| August 20, 2007 Edition |
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Inside IraqWilliam KristolTIme I spent a week in Iraq recently, and here's what impressed me most: the Americans. In particular, the quality and character of the American soldiers and Marines who are fighting there and trying to help rebuild the nation. I don't mean to slight, in some ethnocentric way, the steadfastness and courage of the Iraqi people. But it was meeting and watching the American soldiers at work that I found most interesting. I've served in government, and I'm familiar with Washington, and I'm not an uncritical cheerleader for the American military. Indeed, I'd say that some of our general officers--until this past year, when General David Petraeus and Lieut. General Ray Odierno took over--haven't particularly distinguished themselves. But the brigade and battalion commanders and the company and platoon leaders I saw in Iraq are really impressive. Before going to Iraq, I didn't fully appreciate all the things our military leaders are doing there. Obviously, they're fighting--and doing so more discriminately and effectively than they did in 2003 or 2004. But that's just the beginning. Now that Petraeus and Odierno are pursuing a real counterinsurgency strategy, their subordinate commanders and officers are spending a lot of time engaging the local population in security, political and economic efforts. It's clear from the briefings by colonels and lieutenant colonels at various forward operating bases that they have internalized Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine. Occasionally you'll hear a leftover Rumsfeld-era talking point about how our job is to get out of the way and transition everything over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. And I did see a brigade commander who, when asked by an Iraqi shopkeeper why electricity was so sporadic, replied politely that electric power wasn't his job. Full Story |
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| QUOTE OF THE WEEK |
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The world is but a perpetual see-saw. Michel de Montaigne |
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| PROFESSIONAL ARTICLES, EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS |
The War in West PhiladelphiaWashington PostJohn P. Pryor I didn't hear the cars screech to a halt, but one of the trauma nurses did. He ran outside with two emergency department medics to find several people in a car, all of their clothes soaked with blood. The passengers were screaming for someone to help the young man in the front seat, who was unresponsive. The team threw the limp victim onto a gurney, one of several that stand waiting for these types of scenarios, which occur almost nightly at our trauma center. As the gurney rolled in, I saw a lifeless young man with more gunshot wounds than I could count. I was poised to start a resuscitation effort when a voice behind me announced that three more were coming in. As the team started CPR and checked for cardiac activity, the second and third victims were wheeled in. A young girl had a gunshot wound to the abdomen that made her writhe in pain. Her movements were slow and her mental functioning was impaired, signaling to me that she was in profound shock -- she was dying. I caught only a passing glance of the third patient, who had a gunshot wound to the neck and was coughing up blood. Those brief images were enough for me to sum up a desperate situation; I pronounced the first patient dead to concentrate resources on the other critically injured. Full Story For Top General in Iraq, Role Is a Mixed BlessingNew York TimesJohn F. Burns Gen. David H. Petraeus looked out from a Black Hawk helicopter at the vistas of Baghdad rushing by 150 feet below on a recent summer evening, pointing at bustling markets, amusement parks and soccer fields scattered through neighborhoods where miles of concrete barriers stood like sentinels against the threat of suicide bombers. Pressing the talk button on his headset, the slightly built, 54-year-old general, the top American commander in Iraq, said glimpses of the normal life that have survived the war's horrors have helped to boost his own flagging spirits, especially on days when signs of battlefront progress are offset by new bombings with mass casualties, the starkest measure of continuing insurgent power across Iraq. Then, he said ruefully, he wondered whether he "should have taken that civilian job" before accepting what many see as the most unpromising command since that of Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr. in Vietnam - who took charge, in 1968, when that war was going badly and American opinion was running strongly in favor of a pullout. General Petraeus's task may be tougher still. When he was appointed six months ago and promoted to full general, President Bush cast him as a man known for aggressive, innovative thinking on counterinsurgency warfare who could take the nearly 30,000 extra troops deployed to Iraq in January and turn the war's tide with a "surge" aimed at securing Baghdad and its surrounding "belts." Full Story The Coming Urban TerrorSystems disruption, networked gangs, and bioweaponsCity JournalJohn Robb For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the world's population is living in urban environments. Cities-efficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capital-are thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence. Over the last few years, small groups' ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity-their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold. Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. Full Story |
| BREAKING NEWS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
The Making of a Homegrown TerroristNewsweekChristopher Dickey What happens when politics and politicians, legislation and regulations fail to address the real and continuing threat that terrorists pose to our homes, families and businesses? Do we pretend that the fundamental laws we've got in the United States, including the Constitution and Bill of Rights, need not apply? Or should we declare war half a world away, imagining that with shock and awe and open-ended military occupation we can terrorize the terrorists? No. We've been there, done that, and there's every indication the threat is not only growing but growing closer to home. Maybe as close as next door. Fortunately, a study published Wednesday by the New York City police department's Intelligence Division, which is run by former CIA deputy director of operations David Cohen, provides a clear-eyed assessment of the risks that are real, rather than imagined, and opens the way for solutions that support the enforcement of the laws we've got in the war of ideas that is at hand. The terrorists' ideology, it warns, "is proliferating in Western democracies at a logarithmic rate." And the police can only do so much to counter this fact. Communities have to understand it as well. Full Story Hope and Despair in Divided IraqDer SpiegelUllrich Fichtner When describing Iraq, the word "peace" is seldom used. Truth be told, the Americans have restored order to many parts of the county. But Iraq remains fractured, and where new schools are built today, bombs could explode tomorrow. The Iraq war came within a hair of returning to Ramadi in early July. The attackers had already gathered four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) south of the city, on the banks of the Nasr canal. Between 40 and 50 men dressed in light uniforms were armed like soldiers and prepared to commit a series of suicide bombings. They had already strapped explosive vests to their bodies and loaded thousands of kilograms of explosives, missiles and grenades onto two old Mercedes trucks. But their plan was foiled when Iraqis intent on preserving peace in Ramadi betrayed them to the Americans. Full Story Shameful stunt for peaceThe Arizona RepublicWith all due respect to the nation's anti-war movement, the decision to enter the service is a choice to be made by young men and women and their families. Not by the activists. Since the very first day of classes, anti-war activists have been at Valley high school gates handing out "opt-out" literature - postcards that, if signed and sent, would remove the students' contact information from lists provided to military recruiters. Typically, the groups also bring anti-war signs. And some protesters make disparaging remarks about the military generally. In far too many respects, modern society insists that children grow up way too fast. In others - the issue of military recruitment, for example - we infantilize them. Full Story How I escaped IslamismTimes OnlineShiraz Maher For almost four years I was on the front line of British Islamism serving as a regional officer in northeast England for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group committed to the creation of a puritanical caliphate. Since leaving in 2005, I've been concerned at just how easy it was for me to join a radical Islamist movement - and why there was hardly any support available when I decided to leave. Hizb was a large family in many ways: a group offering social support, comradeship, a sense of purpose and validation. At 21, it was intoxicating to me. I embraced my new Islamist identity and family with eagerness. Islamism transcends cultural norms, so it not only prompted me to reject my British identity but also my ethnic South Asian background. I was neither eastern, nor western; I was a Muslim, a part of the global ummah, where identity is defined through the fraternity of faith. Full Story Ashes and DustIn the aftermath of a militia attack against unarmed civilians.Weekly StandardJeff Emanuel A KEY ATTRIBUTE of the enemy in Iraq for the past few years has been his unwillingness to directly engage Coalition forces in armed combat. Whether this is a result of the enemy's good sense or his cowardice (or some combination of the two), insurgents and sectarians from al Qaeda in Iraq to the Jaisch al Mahdi have almost entirely avoided direct confrontation with the Coalition, instead choosing to target soldiers with IEDs and snipers, while saving more aggressive attacks for soft targets like the Iraqi National Police (NP) and surrounding civilian populations. "It's very clear that they want nothing to do with us directly," said Captain Rich Thompson, a former enlisted Ranger and currently the commander of Baker Company, 1-15 Infantry (from the 3rd Infantry Division). Lieutenant Colonel Jack Marr, the 1-15 Battalion Commander, echoed that sentiment, observing that "They will go out of their way to avoid targeting us with their big operations, and to focus them on the NPs or another target they perceive to be weaker." Full Story |
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| SECURITY FOR THE PROFESSIONAL |
The Cheney ImperativeStephen F. HayesWall Street Op-Ed Dick Cheney sat transfixed by the images on the small television screen in the corner of his West Wing office. Smoke poured out of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center's North Tower. John McConnell, the vice president's chief speechwriter, sat next to him and said nothing. Then, a second plane appeared on the right-hand side of the screen, banked slightly to the left, and plunged into the South Tower. "Did you see that?" Mr. Cheney asked his aide. A little more than an hour later, Mr. Cheney was seated below the presidential seal at a long conference table in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, better known as the bunker. When an aide told Mr. Cheney that another passenger airplane was rapidly approaching the White House, the vice president gave the order to shoot it down. The young man was so surprised at Mr. Cheney's immediate response that he asked again. Mr. Cheney reiterated the order. Thinking that Mr. Cheney must have misunderstood the question, the military aide asked him a third time. The vice president responded evenly. "I said yes." Full Story 21st-Century BarbarismWashington Post EditorialONE REASON the debate over Iraq can seem so perplexing at times is that the nature of the violence can be so horrendous as to be nearly unfathomable. The inexcusable killing of civilians by insurgents and militias is so common as to go almost unremarked upon. But four simultaneous truck-bomb explosions in one small community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night, all directed against defenseless civilians, provided a savage and jarring reminder. The suicide bombers targeted members of the ancient religious sect known as the Yazidis. Women were killed at market; children were buried as clay and mud houses collapsed. At least 250 people were killed and hundreds more wounded, according to Iraqi officials, which would make the attack the deadliest of the war. Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. military commander in Iraq, blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq for the "horrific and indiscriminate attacks." Another U.S. general called the bombings "an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide." Extremist Sunni elements have been targeting the Yazidis at least since the spring, when a cellphone video was widely circulated on the Internet showing -- also unfathomable to most Americans -- a 17-year-old Yazidi girl being stoned to death because she had fallen in love with a Sunni man. Full Story Club Med BaghdadLife in the Green Zone.Weekly StandardIlya Shapiro U.S. Embassy, Baghdad I've been here two weeks now, feeling my way around, meeting people, getting up to speed, beginning to advise the Staff Judge Advocate (General Petraeus's lawyer) on a host of rule of law issues, and liaising with related offices at the State and Justice Departments. The aspect of this experience that most impressed me initially--and continues to do so however long I stay in the Green Zone--is the lavish luxury permeating through the Presidential Palace that emerged unscathed in the war and is now the U.S. Embassy. The expansive floors are marble, the high ceilings are adorned in gold leaf and elaborate murals, and the bathrooms are redolent in ornate fixtures and carvings. You expect veiled concubines to come out from behind the drapes to offer you grapes and a fanning. Full Story Falluja's Calm Is Seen as Fragile if U.S. LeavesNew York TimesRichard A. Oppel Jr. Falluja's police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail Hussein, waved aloft a picture of a severed head in a bucket as a reminder of the brutality of the fundamentalist Sunni militias that once controlled this city. But he also described an uncertain future without "my only supporters," the United States Marine Corps. Nearly three years after invading and seizing Falluja from insurgents, the Marines are engaged in another struggle here: trying to build up a city, and police force, that seem to get little help from the Shiite-dominated national government. Fallujans complain that they are starved of generator fuel and medical care because of a citywide vehicle ban imposed by the mayor, a Sunni, in May. But in recent months violence has fallen sharply, a byproduct of the vehicle ban, the wider revolt by Sunni Arab tribes against militants and a new strategy by the Marines to divide Falluja into 10 tightly controlled precincts, each walled off by concrete barriers and guarded by a new armed Sunni force. Full Story Return of the BearReal Clear PoliticsOliver North The great horned owl is a magnificent raptor with feathers so soft its prey can't even hear it coming until it's too late. But even this superb hunter has a major challenge to overcome: It cannot move its eyes. To scan forest or field for danger -- or its next meal -- the owl, its eyes fixed straight ahead, must rotate its head. Today, the U.S. national security apparatus is much like an owl with a stiff neck. For more than three years now, our White House, State Department and Pentagon have been fixated on America's adversaries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Our preoccupation has been on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. Unfortunately, we seem to have missed what's happening in Russia. Not to carry the wildlife metaphor too far, but "the Bear" is back. 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 EvaluationOdds And EndsThroughout any given year I get some items - pieces of equipment - that aren't really large enough to support individual reviews. I mean, you can only write so much about a sling, a target, or other items. SO, this week's review is going to be about some of those "odds and ends". On tap in this review will be a target from Just Shoot Me products; an intelligent tailcap from Lightsaver products; the Vickers sling from Blue Force Gear; a new survival bar food source by SOG Survival Bar; and finally, the Photon Freedom Micro light from L.R.I.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/other/oddsnends.htm
Recreational Equipment ReviewWaist Packs For HikingI was recently cleaning out the two large Rubbermaid containers that I keep all of the family camping gear in and I came across three waist packs. These packs were originally purchased for a camping trip my wife and I took with our daughter about ten years ago - before our youngest son was even around. We shopped around and selected these particular waist packs for the features they offered. This week's review is going to take a look at those features and why we chose them, as well as some other packs available with features you might need or enjoy.Full Story Can Be Viewed At: http://www.borelliconsulting.com/recevals/campback/waistpacks.htm |
| CHAPLAINS CORNER |
MORE THINGS THAT GNAW...Reports this week... The VIRGINIAN-PILOT, Norfolk ,Va., 08/16/07, Page 7 By Mitch Stacey, The Associated Press More police officers were killed while on duty in the first six months of 2007 - 101 - than during any such period since 1978. ... 39 were fatally shot ...45 died in traffic accidents Craig W. Floyd of the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, said, "It's the most dangerous profession in America. You never know when the odds are going to catch up with you." Floyd called the 44% increase in fatal police shootings across America alarming. The 101 killed during the first six months of 2007 compares with 145 killed nationally in all of 2006. That includes 52 who were shot, 45 who died in traffic crashes, 15 struck by a vehicle and 14 who died from job related illnesses. http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/article/082007chaplain.htm |
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