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So I posted yesterday that I was extremely disappointed that the "Blue Ribbon Panel" did not include at least one mother of a wounded soldier or marine... but then a friend brought to my attention the most recent Joe Galloway article on this HERE
which concludes
One reader e-mailed me this week to suggest that if we really want to get to the bottom of this scandal, we should appoint an investigative commission made up of 10 mothers of wounded soldiers instead of the usual suspects who sit on blue-ribbon commissions and find no one responsible for problems.The mothers, the reader wrote, would sort out who was to blame in short order and find the problems that need fixing even faster. I second her motion.
and to that I might add and that they would spend half the money to fix what's wrong than the guys wearing those blue ribbons...
I haven't always agreed with Galloway in some of his more recent tirades and pronouncements, but I think his outrage this time is warranted... but again, lots of finger pointing and breast beating by the press without a lot of tangible suggestions for change...
You know we'll all be watching this closely
...another scalp.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates accepted the resignation of Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey on Friday amid a scandal over the quality of care given to injured troops recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center."The problems at Walter Reed appear to be problems of leadership," Gates said at the Pentagon.
Gates announcement came on the same day that President Bush ordered a comprehensive review Friday of conditions at the nation's military and veteran hospitals.
When I originally put out the call, you responded. We still need rocks from four states. Those are Arkansas, North Dakota, Vermont and Oklahoma.
Thanks to everyone who agreed to send rocks. Please be sure they are in the mail very soon so they can be received, indexed and ready for the ceremony on April 1.
Caught a moment of a televised press conference with Alabama Governor Bob Riley, responding to reporters' questions on the tornado deaths in Enterprise, near Ft Rucker. Based on the questions I'm hearing, the press seems to be looking for an angle on lack of preparation or response, of course, and perhaps someone to blame for the disaster. (Think Katrina.)
One question, unintelligible, was on the military's response. The governor praised that effort, adding that he told President Bush: "You need to compliment the people of Ft. Rucker, they were true lifesavers in every sense of the word."
Will link the resulting news stories when they're available.
I suspect the media - in spite of vigorous denials by the administration - is trying to portray the US as on the brink of war with Iran. This allows Democrats - and Hillary Clinton in particular - to vociferously oppose this non-existent war.Today:
Fearing that President Bush may be preparing to launch a military strike against Iran, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation that would require the White House to seek congressional approval before any such action.There's probably no better time than now for other despotic regimes to demand equal (and equally pointless) consideration from the U.S. Congress.
If not good news exactly, Victor Davis Hanson today finds hope, writing at National Review Online. Hanson reviews the true history of how we are where we are in Iraq.
Hanson’s chronicle charts what he labels landmines lying about, always ready to explode. Many did, thanks to too many careless forays down pathways of ambivalence, neglect, and hypocrisy.
Read the whole thing, or venture over to Dadmanly for excerpts and commentary.
Looks like Day by Day creator Chris Muir is back from Iraq and doing new strips:
Read this first. The television show will air Saturday, March 3. Check here to find out what time it will air in your area. Congratulations again, Kat.
An early report on the Baghdad strategy from Dave Kilcullen starts thusly:
The war has been going for nearly four years, the current strategy less than four weeks. We need to give it time....includes this:
...insurgent tactics are driven by the need to make a media splash, and nothing does this better than a big bomb. So the enemy will cling to this method as long as the news media reward it....and concludes approximately here:
The one thing we must not do is to confuse the real country of Iraq, where there is a real war, a real population, and a real obligation to protect them, with the parallel-universe "quagmire Iraq" of popular imagination.In between are the details, which you'll find here.
(If you don't know why Kilcullen's opinion matters, read this.)
Update: Yet another report:
Today’s Guardian article (“Military Chiefs Give US Six Months to Win Iraq War”) misrepresents the Baghdad advisers. So much so, it makes me doubt the reliability of the single, unidentified source responsible for much of the article’s reporting.I hope SWJ colleagues will forgive this more "personal" post than usual, but as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser I have a duty to set the record straight on this.
Watching sausage making can be very ugly.
House Democratic leaders will add nearly $4 billion for farmers to a bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to attract conservative Democrats concerned that the measure would wrongly constrict President Bush’s power as commander in chief.$4 billion can buy a lot of kit. A lot of corn. A lot of pork. Sigh.
At Blackfive:
Ralph Nader voters are not as scarce in the Army as you might think. I've actually met two in previous trips to Iraq. Spc. Linsay Burnett was the third. But that was just the beginning. Burnett, a 2003 graduate of the College of William & Mary, is probably the least likely soldier I have ever met. What caught my attention was that she was reading Johnny Got His Gun, a classic antiwar novel of World War I. Then it turned out that she was a Nader supporter, vegetarian, labor organizer, founder of an Amnesty International chapter, and former war protester. Not the typical model of a modern soldier.But like Jonathan Hutto, Burnett joined the Army after the invasion of Iraq. I suppose it's possible she simply didn't heed John Kerrry's warning about studying hard, but regardless of whatever led her to seek a career as an enlisted troop in the Army, ("Curiously, she didn't think very much about deploying to Iraq when she enlisted in February 2004. She needed a job and health insurance; the Army offered both. So she signed up for Army public affairs and broadcast communications") she's now touting Appeal for Redress in the New York Times.
We talked with Col. David Enyeart, Deputy Commander of Task Force Phoenix, the command dedicated to training the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.Col. Enyeart talks about addressing corruption, the much-anticipated Taliban spring offensive (which he calls "make or break for the Taliban") addressing corruption and illiteracy, and the success in recruiting efforts. His conclusion: "This is a winnable war over here."
Also on the call are Mark Finkelstein of Newsbusters, Andrew Lubin of On Point, Scott Kesterson of the Huffington Post, and John Noonan of Op-For.
"Did somebody say 'chicken'? Well, me and mine are off to read the News."
Head on over to Adventures of a Detailed Recruiter to read the sorry tale. Just keep scrolling.
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