Keating to PACOM

I didn't expect that one but didn't know enough to tell.

Now, who's going to NORTHCOM, and what's happening with STRATCOM?

Winter Soldiers?

Washington, D.C. - the Winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee:

If there’s one thing obvious in this room, it is that Emanuel might be clever, but it’s Howard Dean’s party. Dean electrified a similar DNC gathering four years ago when he said that he was “from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” and launched his antiwar candidacy briefly into the stratosphere. Now, all the Democratic presidential candidates appearing here borrow from Dean and try to appease the party’s yowling, antiwar base.
<...>
The Democrats are in the throes of a full-fledged Vietnam flashback. Even if the Bush “surge” works, Democrats will stay committed to ending the war — just as Democrats cut off the war in Vietnam in the mid-1970s, even as it had been put on a more sustainable footing. The party has regressed all the way to its McGovernite roots. The centrist Clintonite interlude of the 1990s is almost entirely washed away, with the Clintonite candidate — Hillary — trying not to get washed away with it.

Answer:

At the Winter Meeting of the Democratic National Committee, in a ballroom of the Washington Hilton packed with hundreds of Democratic activists...

I Know that dude

Sort of, any way:

More ambitiously, the popular blogger "Buck Sergeant" at American Citizen Soldier is working to edit his footage from Iraq into a serviceable full-length feature, "Give War a Chance." The trailers he has posted on YouTube show some of the stunning images he has captured, as well as the inspiration for his title choice--a plea for public support on the home front that will let the troops continue to fight for hearts and minds in Iraq.

Something to Watch

A US Army unit that monitors thousands of websites and soldiers' blogs has been served with a lawsuit by a San Francisco-based privacy group. In the suit filed in the US District Court in Washington last week, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) said that despite several requests for information from the Army unit, known as the Awrac (Army Web Risk Assessment Cell), no answers have been provided.

Marcia Hofmann, a Washington-based staff attorney for the EFF, said the FoIA lawsuit is aimed at protecting free speech and privacy and helping soldiers understand how and why websites and soldiers' blogs are being monitored.

"The idea is to get more information on what the Army is doing," Hofmann said. "Some soldier bloggers choose not to blog because of concerns about what they can and can't say" online.

Read the rest.

Mensch

Defined:

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot vote full confidence in General Petraeus, but no confidence in his strategy. We cannot say that the troops have our full support, but disavow their mission on the eve of battle. This is what happens when you try to wage war by committee. That is why the Constitution gave that authority to the President as Commander in Chief.

Cynics may say this kind of thing happens all of the time in Congress. In this case, however, they are wrong. If it passed, this resolution would be unique in American legislative history. I contacted the Library of Congress on this question last week and was told that, never before, when American soldiers have been in harm’s way, fighting and dying in a conflict that Congress had voted to authorize, has Congress turned around and passed a resolution like this, disapproving of a particular battlefield strategy.

Arkin's Skiiing Vacation Gets Interrupted

Boy, those journalists really don't like it when they get some reporter asking questions, do they?

This Can't Be Good PR...

...for either NASA or the Navy. From this CNN article:

A NASA astronaut was arrested Monday on battery and attempted kidnapping charges after allegedly trying to subdue a romantic rival with pepper spray and abduct her from a parking lot at Orlando International Airport, police said.
Navy Capt. Lisa Marie Nowak, who was a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery in July, and Colleen Shipman were both reported to be "in a relationship" with astronaut Bill Oefelein, a Navy commander, according to a police report of the incident.
Nowak, 43, has been charged with battery, attempted kidnapping, attempted burglary to a vehicle and destruction of evidence. Police have recommended Nowak be held without bond...

Re: Run And Hide

Republicans block Senate

Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats, voted with the rest of the Republicans not to proceed.

I'm still trying to decode the sentence. But give CNN some credit...they actually acknowdged that Lieberman voted.

The WaPo has somehow managed to lose the Senior Senator from Connecticut from its voting database.

I guess Senator Lieberman has become "An Inconvenient Truth", a Progressive Democratic that wants to "End the Slaughter", true to the Democratic Traditions of Roosevelt.

Day by Day

Run and Hide

The Dems wanted to end debate, the Republicans wanted to keep the debate open and argue alternatives, the headline reads GOP blocks Senate debate on Iraq resolution.

But Harry Reid gets the credit for ironic quote of the day: "You can run, but you can't hide," Reid said. "We are going to debate Iraq."

Speaking of running, if we leave Iraq, the slaughter will skyrocket, but these events will stop:

Re: The Brain Trust

Note the author of that WaPo article: Tom Ricks, author of Fiasco.

Note his proclivity to quote anonymous sources when an opinion is to be put forth...

Cognitive Dis

You can argue that troops have done too many tours in Iraq, or you can argue that the troops are untrained - but you really can't argue both at once:

Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division had so little time between deployments to Iraq they had to cram more than a year's worth of training into four months.

Some had only a few days to learn how to fire their new rifles before they deployed to Iraq -- for the third time -- last month.

Or stupid.

Or both.

Mercenaries and Whores

All this talk about US troops being mercenaries because they get paid sounds a lot like the argument that all women are prostitutes because of their being with you following a nice dinner and a movie.

There's a certain internal logic behind both, but you're still a schmuck for making either.

The Brain Trust

The WaPo headlines: "Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort"

The only appropriate response might be "Well, duh!"

But seriously folks... no offense to the fine folks profiled therein, but try finding a senior officer in the military without an advanced degree. These guys might be exceptional, but they aren't the exception in that department. There's a bit of myth perpetuaton here - the reality is the military invests time and money in developing the talents of the right folks for the right jobs - and sometimes they get it right.

And in spite of the article's "but the job is too big for these guys or anyone else" tone, I think the right people have indeed been chosen for this task - a conclusion not just based on the evidence of wisdom exhibited in the highlighted words of this paragraph:

Petraeus, who along with the group's members declined to be interviewed for this article, has chosen as his chief adviser on counterinsurgency operations an outspoken officer in the Australian Army. Lt. Col. David Kilcullen holds a PhD in anthropology, for which he studied Islamic extremism in Indonesia.

Kilcullen has served in Cyprus, Papua New Guinea and East Timor and most recently was chief strategist for the State Department's counterterrorism office, lent by the Australian government. His 2006 essay "Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency" was read by Petraeus, who sent it rocketing around the Army via e-mail. Among Kilcullen's dictums: "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" -- a subversive thought in an organization as hierarchical as the U.S. military.

You might also want to make time for A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy and Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency.