free our fobbits

2007-08-10T02:28:00.000+04:00

Conclusions

Back home now, in fact I'm done with terminal leave. I hope all goes well with the surge, indications are we are finally doing things right. The question is will the Majority party in Congress give Rave Petreaus enough time. The smear campaign has already begun-he is somehow to blame for Iraq being awash in weapons because the IA were and are corrupt. Even the GAO report tries to jump him into that mess. One would think our illustrious Senator's had never traveled or done business overseas. Or for that matter poured any concrete in the home district.

The Army: has come in for much of my blanting, and rightly so. The institution is in need of a slash and burn re-org and a major bloodletting amongst the leadership, especially the officers.

Not that you can't take your safety belt and drape on the dash of that cab you'll drive in Fayetteville, Sergeant Major. For too long the Army has been a refuge for fools to hide behind T-walls from life and the enemy (real civilian life is the "contingency" we need to bring the troops back home to guard against). Not that I damn all, perhaps not even most. Most soldiers are warriors or they wish the system would let them be...but there are two Armies: the fighting Army, and the force structure Army. *

*Goldwater/Nichols 1986-the law of unintended consequences

The fighting Army is like a smokestack corporation attempting to keep up with a nimble, brilliant, innovative startup while saddled with a huge, unionized troglodyte semi-socialized workforce with a huge unfunded pension plan. Think of the US traditional airlines or GM. That's the "contingency" PX that PVT Casey is guarding at home-the force structure Army.

Get in the war, or get out.

The Lawyers: Silent Enem Leges Intra Armas (the law is silent in war).

The law must be sent packing from the ranks, or the ranks can pack up and the lawyers can face the enemy (n.b Mr. Biden). This circle could not be squared by Cicero 2000 years ago (above quote) and still can't be even by the most "morally evolved" Ivy Leager.

The Surge: is the last ditch before our home soil. If you think you can hold Afghanistan or invade Pakistan (risible) after losing Iraq...you can't read a map. Or people.

The Soldiers: best men I ever knew, most of them young. If we can keep America going strong for 20 years we'll make it another 100 on their shoulders. It's the baby boomers that usher our doom...we must stop coddling their Oedipal complex about America.

The leaders: some of who I outranked...SSG and below good to very good. Above that...we were hurting, the good ones are coming rare (I know I cannot speak for everywhere...but I can't ignore what I went through either). See the soldiers entry above, and get out of the way.

2007-05-20T20:44:00.000+04:00

Correspondence on Bachevich's death (LT type)

There was a 27 year old army lieutenant named Andrew Bacevich from Walpole MA killed in Balad last week. His father is a brilliant political scientist who teaches at Boston University. I think he's the clearest thinking man out there. Condolezza Rice ought to get a basic lesson in history (and in reality, she's crazy) from him.

Funeral is Monday. Did you know him or anything about his demise? Very unfortunate.

Fr James

****************************************************
Fr. James,

I have read some of his father, I only know what I read in Iraq Slogger about the LT's death....but it made the news when he was killed. I think he (the father) wrote American Empire or something like that a few years ago....the basic point being that our foreign policy has been remarkably similar regardless of party for the last 100 years...hegemonistic spread of democracy, and that the parties overblow very narrow differences to get elected. He is essentially correct on this point.

If you want to get better informed of the Iraq view (both American and Iraqi) check out Iraq Slogger. www.iraqslogger.com And please understand that as much as the left has done a good job of adding Saddam & CO to their panetheon of victims to make Bush look guilty of aggression, that's not what happened. The biggest sin of Bush in fact is no mass firing of his DOD civilians and most especially Generals who allowed us to come in here without any post conventional war plan (despite the fact we have a great deal of experience in this area) in other words no occupation plan. This is a failure primarily of the military leadership, as the deputy CDR of 3D ACR (McMaster's old command) LTC Yingling has pointed out.* They have failed their country, their soldiers and the Iraqi's who trusted us, and the reason is that they put their careers and themselves first. Did you know at Abu Gharib the Military Intelligence COL and General Geoff Miller (the one bought from GITMO) took immunity and the 5th to testify against their own subordinates? And this has happened again and again...Commander's take the 5th, enlisted take the fall. Now that's crazy, and absolutely has nothing to do with Condi Rice. This is who these people are, that's their character when they face the test.

*to Yingling http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198

Whatever we have acheived here we can at least say we bought the rest of you in the homeland several precious years.

To go the the F@&%ing mall.

Finally...understand absolutely that this will come back on our soil, with results that cannot be predicted except that they will be terrible, costly and that all of you will regret that you threw away the chance to do it elsewhere with the November dolchstosse.

If you really want to know what I think... www.free-our-fobbits.blogspot.com

2007-05-09T21:59:00.000+04:00

Open the FOB's

If the US won't expand the FOB's (spread the excess security ink) then open parts of them. 10% of the money put into the FOB's put into the streets would buy us at least a 20% reduction in trouble. Safe corridors, with the same security arrangements we have now could be opened to areas of our Camps and FOBs. We open four building's immediately:

1. Hospital

2. Natal Clinic

3. School

4. American University

If you want to show them America works for everyone, then start letting them in.

2007-05-09T20:21:00.000+04:00

Graveyard Blues

...A modest suggestion...

We need to gain back some lost psychological ground. Every day bodies go unclaimed, perhaps even untouched in the streets, morgues and rivers of Iraq. Muslims hold the burial of their dead preferably by sundown that day to be very sacred. Currently it's not safe even to pick up a body in the streets. Let's put together Joint USA/Iraqi patrols specifically to do just that...recover the bodies (yes, even before we fix the trash problem), use our vaunted technology to ID the body as rapidly as possible so as to speed it back to the family with all respect. Make sure only Muslims handle the body if possible-preferably some of them American. Give the GITMO chaplains something to do besides pass notes in class.

Gestures like this would buy us some street cred, and get some lost good faith back.

2007-05-03T21:05:00.000+04:00

The (not so) Straight Path

Perhaps God still looks after the United States, even when its' being drunk and childish.* Consider this; to walk the Straight Path (jihad) the erhabi first negotiate their families, who either have instilled in them the values that make them fight even though it goes against the "liberal mainstream" values of the ruling elites**or they radicalize and must truly divorce their families first (as opposed to the false denunciations of Osama and Dr. Z's families). Then they must negotiate the ruthless security services** of their own country, make a dangerous journey thru several hiding with new friends from new foes along the way to the land of two rivers.
Then they face us, hostile locals, pick their moments carefully or die quickly.

Now we come to we Amiriki's. We too usually come from traditional families, warfighting families, take up arms in defiance of the liberal consensus (the central pillar of which is that nothing is worth killing over) but also with the tacit approval of our soft, degenerate princes as long as we don't do something ugly on TV (getting caught). We then must journey a morally and spiritually dangerous path past cowardly ner-d0-well trainers, crooked contractors and leadership paralyzed by their peers jellyfish stings if they're not the mindless stinging jellyfish themselves. If you want to see this in action, attend a staff meeting.
The role of the political police is performed internally by JAG, CID, NCIS, OSI...who being guardians of the law are of course exempt from it. Externally we face the relentless scourge of the media. All of these Iscarioti betray us with a kiss (support the troops). When we come to the land between the rivers we chose between our life and our liberty each time we unsafe our weapons. Our superiors; faithless, false and owing allegiance only to themselves will surrender us up to the howling jackals upon demand, like a crafty sheik who senses the wind has changed.

In fact, the only people we can trust..maybe..are our brothers in the platoon. For a platoon to be successful over here it requires a level of trust within, and paranoid distrust without precedent in Western militaries. You almost have to be as tight as....a cell.

So without planning it...our corrupt princes are creating within us a true match for the enemy by duplicating his training process.

*or perhaps he just wants to watch a good evenly matched fight.
**but with the tacit approval and covert support of many of same, as long as you don't get caught.

2007-04-29T05:38:00.000+04:00

Defeat in Detail

We are already defeated politically here and at home, and we lost the media war by keeping our best reporters (the soldiers) gag ordered. We have long since ceded the population-the primary objective-to the enemy, and are only now making an effort to take it back. We are spread out amongst many FOB's and now even more so with Joint Security Stations and Combat outposts.*
In 2004 the Mahdi Army was able to mount a serious challenge with only a few thousand ill trained militia. They now have tens of thousands well trained, well equipped veteran militia and Iran has 32,000 agents here to assist them. If the combination of the Fallujah uprising and the Mahdi Army uprising in 2004 put a strain on us, I wonder what could happen to this demoralized Maginot Line force** now? Our Generals had better hope the enemy's innate caution and patience win out over temptation. Or they'll be the ones being investigated at long last. You can't blame strategic defeat on junior enlisted.

*although I applaud this...in fact I think most of the FOB's should be emptied out and put on patrol.

**If you don't agree, ask yourself why they bought in 20,000 fresh troops when most of the ones already here are still sitting on their fobs. Cuz the one's here are ruined.

2007-04-22T15:10:00.000+04:00

The code is cracked

Not that it's going to solve our problems, but our young soldiers have come through with the answer again. Last night, one of many interminable long nights at the checkpoint a solider told me a story that explains a lot about the New Inaction Army.

In High school, he had a radical English teacher (that reminds him of me...maybe I'll vote Democratic next time just as a nod to the gods of the polis) who taught the students something about critical thinking...or at least something other than rote memorization. He also had a principal who liked rules....no grind dancing at the high school prom. No hip hop. And slow dancing only at a distance of six inches apart...since that might lead somewhere. The whole rebel drama played out...eventually the principal quit cuz the English teacher started a movement to punk him out.

What jarred his memory on this was a trip to the pool....we have a flea 9 assigned here whose place of duty is pool enforcer of standards. His job is to walk around the pool and make sure, that people don't wear headphones, or too skimpy a bathing suit. Or that the Navy diver can't wear his issue diving shorts...too tight.

Miss Grundy is running the Army....and sorry, they may be young but it's NOT school teaching. Your job is NOT to keep them from mischief. Hell...your job is to make sure they get up not only to mischief but bloody mayhem, and beat (KILL) the other guys out at it.

Do us a favor...get the Fiki out and go teach. Elementary school, not TRADOC.

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

Our Katrina

The Big Army can congratulate itself, it is now completely part of the Federal Government, and Iraq is our Katrina. Our assets are stacked up waiting to go...and they never do. People come to us for help, and we promise to get back to them and later becomes never. Meanwhile please spend your remaining moments dragging the shackles of your earthly coils around our endless, ever growing bureaucratic labyrinth. Bring us information? Thanks for risking your life. We'll file that somewhere, maybe a warehouse at Tobyhana depot. Maybe someday some enterprising reporter will use it as background in his book on Iraq.

However, that doesn't mean money doesn't get spent. You just have to be a contractor (non-Iraqi) to get it. Then not only will the floodgates open...you'll spend the taxpayers money to make more of the taxpayers money...but you'll get US military escort. Unless we're sick of you too...in which case you'll get the taxpayers to pay for mercenaries.

The main difference between this and Katrina? We're occupying the high ground of the Superdome, throwing Toby Keith concerts inside, while outside the flood waters never really abate. And yes...there are many great organizations and people doing heroic work like the Coast Guard did during Katrina. But the head shed is "Brownie" holding press conferences and sending plaintive emails, and no Russel Honore has yet appeared to get things moving.

2007-04-16T13:02:00.000+04:00

Cui Bono?

(who benefits)

Can anyone tell me what we are doing here? Certainly Command didn't come here for the hunting, did they? We are pulling our entire oversized squadron back inside the wire just as the mortars (predictably) are really getting their groove on. Supposedly we are under 100 days, I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen both parts of this movie before: last spring/summer the mortars increased with the rising heat until we decided to stop sitting on our collective asses and start patrolling the villages, and we also did the "we're short, pull everyone in" part late last fall. Then we got extended. Let's see if the short squeeze suckers buy in again and start making vacation plans.

I really can't point to much in the way of tangible accomplishments beyond $5000 a day in meals to KBR. Sure, we bagged a few bag guys but if they had let us fight we would have bagged a few hundred, more importantly we'd actually establish some security around this base and show these people we are as serious as the enemy. Whose chain of Command I'd exchange for mine in a heartbeat.

Hell, I'd rather follow the kids at the gate who spy, steal and pester us. They've got more motivation, better leadership and more courage than my entire chain from E7 to POTUS. And they've got more time inside our wire than my chain does outside it.

2007-04-11T18:50:00.000+04:00

We are pleased to announce...

The creation of the Alcibades award for conspicuous treason during wartime. As treason has in fact become its' own industry or institution, a best practice of business, government, academe and the press, the time has come to announce treason's debut into a mature institution, well deserving of the latter day American practice of awarding formal honors within an interested group.

We haven't decided on what the statue will be...that's still in committee. I'm thinking along the lines of the old Dolchstoss cartoons. But on to the nominations! The categories are:

[] Triangulation

[] Treachery

[] Sophistry

[] Charisma

[] Cui Bono

[] Flattery

My nominees are (feel free to add in comments):

1) Congress; for cutting off an American Army 7000 miles from home in a sea of enemies.

2) Halliburton..for successfully triangulating Gaza pyramid scale graft with high treason by moving its' corporate HQ to Dubai.

We await the votes! Add in comments...

2007-04-11T13:34:00.000+04:00

Can't beat 'em? Join 'em

Hmm....we seem to be unable to prosecute the Iraqi campaign successfully.* So what can we put in the success block on the OER or NCOER? I know...let's prosecute the men. Murder will work if nothing else...there's a great opportunity business out there for an ambitious young military lawyer. Justified killing or murder/war crime? Why it's a mere matter of semantics. The law today has long since abandoned legal positivism for legal post modernism...and it always helps should the real hard left start having war crime tribunals at the Hague or in the States.

Our Leadership aren't the only ones triangulating themselves. Halliburton has moved it's HQ to Dubai. Congrats on the successful transition from Graft to Treason. Trade follows a victorious standard, especially since the Green one isn't as conflicted as ours on any important issue. Apparently simple green is a lower common denominator than all those busy stars, fields, stripes etc.

Meanwhile back in the States, the party of treason has cast a historic dolchstoss vote...for the first time an American Army (an expeditionary force surrounded by enemies 7000 miles from home no less) will be treated like the Nationalist Chinese, French in Indochina, South Vietnamese, Iranians, Somoza etc and cut off from supply. In doing so they will not only doom our efforts here to a range of options from disaster for the suckas dumb enough to trust us to we ourselves meeting the end the Athenian's met at the river Assinarius in Sicily...they have also made quite sure no one will ever want us as an ally again. So that's the end of the vaulted hegemony, and Pax Americana. Also the end of Pax in America. Remember, the voters spoke.

*although the best of luck to the surge effort and Rave Petreaus. Sincerely.

2007-04-10T06:17:00.000+04:00

A little less discipline, a little more courage please

This new discipline is a slavish, unmanning thing. Frankly I have never seen a bunch of Americans so cowed, whipped and miserable. Servility is not discipline. The result is definitively not a better fighting force, just a more docile group being led to defeat. The leadership doesn't have the guts to do the right thing, or anything at all without permission from 2-3 levels above. Nor do they dare challenge anything.

In the short space of a few hours yesterday we were first bested by a cow (don't ask) then watched the insurgents dig in a IED and lay command wire all under our beneficent all watching, all impotent eye. Second time in a week. Being men of action we sprang towards the phone and passed the buck to higher, fulfilling the first Army value--Cover Your Ass. The squabbling TOC toadies fumbled a bit, refused to let us roll waiting gun trucks that could have caught Abu Boom cold busted. They then scrambled air assets. Perhaps we've lost our subtle touch but I don't think it was ever possible to shadow someone overhead with Apache's without giving it away. Up at the TOC, Toad and Stoat couldn't bring themselves to blow up old Mole...so they gave up after a few and sent the Air assets home. So the bad guys slipped away...again.

None of this would be possible without the New Army's New Discipline. Men would have never let mortal enemies off so easily, or their gutless superiors off the hook.

[sorry about mixing my metaphors. Or mating my mixaphors].

Our Command didn't come here for the hunting. Yet the more desperate our position grows-and it doesn't get much more desperate then an expeditionary force 7000 miles from home whose legislature cuts off from supply-the farther we get from victory the more these career losers take refuge in enforcing and indeed inventing new rules. We are beset by a locust swarm of useless people whose war is to sting us in a cloud of their petty regulations....no headphones while exercising, no amber eyepro, the width of the allowed thong at the pool, etc.
It's some weird denial mechanism for dealing with their failure and cowardice-if you can't face War, then make sure Garrison breaks out.

What a pity all these fine young men are being wasted, we will not see their like again.

2007-04-05T05:49:00.000+04:00

Hijab Nancy and Burkha Murtha

Congrats from the Green machine on your treason during wartime. You've given H.A.L and the Soviet economy BDU republik another couple of decades on the incompetence pass. Up until now our impending fiasco could justly be blamed on military incompetence and moral cowardice along with the unbridled graft of KBR et al. No more. Thanks to the leftist dolchstosslegende
(stab in the back) of cutting off an expeditionary force 7000 miles from home in a sea of enemies, everything bad that has happened up to now and going forward can be blamed on your treason.

Segue...every woman who meets you Nancy should thank you...you've not only made their impending enslavement closer, you've also bought them closer to the midwife whose going to separate them from sensitive bits of their anatomy (female specific). As far as Burkha Murtha...may nothing good happen to either Pennsylvania or the USMC until they clear the stain on their honor. Neither deserve good fortune.

2007-04-04T15:01:00.001+04:00

First the Bang, then the whimper...

Sometimes historic events are as obvious as two quarter-mile skyscrapers being reduced into a cloud of ash and dust, sometimes they are less spectacular. Don't doubt that the vote to cutoff funding for an Army 7,000 miles from home in a sea of enemies-there is no truly friendly country to us closer than Israel-while we are still engaged in combat is such a moment. For the first time not an American ally is being betrayed, but an American expeditionary force itself. For the first time American soldiers are being treated as if they were no better than the Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Iranians, Kurds, French in Vietnam, Chinese Nationalists and all the others who were thrown to the wolves in their hour of need. Proves that for all the New Democrat's talk of not punishing the troops this time (like Vietnam) they hold us in no higher regard than the short list of allies who have been betrayed I note above.

The media pundits will do yeoman's service playing this down as just political maneuvers, but the world now and history later will take note. Not only will they abandon their allies, they abandon a healthy, vigorous Army in command of the field to slowly being starved of resources until it must flee or die. Does anyone doubt that if we were facing the Chinese or North Koreans or North Vietnamese of today or 50 years ago, the Japanese, Germans or Russians of the past, or any of our enemies that our fate would be sealed? As it is...if they see this through we may yet still be lucky to see home again.

The consequences of cutting off our funding play out like this...our relief forces (or potential emergency reinforcements) will have to curtail or stop training. That means more extensions. It will also mean less prep for the troops coming here...and all of that is nearly immediate. By summer..the insurgents most active time..this enterprise here will be running out of money.

I wonder...when the insurgents..who must know they are facing a demoralized Maginot Line force already...see us cut off from money..will the temptation for a large scale general offensive (which needs no aircraft or ships, just widespread guerrilla action country wide) of many small scale attacks be more than they can resist?

2007-03-30T18:04:00.000+03:00

Break the Boys
(or...the 4th Estate's victory)

Yes if things are bad at home it is crazing to the soldiers as we are caught and helpless. IRA says break the boys inside, break the boys outside. Gangsters say same thing-run the inside, run the outside. And if there's one way to make sure every daily crisis of life that goes on when we're away is magnified to maddening proportions it's to scare the living shit out of any family member, especially the wives who watch TV, listen to the radio or pick up a newspaper.

That's the genius of what the media has done, really. All they really have to do is break the 1% (to include the reserves) who serve by stressing their families, and sooner or later either the will to fight breaks or the recruits will stop coming. The 1% comes from the other 9% who are vets and their families. It's rather like the metropolitan police and fire departments over time-generational. Recruiters refer to this group-- family, teachers, mentors as the "influencers"--those who will influence a young person in their choices and the formation of their character that would lead them to both be the kind of person to sacrifice, fight, and endure the slavery of enlistment. If they don't buy into war, any war, it's over. A sure way to get a man to stop going or not to go at all is to have every woman in his life not crying while trying to be bravely supportive but absolutely forbidding it..he ain't going.

What's that leave us with? A draft? That would actually be amusing to see Congress try it.

2007-03-30T14:07:00.000+03:00

P.C --work shall make you free (Arbeit Macht Frei)*

The purpose of political correctness is to render first the intellect and then the arm helpless. First you cannot speak in your own defense, after you cannot physically defend yourself. As you are not allowed to think you are worth defending, how can you muster the will or have your mind command your body to do so?

Do not doubt we are well into the second part. We fight to the death against the enemy whose name we dare not speak, most of the government that deals with the war at all focuses most of their effort denying us the right to name the enemy. Or search, or profile, or literally discriminate-to judge.

We are denied judgement, we are denied thought, we are denied speech....why should we raise a hand to defend ourselves against our murderers?

*the sign that hung over the gate to Auschwitz.

2007-03-29T11:00:00.000+03:00

BURN THIS BOX

You can think outside the box all you want. If we ever want to act, we have to burn the box first.

The Army will never, ever reform from within. The people in the Army behave the way they do..career first, don't take any risks, be a yes man, throw the men under the bus because it is in their interests. In the aggregate, it's in their interests to have the Army we have. Who cares if it doesn't win wars and can only field less than 150 thousand to actually fight out of one million total during a World War? What matters is what advances careers individually and collectively.

It is in the interest of the institution to ensure that whenever we go to war, garrison breaks out as soon as it can be negotiated. We have to have something to keep the 10,000 new SGM's* the Army will suffer us to endure soon, surely you don't expect them to dirty their hands with leaving the wire or trooping the line.

It's in the institutions interest to ignore the war they have right now, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future in favor of big procurements for the war they think they wanna have, or at least wish to postulate (conventional conflict with...ah...maybe China?) to justify FCS over V hull vehicles like the Cougar, Buffalo or ASV that are on hand now.

The institution will never reform, it has to be liquidated and the healthy assets (soldiers, equipment, junior and mid-level leaders who get results) transferred to healthy organizations so we can fight the war that mortally threatens us now. The healthy organizations? SOF, CIA clandestine ops, any operation outside the large bureaucracy that is getting results.

The institution has not won a war since 1945, and the bar keeps getting lower. We won't have much left to defend if we don't make the hard choices now...the enemy will make them for us.

*hereafter referred to as "Flea 9's".

2007-03-22T11:46:00.000+03:00

Generation "W"

Whom Ann Coulter called the "Worst generation"

W on't let us fight

W on't let us win

W on't let us go home...

and W ouldn't fight themselves....

2007-03-22T06:06:00.000+03:00

Forrestal's Madman's insight

About the time the H.A.L (Higher Army Leadership) 1947 computer was built the first Secretary of the new Department of Defense-James Forrestal-went barking mad. He ended up raving that the military was controlled by a Communist conspiracy and jumping out a window at Bethesda. I'm assuming H.A.L didn't use his robot arm to push him out. Not trying to start any rumors but I'm just saying here....

Anyway....following the theory that madmen may occasionally have twisted insight...what if he was onto something? Not that the military was controlled by Communist's...that kind of ballsy conspiracy would be bad for OER's. Couldn't be pulled off. But what if what he noticed was that he was creating the Soviet Command economy of military bureaucracy..complete with all the insane inefficiencies, centralized planning lunacy, above all creating a subsidized state of incompetence within our otherwise healthy military. Because that's what we have...just as the Soviet's were subsidized by the West for seven decades until Reagan came along and pulled the credit card out from under them...the Pentagon and our overly centralized leadership are subsidized by the richest economy in the world and fine young people's efforts at the lower levels. However like the Soviet economy we have been unsuccessful for several decades. Their failed 5 year plans and annual grain harvest failures could be compared to our several failed wars and equally misguided transformation plans (the Penatomic Army, Revolution in Military Affairs). Worst of all...everyone in the military now thinks that any mistaken policies require a change in doctrine (TRADOC and Ft. Leavenworth become the Central Committee).

Gee...I guess that means we need a Reagan, and he might just need a Gorbachev.

2007-03-18T12:51:00.000+03:00

BON MOTS

The New Spartan's Battle Drills:

"Contact" (my lawyer) "over"

"Adjust Statement, over"

"Add 'per our ROE', drop lines 12-17."

The GCC, three motarjim, and me...

So me and the 3 Mexicans walk into the Alamo. Sitting behind the table is a duck. The duck's beak hit's the floor. He squawked "moqtada-flaq!".

I think I seen the same duck a month later on the Saddam snuff video. It's tough to be sure...all the ducks look the same in ski masks and leather jackets.

So I ask the duck.."are we early, or late?"

The duck smiled oleaginously and said "no habibbi, you are just in time". The other duck began a hushed, furtive cell phone call.

After that, the motarjim were searched with barely restrained violence, all the while smiling and grinning at me with beaks dripping venom...do ducks have fangs? And the furtive, hurried cell calls continued, with the ducks waving their oily feathers of welcome at me and my increasingly alarmed charges. As I was the lone Amiriki, we decided we forgot some key paperwork and imshii'd the fiki outta there before the ducks got the go ahead call on the cell phone.

The lesson's of the close encounter with the ducks: 1) no one at the Green Zone knows what the fiki they're talking about, even under their own noses (they sent us over there as we were looking for Iraqi passports). 2) the motarjim (terps) are dead at the hands of the ducks the day we leave, 3) never go anywhere without enough duck hunters, 4) I think the ducks are gonna win this race.

2007-03-18T11:55:00.000+03:00

Bin Laden's Lies

Occupying the Hijaz (Arabian Penisula): An Army encamped there for a few months to defend it's territory, with the permission of it's rulers to defend it from aggression, which then leaves after it has chucked them out of Kuwait, leaving a small, residual staff of trainers is occupation? The truth of 1991 is we functioned more as Janassaries, or Malmuks. Certainly King Fahd thought so at the time (he offered us wages of an additional 3000.00$ a month) and the Kuwaiti's behaved so to our troops afterwards. This was a simple matter of defending mutual interests, which Muslim rulers allowed many times throughout history in dealing with the West. Apparently ANY non-Muslim presence is occupation. We could similarly say the Muslims are "occupying" the Rivera, or Las Vegas. Or for that matter Patterson, Jersey City or Brooklyn.

Plundering Riches: by keeping oil prices artificially low in the 80's and 90's. Yes, the prices were kept below free-market prices, in exchange for which the Arab world was defended against first Communism (low prices undercut Soviet oil sales while building up the capitalist West's economies) and then from Saddam's huge Army which could have easily overwhelmed all the Gulf States except for Iran. BTW anytime the Arab world would like a true free market for oil, I am sure they'd find us quite amenable.

Humilation. The true root of muslim humiliation is that they believe themselves to be the masters of all mankind by divine right, yet it is quite the opposite now. In particular the victories of the Jews over vastly superior armies provokes them to insane, raging incoherence.
This has nothing to do with any actual grievance. It has to do with peoples they looked down on and exploited for 1300 years as dhimnni (Christians, Jews, Hindus) suddenly putting on airs and thinking they have rights, further actually winning victories over them. This is the rage of masters against slaves in revolt. How dare these uppity niggers think they have the right to speak to me this way? Then there's the whole matter of women as chattel....which we don't have time enough to get into. Suffice to say the knowing smiles, come hither looks and sudden exaggerated sway of the hips we get when the men aren't watching don't bode well for you holding on to them either. Wink.

2007-03-18T11:41:00.000+03:00

The New Spartans

Go tell the Americans, passerby, that we have died here, obeying their lawyers.

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Give me immunity from prosecution, or give me death!

That's not too inspiring either.

2007-02-23T12:10:00.000+03:00

Frontier Days

"The kingdom of the bronze knows no borders"

http://www.aztlan.net

The southwest quadrant of the USA can no longer be considered to have borders. It's more properly considered a frontier, with all that entails-lawlessness, danger, order only within certain safe areas-above all subject to raids by marauding bands, usually for pillage but sometimes to settle permanently and claim it as their own. If that does not describe the situation on our southern border, nothing does. If you doubt that this is an Army on the march, you can check the above web site for La Raza. They're moving beyond talk, bohemes and the Salonista's...who by the way were purged over the last two years by professional revolutionaries. That's called clearing the decks for action, not to mention La Real revolucionarios don't know how to do anything else. They'll become Civil Rights non-violent types in the same world Yassir Arafat becomes a partner for peace and Osama wins the Nobel Peace prize.

Wait a minute, I think if he doesn't die of kidney failure Osama will someday be up for it. Scratch that.

Aztlan's/La Raza's web site reads like Hamas of the Western Hemisphere. The clearing of the decks indicates it has passed the point of foolish talk, and that they are moving towards "armed struggle". Guzman did the exact same thing just prior to initiating Sendero's armed struggle nearly three decades ago in Peru. The canard about building a better life is..well...kaka. The better life they seek is the same better life the Visigoths sought in Italy and the Turks sought in Anatolia. Between them they destroyed the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. All they wanted was a better life.

PS: I hate to acknowledging PC even by denying it..but...no I am not anti-Hispanic. I do urge Hispanics who are loyal to America to check out the situation for themselves. If Aztlan continues on the path of Armed struggle it will define them and their situation in the USA whether you like it or not (you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you).

PPS: while you're on their web site...ponder...what did the Jews ever do to Hispanics?

2007-02-22T12:00:00.000+03:00

Is it surge or serge?

There is no excuse for any American stronghold in Iraq not to secure the territory adjacent to it's own perimeter. It's a glaring edifice to our bumbling impotence that the insurgents control the villages right up to the wire, including villages whose economy is partially dependent on us...who just might be somewhat more interested in our success. Soldiers who would much rather be facing the enemy are forced to lag about the bases many distractions...the PX, MWR etc. In fact take a look at any Command Post; how many are helping, how many are are in the war?

As long as we have little garrison USA, what's the motivation to take risks, either for enlisted men (physical risk) or officers (career risk)?

2007-02-20T14:39:00.000+03:00

Which movie is this?

We can't figure out whether this is end of "2001" or "The Deer Hunter". The Deer Hunter ends with a retarded Russian roulette game as Saigon falls. We're on track.

The 2001 scenario might go something like this...

"Open the FOB bay door, H.A.L (H.A.L 1947 computer, Higher Army Leadership)"

"I can't do that Dave. You might succeed in your mission, and I can't allow that. I read your lips when you were talking with McMaster. You plan to disconnect my self-defeating logic circuits. I can't allow that."

Sorry, but my money's on HAL. Dave's seen all the stars he's ever gonna. Unless he somehow fucks this up worse...in which case he may make even five stars, and Chief of Staff is assured.

2007-01-21T17:14:00.000+03:00

Spaces of Opportunity

At the interstices of Bin Laden's falsehoods and distortions and the unbridled criminality of his foot soldiers-their petty sadism, inane brutality and murder-are the crossroads of our many little victories if we exploit them. We need only do two things to do so...be better (not perfect) exposing their crimes by our refusal to match him in this the closest of close quarters, and protect by deeds some of the civilians even if we lack the men to protect all. This is the moral high ground we hear so much about, preferred by headquarters dandies and pundits to the mundane actual high ground. If only we were led by morally courageous, uncompromised men these victories can be half won by mere words, the other half being on hand to show people the difference.

2007-01-15T13:32:00.000+03:00

Soldiers need immunity

If it’s good enough for the CIA (pardon...OGA) and M.I. it’s good enough for the rest of us.

This has to be the first Army in history where the soldiers are threatened routinely, in fact relentlessly with dire consequences if victorious. If we spent as much time training in the States on any of the basics of counter-insurgency (we never did) as we did on being threatened by JAG and our own officers...then the soldiers here (1) would know valid reasons to be restrained, instead of fear of corporate lawyers in uniform and (2) we’d actually have been trained in what we need to accomplish. Instead we are target practice for IED’s and the bombers....and all the insurgents know damn well they need not fear arrest. It’s we who need fear using violence, and we need mightily to fear our own “leadership”. They just damned another kid to 18 years for not letting terrorists go, and that’s only if he agrees to be a rat.

There are many ways to carry out an order. My uncle was in WWII, the last war we won. When they received orders to go to their deaths on fruitless patrols by field grade officers safe behind the wire, their LT had the decency to take them just outside the wire and stop. When asked what they were doing he responded “staying alive”. At that time being imprisoned for killing the enemy wasn’t a prospect, I daresay they would have found the theory quite bizarre, and their response to the practice would have quickly foreclosed it.

We are too obedient. We are too disciplined. We are entirely too loyal and bearing of true faith and allegiance to the faithless whose only allegiance is to their OER’s. Do I damn all officers here? NO. But the ones who keep faith (and take risks) with us are almost always company grade, and they have no power.

We need immunity, and we need to begin to demand it from Congress and the Administration. If it bothers them they can think of it as a political quid pro quo....they can give us immunity for the predictable consequences of war –killing and destruction-as we have given them immunity for the unbridled embezzlement and looting by their carpet baggers and mercenaries they we see daily with our own eyes, we the soldiers in the field and the Commanders who silently let it go on.

If no immunity...then hold off on “surging” until we have it, and as proof of good faith from the faithless secure the release of our political prisoners...the Abu Gharib MP’s, the Hamdaniya and Haditha Marines and the rest all get blanket pardons. Even the rats. Then the new “ROE” will meet expectations. Pardon’s now will go a long way with the soldiers.

Even Stalin stopped the purges and the show trials when his back was against the wall.

But for now...we are somewhere between lions commanded by donkeys...and too loyal dogs led to slaughter and defeat by Judas goats.

2007-01-14T20:41:00.000+03:00

Crime and Peace, War and Punishment

Haditha, Hamdaniya, Abu Gharib

War is not the within the realm of law, hence criminal laws or even the term crime does not apply. Nor should peacetime norms and especially the forms of justice and punishment. Victors justice is still what it has always been, which doesn't make it any less just. It's more important that it be expedient, that it be practical, and quite frankly it can be put aside for more important matters. For instance it is a common practice after victory to keep the enemy leader alive to negotiate a peace, or to be used as a bargaining chip. Just before his execution the very people who would have screamed loudest had we simply killed Saddam in his hole were considering that very option.

The obscene snuff film of Saddam's execution last month is actually a blessing for it highlights the bizarre inappropriateness of using trials, judges and especially lawyers in the middle of a war zone. When the snuff flick was done, and when somehow a rope decapitated his relative last week the Iraqi's justifications came back as what happened to Mussolini, what happened to Ceausescu..

The Iraqi's are right. The entire circus had nothing to do with any of the brutal realities of war in particular this one, and everything to do with post-modernist Americas legal religion. Having thrown down and trampled on all the old moralities, religion and social norms the treason generation has sought to replace all of them with the most overweening, stifling and intrusive legal code in history, that seeks every enclave of life to be regulated by lawyers, preferably lawyers dealing directly with each other and cutting out juries, elections and the great mass of unwashed, unbarred citizens. This code has subverted the foundations and seeped through every other part of American life...and now it seeks to bring war too within it's all encompassing Camp of the Saints.

Which brings us to the military. How (we are admonished) can we expect the great unwashed mass of humanity that hasn't come to the enlightened state of children negotiating with their parents through lawyers, how can we expect them to achieve our enlightened level of civilization if we aren't willing to uphold it ourselves? Clearly the function of JAG, CID and NCIS is to bring the order of the court to the chaos of the battlefield. Gentlepersons, you will begin with the traditional laws of war (never more than a luxury, usually a figleaf, often completely forgotten) which you will morph into the post-modern laws of war, jot by jot, change by change, frago by frago. You need no better a breaching tool than the Rules of Engagement. Change this daily, mission by mission, operation by operation....and do make sure there are competing versions afoot. You can't have post-modernism if anything remains objectively true. Should they protest remind them of the rule of lawyers, imply they have let down the side, and hope the natural need for discipline stifles not only dissent but thought itself.

Haditha: TIME magazine, NCIS and JAG were a little too uncritical of the Iraqi's account, and a little too eager to hang the Marines. It's coming out now...but the law should have never been allowed on the scene in the first place. It was a battle, not a crime.

Hamdaniya: Maybe if we weren't held to the "legal" standard for detaining hostiles (from experience there isn't really any standard. 1st Cav believes in holding and interrogating terrorists. 1/34 BCT doesn't, so they arbitrarily let them go) the Marines in Hamdaniya wouldn't have been looking for a bomber released three times, and had to settle for a Iraqi cop. Really....a police force so corrupt they make the Mexican cops look like Carmelite nuns....does anyone think they killed an innocent person? He was at least as guilty as everyone else who let the insurgents excavate large holes and place large bombs in them.

Abu Gharib: The best example of picking up and setting aside the law as needed. The investigation was conducted under color of command, without Taguba informing the intended fall guys he was conducting an investigation until after they talked. So much for Miranda (UCMJ Article 31B). Both the Taguba and Fay investigations make clear the MP's were following orders although as they were "unlawful" orders they have to be punished. Not so unlawful command actually means responsibility however....the Commander took the Fifth, the lower enlisted took the fall. Commanders retire, enlisted scum go to jail.
What exactly is unlawful in the context of our cities destroyed and under siege, civilians murdered as the objective both in the US and Iraq when you are holding a very bad person who knows something valuable, a person who has lost the right to ask for mercy by their own actions? In a war with no end in sight with the enemy crowing that they will show us no mercy, and laughing literally in our faces that we do?

Unlike NCIS, CID and JAG we have to endure those smirks, and watch ourselves letting them go off to take another free shot at us. I've said before on these pages....soldiers need immunity.

Until then...let's try this: if you get challenged by our upholders of ever shifting standards on your warmaking..take a page from the insurgents book. Say you know nothing, nothing was done wrong, invoke Article 31B. Keep faith with your battles, don't bow to the faithless and above all else; when they quit and look for more trusting or weaker prey, remember to smirk when they let you go. We owe at least that much to ourselves.

2007-01-13T12:43:00.000+03:00

A mental surge

Yes, dear readers, I am among the fortunate ones selected for extension. In fact, I now expect to be hanging around here so long that I began to wonder: what are the residency requirements for Iraqi citizenship?

Here me out. We can still win, er....surge. We are already doomed to be in Iraq until the end of time. Why not apply for Iraqi citizenship? Then, acting as Iraqi citizens we will be free of our idiot Generals, JAG, NCIS, CID, KBR's peculation, the stammering boy-king that loses his nerve, and the ROE that makes us target practice.

As Iraqi citizens WE COULD FINALLY FIGHT TO WIN. Then there's the whole oil royalty thing....

This could work!! We bypass the entire chain.....and as far as rules for us.... like a little kid told us the other day when we caught him stealing "I will keep stealing because you American's deposed Saddam, and now there are no laws".

Wow. He knows Pelosi's in charge? Does this mean no lawyers too?

2007-01-13T07:06:00.000+03:00

Haditha, show trials, and leaks

If NCIS and JAG, none of whom leave the wire to be target practice for IED's, but force the rest of us to be, want to investigate something, let them investigate these leaks.
As for the USMC...they sadly seem to be doomed to an auto-de-fe of PC Stalinist show trials, so of course every coward seeks to outshout the others in the chorus of denunciations.

Haditha...a terp who was Ministry of Industry told me when it broke that Haditha has two clans...and one went Wahabbi, and started killing everyone, mainly the other clan that didn't go wahabbi, but that included their relatives. So he asked...what to do? Kill em he said.

Look, the point is...we are being sacrficed for PR, to appease the unappeasable, forced to kill according to what can only be described as a arcane legal ritual, or else. Stars and Stripes also has 3 privates being charged with murder for executing detainees.

I have now released far more detainees than we kept....and by Christ all were guilty. Guess what I was thinking.

I have had it with our Generals. The reason for all these prosecutions is they are gathering scalps of privates in anticipation of victors justice on themselves (the leftist legal machine) so this is their defense. Moral cowards, the lot of them.

2007-01-10T14:28:00.000+03:00

Me& Al-Hayat

"

The Neo-Cons' Role in Saddam's Execution 'Deal'

Raghida Dergham Al-Hayat - 05/01/07//

New York - The Iraqi government, its Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as well as the US administration and President George W. Bush, are fully responsible for what happened to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein upon his execution by the militias of sectarian and political vendetta.

For the issue at hand goes far beyond the prosecution of a regime and the lynching of a tyrant. What happened induces compulsory, key and critical questions regarding who is behind inciting sectarian hatred between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and the reality of US policies toward the Middle East region......

(link to her at bottom)*

Basically she is saying it's all a Neo-Con plot, whose goal (get this) is to realize the Shia crescent ....my response below..

Reference Saddam's botched execution; I am in the American Army in Iraq, and have spent 14 of the last 20 years in Military Service. From that standpoint I can assure you, the hidden reason is incompetence amongst our senior officers, a conspiracy to "cover up" their cretinous, abject ineptitude has been afoot for their entire careers. The hidden agenda is for them to get to their pensions before they can be found out. Seriously lady, I have been working for these idiots for many years, they were insufferable do-nothing morons when they were Majors and LTC's, we knew it would be a nightmare when some of them hung around long enough to make General. NO Zionist machinations are necessary indeed if you have been reading the Weekly Protocols of the Neo-Elders, er...I mean The Weekly Standard you would have detected first exasperation then increasing alarm at the course of the war. You may have also noticed some shuffling of the Flag Officer deck recently. We will see what good it accomplishes.

As long as Arab's are looking for the hidden meaning and the true agenda in what American's say when their isn't one, and the American's are taking what the Arab's say at face value (when no Arab would willingly share problems with a stranger) this will continue to be high tragic comedy, say a Naval Battle choreographed by Franz Kafka and Gilbert and Sullivan. Perhaps you can suggest a title?

Finally the emergence of the Shia Crescent stretching from Herat to Sidon is hardly something that serves our interests, whether "us" is the USA or our Zionist puppet masters (tee hee). It's what happens when idiots are put in charge.

When one comes across a bad situation created by the hands of men, and one struggles for an explanation and is faced of a choice between stupidity and villainy, I tend to believe the former. Others give far too much credence to the latter.

Cordial and best wishes for the new year,

SGT "E.L.F", Salah-ah-Din, Iraq

*contd..
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/01-2007/Article-20070105-f1c2c50f-c0a8-10ed

2007-01-06T13:50:00.000+03:00

Islamism, not Islam

Working definition: We are fighting a fascistic ideology that uses Islam's history and an edited version of the Koran, not Islam itself.

Yes, a valid point. See Pipes link below on British MP Goodman's comments to that effect. I replied that was correct, and pointed out a great tactical mistake we are making.

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/708#comments

His analysis and yours are correct; it is Islamism, and not Islam, and the UK has a chance. Unfortunately this argument has no more war-fighting utility than it's Nazi's not Germans, the Japanese war party not all Japanese, etc and we are at fact at war. In fact, these arguments are trivial to the war effort once we disengage from close contact in trying to help the terrorized masses in the Muslim world, which means close combat with the actual guilty bastards trying to destroy both us and the future of the rest of the Muslims. I know from being in Iraq that many of the civilians will respond to a credible offer of protection from the insurgents, whose GIA-like tactics alienate everyone, forcing all to live in fear. If you don't believe me, believe the AQ in UK tablique fighters who came back from Iraq to UK and voiced exactly that complaint.

Which brings up an opportunity ALL are missing: the very same petty, mindless, lowlife criminal brutality gets them their way often in the short term TURNS ALL against them in the long one, even in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the conservative Arab tribes, ordinary rural people (like the ones around where I am, Balad...which is rich farmland with Sunni/Shia mix) end up more or less very quickly having had enough with the murderous yet petty nihilism, their criminal behaviors (using KNR of even small children to raise funds, their chief source of raising money internally). No matter how lofty their rhetoric, how theologically valid the fatwas (can you tell I've been reading Scheuer) it falls apart in the eyes of the very people they need to raise as the umma nation, the very fish they need to swim in, the very recruiting base they need. Responding both as part of their manly duties and to their own power base, the sheiks and tribal elders will, and do turn on the erhabi (Iraqi for terrorist) and IF we were only there for them, IF our gutless, groveling abject eunuch Generals would let us be there for the Arabs when they turn, village by village and block by block at those moments WE WOULD begin to win.

And that's why, unless you plan to nuke em all (hah hah hah), we need to re-engage the Iraqi's, and start creating those safe havens for the people who are not so much sick of war, but sick of the petty megleomaniac pyschopaths who are the foot soldiers of jihad.

Of course, I doubt that this opportunity will remain on the table forever. Sooner or later, they will clean up their tactics. And then we will have missed another opportunity, like the Palestinians.

2007-01-01T15:07:00.000+03:00

"War Crimes"

When are reporter's going to start digging into why our soldiers and Marines are target practice for IED's (apparently the Marines in Haditha and Hamdaniya were just supposed to eat the casualties). Why aren't you digging further into the history of that town, to wit that there are two clans there, and one of them recently converted to Wahabbism and started killing not just Amriki's but their fellow Iraqi's in the town. I got this information by talking to our terps, why is it so hard for the media? Start asking the Marine, err..."leadership" (cough, gasp) what their TTP's (tactics, techniques, procedures) are for an IED, or the Army for that matter. You'll find there are no provisions for retaliation, so it's a free shot for the enemy. Then start asking about Hamdaniya; why was a insurgent who had been arrested three times at large (their intended target)?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1222/p01s01-usmi.html

2007-01-01T14:33:00.000+03:00

New Year's Resolution: cost's for IED's.

The problem of IED's is that it's a free shot for the insurgent's, rendering us target practice. Now under the restrictive ROE (rules of engagement) there are no consequences for killing us in this fashion, except on those very rare occasions when we catch the trigger man in the act. That's why it's the main choice for the insurgents. All the counter measures are, can and will be defeated by ingenious solutions costing pennies per unit. A case in point are the pressure devices used in this area. It consists merely of a battery, wires and a couple of metal strips spray painted black (sometimes inside a styrofoam cup) and placed on asphalt. When something drives over it the circuit closes and the IED explodes. Then what happens? Nothing, except we fill in the hole with concrete. Lotta concrete holes in the road around here.

There have to be consequences for the people who plant the bombs, and the people who watch them do it. It's a testament to our discipline that more Haditha's and Hamdaniya's don't happen. Why don't reporters ever ask WHY the Marines went looking for bombers who had bombed over and over, whose names were in our database, who were known to us? WHY are these people at large? WHY are our soldiers and Marines target practice?

2006-12-21T13:22:00.000+03:00

Gone Shopping

Mr. President,

Yes, go shopping Sir. For different Generals. Put in MBA terms:

US Army: chapter 7. The soldiers go to healthy organizations. The leadership meets the private sector.

USMC: chapter 11.

DOD---DA, DN, D of etc...get folded (and cut to 10% of current size) into one DoD organization.

The war: put SOF and USMC (post ch. 11) in charge overall. None of the current Army Commanders stay, except COL McMasters (3d ACR) who should be a 2 Star, today.

If you don't do the above.... "C" level management tasks...any resources you continue to pour in are wasted.

Respectfully

SGT

Iraq

2006-12-20T11:43:00.000+03:00

The Price on our Souls

A great deal of "soul searching" in the media lately (soul channel-surfing would be more accurate) about whether fighting is worth the price it takes on our souls.....wrap interrogations up in this weepy holistic blather.

If Americans aren't willing to pay the price of liberty (killing, dying, getting answers from terrorists) then wait until they're paying the price a slave pays to survive.

When this started, I thought the problems in America were largely restricted to the elites. With the last election it appears that we are defending a nation of neurotic, whining de-clawed cats living in a fantasy world subsidized by our sacrifice. America has truly become European for the first time.

2006-12-13T12:08:00.000+03:00

Now so late it's never

Much has been written and said since the election about how to turn around the situation in Iraq. Even the President seems alarmed, or maybe just more interested in his work.

At this stage they're no longer recommendations, they're regrets.

All these articles, and Bush suddenly taking an interest in his job should have happened 18 mos ago. Me, I'm concentrating on getting my terps out.

In two weeks the hearings start, and it's over. By Spring the Dems will have so tarred Bush&Co with the contractor (justly) and oil (more nuanced) brushes that he'll be as weak as Nixon in 74 by summer. It's over. Start doing triage, and accept the position of Byzantium at the end of the 7th century.

Oh BTW if you can't read a map, losing Iraq means it's over for Afghanistan as well.

2006-12-08T11:27:00.000+03:00

Our Embedded Strengths--or How to solve the lack of Embeds

The real embedded reporters we need are already amongst us down the squad level.

Background: We know we haven't got good press since OIF-I. Part of this is politics, part of it is the reporters don't want to leave the hotel and rely on (unreliable) local stringers, some also feel they lose "objectivity" when they embed with the troops. Worst of all Big Army seems to have developed an aversion of late, as was reported in the Weekly Standard recently (at the time only seven embeds active in Iraq). AQ on the other hand has full reporting down to the cell level (helps to have US/UK educated marketing majors, not to mention all those helpful tips from Al-Jazzera).

We already have new-media savvy, morally unassailable and unabashedly patriotic embeds with public credibility at every level, and the Army needs to harness them and their free speech and get out of their way.

It's our soldiers. Every other public institution in the free world has had to come to grips with free speech and how the new techonology makes everyone a part of the media, Big Army does as well. Don't worry, the ghost of Von Steuben won't frown. He understood his times.

2006-12-02T15:31:00.000+03:00

The Choice

VDH lays it out well... " War Stories".. basically between the cut losses, negotiate and 911 was a lucky break, and those who say no...it's an existential conflict.

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120106.html

2006-12-02T13:54:00.000+03:00

Maybe it is the Rapture..

the terps are telling us Jayish-al-Madhi have given the boot to the IP's in Babylon, and are now destroying antiquities there...

Maybe that will get the attention of the West Side Crowd.

2006-11-29T17:38:00.000+03:00

Saddam's comeback

A lot of people are talking about this...I think it's mostly pot stirring. However let's open the debate...my thoughts ...after Mr. Chait of the LA Times.

***********************************************************************************************

Jonathan Chait: Bring back Saddam Hussein

Restoring the dictator to power may give Iraqis the jolt of authority
they need. Have a better solution?

Jonathan Chait

November 26 2006

THE DEBATE about Iraq has moved past the question of whether it was a
mistake (everybody knows it was) to the more depressing question of
whether it is possible to avert total disaster. Every self-respecting
foreign policy analyst has his own plan for Iraq. The trouble is that
these tracts are inevitably unconvincing, except when they argue why all
the other plans would fail. It's all terribly grim.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-chait26nov26,0,6657405.column

Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com

***********************************************************************************************
and sgtelf says: I think it's a bullshit pot stirring trial balloon...if there is anything
behind it...it's a real dictator, this is to see how it flies.

Saddam is finished...he has no power. Even he knows it.

We only got him (drugged...BTW hence his disorientation) cuz his own fed him
to us.

2006-11-25T11:58:00.000+03:00

2006-11-23T13:33:00.000+03:00

The New Army

The Army has all the leadership and knowledge it needs to succeed in its' lower and middle levels. Once the path is cleared for these fine people, the re-organized Army will build around and be trained and led by SF/SOF, CALL personnel and veterans who've actually done it. We have the finest trainers in the world-Special Forces-and it's time for them to actually train the rest of us. This isn't an innovation, our enemies have made it a best practice since the Strum battalions trained the rest of the Imperial German Army in WWI. It's been a best practice for the WWII Germans, the Soviets, and the North Koreans as well. Elite forces train the rest. Don't expect either to be happy about it.

"He should be trained to shoot rapidly on foot, either in the Roman or the Persian manner" Maurice's Strategikon, 6th century BC.

The Byzantine cataphract was trained to fight mounted or dismounted, when mounted he carried lance, spear and bow, most importantly he trained not just in the latter Roman fashion but practiced Persian or Parthian battle drills as well. He knew how his enemy fought.

Our soliders must train and fight as both guerrillas themselves and as a heavy force on force uniformed Army. Each major formation, whether it be Brigade or Division will have a formal training relationship with it's respective elite forces. Everyone trains to do their specialty while fighting as infantry, and everyone fights. The days of little garrison USA being established and maintained while the world burns around them must end.

2006-11-23T13:07:00.000+03:00

Chapter 11 time

Big Army (Big Government in uniform) must undergo chapter 11 reorganization-something most industries underwent from the 70's to the 90's. Chapter 11 means bankruptcy organization, for we are bankrupt in leadership and values. They can post as many signs up as they want, when a moment of moral choice bites their interests these big macho, tabfinder studs fart and blow out the window. A great case in point is Abu Gharib...where the Commanders' took the 5th, and the junior enlisted took the fall. That's not an isolated case, but is becoming a pattern.

Chapter 11 begins by firing the top and middle management, and replacing it with competent leadership that will make tough choices, and in our case a lot fewer leaders period. So adios to our Generals and our Smadges....yes you too, you let it go on. Before we do anything else the path must be cleared of deadweight and debris first; the Force in Being Powell Army/Big Army must die to make way for a fighting Army.

2006-11-21T13:33:00.000+03:00

The FIB finds the FOB...it's own level.

FIB: Force in Being. The Army we built in the 80's. It's not supposed to fight, that's what the Powell doctrine and the Weinberger collorary are all about. Like the last great force in being, the Imperial German Navy, once its' bluff was called it wasn't gonna let itself win even when it did (Battle of Jutland).

Iraq, like real life in the States, is a jungle. Don't go out there!! Stay in the Army, stay on the FOB. Never get off the boat, you'll meet the tiger.

2006-11-21T13:19:00.000+03:00

New War

The new way of war (terrorism) is simple to understand: it's real life with guns, bombs and the law of the jungle as "the market". Murderers are sent when in America you'd send lawyers, or talk it out. You have political parties, but they are nothing without your own murder crews.

The franchise will no longer be guaranteed by the gun, the gun is the franchise.

As the bulk of the Army spends it's time in garrison, the field or even in war in a regimented environment it's risible that people who've spent decades in it could adapt as an institution or that the leadership could grasp it. They don't have to deal with the rough and tumble of life outside the government cocoon, in their case a cocoon that seeks a standard for every tick and movement of their lives. Iraq is where all the discipline on minor things like walking when you smoke and having a standard for everything you do pays off. For the enemy, SGM. You end up with people who can't cope without being told what to do...facing an enemy who has run rings around them the entire time.

2006-11-21T12:51:00.000+03:00

Real Wars.

"I don't think you can call this a real war, it's not between Army's". LT, Ft. Knox standard issue type, said in country.

No Lieutenant jokes. This is the operating philosophy from SecDef down, and the institutions DNA. The LT was just honest enough to voice it. The "Rebel Generals" are mostly angry at Rumsfeld because they blame him for putting them in the war we had, not the war they want to have; right now they think it's China, and will keep thinking that until the Chinese are ready. Then suddenly they won't have enough resources, and will testify to Congress we need more troops to win this than we have on the rolls, and couldn't get within years even with a draft.

Not that Big Army would prevail in a "real war" either. Not against China, nor North Korea. Or the Wehrmacht either. Or anyone. In fact soon there will be no won living who won a war wearing this uniform as the WWII generation dies out, except for SF in El Salvador, etc.

Not that there's going to be a "real" war involving armadas of tanks and planes. Not only are these fleets on the sea, air and ground very expensive, they are obsolete. As useless as the Maginot line. Our foes know this..war has changed, but the US military hasn't.

2006-11-19T12:34:00.000+03:00

Broadway or Baghdad? Apparently Broadway.

The voters have spoken. We had a choice between fighting on our soil, and fighting off it (maybe). The choice was made. Our fellow citizens forgot what 3000 dead an hour was like, so they blanched at 3000 over 5 years of an offensive where the fight was bought to the enemy homeland, with many thousands of their fighters killed, several times that taken prisoner. Make no mistake...this means it's over for us in this region. We will lose the entire region to include Afghanistan, the bulk of the worlds energy and more deadly the Muslim demographic bomb will be in the hands of mortal enemies. We will now face the situation of Byzantium at the end of the 7th century...having lost the same ground. Get ready for the new America: alone, surrounded by enemies, and poor. That's right Aghab. When we get rolled up the international system of security collapses. That means the collapse of trade relations as we knew them and most importantly the end of the USA's unlimited credit card.

The next attack against the West may well be a terrorist coup de main (like Madrid) designed to break our will completely. If preserving my life was my most important value, I'd get the hell away from Manhattan.

Mona Charen gets it: the writing is on the wall...all the walls.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjNmMmNkNzU4ZDVmZWU2ZDgwYzY2YjRkOWUxZGZlN2E=

2006-11-13T00:31:00.000+03:00

Stupid Little Wars

"The enemy diversion you are ignoring is the main attack" - Murphy's Laws of Combat

And the nasty little insurgency we are ignoring as we pile up on the FOB happens to be Global Jihad's main effort.

"Washington, showing considerable warmth, said 'he was very sorry General Lee undertook the Command, unless he meant to fight the enemy". Battle of Monmouth 1778.

"All this disgraceful retreating, passed without the firing of a musket, over ground that might have been disputed inch by inch". Officer close to Washington, concerning Lee's retreat at the Battle of Monmouth.

Lee was court-martialed. And so should be Big Army. How do you court-martial an organization? It's called bankruptcy re-organization, or chapter 11. In other words...you fire all the management.

2006-11-12T06:35:00.000+03:00

Here's a lady who gets it...the voters have just hung out the kick me, hard sign. She predicts it's coming.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1382

2006-11-11T06:25:00.000+03:00

Transitioning to Iraqi Control -- or "Incentivizing"

Reading the record of the Iraqi "Government" assuming security responsibilities is like reading the Old Testament as revised by Edgar Allan Poe.

There is no Iraqi government in the center...unless you define government exclusively as dividing up the swag. They cannot stand alone. More to follow.

2006-11-10T06:04:00.000+03:00

The enemy understands how to shock, terrify and wear down morale with his theatre macrabre (911 as the greatest act of art in history), while inspiring his own followers.

A.Q also learned the lessons from EZLN (the Zapatistas) in mobilizing NGO's for their cause...and the NGO's listen and assist..Incredibly given the overt reactionary fascism of Islamism. Maybe it's a case of paying attention.

We meanwhile appear dumbfounded that we're losing the propaganda war. Perhaps it's because we're not fighting.

2006-11-10T06:02:00.000+03:00

While we focused on brilliant weapons, FCS (future combat system), space the final frontier...our enemies focused on the mind, the moral, the intangible, the spiritual. That's why murder is staged as theater*, whether a mass burnt offering (911) or butchering a pacifist in a orange prisoners jumpsuit.

*See also any disaster movie with NYC as the setting.

2006-11-07T13:57:00.000+03:00

While we are denying terrain, the enemy is denying population-the real objective-after we conducted elections, the enemy exercised the true franchise...the gun.

We need to move from terrain denial to population denial (deny first control of, then access to the population).

We need to screen people, not terrain. We can start with IA/IPs.

Key terrain: no longer a bridge or road junction, unless people live on it. Key terrain is a housing area, or a mosque.

2006-11-07T13:30:00.001+03:00

Terrorism and Guerrillas -- then and now.

Then:

Poor. Short of everything to include food. Required local taxes on civilians in food or money, even when they had outside help. Weapons were often stolen or manufactured. (Communism was always poor).
Local/Regional. Recruits, "taxes" in money or food, weapons were local.
Motivation: political, economic redress, worldly (temporal) motives.
Power: from the barrel of a gun to professors, teachers, lawyers, bougeious intellectuals.
Kill to achieve local control.

TACTICS:
Level I: mines, grenades, sniper, assassinations . Squad sized. Local units. First stage of Peoples War.
Level II: Platoon company sized formations. Main force units begin to form. Shadow govt local/regional, i.e as in Vietnam.
Level III: Battalion and larger units. Peoples war moves from guerrilla to conventional war.

Now:

Rich. Seemingly unlimited outside funding (fill er up). Not only are they rich in weapons, explosives, not least in trained personnel...they actually have "walking around money" to buy sympathy, allegiance, mercenary fighters, even houses from civilians who won’t sell based on threats.
Global. Recruits, $, support both moral and legal, media support. It’s not just the internet..it’s the umma. All support flows to the active regions around the world. The battle is tracked real time by their supporters in London, Cairo, Riyadh and by other interested parties in NYC, DC and LA.
Motivation: religious. Concerned with the spiritual, the eternal (heaven).
Power: from the camera lens, the minaret.
Power: Clerics, scholars, ambitious criminals and warlords, bougeious youth.
Kill as part of the Global theater of the mind.

TACTICS:
I) IED, VBIED, Shahid, as well as mines, grenades, sniper, assasinations .
II) Militia bands take towns, impose sharia. Near complete population denial for government (the enemy truly holds the people, as in many villages and neighborhoods).
III) Strategic terrorist strikes (911, Madrid). Assassination of National figures with eye to shadow coup de main (they hold real power...as they appear to do over Malaki).

2006-11-07T13:30:00.000+03:00

Terrorism and Guerrillas -- then and now.

Then:

Poor. Short of everything to include food. Required local taxes on civilians in food or money, even when they had outside help. Weapons were often stolen or manufactured. (Communism was always poor).
Local/Regional. Recruits, "taxes" in money or food, weapons were local.
Motivation: political, economic redress, worldly (temporal) motives.
Power: from the barrel of a gun to professors, teachers, lawyers, bougeious intellectuals.
Kill to achieve local control.

TACTICS:
Level I: mines, grenades, sniper, assassinations . Squad sized. Local units. First stage of Peoples War.
Level II: Platoon company sized formations. Main force units begin to form. Shadow govt local/regional, i.e as in Vietnam.
Level III: Battalion and larger units. Peoples war moves from guerrilla to conventional war.

Now:

Rich. Seemingly unlimited outside funding (fill er up). Not only are they rich in weapons, explosives, not least in trained personnel...they actually have "walking around money" to buy sympathy, allegiance, mercenary fighters, even houses from civilians who won’t sell based on threats.
Global. Recruits, $, support both moral and legal, media support. It’s not just the internet..it’s the umma. All support flows to the active regions around the world. The battle is tracked real time by their supporters in London, Cairo, Riyadh and by other interested parties in NYC, DC and LA.
Motivation: religious. Concerned with the spiritual, the eternal (heaven).
Power: from the camera lens, the minaret.
Power: Clerics, scholars, ambitious criminals and warlords, bougeious youth.

TACTICS:
I) IED, VBIED, Shahid, as well as mines, grenades, sniper, assasinations .
II) Militia bands take towns, impose sharia. Near complete population denial for government (the enemy truly holds the people, as in many villages and neighborhoods).
III) Strategic terrorist strikes (911, Madrid). Assassination of National figures with eye to shadow coup de main (they hold real power...as they appear to do over Malaki).
Kill as part of the Global theater of the mind.

2006-11-06T14:32:00.000+03:00

The failure.

We have failed here despite our best efforts and signal successes for three reasons.

1) USA and ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) have utterly failed to provide local security nationwide. Local security means where the people, or for that matter Iraqi officials and ISF personnel live, where their families sleep, where the civilian works. The militias have filled that vacuum.

2) We have misunderstood the motives of the insurgency from day one. We focused on the economic (Marx, again) and the political....in other word the temporal. The enemy has always been focused on the spiritual and the next world. Perhaps we should start taking him at his word. He seems to do his best to keep his promises so far.

3) This isn't really an "insurgency". It's a Global jihad, with terrorist and guerrilla tactics from the lowest to highest levels. In US military terms....Level I (small groups = individual IED, suicide bomber, truck bomb or sniper) level II (mid-intensity warfare, platoon or smaller sized elements = ) to level III (high intensity warfare, large sized formations = strategic terrorist actions such as 911 or the Madrid bombings). Doubtless the enemy has read Mao, it seems the jihadi have adapted terrorism to each level to replace mass formations at any level. Sorry DOD.

2006-11-06T13:05:00.000+03:00

COIN obsolete?

COIN (counter-insurgency) doctrine traditionally orients on fixing the underlying (undermining) weakness in the government's policy that feeds the insurgency. Usually that means economic redress, land reform, social services, equality under the law, and the like. As with so much of what we do it's a response to Marxist movements. That means there is never a purely military solution, but that there has to be a political and economic one as well, and the establishment of a more just goverment that provides better economic opportunities, social services, redistribution of land or wealth, and equality under the law will "drain the swamp" and eliminate the breeding ground of the killer mosquitos. Economic solutions were pursued from the beginning at every level with national and local construction both contracted, done by local units, even G.I's on their own initiative and time (between combat missions). There was some success nationwide in these efforts and they were hampered mainly by sabotage (again the failure to provide security).

However despite the high unemployment rate young men are not interested in reconstruction or commerce. They still want to blow things up. Perhaps it's the wounded pride and loss of dignity that counts more, restoration of soverignty should help.

So in Iraq we have from the beginning pursued a political solution by setting up local councils, then elections at all levels, a locally drawn up and locally ratified Constitution (climaxing with the dramatic "purple fingers" election; free, fair, even safe) and not least trying to establish security legitimacy for the Iraqi's by training, equipping, advising and most of all turning over control to Iraqi Security Forces. That should take the wind out of the insurgents sails! And in most insurgencies up until now, it would have. But the lot of the GI and most especially the Iraqi civilian worsens, never more than now. Why?

2006-11-06T12:19:00.000+03:00

Our Failure Here

The failure in Iraq is to provide security, the primary purpose for any government and the only justification for any military forces (someone tell the leadership that). If the terrorists are a disease in the body politic (both the West's and Iraq's) then it is failure in the immune system's. The US government failed to protect its' citizens on Sept 11, the Iraqi government does it hourly.

2006-10-30T11:48:00.000+03:00

I just finished "The Shining Path" by Gustavo Gorriti...and am reading "The Spider and the Starfish" (on leaderless organizations) and had following thought:
A.Q may not be the "leaderless organization" A.Q 2.0 is supposed to be, but at most a Hybrid (mix of hierarchical and leaderless, or all channel). Think on this:
UBL hand picked the organizations' staff himself, and has great organizational skills and inclinations.
He was determined enuf about this enterprise to rub out Abdel Azzam, strictly over power and not a falling from the faith as far as we know. That is the will to power. How can he change his spots?
All the original big operations, and 911 were centrally planned and directed. The recent big jetliner attack on London airliners was directed from Pakistan, which still seems to be the hub of things.
The pressure on their hierarchy seems to have severely retarded their ability to close big operations like another attack on US.
If they are truly leaderless, non hierarchy organization why are such precautions taken about the leadership, not only UBL? Why react so violently, and personalize the reaction to getting close to people close to him ? Why is UBL being shadowed by bodyguard with orders to kill him to prevent capture?
Why did Zarqwari have to swear allegiance to UBL?
What got me thinking all this is studying Sendero and the central role of Guzman, and the precautions taken to protect him. Perhaps we, or the non-hierarchical enthusiasts among us saw an organization we wanted to see....flat, leaderless, etc. Maybe AQ isn't "Craigslist" of jihadi after all (I never bought stateless).

2006-10-30T11:29:00.000+03:00

While I cannot offer a path to victory for the entire country, there is a way to make things better and to start to win it back. Six bullet points:
* The population is the objective for us and the terrorists. Orient on people not on terrain or political goals.
* The bulk of the population cannot be considered terrorists or collaborators, but hostages.
* The Iraqi's will fight to free themselves of the yoke of fear, but they cannot win the fight without a big friend present, and he must guard them and their families as they sleep, not drop by from time to time.
* Start focusing on communities local to our bases that are already friendly and moreover economically tied to us.
* We must begin to offer at least the people who have thrown in their lot with democracy a safe place to sleep at night. This mean US forces must be a constant (not necessarily static) presence in their communities.
* Start extending the security US force live in to these local communities from our bases..in other words don't hide in the Green Zone..spread it. Block by block, village by village. Spread the Green Zone, spread the FOB. A little at a time.
If the Iraqi's see safety, they will flock to it and prosper. We have spent three years reinforcing failure (a national makeover). It is time to change tactics.
I can tell you of friendly communities to this base, but they are being squeezed by militants backed by the Wahabbi (who are buying out their houses one by one, combined with the threat of violence it's very effective). Two of them have already fought off onslaughts. They won't hold out forever on their own, but will fight and win with minimal help.

2006-10-29T23:01:00.000+03:00

We have to get more out of our manpower in Iraq if we are going to win. All over this theater there are combat arms tied down with static security and convoy duty that can and often is performed by non-combat arms. I've seen Air Force maids go out on convoy escort. I've also seen way too many idle bodies around...at the pool, at the MWR (morale rec center), hanging around the PX with no mission. How can we even think about asking for more soldiers when we aren't using the bodies we have?

That's what this blant is about...let's get everyone fully employed, so we can start to win. You could free up a couple of brigades if you recognized that combat support tables of organization are designed for a mechanized Army on the move, and that many personnel will be under-utilized when the Army is static.