THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

Mr. B.'s big item for his and Mrs. Charm's secular Christmas celebration was Guitar Hero. When he's older he may find the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns more enlightening. Fortunately there'll be more available than the usual anti-American, anti-war movies that Hollyweird churns out:

Video "game makers aren't afraid to put players in situations where U.S. soldiers are unambiguously the good guys, while the combatants – often Muslims – are the bad guys."

Via Instapundit.

Re our secular Christmas at the rancho: This celebration of parties, presents and poinsettias has more to do with Saturnalia than Christianity. It is far older than the religious version. (Some nineteenth century Protestants found it so unnerving that they took to assuring their fellows that while they did mark the Nativity they did "not worship the tree.")

Christians still confuse the two, some of them whacking the secular version as ungodly. Well, to each his own. Mrs. C. would be lost without her favorite time of the year. And while he long ago graduated from Santa to understanding who the real gift-givers are, Mr. B. likewise would be bereft without packages to unwrap and goodies to consume. Good thing they needn't be.

Link via Power Line.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Caption says the "reporters" are studying the inscriptions on the shovels for the ceremonial dirt-turning for a memorial tree for fallen American troops. You know, while Barry dithers about whether they need reinforcements or not. This is what the legacy media does these days instead of asking hard questions. Bush quietly met with the survivors of the fallen. Barry turns their deaths into a photo op and a tree-planting. Frankly I think he prefers them fallen. The fallen don't talk back.

Via Mudville Gazette.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of these days, I'm going to get through to the link on this Instapundit item:

A GOVERNMENT THAT FEARS ITS PEOPLE: SONIC WEAPONS USED IN IRAQ POSITIONED AT CONGRESSIONAL TOWNHALL MEETINGS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY.

But, so far, I can't.

UPDATE:  I finally got it to work. Now I'm not so sure I should have linked to it. The headline is correct. But there doesn't seem to have been any intent to harm.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Latest news from Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio on First Cav's LTC Tim Karcher:

"I have no legs, and I accept that. I do not accept that my lack of legs will limit me. The adventure is re-learning, so that I am not limited.  Some people talk about how brave or heroic this attitude is, but for me it is simply practical. I refuse to let this keep me from living my life to the fullest, and you would too. It's not heroic, it's realistic. I admit, I look forward to moving through this adventure with others who are travelling the same path that I am. Thus far, many have helped me and guided me, and I look forward to inspiring future wounded Soldiers. Leadership doesn't stop at the hospital door."

Some would. So it's nice to hear from one whose leadership doesn't. Good luck, colonel.

Via Op-For.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's an old rule. American soliders win a war. American politicians lose it. It's a wonder anyone serves.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm a little late to the program here, this program anyhow. But it's worth noting, and, as we see above it's not just a Marines deal, but an Army one as well. I knew we had women fighter and gunship pilots, and women medics and armed women at security checkpoints. But I was floored by Michael Yon's latest report showing an apparent woman rifleman on a Brit patrol in Afghanistan. I figured it was new. El Coqui, a commenter at Black Five, set me straight. The Brit woman was a Royal MP, along to search women suspects. EC pointed me to the Lioness program. Now we know.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you won't miss Jacko (his best work was years ago) and Farah was never your cup of mocha nor Gov. Sanford of any particular interest, you can still keep up with the Iranian protesters as they get picked off one by one.

Iranian and some Western bloggers always have had the best reporting and aggregating on it, anyhow. Of course, the UN is useless, as always. Heck, it's the Dictator's Club. What, you thought it was the protector of humanity? Only the thug version.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

South Vietnam is what this map reminds me of. Think of the red places as NVA-controlled Indian Country. Places where our forces didn't/don't go for very long. S. Warzistan on the left bottom is where that Predator's Hellfire missiles killed all those Talibani at the funeral the other day. Eighty-something. I expected to be reading of Lefty outrage about that by now. The fact I didn't sorta figures, though.This is Barry's campaign now. He campaigned for it. His Leftist pals wanted it. Now they've got it. Lotsa luck. They're sure going to need it.

I think they're all going to be very sorry before The One's first term is over. Iraq was/is the Left's hated campaign, but it's the one that made the most sense to me. Nevermind the WMDs and all that baloney. The point in going in there was/is that it's in the middle of the Jihadi swamp that needs to be drained. I also believe that whatever success we've had there had more to do with the recent Iranian uprising than anything Barry said in Cairo or anywhere else. (He's too longwinded, too on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, to inspire anybody.) So let's see what he's going to do with Afghanistan. Wallow in the quagmire, I expect. Although that Predator strike on a funeral, of all things, was a good start. Wish we'd had more UAVs in South Vietnam. Apaches are nice, too.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From what I've read so far, she was more of a bystander to the Iranian election protest than an active participant. But it's probable that her Bassij assassin singled her out because she was a woman living in a misogynistic dictatorship. There's no doubt that Neda Agha-Soltan is a martyr now--though it may be only to a failed revolution.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As in, "Sleep tight, America, (Predator's) got the CAP." 24/7

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The 9/11 generation of military veterans are taking up their GI Bills and going to college, and the nutball liberal war-protesting professors at places like Penn State are getting ready to cut them no slack. Disgusting.

Via Doug Ross @ Journal.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Five minutes is a long time for even me to watch one of those support-the-troops videos. But this one, tipped to me by my chapter of the Army Association, is exceptionally fine.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reading an article in the April issue of the print edition of Army Magazine, I came across a double-page (double-truck as we say in the newspaper business) photograph of six M1 Abrams tanks. They belonged to the Third Infantry Division and were in line at an assembly area in Kuwait hours before they rolled into Iraq on March 20, 2003.

I had to use a magnifying glass to read what was stenciled on the barrels of their main guns. It was probably reported at the time but it's news to me six years later. Usually, as in Vietnam, for instance, such barrel art is crude or rude. These were different. American Airlines Flight 11 was the wording on the barrel in the photo's foreground. The other Sept. 11 airliners were commemorated on the rest.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An Army lieutenant in Iraq is making a fool of himself and dishonoring the uniform by publically questioning the president's right to his office. Some milblog commentors are cheering him on. I think he should be courts-martialed for this stunt. At the least he should resign his commission. He obviously doesn't understand it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We didn't hear much about the Iraq elections. A few purple-finger photos, but that's all. Why? Too quiet. Besides, making a big deal about it would only make W. look good and Big Media would never do that. But the Marine, MG John Kelley, who until recently ran Al Anbar province notes that, for its people, this was the first free election of their lives.

MORE:  On the other hand, there's an outside chance it could all unravel again.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Strategic retreat, indeed. B. Hussein Obama hinted at such a retreat in his interview with Al-Arabiya, looking back thirty years (the Carter administration) to a purported U.S.-Arab Golden Age. Not that the bloated Pentagon couldn't lose its spare tire, but the times certainly are not propitious for dieting. With all that battered equipment from Iraq that needs replacing. Especially not with a trillion in civilian pork already moving through the Congressional intestine. ACORN could get a few billion. The military must cut fifty-five billion.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have avoided the wussy IPOD as just another over-priced piece of Apple detritus. But if it can forecast and track a sniper's bullet from muzzle to impact, well, maybe not. So long, jihadis!

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Best confirming sign yet of 2008's biggest (perhaps only) blessing: US military's victory in Iraq.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It takes no courage at all to throw something at an American president, as VDH says. Real courage would be throwing a shoe at Saddam or any other Arab/Persian dictator. But that, of course, would get you a noose--if the security police let you live long enough to make it to the scaffold.

UPDATE:  Looks like he only got a beating. Tough cookies, Muntazer. Ah, but now he has a new excuse. The old assault-on-the-Koran libel. Bosh.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's official, size ten flying shoes to the contrary notwithstanding:

"The police are generally helpless, hundreds of thousands of middle-class Mexicans have fled the border region, often to the United States (if they had dual-citizenship, which many do). Those without money must hunker down and wait for someone to win this war."

We could put the gangsters out of business and stop it all, if Barry had the nerve to end the failed drug war.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Independent correspondent Michael Yon on Bush's major achievement with little to no Dem help:

"I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on."

Glad to see our troops did it before Barry and Hairplugs Joe could foul it up. The Afghan campaign will be enough for them.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

No surprise here. If you were on active duty would you want to be commanded by a guy (Barry) who pointedly never served, and was seconded by (Biden) a Vietnam War draft-dodger? I'm reminded of scifi writer Robert Heinlein's conception: only veterans should be allowed to vote and only mothers should be eligible for office. Works for me.

Via BlackFive.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sarah, in her capacity as governor of Alaska, sends off the "Arctic Wolves," of the Alaska National Guard, including her 19-year-old son, to duty with the Stryker Brigade in Iraq. She'll speak in Vienna, Ohio, tomorrow. More positive stuff on her here. The negative is easy to find as the "save Barry" news frenzy continues.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's good to see this report that at least some Georgian soldiers, including a few in desert camo who apparently are from the brigade we returned from Iraq, are still defending their country. They seem to be doing this in the defense of the capital city, according to Georgian Ambassador to the U.S. Vasil Sikharulidze.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is an idea advocated by John Nagl at Small Wars Journal which makes a lot of sense to this old Army advisor in Vietnam. The role has never been more important, as American counterinsurgency advisors have helped turn around the Iraq campaign and could do the same in Afghanistan. In any case, they will be the last Americans assigned, assisting and training the indigenous armies we leave behind to defend their own countries.

But, as in Vietnam, where the effort was later termed "the other war," as if it wasn't very important, it seems today's Army is being even more ad hoc about it. I got pulled out of a cav regiment for a job advising a couple of companies of Regional Forces and Popular Forces militia known as the Rough-Puffs. We did some training for them, but, with little experience and limited language skills, we hardly ever actually advised the SVN lieutenants and sergeants who ran the patrols and night ambushes. They were usually older and had more combat experience than we did.

I was one of the lucky ones who attended the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg where many of our instructors were Special Forces though we were not. The current advisory crop apparently has less training and one of the same disadvantages, i.e. being outside normal channels, making the assignment no plum for careerists. Advisory work in Vietnam was not even considered command time for line promotion. An Advisory Corps, with permanent units with esprit, etc., could change that.

It also might improve on what me and my five-man team of two officers and three NCOs primarily did. We mainly called in artillery, airstrikes and medevac as needed. Artillery was useful, if the regular unit guns we called were good. Air strikes were, then, usually flown by F4 Phantoms and were often inaccurate. American medevacs, however, were prized, as the SVN troops were afraid of their own medical corps. Our dustoffs would land in the midst of a fight at night. The SVNs would come, if at all, only in the day. Their soldiers also knew their doctors would quickly amputate a wounded limb, which American docs would try to save.

The Internet, of course, is a superlative resource for all deployed soldiers which we would have loved to have had forty years ago, so the current crop of advisors is luckier, in that way, for things such as this nice collection of advisor advice available with one click. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They're billed as the "world's greatest dancers," and they sure come close. Great stuff.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the things I like about the Georgian army--in addition to their deployment of a brigade to help us in Iraq--is that they don't goose step when they march, like the Russian army and, of course, the Nazis before them. They've also traded in their AK-47 peasant rifles for precision American M-4s, which they march with at-the-ready. In this stirring video they are seen to be a mixture of the modern and the ancient, and I hope they're doing well tonight on the battlefield.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One more very good reason not to vote for Baby Barry. He'd just throw it all away:

"The Iraqis aren't yet confident enough to stand entirely on their own; al Qaeda's savagery still imposes too much fear, while Iran is training terrorists next door. In counterinsurgency, the people must know they are protected. Gen. Petraeus has proven that intimidation can be defeated by placing American soldiers among the population."

Worth the read, from fav author Bing West. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that all the other services are using the oft-maligned MV-22 Osprey, including the Marines as part of 2007's surge in Iraq, the Army is taking it up with the aim of using it for special operations.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This one has the common touch, alright. The "finger-licking good" touch, in fact. Thanks, W.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There seemed to be surprise mixed in with the anger that Baby Barry ignored the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--other than the ones specifically vetted for him, black ones for the most part--and skipped the wounded in Germany altogether, during his world tour to create ad spots for his fall campaign. But there shouldn't be any surprise. His own party is doing the best it can to hold down the voting of soldiers overseas. They apparently understand that not many of them would vote Democrat.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There's a lot of teeth gnashing in the conservative blogosphere over BB's tap dancing around the question of whether he should have backed the surge, given its success in Iraq. I watched the cBS video here and, though I don't care much for his politics, I have to say his answer is no more than what any politician, who didn't wish to step down from his earlier judgement, would do. He didn't put down the troops, as some are suggesting. He acknowleged their success, he just questioned the surge strategy itself.

On the contrary, the shift in military strategy, from large unit fighting to establishing lasting community security was almost more important than the additional manpower. As Mac says it's definitely the way to win in Afghanistan, as well. It's just harder there because the people have fewer resources to fall back on, and the terrain is more difficult, with communities more isolated. And with advisers like Gen. McPeak, Barry might just go back to trying to win cheaply, with bombing.

UPDATE:  This, however (scroll to the bottom of the post) is a lie, plain and simple. Why it's called a gaffe is beyond me. Politicians tell gaffes. Ordinary people tell lies. But to me, Baby Barry told a lie, to make himself look good. Instead, he looks very, very bad. See if you don't agree.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The MSM, falling all over itself, as usual, to play pattycake with Baby Barry, is quoting one version of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's alleged translation of his alleged praise for BB's withdraw-from-Iraq-in-sixteen-months pitch.

But, wouldn't you know it, there are at least two other alleged translated versions, each with a different emphasis and different caveats. The original one has no caveats. I thought the CIA was the gang that couldn't shoot straight? I know it's heresy to say so (possibly even, gasp, racist) but I still don't believe BB is going to win the presidency. So save your breath Maliki, assuming you, uh, actually said anything at all.

But I got to admit I like it that the Europeans and other foreigners are falling all over themselves to swoon at BB's feet--and I'll bet that, secretly, Mac does, too. Because if there's one thing that will absolutely undercut an American politician who wants to be president, man, that is it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While America and the Old Media slept. Not that Baby Barry is likely to agree. But why should that matter?

Via Instapundit

UPDATE:  Now Mac is saying it, too. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Their readership/viewership declines every year, in part because they're widely and quite correctly perceived as politically skewed Democrat. But, as usual, the Old Media is deaf to the criticism, so they're suffering no shame at their announced plans to staff BB's upcoming "world tour" big time, while continuing to shoo Mac away as, uh, too old, too boring, too Republican.

Afterall, now that the Iraq campaign is essentially over (no thanks to them or the Dems), they can safely leave the Green Zone hotel to have a look around as BB sings his get-out-now tune. The Old Media poobahs also gave preferential treatment to John Kerry, their ersatz war hero, in 2004, and we all saw how well that worked out--for him and for them--but my guess is they really didn't catch on. They're insulated by their exorbitant pay and the adulation of their peers, which makes them pretty slow when it comes to reality.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's the way to win the Afghanistan campaign, McCain says, logically enough...

"...if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."

...versus Baby Barry's unserious preference to abandon Iraq in favor of hunting down (the quite probably already dead) Osama bin Forgotten.

Via Belmont Club.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What, before Baby Barry could make his first trip there in more than two years? Before the Dems could cut and run? Independent correspondent Michael Yon says so. His colleague Michael Totten says it is all but over, and that we won. But this is the Middle East, not middle Europe. So minor violence could still occur, maybe even something spectacular. But basically, they insist, it's all over, and we and the Iraqi people won it. Yay!

Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:  Even StrategyPage agrees the campaign is basically over. Now, they say, let the corruption begin. But I agree with Instapundit, I can live with that.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't watch television much. Television, as someone said the other day, is for losers. So I didn't watch the president's news conference. So I didn't get the sound of all the word fumbling that he normally commits--although he's nowhere near as vacuous as Baby Barry. But in the transcript, which the White House makes available in these glorious Internet days when one is no longer hostage to whatever the newspapers are willing to print of it, or whatever the teevee and radio folks are willing to air of it, Bush reads pretty good--inspiring, even, unless you hate him as some do.

For one thing, he delivers the most succinct summary of the how of the war on terrorism that I've read in a long time, and there's another good one on just how the oil companies are trying to take advantage of $140 a barrel oil by seeking more supply. Then there's his take, repeated several times to similar questions, about how the American people are smart enough to adjust their own driving and thermostats without the nanny state's help. Lord, yes. How could they not be? All in all, he sounds pretty confident to me, not at all the shell-shocked lightweight the Seablogger encountered on the tube. Maybe there's a lesson here. Read the transcript, people. You've finally got it available whenever you want it. So read it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The daily's print edition has a compelling story (which, disgustingly, you have to dig for on their Web site!) about Iraq campaign widow Taryn Davis, who lives down the road in Buda. Her Web site for her American Widows Project is a poignant look at what these women (and a few men) are going through. What, for instance, do you do now with the Silver Star? This form of grief, it appears to me, is similar to growing old. Forgetting to bathe more than once a week, for instance.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to war correspondent Michael Yon, it's to grow up to be an American soldier. Photo of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Fred Hampton, of Lexington, Ky., kneeling to talk with an Iraqi boy in Sadr City, June 20. Credit: U.S. Air Force Tech Sgt. Cohen Young, Joint Combat Camera Center Iraq.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cool new advertising campaign from group of Afghanistan and Iraq campaign veterans to counter the anti-war bilge of MoveOn.org. But something tells me there'll be a vets for peace campaign to counter this one before long. May the best ad campaigns win! Though I'd prefer this one.

Via Instapundit

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No, this post by Roland Dodds won't impress the Lefties. The ones I know have been saying for some time that they wish we'd leave the Iraqis to stew in their own juice. But it might have an interesting effect on the Independents, the ones Mac really needs to get if he can, to know that the Iraqis find him more persuasive than Baby Barry, whose entire idea of war and strategy comes from books and old movies. Of course, our election is not the Iraqis' decision to make. But it's nice to know that they care, all the same. I hope their prayers for Mac help. Prayer is always good.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Started considering this concept the other day while playing catch with Mr. B. He was whining about the heat. I realized that he's never known anything except air conditioning while I grew up without it. It wasn't common until the early 1960s when I was in my twenties. Did that help acclimate me to heat? Maybe. But the notion falls apart when I think of the volunteers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of them are in their late teens and early twenties. So they were part of the air-conditioning generation, too, and they aren't getting much, or any, of it over there. Maybe Mr. B. just has to toughen up by growing up. I hope so. Father worries.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Baby Barry and Mac apparently can't agree on the formats for more than a few "debates," as contrived as the "debates" have been in the past and likely will continue to be. Baby Barry's got the money and, so far, the polls and so he has no reason to give Mac anything. Can't blame him for that. As for Mac, well, some of the Seablogger's pessimism is starting to rub off on me. Mac the moderate better get off it and start explaining why he champions the Iraq campaign and why the rest of us better suck it up, too. There are good arguments, but he needs to make them and not try to duck the whole thing. Starting here, where even the Dem thinktankers agree, would be a good idea.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, and the ISF, Al Q and the Shiite militias are on the run, and even the MSM is noticing.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"The U.S. military has more combat aircraft and pilots than infantry squads," Bing West in 2005's No True Glory.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You can't blame him. He might be forced to change his pullout plans. His base wouldn't like that a bit.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Barry's crowd has some retrenching to do. They've long been throwing around the sixty-percent-oppose-the-Iraq-campaign poll figure as a justification for their cut-and-run views. But some recent polling shows a sharp rise to fifty-three percent saying the U.S. will succeed in reaching its goals in Iraq. Even CBS admits this could "alter the dynamics of races up and down the ballot." I've never been a fan of polling, which is hampered as never before by changes in the way Americans use their phones. The polls were predicting Kerry would beat Bush right up until election day 2004. But if you live by the polls, Dems, you gotta die by them, too.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fatso Michael Moore, the unethical cretin who ripped off a classic science fiction novel for the title of his fictional political screed on President Bush, is ripping off Michael Yon's classic Iraq photo for Moore's latest pathetic whatever. Yon's lawyer is on the case. Go get 'em!

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Afterall, he's getting away with murder in Iraq, and the Bush administration and Congress ain't doing nothin', while Barry talks about a sit-down to understand Mahmoud's pain.

UPDATE: So, when Bush does the only thing he ever does about this matter, i.e. talk, he manages to enrage Barry, Hilarity, Nancy, etc. For why? Because they won't do anything, either, and don't like to be reminded. Such unanimity.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was waiting for a good moment to buy Michael Yon's book about Iraq, and Michael Totten's revealing review is the one. The fact that the book is already in its second printing and currently No. 167 on Amazon's bestseller list also is encouraging.

MORE: Cobb has an interesting take on it, from quotes from Yon's changed-his-mind-on-Iraq publisher, to Cobb's angry responses to some commenters. As he says: lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good news from the recruiters: "All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The (in)famous banner, subject of so many lies (which some of the commenters here repeat) and MSM sneers since 2004, was created for and addressed to the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln only, according to one who was there. Of course if "CVN 72" had been added to it in the first place, there'd have been no confusion possible.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

President Bush is basically a nice guy, which he proved more than once when he was governor of Texas. Which, of course, is way too nice for the rude, undereducated, overmedicated slugs of the MSM. So it's always a pleasure to see it when he cuts loose on a supercilious one with both barrels.

Via The Fat Guy

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time magazine once again proves why I was wise to stop subscribing to and reading it years ago.

Via Instapundit 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Excellant way to show support for the troops. Back a new G.I. Bill to send them all to college.

UPDATE:  It's set for a May 8 vote in Congress. But there's already concern the Dems will try to kill it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I remember the pathetic MSM speculation about how the Army transportation reservist's reported capture four years ago might have been made to cover up his desertion to get away from the war which the media still works so hard to undermine. The homecoming for Maupin, with its miles of yellow ribbon, was impressive, as was the memorial service at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. It was, obviously, not just for him alone, but for all the ones who gave all.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bill Roggio, embed blogger/journalist in Iraq, for instance: Fair play? From the NYTimes? You've got to be kidding.

Via Instapundit 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While the troops in Iraq edge ever nearer to a lasting victory, the squabbling egotists in Congress fight over the almost-lost  war of 2004-2006. Longtime embed journalist Michael Yon, whose new book on Iraq is available, calls for more troops, not fewer, to enhance our gains for the first Arab-world democracy and keep them working. Afterall, if we're really going to be there for a hundred years, we should do it right.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Whatever Nancy Pelosi intended to stop the general from saying, it doesn't seem to have worked. He poked Iran in the eye several times. Will we do anything more? Remains to be seen, I suppose. It all certainly sounds as complicated as Viet Nam ever was, though, obviously, with more potential immediate impact on our daily lives, and not nearly as out-of-control. Hope and change, it seems, are already in progress--without, of course, Barry and his dictator-loving advisors and their back-to-the-Saddam-era intentions.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I got mine. Help this pro-troops documentary look at the Army and Marine Corps in the Iraq campaign beat the anti-war movie sales. Considering how the anti-war movies bombed, so to speak, that shouldn't be too hard.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mercy. And I thought the NYTimes was merely opposed to the Iraq campaign out of a dislike for President Bush. Now I learn, thanks to Pajamas Media, that they were on the other side all along. Pathetic.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, as the famous relativist's line goes. In this case the one man speaking of Saman Kareem Ahmad is U.S. Army General David Petraeus, and the other "man," so to speak, are the incompetent bureaucrats of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Michael Totten explains.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Iraqi endgame is in sight. Insightful, non-biased reporting from freelance correspondent Michael Yon:

"If there is an increase in casualties here as we go into the summer of 2008, it is because our people and the Iraqi forces are closing in. We have seen just how deadly al Qaeda can be. This enemy is desperate. They know they are losing."

Via Fresh Bilge 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, at least they titled it honestly, in the sense that the title, Bush's War, is so hamhandedly political that you know from the get-go just what the nabobs of the misnamed Public Broadcasting System are up to. But the ads, whose footnote is "the complete saga," are a bald lie:

"Frontline didn’t manage to find any time at all to mention the name of the most significant Iraq commander of all, Gen. David Petraeus. You could view all four and a half hours of this series and remain innocent of any knowledge of the dramatic turning of the tribes in Anbar that began in late 2006, as the Sunnis woke up to their own interest. Of the hard-fought, highly successful campaigns of 2007 to run al-Qaeda out of Baghdad, Diyala, the southern 'Triangle of Death,' not a peep. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr has been intimidated into maintaining his truce, and that his forces are divided, nothing."

In other words, the take-home thought of the two-part series that concludes tonight will be that we're losing. Or, rather, that the hated Bush is losing. What Lefty crep. And to think that our tax money went to pay for this one-sided Democrat Party poop. Honest journalism went down the toilet years ago. Thank goodness for the Internet. Better to know before wasting four hours of your life on stale tripe.

You'd be so much better off, and certainly know more, to visit and subscribe to a true Iraq journalist with no axe to grind--and he doesn't mix metaphors the way I do, and he spellz better.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I confess that it makes me a little nervous to hear President Bush predict that the Iraq campaign will end in a victory. (The BBC has him already proclaiming victory, but, as we know, they are often fact-challenged.) The Dems, of course, already portray it as a defeat. Neither view seems entirely accurate. It certainly is the gentlest war this country has ever been in--fewest friendly, enemy and bystander casualties--despite lasting five years so far. I would expect it to take a lot longer, especially since we have tolerated, instead of eradicating, enemy sanctuaries in Iran and Syria. But even the media, when it is honest about it, knows the Iraqi people want us there. And it could very well turn out to be better for us, in the long run, even than bringing peace to Germany and Japan. Because, after all, Iraq's is the region where we get much of our oil, and whatever we may think of the politics of oil, our economy and our lives depend utterly upon it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite all the fancy, tax-raising promises of this or that by the Dems, the presidential race will be a referendum on the war, particularly the Iraq campaign for which the Lefty Obama-rama already has plans:

“'Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq,' says a statement on the senator’s Web site. 'He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.'”

As Michael Totten says, the hedge at the end only means he'll eschew counterinsurgency for a return to smart bombs and civilian casualties. This is why I think the Dems are headed for defeat. The lefties want to cut and run, they always have. But I'm betting no one else does. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Republic nominee-to-be John McCain says he relies on Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from my birth state of South Carolina, to keep him informed on Iraq. If, as some are speculating, McCain chooses lawyer Graham to run as his VP, Graham's new employer, the Air Force, will have to send him home again. Shouldn't be a problem, of course.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remains to be seen whether it'll be enough, but Army Iraq veteran LTC Greg Gadson, who played football at West Point, has been an inspiration to the New York Giants. We can expect he'll be on their sidelines at the Super Bowl later today and remember to look for him.

Thanks to rare regular reader Anna for the link.

UPDATE:  I guess Gadson was good enough, because they won it all in the final minute, 17-14. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Artist John Cox, of Cox & Forkum fame, brings the war on Islamic facism to the world of comic books. Matamoros is not Captain America, fortunately, but it's just as accessible. Maybe more so. I've ordered my copy. Matamoros, by the way, is Spanish for Moor-slayer.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I confess I didn't pay much attention to the NYTimes' latest smear on combat veterans--implying without context (statistical or otherwise) that the sometimes dubious violent crimes of 121 returned Afghanistan and Iraq veterans are connected to their combat experiences. The Democrat house organ helped invent the slur on Vietnam combat veterans as "ticking time bombs," making us the forerunners of the actual Muslim suicide bomber. But Ralph Peters doesn't overlook such things, even if they aren't news. In "The New Lepers," he describes the latest smear as "an artful example of hate-speech disguised as a public service."

Via Instapundit 

MORE: Beware the brutal veteran journalist, with actual incidents. Humor from Iowahawk. You might need to worry, because a lot of them are going to be laid off in the near future.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thirty-four Al Q boys have bought the farm in a major U.S. operation southeast of Baghdad, ably reported by Bill Roggio's Long War Journal--with gunsight video.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Amazing computer animation of the structural-failure accident that has forced the grounding of many F-15 Strike Eagles. You can argue about how many air-superiority fighters are needed nowadays, but apparently not about the longeron problem afflicting some of these 25-year-old aircraft.

MORE: The Air Force blames manufacturer McDonnell Douglas's work in the 1970s. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The surge is obviously working. You can tell because Iraq is no longer front page news very often, and most of the pols have stopped yammering about pulling out. But good Americans are still dying there, including this 37-year-old, Big Red One Iraqi army advisor and milblogger from Colorado Springs. Oddly enough, he left behind his own final post and this sayonara:

"I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact."

Via Instapundit

MORE: A friend who served with Olmsted at Fort Carson, CO, remembers him in this touching  tribute. And word is finally trickling out about how AJO died: a sniper got him while he was trying to talk some insurgents into surrendering.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to help a troop in Iraq or Afghanistan call home? Here's where to send your old phone to aid the call--by a superior service originated by a Massachusettes 13-year-old and her 12-year-old brother.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They're finally in theatre. Hope they fix that forward-looking gun problem, in case they need it. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I always liked the idea of Iraq as flypaper for the bad guys. As American casualties rose, the notion fell out of favor for discussion except by critics of the effort. Maybe, too soon.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The booms that won't be booming:

"Yesterday a joint US-Iraqi force with help from local anti-al-Qaeda awakening fighters in the Adhamiyah district in northeastern Baghdad found and disarmed more than 20 vehicles rigged as VBIEDs in a parking lot."

Talk about progress in the Iraq campaign. Wow.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hollywood's latest crop of anti-American war flicks are tanking at the box office, which AFP blames on war weariness, but the comments beneath the piece at Breitbart.com tell a different story which most veterans will appreciate this Veterans Day weekend: Hollyweird finally, deservedly, is a victim of itself.

Via LGF 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to the MSM all they do is crash. In fact, the new MV-22 Osprey Tiltrotor is part of the USMC's surge in Iraq. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is the GPS-guided artillery round that's putting the cannon cockers out of business. In Iraq and Afghanistan they're already being handed rifles and turned into infantry. Because with Excalibur, you don't need a barrage of shells to be sure you have eliminated a target. One is all that's necessary. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On my second visit to Austin's VA Health Clinic I was impressed by everything: the friendly people, the clean facilities, the new equipment. Got a flu shot from a tech with a no-pain technique. The doc I was assigned to wanted to run me through the normal blood work, but I pointed out I was scheduled for the full deal, including EKG and X-Rays, Dec. 11 in Temple for the Agent Orange Registry. Did he want to duplicate it? Fine with me. He didn't. I especially liked the ambience that everyone's on the same page. I saw why my late father-in-law, a Navy retiree, preferred VA hospitals to private ones. PTSD questions in the med exam surprised me. I think they're more for new veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq than Vietnam after so many years. Nevertheless. Nightmares? Check. Fear of loud noises? Nope. Avoid situations reminding of combat? Nope. Feelings of detachment from others? That one surprised me. I thought it over and said I would have to answer yes. Wondering now what the Temple exam will uncover in December.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This tale of an urban observation post in Iraq that suddenly turned deadly shows that Al Q can be pretty observant too.

Via American Power 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teflon Don on the skill hardly anybody knew was pursued in Iraq, until now, if they read him and the WaPo. The Buffalo finds and blows them, safely as can be done.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The MSM may not be willing to admit the turnaround in Iraq, but Osama--or his audio double in his latest recording--is:

"Al Qaeda is under a lot of pressure of late. In addition to defeat in Iraq, the organization is being battered in North Africa, South East Asia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bin Laden has not got any good news to talk about..."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bobby Caina Calvan is famous now, at least in the blogosphere, for being a jerk in a war zone. I read his post, saved here after his California newspaper took it down. I sympathized with him, to an extent, though I reserved most of it for the soldier he hassled. And I have to agree that Bobby's too arrogant for his own, or anyone else's good. Replace this smartass boy with a man, ASAP.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scott Beauchamp, the Hemingway-wannabee soldier who was caught slandering his comrades in the pages of The New Republic, is making up for it, according to independent reporter Michael Yon:

"...to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but (his battalion commander) LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it."

Good for him. The whole report, along with good photographs, though none of SB, is worth the read.

Via Patterico

UPDATE: Peggy Noonan: TNR's "report" was a generational thing. Raised on the movies, 'sted of real life. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Global Hawk UAV recently returned from Iraq under its own power. Not transported via C5 or C17. Controlled by a pilot, via satellite, from Edwards AFB, CA, where the robot is shown in its hanger.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors." --Independent journalist Michael Yon's latest.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

His father and mother (who live in San Antonio), and his fiance (re-deploying to Iraq as a medevac pilot)--are all Army. He left behind a web site, and a lot of friends.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just like the Dems, make a non-veteran chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Like he'd know a lot about it. You bet. Not that the Dems have a lot of veterans, you understand. Sure has a big smile for a guy who pushes airport employees around.

Via Mudville Gazette

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't get this prosecution of a Virginia reserve Army lieutenant colonel, Saddam's old jailer, who faces life in prison at Leavenworth for aiding the enemy: i.e. buying the dictator (Ted Koppel's onetime interlocutor) some cigars to smoke, and some hair dye for his vanity, before his neck was stretched by his betters. The colonel is also alleged to have been indiscrete with a female Iraqi interpreter and to have let "top detainees" use a cell phone, etc. Puny stuff for such a grandiose charge and maximum sentence. It seems the Army can still be as petty as it was in the 1960s. But it's probable there's something unspoken going on here, which we just may be lucky enough to find out about before it's over.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like even the defendant thought he did wrong, though he was acquitted of aid-to-the-enemy. He was convicted of unauthorized possession of classified documents, conduct unbecoming and failure to obey an order. Sentenced to two years, and dismissed from the service after 28 years. But, hopefully, an early parole. A strange case I'd still like to see explained.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hurricane Katrina supposedly was the clincher in the notion that global warming is caused by nefarious human greed. But, two years later and with nothing like it to have come again, the most famous hurricane-forecasting meteorologist, William Grey, blames the salt content of the oceans. He says Al Gore and the Nobel peace prize committee are doing a disservice to humanity for saying otherwise. Grey believes the climate will swing to global cooling soon enough. It's been said--I forget by who--that Gore et al are only pushing this phony apocalypse to give the Dems something to run on since, as much as they dislike Bush's Iraq policy, they know in their hearts that they very likely would have been forced by events to do exactly the same thing--and, for the good of the country, they'd better not interfere with it too much.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (31)

Those bad boyz just can't get any rest in Iraq. The USAF F-16s are always dropping by without notice.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Former Marine, winner of the Navy Cross and author Marco Martinez is the sort of troop you're not likely to meet in the MSM. He isn't bitter, homeless or haunted. He felt honored to fight in Iraq.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The country is whole. It has embraced the ballot box. It has created a fair and popular constitution. It has avoided all-out civil war. It has not been taken over by Iran. It has put an end to Kurdish and marsh Arab genocide, and anti-Shia apartheid. It has rejected mass revenge against the Sunnis. As shown in the great national votes of 2005 and the noisy celebrations of the Iraq football team's success in July, Iraq survived the Saddam Hussein era with a sense of national unity..."

A hopeful, longish look at Iraq, well beyond the political squabbling in Washington, and from a center-left magazine, no less. For that reason, alone, it is well worth the read. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why we couldn't simply replicate the Afghanistan/Taliban approach in democratizing Iraq:

"It is not enough to persuade a Muslim population to reject al Qaeda's ideology and practice. Someone must also be willing and able to protect that population against the terrorists they had been harboring, something that special forces and long-range missiles alone can't do."

Read it all. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Six years after 9/11, the Dictator's Club (also called the UN) still doesn't even know how to define it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"The Bush Presidency is running out of time to act if it wants to stop Iran from gaining a bomb. With GIs fighting and dying in Iraq, Mr. Bush also owes it to them not to allow enemy sanctuaries or weapons pipelines from Iran. If the President believes half of what he and his Administration have said about Iran's behavior, he has an obligation to do whatever it takes to stop it."

Less talk and more action would be a good idea, both for the present and for the future. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Hollywood acting as a collective voice stakes out an anti-victory position on the current war in Iraq, continuing its deplorable 40-year streak of working against the United States' strategic objectives at a time of war. Congratulations to every heroic studio exec and heroin-addled reality star for being ahead of -- and helping to move -- the polls."

Read it all. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The plot thickens. Seeming success in Iraq breeds efforts to undermine it. Leftist MoveOn, for instance, didn't invent the slur "betrayus" for Gen. Petraeus that they used in their execrable ad in the NYTImes. They got it from some of his old enemies within the military, who had long used it as a nickname for him, say the usual anonymous sources. Chief among those antagonists is his boss at CENTCOM, Admiral William Fallon. As VHD might say, Gen. Sherman likewise was despised by more than a few generals in the Union army. Only his boss, Gen. Grant, held them at bay while Sherman led his devastating march through the South. P.'s boss does not back him, but President Bush does. Will it be enough?

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anonymous ones, that is. I don't know what to make of it when little media and big media square off with their anonymous sources, and new media picks up little media's charges without scrutiny. Big media, of course, uses anonymous sources all the time. This time the small, conservative American Spectator magazine is claiming two unidentified sources to support its assertion that the NYTimes gave the leftist MoveOn group special treatment in its purchase of a full-page display ad calling Gen. Patraeus a "Betray Us" traitor. The newspaper denies it. The first anonymous AS source, characterized as "a MoveOn organizer," says the group got a $100,000 discount for the ad. The second unidentified source, called "a former NYTimes ad staffer," says a coalition of conservative Pro-Life groups were turned away for any ad, let alone a discounted one. The magazine also adds, without any attribution, that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were similarly turned away before the 2004 presidential election. Instapundit and other conservative blogs have picked up the Spectator's charges without qualification, though Instapundit did insert the word "apparently" in its item about it. The conservative NYPost picks up the story, but also relies on anonymous sources. What is the truth? Your guess is as good as mine. To me, the use of anonymous sources makes it hard to sort it out, whichever media claims to have it.

MORE: However much MoveOn paid, Fred says the ad was reprehensible. Of course it was.

UPDATE: Rudy raised a big enough stink about the ad that he's getting the same rate to run his own defending Petraeus. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the Marines, it's Military Occupational Speciality 0311. In the Army, it's MOS 11 Bravo. Doesn't matter what you call it, it's still the infantry. And, though the ancient Greeks used men of all ages in the phalanx, theirs was a different kind of war. Nowadays, it is, as W. Thomas Smith Jr. says, young man's work.

Via OpFor. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was ambivalent about President Bush's recent invocation of the Vietnam post-war catastrophe (re-education camps, thousands escaping in rickety boats, piles of corpses in next-door Cambodia) as the definitive example of what could happen if we similarly slam the door on Iraq as the Dems want to do. But the Seablogger, linking to a recalcitrant Christopher Hitchens and a matter-of-fact Mark Steyn, reminds me that the Dems feel free to flee because they have never admitted to any connection between their anti-Vietnam war effort and the horrors that followed. They would just turn their other blind eye to Iraq.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the big media, and their sycophantic imitators, it's all about the narrative, the "quagmire" or "the surge isn't working." For a few, it's lately become rather astoundingly flipped to "the surge is working." There's still scant middle ground in their reporting from Iraq. Not so with independent journalists like Michael Totten. With them there's always room for bewilderment. Especially when it comes to Mookie Sadr, the Shia puppet of Iran, leader of Iraq's branch of Hezbollah, whom we still refuse to arrest, deport, kill, etc. Instead, surge or no surge, the vicious little neo-Saddam killer goes on and on.

UPDATE: Uncle Jimbo at BlackFive says Mookie's recent declaration of a hudna is a stall. Of course it is. He says letting Mookie live was one of the biggest mistakes of the Iraq campaign. Right again.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I can't find a link for it, but the September issue of AUSA News (The Association of the United States Army) has an article about the service's May and June shortfalls in recruiting, something they will certainly will make up for July, August and September from new high school and college graduates. The news therein that I wanted to mention was the cheery note that more than 900,000 Americans have volunteered to serve in the Army since 9/11, and more than 700,000 soldiers have re-enlisted. Retention, indeed, remains high despite the pressure of multiple deployments: 101 percent of the goal for the active Army, 119 percent for the Army Reserve, and 107 percent for the Army National Guard.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If this is true, and knowing the recent machinations of the Associated Press, it's hard to tell...

"Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol."

...then it is a comment on the poor planning of the bullet industry, considering that the current military campaigns are puny compared to previous wars.

UPDATE  Scott, at The Fat Guy, thinks its the cops' fault. They're wasting ammo.

MORE: Ha! The AP story is bogus. More MSM anti-war narrative bull. Now why am I not surprised? But it also seems Scott came closer to the truth, i.e. the militarization of our domestic police forces is unnecessarily running up the ammo bill.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This and Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki's latest suckup to the mad mullahs are prime reasons to air strike them, but Robert Haddick at Westhawk doubts we'll do it because, in the final analysis, it wouldn't be permanently effective. Instead he foresees non-state terrorist groups going after Iran to stop their nuke program for their own reasons. Sunnis, I suppose. Al-Q biting the hands feeding it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" admits he erred (or, as Power Line says, the actual word is lied) about one of his three controversial reports. The others he's apparently sticking to, and TNR claims (not very convincingly) to have anonymous sources corroborating them. Ah, those everpresent anonymous sources the MSM loves so much. So handy. His chain of command, meanwhile, says they can find no proof of the other two incidents, either. No word yet on Beauchamp's fate. Ah, the wages of ambition.

UPDATE  The Army makes it official. They can find no evidence, etc., for the truth of any of it. TNR is sticking to its anonymous sources. Standoff, I guess you could say, except that Mr. Beauchamp is sans laptop and cellphone and, henceforth, is incommunicado. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teflon Don has a short, succinct explanation for why there's so much difficulty in keeping the electricity on, four years into the Iraq campaign, even for soldiers who patrol all the time, except for the afternoon hours when they try to sleep in the unalleviated heat.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Totten brings his unique eye to reporting from the center of the surge:

"The 82nd Airborne Division is famous for being ready to roll within 24 hours of call up, so they were sent first. The surge started with these guys. Its progress here is therefore more measurable than it is anywhere else."

I especially like these lines from an earlier report, the sort thing you would never see in the MSM because it diminishes the favored narrative, not to mention the club:

"You’d think explosions and gunfire define Iraq if you look at this country from far away on the news. They do not. The media is a total distortion machine. Certain areas are still extremely violent, but the country as a whole is defined by heat, not war, at least in the summer."

Start here, then click on Home Page and start from the top. Then find the link to give him some money, so this stuff keeps coming.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sound familiar? Try "the damaged Vietnam veteran." Hollywood is so predictably awful these days. The Iraq version will be the theme of the newest Hollywood anti-war movie, "Stop Loss," according to the Drudge Report. Well, really, what can you expect from the land of a thousand cokeheads and Scientologists? Patriotism? Belief in the country? Not hardly. Though, as Drudge points out, their predecessors had the courtesy to wait until World War II and the Vietnam war were over before slandering their veterans. Some courtesy. Cretins.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I keep reading that Iraq, variously, is either as big as Texas, twice as big, or half again as big. That didn't seem right, so I searched the Web. That didn't help much as I kept running into similar comparisons--all to the effect that Iraq is bigger. Finally, I found the National Georgraphic's site with a square mileage comparison: Iraq, with about 168,000 square miles, is 62 percent the size of Texas, with 268,000 square miles. That's more like it. Of course, much of Iraq is desert. But, then, so is much of Texas.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When your aim in journalism is to shock, you run the risk of going too far, becoming tempted to make things up to fit your narrative theme, like a latter-day Chuck Tatum massaging the details of the "grieving widow" device in Billy Wilder's cult classic "Ace In The Hole." Cynicism and ambition run amuck. So it seems to be with Scott Thomas, the pseudonym of an alleged private whose "Baghdad Diarist," for the credulous liberals of The New Republic, is attracting the attention of a growing number of milbloggers--like Matt Sanchez--who are hot on his trail.

"His latest entries are making the rounds and, have raised a lot of doubts," Sanchez writes. "Those who have served in Baghdad are questioning how true these stories are...I don't want to know who this guy is, I just want to fact check his stories."

Shockers like a baby's skull some Neanderthal supposedly digs up and uses for a crown under his Kevlar helmet; the bored Bradley driver who goes out of his way to run over a dog; and the insensitive jerks who mock a disfigured woman in a Camp Falcon mess hall, where Sanchez, too, just happens to dine. So far the Bradley tale is getting the most workout, here in The Weekly Standard, where Bradley veterans explain how they know it's fiction. Tatum (Kirk Douglas in the 1951 film) would do anything for fame. Thomas seems to be following his lead, and the military-hating libs are, naturally enough, sucking it up. As for TNR, well, like the minor league newspaper editor in "Ace In The Hole," they're not looking too close at their good thing.

UPDATE The flak (information officer) at FOB Falcon weighs in, shooting down the baby skull item, and questioning the ones about the disfigured woman and the Bradley.

MORE Then the magazine's editor says it is investigating the accuracy of the articles.

STILL MORE The chickens are coming home to roost as the 1st SGT in the Diarist's unit says he "has other underlying issues" and his writings are "fairy tales." No surprise there. And, finally, Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette sums it all up.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A remark, said a Hillarity mouthpiece, which was "outrageous and dangerous." Dangerous? Sure, just ask Vince Foster. Oh, wait.  

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Gen. David Petraeus, commanding general of the Multi-National Force -- Iraq, had recognized a soldier memorialized at Fort Bliss on Wednesday for excellence. Another was remembered as acting with a heartfelt kindness that convinced suspicious and war-weary Iraqi residents to support coalition forces."

There was laughter at the memorial, as well as grief, for CPL Jeremiah D. Costello, SPC Joseph P. Kenny, CPL Keith V. Nepsa, and PFC Raymond N. Spencer. Worth a read to see why. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Iraqi women and children using plastic pipe to bang on streetlamps: another small sign the tide may be turning at last.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some good news from the war is that, thanks to improvements in medical technology, disabled soldiers and Marines are no longer necessarily being forced to retire:

"One of the better-known examples is Army Capt. David Rozelle. After losing his foot and part of his leg to an anti-tank mine in Iraq, Rozelle not only stayed on active duty; he became the first amputee to return to combat as commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s Headquarters and Headquarters Troop."

Brings to mind a 19th century saying of the French Foreign Legion, that its senior officers and NCOs were characterized by "much wood," meaning the wooden limbs then used to replace the flesh they had lost in battle. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a way, when you read the AP piece which Crittenden has posted, it merely reflects what Herbert Meyer calls the growing ascendency of "Perception Two: We're Reaping What We Sowed," in regards to 9/11. I have to admit that President Bush, despite admirable attacks to dispose of the Taliban and Saddam, has failed to do the obvious: put the US on a war footing, impose some sort of draft, decapitate Iran and Syria and help the Israelis dismantle Hezbollah and Hamas. How Bush expects Gen. Petraeus to succeed in Iraq, without either closing their borders or hitting the insurgents' suppliers in Iran and Syria, is beyond me. As for Petraeus, he admits, in the Army Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency which he authored (excerpts available here in PDF), that insurgencies are rarely beaten and the only time the US has done it was in the Phillipines a hundred years ago. Moreover, he says wars against insurgencies take nine or ten years to win. Meyer sees little chance of that sort of committment, after more than four years in Iraq. Even Victor Davis Hanson, who has written that democracies rarely support wars of more than a few years, has come around to the view that we'll retreat from Iraq. Then what? Meyer says we'll need a bigger repeat of 9/11 to finally go all out. Sure looks that way.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rudy's broken-windows approach to NYC law enforcement has an Iraq corollary. Badger Six explains.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Somebody certainly should, as they have strayed so far afield from their old, just-the-facts days.

"All of which means, so far, the Democratic-controlled Congress is not only wasting everyone’s time, but again undermining U.S. troops in the field and aiding the enemy with pointless gestures, while the AP distorts the picture through skewed presentation."

You can't make this stuff up. Jules Crittenden doesn't have to. He just takes it off the wire.

Via Instapundit. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Yon, reporting on the latest US discoveries in Baqubah, where troops are bringing security to the populace:

"The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about eleven years old. As Lt. David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, 'What did he say?' Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family."

I wonder why the retreaters in Congress think this sort of thing will stop if we withdraw. How can they not care? David Kilcullen, in the Small Wars Journal, reports on what we're up to in the surge.

UPDATE  Some of Wretchard's commenters think the official was telling an old lie, but W. brings out family stories of Japanese atrocities in the Phillipines in WW2. Meanwhile, the BBC finds Petraeus's moves hopeful, if possibly too late. If so, I think we can blame the Pentagon.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Big E, that is, which left Norfolk on Friday bound for the Med and Persian Gulf region:

"This is Enterprise's second deployment within the past 14 months.  Big E returned from its most recent  deployment Nov. 18."

Finally, Debka can truthfully say the Enterprise's Carrier Strike Group 12 is speeding towards the Middle East. What exactly they will do there, along with two other carrier strike groups already there, is anybody's guess. Hit Iran? Remains to be seen. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The AK-47 assualt rifle celebrated its 60th birthday Friday, and Lt Col P at Op-For notes the fact, while dissing the technology. Reliable? Check. Simple? The same. Accurate? Not hardly. But, then, on full auto, hosing the opposition, who could tell? And that's what peasants do. They ain't target shooters.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Badger Six presents an Army Commendation Medal, with V for valor, to a young medic, SGT Jesse Kelsch. I didn't know you could get a V with an ARCOM. Shows how much I know, I guess.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"It's dusty, around 115-120 degrees, and generally not as nice as Idaho, Oregon, and Alaska. Now, of course, I'm back in Iraq, where we have all of that and bullets, too."

But he had fun on home leave in the aforementioned places, cooking, attending a wedding and doing a little target shooting. Pix and words here. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“'They (the Iraqis) have their own system and we are working within that system with Austin leveraging their experience and processes. There are things inherent in government concepts that just work,' he said, explaining that there are models in place within the realm of civics that are essential to the running of any government."

I'm not sure I'd call Austin's a city government that works, much less a model, considering its perpetual problems: the police periodically shooting minorities to death, the uneven, pot-holed roads that never seem to be repaired, the two months it took us to get a replacement garbage can, despite repeated pleas, and the interminable council meetings due to all the protests of this or that. Doesn't Iraq have enough problems already?

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Staff Sergeant Malone, of Wills Point, Texas, a small town east of Dallas, "was G.I. from a very young age. His grandmother, Monah Malone, said he talked about joining the military after watching 'Top Gun' as a boy. He picked a specific branch - the army - in seventh grade and followed through on his dream after finishing high school."

Almost the whole town, a place known for its wild roses, turned out for his memorial service.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in Iraq from home leave, Teflon Don counts the ways combat has changed him:

"I own the ground I walk on, and you'll have to go through me if you want to take it. I've made it through nine months in what was once called the 'triangle of death'; that area of Iraq that last year saw nearly thirty percent of those serving within it earn the Purple Heart. I've learned, as I think most combat soldiers do, to truly 'not sweat the small stuff'. If a situation doesn't threaten death or injury, I can't trouble myself to care too much about it."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Embeded Iraq correspondent Michael Yon finds more to meet the eye than war. Birdwatching:

"We did not see the attack, but a mushroom cloud billowed in the background as I was rushing to photograph a beautiful bee-catcher. (Iraq has [a] fascinating array of birds, and when this war is over, I’m coming back with a long lens and a tripod.)"

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I cringe everytime I hear about another bunch of American soldiers or Marines getting wiped out by an IED exploding near their vehicle on patrol.

"Roadside bombs in Iraq now cause over 70 percent of the U.S. casualties. Moreover, most of the bomb casualties  now are combat troops..."

Why are they driving, I wonder? Have they forgotten how to walk?

Via Instapundit 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Big Army offensives, as Robert Kaplan more or less said in his enlightening GWOT book "Imperial Grunts," are the antithesis of good counterinsurgency. So you have to wonder what's up with "The Battle of Iraq - 2007", as Bill Roggio headlines his command-level updating post on it. Search and destroy was a big waste of time and lives in Vietnam. This one is billed as cleaning out "safe havens."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Passionate reporting from Michael Yon--who is throwing in his lot with Gen. Petraeus--who says a big US offensive is underway in Iraq, one that is so far largely ignored back home. "It's like the Wild West out there," one commenter quotes her infantryman brother who is moving in with the Stryker Brigade.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wretchard says you can tell a lot about what's going on with the big offensive in Iraq just by glancing down the long list of Multi-National Force-Iraq press releases and their titles, a lot more than usual.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)

Teflon Don is blogging his home leave. He seems to have arrived, but mentions this stop in Dallas:

"After another long stretch in the plane, we landed in Dallas. The people in Dallas are great--my first glimpse of America included a fire truck spraying an arc of water over the plane to welcome us home. Inside, the terminal was almost bare, but there was a still a small crowd that went to the airport at 6 a.m. to greet us."

Some veterans groups, particularly Vietnam veterans, organize these welcomes. Glad to see they're still doing them at DFW. I guess the firetrucks were organized by the airport. "No one was rude," he writes, as if he expected some might be.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another good photo essay by Michael Yon on the Brits patrolling in Southern Iraq:

"...life is simple. Sand. Wind. Sand. More wind."

Always worth a look.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

JD Allen in Brazoria has another interesting riff, this one on buffalos and Hollywood, with bulls and cows mixed in and around there. This is the sort of buffalo I was preoccupied with earlier, an IED hunter, in a link to something Teflon Don was describing. But JD's is the more elemental, mythic American Great Plains animal you have heard of. Speedy devil.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once upon a time, Vietnam veterans were ticking bombs just waiting for the time to go off. Now it's Iraq veterans turn. The problem here, I rather think, is journalism's. Too many anti-warriors and too few reserve, guard or veteran soldiers in the newsroom.

Via Best of the Web Today 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of better milblogs in Iraq that hasn't shut down, courtesy of Teflon Don:

"The last time we recovered the beast was just after we started working in Falluja- EOD had set up a controlled detonation of an IED, and assured the BUFFALO crew that they were far enough away to be clear of the blast. Long story short, they weren't, and we had to tow it back and replace three tires before heading back out to restart the mission. Ironically, the one time the BUFFALO was seriously damaged by an IED, we managed to clank all the way home before the shrapnel rattling in the cylinders destroyed the engine."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Israeli historian Michael Oren recommends five books, the oldest published in 1787, the latest in 1993, to understand the American-Arab encounter, from romance such as "The Sheik of Araby," to the Arabists who still are powerful in the State Department, until "9/11, the day the fantasy died."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Poignant slide show memorial to US Marine CPL Jason Dunham, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in Iraq. More on him here.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Memorial Day is supposed to be about honoring the war dead, and passing the torch. It's not supposed to be just another chance to whack Bush over Iraq, while leaving Afghanistan unmentioned because you can't use that favored MSM phrase "...this unpopular war" with Afghanistan. The Memorial Day observance, which began in and after the American Civil War, is supposed to about the war dead, not the living combatants nor veterans. And not breaking faith is, today, an often forgotten part of it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Omar at Iraq the Model will keep an eye on Iraqi news media tomorrow when US and Iranian ambassadors are scheduled to meet for a chat:

"I can't see the slightest hint to concessions from either side so I strongly think that tomorrow's meeting will be only about America and Iran telling each other what they want. The face to face part is the only difference."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The real stuff, the way al Q does it. Not a pretty sight. No lace women's panties on the heads here.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another week, another transfer of a province's security to Iraqi troops. But even though reporters attend the ceremony, you have to read deep into their pieces to find mention of it, says embed Michael Yon.

"The transfer of authority did not even make the cut for news for most US publications and networks. Of those which included the story in their news reports, most mentioned it only as part of an overall report about the day’s activities in Iraq. Many of those included it in reports which were headlined or sandwiched with bad news about the violence in other parts of Iraq."

No wonder Americans are so disenchanted with the campaign. It's all blood all the time. Pathetic. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bob Kerry, former Democrat senator from Nebraska, sees the light:

"The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically 'yes.'"

That takes the shine off the idea of withdrawal any time soon.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone says al Anbar is quieting down these days, as the natives battle Al Q. Iraq the Model elucidates:

"The other pleasing part of the news is that the council prefers handing detainees over to the authorities so the law can take its course instead of assassinations and unsanctioned killing and this is essential for rule of law to take root."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Teflon Don reports on the effects of a thunderstorm. Notice his blog is now part of Pajamas Media:

"Somewhere to the south, a bolt of lightning hit the power grid, and the horizon light up with the turquoise strobes of exploding transformers. Distant lights began to wink out and disappear- the oncoming tide of blackness washed ever closer as transformers continued to light up the sky. The blue light was joined by the steadily flashing golden pink glow of a downed power line. As we continued to roll towards Camp Falluja, we passed the power line still sparking and glowing on top of a concertina fence. The air smelled sharply of ozone- it also smelt cleaner than it has in weeks."

He doesn't like what the new PJ ads do to his format. They are jarring. Hope it pays well. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They'll be dropping their AK-47s in favor of the American automatic rifle. Badger Six says that's good.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

LTC Steven Miska, infantry commander of Task Force Justice, sees a need for us in Iraq for seven more years, which he thinks would be a bargain:

"If our government decides to prematurely pull out, I would fail to reach both goals, and my son and his generation may find themselves embroiled in something far worse than what we experience now—all because my generation couldn’t get the job done."

In which case, Vietnam veterans wouldn't be the only ones criticized for failing to win a war. 

Via Instapundit and Max Boot in Commentary Magazine. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If/when we leave Iraq in large numbers, the so-called chaos and civil war could be short-lived, indeed:

"...with U.S. troops gone, the Iraqi security forces will be inclined to wage war the traditional way. That means massive use of firepower against civilians in any neighborhood where the Sunni Arab terrorists show up, or are found. In Syria, the 1982 uprising by Islamic radicals was put down, in part, by the destruction of the town of Hamat, and the massacre of over 10,000 civilians there."

Meanwhile, confusion continues, with a British think-tank saying Iraq is near collapse. I suspect that Gen. Patraeus, who sees "stunning progress" in al Anbar province, obviously disagrees.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I dislike linking to the BBC, but this report of the missing Americans in Iraq has more detail than AP's version:

"The patrol of seven Americans and their Iraqi interpreter were attacked near the town of Mahmudiya, spokesman Maj Gen William Caldwell said. He said that within an hour other troops were at the scene of the attack, hunting for the [3] missing soldiers. Checkpoints have been set up to prevent the soldiers being moved from the area."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Latest from Jeff Emanuel, a veteran and journalist embed in Iraq 

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) comment that 'the war is lost' and 'the surge…hasn’t accomplished anything' was splashed on the front page of every news outlet from Al Jazeera to the Iranian state newspaper. Contrary to the beliefs of all too many Americans who seem tied to the notion that the Iraqi people are both blind and ignorant, Congress’s votes to set a withdrawal date from Iraq -- much like their other, similar votes and statements -- were heard with perfect clarity by Iraqis, as well as by the insurgents who take heart from them."

Our very own Fifth Column: Congress. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

You know, the ones killing American troops in Iraq? The ones the politicians never want to talk about and the MSM seldom reports? Pajamas Media serves up a good video interview with an EOD officer who knows the troubling details.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When they crossed the line into commentary, they left the news behind in favor of anti-Bush narrative, as Badger 6 shows in a post about happenings in his area of operations.

UPDATE  Hastening to dumb down the headline when it comes to Hamas and Mickey Mouse, via LGF. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

President Bush addressed the Milblog Conference, here, but Badger 6 notes the new regulation suggesting frontline Army blogging may be imperiled, still stands.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some soldiers say they can turn it around in Iraq in eighteen months. Military historian Victor Davis Hanson bets they have six.

"The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw. For all the acrimony and hysteria at home, that in the end is what we face—the verdict of all wars that ultimately are decided by the soldiers, and then either supported or opposed by the majority at home with no views or ideology other than its desire to conform to the narrative from the front: support our winners, oppose our losers. In the end, that is what this entire hysterical four years are about."

I hope he's wrong. If he's right, there will be hell to pay. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The faces of the Iraq campaign, mainly the children. Pictures by embed Michael Yon:

"A huge part of this war comes down to personal relationships and respect. It’s not about killing. That’s only a small part of it. It’s about building: building bonds that build societies. Giving Iraqi civilians a real alternative to those who create and then flee from civil havoc. Terrorists don’t pick up the trash on the way back from blowing up the electrical stations."

Worth a look. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Congress should do so, says this two-tour Marine major because it can work and whittle our forces in half within eighteen months.

"American soldiers in Iraq are constantly asked about our commitment to a fight we started. Most of the advisers I got to know during my most recent tour, which ended in February, were quick to try to assuage their Iraqi counterparts’ concerns and dismissive of the calls for withdrawal by American politicians, news of which trickled onto the battlefield during the winter. After all, the surge itself would not be fully under way until mid-summer. Surely the politicians would give it a chance to work."

Read it all. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...be a big Red One... Some folks, (well, Paul Harvey, for one) contend Paul Jeff Emanuel is the next Ernie Pyle. Like Michael Yon, he's a combat veteran, but also a good writer/reporter, and he's newly embedded with the 1st ID. Worth bookmarking for the future.

Via Day By Day. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

New media's version of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War, but for Iraq. Just sign the petition, soldier, to urge a withdrawal from Iraq.

"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home."

They claim 1,902 have signed. Mighty scruffy-looking longhair in the green helmet on the right at the top of the page. A little too much Vietnam, guys.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The think-tank critics and the MSM hate it. The Marines love it. And it will finally go to war, assuming the Dems haven't figured a way to force a withdrawal by then:

"This fall Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 based at New River Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina will deploy to Al Asad in western Iraq for seven months with around a dozen Ospreys, replacing 1960s-era Boeing H-46 Sea Knights for ferrying and re-supplying Marines fighting in that huge, desolate province."

Read it all at War Is Boring. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“No matter what you think of the war, or what has happened here, you cannot be around the soldiers and not be completely affected. They are amazing people, and they represent themselves and the Army better than anyone could ever imagine.” -- a Spanish journalist.

Good stuff worth a read.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Dems, it seems, truly want another Vietnam defeat in Iraq, now that they've attached departure dates to the refunding of the campaign. Presumably Bush will veto, and the Dems haven't the votes to override. Some conservatives think this will energize the Republican base, but I wonder. The Dems could keep this up until the military runs out of money.

Pultizer prize winning author (and old neighbor in another part of town) Lawrence Wright ("The Looming Tower") says democratization of the Middle East may be our only hope to defeat al Q and its religious zealots and wannabees. But that it won't be pretty, and that leaving Iraq too soon could convulse the region. But with House Speaker Pelosi skipping two meetings with the commanding general in Iraq, and Senate Majority Leader Reid saying the war is lost, it looks like the Dems either disagree or don't care.

UPDATE  Crazy Politico points out that a veto isn't all Bush can do. He can find other ways to pay for the war: "Bill Clinton couldn't get the GOP controlled Congress to pass what he wanted for funding for Kosovo, so he signed executive orders halting certain defense contract work, and shifting the money to fund troops."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I often think the Seablogger, Alan Sullivan, is too pessimistic by half. And considering that he's struggling with cancer, that's not too surprising. But he's just dead-on right about the current situation in Iraq.

"...we are not taking the fight to the enemy, and we never will. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia continue to support Iraqi 'insurgents.' If we were at war, we would have assailed the regimes of those countries for warring on us. But we are merely playing at war..."

Indeed, I am starting to cringe everytime I read about another American casualty in Iraq, partly because it's as though Bush wanted to set up another Vietnam losing proposition, with sanctuaries for the enemy, sanctuaries that (so far) have not been assailed, and may never be. Unlike Sullivan I won't say never, but it does look that way. Some say we should cringe at all the dead Iraqi civilians, but we aren't killing them, and the people who are won't stop even if/when we leave.

UPDATE  Still some hope in the recent infighting among the "insurgents." 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Neel, a 1998 graduate of Fredericksburg, Tx, high school, and, in 2005, of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, died in Iraq April 9, of wounds from a grenade assualt while leading his 8th Cavalry Regt. platoon:

“Phillip was an inspiration and leader to his five siblings,” his family said in a prepared statement... “He led by example and consistently challenged them to do the right thing in all circumstances, no matter what pressures were involved.”

A memorial service for him is planned Saturday in Fredericksburg.

UPDATE  The San Antonio Express News report on the memorial: "Phillip Neel often sat and prayed at the West Point cemetery overlooking the Hudson River in New York, and it was there he watched smoke rise from the World Trade Center in 2001, his dad said."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have liked the idea of a naval blockade of Iran to stop their development of nuclear weapons. But George Friedman of Austin's Stratfor says even the idea of imposing one for the limited purpose of forcing release of the Birt hostages was not seriously considered because of Iran's ability to retaliate in Iraq, among other places. Although one supposes stopping the nukes would be considerably more incentive than a few military prisoners.

Via the ON Point Blog 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"A few days ago, the loud siren sounded, and the 'big voice' speakers bellowed 'INCOMING! INCOMING!'. A group of new Marines scattered like ducklings under the shadow of a hawk. Several ran around the corner of a concrete barrier and into a group of us chatting on as though nothing had happened. We watched as they collected themselves and tried to pretend as though nothing had happened, and then returned to conversation."

More news from the front by Teflon Don at Acute Politics

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, the Brit captives are home, after prostrating themselves at the feet of the pirates who took them, writing letters about their guilt and, in general, humiliating their country, their service and the West in general. The official line is that it didn't matter, but I think anyone watching them knows that it does. Some will call this a victory. Mighty hollow one. At least they're alive, which cannot be assuredly said of the three missing Israeli soliders held by Hamas and Hez, who have not made any similar public mea culpa. The MSM ignores them, of course. They would be released immediately if Hamas's and Hez's Iranian masters said the word. But they haven't and probably won't.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The Iraqi army too has deployed a number of tanks to reinforce some of the major checkpoints around town. My father reported he saw a few tanks added to the bunch of BMP’s that usually group on station at a large checkpoint on the main highway in eastern Baghdad."/Pajamas Media

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"We get the sense the Saudis grin and kiss us on both cheeks when we walk into their palaces, then spit on the ground the moment we leave."

When you sleep with the oil ticks, you rise up with fleas. Little mixey metaphor there.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, not anymore...

"The real priority is the safety of the prisoners themselves. Admiral Sir Alan West, former head of the [Royal] Navy, said this week: 'Our guidance to anyone in that position would be to say what they want you to say.  'Don't tell them secrets, clearly, but if they tell you "Say this", well if that's going to get you out, then do it. It means absolutely nothing, what they say, to be honest.'"

I suppose it does mean something to someone, but probably only those already convinced of whatever the Iranian line is.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Dem presidential candidates and party and congressional leadership prove their unseriousness on the Long War every time they say Afghanistan is where it's at, not oil-rich and influential Iraq--as Charles Krauthammer so ably demonstrates:

"...you do not decide where to fight on the basis of history; you decide on the basis of strategic realities of the ground. You can argue about our role in creating this new front and question whether it was worth taking that risk in order to topple Saddam Hussein. But you cannot reasonably argue that in 2007 Iraq is not the most critical strategic front in the war on terror."

Worth a read.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Senate lards on the pork in narrowly passing its version of the troops funding measure. Still to be worked out, apparently, is the Senate's March 31, 2008 withdrawal-from-Iraq deadline, as opposed to the House's Sept. 1, 2008 withdrawal date. All of which may be mute if Bush, as expected, vetoes it all. You could call them unpatriotic. But I'd prefer "bought-and-paid-for."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Op-For points out that thanks to Parliament, Britain is in no position to start a war with anyone, not even Iran, and even if they were it would be amazing if they'd go to war openly over the troop hostage taking. But why do it openly, asks Peter Boston, a commentor at the Belmont Club:

"Were I calling the shots for the Brits I would sink a patrolling Iranian submarine or two. Quietly and without pubilc announcement. Although we wouldn't hear about it for another 50 years or so I imagine such an event would create a major confidence crisis in top Iranian circles and start destructive internal recriminations flying around."

Sounds like a winner to me. Better, certainly, than bringing in Jimmy Carter for advice. Hopefully, they'll be released like the last group before some Iranian sailors lose their lives. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Why, taking hostages of course. A roundup at Pajamas Media for those following along at home.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The House Dems' lonely cry: We'll end the war by funding the war and, meanwhile, here's some pork.

"To get her narrow majority of 218 votes, Ms. Pelosi and Appropriations Chairman David Obey had to load it up like a farm bill: $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers, $283 million for dairy farmers--all told, some $20 billion in vote-buying earmarks of the kind Democrats campaigned against last year."

It won't pass the Senate, of course, and if it does Bush has promised a veto. Just don't call them unpatriotic. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The half-black presidential candidate isn't really analyzed by the MSM so much as adored. So Steve Sailer takes on the thankless task of doing it for them.

"...the Bad Obama, a close student of other people’s weaknesses, a literary artist of considerable power in plumbing his deep reservoirs of self-pity and resentment, an unfunny Evelyn Waugh consumed by indignation toward his own mother’s people."

I wouldn't vote for him even if he was what Sailer also calls him, "a male Oprah...the crown prince of niceness," if only because he has no experience, he voted early against the campaign in Iraq and he otherwise seems to have little clue about what it's all about. But, then, a lot of other people don't either.

Via Fresh Bilge 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Strange, really, how the U.S. military capitulates when it comes to trying to influence the media war. I guess they expect to lose with the MSM and so they refuse to try to win. But that's really pretty stupid. It may please them to, as Michael Yon notes, decline to set up press centers for the benefit of reporters who need reliable Internet and satellite connections, but they are cutting off their own noses.

"Billions of dollars are spent on the war each month, millions of dollars fly around here like sparrows, yet there are no designated places for journalists? While so many soldiers and their families shout for coverage from Afghanistan (remember that place?) and Iraq, I can sometimes be found from midnight to sunrise sitting outside, trying to transmit photos through a wireless network that only works sometimes."

Much is being made in the blogosphere of Gen. Vincent K. Brooks' apparent threat to kick Yon out of Iraq. I suspect that has less to do with what he writes than his attitude combined with his former status as an NCO trigger-puller. But he also doesn't fail to paint pictures of the ubiquitous PX with its incongruous multitude of flat-screen TVs, and the steak-and-lobster, cake-and-cookie mess halls which the brass cannot fail to dislike having publicized. It's supposed to be all about guns-and-glory, not how many discounted components you can buy for your stereo or camera. As Yon's reporting illustrates, it's really about both. And it isn't new. It was like that in Viet Nam, too. But at least there the military tried, and sometimes successfully did, influence MSM coverage.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession is genuine, the 911 Commission's bestselling report isn't far from fiction, leaving out as it is does his role in the 1993 WTC bombing and his Iraq connection, according to investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein:

"The result is that basic issues concerning KSM's interrogation--and the dozens of crucial citations in the 9/11 Report--are now in such doubt that 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey suggested last Sunday, in his Daily News column, that KSM be put on trial in New York, where presumably he could be properly cross-examined. While that remedy may be far-fetched, some resolution of this investigative failure is necessary."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the Iranians are hot about the new "300" film, which shows a few Spartans kicking a lot of Persian you-know-what. Not because the Iranians find it enthralling, but galling. And so they have complained--where else?--to the UN. Potential GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson shows what we might expect from him in dealing with the mullahs:

"People who want to blow Jews off the face of the earth. The regime that stormed our embassy in 1979 and kept Americans captive for 444 days. Iran’s Hezbollah puppets have killed more Americans, than any other terrorist group except Al Qaeda. Explosive devices from Iran are being used right now against our soldiers in Iraq. They’re clearly more skittish about cultural warfare than the sort that actually kills people – like the one against Israel that Iran financed just a few months ago."

Go get 'em, Fred. Victor Davis Hanson, who teaches the subject, liked it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More good reporting/writing by Teflon Don on why Friday in Iraq is the day for car and truck bombs:

"There's all kinds of smoke in Iraq. There's the plumes that signify a fire- white for wood or reeds, black for vehicles, and grey for buildings. Mushroom clouds mean a bomb of some sort- white or grey, especially with a lot of dust, for an IED, and black for car bombs."

UPDATE  Omar at Iraq the Model on why the chlorine bombs, which TD also refers to, could be a good turning of the screw for us. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Multi-National Force Iraq has a new YouTube connection that's worth a periodic look for new videos.

Via Badgers Forward. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The lunar eclipse from mounted patrol in Iraq:

"At some point while we were digging up the bomb, all the lights down the road went out, leaving the scene [lit] only by the ghostly half-light of the moon. As we pulled off down the road, even that pale illumination faded- the lunar eclipse had come and stolen the light."

Good piece from Teflon Don. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bing West at the Small Wars Journal offers insight from a recent trip to Iraq:

"Trust will decide this war. We know the essence of the problem: Whether the Iraqi central government and security forces are led by deceivers who tell us they believe in a stable federation with power-sharing, while they abet sectarian division. In my most recent visit, there was the pervasive, open acknowledgement by the police, IA and the residents that they trusted the Americans, but not each other."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Momma made her join the Army, so Rachal Franklin became a pilot, an Apache gunship pilot.

"Though women are still barred from infantry and other ground combat units, this [Iraq] is the first war in which female U.S. troops have been authorized to shoot back. And they have – as helicopter gunners, military police, and even truck drivers forced to defend themselves on a battlefield with no clear frontlines."

Good read about our women at arms. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Early days yet--thousands of surging troops have yet to arrive--but hopeful ones:

"The results of Operation “Imposing Law” are not magical. We didn’t expect them to be magical. The commanders didn’t claim they’d be when the Operation began. Still these latest developments are certainly promising. And let’s not forget that what has been achieved so far was achieved while many thousands of the new troops assigned to Baghdad are yet to arrive."

More from Omar at Iraq the Model.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kentucky National Guard Military Police Sgt. Lee Ann Hester, the first woman to earn a Silver Star since World War II, isn't in the grade school history books, like Sgt. Alvin York once was. That kind of thing isn't done these days, and we may yet suffer for the intentional slight. Hester's story is just as remarkable, but a lot harder to find.  The Omaha World Herald seems to have done the best job at the time of the incident in 2005, though you have to read almost to the end before her name appears. This year, Hester is the subject of a new exhibit at the U.S. Army Women's Museum, where she was quoted thusly:

“There’s a lot of soldiers that are doing this job right now,” she said. “Right this minute, right now, they’re doing now what we were doing then, and they’re not getting the credit they deserve. Look at the big picture. We did great one day, but there are people doing that every day. Don’t lose sight of that.”

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ben of Mesopotamia is so short...

"I'm even more tired of seeing MedEvac helicopters skimming above the palm trees, ferrying more wounded soldiers to the Combat Support Hospital."

Short timer malaise in Baghdad. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Army Specialist Donica, 22, from Spring, north of Houston, was killed by a sniper in Baghdad Dec. 28. He was the 3,000th U.S. serviceman to die during the war, and therefore the "grim milestone" of 2006 for much of the MSM. Wikipedia misspelled his name in their haste. His family, having none of it, made "a point of deflecting attention" from the fact, according to the March edition of Texas Monthly. Since then, they have put up an impressive Web site "dedicated to the memory of Dustin Donica, the Donica Family, and Dustin's brothers in arms." The site includes photos and background Celtic music, as well as "American Soldier," a country ballad by Toby Keith. Texas Monthly eulogized Donica as one of more than 275 Texans killed in Iraq, "the highest number from any state other than California, and each one has left behind not just a family but a community."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Iraq has its other face, a face of life and a degree of normalcy. This other face of Iraq is reflected in a series of pictures published by Halim Salman in his two monthly magazines published in London."

Via MEMRI. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Victor Davis Hanson making predictions on the campaign in Iraq:

"If Gen. Petraeus fails he will be unfairly forgotten, but if he succeeds, and I think he will, he will be fairly canonized."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Troops are increasing incrementally daily...

"We are getting used to the procedures at checkpoints; keep your hands visible on the wheel, keep your papers close to you, prepare to open the trunk and if it's getting dark then turn the headlights off and turn the reading light on...The terrorists counterattack is a dirty chemical one this time. Nothing surprising about it though—their old master had a long history of using chemical weapons against unarmed civilians and so we'd expect the minions to use the same evil ways to mass murder and terrorize our people."

Iraq the Model continues here. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"An Iraqi contestant in an Arab-world talent competition similar to 'American Idol' has managed to unite her country like no government can. Every Friday night, Iraqis gather around their TVs to root for Shada Hassoon, 25, as she tries to sing her way to victory and a big cash prize on 'Star Academy.'"

Iraqis as one. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not what you'd expect to find in an opinion poll after so much MSM and congressional bashing, but that's where this Public Opinion Strategies poll of voters is going:

• 57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism.”
• 57% “support finishing the job in Iraq," that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.
• 50% want our troops should stay and “do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country” while only 17% favor immediate withdrawal
• 56% believe “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”
• 53% believe “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”

 More here, which includes a link to the complete poll in pdf. Via Instapundit.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teflon Don gets down as he preps for patrol:

"You can think of it as duty- you have a job, and that job requires violence. You can hate- the easiest of all excuses, and the most exhausting. You can look at it as simple survival- if you don't kill him, then he'll kill you. However you justify it, you are still in a war, and people will still die. It wears on everyone- the American deaths, the 'collateral damage'...the innocents killed when some faceless murderer blows himself up in a crowd. Yes, even the enemy dead take their toll."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despicable Europeans still angry that cowboy Bush toppled Saddam find nasty ways of getting even:

"American transports flying badly wounded U.S. troops back to the United States, often ask European air controllers for a more direct flight path through European air space. This is in order to get the wounded soldier or marine to the American hospital more quickly. This is particularly useful when the aircraft have been turned into a flying ECU (Emergency Care Unit), and doctors are actually treating the seriously wounded in flight. The European air controllers rarely allow the direct flight."

Many of these flights are direct from Iraq to the Army hospitals in San Antonio.

Via Op-For 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The surge and its crackdown are taking hold:

"We are hearing fewer explosions and less gunfire now than two weeks ago and that, in Baghdad, qualifies as quiet. I agree with what some experts say about this lull in violence being the result of militants keeping their heads down for a while. It is also possibly the result of the flight of the commanders of militant groups. Grunts left without planners, money or leaders wouldn’t want to do much on their own."

If the IA and the police can get a handle on it, it could make it harder to resume the attacks later.

Via Mohammed at Iraq the Model 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The message Congress just sent to them all was, 'Hold on, we'll stop the surge, we're going to leave - and you can slaughter the innocent with our blessing.'" Ralph Peters writes today. "We've reached a low point in the history of our government when a substantial number of legislators would welcome an American defeat in Iraq for domestic political advantage."

The Republicans look ridiculous enough when they kowtow to their anti-abortion, can't-live-without-school-prayer base. But the Democrat base now is the hard Left which is only interested in anything that's anti-American. What the Dems are doing now is going to get more American soldiers killed, plain and simple. I think the two-party system is in need of a serious overhaul. Let the loonies form their own parties and leave the rest of us alone.

HT Yargb 

UPDATE  Republicans successfully blocked the same Dems move in the Senate. But New York Dem Sen. Charles Schumer promises that the anti-war fight has only begun: "There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment . . . just like in the days of Vietnam. The pressure will mount, the president will find he has no strategy, he will have to change his strategy and the vast majority of our troops will be taken out of harm's way and come home." And then we can wait for the next 9/11.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Omar at Iraq the Model posts a cellphone snapshot of a B-1 Lancer a few thousand feet over his city, apparently as part of the crackdown of the surge which, he says, already is being felt by residents:

"On the streets, checkpoints and roadblocks are becoming increasingly serious and strict in doing their job; soldiers and policemen are sparing no vehicles or convoys from searching and I personally saw a case yesterday where an ambulance driver tried to rush his vehicle through a checkpoint but the soldiers ordered him to stop and let him pass only after they checked the inside of the vehicle finding only a civilian medical emergency."

As for the B-1, its satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38 "reduces undesired collateral damage and is very useful in urban Close Air Support," according to Wikipedia.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teflon Don, a recently promoted specialist in Iraq, on the IED deaths of three of his platoon:

"Time is supposed to slow down when you're in the moment, not when you're hearing of it. The next four hours are glacial- slower and colder than I could have thought...the breeze twisting dogtags around a rifle like a devils windchime, and carrying once again the plaintive notes of the bagpipe playing Amazing Grace."

A good, although sad, read. Condolences, Don.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Best news yet from Iraq. Mookie has lit out for the territories, i.e. to his buddies in Tehran:

"Sources believe al Sadr is worried about an increase of 20,000 U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. One official told ABC News' Martha Raddatz, "He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house. Sources say some of the Mahdi army leadership went with al Sadr."

He should have been killed a long time ago. But skedaddling will have to do. Captain Ed has more.

UPDATE  Well, maybe not, according to his Iraq associates, one of whom calls the little thug "his eminence." Let's hope his demise becomes imminent.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Support the troops--except when it comes to Iran, which has killed 170 and wounded more than 600 in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. But the Bush administration apparently has done nothing about it, and now that it is talking about doing something about it, the Democrats are threatening to retaliate--against the administration. Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?

UPDATE  Among the arms Iran is sending into Iraq are these .50 caliber Austrian sniper rifles. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fifty of them, from all fifty states, including Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Juan M. Rubio, of Texas.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Very jerky al Q video (with, oddly, a singing chorus) of the missile shootdown of the CH-46 Sea Knight over Iraq this past Wednesday, Feb. 7. The crew and passengers obviously had plenty of time to realize what was happening before the helicopter was engulfed in flames and crashed. Freelance embed Bill Roggio, a former Army officer with signal and infantry experience, says his sources say it could have been a Russian-made Strela 3 shoulder-fired missile provided by Iran. If so, how long will we let this go on?

Posted by Dick Stanley at 07:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The 26 Americans killed in five helicopter shootdowns in Iraq since Jan. 20 were the latest casualties in our unheralded war with Iran inside Iraq, according to Bill Roggio's intelligence sources. The action the Democrats in Congress seem determined to keep from becoming obvious with a strike against Iran itself. But it's another underscoring of the fact that until we take the fight to Tehran and Damascus, no amount of Baghdad neighborhood scouring is going to work for long.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The American opposition to Iraq rises, threatening a million demonstrators before the year is out:

"A band of Republican senators, including Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, threatened Wednesday to shut down the Senate until it debates a resolution disagreeing with President Bush's troop surge for Iraq."

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good piece in the Dallas Morning News about members of the 1st Cav in Iraq, some on their third rotation back to the sand box:

"'They (the Iraqis) stood up for us and we stood up for them," Sgt. Rountree said, adding that he had been looking forward to going back. 'We've seen it blown apart,' he said. 'I want to see it put together. I want to see what we fought for the first rotation. People who say it's not worth it, it is.'"

Meanwhile, according to the Harvard Crimson, the Marines are getting a track star for a new infantry lieutenant:

“'I think this is my generation’s greatest calling,' said [Sean] Barrett. 'Fighting for the freedom of others is a uniquely American value. Protecting my family, my country, our values and way of life is of the utmost importance to me...This isn’t something that’s going away. We have to win.'”

Posted by Dick Stanley at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conflicting reports on whether the CH-46 Sea Knight with seven aboard was brought down in Iraq by ground fire or mechanical problems. If the former, the enemy is getting better at an unfortunate time.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"US says it is on. Maliki Government says it isn’t."

Not very inspiring, are they? Let's hope the coordination, such as it is, gets better. I also hope the miscaptioned photo at the link, of the American troops of the 2nd ID, is a long lens effort that's compressing them into each other. Because not spreading out is a sure way for all to get taken out with one RPG or even one grenade. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Invading, however, really isn't necessary, according to American historian Arthur Herman. Air strikes and naval attacks from the Persian Gulf would be more than enough:

"Almost 90 percent of the mullahs’ oil assets are located either in or near the Gulf. So is the nuclear reactor that Russia is building for Iran at Bushehr. Virtually every Iranian well or production platform depends on access to the Gulf if Iran’s oil is to reach buyers. Hence, the same Straits by means of which Iran intends to lever itself into a position of global power present the West with its own point of leverage to reduce Iran’s power—and to keep it reduced for at least as long as the country’s political institutions remain unprepared to enter the modern world."

Worth a read. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Night raid with the Jundi, i.e. the Iraqi army, and Marines, reported by freelance embed Bill Ardolino:

"On the plus side, they're motivated and brave. Lt. Col. Fisher believes that aggression is a good problem to have, citing the old Marine saying, 'it's better to have to reel them in than have to push them out the door.'"

With photos.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An exile in Britain talks to his mother on the phone from Baghdad where life goes on amid the truck bombs and murdered relatives and no one is safe: 

"Not even Bush's death will solve our problem. I’ll be lying if I say I lost hope. When you are in love it is hard to do so. But my aims for Iraq have changed. I want this horrifying hybrid of a government to succeed and the 21,000 extra troops to take control. All I dream of which is no different to the millions of Iraqis is damage control force."

Read it all here.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not a 21-year-old soldier, says Don Surber, in this good rebuttal piece on why the WaPo's Arkin is a mouse not a man.

"Arkin is a media bubble boy. He does not realize how wrong he was for dumping on a soldier in Iraq who dared — when asked directly — say, hey, you protesters are not helpful."

Arkin is no journalist, no Ernie Pyle, just a flaming lefty who likes nothing better than to sneer, call names ("mercenaries!") and tell other people what to do and think. People like him are one reason why the Left is so marginalized in America, even if they do have the big megaphone of the media, which, increasingly, is despised for providing it.

Instead of listening to the WaPo's resident douchebag, help the troops do one nice thing for Afghanistan and Iraq.

UPDATE  Malarky Arkin is still at it, this time complaining that he's being demonized. He, he maintains, is the true martyr here. Tough cookies, Malarky. Looking at his thumbnail picture, I realize that he really needs shave. Yeah, I know, it's fashionable to look like a bum. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

William M. Arkin is the WashPost's homeland security writer. What a hoot. Then they gave him a blog and he decided to let loose his anti-American spleen on the troops: 

"Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order...[recent report troops are upset about opposition to the war is] an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work."

So the elite blogosphere went ballistic, here, here and especially these milblogs here and, for the profane version, here. Actually, I think we owe Billy a round of applause. He's dropped the "oh-so-objective" pose he learned to do in journalism school, and told us what he and his media buds really think. And it's ugly and sneering which, of course, fully explains their negative reporting on the war and the military itself. Something tells me your editors won't like being exposed like this, Bill. Write when you find another job.

UPDATE  Arkin had already made a name as the Greenpeace alum, far left, anti-military activist  "military affairs" writer for the LATimes. So maybe his WaPo editors won't care after all. They knew what they were getting when they hired him.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of Lyndon Johnson's big mistakes in the Vietnam war was insisting on personally clearing every bombing mission and target beforehand. But even LBJ didn't turn his troops over to the command of the South Vietnamese government. President Bush appears to have given the Iraqi government control of our troops in his new struggle for Baghdad, which may have doomed it from the start. The story, picked up by the likes of conservative blogger Hyscience, is in Salon, the Lefty digital newsmagazine that is not my favorite source of information. Maybe it's bull. Sure hope so. But it fits right in with various tactical stupidities of the past four years, such as allowing the Shia thug Mookie Sadr to live, and playing catch-and-release with Iranian agents whose explosives were killing American troops. But, so far, the dumbest thing of all has been the continuation of two sanctuaries for the enemy's recruitment and re-supply, in neighborhing Syria and Iran, almost exactly what happened in South Vietnam with North Vietnam and Cambodia. If somebody doesn't wise up pretty soon we're going to lose this thing.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Custer's old 7th Cavalry patrolling in Mosul, Iraq, with photos:

"If Americans really wanted to know their Army, American kids would be swapping trading cards of the battalion commanders and command sergeant majors, company commanders and 1st sergeants, and those legions of unknown squad-leaders who earn three Purple Hearts and decorations for valor before they are old enough to rent cars back home."

And unlike Lurch, the braggart soldier, these 3-purple heart squad leaders don't go home after 4 months. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the debates over Iraq, we often hear the canard that Sunni and Shia Muslims are irrevocable enemies who would never cooperate with each other. Yet the evidence that they have and still do is pretty solid, as Iraq freelance embed Bill Roggio says in his latest dispatch on fighting near Najaf which, once again, combined the Sunni Al Queda with the Shia militia:

"Cooperation between Shia and Sunni insurgent groups is not a new development in Iraq, as Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and al_Qaeda cooperated during the Fallujah/Najaf uprisings in the spring and summer of 2004. Shia Iran has been supplying the Sunni insurgency, al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sunnah with weapons and bomb making materials, and is currently sheltering senior al-Qaeda leaders within its borders."

UPDATE  The defeated militia in question apparently is linked to Mookie, the black-turbaned little thug that Bush has allowed to live lo these many years, and their aim was to kill the moderate Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Omar at Iraq the Model isn't the only one who thinks the Karbala attack, which killed Army CPT Brian Freeman and abducted four others who were later murdered, was an Iranian operation. Freelance embed Bill Roggio lines up and knocks over the dominoes:

"This raid required specific intelligence, in depth training for the agents to pass as American troops, resources to provide for weapons, vehicles, uniforms, identification, radios and other items needed to successfully carry out the mission."

Jimbo at Black Five agrees: "The location of the target, the sophistication of the operation, the lack of beheading, all point to a precision raid by highly-trained regular military forces. Iran did this."

So, are we finally going to strike back at the principal supporters of terrorism in the world or are we going to continue to play pattycake with the toothless dictator's club of the UN? If Bush doesn't mind thumbing his nose at the anti-war Democrat Congress over Iraq, surely he won't quail at finally doing what he should have done back in 2003--hitting Iran and its crony-in-evil Syria?

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the very top of the top 10 list, of course, is the constant refrain that no WMD were found:

"Several hundred chemical weapons were found, and Saddam had all his WMD scientists and technicians ready. Just end the sanctions and add money, and the weapons would be back in production within a year. At the time of the invasion, all intelligence agencies, world-wide, believed Saddam still had a functioning WMD program."

This should include Saddam's nuclear weapons program, which Christopher Hitchens recalls, if no one else does: "Saddam Hussein had built an enormous secret nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha, and had acquired most of the elements of a nuclear weapon." 

Via Strategy Page and The Claremont Review of Books

Posted by Dick Stanley at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd is using Army reserve CPT Brian Freeman's death as an argument for withdrawal from Iraq. Dodd says Freeman, killed last weekend in an assault some say was engineered by Iran, passionately complained to Dodd when the senator visited Iraq that Freeman was having to do State Department instead of Army work:

“'Senator, it’s nuts over here,' Dodd quoted Freeman in the Senate on Friday. 'Soldiers are being asked to do work we’re not trained to do.  I’m doing work that the State Department people are far more prepared to do in fostering democracy, but they’re not allowed to come off the bases because it’s too dangerous here.  It doesn’t make any sense.'”

This fits in with previous reporting that the State Department and other agencies are leaving the work in Iraq to the Pentagon. President Bush mentioned in his State of the Union speech that the rest of government needed to do more. Even Gen. Petraeus, the new coalition commander in Baghdad recently complained about it in his Senate confirmation hearings. Sometimes it looks like the whole American government has become unhinged and incompetent: place-holders and buck-passers with their own private political agendas. The Jihadis must be loving it.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More dispatches from Walter Reed by J.R. Salzman in his recovery from losing his right arm and ring finger of his left hand in an IED explosion in Iraq last fall. His wife is doing the typing in this amazing and poignant kind of blogging:

"I realize there are a lot of other people out there who are worse off than me. I am not asking for sympathy here. All I am trying to do is let you know what it is like to experience this. I have constant phantom pain in my arm where it feels like my hand is still there, and someone is sawing on it with a knife."

My Confederate great grandfather lost the lower part of one leg to a cannon ball in the Wilderness battle, May 6, 1864, went home and spent much of the rest of his life wearing a wooden peg while plowing behind a mule. I always wondered what that was like. J.R. brings that and many other things into clear focus.

Via Black Five 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don Suber, in his Charleston (WVA) Daily Mail column today, makes a good point: Bush is a poor wartime leader. Just about everyone who supports the Iraq campaign has compared the war on terror to World War II, but Bush apparently can't see or feel the parallels. Elsewise he might have devoted his entire State of the Union speech to the campaigns, as FDR did to his war:

"President Roosevelt delivered a 4,588-word State of the Union on Jan. 7, 1943, that was on one topic alone: World War II. The war was that serious to FDR. He went through the battles. He went over the war production. He did not mention a single domestic program. He offered hope instead...In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush didn't get around to the war until after 2,317 words in his 5,667-word speech. The people can hardly be expected to stay the course when the captain is not at the helm 24 hours a day."

Bush, whose approval rate average is hovering just two degrees above freezing, has kept most of the war's details to himself, instead of sharing them with us, and we're all paying the price for his shortsightedness.

Posted by Dick Stanley at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bush's Democrat and Republican critics have repeated the same canard now over and over again for years: Bush has no plan, no coherent strategy for Iraq. It's all hit or miss, etc.

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan even quotes Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel reiterating the notion and praises him for having the guts to speak out--even if a quick stroll through the Small Wars Journal could have shown her that his supposedly gutsy move was based on a false assumption.

Some of the journal's counterinsurgeny strategists, at least, have done their homework and concluded that there not only is a plan, and a coherent strategy, in Bush's "surge," with its focus on securing the population of Bahgdad and al-Anbar, but that it has a track record of success:

"The new strategy reflects counterinsurgency best practice as demonstrated over dozens of campaigns in the last several decades: enemy-centric approaches that focus on the enemy, assuming that killing insurgents is the key task, rarely succeed. Population-centric approaches, that center on protecting local people and gaining their support, succeed more often...in the new strategy what matters is providing security and order for the population, rather than directly targeting the enemy – though this strategy will effectively marginalize them."

It's also significant that the Army's guru of counterinsurgency, Gen. David Petreaus, will be the one to implement the new approach. Read it all here. 

Posted by Dick Stanley at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)