Our times defined

...in more ways than one, by this paragraph:

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro seemed to suggest this was a special circumstance. "Failure to sign this legislation posed a significant risk to U.S. national security," Shapiro said. "The President directed the use of the autopen to sign it."

Another gutsy call, eh?

(Related commentary from Reason here.)

State of War (2)

Somewhere in my imagination, George Orwell sighs.

Meanwhile, Congress offers a little something to American troops before taking off for Memorial Day weekend:

In a close 204-215 vote, the House rejected a bipartisan amendment from Reps. James McGovern (D-Mass.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have required the Department of Defense (DOD) to develop a plan for an "accelerated transition of military operations to Afghan authorities."

Twenty-six Republicans voted in favor of the accelerated transition, and all but eight Democrats supported the amendment, which supporters stressed was a plan to speed up the withdrawal, not an immediate requirement to withdraw forces.

Begging the question, accelerated from what, exactly? The president's "begin to withdraw" - while having all the obvious and predictable negative impact on efforts in Afghanistan, has nothing of any real substance (carving it in stone doesn't change that) beyond some vague appeal to voters who aren't inclined to ask what exactly it means, or who will assign their own meaning to it. Here's the answer from this latest report:

The administration said earlier this year that it plans to start withdrawing only 5,000 of the 100,000 troops in Afghanistan by this summer, far fewer than many had hoped.

Interpret that at your own risk. But let us see what degree of clarification 204 courageous congressional representatives failed (just!) to successfully demand:

Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall transmit to Congress a plan with a timeframe and completion date for the accelerated transition of United States military and security operations in Afghanistan to the Government of Afghanistan (including operations involving military and security-related contractors).

Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall transmit to Congress a plan with a timeframe to pursue and conclude negotiations leading to a political settlement and reconciliation of the internal conflict in Afghanistan. Such negotiations will include the Government of Afghanistan, all interested parties within Afghanistan, and with the observance and support of representatives of donor nations active in Afghanistan.

That's the actual text of the amendment - which, regardless of your thoughts on Afghanistan, is a superb blend of the meaningless, ridiculous, and impossible. There is nothing to be said for or against it unless you first assign your own personal meaning to what exactly it says. Can anyone really imagine a date certain after which State or USAID representatives are denied security other than that which the Afghan government is able to provide? Or is that not what it means, and only what it says?

I question - with obvious good reason - president Obama's ability to lead a nation at war (his belief that ordering the killing of Osama bin Laden is somehow evidence to the contrary - or a sign of success in Afghanistan - is in fact the opposite of that) but demanding he provide a timeline for successful negotiations with Mullah Omar (undeniably one of "all interested parties within Afghanistan" - and only one of many) and a drawdown is as absurd a request now as it was in 2006-2007 regarding Iraq - and a different president. Somewhere someone no doubt takes delight in seeing Obama confronted with the same garbage he once piled on his predecessor or his 2008 campaign opponent, but none of those someones are in Afghanistan.

Speaking of which: Afghan Blast Kills 8 NATO Troops. That headline seems very 2011 - though you don't have to read far to learn "Seven of those killed were Americans." If the military can accelerate their return then some of those same Congressman - perhaps even the Commander in Chief (I wouldn't be surprised if he complied with the requirements of this failed legislation anyway) - could also get home in time for an excellent Memorial Day photo opportunity.

Disney abandons SEAL™ hunt

Take SEAL snow globes and Christmas stockings off your wish list this year:

Disney withdrew the application "out of deference to the Navy," a spokesman said.

The Navy first fired back at Disney with its own filings for trademarks on the phrases 'SEAL Team' and 'Navy SEALs,' on May 13, several days after Disney's application. Those terms denote "membership in an organization of the Department of the Navy that develops and executes military missions involving special operations strategy, doctrine, and tactics," the Navy said in its filings.

"We certainly would not request a trademark on a SEAL team that doesn't exist, like SEAL Team 6," said a Navy official.

State of War

November 2010

At more than 7,000 feet, Afghan National Army soldiers and soldiers assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Task Force Bulldog, exit a CH-47 Chinook helicopter on top of a mountain overlooking the Pech River Valley in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, Nov. 23. The joint operation was to clear the mountain villages of insurgent activity.

"The mission was very good; I believe that our combined efforts had a positive impact in the area," said Afghan National Army1st Lt. Fiaz Muhammed, Headquarters and Headquarters Company Coy, 2nd Kandak, 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps ANA.
<...>
"This was another successful joint operation," said U.S. Army Maj. Mary Constantino, Task Force Bastogne spokesperson. "These operations prevent violent extremists from being able to threaten the Afghan people or maintain safe havens where they can threaten the people of the Pech River Valley."

Fort Campbell, Kentucky, May 6 - THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hey, it's good to be back with you all. I'll tell you what. I want to thank General Colt for accompanying me up here. I get the honor of introducing the General...

You guys have been in the fight from the beginning. And the risk you've taken, the incredible sacrifices you've made, the comrades you've lost, the losses you've personally endured -- you've been in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world... I've been there a number of times, back up those damn mountains... God, you're amazing. You just are amazing. I'm in awe of the job you do, in awe of the job you do...

Associated Press, May. 20, 2011: Terrain has hindered 101st Airborne in ensuring Afghan security

JALALABAD, Afghanistan. (AP) - When the 101st Airborne Division took over in eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban took the fight to the rugged mountains along the Pakistan border that have been historical strongholds in the nearly decade-long war...

Pushed out of their southern Afghanistan homeland by a buildup of American troops last summer, the Taliban and other insurgent groups tried to create safe havens in the east, where they used the terrain to their advantage and sought refuge and supplies in Pakistan. Those safe havens have been used to launch attacks against the U.S. and coalition forces and have become the focus of a sharp dispute with Pakistan - which has been accused of tolerating their presence.

"What they did is identify their own battle space," Poppas said in a recent interview with The Associated Press from Jalalabad Airfield.
<...>
With the people of eastern Afghanistan often segregated into self-sustaining valleys, 1st Brigade troops would win over one tribe, but the next valley over would be against them, Poppas said. American troops attracted militants and the people living in the villages would allow the insurgents in to attack the bases, Poppas said.

"We were the destabilizing force all by ourselves," he said.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's my job today and my honor to talk a little bit about the man that I get to work with every day. We've just got to spend time with the assaulters who got bin Laden... I want to tell you, look, I've watched -- I've been around a while with eight Presidents, so I've watched Presidents make some difficult decisions. They've all had to make difficult decisions. But sitting in every meeting getting ready and planning for this mission and assault, for the mission to get bin Laden, I saw something extraordinary...

[The president] walked off on his own without anybody giving him any guarantees at all and he decided -- because he believed in not only the SEALs, but believes in all of you. He has absolute total faith in all of you. And he made that determination, and it was an amazing thing to watch...

Bob Gates said something interesting. I've known Bob for a long time. He said, it was one of the gutsiest decisions I've ever seen made and one of the gutsiest raids. This is going to go down in history, what happened. This is going to go down in history.

Douglas A. Ollivant, Washington Post, May 16: Afghanistan has three wars at once. Let's fight the right one.

Well-meaning commanders and their advisers built more than 40 bases there, constructing roads to share the benefits of civilization with the region's tribes. The people would then be secured and controlled by the Afghan government, the plan went, making it difficult for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to operate nearby.

This month, however, the last U.S. forces will close their bases and withdraw from the Pech Valley. These are the final troops to leave the northern Konar valley complex -- made famous by the 2010 film "Restrepo" -- marking the end of a five-year effort to extend the central government's influence to these isolated regions. The outgoing U.S. commander of forces in eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. John Campbell (with whom I worked as counterinsurgency adviser), made perhaps the most understated comment about the Pech when he once quipped, "It is different than other places."

Perhaps a better strategy -- better than the one that has cost more than 100 U.S. military lives and billions of dollars in that valley alone -- would have been to let it stay different...

America's counterinsurgency strategy did not go poorly at first, and its supporters highlighted the progress made in Konar in 2006 and 2007...

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And here to introduce your Commander-in-Chief, the guy that I'm proud to serve with, is one of the country's leading warriors himself, Deputy Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division, General Jeffrey Colt. Ladies and gentlemen, General Colt. (Applause.)

GENERAL COLT: Thank you, sir.

I can only try to tell you today just how proud of you that this Division and this local community are. But more importantly, today, you're going to get to hear from the Commander-in-Chief just how appreciative he is of all of your service and your sacrifices.

Please join me in this great privilege of welcoming the President of the United States, Barack Obama. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Fort Campbell! (Applause.) 101st Airborne Division--Air Assault, hello! (Applause.)

General Colt, thank you for that great introduction -- it was great because it was brief. (Laughter.) ... And let me just say, I make a lot of decisions; one of the earliest and best decisions I made was choosing one of the finest Vice Presidents in our history -- Joe Biden, right here. (Applause.)

USA TODAY, 9 May: Strain on forces in the field at a five-year high

U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan are experiencing some of the greatest psychological stress and lowest morale in five years of fighting, reports a military study.
<...>
The report says decline in individual morale is significant: 46.5% of troops said they had medium, high or very high morale, compared with 65.7% who said that in 2005. About one in seven soldiers -- and one in five Marines -- reported high or very high morale.

THE PRESIDENT: Of course, our thoughts and prayers are with General Campbell, Command Sergeant Major Schroeder, and all of the Screaming Eagles and troops that are still risking their lives in theater...

Now, I didn't come here to make a really long speech. I know you're hearing that. (Laughter.) It's like, yeah, it's hot! (Laughter.) What I really wanted to do was come down and shake some hands. I came here for a simple reason --- to say thank you on behalf of America...

Associated Press, May 19: Troop morale in Afghanistan plummets, report says

Some 70 percent to 80 percent of troops surveyed for the report said they had seen a buddy killed, roughly half of soldiers and 56 percent of Marines said they'd killed an enemy fighter, and about two-thirds of troops said that a roadside bomb -- the No. 1 weapon of insurgents -- had gone off within 55 yards of them.

Most of those statistics were significantly higher than what troops said they experienced in the previous year in Afghanistan as well as during the 2007 surge of extra troops into the Iraq war, the report said.

THE PRESIDENT: Yesterday, I traveled to New York City, and, along with some of our 9/11 families, laid a wreath at Ground Zero in memory of their loved ones. I met with the first responders --- the firefighters, the police officers, the Port Authority officers --- who lost so many of their own when they rushed into those burning towers. I promised that our nation will never forget those we lost that dark September day.

Associated Press, May 19: Some of the report's highlights:

-- Only 46.5 percent of soldiers said their morale was medium, high or very high last year, compared with 65.7 percent in 2005. For Marines, it was only 58.6 percent last year compared with 70.4 percent when they were surveyed in 2006 in Iraq. (The report compares numbers of the Marine to their time in Iraq because they were not in Afghanistan in significant numbers before the surge.)

THE PRESIDENT: And today, here at Fort Campbell, I had the privilege of meeting the extraordinary Special Ops folks who honored that promise. It was a chance for me to say --- on behalf of all Americans and people around the world --- "Job well done." Job well done. (Applause.)

...They trained for years. They're battle-hardened. They practiced tirelessly for this mission. And when I gave the order, they were ready.

Associated Press, May 19:

-- Nearly 80 percent of Marines and soldiers said they'd seen a member of their unit killed or wounded, compared with roughly half who said that in the earlier years...

THE PRESIDENT: Sending you -- more of you -- into harm's way is the toughest decision that I've made as Commander-in-Chief. I don't make it lightly. Every time I visit Walter Reed, every time I visit Bethesda, I'm reminded of the wages of war. But I made that decision because I know that this mission was vital to the security of the nation that we all love.

And I know it hasn't been easy for you and it hasn't, certainly, been easy for your families.

Washington Post, May 16: These remote regions where the Afghan state is weak are precisely where transnational terrorists tend to congregate... Does the failure of counterinsurgency in the Pech Valley mean that this tenet must be abandoned? Must the United States accept terrorist strongholds in remote areas?

Certainly not. In retrospect, the attempt to extend the state's authority into the Pech was folly. Kabul's nascent government, struggling with corruption and basic competence, will not be able to administer the Pech for a generation.

The failure in the Pech does not mean that counterinsurgency is a failed concept...

Associated Press, May 20, 2011: When the 101st arrived in eastern Afghanistan last year, Campbell stressed that the division had only a year to make progress before troop numbers in Afghanistan started to decline. Now that talk of a deadline to remove troops has been pushed to 2014, Campbell said that extra time is necessary given the pace of progress in war that has drawn out nearly 10 years.

"At some point we have to say, 'We've done what we can,'" Campbell said. "I don't think we're there yet and I don't think the Afghans are there yet. We've got to give this a chance to work."

THE PRESIDENT: So the bottom line is this: Our strategy is working, and there's no greater evidence of that than justice finally being delivered to Osama bin Laden. (Applause.)

But I don't want to fool you. This continues to be a very tough fight. You know that. But because of this progress, we're moving into a new phase. In the coming months, we'll start transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces. Starting this summer, we'll begin reducing American forces...

Associated Press, May. 20, 2011: As Afghan security forces take control in some areas of the country, military officials say the Afghan National Army can fight effectively in small units, but lacks experience at higher command levels and still relies heavily on NATO forces.

One ANA-led operation in Laghman province almost turned catastrophic, when the soldiers were ambushed and nearly two dozen Afghan soldiers were captured. The 1st Brigade had to quickly pull troops from around the region to go after the insurgents and their captives.
<...>
The Afghan National Police, whose ranks are often drawn from the local population, can also be influenced by tribal connections in the areas they police, said Capt. David Jones, who led B Troop, 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry Regiment, in the Ghaziabad district of Kunar province.

"The ANP have a check point and if Afghan Army aren't standing right there, and a Taliban guy comes through check point, they are going to let him do that," Jones said. "If they were to arrest him or stop him from going through the checkpoint, then the reprisals they would face from his tribe or family would have been pretty significant."

USA TODAY, 9 May: The report noted that the emotional strain, while high, was lower than expected given the severity of combat -- evidence of a growing resilience in the force.

THE PRESIDENT: And, as your Commander-in-Chief, I'm confident that we're going to succeed in this mission. The reason I'm confident is because in you I see the strength of America's military -- (applause) -- and because in recent days we've all seen the resilience of the American spirit.

Associated Press, May 19: "We would have expected to see a much larger increase in the mental health symptoms and a much larger decrease in morale ... based on these incredibly high rates of exposure" to traumatic combat events, Bliese said. The report's authors took the statistics as evidence that the force is resilient, a trait the military has been working to develop in troops.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, this week I received a letter from a girl in New Jersey named Payton Wall...

Washington Post, May 16: Yes, these non-state spaces do leave room for terrorists to find sanctuary. But it's awfully hard to attack Manhattan from the Pech Valley...

THE PRESIDENT: We're the nation that has faced tough times before -- tougher times than these...

See, there's nothing we can't do together, 101st... And that is why I am so confident that, with your brave service, America's greatest days are still to come. (Applause.)

God bless you. God bless the 101st. And God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

Postscript:

Clarksville, Tennessee Leaf-Chronicle, May 21:

101st Airborne Division flag returns with command
Colors uncased during ceremony to cap off another hard deployment

The division colors were uncased Friday during an emotional ceremony inside Hangar 3 at Campbell Army Airfield, marking the return of the 101st Airborne Division from its latest "rendezvous with destiny."

Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell and Command Sgt. Maj. Scott Schroeder did the honors, unfurling the flag of the legendary U.S. Army unit before a small but enthusiastic gathering of soldiers and civilians...

November, 2010

A soldier from Bushmaster Company, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Task Force Bulldog takes a short breather on a mountainside at about 7,000 feet as the sun rises over the Pech River Valley in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, Nov. 23. The soldiers teamed up with members of the Afghan National Army during a month-long series of operations to clear some of the most dangerous parts of Task Force Bulldog's area of operations.

"There's a myth, I think, amongst us coalition forces and International Security Assistance Forces that there are some places we can't go," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Joseph A. Ryan, Task Force Bulldog commander. "That is absolutely and unequivocally untrue. We can go anywhere we want to go. We have the technology to support it, but most importantly ... our infantrymen are tougher, stronger, more capable and better trained than the enemy is," the Pearl River, N.Y., native added...

'til the world ends

Something left off of every Rapture-related YouTube music video round-up I've seen around ye olde interwebbes. (If you listen to this, kids, you'll hear the sound of vinyl static and pops...)

A live (or television, at least) version of the song here, from the days of big bells, shining polyester shirts, and men's feathered/shag haircuts, now about as common as vinyl hiss. (The mustache, of course, will never go out of style).

Not long after this, Disco destroyed the world...

Civilization (and other medieval war games)

Some posts need a theme song - this is one.

Why it works as such in a moment - first, a look at things that don't work.

On March 16, the Office of Inspector General for the United States Agency for International Development published on its website a bracing report detailing pervasive insider fraud that led to a run on the largest thrift in Afghanistan, the Kabul Bank.

But shortly after the report went up here, the IG took it down. Why? Because USAID moved to retroactively classify key documents used in the study, effectively removing it from public scrutiny.
<...>
FAS has preserved the original IG report for you. Take that, censoring USAID beadles!

To me, the IG's audit is fascinating for a pair of reasons: 1) It spells out in microcosm what a great flop economic development has been in Afghanistan for nearly a decade; and, 2) It highlights the expanding culture of secrecy at all our agencies during the post-9/11 imperial presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama.

But let's look at the fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan first. USAID sure doesn't want you to do so!

Read the whole thing. As for the expanding culture of secrecy - here's USAID's explanation:

"At the time our report was issued, it was written utilizing information from non-classified sources," said James C. Charlifue, the chief of staff of the USAID Office of Inspector General. "After our report had been issued, USAID subsequently classified two documents that were cited in our report. This action resulted in the report becoming classified and we removed it from the web site," he told Secrecy News.

Depending on the precise circumstances, the classification of information that has already been officially released into the public domain is either discouraged or prohibited, not to mention futile.

Let me draw your attention to the "futile" part of that statement - because it overwhelms all other considerations. There's the tie that binds Carl's two points ("what a great flop economic development has been in Afghanistan" and "the expanding culture of secrecy") together - and to so many other lines of effort in Afghanistan or elsewhere. All life is risk and reward, and success or failure is rarely 100% certain. Confronted with one of those rare instances of total certainty our decisions are so obvious they hardly qualify as "decisions." There is no argument that counters 100% futility, and when evaluating any organization's ability to function, witnessing a clear case of action taken in the face of 100% futility (classifying something that's already publicly released meets that definition) is not a confidence builder in their ability to tackle the merely difficult tasks. You don't need to understand the ins and outs of banking to understand a glaring example of complete denial of reality, and to presume that's part of a broader corporate culture seems a safe bet. (There's an argument that they were just following rules - but that's an argument that supports replacing people with computers; one of these could handle the ap. That same logic could be used to eliminate human inspectors general, too. Most of their functionality is to ensure people are following rules...)

But speaking of computers, here's my first thought on reading Carl Prine's post:

You know, the game "Civilization" would make a great training tool for US Aid (with or without cap A) types. It gives players an idea when "banks" (and other concepts) become important in the development of civilizations.

The more I ponder that off-the-cuff comment, the more I think USAID - and every other US government organization - should hand off their headquarters functions to binary computers for a week or so and have the staff play train using that venerable game complex global development simulation software. There'd be a double benefit - at the end of the week, any task that was accomplished just fine by computers could be left to the computers, and the rest could be tackled by humans with improved understanding of cart/horse concepts. (As long as they don't maintain the illusion that they're in control - that game feature doesn't translate well to the real world.)

In one of those odd moments of synchronicity I stumbled across another reference to Civilization (the game) last week:

A Virginia Department of Transportation employee spent nearly 30 hours of department time over two weeks playing "Civilization IV," a computer role-playing game, according to a state audit...

He spent most of his online time playing "Sid Meier's Civilization IV," an award-winning 2005 installment of Meier's popular turn-based computer game that allows players to build empires over the course of thousands of years in game time.

The audit describes it as "an interactive medieval war game that requires a high degree of user interaction."

So yeah, I recognize the 100% futility of any argument that government employees should officially be playing computer games on company time. There are rules against that.

Footnote:

"Baba Yetu" is a song by composer Christopher Tin... the song was originally created to serve as the theme song for the video game Civilization IV.
<...>
Its nomination at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards made history as the first video game piece ever to receive Grammy recognition. On February 13, 2011, Baba Yetu made history yet again as the first video game piece to ever win a Grammy award, for "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)".

Not bad for "an interactive medieval war game."

(Screen caps in the above from Civilization IV - a great game. [PC version / Mac version] Jefferson quote source here.)

From the Smithsonian

Today's jihaddis got nothin' on our great great grandpappies: The Best Facial Hair in the Civil War.

You can see 'em all and vote for your favorite here. Alpheus Williams, pictured above, is currently in 3rd place (of 24).

He's far from first place, but with enough votes he could still win by a.. hmmm... what's the phrase I'm looking for... win by a...

Oh yeah, narrow margin, that's it. He could still win by a narrow margin.

Damning the flood

(No, that's not a typo in that headline.)

The Hill:

Amid passionate calls from Capitol Hill for the Obama administration to get tough with Pakistan after the revelation bin Laden had been hiding there for up to five years, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday he has seen "no evidence at all that the senior leadership knew."

Not defending the government of Pakistan here, but if Osama bin Laden had been hiding in one of my neighbor's attics I wouldn't have known he was there. And I never wondered whether anyone in the North Carolina government knew Eric Rudolph was hiding in the woods. (If that's an absurd comparison, how so?)

And:

During the same session with reporters, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen urged U.S. government officials to zip up public leaks of information about the commando raid that netted America's most wanted foe.

"We have, from my perspective, gotten to a point where we are close to jeopardizing this precious capability that we have, and we can't afford to do that," Mullen said...

I've seen a few details in media reports that seem innocuous but reveal much to me (I'm not going to highlight them); anyone else with some background in various fields could reach similar conclusions. Get enough such people together (most nations already have such groups) and you learn much. If nothing else, you learn which questions you need answered, and narrowing your focus to the right place goes a long way to successful completion of a search, know what I mean?

There lies the danger in having people who don't know what they're talking about actually talking about something. (See "seems innocuous" above.) The threat of someone doing that can't be eliminated and isn't reduced by comprehensive gag orders. It can be reduced by releasing what can be released - and getting the story right the first time, thus reducing the demand for "what really happened." The Obama administration has a poor track record in that regard - bad enough that it can only be explained as policy, incompetence, or both.

The Obama administration isn't the first to fail at this ("fail" assumes it isn't part of the plan) but "lots of other people have screwed this up in the past, too" is the exact opposite of a good excuse.

Added: I've been meaning to move this up from comments...

Working hypothesis:
"Team Obama" is partial to, and expert in, relying on multiple narratives, for the same factual occurrence, for the purpose of frustrating critical examination of WH actions and policies by consuming the time and credibility of interested parties.
Viewed in this way, the multiplicity of different stories should be seen as a "feature" of this Administration's modus operandi rather than as a "bug".
(see writings by Cass Sunstein: Internet rumors and the reasons, and means to conteract them.)

There's a lot of evidence to support that hypothesis, going back to the April 2009 Afghanistan policy (if not before).

Meanwhile, still back at the front

May day:

The ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) has taken an unusual step by issuing a warning to all internationals, alerting of coordinated "spectacular attacks", kidnapping of internationals, suicide bombings, and all manner of general mayhem to kick off Sunday, 1 May.

That from babatim at Free Range International - who added "To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time ISAF has ever distributed a written warning to internationals at large..."

The day before there was a small bit of buzz among some of us watching the milblog conference via video/chat over a rumor on that same topic. The timing was right for the kickoff of Afghanistan's "spring fighting season," so without benefit of hindsight there was no reason to believe there was anything more than that afoot.

Back to Free Range International for a two-weeks later update on the fighting:

In the Helmand Province, this year's fighting season has started off with a whimper. On May Day (as predicted) the only action was in Paktika Province where a child suicide bomber violated the latest Taliban public announcement by blowing himself up in a police station. The Taliban had just announced they would no longer allow beardless boys into their ranks and, although the Pashtun are a hirsute people, I'm not aware of any 12 year olds who have begun to cultivate beards. After that, the Taliban launched a two day siege in Kandahar which accomplished little; they couldn't manage to inflict any casualties on ISAF or the Afghan security forces.

Read the whole thing.

And I'd recommend this post from early April, too, for its discussion on troop draw-downs. (And this chart...)

Whores de Combat

The Associated Press with "new details" of the bin Laden raid (that differ from the CBS TV version of what "we now know"). The AP touts "officials briefed on the operation " who "spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a classified operation..." "Adding exclusive new details to the account of the assault on bin Laden's hideout." (Including the dog's name.)

Also...

Pakistan's government has since condemned the action, and threatened to open fire if U.S. forces enter again.

Pakistani ground troops opened fire on two NATO helicopters that crossed into Pakistan's airspace from Afghanistan early Tuesday morning, the Pakistani Army said in a statement. A firefight then briefly erupted between NATO forces and the troops, the statement said, and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded.

That report from the NY Times adds that the day before the firefight, "Senator John Kerry met with top civil and military leaders in Pakistan in an effort to smooth the fraying relations between the two countries..." Now, however,

The exchange of fire between NATO and Pakistani forces appeared likely to worsen frictions between Pakistan and the United States. The Pakistani Army "lodged a strong protest and demanded a flag meeting," the statement said, referring to a meeting between officials from Pakistan and NATO.

The Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, arrived in China on Tuesday for a four-day visit, picking up some welcome diplomatic support at a critical moment in Pakistan's relations with the United States.

Pakistani officials said today they're interested in studying the remains of the U.S.'s secret stealth-modified helicopter abandoned during the Navy SEAL raid of Osama bin Laden's compound, and suggested the Chinese are as well.

The pornography recovered in bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

Toons for our Times

Disney seeks SEAL Team 6 trademark - which is indeed pathetic.

But they won't be able to cash in on the White House side of the bin Laden kill - Warner Brothers has had "Looney Tunes" trademarked for years. (Which is too bad, because that part really was a Mickey Mouse operation.)

No Mean City - the free bibliography

So there I was, writing about the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War (though the story of Fernando Wood has obvious parallels to our modern world...), when all of a sudden we got involved in the Libyan Civil War, then killed Osama bin Laden. (Even this post is one I started a month ago.)

So one of these days I'll wrap up this saga, but below you'll some Civil War reading that won't cost you even a greenback, it's that part of the source material available free online. One of the more interesting (in my humble opinion) is the Whitman book, with several of Walt's short works on the war. (He was there - he'd be a milblogger today.) If you want something they really don't teach you in history class (albeit not only about the Civil War), try Headley's Great Riots. For something less violent, Haswell's Reminiscences.

If you're one of those people who doesn't like free books (or old books - even e-versions without that old musty smell), some of the more recent (as in not public domain) source material can be found here. The rest is below.

A new version of truth

(Or What's the story? Part 4)

From part three:

In today's news:

Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.

A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.

Well okay then, that's just their reaction to looking at Leon Panetta. Sure... whatever you say.

That's this morning's news, I shouldn't call it today's. This afternoon's news might be entirely different. For instance, even if "live feed was cut off" that doesn't mean "there is no video."

Today CBS news discovers what we've known all along - important missions are recorded with teensy weensy cameras:

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports the 40 minutes it took to kill bin Laden and scoop his archives into garbage bags were all recorded by tiny helmet cameras worn by each of the 25 SEALs.

Officials reviewing those videos are still reconstructing a more accurate version of what happened. We now know that the only firefight took place in the guest house, where one of bin Laden's couriers opened fire and was quickly gunned down. No one in the main building got off a shot or was even armed, although there were weapons nearby.

Begging the question: have you seen the footage from the doggy cam?

Of course not. They haven't seen any of it. More accurate statement of CBS policy: No one at CBS or anywhere else outside the US Government has seen the video recorded during the Osama bin Laden raid, however, we're willing to write the phrase "we now know" - followed by the 17th US government version of what happened in the compound that sounds a hellalot better than the first several versions released by the White House - without explaining how we now know anything at all. You will accept that without question.

They've added a video simulation to depict the goings on, to help you better visualize what we now know.

Katie Couric adds an extra element of believability to the whole thing with her question at the end - are you surprised that this super secret stuff has leaked? The right answer is "Katie, nothing has leaked. Until we actually see the video we have no idea whether this new version of the story is true or not. It might be the last one we hear, or we might get a different one tomorrow."

It would be nice to think CBS will replace Couric with someone capable of asking better questions - like "how many more versions of this event that was recorded live from 47 different camera angles do you think we'll get?" - but in reality she, like David Martin, was just reading from a script, one her replacement will follow, too.

Let's jump back to part 2:

What I said on day one about the various conflicting stories might prove to be the last word for the whole thing:

All are plausible. But for those and other details, you can pick whichever version you think is likely, but you can't choose which is true.

So let's work with the assumption that this version of the story is true (and for the record, I would very much like it to be true), and that earlier White House versions of the raid with details like "the SEALS killed bin Laden's wife to get to him" and "the SEALs only shot bin Laden's wife in the leg, but we aren't sure she was bin Laden's wife" are not true.

Why are there at least two not true versions of the story from the White House - both released after there was time to debrief the SEAL Team and review the video - at all? "Fog of war" doesn't work as an answer - the op was too small and enough time had passed to eliminate that. (Speaking of which, does the phrase "Officials reviewing those videos are still reconstructing a more accurate version of what happened" in the CBS "news" report give you confidence that you'll eventually get "the real truth"?)

Since the true version is so freaking awesome (and whether it's true or not it is awesome), why wasn't the video of those few seconds (scrubbed of any identifying data and even the actual impacts, if you wanted) released in week one? Why not now?

Added:

Version one of the story - the "million dollar mansion with wife as human shield" version in which SEALs killed bin Laden's wife to get at him - came from White House counterterror czar John Brennan. Version two came shortly after: "She "rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg, but not killed," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters." That also matched elements of the story from survivors from within the compound as relayed by Pakistani officials - but their version includes a claim that bin Laden was captured alive, dragged downstairs, and then executed. It absolutely doesn't matter what you choose to believe in America - but guess which version will be widely believed in certain segments of the Islamic world - especially after the first White House version has proven to be (ahem) "not true." (Real men of genius: today we salute you, Mr White House Counterterrorism Czar...). Bin Laden's wife is apparently very much alive, by the way. This story says she was shot in the leg. Maybe she'll have more to say later...

It's certainly possible she was shot in the leg and shoved aside, but any specific detail isn't what matters here - nor is the point that releasing the video won't stop batshit crazy conspiracy theorists from believing their batshit crazy conspiracy theories. The point is that the White House maintaining a tight grip on "Obama's football" makes every batshit crazy conspiracy theory plausible. And the new best version (best from my point of view) of the story has no source whatsoever. While the CBS story includes vaguely authoritative statements that "Officials reviewing those videos are still reconstructing a more accurate version of what happened..." and "The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee went to CIA headquarters Thursday to view photos the SEALs took of bin Laden's body," nowhere in the report do they ever state even a vague source for what CBS claims "we now know." Did CBS make the whole thing up?

Elsewhere: Jimbo notes the innernets meme on whether or not the SEAL cams were fed live to the White House. He's right - it's not a significant issue. (See also my comment from part three, above.) Other concerns aside, the key point is that even if the White House wanted a live feed, they'd be looking at (as Jimbo says) "dozens of blurry, shaky feeds from helmet cams all at once." No matter how well planned and rehearsed, you don't know until you go in whether bin Laden's in the bedroom, kitchen, or wherever - so there's no way to predict which video feed would be "the one."

But there's also no excuse for not having that video (those videos) - along with de-briefs - available to the key folks in D.C. the next morning, at the latest. And there's nothing wrong with "no comment" until you knew what had happened. "Be first with the truth" is an old and painful lesson from this war, one the Obama administration failed completely in this case.

More reactions here.

And CNN says the US has interviewed three bin Laden widows: "The youngest of the three widows, 29-year-old Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah of Yemen, was shot in the leg early on May 2 by a small team of U.S. Navy SEALs." (Can that be true? It wasn't in the CBS video sim...) CNN adds they were "'hostile' toward the Americans, according to a senior Pakistani government official with direct knowledge..." etc.

I want to believe the CBS description of the SEAL's actions are true - but these are the folks who brought us "abu Ghraib" and George Bush's "National Guard records" - the first a half truth (see also here and here and here...) and the second a blatant fabrication. Is "yeah - but they fired Rather and Mapes" a good enough 'reason to believe' now?

Annnnnnd damn I keeping noticing more stuff - like "Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off." Okay - but the mission took 40 minutes (we're told...). So there was 15 minutes of live video feed to the White House? If so, disregard Jimbo's point that there was no live video feed to the White House (and all the good reasons there shouldn't be).

Why the hell is this story - certainly one of the best in recent years - so screwed up?

A forgotten war

J.D. Johannes is outside the wire again, with the Marines in Afghanistan.

Kiss your baby?

"Hell no I won't kiss your baby. That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Here, do the world a favor and put this Ron Paul 2012 bumper sticker over its face, and don't forget to vote for me."

(Jeebus - points for honesty, I suppose. But do you think the three imaginary Democrats who are angry enough at Obama over the bin Laden killing to actually vote against him will support Paul in the Republican primaries?)

Anyone heard from Mitch Daniels lately?

And More Toy Stories

Not just for the children:

"I agree with you," Schakowsky said. "I think that that was seminal event in their lives, you know? This is the big deal for them growing up. And so I think that there is just a feeling now, not just with young people but getting over this feeling that maybe America's kind of a loser. And now that we're a winner, I think it's very important."

More Toy Stories

President Obama let some Congressmen see his new football. They say it's super gross:

"Pretty gruesome" is how Inhofe described photos of brains hanging out of bin Laden's eye socket. The wound either entered or exited an ear, the Oklahoma senator said.

Meanwhile, the AP is demanding to look at them, too - so they can decide whether Americans can see them or not.

"However, we would decide about publishing all or some on the images based on our own editorial standards, which include such factors as tastefulness and whether they could cause harm or danger to others."

"We're not deciding in advance to publish this material," he pledged. "We would like our journalists, who are working very hard, to see this material and then we'll decide what's publishable and what's not publishable based on the possibility that it's inflammatory."

While showing the images could erode support for the war, not showing them could have an opposite effect.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, said that networks' "sanitization of war may have helped the administration prosecute the war" a year ago.

During the height of the war, few pictures of slain American soldiers were shown and news photographers were not allowed at places where they could shoot images of coffins being shipped home.

The pictures from Wednesday's attack, Rosenstiel said, could anger viewers or "engender disenchantment about the war."
<...>
"These are the kinds of pictures that will linger," said John Schulz, dean of Boston University's College of Communications and a former faculty member at the National War College.

"They'll be there in November when people go to vote."

If that last quote sounds like it doesn't belong, it's because it's from 2004 - in reference to video of burned corpses of Americans hanging on a bridge in Fallujah then being broadcast 24/7.

A 2004 discussion - without pictures - here.

A discussion of who paid for President Obama's football here.

Toy Story

(More insults to SEALs here.)

The Third Wave

Or: Sit up straight! Kill the Jew!

A teacher describing one Monday in his classroom, in 1967 America:

I instructed the class in a sitting posture. This posture started with feet flat on the floor, hands placed flat across the small of the back to force a straight alignment of the spine. "There can't you breath more easily? You're more alert. Don't you feel better."

We practiced this new attention position over and over. I walked up and down the aisles of seated students pointing out small flaws, making improvements. Proper seating became the most important aspect of learning...

In the final twenty-five minutes of the class I introduced some new rules. Students must be sitting in class at the attention position before the late bell; all students Must carry pencils and paper for note taking; when asking or answering questions a student must stand at the side of their desk; the first word given in answering or asking a question is "Mr. Jones." We practiced short "silent reading" sessions. Students who responded in a sluggish manner were reprimanded and in every case made to repeat their behavior until it was a model of punctuality and respect. ...Students were rewarded for making an effort at answering or asking questions. They were also acknowledged for doing this in a crisp and attentive manner. Soon everyone in the class began popping up with answers and questions. The involvement level in the class moved from the few who always dominated discussions to the entire class. Even stranger was the gradual improvement in the quality of answers. Everyone seemed to be listening more intently. New people were speaking. Answers started to stretch out as students usually hesitant to speak found support for their effort.

...Why hadn't I thought of this technique before? Students seemed intent on the assignment and displayed accurate recitation of facts and concepts. They even seemed to be asking better questions and treating each other with more compassion. How could this be?

I question the authenticity of his surprise - it seems hard to believe someone who was teaching high school in 1967 hadn't himself been taught in a classroom where the above behavior was the norm, as it had been for generations in American schools. (And hasn't, at least in government schools, for over two generations of students since.) But I can accept that it might seem out of place in 1967 California, when new methods were all the rage. But if we take him at his word, Ron Jones was deeply concerned this experience might "change my basic beliefs toward an open classroom and self directed learning. Was all my belief in Carl Rogers to shrivel and die?" (Link added.)

The next day:

On Tuesday, the second day of the exercise, I entered the classroom to find everyone sitting in silence at the attention position. Some of their faces were relaxed with smiles that come from pleasing the teacher. But most of the students looked straight ahead in earnest concentration. Neck muscles rigid. No sign of a smile or a thought or even a question. Every fibre strained to perform the deed. To release the tension I went to the chalk board and wrote in big letters "STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE." Below this I wrote a second law, "STRENGTH THROUGH COMMUNITY."

His effort to teach his children about the road to Nazism had begun. You can read one of his early versions of the story of the rest of that week here (source of the quotes above) and here, and more recent news on the topic here and here (via).

There's ample reason to question his account - but my first impression on reading the story is that in order to teach them something about Hitler's Germany (a lesson that would apply equally well to any totalitarian state; few ideas have contaminated modern political discourse more than the claim that National Socialists and Communists represent a left and right extreme of a political spectrum) he first had to introduce them to more effective methods of learning than those he'd previously been using. If you believe schools are a place for children to learn math, science, and grammar (rather than a place to learn how to organize their communities for disciplined action) you'll see something that looks like a baby in that bathwater.

Meanwhile, while Ron Jones was teaching high school sophomores that respect for their teachers and disciplined learning was step one on a path that would lead them to kill six million Jews, a Harvard law student was using a fabricated Hitler quote to condemn law and order in favor of "community action" on college campuses.

For those of you who made it to the end of the discussion, your reward is a group sing-along.

Operation: SEX PANTHER

"They've done studies, you know. Sixty percent of the time it works every time."

Just something that pops into my mind when I hear people talking percentages. (See thought #1 at link.)

I know a little about planning this sort of thing (military operations, I mean) - enough to know that when you hear percentages thrown around you're hearing something enormously complex (and enormously subjective) simplified to the point of absurdity. (Though erroneously perceived as objective.)

So who performed the reduction in the linked example? "The administration," for the benefit of the public, or those who briefed "the administration"?

Same question, posed differently: Who thought their audience wasn't smart enough to understand anything about this above the level a ten year old could grasp?

(I'll just go ahead and apologize for this instead of giving it a real title)

"There was no question in everybody's mind that he was going to do something," Marty said.

Begging the question: is it safe to take a Shiite on a plane ride?

And "Remember, bathroom emergencies are nothing to laugh at..."

What Luck for Rulers that Men Do Not Think

Fake Nazi quotes: How many of these would you use to identify a Nazi?

My favorite: the one used in the 1971 movie Billy Jack.

"The streets of our cities are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and without. We need law and order! Yes, without law and order our nation cannot survive..."

Not only is it not a Hitler quote, it's an anti-Hitler, anti-communist quote:

...that the communists claimed for themselves - to validate their own campus riots three decades later.

But even in the age of the internet, some people just want to believe. (Which is why people fall victim to big lies - and little ones, too.)

(The sixties radicals had another favorite quote: "Never trust anyone over 30" - which eliminated all World War Two veterans from their list of people worth listening to.)

Added footnote: The earliest use of the quote "the streets of our country" etc. I can find is from a Harvard Law student, who went on to a career as a lawyer and Democratic politician. It was apparently reprinted in the Los Angeles Times (I couldn't find it in their on-line archives) and later published under the title The Disparity Between Ideals and Practices. A Google book search for all publications 1932-1968 reveals no verifiable earlier appearance. (Apparently there were two refutations of this spurious quote entered into the Congressional Record in 1970 - probably by people over 30.) Looks like the Hahvahd Man launched his career with a fabricated Hitler quote.

Leadership lessons from World War Two

Victory in Europe

"Eisenhower calls GIs real heroes..."

...and with the lifting of the war time brownout, "New York's Times Square is out in party clothes again."


Original post: 2010-05-08 08:27:47

Last words from Ernie Pyle

Another blast from the Mudville past - this entry from April 18, 2010. Two years to the day after the US got Yamamoto, the Japanese got Ernie Pyle. In the newsman's pocket, the text of his final column, a salute to the men on the European front, on the occasion of the fall of Germany, officially still a couple weeks away...

On this day in 1945, war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gunner on the Pacific island of Ie Shima. The following column was never completed. A draft of it was found in his pocket the day he was killed.

On Victory in Europe

And so it is over. The catastrophe on one side of the world has run its course. The day that it had so long seemed would never come has come at last.

I suppose emotions here in the Pacific are the same as they were among the Allies all over the world. First a shouting of the good news with such joyous surprise that you would think the shouter himself had brought it about.

And then an unspoken sense of gigantic relief - and then a hope that the collapse in Europe would hasten the end in the Pacific.

It has been seven months since I heard my last shot in the European war. Now I am as far away from it as it is possible to get on this globe.

This is written on a little ship lying off the coast of the Island of Okinawa, just south of Japan, on the other side of the world from Ardennes.

But my heart is still in Europe, and that's why I am writing this column.

It is to the boys who were my friends for so long. My one regret of the war is that I was not with them when it ended.

For the companionship of two and a half years of death and misery is a spouse that tolerates no divorce. Such companionship finally becomes a part of one's soul, and it cannot be obliterated.

True, I am with American boys in the other war not yet ended, but I am old-fashioned and my sentiment runs to old things.

To me the European war is old, and the Pacific war is new.

Last summer I wrote that I hoped the end of the war could be a gigantic relief, but not an elation. In the joyousness of high spirits it is easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would not wish themselves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks.

But there are many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

Dead men by mass production - in one country after another - month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn't come back. You didn't see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That's the difference...

Pyle takes a break with Marines on Okinawa, 1945

On April 18, 1945, Pyle died on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa Honto, after being hit by Japanese machine-gun fire. He was travelling in a jeep with Lieutenant Colonel Joseph B. Coolidge (commanding officer of the 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division) and three other men. The road, which ran parallel to the beach two or three hundred yards inland, had been cleared of mines, and hundreds of vehicles had driven over it. As the vehicle reached a road junction, an enemy machine gun located on a coral ridge about a third of a mile away began firing at them. The men stopped their vehicle and jumped into a ditch. Pyle and Coolidge raised their heads to look around for the others; when they spotted them, Pyle smiled and asked Coolidge "Are you all right?" Those were his last words. The machine gun began shooting again, and Pyle was struck in the left temple (however, the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site in Dana, Indiana, contains a telegram from the Government to Pyle's father stating Pyle was killed by a sniper).The colonel called for a medic, but none were present. It made no difference--Pyle had been killed instantly.

He was buried with his helmet on...

In 1977 the National Society of Newspaper Columnists declared April 18th as "National Columnists Day" in Pyle's honor - but while many might hope to share his reputation there's never been another Ernie Pyle.

Indiana University's Ernie Pyle web page is here. A great resource, complete with many columns, photographs, and other information.

2010-04-18 12:09:51

All done!

Get Yamamoto

Recalling a fictional account - one I'd like to be true.

(I read Cryptonomicon in Iraq; found it to be an excellent diversion, thought not too far from the business at hand. But whenever I re-read this post from January, 2005, I still question my decision not to split it into two separate entries.)

Added thought: on the latest re-read, I'm glad I left that as one. Six years later I believe we can still be described as (using Stephenson's terms - as good as any) an Athenian society, but I note the Aresian streak therein (and in every one of us) is fighting hard to remind us it's there. Both George Bush and Barack Obama can be called Athenian in their approach to war. (Obama with more oft-stated - and perhaps true - reluctance.) Democrats' efforts to depict Bush as Ares probably worked as well with followers of Ares as it did with most Democrats, who are decidedly not. (Note also the similarity of sheepdogs to wolves... another valid analogy.) If that's so, the side effect of quieting the Ares-like impulse (in some Americans) to kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out was removed in January, 2009. Since then we've changed very little in our approach to waging war, but have created a new crop of vocal opponents of how we do it (/philosophical musing).

Synchronicity

USS Michael Murphy Christening Today (Cosmic justice, if you've read the "To be a SEAL" post.)

Aha moment or bwaha moment?

Um, know what this looks like to me?

Two guys "coining" each other. But believe what you want.

To be a SEAL

Bob Woodward, in the Washington Post:

His decision to assign the operation to the Navy SEALs, a Special Operations unit with extensive experience in raids on high-value targets, was critical. SEALs have a tradition of moving in and out fast, often killing everyone they encounter at a target site.
<...>
Specific orders were issued to the SEALs not to shoot the women or children unless they were clearly threatening or had weapons...

One senior official said the general philosophy of the SEALs is: "If you see it, shoot it. It is a house full of bad guys."

Sounds like "one senior official," at least, has played video games where he or she gets to "be" a SEAL. Whoever thinks that way should familiarize themselves with the still-controversial decision made by SEAL Team 10...

But "murderous thugs kept in check only by the courage and wisdom of overseers like Panetta and Obama" is the desired narrative here - that's the imaginary world described in Woodward's article, and it's unfortunate we live in a real world with "senior officials" like the anonymous one quoted above.

Fortunately we live in a world with real Navy SEALs, too. Few of the rest of us will ever prove ourselves like this:

What kind of man makes it through Hell Week? That's hard to say. But I do know--generally--who won't make it. There are a dozen types that fail: the weight-lifting meatheads who think that the size of their biceps is an indication of their strength, the kids covered in tattoos announcing to the world how tough they are, the preening leaders who don't want to get dirty, and the look-at-me former athletes who have always been told they are stars but have never have been pushed beyond the envelope of their talent to the core of their character. In short, those who fail are the ones who focus on show. The vicious beauty of Hell Week is that you either survive or fail, you endure or you quit, you do--or you do not.

You don't walk in off the street to special operations training - it's only open to those who've already proved themselves capable of serving in the military in the first place, a minority of Americans who are of recruitment age. (Though most tattoos are no longer disqualifying.) The majority - but not all - of those qualified who do join will pass the test of basic and other training, and some time in service (and further evaluation) before even getting the opportunity to volunteer to be evaluated for the potential to succeed at various entry points into the special operations community. Of those who clear that hurdle... "we had started our indoctrination phase with over 220 students. Only 21 originals from Class 237 would ultimately graduate." That's the experience of Lt. Cmdr. Eric Greitens, whose brief account of his own time in SEAL operations and training is in this article at the Wall Street Journal, quoted above. (His book-length account, The Heart and the Fist: The education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL, was published just last month.)

From the above it's evident that the guy who makes it is one who may or may not have been told all his life he was special. ("Some men who seemed impossibly weak at the beginning of SEAL training--men who puked on runs and had trouble with pull-ups--made it. Some men who were skinny and short and whose teeth chattered just looking at the ocean also made it. Some men who were visibly afraid, sometimes to the point of shaking, made it too.") Your team mates will encourage you to pull through, but that's countered by those "on the sidelines" not cheering you on but urging you to quit, and offering rewards if you do. The end result is a team, one created by true equal opportunity, through an actual process whereby character alone will ultimately determine fitness for membership.

Read the whole thing, it also provides glimpses of what the special ops community did in Iraq. (Something - of necessity - much under-appreciated, but also examined in Dick Couch's 2008 book Sheriff of Ramadi and discussed briefly here.)

Ode to Abbottabad

Post card version (click for larger):

(More poetry here)

Overlooked news this week

ABC: Congress to Examine "Inappropriate" and "Devastating" Use of "Geronimo" Codename in bin Laden Mission.

After that they'll adjourn and go watch the Redskins' spring practice.


Added imaginary planning session:

Congressman: We need a celebrity Indian to testify.

Staffer: Native American, sir.

Congressman: Right. Is that guy who played Tonto still alive?

Staffer: Who's Tonto?

Congressman: Never mind. Who's a famous Ind... Native American today?

Staffer: Um.. there's a guy in the Black Eyed Peas who looks like he might be... I can Google it.

Congressman: yeah - ethnic foods industry. Sure, good stuff. But find one in the entertainment business too.

Great expectations

Carl Prine: SEAL the deal and get the photos:

I very much doubt I'll ever see much from the trove of CIA and SEAL images and videos of the raid. Maybe four decades from now parts of their contents will be released by the National Archives, and historians and PhD candidates will revise some of the reporting whizzing at us today.

But I'm at least going to try to force the issue now, especially bin Laden's death photos. There's a 2003 Supreme Court case that mandates a test: Before denying their release, the government must weigh the privacy rights of the deceased's bereaved family with the public's interest in using and debating the images.

I want this White House to tell our democracy that the feelings of a terrorist's family in Saudi Arabia weigh more than those of a people who send their sons and daughters to war.

It's time to force this administration to live up to the promises it made about government transparency. I battled Bush on the same issues and won't relent now.

Well, Mr. President, the American people paid for those photographs. More than a trillion dollars, in fact, if you include the cost of the Department of Homeland Security, two wars, and the care for more than 40,000 veterans who have been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
<...>
The photos are no doubt bloody and graphic. But do you know what else is painful to see? The burns on the faces of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Or the eyes of Michael Nordmeyer, the father of 21-year-old Zach Nordmeyer, a soldier and member of The American Legion who was killed in Iraq two years ago. It still pains most of us to look at images of firefighters running into the World Trade Center for the very last time.

That time and my own disgust with the White House's handling of the issue had dropped my "care factor" to near zero is a separate issue from what I believe the White House ought to do - or owes the American public: more than what they've done, or than we've been given. Up to and including giving the go order the president has done what a very large majority of Americans would if they'd been in his place. Since then, not so much.

I'm not a "full transparency" guy. I recognize the need for secrecy, misinformation even. ("Pakistan" for example.) But there's an element of conditioning involved in this, too. Get away with withholding information on something this big (and this easy to release) and you've trained your public to accept that sort of thing without question. Mission accomplished with a large segment of that public long ago - but to me that's a more disturbing thought than my mental image of what bin Laden's corpse might look like, or the idea that someone somewhere will get some joy from actually seeing video of the moment he was shot.

But read the links above. Both very different, both influential to my thinking. For Americans it's most definitely time to start thinking of the imagery collected from the raid not as inflammatory or celebratory or even President Obama's football - but rather in terms of exactly what it all is: ours. (But the more I think about it, the more I imagine a response that boils down to two words is all we'll get. Use your own imagination as to what those two words are.)

The King's Speech

Above - the original speech made by King George VI at the outbreak of war with Germany (later called World War Two). If you've seen the movie you'll recognize the image displayed; immediately after giving the speech (over the radio) from another room set up as a studio nearby, he went to his desk and posed for this photo, which appears to be of him actually giving the speech. That's about five seconds of movie time, if you blinked you missed it. (See also here.)

Are you outraged? Me neither. Since I didn't blink I chuckled at the scene, which was played out without any explanation via dialog of what exactly was going on; the King sits, lifts that bit of paper, and looks forward resolutely. There's a flash, and he gets up to join others (including Churchill - who had trouble pronouncing the letter S himself) waiting elsewhere.

So what? You might ask. That's my question, too. If that sort of thing strikes you as a fraud up with which we must not put,* you might want to relax and do some deep breathing exercises for a while. (Maybe go take in a movie or something. There are good ones out there....)

The Forever War

In which Greyhawk proudly posts his daughter's (college history) homework assignment on the Mudville refrigerator... (not this daughter, the slightly older one).

She completed the work last week, you'll see the central paragraphs (sans thesis and close) below. I've changed the footnotes to hyperlinks, rest same. The assignment was for a brief paper on a complex topic, so if the result seems oversimplified that's because it is. Her title is not the title to this post - that's my own. It suits the purpose here, drawing a line from the cold war to modern conflict, which was part of her purpose, too.

Then, a few days after turning it in, Osama bin Laden was killed...

Above I said this was "drawing a line from the cold war to modern conflict." I should add that the line I see forms a circle, and that killing Osama will certainly give us an awesome morale boost as we run our next laps around it.

The Pet Goat revisited

"Today, when we talk about 9/11 in class and you hear kids make mistakes about what happened with the President that day, I can tell them they're wrong," she says, "because I was there."

Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong -- and none of the students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they were all in trouble -- with no less than the Commander in Chief -- but he wasn't sure why.

They're high school students now. It's a piece full of great quotes (including what "the students would like to tell Bush's critics -- like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore...") I'll only borrow one more for here.

Williams doesn't plan to pursue a military career -- she wants to be a veterinarian -- but the military-academy student was impressed by the Navy Seal raid in Pakistan that killed bin Laden: "I was shocked. I thought after 10 years, they'd never find him. But what the SEALs did, it, like, gives me even more respect for that kind of training."

Guerrero, in fact, may as well be part of that training. She also plans a civilian life -- she hopes to study art and musical theater -- but she's a Junior ROTC member and part of her school's state champion Raiders team, which competes against other academies in contests like rope-bridge races, map navigation and marksmanship. In other words, the same sort of skills the Seal commandos have to master. She admits to feeling an added rush when she woke up to Monday morning's news: the Seals' operation, she says, "was very, very cool."

More than cool, Guerrero adds, it was also "so reassuring, after a whole decade of being scared about these things." Most of all, it "brought back a flood of memories" of their tragic morning with a President -- memories that prove kids can carry a lot heavier stuff in those plastic backpacks than adults often realize.

Somewhere in a previous post I said I thought the members of the Obama administration were acting like kids on a playground over this event. I now apologize to seven year olds everywhere.

Read it all.

Imaginary conversation (continued)

(Continued from here)

Him (singsong):
I killed bin Laden
and I gotta picture
and you cannot see it
so nana nana boo boo...

Me: I don't care. And I don't care about the video, either. Maybe the next president will release it all. Dude, my givadameter has dropped about as near to zero as it can get, and I was in the freaking "war on terror..."

Him: I gave the order!

Me: Good. You did exactly what 99% of Americans would do. Hell, 99% of Americans would have pulled the trigger themselves...

Him: Alice Walker wouldn't!

Me: (Sigh) Okay, let's pretend we're grown ups. What's next for Afghanistan?

Him: The United States must overcome the 'trust deficit' it faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believe that we are not a reliable long-term partner.

Me: Okay...

Him: What do you mean okay? The United States must look for a way out of the war in Afghanistan. There's got to be an exit strategy.

Me: Yeah, I noticed that about you...

Him: I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

Me: What? Did you really just say that? Exactly like that?

Him: The messages directed at some may undercut the messages sent to others.

Me:

Him: It's etched in stone!

Me: Uhh... why?

Him: Qaddafi must go!!!

Me: Yeah. Um, actually, I must go, too. Buh bye...

Him (yelling after):
I killed bin Laden
and I gotta picture
and you cannot see it
so nana nana boo boo...

Dogs of war

Wow (or bow wow) - a great series of pictures here...

...Including this one of a dog and his SEAL, who "recently broke the world record for 'highest man/dog parachute deployment' by jumping from 30,100 feet."

(Apparently they took a doggy along on the bin Laden raid, too.)

Added:

Last year, the Seals bought four waterproof tactical vests for their dogs that featured infrared and night-vision cameras so that handlers -- holding a three-inch monitor from as far as a 1,000 yards away -- could immediately see what the dogs were seeing.

So, they've got dogs-eye-view video, too?

Imaginary conversation

Him: Hey, guess what? I killed bin Laden.

Me: You did?

Him: well I gave the order...

Me: awesome. I would have, too.

Him: Yeah, but I did.

Me: Did you give the order to capture or kill, or just kill?

Him: Uhhh... I gotta picture of him dead. Wanna see it?

Me: Sure.

Him: Well, you can't.

Me: okay, whatever. Anyhow, the one real campaign pledge you made was "we will kill bin Laden," and you've made good on that.

Him: Yeah. I've got video, too.

Me: Of course you do. Keep it handy, you'll need it.

Him: No I don't.

Me:

Him: I was born in Hawaii.

(This conversation continues here)

Full details of the raid on the compound

It took a while, but New York Times reporter Frank Elser has published the full account of the raid on the terrorist compound. For the details follow the link below - but two things stand out in my mind:

1. There were three terrorist bodies brought back.

2. The care the troops took to avoid civilian casualties - including the wife and other family members of the target.

Elser was waiting back at headquarters when they arrived with the corpses, and interviewed the lieutenant who actually led the raid. (They got out of the compound just in time - "the locals" were on their heels!) The lieutenant's description of the land and people is tough to read:

"There are no roads at all, just tracks over the plains and mountains. There is very little water..." Of the political climate... "One must be a fool indeed to to think that people half savage and wholly ignorant will ever form a republic. It is a joke. A despot is all they know."

That kind of talk can get you in trouble, but I suppose you can't fault him for saying what he thinks. Regardless of that, the mission was awesome, and while they did encounter unexpected difficulties, they overcame them. This story will prove to be a big morale builder there and back home, at a time when support for the mission had fallen. It sends a message to the terrorists, too - strike on American soil, and we will find you.

It's incredible how quickly this story made the papers - the benefit of advanced communication technology is part of that, but credit too the willingness of the military to tell the tale. I salute everyone involved, from the president on down.

If you haven't already, "read all about it" (as the newsboys used to say) here.

Keep Away

What's driving everyone bonkers is that this administration is incapable of being straightforward. Serpentine deceit is its MO, regardless of the topic, whether birth certificates, health care debates, or sanctioned assassinations. Everything is wrapped in a web of lies and confusion because of the paranoia, personality disorders, narcissism, and sociopathy that walk the White House halls.

I honestly think they're just playing keep away, like kids on a grade school playground laughing at the shorter kid crying "lemme see lemme see..." while their own buddies laugh with them.

But I admit Bookie has a more grown up explanation. (So don't keep away from following that link...)

What's the story (3)

In today's news:

Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.

A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.

Well okay then, that's just their reaction to looking at Leon Panetta. Sure... whatever you say.

That's this morning's news, I shouldn't call it today's. This afternoon's news might be entirely different. For instance, even if "live feed was cut off" that doesn't mean "there is no video."

Or who knows - maybe they decided one of the great moments in history wasn't important enough to document.

On Monday I wanted to see the photo, now I find that initial impulse has faded. Osama bin laden is dead - good. For the rest of us life goes on.

I'll save myself some typing:

True? Who knows - but here's one thing that's even more certain than "Osama bin Laden is dead" - there would be a different version of events from those on the receiving end. That's been demonstrated time and again in multiple fronts of the war on terror. Expecting it here is one of those things that doesn't take a genius, it's one of this conflict's oldest lessons.

What I said on day one about the various conflicting stories might prove to be the last word for the whole thing: All are plausible. But for those and other details, you can pick whichever version you think is likely, but you can't choose which is true.

That won't stop anyone anywhere from believing they can.

For my part, I'm not playing in the damn White House keep-away game, beyond pointing out that's the game they're playing, and saying it's a petty and pathetic thing to do.

Froggy's seal of disapproval

Froggy is not happy.

I've met him. I understand his reaction. I agree with it.

He calls a captured live Osama "the single greatest intelligence bonanza in the history of the conflict." I agree with that, too.

I'm no SEAL, but if I were planning an op to get OBL in his lair, one of my first assumptions would be that his lair was wired to go boom in a big way, and that he had ready access to a detonator that would make that happen. We're talking about the leader of al Qaeda here; "that's crazy" doesn't counter any argument. So in execution of the plan, even if unarmed, if he made a move after I said "don't move" (in Arabic) it would be his last. I'd have no remorse, and if it later turned out the place wasn't made out of C4 drywall that wouldn't change.

Is that what happened? Who knows. The last presser I saw on the topic the guy (Brennan? Can't remember, don't care...) admitting bin Laden was unarmed (and describing a female who ran for the shooter thus blocking his line of sight) wouldn't say exactly how bin Laden "resisted." We're way past "fog of war" on this one - so there's no plausible claim that he didn't know.

For my part, I'm not playing in the damn White House keep-away game, beyond pointing out that's the game they're playing, and saying it's a petty and pathetic thing to do.

And you should read those links above. (Froggy'd be a liar if he said "I'm no SEAL.")

When "the good idea fairy" strikes

"From a visual perspective, here is bin Laden who has been calling for attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that's far removed from the front..."

- Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President
John Brennan

Is that so wrong? (Sorry... can't help myself.)

In other news:

Based on the size of the plot and the house, which was built in 2005, and using recent property sales as a guide, they estimated that it would fetch no more than $250,000 on the current market.

"Twenty million rupees, maximum," said property dealer Muhammad Anwar, a 22-year veteran of the local market, at his Abbottabad office. "No swimming pool. This is not a posh area. We call it a middling area."

Asked about the American estimate, he chuckled. "Maybe that's the assessment from a satellite. But here on the ground, that's the price."

Well, maybe back in 2008 it was worth a million...

And credit to "TheOldMan" who commented on Monday:

$1MM for that dump? It must have been one of those no-doc loans!

What's the Story (2)

I've lost count of how many versions of the bin Laden kill the White House has released, but here's the first from someone inside the compound:

About the slain woman: officials said she could either be Bin Laden's wife or a close family member since she offered to sacrifice her life for him. "As per our information, she shielded Bin Laden during the operation and was killed by American commandos," an official said.

The US Special Forces only took two bodies with them in the military chopper; one is said to be Bin Laden's and the other his son's. By the time Pakistani security agencies and soldiers arrived at the spot, the US commandos were flying over the mountains in the Pakistani tribal belt, well on their way to Afghanistan.




Sources said one of the two women taken into custody from the compound by Pakistani forces was one of Osama bin Laden's several wives.

"She is Yemeni and became unconscious during the operation," said an official. Pleading anonymity, he said the woman was provided necessary medical aid till she became conscious. 



"During preliminary investigations, the lady said they moved to the Abbottabad house five to six months ago," the Pakistani official said, adding that she did not provide further information about bin Laden or his shifting to the house. 



The official said a 12-year-old daughter of bin Laden was among the six children rescued from the three-storey compound.

The daughter has reportedly told her Pakistani investigators that the US forces captured her father alive but shot him dead in front of family members. 



According to sources, Bin Laden was staying on the ground floor of the house and was dragged on the floor to the helicopter after being shot dead by US commandos. 



There were conflicting reports about the second person the US forces took along with them. Some Pakistani officials say it was one of Bin Laden's sons injured by the US commandos and thrown onto a separate military chopper; others say he was killed in the operation and it was only his dead body that they took along. 



...according to information Pakistani officials collected from detained persons, Osama was neither armed nor did inmates at the compound fire at the US choppers or commandos.

"Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the US forces and their choppers. Their chopper developed some technical fault and crashed and the wreckage was left on the spot," a well-informed official explained.


True? Who knows - but here's one thing that's even more certain than "Osama bin Laden is dead" - there would be a different version of events from those on the receiving end. That's been demonstrated time and again in multiple fronts of the war on terror. Expecting it here is one of those things that doesn't take a genius, it's one of this conflict's oldest lessons.

What I said on day one about the various conflicting stories might prove to be the last word for the whole thing:

All are plausible. But for those and other details, you can pick whichever version you think is likely, but you can't choose which is true.

That won't stop anyone anywhere from believing they can.

Fortunately, in an operation of this importance, there's video available from multiple angles, so it will be relatively easy to prove exactly what happened. (Though if that story above is true, you're never going to see that video.)

What's the story?

Bin Laden's dead - as far as stories go that's a pretty good one. On Monday morning my son called from another town to ask me if I'd heard the news. An odd question, I thought, but "I'd think everyone would be talking about it," he said. They aren't? "No, not here at work." He, of course, had a dad who had deployed in this war on terror thing a couple times, so maybe others just didn't share his level of appreciation.

On Monday afternoon the cable guy told me he was tired of hearing about this bin Laden stuff.

A representative sample? Don't know. I do know my son was here in my town over the weekend, in a rented van to pick up some more of his stuff to move to other town. On his way home he texted to report his experience at a gas pump - it wouldn't go past one hundred dollars, so he couldn't fill 'er up. He sent photo evidence, too.

That was immediately prior to the Osama hit. By now just about everyone has had a post-Osama killin' gas pump moment. Cable guy was driving a big van, too. Maybe his came just before getting to my house.

In many regards, to the "American mood" Osama bin Laden's death is something akin to your team winning the Superbowl. Since the team in this analogy is every American's team, it's like everybody's team won the Superbowl. That's not intended as any sort of slur on the average American, it's a good analogy in many ways. Inflation (ignored or not) is still upon us at more places than the gas pump, lives are busy, and their odds of being killed in a terrorist attack have changed in about the same way the odds of their team wining the Superbowl next year change after winning it once.

It fades. And no matter how long TV talking heads can maintain their excitement level, if you're Joe average guy putting a hundred bucks into your tank to get to work where you pay more for a cup of coffee on your break than you did last week, then that's what you and Jane and the rest of the crew talk about on that break.

How do the troops feel?

A few yards behind the front lines on Okinawa, fighting men of the US Armys 77th Infantry division listen to radio reports of Germanys surrender on May 8, 1945. Their battle hardened faces indicate the impassiveness with which they received the news of the victory on a far distant front. One minute after this photo was taken, they returned to their combat post...

Maybe something like that.

Now and Then

Christopher Hitchens, on the bin Laden take down: "...the really hateful work of his group and his ideology was being carried out by a successor generation like his incomparably more ruthless clone in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."

Read the whole thing - that quote doesn't sum it up in any way; it's just one that converges with some of my own first thoughts on bin Laden - as does his next line: "I find myself hoping that, like Zarqawi, Bin Laden had a few moments at the end to realize who it was who had found him and to wonder who the traitor had been."

Zarqawi, like all al Qaeda operatives, had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, so there's no denying who was a "bigger target" in that regard. But as to which one's death would have had a bigger impact on the situation in Iraq in 2006, it's Zarqawi. In all honesty, if I indulge in the thought game of "if in 2006 you were with bin Laden and Zarqawi and had a gun with one bullet, which would you shoot?" my answer is Zarqawi.

That's with some benefit of hindsight. Back then I could (and did) draw a line from Zarqawi's death to the Anbar "awakening" movement. Later I could extend that through "the surge," through which the success of the awakening movement was spread. There were a thousand other moving parts, but if I had to simplify "significant American actions in 2006-2007 that led to increased security in Iraq" to something quick and accurate it would look like this:

Every one of those actions had it's contemporary critics (I was a pre-surge skeptic myself - in part because I'd already drawn that Zarqawi-Awakening line), most of their criticisms were wrong. (And many of their motives were questionable.) Since most still want to pass themselves off as infallible they can't even accept the idea they might have been wrong years after the fact; since many are still considered experts that's had consequences in how we approach current (and likely future) conflicts.

Continuing my thought game, if I'd have shot bin Laden back in '06 I'd be a hero - celebrated far and wide (if not for long) even as the situation in Iraq descended further into chaos, the US evac'd, and al Qaeda turned its full attention to Afghanistan (and beyond).

The Situation Room

"Yeah, this is just made for modification..."

I wasn't the only one who had that thought. :)

One more from me:

And seriously? "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. fingered his rosary beads"? That'll play better in Peoria than Peshawar - but of all the things better left unsaid about this op... hell, why not just call it a crusade?

(And gosh - I know he had a great topic, but that Leon Panetta must be a hellagood briefer - hearing him just isn't enough...)

Hollywood Boal

News from Hollywood:

Somebody get Kathryn Bigelow a rewrite!

Just as the Oscar-winning director and her screenwriting collaborator Mark Boal have been meeting with actors for an Osama Bin Laden assassination project, Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a Pakistani compound.

How this will impact the project is yet to be seen. Bigelow and Boal, the director and writer of 2009 best picture winner The Hurt Locker, are working on an action thriller tentatively titled Kill Bin Laden. The movie is to be based on a failed Black Ops mission by the US military to capture the Al-Qaida leader.

I'd expect a re-write, from story of epic fail to massive success. I'll even give away a movie secret they don't know: that's the kind of film folks will pay money to see. Sure, whoever they got to play Bush will now be playing a small part (if any) and they'll have to find someone to star as Obama, but rest same. I'll go one step beyond and close this by giving them the perfect ending - not a happy one, but one Mark Boal can maybe be happy with.

Boal is no stranger to failed war movies. His first co-writing credit was for In the Valley of Elah, one of a flock of shitty Iraq-themed movies audiences avoided in droves in the Fall of 2007. (Hey, they listened to a wide variety of experts - from Joe Biden to Barack Obama - who predicted the surge would fail, Iraq would get worse, etc. etc.) These movies were supposed to be welcoming the surviving members of Bush's legions home in defeat to an angry America - how could they fail? (Don't bet against well-led American troops, says I...)

As mentioned above, Boal also scripted the slightly less shitty (but still unwatched) Academy Award winning Hurt Locker. ("Everything wrong with Hurt Locker could have been fixed, within the budget, by a decent script." - Greyhawk) Ostensibly "about" an EOD team, the film - like Elah - was really about how screwed up Army dudes are. (Sympathetically, of course.)

More recently Boal penned the Kill Team story for Rolling Stone. Like Locker of Elah, it's based on truth. For as good a review as I've seen anywhere, (though mine would be different if I had the stomach to write one) here's Carl Prine's take.

So, will America line up and pay hard earned cash (with gas at 4+ bucks a gallon...) to watch a movie this guy writes about killin' bin Laden? (Maybe - who's in it?) For my part, I can offer up the perfect ending, and it should fit in with Boal's style. (Unless I don't really understand his style.)

Just after the mission, back in the ship. The guys gather in a dayroom, chatter and whoop whoop is cut short by a shout - "knock it off, the President's on!" Everyone quiets and turns to face the TV just in time for this:

...I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation...

"Turn on ESPN," one guy says. "I want to see who my team drafted." The rest go back to whatever they were doing.

And fade.

Hey Watcha Watchin?

The radio?

President Barack Obama and his war cabinet monitored the operation in the White House situation room. (The White House: Pete Souza)

Oh, a video? Sweet. Judging by the looks on all the faces, it must be at a "good part."

Hey, if one of you could edit out the classified and get that off to Julian Assange sooner rather than later that would be totally awesome, thanks.

Update: yeah, this is just made for modification...

Added - Reason's Tim Cavanaugh: "In my America the unedited video would already be up at dod.gov, but we don't live in my America." Mine too. (Or is it nor mine?)

The Bugle

A couple of clips from We Were Soldiers, not for the squeamish.

It's Hollywood, of course. And what's real and what's realistic is a topic for endless debate. But mixed with the splattering blood is the story of a bugle (also told here) - the thread that connects earlier events to later.

And playing in the background a song that sounds ancient, but was written decades after the events portrayed in that movie happened, about something very similar that happened decades before.

Follow that very real thread forward and you'll pass through the World Trade Center on your way to today, passing through more battlefields along the way. Listen closely and you'll hear bugles echo. Look closely and you'll see that thread fading into the hazy future, too.

Further reading

Two very different accounts worth reading:

Steve Coll's first-look analysis on the bin Laden kill - Coll has authored a couple of volumes on bin Laden.

Andrew Exum's where I was when I heard the news post. Ex is a been there done that guy in more ways than one.

My own first response - sitting at home on a Sunday night, was a bit more cheer than I expected. I find that fading fast. I'm glad the guy's dead, what can I say? And there's not a person who's ever served this country in uniform that wouldn't have wanted to pull that trigger.

Had the cable guys over this afternoon, troubleshooting the lines. Turned the TV on and (of course) the news was still bin Laden. "Man, I'm tired of hearing about that already," said cable guy. An honest man, I suppose. I responded with silence. Had he been the observant type, he might have noticed a lot of momentos of 24 years of service on my walls and flat surfaces around the house.

My familiarity with OBL as public enemy #1 precedes 9/11. It's been more than ten years for me, so every time I heard something about the "ten year hunt" on television I shook my head a bit at that, too.

Dead man squawking?

Expect new bin Laden tape soon: "U.S. intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden made a propaganda recording shortly before his death and expect that tape to surface soon."

And:

"From a visual perspective, here is bin Laden who has been calling for attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that's far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," he said.

Along with a few other details of the attack. Not a stone I would have thrown, but it's been thrown.

You can also read what it was like to be right there in the White House with the President as his mission progressed:

The helicopter hiccup was a heart-stopping moment for president Barack Obama, who was monitoring it all from the White House situation room, surrounded by his war cabinet.
"There was a fair degree of silence as it progressed as we would get the updates. The minutes passed like days, and the president was very concerned about the security of our personnel.

"When we finally were informed that those individuals who were able to go in that compound and found an individual that they believed was bin Laden, there was a tremendous sigh of relief."

A nice house, that White House.

As always, expect errors in any first reports. That said, many updates to posts below, it's that kind of day. (A good kind of day, sez I.)

Real change...

AP: CIA interrogators at secret prisons developed first strands that led to bin Laden.

This is a world-changing event, though the magnitude is to be determined.

If you believed getting Osama was our only reason to be in Afghanistan, what do you believe today?

If you thought "secret prisons" were pointless, what do you think today?

If you put killing Osama bin Laden as our number one national security priority - congratulations! But what's #1 today?

"Here's your head shot, Mr bin Laden"

"The Obama administration has photographs of Osama bin Laden's dead body and officials are debating what to do with them and whether they should be released to the public, officials tell ABC News." Jake Tapper:

The argument against releasing the pictures: they're gruesome. He has a massive head wound above his left eye where he took bullet, with brains and blood visible.

Which leads me to believe this is indeed the picture they're debating releasing. It's been out for a while now... (In my humble opinion it's not quite as gruesome as that description - or what you'd probably imagine when reading that description. Click for popup, I won't have it on display for the unaware.)

Added: I don't post war porn here, but there are some things that some folks have to see - among them, Osama bin Laden dead. I don't need pictures of any of the thousands of his victims over the years to know they exist. (And I count every combat-related death - civilian, military, American, Iraqi, Afghan, coalition partners, aid workers, reporters, et al - since 2001, and some from before, in that number.) Sadly, his death won't put an end to all that, but hopefully, as with the under-appreciated death of Zarqawi in Iraq, it will be a step in the right direction. There are great opportunities here, make them work.

And (update 2).... it's a fake. Release the real deal (see paragraph above).

Was Tapper describing that photograph? Gawd, if the Obama admin wants to close-hold the imagery they can have a new birther-type controversy going in nothing flat...

Update 3: Early conspiracy theory round-up here.

Meet the firm of Trackem, Rackem, and Stackem

- the guys who got bin Laden really have been at it for a while.

ABC:

Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, central to both the 9/11 plot and the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, was captured by U.S. forces and taken to Guantanamo. In 2007, U.S. officials who were interrogating Guantanamo detainees finally learned the nom de guerre of a former Khalid Sheikh Muhammad protégé who had become an important confidante of Abu Faraj al Libi. Al Libi was captured in 2005 and also taken to Guantanamo.

Guantanamo detainees identified the courier who had worked with both KSM and Al Libi as someone who was probably trusted by Bin Laden. Al Libi had actually lived in Abbottabad in 2003, according to his detainee file.

In 2007, U.S. officials learned the courier's real name. In 2009, they located his region of operation and began tracking him.

In 2007, the U.S. learned the man's name.

In 2009, "we identified areas in Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated. They were very careful, reinforcing belief we were on the right track."

After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back.

(I'm not vouching for the accuracy of any of those reports, just sharing.)

Among the conflicts in various reports from "legit" sources:

Obama originally approved B2 bombing raid, but was talked out of it based on "no body/proof" advice -- version 2: Obama originally presented with B2 strike plan but nixed it based on potential for civilian casualties.

Team was ordered to kill, not capture -- Version 2: Team tried to get Osama to surrender, he didn't, they double tapped.

All are plausible. But for those and other details, you can pick whichever version you think is likely, but you can't choose which is true.

Meet the tweeter

- the guy who tweeted the attack on bin Laden's compound.

Somewhere nearby someone probably changed their Facebook status to "What's with all these damn noisy helicopters over the tall guy's house?" too.

Most pathetic headline ever?

"Afghan violence seen dragging on despite bin Laden death" - Reuters.

If you're reading this sometime in the future, be advised that as of the date/time stamp on this article, news of bin Laden's death had been public for about 8 hours.

Meanwhile, back in 2006

Things were different...

(I've heard a rumor that Donald Trump is now demanding to see the death certificate, though.)

Inside bin Laden's compound

Blood-splattered video from ABC News.

Approximate Google Map location here.

Added: And some DoD PowerPoint slides here. I've seen several locations marked as "bin Laden's compound" on Google maps, but none that look like this. If anyone finds the exact spot, let me know.

And update 2: thanks, Kevin!

bin Laden Dead

No joke: Click for (presumed) corpse picture - not a pretty sight. Not an officially released photo, either. (It is just his body, of course. His spirit has flown, as they say... and is being @$$hammered in hell.) (Update: photo fakery... rest same.)

Lots of I, me, mine in video:

Did Rummy "scoop" the White House?

...at 10:25 p.m., while Mr. Obama was writing his speech, one particular tweet seemed to confirm it. Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, wrote at that time, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn."

Whoever says it - this is excellent news, sez I.

Boots on ground mission. Assuming those were military boots, nice way for Gates to end his tenure. Don't expect too many details*, especially on Pak participation. President was vague on those points, as it should be. Statement from George Bush just read on CNN, President Obama called former President Bush to let him know prior to the speech. Large cheering crowd outside White House. Good times - there is no down side to this story.

The big question, of course, is what to do with the corpse. My suggestion: feed it to pigs. I believe the White House answer I just heard is treat it with great respect in accordance with Muslim traditions, etc. (Yep - link.)

An overlooked story from mid-April 2010:

Holder Scales Back Bin Laden 'Corpse' Remark

Attorney General Eric Holder backed off a bit from his comment last month that "we'll be reading Miranda rights to the corpse" of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Holder, testifying today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said U.S. authorities hope to capture and interrogate bin Laden. "Our hope would be to capture him, interrogate him and get useful intelligence." He explained his earlier remark as simply his "assessment of the likelihood" of that outcome.

The "corpse" remark came at a House hearing last month as the attorney general tried to push back forcefully at GOP lawmakers who tried to paint him and the administration as weak on terrorism.

And I just heard Peter Bergen, CNN's national security specialist, declare the war on terror is over, Osama is irreplaceable. Unfortunately, for a war to end both sides have to stop fighting. I suppose there will be increased calls to withdraw from Afghanistan faster from those who believed Osama was the reason for the season. I'm not part of that crowd, but I never believed Afghanistan was the "central front" either.

Al Jazeera:

Reporting from Pakistan, Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder said the development had caught a lot of people by surprise.

"He was considered by many as a hero, but not to the extent that people would come out on the streets. The reaction so far not likely to be strong on the streets, perhaps a protest here or there by the religious parties,." he said.

'Symbolic victory'

Qais Azimy, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said Afghan officials described bin Laden's killing as a "symbolic victory", since he was no longer directly connected to the group's field operations.

News from prior to President Obama's announcement:

ABC News: "His death brings to an end a tumultuous life that saw bin Laden go from being the carefree son of a Saudi billionaire, to terrorist leader and the most wanted man in the world."

Reminds me of their first story on him years ago:

"In America," Miller told bin Laden, "we have a figure from history from 1897 named Teddy Roosevelt. He was a wealthy man, who grew up in a privileged situation and who fought on the front lines. He put together his own men - hand chose them - and went to battle. You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt." Miller further assured Osama that "the American people, by and large, do not know the name bin Laden, but they soon likely will."

BBC:

Al-Qaeda founder and leader Osama Bin Laden is dead, according to US media reports citing officials.

The US is in possession of Bin Laden's body, the reports say. President Barack Obama is due to make a statement shortly.

Bin Laden is top of the US most wanted list.

He is accused of being behind a number of atrocities, including the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.

*Details: actually I do expect everything to be blabbed, as it shouldn't be.

Workers of the World Unite

Forecast:

Thousands expected for LA May Day marches

LOS ANGELES--Thousands are expected to take to the streets of downtown Los Angeles for this year's May Day marches calling for immigration reform and workers' rights.

Permits were given to two separate groups for Sunday's demonstrations and police officials say enough officers will be on duty to handle crowds of up to 50,000 people.

Small turnout for May Day march

By 10 a.m. only a few hundred immigrant rights and labor activists had gathered at Broadway and Olympic Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles to rally public support for legislation that would legalize the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants.

"It's really sad," Luis Ortiz, an ice cream vendor who has been coming to the rallies for the last 15 years, said of the small turnout. "I've sold very little, almost nothing."

Too bad, since the city spent all that money in preparation.

But what's wrong with these people? - They used to know how to party:

Young women participate in a mass gymnastic routine at the 1959 [Moscow May Day] celebrations. The mass choreography so popular at such events inadvertently reflected some of the strictures of Soviet life.

Explanation for failure from second link: "activists have deemphasized street actions in favor of change at the ballot box through promoting citizenship and voter registration."

Added better idea: Victims of Communism Day

A good start: Witness.