doing all they can to stop the rise of a free Iraq, but their bombs and attacks have not prevented Iraqi sovereignty and they will not prevent Iraqi democracy,? Buckner said.
During the week of August 6 through 12, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces captured three bomb makers and six foreign fighters as well as found and cleared 101 improvised explosive devices.
On Jul 27, Security Forces conducted a raid on a safe house in Mosul arresting six terrorists and finding terrorist propaganda to include a letter written to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In the letter the author, Abu Zayd, a terrorist operating out of Mosul, complained of the poor leadership in Mosul and mistreatment of foreign fighters.
A top aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the al-Qaida operation in Iraq and accused of masterminding high-profile bombings in the country, has been killed by Iraqi security forces, US defence officials said.But the battlefield success hardly impressed two leading US senators, who on Sunday questioned the Pentagon's handling of the situation in Iraq and said they no longer had confidence in Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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"Abu Zubair's death, as well as recent captures of terrorists in northern Iraq, is making a difference in coalition and Iraqi security forces' efforts to disrupt terrorists operating in this part of the country," Colonel Bill Buckner, a spokesman for the multinational force, told reporters.He expressed confidence that bombings and other attacks "will not prevent Iraqi democracy".
However, Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that judging by the way things were unfolding in Iraq, democracy there "will not happen in my lifetime".
He argued the most the Bush administration could hope for under the circumstances was a government that would be able to secure public safety and not be a threat to its neighbours.
Jim Hake from "Spirit of America" sends us an email from Jordan with a message:
Greetings.The message below - "To Kill an American" - has been circulating around
the Internet. I don't know if the report it refers to is true but I
don't think it matters. It makes points that are worth considering.Since our organization is named Spirit of America, I often reflect on
what the spirit of America is. For me, the spirit of America is about
freedom, opportunity and generosity. It's the belief that things can
be better than they are - a better mousetrap, a better government, a
better world, a better way to grill a hot dog. And it's the personal
initiative to try to make things better.While America and Americans certainly don't own those ideals, we are a
pretty good example of them.Our job here at Spirit of America is to reflect and help perpetuate
those ideals. Put more simply: we do our work so that freedom
prevails. Our projects in Iraq and Afghanistan are our way of
supporting those struggling for freedom and our way of fighting back
against those who want freedom to fail.I'm writing this from Jordan so I'm more appreciative of the USA than
usual (though Jordan is a very nice country).Thank you for your support.
All the best,
Jim Hake and the Spirit of America team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Kill an American
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was
actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a
newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any
American.
So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what
an American is... so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya,
mate!!!!)
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish,
Polish, Russian or Greek.
An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani,
or Afghan.Read the rest hereposted here
Now it ends with the "Author Unknown" but the author of this powerful piece was not an Australian (sorry Jim). It's original author is Peter Ferrara an associate professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law. Fairfax, Virginia. It was originally published in the National Review on 25, September 2001.
But regardless of who the author is, this is a message that every terrorist should hear.
Mike Yon emailed to tell us he'll conduct a live radio interview from Mosul on Sunday, 14 August, at 9PM Eastern Standard Time.
Yon is a freelance "journalist". He's currently embedded with the Army in Mosul, and provides the most amazing coverage from Iraq that I've ever read.
The only place you can read him is on his blog.
An example - in which he discusses a previous radio interview, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, and courage under fire:
Bullets flying by, and enemy weapons firing: PaPaPaPaPaPaPaPaPaPow? zinnggg?.GawGawGawGawPaPaGawGaw?different types of weapons were shooting.He would "save" the man again later that day too. You can read all about it - and a whole lot more - here. (With photos of the incident too.)One of our big machineguns started boomboomboom?boomboomboom...boomboom boom, and then our guys with those little rifles they carry, poppop...poppoppoppop.... to my left?poppoppoppoppoppoppopp to my right, and then, boomboomboom PaPaPaPaPaPpoppoppoppopp GawGawGaw BOOM PaPaPpoppopGawGaw GawGawGawPaPaPpop popboom boom boom.
This was an appropriate time to run for cover. Enemy bullets snapping by. I saw at least two soldiers smiling?authors are not allowed to carry weapons PaPaPGawGaw BOOM PaPaPpop zinnggg--dust clouding the air?sure would be nice to have a gun instead of a camera right now boompop Gawsnapsnap boom boompoppboomGawGawGaw.
I looked back to where we had been because the prisoner [the American soldiers always remind me that I should call prisoners "detainees"] was still there, hand-cuffed, and on his knees, with the radio transmitter lying beside him on the ground.
We had left the prisoner in the open. Bullets were snapping, and I'm crouched on a knee behind a Stryker. When I look back again, I see Kurilla standing out there, alone, next to the terrorist on the sidewalk. Bullets are kicking up dirt and Kurilla gives us a look, What the hell! You left the prisoner!
For a moment, I nearly ran back out to drag the terrorist behind the Stryker, but then I thought, Nope, he?s a terrorist! If Kurilla gets shot, I?m definitely going to get him. But the terrorist can get shot to pieces and I don't care.
Instead of doing something useful?and I feel marginally guilty about this, but not too much?I start snapping photos as the Commander drags the guy by the collar to get him to the cover of the Stryker. I can't believe Kurilla is still alive after nearly a year of doing this.
Yon also relates a later event - an illustration of how important such stories are, and perhaps a clue as to why they aren't often told (emphasis added):
I woke up early one morning, waiting by my cell phone for a scheduled radio interview, when a gigantic explosion rocked the morning darkness. That was more than a five-banger.Read it all, and pass it on. There's no reason for anyone to "sit in the dark."I walked to the TOC and asked what exploded. Blasts that large can defeat Strkyer armor, but no patrols called in to say they had been hit. I asked "Q," who was manning the counter-battery radar, if he saw anything; maybe flying parts were tracked by radar, but Q showed me the blank screen. No radar acquisitions. Just another giant explosion in the night without explanation; there have been many.
I walked back through the dark and did the radio interview by cell phone. During such interviews, I get the impression that people at home are losing faith in the effort, though we are winning. But at home they cannot see it, and when I said goodbye that time, I sat in the dark.
President Jalal Talabani predicted the constitution would be submitted to the National Assembly on Sunday - one day before the deadline for parliamentary approval.That's not the AP's lead paragraph on the story though, this is:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - American and U.N. diplomats stepped up pressure Saturday on Sunni Arabs to accept a new constitution with only two days before the deadline for its approval. A top Sunni official said his group would never accept terms that would lead to the division of the country.It's a rush job, you see, finished only under pressure.
Megan McArdle cuts through the BS on those the media simplifies as "Sunnis":
So far, they can't quite admit that it is over: that they will never again enjoy unfettered control of their country.Bingo. We're not really talking about all Sunnis here - just those Saddam holdouts who've steadfastly refused to participate in the building of the new Iraq, and who force their less-willing fellows to support them at the point of a gun.
These are momentous times. Iraq's constitution will need careful examination, and like ours will be open to interpretation, and modification via a couple hundred years of trial and error.
Strangely, Megan's choice of words echoes that of Frank Rich in the NY Times, though their opinions seem 180 degrees opposed. The headline? "Someone Tell the President the War Is Over". We've failed, we've lost, it's hopeless. To be fair, lets jump to Rich's bottom line - his real problem on the day the Iraqi Constitution comes due:
The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.Rich is a great American success story - hard work and sacrifice have taken him from NY Times Arts and Leisure critic to "voice of America" in an amazingly short period of time. No facts are presented supporting that "more vulnerable" claim, so we'll accept that those are his "feelings" - and agree that feelings are important too, by golly. But accepting Rich's "America has spoken" thesis is to reject the last two elections in this country. But those elections are the result of our silly little constitution, a document that denies any one person the ability to declare the official feelings of the United States of America.
I was kidding above - Frank Rich's "feelings" don't mean Jack Squat to those of us busy rebuilding Iraq. I won't even take time to write him a poem. But I did receive a rather thoughtful (and thought provoking) email yesterday (signed, but I'll leave that off):
Dear Folks,A longer answer will follow, but first I must say this:I am a 71 year old, semi-retired artist blacksmith (I pound 2000 degree iron into specific shapes for gates and the like), served in the Army at the end of the Korean War for three years in US and Germany (1954-57), come from a long, long line of military careerists both Navy and Army.
I have great respect and admiration for the military and proudly served myself.
That said, I do not support this war in Iraq. I think it is the wrong war, at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. I believe we were lied to, manipulated ... well, you get the drift.
Now, is it possible in your minds to oppose the war and this Administration and yet support the troops? Or, are you of the mind that once in the war, such opposition is treasonous? And not to put words in your mouth, some other position? What is the duty of a citizen?
My questions abound....
Sir,
Thanks for your service. I was born few years after you left the Army, into a free world because of you. My own service began in the mid 1980's, and I saw the end of the cold war - our war, if I may, yours and mine - and the fall of the Berlin Wall and all it represented. Our efforts spanned decades, and we were opposed by many in the US every step of the way, yet we prevailed. I've mentioned here before that there are two amazing events that have occurred in my military lifetime. The first was the fall of that wall, the second the elections in Iraq. I was in Korea during the first event, and in Baghdad for the second. Both events are easily dismissed by the same crowd that opposed our efforts to bring them about. In that I'm disappointed but not surprised. We fought, you and I, for the rights of free people to dissent. Those who sit on the sidelines of history and oppose us do so because we created a world where they can.
But this is just an introduction, not a fair answer to your question. I'm going to spend the day doing that. You and a few thousand other folks deserve no less.
2005-08-14 13:16:28
Update 1:
Let's start with an over-simplified concept. The current divide on the war issue centers around any individual's concept of who "us" and "them" are in the conflict.
This is a simplified version of mine:
I'll explain why I believe mine is an accurate reflection of the situation in the next update. For now I'll introduce you to a group of folks who are equally certain that the second version is better.
Updates to follow.
Holly Aho will present a podcast interview with Chuck Ziengenfuss, his wife Carren, and his mom Alice sometime soon.
For new readers, some background info is in order.
Army Captain Chuck Ziengenfuss was one of the finest milbloggers in Iraq. His reports on the mission were uncensored and gritty, his sense of humor unquenchable, and his frustration with an American media that tended to quote him for their own purposes was real.
Then one day in June, this:
This is Carren writing to tell Chuck's faithful readers that he has been injured, but is in stable condition. I won't give details for fear of misinformation (and the fact that this can be accessed by millions of people).Chuck went to Walter Reed, and his wife and mother joined him there. Carren kept the blog going, reporting on his recovery, their visit from President Bush (and many others), and offering incredible insight to an aspect of war that few folks will ever actually experience.In general... Chuck sustained shrapnel wounds to his legs and arms from an IED. He and an Iraqi civilian were the only ones injured. The Good Lord above was looking out for him in a BIG way! He is probably in Landstuhl (sp?), Germany by now and will be back in the states in the next week to 10 days (as far as I know right now). He still has his eyesite and has not sustained internal injuries that I know of. I have not talked to him yet... they have kept him sedated for his trip to Germany, as well as for pain management. He also has some injuries to his face, but I think it is just bruised/scratched up quite a bit.
Holly, (who will soon offer that podcast interview) is a member of the group Soldier's Angels. Stick around here and you'll hear a lot about them. They do incredible work for the troops - wounded and otherwise. In Chuck's case they have arranged for him to have a laptop computer with voice software, and now he's blogging again. That Soldier's Angels effort has since grown into Project Valour-IT a campaign to do the same for as many wounded as possible. (Read fellow MilBlogger Sgt B's excellent post on the subject here.)
And follow Chuck, Carren, and Alice's ongoing adventures here.
I noted in the previous post that the media insistes on simplifying the politics of Iraq by describing those ex-Baathist holdouts, the Saddam loyalists, as simply "Sunnis". That they may be, but they hardly speak for a monolithic group when they resist free elections, argue against a new constitution, or join insurgents in slaughtering Iraqi people. I hadn't read this story at the time I wrote that previous post, but it's a great and timely illustration of what I meant.
BAGHDAD, Aug. 14 -- Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of six American soldiers.Bill Roggio has more.Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said.
The leaders of four of Iraq's Sunni tribes had rallied their fighters in response to warnings posted in mosques by followers of Zarqawi. The postings ordered Ramadi's roughly 3,000 Shiites to leave the city of more than 200,000 in the area called the Sunni Triangle. The order to leave within 48 hours came in retaliation for alleged expulsions by Shiite militias of Sunnis living in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq.
"We have had enough of his nonsense," said Sheik Ahmad Khanjar, leader of the Albu Ali clan, referring to Zarqawi. "We don't accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis, regardless of their sect -- whether Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs or Kurds.''
New MilBlogs Ring member DKelSmith: Weblog Afficionado:
Unfortunately one of my duties as a staffer for Joint Forces Headquarters is to handle some of the processes that are in place when our soldiers die. Today I went to my first funeral for a KIA (killed in action) Soldier. The Soldier's name was SGT Ryan Montgomery. Montgomery was from Greensburg, a small town in Central Kentucky. Montgomery was in a Field Artillery oufit that was tasked with force protection and convoy security missions around Baghdad. On July 3rd Montgomery fell to a roadside bomb. Very sad, but not as sad as the disruption that almost occurred at his funeral.That disruption was an appearance by the "reverend" Fred Phelps and his Klan. Having failed repeatedly to earn the Democratic nomination for Governor of Kansas, Phelps gained national notoriety for his "God Hates Fags" campaign, and now focuses his efforts on protesting soldier's funerals.
And now back to our blogger:
I wondered why I had not heard about it, but apparently a group called, "Taskforce Omega" had intervened and stumped any attempts that the members of Westboro Baptist Church made to disrupt the funeral. These brave and patriotic people decided to attend this funeral in order to ensure that the Church did not disrupt the funeral.Read all about it here.
The NY Times Magazine on private security forces in Iraq: The Other Army.
Steven Vincent, Basra and Iran - online audio includes an interview with his wife Lisa. (Via The Corner)
We have an added feature in our sidebar, Music by Military. There's some real talent there. Go have a listen.
A commenter yesterday - likely new to the world of blogs - was somewhat surprised (to use a mild description of her response) by the existence of the blog Iraq the Model. There are many such blogs from Iraq, and we link as many here as we can. Scroll down the page a bit and in the right column you'll find links to several.
Michael Totten, guest blogging at Instapundit, offers more:
Friends of Democracy publishes essays from the Iraqi Arabic language blogosphere translated into English. Iraqis who blog in English are aware that their audience is primarily Western. Iraqis who blog in Arabic are talking to each other in their own language. Reading Friends of Democracy is your chance to eavesdrop. (Disclosure: I?m the site editor.)Follow the link for the rest. The Iraqi people are our allies in the war on terror. Their losses to the terrorists in their country - both in lives and opportunities, far exceed ours.Here are some recent posts you may find interesting:
In spite of this, they remain optimistic for their future. The Brookings Institute's report on Iraq presented some recent poll results.
Jason Hartley's book Just Another Soldier : A Year on the Ground in Iraq and Colby Buzzell's My War: Killing Time in Iraq
These guys were two of the milbloggers in Iraq last year, though both have since removed their archives from the web. They were both a pleasure to read - I'm looking forward to these.
Mohammed, an Iraqi writing from Baghdad, answers Cindy Sheehan's question.
The Open Post is Mudville's message board for bloggers and others to post anything they want on topics not covered elsewhere in this site.
Blog links and comments below are placed by the respective authors, and are not selected by The Mudville Gazette. Opinions expressed in the sites linked to this section are those of their authors - and because this is an open forum should not be considered as endorsed or shared by the Mudville Gazette.
We will delete any links or comments referencing or directing readers to obscene or illegal material. Please report any such items to greyhawk @ mudvillegazette.com.
That said, please note that I fight for free speech (literally), and am not afraid of ideas. The exchange of such is the purpose of this daily feature. We encourage your participation.
Navy fighter pilot (and milblogger) Neptunus Lex on Chickenhawks.
If that's not your cup of tea, his greatest hits might include something more to your liking.
I like this one.
The Washington Post:
Organizers of next month's planned antiwar demonstrations yesterday criticized media organizations, including The Washington Post, for co-sponsoring with the Department of Defense an event to remember the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and to support the troops in Iraq.Kudos to the Post for a rather understated yet in your face response in paragraph two:
The Defense Department-sponsored Freedom Walk will proceed from the Pentagon to the Mall near the Reflecting Pool on the morning of Sept. 11. Country music star Clint Black is donating his time to perform a concert after the walk that will be broadcast to troops overseas. The Post, WTOP radio, WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8 are donating public service announcements in advance of the event. Non-media co-sponsors include Lockheed Martin, Subway and the Washington Convention and Tourism Corp., according to the Defense Department's Web site for the walk.Personally I'd like to thank the Left for adding to the publicity for the event. Please google "Christians protest Harry Potter" for a recent example of what your efforts might achieve. I'd be sensitive to their concerns, but every time 12 sign waving war protestors appear on any street corner in the USA it makes front page news - complete with the organization's estimate of "hundreds of demonstrators gathered..."
In the same story, the Post publicizes another forthcoming event:
On Sept. 24, nearly two weeks after the walk, critics of the war will gather in Washington for three days of demonstrations, including a concert, a march and other events.Could anyone be more oblivious to the irony?Yesterday, some of those critics said media support for the Pentagon event undercuts their credibility in covering the controversial war as well as reporting on antiwar efforts.
"No common person will see this as not taking sides in this war," said Adam Eidinger, a promoter of the antiwar concert being called Operation Ceasefire. "This is clearly support for the war because it's being organized by the U.S. military."
Un-hinged.
Oh, by the way, welcome Washington Post readers. Obviously, the link to this site from the Post indicates their complete and total support for the troops in the war on terror, and endorsement of the many positions I have taken in opposition to stories I've found there.
Seriously though, debate is good, our nation was founded on just that. Calls from "the opposition" for "the other side" to be silenced speak volumes for the quality of their arguments. Thanks to John Finer and the Washington Post for amplifying a lot of disparate voices in the War on Terror, and letting readers think for themselves.
This is not satire...
NORAD, the section of the Pentagon that monitors and assesses U.S. airspace for risks of attack, has decided to delete references to American Indians in titles of readiness exercises by October.Amalgam Fencing Brave? Does this make sense in Japanese? In which order would you replace the the words?The decision does not apply to the rest of the military.
In July, Adm. Timothy Keating, head of Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, sent a memo to the Pentagon that said exercises such as "Amalgam Fencing Brave" will, as of October 1, be referred to as "Amalgam Fencing Dart." As another example: The exercise "Amalgam Warrior" will be called "Amalgam Phantom."
<...>
A spokesman for NORAD told CNN there were no complaints that led NORAD to decide on the name changes. The agency's intent, he said, is to avoid using names that might offend American Indians.
When Air Force uniform officials were first briefed on new utility boots that airmen are now testing, a question came to their minds: Would religious groups be offended by boots made of pigskin?The story does not mention whether pork products are used in the manufacture of smart bombs.The answer ? ?yes? for some Muslims ? could be a factor in what boot the Air Force ultimately chooses.
The use of pigskin unless for medical reasons is ?clearly prohibited? for Muslims and is only made lawful when its use is a dire necessity, wrote Qaseem Ali Uqdah, the Muslim chaplains? senior ecclesiastical endorser, in a July 6 letter to an Air Force chaplain.
Uqdah, responding to an Air Force request for his input, cited the Koran verse, ??He has only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine and any [food] over which the name of other than Allah has been invoked.?
Uqdah wrote, ?It is forbidden for a Muslim to wear pigskin because the impurity of a pig?s skin is not removed even by tanning their skins, as pigs are impure in themselves. So the issue here is not confined to just eating it ??
The concern from some involves not only the idea of Muslim airmen being asked to wear the boot, but the international implications of Americans wearing them in Muslim countries.
Mahmoud El-Yousseph, a Muslim and active member of the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military, said he ?freaked out? when he learned the boots were being tested.
?It is almost like an ?in-your-face? attitude,? said El-Yousseph, a Palestinian-born U.S. citizen who recently retired from the Ohio National Guard as a technical sergeant (E6). ?Most of our troops are stationed in Muslim nations. You can?t win people?s minds and hearts in the Muslim world if you go there wearing uniforms made of pigs.?
<...>
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, America?s largest Islamic civil liberties group, had a similar recommendation for the Air Force.Spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed said airmen wearing pigskin would be an offense to Muslim sensitivities and could give extremists further ammunition to say, ?The West doesn?t respect Islam.?
Navy:
The U.S. military plans to ease conditions for some detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba ? housing them in a renovated section with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean, the detention center?s commanding officer said in court papers.However, seems not everyone has gotten the memo. The Army (from the NORAD story above):
One Army official said he's heard no talk of changing the name of the Army's Apache, Black Hawk or Kiowa helicopters, all of which are named after Indian tribes or leaders.Marines (from the boot story above):
The pigskin boot has been in the Marine Corps inventory as an optional item for about a year, though that boot could be replaced. Although there are no specific regulations for wearing the boot, commanders can make special uniform considerations for religious preferences, according to a Marine Corps spokesman.Obviously they haven't experienced enough hours of PowerPoint "Sensitivity Training"...Asked for comments from Marines wearing these boots in Iraq, Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a Multi-National Forces-West spokesman at Camp Fallujah, wrote: ?There is not one person I have spoken with who knows what their boots are made of. I don?t have any idea what mine are made of. This is not an issue or something one considers.?
...yet.
Update: This, however, is satire (in it's finest form).
Via Email:
Mrs.Greyhawk,www.cancerablation.com is on the 1st & 2nd pages on Yahoo and Google,
under multiple search names, and the ad is on this Sunday!The power of the blogosphere, and more importantly, what it says of
the people thereof.My thanks to you. Many thanks.
Sincerely,
As many of us in the Military understand, a battle may be won but the war is not over, not for Cathy, continue your thoughts and prayers for her recovery.
Via Drudge:
FAMILY OF FALLEN SOLDIER PLEADS: PLEASE STOP, CINDY!The rest is here.
Thu Aug 11 2005 12:56:21 ETThe family of American soldier Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, has broken its silence and spoken out against his mother Cindy Sheehan's anti-war vigil against George Bush held outside the president's Crawford, Texas ranch.
The following email was received by the DRUDGE REPORT from Casey's aunt and godmother:
Our family has been so distressed by the recent activities of Cindy we are breaking our silence and we have collectively written a statement for release. Feel free to distribute it as you wish. Thanks РCherie
There's obviously one man who can't speak here, but who's actions said much more than anyone's words ever could. Such is the tragic reality of war.
My prayers are for peace for the Sheehans.
(Background on the story here.)
(Part one of this series is here, part II here)
The Politics of Passion
Professor Uwe E. Reinhardt, of Princeton, to his son upon learning he was joining the Marines:
"Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded."The good professor is certainly within his parental rights to be concerned, but if he's right in what he's saying then something must be done about it. But (given his platform for relating those words) if wrong, he's open to accusations of using the wounded for political gain. Unfortunately, there are those among us who look into the eyes of wounded heroes and see only opportunity.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq photographer Nina Berman set out to do something about it.
Basically, I've been a photographer for many years and I did this book because I want people to see these pictures. As a journalist and as an American living here I feel like there's something that I must be able to contribute that isn't being done. I was too young to do anything during the Vietnam War but if I don't do something during this war then I'll just feel like I'm as bad as everybody else.The offspring of her passion is the book Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq
, a photo collection depicting some of the wounded from the war on terror (sorry, Iraq sector only, others need not apply). Most of her subjects are amputees. But the book takes no position on the war, she explains: "...I wanted soldiers to tell their own stories so that someone could not dismiss Purple Hearts as an anti-war book or a pro-war book. It's important to just let the soldiers speak for themselves." .
And they are inspiring indeed. Let's read some of their quotes then, as reported (somewhat surprisingly) at the inarguably left-wing web site Mother Jones.
Sam Ross was with the 82nd Airborne in Baghdad when a bomb blew up during a munitions-disposal operation:
I lost my left leg, just below the knee. Lost my eyesight, which it's still unsettled about whether it will come back or not. I have shrapnel in pretty much every part of my body. Got my finger blown off-it don't work right. I had a hole blown through my right leg-had three skin grafts to try and repair it. It's not too bad now. It hurts a lot, that's about it. You know, not really anything major.
<...>
It was the best experience of my life. Twenty-one years old and I've seen a couple of countries. I've been pretty much everywhere and done everything. I've jumped out of airplanes, I got to play with mines, got to see how the Army works. I got to interact with people of another culture, people who live their lives 100 percent different than the way we live here. That's something that one in a million people will ever get to see in their lifetime-another culture.
<...>
I want to go into politics. Run for office, maybe.
Erick Castro was with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment when he lost a leg during a firefight near Fallujah.
I was born in Mexico - I came here when I was one. I just became a U.S. citizen in December. There was this two-star general at the hospital that asked me, "Hey, are you a citizen?" That same day, I saw Senator Kennedy, and I decided to apply. The director of the INS performed the ceremony in Senator Kennedy's office.Alex Presman, a heavy-vehicle operator in the Marines' 6th Communication Battalion, was injured outside Baghdad when he stepped on a land mine:
<...>
Now I have to wear a prosthetic. Or if I don't want to wear it, I hop around on crutches. My life has changed a lot - a big distance from where it was before. But I'm actually glad I did it, that I served. I don't regret the injuries, not at al. It's just what happens in those circumstances. I got a Purple Heart from the President in Washington. He just came down and handed it to me.I don't regret joining. If I could do it again, I would. I wanted to do something different. Now, I'm going to go back to school. The VA will pay for tuition. I'll go to school for 2 or 3 years. I think what I'll do is mechanical engineering. Then find a job in that.
I was born in Russia. We came in '94. I think a man has to go through the military. My father was in the military. I wanted to go to school, and I just thought it was the right thing for me to do.A tank operator in the 4th ID, Luis Calderon was injured May 5, 2003, while destroying a mural of Saddam Hussein in Tikrit.I volunteered to go. I could have gotten out, because my reserve contract was over. I volunteered basically, because a couple of my good friends were going and being in the military is what's it's all about. It's about doing something. Being in the military action. I just wanted to be a part of it.
...They medevaced me out, took me to Bethesda Naval Hospital, and they told me it had to be amputated. Nobody can prepare himself for that. But you know, it could have been worse.
It's just pride. The brotherhood. The way of life. Being in the military, and being one of the few, the proud. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
The wall just crashed on me. Crushed my head, broke my neck. I felt separated, like in relaxing mode, but really I was still driving the tank. I couldn't feel my hands on the wheel. I felt nothing. My sergeant was telling me to stop on the radio, but I couldn't speak loud because my voice just went away, I was whispering, a very slight whisper. Another tank got the wall from ahead and took it out, and we waited until the medics came.Alan Jermaine Lewis of the 3rd ID was wounded when the Humvee he was driving hit a land mine in Baghdad:<...>
I'm just happy I took the wall down. I did my job. If I had the chance to, I would go back now.
<...>
I still think I'm active. I'm 22 years old. You don't see a lot of veterans at 22 years old. I would like to talk to soldiers. Do volunteer work. Just talk to soldiers. But for the moment, right now, I just want to heal.
I've always wanted to go into education and become a teacher but they just don't make enough to survive off of. So I figure with my disability now, and the money I'll get from the government, I can use that plus the money I'll get from being a teacher and live comfortably. So I want to go to college and study education.One thing seems obvious from these quotes - if the military wanted to publicize the stories of wounded veterans it could do so to its advantage - but respect for privacy seems to have thus far outweighed the potential public relations gains such publicity would offer.
<...>
The reasons for going to war were bogus but we were right to go in there. Saddam was a bad guy. But the Purple Heart was one thing I never wanted. The Secretary of the Army gave it to me.
Of course, those who do want to gain political capital from wounded heroes will even spin that reluctance for their own purposes:
They are the images the government doesn't want you to see -- of soldiers returning from "Operation Iraqi Freedom", wounded for life, physically and emotionally.That's the opening line from the Mother Jones interview with Purple Hearts author Nina Berman. She was surprised by the positive response of these wounded heroes - though she doesn't call them heroes, and with time she's been able to recover enough from her shock to reconcile their comments with her own thinking:
MJ.com: Were you surprised by some of the soldier's positive reactions, given the considerable physical and emotional damage they suffered, to the war and their experiences in Iraq?Read the entire interview and one point shines through - she may have indeed let them speak their own words, but she sees them as potential converts to her cause - and potentially valuable ones at that. So don't bother looking for any indication that she actually listened to anything they said, she blames their attitudes on their ignorance, and refers to them as "robotic".NB: I expected bitter soldiers, but as I talked to more people and family members, I realized that wasn't really the experience of a wounded soldier returning home. Most of the soldiers I photographed had literally just been released from the hospital. They're still in shock. For them to turn around and say, "I'm blind" or "I don't have any legs" and then think that it wasn't worth it -- that's a very hard leap to make. So I expected more bitterness and the pictures reveal soldiers who look quite lonely and almost in a state of shock.
MJ.com: What do the soldiers think when Americans say that "I'm against the war but I support the troops"?She's worried about others who might try to "use" the troops for their political gain too:NB: Well, I would really side-step political questions about whether they were in favor of the war or not because when I asked that question most soldiers tended to give robotic responses, saying: "I'm a soldier and I have no political feelings." One soldier, though, whom I met at Walter Reed, said to me, "Look, whatever the book does or whatever you do, just make sure you say that people support the troops." So I'm not sure what they think it means. I think, for me, the banner "support the troops" is an almost meaningless expression.
<...>
MJ.com: That reminds me of what Spc. Robert Acosta, a twenty year-old soldier from Santa Ana, California, said about how Americans "watch action movies and glorify all of this stuff."NB: Right, Robert Acosta was probably the most articulate in the book. He's become quite an activist. He recently appeared in an ad working with this group called Operation Truth and this morning, we were on the radio together. Since I met him, he's made quite a substantial leap in his thinking about the entire war.
<...>
Their whole understanding of the war, and how they process their injuries, depends on how much information they have access to and whom they talk to.MJ.com: Did any of the soldiers talk about the Vietnam War?
NB: One soldier, Sgt, Josh Olson, who's an amputee up to the hip, had relatives in Vietnam. He had the view that U.S. hands were tied in Vietnam and that we should have finished the job. He was also very hard-core about the war in Iraq, saying we're going to have to kill a lot of people and "if they want to go to Allah, I'm going to send them to Allah."
What I found, though, is that Vietnam Veterans are very interested in these sorts of soldiers. Purple Hearts' afterword is written by Tim Origer, a Vietnam veteran who returned from Vietnam at 19 as an amputee, works with Veterans for Peace and is making contacts with these soldiers. Many Vietnam vets are super, super upset about this war. They identify with these wounded soldiers and basically see the whole nightmare unfolding for a second time.
MJ.com: I want to ask you about the book's afterword. Tim Origer writes that books like Purple Hearts "can awaken [our contemporaries] from their comfortable and complacent dreams." Do you think Purple Hearts can have this type of impact? What else needs to emerge to change the culture of war?
NB: Well, for me, it comes down to basically two things with this book. One is let's start getting a real look at war. If you want to start sending your sons and daughters to war then don't have this cartoon version of what is going to happen to them. You know, they are not going to be action heroes coming home in a blaze of glory. So let's face up to that. That was a really important reason for me to do this book because to me we're all kind of complicit in this experience here.
And the second thing is that I hope the text gives people a little bit of an understanding of the kind of youth culture that exists in America, and what these youths know, what they don't know, and what they imagine about the rest of the world. A lot of these soldiers come from very poor communities and the Army was the only thing out there. The Army recruiters are in their school every week, while corporate recruiters never enter these schools. The only people that are showing up in these high schools are Army recruiters in snappy uniforms with smiling faces.
I just got an e-mail off my site from this couple in Hawaii saying what can I do, the recruiters are coming to the school all the time and taking away all these children. I also made a ten-minute movie -- which records these soldiers in their own voices -- and I hope to get this movie shown in public schools. That's what I'm hoping to do, that's the next round.
Basically, I've been a photographer for many years and I did this book because I want people to see these pictures. As a journalist and as an American living here I feel like there's something that I must be able to contribute that isn't being done. I was too young to do anything during the Vietnam War but if I don't do something during this war then I'll just feel like I'm as bad as everybody else.
MJ.com: What about the rhetoric around troops that politicians use in campaign rallies and commercials?Remember, though, the book doesn't take a position on the war.NB: They say, "support our troops" or they show up at a veteran's parade and that's it. Or, like Acosta says, they show the war and America changes the channel. For me, the best possible solution is to humiliate politicians publicly, because that's the only way I can figure out how to make them move.
"...I wanted soldiers to tell their own stories so that someone could not dismiss Purple Hearts as an anti-war book or a pro-war book. It's important to just let the soldiers speak for themselves."Certainly if Berman and others like her can convince these GIs that they have been used to advance a foolish cause - for which they've been crippled and rendered useless and forgotten - then they will be able to convert them to their opposition to that cause. But it's been almost a year since the publication of her book, and the campaign to enlist the wounded veterans hasn't gained much traction. It's not known whether she now regrets letting the "robots" speak for themselves.
There's an interesting look at veteran's groups in between the lines of the above interview. Most such organizations are worthwhile, but others have goals that seem to change as often as political parties in power in DC.
One GI that was less-than-impressed by his experiences with such groups was North Dakota National Guardsman Brandon Erickson, whose tour of duty in Iraq cost him his right arm.
He was recently interviewed by NPR's John Ydstie
JY: How about you mood generally would you say?The interview begins with Brandon on his new job - spraying lawns for the Happy Grass Lawn Care company. But lest you think he's been condemned to the bottom of the economic scrap heap rest assured, it's just a summer job, one in which he protects his $100,000 electronic arm by using a low-tech replacement. His full time job is student, a Political Science major at the University of North Dakota.BE: I think my mood's definitely improved. I've gotten this new attitude too - I really got mad at myself this last winter - I think I got a little bit of the winter blues, and I was kind of sulking around and feeling sorry for myself. It's been within the last three months I've gone through this change... to quit complaining. I just get mad at myself for complaining about things.
I was getting involved with some of the veterans organizations. They wanted me to... call congressmen, get this and that. I was like,,, yea maybe we do deserve these benefits, but at the same point appreciate what we have. Quit hounding them, saying "we deserve this this this this and this"... Honestly they can only provide so much. One guy was cussing up a storm at one of the senators - because we need to have this and this... but there's nothing in the constitution that says veterans have to have these certain rights - just out of the kindness of American's hearts we get all these benefits...
JY: You didn't want to get involved in that sort of negative... always being negative, always asking... you just didn't feel like it was good for your psyche...
BE: Yeah, I don't know why or what changed me but that whole negative thing about complaining about the war... I quit talking about that a long time ago, that got on my nerves instantly. Let it go.
He's not overtly political though - in a previous NPR interview we learned his fellow students aren't aware of his story:
I'm a Political Science major, and one of my classes is International Politics, and we've talked about Iraq quite a bit. In all my classes nobody knows what happened to me. I dont say a word about being in the Army, being in Iraq. When people say silly things, I just want to fully unleash on them, "do you have any idea what ..." but I don't, I'm usually pretty quiet, I just let them think silly thoughts - because I know what's the real story from being over there.It's not clear exactly what those "silly things" are, but there's a hint provided later as they approach his apartment:
BE: Bet you can't Guess which one's mine..That's a picture that didn't appear in campaign advertising, by the way.JY: Let's see now, there's one with an American flag hanging off the balcony...
BE: Yeah, that would be mine.
JY: Brandon says he still supports the war in Iraq. He lives in a small, quiet apartment complex a couple of miles from campus.
It looks like a regular guy's apartment, sparsely furnished...
BE: This is my Purple Heart, which was presented by Vice President Cheney. That was really cool. They didn't tell us until the night before, the last second, you get the purple heart from the vice president. We got excited, we're going to meet him...
<...>
We sat and talked, he made it very informal, it was pretty neat.
Having failed to convert the living to their cause, today's "anti-war" crowd has shifted their focus entirely upon the dead. Demands for photos of flag-draped coffins to accompany any published anti-war diatribe are now easily filled - the result of lawsuits successfully waged in the nation's courts. (Professor Reinhardt's original piece included one such photograph.) None of this is new, of course, and one of the first practitioners of the art in it's modern form was Michael Moore. Moore sidestepped any question of whether his subjects agreed with him or not by simply using film of them in his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 without bothering to ask.
His use of footage from U.S.A.F. Maj. Gregory Stone's funeral earned him the outrage of the man's surviving relatives. Stone's mother described Moore as a "maggot that eats off the dead."
But he also hijacked wounded heroes for his cause, much to their surprise and revulsion. SSG Roy Mitchell was one of his victims. Mitchell learned of the abuse from a friend - while he was still recovering at Walter Reed. He "vehemently objects to filmmaker Moore's using them - without his knowledge - in a film he thinks undermines the military's mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he risked his life."
Another case from the same story:
The July 15 issue of The Enterprise, a Massachusetts newspaper, reported that Army reservist Peter Damon - also recuperating at Walter Reed after losing parts of both arms in an explosion in Iraq - was "surprised" to learn that an interview he gave to NBC this year is shown in the film.Make no mistake - this is why the dead are valuable to the "anti-war" crowd - they don't talk back.John Gonsalves, the founder of Homes for Our Troops - a Massachusetts organization that builds homes for disabled soldiers - is constructing a new house for Damon and his wife, with whom he has talked extensively about the film.
"To do a movie that's clearly anti-war and totally against the Bush administration, and to put these guys in it without their knowledge, is morally wrong, and maybe even legally," said Gonsalves.
We offered a follow-up report on Damon's recovery here:
There is a sketch in his living room of a soldier carrying another soldier on his back, evidence the righthanded Damon can still draw, though he must clasp his pencil between two pieces of metal.You can "visit" the home built for Sgt Damon and his family here - and meet some other heroes the organization is helping here. Take a look around the Homes for our Troops website while you're there - and meet some folks do more than talk about their support for the troops.The drawing he's working on will be used in an advertisement for Homes For Our Troops, a nonprofit organization that uses donations by contractors to build homes for veterans. The Damons will be moving into a new home by the end of July, a place equipped with easy-to-open cabinets, latch-handle doors, keyless entry, low-maintenance vinyl siding, an easy-to-clean flat-top stove, and a master bedroom suite with a wide shower.
It was truly an honor to discover this comment left on that previous post:
I'd like to thank everyone for showing an interest and showing so much support for my story, and the story of Homes For Our Troops. Reading comments like these make all the sacrifices that I have made, and ALL THE OTHER SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN who have given life and limb for their Country and for Freedom, worth it.Thank You, and GOD BLESS AMERICA
Pete Damon
SGT. U.S. Army RET
(Part IV is here)
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Some people don't mind working during a space shuttle launch...
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lift off...
Cathy, the sister of Day by Day cartoonist Chris Muir, is being treated at the Cancer Ablation Center in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Chris has humored us all here in the blogosphere and has become a virtual friend to many of us. He was one of the very few that corresponded with Greyhawk while he was in Baghdad, something that Greyhawk appreciated very much.
The Cancer Ablation Center in Gulf Shores, Alabama. will have an ad to be aired on CNN cancer special on August 14th and 20th, but Chris is asking for our help in doing more.
For the next TEN DAYS, click on the banner (or links) as often as you can and boost their visibility in search engines, and please use the banner and put up a link at your sites as well. pssst ......We'll even let you hotlink it if need be.
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Our thoughts and prayers go out to Cathy, in hopes of a full recovery and for The Cancer Ablation Center in Gulf Shores, Alabama, in hopes they can continue helping those in need.
This will stay on top for this duration.
UPDATE:
Mike Yon, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, and courage under fire
Bullets flying by, and enemy weapons firing: PaPaPaPaPaPaPaPaPaPow? zinnggg?.GawGawGawGawPaPaGawGaw?different types of weapons were shooting.He would "save" the man again later that day too. You can read all about it - and a whole lot more - here. (With photos of the incident too.)One of our big machineguns started boomboomboom?boomboomboom...boomboom boom, and then our guys with those little rifles they carry, poppop...poppoppoppop.... to my left?poppoppoppoppoppoppopp to my right, and then, boomboomboom PaPaPaPaPaPpoppoppoppopp GawGawGaw BOOM PaPaPpoppopGawGaw GawGawGawPaPaPpop popboom boom boom.
This was an appropriate time to run for cover. Enemy bullets snapping by. I saw at least two soldiers smiling?authors are not allowed to carry weapons PaPaPGawGaw BOOM PaPaPpop zinnggg--dust clouding the air?sure would be nice to have a gun instead of a camera right now boompop Gawsnapsnap boom boompoppboomGawGawGaw.
I looked back to where we had been because the prisoner [the American soldiers always remind me that I should call prisoners "detainees"] was still there, hand-cuffed, and on his knees, with the radio transmitter lying beside him on the ground.
We had left the prisoner in the open. Bullets were snapping, and I'm crouched on a knee behind a Stryker. When I look back again, I see Kurilla standing out there, alone, next to the terrorist on the sidewalk. Bullets are kicking up dirt and Kurilla gives us a look, What the hell! You left the prisoner!
For a moment, I nearly ran back out to drag the terrorist behind the Stryker, but then I thought, Nope, he?s a terrorist! If Kurilla gets shot, I?m definitely going to get him. But the terrorist can get shot to pieces and I don't care.
Instead of doing something useful?and I feel marginally guilty about this, but not too much?I start snapping photos as the Commander drags the guy by the collar to get him to the cover of the Stryker. I can't believe Kurilla is still alive after nearly a year of doing this.
Yon also relates a later event - an illustration of how important such stories are, and perhaps a clue as to why they aren't often told (emphasis added):
I woke up early one morning, waiting by my cell phone for a scheduled radio interview, when a gigantic explosion rocked the morning darkness. That was more than a five-banger.Read it all, and pass it on. There's no reason for anyone to "sit in the dark."I walked to the TOC and asked what exploded. Blasts that large can defeat Strkyer armor, but no patrols called in to say they had been hit. I asked "Q," who was manning the counter-battery radar, if he saw anything; maybe flying parts were tracked by radar, but Q showed me the blank screen. No radar acquisitions. Just another giant explosion in the night without explanation; there have been many.
I walked back through the dark and did the radio interview by cell phone. During such interviews, I get the impression that people at home are losing faith in the effort, though we are winning. But at home they cannot see it, and when I said goodbye that time, I sat in the dark.
A great idea friom Steven Kiel - Operation Hands Full:
When I first got here I was on night guard duty for a few months and worked alongside some of the Iraqi soldiers. I began to hand things out to them, mostly extra things from care packages. They loved it. They had never received anything from Americans and were excited to receive things. After I got off of guard duty, I continued to hand out items through an Iraqi interpreter and through people who are still on guard duty. It?s been a great way to build goodwill and I?d like to continue and expand on it.Read the rest here. Steve's home on leave, but will be back soon. Some of the other guys "over there" might want to pick up on this idea though...If you?d like to participate, this is how it works: You send me packages of stuff for the Iraqi soldiers, and I?ll make sure it gets handed out to them.
And the latest from Russ Vaughn:
Why Was It My Son Had to Die?
To the families of the brave Ohio Marines
Why was it my son had to die,
To preserve some truth? To hide a lie?
Why did my country ask of me,
To sacrifice my hopes so totally?
Why must one home give up so much,
Among the few to feel death?s touch?
Why was it my son had to die?
Please let me know, please tell me why.
Your son died in a valiant cause,
To save our way of rights and laws,
To keep the light of freedom glowing,
To keep the rights of freemen flowing,
To keep our tall torch burning bright
Against the terror, against its night.
Your son gave up his valiant best,
To save our ways, preserve the rest.
True, politics is a darkened art,
Devouring lives of those with heart,
The heart to give their very best,
To serve, protect we helpless rest.
But, Lord, we?re thankful some will serve
We multitudes, who lack their nerve.
They take up arms and fight our foes,
Bearing bloody burdens for our woes.
Why was it my son had to die?
Why must I be the one to cry?
Because you are one of the few,
Who raised a son who truly knew,
Our freedom?s price is paid in blood,
Young men must die to stay the flood,
To keep the terror wolves at bay,
To save us all, preserve our way.
Why was it my son had to die?
Because your son was one fine guy.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
Vietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the latest installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq.
The way we?ll never be again
Dear Warrior in Iraq . . .
If you got one of those two-week leaves from the combat zone, you now have one more thing in common with the Vietnam veteran of yesteryear. Very likely, you reminded yourself every day about how great it was to be home. You also tried to tell yourself not to think about what you left behind in Iraq.
Not likely you could put the Raq out of your mind, though. You left behind friends, a mission, a slice of your daily life, a piece of your very being. It?s possible you felt guilty leaving those friends in danger while you were safely home enjoying the company of family. Perhaps a fear visited you in your alone moments, a fear that something might happen to somebody you?d left over there. You might even have felt that, if something did happen, it might be your fault, that had you stayed there, you might have prevented an injury or a death.
Eventually you came to your senses. After all, it is awfully arrogant to assume so much responsibility for what could happen in a war that?s bigger than any one country, let alone a single man or woman. Besides . . .
In your heart of hearts, you did feel that sense of relief that, if something did happen, it couldn?t happen to you while you were stateside. Still . . .
Well, there was nothing left to do but put it out of your mind. Just not think about it. But not thinking about it is a guilt trip all its own, isn?t it? And, hey, the harder you try not to think about it, the more it?s like trying to ignore the elephant in the room.
It?s a heck of a game your mind plays on you, back and forth like that. It?s a sign of change in you.
One day you?ll realize that there?s no going back to the way you were before you entered the combat zone that first time.
And so it is for all who go to war. My father in law was a veteran wounded in Normandy in World War II. He was also the father of four daughters, and none of them ever wanted to awaken him from his chair for dinner because of the way he startled from a nap?it was as though his war visited him every time he closed his eyes.
For others, the changes were less visible but more sweeping, not even evident until after years of reflection. For instance, I have auto-reactions to some of the myths and revised history of Vietnam, that notion that we lost the war, which crops up on every anniversary of a Vietnam event or upon the death of an old warrior like Gen. William C. Westmoreland. I cannot forget certain things, such as a youthful John Kerry testifying before Congress and painting all Vietnam warriors as war criminals.
When I hear such things or remember them, I get a kind of startle, like being awakened from an emotional nap too suddenly. For years, I had to ask myself: ?Where is that coming from??
Lately I have come to understand the feeling. You see, I was young when I went to serve, with no particular future mapped out for me. The first important job in my life was as a combat tank platoon leader in Vietnam, the most important job I ever had. I liked the Army well enough to stay in it for a shade more than 20 years. If not for the war, if not for the draft, if not for Vietnam, if not for officer candidate school, if not for combat . . . well, you can see where this is going. If not for those things, I?m a different guy in a different place.
That?s why I react to any antiwar sentiment that tries to trivialize my life. It?s not that I?m particularly pro-war. Most soldiers are not. Fact is, in my career, the only guys I met who said they loved war were either downright fakes or certifiable psychopaths.
It?s just that I won?t let the antiwar war crowd call me a loser, a war criminal, a tool of the politicians in an unjust war.
I was called to service, and, perhaps more by accident than design, I did answer the call. Simple as that.
I?ve never tried to attach any particular importance to what I and others did in our service. I know full well that the generation that truly saved the world was the one that fought World War II. Although lately, some would even try to trivialize or criminalize that effort on the part of American veterans.
I?m not buying it. Not in WWII. Not in Vietnam. And not for you in Iraq.
Till next week . . .
God bless you and Godspeed.
John is a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam and a member of the American Legion. His novel, Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword is a fictional account of the 9/11 attacks and the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom.
And today we're proud to announce the publication of the second of John's Delta books, Prelude to War
Interested in keeping Arthur Chrenkoff's "Good News" projects going?
Joe Katzman says: "Actually, there are a few of us working hard behind the scenes to ensure that it will continue.
Anyone who is interested in being part of that, please leave a comment in the comments section of the Winds of Change.NET version.
Time Magazine presents 10 Questions for Jessica Lynch.
Question two is interesting (all-caps in original):
LOOKING BACK, DO YOU FEEL YOU WERE USED BY THE MILITARY TO INCREASE AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR THE WAR IN ITS EARLY STAGES?The better question might be "Do you feel you were used by large media conglomerates to increase ratings, sell newspapers and magazines, and ultimately create a best-selling book?" And the best question might be "Is it true you want to get on with your life without us hounding you?"I think I provided a way to boost everybody's confidence about the war. I was used as a symbol. They could show the war was going great because "we rescued this person." It doesn't bother me anymore. It used to. Through my book [I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, written by Rick Bragg], I have been able to set the record straight. I did what I could do and now let the record speak for itself.
But her response to the question as posed doesn't read like a complaint - "used" was the reporter's term, and "I was used as a symbol" seems accurate, but not in the sense the reporter meant "used". More on that later, but first a look at the media reporting on itself. The Agence France Presse coverage of the Time interview gets this screaming headline: Ex-POW Jessica Lynch says US used her as Iraq war symbol. And the reporter's question "magically disappears":
Former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch, whose capture and rescue in the early days of the Iraq war turned her into a US icon, said in an interview that the US government had used her as an upbeat symbol in the conflict.That's a re-write of an answer to a loaded question - remember "used" was the Time reporter's word choice in the first place. An obvious effort to turn up the volume of that original comment to eleven."I think I provided a way to boost everybody's confidence about the war," Lynch told Time magazine.
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Lynch, who has previously criticized the official US government portrayal of her rescue, said her book "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," written by Rick Bragg, allowed her to "set the record straight" about her March 23, 2003 capture and rescue nine days later.
Coincidentally, Jessica Lynch made a simultaneous "appearance" in this NY Times report complaining about the government's "refusal" to publicize "heroes" in the war on terror:
Perhaps, some experts said, the military knows that promotion will attract unwanted scrutiny. After the heroic tales of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Sgt. Pat Tillman were largely debunked - with Private Lynch shown to have never fired a shot during her capture and rescue in Iraq, and Sergeant Tillman killed accidentally by fellow Americans, not the enemy, in Afghanistan - the Pentagon may have grown cautious.A quick side note: neither Lynch nor Tillman are any less heroic in my mind than they ever were - but obviously others see them as diminished. So it goes.
I'm not sure how "the military" could have avoided publicizing the fact that Lynch had been rescued. The degree of that publicity was determined solely by the media - and they knew they had a compelling story. Once the military announces "we've rescued Jessica Lynch" the newspapers determine where that belongs in their publications and the networks determine exactly where (and if) that story fits into their evening broadcast. In short, this story was "pulled" by the media more than it was "pushed" by the Pentagon. If the Pentagon is choosing headlines for the NY Times or cover photos for Time magazine I'd like to know - I'll do everything in my power to restore their freedom to publish what they see fit.
To the best of my knowledge Lynch underwent treatment and a long recovery - and was medically retired from the Army without ever being "used" in any way other than as a response to press inquiries. If anyone can provide some evidence of the Pentagon pushing this story or sending Pvt Lynch on a PR tour please do so. Yes - for many Jessica Lynch was "the story" of the early days of the Iraq campaign, but this was not a time when the military was desperate for positive coverage or in need of "good news" - from the military standpoint the news from Iraq could hardly have been better, it was victory piled on victory after all.
To see it spun otherwise now seems little more than a bitter attempt to rewrite that history.
Dear friends
One day, hopefully sooner rather than later, Afghanistan will be a peaceful and normal country, but when that happens, it will be due to the efforts of Afghan math students rather than the Western media.
My involvement with the series is slowly coming to an end, but the series itself, I hope, will continue.
Best regards
Arthur
Update from Joe Katzman: Actually, there are a few of us working hard behind the scenes to ensure that it will continue.
Anyone who is interested in being part of that, please leave a comment in the comments section of the Winds of Change.NET version.
Via email: Both my paypal and ebay accounts have been suspended!!!
But I won the lottery!!!!! (Now I can afford to send that money to the nice Nigerian widow, and I won't need that 400,000 dollar home loan after all!!!!)
There really are two (and only two) sides to the War on Terror*, and if you're in the mood for an examination of the other side I recommend this excellent think-piece from Cliff May:
But let's be clear, Islam is not ? as has been repeatedly claimed -- a ?religion of peace.? Indeed, the idea is absurd, considering that Islam's founding prophet also was a warrior -- among the most successful in history, establishing an empire ranging from Spain to the South Pacific.And this investigative report from the London TimesNor did Osama bin Laden ?hijack? Islam ? any more than Hitler hijacked Germanic culture or Lenin hijacked the Russian ethos. Rather, Hitler and Lenin drew upon the ugliest threads in their nations' fabrics. So, too, has bin Laden invoked Islam's most radically xenophobic doctrines to legitimize a vicious assault against all those who refuse to accept his authority, all those he demonizes as ?infidels.?
A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a recruit inside the Saviour Sect to reveal for the first time how the extremist group promotes hatred of ?non-believers? and encourages its followers to commit acts of violence including suicide bombings.Read all of both.
Hat tips to LGF for the latter and The Debate Link for the former. You'll find additional insight and commentary there.
*If you find that statement offensive you're probably not in the game. Read the links anyway, and thanks for expressing your interest in our national defense.
This is the Ranger Creed:
Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of the Rangers.Anyone wanting to join that team will have to overcome some obstacles, and prove themselves worthy. In some ways SPC Peter Sprenger had more hurdles to clear than most:Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster, and fight harder than any other soldier.
Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one hundred percent and then some.
Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress, and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.
Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.
Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.
For Spc. Peter Sprenger, an Infantryman, Dec. 9, 2003, is a day that will stay with him forever.Sprenger graduated from Ranger Training on July 29th, 2005.Sprenger, who's assigned to the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, was on an early morning patrol in Talafar, Iraq, when a car bomb exploded near the command post. No Soldiers died in the attack, but Sprenger was one of 60 casualties.
"My right eye was just mutilated, and I had shrapnel wounds to my mouth, back, legs and shoulder," he said. "It kind of messed up my day."
Sprenger was evacuated to Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany and then to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where President George W. Bush presented Sprenger a Purple Heart.
Sprenger spent nearly eight months undergoing numerous surgeries and rehabilitation. He's legally blind in his right eye, still has shrapnel in his shoulder, the small of his back and his right leg. "I shoot with my left eye, anyway," he said.
Sprenger, who could have been medically retired, chose to get back to his unit and complete his mission.
"I came into the Army to be a Soldier and fight for my country," he said. "I was not going to let this incident deter me."
When Spc. Peter Sprenger recited the words of the Ranger Creed during Friday's graduation ceremony, brigade leaders figured no one more deserved the honor.The story originally appeared in Ft Benning's newspaper - we found it through fellow MilBlogger Jack Army. Go read all about this hero.The credo, which ends with a pledge to "display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on" seems tailor-made for Sprenger - who earned the right to be called a Ranger after losing an eye in Iraq.
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Even with two good eyes, soldiers find it to be among the U.S. military's toughest training. On average, 52 percent of the troops who take the 61-day course end up graduating."Sprenger is unbelievable," Chinn said. "He's a great example and inspiration to all soldiers and Rangers."
Sprenger said he got a lot of support from his father, John, and countless officers and fellow soldiers in the Army.
Depth perception was the only trouble his one-eyed sight gave him during Ranger training, he said, especially during the 20-foot-high catwalk.
Although he can't play pickup basketball and football anymore, he still enjoys racquetball and still legally drives.
Now, Sprenger is looking forward to rejoining his unit and deploying back to Iraq in September.
"I want to finish the job I started," he said.
You'll likely only have a little while to enjoy this.
In case it's not clear, bandwidth = cost, and a picture is actually worth well over a thousand words.
UPDATE : TacJammer has a screen capture here
A worthy cause:
First and foremost, I want to say thank you to all who have contributed to my Vision and Goal. Sometime ago, I sent out an email asking for help to receive donations of shoes for the children of Iraq. To my surprise, I received an over whelming response. It was such a huge response that I felt I had to give the program a name, henceforth, SOLES FOR SOULS. Thanks to the modern technology of email, my Vision and request for help has reached across the United States. I've received responses and packages from California, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana.This is a great cause, "A single pair of shoes/sandals are less then the price of a Starbucks coffee, less then the price of an alcoholic drink at a bar."Local city organizations such as YUM (Corporate Headquarters for KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silvers), CURVES, city School Boards, and WAL-MART have agreed to become drop off locations or are considering becoming one. Others have started local drives at their place of employment.
One day while on patrol, I asked myself, what, if anything is being done for the children, whom in reality some will become the leaders of this country. We all ask the questions, point the blame, but rarely do we come up with the answers. Maybe it's because we're afraid we'll make a difference or we're waiting for someone else to do the work. Is it work?!?! Let me be the first to tell you? I'm in Iraq, running missions daily, sometimes twice a day, and it's always a Monday because you never know when you're going to have a day off? YES, IT'S WORK!!!
Go read the rest at Iraq War News
Via email:
Dear Greyhawk,There's a bit of insight into the man there, and it jives with what I've read elsewhere.
I just ran across your beautiful post about Steven Vincent. You said a lot of things that were very poignant. Most especially this: "Neither I nor NRO or the NY Times could get his words read by as many people as the bastards who killed him did today." Exactly.
Steven was an extraordinary writer and it was beyond me why his blog went almost unnoticed...despite the claims by bloggers in the last few days that they loved Steven's blog. On days that I checked, the daily hits would hover at less than 200. Last week, Charles Johnson at LGF linked to the blog, and the count went up to nearly 1000 one day.
I've read your blog for many months, and I've never written to you. And I regret it...just as you mentioned that you had regrets that you never emailed Steven. He almost surely would have replied and I think you would have been greatly impressed by his tender concern for our soldiers. Steven and I had many email exchanges over the last nine months. It started when I commented on his blog, and he wrote me a thank you note. I wrote him back and mentioned that I had a son in Iraq. He wrote about my son a couple of times on his blog.
You questioned in your post about using the word "journalist" for Steven. That he was. He was also a hero, and a guy from New York who took too many risks and stayed too many days where he should not have been. I pray that his sacrifice will be worth it.
In January I discovered his blog and emailed him to ask some detailed questions about something I had recently read about Iraqi domestic politics. He got back to me in 24 hours with an equally detailed response. I thought that was very charitable of him. Shortly thereafter I invited him to write some guest posts here on Adventures and was flattered when he agreed. I was just a little ole blogger after all, and he was a published writer.You can find the rest of his thoughts and those guest posts here.
But what an amazing man, who took the time to respond to comments and emails in a way that shames most of the rest of us - myself included. The man had discipline, as Nick Gillespie makes clear:
He was great to work with. His story pitches were clean, crisp, and to the point. He hit his deadlines without fail.Gillespie is Editor-in-Chief of Reason, and published several of Vincent's pieces. But that quote above is a minor point in his full tribute, which you can read here. Along with several links to more of his writing, the story offers this insight:
Unlike many journalists, he actually spent much of his time - in retrospect, perhaps too much of his time - out and about, beyond the comforts and protection of an office or an apartment. He was fantastically well-traveled, especially to places on the busted seams of history - places like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong on the eve of its annexation by China.A man of the world, - it's no surprise his idealogical opponents still respected and listened to him:
Steve was a complex person and a quintessential New Yorker. "A natural contrarian" in the words of his friend gallerist Becky Smith, he was a political conservative in the left-leaning art world and a former East Village squatter who dressed in suits.Although that believe the worst line is likely misinterpretation, clearly here was a man who could place himself in any environment and thrive.As his friend Steve Mumford put it, "He was an amateur in the 19th century sense of someone who followed his passions, and he became an art critic because he wanted to be yanked off his feet by a work of art. He became disenchanted as the New York art world he knew from the '80s became increasingly professionalized, and after 9/11 he felt that he had a cause he had to follow. He wasn't an ideologue, but he believed that the Islamic world had to look within itself. And the possibility of dying in Iraq didn't deter him one bit."
He was one of us who believe that the great experiment claiming so many lives in Iraq is the moral hinge on which the world now turns.
Which still leaves endless room for disagreement. On one of the handful of occasions on which I saw him - mainly at political-discussion gatherings at my house - I argued strenuously with Steve for his readiness to believe the worst of Islamic traditions and Shiite theology in particular.
But we shared the American belief that one of the bedrock values of our society is dialogue with complicated people one doesn't always agree with. Steve wanted Iraq to be a place like that - five or 50 or 500 years from now.
Vincent, a professional who was a delight to work with, loved Iraq and its people, calling it "Beautiful Basra" in his last e-mail to me. National Review Online is honored to have published Vincent and we're all praying for Vincent's family and his longtime translator.Follow that link and you'll discover his writings at NRO - an amazing collection.
Steven Vincent, "natural contrarian... political conservative in the left-leaning art world and a former East Village squatter who dressed in suits" was educated at Berkeley:
Steve and I both transferred to UC Berkeley at the same time. At Berkeley, Steve liked to poke fun at the left wing establishment ensconced there. Sproul Plaza is Berkeley's historic main campus square and in our day it was always packed with a dizzying array of booths promoting various liberal causes. Steve wanted to cart in an old covered wagon and dress up like a gypsy, complete with donkeys and unwashed children. He would claim he was from the oppressed country of Bosrovia, which he made up. He created a fake map and squeezed Bosrovia in there somewhere between Roumania and Bulgaria. He wanted to stand on a milk box and make impassioned liberation speeches all day long. He was never quite able to pull that off, but to this day I can't get that hilarious image out of my mind. He was a tremendous wit.That's from a reflection written by an old friend, and you can read the whole thing at Arthur Chrenkoff's, including this hint at his entry into the art world:
When we met up in New York in 1980, my sister in law got us both jobs as security guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The job were extremely monotonous. I remember one day the museum had closed the main European painting section. Steve was given the assignment of standing at the entrance and telling the public that the section was closed. Everyone kept asking him all day long why it was closed. Steve started a game up to keep his mind active. He tried to tell each person a different reason why the section was closed. "It's the Plague, sir." he would deadpan. "The section has been quarantined. Please step back for your own safety." "It's Black Thursday, Ma'am. On this date in 1888, three French impressionists plunged to their doom off the Loire bridge in Paris. The section has been closed in their honor." Needless to say, Steve had no problem coming up with as many different answers as he needed.And this confirmation of his adventurous spirit:
After college, Steve bummed around Europe on the Railpass junket for a few months. He went to Ireland. Many times I heard him tell a fascinating tale of a couple of weeks he spent living in Belfast with some dangerous IRA types. That experience probably whetted his appetite for adventure travel later in life.Set your drink down and read the whole thing.
I began this discussion with a look at the man who answered emails, and I'll close on the same note. An email to Reason, from a young reader responding to Steven's death and an article by him there:
As a matter of fact, I enjoyed it so much that I wrote Mr. Vincent an e-mail expressing my admiration for the article and asking him about how he got into the freelance journalism business (a field which, as a high school senior on the cusp of college, I was thinking about pursuing . . . and as a rising college sophomore, still am). Not only did he respond -- and from his apartment in Baghdad no less -- he also wrote me probably the best advice I've received yet in my life. He offered tips on how to get into journalism and words of wisdom on how to approach it once there (he was adamant about maintaining an independent voice, which he himself said he was slowly cultivating with his freelance political writing). Perhaps more enticing, however, was his wild and daunting vision of the best way to spend one's twenties . . . working shit jobs, being a down and outer in Paris and London, generally taking advantage of the simple freedom that accompanies that decade of your life in the most exuberant ways possible.And so we come to the bottom line: go west, young men, or east or north or south. I've seen the world myself, and though diminished by the loss of Steven Vincent it's a still a fine place to be.
I never met him. I know him well.
Steve's family requests that donations in his memory be made to Spirit of America, an absolutely appropriate and worthy charity we've supported here for quite some time.
If you purchase Steve's book In The Red Zone: A Journey Into The Soul Of Iraq
Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Mosul starts by looking at personal interactions, the minutia of rebuilding a nation:
As we drank Pepsis with the police commanders, Major Khalid kept asking LTC Kurilla to call the Mosul water directorate to get a bigger water pipe, and to call the Mosul electric company to get national power lines installed, (this, despite having a $50,000 generator provided by the US Army.) It was as frustrating for me to listen as it must have been for LTC Kurilla to answer."Stop humping my leg." Sometimes that's just what needs to be said. Hopefully not too many more times before the message gets across.?I will help you with security, combat patrols, military equipment and intelligence. I will point you in the right direction for the rest," said LTC Kurilla. "There?s only so much we are going to do for you, and then you are on your own. Stop humping my leg. Pick up the phone and call the water department.?
Yon's story goes on to relate the loss of an individual - and the response of individuals to that.
The constant complaint from journalists regarding Iraq is two-fold: It's too dangerous to get the story unless you're embedded with US forces, but if you are embedded you can only get half the story. If that's true of Yon's reports I can only say that his "half stories" make a hell of a good read.
And next time you hear a complaint from someone about the difficulty of getting the story from Iraq, tell them to stop humping your leg.
From the NY Times, via Instapundit:
Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.Enter the word hero into the search window on the right hand column and you'll find a rather large group of folks who I believe have more than earned that distinction. The Mrs and I decided on the headline "Every Day Heroes" to use on many of those stories - to reflect that such heroes were to be found every day. Even we couldn't possibly salute them all, but those we missed can certainly be found in other MilBlogs.
Three you will find here are Sgt. First Class Paul R. (Ray, by the way) Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta.
Follow the links to Smith and Hester and you'll find video coverage of their stories, from the many such files the Pentagon makes available free to anyone who wants them on the world wide web. You'll also find links to local media coverage of virtually any of the hero stories linked here.
But kudos to the Times for wondering if they have a problem - the next step in recovery would be to admit that they do. (That won't occur quite so publically, if at all.) But I'll let others determine the Times' motive for pretending to be unaware of these stories, or for trying to blame the White House or (stunningly worse) the public for their own professed corporate ignorance.
And one of those others is the author of an LA Times column introducing SFC Smith that we linked here earlier this year. He wasn't addressing the NY Times, of course, but he was arguing the existence of a certain rigid mindset that permeates both academia and the "mainstream" media - two segments of society increasingly far removed from mainstream America. An excerpt from that earlier Mudville story:
Turning Corners?
Guess who said it (bonus points for where):
Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith of the U.S. Army was the first Iraq war soldier to win the Congressional Medal of Honor ? posthumously. On April 4, 2003, a group of American soldiers building a POW compound were slammed by a surprise attack. Smith organized a defense, then moved under fierce fire to an unprotected machine gun. He kept firing as the wounded were brought to safety and the attack driven off. Meanwhile he was hit, fatally.Give yourself 2 points if you guessed professor at Yale and in the LA Times.Even Iraq war opponents and Bush-haters say they honor Smith's courage. But their "honor" is mostly a sham. Unless you understand what drives a man like Sgt. Smith to become a soldier, the honor you do him is honor with a footnote (he was a brave man, but obviously some kind of weirdo).
...my colleagues seem determined to turn American soldiers into an out-of-sight, out-of-mind servant class who are expected to do their duty and keep their mouths shut.
The LA Times has since flushed that column into their archives, but you can read the whole thing here.
Meanwhile, back at the NY Times, the closing paragraph ironically reveals more of the gulf between American media and America:
It is a rhetorical split that mirrors the larger national divide between the minority who serve in the military and those who do not, said Anthony Swofford, a former Marine and the author of "Jarhead." And it leaves important stories untold and unappreciated. "There might be heroes," Mr. Swofford said, "in some of those coffins.""Some" of the fallen "might" be heroes. What a bold statement in the NY Times.
We'll stick with "every day" here.
(Type hero in that search window. Many are still among us, others aren't. Here's one from New York, perhaps the Times could start there.)
Update: Another source of info on these heroes:
They just don't make the front page. Probably because of "the culture at large".
Times' reporter Eric Schmitt's name comes up with both those searches. Perhaps Damien Cave, author of the current piece, could interview him, learn how he does it. Then he could write about Peralta.
Update 2: The first-ever NY Times headline on Paul Ray Smith: "Medals for His Valor, Ashes for His Wife ". That's no longer available for free, but from the abstract the story seems as simple as the headline - he gets a medal, she gets a box of ashes.
Especially repulsive, given the stories they chose not to tell:
TAMPA - Birgit Smith came to the United States 13 years ago from Germany but says she didn't know what it meant to be an American until her husband, a soldier, died in Iraq in an extraordinary act of bravery that earned him the Medal of Honor.That's from the Tampa Bay Times.So on Wednesday, with her heart bursting with both pride and sorrow, Smith took the oath of citizenship and then led 290 of her new fellow Americans in the Pledge of Allegiance.
"I know Paul's extremely proud," Smith, 38, said after a ceremony at the Tampa Convention Center. "I feel whole now. I don't feel like something is missing inside of me."
It was a poignant and celebratory moment for the mother of two who said she was so moved by Americans' reaction to the death of her husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, she wanted to join them in citizenship.
"It is a great nation and I wanted to become a bigger part of it," Birgit Smith said following the ceremony. "I am extremely proud and I know my husband would be proud of me now. I know he was with me today."
The citizenship ceremony came just six weeks after President Bush awarded Paul Smith the Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery the president can bestow, on what was the second anniversary of the battle near Baghdad International Airport. Paul Smith, who died at 33, is the first soldier from the Iraq war to receive the honor.
"It's unbelievable how people come up to me - strangers - they come up to me and hug me and cry," Birgit Smith said as her new citizenship certificate and small American flag balanced on her lap. "I wanted to be a part of this great nation."
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Smith said she felt her husband's presence in the cavernous hall at the Tampa Convention Center where scores gathered for the ceremony. She was joined by about 300 other people representing 64 nations, some of them veterans and others currently serving in the U.S. military, as they watched patriotic videos and took the Oath of Allegiance, in which ties to other countries are renounced.Smith said that part was made easier by her feelings toward Germany since the war began in Iraq. "I had a pretty good grudge against them for not supporting us."
Many in the crowd alternately dabbed their eyes and waved their American flags as the lyrics "I'm proud to be an American" from the song "God Bless the USA" played - as it is at all citizenship ceremonies. It also happened to be Paul Smith's favorite song, his family said.
"We can see him singing that song," said Janice Pvirre, Paul Smith's mother, who joined her daughter-in-law at the ceremony. "It's very touching."
Pvirre wore a metal emblem in the shape of a dog tag bearing her son's image and tightly embraced her daughter-in-law as Birgit Smith finished to the oath which made her American citizenship official.
"Birgit becoming a citizen has freed her," Pvirre said. "It gave her a sense of freedom, a sense of total belonging."
At the end, Smith led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance and then headed back to Pasco County with her mother-in-law.
They stopped for lunch along the way. For her first meal as a citizen, Smith kept it simple: a Greek salad and decaf coffee. "I should have had a Big Mac," she said. "That's really American."
Update 3: Local papers do a wonderful job of covering the stories of heroes - and aren't afraid to call them heroes. Via e-mail Tim Sumner (of 911 Families) brings one such example to our attention, from the NY Daily News:
He served his city and died protecting his country.A NY Times reporter was able to get some key questions answered for his paper too:James McNaughton, a city cop and Army Reserves staff sergeant, was gunned down Tuesday near Baghdad - becoming the first of New York's Finest killed in the line of duty in Iraq.
"He believed in what he was doing," said his devastated father, William McNaughton, a recently retired NYPD cop. "I'm proud of what he's done.
"To me, he's a hero."
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As mourners streamed in and out of the McNaughtons' split-level ranch home, his father proudly shared that his son had been born in West Point, N.Y., while he was in the Army."You can't get any more American than that," he said.
James McNaughton was raised in Centereach and was a member of Centereach High School's wrestling team.
He joined the Army after he graduated, his father said, and became a military police officer.
"So he was a cop at 18 years old," the father said, as the family's American flag fluttered at half-staff in front of their home. "He's been carrying a gun since he was 18."
After his enlistment with the Army was over, he signed up with the reserves and entered the Police Academy in 2001 - and was among the first class to graduate after 9/11.
McNaughton was called up from the reserves for the first time in October 2002 and served a tour in the U.S. He shipped out to Iraq just after Christmas last year.
His stepmother, Michele McNaughton, said she didn't worry about James. "Never," she said. "It's what he believed in."
At Transit District 2, on Lispenard Street and West Broadway, police officers expressed shock at the news of their fellow officer's death. "He gave his all; he literally gave his all," said Officer Edward Looney. Another, Officer Michael Percy, said that he was not sure whether Sergeant McNaughton had traveled to Iraq out of obligation or dedication. Whatever his reasons, Officer Percy said, his decision was not driven by politics.The difference is subtle, but one is a story of tragedy, and the other a story of a hero. As long as the primary concern of Times reporters and editors is politics they'll never find a hero.
Update 4: I'd be remiss if I failed to note Blackfive's efforts - Fallen But Never Forgotten and Someone You Should Know.
Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Democrat of Cleveland, wasted no time in recognizing the deaths of Marines as valuable propaganda for a cause she holds dear. Unfortunately, that cause is complete and total victory fo those who killed them:
"The memorial service is so important to the families of the Marines. I just wish we could do more. They can use our prayers, but they can also use our voices to speak out against this war in Iraq."Meanwhile, their fellow Marines are on the move in al Anbar. I don't think they're ready to surrender just yet.
Jim Lynch is offering a Day by Day cartoon strip autographed by Chris Muir to the top donor to his blogathon effort.
Cool.
It must be Movie Day in Mudville - this will be the third post to discuss films and videos.
The London Times:
A MASKED British gunman claiming to be fighting with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan appeared on an Arabic satellite channel yesterday describing how he killed a team of US Special Forces.Note that the first individual is an "alledged" fighter, the second "claimed" to be British, and "The mens? identities and nationalities could not be confirmed" - but they were joined by a "French-born fighter" - about whom the reporters apparently have no question.
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Security services here will study the broadcast to try to identify the man. UK intelligence agencies admit that they do not know how many Britons are with terrorist outfits abroad. This alleged fighter, who did not reveal his identity but spoke in a broad northern accent, described how he took part in the attack on a US Chinook helicopter in June.
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He is wearing combat fatigues and his face is covered by a balaclava. The fighter was then joined on screen by another man who also claimed to be British and who spoke with a Northern Ireland accent.The mens? identities and nationalities could not be confirmed last night. Al-Arabiya did not say when these men when or where the pair were filmed. The two were also flanked by a French-born fighter who echoed the Britons? threats.
Another happy thought from the story:
Up to 3,000 young Britons are said to have been trained at al-Qaeda camps in countries like Afghanistan, according to Sir John Stevens, the recently retired Scotland Yard commissioner. Intelligence agencies admit that they do not know what happened to most of these volunteers. None of the Britons who attended these training camps were arrested on their return home.But if they ever are, they can count on being shown the door, as the New York Times reports:
LONDON, Aug. 5 - Prime Minister Tony Blair promised new measures on Friday to close down mosques and bar or deport clerics deemed to be fostering hatred and violence, bringing Britain's antiterrorism policy more into line with some of its neighbors' and answering critics who say the country has sheltered Islamic extremists for years.But - to borrow a movie quote - where shall they go? What shall they do?He also said two Islamic organizations would be banned. A global list would be drawn up of people "whose activities or views pose a threat to Britain's security," and they would be kept out of Britain.
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In addition, Mr. Blair said that any foreigners in Britain in "active engagement" with those sites or groups would be considered for deportation. He did not say how Britain would define the term extremist.
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Mr. Blair suggested that the new deportation powers would bring Britain into line with the procedures prevalent among some of its critics - notably France - which have said that terrorists have been given free rein here to plot attacks. "France and Spain, to name just two other European countries, do deport by administrative decision. The effect is often immediate," he said.
A question to which this seems the only reply: "We'll always have Paris Kabul."
A puzzling story from the NY Times:
This week the Web site ifilm.com introduced a new "channel" called WarZone (www.ifilm.com/warzone) with film clips from World War II, Vietnam, Israel and Iraq. Looking at the selection of videos about Iraq, it's hard to say which are scarier: the clips themselves or the advertisements that run with them.Some of the clips:
From inside a car, you see a roadside bomb attack.The sponsor - that's who. And according to the Times, that sponsor is the US Army.
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Next in the lineup is an Al Jazeera video of a missile attack on a British C-130 plane, as broadcast on MSNBC.
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Now it's on to a promotional video for the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia. The clip, nearly four minutes long, shows lots of guys, presumably recruits, waving guns. Much of it is boring, since you can't understand what they're saying. And before you can see it, you have to pay your dues once again. A young American tells his mother, "I found someone to pay for me to go to college." Guess who.
If you want to watch the mujahedeen attack a Mi-8 chopper, first you must listen to a young man having an earnest talk with his father at a pool table: "I'm going to be part of something that's important." The father is doubtful. "Good training?" The son reassures him: "It's the Army."The Times story offers no comment from the Army, in fact it doesn't even mention whether the reporter attempted to contact the Army for a comment. Some of the videos are described as "horrific" - but the story quotes Roger Jackson, ifilm's vice president for content, who says the editors at ifilm look over submissions to weed out anything too ghoulish (like beheadings).
More:
Some of the clips critical of the war, though not all, are stashed in a special section within the WarZone channel called "Spin Zone." There you will find a Norwegian rap group's attack on President Bush, "Kill Him Now," and a clip titled simply "Rumsfeld Caught Lying."I'd like to think the Army ads appearing with these videos are an unintentional result of sponsoring the site as a whole - but as noted, there is no response from the Pentagon included in the story.Other antiwar clips are tucked away even further. They're not on WarZone and can be found only by searching for "Iraq" from ifilm's homepage. One is a short and biting history of Saddam Hussein's long relationship with the C.I.A., set to the tune "Thanks for the Memory." Another is a film clip from the documentary "The Ground Truth" in which soldiers who have lost limbs during the war discuss what happened. One woman's leg was crushed because her Humvee had no doors.
But if you like to watch the Army's toys at work, the "Latest" section of WarZone is the place to be. There you'll find "angel decoys" that repel heat-seeking missiles, a "bunker buster" bomb, and an F-18 Hornet fighter racing against a Formula One car. You can even watch a couple having sex in a convertible as seen by an OH-58D surveillance camera. The video lasts nine minutes.
Don't read this.
Definitely read this.
And whatever you do, you must never read this.
Update: Leadership in action - "Hoffman said that if she could do it over again, she would listen less to lawyers and more to public-relations staff." Sounds like excellent advice - for anyone lacking a personal moral compass. The topic of the speech? Ethics in leadership.
Update 2: If you read the above links you met two women; one rambles incoherently and the other was a famous actress.
Jim Lynch is supporting Freedom Alliance in the blogathon:
The Mission of Freedom Alliance is to advance the American heritage of freedom by honoring and encouraging military service, defending the sovereignty of the United States and promoting a strong national defense.He's got to post something on his blog every half hour for the next 24 hours. I say donate, but if you can't please offer moral support by visiting often.
And an email to share:
Please check out Pundit Review Radio this Sunday evening as we will be speaking to milblogger Michael Yon live from Mosul Iraq.Greyhawk here: if you haven't read Michael Yon, you're missing the best reporting currently coming from Iraq. That show will be 3AM my time, but I might try...
Sunday evening, 9pm EST
Stream the show live at www.wrko.com
Call us toll free at 877-469-4322
Thanks for your support.
(Part one of this series is here.)
Raw Numbers
The Brookings Institution's recently updated Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq presents a wealth of unparsed information on the situation there. Among other statistics tracked they present this graph on the numbers of troops wounded in action:
If I hit the right buttons on my calculator, the total is 13,769. Note the peaks.
April: The First battle for Fallujah.
November: Finishing Fallujah. (Yes, we should have finished the first time)
It's no surprise that the numbers rise significantly during the (relatively) major operations launched by coalition forces. But those who would argue that the terrorists are choosing the battles are doing so without the facts on their side.
The source of the data is the Department of Defense, the numbers are available on the world wide web:
There's a crucial distinction here not found in the Brooking's totals. Those whose wounds are minor enough to allow a return to duty within 72 hours are classified as "Returned to Duty". Since the invasion of Iraq began there have been 6651 wounded who required more than three days recovery.
As noted in part one of this series, from March 19, 2003, through May 31, 2005 there were 2,527 WIA in Iraq whose wounds were significant enough to require evacuation to stateside Army medical facilities. A total of 254 of those were amputees - defined as persons sustaining the loss of hands, feet, arms and/or legs; the total does not include those who suffered loss of fingers and/or toes.
Repeating a crucial point from part one: There is nothing to celebrate in the numbers of injured, nothing can make war less ugly than it is. But in spite of the accessibility I've never seen these numbers before in any media reports from Iraq. I have seen the larger totals, but if anyone can provide a link to a media report on this information elsewhere please do so in comments or via email.
Those are the numbers, but we've yet to address Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt's warning to his son upon learning he was joining the Marines:
"Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded."But we'll examine the human side of the equation in Part III.
In the meantime, if you're wondering if there's anything you can do for America's wounded heroes, listen to this interview with Soldier's Angels founder Patti Patton-Bader (yes - that's Patton as in George S.) and then visit my good friends at Soldier's Angels.
(Part III of this series, The Politics of Passion, is here.)
Glenn Reynolds points us to the Brookings Institute's report on Iraq. Lot's of numbers, in convenient graph form.
Update: You have to scroll a bit to get past the charts depicting deaths, injuries, and car bombs, but towards the bottom you'll find these:
Navy MilBlogger Chapomatic says:
The deal: AS-28, a forty-four foot long thirty-year-old titanium hulled minisub, is trapped underwater (200 meters?) off the coast of Petropavlovsk in Berezovaya Bay. There?s about a day of air (more or less, and I?m assuming they?re including CO2 removal) left for the seven or so guys involved.More here.
Navy MilBlogger Smash has more, too.
Via email:
Dear friends
I'm just writing a quick few words to let you know that I have just accepted a new job, which I will be taking in about one months' time. Unfortunately, one of the conditions is that I am not allowed to blog/write anymore.
This has been one of the more painful decisions of my life, seeing that writing is a passion for me and I immensly enjoyed the adventure of blogging for the past year and a half. However, I couldn't justify any longer staying year after year in the same dead-end job, just because it allowed me the flexibility to engage in the hobby of blogging/writing, which however satisfying, was extremely unlikely to ever translate itself into a full-time, well-paid job of any sort. If I were 5 or 10 years younger, I would probably take a risk, but my preference for the "romantic" over the "sensible" has already taken too big a toll both on my personal and my professional life.
I would like to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting all of you (most of you, alas, only virtually) over the last year and a half. For me, personally, this has been the best thing about blogging. Thank you so much for all your support, encouragment, and kidness over that time.
I would hope that we'll be able to stay in touch in the future. Hope springs eternal - maybe one day I will be able to return to sharing the creative universe with you all again, but regardless, if I ever can be of any assistance to you in any way, I'll do my best. And, of course, if you're ever in Brisbane, Australia, please drop by and say hello.
So, thank you again for helping to make it the most interesting and enjoyable 18 months of my life. Best of luck will all your work!
Kind regards
Arthur Chrenkoff
This Is sad news indeed for the blogoshere but we wish Arthur the best in all his endeavors. He has done more for America in reporting the unreported and we owe him a debt of gratitude for the time he devoted to doing it.
Arthur has become a close virtual mate of Greyhawk and I, we hope he'll have time to stop in for a visit from time to time to say g'day.
Good onya Arthur.
Hoo roo, we'll miss ya.
For those of you new to the blogoshere or who have been hiding in a closet and do not know Arthur Chrenkoff, go meet him, he's one of the finest blokes you'll virtually meet.
ok, I'm done having fun with the Aussie lingo
I was just about ready to put up an open post, but I lost it!
The regular open post will return tomorrow.
Update: Wait - use this as an open post!
And Happy Birthday to the Coast Guard!
There's speculation in the press. No accusations, just hints, allegations, and things almost said...
FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES OF STEVEN VINCENT, THE AMERICAN FREELANCE JOURNALIST kidnapped and slain in Basra yesterday, believe he was killed because he spoke out against the threat Islamic religious extremism poses to Iraq's nascent democracy. In his last dispatch on his blog ( www.redzoneblog.com), Mr. Vincent, author of In the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq, described an interview he and Layla, his Iraqi translator, conducted with an Air Force captain in charge of doling out business to Iraqi contractors. Mr. Vincent portrayed the session as an example of American naivet頩n the face of the danger posed by Shiite militants.The Times of London:
US reporter murdered in Iraq had written his own epitaphAnd the always bold NY Times:Steven Vincent's final story, reprinted today, told of a police 'death car' operating in Basra. Shortly afterwards he was bundled into a pick-up and shot in the head
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He wrote: "An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumours that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations, mostly of former Baath Party members, that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mk II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment."
Driving through central Basra with a Times journalist a few days before the article was published, he spotted an identical vehicle near the waterfront. "That's the death car," he said. Another journalist reassured him that the rumour was that a different vehicle was now being used for assassinations.On Tuesday night, as he walked with Ms Itais to exchange some money outside the Merbid Hotel, he found out what the new death car was: a white Chevrolet pick-up without registration plates but with the word Police on it.
Witnesses said that armed men jumped out of the vehicle and bundled him inside. Having written extensively about the Islamic militias who enforce their own harsh law on the city, Mr Vincent struggled to get away. His shoes were later found in the rubbish that litters Basra's streets. Locals who saw the abduction and were brave enough to inquire what was going on said that the gunmen shouted out that they were policemen. No one dared to intervene.
An officer in the Basra police department said Mr. Vincent had been working on an article about the role of policemen in the recent assassinations of former Baath Party officials.That last quote especially reminded me of a Mudville series from this past June, where we compared media stories and blog reports from Iraq. An excerpt:
More excerpts from Steve Vincent's blog In the Red Zone:The past few days have been interesting in Basra--and of course, in Iraq, "interesting" means general mayhem and bloodshed. Cases in point: over the weekend, unknown assailants--the assailants are always unknown, there are no uniforms or name tags here--assassinated five people in the streets. The victims, or so I hear, were ex-Baathists (there is no such thing as an "ex" Baathist to some, evidently), but, as Samir, the night clerk at the funduk put it, "We have courts and judges to decide matters like this. It is not up to people who chose to take life so cheaply."In another incidentThe sharp ripping sound erupted somewhere close to the hotel. Automatic weapon fire, I thought, flashing back to Baghdad, where the same noise was--and still is--a constant part of city life. Perhaps it's just a wedding. But it was 9 a.m., and besides, everyone knows that the Hauwza--the religious establishment in Najaf--has outlawed the casualty-producing custom of celebrating nuptials by firing guns into the sky.A few hours later, we got the news. On the street just behind the funduk, four masked men in a Toyota emptied their AKs into a parked car, killing a police colonel from Zubair, who had come to Basra for medical treatment. The assassins are unknown, as is their motive, although rumors have it the murder had something to do with "smuggling."
"Summer is coming," an Iraqi man grunted in the hotel lobby. "The Wahhabi have been quiet for awhile, but we are expecting their return with the hot weather."
***** The NY Times ($) offers their coverage of the same attack:
In other violence, insurgents gunned down Iraqi security officers in the major cities of Kirkuk and Basra, police officials said Friday...Gripping reporting! How silly of Vincent to be satisfied with "The assassins are unknown, as is their motive..." when a quick glance in the Times would reveal they were insurgents.In the Basra attack, which took place in the center of the city at 10:20 a.m., four men wearing black masks showered bullets into a car carrying the security officers, Col. Abdul-Karim al-Daraji and his brother Kosay. Both died, while a third brother in the car suffered minor injuries. Ammar Hussein, a medical assistant at the Educational Hospital of Basra, said that Colonel Daraji died immediately, while Kosay died later as a result of chest wounds.
Although the original AP story from which the Times culled their quote called them "gunmen":
Also Friday, gunmen killed the dean of the police academy in the southern city of Basra and an Iraqi soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the central city of Mashru.And a google cache of another version of the NY Times story reveals an even more in-depth re-write:In the Basra attack, which took place in the center of the city at 10:20 a.m., four men wearing black masks showered bullets into a car carrying the security officers, Col. Abdul-Karim Daraji and his brother Kosay.
But as the political haggling dragged on, insurgents once again showed how seemingly easy it is for them to strike and escape. In the Basra attack, which took place in the center of the city at 10:20 a.m., four men wearing black masks showered bullets into a car carrying the security officers, Col. Abdul-Karim al-Daraji and his brother Kosay. Both died; a third brother in the car survived.It's certainly not clear who committed this crime, but evidence suggests that in this case those "insurgents" made their first appearance at the Times editor's desk in New York City.
A few weeks later and it's likely the Times, in reporting Vincent's murder, can't even grasp the irony:
An officer in the Basra police department said Mr. Vincent had been working on an article about the role of policemen in the recent assassinations of former Baath Party officials.Do you suppose the Times might stop pinning all murders in Iraq on the insurgency?
It's certainly much more complicated than that, but perhaps there's a simple solution. Perhaps they could switch to the term "thugs". There is indeed a power vacuum in Iraq, and many would struggle to fill it by becoming the next Saddam Hussein, or the next Ayatollah Khomeini. The biggest thug on the block.
What Iraq needs, of course, remains elusive. Iraq needs its first statesman, someone to rise and unite, to cut across divisions, provide hope amidst despair. The good people of Iraq, as with anywhere else, outnumber the thugs. This must not be forgotten, even in the midst of the current darkness. Especially in the midst of this current darkness.
Steven Vincent knew this. He was an eyewitness to darkness on 9/11, having seen a plane hit the Trade Center - not on TV, but before his own eyes. From the same post linked above, he describes seeing the same thing again. But this time it was on TV in his hotel room in Basra, when a Dubai-based channel aired "Rudy: the Rudolph Giuliani Story."
Ten minutes into the movie, the real-life footage began: the gaping hole in the north tower; fire erupting from the south; smoke streaming from the largest skyscraper fires in history; people on the upper floors waving white distress flags; the downward plunge of the south tower into its foundations; avalanche-like billows of white debris pouring down Vesey Street and over the spire of St. Paul's Church as the north collapsed...and for a moment, I was no longer in my hotel room, but back in New York, on the roof of our building, once again witnessing the horrible, the unimaginable, the obscene.It's overly simple, perhaps, but it seems more accurate than "insurgent". Maybe the NY Times could use "fascist thugs" to describe Steven Vincent's killers.Upsetting, yes; but somewhat eerie, too, to watch these scenes replayed in Iraq. For, of course, the reason I was even in this Basran hotel room--the reason America and Britain forces invaded Iraq, drawing thousands of people, including myself, into this country--was the nearly 3,000 people murdered on September 11. Strange, too, were the words I remember the real Mayor Giuliani expressing that day--especially his awful, emotionally wrenching statement that the "loss of life today will be more than any of us can bear"--given Arabic subtitles. Did Iraqis watching this show--say, my friendly hotel staff--identify with the mayor, or with the terrorists who humbled the Great Satan? Did they cheer the law and order sheriff or the Robin Hood of the Middle East?
I can't say for sure, of course, but knowing Iraqis, my money's on Rudy. The people here desperately need--and deserve--law and order, a sense that justice can prevail against malevolent powers stalking their nation. The idea that a single man can galvanize a society to stand up to Ali Baba, be they mobsters or terrorists, and survive--unlike, it seems, the police colonel from Zubair--can only bring hope to these demoralized and suffering people. "We need leaders," a Iraqi journalist said to me over dinner last week. "But where can we find them in such a society?"
Hollywood being Hollywood, Rudy's war on crime (the same war that cleaned our block of the heroin gang that had ruled it for years) was depicted with a montage of cops rousting the homeless and squeegie men and prostitutes, scored by a ominous soundtrack that evoked thoughts of fascist thugs crushing the spirit of democracy. I had to laugh. Here in Iraq, real fascist thugs--and not the imaginings of hysterical lefists--seek to crush the spirit of democracy. Here in Iraq--where serving as a policeman is the most dangerous job in the world--people can only pray for a force that is incorruptible, efficient and effective against Saddamite psychos and bloody-thirsty jihadists. They wouldn't call a man like Giuliani a "fascist," and they certainly would not call police officers "pigs." And that's not just because they're Muslims.
Or maybe not.
The NY Times, from their report on his death:
Mr. Vincent resolved to go to Iraq, where he lived a hardscrabble life in a $15-a-day hotel and wrote articles about what he regarded as Islamic fascism."...what he regarded as Islamic fascism."
Courage.
Steven Vincent's family requests that donations be made in his name to Spirit of America.
John Hockenberry takes a look at Milblogs for Wired magazine.
He and I swapped e-mails a few months ago. Eason Jordan was a big issue at the time, which explains a lot of the focus of the paragraph about Mudville. But I was not a player in that game, I was busy re-deploying from Iraq. I may post the full interview later. No complaints from me though - Hockenberry did a fine job presenting milblogs.
And check out CENTCOM's latest innovation: the Coalition Bulletin magazine.
Via e-mail:
Greetings,A tough week seems to be unfolding in Iraq. We?ve lost at least 21 Marines killed, and others wounded.
Also, a blogger/journalist was killed today, and there has been a flood of email checking that I am well. I apologize that I cannot answer all of the messages. There simply are too many, but this message should help.
The lost writer was actually Steven Vincent. Steven was an excellent writer; I often visited his site.
Respectfully,
American Journalist Killed in Iraq. Not a headline I ever wanted to see. But I saw it today, and then I saw the name.
Steven Vincent.
Damn.
I never met him. Never even emailed him. Too late now.
Journalist? Would he have welcomed that description?
What an unlikely character. A New York art critic on September 11th.
My trips to Iraq were a complicated response to 9/11. As I wrote in my book, I stood that morning on my rooftop on Manhattan's Lower East Side and watched United Airlines Flight 175 fly into the World Trade Center. That was the initial shock. Afterwards came a sense of mourning as people all over Manhattan created makeshift shrines of candles and plastered bus stops with photocopied images of the "missing" (for we could not yet admit to ourselves that the 9/11 victims were dead). After that, fear: when was Al Qaeda coming back? What would they do next? The unspoken undercurrent of every conversation in New York in the months following 9/11 was an acknowledgement that we might perish in some terrorist catastrophe. Some people - including my wife and I - built bomb-shelter-like refuges in our basements, as if this were the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again.That's Steven from an interview with blogger Jeff Harrell. You can also read an interview from Front Page Magazine here, and one from Arthur Chrenkoff here.But you can only experience fear for so long; eventually, you want to fight back. How dare these bearded maniacs threaten all that we value and hold dear! My country was at war, and I wanted to participate in the conflict - as a patriot, and as someone seeking a way to strike back against the terrorists. But when the United States. invaded Afghanistan, I dithered, unsure of how to make the transition from art journalism to combat journalism. At the same time, though, I felt the pressure of events - history was in the making, huge forces were locked in life and death issues that would change the course of the world. Who wouldn't want to be part of that? When my artist friend Steve Mumford left New York for Iraq in April 2003, I knew I had to either act on my "moral fervor" or regret my timidity for the rest of my life. Fortunately I acted, traveling to Iraq in the fall of 2003, and the winter-spring of 2004.
Some comments from "readers" at Steve's blog today:
This death, and the 1700 plus that precede this horrible night, is but another trophy for Bush. He asked those naughty insurgents to BRING IT ON.How to respond to such? I say like this:These deaths, the blood, is splattered all over the White House.
To the Vincent family, I am sorry you will have to endure such public pain for such a senseless loss.
Posted by: Pamela | August 3, 2005 03:08 AM
At a time like this I can't help but think about the "pack of lies" that were foisted off on the American people to justify our preemptive invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, some media colleagues of the late Mr. Vincent were complicit in this deception. With a little luck we may eventually find out the real motivations of those who got us into this mess.
All of us, even those who opposed the war, share the pain and loss of the Vincent Family.Posted by: Ed | August 3, 2005 10:59 AM
The Left. Hopeless. Shameful. History will record that the U.S. could have saved tremendous loss of life and treasure had we liberated Iraqi with more troops and a proper "after-victory" plan. But the chronicles will also show that America could have saved time, money and--most especially, lives--had the Left contributed its valuable resources to the liberation effort as well. Imagine if feminists, labor leaders, environmentalists, civil rights activists, artists and the media had joined in the struggle instead of sitting on the sidelines--or worse, assisting the fascists? Imagine if the clarion cry of freedom and democracy had arisen from a unified progressive front consisting of conservatives and liberals? Just as we've learned how much succor the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took from the anti-war protesters of the 1960s, we will someday learn how the parochial, small-minded, narrow-souled opposition to the establishment of democracy in Iraq stiffen the fascist backbone of the "insurgency." But of course, the Michael Moores, Robert Fisks, George Galloways, Ted Kennedys and innumerable Hollywood celebrities and academics of this world will not care--they will always find reporters, voters, fans and tenure committees willing to dull the sting of conscience.Those aren't my words though - they were written by Steven Vincent.
Others may try to redefine him now, make him into something he wasn't. That's why that "journalist" sobriquet troubled me a bit when I first saw it. It seemed like another example of just that...
I "found" Steven Vincent on Chester's blog while I was still in Iraq. I'd also seen him mentioned at Chrenkoff's. But I was truly surprised to find he'd gone back for his third trip to Iraq this past spring, and I linked him when he wrote and did whatever else I could to bring attention to his efforts. He was The Man.
Got this email just last week. It's not the first such, just the latest:
On 7/28/05, xxxxxx xxxxxx@comcast.net wrote:A couple days later I was surprised to find Steven Vincent's name on his now-infamous NY Times story on Basra. But beyond his blog his most frequent appearances were at National Review - a fact I've yet to see noted in the media coverage of his passing. Now he's a freelance journalist who had a piece in the New York Times.Professor Reynolds:
Hey, thanks for posting the links for Michael Yon's blog?not sure I would have found it otherwise. It's been very useful to me, and now I'm on the hunt for other in-Iraq bloggers. I seem to recall you posted a 'best of' military bloggers" list a while back, but can't seem to find it with your search tool. Who in-country would you suggest I keep current on?
Many thanks for your assistance?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glenn Reynolds"
To: "xxxxxx" xxxxxx@comcast.net
Cc: greyhawk@mudvillegazette.com
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 11:44 PM
Subject: Re: recommended warblogs?
I strongly recommend faces from the front: http://facesfromthefront.com . But the go-to milblog guy is Greyhawk of the Mudville Gazette. I'm copying him on this email and I'm sure he can help you.----- Original Message -----
From: greyhawk@mudvillegazette.com
To: pundit@instapundit.com; "xxxxxx" xxxxxx@comcast.net
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 9:07 AM
Subject: Re: recommended warblogs?Another non-military, independent source here http://spencepublishing.typepad.com/in_the_red_zone/. Steve Vincent isn't embedded with the troops and spends even more time with the locals than Yon.
Here's a screen capture of the site meter for "In The Red Zone" this month:
Neither I nor NRO or the NY Times could get his words read by as many people as the bastards who killed him did today.
Here's how he began all his blog posts from Iraq:
Dear Lisa,They were letters home.
For now I'm going to offer you a final quote from Steven Vincent, and another reason that the "journalist" tag didn't seem quite right when I first saw it:
Bloggers. I can't imagine how the liberation of Iraq would have progressed without the hundreds, the thousands, of blogs that cut through the anti-war bias of the MSM. By giving a voice to people and viewpoints which otherwise would have gone silent, bloggers helped articulate the cause of democracy and civil rights that lies at the base of this conflict. Which make me wonder: how would bloggers have affected the course of Vietnam War?But, in spite of that quote, today I realized that "journalist" was exactly the right description for Steven Vincent. It's just that it's the wrong description for many who would actually claim it for themselves.
You see, I realized today that outside the "Green Zone", away from the protection of US forces, there was one American journalist in Iraq. He was killed, and then there were none.
Update: Via Kathryn Lopez at NRO, Instead of flowers, his family asks that donations be made in his name to Spirit of America.
Via email, from Mike Tucker of Gunner Palace:
Former 2/3 FA CPT Jon Powers, who many of you may have met during the GP press tour, is on his way to Baghdad today as a civilian to begin working on the ground for a project he has started to help Iraqi street kids and orphans. Jon intends to support local programs as well as to build a facility for at risk kids. If you'd like to support Jon, contact him at:More info here.Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
Orphans and Street Kids Project
1725 Eye Street, NW
Washington, DC
20006
Russ Vaughn's latest comes with a hat tip to Ollie North for the title. I really woudn't be surprised to see Vietnam vets greeting this parade wherever it goes...
Jihad Jane
What a prize to show for her life of toil,
A bus that runs on vegetable oil;
To keep it running will prove no strain,
Run a fuel line from her peanut brain.
As once again she shows us all
How wrong we are and how we?ll fall.
She?ll grant no quarter, cut no slack,
Get her picture taken on a camel?s back.
Jihad Jane will show us once again,
She?s smarter than all the President?s men;
I doubt Sun Tzu could tell us more
Than Jihad Jane when it comes to war;
She?ll save the world, bold Barbarella,
More wily and wise than any Army fella.
While she fancies herself truly Machiavellian
A more apt description is piggy Orwellian.
It?s true Jane could write an encyclopedia
On fooling the drooling mainstream media.
Princes of primetime breathlessly follow;
Sputum she spouts they eagerly swallow.
Trumpet her tripe as trustworthy truth,
Pushing her pap down the throats of our youth.
Reporters will climb right on down in that sewer,
Covering every mile of Jane?s veggie-fueled tour.
While wiser minds wait, holding their breath,
Warily wondering just how much death
All her agitprop antics will incite this time,
And whose lives will be forfeit for one fool?s crime.
In most scripts of life, we become wiser with age;
But this airhead actress cannot get to that page.
So she?ll be well remembered, as well she should,
As the dumbest damned broad in Hollywood.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Infantry
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
Update/bump from 2005-08-02 18:20:24: Via email
Greyhawk,I saw your post with the picture of Jihad Jane. My father is a soldier in the National Guard currently stationed in Tikrit, and has recently sent both my brother and I some photos poking some fun at ?The Traitor? as he?s taken to calling her. He?s asked us to forward these photos to whomever may be interested, and we thought you may like to share them with your readers.
You thought right!
And if anyone would like copies of the originals - which at 32X24 inches would look great on "welcome" posters for when Jane comes to your town - email me at greyhawk-at-mudvillegazette.com
U.S. freelance journalist Steven Vincent, blogger and author of ?In the Red Zone,? has been killed.
An American freelance journalist was found shot to death in the Iraqi city of Basra early Wednesday, officials said.He was killed two days after he wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing the Basra police and hours after this article was published: On Again, Off Again - A power problem in Basra.A U.S. Embassy spokesman confirmed Steven Vincent's body was found, and that his family has been notified.
A Western official said Vincent suffered multiple gunshot wounds. He had been abducted, along with a translator, by unknown gunmen, but the translator survived, the official said.
It was unclear when the abduction took place.
Vincent was in Basra writing a book about the history of the city. He also maintained a Web blog about life in Iraq, and most recently had an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Sunday.
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Vincent was an eyewitness to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and traveled twice to Iraq afterward, paying his own way and "traveling without security or official connections, living by his wits," according to the Spence Publishing site.
Excerpt of his last words:
Basra, Iraq ? In the middle of an interview with Sheik Abdul al-Baghdali, an American-hating supporter of Moqtada al-Sadr, the lights in his office suddenly went out. "This is what your country has done to Iraq," he snorted, "stolen its electricity." On his pumpkin-sized face was the insufferable smirk of a man who knows ? right or wrong ? he has you beat in an argument.The problem was, he did have me beat. Understandably enough, the shortage of electricity throughout Iraq is a major source of citizen anger. In Basra, the kahrabaa is on for three hours, off for three, giving numerous opportunities for people to blame America and pine for the energy-rich days of Saddam. And since like most journalists, my knowledge of electricity extends no further than an on/off switch, I hadn't the foggiest idea how to respond.
<...>
To find out, I went to the Electrical Energy Transmission Directorate to speak to ? well, let's call him Dr. B. (As is usual with so many Iraqi officials, security concerns prompted him to speak only on condition of anonymity.) A loquacious man, given to digressions about Basra politics, the engineering Ph.D. laid out the recent history of Iraq's energy production, charting helpful diagrams on an office greaseboard.
Our sincere condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues.
If this report is accurate it should cause some unease in some quarters:
"Most of the kids say they don't want to fight for a country that's pickin' on other countries," he said. "I don't want to fight because this [Iraq] war was stupid, it wasted money. Army people are getting killed for nothing, and we should have stayed in our own business."Ignoring that "We saw the most precipitous drop immediately after Sept. 11" the editors chose to lead with this:Mr. Rhone represents a trend that began before the war in Iraq but has worsened since: a steep drop in the percentage of black Army recruits.
"We saw the most precipitous drop immediately after Sept. 11," Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of Army recruiting, said at the Pentagon this year.
In fiscal 2001, which ended 19 days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, nearly 23 percent of all new Army recruits were black ? as in each of the previous five years. So far in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30, only about 14 percent are.
That's a decline of nearly 40 percent in the proportion of black recruits ? when the Army never needed them more.
WASHINGTON ? The Iraq war is drying up at least part of a pool of recruits the Army has relied upon for decades: black Americans.Army authorized end strength has been increased by 30k this year, contributing significantly to numerical recruiting woes. But if raw numbers of recruits are actually up then a concurrent increase in non-black recruits over the past several years is implied.
More from the link:
Pollster David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that focuses on black issues, found out why when he conducted a poll for the Army in 1998.A provocative story - the response (or lack thereof) in the media and from various concerned organizations should be notable."A large percentage of African-Americans thought the Army was one of the most racially integrated and fair organizations or institutions in the country," he said.
"African-Americans always had a much, much higher propensity to serve" in the Army than did whites, he added, largely because it gave them "a chance to get training, pay for education, a variety of things like that."
But blacks also have strong negative views about the war and President Bush that Mr. Bositis and others say have cooled their ardor for the Army.
A poll Mr. Bositis did last October of 850 blacks and an equal sample from the general population that included 58 blacks found only half as much approval for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq among blacks as among the general population. The poll's margin of error was 3.5 percent.
"True or not, African-Americans often think that when there's a war, African-Americans disproportionately get killed," he added.
The numbers disprove that assumption, which came to life during the Vietnam War. Military sociologist Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, who with University of Texas professor John Sibley Butler co-wrote a book on blacks in the Army, said that in Vietnam, blacks accounted for 12.1 percent of U.S. troop deaths ? about their proportion of the population then.
Army figures show that as of February ? the latest ethnic breakdown of casualties available ? blacks accounted for 12.11 percent of Army troops killed in action and 12.74 percent of those wounded in Iraq, even though nearly 23 percent of troops deployed to the conflict are black.
Whites have accounted for about 72 percent of soldiers killed and wounded in action, while 10.28 percent of those killed in combat and 7.31 percent of those wounded were Hispanic, according to Army figures.
Vietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the latest installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq.
Setting the record (mine) straight
Dear Warrior in Iraq . . .
Last week I wrote that in 1973, "America withdrew its last combat soldiers from South Vietnam, where no significant fighting had gone on for a two years or so." Then I mentioned that we left, on our own, as part of a negotiated peace with North Vietnam, without being forced out of the country militarily. I was trying to make the point that we did not lose the war, when in 1975 the North broke the treaty and invaded after we had left South Vietnam.
I made my point well enough, but at the cost of giving due diligence to the fact that there were battles fought and won after Tet. A couple of veterans reminded me. I apologize to all veterans who were in Vietnam until the end, because I know they were at risk at all times in that war zone. I give you the remarks of two veterans who responded to my lapse in facts. The first is from veteran Bill Faith:
"My tour of duty in 'Nam was extended by 90 days due to the north's 1972 spring offensive. Only blind luck kept me from dying on a C-130 that was shot down at the Kontum airbase in May of that year -- I'd left on an earlier flight almost 10 minutes earlier. Not long after that, my good friend William Page, who I mention now and then on my blog, was airlifted out of a nearby firebase just before it was overrun by NVA troops. The South Vietnamese, with a lot of help from the U.S., were finally able to repel the '72 offensive and things were under control enough by August that my tour wasn't extended a second time, which looked quite possible for a while. . . . I'd also remind you that our B-52 crews were bombing the hell out of Hanoi and Haiphong as late as December of '72. . . . I just wish he wouldn't make it sound like anyone who missed Ia Drang and the '68 Tet offensive missed the whole war."
I did make it sound like that. I was wrong. Again, I'm sorry.
Rather than offer any more excuses, I'll let another veteran tell you his opinion as to why I let the facts slip through the cracks.
"As with a lot early Vietnam Vets, for the most part they think the war was pretty much over after TET 68 and the Cambodian incursion of 1970. I chalk up their lack of knowledge to just being glad to be home to get on with their lives. The troops before me pretty much totally eliminated the Viet Cong (VC) within S. Vietnam. They also fought valiantly the large NVA regiments and divisions. However, there were several other very large battles left to fight. And those battles involved direct action of American troops. Just look at the Wall for those years 1971 - '73. For that matter, look all the way to the end of the WALL and beyond. One battle was 'Lom Son 719' in 1971 in Laos. Many American Air Cav fought and died alongside our allies."
Thank you, William B. Page, 1st Cav Div (Airmobile) RVN.
That part about thinking the war was over because I was just glad to be home to get on with my life? It's spot on. In my head, after I left Vietnam, the next huge event was the Cambodian incursion, which was our own initiative. Next came the peace accords and return of our POWs. Then came 1975. All else I forgot.
Thanks for bringing me back to the facts.
As for our troops in Iraq, you will feel a mix of emotions and memories after you finish your tour and leave that war behind. But that's a subject for next week's letter.
Till next week . . .
God bless you and Godspeed.
John is a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam and a member of the American Legion. His novel, Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword is a fictional account of the 9/11 attacks and the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom.
And today we're proud to announce the publication of the second of John's Delta books, Prelude to War
An interesting e-mail:
Just wanted to touch base with you and let you know that Mortaritaville, I am a Patriot, and American by God's Amazing Grace were written and recorded by myself and two fellow soldiers, Nick Brown and Luke Stricklin. We also recorded many other songs and are trying to sell a CD of rought-cut songs from Baghdad on our website, www.iraq-songs.com. Thanks,Background info here.
JR Schultz
After describing a near-death experience at a military checkpoint in Baghdad a reporter gets to his real topic:
Afterward I asked their captain how close they had come to killing us. He still had the safety off his M-16, his finger still curled around the trigger. He twitched it imperceptibly. "That close," he said. Had I not been there, but just my Iraqi colleagues or had the driver panicked and reversed or even had they been just a little farther away, no doubt I would not be writing this now. An ending that unfortunately many Iraqis have already suffered, shot at checkpoints and roadstops by jumpy troops, mistaken for possible suicide bombers, bombed by aircraft with faulty targeting information. All those things have indeed happened.
But how often, really? The answer: not very often, in fact. And not nearly often enough to make the 150,000 U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq the leading scourge of Iraq's civilians. That dishonor goes, hands down, to the insurgents. Even one incident is bad, of course, and there have been many. But civilian killings by U.S. troops are not nearly as common as the critics of the war in Iraq would like us to believe. It has become an article of faith among them that American troops have been slaughtering Iraqi civilians indiscriminately, and that one of the consequences of the war has been an unconscionable loss of life among the civilian population. It just isn't true.
The author is Rod Nordland, who just completed a stint as Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief. Read the entire article here. Among other things Nordland examines (and debunks) the previously discredited but still oft-touted Lancet report that claims 100,000 dead civilians in Iraq. Likewise he doesn't shy away from noting the tactics used by Saddam's army in the fall of Baghdad (and by "insurgents" since) that were designed to maximize civilian casualties - a point that's been examined here previously.
To what end? Because Saddam assumed the press backlash against US forces would fuel anti-American sympathies and prevent the fall of Baghdad. But that event took a little less time (and significantly fewer casualties) than the Baathist leadership had estimated. But while the civilian casualties did not occur in the predicted numbers that didn't stop "many" from claiming they indeed had. Saddam woefully underestimated the speed and precision with which the US military would end his regime, but he was dead-on in anticipating the response of a world-wide propaganda machine and the subsequent response from those easily swayed to jihad - and other, less violent support. Thus the irony - and it's a criminal irony, to be honest - is that the inflated reports of civilian casualties go a long way towards inspiring an influx of foreign fighters to Iraq, and thus more civilian casualties there.
And elsewhere for that matter. A point not lost on Arthur Chrenkoff:
We are told that London bombings are a result of Tony Blair's decision to participate in the illegal invasion of Iraq. We are told that the continuing occupation of Iraq, and the carnage and humiliation inflicted upon Iraqi people by the United States, Great Britain and other occupying powers have radicalized some British Muslims to such extent as to push them into becoming suicide bombers on the buses and subways of their adopted country (in some cases their country of birth).
There are 250,000 Iraqis living in Great Britain - that's quarter of a million people, one of the biggest communities in Iraqi diaspora, and just under one sixth of the total British Muslim population of some 1.6 million.
So why, among the original 7/7 bombers, the next lot of recently captured bombers, and all the other people arrested in connection with the attacks, aren't there any British Iraqis?
Arthur's follow up post to that is also a must read
, and speaks more directly to the situation in Iraq. Having robbed him of the above quote I'll urge you to follow that link.And by all means read the entire Newsweek piece too.
On a side note - kudos to Newsweek for an innovation. Each of their on-line stories now includes technorati links to every blog that comments on that story - here's the link page for those writing on the above piece. The "front page" of the Newsweek site also includes a list of their "most-blogged about articles". Few blogs offer that much trackback so easily accessible - well done.
Before you pick up your phone and subscribe let's set the record straight - that headline won't appear anywhere else but here - I made it up.
Fred Schoeneman does offer a look at the sorts of things we'd read in that world though.
THE United States now hasHey, if the New York Times can re-write contributions from military members to better fit their own editorial slant than there's certainly nothing wrong with turnabout - right?a mercenary armya self-loathing intelligentsia. To be sure, oursoldiersprofessors are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hatedHessiansJewish physicists whomGeorge IIIFranklin Delano Roosevelt III recruited tofight against the American Revolutionariesbuild the atomic bomb and oppress us with their irrational fear of totalitarian communism, thus creating the conditions necessary for McCarthy and blacklisting. But like thatHessiansJewish cabal, today'svolunteersPhD candidates sign up for some mightydangerousincestuous work largely for wages and benefits - a compensation package that may not always be commensurate with thedangersboredom in store, as currentrecruiting problemslow GRE scores within liberal arts programs (when compared with the hard sciences) testify.
Read Enjoy the whole thing - highly recommended.
