Category Archives: Iraq

Mookie still in the saddle, part 2

Posted on August 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Mookie still in the saddle, part 2

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.

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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops

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Volunteering to fight

Posted on August 23, 2007 | Comments Off on Volunteering to fight

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.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War, Troops

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Bullet deficit

Posted on August 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Bullet deficit

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.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Scribbles, The War, Troops

State of war

Posted on August 10, 2007 | Comments Off on State of war

StateofWar.JPG

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.

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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops

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Lies a soldier told

Posted on August 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Lies a soldier told

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. 

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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops

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Why the AC goes out

Posted on July 29, 2007 | Comments Off on Why the AC goes out

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.

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Riding with America’s team

Posted on July 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Riding with America’s team

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.

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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops

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