| From The Editor March 12, 2007 |
Bruce Crandall: Valor DefinedOnce again, our nation has found it fitting to award the Medal of Honor to one of our brave. This is no empty act; after all, advised Churchill, it is courage that is the foundation for all other virtue.I was introduced to the recipient during Christmas, 1992. I had received the book We Were Soldiers Once... and Young by Lt. General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway as a gift from my Dad. The book told of the profound bravery of Major Bruce Crandall at a placed in Vietnam called Ia Drang. Crandall is not your average kind of hero if there is such a thing. In fact, he should be awarded the MOH 22 times by my count. That's right: Crandall flew twenty-two missions into a besieged landing zone over a 14 hour period on November 14, 1965, ferrying in much-needed ammunition, supplies, and water while evacuating the wounded. Any person that would fly three different choppers (two were badly damaged) into a hot landing zone 22 times facing an almost certain death is a person with courage beyond measure. Crandall blazed many trails that bleak day in November that add a richness to this decoration. For openers, this was the first time that the U.S. used helicopters for ferrying troops into battle in a massive way. It also became the first time that the same choppers were used as air ambulances that would later be called "dust offs" for their rapid descent and departure. History was being played out just as Crandall was showing us how courageous a person could be. Full Story Gary Jackson |
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| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
The 'Surge' Is SucceedingA front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference. Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect. Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone shifted the dynamic. Full Story Anatomy of IraqHow did we get to this baffling scenario?It's make it or break it in Iraq in 2007. Or so we are told, as America nears four years of costly efforts in Iraq. But how did we get to this situation, to this fury over a war once supported by 70 percent of the public and a majority of Congress, but now orphaned by both? How did a serious country, one that endured Antietam, sent a million doughboys to Europe in a mere year, survived Pearl Harbor, Monte Cassino, Anzio, the Bulge, Tarawa, Iwo and Okinawa, the Yalu, Choisun, Hue and Tet, come to the conclusion - between the news alerts about Britney Spears' shaved head and fights over Anna Nicole Smith's remains - that Iraq, in the words of historically minded Democratic senators, was the "worst" and the "greatest" "blunder," "disaster," and "catastrophe" in our "entire" history? Even with all the tragic suffering, our losses, by the standard of past American wars, have not been unprecedented, especially given the magnitude of the undertaking - namely, traveling 7,000 miles to remove a dictator and foster democracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate. This was not a 1953 overthrow of an Iranian parliamentarian. Nor was it a calculated 1991 decision to let the Shiite and Kurdish revolts be crushed by Saddam. And it was most certainly not a cynical ploy to pit Baathist Iraq against theocratic Iran. Instead, it was an effort to allow an electorate to replace a madman. There were always potential landmines that could go off, here and abroad, if the news from the battlefield proved to be dispiriting. First, George Bush ran for president as a realist, who turned Wilsonian only after 9/11, in the belief that removing Saddam and leaving democracy in his wake could break up the nexus between Middle Eastern terrorism and autocracy. But his conservative base was always skeptical of anything even approaching internationalist activism. And his Democratic opponents were not about to concede his idealism. So when times got tough, the president's chief reservoir of diehard supporters proved to be principled Lieberman Democrats and McCain Republicans - neither group a natural majority nor, after 2000, with any natural affinity for the president. Second, after the relatively easy victories in Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, Serbia, and Afghanistan, the American public became accustomed to removing thugs in weeks and mostly by air and light ground-support. All during the 1990s, the more we made use of the military the more we cut it, until things came to a head in Iraq in a postwar effort that has been both long and confined largely to the ground. Full Story Forced To Flee Iraq: One Family's StoryMy Uncle Brahim is trapped inside his Baghdad home - waiting to flee a country that six months ago he swore he'd never leave. With him are his wife, his hugely pregnant daughter and his 1-year-old grandson. I'm not sure how to say "cabin fever" in Arabic, but I'm pretty sure they have it. They've been holed up for months in that house as battles rage in and around their Mansour neighborhood. I can hear the anarchy outside their door when I call - explosions, gunshots and, once, a scream. Still, my 77-year-old diabetic uncle greets me like the world is full of roses: "Habibi hiyati! [Love of my life!] How is my American girl?"There seem to be a billion obstacles between Brahim's family and escape. They're still waiting on their new Iraqi passports, even though Brahim applied months ago. And who will watch their house of 45 years and all their belongings inside? Then there's the question of where to go. Jordan and Syria are already swamped with Iraqi refugees and have tightened, if not sealed off, their borders. It's clear that Brahim and his family waited too long, and now things are desperate. "I think maybe we will try Bulgaria, Loreen," he says. "My son-in-law knows a person there, and I hear they are excellent for the clinic of diabetes." Baghdad or Bulgaria? This is what it's come to for thousands of families like ours. Most everyone from my dad's side of the family (whose names I've changed for security reasons) lived in the Iraqi capital up until 2003. But now, if they're not hiding out in their homes, they're struggling to adjust to life somewhere else. Brahim's middle daughter, Mahia, is in Amman with her three young kids. Her sister Lulu is in Germany with her husband and baby. My late Aunt Fatima's son Sami fled to southern Iraq when his Baghdad home was seized by insurgents. He's now looking to move to Egypt or even Sweden. His brilliant geologist sister Silma left her upscale Baghdad home and is now stuffed into a tiny apartment in Amman with her husband, Omar, and three teenagers. Uncle Hassan's daughter Loubna, once a curator for the museum of Baghdad, fled to Syria. So did her brother. But their sister never arrived. She was killed on the road from Baghdad to Damascus. Three more distant relatives were never afforded the chance to flee - or turn 25. They were brutally murdered, their mutilated bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad. Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Pentagon Struggles to Find Fresh TroopsMilitary leaders are struggling to choose Army units to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan longer or go there earlier than planned, but five years of war have made fresh troops harder to find. Faced with a military buildup in Iraq that could drag into next year, Pentagon officials are trying to identify enough units to keep up to 20 brigade combat teams in Iraq. A brigade usually has about 3,500 troops. The likely result will be extending the deployments of brigades scheduled to come home at the end of the summer, and sending others earlier than scheduled. Final decisions which have not yet been made would come as Congress is considering ways to force President Bush to wind down the war, despite his vow that he would veto such legislation. In the freshest indication of the relentless demands for troops in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, commander of coalition forces in the north, told reporters Friday that his troops have picked up the pace of their attacks on the enemy in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.Full Story Nominee for U.S. military chief in Asia says conflict with China can be avoidedThe admiral nominated as top U.S. military commander in the Pacific said U.S. conflict with a growing Chinese military is not a foregone conclusion. Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, however, told lawmakers at a congressional hearing Thursday that if confirmed he would closely watch China's military development and would make sure Taiwan was able to defend itself if attacked by rival China. Keating also said a January test of a Chinese missile to destroy a weather satellite showed that China's weapons can be a threat to international space assets. The test was unfortunate, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, caused considerable space debris and risked satellites that support the world's economy. China's continued pursuit of such technology, he told reporters after the hearing, would be a serious concern for all countries that have satellites in space. "We would expect China to behave in a responsible manner," he said.Full Story Organization Makes Progress Defeating IEDsImprovised explosive devices are to the war in Iraq what artillery and mortars were to World War II, Korea and Vietnam - the main troop killers, a retired general working to defeat the deadly devices said here yesterday. Retired Army Gen. Montgomery Meigs, head of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, briefed media on progress in countering IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. "IEDs are hybrid, idiosyncratic things that go off in surprising ways," Meigs said. "But all they are, are the enemy's fire system. The question is, 'How do we deal with this fire system?' And we spend a lot of time on that." In previous wars, the enemy delivered artillery shells through guns. In Iraq, the enemy delivers the ordnance "through the labyrinth of structures in that society," Meigs said.Full Story Native American trackers to hunt bin LadenAn elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan's borders. The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units. In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked smugglers along the US border with Mexico. But the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan and the US military's failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden - still at large on his 50th birthday on Saturday - has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them. US Defence Secretary Robert M.Gates said last month: "If I were Osama bin Laden, I'd keep looking over my shoulder." The Pentagon has been alarmed at the ease with which Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters have been slipping in and out of Afghanistan. Defence officials are convinced their movements can be curtailed by the Shadow Wolves.Full Story Don't Send a Lion to Catch a MouseTwo centuries ago, Napoleon Bonaparte sent his armies into Spain to overthrow a monarch who had once been a French ally. Napoleon, who believed he was touched by the hand of destiny, predicted his troops would be welcomed as liberators by ordinary Spaniards. He was wrong. The resulting Peninsular War from 1808 to 1814 seriously undermined French prestige, handed Napoleon a stinging defeat and produced a raft of unanticipated consequences that included the outbreak of deadly civil wars. Historians would have a field day exploring parallels between Napoleon's Peninsular War and President Bush's war in Iraq, but that is not where we are going today. The Peninsular War interests us because it is one of the earliest examples of an asymmetrical war -- Spanish insurgents faced down the powerful French army by using stealth, deception and the support of civilians. It is the war that gave us the term "guerrilla." Two political scientists recently examined 250 asymmetrical conflicts, starting with the Peninsular War. Although great powers are vastly more powerful today than in the 19th century, the analysis showed they have become far less likely to win asymmetrical wars. More surprising, the analysis showed that the odds of a powerful nation winning an asymmetrical war decrease as that nation becomes more powerful.Full Story |
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Making Peace with the MilitiasWanted in Iraq: a few good militias. Job requirements: don't kill Americans or attack the central government. Compensation: you may be allowed to survive. The new U.S. approach to securing Iraq may not be as simple as this job description. But Gen. David Petraeus and other officials behind the "surge" plan in Iraq are acutely aware that domestic support for a prolonged U.S. stay is wilting fast. As a result, they are searching for a new way - any way - to stabilize the country quickly. And that may include some fresh and controversial thinking about Iraqi militias and other nongovernmental security forces. A central tenet of President Bush's original vision of Iraqi democracy was that the unofficial militias loyal to various religious parties and local authorities needed to demobilize and disarm, or be merged into the Iraqi national army or police force. The administration's commitment to this plan was reiterated in forceful terms on Thursday by David Satterfield, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's coordinator for Iraq. At a news briefing, Satterfield repeatedly referred to the militias as "death squads" who "in no way contribute to any positive role for the life of a unified Iraqi state."Full Story Caste Out At Walter ReedI'd guess that most veterans were as angry as I was on learning that combat-maimed soldiers have been warehoused and forgotten among roaches, rodents and mold at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I'd also guess they weren't entirely surprised. That's because most veterans are enlisted. So was every one of the maltreated Building 18 soldiers and Marines quoted in The Post's revelations of the Walter Reed mess. When you're enlisted you get used to being treated certain ways by certain officers. Every outfit has them. A little more than 80 percent of the military is enlisted. The enlisted are the privates, corporals, specialists, airmen, seamen and sergeants who have to salute and say "sir" to an elite called officers: lieutenants, commanders, captains, majors, colonels, generals and admirals. The officers wear the white collars, the enlisted wear blue. The two classes live on different sides of the tracks.Full Story How Fervent Is Taliban Support?Mullah Mohammed Meerza is what the Afghans call "soft" Taliban. But there's nothing effete about him. He's almost burnt by the sun, his hard hands calloused. He lost his father at the age of five and grew up hungry and poor. As the eldest child, he had to fend for the rest of his family. Of his childhood, he simply says, "I have no good memories." He has come into the city of Kandahar on a winter's day in late January to speak to a reporter but has to leave before night falls and the risks of capture increase. The interview is rushed. Soft Taliban, he explains, comprise about 95% of the Taliban force. "They very much want to join the government, provided that they have security and opportunities for work," he says. But it would help if government subsidies came their way. Says Meerza: "There is still a great distance from here to Kabul... There is very little incentive from the government to cooperate." He says Pakistanis are offering $1,000 stipends to commanders who join the Taliban, that he's been approached himself. And the Kabul government's counter-offer to work against the Taliban? $10. "There's no incentive," he says repeatedly. He says that the anti-government fighters have varying motivations. "Sixty to seventy percent are fighting for the money," he says. "Thirty to forty percent are fighting for Islam."Full Story Afghans getting drug-war training in ColombiaFirst Sgt. Abdul Najib Haidary crouches in a patch of tall grass and silently taps on his left shoulder signaling for his fellow police agents to continue their patrol. Given the makeup of the patrol, it's a good thing communications are silent. Aside from two fellow Afghans snaking through the grass, the rest of the patrol speaks only Spanish. Haidary and his compatriots can barely say gracias. Haidary is part of an Afghan counternarcotics police contingent participating in a specialized training course in Colombia for counternarcotics commando units. ''We came because there are some things the Colombians know that we didn't know,'' Haidary said in halting English in the steamy heat at a Colombian police training camp south of Bogotá. ``Colombians have more experience than we do.'' Colombia, the world's top exporter of cocaine, has a long history of fighting powerful drug cartels and leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which together with right-wing paramilitary groups today control much of the country's drug trade. Afghanistan finds itself in a similar situation since becoming the world's No. 1 grower of opium poppy, the plant from which heroin is made.Full Story Elite Iranian general defects with Hezbollah's arms secretsAn Iranian general who went missing on a visit to Turkey last month appears to have defected to America, taking with him a treasure trove of his country's most closely guarded secrets. Ali Resa Asgari, 63, a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, vanished on February 7 after arriving in Istanbul on a flight from Syria. He had reservations at the Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel but never checked in. Iran has notified Interpol and raised fears that General Asgari might have been kidnapped. Yesterday, however, several sources confirmed reports in America that General Asgari had fled to the West, becoming the first senior Iran official to defect since the revolution 27 years ago. Danny Yatom, the former head of Mossad and a member of the Knesset, said that the general could provide Western intelligence with a unique insight into Iran's foreign operations in Lebanon and beyond.Full Story |
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Blackwater Executive Self Security TrainingBlackwater is pleased to announce the launch of the Blackwater Executive Self Security Training course - BESST. This course is designed to assist individuals in establishing and maintaining a clear understanding of their security situation, in avoiding security issues and in properly reacting when potential threats occur. The knowledge and techniques learned in this course are invaluable to the corporate employee or government official who finds themselves on assignment overseas or traveling through potentially hazardous or unstable regions of the world. Taught by world class security and intelligence instructors, the BESST course offers a rapid and effective method to ensure personnel safety anywhere in the world. Please see the attached document for more information on the BESST course. Click Here | |
| FRANKS REVIEW |
Service Equipment ReviewKRISS XSMGAt SHOT Show I saw a new design in sub-machineguns that struck me as evolutionary. I've mentioned it before: the Kriss XSMG from Transformational Defense Industries. What makes the weapon so new and different isn't the 5.5" barrel - been there, done that; it isn't the fact that the gun uses standard Glock .45ACP magazines - other weapons use common magazines too; but this subgun takes the energy from the bolt blowing back and redirects it in a downward path in front of the trigger area. When I first saw it I thought "broomhandled Mauser mixed with Star Wars". When I got a chance to learn more about it and shoot it at the range I came to appreciate the newly developed recoil design. It was a cold day at the range with precipitation that ranged from fat snow flakes to mixed sleet and rain... it was definitely a cold weather test day and we put an ugly mix of ammo through the weapon. Read how well it performed below.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/guns/krissxsmg.htm Recreational Equipment ReviewTASER C2Last summer I did complete reviews on the TASER M18 and X26C, TASER's then existent civilian self-defense tools. At the time I made some comparisons between what used to be science-fiction and is now science-fact. When I compared the TASER models to the PHASERS from various versions of Star Trek, I never expected that TASER would evolve the appearance of these tools along the same lines. In the original Star Trek the phasers were shaped like pistols. In Star Trek: The Next Generation the phasers were shaped more like television remote controls - a curved ergonomic device with push-button activation on the back instead of a trigger on a pistol grip. Well, guess what? The TASER C2 is the realization of that same type of design evolution: it no longer looks like a pistol at all and comes in four different colors so you can accessorize accordingly.
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| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
FIDELITYfi·del·i·ty [fi-del-i-tee, fahy-] - noun, plural -ties.1. strict observance of promises, duties, etc.: a servant's fidelity. 2. loyalty to one's country. 3. conjugal faithfulness. 4. adherence to fact or detail. 5. accuracy; exactness: The speech was transcribed with great fidelity. 6. Audio, Video. the degree of accuracy with which sound or images are recorded or reproduced. I was requested to write a message on infidelity ...To do that requires that we know what fidelity is... Hence the foregoing definitions. My target audience is Peace Keepers... military, law enforcement and all in their support systems. Every member of the military and law enforcement had to take an oath of office at the beginning of their service. If they stay with it long enough to be promoted, some levels of promotion require taking an oath again. Our system of laws and courts rely upon the administering of an oath or affirmation to tell nothing but the truth. An oath is commitment to loyalty, service and duty affirmed or sworn to in the presence of governmental authority. The taking of marriage vows is the same kind of commitment in the presence of an authority recognized to administer those vows. If a person is not of the mindset and attitude to keep those oaths and vows as the prime commitment of their lives... It would be best for everyone if they never publicly took the oath nor took the vows. Infidelity is not keeping oneself under the promise made in the presence of the authority empowered to administer the oath or vow. The motto of the United States Marine Corps is "SEMPER FIDELIS" or "SEMPER FI" as it is often used in print and in conversation ... "ALWAYS FAITHFUL". So far it all sounds good and looks good... Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/article/031207chaplain.htm
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