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"...Marines on the ground, still engaged in combat, raised a spontaneous yell when they saw the flag. Screaming and cheering so loud and prolonged that we could hear it quite clearly on top of Suribachi..."
The first flagraising atop Mount Suribachi, February 23, 1945. Hank Hansen (without helmet), Boots Thomas (seated), John Bradley (behind Thomas) Phil Ward (hand visible grasping pole), Jim Michaels (with carbine) and Chuck Lindberg (behind Michaels). Photo by Lou Lowery. 10AM, Feb. 23, 1945
Remember the *1st* Iwo Jima flag raising? The one Joe Rosenthal *didn't* get a picture of? Nothing bad against Joe - he got the best one that day, no argument!
Private First Class Ray Jacobs was one of those flag-raisers. He didn't make it into the pictures. They were kind of busy, taking the island and all. They had other things on their mind, I'm guessing.
He died today.
The media hasn't noticed, yet. But we'll make sure they do.
So make a hole down there in Fiddler's Green! War hero, genuine, 1ea, Inbound
Now is the time at Castle Argghhh! when we dance, In Memoriam.
A year ago Task Force Pathfinder lost its first Soldier Killed in Action. Remember Corporal Stephen Shannon.
AFP is touting a new study claiming even more Iraqi Deaths than the infamous Lancet Study here.
LONDON (AFP) - More than one million Iraqis have died because of the war in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, research published Wednesday showed. According to data compiled by the Opinion Research Business (ORB) and its research partner the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies
Only one problem...the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies was the "Research Partner" for the Lancet Study as explained here
Confirmation doesn't generally mean asking the same person the same question twice. There used to be a rule in journalism that one something wasn't true unless two different people confirmed the facts. New rules...two different people...quoting the same person...makes something true.
The NY TImes Public editor ignorantly blathers on about their series pedaling Veterans as a group of psychotic killers here (reg required)
Some readers wanted to know how the rate of homicides by veterans compared with the civilian rate. Several bloggers did back-of-the-envelope calculations and said the homicide rate for returning veterans was lower than the rate for the general population. So, what’s the problem, they wondered. I asked Martin T. Wells, a professor of statistical sciences at Cornell University, to take a stab at a comparative calculation. The homicide rate for returning combat veterans could be better or worse than the civilian rate, he determined, depending entirely on how many of the 1.6 million military personnel who have been deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars actually saw combat, a number the Pentagon does not have.
Last I checked, there is something called the Combat Action Badge with varations Combat Infantry Badge and Combat Medical Badge)..and the military does keep track of how many it hands out. So the fact that a statistical analysis is impossible is just plain ignorance on the part of the NY Times or whoever their super secret contact in the Pentagon is.(You know...the one who leaks secrets). Unfortunately, for the Times..to do an actual comparison would inolve excluding those 121 Psychotic Killers without a Combat Action Patch or equivalent from their article.
I really don't have a problem with the NY Times doing an article on the difficulty returning Vets have re-integrating into civilian life. I also don't have a problem with doing stories on problems the VA faces....it's been a long time since WWII and Vietnam...the VA is better equipped to deal with 70 year old men with Kidney Stones and 80 year old men with Alzheimers than recently returning 20 year old combat veterans.
I do have a problem with the NY TImes perpetuating the Pychotic Killer Myth...not only does it dishoner our Vets...it compounds their problems in re-integrating. All job applications ask veterans status...planting the seeds in some idiot in the Corporate Human Relations Department that Vets pose a grave threat to the safety of the other employees is just making Vets problems worse. It is hard to describe the feeling when you see the look in the eyes of the prissy little HR clerk that suddenly change to fear when they find the "Vet" box on the application form checked.
Remember the Coughlin vs. Islam kerfuffle? Well, it is getting much more interesting. I hope this is all a great misunderstanding - or Mr. Islam is going to have a very bad 2008.
Well, news that news will be coming soon....
I've received a lot of inquiries about the 2008 MilBlog Conference. We will have a conference this year, but some big changes are in the works. The first being the dates. As it stands right now, we'll be changing the conference from spring to fall (September).
We're hoping to have a more substantial update in the next couple of weeks. Just wanted to let you know that we are working on it.
Consul at Arms pointed out this which is very worth sharing:
John Matel's The Meaning of Our Victory in Iraq. Quote:
Sometimes you just have to win. Some conflicts just need to run their courses and some bad guys just need killing. Nazi ideology was not discredited UNTIL it was defeated on the battlefield. No amount of peaceful persuasion or appeasement worked. People thought communism was a viable alternative to the free market UNTIL it ignominiously collapsed. Massive economic evidence and even the presence of a very large and deadly wall running down the middle of Berlin did not convince the believers to abandon their failed ideology. Earlier forms of terrorism from the Barbary Pirates to the Bader-Meinhof didn’t go away until they were defeated. We tried appeasement in the 1930s and we tried ignorance in the 1990s. These things did not work.Ideology is weakened AFTER its defeat. That is often the direction of causality. In our recent case, more people are drawn to be takfiri when being takfiri is easier and more beneficial. People are attracted to success and avoid losers.
Fu-Go.
Roswell.
F-51 chase planes.
Mogul, Genetrix, Moby Dick, Gopher,Grandson.
Russia, China and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.
And this thing:
Maybe tied together here.
And the TNR's version of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story collapses. There's more where that post came from, too.
You may well be part of an investigation in your career. Might be useful to file away for further use what gets released and what doesn't.
On TNR's blog, a two year old TV ad, politics, and football. I wonder what's missing.
The smugness will make you feel so much better - especially because, deep down, you know you would never be able to make it through Journalism School like they did - and it eats you up inside every day.
Get them help before it's too late.
Interesting.
The wife of a soldier serving in Afghanistan will appear tonight on NBC’s hit game show, “Deal or No Deal,” in a special episode devoted to military spouses.The show, hosted by Howie Mandel, will air 8 p.m. Central Standard Time and feature an audience of military members and spouses.
The contestant, Shequila Farrelly, 39, is the wife of Staff Sgt. Patrick Farrelly, who is currently serving in Afghanistan on a military transition team attached to the 1st Brigade Combat Team based at Fort Riley, Kan.
Here's hoping Shequila Farrelly walks away with a boatload of cash....
There's an Army wife looking to write a book about The Life and dog tags that has asked for my assistance. Dog tags aren't huge in naval aviation, although some guys will lace one up in their boots as a kind of memento mori. Anyway, the full story and contact data is over here if anyone thinks they could help a lady out.
Capt. David Adler (USS PORT ROYAL) and Cmdr. Jeff James (USS HOPPER). Spoken Word poetry of the 1st person report.
The New York Times on Sunday commenced a reporting series called “War Torn,” described as “A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.”
The Times starts War Torn with "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," written by Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez, consisting of atypical anecdotes, seemingly contradicting data, and an absolute lack of statistical context.
One can only speculate on what the Times plans for future installments.
Several statistically informed and militarily knowledgeable bloggers have already criticized the Times for faulty reporting and even faultier data analysis techniques.
Phillip Carter of Intel Dump, no slacker as a critic of our efforts in Iraq, reached a one word conclusion about the Times piece: “bullsh*t.”
That’s at the end of a somewhat more elaborate criticism:
Pete reminds some folks that the tipping point may be behind behind them .....
Democratic leaders in Congress — and on the campaign trail — should take a lesson from the Maliki government. Swallow your pride, admit you were wrong about the surge, and get behind our courageous military....but I think they already know it - they seem to be taking credit.
Get ready to go for a ride if you see something like this:
And it played a role in the truly Cold War, as set out here.
..the very best.
A request has been made by top commanders in Afghanistan to send 3,000 Marines to the country, FOX News has learned.The rest of NATO isn't going to fill any of their own 7,500 shortfall and fight'n season cometh....The goal would be to have the Marines in the region by April, the time of year when offensive actions by the Taliban usually pick up after the Spring thaw.
...
The plan calls for sending one ground and one air Marine contingent plus one battalion for a "one-time, seven-month deployment," Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morell said Wednesday.
A reader of mine is engaging in a survey about military folks transitioning from the service to the private sector. Her employer is a major insurance company looking to expand their outreach. There are a lot of use-to-be's out there that are now something-else's.
Want to help the next wave?
Always an interesting place to get sea time.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said, "This aggressive and hostile behavior by IRG (Iranian Revolutionary Guard) is a cause for real concern."It is perplexing why five small Iranian boats would confront three U.S. warships operating in international waters. Such actions are dangerous and could have quickly escalated.
"We see it as further evidence that Iran is unpredictable and remains a threat."
The Iranian boats came within 200 yards of the U.S. ships — a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer that U.S. officials said were on a routine transport mission.
The U.S. ships were forced to take defensive action to avoid striking the close-by Iranian boats and armed their weapons, but neither side fired any shots.
Corrugated metal goes to war and comes back.
As set out here.
I think I would use the term "Anantomy of Aiding and Abetting Mass Murder"....but hey...coming up with some fraudulent study that gives some 20 year old young and dumb Muslim guy a reason to kill thousands is like "Free Speech" or something.
John Hopkins and the Lancey folks need to review the Hippocratic Oath.....physicians my backside...mass mudering asshats.
Via JP, I found this story at Deb's place.
Since April 2004, I've shared hundreds of wonderful stories about the Marines who preserve our way of life and our liberties. And, I've received thousands of emails from parents, family members, and supporters of our military - most very appreciative of men and women in uniform. Many of their stories have been shared here at Marine Corps Moms. A good friend of mine, Mary Helen Bartch, shared with me pictures of her husband, Col. Richard Bartch, who was deployed at the same time my son was during the 2004 holiday season. We coped by immersing ourselves in supporting ourselves and our troops through Operation Santa,sending thousands of filled Christmas stockings to Iraq, and many late night phone calls. And, we celebrated when my son and her husband came home safe and sound that next year.Last October, I became aware that this site had been used for another purpose. A low-life scammer had taken the pictures of Col. Bartch and a few details of his life to create a fictitious identity, posting details on a number of dating websites. I don't know how many women responded to the identities, thinking that they were corresponding with a divorced Marine Officer who was interested in meeting them.
Instead, they were corresponding with someone who had nothing in common with the Marine he impersonated. Honor, integrity, courage, and commitment - none of these were part of the scammer behind the persona of a Marine Colonel. I've corresponded with a number of the women who were victimized, but I'm sure there are many more out there.
Neil Munro and Carl Cannon undertook an autopsy of the highly-suspect 2006 study by British medical journal The Lancet, purporting to estimate "excess" Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 654,965.
Munro and Cannon publish the results of their autopsy in National Journal. In brutal summary, based on their analysis, the state of the “science” behind the Study has only further decomposed since its publication. Yet somehow, this will be the rotting corpse of the Iraqi debate, the stench of which mainstream media (MSM) won’t notice.
I criticized the study when it was first released in October 2006, highlighting my objections at MILBLOGS, as did my fellow MILBLOGGERS Soldier's Dad and Steve Schippert.
Munro and Cannon are painstaking in their dissection of the many flaws in the study, as well as what amounts to the rather obvious the circumstantial evidence that the Study was intended as an assault on US electoral politics:
Three weeks before the 2006 midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress, a shocking study reported on the number of Iraqis who had died in the ongoing war. It bolstered criticism of President Bush and heightened the waves of dread -- here and around the world -- about the U.S. occupation of Iraq.That’s an understatement, not as it applied to the MSM, and Munro and Cannon provide several examples.Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical journal, the study [PDF] used previously accepted methods for calculating death rates to estimate the number of "excess" Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. This stunning toll was more than 10 times the number of deaths estimated by the Iraqi or U.S. governments, or by any human-rights group.
In December 2005, Bush had used a figure of 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. Iraq's health ministry calculated that, based on death certificates, 50,000 Iraqis had died in the war through June 2006. A cautiously compiled database of media reports by a London-based anti-war group called Iraq Body Count confirmed at least 45,000 war dead during the same time period. These were all horrific numbers -- but the death count in The Lancet's study differed by an order of magnitude.
Queried in the Rose Garden on October 11, the day the Lancet article came out, Bush dismissed it. "I don't consider it a credible report," he replied. The Pentagon and top British government officials also rejected the study's findings.
Such skepticism would not prove to be the rule.
This should provide some insight why the full story does not get told to senior policy makers.
Mr. Coughlin wrote a memorandum several months ago based on documents made public in a federal trial in Dallas that revealed a covert plan by the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian-origin Islamist extremist group, to subvert the United States using front groups. Members of one of the identified front groups, the Islamic Society of North America, has been hosted by Mr. England at the Pentagon.Remember how important it is, as we were told 1,001 times in the last half-decade+, to connect the dots? Well, to some, there are more important things than truth. You'll figure it out.
I was waiting for the official announcement, although it's all over the Net. Killed in Diyala in an ambush.
DoD Identifies Army CasualtiesThe Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Jan. 3 in As Sadiyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit using small arms fire during combat operations. Both Soldiers were assigned to the Military Transition Team, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.
Killed were:
Maj. Andrew J. Olmsted, 37, of Colorado Springs, Colo.
Cpt. Thomas J. Casey, 32, of Albuquerque, N.M.
Both men were doing a difficult job well. Both men were victim to the cruel arbitrary nature of war; all the risk management and hardening won't protect you when it's your turn. I wish they had come home alive and well; I hope their families can heal, given enough time.
Fox News is reporting that we may soon be treated to a new al Qaeda video featuring "Azzam the American." The Iowa caucuses are mere hours away. Does that explain anything? Guess we'll soon see...
Update: Here's the first link I could find to the "breaking news."
Kenya's looking bad. Baldilocks is back up and blogging about it. Here's her latest post. Here's an aggregate story from the Razor from yesterday.
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