Dawn Patrol

Note: This post will grow through the day. Consider it your open post too. Comment and trackback to your heart's content. And wherever you are, enjoy your Sunday.

• Glenn Reynold's Afghanistan correspondent, Major John Tammes, has reached the end of his deployment. I suppose the professor might forward emails from well wishers... (great Afghanistan photo collection at the link, by the way)

  One comes home, another deploys: MilBlogger 'B' at Going Down Range is waiting a plane ride to... Afghanistan. Wish him a safe trip.

  Anybody know of any other Afghanistan-deployed MilBloggers? (Man, I miss Hook...)

• Bush Pokes Fun at Himself at Press Dinner:

  President Bush poked fun at himself at the press corps Saturday night and offered a new reason for overhauling the Social Security system. Raising the name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush said, "We have to fix it or Rumsfeld may never retire."

  Bush noted with a little help the presence of a number of new Cabinet members attending the Gridiron Club's 120th annual dinner.

  Turning to Vice President Dick Cheney, the president said, "Dick, maybe you can point them out to me."

  Some of the press skits he had watched earlier in a long evening were about steroid use in professional sports, but Bush said that in looking out at the press corps he was confident none of them were on steroids.

  "Those are all natural bodies," he said.

  Bush said anyone looking for a transcript of the evening's program should call Doug Wead, the longtime Bush family friend who recently made public tape recordings of private telephone conversations he had with Bush before he started running for president.

  What's also funny is that the San Francisco Chronicle published the same story from the same reporter without the quotes.

  Sounds like everybody had a wonderful time though.

• Manning the Barricades: A Marine officer writes in the NY Times,

  This tragedy resonates with me because I led Marine platoons in Afghanistan and Iraq. Standing in the dark at highway checkpoints, I've often had to make split-second, life-or-death decisions. A couple stand out.

  One ended well. On the night of March 30, 2003, my platoon was one of the northernmost American units spearheading the blitz to Baghdad. As darkness fell, we set up a checkpoint on a highway north of Al Hayy, in central Iraq. Other marines were attacking from the south, and our mission was to play the anvil to their hammer, to block the escape of Baathist guerrillas. The problem, we knew, was that innocent people would also flee the American onslaught.

  We strung a piece of concertina wire across the highway 100 yards ahead of our position to warn drivers to stop. Three times, I exhaled in relief as approaching headlights slowed and turned around. The fourth set of headlights was higher off the ground: a tractor-trailer. I heard mashing gears as it accelerated. At 60 miles per hour, the truck sped nearly 100 feet closer to our position every second. It crashed through the wire, still picking up speed. Even if the truck wasn't a bomb, I knew it would kill my marines and destroy our vital equipment. I ordered the platoon to fire.

• From another Point of View, Checkpoint Iraq: A Tactic That Works: A reporter in the Washington Post,

  As an unembedded freelance journalist in Iraq, I have safely driven through scores of American roadblocks all over this country. I have also spent many hours with U.S. troops as they set up and operate these checkpoints.

  At the same time, like other reporters here who don't travel with armies of their own -- and like the millions of Iraqis who either have some money or are brave enough to participate in their country's reconstruction -- I live constantly with the fear of being kidnapped. We see every day the damage done with the millions of dollars that Iraq's Baathist and Wahhabist insurgencies make from that appalling business.

  So as investigators try to sort out how U.S. troops could have fired on a car carrying newly freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, wounding her and killing the man who secured her release, I'm thinking about how checkpoints save lives. We don't know exactly what happened at the checkpoint on the way to the Baghdad airport. But I've seen how checkpoints work, and the American soldiers who man them are anything but trigger-happy. They know the consequences of making a mistake.

• Taking aim at Iran Israeli troops are training for an assault on Iran?s nuclear facilities. Will it happen and what would be the fallout?

  Israel?s finest soldiers had been flying for several hours before the assault helicopters reached their target ? the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, in southern Iran.

• Bionic US Troops Go Back To War Amputees returning to frontline duty can outrun the rest of the regiment on their high-tech legs.

  IN A US military camp on the Kuwaiti border, Captain David Rozelle is waiting for the order to lead the soldiers under his command into Iraq for a new tour of duty.

• Crash of U.S. spy plane sets off hunt

  MUQDADIYA, Iraq ? When an unmanned U.S. spy plane crashed in a farmer's onion field in central Iraq, he buried it.