Boots In Baghdad

To Our Troops: Thank You!

2009-07-03T12:58:00.001-04:00

Video from Fox News

Did toxic chemical in Iraq cause GI's illnesses?

2009-06-29T19:48:00.002-04:00

From the St. Augustine Record:

By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
Publication Date: 06/29/09

Larry Roberta's every breath is a painful reminder of his time in Iraq. He can't walk a block without gasping for air. His chest hurts, his migraines sometimes persist for days and he needs pills to help him sleep.

James Gentry came home with rashes, ear troubles and a shortness of breath. Later, things got much worse: He developed lung cancer, which spread to his spine, ribs and one of his thighs; he must often use a cane, and no longer rides his beloved Harley.

David Moore's postwar life turned into a harrowing medical mystery: nosebleeds and labored breathing that made it impossible to work, much less speak. His desperate search for answers ended last year when he died of lung disease at age 42.

What these three men -- one sick, one dying, one dead -- had in common is they were National Guard soldiers on the same stretch of wind-swept desert in Iraq during the early months of the war in 2003.

These soldiers and hundreds of other Guard members from Indiana, Oregon and West Virginia were protecting workers hired by a subsidiary of the giant contractor, KBR Inc., to rebuild an Iraqi water treatment plant. The area, as it turned out, was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a potent, sometimes deadly chemical linked to cancer and other devastating diseases.

No one disputes that. But that's where agreement ends.

Among the issues now rippling from the courthouse to Capitol Hill are whether the chemical made people sick, when KBR knew it was there and how the company responded. But the debate is more than about this one case; it has raised broader questions about private contractors and health risks in war zones.

Questions, says Sen. Evan Bayh, who plans to hold hearings on the issues, such as these:

"How should we treat exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals as a threat to our soldiers? How seriously should that threat be taken? What is the role of private contractors? What about the potential conflict between their profit motives and taking all steps necessary to protect our soldiers?

"This case," says the Indiana Democrat, "has brought to light the need for systemic reform."

For now, dozens of National Guard veterans have sued KBR and two subsidiaries, accusing them of minimizing and concealing the chemical's dangers, then downplaying nosebleeds and breathing problems as nothing more than sand allergies or a reaction to desert air.

KBR denies any wrongdoing. In a statement, the company said it actually found the chemical at the Qarmat Ali plant, restricted access, cleaned it up and "did not knowingly harm troops."

Ten civilians hired by a KBR subsidiary made similar claims in an arbitration resolved privately in June. (The workers' contract prevented them from filing suit.)

This isn't the first claim that toxins have harmed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; there have been allegations involving lead, depleted uranium and sarin gas.

This also isn't the first challenge to KBR, whose billions of dollars of war-related contracts have been the subject of congressional scrutiny and numerous legal claims.

Among them are lawsuits recently filed against KBR and Halliburton Co. -- KBR's parent company until 2007 -- that assert open-air pits used to burn refuse in Iraq and Afghanistan caused respiratory illnesses, tumors and death. (KBR says it is reviewing the charges. Halliburton maintains it was improperly named and expects to be dismissed from the case.)

Earlier this year, several members of Congress asked Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to investigate potential burn pit hazards. He replied that his agency is conducting a health study of 30,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and noted the VA "has learned important lessons from previous military conflicts" as it deals with environmental exposure questions.

Some veterans advocates say the military is more attuned to health risks than it was in Vietnam and the Gulf War, but still falls short.

"I'm a realist -- things are going to get burned, things are going to be blown up," says Tom Tarantino, an Iraqi veteran and policy associate at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "But I think the DOD (Department of Defense) could do a better job at tracking what people are exposed to. If there's a big pit outside your base, you need to know what's going on and do tests ... so if people start getting sick, they won't spend years trying to figure out what's wrong with them."

This isn't a natural fit, he concedes, since the Defense Department "is a war-fighting agency, not an environmental protection agency. But I think there's a lack of information out there."

This case stems from the chaotic start of the war in 2003 when a KBR subsidiary was hired to restart the plant, which had been looted of equipment, wiring, even metal roofing and siding. The Iraqis had used hexavalent chromium to prevent pipe corrosion at the plant, which produced industrial water used in oil production.

It's the same chemical linked to poisonings in California in a case made famous in the movie "Erin Brockovich."

Hexavalent chromium -- a toxic component of sodium dichromate -- can cause severe liver and kidney damage and studies have linked it to leukemia as well as bone, stomach, brain and other cancers, according to an expert who provided a deposition for the civilian workers.

The chemical "is one of the most potent carcinogens know to man" and it can "enter every cell of the body and potentially produce widespread injury to every major organ in the body," said Max Costa, chairman of New York University's Department of Environmental Medicine.

KBR, however, says studies show only that industrial workers exposed to the chemical for more than two years have an increased risk of cancer -- and in this case, soldiers were at the plant just days or months.

The company also notes air quality studies concluded the Indiana Guard soldiers were not exposed to high levels of hexavalent chromium. But Costa says those tests were done when the wind was not blowing.

Both soldiers and former workers say there were days when strong gusts kicked up ripped-open bags of the chemical, creating a yellow-orange haze that coated everything from their hair to their boots.

"I was spitting blood and I was not the only one doing that," recalls Danny Langford, who worked for the KBR subsidiary. "The wind was blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. You could just hardly see where you were going. I pulled my shirt over my nose and there would be blood on it. I also saw the soldiers. They had blood splotches on their masks."

Larry Roberta, a 44-year-old former Oregon National Guard member, remembers a strange metallic taste and dust everywhere. He sat on a bag of the chemical, unaware it was dangerous.

"This orange crud blew up in your face, your eyes and on our food," he says. "I tried to wash my chicken patty off with my canteen. I started to get sick to my stomach right away."

Roberta had coughing spells and agonizing chest pains, he says, that "went all the way through my back. Whenever I breathed, the pain got more sharp. ... Every day I went there, I had something weird going on."

Russell Kimberling, a former Indiana National Guard captain, had severe sinus troubles that forced his evacuation to Germany. After returning, he became alarmed one August day in 2003 while escorting some officials to the plant in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

"I jumped out of the truck and I turned around and they (KBR staff) had full chemical gear on," he says. "I looked at some of my soldiers and said, 'This can't be very good."'

"They could have told us to put chemical suits on," Kimberling adds. "There are so many things that could have been done."

Ed Blacke, hired as plant health, safety and environmental coordinator, says he became worried after workers started having breathing problems and a former colleague sent him an internal KBR memo outlining the chemical's dangers. Blacke says when he complained at a meeting, he was labeled a troublemaker and resigned under pressure.

"Normally when you take over a job, you have a briefing -- this is what's out there, here's what you need for protective equipment," says Blacke, who testified at a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing last year. "There was nothing, nothing at all."

Blacke and Langford were among those whose civil claims were resolved in arbitration.

Kimberling is among nearly 50 Guard veterans -- most from Indiana, a smaller number from Oregon and West Virginia -- who've sued.

Mike Doyle, the Houston lawyer representing the soldiers and civilians, maintains KBR knew as early as May 2003 the chemical was there, but didn't close the site until that September.

"Once they (KBR) found out about it, they didn't tell anybody and they did everything to conceal it," he contends. "You have (KBR) managers in Houston, in Kuwait City who knew about this. Their staff was getting reports and soldiers and civilians who were in the field were told, 'No big deal. There's nothing to worry about."'

The lawsuit cites minutes of an August 2003 KBR meeting that mentions "serious health problems at the water treatment plant" and notes "almost 60 percent of the people now exhibit the symptoms."

In a recent wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, KBR chairman William P. Utt suggested the company be given some latitude with its military contracts.

"We think there ought to be some consideration given in many of these claims to the same protections the government has from these suits that exist," he said.

He also said KBR has been unfairly targeted in war zones. "People think there's an opportunity here in Iraq, let's paint it on KBR, then we'll worry about making the facts precise or correct later," Utt said.

As for the water plant, KBR says once it learned of the chemical, it took precautions to protect workers, notified the Army Corps of Engineers and led the cleanup. It says the Corps had previously deemed the area safe.

KBR also points to Army tests of 137 Indiana Guard soldiers that showed no medical problems that could be linked to exposure, as well as a military board review that found it unlikely anyone would suffer long-term medical consequences.

But Bayh and Doyle say those tests were done too late to be valid and note that soil tests were taken after the contaminated area was covered with asphalt and gravel.

Doyle also disagrees with KBR's contention that workers weren't there long enough -- weeks or months -- to have elevated cancer risks.

It can take a long time for symptoms of illness to surface -- five to 10 years or more for cancer. But some of those who say they were exposed are already ill.

Gentry, a retired lieutenant colonel who commanded the Indiana Guard unit, is in the late stages of lung cancer, which has spread to other parts of his body, according to his friend, Christopher Lee.

Gentry hasn't sued, but in a December 2008 deposition he recalled complaining to his superiors after his soldiers were told by KBR workers the orangish sand was a cancer-causing chemical. He said it was "very disappointing" that KBR managers didn't share that information.

"I'm dying because of it," he said.

While acknowledging he wasn't 100 percent certain that's why he has cancer, Gentry -- who served a second tour in Iraq -- said his doctor "believes the most probable cause was my exposure to this chemical."

KBR's actions, he said, had put "my men at risk that is unnecessary."

The Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon National Guards have sent hundreds of letters to soldiers notifying them of possible contamination and urging them to seek medical attention. The Oregon Guard also set up a Facebook page and reports about 15 soldiers have reported medical symptoms.

Bayh has introduced a bill calling for a special medical registry that would require the Department of Defense to notify all military members of exposure to potential toxins -- and provide comprehensive medical care. (It would be limited to those serving after Sept. 11, 2001.)

A similar notification measure was approved Thursday in the U.S. House, an amendment to the defense authorization bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, an Oregon lawmaker.

All these measures come too late for 1st Sgt. David Moore, who served with Gentry.

He thought his persistent cough in Iraq would stop when he returned home. Instead, breathing became difficult; he eventually needed a chair in the shower because he could no longer stand, says his brother, Steve. Moore had nosebleeds, too, and boil-like rashes behind his ears and on his back, arms and legs. He went from doctor to doctor. "None of them could ever figure out what it was," his brother says.

By late 2007, the one-time construction worker -- who had been "strong as an ox," and ran 3 1/2 miles every other day -- couldn't even venture outside, Steve Moore says. But he didn't give up.

"He was always upbeat," his brother says. "He said, 'They'll figure it out, they'll figure it out.' He thought that until the last time I talked to him. You could see the fear in his eyes. They had him on 100 percent oxygen and he still couldn't breathe. He requested to be put on a ventilator so they could figure it out."

Moore died in February 2008. The cause was lung disease. His death was ruled service-related. His brother believes it was hexavalent chromium.

Larry Roberta, the former Oregon Guardsman who needed stomach surgery after his return, still has physical and emotional problems: Post traumatic stress. Mood swings. Nose polyps. Chest pains. Migraines that can keep him bedridden for days.

He takes two inhalers -- he can't walk a block without them -- and high blood pressure medicine every day and testosterone shots every two weeks.

"I have 100 percent disability," he says. "I've got a long laundry list of things that happened to me while I was there. If you add it all up, I'd be almost 200 percent disabled."

Roberta recently testified before Oregon lawmakers, urging them to set aside money for Guard members who develop cancer from exposure to the chemical.

His wife, Michelle, says her husband's illness has dramatically changed his outlook.

"He has no ambitions for life anymore," she says. "At his age, that makes me very sad. I worry about him every day."

Kimberling, the former Indiana Guardsman, struggles as well.

The father of two young children -- he's a pharmaceutical salesman in Louisville, Ky. -- says he hasn't been able to get life insurance because his possible exposure is mentioned on his medical records.

Sometimes, he says, it's hard to sort out his real aches from his fears.

"I feel like I'm a 38-year-old in a 60-year-old's body," he says. "There are a lot of things that seem to be going south a lot quicker than they should. Sinus problems ... pain in my joints that I've never felt before.

"I'm not sure if it's the anxiety of finding out about it or not. I kind of know and feel it's just a matter of time before it catches up with me."

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© The St. Augustine Record

Life after U.S. pullout brings worries for Iraqis

2009-06-28T15:51:00.001-04:00

From Reuters:

Sun Jun 28, 2009 11:48am EDT
By Daniel Wallis

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sitting in his small room in northern Baghdad, a pistol nearby and assault rifles stacked under the bed, Khalil Ibrahim is worried over Iraq's future.

Six years after the U.S. invasion, Iraqis are contemplating the reality of life after a major milestone -- Tuesday's withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from urban centres.

Glancing at his seven-year-old son playing a war game on a computer in the corner, Ibrahim, a chain-smoking former military intelligence officer, said he has two main worries.

"Iran has good relations with our political parties. They run militias. If the U.S. troops complete their withdrawal, Iran will do whatever it wants in Iraq," he said, scowling.

Shi'ite-ruled Iran is often accused of arming and funding Shi'ite militias who have killed Sunnis, a charge Tehran denies.

"Also, if the Americans pull out, al Qaeda will return," Ibrahim said. He knows the Islamist militants better than most.

As leader of a U.S.-backed Sunni Arab guard unit made up of many former insurgents, some of his men fought with the rebels against the U.S. military, before switching sides and helping drive al Qaeda fighters out of much of Iraq.

But as U.S. forces increasingly hand control to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Muslim-led government under a security pact that requires them to withdraw completely by 2012, tensions are rising.

Violence has dropped sharply across Iraq, but militants still launch devastating bombings. They are usually blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents like al Qaeda, and seem aimed at undermining Maliki's administration and tipping the nation back into the sectarian slaughter of 2006/07.

WAVE OF BOMBINGS

The last few days have seen two of the worst attacks in more than a year. A suicide truck bomb killed at least 73 worshippers leaving a Shi'ite mosque near northern Kirkuk city on June 20. Four days later another blast tore through a market in Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shi'ite slum, killing 72 people.

The government has warned that bloodshed is likely to intensify ahead of an even more important milestone for Iraq than this week's -- a parliamentary election due in January.

With the U.S. withdrawal from cities, many Iraqis from Shi'ite and Sunni sects say they feel exposed to what they say is corruption and incompetence afflicting Iraqi security forces.

"We're afraid of what will happen in the next few days," 40-year-old Shi'ite civil servant Salah Abd told Reuters by the wreckage of the Sadr City blast. "We could lose a lot of lives."

Others are more optimistic about the U.S. withdrawal, which will see almost all U.S. troops pull back to rural bases.

"The Iraqi forces will improve, and then they will be better than Americans because they have our best interests at heart," said a 44-year-old Shi'ite woman called Marwa. She was taking advantage of the quiet weekend streets to shop for a digital camera in the upmarket Karrada district.

U.S. military officials say they have plans in place that will let them redeploy if Iraq asks for their help. And their main bases in violent northern provinces have all been defined as "rural" to allow them to retain a presence.

AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

At his apartment in northern Baghdad's run-down Adhamiya neighbourhood, Ibrahim, who also goes by the name of Abu Omar, remained sceptical.

Al Qaeda frequently targets the Sunni guard units, known as Awakening Councils, or Majalis al-Sahwa in Arabic, since they switched sides. His brother was killed on duty last July, then one son was killed by a Yemeni suicide bomber in August.

A second son was slain by a Shi'ite militia in 2005.

Lighting another cigarette, he turned to a window overlooking a square beside a Sunni mosque where Saddam Hussein made his final public appearance in Baghdad in April 2003.

His guards feared the future, Ibrahim said, partly because they no longer had contact with the U.S. military. Many Sahwas fear Baghdad will turn on them for their insurgent past.

"I still have good relations with the United States. I could go and live there," he said, as a pair of yellow canaries chirped in a small cage and a rickety ceiling fan revolved overhead.

"But I was born here, lived here, and I intend to die here. If I go, others will go, and then who will stay?"

Ed "Too Tall" Freeman

2009-06-25T08:33:00.008-04:00

Remembering a Hero
From an e-mail I received this morning:

You’re a 19 year old kid. You’re critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8–1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half way around the world—12,000 miles away—and you’ll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He’s not Medi-Vac, so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He’s coming anyway.

And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the doctors and nurses.

And, he kept coming back…13 more times…and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

From Wikipedia:

On November 14, 1965, Freeman and his unit transported a battalion of American soldiers to the Ia Drang Valley. Later, after arriving back at base, they learned that the soldiers had come under intense fire and had taken heavy casualties. Enemy fire around the landing zones was so heavy that the medical evacuation helicopters refused to enter the area. Freeman and his commander, Major Bruce Crandall, volunteered to fly their unarmed, lightly armored helicopters in support of the embattled troops. Freeman made a total of fourteen trips to the battlefield, bringing in water and ammunition and taking out wounded soldiers.

Freeman was sent home from Vietnam in 1966 and retired from the military the next year. He settled in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho, his wife Barbara's home state, and continued to work as a pilot. He used his helicopter to fight wildfires, perform animal censuses, and herd wild horses for the Department of the Interior until his final retirement in 1991.

Freeman's commanding officer nominated him for the Medal of Honor for his actions at Ia Drang, but not in time to meet a two-year deadline then in place. He was instead awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The Medal of Honor nomination was disregarded until 1995, when the two-year deadline was removed. He was formally presented with the medal on July 16, 2001, by President George W. Bush.

Freeman died on August 20, 2008 due to complications from Parkinson's disease. He was buried in the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery in Boise.

In the 2002 film We Were Soldiers, which depicted the Battle of Ia Drang, Freeman was portrayed by Mark McCracken. The post office in Freeman's hometown of McLain, Mississippi, was renamed the "Major Ed W. Freeman Post Office" in March 2009.

Iran's Post-Election Crisis

2009-06-23T15:58:00.005-04:00

"The United States must seek out opportunities for resolving the increasingly urgent impasse over Iran’s nuclear program and addressing the broader array of concerns about Iranian policy. The elections have not changed the fact that negotiations represent the best of a range of unappealing options available to Washington. However, as a result of the increasingly arbitrary actions by Iran’s leadership, the American diplomatic approach has become more complicated and a successful resolution of the three-decade long estrangement becomes unfortunately less likely."
-Suzanne Maloney, June 14, 2009
Saban Center for Middle East Policy

For the entire article, click here.

Double standard continues

2009-06-23T15:32:00.003-04:00

Media Cheer Obama's Golf Outings; Criticized Republicans' Trips to Course

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama has gone to the golf course at least 11 times since he took the oath of office a little more than six months ago--three rounds were played during the late January, 12-day holiday Obama took with his family in Hawaii; one at Andrews Air Force Base; and seven at Ft. Belvoir Golf Course, including a round on Sunday, Father’s Day, with Vice President Joe Biden.

These 11 rounds played by the president are documented through media reports of his golf trips. The White House press office told CNSNews.com that to confirm every round of golf played by the president since he took office would take “hours” because the only records kept are those sent to the media through e-mails that are not posted on the White House Web site because they are for media planning only.

Despite ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ongoing violence in Iran, and an economy that Obama has described as the worst since the Great Depression, the president has golfed multiple times in the past several weeks--on April 26, May 16, May 25, May 31, June 7, June 9, June 14 and June 21.

Obama’s golf outings have generated favorable reports from the media, in contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush.

On Aug. 5, 2002, The Washington Post wrote about President Bush golfing near his parents’ home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Under the headline “Before Golf, Bush Decries Latest Deaths in Mideast,” staff writer Mike Allen described Bush as he “sprang from his golf cart at 6:15 a.m. and said he was distressed to hear about the latest suicide bombers in Israel.”

“Bush, wearing khakis and a knit shirt, was holding a driver in his gloved left hand,” Allen wrote.

“However incongruous the setting, the president plunged ahead,” Allen wrote.

“There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” he [Bush] said. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”

“His business out of the way,” Allen wrote, “Bush barely paused for breath before saying, ‘Thank you. Now watch this drive.’”

A search of news reports on Nexis revealed that photographers, but not reporters have access to Obama when he is on the links. But his outings have been covered, including by The Washington Post on June 9, 2009, in an article with the headline “Just the Sport for A Leader Most Driven.”

“What’s the deal? Why golf?” Post staff writer Richard Leiby wrote. “The attraction seems to be simple. It’s a great escape; the game demands such attention that nothing else matters. It’s time spent with friends, an unhurried afternoon in loose clothing (shorts seem to be Obama’s preference).”

Leiby continued, “To some, Obama’s frequent outings reflect a cool self-confidence.”

Leiby even quoted a sports psychologist who said Obama seemed able to play golf despite the grim reports by the media about the wars and the economy.

In August 2003, Bush said he decided to stop playing golf to show his respect for the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” Bush said in an interview with Politico and Yahoo News on May 13, 2008. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made the decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner of human rights. He was golfing when he got the news.

“I was playing golf--I think I was in central Texas--and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

Bush was criticized for giving up golf, including by presidential historian Robert Dallek who was quoted in a May 14, 2008 article in The Washington Post.

Dallek said Bush’s remarks about Iraq “speak to his shallowness.” Dallek added: “That's his idea of sacrifice, to give up golf?”

Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, also was criticized for golfing in a time of war.

In an Aug. 3, 2006 article in USA Today entitled “No Rest for the President,” it noted that George W. Bush cut his summer vacation to 10 days because of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, and a sidebar reviewed other presidential vacations.

Among other things, the sidebar said, “George H.W. Bush: In 1990, Bush was criticized for playing golf and fishing at his Kennebunkport, Maine, summer home and seeming indifferent as U.S. troops were being deployed to the Persian Gulf in anticipation of a war with Iraq.”

Obama golfed on May 25 after he spoke and placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day. Presidential aides told the media that Obama observed a moment of silence at 3 p.m. while on the links.

Obama also played golf on June 7, the day he returned from his trip to Egypt and Germany, where he visited Holocaust concentration camps, and Normandy, France, where as many as 6,000 American troops died when Allied Forces invaded the country during World War II.

“With his wife and daughters still in France, the president ducked out of the White House 90 minutes after getting home and headed out to the Andrews Air Force Base course with his clubs to enjoy a round, with skies only partly cloudy and temperatures about 80 degrees,” United Press International reported on June 7.

The following U.S. troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan while Obama was on golf outings, according to records of U.S. troop casualties kept by the Department of Defense:

-- Spc. David A. Schaefer Jr., 27, of Belleville, Ill., died May 16 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 172nd Infantry Brigade, Schweinfurt, Germany.

--Cmdr. Duane G. Wolfe, 54, of Port Hueneme, Calif., died May 25 from injuries suffered as a result of an improvised explosive device attack on his convoy southeast of Fallujah. Wolfe was assigned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Gulf Region Division in Iraq.

-- Spc. Eduardo S. Silva, 25, of Greenfield, Calif., died June 9 at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, of a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 563rd Aviation Support Battalion, 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

HERO - Coast Guard Vet saves lives

2009-04-01T17:15:00.001-04:00

Heroic Nurse, Shot 27 Times, Saved Lives
Coast Guard Vet Died While Alerting Others As Gunman Went On Rampage In N.C. Nursing Home

ROCKINGHAM, N.C., March 30, 2009

(CBS) Jerry Avant Jr. died while protecting others.

Doctors said the 39-year-old male nurse was shot more than two dozen times Sunday while trying to shield others from a gunman at a Carthage, N.C. nursing home.

The suspect, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, seemingly picked his targets at random, moving from room to room inside the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center in Carthage, N.C., shooting 11 people in all, eight fatally.

Seven of the eight killed were patients at the facility, where police say Stewart's ex-wife was employed.

Avant's father, Jerry Avant Sr., told CBS Affiliate WRAL-TV that the doctor told him his son was a hero. "He said he undoubtedly saved a lot
of lives before he went down, because he counted, himself, 27 bullet holes."

Avant was a 10-year veteran of the Coast Guard before he became a male nurse.

Avant's fiancée, Jill DeGarmo, a medical technician who was working at Pinelake's Alzheimer's unit when the shooting began, told CBS' The Early Show that she'd heard Avant over the intercom: "I couldn't make out everything he was trying to say, something about 'Lock the doors.' And one of the girls got a call that there had been a shooter in the building.

"And the first thing we did, we grabbed the patients as quickly as possible and got them in a room that would hold everyone. We put the blinds down and made sure everyone was in there. Turned the lights off, got it quiet."

Shortly after, DeGarmo said she heard doors open up "and we heard a couple of shots go off."

DeGarmo stayed with the patients until word spread that the gunman had been apprehended - and that her fiancée had been shot. "I went to the front to see where he was. He was laying on the floor bleeding. I ran and got some towels and tried to help control his bleeding the best I could until someone got there."

"He told me he felt like he was dying. And I kept telling him he wasn't going to die, everything would be OK.

"And he asked me to pray with him. And he started to pray. And he said a couple more times, he said, 'I'm dying.' I guess … I just didn't think that way. I didn't think that no matter how bad it got … he was not going to die, he was going to be OK. And he was losing consciousness. I just tried to keep him awake the best I could until someone got there. And then once the paramedics got there, they took over."

DeGarmo followed him to the hospital where he was taken into surgery.

"The doctor informed me during surgery - he had come out and spoke with me- [that] his heart had stopped. And they did revive him, but I guess his heart stopped the second time around, and they couldn't revive him. He had lost too much blood."

Avant's sister, Frances Greene, said she wanted the world to remember her brother as "a very compassionate, wonderful person.

"I couldn't have went out and hand-picked a better brother," she told Early Show anchor Julie Chen. "I mean, God blessed me with a wonderful brother for 39 years. And I love him so much. And I'm going to miss him, so much."

Avant's father told WRAL that he takes solace in knowing his son may have saved many more lives.

"Like it said in the Bible, John 15:13, any man that would lay down his life for another man, that's good."

For the original article, click here.

The War on Business

2009-03-10T07:52:00.002-04:00

From Bloomberg.com

‘Manchurian Candidate’ Starts War on Business: Kevin Hassett

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

These steps would create near-term distress. If our Manchurian Candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.

There are two steps to accomplish that.

Discourage Innovation

First, one way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.

Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been so slow to act that even liberal economist and commentator Paul Krugman is criticizing the administration for “dithering.” It has gotten so bad that the Intrade prediction market now has a future on whether Geithner is gone by year’s end. It currently puts the chance of that at about 20 percent.

No More Deferral

On the tax hike, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income that they earn abroad.

Currently, the U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax on Earth. U.S. firms can compete in Europe by opening a subsidiary in a low-tax country and locating the profits there. Since the high U.S. tax applies only when the money is mailed home, and firms can let the money sit abroad for as long as they want, the big disadvantage of the high rate is muted significantly.

End that deferral opportunity and U.S. firms will no longer be able to compete, given their huge tax disadvantage. With foreign tax rates so low now, it is even possible that the end of deferral could lead to the extinction of the U.S. corporation.

If any firms are to remain, they will be festooned with massive carbon-permit expenses because of Obama’s new cap-and- trade program.

Importing Drugs

Obama’s attack on intellectual property is evident in his aggressive stance against U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the budget. He would force drug companies to pay higher “rebate” fees to Medicaid, and he included wording that suggests Americans will soon be able to import drugs from foreign countries. The stock prices of drug companies, predictably, tanked when his budget plan was released.

Obama will allow cheap and potentially counterfeit substitutes into the country and will set the U.S. price for drugs equal to the lowest price that any foreign government is able to coerce from our drugmakers.

Given this, why would anyone invest money in a risky new cancer trial, or bother inventing some other new thing that the government could expropriate as soon as it decides to?

Finally, Obama has set aside $634 billion to establish a health-reform reserve fund, a major first step in creating a universal health-care system. If you want to have health care for everyone, you have to give it to many people for free. Once we start doing that, we will never stop, at least until the government runs out of money.

It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.

Obama Plan = Impossible

2009-02-26T09:54:00.002-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal

FEBRUARY 26, 2009, 3:47 A.M. ET

The 2% Illusion
Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."

This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.

But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006.

Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he's also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don't matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation's primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively "small business" is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income.

The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.

On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy. There's a reason that Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means panel, which writes tax law, is holding hearings this week on cap-and-trade regulation.

Mr. Obama is very good at portraying his agenda as nothing more than center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. And the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12

Mitt Romney: Stimulate the economy, not government

2009-02-06T21:24:00.002-05:00

By Mitt Romney
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- These are extraordinary times, and like a lot of Republicans I believe that a well-crafted stimulus plan is needed to put people back to work. But the Obama spending bill would stimulate the government, not the economy.

We're on an economic tightrope. The package that passed the House is a huge increase in the amount of government borrowing. And we've borrowed so much already that if we add too much more debt, or spend foolishly, we could invite an even bigger crisis.

We could precipitate a worldwide crisis of confidence in America, leading to a run on the dollar or hyperinflation that wipes out family savings and devastates the middle class.

It's still early in the administration of President Obama. Like everyone who loves this country, I want him to adopt the correct course and then to succeed. He still has a chance to step in and insist on spending discipline among the members of his own party.

It's his job to set priorities. I hope for America's sake that he knows that a chief executive can't vote "present." He has to say yes to some things and no to a lot of others.

As someone who spent a career in the private sector, I'd like to see a stimulus package that respects the productivity and genius of the American people. And experience shows us what it should look like.

First, there are two ways you can put money into the economy, by spending more or by taxing less. But if it's stimulus you want, taxing less works best. That's why permanent tax cuts should be the centerpiece of the economic stimulus.

Second, any new spending must be strictly limited to projects that are essential. How do we define essential? Well, a good rule is that the projects we fund in a stimulus should be legitimate government priorities that would have been carried out in the future anyway, and are simply being moved up to create those jobs now.

As we take out nonessential projects, we should focus on funding the real needs of government that will have immediate impact. And what better place to begin than repairing and replacing military equipment that was damaged or destroyed in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan?

Third, sending out rebate checks to citizens and businesses is not a tax cut. The media bought this line so far, but they've got it wrong. Checks in the mail are refunds, not tax cuts. We tried rebate checks in 2008 and they did virtually nothing to jump-start the economy. Disposable income went up, but consumption hardly moved.

Businesses aren't stupid. They're not going to invest in equipment and new hires for a one-time, short-term blip. What's needed are permanent rate cuts on individuals and businesses.

Fourth, if we're going to tax less and spend more to get the economy moving, then we have to make another commitment as well. As soon as this economy recovers, we have to regain control over the federal budget, and above all, over entitlement spending for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This is more important than most people are willing to admit.

There is a real danger that with trillions of additional borrowing -- from the budget deficit and from the stimulus -- world investors will begin to fear that our dollars won't be worth much in the future. It is essential that we demonstrate our commitment to maintaining the value of the dollar. That means showing the world that we will put a stop to runaway spending and borrowing.

Fifth, we must begin to recover from the enormous losses in the capital investment pool. And the surest, most obvious way to get that done is to send a clear signal that there will be no tax increases on investment and capital gains. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts should be extended permanently, or at least temporarily.

And finally, let's exercise restraint in the size of the stimulus package. Last year, with the economy already faltering, I proposed a stimulus of $233 billion. The Washington Post said: "Romney's plan is way too big." So what critique will the media have for the size of the Obama package?

In the final analysis, we know that only the private sector -- entrepreneurs and businesses large and small -- can create the millions of jobs our country needs. The invisible hand of the market always moves faster and better than the heavy hand of government.

Article found here.

Military Times poll: Troops wary about Obama

2009-01-02T10:38:00.002-05:00

From the Military Times:

2008 Military Times poll: Wary about Obama

Troops cite inexperience, Iraq timetable
By Brendan McGarry - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Jan 1, 2009 11:06:56 EST

When asked how they feel about President-elect Barack Obama as commander in chief, six out of 10 active-duty service members say they are uncertain or pessimistic, according to a Military Times survey.

In follow-up interviews, respondents expressed concerns about Obama’s lack of military service and experience leading men and women in uniform.

“Being that the Marine Corps can be sent anywhere in the world with the snap of his fingers, nobody has confidence in this guy as commander in chief,” said one lance corporal who asked not to be identified.

For eight years, members of the U.S. military have served under a Republican commander in chief who reflected their generally conservative views and led them to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, the troops face change not only at the very top of the chain of command, as Obama nears his Jan. 20 inauguration, but perhaps in mission, policy and values.

Underlying much of the uncertainty is Obama’s stated 16-month timetable for pulling combat troops out of Iraq, as well as his calls to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to allow gays to serve openly in the military, according to survey responses and interviews.

“How are you going to safely pull combat troops out of Iraq?” said Air Force 1st Lt. Rachel Kleinpeter, an intelligence officer with the 100th Operations Support Squadron at RAF Mildenhall, England. “And if you’re pulling out combat troops, who are you leaving to help support what’s left? What happens if Iraq falls back into chaos? Are we going to be there in five years doing the same thing over again?”

When asked who has their best interests at heart — Obama or President George W. Bush — a higher percentage of respondents picked Bush, though Bush has lost ground over time. About half of the respondents said Bush has their best interests at heart this year, the same percentage as last year but a decline from 69 percent in 2004.

Nearly one-third of respondents — including eight out of 10 black service members — said they are optimistic about their incoming boss.

Even some service members who voted against Obama — only 1 in 4 supported him over Sen. John McCain in a pre-election survey of Military Times subscribers —now express goodwill toward him as their new commander in chief.

“Overall, the prospect of having someone who isn’t necessarily tied to old strategies is a good thing,” said Air Force Master Sgt. David Ortegon, who said he voted for McCain. “Sometimes you need a fresh perspective to be able to handle our military readiness and the needs of the nation.”

The findings are part of the sixth annual Military Times survey of subscribers to Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times newspapers. This year’s survey, conducted Dec. 1 through Dec. 8, included more than 1,900 active-duty respondents.

The responses are not representative of the opinions of the military as a whole. The survey group overall under-represents minorities, women and junior enlisted service members, and over-represents soldiers.

But as a snapshot of the professional corps, the responses highlight the challenges Obama faces as he prepares to take command of military careerists with different political and cultural attitudes.

In keeping with previous surveys, nearly half of the respondents described their political views as conservative or very conservative. Slightly more than half said they consider themselves Republicans, 22 percent independents and 13 percent Democrats.

Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has written extensively about civil-military relations, said a degree of uncertainty among service members toward Obama is appropriate, given their questions about how he will govern as commander in chief.

“Those numbers don’t convince me he has got a big problem on his hands because what he is seeing is not military hostility, but rather military caution, and caution that is reasonable because he has never been in the position of this office,” Feaver said. “It’s sensible and understandable that they have doubts about him.

“They respect the office of the commander in chief,” Feaver said. “As long as he wields that office responsibly, then these numbers need not morph into a problem.”

David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland, said respondents’ optimism toward Obama can be partially attributed to confidence in his military advisers, including Richard Danzig, former secretary of the Navy, and retired Gen. James Jones Jr., former commandant of the Marine Corps and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

On Dec. 1, the day the survey was released, Obama announced his national security team, including Jones as national security adviser and Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, as defense secretary.

“There is an understanding that the president doesn’t do all his own paperwork,” Segal said. “The quality of any president is going to depend on the quality of the people he has around him.”

When to leave Iraq
While nearly half of the respondents said they disapprove of Obama’s proposal to withdraw combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, a slightly higher percentage said they support the Status of Forces Agreement calling for U.S. forces to leave the country by the end of 2011.

Army Spc. Robbie Blackford, an infantryman with C Troop, 1-71st Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, who returned from a 14-month tour in Iraq in late October, said Obama should gradually reduce the number of U.S. service members in Iraq.

“In my mind, things were changing to the point where we could get out of there and the Iraqis could take over their own country,” Blackford said. “I think that he should just pull out a little at a time.”

Although realistic about the challenges ahead, troops overwhelmingly support the mission in Afghanistan.

Eight out of 10 respondents said the U.S. should have gone to war in Afghanistan. Nearly the same amount support plans to boost the number of troops there by more than 20,000, for a total of more than 50,000.

“We just don’t have enough manpower to be out there doing what we need to do, winning the hearts and minds and so forth,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jay Brewer, a meteorological and oceanographic officer with Marine Forces Pacific who has twice deployed to Iraq. “In Iraq, when we increased the number of troops, we were able to increase our presence full-time in certain areas.”

While the majority of respondents expressed some degree of optimism the U.S. will succeed in Afghanistan, 30 percent said troops will need to stay for more than a decade to achieve its goals.

The survey results also suggest that despite the military’s efforts to address mental-health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, stigma associated with the conditions lingers.

About 15 percent of active-duty respondents said they are suffering from or have suffered from PTSD, TBI or other mental health issues.

Most of those respondents said they sought help with the treatment. But four out of 10 said they believed seeking care for such disabilities would negatively affect their career.

Navy Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class William Rioseco, an instructor at Center for Security Forces, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, said mandatory post-deployment screening across all services would help to reduce stigma associated with mental health disorders.

“Like PT, it should be mandatory. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in action, or you’re doing support,” he said. “If you’re in a combat zone, you’re subject for mandatory psychoanalysis because people can get affected by different things.”

Russia vs. USA

2008-12-29T11:17:00.003-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America 'Disintegrates' in 2010

By: Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin's ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country's top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin's English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It's much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union."

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin's predictions. "Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people," says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin's theories don't hold water.

Mr. Panarin's résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB's successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are "classified."

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

"When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise," he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. "They didn't believe me."

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

"It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama "can work miracles," he wrote. "But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

The article prompted a question about the White House's reaction to Prof. Panarin's forecast at a December news conference. "I'll have to decline to comment," spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino's response was significant. "The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully," he says.

The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union -- 15 years beforehand. "When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him," says Prof. Panarin.

Man made global warming disproved

2008-12-29T10:51:00.001-05:00

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

By Christopher Booker

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest "metric martyr", the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council's vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce "by the bowl" (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don't understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray.

Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original "martyrs" who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column's readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book).

Readers were equally generous this year in rushing to the aid of Sue Smith, whose son was killed in a Snatch Land Rover in Iraq in 2005. Their contributions made it possible for her to carry on with the High Court action she has brought against the Ministry of Defence, with the sole aim of calling it to account for needlessly risking soldiers' lives by sending them into battle in hopelessly inappropriate vehicles. Thanks not least to Mrs Smith's determined fight, the Snatch Land Rover scandal, first reported here in 2006, has at last become a national cause celebre.

May I finally thank all those readers who have written to me in 2008 – so many that, as usual, it has not been possible to answer all their messages. But their support and information has been hugely appreciated. May I wish them and all of you a happy (if globally not too warm) New Year.

REACTION-Israeli attacks on Gaza

2008-12-27T19:46:00.000-05:00

Rueters:

27 Dec 2008 13:49:28 GMT

GAZA, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Israeli war planes and combat helicopters pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday.

Here are some of the key comments:

ISRAELI DEFENCE FORCE STATEMENT:

"The IDF will continue its operations against terror in accordance with constant status assessments by the IDF Chief of General Staff. This operation will be continued, expanded and intensified as much as required."

ISRAELI DEFENCE MINISTER EHUD BARAK:

"We face a period that will be neither easy nor short, and will require determination and perseverance until the necessary change is achieved in the situation in the south."

ISLAMIC JIHAD:

"All fighters are ordered to respond to the Israeli slaughter."

HAMAS ARMED WING SPOKESMAN ABU UBAIDA:

The group will "teach the enemy a lesson they will never forget".

NABIL ABU RDAINAH, AIDE TO PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS:

"President Abbas demands that the Israeli government stop this aggression immediately to spare our people its painful effects, and calls on the international community to intervene to stop the aggression."

WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN GORDON JOHNDROE:

"Hamas' continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop. Hamas must end its terrorist activities if it wishes to play a role in the future of the Palestinian people.

"The United States urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza."

SPOKESMAN FOR EU FOREIGN POLICY CHIEF JAVIER SOLANA

"We are very concerned at the events in Gaza. We call for an immediate ceasefire and urge everybody to exert maximum restraint."

ARAB LEAGUE SECRETARY-GENERAL AMR MOUSSA:

"We are facing a continuing spectacle which has been carefully planned. So we have to expect that there will be many casualties. We face a major humanitarian catastrophe".

EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT HOSNI MUBARAK, QUOTED BY MENA:

"Egypt condemns the Israeli military attacks."

"Egypt will continue its contacts to prepare an atmosphere conducive to restoring the period of calm and achieving reconciliation between the Palestinian groups."

IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN HASAN QASHQAVI QUOTED BY STATE TELEVISION:

"Iran strongly condemns the Zionist regime's (Israel) wide-ranging attacks against the civilians in Gaza."

"The raids agains innocent people are unforgiveable and unacceptable."

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY STATEMENT:

"Moscow deems it necessary to stop large scale military action against Gaza, which had already led to big casualties and suffering among civilian Palestinian population. At the same time we call on Hamas leadership to stop shelling Israeli territory."

FRENCH PRESIDENCY STATEMENT:

"He (French President Nicolas Sarkozy) demands an immediate stop to the firing of rockets on Israel and to the Israeli bombings in Gaza and calls for all parties to use restraint."

BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE STATEMENT:

"The only way to achieve lasting peace in Gaza is through peaceful means. Whilst we understand the Israeli government's obligation to protect its population we urge maximum restraint to avoid further civilian casualties"

"We also call on miltants in the Gaza Strip to immediately cease all rocket attacks on Israel."

Israel kills scores in Gaza air strikes

2008-12-27T19:42:00.001-05:00

Reuters:

Sat Dec 27, 2008 6:42pm EST

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 229 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.

Click here for entire article.

Syria: US choppers attack village near Iraq border

2008-10-26T18:07:00.003-04:00

Syria: US choppers attack village near Iraq border

Oct 26 05:12 PM US/Eastern

By ALBERT AJI
Associated Press Writer

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - U.S. military helicopters attacked territory inside Syria close to its border with Iraq Sunday, killing eight people in a strike the Syrian government condemned as "serious aggression." Click here for more.

This is good news. The success of the surge cannot be sustained if the U.S. does not seal off the Syrian and Iranian borders. Foreign fighters enter Iraq through Syria and weapons enter through Iran.

Military Times Poll: Troops backing McCain

2008-10-15T18:32:00.007-04:00

By Brendan McGarry - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 9, 2008 5:44:48 EDT

Sen. John McCain enjoys overwhelming support from the military’s professional core, a Military Times survey of nearly 4,300 readers, indicates, though career-oriented black service members strongly favored the Democratic Party candidate.

McCain, R-Ariz., handily defeated Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., 68 percent to 23 percent in a voluntary survey of 4,293 active-duty, National Guard and reserve subscribers and former subscribers to Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times.

To download a detailed breakdown of the poll, click here.

For the entire article click here: Military Times Poll

General Electric and Iran: CEO Jeffrey Immelt is killing American troops in Iraq

2008-05-08T21:54:00.008-04:00

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt admits General Electric is doing business with Iran.

Iran has been sending platter charge improvisational explosive devices, also known as Explosively Formed Penetrators, into Iraq that have been maiming and killing American soldiers and marines since I was there in 2005. They have also made continuing and substantial fiscal contributions in support of anti-American and anti-Iraqi forces.

"It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of American's in Iraq." - CIA Director General Michael Hayden

Despite such realities, one of America's largest and most respected corporations continues to do business with Iran. Some business even relates to defense technologies.

At GE's annual meeting in Pennsylvania on April 23, 2008, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt was questioned by a shareholder on GE's involvement with Iran:

Investor: GE products are keeping Mr. Ahmadinejad comfy when he's plotting to kill U.S. troops and trying to annihilate Israel. It's just an outrage. And GE is keeping their infrastructure intact... You know, this is kind of blood money and I don't want to be a part of it...

Jeffrey Immelt: Ok let me respond, and I'll respond on behalf of the board. We have stopped taking any orders from Iran in 2005. Our customers with Iran were European oil and gas companies. We decided at that time to fulfill the orders they had committed to us at the time and now that is completed...

Investor: I hope the other shareholders will vote. Do they think we should be selling equipment to Iran? Let's see a show of hands...

Jeffrey Immelt: Dr. Borelli, you've gone on and on, I think you made your point. Thank you.

Mr. Immelt's statement is misleading, considering General Electric is still in business with Iran.

Article III Section 3 of the United States Constitution states, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or, in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News tonight aired a segment on General Electric's continued involvement with Iran, which is where the audio and transcript of the General Electric annual meeting was obtained. Please view an older segment done by O'Reilly on this situation below:

At the annual meeting in Pennsylvania, Jesse Watters, a Fox News producer, spoke to one of the wives of a General Electric executive. "She told me the executives had no idea that the relationship between the Iranian's and GE ever existed until they saw it on (the O'Reilly Factor) and what she used to describe the reaction was complete and utter shock. So now there is a lot of animosity between the GE hierarchy and Immelt, because they felt like they'd been left in the dark."

A bi-partisan congressional investigation of GE's involvement with Iran needs to occur. Regardless of their level of involvement, it needs to discontinue immediately.

If any link is drawn between General Electric and the loss of American life in Iraq, our representatives in Congress are obligated by the United States Constitution to take appropriate action.

More attention needs to be brought to this situation. There has been virtually no coverage of this. Don't take my word for it. Do some research and spread the word.

I would encourage to do what I did this evening and contact your representative in Congress. Make them aware of this situation and let them know how you feel.

Top U.S. military officer assails Iran's role in Iraq

2008-04-25T21:01:00.000-04:00

International Herald Tribune
By David Stout
Friday, April 25, 2008

WASHINGTON: The government of Iran continues to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq, despite repeated promises to the contrary, and is increasingly complicit in the death of U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a stark new assessment of Iranian influence.

The chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was "extremely concerned" about "the increasingly lethal and malign influence" by the government of Iran and the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, a special force that aids and encourages Islamic militants around the world. The Quds Forces in Iran were created during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and report directly to the leadership of Iran's theocratic government.

Pentagon concerns about Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq is nothing new, but the content and tone of Mullen's remarks left the impression that far from abating, the worries about Iran have intensified in recent months.

"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago," Mullen said. "It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way."

The discovery of weapons caches in Iraq, with devices bearing stamps that indicate they were manufactured quite recently, run contrary to the Iranian promises not to interfere in Iraq, the admiral said. He conceded that he had "no smoking gun" to prove direct involvement by the very highest echelons in Tehran, but he said he found it hard to believe that all the top leaders were ignorant of recent developments.

The Pentagon is sufficiently concerned about Iran's apparently deepening involvement in Iraq that it plans a briefing in the near future by General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, to publicize the caches of weapons, some of which are believed to have been used against U.S. troops in the recent fighting in Basra, in southern Iraq. Details of the weapons and the Pentagon's concerns over them were disclosed Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

"I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability," Mullen said.

Of particular concern to U.S. military commanders are explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which the Pentagon says are being made in Iran and shipped to Shiite militants in Iraq, where they are used to deadly effect against U.S. forces trying to subdue extremist elements and bolster the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Asked whether the new evidence of Iranian mischief in Iraq portends an U.S. military conflict with Iran, the admiral said, "I'm not going to add anything to what I've already said in that regard." For now, Mullen said, the best weapon against Iran is a combination of diplomatic and financial pressure by the United States and other nations alarmed by Iran's attitude.

Pentagon leaders have said they would not rule out military action against Iran. But it is not uncommon for U.S. civilian and military leaders to leave "all options on the table," in an often-used phrase, because to rule out military action in advance is seen as admitting a lack of resolve.

Mullen acknowledged that the U.S. military was being stretched thin by the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, "it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability." As for Iranian motives, Mullen said he believed the leadership in Tehran hopes for a weak Iraq, so that Iran can increase its influence in the region.

Moreover, deep resentment remains in Iran toward the United States, which until the Iranian revolution in 1979 long supported the repressive regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Cold War. The current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has shown little indication of wanting better relations with Washington.

Mullen said Iranian influence in Iraq goes beyond shipment of weapons. "They continue to train Iraqis in Iran to come back and fight Americans and the coalition," he said. Reiterating earlier accusations, he asserted that Iranian leaders "continue to broadly support terrorists in other parts of the region," including the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

"And in fact, we're seeing some evidence that they're supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan," Mullen said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

This War is Real

2008-04-15T10:45:00.003-04:00

Thank you to Joe Hill of Jacksonville, FL for e-mailing this article.

By Dr. Vernon Chong, Major General, USAF (Ret.)
Biography

To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII).

The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means.

First, let us examine a few basics.

1. When did the threat to us start?

Many will say September 11, 2001. The answer, as far as the United States is concerned, is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us:

* Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979;
* Beirut , Lebanon Embassy 1983;
* Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983;
* Lockerbie , Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988;
* First New York World Trade Center attack 1993;
* Dhahran , Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996;
* Nairobi , Kenya US Embassy 1998;
* Dares Salaam , Tanzania US Embassy 1998;
* Aden , Yemen USS Cole 2000;
* New York World Trade Center 2001;
* Pentagon 2001.

(Note: During the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide.)

2. Why were we attacked?

Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats, as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessor, President Ford.

3. Who were the attackers?
In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims.

4. What is the Muslim population of the World?
25%.

5. Isn't the Muslim Religion peaceful?
Hopefully, but that is really not material. There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or else you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests).
http://www.nazis.testimony.co.uk/7-a.htm

Thus, almost the same number of Christians were killed by the Nazis as the six million holocaust Jews who were killed by them, and we seldom hear of anything other than the Jewish atrocities. Although Hitler kept the world focused on the Jews, he had no hesitancy in killing anyone who got in the way of his extermination of the Jews or of taking over the world - German, Christian, or any others.

Same with the Muslim terrorists. They focus the world on the US, but kill all in the way -- their own people or the Spanish, British, French or anyone else. The point here is that, just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing -- by their own pronouncements -- killing all of us "infidels." I do not blame the peaceful Muslims. What would you do if the choice was to remain silent or to be killed?

6. So, with whom are we at war?

There is no way we can honestly respond that it is anyone other than the Muslim terrorists. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion can well be fatal. There is no way to win if you do not clearly recognize and articulate whom you are fighting.

So with that background, now to the two major questions:

1. Can we lose this war?
2. What does losing really mean?

If we are to win, we must clearly answer these two pivotal questions:

We can definitely lose this war and, as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose is that so many of us simply do not fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing mean?

It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home, and going on about our business, like post-Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get.

What losing really means is:

We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but, rather, will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us over the past 18 years. The plan was, clearly, for terrorists to attack us until we were neutered and submissive to them.

We would, of course, have no future support from other nations, for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they would see; we are impotent and cannot help them..

They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It does not matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do will be done. Spain is finished.

The next will probably be France. Our one hope with France is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished, too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may already be too late for France. France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast.

Without our support, Great Britain will go also. Recently, I read that there are more mosques in England than churches.

If we lose the war, our production, income, exports, and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us if they were threatened by the Muslims? If we cannot stop the Muslim terrorists, how could anyone else?

The radical Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We had better know it, too, and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.

Why do I go on at such lengths about the results of losing? Simple. Until we recognize the costs of losing, we cannot unite and really put 100% of our thoughts and efforts into winning. And it is going to take that 100% effort to win.

So, how can we lose the war?

Again, the answer is simple. We can lose the war by "imploding." That is, defeating ourselves by refusing to recognize the enemy and their purpose and failing to dig in and lend full support to the war effort. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. If we continue to be divided, there is no way that we can win.

Let me give you a few examples of how we simply don't comprehend the life and death seriousness of this situation:

President Bush selects Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation. Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, Secretary Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war! For the duration, we are going to have to give up some of the civil rights to which we have become accustomed. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently.

And do not worry that it is a slippery slope. We gave up plenty of civil rights during WWII, and immediately restored them after the victory ... and, in fact, added many more since that time.

Do I blame President Bush or President Clinton before him?

No, I blame us for blithely assuming we can maintain all of our Political Correctness and all of our civil rights during this conflict and have a clean, lawful, honorable war. None of those words apply to war. Get them out of your head. Some have gone so far in their criticism of the war and/or the Administration that it almost seems they would literally like to see us lose.

I think some actually do. I hasten to add that this is not because they are disloyal. It is because they just do not recognize what losing means. Nevertheless, that conduct gives the impression to the enemy that we are divided and weakening. It concerns our friends and it does great damage to our cause.

Of more recent vintage, the uproar fueled by the politicians and media regarding the treatment of some prisoners of war perhaps exemplifies best what I am saying. We have recently had an issue involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war, by a small group of our military police. These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues, and otherwise murdering their own just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein.

And just a few years ago, these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type of enemy fighters who recently were burning Americans and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq. And still more recently, the same type of enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally of the beheading of American prisoners they held.

Compare this with some of our press and politicians, who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners -- not burning them, not by dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them.

Can they be for real?

The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. If this does not show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in, and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can.

To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world. Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this internal strife. Again, I say, this does not mean that some of our politicians or media people are disloyal. It simply means that they are absolutely oblivious to the magnitude of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us for many years.

These people are a serious and dangerous liability to the war effort. We must take note of who they are and get them out of office. Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels. That translates into ALL non-Muslims - not just in the United States ? but also throughout the world. We are the last bastion of defense.

We have been criticized for many years as being 'arrogant.' That charge is valid. We are arrogant in that we believe that we are so good, powerful, and smart that we can win the hearts and minds of all those who attack us, and that, with both hands tied behind our back, we can defeat anything bad in the world. We cannot! If we don't recognize this, our nation, as we know it, will not survive, and no other free country in the world will survive if we are defeated.

And, finally, name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal rights for anyone -- let alone everyone, equal status or any status for women, or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the world.

This has been a long way of saying that we must be united on this war or we will be equated in the history books to the self- inflicted fall of the Roman Empire; if, that is, the Muslim leaders will allow history books to be written or read.

If we do not win this war right now, keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over France in the next 5 years or less. They will continue to increase the Muslim population of France and continue to encroach, little by little, on the established French traditions.

The French will be fighting among themselves over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken them and keep them from any united resolve. Doesn't that sound eerily familiar?

Democracies do not have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece. And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide, that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power.

Muslims have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who among the few will be controlling the masses.

What is happening in Iraq is a good example. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct about the "peaceful Muslims?"

I close on a hopeful note by repeating what I said before: If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. I hope now, after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in, and will unite to save our country. It is your future we are talking about. Do whatever you can to preserve it. I reiterate: our national election is under way.

After reading the above, we all must do this, not only for ourselves, but for our children, our grandchildren, our country, and our world, whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, and that includes the politicians and media of our country and the free world.

Please forward this to any you feel may want, or NEED to read it. Our "leaders" in Congress ought to read it, too. There are those who find fault with our country, but it is obvious to anyone who truly thinks through this, that we must UNITE!

Lastly, I wish to add: at the risk of offending, I sincerely think that anyone who rejects this as just another political rant, or doubts the seriousness of this issue, or just deletes it without sending it on, is part of the problem. Let us quit laughing at and forwarding the jokes and cartoons that denigrate and ridicule our leaders in this war against terror. They are trying to protect the interests and well-being of the US and its citizens. Best we support them.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

BAGHDAD from the suburbs to downtown

2008-03-25T23:00:00.004-04:00

Originally posted May 6, 2005

My Battalion has changed its Area of Operations from the rural suburbs of Baghdad to some of the city's most downtown sectors. This change has included the permanent relocation of some personnel, including myself, to a new base in the heart of Baghdad. We have been working around the clock, continuing missions, getting moved in as well as pulling various details. Despite the constant changes and endless work, everyone has stayed postitive and done more than their part.

I myself have been extremely excited about the changes. For starters... we are in downtown Baghdad! We are living in buildings that have decades of history. Before we were living in dress right dress white trailers. They were comfortable, complete with air conditioning and electricity, but they lacked any sense of individuality or character. The buildings we now occupy were only a few years ago the backbone of Saddam Hussein's regime. Just looking out the windows and seeing American soldiers working with the new Iraqi police officers and Iraqi soldiers is a constant reminder of progress.

In some ways literally but in more ways symbolically Baghdad is the heart of Iraq. It serves as the epicenter of life, the core of change. With a profound history and a challenging future, the entire world measures the success of a nation which consists of 437,072 sq km of diverse landscapes and unique cultures by the daily happeneings within this remarkable city.

Baghdad as a guage of progress for the rest of Iraq isn't always fair, considering the successes and setbacks within the city aren't always consistent with those of the rest of the country. However, it is impossible to deny the significance of this city as it houses the creation of the first real and credible democracy this region of the world has seen.

We've been out several times doing dismounted patrols. There is no doubt a heightened level of intensity as we walk through streets whose histories are full of blood. People are everywhere. Life goes on all around us. We get an occasional smile or wave. Sometimes a nod with a hand over heart, a gesture of gratitude and respect. The children, as always, are quick to embrace us. Despite the many distractions we are constantly scanning. The rooftops, the balconies, the crowds, the cars, the kids, the market stands.

Anything and everything must be analyzed, considered and ruled out as a threat in a split second. And when that split second is over and your assesment has been made you begin the process all over again, "Why is he nervous? That man is staring from that doorway. Why are they walking so fast? That taxi is moving pretty slow. What is she holding? Three guys are on the balcony to the right. Who is he on the phone with? There's a man in the window up ahead. What's in her backpack?" Constantly scanning. Awareness means control. Control means survival. Even when nothing happens, you are drained when you get back in the wire.

I spent the night of my twenty-second birthday on the roof of what used to be the Ba'ath party headquarters in an overwatch position. The view was utterly amazing. Straight ahead was Baghdad. Looking to my left was the Tigris river and Sadr City. On the right was the downtown markets and the Grand Mosque. The mosque was surrounded by a glowing haze from its bright and colorful lights. Throughout the city were distant flashes and deep rumbles from various explosions. Sporatic small arms fire accompanied by thin red and orange bursts of fire from tracer rounds ripped the black night sky apart. Each projectile moving fiercely fast toward its target... all too ready to fulfill its destiny. None of this new or unusual within this city of perseverance. I sat there quietly, somehow feeling peaceful and relaxed as I absorbed the distant sights and sounds of war.

POSTED BY MARK P. MINER AT 5/06/2005 06:50:00 PM

For the rest of this post and others from my deployment, utilize the "archives" menu on the right sidebar and review 2005.

I am running for office!

2008-01-13T17:02:00.000-05:00

As many of you are aware, I am running for office. If you are interested in helping out, please go to www.ElectMarkMiner.com and view my website. You can also make a contribution using your credit card by clicking here.

Thank you!

Guard Film Tells Soldiers' Stories

2007-12-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

Staff Sgt. Mary Flynn

Army News Service

WASHINGTON - Like many Soldiers deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, Soldiers from the Oregon National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry brought their personal cameras to Iraq during their deployment in 2004. They snapped photos of each other firing weapons, shot video of explosives they detonated and logged plenty of footage of their own commentaries intermixed with Soldier humor.

But they never expected that their day-to-day antics would one day represent deployed National Guard Soldiers everywhere, preserved in a feature-length documentary film called "This is War: Memories of Iraq."

The National Combat History Archive and Lucky Forward Films used the unscripted testimonies of nine Soldiers of varying ranks and experiences to narrate the events. Photos and video they shot with their own personal cameras illustrate their experiences.

"We wanted to make a very non-political film that took someone who's never been to Iraq ... to show what it means to go into combat," said the film's director, Gary Mortensen. "We told it in a non-specific way so that it could represent Soldiers everywhere - we wanted to tell a tale that anyone who has been over there can identify with."

Mr. Mortensen added that the unique thing about the film is that these Soldiers had their own personal recording devices on hand, giving an intimate view of what they saw on a daily basis. The Soldiers had no idea any of it would be turned into a film, so the result is a very honest and raw portrait of their experiences.

"It's very powerful," said Sgt. 1st Class Phillip "Vince" Jacques, one of the Soldiers featured in the film. "It really represents the professionalism of these guys and shows exactly what troops are going through over there. They're the ones fighting the war. You might as well hear their story."

Present at various screenings of the film, Sgt. 1st Class Jacques noticed that the audience's reaction was often one of awe. "Whether they support the war or not, they come away with a whole different view of what Soldiers are doing over there," he said.

National audiences are also beginning to take notice. "This is War" won the Audience Choice Award and Best Documentary at the Idaho International Film Festival, and received the Jury Award: Best Documentary at the Florida International Media Market. It also took home awards for best documentary and best director at the Sweet Onion Film Festival in Walla Walla, Wash.

Unfortunately, the film isn't available in local video stores yet; Mr. Mortensen explained that they are working on the film's distribution and broadcast rights. It can be purchased by calling (503) 597-7030 or by checking out the Web site at www.luckyforwardfilms.com.

According to the site, all sales of the film help support the Fallen Soldiers Relief Fund, the National Combat History Archive, the Iraq/Afghanistan Oregon Memorial Fund and the Wounded Warriors Project, a non-profit organization that helps injured servicemembers by providing programs and services to meet their unique needs.

Photo - The National Combat History Archive and Lucky Forward Films used the unscripted testimonies of nine Oregon National Guard Soldiers of varying ranks and experiences to narrate the events of the film "This is War: Memories of Iraq." Photos and video the Soldiers shot with their own personal cameras illustrate their experiences. (Contributed Photo).

U.S. Airmen Help Open Hospital in Afghanistan

2007-12-20T16:22:00.000-05:00

By Staff Sgt. Mike Andriacco, USAF

455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

FORWARD OPERATING BASE HERO, Afghanistan – Airmen in a medical mentoring team here have been working hard to ensure the successful opening of an Afghan National Army hospital for the past several months.

The team’s original mission was to mentor their Afghan counterparts and teach them medical skills to treat Afghan military and police members, said Air Force Col. Mike Skidmore, the team’s senior mentor officer and administrator.

All that changed when the team arrived several months ago, he said. The hospital was 500 days behind schedule, and instead of finding equipment and eager ANA medical personnel, the team found an empty, incomplete facility.

“We had to move from a mentoring mission to a new mindset of equipping the hospital, opening it and then mentoring,” said Air Force Col. (Dr.) Thomas Seay, the senior medical mentor and chief radiologist.

Most of the state-of-the-art equipment, to include a digital X-ray and digital ultrasound machines, were purchased by the United States, with some items – such as wheelchairs -- donated by a nonprofit organization based in Canada, he said.

The hospital is one of the most advanced of its kind in the southern region of Afghanistan.

“Phase one of the construction consisted of a $5.6 million, 50-bed main hospital,” Skidmore said. “It will serve the entire ANA 205th Corps, including four combat brigades, their associated garrison clinics and more than 27,000 ANA soldiers, Afghan National Police and their families. There are two isolation rooms, one trauma room, two operating rooms, and an intensive care ward that can accommodate up to six patients.”

One of the most impressive elements of the project is the water processing plant, he added. It uses a multi-stage process to clean and sterilize water to the standard necessary for hospital conditions and also is being used as a model for future water plants throughout the country.

Contractors also recently broke ground on phase two, a $2.6 million hospital expansion that will house an additional 50 patients, Skidmore said.

With the hospital ribbon-cutting held Dec. 15, the mentoring team now is looking forward to starting the job it came to do.

The team is made up of a total of 18 airmen: three doctors, three nurses, three administrators, a radiologist, a pharmacist, a medic, two lab technicians, a pharmacy technician, a radiology technician, a biomedical equipment technician and a logistician. Team members will work with their Afghan counterparts to create a baseline of skills, Seay said. There also will be a lot of focus on sterilization and sustainment of equipment and resources, he added.

Together, the team hopes its efforts can help the Afghan National Army to rebuild the country and be effective at maintaining peace and security.

“This is arguably the best ANA hospital in the entire country, given the building, the equipment and the water treatment plant, but the most impressive part of this hospital is its staff,” Skidmore said. “They are incredibly excited and enthusiastic to learn new clinical and managerial techniques in health care.”

Photo - Air Force Tech. Sgt. Edward Weaver, a medic deployed from Travis Air Force Base, Calif., instructs Afghan National Army medical personnel on spinal immobilization techniques at the newly opened Kandahar ANA regional hospital in Afghanistan. The medical mentoring team arrived to find the construction 500 days behind schedule and immediately took on the task of supplying the hospital and getting it opened before continuing the mission of mentoring Afghan National Army medical personnel. Photo by Col. (Dr.) Thomas Seay, USAF.

DETAINEES RELEASED IN BAGHDAD

2007-12-20T16:20:00.000-05:00

From U.S. Central Command

Release Date:
12/20/2007
Release Number:
07-01-03P

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition forces held a release ceremony for 100 detainees Wednesday at Camp Cropper in a gesture of goodwill and reconciliation during the holiday of Eid al Adha.

“On this joyful occasion, I would like to take the opportunity to welcome you back to the new, peaceful Iraq,” said Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, commander of Multi-National Force - Iraq Detainee Operations, in Arabic. “I hope and believe that you will be the role models for the generations to come and contributors to Iraq’s glory and prosperity.”

The ceremony honored the joint effort by the Government of Iraq and Coalition forces to increase the average number of detainee releases per month. Individuals are only released after they are deemed to no longer be an imperative threat to the security of Iraq.

The majority of the detainees were released through a review board process, when they had the opportunity to address their cases personally. They also made a pledge to an Iraqi judge, swearing to maintain peace and good conduct.

“We pledge to Allah, the Almighty, to be faithful servants in safeguarding and building Iraq,” said one releasee on behalf of the group. “And we ask of Him to fill our hearts with love and compassion to the Iraqi people and reject all aspects of violence and hatred.”

While in detention, the detainees had the opportunity to volunteer for a number of programs, including basic education courses, religious discussions, vocational training and work programs designed to help them reintegrate and function as productive members of the community.

All 100 detainees were released Wednesday. Approximately 850 detainees have been released so far during the Hajj and Eid al Adha holiday season.

COALITION FORCES CAPTURE SPECIAL GROUPS CRIMINAL ELEMENT LEADER, DETAIN THREE SUSPECTS

2007-12-20T16:19:00.000-05:00

From U.S. Central Command

Release Date:
12/20/2007
Release Number:
07-01-03P

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition forces captured a Special Groups leader and detained two other suspected criminals during operations to disrupt criminal element networks early Sunday in the Baghdad area.

The targeted individual reportedly supplied various weapons, such as explosively formed penetrators, rocket propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices and mortars, to various Special Group criminal elements to aid in attacks on Coalition forces. He was coordinating criminal cells throughout the Diyala province. In addition, he was reportedly an associate of several other senior-level criminal element leaders who were involved in attacks on Coalition forces.

Intelligence led ground forces to the target area, where they captured the targeted individual and detained the two other suspects without incident.

During the operation, ground forces also discovered two assault rifles, two pistols, two machine guns, night vision goggles and large amounts of American and Iranian currency.

“Groups honoring al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr’s ceasefire pledge are helping to make Iraq a safer place,” said Maj. Winfield Danielson, MNF-I spokesman. “Criminal elements dishonoring Sadr’s pledge can not be allowed to undermine the improvements in security and stability the Iraqi people have fought so hard to achieve.”

Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

2007-12-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

Posted By Marc Morano - Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov - 9:47 AM ET

U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Senate Report Debunks "Consensus"

Complete U.S. Senate Report Now Available: (LINK)

Complete Report without Introduction: (LINK)

INTRODUCTION:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bite the dust.” (LINK) In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement. (LINK)

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.

Click HERE for the rest.

NBC Reverses Course, Agrees to Air Troop 'Thank You' Ad

2007-12-08T22:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday , December 08, 2007

Associated Press

WASHINGTON —

NBC reversed course Saturday and decided to air a conservative group's television ad thanking U.S. troops.

The ad, by the group Freedom's Watch, asks viewers to remember the troops during the holiday season. NBC had refused to air the ad because it guides viewers to the Freedom's Watch Web site, which NBC said was too political.

But in a statement issued Saturday evening, NBC said:

"We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site. Based on these amended standards the Freedom's Watch ad will begin to run as early as Sunday."

NBC' head of standards and practices, Alan Wurtzel, notified Freedom's Watch's media consultant Saturday by e-mail, writing: "This will confirm that the Freedom's Watch spot is approved for air."

NBC initially said that airing the spot would violate the network's prohibition on controversial issue ads. Wurtzel, in an interview Friday with The Associated Press, said NBC found nothing wrong with the ad's content, but rather objected to the link to http://www.FreedomsWatch.org, viewing the Web site as too political.

The group's home page is critical of liberals and has a link to a page urging lawmakers not to "cut and run" from the war in Iraq. The home page also links to another Freedom's Watch page dedicated to ways to assist the troops and provides links to organizations that send care packages to soldiers.

News of NBC's initial rejection caused an angry reaction on the Internet. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, appearing on the Fox News Channel on Friday, called for a boycott of NBC.

Freedom's Watch, a group backed by wealthy Republican fundraisers, has emerged as one of the best-financed conservative groups. It seeks to be a vocal advocate of President Bush's current policy in Iraq.

NBC refuses to thank our troops

2007-12-08T01:15:00.000-05:00

Group Says NBC Refuses to Air Ads Thanking Troops Over Holidays
Saturday, December 08, 2007

Fox News

WASHINGTON —

NBC has nixed holiday advertisements meant to thank troops for serving overseas in opposition to the inclusion of a non-profit's Web address.

The ads, paid for by the non-profit Freedom's Watch, are a simple thank you, the group says, with people shown paying gratitude to members of the military and the final frame showing the group's Web address, www.freedomswatch.org.

Click here and here to view the ads that NBC won't air.

NBC is refusing to air the ads as long as the address is included, according to an e-mail exchange between NBC and the group, which Freedom's Watch provided to FOX News.

"Per my previous email, the www.freedomswatch.org website will have to be redacted from the commercials for approval. This comes from Alan Wurtzel and Rick Cotton," according to one of the notes.

Wurtzel is president of research at NBC. Rick Cotton is general counsel for NBC Universal.

Speaking with FOX on Friday, Wurtzel said NBC has no problem with the content of the ad, specificallythe well-wishes to troops.

However, he said, the link to the website violates their policy on controversial issue advertising because it encourages political action and other activities. He said the policy is applied consistently across the board and this group was not targeted in any way.

Wurtzel also expressed general concerns that NBC has about people with "deep pockets" being able to buy up a great deal of advertising and affect public perception on any issue, solely because they have the money to do it.

Freedom's Watch President and CEO Bradley Blakeman told FOX on Friday that this is not the first time NBC has turned down his group's ads and believes it has a specific objection to his group's support for the War on Terror.

"NBC asked us to re-vamp our Web site. They wanted to censor us, and we said, 'No we're not going to be censored,'" Blakeman said, noting that the organization's Web site points to more than 20 other non-profit Web sites where readers can thank and support troops.

NBC also objected to using images including military uniforms and vehicles and asked for proof of government approval for the group's use of the images in its ads.

Freedom's Watch says it has never been questioned on that before and paid for the rights to use the images from an independent licensing company.

E-mails provided to FOX show that NBC also might have objected to the ads on its in-house issue advertising policy.

FOX News' Shannon Bream contributed to this report.

U.S. Urges Iraq to Take Advantage of Lull

2007-12-03T21:43:00.000-05:00

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

Published: December 3, 2007

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 — Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, in Baghdad after a week of meetings with Iraqi provincial leaders, said Sunday that lawmakers must take advantage of the decline in daily violence in recent months to pass crucial legislation and improve basic government services.

Mr. Negroponte, a former ambassador to Iraq, said if Iraq’s sharply divided Parliament did not reach a consensus “in the near future” on matters that would improve the lives of Iraqis, it risked losing the gains in security that had come in part because of the increased number of American combat troops.

“It’s one thing to have brought the violence under some semblance of control,” Mr. Negroponte said during a news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone here, after meeting Iraqi officials in Baghdad and seven other provinces in Iraq’s north, south and west. “But it’s another matter now to follow up with the necessary reconstruction and stabilization projects that will safeguard regions and protect them from this type of violence.”

In particular, he said, Washington was counting on Iraqi lawmakers to pass two languishing bills that would help stabilize the central government: an oil revenue-sharing law, and a measure that would allow more former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to take government jobs.

“It would be extremely helpful if this could be passed and go forward as an indication that the people and government and the legislature of Iraq are prepared to build on the security gains that have been achieved,” he said.

Mr. Negroponte also said a referendum vote in Kirkuk on whether to join the Kurdish-controlled region would probably not occur this year. “Clearly it’s not going to be possible between now and the end of this year to mount a referendum,” he said.

Also on Sunday, the leader of Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab political bloc said he and his fellow lawmakers would return to Parliament after his release from a three-day house confinement. The lawmaker, Adnan al-Dulaimi, the leader of the Iraqi Consensus Front, told an Iraqi television station on Sunday that he was allowed to travel from his house to a hotel in the Green Zone.

After Mr. Dulaimi left his house, Iraqi Army troops arrived and removed the blast walls surrounding it, said his son, Muthanna Adnan al-Dulaimi. The removal of the walls appeared to suggest that Mr. Dulaimi would no longer have the benefit of government protection unless he was in the Green Zone.

Consensus Front members walked out of Parliament on Saturday to protest what they said was the government’s restriction on Mr. Dulaimi, part of a law-enforcement operation on Thursday in which dozens of his security guards were arrested after a car bomb was discovered in an alley near his Baghdad office compound.

The episode was another in a series illustrating the profound problems within the Iraqi government in stopping infiltration by insurgents. While Mr. Dulaimi’s colleagues privately expressed doubt that the politician, an elderly man, was directly involved in the criminal activities that his guards were accused of engaging in, he also seemed unable to stop them.

Also Sunday, a roadside bomb in the Mansour district of west Baghdad killed two policemen and wounded four others, an Interior Ministry official said. Gunmen in the same neighborhood also killed a police official as he was heading to work, the Interior Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi security forces were subject to other attacks around Iraq on Sunday. In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a police patrol, wounding 14 people, a city police official said. In Hawija, west of Kirkuk, gunmen killed five Iraqi solders as they drove out of an army base, a police captain said.

In Falluja, Iraqi security forces found a mass grave containing about 20 bodies of men, women and children, the police said, Reuters reported. In Mosul, Iraqi policemen discovered six bodies, including those of two policemen, in different areas of the city, the Interior Ministry official said.

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul, Diyala and Kirkuk.

George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

2007-11-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houfes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requefted me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablifh a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of thefe States to the fervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our fincere and humble thanksfor His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the fignal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the courfe and conclufion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have fince enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to eftablish Conftitutions of government for our fafety and happinefs, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are bleffed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffufing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleafed to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in moft humbly offering our prayers and fupplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and befeech Him to pardon our national and other tranfgreffions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private ftations, to perform our feveral and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a bleffing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wife, juft, and conftitutional laws, difcreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all fovereigns and nations (especially fuch as have shewn kindnefs unto us); and to blefs them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increafe of fcience among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind fuch a degree of temporal profperity as he alone knows to be beft.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand feven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

VETERANS DAY

2007-11-10T21:49:00.000-05:00

Thank you to the men and women of the American Armed Forces and their families. Past, present & future.

A Proclamation By the President of the United States of America

Throughout our history, America has been protected by patriots who cherished liberty and made great sacrifices to advance the cause of freedom. The brave members of the
United States Armed Forces have answered the call to serve our Nation, ready to give all for their country. On Veterans Day, we honor these extraordinary Americans for their service and sacrifice, and we pay tribute to the legacy of freedom and peace that they have given our great Nation.

In times of war and of peace, our men and women in uniform stepped forward to defend their fellow citizens and the country they love. They shouldered great responsibility and lived up to the highest standards of duty and honor. Our veterans held fast against determined and ruthless enemies and helped save the world from tyranny and terror. They ensured that America remained what our founders meant her to be: a light to the nations, spreading the good news of human freedom to the darkest corners of the earth.

Like the heroes before them, today a new generation of men and women are fighting for freedom around the globe. Their determination, courage, and sacrifice are laying the foundation for a more secure and peaceful world.

Veterans Day is dedicated to the extraordinary Americans who protected our freedom in years past, and to those who protect it today. They represent the very best of our Nation. Every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, and Coast Guardsman has earned the lasting gratitude of the American people, and their service and sacrifice will be remembered forever. In the words of Abraham Lincoln: " . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle . . . ." On this Veterans Day, I ask all Americans to express their appreciation to our Nation's veterans.

With respect for and in recognition of the contributions our service men and women have made to the cause of peace and freedom around the world, the Congress has provided (5 U.S.C. 6103(a)) that November 11 of each year shall be set aside as a legal public holiday to honor our Nation's veterans.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim November 11, 2007, as Veterans Day and urge all Americans to observe November 11 through November 17, 2007, as National Veterans Awareness Week. I encourage all Americans to recognize the valor and sacrifice of our veterans through ceremonies and prayers. I call upon Federal, State, and local officials to display the flag of the United States and to support and participate in patriotic activities in their communities. I invite civic and fraternal organizations, places of worship, schools, businesses, unions, and the media to support this national observance with commemorative expressions and programs.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Corporate America Accelerates Military Recruiting Efforts as Baby Boomer Retirements Cause Growing Nationwide Talent Shortage

2007-11-07T08:17:00.000-05:00

BPITTSBURGH, Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- On Oct. 15, 2007, Kathleen Casey- Kirschling -- America's first official baby boomer -- applied for social security. She is the first in a wave of 80 million baby boomers who are expected to retire at a rate of over 10,000 per day for the next two decades. This shrinking quantity and quality of the U.S. workforce, combined with even modest economic expansion, will make transitioning military personnel -- one of only two renewable talent pools in the U.S. -- even more coveted as companies compete for top talent.

"Hiring America's military veterans is a smart business decision for which all of the Top 50 companies should be commended," said Chris Hale, general manager of the publication. "Sure, it's patriotic to hire military, but that's not why corporate America does so. These companies understand how military knowledge, training and real-world experience positively affect their bottom line."

BNSF Railway unseated two-time repeat performer Union Pacific to capture the No. 1 position of America's Top 50 "Military Friendly-Employers" in the fifth annual list published by G.I. Jobs, the nation's premier career guide for military job-seekers. "We are humbled, and proud, to be selected the No. 1 of 2,500 companies," said Connie McLendon, military staffing manager for BNSF. "We have worked hard to increase our outreach to members in transition from the military to civilian work. Just to be among the Top 50 is an honor."

The annual list is a "who's who?" of FORTUNE® 1000 firms who have made the greatest effort and have had the greatest success in hiring military veterans. The list spans the entire industry spectrum of the U.S. economy.

The pool of eligible companies (minimum of $1 billion annual revenues) was approximately 2,500. Only 2 percent made the list. Seven firms -- American Electric Power, Brinks, GE, Merrill Lynch, Sprint Nextel, The Home Depot and USAA -- have earned a spot on the list in all five years of its existence. Johnson Controls, Lockheed Martin and Union Pacific have made the lists in four of five years.

Criteria for the rankings included assets dedicated to military hiring (40%), Reserve/Guard policies (25%), percentage of total new hires in the past two years who are veterans (20%), and veteran recruitment / training / promotional programs (15%).

ABOUT G.I. Jobs

G.I. Jobs is published by Victory Media, a veteran-owned business, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa. The company also publishes Military Spouse and Vetrepreneur magazines.

G.I. Jobs 2007 Top 50 Military-Friendly Employer List

1 BNSF Railway
2 Union Pacific
3 ITT Systems
4 EG&G (Lear Siegler)
5 USAA
6 Schneider National
7 Johnson Controls
8 CSX Transportation
9 ManTech International
10 Applied Materials
11 Booz Allen Hamilton
12 The Home Depot
13 Lockheed Martin
14 J.B. Hunt Transport
15 CINTAS
16 DynCorp
17 EDS
18 General Electric
19 Travelers
20 GlobalSantaFe
21 Southern Company
22 Werner Enterprises
23 Norfolk Southern
24 Morgan Stanley
25 Sunbelt Rentals
26 Sprint Nextel
27 Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold
28 Constellation Energy
29 ENSCO International
30 Fluor
31 BearingPoint
32 Merrill Lynch
33 Brink's U.S.
34 State Farm
35 Anheuser-Busch
36 Health Net
37 Lowe's
38 Xcel Energy
39 Progress Energy
40 FMC Technologies
41 U-Haul
42 Bank of America
43 AT&T
44 T-Mobile
45 NVR
46 American Electric Power
47 Southern California Edison
48 Westinghouse
49 Wachovia
50 Sears Holdings

Videos no longer available at Boots In Baghdad Films

2007-10-30T18:11:00.000-04:00

I read a blog piece about one of the videos I had posted from Iraq. The piece, which can be found at Caitlin's Journalism Blogs has led me to reconsider having my videos available to the general public. While I appreciate the author's respect for the troops, I do not appreciate their statement, "I take issue with our training of soldiers."

The video the author is referencing is from Sunday August 21, 2005 around 2015 hours (8:15 pm). My platoon had just returned from conducting a BDA (Battle Damage Assessment) of a popular family restaurant just outside the gates of our Forward Operating Base in Kadhimiya that had been hit with two vehicle born improvisational explosive devises (car bombs). It was messy. You can read my original posting from August 22, 2005 here.

Upon completion of the Battle Damage Assessment we returned to base to rest and prepare for a mission we were to go on a few hours later. As we were downloading some of our gear and prepping our vehicles for later that evening, a series of mortar rounds began impacting and our fighting positions along the Tigris River began taking small arms fire.

Being the target of both direct and in-direct enemy fire, we did what we were trained to do. The video I had posted was of a M240B (machine gun) laying a belt of tracer rounds right into the source of the small arms fire that was aimed at us. From the video I posted, you couldn't see our rounds meet their targets. You couldn't see the mussel flashes from the barrels that were sending bullets down range aimed at us. What you could see was some Army National Guard Infantrymen immediately gain fire superiority over the enemy with a PFC screaming in the background, "light those mother fu*kers up!"

The author indicated a concern over the comments the PFC screamed in the video, and when the author thought about where those 7.62 rounds spraying from that M240B were going, they felt sick.

Well maybe if the author had been in our Battalion two weeks earlier when we lost two soldiers (Pfc. Hernando Rios and Sgt. Anthony Kalladeen), they would have felt sick then. Maybe if the author had conducted a Battle Damage Assessment of a crowded family restaurant that had just been hit with two car bombs, they would have felt sick. And maybe if the author had been with us when we were the target of mortars and bullets just moments before, they would not have felt so well.

Perhaps if the author had been with us the preceding eleven months they would have understood why that PFC was screaming when he was only a few weeks from being home, standing toe to toe with the enemies of his nation, and perhaps more importantly at the time the enemies of his friends. After all, isn't that what it is all about?

The terror and the adrenaline slamming together amidst the psychological conundrum of fight or flight syndrome balanced with discipline and effective training somehow results in the right thing being done time and time again. From the jaded hardness that comes from a year of walking the streets of Baghdad as a young Infantryman, staring into the face of a faceless enemy is eerily romantic, an opportunity to be cherished in the land of road side bombs and falling mortars.

I do regret that to many civilians that video may have made American soldiers seem anything other than professional and disciplined. But having the luxury of passing judgment from the safety of home or the floors of Congress can't be had without the trigger pullers.

Considering Anderson Cooper can show our soldiers getting shot by snipers on CNN, I didn't think that me showing our soldiers shooting back would be such a big deal. But if there is even the slightest indignation, then maybe this small window into Iraq shouldn't be made available to everyone. I don't want anyone to question the professionalism, the discipline or the training of America's Army National Guard.

And while the Author may be a student of sociology and psychology, the beast that is war and the preparation that is necessary to survive it will never be something even an expert in those studies could comprehend. No book, no seminar, no degrees and no interviews could ever come close.

It is one of those things you have to experience to understand. And because of people like the PFC with a vulgar tongue, the Author and the vast majority of every day America will never have that experience, thank God. That just means we are doing our job and doing it well.

I don't blame the Author for having abject opinion of military training or naivety of the real world outside the American bubble. I blame a plethora of variables beginning with horrific representation of this war by the media and western news outlets. I blame members of Congress for speaking of things they know nothing about for political gain. I blame people like John Kerry, Jack Murtha, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for condemning our troops and condemning this war without ever giving it a chance.

They have watered down our nation's motives and politicized the War on Terror to a state of dejection.

The less intense the motives, the less will the military element's natural tendency to violence coincide with political directives. As a result, war will be driven further from its natural course, the political object will be more and more at variance with the aim of ideal war, and the conflict will seem increasingly political in character.

- Carl Von Clausewitz

Immunity deal hampers Blackwater inquiry

2007-10-29T21:12:00.000-04:00

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The immunity deal has delayed a criminal inquiry into the Sept. 16 killings and could undermine any effort to prosecute security contractors for their role in the incident that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

"Once you give immunity, you can't take it away," said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

State Department officials declined to confirm or deny that immunity had been granted. One official — who refused to be quoted by name_ said: "If, in fact, such a decision was made, it was done without any input or authorization from any senior State Department official in Washington."

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd and FBI spokesman Rich Kolko declined comment.

FBI agents were returning to Washington late Monday from Baghdad, where they have been trying to collect evidence in the Sept. 16 embassy convoy shooting without using statements from Blackwater employees who were given immunity.

Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protection as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.

The law enforcement and State Department officials agreed to speak only if they could remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the inquiry into the incident.

The investigative misstep comes in the wake of already-strained relations between the United States and Iraq, which is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell declined comment about the U.S. investigation. Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater USA is the largest private security firm protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

The company has said its Sept. 16 convoy was under attack before it opened fire in west Baghdad's Nisoor Square, killing 17 Iraqis. A follow-up investigation by the Iraqi government, however, concluded that Blackwater's men were unprovoked. No witnesses have been found to contradict that finding.

An initial incident report by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq, also indicated "no enemy activity involved" in the Sept. 16 incident. The report says Blackwater guards were traveling against the flow of traffic through a traffic circle when they "engaged five civilian vehicles with small arms fire" at a distance of 50 meters.

The FBI took over the case early this month, officials said, after prosecutors in the Justice Department's criminal division realized it could not bring charges against Blackwater guards based on their statements to the Diplomatic Security investigators.

Officials said the Blackwater bodyguards spoke only after receiving so-called "Garrity" protections, requiring that their statements only be used internally — and not for criminal prosecutions.

At that point, the Justice Department shifted the investigation to prosecutors in its national security division, sealing the guards' statements and attempting to build a case based on other evidence from a crime scene that was then already two weeks old.

The FBI has re-interviewed some of the Blackwater employees, and one official said Monday that at least several of them have refused to answer questions, citing their constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. Any statements that the guards give to the FBI could be used to bring criminal charges.

A second official, however, said that not all the guards have cited their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — leaving open the possibility for future charges. The official declined to elaborate.

Prosecutors will have to prove that any evidence they use in bringing charges against Blackwater employees was uncovered without using the guards' statements to State Department investigators. They "have to show we got the information independently," one official said.

Garrity protections generally are given to police or other public law enforcement officers, and were extended to the Blackwater guards because they were working on behalf of the U.S. government, one official said. Experts said it's rare for them to be given to all or even most witnesses — particularly before a suspect is identified.

"You have to be careful," said Michael Horowitz, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and senior Justice Department official. "You have to understand early on who your serious subjects are in the investigation, and avoid giving these people the protections."

It's not clear why the Diplomatic Security investigators agreed to give immunity to the bodyguards, or who authorized doing so.

Bureau of Diplomatic Security chief Richard Griffin last week announced his resignation, effective Thursday. Senior State Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said his departure was directly related to his oversight of Blackwater contractors.

Tyrrell, the Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company was alerted Oct. 2 that FBI would be taking over the investigation from the State Department. She declined further comment.

On Oct. 3, State Department Sean McCormack said the FBI had been called in to assist Diplomatic Security investigators. A day later, he said the FBI had taken over the probe.

"We, internally and in talking with the FBI, had been thinking about the idea of the FBI leading the investigation for a number of different reasons," McCormack told reporters during an Oct. 4 briefing.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered a series of measures to boost government oversight of the private guards who protect American diplomats in Iraq. They include increased monitoring and explicit rules on when and how they can use deadly force.

Blackwater's contract with the State Department expires in May and there are questions whether it will remain as the primary contractor for diplomatic bodyguards. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his Cabinet is drafting legislation that would force the State Department to replace Blackwater with another security company.

Congress also is expected to investigate the shootings, but a House watchdog committee said it has so far held off, based on a Justice Department request that lawmakers wait until the FBI concludes its inquiry.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this story.

More progress from Iraq

2007-10-29T21:09:00.000-04:00

JOINT STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR RYAN C. CROCKER AND GENERAL DAVID H. PETRAEUS ON THE TRANSFER OF SECURITY RESPONSIBILITY FOR KARBALA PROVINCE

Release Date: 10/29/2007

Release Number: 07-01-03P

Description: The United States and Multi-National Force-Iraq welcome the transfer of security in Karbala Province to Iraqi responsibility as a positive step on the path to Iraq’s self-reliance.

Karbala is the eighth province to be transferred to Iraqi security responsibility as the Government of Iraq and its security forces continue to develop and assume greater responsibility for governing and providing security for the citizens of Iraq. The first province transferred to Government of Iraqi security control was Muthanna in July 2006, followed by Dhi Qar, An Najaf, Maysan, and most recently Irbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Dahuk in May 2007.

The transfer of provincial security responsibility is particularly significant because it includes the city of Karbala, a center of Shi’a Muslim worship, pilgrimage and religious instruction. Saddam Hussein once restricted religious observances at this city and non-Iraqi Shi'a were not allowed to travel there. Today, Karbala is again an international center of worship, pilgrimage and religious instruction.

Iraqi Security Forces in Karbala have been successfully operating independently, maintaining their own security for the past three months. Working with local government officials, they have demonstrated their readiness to assume responsibility for the province. Today this responsibility is theirs.

The transition of responsibility for security in Karbala Province represents the most recent step toward a future of improved security, self-reliance and increasing prosperity that will benefit all Iraqi citizens. The United States and Multi-National Force-Iraq congratulate the Government of Iraq on this important milestone.

Two sailors shot dead in Bahrain: navy

2007-10-22T05:50:00.000-04:00

MANAMA (Reuters) - Two American sailors were shot dead and one was critically wounded at the U.S. navy base in Bahrain, the navy said on Monday.

There were no indications that non-U.S. citizens were involved, a navy spokeswoman said.

The shootings took place at about 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), the navy said in a statement, adding that they were investigating the incident.

The navy gave no explanation for the shootings, which took place in the base's barracks, and said the names of the sailors were being withheld. No further information was immediately available.

Bahrain is the home of the U.S. navy's fifth fleet, which patrols Gulf waters, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.

About 3,000 U.S. personnel, not including the crews of visiting ships, live and work on the base. Staff generally keep a low profile in the tiny Gulf Arab kingdom of about 750,000 people.

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) should RESIGN!

2007-10-19T12:42:00.001-04:00

Stark stated on the House floor: "You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement."

In a debate on the State Children's Health Insurance Program on the House floor, Rep. Stark used a typical liberal tactic, accusing our military of targeting civilians and making a mockery of combat fatalities and the sacrifice the men and women of the American Armed Forces and their families make day in and day out.

Mr. Starke is either guilty of hating the military, hating America, or being so dillusional he is unable to make rational decisions and exercise sound judgement on behalf of the American people. I am under the impression he suffers from all three, but any of them is enough cause for his resignation.

Starke has a long history of disservice to the American people. Please watch the video clip below from Fox News.

Labor's Veterans Program Probed

2007-10-18T18:30:00.000-04:00

By JENNIFER C. KERR
Associated Press Writer

ABOARD THE NEW JERSEY (AP) - For 10 months, Iraq war veteran Andrew Schumann has been looking for a job. So far, no luck.

"Transitioning from the military has been a little bit difficult as far as trying to seek employment," said Schumann, 25, of Glassboro, N.J. "You get out of the military and you're kind of lost."

The Labor Department is trying to help veterans like Schumann, but some lawmakers in Congress are questioning whether federal money dedicated to finding vets employment is being spent wisely and fairly.

The House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity is checking out a veterans outreach program at the department. The program, with a budget of $161 million, sends federal money to the states to hire local veteran employment specialists.

Veterans' groups, such as the American Legion, have complained that the outreach is substandard in some states, leaving downtrodden and homeless vets without the help they need.

Subcommittee Chairwoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D, says lawmakers want to ensure that decorated veterans with polished resumes aren't the only ones getting help.

"You have to look at the entire veteran community and those that face different barriers," Herseth Sandlin said in an Associated Press interview. She plans a hearing on the program next week.

The assistant secretary for veterans' employment and training at the Labor Department, Charles Ciccolella, defended the program.

"You will never find a more dedicated group of veterans out there working to help veterans get jobs," he said. "They're always focused and always very, very dedicated."

The department runs a separate Web campaign called HireVetsFirst that aims to raise employer awareness about the value of hiring veterans. As part of the project, the department will announce on Thursday a major expansion of its job fairs for veterans, with more than 100 fairs in all 50 states starting this week and running through the week of Veterans Day.

The HireVetsFirst campaign also has helped with the marketing for dozens of career fairs run by private recruiting firms, such as the job fair Andrew Schumann attended last week in Camden, N.J., aboard the New Jersey, a decommissioned battleship. He and hundreds of other veterans distributed resumes to more than 50 employers from companies big and small _ from BAE Systems and Lowe's to local police departments and schools.

A recruiter for Florida-based CSX Corporation said veterans make excellent job candidates.

"They've had leadership training. They've worked in teams," said recruiting manager Mark Miner. "They're disciplined, hardworking individuals who have a lot more experience for their age than their civilian counterparts."

Still, it's been a struggle for Schumann, the father of a 1-year old who is living with relatives and whose wife has taken on a full-time job to help pay the bills. He's looking for a job as a videographer. While he didn't walk away with an offer, he remains encouraged.

"Coming here today, you see a lot of employers eager to hire veterans," he said.

Labor department officials say they don't track the number of vets who secure employment through career fairs. They estimate that about 10 percent to 15 percent of veterans receive job offers.

The Pentagon says over 300,000 military members returned to civilian status last year. Finding jobs in the civilian world isn't a considerable challenge for many vets _ the unemployment rate for all veterans last year was a low 3.8 percent.

But younger veterans face obstacles. The unemployment rate was 10.4 percent last year for veterans aged 20-24. Since the 90s, the unemployment rate has been somewhat higher for younger vets than for their civilian counterparts.

"When they come off of a period of active duty service, it takes them time to find a job," said David Loughran, a senior economist at Rand Corporation. "For some veterans, the skills that they learned in the military are not necessarily immediately transferable to a civilian job."

Marine Sgt. Garth Troescher, 25, who spent six months in Iraq, drove more than two hours with his fiancee to the career fair on the New Jersey _ and it may have paid off.

"This is great," said Troescher of Dagsboro, Del. "Here I am and people are offering me jobs. It's kind of nice."

He said he received two job offers and may relocate to Dallas for work.
___

On the Net:

HireVetsFirst: http://www.hirevetsfirst.gov

House Veterans' Affairs Committee: http://veterans.house.gov

(Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Progress in Northwestern Baghdad

2007-10-15T22:46:00.000-04:00

NEWS RELEASE - HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND

BRIGADE COMMANDER NOTES PROGRESS IN NORTHWESTERN BAGHDAD

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq - A reduction in violence in neighborhoods on Baghdad's northwest side and an improved security situation are allowing reconstruction efforts and economic gains to flourish, according to the commander of the brigade that has patrolled the area for nearly a year.

Col. J.B. Burton, commander of the 2nd "Dagger" Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, met with members of the Pentagon press corps for a briefing via satellite here Oct. 12 and highlighted the progress made in his area of operation, which spans most of northwestern Baghdad.

"In order to stop the cycle of violence, we set about to defeat sectarian expansion by Shia Extremists, while simultaneously defeating al-Qaeda and denying their access to the population," said Burton, a native of Tullahoma, Tenn. "In short, we had to get out into the city, live among the citizens, fight alongside the ISF and deny insurgents, criminals and extremists access to the population."

The implementation of the Baghdad Security Plan, Operation Fardh Al-Qanoon, allowed the Dagger Brigade to move into neighborhoods with a permanent presence, Burton added, with the end result being an 85 percent reduction in violence in the area since May.

"Of our 95 'Mulhallas,' or neighborhoods-58 of them are now considered under control, 33 remain in a clearing status with violence continuing to go down, and four remain in a disrupt status," Burton noted. He said murders in the area, which a year ago occurred more than 150 times each week, are down to an average of five a week.

He said a major contributor to the improving security situation in northwestern Baghdad is the commitment of concerned citizens, who have stepped forward to aid Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces provide safe neighborhoods and put a stop to sectarian violence and terrorist acts in their midst.

"These volunteers are actively providing security in partnership with our combined forces and concurrently increasing the citizen's confidence in the Iraqi Security Forces as a whole," Burton said. "To date, we have a total of 1,772 volunteers and recruits who are fully screened and ready to attend academy for integration into the ISF, with 500 scheduled to attend (the police) academy this month."

With an increased confidence in the security efforts in their neighborhoods, Burton said each of his 14 joint security stations have seen an increase in tips from residents, helping to thwart terrorist activity. Likewise, he said residents are becoming more involved in the local governmental process, addressing community issues together.

"Further, we are focused on extending the reach of the government by providing businesses access to financial capital and through the development of public works substations that employ locals in local areas to deliver essential services within their capacity," Burton told the media members. "Our Embedded Reconstruction Team and Joint Project Management Office are helping us achieve these effects."

Burton's brigade headquarters is slated to return to its home base in Schweinfurt, Germany, beginning next month. The Dagger Brigade commander said he is pleased with the progress he's seen during his year in the Iraqi capital.

"We leave an area of operations that has shown significant improvement in terms of reduced violence, improved essential services, improvement in the task of daily governing, Iraqi Security Forces that get better each and every day," Burton concluded. "And most importantly we are seeing citizens who are rejecting extremist organizations and standing up and volunteering to help improve the security and well-being of their families and their neighbor's families."

Tullahoma, Tenn. native Col. J.B. Burton, commander of the 2nd "Dagger" Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, conducts a press briefing via satellite with the Pentagon press corps from Camp Victory in western Baghdad Oct. 12. Burton's Schweinfurt, Germany-based brigade has been responsible for security in 95 western Baghdad neighborhoods for the past year. (U.S. Army photo by Capt. David Levasseur, 2nd BCT, 1st Inf.
Div. PAO)

We Will NEVER Forget

2007-09-11T11:49:00.000-04:00

Democrats Refocus Message on Iraq After Military Gains

2007-08-22T10:57:00.000-04:00

By Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A04

Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political factions.

And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom's Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush's policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war's progress. The first installment of Petraeus's testimony is scheduled to be delivered before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a fact both the administration and congressional Democrats say is simply a scheduling coincidence.

The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.

"We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday.

"My assessment is that if we put an additional 30,000 of our troops into Baghdad, that's going to quell some of the violence in the short term," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) echoed in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. "I don't think there's any doubt that as long as U.S. troops are present that they are going to be doing outstanding work."

Advisers to both said theirs were political as well as substantive statements, part of a broader Democratic effort to frame Petraeus's report before it is released next month by preemptively acknowledging some military success in the region. Aides to several Senate Democrats said they expect that to be a recurring theme in the coming weeks, as lawmakers return to hear Petraeus's testimony and to possibly take up a defense authorization bill and related amendments on the war.

For Democratic congressional leaders, the dog days of August are looking anything but quiet. Having failed twice to crack GOP opposition and force a major change in war policy, Democrats risk further alienating their restive supporters if the September showdown again ends in stalemate. House Democratic leaders held an early morning conference call yesterday with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), honing a new message: Of course an influx of U.S. troops has improved security in Iraq, but without any progress on political reconciliation, the sweat and blood of American forces has been for naught.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) made a round of calls yesterday to freshman Democrats, some of whom recently returned from trips to Iraq and made news with their positive comments on military progress. "I'm not finding any wobbliness on the war -- at all," Emanuel said.

The burst of effort has been striking, if only because Democrats left for their August recess confident that Republicans would be on the defensive by now. Instead, the GOP has gone on the attack. The new privately funded ad campaign, to run in 20 states, features a gut-level appeal from Iraq war veterans and the families of fallen soldiers, pleading: "It's no time to quit. It's no time for politics."

"For people who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming," said Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary who is helping to head Freedom's Watch.

GOP leaders have latched on to positive comments from Democrats -- often out of context -- to portray the congressional majority as splintering. Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), an Armed Services Committee member who is close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said many of her colleagues learned a hard lesson from the Republican campaign.

"I don't know of anybody who isn't desperately supportive of the military," she said. "People want to say positive things. But it's difficult to say positive things in this environment and not have some snarky apologist for the White House turn it into some clipped phraseology that looks like support for the president's policies."

Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), who made waves when he returned from Iraq by saying he was willing to be more flexible on troop withdrawal timelines, issued a statement to constituents "setting the record straight."

"I am firmly in favor of withdrawing troops on a timeline that includes both a definite start date and a definite end date," he wrote on his Web site.

But in an interview yesterday, McNerney made clear his views have shifted since returning from Iraq. He said Democrats should be willing to negotiate with the generals in Iraq over just how much more time they might need. And, he said, Democrats should move beyond their confrontational approach, away from tough-minded, partisan withdrawal resolutions, to be more conciliatory with Republicans who might also be looking for a way out of the war.

"We should sit down with Republicans, see what would be acceptable to them to end the war and present it to the president, start negotiating from the beginning," he said, adding, "I don't know what the [Democratic] leadership is thinking. Sometimes they've done things that are beyond me."

In the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, former senator John Edwards issued a scathing attack on Clinton's remark. But he said there has been "progress in Al-Anbar province."

"Senator Clinton's view that the President's Iraq policy is 'working' is another instance of a Washington politician trying to have it both ways," Edwards campaign manager David Bonior said in a statement. "You cannot be for the President's strategy in Iraq but against the war. The American people deserve straight talk and real answers on Iraq, not double-speak, triangulation, or political positioning."

Saving Soldiers' Jobs

2007-08-06T17:56:00.000-04:00

Washington Post
August 4, 2007
Pg. 15
Saving Soldiers' Jobs
By Amy R. Gershkoff

For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning -- not the end -- of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to active duty.

The act is supposed to protect reservists' civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But the government has made it difficult for veterans to enforce their legal rights. Service members who return to find their civilian jobs gone also find that the burden is on them to prove that their jobs were taken away as a result of their military service and that there is no other reason that they could have been fired.

This onerous burden of proof discourages many from filing formal complaints.
Despite such bureaucratic hurdles, more than 16,000 reservist complaints were filed between 2004 and 2006, the Government Accountability Office said this year. But fewer than 30 percent of the reservists who experience USERRA violations file complaints, the GAO estimated.

Those who do file complaints with the Veterans Employment and Training Service Department (VETS) find that resolving their complaints, by the military's own admission, can take "months, if not years." A declassified Defense Department memo compiled for military lawyers stated: "Many VETS field investigators simply accept whatever the employer tells them in a response and close their files"
rather than continue an investigation, meaning the reservists never receive assistance. A 2005 GAO report found that the average time service members have to wait for USERRA complaints to be resolved is 619 days -- nearly two years.

Complaints that cannot be closed are referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, but few cases make it that far. In 2005, of the 5,302 complaints filed by reservists, 111 cases were referred to the Justice Department. Only 16 resulted in benefits going to reservists.

The Justice Department special counsel in charge of prosecuting veterans' job cases, Scott Bloch, declared before Congress in May 2005 that he had "zero tolerance for violations of USERRA" and would "enforce the law vigorously." He promised lawmakers that the Justice Department would do better.

It did -- barely. In 2006, the Justice Department received168 cases and found in favor of the service members 48 times. Resolving 48 cases is better than 16, but tens of thousands of veterans are still without jobs and without recourse.

If the Justice Department has failed to prosecute employers who act illegally, the Defense Department has taken unprecedented steps to keep reservists'
reemployment problems secret. According to the GAO, the Pentagon's annual Status of Forces Surveys provide the only accurate account of the number of reservists experiencing reemployment difficulties. These surveys ask reservists about their service, job loss and whether they are receiving the legal protections -- occupational and otherwise -- guaranteed to them under federal law.

Status of Forces Surveys used to be available to the public. But the 2005 and
2006 surveys of returning reservists and guardsmen were designated "for official use only," putting them off-limits to civilians, journalists or anyone else outside government curious about enforcement of USERRA.

The Defense Department has effectively made oversight of this issue impossible.
America deserves a full accounting of the sacrifices our soldiers have made on and off the battlefield. Most reservists are not wealthy; when the government fails to redress their grievances, the majority cannot afford to hire lawyers to prosecute their cases, particularly if they have lost their civilian jobs.
Thousands of the brave men and women lucky enough to return safely from Iraq are being left without jobs, without hope and without recourse.

The government has failed to protect these reservists and has covered up the evidence. It is time for Americans to protect those who protect us by demanding thorough oversight of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

The writer is director of analytics at MSHC Partners, a Washington consulting firm.

Latest poll shows growing support for Iraq war policy

2007-08-06T17:55:00.000-04:00

From USA TODAY:

USA TODAY's Susan Page reports that President Bush is making some headway in arguing that the increase in U.S. troops in Iraq is showing military progress.

In the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, taken Friday through Sunday, the proportion of those who said the additional troops are "making the situation better" rose to 31% from 22% a month ago. Those who said it was "not making much difference" dropped to 41% from 51%.

About the same number said it was making things worse: 24% now, 25% a month ago.

The number of those who favor removing virtually all U.S. troops from Iraq by next April 1 has dropped a bit, though two-thirds of those surveyed still support the idea.

In the July survey, a record high of 62% had called the invasion of Iraq "a mistake." That view is now held by 57%, roughly where it's been for more than a year.

The telephone poll of 1,012 adults has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

Watch for more results from the poll tomorrow.

Iraqis greet Asian Cup triumph with joyful gunfire

2007-07-29T17:45:00.000-04:00

Jul 29 03:35 PM US/Eastern

From BREITBART.com

Iraq erupted in joy and celebratory gunfire on Sunday when the country's national football squad won the Asian Cup and united its bitterly divided communities in a rare moment of celebration.

Thousands of Iraqis, including members of the security forces, defied a strict government ceasefire order to welcome the team's 1-0 victory over local rivals Saudi Arabia with an intense barrage of gunfire.

Soldiers, police and civilian gunmen loosed off long volleys of automatic fire skywards and into the waters of the Tigris within seconds of the final whistle in Jakarta, beamed live to cafes and homes across the country.

The Iraqi victory against the three-time Asian Cup champions was a precious moment of shared national joy in a country beset by civil strife.

"Now it is our right to enjoy this victory that our heroic team has brought to us. They have brought us joy that we never experienced in the past, when we suffered greatly," said Haidar Mustafa, a Baghdad student.

Around him in a downtown coffee shop, dozens of fans leapt and sang with joy after seeing skipper Younis Mahmoud's powerful header seal a first Asian Cup victory for his mixed team of Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds.

From the southern Shiite port city of Basra, to executed Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein's northern hometown of Tikrit and even to Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, flag-waving crowds celebrated.

Earlier, Baghdad security authorities had imposed an overnight vehicle curfew in order to prevent insurgent car bomb attacks and ordered police to arrest anyone who took part in the traditional celebratory gunfire.

In the hours leading up to the match there were reports that two foreign Arab fighters had been apprehended while trying to move car bombs into Baghdad's Zayuna district, which has been targeted by Sunni extremists.

Zayuna was struck by one of two car bombs that went off following last week's semi-final victory against South Korea, shattering the celebrations and killing at least 50 people.

"The security leadership of Baghdad operations has decided to enact a curfew for vehicles, motorbikes and carts," Brigadier General Qassim Atta, spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, said before the match.

A senior interior ministry official strongly advised Iraqis to hold their celebratory fire and to stay in their own areas of the city.

Nevertheless, troops and cops were among the first to start pumping out rounds from their AK-47 assault rifles and Glock pistols at checkpoints and barracks in the centre of the war-torn capital.

Elsewhere in the city large crowds gathered in the streets waving flags, dancing and -- in Shiite neighbourhoods -- bearing aloft large banners with pictures of revered saints.

Iraqis traditionally celebrate sporting victories by firing guns into the air, a practice grown more lethal in recent years as arms have proliferated across the war-torn country.

People nevertheless welcomed the victory from their heroic team, one that would -- at least temporarily -- unite their divided country in jubilation.

In a statement released immediately after the match Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the victory "a lesson in how to triumph over the impossible to realise victory".

"May you and Iraq live in freedom and victory, with no place for destroyers or killers. Your greatness will remain in the hearts of the Iraqi people, and your joy is stronger than the hate of the terrorists."

Since US-led forces overthrew Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in March 2003, the country has slipped into a chaotic turf war between rival armed factions, with extremists driving a wedge between Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds.

With Maliki's coalition government riven by internal rivalries the national football team carries the rare honour of commanding support from across the country's fractured society.

The United States is pressing Iraq's government to make progress in national reconciliation efforts, and a senior US diplomat said politicians should follow the players' example.

"They were truly united, unlike the government and the political process, where the unity that exists is very much hedged," UN ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington's former envoy in Iraq, said following the match.

"This unity was truly a united effort by the team that produced results. And I hope that the Iraqi politicians will learn from the soccer team," he added.

Earlier this month, the White House released an interim report that found satisfactory progress by Iraq's government on only eight of 18 security and political benchmarks set by Congress.

Copyright AFP 2007, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

US troops in Iraq mark July 4 holiday

2007-07-04T12:22:00.000-04:00

Yahoo News July 4, 2007

Hundreds of U.S. troops marked the Fourth of July by re-enlisting in the military Wednesday while others took their oaths of American citizenship in ceremonies at the main U.S. headquarters in Iraq.

A total of 588 troops signed up for another stint in the military, according to a U.S. military statement. Another 161 became naturalized American citizens.

"No bonus, no matter the size, can adequately compensate you for the contribution each of you has made and continues to make as a custodian of our nation's defenses," the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, told the audience at Camp Victory.

"Nor can any amount of money compensate you adequately for the sacrifices you make serving here in Iraq or the burdens your loved ones face at home in your absence. And we certainly cannot put a price on the freedoms you defend or those we are trying to help the Iraqis establish and safeguard here in the land of the two rivers."

Petraeus dedicated the Independence Day ceremony to the memory of two soldiers who were killed in action before they could be sworn in as citizens.

They were Sgt. Kimel Watt, 21, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was killed June 3 in Baghdad, and Spc. Farid Elazzouzi of Paterson, N.J., who died June 14 in a bombing near Kirkuk.

"Words cannot express the admiration I feel for these two men or the sadness I feel for our nation's loss and their families' sacrifice," Petraeus said.

Visiting Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., congratulated the new citizens and spoke of the hardships endured fighting in an unpopular war.

"You know that you who have endured the dangers and deprivations of war so that the worst thing would not befall us, so that America might be secure in our freedom," McCain said. "As you know, the war in which you have fought has divided the American people. But it has divided no American in their admiration for you. We all honor you."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., led the new citizens in the Pledge of Allegiance.

At a U.S. base outside Baqouba, Sgt. Jesse Jones, 24, of Olympia, Wash., spent Independence Day by taking a shower and getting a haircut. His platoon was on break before heading back to fighting in Baqouba.

"Today I'm just basically relaxing and refitting, getting ready to go back into the city," he said. "As much as I want to be home, I don't regret being here. This is a good place to celebrate the Fourth of July. Not only are we celebrating independence, we're fighting for independence, too."

CAR BOMBS - The west's new problem

2007-07-01T14:12:00.000-04:00

Taken from The Independent - UK:

The hunt for the London terrorists: Attempt may show change of tactics
Did the attackers simply fail to make a bigger device, or is this al-Qa'ida's new way of igniting fear on the streets?

Paul Lashmar and Cole Moreton report

Published: 01 July 2007

The London car bombers could not have destroyed the Tiger Tiger club and killed people in it, experts said last night. The huge manhunt for the would-be mass murderers by police and security services was given new urgency by an attack on Glasgow airport yesterday and the fear of further incidents.

However, it emerged that the Haymarket gas and nail bomb was almost certainly not big enough to have brought down the building, as previously reported. It would have killed and maimed within 100 metres.

Security forces have two theories. The first is that a recent crackdown stopped the terrorists getting their hands on as powerful a bomb as they would have liked. The second is that al-Qa'ida - still the most likely suspect - has changed its tactics. Instead of striking at showpiece buildings it is choosing smaller, unpredictable targets that will cause fear and panic on ordinary streets. One may, of course, have led to the other.

Police are also believed to be urgently seeking three men who went missing while under anti-terror control orders. One of them, a 26-year-old former Tube driver of Algerian descent, is alleged to have talked about wanting to blow up a nightclub. All three were previously thought to have left the country.

A first bomb was found in a Mercedes outside the Tiger Tiger club in Haymarket just before 2am on Friday. An ambulance crew treating a man who had hurt his head saw vapours in the car and alerted the police. Bomb disposal officers risked their lives to defuse the lethal combination of petrol, gas and nails inside.

Police think that an explosion here might have been intended to draw panicking revellers out on to the streets, where they would be have been joined by the emergency services. Then another, bigger bomb in a second Mercedes among them could have been triggered, causing hundreds of deaths.

A blue 280E model Mercedes was illegally parked in Cockspur Street, near Trafalgar Square, but was towed to a Park Lane car pound at 3.30am on Friday. The explosive device inside did not go off. If successful, the trap would have resembled the attack on backpackers in a Bali nightclub in 2002, when a suicide bomb led those escaping straight into the path of a van packed with explosives.

"The danger here is that we are entering the era of the car bomb," said an intelligence source. "In the past, al-Qa'ida-style terrorists have used high-explosive bombs aimed at symbolic, high-profile targets," he said, but that might have changed out of necessity. "It's easy to make a gas and nail car bomb without raising suspicion."

The plot has striking similarities with one that resulted in Dhiren Barot being jailed for life last November, for conspiring to park limousines packed with gas canisters underneath high-profile buildings, with the intention of later detonating them. Another member of the gang jailed in connection with that plot had a brother called Lamine Adam who allegedly spoke of attacking clubs. Adam was put under a control order with his younger brother Ibrahim, 20, and their friend Cerie Bullivant, 24. But all three disappeared.

It is now known that the bomb outside Tiger Tiger would have been set off by a call to a mobile phone in the car triggering a home-made incendiary detonator. This would have set light to petrol vapour, instantly exploding petrol cans in the car and the fuel tank. As the car burned very quickly the heat would have detonated gas cylinders containing compressed gas, causing a large explosion and scattering the nails.

Although deadly - the ambulance crew and any revellers on the pavement would have been killed - it would not have caused serious damage to the club or brought down the building.

The two cars were meant to have burned in the attacks, destroying all evidence. Instead they are now in the specialist Forensic Explosives Laboratory concealed in the countryside in Kent. That is where experts pored over the double-decker bus blown apart in the 7 July 2005 attacks in London.

In lab X47 teams of scientists are examining the two Mercedes, looking for evidence such as hair, skin, sweat or clothes fibres. Others are examining the chemical make-up of the bombs, which may lead them to a particular part of the country, even a specific supplier.

There could also be incriminating documents that were meant to be destroyed by fire. Police will take the mobile phone removed by the bomb disposal team and find out whether it had been bought or stolen. They will find the numbers it has called and received.

Although delighted at this high-quality forensic evidence, the police hope to capture clear images of the drivers and any passengers. The London car bombers chose to strike in one of the world's most heavily filmed areas. Yesterday there were reports that the police had captured a "crystal clear" image of a suspect leaving the vehicle outside the Haymarket club, but no pictures have yet been made public.

Experts were last night sifting through hours of material recorded by a network of 33 street CCTV cameras in the West End. Three more cameras are located in vans that tour the area, and Westminster council has an additional 30 cameras that can be moved around and operated through laptops. Detectives were also looking to trace the routes the cars took towards their destination, using 52 cameras that monitor every road entrance to central London.

This so-called "ring of steel" may tell police where the cars came from, enabling them to trace their starting points.

Whitehall sources said there had not been any specific intelligence and no one had claimed responsibility for the attempted bombings.

Intelligence sources say that two rather than one car bomb points to the existence of a cell of al-Qa'ida sympathisers. The unsophisticated devices suggest a "home-grown" cell of radical British Islamists rather than a cell infiltrated from abroad.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, said yesterday's attack on Glasgow made it obvious that the public should be on their guard.

MI5 said last year it believed Islamist radicals were plotting at least 30 major terrorist attacks in Britain and it was tracking some 1,600 suspects.

‘Neighborhood Watch’ turns over cache

2007-06-28T19:01:00.000-04:00

Thursday, 28 June 2007

By Maj. Randall Baucom
1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division

CAMP TAJI — For a second time this week, Iraqi citizens here turned in a large cache consisting of improvised explosive device-making material and mortar rounds.

The Taji neighborhood watch contacted Coalition Forces June 25, after the driver of a truck fled the scene when the volunteers stopped a suspicious vehicle moving through the rural village of Abd Allah al Jasim. The vehicle contained 24 mortar rounds, two rockets, spare machine gun barrels, small arms ammunition and other IED-making material.

"This grassroots movement of reconciliation by the volunteers is taking off all around us. The tribes that had once actively or passively supported al-Qaeda in Iraq now want them out," said Lt. Col. Peter Andrysiak, the deputy commander of the 1st "Ironhorse" Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.

The neighborhood watch is made up of a group of 500 volunteers, from a number of tribes in the area, who want reconciliation with the Coalition Forces and the Iraqi government. The volunteers are currently being vetted for possible future selection for training as Iraqi Police or some other organization within the Iraqi Security Forces.

U.S. Forces Crack Down on Terrorists Smuggling Bombs From Iran

2007-06-28T18:47:00.000-04:00

Tuesday , June 26, 2007

Associated Press

JISR DIYALA, Iraq —
Newly arrived U.S. troops southeast of Baghdad are destroying boats on the Tigris River and targeting networks bringing powerful roadside bombs from Iran as the military cracks down on Sunni and Shiite extremists from all directions.

But a top U.S. commander warned on Monday that three or four times more Iraqi security forces are needed to sustain the progress in clearing the area and stanching the flow of arms and makeshift bombs into the capital.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose command covers the southern rim of Baghdad and mostly Shiite areas to the south, said the reinforcements who arrived as part of a troop buildup have had success in rooting out militants from their sanctuaries and preventing them from fleeing the area in an operation called Marne Torch — one of a quartet of offensives in the capital and surrounding areas.

• Visit FOXNews.com's Iraq Center for more in-depth coverage.

"All along the Tigris River valley, people knew this is where the Sunni extremists were storing munitions, training for operations, building IEDs to take them into Baghdad," he said, referring to improvised explosive devices, the term the military uses for roadside bombs.

"They just didn't have the reach to get down there. Now with the surge brigades they've got the reach. But the issue is we can't stay here forever and there's gotta be a persistent presence and that's gotta be Iraqi security forces. And that's always our biggest concern," he said while visiting troops from the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team at a U.S. patrol base on the southeastern edge of Baghdad.

The dusty base is nestled between high sand berms on what was the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, which was bombed during the U.S.-led invasion and subsequently looted, near the mainly Shiite village of Jasr Diyala, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Lynch said his units had been successful in preventing the militants from fleeing the area ahead of the offensive and overall detained 150 people, including at least 30 high-value targets — most from the rural Arab Jubour area just south of the capital.

"In the past they had exit routes so they saw the operation coming," he said. "What we did is establish blocking positions all around Arab Jubour so the enemy couldn't leave but they had to stay and fight and as a result to either die or be captured."

Lynch's comments were the latest to signal a growing impatience among U.S. commanders with Iraqi security forces amid calls in the U.S. for the Bush administration to start bringing troops home. The Americans have expressed confidence in a new strategy aimed at flooding volatile areas with U.S. troops to quell the violence, but also concern that the progress could be reversed once U.S. troops leave.

Underscoring the dangers, Lynch said two helicopters adjacent to his came under "significant small-arms" fire while flying low over the desert landscape to the patrol base, causing no injuries but leaving one aircraft severely damaged.

The brigade commander, Col. Wayne W. Grigsby, Jr., said 21 boats had been destroyed on the river and in the reeds on the banks since the operation began in force on June 15, most with secondary blasts indicating many were filled with explosive material.

He also said the military had gained intelligence from a local sheik about networks bringing armor-penetrating explosively formed projectiles, known as EFPs, on a major road that travels from the border with Iran through Shiite areas to Baghdad.

Lynch said the area had two battalions from the 8th Iraqi army division but added "there needs to be three or four times more Iraqi security forces than are currently present to provide for sustained security. That's the critical piece in all of this."

Lynch said the Iraqi soldiers with whom he had worked were professional, although many still lacked training and equipment more than four years after the war started in March 2003. He said the main problem was with Iraqi police, a predominantly Shiite force that has been accused of being infiltrated by militias.

"In my battlespace my concern is police, local police. Either they're nonexistent or the ones that are there tend to be corrupt," he said.

"Then there are large portions of the battlespace where there are no Iraqi security forces at all. And the Iraqi security forces have to be grown to a level where they can occupy these places. This is an enemy sanctuary because nobody's been out there. There are no Iraqi security forces so the enemy fills the void."

He said the extra U.S. troops had provided the numbers to curb the militant activity, which included storing munitions, training and building roadside bombs.

"But if someone doesn't secure that presence, I mean have sustained security then it's not going to work. that's the concern," he said.

'Chemical Ali,' 2 Other of Saddam's Henchmen to Hang for Massacre of Kurds

2007-06-28T18:45:00.000-04:00

Monday , June 25, 2007

Associated Press

BAGHDAD —
Saddam Hussein's cousin and two other former regime officials were convicted Sunday of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang for the brutal crackdown that killed up to 180,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas two decades ago.

Two other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the 1987-1988 crackdown, known as "Operation Anfal." A sixth defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence. Death sentences are automatically appealed.

The most notorious defendant was Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of mustard gas and nerve agents against the Kurds, who had allegedly collaborated with the Iranians during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War.

Visit FOXNews.com's Iraq Center for more in-depth coverage.

Al-Majid, once among the most powerful and feared men in Iraq, stood trembling in silence as Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa read the verdict against him and imposed five death sentences.

"You had all the civil and military authority for northern Iraq," al-Khalifa said. "You gave the orders to the troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions. You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery. You led the killing of Iraqi villagers. You restricted them in their areas, burned their orchards, killed their animals. You committed genocide."

Complete coverage is available in FOXNews.com's Iraq Center.

Al-Majid said "Thanks be to God" as he was led from the courtroom.

Also sentenced to death were former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, who led the Iraqi delegation at the ceasefire talks that ended the 1991 Gulf War, and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces.

Mohammed interrupted the judge as the verdict was being read, insisting the defendants were defending Iraq from Kurdish rebels who collaborated with Iran.

"God bless our martyrs. Long live the brave Iraqi army. Long live Iraq. Long live the Baath party and long live Arab nations," he said.

Al-Tai insisted he was innocent, telling the judge "I will leave you to God" as he was led away from the court.

Farhan Mutlaq Saleh, former deputy director of operations for the armed forces, and Sabir al-Douri, former director of military intelligence, were sentenced to life in prison. Taher Tawfiq al-Ani, former governor of Mosul, was acquitted.

Saddam himself was among the defendants when the trial began last Aug. 21. But he was hanged four months later for his role in the deaths of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail — the first trial against major figures from the ousted regime.

In northern Iraq, many Kurds welcomed the verdict, even though some were disappointed that Saddam did not have to face the gallows in the Anfal case.

In Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 Kurds were killed in a massive chemical attack in March 1988, a power outage prevented many people from watching the televised proceedings. But dozens gathered in cafes and restaurants which had generators to watch the verdicts.

"I would never miss this," said Peshtiwan Kamal, 24, who was too young to remember the attacks. "I always heard from my family what those criminals did to my people. So I just wanted to see how they would take the verdict and punishment."

A small rally was also held at a memorial garden in the Halabja cemetery.

"We thank God that we have lived to see our enemies being punished for all of the atrocities they have committed against our people," said Lukman Abdul-Qader, head of a local organization of chemical attack survivors.

Soran Ghasur, 92, who lost his father and a friend in the Halabja attack, was overcome with emotion as he embraced a headstone. "Those are my family," he sobbed.

As in the Dujail case, some human rights organizations questioned whether the Anfal proceedings complied with international standards for fairness.

Miranda Sissons of the International Center for Transitional Justice said the broad array of charges facing all the accused made it difficult to prepare a proper defense.

"It matters to the rule of law and the future of Iraq that individuals are sentenced after fair and critical trials that meet international standards," Sissons said. "My organization opposes the death penalty, but it's particularly important that if the death penalty is applied that it be done after a trial that meets international standards."

Besides Saddam, Four other members of the former regime have been executed for alleged atrocities against Iraqis during Saddam's nearly three-decades rule.

Besides Saddam, three other figures from the former regime have been executed — all in the Dujail case. They include Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, who headed the Revolutionary Court that sentenced the Dujail victims to death. They were hanged in January.

Former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, had been sentenced to life in prison for his role in Dujail but was hanged in March after an appeals court decided the life sentence was too lenient. Three other defendants were sentenced to 15 years in jail in the Dujail case, while one was acquitted.

Munir Hadad, a judge on the Iraqi high tribunal, said up to 15 officials were expected to go on trial in a few weeks in the suppression of a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq in 1991.

Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of stridently secular Britain

2007-06-21T20:05:00.000-04:00

International Herald Tribune
(http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6263112)

By Jane Perlez
Thursday, June 21, 2007

LONDON: Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their children to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that allow only a slit for their eyes.

Like little else, their appearance has unnerved Britons, testing the limits of tolerance in this stridently secular nation. Many veiled women say they are targets of abuse. At the same time, efforts are growing to place legal curbs on the full Muslim veil, known as the niqab.

The past year has seen numerous examples: A lawyer dressed in a niqab was told by an immigration judge that she could not represent a client because, he said, he could not hear her. A teacher wearing a niqab was told by a provincial school to go home. A student who was barred from wearing a niqab took her case to the courts, and lost. In fact, the British education authorities are proposing a ban on the niqab in schools altogether.

David Sexton, a columnist for The Evening Standard, wrote recently that Britain has been "too deferential" toward the veil. "I find such garb, in the context of a London street, first ridiculous and then directly offensive," he said.

Although the number of women wearing the niqab has increased in the past several years, only a tiny percentage of women among Britain's two million Muslims cover themselves completely. It is impossible to say how many exactly.

Some who wear the niqab, particularly younger women who have taken it up recently, concede that it is a frontal expression of Islamic identity, which they have embraced since Sept. 11, 2001, as a form of rebellion against the policies of the Blair government in Iraq and at home.

"For me it is not just a piece of clothing, it's an act of faith, it's solidarity," said a 24-year-old program scheduler at a broadcasting company in London, who would allow only her last name, Al Shaikh, to be printed, saying she wanted to protect her privacy. "9/11 was a wake-up call for young Muslims," she said.

At times she receives rude comments, including, Shaikh said, when a woman at her workplace told her she had no right to be there. Shaikh said she planned to file a complaint.

When she is on the street, she often answers barbs. "A few weeks ago a lady said: 'I think you look crazy.' I said: 'How dare you go around telling people how to dress,' and walked off. Sometimes I feel I have to reply. Islam does teach you that you must defend your religion."

Other Muslims find the niqab objectionable, a step backward for an immigrant group that is under pressure after the terror attack on London's transit system in July 2005.

"After the July 7 attacks, this is not the time to be antagonizing Britain by presenting Muslims as something sinister," said Imran Ahmad, author of "Unimagined," an autobiography of growing up Muslim in Britain, and the head of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. "The veil is so steeped in subjugation, I find it so offensive someone would want to create such barriers. It's retrograde."

Since South Asians started coming to Britain in large numbers in the 1960s, a small group of usually older, undereducated women have worn the niqab. It was most often seen as a sign of subjugation.

Many more Muslim women wear the headscarf, called the hijab, covering all or some of their hair. Unlike in France, Turkey and Tunisia, where students in state schools and female civil servants are banned from covering their hair, British Muslim women can wear the headscarf, and indeed the niqab, almost anywhere, for now.

But that tolerance is eroding. Even some who wear the niqab, like Faatema Mayata, a 24-year-old psychology and religious studies teacher, agreed there were limits. "How can you teach when you are covering your face?" she said, sitting with a cup of tea in her living room in Blackburn, a town in the north of England, her niqab tucked away because she was within the confines of her home.

She has worn the niqab since she was 12, when she was sent by her parents to an all-girls boarding school. The niqab was not, as many Britons seemed to think, a sign of extremism, she said. The niqab, to her, was about identity. "If I dressed in a Western way I could be a Hindu, I could be anything," she said. "This way I feel comfortable in my identity as a Muslim woman."

No one else in the family wore the niqab. Her husband, Ibrahim Boodi, a social worker, was indifferent, she said. "If I took it off today, he wouldn't care."

When she is walking, she is often stopped, she said. "People ask, 'Why do you wear that?' A lot of people assume I'm oppressed, that I don't speak English. I don't care, I've got a brain."

Some commentators have complained that mosques encourage women to wear the niqab, a practice they have said should be stopped. At the East London Mosque, one of the largest in the capital, the chief imam, Abdul Qayyum, studied in Saudi Arabia and is trained in the Wahhabi school of Islam. According to the community relations officer at the mosque, Ehsan Abdullah Hannan, the imam's daughter wears the niqab.

At Friday prayers recently, the women worshipers were crowded into a small upstairs windowless room away from the main hall for the men.

A handful of young women wore the niqab and spoke effusively about their reasons. "Wearing the niqab means you will get a good grade and go to paradise," said Hodo Muse, 19, a Somali woman. "Every day people are giving me dirty looks for wearing it, but when you wear something for Allah you get a boost."

Hero Professor at Virginia Tech

2007-04-18T07:38:00.000-04:00

Courageous final act of professor

Fatally shot as he protects students

BY OREN YANIV and LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Tuesday, April 17th 2007, 2:27 PM

Virginia Tech University Prof. Liviu Librescu, described as a family man who once did research for NASA, sacrificed his life to save his students in the shooting rampage yesterday.

"When he heard the gunfire, he blocked the entrance and got shot through the door," his daughter-in-law Ayala Schmulevich said.

"He realized he had to save the students," she said. "That was the kind of man he was."

The hero educator was beginning a class on solid mechanics when all hell broke loose on the second floor of Norris Hall.

First came the terrifying gunshots from a classroom next door.

"It wasn't like an automatic weapon, but it was a steady 'pow,' 'pow,' 'pow,' 'pow,'" student Richard Mallalieu, 23, told The Washington Post. "We didn't know what to do at first."

The students in the class dropped to the floor and started overturning desks to hide behind as about a dozen shots rang out, he said.

Then the gunfire started coming closer. Librescu, 77, fearlessly braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman in the hall, while students darted to the windows of the second-floor classroom to escape the slaughter, survivors said.

Mallalieu and most of his classmates hung out of the windows and dropped about 10 feet to bushes and grass below - but Librescu stayed behind to hold off the crazed gunman.

Alec Calhoun, 20, said the last thing he saw before he jumped from the window was Librescu, blocking the door against the madman in the hallway.

He died trying to protect the students.

Librescu taught aerospace and ocean engineering but focused much of his time on research.

He leaves a wife and two sons. His family is planning to bury him in Israel.

Two other identified victims of the massacre, educator Christopher (Jamie) Bishop, 35, and student Ryan Clark, were mild-mannered gentlemen who by all accounts were liked and admired by those who knew them.

Bishop patiently guided undergrads at the Virginia Tech University through the intricacies of the German language and doted on his wife, Stefanie, and their cat, Trinity.

Clark was working on three majors - biology, English and psychology - yet managed to devote time to Circle K, the largest volunteer community service organization on campus, and serve as an officer with the Marching Virginians, the university's band.

Clark, 23, who was due to graduate soon and hoped to pursue a career in cognitive neuroscience, apparently was one of the first to die. The tall, thin student and resident student adviser was rushing to investigate the ruckus at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dorm when the crazed gunman shot him.

Clark, who was called "Stack" by his pals, "was one of the nicest guys I've ever known," said one friend who declined to give his name.

Another described Clark as helpful and a good listener. "When I was upset about something, he would come over and ask, 'Are you OK,'" she said.

Clark's family was too distraught to talk last night.

Bishop, who got his master's in German linguistics from the University of Georgia and lived in Germany for several years, became an adjunct member of the Virginia Tech staff in 2000.

Jonathan Gurwitz: Homefront ingrates turning on American troops

2007-02-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Web Posted: 02/06/2007 07:10 PM CST at San Antonio Express-News

There is inherent tension in the concept of opposing the war in Iraq but supporting the troops. So it was perhaps inevitable that some people who despise the war would begin to turn on the men and women fighting it.

Many people can maintain the distinction. But as the ugliness of the criticism increases, it becomes more difficult to separate the men from the mission. After all, the men and women fighting in Iraq and elsewhere in the global war on terror tend to be — despite all the hardships placed upon them and their families — the most ardent supporters of completing the mission.

Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein breached the wall between opposing the war and supporting the troops last year. "When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism," he wrote in a column titled "Warriors and Wusses."

"I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War," Stein added, "but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea."

Last week, Washington Post columnist William Arkin thoroughly demolished the wall.

In response to an NBC News report about military personnel in Iraq feeling increasingly frustrated at domestic criticism of the war, Arkin vented his rage at America's "mercenary" force:

"So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?"

By way of clarification, Arkin followed with:

"Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the Constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people."

Neither Stein nor Arkin was on hand last week for the dedication of the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center. If they had been, they would have heard Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton do an admirable job of supporting the troops despite her well-publicized criticism of the war.

And they would have heard Sen. John McCain, who knows something about the "obscene amenities" of the war zone, deliver a spectacular oration about sacrifice and the duties of citizenship and leadership. Selective quotes don't do it justice. The entire speech is available on the MySanAntonio.com Web site.

More than anything, they would have seen a parade of 300 patients, some walking, some wheeled — men and women who shoulder the burden of the all-volunteer military.

There were many moving moments, moments that caused even the steel jaws of combat veterans to quiver a bit. Let me share just one.

As the color guard entered the assembly, the wounded soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen who could do so rose. One of them was Staff Sgt. Jon Arnold-Garcia of the 101st Airborne Division. Arnold-Garcia lost the lower half of his right leg when insurgents attacked his convoy in Hawija, Iraq. He has not yet been fitted with a prosthesis.

Arnold-Garcia stood at attention without his crutches. As the national anthem played, he saluted the flag, standing on one leg. When he would momentarily lose his balance, Arnold-Garcia touched the elbow of his saluting arm to the soldier next to him, Staff Sgt. Steve Bosson of the 1st Cavalry Division. Bosson lost the lower half of his left leg in an insurgent attack west of Baghdad.

Fighting tools of American imperialism? Hiding behind the Constitution and the flag?

Arnold-Garcia, Bosson and thousands of others have shed their blood so ungrateful jerks have the right to write such garbage.

Full Text: State of the Union

2007-01-23T21:21:00.000-05:00

Madam Speaker, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:
This rite of custom brings us together at a defining hour – when decisions are hard and courage is tested. We enter the year 2007 with large endeavors underway, and others that are ours to begin. In all of this, much is asked of us. We must have the will to face difficult challenges and determined enemies – and the wisdom to face them together.
Some in this Chamber are new to the House and Senate – and I congratulate the Democratic majority. Congress has changed, but our responsibilities have not. Each of us is guided by our own convictions – and to these we must stay faithful. Yet we are all held to the same standards, and called to serve the same good purposes: To extend this Nation’s prosperity ... to spend the people’s money wisely ... to solve problems, not leave them to future generations ... to guard America against all evil, and to keep faith with those we have sent forth to defend us.
We are not the first to come here with government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people. Our citizens don’t much care which side of the aisle we sit on – as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans, and help them to build a future of hope and opportunity – and this is the business before us tonight.
A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy – and that is what we have. We are now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth – in a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs ... so far. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising. This economy is on the move – and our job is to keep it that way, not with more government but with more enterprise.
Next week, I will deliver a full report on the state of our economy. Tonight, I want to discuss three economic reforms that deserve to be priorities for this Congress.
First, we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes. What we need to do is impose spending discipline in Washington, D.C. We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009 – and met that goal three years ahead of schedule. Now let us take the next step. In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years. I ask you to make the same commitment. Together, we can restrain the spending appetite of the federal government, and balance the federal budget.
Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour – when not even C-SPAN is watching. In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate – they are dropped into Committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You did not vote them into law. I did not sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the budget process ... expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress … and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session.
Finally, to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements. Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience – and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty – and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Everyone in this Chamber knows this to be true – yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and good will, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid – and save Social Security.
Spreading opportunity and hope in America also requires public schools that give children the knowledge and character they need in life. Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act – preserving local control, raising standards in public schools, and holding those schools accountable for results. And because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap.
Now the task is to build on this success, without watering down standards ... without taking control from local communities ... and without backsliding and calling it reform. We can lift student achievement even higher by giving local leaders flexibility to turn around failing schools ... and by giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose something better. We must increase funds for students who struggle – and make sure these children get the special help they need. And we can make sure our children are prepared for the jobs of the future, and our country is more competitive, by strengthening math and science skills. The No Child Left Behind Act has worked for America’s children – and I ask Congress to reauthorize this good law.
A future of hope and opportunity requires that all our citizens have affordable and available healthcare. When it comes to healthcare, government has an obligation to care for the elderly, the disabled, and poor children. We will meet those responsibilities. For all other Americans, private health insurance is the best way to meet their needs. But many Americans cannot afford a health insurance policy.
Tonight, I propose two new initiatives to help more Americans afford their own insurance. First, I propose a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the standard tax deduction for dependents. Families with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $15,000 of their income. Single Americans with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $7,500 of their income. With this reform, more than 100 million men, women, and children who are now covered by employer-provided insurance will benefit from lower tax bills.
At the same time, this reform will level the playing field for those who do not get health insurance through their job. For Americans who now purchase health insurance on their own, my proposal would mean a substantial tax savings – $4,500 for a family of four making $60,000 a year. And for the millions of other Americans who have no health insurance at all, this deduction would help put a basic private health insurance plan within their reach. Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making healthcare affordable for more Americans.
My second proposal is to help the states that are coming up with innovative ways to cover the uninsured. States that make basic private health insurance available to all their citizens should receive federal funds to help them provide this coverage to the poor and the sick. I have asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services to work with Congress to take existing federal funds and use them to create “Affordable Choices” grants. These grants would give our Nation’s governors more money and more flexibility to get private health insurance to those most in need.
There are many other ways that Congress can help. We need to expand Health Savings Accounts ... help small businesses through Association Health Plans ... reduce costs and medical errors with better information technology ... encourage price transparency ... and protect good doctors from junk lawsuits by passing medical liability reform. And in all we do, we must remember that the best healthcare decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors.
Extending hope and opportunity in our country requires an immigration system worthy of America – with laws that are fair and borders that are secure. When laws and borders are routinely violated, this harms the interests of our country. To secure our border, we are doubling the size of the Border Patrol – and funding new infrastructure and technology.
Yet even with all these steps, we cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border – and that requires a temporary worker program. We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis. As a result, they won’t have to try to sneak in – and that will leave border agents free to chase down drug smugglers, and criminals, and terrorists. We will enforce our immigration laws at the worksite, and give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers – so there is no excuse left for violating the law. We need to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals. And we need to resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country – without animosity and without amnesty.
Convictions run deep in this Capitol when it comes to immigration. Let us have a serious, civil, and conclusive debate – so that you can pass, and I can sign, comprehensive immigration reform into law.
Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America’s economy running and America’s environment clean. For too long our Nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists – who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments ... raise the price of oil ... and do great harm to our economy.
It is in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply – and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power – by even greater use of clean coal technology ... solar and wind energy ... and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol – using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes.
We have made a lot of progress, thanks to good policies in Washington and the strong response of the market. Now even more dramatic advances are within reach. Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years – thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.
To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory Fuels Standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 – this is nearly five times the current target. At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks – and conserve up to eight and a half billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.
Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but will not eliminate it. So as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must also step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment – and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.
A future of hope and opportunity requires a fair, impartial system of justice. The lives of citizens across our Nation are affected by the outcome of cases pending in our federal courts. And we have a shared obligation to ensure that the federal courts have enough judges to hear those cases and deliver timely rulings. As President, I have a duty to nominate qualified men and women to vacancies on the federal bench. And the United States Senate has a duty as well – to give those nominees a fair hearing, and a prompt up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
For all of us in this room, there is no higher responsibility than to protect the people of this country from danger. Five years have come and gone since we saw the scenes and felt the sorrow that terrorists can cause. We have had time to take stock of our situation. We have added many critical protections to guard the homeland. We know with certainty that the horrors of that September morning were just a glimpse of what the terrorists intend for us – unless we stop them.
With the distance of time, we find ourselves debating the causes of conflict and the course we have followed. Such debates are essential when a great democracy faces great questions. Yet one question has surely been settled – that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.
From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since Nine-Eleven has never been the same.
Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented – but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.
Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy. The evil that inspired and rejoiced in Nine-Eleven is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a Nation at war.
In the minds of the terrorists, this war began well before September 11th, and will not end until their radical vision is fulfilled. And these past five years have given us a much clearer view of the nature of this enemy. Al Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists, possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology. Take almost any principle of civilization, and their goal is the opposite. They preach with threats ... instruct with bullets and bombs ... and promise paradise for the murder of the innocent.
Our enemies are quite explicit about their intentions. They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country. By killing and terrorizing Americans, they want to force our country to retreat from the world and abandon the cause of liberty. They would then be free to impose their will and spread their totalitarian ideology. Listen to this warning from the late terrorist Zarqawi: “We will sacrifice our blood and bodies to put an end to your dreams, and what is coming is even worse.” And Osama bin Laden declared: “Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us.”
These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah – a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.
The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans ... kill democracy in the Middle East ... and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.
In the sixth year since our Nation was attacked, I wish I could report to you that the dangers have ended. They have not. And so it remains the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement, and military action to do our duty, to find these enemies, and to protect the American people.
This war is more than a clash of arms – it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our Nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom – societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies – and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security . . . we must.
In the last two years, we have seen the desire for liberty in the broader Middle East – and we have been sobered by the enemy’s fierce reaction. In 2005, the world watched as the citizens of Lebanon raised the banner of the Cedar Revolution ... drove out the Syrian occupiers ... and chose new leaders in free elections. In 2005, the people of Afghanistan defied the terrorists and elected a democratic legislature. And in 2005, the Iraqi people held three national elections – choosing a transitional government ... adopting the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world … and then electing a government under that constitution. Despite endless threats from the killers in their midst, nearly 12 million Iraqi citizens came out to vote in a show of hope and solidarity we should never forget.
A thinking enemy watched all of these scenes, adjusted their tactics, and in 2006 they struck back. In Lebanon, assassins took the life of Pierre Gemayel, a prominent participant in the Cedar Revolution. And Hezbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region and are seeking to undermine Lebanon’s legitimately elected government. In Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters tried to regain power by regrouping and engaging Afghan and NATO forces. In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam – the Golden Mosque of Samarra. This atrocity, directed at a Muslim house of prayer, was designed to provoke retaliation from Iraqi Shia – and it succeeded. Radical Shia elements, some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads. The result was a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal that continues to this day.
This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in. Every one of us wishes that this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.
We are carrying out a new strategy in Iraq – a plan that demands more from Iraq’s elected government, and gives our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete their mission. Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.
In order to make progress toward this goal, the Iraqi government must stop the sectarian violence in its capital. But the Iraqis are not yet ready to do this on their own. So we are deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq. The vast majority will go to Baghdad, where they will help Iraqi forces to clear and secure neighborhoods, and serve as advisers embedded in Iraqi Army units. With Iraqis in the lead, our forces will help secure the city by chasing down terrorists, insurgents, and roaming death squads. And in Anbar province – where al Qaeda terrorists have gathered and local forces have begun showing a willingness to fight them – we are sending an additional 4,000 United States Marines, with orders to find the terrorists and clear them out. We did not drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.
The people of Iraq want to live in peace, and now is the time for their government to act. Iraq’s leaders know that our commitment is not open ended. They have promised to deploy more of their own troops to secure Baghdad – and they must do so. They have pledged that they will confront violent radicals of any faction or political party. They need to follow through, and lift needless restrictions on Iraqi and Coalition forces, so these troops can achieve their mission of bringing security to all of the people of Baghdad. Iraq’s leaders have committed themselves to a series of benchmarks to achieve reconciliation – to share oil revenues among all of Iraq’s citizens ... to put the wealth of Iraq into the rebuilding of Iraq ... to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's civic life ... to hold local elections ... and to take responsibility for security in every Iraqi province. But for all of this to happen, Baghdad must be secured. And our plan will help the Iraqi government take back its capital and make good on its commitments.
My fellow citizens, our military commanders and I have carefully weighed the options. We discussed every possible approach. In the end, I chose this course of action because it provides the best chance of success. Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq – because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far reaching.
If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country – and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict.
For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective. Chaos is their greatest ally in this struggle. And out of chaos in Iraq, would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens... new recruits ... new resources ... and an even greater determination to harm America. To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September 11th and invite tragedy. And ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East ... to succeed in Iraq ... and to spare the American people from this danger.
This is where matters stand tonight, in the here and now. I have spoken with many of you in person. I respect you and the arguments you have made. We went into this largely united – in our assumptions, and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq – and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field – and those on their way.
The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others. That is why it is important to work together so our Nation can see this great effort through. Both parties and both branches should work in close consultation. And this is why I propose to establish a special advisory council on the war on terror, made up of leaders in Congress from both political parties. We will share ideas for how to position America to meet every challenge that confronts us. And we will show our enemies abroad that we are united in the goal of victory.
One of the first steps we can take together is to add to the ranks of our military – so that the American Armed Forces are ready for all the challenges ahead. Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.
Americans can have confidence in the outcome of this struggle – because we are not in this struggle alone. We have a diplomatic strategy that is rallying the world to join in the fight against extremism. In Iraq, multinational forces are operating under a mandate from the United Nations – and we are working with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States to increase support for Iraq’s government. The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran, and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. With the other members of the Quartet – the UN, the European Union, and Russia – we are pursuing diplomacy to help bring peace to the Holy Land, and pursuing the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. In Afghanistan, NATO has taken the lead in turning back the Taliban and al Qaeda offensive – the first time the Alliance has deployed forces outside the North Atlantic area. Together with our partners in China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, we are pursuing intensive diplomacy to achieve a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons. And we will continue to speak out for the cause of freedom in places like Cuba, Belarus, and Burma – and continue to awaken the conscience of the world to save the people of Darfur.
American foreign policy is more than a matter of war and diplomacy. Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required. We hear the call to take on the challenges of hunger, poverty, and disease – and that is precisely what America is doing. We must continue to fight HIV/AIDS, especially on the continent of Africa – and because you funded our Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the number of people receiving life-saving drugs has grown from 50,000 to more than 800,000 in three short years. I ask you to continue funding our efforts to fight HIV/AIDS. I ask you to provide $1.2 billion over five years so we can combat malaria in 15 African countries. I ask that you fund the Millennium Challenge Account, so that American aid reaches the people who need it, in nations where democracy is on the rise and corruption is in retreat. And let us continue to support the expanded trade and debt relief that are the best hope for lifting lives and eliminating poverty.
When America serves others in this way, we show the strength and generosity of our country. These deeds reflect the character of our people. The greatest strength we have is the heroic kindness, courage, and self sacrifice of the American people. You see this spirit often if you know where to look – and tonight we need only look above to the gallery.
Dikembe Mutombo grew up in Africa, amid great poverty and disease. He came to Georgetown University on a scholarship to study medicine – but Coach John Thompson got a look at Dikembe and had a different idea. Dikembe became a star in the NBA, and a citizen of the United States. But he never forgot the land of his birth – or the duty to share his blessings with others. He has built a brand new hospital in his hometown. A friend has said of this good hearted man: “Mutombo believes that God has given him this opportunity to do great things.” And we are proud to call this son of the Congo our fellow American.
After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children’s videos in her basement. The Baby Einstein Company was born – and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. In November 2001, Julie sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company, and with her help Baby Einstein has grown into a $200 million business. Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America. And she is using her success to help others – producing child safety videos with John Walsh of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Julie says of her new project: “I believe it's the most important thing that I've ever done. I believe that children have the right to live in a world that is safe.” We are pleased to welcome this talented business entrepreneur and generous social entrepreneur – Julie Aigner-Clark.
Three weeks ago, Wesley Autrey was waiting at a Harlem subway station with his two little girls, when he saw a man fall into the path of a train. With seconds to act, Wesley jumped onto the tracks ... pulled the man into a space between the rails ... and held him as the train passed right above their heads. He insists he’s not a hero. Wesley says: “We got guys and girls overseas dying for us to have our freedoms. We got to show each other some love.” There is something wonderful about a country that produces a brave and humble man like Wesley Autrey.
Tommy Rieman was a teenager pumping gas in Independence, Kentucky, when he enlisted in the United States Army. In December 2003, he was on a reconnaissance mission in Iraq when his team came under heavy enemy fire. From his Humvee, Sergeant Rieman returned fire – and used his body as a shield to protect his gunner. He was shot in the chest and arm, and received shrapnel wounds to his legs – yet he refused medical attention, and stayed in the fight. He helped to repel a second attack, firing grenades at the enemy’s position. For his exceptional courage, Sergeant Rieman was awarded the Silver Star. And like so many other Americans who have volunteered to defend us, he has earned the respect and gratitude of our whole country.
In such courage and compassion, ladies and gentlemen, we see the spirit and character of America – and these qualities are not in short supply. This is a decent and honorable country – and resilient, too. We have been through a lot together. We have met challenges and faced dangers, and we know that more lie ahead. Yet we can go forward with confidence – because the State of our Union is strong ... our cause in the world is right ... and tonight that cause goes on.

SADDAM HUSSEIN EXECUTED

2006-12-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

From the BBC:

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location, reports say.
Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). It was witnessed by a doctor, lawyer and officials. It was also filmed.

US troops and Iraqi security forces are on high alert for any violent backlash.

Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November after a year-long trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town Dujail.

NBC: Saddam to be hanged by Sunday

2006-12-28T19:10:00.000-05:00

NBC News and news services
Updated: 6:47 p.m. ET Dec 28, 2006

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins this Sunday.

Saddam’s sentence, handed down last month, ordered that he be hanged within 30 days.

Earlier Thursday, Saddam’s chief lawyer implored world leaders to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying the former dictator should enjoy protection from his enemies as a "prisoner of war."

“According to the international conventions it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary,” Saddam’s lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said in Amman, Jordan.

“I urge all the international and legal organizations, the United Nations secretary-general, the Arab League and all the leaders of the world to rapidly prevent the American administration from handing the president to the Iraqi authorities,” he told The Associated Press.

Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI’s top prelate for justice issues and a former Vatican envoy to the U.N., condemned the death sentence in a newspaper interview published Thursday, saying capital punishment goes against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

After his sentence was given, Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld.

Some international legal observers and human rights groups have also called Saddam’s trial unfair because of alleged interference by the Shiite-dominated government.

Meets with half-brothers
Saddam met with two of his half-brothers on Thursday and passed on personal messages to his family, a lawyer said.

Badie Aref, one of Saddam's lawyers, said the rare meeting with maternal half-brothers Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim Hassanal-Tikriti, who are in U.S. custody, was at the request of the ousted Iraqi leader and took place inside his heavily guarded prison cell in Baghdad.

Aref said Saddam was in very high spirits and had sensed "something was happening relating to the sentence" when prison guards took away a small radio he had been given several months ago.

"He met Sabawi and Watban and gave them letters to his family in anticipation.... He is clearly unaware of the details of what is happening around him and prepared to give his life as a martyr to his country," Aref told Reuters by telephone.

Aref said prison sources who told him of the family meeting said Saddam was aware of an appeals court decision to uphold his death sentence for crimes against humanity during his 24-year rule.

"He was in very high spirits and clearly readying himself," Aref said during a visit to Dubai.

"He told them that he was happy he would meet his death at the hands of his enemies and be a martyr and not just languish in prison in oblivion."

Aref said he was unsure if Saddam's third half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, who was sentenced to death along with the ousted leader, saw Saddam.

Fears that handover may spark violence
An official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Saddam would remain in a U.S. military prison until he is handed over to Iraqi authorities on the day of his execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.

A top government official disputed the court’s ruling that Saddam must be hanged within 30 days, saying the execution should be held after that time period. The comment comes amid debate over other legal procedures such as whether the presidency is required to approve the execution.

This breaking news story will be updated.

© 2006 MSNBC InteractiveNBC News, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16384738/

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T09:22:00.001-05:00

and Happy New Year!

Soldier Saves Man from Drowning

2006-12-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

By Sgt. Jordan E. Werme
130th PAD, Connecticut National Guard

WEST HAVEN, Conn. , Dec. 5, 2006 — When Sgt. Kristi J. Artigue joined the Connecticut Army National Guard the summer before her senior year of high school, it was a chance to broaden her experiences.

“I’ve always been a risk taker,” said Artigue, 23, now a medic with the 141st Medical Company.

On Nov. 10, Artigue called upon the skills learned during her six years of National Guard service -- including a recent deployment to Iraq -- to help save the life of a man who may have drowned.

“I was passing by (Supersonic Car Wash, West Haven) after work when I saw my boyfriend’s car,” said Artigue. “I called him to say ‘Hi’, and he told me someone had had a seizure and fallen into the water.”

Her first reaction: call 911. Artigue told her boyfriend that he should call for emergency services, but because of the urgent tone of his voice, she pulled out of rush-hour traffic in New Haven and rushed to the scene.

When Artigue arrived, she found a group of people hanging onto the shore and forming a “chain,” trying to keep a man above the fast-moving water.

“Tom,” a middle-aged man, had suffered a seizure and fallen into a section of the West River. Unable to swim, he struggled to remain above the surface with the help of several civilians and two West Haven police officers. The chain was trying to hang on until the local fire department rescue crew could arrive, but everything seemed to Artigue to be well under control.

Then the life-defining event happened.

“He let loose,” said Artigue, “and went under for one or two seconds. Long enough to know he wasn’t going to be coming up again. And he was moving out farther from the shore toward the center of the river.”

At that point, Artigue let her training take over. The nursing student and Iraq War veteran jumped into the freezing water and swam out about 10 feet to where Tom was struggling for air.

“It was too cold to talk,” said Artigue, “but I grabbed his vest and tried to keep him above the water. He grabbed a hold of me and started to pull me down with him, but I was able to drag him by his vest to shore.”

The human chain helped to pull both Artigue and Tom out of the water. On a cold November day, coming out of cold, moving water, communication was difficult, but Artigue was able to keep Tom talking and conscious until emergency crews arrived.

“(The man) suffered a seizure and fell from a bridge,” said William E. Ciccosanti, who was the first officer at the scene of the incident. “(Artigue) risked her own safety to save a stranger. She definitely did a good job and should be commended for that.”

Tom was fishing from a bridge when he suffered the seizure, tumbled over the railing and fell more than seven feet into the water, just a few feet from the spot where the river is dammed. Had Artigue not jumped into the water when she did, there was a good chance that the victim would have been pulled under and into the dam, said Ciccosanti.

“This was the first time I’ve had to take it upon myself to take action,” said Artigue. “In the military there’s always someone there to help, but this time I wasn’t sure anyone else there could have helped the way I could. Being in the military has given me the confidence to do things I wouldn’t have as a civilian. It puts me a step above those without military training.”

A future trauma nurse, Artigue plans to use her experiences in the Guard and in Iraq to save as many lives as possible.

“Since Iraq,” she said, “I’ve learned to adapt and overcome. I saw what was happening and I had no option but to get involved because of not only my medical training, but also because of my personal responsibility. “I will always appreciate my military experience. It’s something I would never give up,” said Artigue.

Pentagon to move troops into Kuwait

2006-12-15T21:49:00.000-05:00

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is planning to move a brigade of troops into Kuwait in what could be the first step of a short-term surge of American forces into Iraq to stabilize the violence.

The 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division is expected in Kuwait shortly after the new year, a senior Defense Department official told The Associated Press on Friday. The official requested anonymity because the plans had not yet been announced.

The 2nd Brigade, made up of roughly 3,500 troops, is based at Fort Bragg, N.C., and would be deployed in Iraq early next year if needed, the official said. The move would be part of an effort to boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq for a short time, the official said. The plan was first reported by CBS News.

In a half-hour video conference with President Bush on Friday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki outlined plans for the national reconciliation conference taking place in Baghdad on Saturday. Al-Maliki cited the desire of many people in Iraq for a larger core of Iraqi political leaders to come together for the common objective of stabilizing the country and promoting the rule of law, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in describing the conversation.

Al-Maliki also talked with Bush about providing greater security, in particular in Baghdad, by going after all sources of violence, including insurgents and militias, Johndroe said. Bush reiterated his support for al-Maliki and said he was encouraged by the meetings he had recently with Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, and with the leader of the largest Shiite bloc in Iraq's parliament, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.

In assessing the state of the war in Iraq, Bush has been meeting this week with top generals and other advisers. The military options being considered include an increased effort to train and equip Iraqi forces.

Meanwhile, the commander of U.S. forces in the strife-ridden Iraqi province of Diyala said Friday that tribal leaders and some political groups in the province are turning to terrorists and insurgents for protection rather than trust Iraqi soldiers and police.

"This sort of unity only worsens the sectarian divide and encourages further violence," said Col. David Sutherland, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. He spoke to reporters at the Pentagon by a satellite video connection from his headquarters near the city of Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.

"Public perceptions of corruption, inequity and fear are the driving force behind support to terrorist organizations," Sutherland added. "These are not new problems in Iraq but problems that developed out of a desire for personal and financial gain."

Sutherland said he is trying to turn that around by putting Iraqi police through more rigorous training, placing more U.S. advisers in the Iraqi army and police units and through Iraqi efforts to recruit a police and army force that better reflects the sectarian makeup of Diyala, which is about 55 percent Sunni, 30 percent Shiite and 15 percent Kurd.

Currently, the Iraqi security forces in Diyala are predominantly Shiite, he said.

Sutherland said he is working out arrangements to expand the use of U.S. adviser teams with Iraqi security forces, reflecting the view of senior U.S. commanders that such an expansion can speed the development of competent Iraqi forces.

The Army is considering ways it can speed up the creation of two additional combat brigades — a move intended to expand the pool of active-duty combat brigades in order to relieve some of the strain on the Army from large-scale deployments to Iraq.

Under the plan being developed, the new brigades could be formed next year and be ready to be sent to Iraq in 2008, defense officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans were not final.

The Army's chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, told a commission Thursday that he wants to increase the half-million-member force beyond the 30,000 troops authorized in recent years. And he warned that the Army "will break" without thousands more active duty troops and greater use of the reserves.

President George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

2006-11-22T23:18:00.000-05:00

I spent Thanksgiving two years ago in the cold rain guarding the outer gates of the Baghdad International Airport. Now I have the fortune of warmth and comfort within the safe borders of our great Nation in the company of family... thanks largely to the hundreds of thousands of American military personnel spread throughout the world. Let's be sure to remember them and their families this Thanksgiving. For the second year in a row now I have posted below President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation.

General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Congress later changed the official holiday to the last Thursday of November.

To view the original proclamation click here.

Robert Gates

2006-11-08T20:27:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) is the president of Texas A&M University, as well as a former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently the nominee for the office of United States Secretary of Defense. Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. Under President George H.W. Bush, he served as Director of Central Intelligence. After leaving the CIA, he wrote his memoirs[1], became president of Texas A&M University, and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the bipartisan commission headed by James A. Baker III, the Iraq Study Group, that has studied the Iraq campaign.

In the wake of the 2006 midterm election result, President George W. Bush announced his nomination of Gates to succeed the resigning Donald Rumsfeld as U.S. Secretary of Defense on November 8, 2006.[2][3] Gates has stated in a letter [4] to students that he will continue as President of Texas A&M until completion of the confirmation process. Gates will now face confirmation first in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and if approved, by a majority vote in the Senate.

Biography

Childhood and education

A native of Wichita, Kansas, Gates attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America and is a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He graduated from Wichita East High School in 1961. Gates received his bachelor's degree from the College of William and Mary in 1965, his master's degree in history from Indiana University in 1966, and his Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University in 1974.
Intelligence career

While at Indiana University, Gates was recruited to join the Central Intelligence Agency. However, the CIA offered no exemption from the draft during the Vietnam War. Before joining the CIA full-time as an intelligence analyst, he spent two years in the Air Force. During one posting, at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, he delivered intelligence briefings to ICBM missile crews. [5]

Gates left the CIA in 1974 to serve on the National Security Council staff but returned to the CIA in late 1979. He was named the Director of the DCI/DDCI Executive Staff in 1981, Deputy Director for Intelligence in 1982, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from April 18, 1986, to March 20, 1989. He was nominated to become the Director of Central Intelligence in early 1987, but withdrew the nomination after it became clear the Senate would reject it due to controversy[6] about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Senate members later queried the nomination for the additional reason that Gates allegedly passed intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.[7]

Gates was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from March until August of 1989, and was Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser from August 1989 until November 1991. He was nominated (for the second time) for the position of Director of Central Intelligence by President Bush on May 14, 1991, confirmed by the Senate on November 5, and sworn in on November 6, becoming the only career officer in the CIA's history (as of 2005) to rise from entry-level employee to Director. Deputy Directors during his tenure were Richard J. Kerr (from November 6, 1991, until March 2, 1992) and Adm. William O. Studeman (from April 9, 1992, through the remainder of Dr. Gates’ tenure).

During his 26-year career as an intelligence professional, he spent almost nine years on the National Security Council, serving four Presidents of both major political parties.

In 1996, his memoirs were published under the title From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War.
Gates has been highly decorated for his service: he was the recipient of the National Security Medal and the Presidential Citizens Medal, was twice awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and three times received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

Involvement in the Iran-Contra Scandal

Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran-Contra Affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran-Contra activities or his responses to official inquiries.

Gates was an early subject of Independent Counsel's investigation, but the investigation of Gates intensified in the spring of 1991 as part of a larger inquiry into the Iran/contra activities of CIA officials. This investigation received an additional impetus in May 1991, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested in a letter to the Independent Counsel on May 15, 1991, any information that would “significantly bear on the fitness” of Gates for the CIA post.

Gates consistently testified that he first heard on October 1, 1986, from Charles E. Allen, the national intelligence officer who was closest to the Iran initiative, that proceeds from the Iran arms sales may have been diverted to support the Contras. Other evidence proves, however, that Gates received a report on the diversion during the summer of 1986 from DDI Richard Kerr.[8] The issue was whether Independent Counsel could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gates was deliberately not telling the truth when he later claimed not to have remembered any reference to the diversion before meeting with Allen in October.

Grand Jury secrecy rules hampered Independent Counsel's response. Nevertheless, in order to answer questions about Gates' prior testimony, Independent Counsel accelerated his investigation of Gates in the summer of 1991. This investigation was substantially completed by September 3, 1991, at which time Independent Counsel determined that Gates' Iran/contra activities and testimony did not warrant prosecution.

Independent Counsel made this decision subject to developments that could have warranted reopening his inquiry, including testimony by Clair E. George, the CIA's former deputy director for operations. At the time Independent Counsel reached this decision, the possibility remained that George could have provided information warranting reconsideration of Gates's status in the investigation. George refused to cooperate with Independent Counsel and was indicted on September 19, 1991. George subpoenaed Gates to testify as a defense witness at George's first trial in the summer of 1992, but Gates was never called.

Career after leaving the CIA

Gates became the 22nd President of Texas A&M University on August 1, 2002 following a tenure as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999 to 2001. He has served as a member of the board of trustees of Fidelity Investments, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc. and Parker Drilling Company, Inc. He also served as President of the National Eagle Scout Association during the mid-2000s.
Director of National Intelligence

In February 2005, Gates wrote in a message posted on his school's website that "There seems to be a growing number of rumors in the media and around campus that I am leaving Texas A&M to become the new director of national intelligence ('Intelligence Czar') in Washington, D.C." The message said that "To put the rumors to rest, I was indeed asked to take the position, wrestled with perhaps the most difficult -- and close -- decision of my life, and last week declined the position."
Gates committed to remain as President of Texas A&M University through the summer of 2007; President George W. Bush offered the position of United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to John Negroponte, who accepted.[9]

Gates said in a 2005 discussion with the university's Academy for Future International Leaders that he had tentatively decided to accept the DNI position out of a sense of duty and had written an email that would be sent to students during the press conference to announce his decision, explaining that he was leaving to serve the U.S. once again. Gates, however, took the weekend to consider what his final decision should be, and ultimately decided that he was unwilling to return to Washington, D.C. in any capacity simply because he "had nothing to look forward to in D.C. and plenty to look forward to at A&M."

Secretary of Defense nomination

On November 8, 2006, George W. Bush nominated Gates to serve as Secretary of Defense in the wake of Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. Gates will now face confirmation first in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and if approved, by a general vote in the United States Senate.
Awards and decorations
Gates' awards and decorations include:

Government awards
• National Security Medal
• Presidential Citizens Medal
• National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice)
• Distinguished Intelligence Medal (thrice)

Other awards
• Eagle Scout
• Distinguished Eagle Scout Award

Quotes

• "Speaking to you all again is a bit like being Larry King's newest wife-- I know what I'm supposed to do here, I'm just not sure how to make it interesting."

• "Were we to become a top ten university and lose that spirit, those traditions, our culture, we would be nothing more than another giant education factory. A big brain with no heart. Hell, we might as well be in Austin."

References

1. ^ Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (May 7, 1997).
2. ^ "Bush replaces Rumsfeld to get 'fresh perspective'", CNN.com, November 8, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
3. ^ Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg. "Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary After Big Election Gains for Democrats", New York Times, November 8, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
4. ^ To the Aggie Family, Gates' first announcement, and acknowledgement to being nominated for Secretary of Defense
5. ^ "Who Won the Cold War?" Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books, Vol. 43, no. 11 June 20, 1996
6. ^ Although he "was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment...." Final report of the independent counsel for Iran/Contra matters
7. ^ Gates nomination, Senate Proceedings, 1991..
8. ^ GlobalSecurity.org. Iran-Contra Report, Chapter 16.
9. ^ "Bush names Negroponte intelligence chief", CNN.com, February 18, 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
Sources
• Robert M. Gates: From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. Simon & Schuster 1997, ISBN 0684834979
• Author Unknown. "Biography, Dr. Robert M. Gates, President, Texas A&M University," Texas A&M University. (2003)
• Center for the Study of Intelligence. "Robert Michael Gates," Directors & Deputy Directors of Central Intelligence. (2004)
• Material on Gates, from The Literature of Intelligence: A Bibliography of Materials, with Essays, Reviews, and Comments, by J. Ransom Clark
• Brett Nauman. "Gates passes on intelligence czar post," The Bryan-College Station Eagle. (February 1, 2005)
Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

• Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (May 7, 1997).
• Robert Gates, US Intelligence and the End of the Cold War, 1999, CIA
• Robert Gates, Frontline The Gulf War: An Oral History: Interview with Robert Gates, Deputy National Security Advisor, 2001, PBS.org
• Writings and Speeches

Poor Decision by Bush

2006-11-08T14:23:00.000-05:00

I am under the firm opinion that the only mistake in the War in Iraq is to change the course. The American public has too minimal an understanding of this War to exercise sound judgement on the matter. The military didn't lose Vietnam, the American people did.

I fear that the President is letting a great leader take the fall for a nations ignorance.

I regret to see Secretary Rumsfeld depart. I am a solid supporter of his leadership. He has done a tremendous job at an extremely difficult task.

As a soldier, I support any decision my change of command makes. As a civilian, this is an unwise decision and simply displays to our enemies a newfound level of weakness.
Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

New Defense Secretary Announced

2006-11-08T13:24:00.000-05:00

NBC: Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld.
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Rumsfeld Resigns

2006-11-08T13:11:00.001-05:00

Rueters: Defense Secretary Donal Rumsfeld is stepping down. More to follow...

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Letters...this one from Judy

2006-11-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

Judy’s e-mail will be in blockquote and mine will be in parenthesis. She begins by quoting me.

"I have never met an opponent of the war in Iraq who could grasp the
magnitude of what is at stake."

"What a deal for Mr. and Mrs. America! They are now experts on American
foreign policy in the Middle East and it is obvious to them America is
losing the war because they get to watch America’s soldiers getting shot."

"Why should we stay and get things done the right way when the whole
world and all of our enemies are counting on America’s weak population
to vote us out of Iraq? Come on, let’s quit! If we do what they want us
to do, they’ll like us again!"

Dear Mr Miner:

Thank you very much for your service to our country... I appreciate the
courage and professionalism of the US troops.

I agree with you that our news media are doing a pathetic job of
covering the war in Iraq. I, for one, would like to get a sense of what
is actually happening there on the ground. This is why I read military
blogs, and Iraqi blogs, and many other news sources, like the reports of
Dahr Jamail. The American people are paying billions every week for this
war, and we have a right to see and hear the truth, no matter how brutal
it is to look at and hear.

I stumbled upon your blog today, and I note that you are upset with
Senator Kerry. Well, I can tell you that you needn't worry about his
remarks. I have followed the Senator for a long time... I used to live
in Massachusetts... and I can assure you that he does not think our
troops in Iraq are uneducated or unintelligent. He was a soldier,
himself, you see. In my opinion, President Bush has a lot of things he
should be talking about, and it is obvious that in talking about Senator
Kerry, he is just trying to avoid talking about the issues he should be
addressing.

In fact, many intelligent high school and college grads, who have not
found a niche in life, are falling for the aggressive tactics and
signing bonuses offered by recruiters. A friend of mine has a brilliant
daughter who was just recruited... she was told that she WILL NOT BE
SENT TO IRAQ. Baloney! As a mother, I find these tactics criminal and
disturbing. Most highly qualified, professional soldiers were not
recruited in this dishonest manner, and if recruited dishonestly, the
contracts they sign should not be legally binding.

I'm curious why you would focus on CNN (I agree, that it isn't very
good!) as a source for inaccurate news? FOX is much worse, and the
biggest problem we have are the entertainers, like Rush Limbaugh, who do
nothing but spew pure fantasy for three hours a day. Americans who go to
these sources for their news, are actually immersing themselves in
fiction... some of them end up blathering-on like brainwashed fanatics.
God forbid that these people are voting based on the illusions Rush
spins for them.

Since you were offended by Senator Kerry's remarks, I would like to
point out, respectfully, that your remarks, which I have quoted above,
are somewhat insulting to Mr. and Mrs. America. You would be surprised
how clever we are, and how quickly we learn to recognize propaganda when
we see it. By the way, I noticed that you read Iraq the Model, and as
Iraqi blogs go, I have this one at the top of my propaganda list. The
truth is, that most Iraqis now see American Troops as occupiers, because
we can't protect them, and we have killed many innocent Iraqis. The more
Iraqis who lose friends and family to this war, the more hatred toward
America grows, and the more enemies we have to worry about.

(Before I answer these questions I want to make a few clarifications. First of all, John Kerry does not have any respect for the troops. His military experience is irrelevant. Since he got out he has lied and slandered our military. He has voted against us. His words and his actions display nothing but disrespect toward us.

Second, You should thank God that brilliant Americans are joining the military to protect you. I doubt that the commentary between the recruiter and your friend’s daughter went anything like you say it did. The daughter may have told you and your friend she wouldn’t go to Iraq because she didn’t want to hear your smug and presumptuous opinions on the military or the war. I have worked in a Recruiting and Retention Battalion for the military. There are stringent ethical standards. No military recruiter would ever dare say such a thing. Your claim of their “aggressive tactics” is overdramatic and you know it. And if such an unlikely story were true, then your friend’s brilliant daughter should have read the contract. Black text on white paper doesn’t lie. Nobody made her sign the line.

Third, Fox News is not worse than CNN. It is by no means an exemplary example of journalism, but compared to CNN it is a consummate source of information. I find Rush Limbaugh’s assessment of the War accurate.

Fourth, the only American’s that my writing will offend are the ones that need to be offended. I am offended by them. I am offended that they care so little for this country that they are unwilling to educate themselves on this War. I am offended that they are so entrenched in partisan politics they refuse to acknowledge the successes in Iraq. I am offended at their apathy. They are destroying this country and they will not realize it until it is too late.

Finally, how dare you presume to know the thoughts of the people of Iraq! How long were you there? How many Iraqis have you talked with? How do you know their perception of us? You don’t! And clearly, you never will based on the sources you are relying upon. You then have the audacity to tell me that an Iraqi blogger, who was born there and lives there is providing propaganda?!?! Who are you to make such distinctions?)

So I'd like to ask you a few questions, and I would sincerely appreciate
answers to these questions:

----You mention the "magnitude of what is at stake." We do understand,
but what I'd like to know: Now that Iraqis are forming militias just to
protect themselves, their children, their neighborhoods... how do you
know who the enemy is? Now that the Iraqi police and military are
participating in some of the sectarian kidnapping and violence... how do
you know who the enemy is? Now that Iraqis (who were living together
peacefully before the war) are killing each other, how do we know who
the enemy is? And why are we killing so many innocents "by accident"?

(It is very difficult to know who the enemy is. That is what makes this war so challenging. That is why American forces do not fire until fired upon. Clearly, if you are getting shot at, it is safe to assume that the shooter is your enemy.

I don’t find your statement that Iraqis are forming militias to protect themselves accurate. The militias that have been formed were created to obtain political objectives. Al Sadr and his militia are a sufficient example. The Iraqi police have had problems with corruption. However, these problems have occurred far less than the media would like you to think. On the other hand, the Iraqi Army has done extremely well and has had minimal problems with such issues. I have had the privledge of working with them for several months. They are passionate and they are motivated. They are disciplined fighters. Iraqis are joining the Iraqi Army in droves. For every Iraqi that joins a militia there are ten that join the Army. They are sick of these terrorists disrupting their progression as a nation and they are doing something about it.

Since the invasion of Iraq, foreign fighters have been infiltrating Iraq’s borders with the mission of destroying the country’s progression. They are terrified of what a Democratic Middle East will do to extremist Islam in that region. Sure, Iraqis are killing each other. There is also support from outside countries such as Iran and Syria, providing fighters, weapons and money. Our enemies in Iraq are the enemies of Iraq. The enemies of Iraq are those who fight against the people and the government of Iraq. They are losing and they know it.)

----"...it is obvious to them America is losing the war because they get
to watch America’s soldiers getting shot." Do you think that Americans
don't have the right to see, or shouldn't see, images of soldiers
getting shot... or of wounded and dead Iraqis?

(No, American’s do not have the right to see American soldiers getting shot. And what a ridiculous presumption of a right! The last thing our military needs to be worrying about is their loved ones watching them get killed on CNN. Is the fear of death not enough? Why do you need/want to see it anyway? Do I have the right to watch your loved one die in a car accident/of cancer/of murder/of whatever??? Additionaly, such videos are obviously distributed by our enemies. For them to have the ability to get their propaganda distributed not only throughout the west, but the world, is an advantage that they do not and should not have. Why would you want to assist the enemies of your nation in their recruitment? The wounded and dead Iraqis don’t need to be displayed either. If they are dead enemies, that is another story. I couldn’t care less. I don’t think it needs to be on network news, but, if someone desires to see them, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be available.)

----You mention "getting things done the right way". Could you please
define for me what winning would look like? The president keeps talking
about "winning". What does that mean? He told us we were going there to
disarm Saddam, and that job was apparently done before the war, so...
what are we trying to achieve now? Just to undo the chaos that the war
has created? You speak of "terrorists" and "insurgents", but I see
little evidence that there are many of either in Iraq. You speak of "the
enemy"... who is that exactly? How can you tell, now that every Iraqi is
armed to the teeth just for self-protection? Are you beginning to see
Iraqi citizens as the enemy? Are Iraqi citizens beginning to see U.S.
troops as the enemy? (In my reading of the blogs, I sense that the
answer to this last question, is yes). If U.S. troops have become the
enemy... what can we possibly achieve there?

(Winning means we continue to press forward in Iraq. If CNN focused on every violent act that occurred in the state of California and aired it continuously, it would look terrible. While there certainly is violence in Iraq and security problems, there has been consistent progress there. We continue to build schools and strengthen infrastructure. Their economy continues to grow and their technology continues to advance. See my article Staying the Course for more detail.

Nothing was “apparent” prior to the invasion other than the potential threats that were in Iraq. We won the war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and now fight the war on terrorism in Iraq. The United States didn’t create the war. Terrorists did when they attacked the United States and Saddam Hussein did when he refused time and time again to cooperate with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. Had he cooperated and verified his claims that he had no weapons, things would have been different. But he refused, and the United States had an obligation to ensure the security of the American people. Your cherished John Kerry agreed Saddam was a threat. He supported the invasion. And Saddam was certainly a threat.

How can you say there is little evidence of “terrorists” and “insurgents” in Iraq? What was Zarqawi? He was a self proclaimed leader of Al Qeida in Iraq! There are dozens upon dozens of terrorist groups in Iraq. Who do you think is killing Iraqi government leaders? Who do you think is blowing up civilians in the markets? Who do you think is launching mortars into crowds of women and children?

Every Iraq is not armed to the teeth. The Iraqi government has specifications on what weapons are authorized for the general public. Certain weapons are permitted for self defense, and upstanding Iraqi citizens abide by the laws. Of course the Iraqi citizens are not seen as the enemy. Nor are the Iraqi citizens viewing our troops as the enemy. There is certainly frustration. More than anything the people of Iraq fear what will happen if the United States leaves prematurely. They know they will be slaughtered as foreign funded militias and terrorist groups fight for control of the country. They know what is at stake and want to see their country succeed just as bad as we do. They are far more intelligent then you give them credit for and their resolve certainly is stronger than yours.)

Enough for now... if you have answers to these questions, I'd sincerely
love to hear them.

Judy C.

Judy, you need better sources of information. I regret to inform you that you are, I believe, a fine example of the Mrs. America I was referring to. Nonetheless, thanks for the letter and good look on your quest for the truth.

Letters...this one from Laura

2006-11-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

Mr. Miner,

My name is Laura J. and I'm an English teacher in northern Minnesota. In the past, I used some of your blog entries in my classroom while you were on active duty in Iraq as my juniors were working their way through American Literature in a war/
conflict unit. It's that time of the year again.

I know that your blog is important to you because if it weren't, you wouldn't be adding posts now that you are out of Iraq. Part of what we discuss in the classroom as we read different soldiers' blogs is censorship and who, if anyone, should have the power to shut soldiers' blogs down. We also talk about whether or not they should be regulated.

If you have the time to answer the following question, I intend to share it with my students. If you were standing in front of a classroom of high school juniors, what would you tell them are the reasons why you blogged about your experiences in Iraq? Why is it important for the soldiers? Why is it important for the American public? How did writing a blog while you were in Iraq benefit you as the writer?

(I blogged about my experiences in Iraq because I felt the mainstream media was doing a terrible job. I felt they were misleading the American people as to what was really occurring in Iraq. It is incredibly important for American’s to be aware of the truth in Iraq. American’s, I fear, don’t understand what is at stake in this war. And unfortunately, all they are seeing of this war is the bloodshed. There are certainly horrific things occurring in Iraq. There are also wonderful things being accomplished there. Objective journalism would be to report the bad in proportion with the good. That isn’t happening. None of the good news and the progress makes it to your TV.

It is very important for soldiers to know that someone out there cares. That someone out there is getting the real story… their story. It is important for the public to get the reality. The mainstream media simply refuses to provide the truth.)

I guess that's more than one question.

My thought is that you could probably write quite a bit about that topic, =
but whatever you choose to write is fine with me. If you don't have the =
time to respond, I fully understand. I have found out, however, that =
unless I ask, I won't ever find out.

Just so you are aware, I do agree that these blogs are important and vital to show the public what the media does not, and that is why I continue to use them in my classroom. It shows the kids how technology is used during a time of war to get things out to the public in a way that has never been done before, and now the government is working on shutting down blog after blog. It shows them a completely different side of the war that they will never see in the popular media, and it gets them thinking. That's what I want.

(Regarding the government censoring soldier’s blogs coming out of combat zones, I feel this is necessary in some instances. Overall, I feel soldiers appreciate this. Being a grunt on the ground, at times your perception of the overall operation is very microscopic. It can be easy to post something that you wouldn’t think could be detrimental elsewhere. While soldiers do have their freedom of speech, their first obligation and commitment is to being a soldier. If their postings start to interfere with their duties or the safety of other soldiers, I feel the government is justified to intervene. I do not believe it is censorship in any way, shape or form. I feel it is appropriate for a soldier's chain of command to monitor their writings while in combat. When I was there, there were no issues. None of this had really been addressed yet.

When I was in Iraq I had one posting that shared too much information. I didn’t even think about it until my team leader brought it to my attention. I wasn’t forced to change anything. But why would I want to provide the enemy with valuable information? I appreciated it. And you will find that most military bloggers do as well.)

I hope this finds you well and anything you have to offer that I can share with my kids will be appreciated.

Laura J.

Laura gives me hope for the future. I am honored to be a part of her class. To her students, I would encourage you to read The Blog of War. It is a very real look at the war from many different perspectives. It is blogging at its finest! Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Thanks.

John Kerry represents his party...

2006-10-31T22:21:00.000-05:00

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

In other words, the military is a bunch of stupid failures. I appreciate that.

My Commander In Chief responds, "Kerry comments insulting and shameful."

Thank you, Sir.

The National Commander of the American Legion also defends us, "As a constituent of Senator Kerry's I am disappointed. As leader of The American Legion, I am outraged," said National Commander Paul A. Morin. "A generation ago, Sen. Kerry slandered his comrades in Vietnam by saying that they were rapists and murderers. It wasn't true then and his warped view of today's heroes isn't true now."

"While The American Legion shares the senator's appreciation for education, the troops in Iraq represent the most sophisticated, technologically superior military that the world has ever seen," Morin said. "I think there is a thing or two that they could teach most college professors and campus elitists about the way the world works."

(2006). www.drudgereport.com. Retrieved October 31, 2006, from Drudge Report
(2006). www.breitbart.com. Retrieved October 31, 2006, from BREITIBART

Rep. Anne M. Northup (R-KY)

2006-10-27T13:57:00.000-04:00

"You can have a bad week. You can have two bad weeks. But, when you have two bad months, you have to reassess. You cannot afford to lose the numbers we are now."

Rep. Northup is another fine example of the weak and worthless that plague our Congress. From the view of our enemies, Rep. Northup is a fine example of the average American.

NOTE TO AMERICA: In Wars, people die. People die until one side quits. Our enemies are depending on Americans like Rep. Anne Northup.
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CNN = Politics

2006-10-27T07:50:00.000-04:00

That's their claim. That's their problem.

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4th Infantry Division Soldiers Seize Large Weapons Cache

2006-10-02T13:42:00.000-04:00

NEWS RELEASE
HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND
7115 South Boundary Boulevard
MacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101
Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894

Title:
MND-B SOLDIERS SEIZE LARGE WEAPONS CACHE
Release Date:
10/2/2006
Release Number:
06-01-02P
Description:
BAGHDAD – Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, seized a large weapons cache northwest of Baghdad at approximately 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

The cache consisted of 141 rocket-propelled grenades, 150 RPG boosters, 186 fuses, 50 grenade bodies and a missile warhead.

An Explosive Ordnance Disposal team destroyed the weapons.

As of Friday, Iraqi Security Forces and MND-B Soldiers have cleared approximately 95,500 buildings, 79 mosques and 65 muhallas, detained more than 120 terrorist suspects, seized more than 1,700 weapons, registered more than 780 weapons and found 37 weapons caches in support of Operation Together Forward. The combined forces have also removed more than 195,841 cubic meters of trash from the streets of Baghdad.

For additional information concerning this release, contact the MULTI-National Division - Baghdad Public Affairs NCO In Charge, Master Sgt. Eric Lobsinger at: eric.lobsinger@mnd-b.army.mil , Commercial: (914) 822-8174 OR IRAQNA 011-964-790-192-4675.

IRAQ’S ARMY ASSUMES CONTROL OF FORCES NEAR FALLUJAH

2006-10-02T13:35:00.000-04:00

NEWS RELEASE
HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND
7115 South Boundary Boulevard
MacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101
Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894

Title:
IRAQ’S ARMY ASSUMES CONTROL OF FORCES NEAR FALLUJAH
Release Date:
10/2/2006
Release Number:
06-01-02P
Description:
NASSER WA SALAAM, Iraq – Iraq’s army took a leap forward toward greater independent responsibility Oct. 1 when the 1st Iraqi Army Division assumed operational control of another brigade.

Marines and soldiers of Regimental Combat Team 5, based in Fallujah, turned over operational control of Iraqi soldiers assigned to 4th Brigade to the 1st Iraqi Army Division in a ceremony marking the transfer of authority. Iraqi soldiers serving in the brigade operate in joint and independent battlespaces ranging from this small city west of Abu Ghraib to regions north of Fallujah.

“On behalf of the 5,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers of Regimental Combat Team 5, I want to say how special and important today is,” said Col. Larry D. Nicholson, commanding officer of RCT-5.

Nicholson said Iraqi soldiers, or jundi, proved their mettle in the past months by fighting insurgents alongside Marines, sharing in the risks and the victories over terrorism.

“Last week, jundi, Marines and police patrolled the streets of Gharmah,” he explained. “That couldn’t have been imagined two years ago. Marines and jundi have fought together, died together and bled together.”

Iraqi Army Brig. Gen. Abdullah Abdul Satter Abdul Karem, commander of 4th Brigade, said the transfer from U.S. to Iraqi command was a historic occasion for the brigade, stating his Iraqi soldiers “honor the men of our country.”

“This is an indicator of the level of training of the jundi of 4th Brigade,” Abdullah said. “We are dedicated to building a free Iraq to defeat terrorism.”

Iraqi soldiers from 4th Brigade fought battles in Fallujah, Gharmah and Karbala, he said. They also distributed medical assistance to local residences and assisted in rebuilding Fallujah following the battle in 2004. Additionally, they protected electoral candidates from assassination attempts prior to Iraq’s first free elections last year.

“Although the relationship has changed,” Nicholson said, “we’ll continue to look forward to working together … to defeat the enemy.”

This was the second such ceremony in as many months. In September, Iraq’s 1st Division assumed authority over 3rd Brigade, based in Habbaniyah.

For more information contact 2nd Lt. J. Lawton King at Joseph.King@gcemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil

Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States

2006-09-27T10:03:00.000-04:00

Click HERE to read the recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States

(pdf) Format available courtesy the Washington Post

Terrorists are at war with democracy

2006-09-19T09:02:00.000-04:00

By Cliff Knizley
www.CliffKnizley.com

Coimbatore Iswaran's Sept. 9 Speaking Out, titled "Bush's actions ensure danger" is a dumbfounding take on the worldwide threat of Islamic terrorism. He ignores history and the terrorist's own words and makes arguments unrivaled in their naivete.

Iswaran's Indian heritage doesn't prevent his descent into the pseudo intellectual drivel of the Western leftist. He quotes obscure poets, cites historical anecdotes and throws around SAT words like nobody's business. None of this saves him from sounding completely detached from reality.

The basic premise is an old one, President Bush's policies have created a proliferation of Islamic terrorism. In Iswaran's world, "Bush's war on terror" has "awakened the enemy and assured the possibility of a dastardly act." One week away from Sept. 11 strikes me as an unusual time to make such a statement.

Iswaran contends that prior to Bush's policies, terrorists "attacked haphazardly." Two rather large craters in downtown Manhattan provide a potent rebuttal to this asinine idea. Those craters were the result of years of planning, not exactly a haphazard attack. The fact that these same terrorists attempted to create those craters in 1993 is lost on Iswaran, who describes the terrorists' strategy as "do not resist the conquerer overtly." He should float that theory by the survivors of the attacks on the Khobar Towers and the U.S.S. Cole. Those attacks occurred years before Bush was president and define the term overt.

Iswaran claims that contrary to Bush's statements, terrorists "love freedom and democracy." No doubt it was this great love that motivated al-Qaeda's decision to set up shop in that bastion of freedom known as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Perhaps he should read the words of the late terrorist Zarqawi who said, "We are at war with democracy, which allows one to chose their religion and is an affront to God." Iswaran then states, "Terrorism flourishes in lawless societies with weak governments."

This is not a Webster's definition of the terrorist's beloved democracy.

Iswaran takes a typical shot at the Patriot Act claiming that Bush is "curtailing our freedom." He conveniently fails to provide any part of the act or its usage that would support this claim and I doubt it has affected him personally.

He then states that Bush has "deliberately weakened the Iraqi government and refused to strengthen the Afghanistan government." Removing totalitarian regimes and attempting to support constitutional democracies seems like a strange way to "weaken" a country, but then again, I may not have Iswaran's sources.

According to Iswaran, Bush has "managed to polarize America." Maybe he was still in India during the polarizing 2000 election. He also blames Bush for his contention that "as a Middle Eastern looking individual," suspicious looks are often cast his way. Perhaps those democracy loving terrorists who created those craters might have some responsibility as well!

He then blames Tony Blair's position as a "Bush lackey" for the terrorism which continues to threaten Britain. I read further hoping to learn why Iswaran's homeland of India was recently attacked, but was disappointed.

Finally Iswaran claims that "fear is the biggest enemy of civilized society." I'd suggest that terrorists with nukes is a greater enemy, but I've probably fallen victim to Bush's "fear mongering."

Iswaran will not fall victim to fear. So fearless is he, that he refuses to lock his car at the mall. He's concerned he might lock his keys inside.

The fact that he has replaced one fear with another escapes our intrepid hero. But it does yield an interesting analogy.

The car could represent our national security. Israwan's policy to leave his unlocked ignores the reality of evil men with nefarious plans. My policy is to lock the car and hope law enforcement removes criminals from the streets. My car may not be completely safe, but it's certainly more safe than Israwan's. And in the event my car is stolen, would it be due to the fact that it was locked?

Cliff is a good friend and creator of Letters to Baghdad: A Tribute to Our Troops. He's a squared away American.

The Free World Speaks

2006-09-11T21:37:00.000-04:00

Tonight, the President of the United States told America and the world what our United States are doing and must continue to do to preserve our way of life. I only hope America was listening... I know our enemies were.

Excerpts from the text of President Bush's address to the nation on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, as provided by the White House:

On the heroism of Americans: "On 9/11, our nation saw the face of evil. Yet on that awful day, we also witnessed something distinctly American: ordinary citizens rising to the occasion, and responding with extraordinary acts of courage."

On the ongoing terrorist threat: "We face an enemy determined to bring death and suffering into our homes. America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over. So do I. But the war is not over, and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious. If we do not defeat these enemies now, we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons. We are in a war that will set the course for this new century and determine the destiny of millions across the world."

On what is at stake: "This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations. And we are fighting for the possibility that good and decent people across the Middle East can raise up societies based on freedom, and tolerance, and personal dignity."

On democratic reform in the Middle East: "By standing with democratic leaders and reformers, by giving voice to the hopes of decent men and women, we are offering a path away from radicalism. And we are enlisting the most powerful force for peace and moderation in the Middle East: The desire of millions to be free."

On working together to win the war on terror: "Our nation has endured trials, and we face a difficult road ahead. Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us. We will defeat our enemies, we will protect our people, and we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty."

Source: The Associated Press

Our Nation has made great sacrifices in the last few years, but it hasn't been without great successes. I appreciated the President's reference to the generations that have come before us and met victory despite extraordinary obstacles. We now stand at the brink of American survival or suffocation. Our preservation is ours to lose. If America is fragile it is not because of our enemies, but because of the apathetic and complacent among us. We must stay the course. We must persevere. The life of the free world depends on it.

More than 5000 terrorists killed or captured!

2006-09-11T12:20:00.000-04:00

"In five years, more than 5,000 terrorists have been captured or killed." - Statement to Employees by Central Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden on the
Fifth Anniversary of 9/11, 11 September 2006.

Message from CIA Director

Let's make sure that number continues to grow... and grow and grow and grow!

Staying the Course in Iraq

2006-09-09T22:59:00.000-04:00

Since its invasion of Iraq over three years ago, the United States has ridden a public opinion roller coaster. Pundits and armchair generals alike are quick to presume complete failure if even one aspect of an extremely intricate mission seems challenging. However, it is important to acknowledge that the task of altering the course of a nation is an extremely complex and in-depth objective. America has rebuilt Iraq’s schools, hospitals, infrastructure, economy and government in only three years and cannot stop now.

Some of the most substantial and recognizable improvements have been to Iraq’s infrastructure. Since America’s invasion over 2300 schools have been rehabilitated and constructed and are being fitted with over 8.7 million new textbooks (USAID, 2006). The U.S. believes that the children of Iraq are the future of the Middle East. It is important that all Iraqi children are given the opportunity to receive a well balanced and unbiased education, covering the core subjects as well as technological familiarization, hygiene and individual rights.

Only a few years ago Iraq’s health care was nearly the worst in the region. Since the invasion, the U.S. has spent over $600 million to assist Iraq’s Ministry of Health (USAID, 2006). Better nutrition as well as open access to healthcare for the first time in decades has made substantial improvements. Over 3.2 million children under the age of five have received vaccinations (USAID, 2006). These vaccinations are expected to reduce the child mortality rate. Instilling proper health habits with Iraq’s youth and educating mothers on proper nutrition habits will continue to have positive effects on Iraq’s health over all.

The United States has also helped Iraq hold some of their first legitimate democratic elections. Despite the security concerns, over 70% of eligible voters turned out in the December 2006 election (Saban Center Iraq Index, 2006). This strong turnout proves the people of Iraq are ready for change. Coalition forces put forth astounding efforts to educate the public on the democratic process. Over 1.5 million election publications were distributed throughout the country (USAID, 2006). On Election Day, the Iraqi people waved their purple stained fingers in the air with pride to show they had voted. They are presently being led by a government they elected to represent them.

Throughout Saddam’s reign and with the Coalition invasion many of Iraq’s roads and bridges were disabled. One of the first initiatives after the invasion was to rebuild Iraq’s busiest bridges and interstates in some of Iraq’s largest cities. Doing so has increased the flow of traffic and substantially reduced traffic accidents. The reduced traffic congestion has also helped Iraq’s new first responders and Iraqi police arrive at emergencies much faster.

Iraq’s economic policy in early 2003 was in a devastating state. There was corruption and lack of education widespread in both the private sector as well as within Iraq’s ministries. The U.S. has assisted in training government leaders in economic policy and helped create a national economic strategy. In 2003 Iraq’s Ministry of Finance introduced the new Iraqi dinar which now has over 4.62 trillion in circulation (USAID, 2006). Oil revenues have gone up astronomically, from $2 million in June 2003 to $62.6 billion in July 2006 (Saban Center Iraq Index, 2006). More and more Iraqis are able to open businesses. Unemployment decreased from 60% in June 2003 down to 25% a year later, and continues to drop substantially helping the security situation (Saban Center Iraq Index, 2006).

Iraq has also seen substantial increases in the quality and numbers of their security forces. Both the Iraqi police and the Iraqi Army are making continuous strides in their tactical abilities and their discipline. The U.S. has installed very thorough training programs for the varying types of military and police forces in Iraq. The Coalition Military Assistance Training Team has been instrumental in training the Iraqi Ministry of Defense at all levels. The Civilian Police Assistance Training Team provides a similar role and is made up of American Military Police personnel. Coalition Military Assistance Training Team and Civilian Police Assistance Training Team provide training throughout the entire development of the organization, turning recruits off of the street into a combat force ready for security responsibilities on some of Iraq’s most dangerous streets (Multi National Forces Iraq, 2006).

The Iraqi Army and Police forces are having continuing success with their recruiting and retention. There is always an abundance of passionate and willing volunteers to join the forces. In Baghdad alone there are over 42,000 Iraqi security forces with thousands volunteering daily throughout the country (Multi National Forces Iraq, 2006). The U.S. is currently working to make these forces more self-sustaining. While Iraqi forces are taking on more and more roles in combat operations, they are still working on being able to provide their own essential support functions.

In less time than it takes the United States to make one military officer, a nation has been liberated and is making enormous strides towards independence. Now more than ever the American-led coalition needs unilateral support for its efforts in Iraq.

A premature pull-out would have devastating effects. A lack of substantial security presence would trigger a series of tragic events as has been seen in Rwanda, Somalia and Afghanistan. Initially the crime rates would begin to rise. Not necessarily organized crime, but every day theft, homicide and assaults. As crime began to spin out of control, the varying sects of Islam in the region would begin to fight for control of the country. Funding and influence from Iran, Syria, Jordan and varying organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah would certainly contribute. The opportunity to have a geographic region to base international operations out of is very enticing to many up and coming terrorist organizations, such as Afghanistan was to the Taliban.

The Iraqi people would be caught in the middle of this chaos. The economy would probably crumble first, initiating a domino effect leading to teachers and health care professionals slowly dwindling away for fear of their safety. Businesses would begin to either close or be forced to pay for their protection to an insurgency group. Eventually, the threat of this region to the west would be greater than it is now or ever was. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqi people would be slaughtered in civil war.

The United States is certainly on the right track. No mission of this size ever gets accomplished problem free. The American people need to realize that a country cannot be liberated over night. America must stay the course. Too much has already been sacrificed and accomplished to disregard the successes made up until this point. The future of Iraq is promising... if the American people want it to be.

Not that what's happening with Israel and Lebanon isn't important, but, America is still fighting a War

2006-07-22T20:31:00.000-04:00

2 Americans, dozens of Iraqis killed

By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer

Two American soldiers were killed Saturday in Baghdad, seven Shiite construction workers were gunned down and five Sunni civilians were blown up, deepening the capital's security crisis. Shiite politicians called on the prime minister to cancel his visit to Washington to protest Israel's attacks in Lebanon.

Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by a helicopter gunship launched a major attack Saturday on a headquarters of a radical Shiite militia south of Baghdad, killing 15 militiamen in a three-hour battle, the U.S. said.

One U.S. soldier died in the second of two roadside bombs that exploded in east Baghdad at mid-morning. An Iraqi civilian was killed by the first blast, police said. Another American soldier died Saturday evening when gunmen attacked his patrol with small arms fire, the military said.

The seven Shiite workers were killed and two were wounded when gunmen opened fire on a construction site near Baghdad International Airport, police said. Later Saturday, a mortar shell killed five civilians at a market in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Amil in west Baghdad, police said.

Two rockets also blasted the heavily guarded Green Zone, which includes the U.S. and British embassies as well as major Iraqi government offices, but the U.S. military said there were no casualties.

Much of the violence appeared to be part of the tit-for-tat reprisal killings by Sunni and Shiite extremists which have led to a dramatic deterioration of security in the Iraqi capital.

With violence rising, the United States is moving to bolster American troop strength in the Baghdad area, putting on hold plans to draw down on the 127,000-member U.S. military mission in Iraq.

U.S. officials have pointed to Shiite militias as a major cause of sectarian violence. In a bid to curb militia influence, American troops moved Saturday against the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad.

U.S. troops reported killing 15 gunmen in a three-hour firefight in Musayyib but described them only as "thugs and criminals" who had tried to take over the city. Sheik Jalil al-Nouri, an aide to al-Sadr, said U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked the Mahdi Army office in Mussayib and that sporadic shooting was still underway late Saturday.

Local officials said the Americans conducted a similar raid on al-Sadr's office in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad and scene of an attack five days ago in which 50 people were killed.

In London, the British military announced Saturday that British troops arrested the Mahdi Army commander in Basra in raids last weekend against militia weapons depots.

With violence rising, the United States is moving to bolster American troop strength in the Baghdad area, putting on hold plans to draw down on the 127,000-member U.S. military mission in Iraq.

The security crisis in Baghdad is expected to figure prominently when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets President George W. Bush at the White House on Tuesday. U.S. officials are expected to push al-Maliki, a Shiite, to move quickly to calm sectarian tensions and abolish Shiite militias blamed for much of the violence.

But the visit comes amid rising anger among Iraqis over Israel's attacks in Lebanon, launched after Shiite Hezbollah militiamen seized two Israeli soldiers.

On Saturday, the Fadhila party, which is part of al-Maliki's Shiite alliance, urged the prime minister to call off his visit.

"Fadhila demands that the prime minister cancel his visit to the U.S. in solidarity with the Lebanese people and over what is going on there, the disasters due to the Zionist aggression amid international silence about these crimes," party official Sheik Sabah al-Saiedi told The Associated Press.

Despite public anger over Lebanon, the Shiite political establishment has too much to lose politically by risking its ties with the Americans over the fate of Hezbollah.

Nevertheless, al-Maliki, a former Shiite activist who spent years in exile in Syria, has condemned Israel's offensive and has complained that the United States and the international community have not done enough to stop it.

Al-Maliki told reporters he would convey that message personally to Bush.

"The hostile acts against Lebanon will have effects on the region and we are not far from what is going on in Lebanon," al-Maliki said. "We will speak with the United Nations and American government to call for a cease-fire quickly."

Al-Maliki spoke following the first meeting of a government committee formed to reconcile Iraq's disparate sectarian and political groups, but differences emerged immediately between top Shiite and Sunni officials over the issue of amnesty for insurgents.

Al-Maliki told reporters that despite his proposal for amnesty for some insurgents, "all those whose hands were tainted with blood should be brought to justice."

But the Sunni speaker of parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, snapped back, saying that "if we punish a person who killed an American soldier, who is an occupier, we should punish the American soldiers who killed an Iraqi who fought against occupation."

Most of the insurgents who have been fighting U.S. forces are Sunnis. The United States and the Iraqi government have sought to reach out to selected insurgent groups in hopes of convincing them to lay down their arms.

In other news Saturday:

• 10 Iraqi soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb struck a convoy in Karmah, west of Fallujah in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, police Lt. Ahmed Ali said.

• Three people died and five were injured in a bombing and shooting in the market in Baqouba, where U.S. forces killed five civilians the day before. The U.S. military expressed regret over the civilian deaths and blamed extremists for putting civilians in danger.

• An American soldier died Thursday of a non-combat related injury, the U.S. military reported. He was assigned to the 43rd Military Police Brigade.

• One civilian was killed when masked gunmen attacked Iraqi police in Mosul, and three gunmen died in an a separate firefight with police there.

__

Eds: Associated Press correspondents Bassem Mroue, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Qais al-Bashir and Ryan Lenz contributed to this report in Baghdad.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Cliff Knizley and Letters To Baghdad on Michael Yon

2006-07-21T18:24:00.000-04:00

This is good stuff. Check it out by clicking the link above.

TWO IRAQI FORCE RAIDS IN BAGHDAD NET FOUR INSURGENTS

2006-07-21T18:12:00.000-04:00

From Central Command:

Title:
TWO IRAQI FORCE RAIDS IN BAGHDAD NET FOUR INSURGENTS

Release Date:
7/21/2006

Release Number:
06-07-02P

Description:

BALAD – Iraqi security forces conducted two separate operations in Baghdad on July 20, capturing four insurgents who may be involved in ‘extra judicial killing,’ or EJK cells.

The first operation by Iraqi security forces, a raid on back-to-back objectives in southwest Baghdad, netted three primary targets. The first individual was a key insurgent leader believed to plan and coordinate insurgent operations in Baghdad. The second is allegedly involved in financing operations and supplying weapons to insurgents. And the third is believed to be involved in kidnapping Iraqi citizens, Iraqi police and Iraqi soldiers for ransom to finance insurgent activities. He is also allegedly involved in murdering kidnapping victims and participating in attacks against coalition forces.

Iraqi forces also seized three AK-47 assault rifles and three nine millimeter pistols.

During a second raid in southern Baghdad, Iraqi Army forces captured an individual known to deal improvised explosive devices, or IEDs and small arms to insurgent groups.

Coalition force advisers were on hand during both operations, and both occurred without incident.

No Iraqi or coalition forces were injured during the operation.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT MULTINATIONAL CORPS PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT MNCI-PAO-VictoryMainJOC@iraq.centcom.mil.

Marines Return to Beirut to Aid U.S. Evacuation

2006-07-20T23:43:00.000-04:00

July 21, 2006
The Conflict
Marines Return to Beirut to Aid U.S. Evacuation
By JAD MOUAWAD and STEVEN ERLANGER

BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 20 — United States marines landed in Beirut on Thursday for the first time in more than 20 years to help evacuate Americans from Lebanon, as Israeli officials suggested that Israeli ground troops might take a more active role in combating the Hezbollah militia. There were also more strong condemnations of Israel’s heavy use of force in Lebanon.

With the fighting continuing for a ninth day, fierce clashes erupted between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters inside Lebanon. Hundreds of Israeli troops were trying to destroy Hezbollah outposts and storage facilities, Israeli Army officials said.

Two Israeli soldiers and a Hezbollah fighter were killed late Wednesday as Israel discovered a warren of storage rooms, bunkers and tunnels. The death toll in Lebanon for the nine days passed 300; the vast majority were said to be civilians.

On Thursday evening, two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others wounded in further fighting. At least two Hezbollah fighters were believed to have been killed.

The Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz, visiting northern towns hit by scores of Hezbollah rockets, hinted at a broader ground operation. “We have no intention of occupying Lebanon, but we also have no intention of retreating from any military measures needed,” he said. “Hezbollah must not think that we would recoil from using all kinds of military measures against it.”

Mr. Peretz continued, “You can mark one thing down: Hezbollah flags will not hang over the fences of Israel.”

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the Israeli operation as an “excessive use of force.”

Russia, which reduced parts of Chechnya to rubble in its fight against rebels there, also sharply criticized Israel, with the Foreign Ministry calling Israel’s actions in Lebanon “far beyond the boundaries of an antiterrorist operation” and urging a cease-fire.

At the White House, President Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, said, “I’m not sure at this juncture we’re going to step in and put up a stop sign,” although he called on Israel to “practice restraint” and said that Mr. Bush was “very much concerned” about a growing human crisis in southern Lebanon.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is arranging a trip to Asia and the Middle East; she could be visiting this region as early as Sunday.

Diplomats are investigating the idea of a more robust international force under United Nations auspices but more likely made up of European troops, that could help the weak Lebanese government move its army to the Israeli border and push back a weakened Hezbollah.

Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy defense minister and a former Israeli commander in Lebanon, told Israeli television: “We have no choice but go in and physically clean up Hezbollah posts on the ground. The air force can’t do that. So when we talk about a ground operation, the intention is not necessarily a massive incursion but more pinpoint operations.”

The small force of about 40 marines who landed in Beirut on Thursday were the first American military personnel to be deployed in Lebanon since the withdrawal of forces after a Hezbollah suicide bomb attack killed 241 Americans, mostly marines, in 1983. The marines who landed Thursday were from the same unit as those killed 23 years ago.

Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown of the United States Naval Central Command in Bahrain said a small number of marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit landed on a beach north of Beirut, near shorefront belonging to the American Embassy on Thursday morning. They helped American citizens board a landing craft that ferried them to the amphibious assault ship Nashville stationed offshore.

By late afternoon, 1,052 evacuees had been boarded, and the Nashville was preparing to head to Cyprus, Commander Brown said.

Helicopters also evacuated 161 Americans on Thursday, the military said, and the Orient Queen, a cruise liner that had transported the first large group of American evacuees to Cyprus on Wednesday, was expected to reach Beirut on Thursday night for reloading.

A planeload of Americans who had been on the Orient Queen’s first trip to Cyprus arrived at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport on Thursday morning. Five more naval vessels are expected to arrive in the area on Friday, along with a high-speed ferry hired to transport evacuees to Cyprus, the military said in a statement.

Citizens of Britain and other countries were also evacuated.

On Thursday, Israel continued its large-scale air attacks on Hezbollah positions and equipment. It also leafleted southern Lebanese villages, made taped phone calls, informed local leaders and broadcast messages in Arabic to warn residents to move north of the Litani River if their villages contained Hezbollah assets or rockets, but gave no deadline.

Israel dropped similar leaflets on Thursday in Gaza as well, possibly foreshadowing more attacks on populated areas where Israel believes Hamas is storing Qassam rockets.

The air attacks on Thursday also hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, following Wednesday night’s heavy attack by Israeli jets, using special burrowing bombs, to try to penetrate a bunker believed to be used by senior Hezbollah officials, including its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah said no one was hurt in the bombing, which Israeli officials said involved 23 tons of explosives in the Burj al Brajneh neighborhood.

According to Al Jazeera’s Web site, Sheik Nasrallah said in an interview on Thursday that the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in a raid last week would be freed only in the context of a prisoner exchange and otherwise would not be released even “if the whole universe comes against us.”

Hezbollah said its military capacity was largely undiminished. “The resistance has only used a small, small part of its strength,” Hussein Hajj Hassan told LBC television. “Nothing has been destroyed.”

Despite the continuous shelling of the Hezbollah strongholds of southern Beirut, the militia remains very much in control there, barring access to outsiders.

On Thursday, the militia led a group of reporters for a tour of the area, where Hezbollah’s headquarters are. Buildings as high as 12 or 15 stories had collapsed; some were still smoking.

According to Lebanese reports, four civilians were killed in a strike on a car in the coastal city of Tyre. Israeli jets also attacked a detention center in the town of Khiam in south Lebanon on Thursday, according to local television reports. The prison, formerly run by Israel’s Lebanese militia allies during its occupation of south Lebanon, was destroyed.

Israeli planes also struck at Shiite areas in the eastern towns of Baalbek and Hermil, where some Hezbollah leaders are said to live, and several southern villages.

About 50 rockets hit Israel on Thursday, the Israeli Army said, a sharp drop from 150 the day before.

The Israeli military reported that two of its helicopters collided near the border with Lebanon, injuring five of those on board.

In Gaza, Israel continued its military operation in the central sector, killing at least three Palestinians and wounding six in fighting around the Mughazi refugee camp. An airstrike on the same refugee camp killed one fighter and wounded eight more. One of the dead was a Palestinian girl, 10, wounded in an airstrike on Wednesday, when nine Palestinians, eight of them militants, were killed, according to The Associated Press.

The Israeli Army dropped the leaflets throughout Gaza on Thursday warning that “anyone who has, or is keeping an arsenal, ammunitions or weapons in their house must destroy it or will face dangerous consequences.”

On the West Bank, Israeli forces continued to surround the Mukata compound in Nablus, where Palestinians wanted by Israel have been taking refuge since Wednesday morning. About 15 wanted men gave themselves up but at least 10 remain inside. Tanks fired five shells at the buildings and army bulldozers worked to knock down the exterior walls, while warning those inside to come out or risk being buried underneath the rubble.

Israeli troops fired rubber-coated bullets at Palestinians who demonstrated against the troops, wounding five, one seriously, Palestinian medics said. About 4,000 Palestinians demonstrated in Nablus in support of Hezbollah, calling on the militia’s leader, Mr. Nasrallah, to attack Israel with rockets.

“Nasrallah, our dearest, strike, strike Tel Aviv!” the Palestinians shouted. Five Palestinians were killed in the Nablus operation on Wednesday.

The Lebanese government said it had so far sheltered as many as 120,000 refugees, mostly in public and private schools. It is considering setting up tents and temporary barracks for the refugees in public parks and sports fields. The United Nations estimates that a total of 500,000 people have been displaced.

“The losses are immeasurable,” said Nayla Moawad, the Lebanese minister for social affairs.

Ms. Moawad blamed Syria for setting off the crisis, saying that she was expressing her personal opinion. “The decision of the Hezbollah operation was not taken in Lebanon,” she said. “Lebanon was taken a hostage, a mailbox of other people’s interests. It has been taken in Damascus, probably with an Iranian coordination.”

Ms. Moawad was one of the leaders of the Lebanese revolt last year that led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

“Syria has tried to destabilize Lebanon since her troops pulled out,” she said.

Jad Mouawad reported from Beirut for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.

Israel, Hezbollah Intensify Ground Conflict in Lebanon

2006-07-20T23:42:00.000-04:00

By Scott Wilson and Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 21, 2006; A01

JERUSALEM, July 20 -- Israeli ground forces and Hezbollah guerrillas engaged in heavy fighting inside Lebanon on Thursday, as senior Israeli defense officials braced the country for a long conflict against the radical Islamic groups on its borders and indicated that a large ground operation could still lie ahead.

The Israeli military said at least two soldiers were killed and six others wounded in the fighting, the most intense ground exchange in the current military campaign. Israeli military officials later said two Apache attack helicopters collided at Ramot Naftali, about two miles inside the Israeli border, just after midnight. Israel's army radio said there were four casualties in the crash, Reuters news agency reported.

Israeli military aircraft pounded targets across Lebanon for a ninth straight day amid growing international calls for Israel to suspend a bombing campaign that has ravaged that country's civilian population. The airstrikes swelled the ranks of the displaced and accelerated the evacuation of U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals, thousands of whom sailed away from the tattered country in a chartered cruise ship and a military transport vessel.

Using local radio stations and other media, Israel warned the roughly 300,000 Lebanese civilians who live south of the Litani River, which runs about 25 miles north of Israel's border with Lebanon, to abandon their homes. Israeli officials, meanwhile, indicated that a large ground offensive could follow as rocket fire continued into Israel's Galilee region, although at a diminished rate.

During a tour of northern Israel, where more than 850 rockets have rained down since Hezbollah gunmen captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the radical Shiite Muslim militia "must not think that we would recoil from using all kinds of military measures against it."

"We have no intention of occupying Lebanon, but we also have no intention of retreating from any military measures needed," Peretz said. The comments left open the possibility that Israel could move forces into southern Lebanon, the restive, Shiite-dominated region it has occupied before. Israeli military officials have raised the need to clear Hezbollah forces from a 12-mile-wide swath inside the Lebanese border to increase the distance between the group's increasingly long-range arsenal and the Israeli cities in the firing line.

Israeli officials have dismissed international proposals for a peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, saying they need more time to bombard Hezbollah launch sites, bunkers and supply routes before considering a cease-fire. They say the bombing effort has severely damaged Hezbollah forces -- an assertion denied by the group's leaders in Lebanon.

Hezbollah gunmen fired about 40 rockets into Israel, about a third of the number they fired the previous day. There were no casualties reported from Thursday's rocket strikes, which have killed 15 Israeli civilians since fighting began.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday urged Israel to halt its military operations in Lebanon, claiming it is inflicting unacceptable harm on civilians while increasing Hezbollah's popularity and undercutting Lebanon's fledgling democracy. But he voiced pessimism about the prospects for a quick halt to the violence and urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties in the meantime and provide access for humanitarian relief workers throughout Lebanon.

"The Lebanese people, who had hoped that their country's dark days were behind them, have been brutally dragged back into the war," Annan told the U.N. Security Council. He was accompanied by former Indian diplomat Vijay Nambiar, who had just returned from leading a peace mission in the region.

"Let me be frank with the council," Annan said. "The mission's assessment is that there are serious obstacles to reaching a cease-fire, or even diminishing the violence quickly."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched her diplomatic effort at a working dinner with Annan on Thursday, with a Security Council briefing scheduled for Friday morning. The United States is now working on a package of ideas for Rice to take the region when she begins talks early next week, with timing and locations still up in the air, U.S. officials said.

The fighting near the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras, just across the border from the Israeli farming community of Avivim, pointed up Hezbollah's skill at fighting in terrain it has spent years preparing against another Israeli invasion. Sixteen Israeli soldiers have been killed so far on the northern front, and 61 have been wounded.

Heavy fighting broke out several times throughout the day after Israeli tanks and bulldozers pushed a few hundred yards inside Lebanon in search of tunnels, bunkers and posts used by Hezbollah gunmen.

The clashes involved small-arms fire and antitank missiles. Israeli attack helicopters provided support as soldiers removed the wounded. Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, said two Israeli tanks were destroyed in the clashes.

Lebanese officials say more than 300 Lebanese have died in the fighting, nearly all of them civilian, while more than 1,000 others have been wounded. It is unclear how many Hezbollah gunmen have died in the airstrikes or ground fighting.

In a statement, Hezbollah officials said bombing by Israel on Wednesday night that was described as an attack on a bunker in fact hit a mosque under construction and caused no injuries to senior Hezbollah leaders.

Hezbollah members of parliament, who number a dozen among the legislature's 128 members, appeared on Lebanese television to vow steadfastness and declare that the group's arsenal still has plenty of weapons for retaliatory strikes against Israeli towns. Hezbollah officials escorted journalists around their southern Beirut stronghold to show the damage to what they said were civilian residences.

Israeli aircraft roamed the southern Lebanese skies looking for targets, continuing their campaign to blast Hezbollah infrastructure and prevent vehicles from resupplying the militia's forces. But missile attacks seemed to diminish in the area around Beirut as foreign governments, including that of the United States, continued evacuation operations.

In the Gaza Strip, where Israeli tanks and troops clashed with gunmen from the governing Hamas movement's military wing, the death toll rose on Israel's second front. Palestinian hospital officials said four Palestinians were killed, including two children, as Israeli forces attacked Palestinian positions in the Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza for a second day.

[On Friday, Israeli tanks and troops withdrew from the Mughazi camp, Reuters reported, citing witnesses and an Israeli army spokeswoman.

"Yes, our forces are out, but it is important to emphasize that operations in Gaza continue," Reuters quoted the spokeswoman as saying.]

Hamas's military wing helped stage the June 25 cross-border raid on an army post in which a 19-year-old Israeli soldier was captured. Its members also regularly fire rockets into southern Israel, something Israeli officials say must stop. Hospital officials put the two-day casualty toll at 11 dead and more than 170 wounded.

About 40 Marines came ashore in a Maronite Christian area in Lebanon just north of Beirut to help U.S. nationals board a landing craft and move to the USS Nashville, a warship looming offshore. The Ocean Queen, a cruise ship chartered by Washington, returned late in the day for a second load of Americans.

U.S. authorities in Beirut also used a bus convoy Thursday to evacuate 341 American citizens from battered southern Lebanon and moved approximately 2,250 people out of the country on helicopters and sea vessels, military and diplomatic officials said. The departures marked the largest group of U.S. citizens to leave Lebanon on a single day since Israeli airstrikes began.

Since Marine helicopters first began lifting people out of Beirut on Sunday, the United States has been able to transport more than 3,850 citizens to safety, said Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs.

The U.S. move to rescue those in the south, the most dangerous area of the country, was hailed by U.S. officials as "successful," but they also said there could be more people there they just don't yet know about. Harty said another evacuation from southern Lebanon was possible. She urged U.S. citizens trapped there to "continue to stand fast" and monitor Lebanese radio for updates.

Harty said the 341 citizens who were bused out of southern Lebanon were scheduled to board a cruise ship for Cyprus.

European and other governments also proceeded with evacuations of their nationals, most of them Lebanese with foreign passports who had returned for summer vacations. Officials estimated that more than 12,000 foreigners have been taken out of the country in the past three days.

The Israeli public, while so far largely supportive of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's war effort, has been generally less tolerant of ground operations since Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the bloody 18-year occupation that followed. Israel left southern Lebanon in May 2000.

Amos Yaron, a retired general who commanded the paratroop division that entered Beirut in 1982, said that "people make a lot of mistakes when they are drawing lessons" from the Lebanon invasion.

"We didn't have any problem entering Lebanon in 1982," Yaron said. "The problem was leaving it."

Yaron said he believes a ground operation might be necessary before the fighting ends. "At the end of the day," he said, "you have to take Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. No one will do it for you."

Yagil Levy, a professor of public policy at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba and author of the "The Other Army of Israel," said most of Israel's senior commanders served as young officers during the 1982 invasion and the Hezbollah attacks that followed during the occupation.

He said the leadership is suffering "schizophrenia" from the lessons it learned from that experience. On the one hand, he said, military commanders understand "never to get involved in a war of attrition" that turns the Israeli public against it.

"But the opposite element is that some of these people carry with them a lot of frustration," Levy said. "For some of these officers, this operation now is something like unfinished business."

Cody reported from Beirut. Staff writers Josh White and Robin Wright in Washington and Colum Lynch at the United Nations also contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

IRAQI ARMY, MND-N SOLDIER LAUNCH OPERATION GAUGAMELA

2006-07-20T23:38:00.000-04:00

From Central Command:

Title:
IRAQI ARMY, MND-N SOLDIER LAUNCH OPERATION GAUGAMELA
Release Date:
7/20/2006
Release Number:
06-07-02P
Description:

KIRKUK, Iraq (July 20, 2006) – Thursday morning, Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 4th Iraqi Army Division and Bastogne Soldiers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division simultaneously surrounded and entered the cities of Hawija and Riyadh, just west of Kirkuk, searching for suspected al-Qaeda terrorists as combined Operation Gaugamela (gaw'guh-MEE-luh), gets underway.

The ongoing operation, requested by local Sunni Arab leaders, follows a series of terror attacks in the area, and comes as there are reports indicating the presence of al-Qaeda terror cells in the area. In the past five weeks, 31 Iraqi soldiers have been killed in terrorist attacks in the region and just three days ago six policemen were killed in Hawija.

In Hawija, Bastogne Soldiers and Iraqi Security Forces surrounded the city, blocking off escape routes, as another combined force air assaulted into the market in the heart of the city. The units are cordoning off the area and searching for terrorist forces. Meanwhile, Iraqi Security and Coalition Forces surrounded the village of Riyadh, approximately 10 miles away, and are also searching that city.

Operation Gaugamela is named for the battle in which Alexander drove the Persian army from the city of Gaugamela.

Extremists linked to drug trade

2006-07-19T20:59:00.000-04:00

COMBINED FORCES COMMAND – AFGHANISTAN COALITION PRESS INFORMATION CENTER KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 18, 2006
Release # 060718-07

Extremists linked to drug trade

KABUL , Afghanistan – Coalition Soldiers have seized an estimated $3 million in opium from an extremist compound July 13 after a Coalition patrol held off more than two dozen fighters until additional firepower arrived.
Following the engagement, the Soldiers found five dead extremists, but believe many more were killed.
A search of the compound found 70 kilograms of opium paste, a rocket propelled grenade launcher, four rockets, an AK-47 and ammunition, a passport and other documents.
“Recovering these weapons and drugs increases the safety and security of Afghans, and reduces the danger posed by criminals and extremists who might use those munitions indiscriminately to cause harm on the Afghan people, Afghan security forces or Coalition forces ,” said Col. Thomas Collins, Coalition spokesman. “This engagement also confirms with physical evidence that the extremists are linked to the drug trade in southern Afghanistan .”

Israeli Tanks in Central Gaza; Fighting Is Fierce

2006-07-19T00:17:00.001-04:00

The New York Times
July 19, 2006
The South

Israeli Tanks in Central Gaza; Fighting Is Fierce

By CRAIG S. SMITH
GAZA CITY, Wednesday, July 19 — Just hours after withdrawing from the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli tanks moved into central Gaza early Wednesday, encountering fierce fighting that wounded at least three Israeli soldiers. One Palestinian was killed, Reuters reported.

The renewed fighting after a day of relative calm came as the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, returned to the territory from his home on the West Bank for meetings with United Nations envoys.

With Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon, the fighting in Gaza has been largely overlooked. But people continue to die daily in the territory, with 103 Palestinians killed so far, and Palestinian fighters continue to fire rockets into Israel.

Late Tuesday, Palestinian militants fired two homemade Qassam rockets from Beit Hanoun, which earlier in the day was vacated by Israeli tanks. The rockets, simple finned tubes carrying just a few pounds of explosives, landed near Sderot, Israel, without causing injuries, according to an Israeli Army spokesman.

The current crisis began with a raid by Palestinian militants on an Israeli Army post, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed and one, Cpl. Galid Shalit, 19, was taken prisoner.

But Palestinians are quick to point out that the dying began long before Corporal Shalit was captured, when what they say was shelling from an Israeli gunboat in early June in response to rocket attacks killed a family of seven while they were picnicking on a northern Gaza beach. Israel denied responsibility.

The abduction of Corporal Shalit set off an initially strong Israeli response, in which roads and bridges, the territory’s main power station and government offices were bombed. Most border crossings were closed and Israeli forces eventually moved into central Gaza, cutting the roughly 28-mile-long strip in two. Israel arrested 8 of the 24 ministers in the Hamas-led government and 20 members of the Palestinian parliament.

But the intensity of the initial assault waned as negotiations with the Palestinians’ Hamas-led government began through Egyptian mediators. Hezbollah’s attack on Israeli troops along the Lebanese border soon drew attention and resources away.

Israel withdrew from central Gaza last week and its incursions since then have been relatively light, limited to menacing tank and artillery fire without penetrating far into the territory. Most of their activity has been airstrikes focused on individual militants or suspected munitions factories.

On Tuesday, as Israel withdrew from the north, there were hopeful signs of normalcy. The border crossing with Egypt opened to allow traffic into Gaza. The Palestinian cabinet members not under arrest, including the prime minister, Ismail Haniya, and the foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar, met at Mr. Haniya’s office. Both he and Mr. Zahar are on Israel’s list of targeted officials and have not often been seen in public since the crisis began.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Abbas arrived for meetings with United Nations envoys in hopes of ending the conflict. The United Nations delegation, led by Vijay Nambiar, met with Israeli officials in Jerusalem earlier Tuesday.

But by midnight the boom of artillery fire once again echoed across northern Gaza, and by early Wednesday the Israeli Army was moving back into the middle of the territory. The target this time was the Maghazi refugee camp, north of Khan Yunis and not far from where Israel had earlier cut Gaza in two.

The refugee camp, which has grown into a crowded town since it was established a half century ago, is near the fence separating Gaza from Israel.

The Israeli Army said the incursion began late Tuesday with tank movements on the Israeli side of the border. It said it encountered heavy fighting as it entered the refugee camp and that “three or four” soldiers had been wounded. It did not say whether they were seriously hurt.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

U.N. Force in Lebanon Offers Harsh Realities and Lessons

2006-07-19T00:17:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
July 19, 2006

By HASSAN M. FATTAH and WARREN HOGE
HOSH, Lebanon, July 18 — Buried in the rubble of one of the homes demolished in Israel’s relentless bombardment of southern Lebanon was a stark illustration of why the United Nations’ peacekeeping efforts have been seen as ineffective.

A Ghanaian member of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as Unifil, was killed along with his family here on Sunday by an Israeli bomb. And more than 24 hours later, peacekeeping troops could not even leave their base to dig out his body, because the short trip to his house was too dangerous.

“They are barely able to take care of themselves,” said Timur Goksel, who spent 20 years as an official with Unifil, and now lectures at American University in Beirut. “How can you expect them to do their work? It’s a mini-force with small engineering capacity and a narrow area of operation right along the border. What can anyone expect them to do?”

The saga of the troops, who are charged with keeping the peace and observing the border, offers a sobering reminder of the grueling realities of peacekeeping to politicians hoping that a new United Nations contingent might be the solution in Lebanon.

And, peacekeeping experts say, it offers lessons on how to shape a more effective force.

On Monday, Secretary General Kofi Annan, backed by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, called for a new stabilization detachment in southern Lebanon.

Mr. Annan said that the unit would have to be much larger than the existing 2,000-man Unifil, and that it would operate with a broader mandate, which would give it the ability to stabilize Lebanon so that the government could gain control of the south and “sort out the question of the disarmament of the militia.” It is not clear if Mr. Annan will propose that any new force be drawn from major powers.

Mr. Annan, who returns to New York from Europe on Wednesday, is expected to brief the Security Council on Thursday. Creating a blue-helmeted contingent will require a Council resolution, a requirement that can delay swift action.

In a telephone interview from Brussels, Mr. Annan said, “I will be appealing for their political will for action because around the world people do not understand why the Council has not been able to act when the Middle East is burning.”

The Council has met three times to discuss Lebanon without taking any action or making any statement. On Monday, John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, discouraged talk of either a multilateral force or a cease-fire, both proposals that Mr. Annan has made.

Mr. Annan said he questioned a call from Israel to set up its own security cordon in south Lebanon. “They may call it what they want, but to the others it will be an occupation, since it will be on somebody else’s territory,” he said. “You need a third party, hence my suggestion for a stabilization force.”

Mr. Goksel emphasized that any unit with the job of deterring actions would immediately be seen as an attempt to rein in Hezbollah.

“This will immediately be seen as an occupation force, and then the trouble will start,” Mr. Goksel said.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the under secretary general for peacekeeping, said the problems confronting Unifil were ones frequently experienced when peace broke down.

“One should never forget that peace is made by those who fought, it is not made for them by the international community,” he said in a telephone interview from Brussels, where he was accompanying Mr. Annan.

When Unifil was formed in 1978, it was meant as an interim force to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, restore security in the area and help the government regain authority over the area. But to many here, Unifil gradually became a lifeline, too, as a series of flare-ups and wars forced the mission to undertake humanitarian missions as well.

Undermanned and often outgunned, Unifil did not have the political backing of major powers to enforce peace.

At times, the force served as a successful buffer in Lebanon, but ultimately the system broke down. Unifil troops failed to control first Palestinian guerrillas, then Israeli occupiers, and then the Hezbollah militia, which drove out the Israelis.

The Unifil force shrank significantly after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. It has 2,000 members today, including Indian, Ghanaian, French, Italian and Polish troops and aides, down from more than 6,000 troops and aides at its peak.

The unit was reduced deliberately, according to United Nations diplomats, in an effort to pressure the Lebanese government to take action to disarm Hezbollah and declare its authority over the south.

That number of troops has proven woefully low as the bombing campaign began last week. The force has had a hard time supplying its own bases and observation posts in the south.

They have about a week of diesel fuel left and are running short of food and water, and the bases have come under fire, said Richard Morczenski, a civil affairs officer with the force.

“If you operate in a war zone and you are also helping people, there are risks, calculated risks, but risks nonetheless,” Mr. Goksel said. “That’s why you have armies doing the job.”

Hassan M. Fattah reported from Hosh for this article, and Warren Hoge from the United Nations

Evacuations Underway in Beirut

2006-07-19T00:16:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post

Israel Continues Deadly Airstrikes; Hezbollah Fires Scores of Rockets

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 19, 2006; A01

BEIRUT, July 18 -- By helicopter and ship, hundreds of Americans and Europeans fled on Tuesday from Beirut, ending its first week of siege, as casualties mounted in deadly Israeli raids that struck a Lebanese military base, a truck carrying food from Syria and a village near the border. The militant group Hezbollah fired at least 100 rockets into Israel, killing one civilian.

On a sweltering day, Norwegian, Swedish, Greek and British ships pulled into Beirut's harbor, most of them trying to load their passengers before nightfall. From a helipad at the U.S. Embassy overlooking Beirut, the dull thud of rotors announced the arrival of helicopters, which ferried passengers to the island of Cyprus, taking 30 people on each trip. Other U.S. citizens waited, growing more frustrated over having to endure another day of a conflict that has begun to impose a wartime logic in the city.

"I had to come and cry at the door of the U.S. Embassy, kissing hand and foot, telling them they must let me leave," said Raba Letteri, a child-care provider from Reston, Va., who was on vacation in Lebanon with her husband and two children.

They were living near Beirut's international airport, a swath of the capital barraged in Israeli airstrikes. Her 2-year-old son, Aaron, had a stomach infection. As they waited to board, he burst into tears. "This is the worst thing in my life," she said.

Through the day, Beirut itself was relatively quiet. Life returned to some streets so far unscathed by the attacks. Even traffic in the battered Shiite Muslim suburbs, Hezbollah's stronghold, trickled past the rubble of destroyed bridges and the shattered glass from apartment buildings that littered the streets. To some, the day was a brief respite as evacuations got underway. What might follow the foreigners' departure was a question many asked.

"I feel in my heart that after the foreigners leave, big problems are on the way," said Jamil Abu Hassan, a burly 56-year-old, loitering near the port. "Today, the embassies are taking their people. Tomorrow, the next day? God knows what will happen."

Hezbollah fired at least 100 rockets at Israel on Tuesday, including a large barrage an hour before sunset, striking about 10 towns and cities across northern Israel, from Haifa on the Mediterranean coast to tourist communities in the southern Galilee region. [Two big explosions reverberated over Beirut early Wednesday, and missiles hit towns to the east and south of the capital, the Associated Press reported.]

One Israeli was killed Tuesday in a rocket strike in Nahariya about four miles south of Lebanon on the coast, the Israeli military reported. Twenty-one people were injured. So far, in the fighting, 25 Israelis have been killed, including 12 soldiers.

[Israeli forces entered the central Gaza Strip early Wednesday and clashed with Palestinian militants, the Reuters news agency reported. Witnesses reported heavy gunfire near the Maghazi Refugee Camp, not far from the Gaza Strip's border with Israel. There were no immediate reports of casualties.]

Several rockets struck Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, about 22 miles south of Lebanon, where eight civilians were killed in a rocket barrage Sunday, the Israeli military said. The city's port remained closed for a second day because of the danger.

More than 720 Hezbollah rockets -- a small portion of the militant Islamic group's arsenal -- have struck Israel since hostilities began a week ago, when Hezbollah crossed the border and seized two Israeli soldiers. In the wake of the attack, Israel has unleashed a destructive military offensive that has killed more than 230 Lebanese, most of them civilians. The country's airport is closed, and the south is largely cut off from the rest of the country by wrecked roads and collapsed bridges.

The Israeli military said its jets flew about 110 raids over Lebanon on Tuesday, part of a campaign that has created competing narratives of the war. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the raids were targeting trucks carrying Hezbollah weapons, Katyusha rocket launchers in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah weapons storage facilities, bridges and roads used to transport weapons and fighters -- "all of this to damage the Hezbollah infrastructure," she said. In Lebanon, anger grew at the number of civilians killed and the dismantling of infrastructure that many Lebanese saw as their greatest achievement in the post-civil war era.

"This is a city of ghosts," said Adib Hourani, a 26-year-old gas station attendant, pointing down a deserted street.

In Aitaroun, a village near the Israeli border, a family of five was killed, although some witness accounts put the toll at nine. On the twisting mountain road to Damascus, an Israeli raid struck a truck carrying sacks of sugar and rice bound for Beirut, as well as two other large trucks, a pair of sedans and a four-wheel-drive taxi. In Kfar Chima, a Lebanese army base took a direct hit as troops rushed to bomb shelters, killing at least 11 Lebanese soldiers and wounding 35, the military said. Black fires stained nearby cinder-block tenements, and charred, twisted fenders, engine blocks and debris were scattered along the highway overlooking the base.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that Israel wants the Lebanese army to deploy to the border, now under the effective control of Hezbollah, but on several occasions, Israeli aircraft have targeted Lebanese military installations.

An Israeli military spokeswoman, Capt. Noa Meir, said the military was checking reports of the strike on the base, reiterating that Israeli forces were "doing everything we can to keep civilians and the Lebanese military out of harm's way."

Even the most optimistic Lebanese officials have acknowledged that diplomacy to end the conflict remains at its initial stages. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan have suggested that a U.N. force deploy to the Lebanese border. Annan said the force would have to be more effective than the current U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which was largely ineffective in stopping either Hezbollah or Israel.

Although some European countries have expressed support, both the United States and Israel have responded coolly, and Israeli officials, after meeting U.N. negotiators Tuesday, said that the campaign will not let up before the soldiers are released and Hezbollah withdraws from the Israeli border. For their part, Hezbollah officials seem to have become convinced that the stakes of the war have become much higher: a U.S.-backed Israeli plan to strategically realign the region.

To a striking degree, both the Israeli public and Hezbollah's supporters seem prepared for a longer struggle.

A poll in Tuesday's Yedioth Aharonoth, an Israeli daily, found that 86 percent of those surveyed said that the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah was "the right thing to do," and 81 percent wanted it to continue; 58 percent said it should continue until Hezbollah is destroyed, and 17 percent said they favored a cease-fire and the start of negotiations.

In Beirut's southern suburbs, where trash has piled up on corners and shops were almost uniformly shuttered, Abbas Fattuni sat with a friend smoking a water pipe in front of his auto parts store. They watched the traffic, enjoying the respite of bombing in the capital.

"We're nothing without the resistance," he said, as his friend nodded his agreement between puffs. "When a Lebanese dies, anywhere in the country, no one in the Arab world lifts a finger. Only the resistance takes care of them."

Across Lebanon, the siege began reverberating in people's lives. The price for items like kerosene for cooking and flour have all increased. Residents are withdrawing money from banks and trying to convert their Lebanese pounds into U.S. dollars, fearing a devaluation. The price of gasoline in the southern city of Tyre has increased more than sixfold.

"Six days, no sleep. We couldn't even buy bread," said Mirna Ballout, a 30-year-old Lebanese American who left Tyre on Monday and was standing outside the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday. "It's not fair -- whether it's for Hezbollah or whether it's for Israel. It's just not fair for the people living here."

Her two sons, Bassam, 7, and Yassine, 4, leaned against a suitcase. A few hours earlier, she comforted them after they thought a car door slamming was a bomb. Her daughter, 9-year-old Dana, held the handle of her pink Hello Kitty suitcase and recounted the days, her eyes wide with fear and surprise. "It's my first time," she said. "That was why I was really scared."

She smiled. "I hope this is my last time."

The helicopters ferried what the embassy called special cases on Tuesday -- the sick, elderly and families with young children. Officials said 136 American students studying at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University were evacuated aboard a Norwegian vessel from Beirut's port.

U.S. officials said they believe they will have the capability to transport as many as 2,400 U.S. citizens out of Lebanon on Wednesday, using two civilian cruise ships and Marine Corps helicopters to ferry people to nearby Cyprus. The boosted evacuation effort could include the removal of more than 5,000 citizens by the end of the week.

State and Defense department officials said they have been limited to air and sea evacuations because they have deemed the roads leading out of the country into Syria to be too hazardous. The Orient Queen cruise ship, with the ability to carry 800 to 1,000 people, docked in Beirut on Tuesday night and was preparing to leave for Cyprus at dawn Wednesday. A second ship, slated to carry about 1,400 people, was also scheduled to be available Wednesday.

Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, said sailors and Marines from the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit had been ordered to the Mediterranean Sea to assist in the large-scale evacuation. Nine U.S. warships were headed to the region to provide security and, if needed, to help transport civilians to safety.

One of those departing was Adam al-Sarraf, a 20-year-old American from Los Angeles, who was studying Arabic at the American University of Beirut. His Iraqi-born father, working in Baghdad, had called to give him advice: Get off the fifth floor and stay in the basement. Watch out for the windows. The two planned to meet in Amman after the son was evacuated.

"The students really sympathize with the people here," Sarraf said, standing on the campus before his departure to the port, where he was to board a Norwegian ship. "We understand they're going through much more than we are."

Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Jerusalem, staff writer Josh White in Washington, and staff photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez and special correspondent Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company