| August 13, 2007 Edition |
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Beauchamp RecantsNew Republic author tells U.S. Army investigators under oath that he made up stories.Michael GoldfarbWeekly Standard THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source. Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad: An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims. According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name." The magazine's editors admitted on August 2 that one of the anecdotes Beauchamp stood by in its entirety--meant to illustrate the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war"--took place (if at all) in Kuwait, before his tour of duty in Iraq began, and not, as he had claimed, in his mess hall in Iraq. That event was the public humiliation by Beauchamp and a comrade of a woman whose face had been "melted" by an IED. Full Story |
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| QUOTE OF THE WEEK |
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| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
The Baghdad FabulistWashington PostCharles Krauthammer For weeks, the veracity of the New Republic's Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the Army private who has been sending dispatches from the front in Iraq, has been in dispute. His latest "Baghdad Diarist" (July 13) recounted three incidents of American soldiers engaged in acts of unusual callousness. The stories were meant to shock. And they did. In one, the driver of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle amused himself by running over dogs, crippling and killing them. In another, a fellow soldier wore on his head and under his helmet a part of a child's skull dug from a grave. The most ghastly tale, however, was about the author himself mocking a woman whom he said he saw "nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq." She was horribly disfigured, half her face melted by a roadside bomb. As she sat nearby, Beauchamp said loudly, "I love chicks that have been intimate -- with IEDs. It really turns me on -- melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses." As his mess-hall buddy doubled over in laughter, Beauchamp continued: "In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? 'IED Babes.' " The woman fled. Full Story Bomb BustersOn the Ground With an Anti-IED UnitNewsweekJoe Cochrane Most American soldiers in Iraq want to avoid roadside bombs. Ted Seitz isn't one of them. The powerfully built Navy chief petty officer spends his days and nights deliberately searching for improvised explosive devices, better known by the infamous acronym IEDs, along desert roads and highways in northern Iraq. It's tough, tiring and dangerous work, and it takes a particular nasty toll: three fellow explosive ordnance technicians died in separate incidents last month. Seitz, an Arizona native, had been a training instructor for two of the dead. "It sucks," he told NEWSWEEK. "It reminds the guys that this is for real." The men and women of Seitz's battalion, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 2, based out of Little Creek, Va., probably don't need that reminder. They've lived and worked seven days a week for months on end to rid northern Iraq of the weapon that is the biggest threat to U.S. troops. Several members of their battalion (officers won't say exactly how many) have died doing this job-deaths that hit especially hard in the small, tightly knit EOD group. "You chew the same dirt-you celebrate birthdays, you celebrate holidays. You do everything as a group," says Terrence I. Molidor, the command master chief of a mobile EOD battalion based in central Iraq. He was one of several EOD members who flew to Forward Operating Base Speicher to attend the July 25 memorial service for technicians Jeffery L. Chaney and Patrick L. Wade, killed while clearing a road in Samarra on July 17. "It's the one thing that I've dreaded since I came into this country: going to a memorial for someone you know," Molidor told NEWSWEEK. "When you know the individual's family-his wife, his kids-that has a tendency to make your job that much harder." Full Story Remembering PartitionThe parallels between India '47 and Iraq '07.SlateFred Kaplan Next week marks the 60th anniversary of the partition of India. Two new books on the subject-Yasmin Khan's The Great Partition and Alex von Tunzelmann's Indian Summer-are reviewed in recent issues of the Economist and The New Yorker, respectively. And though neither review mentions today's Iraq, (except, at most, in passing), the parallels are ominous and inescapable. Anyone who believes that U.S. troops can simply and suddenly leave Iraq without risk of unleashing great horror-or who regards religious or ethnic partition as a solution instead of a desperate ploy-should look back at the summer of 1947, when the British Empire packed up and India fulfilled its "tryst with destiny" (as Jawaharlal Nehru described its awakening to independence), only to plunge into a monstrous spree of ethnic cleansing (12 million people uprooted, as many as 1 million murdered) that continues to take its toll today. As India's independence and Britain's withdrawal seemed inevitable in the wake of World War II, the country's long-suppressed internal fissures began to rumble like a reawakened volcano. Gandhi's followers in the Congress Party campaigned as a secular movement. But Muslims saw it as a cover for Hindu domination, and Gandhi's rival, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, though a secular Muslim, played the religion card to the hilt to attract fundamentalists' favor. Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
An Iraq meltdown: Basra's cautionary taleUnion LeaderTHE SOUTHERN Iraqi city of Basra was a thriving port city for most of the past four years. British forces maintained security, which allowed the economy and civil society to flourish. But the British have withdrawn most of their troops, and thugs have taken over. "As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources," The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. "Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets." Full Story Islamic extremists partner with MexicansNewsdayJames P. Pinkerton There's good news, bad news and worse news on the immigration issue. The good news is that Congress and the White House are moving forward with prudent steps, gaining control of the border, securing the homeland against terrorism and reasserting American sovereignty. The bad news is that, in the past four decades, we've lost a lot of time fighting off the open-borders advocates and the anti-Western multiculturalists. Even as we now seek elementary homeland security measures - so that we can be safe in a world awash with jihadists, narcotraffickers and weapons-of-mass-destruction peddlers - we must first undo the grievous policy choices championed, and enacted, by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) since 1965. Policies that were co-championed by quite a few Republicans, too, including George W. Bush. Full Story Generals Don't Need a WatchdogNew York TimesJack Jacobs BY now, most Americans know the story of Cpl. Pat Tillman. He bravely chose military service rather than the National Football League, and he was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 by fire from his comrades. My own units in Vietnam were occasionally the victims of errant rifle fire, mortar rounds and bombs - indeed, the very success of an infantry attack is dependent on leaning forward into friendly supporting fires. But, after the fact, the Tillman death played out differently. His unit reported that he was killed in a ferocious engagement with the enemy, and the truth was hidden by the chain of command until, as is almost always the case, the truth escaped. As has been proved repeatedly, bad news doesn't get any better with age. Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., who was responsible for the cover-up, has been censured and faces demotion. Sadly, Corporal Tillman's death comes with another unhappy legacy: a ludicrous change in the Army regulation that deals with reporting casualties. With this change, the Army now requires a formal, independent investigation into the death of every American in a hostile area. Full Story Will Colombia Be the Next to Fall?Real Clear PoliticsCarlos Alberto Montaner Colombia must prepare to stand starkly alone. It is very likely that military aid from the United States will vanish in the near future, as Republicans and Democrats do battle. President Alvaro Uribe may be winning the war in the Colombian jungles, but he's losing it in Washington. It is not true that the two U.S. parties unite patriotically when faced with major foreign-policy challenges. That's part of the American mythology. If there's any electoral advantage in throwing overboard a foreign ally (or supporting him), Republicans and Democrats will do it. The only immovable principle is that elections must be won at any cost and under any pretext. Nor should Colombians expect the slightest solidarity from their ''Latin American brothers.'' That's another myth. The feelings that prevail in the region are either indifference or satisfaction over the dangers that loom over Colombian democracy. The countries in the southern cone are indifferent. Brazil -- despite the refinement of its ruling class -- is a giant with feet of clay and a soccer ball for a head. Full Story The Next InterventionWashington PostIvo Daalder and Robert Kagan Is the United States out of the intervention business for a while? With two difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a divided public, the conventional answer is that it will be a long time before any American president, Democrat or Republican, again dispatches troops into conflict overseas. As usual, though, the conventional wisdom is almost certainly wrong. Throughout its history, America has frequently used force on behalf of principles and tangible interests, and that is not likely to change. Despite the problems and setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, America remains the world's dominant military power, spends half a trillion dollars a year on defense and faces no peer strong enough to deter it if it chooses to act. Between 1989 and 2001, Americans intervened with significant military force on eight occasions -- once every 18 months. This interventionism has been bipartisan -- four interventions were launched by Republican administrations, four by Democratic administrations. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the situations in which an American president may have to use force have only grown, whether it is to respond to terrorist threats, to curb weapons proliferation, to prevent genocide or other human rights violations, or to respond to more traditional forms of aggression. To sustain broad, bipartisan support for interventions requires that we rebuild a domestic consensus on a fundamental but elusive issue: the question of legitimacy. That consensus has been one of the casualties of the Iraq war. Many of President Bush's critics, at home and abroad, argued that the war lacked legitimacy since it was not a clear instance of self-defense nor received the sanction of the U.N. Security Council. Many of Bush's supporters respond that it is not the opinions of other nations or institutions that provide legitimacy but the substance of the action itself. Toppling Saddam Hussein was a just act and therefore was inherently legitimate. Full Story |
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| SECURITY FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Perceptions of Iraq War Are Starting to ShiftMichael BaroneIt's not often that an opinion article shakes up Washington and changes the way a major issue is viewed. But that happened last week, when The New York Times printed an opinion article by Brookings Institution analysts Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack on the progress of the surge strategy in Iraq. Yes, progress. O'Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- Pollack even wrote a book urging the overthrow of Saddam Hussein -- but they have sharply criticized military operations there in the ensuing years. "As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq," they wrote, "we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory,' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with." Their bottom line: "There is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008." Full Story Domestic Terror in IranWall Street Journal Op-EdAmir Taheri It is early dawn as seven young men are led to the gallows amid shouts of "Allah Akbar" (Allah is the greatest) from a crowd of bearded men as a handful of women, all in hijab, ululate to a high pitch. A few minutes later, the seven are hanged as a mullah shouts: "Alhamd li-Allah" (Praise be to Allah). The scene was Wednesday in Mashad, Iran's second most populous city, where a crackdown against "anti-Islam hooligans" has been under way for weeks. The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks. The latest wave of executions is the biggest Iran has suffered in the same time span since 1984, when thousands of opposition prisoners were shot on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini. Full Story Wait, haul down the white flags - the surge in Iraq is workingCincinnati EnquirerPeter Bronson We're winning in Iraq. Ok, I said it. It's crazy. Stupid. Naive. Hopelessly optimistic. And true. Something has changed, and the cut-and-run crowd in Congress did not get the memo. They insist the war is lost and we should get out yesterday. But the war has taken a turn for the better, like a patient making a sudden recovery after years on life support. "Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms." That's not from a Bush loyalist. It's from two analysts at the liberal Brookings Institution, who say they have "harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq." After an eight-day tour of the war zone, they wrote a New York Times op-ed that had to give an extra-strength Maalox heartburn to Sen. Harry "this war is lost" Reid. Full Story How Indonesia is Winning Its War on TerrorTimeJoshua Kurlantzick In early June, the Indonesian authorities made a stunning capture. After pursuing a suspected militant to a safe house in central Java, police say they shot him in the leg as he tried to flee. The target was Abu Dujana, the alleged head of the military wing of the extremist group Jemaah Islamiah (J.I.). That same day, the police made more busts. A squad of Indonesian commandos stormed into a home in Yogyakarta, nabbing Zarkasih, whom the authorities say is a veteran jihadist and J.I.'s overall leader. And just a few months earlier, the police uncovered an arsenal of deadly bombmaking materials in another house in central Java, including potassium, TNT, detonators and ammunition for a grenade launcher, all of which might have been used for a massive new terror attack. Since the first Bali bombings five years ago, Indonesia has transformed itself from a country riddled with radical Islamist movements and terror threats - Indonesians once called autumn "the bombing season" because attacks had become so regular - to one of the world's few triumphs in fighting terrorism. Even better, Jakarta has succeeded without resorting to the draconian antiterror tactics increasingly preferred by governments from Sri Lanka to Iraq. Full Story I have seen the horrorNew York Daily NewsMichael Yon Amid all this talk of timetables for the War in Iraq, blurred as they are by a strange lemming-like compulsion to declare the "surge" strategy a failure almost before it actually began, one deadline looms larger with each passing day: It's time for a reckoning with the truth. The problem is that almost none of those who have cast themselves as truth-tellers have the requisite credibility for the job. The one man who does was told he had only until September to evaluate progress. I'm not suggesting that I make a worthy substitute for the commanding general, David Petraeus, on this or any subject, but since December of 2004, I have spent roughly a 1 1/2 years on the battlefields of Iraq. Full Story |
| TACTICAL TRAINING & INTELLIGENCE RESOURCES FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
Mirror Image Training: Training to Combat TerrorismMirror Image is a tactical and strategic training course developed and owned by the Terrorism Research Center. TRC instructors have trained hundreds of military personnel that are subsequently deployed to active combat operations, as well as large numbers of first responders, law enforcement, and security professionals. Mirror Image is an intensive one-week classroom and field-training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques, and operational tactics. During the course, participants will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands-on experience with the methods and means terrorist employ, education about terrorist ideologies and the cultural dimensions that influence their decision making process. Military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security professionals will, in turn, be able to see themselves as the terrorists see them and understand the weaknesses in their own environment that the terrorists will seek to exploit, and which all too often they miss. Armed with these insights participants will leave the course better able to anticipate, prevent and respond to multiple terrorist threats.
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| FRANKS REVIEW |
Tactical Equipment EvaluationHide-Away Holsters For The SummerA long time ago in a galaxy far away... no wait; wrong story. Not THAT long ago I received an off-duty holster system to test and was surprised to find that it was essentially a belly-band with a shoulder strap for support. Shortly thereafter I was given another off-duty holster system that was essentially a belly-band with two shoulder straps (like suspenders) for support. Being a little more round in the middle than I used to be, hiding such holster systems under a t-shirt isn't as easy, but I gave it my best try and here's how they both did.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/holsters+/hideaways.htm
Recreational Equipment Review"The First Commandment" by Brad ThorI had the honor and pleasure of meeting the author Brad Thor at an anti-terrorism conference in Virginia Beach, VA a couple years ago, and then saw him again during SHOT Show '06 in Vegas. The fact that we seemed to agree on so many contemporary issues and topics only made me more eager to read some of his books. His latest book arrived from his publisher as quite a surprise to me, but I set to reading it almost immediately. "The First Commandment" is #7 on the New York Times Bestseller list as I type this and I expect that it might climb a little more. Let me tell you why...Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/recreading/1stcommandment.htm |
| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
THINGS THAT GNAW..."There are some things that gnaw at a man." Charlie Wade (Postlewate) in the movie, "OPEN RANGE". He was talking about revenge upon the people who had violently killed his friend, his dog and critically injured a young boy who worked the cattle with him. Life is difficult enough but there are some things that some people, especially some men, never learn to tolerate. For those in peace keeping one of those things is a direct affront for authority, especially the authority of the one or more Peace Keepers who must handle whatever the situation happens to be. It is the same whether we are talking about Homeland Security and enforcement or actions on a foreign battlefield. Citizens know this and enemies know this. Some citizens and most enemies will use this particular thing that gnaws at us to create some response that will give them an advantage. These people know that most Peace Keepers are totally committed to Justice. Justice is when some violator gets just what he deserves in response to his actions of antagonism. In my early days of law enforcement I learned that justice always comes... It just does not always come as soon as we desire it... I had to learn how to defeat the gnawing and learn to wait for the opportune time... For the right mistake by the perp at the right time so that justice could be given a chance. Justice always comes but sometimes we are not allowed to be the one who brings it... And usually, it does not come in the manner in which we desire it. http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/article/081307chaplain.htm |
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