The View From Here

Poppies and Helicopters

2010-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Here is another example of the paradox of our being in Afghanistan. Can someone tell me why we should still be there? In addition, General Stanley McChrystal has recently hamstrung Special Forces operations in Afghanistan for "being out of control". Hello General--who's fault is that?

We continue to A. Fight a stupid war and
B. Handicap our troops at every opportunity

The end result is more young Americans being killed for NOTHING. How long before the American public is going to wake up, stand up and protest?

George Harris

Afghan poppy harvest is next challenge for U.S. Marines
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MARJAH, Afghanistan — U.S. Marine Sgt. Brad Vandehei stood on the edge of the small opium poppy field that serves as a central helicopter landing zone for the new military compound that's rising nearby.

"Those are poppies, sir?" Vandehei, 25, of Green Bay, Wis., asked Maj. David Fennell as they gazed at the spiked young plants that should be ready for harvest next month. "Let's burn it down, sir."

Fennell was scoping things out for another reason, however: That morning, the poppy farmer turned up with a dozen neighbors to complain about the Marines transforming his lucrative field into a rural helipad.

The swift American-led military offensive that drove the Taliban from power in this southern Afghan farm belt came at an inopportune time for the area's poppy farmers. That's created a quandary for Marjah's new, U.S.-backed leaders and for the American military as they try to transform this sweltering river valley, whose biggest cash crop is opium poppy, into a tranquil breadbasket.

"The helicopters are landing in my field," the weathered farmer told Fennell as they sat in the dirt outside the Marines' newest forward operating base in Marjah. "You have to stop landing there. Next time, the Taliban will put an IED in the field," an improvised explosive device, the military's term for a homemade bomb.

Using his skills as one-time trial lawyer, a few essential Pashto words and an evolving understanding of local tribal culture, Fennell sought to reassure the farmer.

"I apologize for your inconvenience," the 36-year-old Denver reservist told the farmer. "We're here to provide security, and one person must be inconvenienced to provide security for 1,000. But we're not like the Taliban. We're not just going to take; we're going to compensate you."

Unswayed, the Marjah men again pressed Fennell to stop using the field as a landing zone. When it became clear that the Marine wasn't going to budge, they asked for money to pay for the damaged poppy field.

"We're not here to eradicate your poppies, but we won't pay for damage to your poppies," Fennell said. "What we will do is pay for the inconvenience and for any damage to your wheat."

Marjah leaders and the U.S. Marines so far have no clear answers for farmers such as these. The Marines and the new Marjah government are still trying to figure out how to persuade poppy growers not to harvest their crops this spring.

"We are entering the poppy harvest season, which will also put us at great risk for having instability," Marine Col. Randy Newman warned Marjah leaders this past weekend. "So we must talk to the people with one voice about how we will deal with the poppy."

For years, Marjah has been the center of the drug trade in Afghanistan, which provides about 90 percent of the world's opium. About 50 percent of Afghanistan's poppy crop is grown in surrounding Helmand province, and much of the multi-billion-dollar industry is centered in and around Marjah.

The opium trade supports tens of thousands of local farmers and fuels the Taliban, who taxed the crops to pay for weapons and supplies.

"If I was a farmer here I'd be growing poppies," said Mike Courtney, the senior field director in Marjah for Adam Smith International, a global consulting firm that's working in Afghanistan. "It's a Catch-22. How do you win over the population and, at the same time, stop the drug trade?"

U.S. officials largely have given up on destroying Afghanistan's poppy fields as the best way to combat the drug trade. Razing the fields was seen as counterproductive.

Instead, the American-led coalition in Afghanistan launched programs meant to encourage farmers to plant wheat, cotton and other alternative crops. They've had modest success.

The wheat-for-poppy projects have been undermined by corrupt Afghan officials who've given mediocre fertilizer and inferior seeds to farmers and have siphoned off money for themselves.

At the end of the day, poppy brings in more money most years than wheat or cotton does.

"The opium issue takes time," said Haji Abdul Zahir, the newly appointed district governor of Marjah. "It's like if you swat a bee, 1,000 bees will come and sting you. It takes time to stop the drug trade. But we won't do it through eradication."

The Marines have developed a new plan to hand out modest grants to farmers who show that they're planting legal crops. The grants — some $500 per hectare, about two and a half acres — don't compare with the money made from poppy harvests in good years, however.

Plowing under the poppies also could be a dangerous gamble for farmers who took money from drug dealers and Taliban financiers, who might come back to collect the harvest.

At the moment, Afghan and U.S. leaders are betting that the insurgents won't feel bold enough to come looking for their poppies if they have to deal with thousands of American and Afghan fighters.

Some officials have suggested that they simply buy this year's harvest and take it off the streets. Buying millions of dollars in opium could be politically unpalatable, however.

"There's a problem with buying it. There's a problem with burning it," said Marine Capt. Matthew Andrew, of Boise, Idaho, the 30-year-old judge advocate for the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. "The larger problem is security. If they don't have poppies, there's no point in sticking around. The real test is going to be next year."

As the farmers pressed Fennell last weekend to pay for the damaged poppies, he pulled out another weapon in his verbal arsenal: guilt.

"We're not here to eradicate any poppies," Fennell told the men. "But we're worried, because we've seen the addiction to opium among Afghans and we know that good Muslims don't want that."

The men shifted uncomfortably and assured Fennell that they agreed. Then they asked him again to stop helicopter landings in the poppy field.

Fennell patiently told the men that that wasn't going to happen. He asked them to figure out what they thought was a fair price for the adjacent wheat field.

He's still waiting for them to return.

Al-Qaida Calls on US Muslims to Attack

2010-03-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

I am normally a pretty peaceful guy, but if ever there was a reason to mount a special ops mission to snuff someone, this is it. We need to cancel this bastard's stamp NOW. Everyone of these jerks that we allow to continue to run their mouth, you can rest assured it is going to cost us some lives somewhere just as it it at Fort Hood. People are still denying that Nidal Hasan (he doesn't deserve to be called Major) is a terrorist. What they don't understand, they call crazy. But what they REALLY don't understand is that people like Adam Gadahn, or whatever he calls himself, will incite more folks to do just what Hasan did.

So let's get it over with, then we can get on with denying it.

George

Al-Qaida Calls on US Muslims to Attack

March 07, 2010
Associated Press

CAIRO - Al-Qaida's American-born spokesman on Sunday called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood.

In a 25-minute video posted on militant Web sites, Adam Gadahn described Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims, especially those serving Western militaries.

"Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes," he said.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki, was dressed in white robes and wearing a white turban as he called for attacks on what he described as "high-value targets."

"You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage," he said, an assault rifle leaning up against a wall next to him.

Hasan has been charged in the Nov. 5 shooting that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist remains paralyzed from the chest down after being shot by two civilian members of Fort Hood's police force.

"Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers," Gadahn said.

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County. He has been wanted by the FBI since 2004 and two years later was charged with treason. There is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

He has in the past posted videos and messages calling for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. His location is unknown, but he is believed to be somewhere along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the latest video, Gadahn said those planning attacks did not need to use only firearms like Hasan, but could use other weapons. "As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a limited budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon."

Gadahn said fighters should target mass transportation systems in the West and also wreak havoc "by killing or capturing people in government, industry and the media."

He recommended finding ways to shake "consumer confidence and stifle spending" and noted that even unsuccessful attacks, such as the failed attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas day, can bring major cities to a halt.

"I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance in general and America, Britain and Israel in particular to prepare to play his due role in responding to and repelling the aggression of the enemies of Islam," Gadahn said.

How many is enough

2010-03-04T04:25:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything for a while, mostly because I have been involved in things here at home. The bombing in Baghdad in the past few days as early voting begins there forced me to ask myself how many more have to die before this all ends. In addition, this article in the Charlotte Observer about a speech by General David Petraeus made this question even more pressing.
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Petraeus predicts 'a hard year' of war in Afghanistan
By Peter St. Onge
pstonge@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010

America is about to embark on the longest campaign in its longest war, the commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East told a Charlotte audience Tuesday.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, told a crowd of more than 550 at the Westin Charlotte that a civil and military counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, now revving up, will take about 12-18 months.

"This is going to be a hard year," he said.

Petraeus, armed with slides and laser pointer, took questions for about an hour at a luncheon hosted by the World Affairs Council of Charlotte. Most of the conversation centered on the war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001 and will pass the Vietnam War this month as the longest war abroad in American history, many historians say.

Petraeus was optimistic, however, of a positive outcome. The United States has learned from its counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, he said, and many of that war's key figures are now in Afghanistan. They will be joined, eventually, by 30,000 additional American forces, as well as about 8,000 that NATO has committed.

Already, he said, the U.S. has killed "boatloads of bad guys" in Afghanistan, but cautioned: "You don't just kill and capture your way out." Recent strategy shifts emphasize limiting the loss of civilian lives, he said, helping the U.S. strengthen its relationship with Afghans.

The policy played a role in why the U.S. announced in advance the February invasion of one-time Taliban stronghold Marja. Some Taliban escaped in advance of the invasion, Petraeus acknowledged, but it allowed the U.S. to save the city from the destruction that full-scale fighting would have inflicted. "We didn't want to destroy Marja to save it," he said.

Petraeus, who did not answer questions from the media, was not asked by the audience about a NATO airstrike in February that killed at least 20 Afghan civilians. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, apologized for the deaths.

The war, Petraeus said, is a "hugely important endeavor," noting that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, took root in Afghanistan. "We can't let Afghanistan be a sanctuary or a safe haven again," he said.

Petraeus was asked about Iran's recent nuclear activity, which he said is prompting new sanctions and U.S. diplomatic pressure. "That's the focus right now," he said.

Also, one audience member asked about the general possibly running for president - a question posed regularly in political circles.

Petraeus, fresh off an appearance in Nashville, answered with a nod to country performer Lorrie Morgan, who sang: "What part of no don't you understand?"

As of Tuesday, March 2, 2010, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed 5,383 young American service personnel. Another 36,837 have been wounded and many of them have what are euphemistically called “life altering injuries”. In other words, they have lost limbs or eyes (or both) or have suffered a traumatic brain injury that has wreaked havoc with their lives. MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) (when they are available) are saving the lives of our service personnel, but the ordinary M1A1 U.S. Service Member is still subject to devastating injury. Body armor and helmets do a pretty good job, but there are gaps in them and snipers have learned to exploit these vulnerabilities. There are many problems with the MRAPs—they’re big, unwieldy, extremely heavy, (72% of the worlds bridges won’t carry them) and they are hard to maneuver in the narrow streets of the cities, towns and villages our folks are fighting in.

In the ten years that the Soviets tried to subdue the Mujahideen, they lost just over 12,000 killed and some 35,478 wounded. No one knows how accurate these figures are, but they are very telling. And no one has a clue as to how many civilians were killed/maimed. Estimates run from just under 700,000 to over 2,000,000.

As to how many Afghanis and Iraqis have been killed in the latest wars is probably an onageristic estimate also. (This is my own term—an onager is a fast running wild ass of central Asia). The numbers look like this at last count (Feb 16, 2010):

Casualties in Afghanistan:

Afghan troops killed 8,587 Afghan troops seriously injured 25,761
Afghan civilians killed 8,309 Afghan civilians seriously injured 14,956
Total killed in Afghanistan: 16,896 Total injured in Afghanistan: 40,717
Casualties in Iraq:

Iraqi troops killed 30,000 Iraqi troops seriously injured 90,000
Iraqi civilians killed 815,411 Iraqi civilians seriously injured 1,467,740
Total killed in Iraq: 845,411 Total injured in Iraq: 1,557,740

(From “Unknown News” published by Helen and Harry Highwater: http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html)

How many is enough? Are we supposed to wait until we have enough deaths to justify building another memorial the size of the Vietnam Memorial, which has 58,261 names on it? Or will we be willing to settle for a smaller memorial listing those who did not have to die in a war that was fabricated and instigated with lies? Fifty-two thousand eight hundred seventy-eight is all we have to go. That’s about as many people as live in the Fargo, ND-Moorhead, MI area or the Lewiston, ID-Clarkston, WA area. It’s about as many registered Democrats as there are in all of Wyoming.

So again—How many is enough? I don't know, but would the last person who leaves please turn out the lights?

The face of suicide

2010-02-01T07:12:00.000-08:00

Not all of this is about suicides, but it does tell some tragic stories. The last article is about Command Sergeant Major Samuel Rhodes who has ben to the dark place and returned. His admonition--all the money in the world won't help--leadership is the problem. Despite all the mouthings of our leaders, the stigma of mental illness, PTSD or whatever name you want to hang on these victims is still there. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the JCS knows damned well the problem is OPTEMPO and PERSTEMPO, yet we continue to stress our troops by repeated tours in a war that seems to have no end. Yes, some talks are going on and some troioips are coming out of Iraq, but some troops are still dying as the result of enemy action, some are among the walking dead,; their soul sucked out of them by their experiences and sadly some are dying by their own hand, haunted by the ghosts of this war.

George Harris

5 months after Iraq bloodbath, young veteran takes his life

By Cynthia Hubert Sacramento Bee

On March 7, 2007, Army Spc. Trevor Hogue was inside his barracks in Baghdad, describing his morning on the battlefield.

"I saw things today that I think will mess me up for life," Hogue typed to his mother, Donna, as she sat at her computer thousands of miles away from Iraq, in Granite Bay.

That day the young soldier, whose assignment included driving a Humvee through perhaps the most dangerous ZIP code on the globe, saw his sergeant blown to pieces. He saw the bodies of half of the men in his platoon torn apart. Heads were cut off and limbs severed. It happened 30 yards in front of him, and he had never been so afraid, he told his mom.

"My arms are around you," Donna Hogue wrote. "You'll be alright."

But Hogue never really recovered. Last week, he committed suicide by hanging himself in the backyard of his childhood home. He was 24 years old.

According to the Army, soldiers are killing themselves at the highest rate in nearly three decades, surpassing the civilian suicide rate for the first time since the Vietnam War.

At least 128 U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, a number that has risen four years in a row. The death toll could be even higher this year. Through April, 91 soldiers had committed suicide.

Hogue's death, because it occurred after he was discharged, is not included in those statistics. But his friends and loved ones believe he was a casualty of war as much as any soldier on active duty.

"You think that they are safe when they get back home," Donna Hogue said, tearfully reading printed messages that she and her son exchanged while he was at war. "They're not. The reality of the things that they experienced continues to haunt them."

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VA system ill-equipped to treat mental anguish of war, 2/5/07

Iraq War veteran Timothy Bowman, of the Illinois National Guard, committed suicide in November 2005. He had been home from the war only 8 months.

FORRESTON, Ill—A year ago on Thanksgiving morning, in the corrugated metal pole barn that housed his family's electrical business, Timothy Bowman put a handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. The bullet only grazed his forehead. So he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger again.

He had been home from the Iraq war for only eight months. Once a fun-loving, life-of-the-party type, Bowman had slipped into an abyss, tormented by things he'd been ordered to do in war.

"I'm OK. I can deal with it," he would say whenever his father, Mike, urged him to get counseling.

A young warrior who spent months patrolling the treacherous highway that runs between the Baghdad airport and the city's fortified Green Zone, Tim received several medals and is set to be posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

"Tim always referred to the National Guard soldiers as the Army's disposable soldiers," his father, Mike Bowman, said. "Six months of training to kill, 12 months of the nastiest duty in Iraq and then two weeks that the Army gave them to be re-educated back to civilian life.

"It's not humanly possible to readjust to civilian life with that type of treatment," he said.

In the small town of Grundy Center, Iowa, Randy and Ellen Omvig keep a large plastic freezer bag. Inside is a piece of torn paper with "Mom & Dad" written at the top.

When she first saw it in December 2005, Ellen thought it was a Christmas list from her son Josh, who had just walked out the front door.

Then she read the words:

"Don't think this is because of you," it said. "You did the best you could with me. The faces and the voices just won't go away."

The note indicated Josh's imminent suicide and went on to apologize for the pain he would cause. He said he had just received a driving-while-intoxicated charge—a surprise since he rarely drank. "This kills all hope of becoming a police officer that I ever had," he wrote.

By the time Ellen realized what the note was about, she ran outside. Josh was getting in his truck. She grabbed the side mirror, yelling hysterically that he would have to run her over before driving away. He yelled back, about a friend who had been killed in Iraq.

"Your battle buddy would not want you to die," she screamed.

"Mom, you don't understand," he said. "I've been dead ever since I left Iraq."

Josh shot himself in the head a few seconds later, as a police officer—and close friend—pulled up. His case made local headlines and has since become the inspiration for legislation in Congress to better prevent veteran suicides.

Josh Omvig had been a happy kid who signed up for the Army Reserves the day after he turned 18. He spent an intense 10 months in Iraq and then suddenly was home again. In the space of six days, he went from serving in Iraq to sitting at his family's Thanksgiving dinner table.

In the 13 months that followed, it was clear that Josh had changed. His parents urged him to get help. But he was convinced that showing up at the VA would go on his record, costing him a career in the military and law enforcement.

The Omvigs believe the nation faces a cascade of mental health problems.

"There are so many Joshes coming back now," Randy Omvig said.

In many respects, the Omvigs' story is remarkably similar to that of the Bowmans', whose son Tim killed himself on Thanksgiving Day in 2005.

It's impossible to know what goes through the mind of any suicidal veteran, or whether care would have made a difference. But as he tries to rebuild his life without his son, Mike Bowman is convinced that even a little care would have been better than none.

Tim Bowman joined the National Guard after Sept. 11 but before the Iraq war.

He was a charming jokester, a small-town kid who played musical instruments in high school, attended some junior college and then went to work in his family's electrical business in Polo, Ill.

He left for the war on March 4, 2004, his 22nd birthday.

Over the next 12 months, his assignments varied, but among them was helping patrol Route Irish, the treacherous airport highway. He told his father about having to bag body parts.

In his communications back home, Tim became an expert at withholding the details of his reality. He did open up once, however. Home for a short leave, Tim and his father stopped for a beer after a softball game. They got into their deepest conversation about the war and even talked about an episode in which Tim, as the last line of defense, said he was forced to shoot at a car—with a family inside—that had failed to stop at a checkpoint.

"He was really quiet as he told me—not at all the normal Tim," his father said. (His commander at the time said he is unaware of any incident like Tim described. Tim's father said Tim may have been involved in a shooting and "assumed the worst in his state of mind.")

At the end of his leave, Tim didn't want to go back to Iraq, but he didn't not want to go back, either. More than anything, he couldn't stand being away from his unit.

He returned home for good in March 2005. His deployment had included some mental health screening, but he told his father that it was "a joke." Soldiers coming off months of active duty would say anything during the screenings. "All they wanted to do was get home," his father said.

That was a feeling shared by Tim's commander in Iraq, Maj. Mike Kessel of Mahomet, Ill., who recently retired after 21 years in the Army National Guard. Two months before his unit returned home to Illinois, Kessel urged his bosses to change the demobilization process by letting the soldiers go home briefly before returning for health screening.

"I knew we were going to have problems," Kessel said. But his proposal was rejected.

"We got off the bus, we had a five-minute ceremony, and, boom, we were released," he said. "We didn't come back to drill for 110 days. Suddenly, your support system is gone. We had 120 people in 70 communities spread across five states."

Tim came home and tried to dive back into his life, working his electrical job and volunteering at the fire department. He'd be pleasant one minute and flip out over mild annoyances the next.

"I don't feel right here," Tim admitted during a rare candid conversation with his sister Michelle. "I'm spending too much time in the bar," he added.

Tim took a six-week National Guard assignment to help with the Hurricane Katrina recovery. His family said he relished the structure of the unit. He even began talking about the possibility of going back to Iraq.

"What better place for a soldier to die," he told his father one night.

In November, Tim scheduled an appointment with the VA. His father wasn't sure what it was for—mental issues, or perhaps follow-up for a hand injury that Tim had suffered in Iraq.

The night before Thanksgiving, Tim had a great conversation with his father and his sister. He seemed his old, jovial self. His family now believes that by then he already knew what he was about to do.

The next day, Tim didn't show up for an extended-family Thanksgiving dinner. They called and called. Finally, Mike Bowman decided to see if Tim was at the family business. He found him on the floor, shot but still breathing.

Tim died two hours later.

At Tim's funeral, Kessel, his commanding officer, found that several other soldiers were having mental troubles, too—and having trouble getting into the VA.

"They were told, `We can't get you in for six months,'" Kessel said. "We started pulling a bunch of strings and making lots of noise, and then people started listening.

"But it was one soldier too late."
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I didn't used to be this bad.

John Wixom, a burly 58-year-old with a full gray beard and long brown hair, has been in Carlsbad his whole life, except for his year of service during the Vietnam War.

He works at a potash mine east of town, maintaining its vehicles and equipment. All along, he's had trouble dealing with other people, with crowds, with Fourth of July fireworks. He flies off the handle with little provocation. "I get so mad I want to choke somebody, and I'm afraid I will choke somebody," he said.

At work, he said, colleagues drop heavy tools or whack a big metal drum "just to see me jump."

"Everybody at work knows what a Wix fit is," Wixom said.

After 35 years of suppressing his rage and drinking away his memories of Vietnam, Wixom said that his emotions are erupting more regularly. He has night sweats two to four times a week and nightmares regularly—apparently provoked by the latest war news from Iraq.

"I didn't used to be this bad," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tough old soldier battles new enemy: Suicide epidemic

By Halimah Abdullah McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Samuel Rhodes keeps pictures of the dead in his pockets.

They're the faces of young soldiers whose eyes stare out resolutely from photocopied pages worn and creased by the ritual of unfolding them, smoothing them flat and refolding them.

They're the faces of men who, haunted by problems at home or memories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the dead children, the fallen comrades and the lingering smell of burnt flesh — pressed guns to their heads and pulled the triggers or tied ropes with military precision and hanged themselves.

The pictures remind Rhodes of how close he came to joining them and how, sometimes when the sadness presses in dark and suffocating, he still mentally pens suicide notes.

"How many times have I written that letter in my head?" he said. "I still think about suicide, but when I start thinking about it I have to think, 'What's the impact on everyone I care about?' "

It's been roughly five years since Rhodes came home from his third tour in Iraq, and despite a highly-decorated 29-year career in the Army, a new book, more than a hundred speaking engagements and praise from the likes of Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, for his efforts in suicide prevention, Rhodes still wrestles with his own demons. When he speaks to crowds and gently holds up the photos of fellow servicemen who've committed suicide, it's as if he's holding up a mirror.

"It's not about me," he tells soldiers. "Every one of us can tell our own story. Start telling it. Change the culture of silence."

Rhodes is among a small cadre of senior non-commissioned officers and officers who're opening up about their journeys back from the brink of suicide — efforts that top military commanders applaud as they battle a suicide epidemic. The open support from the military's uppermost ranks for openly discussing a topic long considered taboo is a revolution triggered largely by both greater awareness and pressure to curb record-high suicide rates.

This month, the Defense Department reported that there were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides in 2009, up from 140 in 2008. Of these, 114 have been confirmed, while the cause of death in the remaining 46 remains to be determined. The increase in military suicides includes men between the ages of 18-30, mid-career officers and, increasingly, women.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders have said the increase is likely related to repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and to the stigma long associated with seeking treatment for mental health problems. Many soldiers are embarrassed to seek help and worried that doing so will hamper their prospects for advancement.

In response, the Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into new suicide prevention programs and thousands of hours on helping soldiers suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Through programs such as the Real Warriors Campaign, with its catchphrase of "Resilience. Recovery. Reintegration," the military encourages soldiers to help others by sharing their stories of sorrow.

Veterans such as Rhodes put a different face on grief.

"The one thing that I've found when talking to soldiers and leaders, a lot of the response has been, 'this is the first time we've had a senior leader who has dealt with this talk about it,'" Rhodes said. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much money we put into this system to change policies and whatever else. At the end of the day, it's leadership."

For Rhodes, 49, who grew up in Ringgold, Ga. and lives in the shadow of Fort Benning, near Columbus, Ga., where he once commanded troops, the Iraq war was a greedy ghost that stole him away for 30 months and gnawed at his marriage and his sanity.

He lost both during his third tour. Rhodes' sky cracked open in April 2005.

"The first hundred days, we didn't have a boy get a scratch. Then we lost two guys when their suits caught on fire. It started then. Then a couple days later we lost a few more."

Then the unit lost two captains — younger men with children and career aspirations.

"We arrived at the scene, and that was the first time I saw a human body in so many dismemberments. A young private walked over to me with a hand and said, 'What do I do with this?' I took his ring off and said, 'Put this over in that bag.' "

In all, he watched 37 soldiers die during his time in Iraq. Rhodes pushed on through heavy fighting, fatigue and a grief so deep that it threatened to swallow him whole.

Then one day, everything went dark.

"I woke up on the helicopter, and a young soldier put a card in my pocket and said, 'You've been serviced by Angel Flight.' "

Rhodes was flown to a military hospital in Baghdad and was diagnosed with PTSD. He made what he calls "a deal with the devil" and was offered an opportunity to slow down and receive counseling.

He was also prescribed medication for depression, which he rarely took. Soon he started sleepwalking.

"I'd tie myself to my bunk at night. One time I was found on top of my bunk and was brought back down."

Back home, his wife, Carol, found that she could relax only after 10 at night, figuring that the Army would never bring her news of her husband's death any later than that. His son, Sam, dropped out of college and joined the Army in the hopes of fighting alongside his father in Iraq.

That November, Rhodes was sent to Fort Benning to help lead a brigade. By day, he was a stalwart commander, barking out orders and in full control. At night he'd go back to his now empty apartment — he and Carol had divorced — drink and think about whether in death he might find some sort of respite from the nightmares and the overwhelming guilt he felt because he'd survived and others hadn't.

"I went to a friend's house, a retired veteran, I got a gun from him with bullets, and the next day I was trying to figure out when and where to do it."

Col. Charles Durr, the brigade commander, sensed that Rhodes was having problems and pulled him aside.

"He spent the day with me, and he recognized I was having issues; he didn't know I was considering suicide," Rhodes said. "It was just a very positive day. He told me I was doing a good job. When somebody says something positive to you and reinforces you're doing good things, it makes it seem better."

Slowly, painfully, Rhodes found his way back.

He met Cathy, a friendly Army IT specialist who made him feel new. They married in a small, spur-of-the-moment ceremony in Fort Benning's chapel, then dashed off for a whirlwind honeymoon in Las Vegas.

It was willfully impulsive, and it was the closest thing to normal he'd felt in a long time.

He also rediscovered a love of horses and found catharsis in stoking their smooth coats and silently unburdening all his troubles on his quiet, gentle companions.

Rhodes also came to realize that his father, William Rhodes, a highly decorated World War II veteran who'd saved the life of future Georgia governor Marvin Griffin in combat, also suffered from PTSD and drank to deal with his demons.

Fearing a generational curse, Rhodes told his son, who's currently serving in Iraq, about his own and his grandfather's problems, and he prays that the military's changing attitude about mental health might help spare Sam his father's and grandfather's fate.

He decided that he might be able to help others, too. So one day, following a presentation on suicide prevention in the Army, Rhodes went up to the facilitator and said, "I think I can help."

He has. Rhodes receives hundreds of e-mails every week from soldiers who pour out their hearts with secrets they don't feel they can tell their spouses or their commanding officers. He encourages them to get help, and every once in a while they do.

"The other week, we were at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, and we were walking into the building, an old theater, this E-7 (Sergeant 1st Class) was sitting there with his sunglasses. (Rhodes) said hi to him 'cause the guy looked disturbed," Cathy Rhodes said. "People came up after the presentation. This one soldier came up to him and had taken off his sunglasses, and he said, 'Sergeant Major, I want to thank you.' That really touched my heart."

Major Hasan--Still in the news

2010-01-28T04:36:00.000-08:00

Brennan pushes back on Lieberman over Fort Hood shooting

Posted By Josh Rogin Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:49 PM

In a previously undisclosed letter, John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism advisor, pushes back on complaints on Capitol Hill that the Obama administration has not been cooperative with Congress over the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.

"I do not believe this is a fair or accurate assessment," Brennan writes."Starting from the first moments after this tragedy, the President directed us to keep Congress appropriately informed."

Brennan goes on to detail the various briefings members of the administration have given to congressional leaders, committee chairs, and staffers, and promises that more information from the Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI is forthcoming.

The letter, addressed to Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, is dated Jan. 27 and was exclusively obtained by The Cable. It is ostensibly a response to a Dec. 3 request by the two senators, who cochair the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, for certain unspecified documents.

To the Army's evident discomfort, Lieberman has suggested repeatedly that the Fort Hood shooting was terrorism, not a random act by a mentally disturbed individual, and vowed to use the committee to fully investigate the incident. The shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, has been linked to Anwar al-Awlaqi -- the radical Yemeni-American cleric who has since become a top "kill or capture" target for U.S. intelligence agencies and Special Forces teams operating in Yemen -- but Hasan showed signs of deep emotional instability before his Nov. 5 attack.

In his letter, Brennan first refers to the massacre as a "tragedy," but he seems to hedge his language here:

The President has a solemn responsibility to protect this nation from future acts of terrorism. In sharing what we have learned about what happened at Fort Hood, he is confident that we can help prevent such senseless acts of violence in the future."

So which is it? Terrorism or a senseless act of violence?

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This above letter can be found here:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/100127_Brennan_Response_to_Lieberman_and_Collins_1-26-10.pdf

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While I do not like Senator Joe Liberman (I think he is self-serving and is willing to sell his soul to stay in office) Ido agree with his assessment of Maor Hasan's actions. This article, written in November by the same author lays out Senator Liberman's position.

Casey vs. Lieberman on Ft. Hood Massacre

Posted By Josh Rogin Monday, November 9, 2009 - 2:22 PM

Army Chief of Staff George Casey took to the airwaves Sunday to warn the public not to overemphasize unconfirmed reports about anti-American and religious statements allegedly made by alleged Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Hasan.

"I think we need to be very careful here about speculating based on anecdotes like that," Casey said on ABC's This Week, "We all want to know what happened and what motivated the suspect, but I think we need to be very, very careful here in these early days to let the investigation take its course."

He warned that any effort to prejudge Hasan as a terrorist or as having religious motivations could cause unnecessary and harmful effects for the 3,000 plus Muslims currently serving in the military.

"I think the speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here," Casey said.

Meanwhile, Senator Joseph Lieberman, I-CT, was on Fox news talking all about Hasan's motivations and warning that the attack could be a new model of terrorism on U.S. soil.

"It's clear that he was, one, under personal stress and, two, if the reports that we're receiving of various statements he made, acts he took, are valid, he had turned to Islamist extremism," Lieberman said, "And therefore, if that is true, the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act and, in fact, it was the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11."

Lieberman stated that the evidence was not all in, but he went on to detail each and every reported allegation of Hasan's anti-American behavior, including reports that he compared suicide bombers to U.S. soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in war and that he shouted ‘Allah Ahkbar' during the attack.

"The fact that he did that at the moment of these murders - if that's confirmed, of course - raises genuine concerns that this was a terrorist act," Lieberman said, ""There's concern from what we know now about Hasan that, in fact, that's exactly what he was, a self-radicalized home-grown terrorist."

He promised to start an investigation in his Homeland Security Committee as to Hasan's motives. The Army declined to comment Lieberman's investigation.

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I appreciate General Casey's concerns, but this was an act of terrorism and the sooner folks understand this, the sooner we can learn how to ferret out these single terrorists and stop them in their tracks before they commit another heinous crime.

General finds "McChrystal Ball" in Afghanistan

2010-01-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

McChrystal predicts “real progress” in Afghanistan by December

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 02:20 PM PST

With all the talk in Washington about Amb. Karl Eikenberry's leaked cables opposing President Obama's surge strategy, his military counterpart Gen. Stanley McChrystal is right on message, predicting the path to victory will be clear by the time the troops start to leave in the middle of next year.

McChrystal is setting six-month milestones for progress in a talk in Kabul, shown in this video provided by NATO TV:

"I believe that by this coming summer, it's going to be obvious to the people in this room that things have changed, but it won't be obvious to people 3,000 miles or 10,000 miles away," he says in the video, predicting progress just as additional combat troops begin to arrive

"I think by next December, we'll be able to show with hard numbers and things, real progress," McChrystal goes on, without getting into specifics. "We'll be able to go ‘Look, here's more areas we cover, here's this, this, this.'"

Here's the kicker:

"And I think by the summer of 2011, it will be enough progress where the Afghans and the Taliban particularly, believe it, believe they're not going to win," McChrystal says, identifying the breaking point of the Taliban as around the same time U.S. forces are slated to begin withdrawing.

Seeming to contradict himself, McChrystal also speaks at length about the need to have a sustained presence in remote Afghan areas to convince locals to take the huge risk of turning on the Taliban and siding with Afghan and NATO forces. He talks about the need to stay and prove to locals that their long-term interest is in supporting and even defending the government before the coalition can transfer security to Afghan control.

McChrystal also addresses the controversial issue of reintegrating Taliban fighters. Most foreign fighters can't be reintegrated, he says, and most local fighters won't switch sides -- they will simply decide to stop attacking the government forces.

"I think a lot of reintegration won't be formal," says McChrystal. "It will just be, you'll just notice there are fewer of them."
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How does General McChrystal propose to do this? There is an old Arabian proverb that says: "Keep your friends close--hold your enemies closer." And that is exactly what the general and President Hamid Karzai are proposing. Their plan is to woo Taliban fighters away by offering them jobs, security by taking some of them of various hit lists and protecting themagainst retaliation and Karzai even wants to integrate some Taliban leaders back into the political scene.

This plan is going to be presented today in London. The hope is that those participating in the action in Afghanistan will provide the necesary funds (and perhaps troops) to make this work. Special envoy to AFghanistan, Richard Holbrooke agrees with the plan and Britain has announced it will help fund the effort.

Will this work? Only time can tell. Most of the tribes in Afghanistan have little faith in the government and in the karzai government in particular. The tribes themselves have trouble getting along together and within tribges, various factions often have uneasy an easy peace. It has just been announced that the largest Pashtun tribe in a major Taliban area, the Shinwari tribe, has decided to fight the Taliban. This is a significant break-through since this tribe has had members killed when they have attempted to fight back. But they apparently have had enough. We have been promised the Shinwaris a million dollars in various projects. This money will go directly to the tribal leaders and the local Karzai government will be left out of the formula.

Perhaps this is the first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel and if we had only known that such a prgram would solve the problem, we could have saved nearly 5,000 American lives and tens of thousands of wounded Americans whose lives have been altered forever. And this doesn't even consider the thousand and thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who have been killed. And the fiscal cost would have been far less. This could have meant that billions of dollars might have been available to the people of this nation. Coming up with an affordable health care plan would have been much easier with all this extra money around.

IMHO, we still don't understand these people and neither have others who have come to Afghanistan for various reasons. We simply don't undrstand how deep their religious fervor runs. We think we know the right thing to do--kinda like the power plant we have built in Afghanistan that is too sophisticated and too expensive for the Afghanis to operate. But USAID knew what was best.

Only time and many more casualties will tell.

Suicides continue to climb

2010-01-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

Back in November, I posted this question a friend had asked me about the status of mental health care in the military—

Do the military medical services still lack the capacity to adequately treat mental problems? As a PTSD sufferer myself I can certainly attest to this paucity of care in the past, but I had believed improvements had been made. Was I wrong?

At that time I wrote that despite the military’s best efforts the suicide rates were still climbing. And my conclusion was that things were not getting better. Well I am sad to say that not only are things not getting better, they are getting worse. It is a long read, but here is what McClatchy News is reporting as of January 15, 2010—

BY HALIMAH ABDULLAH
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- Eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have etched indelible scars on the psyches of many of the nation's service members, and the U.S. military is losing a battle to stem an epidemic of suicides in its ranks.

Despite calls by top Pentagon officials for a sea change in attitudes about mental health, millions of dollars in new suicide-prevention programming and thousands of hours spent helping soldiers suffering from what often are euphemistically dubbed "invisible wounds," the military is losing ground.

The Department of Defense Friday reported that there were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides in 2009, up from 140 in 2008. Of these, 114 have been confirmed, while the manner of death in the remaining 46 remains to be determined.

"There's no question that 2009 was a painful year for the Army when it came to suicides," said Col. Christopher Philbrick, the deputy director of the Army Suicide Prevention Task Force, in a statement, despite what he called "wide-ranging measures last year to confront the problem."
While the military's suicide rate is comparable to civilian rates, the increase last year is alarming because the armed services traditionally had lower suicide rates than the general population did.

"I look at the numbers of each service, and that rate has gone up at the same rate across the services," Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a gathering of military mental health professionals and advocates last week. "This isn't just a ground force problem."

Some of the suicides are young men, fresh from deployments and haunted by memories, who shoot themselves after they return from their second or third tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, or when romantic relationships turn sour, sometimes due to long separations or post-traumatic stress.

Others are career officers who quietly nurse addictions to drugs or alcohol and finally decide to silence their ghosts.

An increasing number are female soldiers, who rarely committed suicide before but now are killing themselves at a much higher rate.

"There does not appear to be any scientific correlation between the number of deployments and those that are at risk, but I'm just hard pressed to believe that's not the case," Mullen said.
The emotional wounds are so deep and the suicide rates are so high that top Pentagon officials broke a generations-long code of silence on the topic and have started speaking publicly and vehemently about the effects of mental illness.

At Fort Benning, Ga., which defense experts say ranks among the top installations for effective mental health screening, retired Brigade Command Sgt. Maj. Samuel Rhodes' speech to troops about how he considered suicide after serving for 30 months in Iraq encouraged other soldiers to come forward.

The military's shift in attitudes about mental health was evident during last week's joint Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs suicide prevention conference, where uniformed attendees spoke openly about the stigma of seeking mental health care, the need for policy changes that will make help easier to get and the importance of supporting the families of troops suffering from mental illness.

"It's a joint DOD and VA conference, that alone says an awful lot about where we used to be and where we are now," Mullen said.

With one of the highest suicide rates in the Army, Fort Campbell, a sprawling installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border that's home to the elite 101st Airborne Division, illustrates the severity of the problem.

"Our issues here at Fort Campbell identically mirror the issues mirroring the Army as a whole. The demographics are almost exactly: white males 18-29 who commit suicide (using handguns)," said Joe Varney, the Fort Campbell suicide prevention program manager.
In 2007, Fort Campbell created a suicide task force after nine soldiers committed suicide, three during the first few weeks of October, and 101st Airborne's commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, reached out to soldiers and their families.

"As our soldiers fight terrorism, the sacrifices asked of them and their families have increased significantly," Schloesser said in a letter to troops. "Regrettably, under such circumstances, it is natural for our people to feel the stress of these demands and to be overwhelmed at times. Tragically, these pressures too often end in suicide."

The following year, Fort Campbell's suicide rate jumped to 12.

The base hired a suicide-prevention program manager and dispatched staffers to study trends, increased awareness training for troops and boosted the number of mental health professionals available to soldiers while in combat and after they return. Army officials say those efforts could prove useful service-wide.

Last year, Fort Campbell held a three-day "suicide stand-down," and top officials pleaded with soldiers to get mental help if they needed it and assured them that seeking such help wasn't a sign of weakness and wouldn't affect their careers.

The number of suicides increased to 14 in 2009.

"It's been discouraging to say the least," Varney said.

Stemming the rise in suicides will take more than conferences, task forces, training and studies, said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the director of behavioral health for the Office of the Army Surgeon General. The military also will have to grapple with the easy availability of handguns, a topic that's sure to be unpopular, she said.

"It's amazing to me when you see Fort Campbell, which is at the top of suicide lists. They have a beautiful gun shop in the middle of the (Post Exchange)," Ritchie said. "I'm troubled by what I see as a mixed message."

Some soldiers who receive counseling are still committing suicide, and many think - with good reason, given previous military policies and attitudes about mental health - that seeking treatment could ruin careers, she said.

"We cannot change stigma until we change policies that contribute to stigma," Ritchie said. "In many ways we talk out of both sides of our mouths."

The Obama administration, at the behest of a small bipartisan congressional group, is reviewing a long-standing unofficial policy that bars the president from sending condolence letters to the families of servicemen and women who commit suicide.

Family members of soldiers who've committed suicide said that changing the policy would go a long way toward removing the stigma because the military already provides a full military burial for soldiers who commit suicide.

"That policy reflects the heartlessness to those who served. They've been inflicted with hidden wounds, but it doesn't mean they're any less lethal," said Kevin Lucey, of Belchertown, Mass., whose son Jeffrey, a 23-year-old Marine, hanged himself less than a year after he returned from Iraq. The government settled with the family for $350,000.

Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, may well be on the right track when he says he is hard pressed to not believe that the number of deployments affects the number of suicides.

Despite setting up offices and people to study the “Why” of suicides, they continue to climb. Despite stand-downs and new policies to get rid of the “stigma”, our young men and women keep offing themselves. I, for one, think that repeated deployments to wars that seem to have no end in sight have everything to do with what is happening. Many of our young service personnel are on the fourth and perhaps fifth rotation and each time they go they see the same things, are exposed to the same roadside IEDs and suicide bombers and the same endless nothingness of a war. They see millions of dollars being wasted or stolen by governments and unprincipled contractors. They find they don’t have enough “stuff” to do their job and yet they a re sent back again and again. It is like the movie “Groundhog Day” with bullets and IEDs.
And when someone does kill himself or herself, they are treated like a pariah. There is an “unofficial policy” that the president won’t write condolence letters to the families of these war victims. The president is “reviewing” this policy. Reviewing it—Hell do away with it Mr. President. Don’t the figures tell you anything? By not expressing your sorrow and the sorrow of the Nation, you are adding to the stigma. This is an epidemic, just like the H1N1 flu problem—we need to mobilize and use every weapon we have to fight this epidemic.

More importantly, we need to ask ourselves why are we still in Iraq and Afghanistan. And unless we can answer we can actually prove that being there is keeping terrorists from our door, the we need to figure out how we get out with some kind of honor.

Major Hasan--How Did He Do It?

2010-01-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

Our local fishwrap, The News and Messenger (January 12, 2009) carried an article that pondered how it was that Major Nidal Hasan was able to get through medical school and a psychiatry residency despite the fact that his performance all along the way was substandard.

Oh, if you only knew!

Let’s start with Major Hasan’s education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine, our nation’s military medical school. Medical students entering the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine are commissioned as at the entry level (2nd Lieutenant/Ensign) in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Public Health Service. They are paid at this grade for the four (or more) years they attend school but they pay no tuition, laboratory fees, etc. while they attend school. Once they complete school, they are advanced to Captain/Lieutenant and begin their internship and eventual payback for their “free” medical education. At this point, the government (the Armed Forces) has something approaching $500,000 invested in each graduating student. This does not count their pay and allowances. At the current pay scale, new students pay and allowances for four years comes to just over $271,000. Of course, this investment is greater for the student who doesn’t finish in four years as was the case for Major Hasan—the six year tally comes to more than $470,000. So the government has somewhere between three-quarters and nearly a million dollars invested in a new physician before they begin their internship and any specialty training. Hasan was promoted to Captain upon graduation and his annual income for the next four years was more than $385,000 (again, based on the current pay scale). This includes another year of training for master’s degree in public health—the cost of that schooling has not been calculated in this figure.

The Uniformed Services University has never been able to fully quantify just how much it costs to train a medical student because the school does much more than just train physicians. There are numerous PhD programs, research programs and other training courses that impact the cost of operating the medical school. But conservatively the government had something over $1.25 million invested in Major Hasan when he was transferred to Fort Hood.

Despite his poor performance in medical school and his residency program, those in charge of Major Hasan equivocated repeatedly on his Officer Evaluation Reports and on reports regarding his performance during his residency.

On May 17, 2007, Major Scott Moran, an Army psychiatrist and director of Major Hasan’s psychiatry residency training program wrote the following memorandum:

"Consortium Participating Instructions: Uniformed Services University of Health
Sciences, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, National Naval Medical Center,
Malcolm Grow USAF Medical Center

May 17, 2007

Memorandum for: Credentials Committee

Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan

1. I am the program director for NCC Psychiatry Residency Training Program. I
took over as PD in MAR 2007 and was Assistant PD from July 2006. I have
been a faculty member of the residency since July 2004.
2. This memo is based on my personal knowledge of and the documented
incidences in CPT Hasan’s Resident Training File.
3. The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work
ethic. Clinically he is competent to deliver safe patient care. But he
demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism. In
his PGY-2 year, he was counseled for inappropriately discussing religious
topics with his assigned patients. He also required a period of in-program
remediation when he was discovered to have not documented appropriately an
ER encounter with a homicidal patient who subsequently eloped from the ER.
He did successfully remediate this problem. At the end of his PGY-2 year,
he was placed on administrative probation by the NCC GMEC for failure to
take and pass USMLE Step 3 and to obtain an unrestricted state medical
license by the end of his PGY-2 year; as a result he was not promoted to
PGY-3 on time. He did eventually complete step 3 and get a license and was
promoted to PGY-3. He was counseled for having a poor record of attendance
at didactics and lower than expected PRITE scores. One year he failed to
show for his PRITE examination at all. During his PGY-3 year, he was
counseled for being consistently late to NNMC morning report. During his
PGY-4 year, he was discovered to have only seen 30 outpatients in 38 week
of outpatient continuity clinic. He was required to make this missed clinic
time up using his elective. He failed his HGT/WGT screening and was found
to be out of standards with body fat % and was counseled on that.

Lastly, he missed a night of call for MGMC ER and then did not respond to
numerous pages by my office the next day.
4. Take together; these issues demonstrate a lack of professionalism and work
ethics. He is able to self-correct with supervision. However, at this point
he should not need so much supervision. In spite of all of this, I am not
able to say he is not competent to graduate nor do I think a period of
academic probation now at the end of his training will be beneficial. He
would be able to contain his behavior enough to complete any period of
probation successfully. My purpose in writing this letter is to give the
credentials committee the benefit of full disclosure and the opportunity to
modify CPT Hasan’s plan of supervision following initial privileging.
5. I did discuss this memo with CPT Hasan and informed him I would be adding
it to his initial credentialing paperwork.
6. POC is the undersigned and may be reached at 202-XXX-XXXX or email at XXX/

Sincerely,
Scott Moran, MAJ, MC
Program Director
NCC Psychiatry Residency Training"

Despite all of his reservations, Major Moran failed to stop then Captain Hasan from graduating. A careful read of paragraph 4 tells the story. It is this paragraph that lets Major Hasan off the hook as well as the author Major Scott Moran. It equivocates, back peddles, is wishy washy, waffling or whatever name you wish to assign to someone who is protecting himself and is obviously concerned about possible litigation--one of the biggest crimes I believe we face in our society. It keeps us from being candid just when we need to be.

Graduating, promoting and transferring Hasan were major leadership failures from medical school through residency training. I have said it before and I will say it again, physicians don't like to "rat out" other physicians. It is much like the Blue Wall of Silence found among police officers--fellow police officer don't "rat out" fellow police officers and physicians don't "rat out" other physicians.

There is plenty of room for blame here and I, for one, hope that is spread around on those responsible that they are appropriately disciplined. But I'm not making any bets on it--our leaders have become politically correct wimps--always concerned about litigation and their public persona. Where are the George Pattons, Chesty Pullers, and Bull Halseys when we need them? Gone to graveyards everyone.

There have been other instances over the years since the University was opened that medical students did not graduate in four years. How many? I don't know, but unless someone steps in and carefully reviews the procedures at the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine that are used to determine whether a student graduates, is “rolled back” or is removed from training, there will be other Major Hasans—it is only a matter of time. The University had a major shakeup some fourteen years ago; perhaps it is time for another bottom to top examination.

Taliban Counter-Plans

2009-12-23T04:37:00.000-08:00

This is from the Middle East Media Research Institute--if it is half correct, then what we are starting to do is going to cost us very dearly. I wonder if anyone in Wahington or in Afghanistan is aware of this sort of stuff?

Commander Of Taliban’s Haqqani Network Claims They Control 80 Percent Of Afghanistan, Warns: We Have Drawn Up Counter-Plans and are Waiting for Arrival of Fresh 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to Give Them a Tough Time

A prominent commander of the Haqqani Network, a key organization that forms part of the Taliban militant movement in Afghanistan, has claimed that the Taliban control over 80 percent of Afghanistan and do not need to flee to Pakistan to take refuge, according to a Pakistani daily.

Rejecting as baseless the U.S. allegations that the Afghan Taliban have a presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas, Mullah Sangeen said that there is no truth in the U.S. charges as the Taliban are holding 80 percent of territory in Afghanistan.

In a video message which the Taliban commander claimed was recorded in one of his camps in the Paktika province of Afghanistan, he said that the Haqqani Network is active and based in Afghanistan. Mullah Sangeen is associated with the Haqqani Network, which operates in the Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Logar, and Maidan-Wardak provinces of Afghanistan as well as in the capital city of Kabul.

The Haqqani Network led by Commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, the elder son of veteran Afghan Mujahideen leader Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, has nominated Mullah Sangeen as the shadow governor of the Paktika province, according to a report in the Pakistani daily The News.

By pressing the government of Pakistan to launch a military operation in North Waziristan, the U.S. is trying to weaken Pakistan, Mullah Sangeen said, adding that the U.S. is making all-out efforts to pit Pakistan’s armed forces and people against each other.

Mullah Sangeen claimed that the Taliban have become a strong force and are now ruling most of Afghanistan with support from the Afghan people.

“The U.S. knows that we are here in Afghanistan and are fighting against them. The U.S. always levels such allegations whenever it suffers losses at our hands,” he said, adding that the U.S. and its allies invaded their country with a claim to make it prosperous and developed.

“Instead, they turned Afghanistan into ruins. Thousands of Afghans were killed and their houses bombarded in the name of the war on terrorism. The U.S. still does not understand the complexity of the situation. It wrongly considers that the Taliban are furthering somebody else’s [Pakistan’s] agenda. Now is the time for the U.S. to understand that we are Afghans and are fighting for the freedom of our homeland,’’ he added.

The Taliban commander termed reports of secret U.S.-Taliban talks as baseless, saying that the Taliban does not want talks with the occupying forces because they have ruined their country, filled jails with innocent Afghans and made thousands of Afghan children orphans and women widows.

The Taliban have drawn up counter-plans and are waiting for the arrival of 30,000 fresh U.S. troops in Afghanistan to give them a tough time, he noted, warning: “With an increase in the number of their troops, they will suffer more casualties.”

Mullah Sangeen said that the Haqqani Network has inflicted heavy losses on the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. “This is the reason the U.S. is putting pressure on Pakistan to launch a military operation in North Waziristan [a tribal district of Pakistan]. At a time when Pakistan is supporting the U.S. in its war against terror and U.S. drones are flying over North Waziristan round the clock, no sane person would like to live in Waziristan,” he added.

Source: The News, Pakistan, December 22, 2009

Posted at: 2009-12-22

Afghanistan--The questions that haven't been answered

2009-12-20T04:34:00.000-08:00

Many of you may remember Joe Galloway--he and General Hal Moore wrote, We Were Soldiers Once and Young. He and Moore have reprised this with We are Soldiers Still. I think of him as a sort of modern day Ernie Pyle. In this piece he repeats the questions that General Colin Powell asked, but in my estimation never got answered or answered himself. I wonder if these questions came up during the long debate around the White House conference table and if they did, what were the answers.

George

Afghanistan isn't worth one more American life

By Joseph L. Galloway McClatchy Newspapers
The debate over our creeping military mission in distant Afghanistan grows ever hotter, and before we march even deeper into trouble, perhaps it's time to dig out the old Powell Doctrine and answer the eight questions it poses.

Gen. Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said these questions all must be answered with a loud YES before the United States takes military action. He listed his questions in the 1990 run-up to the Persian Gulf War, drawing heavily on the Weinberger Doctrine that was laid down by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger during the debate over America's ends and means in Lebanon.

•1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

•2. Do we have a clear, attainable objective?

•3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

•4. Have all non-violent policy means been exhausted?

•5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

•6. Have all the consequences of our action been fully considered?

•7. Is the action supported by the American people?

•8. Do we have broad international support?

Those questions weren't asked and answered before we invaded Afghanistan late in 2001, and by the time we invaded Iraq early in 2003, then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was declaring the Powell doctrine "outmoded" as he ran premature victory laps around a fleeting success in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration is gone, but both Iraq and Afghanistan are still with us, and now a new president is overseeing a slow-motion U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and a slow-motion U.S. escalation in Afghanistan.

It can fairly be argued that not a single affirmative answer can be given to Gen. Powell's eight questions with regard to the actions now planned or underway in Afghanistan. Had those questions been asked about Iraq in early 2003, not a single affirmative answer could have been given.

There was, in the beginning in Afghanistan, a vital national security interest in toppling the Taliban government and killing or capturing the Taliban’s murderous guests, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorists. We toppled the Taliban, but we let al Qaida flee over the rugged, mountainous border into Pakistan.

Even before that, we began to let Afghanistan fester, starved of U.S. manpower and money, and turned our attention to Iraq, where Rumsfeld had estimated that victory would be ours and our troops would be home in six months or so.

We no longer have a vital national security interest or a clearly attainable goal in Afghanistan. Our stated goal is to deny any future sanctuary to al Qaida in Afghanistan - but al Qaida isn't based in Afghanistan and hasn't been for years.

We've changed presidents, changed commanding generals and ambassadors, changed our tactics and changed the numbers of American boots on the ground in a buildup that's expected to reach a total of more than 70,000 U.S. troops by the end of this year.

The new U.S. military commander in Kabul, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants more U.S. troops — somewhere between 14,000 and 45,000 more, at least for now — to fight the newly resurgent Taliban guerrillas who control well over half the country, but he's been told that he shouldn't ask for them anytime soon.

With the country in recession, the budget deficit spinning into the trillions of dollars, American casualty rates in Afghanistan at record highs and public approval of the president and the war in Afghanistan falling like rocks, the White House desperately wants some breathing room.

That's politics, folks, and it runs counter to an important corollary to the Powell Doctrine: If you're determined to fight a war, choose a commander whom you trust and a strategy that you back, and then give your military leaders all the resources they say they need to achieve your objective.

If you can't do that, if your objective isn't clear, if the American people and the international community aren’t with you, then order a withdrawal and explain why.

For God's sake, don't ratchet up slowly, buying time with the bodies of dead and wounded American soldiers, while you try to sell the wrong war in the wrong place against the wrong enemy to the American people.

For eight years, we've heard presidents and other politicians talk about setting conditions for a democratic central government in a country — really a bunch of tribes and clans — that's never had such a thing in 2,000 years and seemingly doesn't want one now.

The national treasure we've invested in that effort has propped up an ineffective and corrupt Kabul regime. Its only economic success has been the restoration of the opium trade. Afghanistan is now the world's leading producer of opium and heroin, where under the Taliban government that was a death penalty offense.

It's time to make a decision, Mr. President, and I hope that for our sake and yours, you make the right one. Afghanistan isn't worth the life of one more American soldier, much less the hundreds and thousands that an open-ended commitment to a war that we cannot win would cost.

French Arms Sales

2009-12-19T04:51:00.000-08:00

I wonder--is this selling the hangman the rope he will use to hang you?

Proposed French arms sale to Russia faces mounting opposition on Capitol Hill Posted: 18 Dec 2009 07:26 AM PST

Have you heard of the French ship called the Mistral? Well, you're about to. Several senior members of the U.S. Congress are becoming heavily involved in trying to thwart the possible sale of the Mistral from France to Russia.

The Mistral is France's state-of-the-art amphibious assault ship, and discussions of selling it to the Russian Federation have been causing angst in European capitals for months. The sale would be the first significant arms transfer from a NATO country to Russia and what's more, the Russians have already indicated that it could be used in future operations in countries in its near abroad, such as Georgia, which it invaded last year.

Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy said in September that "In the conflict in August last year [against Georgia], a ship like that would have allowed [Russia's] Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not 26 hours which is how long it took us [to land the troops ashore]."

This is just one of the concerns that prompted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-LA, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to introduce a bill late Thursday that would express the sense of Congress that "France and other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union should decline to sell major weapons systems or offensive military equipment to the Russian Federation."

The resolution alleges that Russia remains in violation of the French-brokered ceasefire that followed the Georgia invasion. Also, Russia is expanding its military presence in a way that threatens Georgia, and has made a number of aggressive moves toward several countries in the region, according to the text. The sale of the Mistral to Russia "would enhance that country's ability to potentially wage aggression against its neighbors," the resolution states.

Ros-Lehtinen is calling on President Obama, as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to urge France not to sell major offensive weapons systems to Russia until Russia completely withdraws from Georgian territory and makes broad reforms in areas ranging from rule of law to human rights.

The bill has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration, but that's only the beginning of coming U.S. congressional involvement on the issue. Multiple Senate aides tell The Cable that several senators from both sides of the aisle are busily drafting a letter to the French Embassy calling on France to hold off on the sale. That letter is expected early next week.

There goes the neighborhood?

The 650-foot long Mistral is the second largest vessel in the French Navy and each one is capable of carrying up to 16 helicopters, tanks, land assault vehicles, and 900 troops.

In addition to Georgia, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are also concerned about the Russians buying such a ship, especially from their fellow NATO and EU member France. Serious discussions have been initiated within NATO by these states about the possible deal.

"I'll say it quite bluntly --it has implications for NATO's security, because of what we saw last year," Marko Mikhelson, chairman of the European affairs committee in Estonia's Parliament, told the New York Times.

Despite that, the French sailed a Mistral directly past these states to the port of St. Petersburg last month to show off the ship for the Russian government. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin refused to rule out using the ship against the Baltics on his recent trip to Paris.

"Whoever we buy it from, we will reserve the right to use it where and when we consider necessary," he said.

The Baltic states have protection as part of NATO and the EU. Georgia? Not so much. A senior Georgian government official spoke with The Cable about that country's concerns about the sale.

"We have experienced ourselves that Russia is capable of using military force against its neighbors," the official said, pointing out that Georgia has less ability to build international support for their opposition to the deal.

A French Embassy spokesman told The Cable that the sale of a Mistral-class ship to Russia is still a project and no decision has been made by either the Russians or the French.

"There is a Russian request and we see no reason to refuse considering that request, which will be examined with all the necessary precautions as part of the military equipment export control regulatory procedures and will take time," the spokesman said.

He pointed out France has used Mistral-class ships for humanitarian missions and to evacuate nationals from dangerous situations.

The French have also have made the argument that selling arms to Russia is needed for peace and stability in Europe. "It would be impossible to call for continental stability in partnership with Russia if we refuse to sell armaments to Russia. A refusal would amount to contradicting our own discourse," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon reportedly said.

And while the French have said they would sell a scaled-down version of the Mistral without some weapons and advanced-control technologies, American defense experts warn that the sale could start a chain reaction of European states selling sensitive military technologies to Russia to shore up their struggling defense industries.

"Given the shrinking defense budgets of European countries and the pressure to keep domestic defense firms from going under by expanding exports, there is little question that less and less restraint would be shown by competing governments and companies on what could be sold to Moscow," wrote Gary Schmitt, defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Moreover, "there is the signal such a sale would send Moscow about just how unserious the West is in holding Russia's feet to fire over its invasion of Georgia and the terms of the subsequent agreement," he said.

The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges

2009-12-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

We haven't heard much recently about Major Nidal Hasan what with all the other "stuff" going on to inclujde the five young Americans being held in Pakistan for their apparent attempts to join the jihad. Once again a small, home grown group who may or may not be terrorists, but they walk like a duck and quack like a duck--just may be a duck. This article is from STRATFOR. Thought you might find it interesting.

George

The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges

November 11, 2009 | 1841 GMT

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.

The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.

Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.

Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.

However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.

We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.

The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.

The Nature of Intelligence Investigations

The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.

If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit.

One of the large problems in national security investigations is separating the wheat from the chaff. Many leads are based on erroneous information or a misidentification of the suspect — there is a huge issue associated with the confusion caused by the transliteration of Arabic names and the fact that there are many people bearing the same names. Jihadists also have the tendency to use multiple names and identities. And there are many cases in which people will falsely report a person to the FBI out of malice. Because of these factors, national security investigations proceed slowly and usually do not involve much (if any) contact with the suspect and his close associates. If the suspect is a real militant planning a terrorist attack, investigators do not want to tip him off, and if he is innocent, they do not want to sully his reputation by showing up and overtly interviewing everyone he knows. Due to its controversial history of domestic intelligence activities, the FBI has become acutely aware of its responsibility to protect privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and other laws.

And the rights guaranteed under the Constitution do complicate these national security investigations. It is not illegal for someone to say that Muslims should attack U.S. troops due to their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that more Muslims should conduct attacks like the June 1 shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. — things that Hasan is reported to have said. Radical statements and convictions are not illegal — although they certainly would appear to be conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. (We will leave to others the discussion of the difficulties in dealing with problem officers who are minorities and doctors and who owe several years of service in return for their education.)

There are also many officers and enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who own personal weapons and who use them for self-defense, target shooting or hunting. There is nothing extraordinary or illegal about a U.S. Army major owning personal weapons. With no articulable violation of U.S. law, the FBI would have very little to act upon in a case like Hasan’s. Instead, even if they found cause to extend their preliminary inquiry, they would be pretty much limited to monitoring his activities (and perhaps his communications, with a court order) and waiting for a law to be violated. In the Hasan case, it would appear that the FBI did not find probable cause that a law had been violated before he opened fire at Fort Hood. Although perhaps if the FBI had been watching his activities closely and with an eye toward “the how” of terrorist attacks, they might have noticed him conducting preoperational surveillance of the readiness center and even a dry run of the attack.

Of course, in addition to just looking for violations of the law, the other main thrust of a national security investigation is to determine whom the suspect is connected to and whom he is talking to or planning with. In past cases, such investigations have uncovered networks of jihadist actors working together in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. However, if all Hasan did in his correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki was exercise his First Amendment right to hold radical convictions, and if he did not engage in any type of conspiracy to conduct an attack, he did not break the law.

Another issue that complicates national security cases is that they are almost always classified at the secret level or above. This is understandable, considering they are often opened based upon intelligence produced by sensitive intelligence programs. However, this classification means that only those people with the proper clearance and an established need to know can be briefed on the case. It is not at all unusual for the FBI to visit a high-ranking official at another agency to brief the official on the fact that the FBI is conducting a classified national security investigation involving a person working for the official’s agency. The rub is that they will frequently tell the official that he or she is not at liberty to share details of the investigation with other individuals in the agency because they do not have a clear need to know. The FBI agent will also usually ask the person briefed not to take any action against the target of the investigation, so that the investigation is not compromised. While some people will disagree with the FBI’s determination of who really needs to know about the investigation and go on to brief a wider audience, many officials are cowed by the FBI and sit on the information.

Of course, the size of an organization is also a factor in the dissemination of information. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army are large organizations, and it is possible that officials at the Pentagon or the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (still known by its old acronym CID) headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., were briefed on the case and that local officials at Fort Hood were not. The Associated Press is now reporting that the FBI had alerted a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington about Hasan’s contacts with al-Awlaki, and ABC reports that the Defense Department is denying the FBI notified them. It would appear that the finger-pointing and bureaucratic blame-shifting normally associated with such cases has begun.

Even more severe problems would have plagued the dissemination of information from the CIA to local commanders and CID officers at Fort Hood. Despite the intelligence reforms put in place after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still faces large obstacles when it comes to sharing intelligence information with law enforcement personnel.

Criminal Acts vs. Terrorism

So far, the Hasan shooting investigation is being run by the Army CID, and the FBI has been noticeably — and uncharacteristically — absent from the scene. As the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI will often assume authority over investigations where there is even a hint of terrorism. Since 9/11, the number of FBI/JTTF offices across the country has been dramatically increased, and the JTTFs are specifically charged with investigating cases that may involve terrorism. Therefore, we find the FBI’s absence in this case to be quite out of the ordinary.

However, with Hasan being a member of the armed forces, the victims being soldiers or army civilian employees and the incident occurring at Fort Hood, the case would seem to fall squarely under the mantle of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). From a prosecutorial perspective, a homicide trial under the UCMJ should be very tidy and could be quickly concluded. It will not involve all the potential loose ends that could pop up in a federal terrorism trial, especially when those loose ends involve what the FBI and CIA knew about Hasan, when they learned it and who they told. Also, politically, there are some who would like to see the Hasan case remain a criminal matter rather than a case of terrorism. Following the shooting death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and considering the delicate relationship between Muslim advocacy groups and the U.S. government, some people would rather see Hasan portrayed as a mentally disturbed criminal than as an ideologically driven lone wolf.

Despite the CID taking the lead in prosecuting the case, the classified national security investigation by the CIA and FBI into Hasan and his possible connections to jihadist elements is undoubtedly continuing. Senior members of the government will certainly demand to know if Hasan had any confederates, if he was part of a bigger plot and if there are more attacks to come. Several congressmen and senators are also calling for hearings into the case, and if such hearings occur, they will certainly produce an abundance of interesting information pertaining to Hasan and the national security investigation of his activities.

The Real Threat to Healthcare

2009-12-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

I recently received this e-mail from MOAA and thought I would pass it along. If you are eligible to join MOAA and haven't, please consider it since they do so much for us. If you haven't written to your senators and representative, I hope you will. As veterans, you are entitled to care--this just isn't about career military personnel.

George

Dear Captain Harris,

Previously, I told you that, while we respect members’ strong opinions on both sides of the national health care reform argument, MOAA would refrain from taking a position on the social and political aspects and devote our limited resources to safeguarding military/VA beneficiaries’ health care benefits, protecting against taxation of those benefits, improving access to providers, and ensuring long-term sustainment of Medicare and TRICARE For Life (TFL).

MOAA members have generated more than 130,000 messages to Congress in support of these goals, and legislators of both parties have responded by including provisions aimed at holding military and VA beneficiaries harmless.

That said, there’s never any guarantee that Congress won’t change something about Medicare, TRICARE, TFL, or VA coverage, and we fully expect such changes could come in the future.

In that context, it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees.

It’s the next round of “adjustments” that poses the greatest concern – the ones that will be required to address the problem of the millions of baby boomers about to become eligible for Medicare, which the current legislation doesn’t address at all.

Most Medicare cuts in the pending legislation are the relatively less painful ones – $118 billion from eliminating the extra subsidy to the Medicare Advantage HMO program (which was sold to Congress as a cost-saver, but actually costs 14% more per person than Standard Medicare; DoD is cutting back on its TRICARE Prime HMO system for the same reason), cutting about $150 billion from non-rural hospitals (which the hospital associations say they can handle because expanding insurance coverage to most Americans will mean they won’t have to eat the cost of serving the uninsured), and cutting back abuses in medical equipment (under current systems, Medicare will buy you a wheelchair you might only need a few months, or allow a company to rent you one for life for a permanent condition).

These are things most of us would probably push to consider if it were our own money paying for them (which it actually is).

The real issue under national health care reform is that the money from these Medicare savings will be used to fund expansion of health insurance coverage to those who don’t have it now. It’s hard to argue that reducing the number of uninsureds would be a bad thing. But using the relatively “easy” Medicare savings initiatives to fund that means that when the baby boomers start swamping Medicare and Social Security in the next few years, Congress will be forced to look at more painful ways to fund that need.

Some in government already are pushing for a new entitlements commission to recommend ways to rein in entitlement spending. The last such commission, in 1994-95, considered a swath of changes – not just for Social Security and Medicare, but also for military and federal civilian health care, retired pay, VA disability compensation, and more.

It took years of tough battles, but we dodged most of those bullets, though we had to suffer COLA delays for several years until we won them back. We expect those reviews and threats to be renewed again – with even more force – within the next few years.

MOAA is already preparing for a major battle on those topics, to make sure our government leaders in both the Executive and Legislative Branches understand the important distinction between social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security and earned compensation for a career of arduous military service and sacrifice.

One hundred thirty thousand messages will not be enough to win that battle. It will take millions, and that starts with one person – you. If you know someone who is not an MOAA member, please make it clear to them that MOAA is the lead organization looking out for them (there’s a reason MOAA has been named the top military or veterans lobbying association for three years in a row by The Hill). Tell them that we need all hands on deck – and we need to count them in our membership ranks now.

Having a strong, active membership equates to clout, and clout is what we will need to protect our health care entitlement. So, if you know someone who is not yet an MOAA member, forward them this e-mail and have them call our Member Service Center at (866) 739-7106 and mention this message to receive a special introductory one-year membership price of only $15.

Thank you for your continuing support.

All the best,

VADM Norb Ryan Jr., USN (Ret)
President

The Power of Ten

2009-12-08T04:02:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I was watching the evening news when they ran a story about a group calling themselves “Secret Santas. It is not they are so “secret”, but they do go around giving gifts of at least one hundred dollars to people they feel are in need of a helping hand from a Secret Santa. They look for recipients in thrift shops, Salvation Army stores, senior centers, etc. and they are presented an unconditional gift. In one instance last night, an elderly woman who could not always afford to buy heating oil was given $400.

As I watched, I thought this was a wonderful idea, but why limit it to the holiday season? What if people would take a small amount of money and multiply it by ten and present that money to some deserving soul? What if they did this every month of the year?

The idea of The Power of Ten has been playing around in my head. What if you and nine of your friends got together and each of you gave $10. Well, you would have $100—The Power of Ten. If you did this once a month, your group could give away $1,000 in ten months—The Power of Ten. Now think about this, if each member of your group formed another group of ten, now these ten groups can provide $1,000 a month—The Power of Ten. Now a hundred dollars doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but if you don’t have enough to provide for life’s simple necessities, a hundred dollars is a fortune.

And so there is the possibility of exponential giving for a very small investment on your part. Maybe I am being a silly, but I would be interested in your feedback. If enough people agree, I would like to flesh out this idea, form a group of ten and start.

My e-mail: sailorguy@comcast.net

The High Cost of War

2009-12-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

The following article is from McClatchy News. It has been said that the late Senator Everett Dirksen once said, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money."

Well that seems to be the case here. After President Obama spoke at West Point, the media preported that this "surge" would cost $30 billion the first year. I guess by Senator Dirksen's standard, we are talking about real money. On a national scale, $30 billion is not a lot of money, but when you are in a situation where the nation is $12 TRILLION in debt, it is significant. The old Will Rogers adage that, "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. " applies here. We have spent nearly $90 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq and have practically nothing to show for it--a corrupt government in Afghanistan that has little or not credibility with the Afghan people and a smoldering political /religious mess in Iraq that will more than likely explode once we are gone.

While I don't know what the answers are, I am pretty sure it is time to put the shovel down.

Posted on Sunday, December 6, 2009

By David Lightman McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama insisted last week that as the nation confronts record government debt and pressing economic needs at home, it cannot afford a lengthy, ambitious nation-building effort in Afghanistan — but limiting U. S. involvement is unlikely to make much of a dent in the record federal debt.

Liberals complain that the war has been a big contributor to the nation's budget problems, and are insisting that some way be found to pay for the buildup.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they've virtually all been funded by deficit spending, are not the main reason why the publicly held national debt has more than doubled — from $3.339 trillion to $7.709 trillion — since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"It's a small part of the deficit," said Todd Harrison, fellow in defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington research group.

That's not to say the war costs don't matter.

"Over the short term, we are certainly spending a large chunk of money of the wars, money that could be devoted to other priorities or for deficit reduction, at least once the economy improves," noted Josh Gordon, policy director at the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan research group devoted to fiscal discipline.

But over the long term, he stressed, "Our fiscal challenges are substantially larger, and just ending the wars would not change those projections — because they all assume peacetime budgets."

Obama last week said that he'd deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This year's expected $30 billion to $40 billion price tag for that should boost the total cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion over the last nine years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

That spending accounts for only about one-fifth of publicly held debt accumulated in that time.

National defense spending accounted for 20.7 percent of the federal budget last year. While that's higher than peacetime lows of around 16 percent in the late 1990s, it's less than the 26-28 percent annual shares between 1975, when U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, and 1992, when first the Cold War and then the 1991 Gulf War ended.

What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990.

The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes.

"The purpose of a budget is to set priorities and make tradeoffs," said Susan Tanaka, director of citizen education and engagement at the Peterson Foundation, a New York-based fiscal watchdog group.

Since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, CBO estimates that the U.S. has spent $943.8 billion through Sept. 30, 2009, to meet war and war-related needs, and could spend another $1.6 trillion over the next decade — no small sum, indeed.

About $891 billion has been spent on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraq share, 85 percent of 2007 spending, accounted for an estimated 74 percent last year.

Most of the rest has been allocated for diplomatic operations and foreign aid to Iraq, Afghanistan and other allies in the war on terror. About $16 billion has gone to the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.

Other estimates put the cost higher; a 2008 study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes dubbed the conflicts the "$3 trillion war."

That figure appears consistent with current spending levels, since it assumes that the U.S. will continue to spend on the war and related activities through 2019, a mission CBO estimates could cost $1.6 trillion.

Also adding to the cost is interest on war-related debt; that's totaled at least $100 billion. Interest on future debt and other indirect costs are difficult to calculate, such as the cost of replacing equipment and providing benefits and health care to military veterans and families.

Direct war costs dropped in 2009, to about $154 billion, after reaching $187 billion in 2008. The administration had sought $130 billion in fiscal 2010; the defense spending legislation is still pending in Congress; that figure is now likely to grow by at least $30 billion.

A small band of congressional liberals insists that too much is being spent on the war, and that it's driving up the national debt.

War spending "has contributed to our economic crisis, exploded the lid off our national debt, and diverted funds from desperately needed domestic priorities," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

"We believe that if this war is to be fought, it's only fair that everyone share the burden," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., who had pushed for a war surtax.

The surtax effort was seen as more a political than a fiscal initiative.

"Look at who's pushing this. It's people opposed to the war," said Roberton Williams, budget analyst at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sensing scant support for the surtax, effectively killed the idea on Thursday.

The war cost will help boost a federal deficit that CBO estimates will reach $1.4 trillion this year, roughly the same as last year, and add to a total national debt that now tops $12 trillion when including debt held in government accounts. But Obama's extra $30 billion is only a drop in the $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit bucket.

CBO sees huge deficits ahead. Its latest projections show that even with stricter fiscal policies and a reviving economy, federal deficits are expected to total $7.1 trillion over the next decade, still reaching $722 billion in fiscal 2019 alone.

Those projections assume a continuation of current war policies. Should troop levels decline "significantly" over a three year period, as Obama hopes, the cost would drop to about $1.1 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $140 billion a year, which would still leave large deficits.

Democratic leaders lament that until the economy stabilizes, it could be hard to significantly dent those deficits.

"I am for paying for things that we do," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. But, he said, trying to offset spending "is complicated by the economic crisis."

How President Obama Reached His Decision

2009-12-06T05:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

This is a long read but very well worth it. I was skeptical about the President's decision but I am beginning to come around to seeing that he does not intend this to be another Vietnam. I still have some doubts since we have been there eight years and have not been able to bring this war to a successful close. Our Nation has many serious financial burdens and these wars are adding to that burden. At $30 billion dollars a year, this money could solve many of our problems and make funding health care much easier. Although I say this, it seems odd that money spent on wars does not always translate to money available for other things when the wars end. At some point,the American public is going to rebel. It may happen at next year's mid-term election or it may come at the next presidential election. Only time will tell if this new war effort was the right choice...

Climbing suicide rates--what is happening?

2009-11-22T13:28:00.000-08:00

One of the readers of this blog sent me a note a few days ago posing the following questions,

Do the military medical services still lack the capacity to adequately treat mental problems? As a PTSD sufferer myself I can certainly attest to this paucity of care in the past, but I had believed improvements had been made. Was I wrong?

Is he wrong? Sadly, I must say he is. There are many sides to this tale…

The Army Vice Chief of Staff, General Peter Chiarelli told the Associated Press that the Army believes there have been 140 active duty soldiers who have taken their own life. He says that is the same as all of 2008, but the 2009 is not over yet.

The other important point here is that this is the fifth year in a row that the number of suicides has exceeded the previous year. There were 102 suicides in 2006, 115 in 2007 and 140 in 2008. And keep in mind these are deaths of active duty soldiers. While the numbers are somewhat “foggy”, the Centers for Disease Control say that there may be as many as 18 veterans a day who take their own lives—that’s 6,500 a year. What makes this number “foggy” is that it includes veterans from all wars. The Department of Veterans Affairs says that 144 veterans out of 500,000 who served between 2002 and 2005 have taken their lives.

Marines have not fared any better and, as a matter of fact, their numbers may be worse. As of September of this year, 38 Marines have taken their lives and if the continue doing so at this rate, the Marine Corps is facing a 20% increase in suicides. One Marine report noted that less than 42% of those killing themselves since 2001 had any history of a deployment to one of the war zones. But in the last two year, some 70% of the 80 Marines who have committed suicide had a history of a deployment. The rate of suicides in the Army was 61% in 2008.
While the Marines say they can’t pinpoint the cause for the increase in suicides, I strongly believe that the pressure of increased OPTEMPO and PERSTEMPO are wreaking havoc on morale of our service personnel. Commander Aaron Werbel, the suicide prevention program manager for the Marine Corps says he believes increased operational tempo is a contributing factor. Commander Werbel is a Navy Medical Service Corps officer with a PhD in clinical psychology.
The Navy and Air Force suicides rates have been a little better, but even those rates, around 11 per 100,000, have resulted in the loss 38 airmen and 41 sailors in 2008.
There are two interesting documents found at these links.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/03/airforce_suicide_032309w/

http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2009/03/t20090318a.html

The first is an article from a March 2009 edition of the Air Force Times. The second is the prepared testimony of Kathryn A. Power, Director of the Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services of the Department of Health and Human Services before the United States SenateCommittee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel. Her testimony concerns what the Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs and DHHS are doing to help reduce the numbers of suicides among active duty personnel and veterans.

While I cannot say all is well to the reader who asked me about the state of mental health care, I can say that the Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Health and Human Services are making many efforts. Of course, finding a way to honorably get out of Iraq and Afghanistan would perhaps go a long ways toward solving some of the problems.

Hasan's Supervisor Warned Army In 2007

2009-11-21T04:56:00.000-08:00

This article cited below is by Daniel Zwerdling of National Public Radio.

It really is necessary to read the memo at the link. In particular, read paragraph 4 very carefully. It is this paragaph that lets Major Hasan off the hook as well as the author Major Scott Moran. It equivocates, back peddles, is wishy washy, waffling or whatever name you wish to assign to someone who is protecting his 6 o'clock and is obviously concerned about possible litigation--one of the biggest crimes I believe we face in our society. It keeps us from being candid just when we need to be. It would be most interesting to see what was said in Major Hasan's Officer Evaluation Reports during his residency program. If they were as damning as some parts of Major Scott's memorandum, I have ask, "How did he get promoted to major?"

Army Regulation 623-105 Officer Evaluation Reporting System, provides detailed instructions for evaluating the performance and potential for promotion of all Army officers. There is even a special appendix regarding the evaluation of medical officers. [I have tried repeatedly to download the current version of this regulation but have not been able to do so.] The bottom line here is that equivocation on the part of Hasan's supervisors has resulted in an act of terrorism that is absolutely unforgivable. Unless Major Scott's concerns showed up in Hasan's OERs, the Army was not warned--a local academic review board was warned and that simply is NOT the answer. The reason I say this is the simple fact that Captain Hasan became MAJOR Hasan. And as many readers know, even if degorgatory comments were made, it is not unusual for senior reviewers to gloss over these comments or direct that they be rewritten.

Promoting and transferring Hasan were major leadership failures. I have said it before and I will say it again, physicians don't like to "rat out" other physicians. It is much like the Blue Wall of Silence found among police officers--fellow police officer don't "rat out" fellow police officers and physicians don't "rat out" other physicians. Does anyone remember Commander Donal (not misspelled) Billig?

There is plenty of room for blame here and I, for one, hope that is spread around on those responsible that they are appropriately disciplined. But I'm not making any bets on it--our leaders have become candy asses--always concerned about litigation and their public persona. Where are the George Pattons, Chesty Pullers, and Bull Halseys when we need them? Gone to grave yards everyone.

Read a transcript of the May 2007 memo obtained by NPR in which Dr. Scott Moran, the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, outlines his concerns about Hasan:

http://www.npr.org/documents/2009/nov/hasanletter.pdf

November 18, 2009

In May of 2007 Dr. Scott Moran, the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, outlined his concerns about Hasan in a memo.

Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan's incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan's file.

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

The Damning Memo

On May 17, 2007, Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, "Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan." More than a page long, the document warns that: "The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism." It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan's career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.

"Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview," says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt's psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.

Sharfstein says it's a little hard to read the evaluation now and pretend that he doesn't know that Hasan is accused of shooting dozens of people. But he says if he had seen a memo like this about an applicant, Sharfstein would have avoided him like the plague.

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

Enlarge U.S. Government Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences/Getty ImagesAn undated handout photo of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, earlier this month.

U.S. Government Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences/Getty ImagesAn undated handout photo of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, earlier this month.
Warning Signs

Sharfstein says the memo doesn't suggest that Hasan would end up shooting people, but it warns that Hasan was "somebody who could potentially put patients in danger."

"There are all kinds of warning signs, flashing red lights, that, in terms of just this paragraph, you'd say, 'Oh, no, this is not somebody that we would take a chance on.' "

Sharfstein says that in the 25 years he has been supervising and hiring psychiatrists, he has seen only a half-dozen evaluations this bad.

The memo does have a couple of qualifications that say something positive about Hasan. It says, "He is able to self-correct with supervision." And Moran writes, "I am not able to say he is not competent to graduate." [My emphasis]

Officials at Walter Reed told NPR that those statements were very carefully worded. What they convey is that when Hasan's supervisors read him the riot act — when they gave him intensive supervision — he would improve just enough so that they had to tell their commanders: "Hasan is capable of doing better."

But officials say nobody has the time to supervise a doctor that closely.

Alerting Fort Hood

"I would never, ever hire a physician with this kind of a record," says Judith Broder, who runs the Soldiers Project, an award-winning private therapy program for troops in Southern California.

Broder says that soldiers seeking therapy may be falling apart, filled with rage and a distrust of authority. What those soldiers need, she says, is a psychiatrist they can trust completely — not a therapist who fails to show up and abandons his patients.

"This kind of behavior could, in fact, set off a stress reaction" in a patient, she says. "It could be a trigger to a post-traumatic stress reaction."

Moran and Pentagon spokesmen declined NPR's requests for interviews for this story. Officials at Fort Hood would not comment, either.

But sources say that when the Army sent Hasan to Fort Hood earlier this year, Walter Reed sent the damning evaluation there, too. So commanders at Fort Hood would know exactly what they were getting.

The High Cost of War

2009-11-18T20:47:00.000-08:00

This is a very interesting read from The New York Times. This is the very same problem the British faced in the years between World War I and World War II when they had a million-man army in the Middle East. The British finally decided it was just not possible to sustain this effort—they were out of money, out of men to send and the public and the military were tired of the effort. We have already spent over $230 billion in Afghanistan and over $700 billion in Iraq. As we approach the trillion-dollar mark, we don’t seem to be any closer to the end that President Obama says he is seeking. We are talking about spending roughly $1 million per year for each soldier, sailor, airman and Marine we have in these two countries. And we are doing this in one country that is corrupt beyond belief. President Hamid Karzai's election was an absolute fraud and just in the past day or so it has been reported that the Minister of Mines has taken a $30 million bribe from the Chinese for copper mining rights.

Stop and think about that for a moment—this would cover health care for every uninsured American with money left over. We could provide funding for projects in our own country that would help raise this nation out of this recession and perhaps, just perhaps, we could find a way to reduce our indebtedness to China by producing more goods here at home. Perhaps we could fund more research into making us less dependent on foreign oil. And perhaps, just perhaps, not near as many Americans would go to bed hungry each night.

Just think about it…

High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
A version of this article appeared in print on November 15, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition of The New York Times.

The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.
Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier a year, appears almost constant.
So even if Mr. Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan’s new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.
Such an escalation in military spending would be a politically volatile issue for Mr. Obama at a time when the government budget deficit is soaring, the economy is weak and he is trying to pass a costly health care plan.

Senior members of the House Appropriations Committee have already expressed reservations about the potential long-term costs of expanding the war in Afghanistan. And Mr. Obama could find it difficult to win approval for the additional spending in Congress, where he would have to depend on Republicans to counter defections from liberal Democrats.
One senior administration official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the details of confidential deliberations, said these concerns had added to the president’s insistence at a White House meeting on Wednesday that each military option include the quickest possible exit strategy.

“The president focused a lot on ensuring that we were asking the difficult questions about getting to an end game here,” the official said. “He knows we cannot sustain this indefinitely.”
Sending fewer troops would lower the costs but would also place limitations on the buildup strategy. Sending 30,000 more troops, for example, would cost $25 billion to $30 billion a year while limiting how widely American forces could range. Deploying 20,000 troops would cost about $21 billion annually but would expand mainly the training of Afghans, the officials said.
The estimated $1 million a year it costs per soldier is higher than the $390,000 congressional researchers estimated in 2006.

Military analysts said the increase reflects a surge in costs for mine-resistant troop carriers and surveillance equipment that would apply to troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But some costs are unique to Afghanistan, where it can cost as much as $400 a gallon to deliver fuel to the troops through mountainous terrain.

Some administration estimates suggest it could also cost up to $50 billion over five years to more than double the size of the Afghan army and police force, to a total of 400,000. That includes recruiting, training and equipment.

At a stop at a military base in Alaska on Thursday, Mr. Obama told a gathering of soldiers that he would not risk more lives “unless it is necessary to America’s vital interests.” He added during his visit to Tokyo on Friday that he wanted to avoid taking any step that could be seen as an “open-ended commitment.”

The administration said Friday that it planned to cut up to 5 percent at domestic agencies in fiscal 2011 as part of an effort to reduce the federal budget deficit, which rose to $1.4 trillion with the economic stimulus and financial bailouts.

Several leading Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama’s willingness to spend more freely on domestic programs and urged him to provide General McChrystal with the resources he is seeking in Afghanistan.

“Keeping our country safe: Isn’t that the first job of government?” said Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Republican from Missouri and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “If we have just a minimalist counterterrorism strategy, the Taliban will come back over the mountains from Pakistan, and they will be followed by their co-conspirators from the Al Qaeda organization.”

Cost is far from the only concern about escalating the war. The debate intensified last week amid disclosures that the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, had sent cables to Washington expressing his reservations about deploying additional troops, citing weak Afghan leadership and widening corruption.

That kind of doubt could also make some in Congress hesitant to support an expansion of the war, especially with the midterm elections coming next year.

Representative David R. Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin who heads the House Appropriations Committee, said recently that sending more troops to Afghanistan could drain the Treasury and “devour virtually any other priorities that the president or anyone in Congress had.”

Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania and chairman of a subcommittee on defense appropriations, said in an interview that because of concerns about President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, he thought a majority of the 258 Democrats in the House would vote against any bill to pay for more troops. “A month ago, I would have said 60 to 70,” he said.
“Can you pass one?” Mr. Murtha said. “It depends on the Republicans.”

Mr. Murtha said he opposed sending more troops, though he would support any decision Mr. Obama made. He said he was concerned that even without a supplemental bill, total spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would surge past $1 trillion next year, which could hamper the economy for years to come.

Others said some Republicans could find it hard to justify a yes vote on troops after criticizing Mr. Obama for his spending. Some liberal Democrats said voters who had been drawn to Mr. Obama for his early opposition to the Iraq war could become disenchanted if he approved a major expansion in Afghanistan.

“In the times we’re in right now, I just totally believe that the public that elected President Obama really wants to see something different,” said Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was careful to say that he would not cut military spending while the nation was engaged in two wars. He also said it was important to shore up the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. And shortly after he took office, he approved sending an additional 21,000 soldiers there, bringing the total American force to 68,000.
Still, many of his supporters assumed that his pledges to withdraw from Iraq, and to rein in the cost overruns on high-tech weapons programs, would still produce significant savings.
But even though Mr. Obama has won battles to cancel the F-22 fighter plane and other advanced programs, the immediate savings have been offset by increased spending on the surveillance drones and mine-resistant vehicles needed in the field now.

And he recently signed a $680 billion military authorization bill for fiscal 2010 that represented a 2.7 percent increase over the 2009 spending level and a 1.9 percent increase over President Bush’s peak budget in fiscal 2008.

The administration has projected that spending on Iraq would drop by $25.8 billion in fiscal 2010, to $60.8 billion, as most of the troops withdraw.

It also expected spending on the Afghanistan war to increase by $18.5 billion in fiscal 2010, to $65.4 billion, for a net savings on the two wars of $7.3 billion, if no more troops were added.

Hasan—Premeditated Murder, A Terrorist Act or Insanity?

2009-11-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

Hasan—Premeditated Murder, A Terrorist Act or Insanity?

On November 12, 2009, military prosecutors charged the Army psychiatrist with 13 counts of premeditated murder in last week's rampage at Fort Hood, Tex.

In an article published in The Washington Post on Friday, November 13, 2009, Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the Armys Criminal Investigation Division stated, “We're looking at every reason for this shooting." He further stated, "We're aggressively following every possible lead."
The same article went on to say, “Investigators say they think he was the only gunman. Grey, however, left open the possibility that someone else may have helped instigate the attack. He said military prosecutors may charge Hasan with additional crimes.”

And finally,

In the same article, William Cassara, a former Army captain and lawyer who is now in private practice in Augusta, Ga., "I would fully anticipate that the charge sheet in this case will get much longer."

I would presume from this chit-chat, that the Army has not ruled out charging Major Hasan with conducting a terrorist attack. However, in the same Friday the 13th Post article, Guy Womack, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who practices military law in Houston, speculated that Hasan's defense counsel, retired Colonel John Galligan, probably will argue that Hasan was mentally unstable at the time of the shootings.

Womack postulated that, "The defense argument will be that Major Hasan knew that he would be identified, he knew that he would be captured, and he did it anyway, so clearly he was insane, that his mental defect was so severe that he couldn't control his actions from right and wrong," [My emphasis]

There is no doubt in my mind that Lieutenant Colonel Womack’s assessment as to the possible insanity plea is right on the mark.

Why?

Because we just aren’t able to wrap our mind around the idea that an individual, particularly a follower of Islam, could/would commit an act of terrorism without being part of a larger radical Islamic plot. Unless, of course, the individual was insane. Why else would someone do something as horrendous as this?

In a previous posting, I had listed an article the Scott Stewart and Fred Burton who reported that Nasir al-Wahayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called on jihadists, "…to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West.” Stewart and Burton also noted “… how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.”

On November 7, 2009, The New York Times reported in an article by Nicole Bengiveno, that, “After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.” Ms. Bengiveno went on to report, “… the investigators, working with behavioral experts, suggested that he might have long suffered from emotional problems that were exacerbated by the tensions of his work with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home with serious psychiatric problems.”

As I noted above, we just can’t get our head wrapped around the idea that Major Hasan intentionally or unintentionally followed al-Wahayshi’s advice to, “conduct simple attacks…” In this case a lone gunman, a fellow soldier, gunned down and killed 13 people and wounded another 30. This was an act of terrorism by a radical Islamist, not the act of someone who did not know what he was doing and could not distinguish right from wrong. Major Hasan thought about this; he bought two guns, he bought ammunition, he bought a laser pistol sight and, according to reports, spent time at a shooting range familiarizing himself with his newly acquired capability. And the idea that you must belong to some terrorist group like al Qaeda or some terrorist cell to commit terrorist acts is passé. Groups or cells are much easier to track; a lone terrorist is invisible to the untrained eye. The sooner we figure this out, the better off we will be.

The act of terrorist or an insane person? The line may be fine. A radical Islamist may certain seem insane to we “non-believers”, yet in at least one instance his act has been proclaimed to be the act of a hero. Surely if Major Hasan had been killed that day, he would have been proclaimed a martyr by radical Islamists.

A look back at the Tomb of the Unknowns

2009-11-13T05:17:00.000-08:00

I found this on the Military.com website and thought is was appropriate considering our recent celebration of Veterans' Day (Armistice Day to those of us who are old enough to remember). As Ms. Miriam Felt describes the events of the day, it certainly was one that a person would remember for the rest of their life.

The tomb and the nearby crypts contain the remains of an Unknown from World War I, World War II, and Korea. An additional crypt did hold the remains of an Unknown from Vietnam, but the remains of the Vietnam Unknown were exhumed May 14, 1998. Based on mitochondrial DNA testing, Department of Defense scientists identified the remains as those of Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, who was shot down near An Loc, Vietnam, in 1972. The identification was announced on June 30, 1998 and on July 10, Blassie's remains arrived home to his family in St. Louis, Missouri; he was reinterred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.

Interestingly enough, my great-great grandfather Lemuel Purteet is buried in this same cemetery. He was a civilian Confederate sympathizer who became a POW after a battle near St. Louis, MO. He died while a POW and was buried in this cemetery in a section set aside for the remains of Confederate soldiers and some civilians. It is an impressive cemetery just south of St. Louis well worth seeing if you are ever in that area.

I don't know if there will ever be anymore Unknowns because of the capability of DNA tracking. It would be wonderful if there never was another Unknown because there were no more wars. But that does not seem to be the nature of man who needs to continually exercise the territorial imperative.

Tomb of the Unknowns

“Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Solider Known But To God"

These words are inscribed on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. The Tomb of the Unknowns symbolizes those of America who gave their lives in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War in defense of the Nation’s integrity, honor, and tranquility.

Numerous ceremonies are performed annually at the Tomb to honor these soldiers and to show the nation’s respect for members of the United States Armed Forces.

The most notable of such ceremonies are wreath-laying ceremonies that take place on National holidays, such as Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day, where the President or his designee lays a wreath to mark the national observance of that day. Also, held in high esteem are wreath laying ceremonies that occur during state visits. At these ceremonies, the visiting head of state will pay formal respects to the sacrifice of America’s veterans in foreign wars by placing a wreath before the Tomb.

All ceremonies performed at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with the exception of Tomb Guard duty performed by the Army Honor Guard, are Joint Service functions led by the Military District of Washington. Therefore, the members of the Coast Guard Ceremonial Honor Guard serve as active participants in all Joint Service ceremonies performed at the Tomb, including the highly respected wreath laying ceremonies. During these ceremonies, each service of the Armed Forces (Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard) provide Ceremonial Honor Guard personnel to represent their respective service to the public and to the leaders of foreign countries. The Coast Guard Ceremonial Honor Guard strives to prepare its members for these ceremonies through hours of practice in weapons drill, uniform maintenance, and military bearing.

In the following letter, Miriam ("Mimi") Felt describes the gravity of the first ceremony for Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in November 1921. At that time, Mimi was 23-years-old and worked in the water sanitation division of the U.S. Health Service in Washington, DC.

Sunday (Nov. 13, 1921)

Dear Family,

Well, this last week has been quite an event in history, and I certainly do wish you all could have been in Washington. It certainly is something I shall never forget. Somehow, you can talk about it and think about it, but the realization of the whole thing struck me so much more by seeing it all, and it was so impressive. Of course, Washington is alive with foreigners of all sorts, and I am turning around all the time to see something else for fear I will miss something. The crowds have been simply enormous, and I feel considerably thinner from having wedged my way through. But leave it to Clara, we are always on the front line.

Thursday night after work, Gertie and I went up to the Capitol to see the body in state there. We went up about six o'clock , thinking the crowd would not be so large. But at that time the line (four abreast) extended over two blocks, and by the time we had reached the Capitol steps and could look back at the crowd, it extended up one side of the park, down another side, then the third side of it and on beyond around the Capitol building where we could see no farther, so I don't know how much longer it was. It was perfectly beautifully managed, and there was no crowding, and everyone, strangely enough, acted as though they really were there to pay respect to the memory which that body was to represent to the country, and not there to see out of curiosity.

There were guards, of course, all up the line and then a special guard of honor around the catafalque. The flowers were simply magnificent, each state and then different organizations sent wreaths or flowers made up in some beautiful piece. President Harding's wreath of red roses was on the bier and also a white ribbon was draped over it, which Mrs. Harding had made. It was most impressive, all told.

Friday bright and early, we arose and went down on Pennsylvania Avenue to see the funeral procession. Of course, we had hysterics over Clara trying to wedge us in amidst the crowd. I'll have to leave the details of that to tell. Something on the order of Inauguration, however. It was sort of a fitting setting all around for it, because you remember I told you the day the Olympia arrived with the body, it was very rainy and dark, and in my mind sort of typified the thing itself. Then Friday, when the procession started, it was as though it were in the "gray dawn", for the sun didn't really break through until it was about all passed. And that went with that part of it, too, to me.

There were represented in the procession about every branch of service, and all the organizations, etc. President Harding and the cabinet and the Senate all walked, and we had a chance to see them all very clearly. Only I missed finding Taft until he was passed. I am going to have to see him soon, somehow. It seems that because I am specially anxious to see him, I always miss him!

Did you know that this was the first time in History that three Presidents were seen in the same procession? Wilson had to ride, of course. He looked quite well, and people that have seen him recently seem to think he is much improved. I couldn't quite understand, however, why Mrs. Wilson had to ride by his side, for she was the only lady of that sort in it. The President and cabinet etc. dropped out at the White House and rode up to Arlington. The rest marched on. We didn't attempt to go there because there was no chance of seeing anything and we figured we could read the speech. We had seen the cemetery on Wednesday and knew about what would take place. I'm glad we didn't attempt it for most people were about five hours in all getting up and back.

Then that night was the illumination of the jeweled arch. It was wonderful! When the lights first started to come on, you could see the different lines of the search lights gradually cross each other, and then finally shine out in the most beautiful colors you have ever seen. They fired twenty-one minute guns and the lights were seen through the smoke. I just can't describe to you the effect of it all.

I declare the arch was something that you cannot conceive of man making, somehow. It seemed almost superhuman. The pillars on either side of the street were made into monument effects, the tops from about half way up being covered with sequents of some sort. This all was on a larger base, and around them, on each base, was a large eagle, and incense bowls all around too, burning. In the center of the arch was a large circle composed of smaller circles, and within each of these the picture of the various flags. Then hanging from the pillars was a straight band of vari-colored glass, I guess it must have been, which positively sparkled with more beautiful colors than I have ever seen. They threw different colored search lights on it from all sides. And that wasn't all — the Washington monument was lighted so that it looked as though there were streamers of white light from the top to the bottom, and two search lights from the top crossed and were sent out over the city. Also lights were thrown from the Capitol building so far away which were visible, too.

All along the street in front of the Pan American building where the Conference will be held for the most part, there were erected tall poles with Eagles on the top and colored, lighted box effects built about them of the different shields, that is, "flag productions" of the shields. It made the whole street lighter than day, of course, and with all the various colors it certainly was a vision to behold! Course, you will see it in the movies, and maybe not recognize my description of it all, but it's the best I can do, and I thought perhaps Mother and Dad, at least, would like to hear my own description of it!

Yours,
Daughter, Sister and sweetheart.
M

(As a postscript, Ms. Felt wrote:)

Give my love to Grandpa. Sorry he isn't feeling up to par. Tell him to be a good boy. Tell him too that some of his old "cronies" marched to Arlington Friday and they looked mighty fine, I'll tell you - and I thought a lot about what he did for his country.

The Veterans Day National Committee thanks Ms. Barbara Felt, the author's niece, for sharing this letter to relatives written by her Aunt Mimi.

THE CLASSIC STATE VS DEFENSE BATTLE--WHO IS IN CHARGE

2009-11-12T05:11:00.000-08:00

Depending on your views about what we should do in Afghanistan, you may agree that Ambassador Karl Eikenberry is right or that General Stanley McChrystal is right. Either way, this is could turn out to be the whizzing contest of all whizzing contests.

Why would we expect Afghanistan to do anything different than what it has done for centuries? Why should we expect them to be eager to commit more resources from what little they have if we are willing to do their fighting for them?

Why would we expect the oppossition party to do anything else but Monday morning quarterbacking? It was their former leader who started the war in Afghanistan and then abandoned it in favor of toppling Saddam Hussein. The end result is two campaigns that are literally and figuratively bleeding us dry; killing and maiming our young men and women by the hundreds while we make little if any headway.

I cannot blame President Obama for being gun shy--Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires and I am certain he does not want us buried there. He must do something though because we can't just leave what we have in country to fend for itself. We either have to fish, cut bait or get out of the boat. The question is, "What and how do we do it?"

Afghanistan is not a "nation"--it is a place and people. There are numerous tribes who mostly live in remote villages in "tribal territories/districts/or whatever you want to call them" and there are some wht I chose to call "city states", much like ancient Greece--Kabul (the capital), Kandahar and Herat. There are four major languages and perhaps 30 minor languages. Pashtuns and Tajiks make up about 70% of the population while Hazaras, Uzbeks, Aimaks, Turkmen, and Balochs make up about 25% and the remainder are "odds and ends."

Afghanistan is vast, some 250,000 square miles, just a little smaller than Texas; however, the terrain is very mountainous and rugged with little infrastructure once outside the cities. If we put a million troops into Afghanistan, we still could not "secure" it nor could we sustain such a force. Neither can Afghanistan--it has neither the willpower nor the resources.

Somehow, the tribal areas have to be developed to stand on their own against the Taliban and al Quaeda. We have to find a way to reassure them that we are not there to conquer them, but to help them become self-sufficient when it comes to their own defense.

If possible we have to find a way to clean up the "central" government; get rid of its corruption, which foments the distrust of the tribal leaders. So far we have not been successful. We jumped on the Karzai bandwagon only to find out it is seen as anathema to the tribal leaders with Karzain a corrupt American puppet. The recent national election debacle only reaffirmed this to Afghanis and the outside world. But we picked "our man in Kabul" and it would seem we are stuck with him.

Anyone have any answers?

George

Official: Obama wants revised Afghan war options

By BEN FELLER and ANNE GEARAN, AP
2 hours ago

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama won't accept any of the Afghanistan war options before him without changes, a senior administration official said, as concerns soar over the ability of the Afghan government to secure its own country one day.

Obama's stance comes as his own ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, is voicing strong dissent about a U.S. troop increase, according to a second administration official.

Eikenberry's misgivings center on a concern that bolstering the American presence in Afghanistan could make the country more reliant on the U.S., not less. He expressed them in forcefully worded cables to Washington just ahead of Obama's latest war meeting Wednesday.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss administration deliberations.

The developments underscore U.S. skepticism about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose government has been dogged by corruption. The emerging administration message is that Obama will not do anything to lock in an open-ended U.S. commitment.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she is concerned about Afghanistan's "corruption, lack of transparency, poor governance (and) absence of the rule of law."

"We're looking to President Karzai as he forms a new government to take action that will demonstrate — not just to the international community but first and foremost to his own people — that his second term will respond the needs that are so manifest," Clinton said during a news conference in Manila with Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo.

Obama is still expected to send in more troops to bolster a deteriorating war effort.

He remains close to announcing his revamped war strategy — troops are just one component — and probably will do so shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends Nov. 19.

Yet in Wednesday's pivotal war council meeting, Obama wasn't satisfied with any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, one official said.

The president instead pushed for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. In turn, that could change the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official.

Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama's resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.

The president is considering options that include adding 30,000 or more U.S. forces to take on the Taliban in key areas of Afghanistan and to buy time for the Afghan government's small and ill-equipped fighting forces to take over. The other three options on the table are ranges of troop increases, from a relatively small addition of forces to the roughly 40,000 that McChrystal prefers, according to military and other officials.

The war is now in its ninth year and is claiming U.S. lives at a record pace as military leaders say the Taliban has the upper hand in many parts of the country.

Eikenberry, the top U.S. envoy to Kabul and a former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, is a prominent voice among those advising Obama, and his sharp dissent is sure to affect the equation.

The options given to Obama will now be altered, although not overhauled.

Military officials say one approach is a compromise battle plan that would add 30,000or more U.S. forces atop a record 68,000 in the country now. They described it as "half and half," meaning half fighting and half training and holding ground so the Afghans can regroup.

"The government of Afghanistan has to accept greater responsibility for its own defense," Clinton said Thursday. She had no comment on the Eikenberry memos.

The White House says Obama has not made a final choice, though military and other officials have said he appears near to approving a slightly smaller increase than McChrystal wants at the outset.

Among the options for Obama would be ways to phase in additional troops, perhaps eventually equaling McChrystal's full request, based on security or other conditions in Afghanistan and troop levels by U.S. allies there.

The White House has chafed under criticism from Republicans and some outside critics that Obama is dragging his feet to make a decision.

Obama's top military advisers have said they are comfortable with the pace of the process, and senior military officials have pointed out that the president still has time since no additional forces could begin flowing into Afghanistan until early next year.

Under the scenario featuring about 30,000 more troops, that number most likely would be assembled from three Army brigades and a Marine Corps contingent, plus a new headquarters operation that would be staffed by 7,000 or more troops, a senior military official said. There would be a heavy emphasis on the training of Afghan forces, and the reinforcements Obama sends could include thousands of U.S. military trainers.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Manila, Philippines, and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.

More About Major Hasan--The Story Continues

2009-11-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I put a STRATFOR piece on this blog regarding Nasir al-Wahayshi's call for individuals to conduct their own jihads. As the investigation broadens, it would appear that Major Hasan answered this call. The problem--we still can't accept that this was an act of someone who had become a radical Muslim. We want to believe he was obviously insane to do this. WRONG--he became a radical and no one picked up on it. It also seems that the leadership at Walter Reed Army Medical Center dropped the ball or perhaps purposely got Hasan transferred to get him out of their hair. The FBI and the Department of Defense Criminal Investigative Services are also to blame for not passing on their information to the Army. We have to wake up--we have to understand that, as Pogo said many years ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges
November 11, 2009 1841 GMT

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.

The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.

Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.

Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.

However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.

We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.

The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.

The Nature of Intelligence Investigations

The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.

If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit.

One of the large problems in national security investigations is separating the wheat from the chaff. Many leads are based on erroneous information or a misidentification of the suspect — there is a huge issue associated with the confusion caused by the transliteration of Arabic names and the fact that there are many people bearing the same names. Jihadists also have the tendency to use multiple names and identities. And there are many cases in which people will falsely report a person to the FBI out of malice. Because of these factors, national security investigations proceed slowly and usually do not involve much (if any) contact with the suspect and his close associates. If the suspect is a real militant planning a terrorist attack, investigators do not want to tip him off, and if he is innocent, they do not want to sully his reputation by showing up and overtly interviewing everyone he knows. Due to its controversial history of domestic intelligence activities, the FBI has become acutely aware of its responsibility to protect privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and other laws.

And the rights guaranteed under the Constitution do complicate these national security investigations. It is not illegal for someone to say that Muslims should attack U.S. troops due to their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that more Muslims should conduct attacks like the June 1 shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. — things that Hasan is reported to have said. Radical statements and convictions are not illegal — although they certainly would appear to be conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. (We will leave to others the discussion of the difficulties in dealing with problem officers who are minorities and doctors and who owe several years of service in return for their education.)

There are also many officers and enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who own personal weapons and who use them for self-defense, target shooting or hunting. There is nothing extraordinary or illegal about a U.S. Army major owning personal weapons. With no articulable violation of U.S. law, the FBI would have very little to act upon in a case like Hasan’s. Instead, even if they found cause to extend their preliminary inquiry, they would be pretty much limited to monitoring his activities (and perhaps his communications, with a court order) and waiting for a law to be violated. In the Hasan case, it would appear that the FBI did not find probable cause that a law had been violated before he opened fire at Fort Hood. Although perhaps if the FBI had been watching his activities closely and with an eye toward “the how” of terrorist attacks, they might have noticed him conducting preoperational surveillance of the readiness center and even a dry run of the attack.

Of course, in addition to just looking for violations of the law, the other main thrust of a national security investigation is to determine whom the suspect is connected to and whom he is talking to or planning with. In past cases, such investigations have uncovered networks of jihadist actors working together in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. However, if all Hasan did in his correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki was exercise his First Amendment right to hold radical convictions, and if he did not engage in any type of conspiracy to conduct an attack, he did not break the law.

Another issue that complicates national security cases is that they are almost always classified at the secret level or above. This is understandable, considering they are often opened based upon intelligence produced by sensitive intelligence programs. However, this classification means that only those people with the proper clearance and an established need to know can be briefed on the case. It is not at all unusual for the FBI to visit a high-ranking official at another agency to brief the official on the fact that the FBI is conducting a classified national security investigation involving a person working for the official’s agency. The rub is that they will frequently tell the official that he or she is not at liberty to share details of the investigation with other individuals in the agency because they do not have a clear need to know. The FBI agent will also usually ask the person briefed not to take any action against the target of the investigation, so that the investigation is not compromised. While some people will disagree with the FBI’s determination of who really needs to know about the investigation and go on to brief a wider audience, many officials are cowed by the FBI and sit on the information.

Of course, the size of an organization is also a factor in the dissemination of information. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army are large organizations, and it is possible that officials at the Pentagon or the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (still known by its old acronym CID) headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., were briefed on the case and that local officials at Fort Hood were not. The Associated Press is now reporting that the FBI had alerted a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington about Hasan’s contacts with al-Awlaki, and ABC reports that the Defense Department is denying the FBI notified them. It would appear that the finger-pointing and bureaucratic blame-shifting normally associated with such cases has begun.

Even more severe problems would have plagued the dissemination of information from the CIA to local commanders and CID officers at Fort Hood. Despite the intelligence reforms put in place after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still faces large obstacles when it comes to sharing intelligence information with law enforcement personnel.

Criminal Acts vs. Terrorism

So far, the Hasan shooting investigation is being run by the Army CID, and the FBI has been noticeably — and uncharacteristically — absent from the scene. As the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI will often assume authority over investigations where there is even a hint of terrorism. Since 9/11, the number of FBI/JTTF offices across the country has been dramatically increased, and the JTTFs are specifically charged with investigating cases that may involve terrorism. Therefore, we find the FBI’s absence in this case to be quite out of the ordinary.

However, with Hasan being a member of the armed forces, the victims being soldiers or army civilian employees and the incident occurring at Fort Hood, the case would seem to fall squarely under the mantle of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). From a prosecutorial perspective, a homicide trial under the UCMJ should be very tidy and could be quickly concluded. It will not involve all the potential loose ends that could pop up in a federal terrorism trial, especially when those loose ends involve what the FBI and CIA knew about Hasan, when they learned it and who they told. Also, politically, there are some who would like to see the Hasan case remain a criminal matter rather than a case of terrorism. Following the shooting death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and considering the delicate relationship between Muslim advocacy groups and the U.S. government, some people would rather see Hasan portrayed as a mentally disturbed criminal than as an ideologically driven lone wolf.

Despite the CID taking the lead in prosecuting the case, the classified national security investigation by the CIA and FBI into Hasan and his possible connections to jihadist elements is undoubtedly continuing. Senior members of the government will certainly demand to know if Hasan had any confederates, if he was part of a bigger plot and if there are more attacks to come. Several congressmen and senators are also calling for hearings into the case, and if such hearings occur, they will certainly produce an abundance of interesting information pertaining to Hasan and the national security investigation of his activities.

All is Quiet on the Western Front

2009-11-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

All is Quiet on the Western Front

They're all gone now, those young American doughboys who sailed off to far away France to fight the mighty Hun. The strains of "Over There" and "Lily Marlene" are distant memories. These young soldiers, sailors and Marines put down their plows and pencils and went off to face murderous machinegun fire, choking, blinding mustard gas and the cold, killing reality of trench warfare. Then on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the victors and the vanquished gathered in a small railroad car in Compiègne, France to bring to a close the "war to end all wars." All was quiet on the Western Front.

Day is done ...
Gone the sun ...
From the lakes ...
From the hills ...
From the sky ...
All is well ...
Safely rest ...
God is nigh...

Fading light ...
Dims the sight ...
And a star ...
Gems the sky...
Gleaming bright ...
From afar...
Drawing nigh ...
Falls the night ..

Thanks and praise ...
For our days ...
Neath the sun ...
Neath the stars ...
Neath the sky ...
As we go ...
This we know ...
God is nigh ...

Sleep well you warriors of so long ago, the new breed has assumed the watch.

Very respectfully,

George S. Harris
Captain, U. S. Navy (Retired)

Hasan Communicated with Radical Imam

2009-11-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the New York Times yesterday. The imam in question is an American born of Yemeni immigrants in New Mexico. He has become an extremely militant Islamist and as you may have already read, has praised Major Hasan for his actions. Apparently in an outbreak of political correctness authorities decided to bring Major Hasan's communications with Anwar al-Awlaki to the attention of the Department of Defense or the Army.

Like others, I am guilty of Monday morning quarterbacking on this. But the more I read about what we knew and didn't do anything about, the more I wonder what the various intelligence agencies are doing.

As I have already written, we Judeo-Christians think Hasan must have been out of his mind, but I think he was on a one-man jihad and knew exactly what he was doing.

Will we ever know the truth? I doubt it. We will have to see just how close to their chest the "intelligence agencies" want to play their cards. I am sure more will be revealed in the following days.

U.S. Knew of Suspect’s Tie to Radical Cleric

JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE
Published: November 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between the military psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings.

But the federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding that the messages from the psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, did not suggest any threat of violence and concluding that no further action was warranted, government officials said Monday.

Major Hasan’s 10 to 20 messages to Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Major Hasan worshiped, indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but that the authorities left him in his post.

Counterterrorism and military officials said Monday night that the communications, first intercepted last December as part of an unrelated investigation, were consistent with a research project the psychiatrist was then conducting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington on post-traumatic stress disorder.

“There was no indication that Major Hasan was planning an imminent attack at all, or that he was directed to do anything,” one senior investigator said. He and the other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying the case was under investigation.

The officials said the Departments of Defense and Justice had decided Major Hasan would be prosecuted in a military court, an indication that investigators believe he acted alone. Government lawyers had said his case might be tried in civilian court if he were believed to have conspired with nonmilitary defendants.

In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said, “At this point, there is no information to indicate Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot.” The statement concluded that “because the content of the communications was explainable by his research and nothing else was found,” investigators decided “that Major Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning.”

Officials said the F.B.I. and the Defense Department would be reviewing their earlier assessment of Major Hasan to determine whether it was handled correctly.

Given the radical views of Mr. Awlaki, however, the conduct of the F.B.I. and the military is likely to come under intense scrutiny from Congress. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, on Monday asked intelligence and law enforcement officials to preserve all records of their dealings with Major Hasan.

The communications provide the first indication that Major Hasan was in direct communication with anyone who espoused militant views. On Monday, Mr. Awlaki praised Major Hasan on his Web site, saying that he “did the right thing” in attacking soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The officials said the communications did not alter the prevailing theory that Major Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim.

Major Hasan, who was shot by a police officer, has regained consciousness at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and is able to talk, though he declined on Sunday to speak to federal investigators about the shooting rampage. “He is critical but stable,” said a hospital spokeswoman, Maria Gallegos.

Ms. Gallegos added that Major Hasan had come out of a coma on Saturday and had been conversing with his doctors ever since. A lawyer for Major Hasan told The Associated Press on Monday that he had asked investigators not to question his client and expressed doubt that he could get a fair trial. The lawyer, John P. Galligan, a retired Army colonel, said he was contacted by Major Hasan’s family on Monday and was traveling to San Antonio to consult with him.

The imam whom Major Hasan made contact with is an American citizen born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents. He wrote on Monday on his English-language Web site that Major Hasan was “a hero.” The cleric said, “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

Mr. Awlaki added, “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Awlaki was quoted as disapproving of such violence and was portrayed as a moderate figure who might provide a bridge between Islam and Western democracies. But since leaving the United States in 2002 for London and later Yemen, Mr. Awlaki has become, through his Web site, www.anwar-alawlaki.com, a prominent proponent of militant Islam.

“He’s one of the most popular figures among hard-line, English-speaking jihadis around the world,” said Jarret Brachman, the author of “Global Jihadism” and a terrorism consultant to the government.

Mr. Brachman said Mr. Awlaki was especially appealing to young Muslims who are curious about radical ideas but not yet committed. “He’s American, he’s funny, and he speaks in a very understandable way,” Mr. Brachman said.

In 2000 and 2001, Mr. Awlaki served as an imam at two mosques in the United States frequented by three future Sept. 11 hijackers. Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi attended the Rabat mosque in San Diego, where Mr. Awlaki later admitted meeting Mr. Hazmi several times but “claimed not to remember any specifics of what they discussed,” according to the report of the national Sept. 11 commission.

Both Mr. Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, later attended the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., after Mr. Awlaki had moved there in early 2001. The Sept. 11 commission report expressed “suspicion” about the coincidence, but said its investigators were unable to find Mr. Awlaki to question him.

Major Hasan attended the same Virginia mosque, but it is not known whether they met there.

Mr. Awlaki, who is in his late 30s, had returned to Yemen with his family as a child. He received a religious education in Yemen and later earned degrees in engineering at Colorado State and in education leadership at San Diego State, according to his Web site.

His writings urge Muslims to dedicate themselves to defending Islam, including pursuing “arms training,” in such works as “44 Ways of Supporting Jihad.”

At Fort Hood, the Army erected walls of gray containers around the headquarters of III Corps in advance of a memorial service Tuesday for the 13 people killed when, the authorities say, Major Hasan opened fire in a center where soldiers get vaccinated before being sent abroad.

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, are expected to attend the ceremony, and the president will speak to a crowd that will include the survivors of the attack and the families of the victims.

James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting from Killeen, Tex.

Little Evidence of Terror Plot in Base Killings

2009-11-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

This article appeared in the New York Times. As usual, folks are looking for some large terrorist plot, when what they probably will not discover is that this was a one man jihad--see my previous posting. There seems to be sufficient evidence that Major Hassan did not simply "snap"; he deliberately planned to kill and wound his fellow soldiers hoping that he would be martyred in the process--a sort of martyrdom by cop. He apparently believed he would go on to paradise and his share of virgins supposedly reserved for martyrs. I think not. I am not prepared to believe he was harrased as alleged. If that was the case, why did he not report it to authorities? Where is the proof?

I cannot help but wonder why the leadership at Walter Reed Army Medical Center did not take action to remove Major Hassan from the military. Much of that decision may have to do with the amount of service he owed for his medical education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Rather someone chose to let him be transferred to an operational unit preparing for deployment to the Middle East.

George Harris
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Little Evidence of Terror Plot in Base Killings
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Published: November 7, 2009

WASHINGTON — After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.
Army Concludes Shootings Involved Only One Gunman (November 8, 2009) Rather, they have come to believe that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the shootings, acted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures, according to interviews with federal officials who have been briefed on the inquiry.

Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Major Hasan believed he was carrying out an extremist’s suicide mission.

But the investigators, working with behavioral experts, suggested that he might have long suffered from emotional problems that were exacerbated by the tensions of his work with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home with serious psychiatric problems.

They said his counseling activities with the veterans appear to have further fueled his anger and hardened his increasingly militant views as he was seeming to move toward more extreme religious beliefs — all of which boiled over as he faced being shipped overseas, an assignment he bitterly opposed.

Investigators have gleaned most of their findings from Major Hasan’s computer use and from interviews with his family members, co-workers and neighbors. One significant investigative thrust has involved determining whether Major Hasan had contact with extremists who preyed on his increasingly angry and outspoken opposition to American policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But so far, investigators have unearthed no evidence that he was directed or steered into violence or ever traveled overseas to meet with extremist groups, as defendants in some recent terrorism cases are accused of doing, the officials said.

The officials emphasized that their findings were preliminary and that the investigation was fluid. New information could alter their perceptions of Major Hasan’s motives. But the early conclusions are already influencing the course of the inquiry, including which law enforcement agencies lead it.

“It’s early, but it looks like there are a number of factors going on here,” said a senior government official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings do not represent the government’s formal investigative and legal views of the case.

The officials said a continuing search of Major Hasan’s computer indicates that he had logged on to Web sites that celebrated radical Islamic ideologies and that he had exchanged e-mail messages with like-minded people, some possibly overseas. In addition, they believe that he may have written inflammatory Internet postings that justified suicide attacks, though that has not been concretely established.

Still, investigators have found no evidence that Major Hasan sent e-mail messages to known terrorists or anyone else who encouraged or helped him to orchestrate the shootings.

Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who is head of the House Homeland Security intelligence subcommittee, confirmed in a phone interview on Saturday that investigators had thus far not found any evidence suggesting that Major Hasan had been in contact with extremist or terrorist organizations. “I don’t know of that link,” Ms. Harman said, adding that the investigation was seeking to answer that question. The committee oversees some of the agencies involved in domestic counterterrorism inquiries.

The officials said it was increasingly unlikely that co-conspirators might still be found and charged. Based on this preliminary view, the officials said they were leaning toward charging Major Hasan in a military court rather than a civilian court. Though that decision was not official, they said he was more likely to be prosecuted in a civilian court if other nonmilitary defendants were involved.

Confirming the law enforcement view, a senior American intelligence official said on Saturday that there were no known co-conspirators at this point. “Hasan is the only name that’s emerged so far,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity when discussing intelligence matters.

The possibility that the Fort Hood attack involved terrorism arose for a number of reasons. For one, early reports from the chaotic scene indicated that there might have been more than one gunman. Investigators have now said publicly that there was only one shooter. Also, friends and work associates of Major Hasan have described his increasing doubts about the American military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In interviews in recent days, friends and others have portrayed Major Hasan as a troubled man, deeply concerned about being deployed to the war zones.

Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command are moving deliberately through their search of Major Hasan’s computers. They suspect that he might have used multiple e-mail accounts and fictitious identities, and might have destroyed documents in advance of the attack, perhaps in an effort to conceal his activities in the days leading up to the shootings.

Such steps could be revealing and potentially legally significant as evidence that the killings were premeditated and not the spontaneous outburst of a mentally impaired malcontent.

Neighbors in the run-down two-story apartment building were Major Hasan has lived since arriving in Killeen, Tex., said that federal agents had seized a computer belonging to his next-door neighbor. Major Hasan had used the computer frequently, they said, paying the neighbor for its use.

Federal agents also took away a large trash bin in which the psychiatrist had dumped a shredder and a plastic bag full of shredded documents on the morning before the shooting, neighbors said.

Over all, the inquiry is somewhat more subtle than many criminal cases in which investigators try to piece together a timeline of a suspect’s activities. The inquiry into the Fort Hood shootings is turning into a deep psychological exploration of the mind of a suspect in a mass killing.

James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting from Killeen, Tex.

Counterterrorism: Shifting from 'Who' to 'How'

2009-11-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

VERY THOUGHT PROVOKING ARTICLE THAT MAY MAKE YOU LOOK AT THINGS AND PEOPLE MUCH DIFFERENTLY.

GEORGE

From www.stratfor.com

Counterterrorism: Shifting from 'Who' to 'How'
November 4, 2009 | 1918 GMT

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In the 11th edition of the online magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battle), which was released to jihadist Web sites last week, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi wrote an article that called for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets. The targets included "any tyrant, intelligence den, prince" or "minister" (referring to the governments in the Muslim world like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen), and "any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc.," (an obvious reference to the United States and Europe and Westerners living in Muslim countries).

Related Special Topic Pages
Surveillance and Countersurveillance
Terrorist Attack Cycle
Al-Wahayshi, an ethnic Yemeni who spent time in Afghanistan serving as a lieutenant under Osama bin Laden, noted these simple attacks could be conducted with readily available weapons such as knives, clubs or small improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to al-Wahayshi, jihadists "don't need to conduct a big effort or spend a lot of money to manufacture 10 grams of explosive material" and that they should not "waste a long time finding the materials, because you can find all these in your mother's kitchen, or readily at hand or in any city you are in."

That al-Wahayshi gave these instructions in an Internet magazine distributed via jihadist chat rooms, not in some secret meeting with his operational staff, demonstrates that they are clearly intended to reach grassroots jihadists -- and are not intended as some sort of internal guidance for AQAP members. In fact, al-Wahayshi was encouraging grassroots jihadists to "do what Abu al-Khair did" referring to AQAP member Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, the Saudi suicide bomber who attempted to kill Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef with a small IED on Aug. 28.

The most concerning aspect of al-Wahayshi's statement is that it is largely true. Improvised explosive mixtures are in fact relatively easy to make from readily available chemicals -- if a person has the proper training -- and attacks using small IEDs or other readily attainable weapons such as knives or clubs (or firearms in the United States) are indeed quite simple to conduct.

As STRATFOR has noted for several years now, with al Qaeda's structure under continual attack and no regional al Qaeda franchise groups in the Western Hemisphere, the most pressing jihadist threat to the U.S. homeland at present stems from grassroots jihadists, not the al Qaeda core. This trend has been borne out by the large number of plots and arrests over the past several years, to include several so far in 2009. The grassroots have likewise proven to pose a critical threat to Europe (although it is important to note that the threat posed by grassroots operatives is more widespread, but normally involves smaller, less strategic attacks than those conducted by the al Qaeda core).

From a counterterrorism perspective, the problem posed by grassroots operatives is that unless they somehow self-identify by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to authorities, attend a militant training camp, or conduct electronic correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny, they are very difficult to detect.

The threat posed by grassroots operatives, and the difficulty identifying them, highlight the need for counterterrorism programs to adopt a proactive, protective intelligence approach to the problem -- an approach that focuses on "the how" of militant attacks instead of just "the who."

The How
In the traditional, reactive approach to counterterrorism, where authorities respond to a crime scene after a terrorist attack to find and arrest the militants responsible for the attack, it is customary to focus on the who, or on the individual or group behind the attack. Indeed, in this approach, the only time much emphasis is placed on the how is either in an effort to identify a suspect when an unknown actor carried out the attack, or to prove that a particular suspect was responsible for the attack during a trial. Beyond these limited purposes, not much attention is paid to the how.

In large part, this focus on the who is a legacy of the fact that for many years, the primary philosophy of the U.S. government was to treat counterterrorism as a law-enforcement program, with a focus on prosecution rather than on disrupting plots.

Certainly, catching and prosecuting those who commit terrorist attacks is necessary, but from our perspective, preventing attacks is more important, and prevention requires a proactive approach. To pursue such a proactive approach to counterterrorism, the how becomes a critical question. By studying and understanding how attacks are conducted -- i.e., the exact steps and actions required for a successful attack -- authorities can establish systems to proactively identify early indicators that planning for an attack is under way. People involved in planning the attack can then be focused on, identified, and action can be taken prevent them from conducting the attack or attacks they are plotting. This means that focusing on the how can lead to previously unidentified suspects, e.g., those who do not self-identify.

"How was the attack conducted?" is the primary question addressed by protective intelligence, which is, at its core, a process for proactively identifying and assessing potential threats. Focusing on the how, then, requires protective intelligence practitioners to carefully study the tactics, tradecraft and behavior associated with militant actors involved in terrorist attacks. This allows them to search for and identify those behaviors before an attack takes place. Many of these behaviors are not by themselves criminal in nature; visiting a public building and observing security measures or standing on the street to watch the arrival of a VIP at their office are not illegal, but they can be indicators that an attack is being plotted. Such legal activities ultimately could be overt actions in furtherance of an illegal conspiracy to conduct the attack, but even where conspiracy cannot be proved, steps can still be taken to identify possible assailants and prevent a potential attack -- or at the very least, to mitigate the risk posed by the people involved.

Protective intelligence is based on the fact that successful attacks don't just happen out of the blue. Rather, terrorist attacks follow a discernable attack cycle. There are critical points during that cycle where a plot is most likely to be detected by an outside observer. Some of the points during the attack cycle when potential attackers are most vulnerable to detection are while surveillance is being conducted and weapons are being acquired. However, there are other, less obvious points where people on the lookout can spot preparations for an attack.

It is true that sometimes individuals do conduct ill-conceived, poorly executed attacks that involve shortcuts in the planning process. But this type of spur-of-the-moment attack is usually associated with mentally disturbed individuals and it is extremely rare for a militant actor to conduct a spontaneous terrorist attack without first following the steps of the attack cycle.

To really understand the how, protective intelligence practitioners cannot simply acknowledge that something like surveillance occurs. Rather, they must turn a powerful lens on steps like preoperational surveillance to gain an in-depth understanding of them. Dissecting an activity like preoperational surveillance requires not only examining subjects such as the demeanor demonstrated by those conducting surveillance prior to an attack and the specific methods and cover for action and status used. It also requires identifying particular times where surveillance is most likely and certain optimal vantage points (called perches in surveillance jargon) from where a surveillant is most likely to operate when seeking to surveil a specific facility or event. This type of complex understanding of surveillance can then be used to help focus human or technological countersurveillance efforts where they can be most effective.

Unfortunately, many counterterrorism investigators are so focused on the who that they do not focus on collecting this type of granular how information. When we have spoken with law enforcement officers responsible for investigating recent grassroots plots, they gave us blank stares in response to questions about how the suspects had conducted surveillance on the intended targets. They simply had not paid attention to this type of detail -- but this oversight is not really the investigators' fault. No one had ever explained to them why paying attention to, and recording, this type of detail was important. Moreover, it takes specific training and a practiced eye to observe and record these details without glossing over them. For example, it is quite useful if a protective intelligence officer has first conducted a lot of surveillance, because conducting surveillance allows one to understand what a surveillant must do and where he must be in order to effectively observe surveillance of a specific person or place.

Similarly, to truly understand the tradecraft required to build an IED and the specific steps a militant needs to complete to do so, it helps to go to an IED school where the investigator learns the tradecraft firsthand. Militant actors can and do change over time. New groups, causes and ideologies emerge, and specific militants can be killed, captured or retire. But the tactical steps a militant must complete to conduct a successful attack are constant. It doesn't matter if the person planning an attack is a radical environmentalist, a grassroots jihadist or a member of the al Qaeda core, for while these diverse actors will exhibit different levels of professionalism in regard to terrorist tradecraft, they still must follow essentially the same steps, accomplish the same tasks and operate in the same areas. Knowing this allows protective intelligence to guard against different levels of threats.

Of course, tactics can be changed and perfected and new tactics can be developed (often in response to changes in security and law enforcement operations). Additionally, new technologies can emerge (like cell phones and Google Earth) -- which can alter the way some of these activities are conducted, or reduce the time it takes to complete them. Studying the tradecraft and behaviors needed to execute evolving tactics, however, allows protective intelligence practitioners to respond to such changes and even alter how they operate in order to more effectively search for potential hostile activity.

Technology does not only aid those seeking to conduct attacks. There are a variety of new tools, such as Trapwire, a software system designed to work with camera systems to help detect patterns of preoperational surveillance, that can be focused on critical areas to help cut through the fog of noise and activity and draw attention to potential threats. These technological tools can help turn the tables on unknown plotters because they are designed to focus on the how. They will likely never replace human observation and experience, but they can serve as valuable aids to human perception.

Of course, protective intelligence does not have to be the sole responsibility of federal authorities specifically charged with counterterrorism. Corporate security managers and private security contractors should also apply these principles to protecting the people and facilities in their charge, as should local and state police agencies. In a world full of soft targets -- and limited resources to protect those targets from attack -- the more eyes looking for such activity the better. Even the general public has an important role to play in practicing situational awareness and spotting potential terrorist activity.

Keeping it Simple?
Al-Wahayshi is right that it is not difficult to construct improvised explosives from a wide range of household chemicals like peroxide and acetone or chlorine and brake fluid. He is also correct that some of those explosive mixtures can be concealed in objects ranging from electronic items to picture frames, or can be employed in forms ranging from hand grenades to suicide vests. Likewise, low-level attacks can also be conducted using knives, clubs and guns.

Furthermore, when grassroots jihadists plan and carry out attacks acting as lone wolves or in small compartmentalized cells without inadvertently betraying their mission by conspiring with people known to the authorities, they are not able to be detected by the who-focused systems, and it becomes far more difficult to discover and thwart these plots. This focus on the how absolutely does not mean that who-centered programs must be abandoned. Surveillance on known militants, their associates and communications should continue, efforts to identify people attending militant training camps or fighting in places like Afghanistan or Somalia must be increased, and people who conduct terrorist attacks should be identified and prosecuted.

However -- and this is an important however -- if an unknown militant is going to conduct even a simple attack against some of the targets al-Wahayshi suggests, such as an airport, train, or specific leader or media personality, complexity creeps into the picture, and the planning cycle must be followed if an attack is going to be successful. The prospective attacker must observe and quantify the target, construct a plan for the attack and then execute that plan. The demands of this process will force even an attacker previously unknown to the authorities into a position where he is vulnerable to discovery. If the attacker does this while there are people watching for such activity, he will likely be seen. But if he does this while there are no watchers, there is little chance that he will become a who until after the attack has been completed.

The CBO/TRICARE Email That Won’t Die

2009-11-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

The CBO/TRICARE Email That Won’t Die

Here is the current facts about this rumor that keeps going around.

George

State Department Official Resigns over Afghanistan

2009-10-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html?hpid=topnews

The article at this URL is very good and should cause everyone to wonder as this this former Marine officer and State Department Foreign Service Officer does about what are we up to in Afghanistan. I appreciate that President Obama is not doing the "Ready, Aim, Fire" that the Bush administration did and which former (I stress FORMER) Vice President Cheney wants President Obama to repeat, but I cannot help but think we have find ourself in a bottomless pit. Historically, many empires have been defeated in Afghanistan. As this article points out, many of the local tribes DON'T want us there and thus have joined with the Taliban and al Qaeda to fight us.

While no one wants to lose, I think we must ask ourselves how many young men and women and many resources are we going to waste before we decide we have had enough. We have not yet figured out that we are the enemy to many Afghanis. As Pogo said many years ago, "W have met the enemy and he is us." Our problem is that our leaders are not as smart as this comic strip character.

America and Afghanistan--A Different View

2009-10-21T04:27:00.000-07:00

This article points you to a very excellent paper by Gilles Dorronboro of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I highly recommend you click on the CEIP link and read his article. It is long but may help to explain why we are having problems and why the Pakistan Army is having trouble with their latest efforts. (Not to detract from the CEIP article, but if you want to see what is happening with the latest Pakistani effort against the Taliban, go here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/77472.html )

We have way underestimated the Taliban and their abilities and determination. They ain't a bunch of "ragheads" or "Hadjies" (today's replacement for Gook and other disparaging remarks for indigenous folks). The Taliban is ruthless and has killed many tribal leaders in order to gain control of much of Afghanistan. It is no wonder that locals don't want to oppose them. They know we will leave eventually, but the Taliban will still be around and will return to seek their revenge.

BTW "Hadji" is an honorific used to address someone who has made the Hadj to Mecca.

Think Tank Nation — America and Afghanistan

1 Reviews
2009/10/16 00:00:00
By Dr. Alan L. Gropman
Review of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan is all over the news and very much on President Obama’s mind. U.S. counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts and operations are currently widely debated. A relevant essay by Gilles Dorronsoro, “The Taliban's Winning Strategy in Afghanistan,” is available from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), complete with a highly useful bibliography. The CEIP, arguably the most venerable think tank in the world, has influenced public policy for a year short of a century. Visit http://www.ceip.org/ and click on publications to call up Dorronsoro’s essay. (His well-informed views on this critical issue also can be found in a short essay in the most recent The National Interest titled “Afghanization” which also is well worth the MOAA reader’s time.) Dorronsoro writes: “A misunderstanding of the insurgency [in Afghanistan] is at the heart of the difficulties facing the international coalition in Afghanistan. The Taliban are often described as an umbrella movement comprising loosely connected groups that are essentially local and unorganized. On the contrary, this report … reveals a resilient adversary, engaged in strategic planning and coordinated action.” Dorronsoro further advises: “The Taliban are a revolutionary movement, deeply opposed to the Afghan tribal system and focused on the rebuilding of the Islamic Emirate. Their propaganda and intelligence are efficient, and the local autonomy of their commanders in the field allow them both flexibility and cohesion. They have made clever use of ethnic tensions, the rejection of foreign forces by the Afghan people, and the lack of local administration to gain support in the population. … [T]he Taliban have achieved their objectives in the South and East of the country, isolating the Coalition, marginalizing the local Afghan administration, and establishing a parallel administration (mainly to dispense Sharia justice and collect taxes).” In other words, Dorrononsoro tells Americans we are losing in this graveyard of empires in large part because we have flunked Sun Tzu’s critical requirement of understanding our adversary and have not taken the Taliban “seriously.” Dorronsoro emphasizes: The Taliban “are often characterized as ‘backward,’ ‘medieval,’ and ‘reactionary,’ and as an association of loosely organized groups. The insurgency is perceived as a local problem to be solved locally; the national and dynamic dimension of the struggle is not taken into account. In fact, the Taliban are quite capable of strategic planning and coordinated action. This means that they will adapt to and counter any moves by the International Coalition [IC]. On-the-ground observations and reliable evidence suggest … the Taliban have an efficient leadership, are learning from their mistakes, and are quick to exploit the weaknesses of their adversaries. They are building a parallel administration, have nationwide logistics, and already manage an impressive intelligence network. Based on the analysis of the insurgency, I argue that the Taliban organization and goals call for a different IC strategy.” The author, therefore, advises us to “know our enemy” and also makes several cogent suggestions such as: “Stop focusing on the local leadership of the Taliban in Afghanistan and focus more on the central command in Quetta while pressuring Pakistan directly to take action there. … Focus new resources in places where the Taliban are still relatively weak: around Kabul and in the North to counter their strategy of geographical and ethnic extension of the war. … The current strategy of focusing the reinforcements in two provinces (Helmand and Kandahar) is risky. The lack of Afghan institutions condemns the IC forces to stay there indefinitely to prevent the return of the Taliban, especially since the Pakistani sanctuary enables them to conduct hit-and-run operations. In addition, the insurgency could rapidly redirect its resources to the North. Finally, more reinforcements will be needed in 2010 if this ‘clean and hold’ strategy is to be expanded to other provinces.” Dorronsoro ends this way: “NATO mistakenly views the insurgency as a local or regional phenomenon and has organized its forces accordingly, thereby failing to develop an integrated, coherent national response. The current offensive in Helmand, with its very local focus, is the latest example of this misguided strategy.” All good advice!
About the author: Dr. Alan Gropman teaches a course at the National Defense University called Public Policy Formulation: Think Tanks. He is a Life Member of MOAA and served 27 years in the U.S. Air Force. His ideas are his own.

Copyright Alan Gropman and Military Officers Association of America. All rights reserved.
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Captain Harris
10/21/2009 7:25:38 AM
This is an excellent article. Dorronsoro's article is riveting and is a must read. It will help explain our problems as well as the news today that the Pakistan army is not doing well in their battle--see McClatchy news today here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/77472.html

40 Years Ago...

2009-10-21T04:16:00.000-07:00

It is good to know that bravery does get recognized, even if it is a few years late!

Almost 40 years late, unit honored for bloody Vietnam battle

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the White House. And welcome to a moment nearly 40 years in the making.
Last month, I was privileged to present the parents of an American soldier, Sergeant First Class Jared Monti, with our nation's highest decoration for valor — the Medal of Honor. Today, we celebrate the awarding of our nation's highest honor for a military unit — the Presidential Unit Citation.
The Presidential Unit Citation is awarded for "gallantry, determination, and esprit de corps in accomplishing its mission under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions." Since its creation during the Second World War, it has only been bestowed about 100 times.
Today, another unit assumes its rightful place in these ranks — Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, the legendary Blackhorse Regiment.
To mark this occasion we're joined by Congressman — and Vietnam veteran — Leonard Boswell; Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jim "Hoss" Cartwright; John McHugh, our Army Secretary; and Vice Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli; from Fort Irwin, California, leaders of today's 11th Armored Cavalry — Colonel Paul Laughlin and Command Sergeant Major Martin Wilcox; and most of all, the men of Alpha Troop — those behind me and some 100 here today.
Now, these men might be a little bit older, a little bit grayer. But make no mistake — these soldiers define the meaning of bravery and heroism.
It was March 1970, deep in the jungles of Vietnam. And through the static and crackle of their radios Alpha Troop heard that another unit was in trouble. Charlie Company, from the 1st Calvary Division, had stumbled upon a massive underground bunker of North Vietnamese troops. A hundred Americans were facing some 400 enemy fighters. Outnumbered and outgunned, Charlie Company was at risk of being overrun.
That's when Alpha Troop's captain gave the order: "Saddle up and move out."
As these men will tell you themselves, this isn't the story of a battle that changed the course of a war. It never had a name, like Tet or Hue or Khe Sanh. It never made the papers back home. But like countless battles, known and unknown, it is a proud chapter in the story of the American soldier.
It's the story of men who came together, from every corner of America, of different colors and creeds. Some young — just 18, 19 years old, and just weeks in the jungle; some older — veterans hardened by the ugliness of war. Noncommissioned officers who held the unit together and the officers assigned to lead them.
It's the story of how this team of some 200 men set out to save their fellow Americans. With no roads to speak of, they plowed their tanks and armored vehicles through the thick jungle, smashing a path through bamboo and underbrush, mile after mile, risking ambush and landmines every step of the way, and finally emerging from the jungle to the rescue — what one member of Charlie Company called "a miracle."
It's a story of resolve. For Alpha Troop could have simply evacuated their comrades and left that enemy bunker for another day — to ambush another American unit. But as their captain said, "That's not what the 11th Cavalry does."
And so, ultimately, this is a story of what soldiers do — not only for their country, but for each other: the troopers who put themselves in the line of fire, using their tanks and vehicles to shield those trapped Americans; the loaders who kept the ammunition coming, and the gunners who never let up; and when one of those gunners went down, the soldier who jumped up to take his place.
It's about the men who rushed out to drag their wounded buddies to safety; the medics who raced to save so many; the injured who kept fighting hour after hour. And finally, with dark falling, as the convoy made the daring escape back through the jungle, these soldiers remained vigilant, protecting the wounded who lay at their feet.
The fog of war makes a full accounting impossible. But this much we know. Among the many casualties that day, some 20 members of Alpha Troop were wounded. And at least two made the ultimate sacrifice — their names now among the many etched in that black granite wall not far from here. But because of that service, that sacrifice, Alpha Troop completed its mission. It rescued Charlie Company. It saved those 100 American soldiers, some of who join us today. And those soldiers went on to have families — children and grandchildren who also owe their lives to Alpha Troop.
Now, some may wonder: After all these years, why honor this heroism now? The answer is simple. Because we must. Because we have a sacred obligation. As a nation, we have an obligation to this troop. Their actions that day went largely unnoticed — for decades — until their old captain, John Poindexter, realized that their service had been overlooked. He felt that he had a right to wrong. And so he spent years tracking down his troopers and gathering their stories, filing reports, fighting for the Silver Stars and Bronze Stars they deserved and bringing us to this day.
Thank you, John.
We have an obligation to all who served in the jungles of Vietnam. Our Vietnam vets answered their country's call and served with honor. But one of the saddest episodes in American history was the fact that these vets were often shunned and neglected, even demonized when they came home. That was a national disgrace. And on days such as this, we resolve to never let it happen again.
Many of our Vietnam vets put away their medals, rarely spoke of their service and moved on. They started families and careers. Some rose through the ranks, like the decorated Vietnam veteran that I rely on every day, my National Security Advisor, Jim Jones.
Indeed, I'm told that today is the first time in 39 years that many from Alpha Troop have pulled out their medals and joined their old troop. Some of you still carry the shrapnel and the scars of that day. All of you carry the memories. And so I say, it's never too late, we can never say it enough. To you and all those who served in Vietnam, we thank you. We honor your service. And America is forever grateful.
Today also reminds us of our obligations to all our veterans, whether they took off the uniform decades ago or days ago — to make sure that they and their families receive the respect they deserve, and the health care and treatment they need, the benefits they have earned and all the opportunities to live out their dreams.
And finally, if that day in the jungle, if that war long ago, teaches us anything, then surely it is this. If we send our men and women in uniform into harm's way, then it must be only when it is absolutely necessary. And when we do, we must back them up with the strategy and the resources and the support they need to get the job done.
This includes always showing our troops the respect and dignity they deserve, whether one agrees with the mission or not. For if this troop and our men and women in uniform can come together — from so many different backgrounds and beliefs — to serve together, and to succeed together, then so can we. So can America.
I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute to these men, who fought in what came to be called The Anonymous Battle. Troopers, you are not anonymous anymore. And with America's overdue recognition also comes responsibility — our responsibility as citizens and as a nation, to always remain worthy of your service.
God bless Alpha Troop and the 11th Armored Cavalry. God bless all those who wear this nation's uniform. And God bless the United States of America.
Thank you very much, everybody. (Applause.)

New Elections in Afghanistan--Maybe, Maybe Not

2009-10-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like the United Nations-backed Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission has finally finished its work and if they can now figure out how to subtract the fraudulent votes, it may just be that President Hamid Karzai will be forced into a runoff election. This will give him a second oppotunity to steal votes and to stuff ballot boxes, particularly in the remote areas of Afghanistan. That is, if people can get to polling places what with winter coming on and the resurgence of the Taliban and its strange bedfellow al Quaeda. People may well think twice about losing their heads literally over casting a ballot.

If we had some hanging chads around this would remind me of the first George W. Bush election. Fortunately or unfortunately that is not the case.

In the meantime, President Barack Obama is trying to reach some conclusion about what we are going to do in Afghanistan. I don't know how in good faith, he can support a government that has stolen an election. I would like to think the American people will rise up and we will still protests much like those we saw 40+ years ago. At least I would hope so.

VA Extends ‘Agent Orange’ Benefits

2009-10-15T05:25:00.000-07:00

Some very important information here. In addition to checking with the VA, I recommend contacting Disabled American Veterans www.dav.org for assistance.

VA Extends ‘Agent Orange’ Benefits

The Taliban and Afghanistan

2009-10-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-09-11-voa10.cfm

This article from the Voice of America points out that the Taliban now has a viable presence in at least 80% of Afghanistan. It is no wonder that General Stanley McChrystal is painting such a gloomy picture. A year ago, the Taliban was an important force in about half of Afghanistan and today that presence is increasing. Is there any possiblilty that we can change that? I personally do not think that is the case regardless of General McChrystal's "new strategy".

As we are slowly learning, keeping small groups of American troops is very isolated areas has done little more than offer them up for sacrifice. Many of these areas are so remote that everything must be flown in by helicopter--food, water, ammunition, toilet paper, you name it. And when things get hot, support is often some time away and in short supply. In 1840, the British lost 16,000 men, women and children, civilian and military as they tried to abandon Afghanistan. One military physician survived and it is believed that was on purpose in order to send a message to the British. Are we going to wait until we have lost 16,000 people before we figure out that Afghanistan is not worth the loss of so many young men and women? The Russians spent ten years and had as many as 106,000 personnel in Afghanistan and finally left. Are we going to continue down that same path?

Falling back and protecting the major population areas seems to me to say that we are willing to give up most of Afghanistan to our avowed enemy. To try to train an army and national police force of several hundred thousand seems to be a waste of energy, time and money. Afghanistan can't support such a force for the long haul. The world at large would have to spoon feed billions or perhaps trillions of dollars into a place that has nothing to offer as a return on the investment. We don't need more opium and we have enough sand and rocks. Afghanistan is for Afghanis--they are going to have to figure out what it is they want to be and who they want to rule them. This is no longer our fight.

Decision Time in Afghanistan

2009-09-30T16:23:00.000-07:00

This article from www.stratfor.com makes my point very well.

Afghanistan, A Key U.S. Decision Point

September 22, 2009 2046 GMT
DAVID FURST/AFP
Summary
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration appears to be inching toward a seminal decision on strategy in Afghanistan. It is becoming clear that a shift in strategy is looming, but the nature and extent of that shift — as well as the implications for troop levels in Afghanistan — remain to be seen. Nevertheless, the decisions made by the White House now could well shape the Afghan war for the rest of Obama’s presidency.
Analysis
Related Links
Afghanistan: The Nature of the Insurgency
Strategic Divergence: The War Against the Taliban and the War Against Al Qaeda
Geopolitical Diary: U.S. Limitations in Afghanistan
Geopolitical Diary: Differing Expectations for Afghanistan
U.S. President Barack Obama is approaching a key decision point in his presidency: how to proceed with the campaign in Afghanistan. The initial assessment of the senior commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was leaked to the Washington Post and published late Sept. 20. The classified report (the published version had redactions for operational security) was clearly intentionally leaked and done for maximum publicity. But the report — both explicitly and implicitly — expresses a great deal more than a simple call for more troops. In fact, it highlights the far-reaching implications of the strategic discussion currently under way within the administration.
Since Obama took office, key figures within the administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have been making public statements attempting to moderate popular expectations for the war in Afghanistan and discussing the need to shift away from a broad and wholesale exercise in nation-building to more focused and achievable goals like counter-terrorism and hunting al Qaeda specifically. And even with a small surge in troops, important changes to rules of engagement under McChrystal’s command and an offensive well under way in Helmand province, the situation in Afghanistan was slipping from bad to worse even before Obama took the oath of office. Matters have only deteriorated since. As a consequence, the strategic situation has continued to evolve and the administration has yet to make a definitive choice on the nature of the mission and the commitment of forces to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.
That decision appears to be coming soon. There are two key historical examples to consider, the first of which is when U.S. President Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam conflict in 1963. When U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, there were 16,000 American advisers in South Vietnam. When Johnson took the oath of office, a space race with the Soviets was in full swing and civil rights issues were heating up domestically. Few would have imagined that the war in Vietnam would come to define his presidency. But Johnson almost immediately committed to Vietnam, and by the end of his presidency the U.S. military was directly involved in front-line combat operations across Vietnam and there were more than half a million troops in country. The war and the failed American effort there have come to define his presidency.
In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan made the opposite decision in Lebanon. Following the loss of nearly 250 U.S. servicemen in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23 of that year; the situation on the ground began to worsen. But instead of doubling down and committing more forces, he made the decision to withdraw on Feb. 7, 1984, less than four months after the barracks bombing. Reagan did not inherit this problem, but he was presented with it early in his presidency. As the situation worsened, he chose to cut his losses and leave rather than become tangled up in Lebanon. Though criticized by some at the time, Reagan was re-elected and the Lebanon issue hardly registers in the popular memory of his presidency.
The point here is not to debate the finer points of history or second-guess decisions, but rather to highlight the importance of the compatibility between military strategy and the commitment of military forces — both quantitatively and over time — to that strategy. The common theme in these two examples is a deeply intractable and complex political-military problem and the American reaction to it. In the first case, the decision was made to commit. But this commitment was made without an achievable strategy compatible with the forces the U.S. was willing to dedicate to it at the time. Indeed, at the time of Kennedy’s death, some 1,000 American advisers were slated to be withdrawn from Vietnam (this decision was secret at the time). Kennedy had concluded that committing additional U.S. forces could not solve the conflict in Vietnam. Johnson thought otherwise. Reagan recognized this same incompatibility in Lebanon. The objective of stabilizing Lebanon was a complex and dubious one at best, but in any event, it required far more troops than he was willing to commit to the problem. In other words, he did not have a strategy he thought could succeed with the commitment he was willing to make to the problem. He withdrew.
The Obama administration is now facing a similar problem. The commanding general of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has advised the White House that the current strategy is not achievable even with more troops. McChrystal’s assessment postulates a new counterinsurgency strategy but (at least the redacted version) makes no statement about how many troops would be required to execute that strategy or how long a commitment is necessary to achieve it (though these are undoubtedly figures that are part of the current internal debate within the administration).
The administration is struggling with a spectrum of problems:
The fundamental challenges of Afghanistan — rugged geography, highly localized loyalties, traditions of governance, warlordism and poor infrastructure — that defeated the Soviets, the British and Alexander the Great alike;
More recent developments that are compounding matters further: a resurgent and strengthening Taliban insurgency, the interrelated problem of Pakistan’s insurgency (though Pakistani security efforts have intensified significantly) and a political crisis following the disputed Afghan presidential election;
The ebbing of allied support and the looming withdrawal of NATO forces currently committed to the campaign (in the near future, the United States will have to commit additional forces to Afghanistan merely to keep overall troop levels constant); and
The ebbing of domestic support for the campaign and the lack of support even from Obama’s own party to put additional troops in Afghanistan.
In other words, in addition to the top-level constraints on the number of troops the U.S. can commit to and sustain in Afghanistan due to current U.S. Army and Marine deployment practices, troop commitments in Iraq and logistical considerations, Obama faces further other, domestic constraints on what is possible and sustainable. (The Soviets failed in Afghanistan with nearly 120,000 troops; it seems unlikely that the United States will be able to match that commitment.)
It is clear that some shift in strategy is necessary. To our eye, the key questions to consider in this shift are:
What will the new strategy be, and will it be obtainable?
Will the troops and resources committed to the new strategy be sufficient to achieve its objectives?
Can the commitment of troops and resources be sustained long enough to achieve the objectives?
It is too soon to assume that Obama will double down in Afghanistan, or that the strategy McChrystal has laid out can be properly resourced even if the White House chooses to pursue it. Whether such a strategy can be achieved on a timetable compatible with the already wavering will of the American people is certainly questionable.
Whether the Afghan campaign comes to be a defining part of Obama’s presidency remains to be seen. But it is increasingly clear that the impending decision regarding the strategy for the campaign and the troops committed to it will be critical to shaping the remainder of Obama’s time in the White House.
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New nulear site in Iran

2009-09-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

How come if we know there is a site at Qom, Iran that we don't bomb the crap out of it? If we don't have the cajones, then why don't we hire the Israelis to do it? They have one made of brass and the other made of steel--and you know the rest. One small tacticl nuke bomb should do the trick. Diplomacy is not the answer--POWER is the answer and always has been in this case.

Can you remember when?

2009-09-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Can you remember the last time we won a war? I mean a real war. I’m not talking about the little dust ups in places like Grenada, Panama, Bosnia-Herzegovina , Mogadishu or even the Bay of Pigs. I mean something where we really got it on. Well, if you were born anytime after September 1, 1945, you have not witnessed a single “win” on our part.

In less than half a decade after V-J Day (September 1, 1945), we became embroiled in a war with North Korea. After three years of intense fighting that cost the U. S. more than 54,000 killed, the war ground to a halt and an “armistice” was signed on July 27, 1953. Notice that I did NOT say a “peace agreement” was signed. And of this writing, there still is not formally declared peace.

Not only did we lose 54,000 killed, more than 103,000 were wounded, some 8,100 were Missing In Action, over a million Koreans and Chinese were killed and one of our greatest generals, Douglas MacArthur was fired for wanting to win the war. This is the same cantankerous, vain, self-aggrandizing general that led this Nation to victory in our war against Japan during World War II.

When it was all said and done, the division between North and South Korea ended where it began, at the 38th Parallel where Korea was divided after World War II. More than 28,000 U. S. forces are staring at an unknown number of North Korean forces across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) established in 1953. Interestingly enough, on both sides, these are more than likely the grandchildren of the folks who were there over a half century ago. And that includes me!!! An interesting side note—several years ago, I went to Russia on a mission to the Russian Military Medical Academy, which is the oldest military medical school on this planet. I met a physician whose grandfather had been a USSR advisor to the North Koreans during the period I was there. We both wondered if we had ever stared at each other across the DMS and we drank a few vodkas to celebrate!

But before the little “dust up” in Mogadishu where we got our collective asses kicked, we engaged in the first Gulf War (aka Desert Storm/Desert Shield). On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq, launched an attack against Kuwait. Kuwait was quickly overrun and Saddam challenged the world to do something about it saying that this was, “The Mother of all Battles.” We quickly rose to the bait. The U.N. Security Council immediately instituted economic sanctions against Iraq and some twelve states joined us in sending naval forces and eight countries sent troops in varying numbers. We sent seventeen heavy and six light brigades of the U.S. Army and nine Marine regiments, with their large support and service forces. Four countries had sent combat aircraft, joining the local air forces of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the U.S. Air Force. The goal of all this firepower was to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and back to Iraq. Well, we did that and then we signed an agreement to cease fighting, but we allowed Iraq to keep some armored helicopters, which were eventually used to brutally suppress Shiite and Kurdish uprising. The U.N. mandate had not allowed coalition forces to pursue Iraqi forces into Iraq to put an end to Saddam Hussein in 1991 so what was there for us to do but pick up our toys, lick our wounds and go home. Little did we realize that just over a decade later our Nation would be devastated by the events of September 11, 2001. And what we also did not realize was that members of the Bush 41 administration didn’t forget what they considered unfinished business with Saddam Hussein.

Oh, and by the way—we had a big victory parade in Washington, D.C. to celebrate our ”victory” and to make up for the ones we didn’t have after Korea and Vietnam.

Now we are engaged in two major “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. We claim that we are winning in Iraq and it seems to have fallen off the front page of most newspapers but that is because our current brushfire is in Afghanistan. Depending on what you read and who wrote what you read, we seem to be in very deep trouble in Afghanistan and General Stanley A. McChrystal says that if he doesn’t get more troops immediately, there is a very good possibility that we could once again get our collective butts kicked by the Taliban and al Qaeda. Or, if McChrystal is correct that his new strategy can turn the whole thing around in an unknown number of years (or decades perhaps), then the American people have to decide what price are they willing to pay in blood to see if McChrystal’s plan will actually work.

There is much tug and haul going on between the civilians in the administration and the military professionals in the Pentagon and on the battlefield. Vice president Joe Biden and Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee don’t want to put any more troops in Afghanistan, but want to strengthen the Afghan Army and police. Senator John McCain, the Ranking Member of the same committee sides with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General McChrystal in pushing for 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan to implement McChrystal’s new strategy.

What is this new strategy? Perhaps that will become more clear in the coming weeks.

General McChrystal denies rift with administration

2009-09-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

This article was in yesterday's New York Times. It is very interesting to see what happens when the military/civilian interface doesn't fit. This could be an instance where some senior leaders will resign if their endorsement of General McChrystal planned strategy and inevitable request for additional troops is not fulfilled by the Obama administration. You may recall that some two decades ago, then Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb resigned because he did not agree with the Secretary of Defense about the size and role of the Navy.

It is very natural for the military to successfully complete the mission--that is what we are trained to do. Realizing or admitting defeat is anathema. During much of my nearly 40 year career, we got our lunch handed to us in Korea and Vietnam. You may not agree with me about Korea, but North Korea still exists and is a far bigger threat today than it was 50+ years ago. As for Vietnam--well the communists are still in charge and we have 58,000+ names on a black marble wall to remind us of how badly we handled that war.

If we know Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are hiding in Pakistan, why aren't we sending in Special Forces hunter-killer teams to get these guys. Seems to me if you cut off the head of the snake, it dies. If Pakistan gets all bent out of shape, then so be it--making a glass covered parking lot out of Karachi sounds like a plan.

My question is, "How many names will we have to carve on another monument?"

Top General Denies Rift With Obama on Afghan War

By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: September 23, 2009

WASHINGTON — The senior American commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday rejected any suggestion that his grim assessment of the war had driven a wedge between the military and the Obama administration, but he warned against taking too long to settle on a final strategy.
The commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, said in an interview that he welcomed the fierce debate that had emerged this week over how to carry out the war.

“A policy debate is warranted,” General McChrystal said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Kabul.

“We should not have any ambiguities, as a nation or a coalition,” he added. “At the end of the day, we’re putting young people in harm’s way.”

President Obama’s top advisers are rethinking the strategy that Mr. Obama unveiled in March, amid a growing political divide in the United States over how to proceed and confusion among allies that have fighting forces in Afghanistan.

General McChrystal would not address how many additional combat troops he would seek in a request he is preparing to send to the Defense Department. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Wednesday that the commander’s request would be submitted this week, even though no decisions would be made until the administration had finished its newest review of Afghanistan policy.

In his confidential assessment delivered on Aug. 30, General McChrystal warned that he needed more troops within the next year or else the conflict most likely would result in failure.
“I had absolute freedom to put in a candid assessment, and I did that,” he said in the interview, his first since submitting his 66-page classified report. “I have not been limited in any way in identifying resources that might be required.”

General McChrystal said he agreed to speak to The New York Times on Wednesday after he became increasingly concerned about reports of rifts between the military and the civilian leadership, and about rumors he was considering resigning if his assessment was not accepted.
The general denied that he had discussed — or even considered — resigning his command, as had been whispered about at the Pentagon, saying that he was committed to carrying out whatever mission Mr. Obama approved.

“I believe success is achievable,” he said. “I can tell you unequivocally that I have not considered resigning at all.”

The general said that after submitting his report, he had been directed to provide more information and respond to several questions, including on perhaps the thorniest issue: the impact of the flawed Afghan presidential election. Allegations of widespread ballot fraud have raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of President Hamid Karzai as a partner in the counterinsurgency campaign.

“We are doing an assessment almost on a constant basis,” General McChrystal said, speaking of both the twists and turns of the military mission and the political developments in Afghanistan.
He would not address various proposals for reshaping the mission that differ from his, including an approach supported by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back the military operation in Afghanistan to focus instead on terrorists seeking haven in Pakistan.
The commander said that he welcomed alternative proposals for how to stabilize Afghanistan and stressed that he did not feel that his analysis had been diminished in the view of senior administration officials because of its blunt tone.

“This is the right kind of process, and the way I see duty,” he said. “I have been given the opportunity to provide my inputs to the decision. Then it is my duty to execute that decision.”
General McChrystal, who assumed command of the American and NATO operations in Afghanistan in June, said that he had not spoken directly to Mr. Obama since he submitted his assessment, but that he expected he would after the president and his advisers had time to digest it.

Separately, at a conference in Washington, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the Middle East, said that both he and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had endorsed General McChrystal’s broad assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.

Asked to evaluate the impact of possible delays on endorsing a new strategy and considering troops requests, General McChrystal said, “Obviously, from a strictly military standpoint, time is always important, but it also is relative in this case.”
The general said he never was told to delay his troop request because of political concerns in Washington.

“My prognosis probably did exactly what it should have done: It got people to stop and say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s look at the basic premise,’ ” he said. “To me, there’s no rift. There’s no boxing anybody in.”

Even in advance of any decisions by the Obama administration, General McChrystal said he was taking steps to reshape the war effort in Afghanistan, including changing the way coalition forces develop Afghanistan’s own security forces.

While there are a range of opinions in Congress on whether to send more combat troops, there is broad support for making a priority of building up Afghanistan’s army and police force.
General McChrystal said he had ordered allied forces working with Afghan soldiers and police officers to go beyond organizing, training and equipping local forces; American and NATO units now try to build “a full-time partnership” with local forces, expanding the relationship to include living side by side, combining their planning efforts and going out on operations together.

OBAMA IS CONSIDEREING STRATEGY SHIFT IN AFGHAN WAR

2009-09-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that this "change in strategy" is a day late and a dollar short. When President Bush decided that Iraq was more important than Afghanistan, he made certain that we more than likely would lose the war in Afghanistan. We are damned if we do and damned if we don't--If we decide to protect the people in the urban areas, then a large portion of the population that lives in small isolated towns and villages will fall victim to the Taliban once again. If we try to defend the people in the small towns and villages as well as the urban areas, we will die the death of a thousand pecks since we don't have enough troops, equipment or staying power to do this. If we try to defend the small towns and villages, we lose the urban areas since apparently the Afghan army and police are so weak and so corrupt that they can't defend them.

The last line of this article is a very telling one.

NEW YORK TIMES

Obama Is Considering Strategy Shift in Afghan War

By PETER BAKER and ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: September 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.

Kevin Wolf/Associated Press

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who spoke Tuesday in National Harbor, Md., wants to scale back troops in Afghanistan.

The options under review are part of what administration officials described as a wholesale reconsideration of a strategy the president announced with fanfare just six months ago. Two new intelligence reports are being conducted to evaluate Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

The sweeping reassessment has been prompted by deteriorating conditions on the ground, the messy and still unsettled outcome of the Afghan elections and a dire report by Mr. Obama’s new commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Aides said the president wanted to examine whether the strategy he unveiled in March was still the best approach and whether it could work with the extra combat forces General McChrystal wants.

In looking at other options, aides said, Mr. Obama might just be testing assumptions — and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not rushing into a further expansion of the war — before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from General McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.

Although Mr. Obama has said that a stable Afghanistan is central to the security of the United States, some advisers said he was also wary of becoming trapped in an overseas quagmire. Some Pentagon officials say they worry that he is having what they called “buyer’s remorse” after ordering an extra 21,000 troops there within weeks of taking office before even settling on a strategy.

Mr. Obama met in the Situation Room with his top advisers on Sept. 13 to begin chewing over the problem, said officials involved in the debate. Among those on hand were Mr. Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; James L. Jones, the national security adviser; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They reached no consensus, so three or four more such meetings are being scheduled. “There are a lot of competing views,” said one official who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.
Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that it is on the table again speaks to the breadth of the administration’s review and the evolving views inside the White House of what has worked in the region and what has not. In recent days, officials have expressed satisfaction with the results of their cooperation with Pakistan in hunting down Qaeda figures in the unforgiving border lands.
A shift from a counterinsurgency strategy to a focus on counterterrorism would turn the administration’s current theory on its head. The strategy Mr. Obama adopted in March concluded that to defeat Al Qaeda, the United States needed to keep the Taliban from returning to power in Afghanistan and making it a haven once again for Osama bin Laden’s network. Mr. Biden’s position questions that assumption.

Mrs. Clinton, who opposed Mr. Biden in March, appeared to refer to this debate in an interview on Monday night on PBS. “Some people say, ‘Well, Al Qaeda’s no longer in Afghanistan,’ ” she said. “If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can’t tell you how fast Al Qaeda would be back in Afghanistan.”

At the time he announced his new approach, Mr. Obama described it as “a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy,” and said “to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.” The administration then fired the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, and replaced him with General McChrystal, empowering him to carry out the new strategy.

But the Afghan presidential election, widely marred by allegations of fraud, undermined the administration’s confidence that it had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden already had raised doubts about Mr. Karzai, which were only exacerbated by the fear that even if he emerges from a runoff election, he will have little credibility with his own people.

“A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”

Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, sent Mr. Obama a six-page letter arguing the case for more troops for General McChrystal. “There is no strategy short of a properly resourced counterinsurgency campaign that is likely to provide lasting security,” he wrote.

Mr. Obama now has to reconcile past statements and policy with his current situation.

“The problem for President Obama is he has made the case in the past that we took our eye off the ball and we should have stayed in Afghanistan,” said former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. But now that he is in charge of the war, Mr. Cohen said, Mr. Obama is discovering “he doesn’t have much in the way of options” and time is of the essence.

Mr. Cohen added, “The longer you wait, the harder it will be to reverse it.”

Thom Shanker, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting

Afghan lessons from Iraq 'success'

2009-09-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

A fellow veteran sent this to me--the theme is about the same--why are we in Afghanistan?

Afghan lessons from Iraq 'success'

By Andrew North BBC News, Baghdad

The rising deaths among US, British and other foreign troops in Afghanistan are the unavoidable result, commanders and politicians say, of the renewed effort to turn things round in what was the original post 9/11 war.

The language has all changed. Now, Afghanistan is called the "war of necessity", Iraq "the war of choice".

There has been lots of talk of new policies and tactics, and learning from "successes" in Iraq.
It is a well-established pattern, of ideas being recycled between the two wars, going back to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

But are the lessons from Iraq so positive for Afghanistan now?
Even some of those fighting there today are unsure of the reasons why.
"The Iraq war was different from this war," a US marine in Afghanistan's Helmand province told a BBC reporter recently.
“ In larger and more rural Afghanistan, it is that much harder to control territory and influence the mood ”

"That was definitely a war on terrorism. Here I don't know. No-one even mentions 9/11 any more. That's why I went to Iraq."

Yet there is hope the Taliban in Afghanistan will be beaten by another Iraq-style "surge" of US and foreign troops - although American commanders are shy of the comparison to Iraq.
With more boots on the ground, US and Nato forces, goes the thinking, will be better able to hold ground and protect the population.
US President Barack Obama may order thousands more troops in later this year, so the Afghan surge could turn out to be even larger than the 30,000 reinforcements President George W Bush sent to Iraq in 2007.

Mood change

Yet there has been plenty of misunderstanding about what happened in Iraq two years ago.
Even many US officers now admit that the importance of the surge was as much symbolic as military, demonstrating to insurgents that the Americans were not about to leave.
“ Although many Americans may want to call it a success, few Iraqis use that term ”
That was significant, but the key change was what happened before the surge was even announced - the decision by many Sunni Iraqis to turn against al-Qaeda.
Without that transformation, the war in Iraq could have got even worse.
So far, there is no sign of that kind of change in mood in the Taliban's heartland areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Commanders may answer that is because they still need more troops to be able to keep insurgents from returning to areas they have taken.
But 30,000 extra troops was very little for a country the size of Iraq, and one with better roads and more people living in towns and cities. If the mood had still been against them, it is unlikely that would have been a sufficient force.
In larger and more rural Afghanistan, it is that much harder to control territory and influence
the mood - as the Russians found in the 1980s, with many more soldiers.

Casualties rise

What is more, although many Americans may want to call it a success, few Iraqis use that term to describe the state of their country two years after the Bush surge.
There may be less bloodshed than before, but there are still attacks in Iraq every day.
In the first six months of this year, more than 2,000 Iraqi civilians died in violence, over double the number in Afghanistan in the same period.
And the casualty rate in Iraq has risen again in recent weeks because of an increase in attacks since the US pullout from the cities.

More than 100 people were killed in mass bombings in central Baghdad last week.
The US-trained Iraqi security forces now in charge in Baghdad are taking much of the blame for allowing the bombers to get through.
That is the plan in Afghanistan too, that Afghan security forces will take over from foreign troops.

But the end result may be a lot messier and unhappy than anyone wants to admit.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8221265.stmPublished: 2009/08/25 18:43:32 GMT

Deadly Afghan Ambush

2009-09-18T05:11:00.000-07:00

I hope you will read this and that you will be as angry as I am. It is long, but tells a tale that is not a pretty one.

As I read this piece, my anger increased with each line. We are alowing our young men and women to be sacrificed while at the same time we are planning on sending more into the maw. It simply does not make sense. The White House has allegedly developed eight general metrics that supposedly will be used to measure our success in Afghanistan, but I can tell you as a Total Quality Management/Quality Improvement individual, the "metrics" are practically useless. They are so general in nature as to be unmeasureable. There does not appear to be any who, when, how much identified in them. The first rule of a good metric is to have something that is measureable with some stated period for its completion.

We have over extended ourselves militarily and cannot figure out how to get out of this mess. We do not have enough, troops, enough support, and too damned many rules that only serve to defeat our purpose and get our people killed. One Marine Corporal had it right when he said, "We basically screwed our guys over." You will see more of what he had to say below. His anger and frustration are the types of things that eat away at the fighting spirit of our personnel. If they can't trust the leadership to give them the support they need, their will to fight will shrivel like a raisin in the sun.

Deadly Afghan ambush shows perils of ill-supplied deployment

By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — Manning a machine gun on a ridge overlooking this remote Afghan village, U.S. Marine Cpl. Steven Norman tried desperately to lay down covering fire for some 90 Afghan security forces and U.S. military trainers who were trapped in an ambush in the valley below.

Each time he'd raise his head to let loose a burst, however, the insurgents in the encircling mountains and the fortress-like hamlet itself would drive Norman down, drenching his position with cascades of machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
"I was pinned down hard core," recalled the slight 21-year-old from Moultrie, Ga., part of a team from the Okinawa-based 3rd Marine Division based in the nearby town of Sarkani. "I'd look where they were shooting, and I would shoot back. But I was pinned down."

Norman and other combat veterans who were caught in the Sept. 8 ambush that killed three U.S. Marines, a Navy corpsman and nine Afghans said it was the deadliest, most intense combat they'd faced in Afghanistan or Iraq. The insurgents never ran out of ammunition, they recalled, and some even wore helmets, flak jackets and military-style magazine pouches.
"They were firing from every direction. They were well placed. We could hardly see them," Norman said. "They were very coordinated in their fire. When we'd suppress that fire, they'd hit us from somewhere else."

The ambush and the nearly nine-hour battle in the rugged mountains of eastern Kunar province illustrated many of the toughest challenges inherited by the Obama administration and U.S. commanders and their soldiers, who're scrambling to regain the upper hand in an eight-year-old guerrilla war that's growing bloodier and more unpopular in both countries by the day.

Intelligence is inadequate. The Afghans and their U.S. trainers expected to face no more than a dozen insurgents in Ganjgal on their mission to sweep the village for arms and meet with the elders to discuss implementing an agreement to accept the local government's authority.
Instead, the contingent of 80 Afghan troops and border police and about a dozen U.S. military trainers walked into a three-sided storm of fire from automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and at least one recoilless rifle.

The lack of timely air support — it took about 80 minutes by a reporter's watch for helicopters to arrive, despite assurances that they'd be five minutes away — was a consequence of the manpower and equipment shortages bequeathed by the Bush administration's failure to secure Afghanistan against a resurgence of the Taliban, al Qaida and allied groups before turning to invade Iraq.

There are a limited number of U.S. helicopters in Kunar, a stretch of craggy mountains and serpentine valleys bordering Pakistan where airpower gives a vital edge to overstretched U.S. troops fighting guerrillas who know every nook and trail of the area. Unbeknownst to those trapped in the Ganjgal kill zone, however, the available aircraft were tied up in the Shiryak Valley to the north in a battle in which two pilots were wounded, U.S. commanders said.
The denial of heavy artillery fire to those trapped in Ganjgal also has roots in the Bush administration's decision to divert resources to Iraq and the resulting stress on the U.S. military.

New rules limiting the use of artillery imposed by U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal after he took command of the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan this summer are intended to curb civilian casualties caused in part by his contingent's reliance on artillery barrages and air strikes to compensate for their shortage of ground troops.

The rising toll has enraged ordinary Afghans, whose support is key to the U.S. goal of marginalizing the hardest core insurgents. It's also provided the Taliban with recruits and a propaganda bonanza and allowed Afghan President Hamid Karzai to score domestic political points by deflecting blame for the deepening crisis onto his American and European patrons.
The worst single loss of U.S. military trainers of the war brought out the deep bitterness with which many soldiers view the new rules. They feel unfairly handcuffed, especially in the case of Ganjgal, where women and children were seen running ammunition and weapons to gunmen firing from inside the hilltop hamlet.

There are circumstances — and Ganjgal was one — when the rulebook should be tossed out, they said.

"We basically screwed our guys over," said Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., who braved enemy fire to retrieve the bodies of his fallen comrades from outside the village. "They expect us to bring stuff to the fight, and (U.S. commanders) didn't give it to us."
That anger was magnified by a realization that the insurgents in Ganjgal had somehow learned of the operation in advance and were waiting for the contingent to enter the valley as the sun rose.

"We walked right into it," Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, of Louisville, Ky., the trainers' commander, said ruefully as he nursed a wounded forearm.

Their Afghan counterparts, who arrested two of nearly 30 suspects rounded up in the village after the insurgents withdrew, shared the Americans' frustration.

Col. Mohammad Avzal, the commander of the Afghan army unit the Marines are training, said the insurgents were waiting in dense groves and villages nearby to return to Ganjgal after Afghan and U.S. forces departed again. That means another battle and more casualties are in the offing.

"We are angry that we pulled out," said Avzal, who walked the same trails and hid in the same caves when he fought as a guerrilla against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a day after the ambush. "But we would have had to continue the mission in that valley for at least three days."

As they waited to infiltrate back into the village, the guerrillas were heard discussing on their radios "everything that happened, about their guys who got killed and how their (duffel) bags are still left inside Ganjgal," said Marine Lt. Ademola Fabayo, 28, of New York City, who helped lead the operation.

The failed operation drove home other problems and complexities that U.S.-led forces are grappling with as they pursue President Barack Obama's counterinsurgency policy of redoubling underfunded civilian aid programs and transferring greater responsibility to the Afghans for running their own affairs.

Ganjgal and villages farther into the mountains are way stations on a traditional smuggling route that insurgents use to move men and weapons into Afghanistan from Pakistan, unhindered by Pakistani security forces, according to U.S. and Afghan officers.
Insurgents also use the area around the hamlet to fire rockets and mortars into U.S. Forward Operating Base Joyce with such frequency that the stronghold where the U.S. trainers and the Afghan troops live has been christened "Rocket City."

So when Afghan Border Police commanders developed an idea to extend the government's writ to the area, U.S. officers jumped at it, despite the contingent's reputation as the most corrupt of Afghanistan's security organizations.

Not only might such an operation smother the rocket fire on the U.S. base, but it also could kick-start reconstruction projects and help build cooperation between the two Afghan forces, which the U.S. trainers said is essential to weaning them from their dependency on the U.S. military.

The border police proposed that the Afghans and their U.S. trainers mount a patrol into Damdara, an insurgent-controlled village near Ganjgal, to convince the area's elders that they'd receive protection against the insurgents and U.S.-funded aid projects if they accepted the authority of the local government.

Avzal's officers agreed to participate, but in return they demanded the border police's commitment to stage a similar operation into Ganjgal, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
The plan initially succeeded. The operation earlier this month into Damdara — which ended with the insurgents turning loose some desultory Kalashnikov rifle fire and a rocket-propelled grenade that caused no casualties as the Afghans and Americans exited the area — appeared to convince the elders in Ganjgal to renounce the Taliban.

They broadcast a renunciation and their willingness to accept the local government's writ over the local radio after negotiations with Afghan and U.S. officials.

Afghan army officers drew up a plan for a weapons search and a meeting with the Ganjgal elders to discuss the establishment of Afghan police patrols. U.S. officers refined the plan.
Then things began to go wrong.

The operation was first set for Sept. 7. A day earlier, Marine Lt. Fabayo; Army Capt. William Swenson, of Seattle, a border police trainer; and Capt. Talib, the Afghan army officer who developed the plan, met with Lt. Mohammad Nader, the border police operations officer, to finalize his unit's participation. A reporter sat in on the meeting.

"I'm not ready for this mission," Nader said. "The group that you are trying to get for this mission is (committed to) escorting a supply convoy."

The others were stunned. They worried that a delay would give the insurgents time to take revenge on the elders or force them to renege. Swenson asked to speak to Nader's superior. He was resting and refused to leave his room.

"Let's do the mission concept at least," Swenson told Nader. "We can do the timeline and the concept, but just not what day we will do this. We can let this slip to another day."
"All's I'm saying is that I have to get ready for the escort mission," Nader replied. "We will be talking about a plan without the approval of the commanders."
The effort to hammer out a compromise was further hampered by the need to translate between English and Nader's Pashtu, one of Afghanistan's two main languages, and also by translations between Nader and Talib, who speaks only Dari, the country's other major tongue.
Meeting later with staff officers from the 10th Mountain Division's "Task Force Chosin," Fabayo and Swenson discussed alternatives to delaying the operation, including using ordinary Afghan police to replace the border unit. They rejected the idea, reasoning that ordinary cops were no substitute for border officers, who're trained and equipped as light infantry.
Moreover, the pair worried that they'd compromise their goal of building trust and cooperation between the border police and the army.
The meeting ended with a decision to delay the operation by a day while the border police commander, who was on leave in Kabul, was contacted and persuaded to order his unit to participate, even though that meant losing the helicopter cover that had been reserved for the operation on Sept. 7.
It was then that the "Task Force Chosin" delegation assured Fabayo and Swenson that if they were needed, helicopters would "be five minutes away."
At the same meeting, a warning that Nader sounded to mission planners became the epitaph of the mission.
"The Ganjgal people have an expression," he said: "It's up to you to come into the valley, but it's up to us to let you out."

Medal of Honor

2009-09-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

This website contains the citation and pictures of Staff Sergeant Jared Monti, U. S. Army, the latest Medal of Honor winner.

The irony of Staff Sergeant Monti's efforts to save one of "his soldiers' life" is that the soldier was not killed by the enemy but by a fall when the winch on the helicopter failed and the soldier and the Army Medic going after him were killed in the fall.

http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/monti/citation.html

Perhaps even more ironic, there were not enough helicopters available when the request to extract the patrol was made.

We send our military folks into harm's way and then we don't provide them the support they need--an absolutely inexcusable failure of leadership.

Lest We Forget

2009-09-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

I am guilty of it and I am sure that others are also. We tend to forget that there are other nations involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other families in other lands suffer the loss of sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, wives and husbands.The pain that we feel is felt by others whose languages and mores are strange to us, but sorrow and tears know no geographical or social boundaries. Mothers around the world clutch their breasts when they are told that someone who is flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood has been killed or terribly maimed for life. How do I know this? I once was one of those individuals who had the duty of notifying families of their losses. The most difficult duty I ever had.

The following article is from the New York Times their story.

JUDY DEMPSEY and IAN AUSTEN
Published: September 16, 2009
BERLIN — For most Germans, it was a rare — even shocking — scene. There, on television, were coffins holding the bodies of three soldiers, all in their early 20s, all killed in Afghanistan, all draped with the national flag.

Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

A memorial service for three fallen German soldiers in Bad Salzungen in July.
The soldiers, Martin Brunn, 23; Oleg Meiling, 21; and Alexander Schleiernick, 23, were memorialized July 2 at a service in Bad Salzungen, in the eastern state of Thuringia, where their armored infantry battalion has its headquarters. The three were killed in the Kunduz region, where most of Germany’s 4,000 troops are based, bringing to nearly three dozen the number of German soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

For many Germans, the most recent deaths again underscored their discomfort with the deployment in Afghanistan, where they had expected troops that were focusing on peacekeeping and reconstruction to be mostly safe. Franz Josef Jung, the defense minister, who was present at the memorial service, said the deaths of the three “showed what a high price we pay to live in peace and freedom in Germany.”

Much of the attention on the war in Afghanistan has been concentrated on the losses by the United States and Britain; 830 United States troops and 214 British troops have been killed, according to icasualties.org, a Web site. But 22 other countries that have sent forces to Afghanistan have suffered deaths among their troops, with Canada bearing the next greatest burden.

In many of those countries, as in Germany, the sight of military funerals is having a significant impact on public opinion, with some sharing a growing sense that their losses are being overshadowed.

“Somehow when a country like Denmark, which has 700 troops in Afghanistan — which per capita, is one of the highest of the contributors — suffers casualties, it slips under the radar because it is the bigger countries that tend to get noticed,” said Klaus Carsten Pedersen, director of the Danish Foreign Policy Society. His country has lost 24 soldiers.

In Germany, the deaths of Germans, and a controversial airstrike ordered by German commanders on Sept. 4, have forced the issue into the parliamentary election campaign, leading political parties for the first time to talk about a timetable for bringing the troops home. The NATO airstrike, directed at two tanker trucks carrying alliance fuel that had been hijacked by the Taliban, killed scores of people; the number of dead civilians remains unclear.

Today, there are more than 108,000 troops serving in Afghanistan: 64,500 from the United States, 9,000 from Britain and 34,500 from other nations. In all, 1,386 troops have been killed.
From Canada, the nation with the largest number of deaths after the United States and Britain, 130 soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. Other countries that have lost service members include the Netherlands, Australia, Estonia, Germany, South Korea, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Sweden, Poland and Spain.

In Canada, the public ritual is sadly well established. The bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan are flown to a sprawling air base southwest of Ottawa. After their coffins are met by a military band, politicians and family members, a rolling police roadblock clears Canada’s busiest expressway for the two-hour drive to the coroner’s office in Toronto. Along the way, small groups gather on overpasses with flags to salute.

On Wednesday, this ritual is expected to be repeated for Pvt. Patrick Lormand, the 130th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002. He was killed Sunday after a roadside bomb detonated when he was traveling in an armored vehicle near Kandahar, the city where the base of Canadian operations is located. Four other Canadian soldiers were wounded. A member of a regiment based north of Quebec City, Private Lormand, 21, was a native of Chute-à-Blondeau, Ontario, a primarily French-speaking farm village east of Ottawa.
Canada has had relatively few military deaths since the Korean War, which amplifies the impact there, compounded by the country’s comparatively small population of roughly 33 million, about half that of Britain and about one-tenth that of the United States. Announcements of each death usually lead news broadcasts.
The deaths have provoked a variety of reactions, along with resentment that many other NATO countries have sent their troops only under terms that keep them away from combat and out of harm’s way.

Writing in “A Military History of Canada,” Desmond Morton, one of the country’s leading military historians, concluded that Canada’s economic and military ties with the United States left it with little choice but to join the Afghan war. But, he added, “Many countries echoed that pledge; few had Canada’s practical obligation to respect it.”
Canadians’ support for the mission remains mixed.
Although several Canadian ministers have regularly visited Afghanistan to show support for the military and the NATO mission in Afghanistan, they show little enthusiasm for prolonging the country’s combat role.

When Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, suggested in August that Canada should stay on after 2011, the expiration date for Canada’s combat role set by Parliament last year, he received a frosty response.
Peter MacKay, the defense minister, later said the United States should expect the same sort of answer if it comes looking for a longer combat presence.
“There are many countries in line before Canada that should be approached before they would come knocking on our door, I would suggest to you,” he said at a news conference at a military base in Quebec in August.

The Dutch, with 1,770 solders in Afghanistan, have yet to decide whether they will pull out in 2010 or redeploy from the country’s perilous south.
A debate is also under way in France, which has 3,160 troops in Afghanistan.
The forces are concentrated in Kapisa, in the northeast, and in the eastern region of Surobi, where 10 French soldiers died in an ambush and firefight with insurgents in August 2008.
The French also hold the Kabul regional command, but they are scheduled to hand over control to the Afghans in November.

As Capt. Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for the French chief of staff, pointed out, French soldiers are “involved in exchanges with insurgents every day.”
This month, the death of Sgt. Thomas Rousselle, 30, of the Third Vannes Marine Infantry Regiment, in an improvised explosive device attack, on a road in the Showkhi region, brought the total number of French killed in the war to 31.

President Nicolas Sarkozy attended a memorial service in Vannes, on France’s west coast, for Sergeant Rousselle and a colleague, Cpl. Johan Naguin, 24, who died in the same attack. Mr. Sarkozy reaffirmed the country’s pledge to remain in the country until a viable Afghan state was built.

But the French public is skeptical.

Despite the toll, officials in a number of countries have also vowed to stay, reiterating the view that NATO is committed to preventing Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven again.
Poland, which has 2,000 troops deployed, seems determined to keep them there despite the sour mood back home. Poland’s defense minister, Bogdan Klich, who visited Afghanistan last week, said the mission was about bringing security, but also about “strengthening the alliance.”
Thirteen Poles have been killed, the most recent, Piotr Marciniak, just last week.
Judy Dempsey reported from Berlin, and Ian Austen from Ottawa. Matthew Saltmarsh contributed reporting from Paris.

State Building????

2009-09-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

This is what ""State Building" is supposed to change. "State Building" is about getting state agencies/institutions to act in a way that is beneficial to the citizens of the state. The same kind of incidents by the Army and police are occuring in Afghanistan along with rampant corruption. The recent and still unsettled national presidential election is another excellent example. Yet we persist in remaining there while our you men and women are being killed and maimed. This mornings Washington Post had an article about a young man and his father who were told by the Taliban that if the young man went to work for a local U.N. agency that something might happen to him. The son was so intimidated that he called and resigned from his prospective job.

New York Times

By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAHT
Published: September 14, 2009

MINGORA, Pakistan — Two months after the Pakistani Army wrested control of the Swat Valley from Taliban militants, a new campaign of fear has taken hold, with scores, perhaps hundreds, of bodies dumped on the streets in what human rights advocates and local residents say is the work of the military.

Michael Kamber for The New York Times

The New York Times

Pakistan’s army wrested control of Swat from the Taliban.

In some cases, people may simply have been seeking revenge against the ruthless Taliban, in a society that tends to accept tit-for-tat reprisals, local politicians said.

But the scale of the retaliation, the similarities in the way that many of the victims have been tortured and the systematic nature of the deaths and disappearances in areas that the military firmly controls have led local residents, human rights workers and some Pakistani officials to conclude that the military has had a role in the campaign.

The Pakistani Army, which is supported by the United States and in the absence of effective political leadership is running much of Swat with an iron hand, has strenuously denied any involvement in the killings. The army has acknowledged that bodies have turned up, but its spokesmen assert that the killings are the result of civilians settling scores.

“There are no extrajudicial killings in our system,” said Col. Akhtar Abbas, the army spokesman in Swat. “If something happens, we have a foolproof accountability system.”
But neighbors of the victims and Swat residents say there is something more going on than revenge killings by civilians.

A senior politician from the region and a former interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, said he was worried about the army’s involvement in the killings. “There have been reports of extrajudicial killings by the military that are of concern,” he said. “This will not help bring peace.”

Pakistan’s military operations against the Taliban in Swat, begun in May under public pressure from the United States, has been hailed by Washington as a showcase effort of the army’s newfound resolve to defeat the militants. The American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, visited Mingora, the biggest town in Swat, last week, becoming the first senior American official to go to Swat since the army took over.

Now, concerns over the army’s methods in the area threaten to further taint Washington’s association with the military, cooperation that has been questioned in Congress and has been politically unpopular in Pakistan.

The number of killings suggests that the military is seeking to silence any enthusiasm for the Taliban and to settle accounts for heavy army casualties, said a senior provincial official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprimand by the army.

A sullen, uncertain atmosphere prevails in Mingora, where people interviewed last week in shops, homes and government institutions nervously complained of the arbitrary and unpredictable army rule.
Bodies, some with torture marks and some with limbs tied and a bullet in the neck or head, have been found on the roads of Mingora and in rural areas that were militant strongholds.
Reports on Sept. 1 in two national daily newspapers, Dawn and The News, said the bodies of 251 people had been found dumped in Swat.

The Human Rights Commission, a nongovernmental organization, disputed that all the victims had been killed by civilians, saying last month that there were credible reports of retaliatory killings by the military. It said that witnesses had seen mass graves and that in some cases, the bodies appeared to be those of militants.

The exact number of alleged killings was impossible to calculate because the presence of human rights monitors was limited by the authorities, the commission said. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which investigates illegal killings, was ordered by the military to leave Swat last month over matters unrelated to the killings, a senior Pakistani government official and the Red Cross said.

In one case, a family filed a petition with the army command last week describing the alleged killing of their son while in military Colonel Abbas said the army did not acknowledge that Akhtar Ali had been in military custody. If the inquiry found that a member of the army was guilty of the death, he would be disciplined, he said, “whatever the rank.”

According to the family’s account, family members went to army headquarters in Mingora the day after his arrest. “We were assured he would be released,” the petition said. A day or two later they were told he would be home the next day.

Instead, at 6 a.m. on Sept. 5, security forces dropped his body on the doorstep, the statement said. “There was no place on his body not tortured,” the petition said. Nails were “hammered into his body, and cigarettes burned into the skin.”

The petition said Mr. Ali had no relationship with the Taliban.

In another alleged retaliatory killing, a man in his mid-20s, also called Akhtar Ali, was arrested in Mingora on July 22, shortly after the army declared the city safe.

His father, Aziz Ullah, said Mr. Ali had been taken away by soldiers near the family home. The next morning, Mr. Ali’s body was found on the street not far from where he had been picked up, Mr. Ullah said.

“He had spoken in the mosque in favor of the Taliban, but he never picked up a gun,” he said.
The Human Rights Commission report said residents also described mass graves in Kukarai village and in an area between the villages of Daulai and Shah Dheri. Witnesses said some of the bodies in the graves appeared to be those of Taliban militants, the report said. The army has rejected any suggestion that soldiers were involved.

The chief spokesman for the military, Gen. Athar Abbas, said the graves were the result of the Taliban killing their wounded as they retreated and dumping the bodies. The military was dealing with arrested militants through the courts and was seeking changes in the law of evidence to ensure more convictions, General Abbas said.

About 250 to 300 people told the commission of suspected retaliatory killings, a commission official said. In some cases, five people told the group about the same single episode, he said.
A well-to-do landlord, Sher Shah Khan, who had criticized what he termed the army’s early reluctance to confront the militants, said he was not worried about the reports. “If the security services kill in the same manner as the Taliban killed, people have no problem.”
But the principal of a girls’ school, Ziauddin Yousafzi, said the military was making examples of the wrong people.

“The state cannot be barbaric,” he said. “If people see the bodies of the top leaders of the Taliban rather than the body of people like Akhtar Ali, they will be jubilantcustody. The army has initiated an inquiry, Colonel Abbas, the military spokesman in Swat, said.

The family of the man, Akhtar Ali, 28, said he was arrested at his electrical shop in Mingora in the early evening of Sept. 1 by a group of soldiers. Four days later, Mr. Ali’s body was returned to the family home “tortured to death,” a petition signed by his mother, Jehan Sultana, said.

Exit Strategy, Nation Building, State Building or What—III?

2009-09-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

Exit Strategy, Nation Building, State Building or What—III?

So what are we doing--Nation Building or State Building? The line between the two is very fine and trips us up in our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nation Building is about bringing together differing racial, ethnic, religious and political groups and persuading them to identify themselves as a “nation” rather than individual groups or tribes. Such groups are more or less loyal to a common cause.

We began nation building in this country by trying to brew tea in Boston Harbor. Two and a half years before we declared our independence from Great Britain, Massachusetts’s colonists rebelled against another tax, the Tea Tax, since it was another tax imposed on them by people who were not their elected representatives. This nascent effort was the first of many steps to the “shot heard ‘round the world”, on April 19, 1775 at Concord, Massachusetts. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this historic moment some sixty years later in his Concord Hymn published in 1837—

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard 'round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee."

If you have been to Concord and stood in this spot and touched the “votive stone” as I have, you cannot help but be caught up in the aura that seems to exist there. It is hallowed ground for Americans—it is the birthplace of our Nation. Our Nation—50 states strong, many religions, 300,000 million people all with a common cause—the preservation of our Nation.

So how does this apply to places like Afghanistan?

Terms like democracy, representative government, duly elected representatives, vox populi, non-fraudulent elections and freedom of the press are not to be found in the lexicon of the ordinary Afghani.

While there is some evidence that people have been in that area for 50,000 years and although Afghanistan borders on the “cradle of civilization”—ancient Mesopotamia—it is far from a “civilized” nation or peoples measured by any modern yardstick. There have been so-called capitals over the millennia; I think they might more appropriately be called “city states” much like those of ancient Greece, with a modicum of fealty from bordering tribal areas.

Although Afghanistan had been multi-religious (Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Zoroastrians and others) for centuries, Islam came to Afghanistan in the 7th century and after Mohammed died, the Islamists split between Shias and Sunnis. And so it is today. Not only are there tribes, but also there are differing religious sects among the tribes. Although Pashtuns make up the largest segment of the population (about 42%), there are also Tajiks another 25% of the population), Hazaras, Uzbeks, Aimaks, Turkmen, Balochs, and others.

In addition to tribal and religious divisions, the country has as many six languages are spoken (Pashto, Dari [often called Afghan Persian], Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashai and along with dialects among these languages). For the most part, when we decided we wanted to be a nation, we all spoke the same language—English—or as I like to call it Vulgate English or American. Yes, many other languages are spoken here, but the lingua franca is English/American.

While all of these people may identify themselves as Afghanis, this veneer is extremely thin. They are quick to point out their tribal and religious affiliations. I believe it is safe to generalize about this phenomenon for the entire region. While I do not know anyone from Afghanistan or Iraq, I do have friends from Iran. In one instance, the family has a 400-year history of living in Iran. Do the people identify themselves as Iranians? No. They are Armenians. Not only that, they are Christian Armenians. In the other instance, a Muslim woman I know does not identify herself as an Iranian either—she is a “Persian”. I once made the mistake of asking her if she was an Arab—and the lecture, well…

Here in the United States, most of us are what I call “Heinz variety” Americans, a mixture of many nationalities. For example, I am English, Irish, Scot, German (Pennsylvania Dutch my maternal grandfather called it) and a smattering of French. My wife is Irish and Scot. Most of us just identify ourselves as Americans, but some chose to identify themselves as hyphenated-Americans—African-American, Italian-American, Irish-American, Mexican-American, German-American, etc, etc, etc. And in many cities, we have “tribal” areas such as Chinatown and Little Italy. But in the main, we are Americans.

Also common in the Middle East is to attach the place of your birth to your name. For example, Saddam Hussein’s full name was Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid (father’s name) al-Tikriti. (Saddam was born or near where he was born) Hamid Karzai (born in Karz). Also the honorific hadji or hajji is used to address an individual who has made the hadj/hajj to Mecca, which every Muslim is expected to do once in their lifetime. Unfortunately, the term has become a derisive term used to refer to Iraqis and I suspect for Afghanis now that there is a greater troop exposure to Afghanis.

Many have come to Afghanistan but few have stayed. Indo-Europeans, Indo-Aryans, Persians, Macedonians, Islamic Arabs, Mongols, the British and the Russians. And now, The Americans with a coalition force consisting of troops from Britain, Canada, Holland France, Denmark, Australia, and Estonia. While some have left their mark, they have mostly disappeared for various and sundry reasons. In the mid-19th century, Britain lost all but one person of some 16,000 who fled Kabul after an Afghanis revolt. It is thought that Dr. William Brydon, a surgeon in the British Army was spared to serve as a witness about the massacre.

The bottom line for all of this—nationalism must well up from inside the people like an artesian spring. Outsiders cannot impose nationalism on a people. Trying to accomplish nation building by force is like herding cats. State building is an entirely different issue.

We are pinned down

2009-09-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

The following is from McClatchy News. Would someone please remind me again why we are fighting? It appears in this instance that as Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and they are us." The JCS and General McCrystal can deny all they want but this looks more and more like Vietnam each day. When you are restricted on how you kill the enemy, the enemy gets to kill you--no holds barred. I have highlighted some sections that show how are military folks are being betrayed by our own people.

Why is the American public sitting on its collective hands? When are we going to be pissed off enough to protest?

George Harris

Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2009

'We're pinned down:' 4 U.S. Marines die in Afghan ambush

By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.

"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.
Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.

U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren't near the village.

"We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We've lost today," Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter's repeated demands for helicopters.

Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander's Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.

Three Americans and 19 Afghans were wounded, and U.S. forces later recovered the bodies of two insurgents, although they believe more were killed.

The Marines were cut down as they sought cover in a trench at the base of the village's first layer cake-style stone house. Much of their ammunition was gone. One Marine was bending over a second, tending his wounds, when both were killed, said Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., who retrieved their bodies.

HISTORY OF RESISTANCE
A full moon was drenching the mountains in ghostly light as some 60 Afghan soldiers, 20 border police officers, 13 Marine and U.S. Army trainers and I set out for Ganjgal at 3 a.m. from the U.S. base in the Shakani District.

The operation, proposed by the Afghan army and refined by the U.S. trainers, called for the Afghans to search Ganjgal for weapons and hold a meeting with the elders to discuss the establishment of police patrols. The elders had insisted that Afghans perform the sweep. The Americans were there to give advice and call for air and artillery support if required.
Dawn was breaking by the time we alighted for a mile-long walk up a wash of gravel, rock and boulders which winds up to Ganjgal, some 60 rock-walled compounds perched high up the terraced slopes at the eastern end of the valley, six miles from the Pakistani border.
Small teams of Afghan troops and U.S. trainers headed to ridges on the valley's southern and northern sides, setting up outposts as the main body headed slowly up toward the village and, unbeknownst to us, into the killing zone.

The terrain — craggy ravines and sweeping, tree-studded mountains riddled with boulders and caves — was made for guerrilla warfare. The ethnic Pashtun villagers pride themselves on their rejection of official authority, their history of resistance and their disdain of foreign forces that many regard as occupiers.

A possible clue to what was to come occurred when the lights in Ganjgal suddenly blinked out while our vehicles were still several miles away, crashing slowly through the semi-dark along a rutted track toward the village.

NO AIR SUPPORT

The first shot cracked out at 5:30 a.m., apparently just as the four Marines and the Afghan unit to which they were attached reached the outskirts of the village. It quickly swelled into a furious storm of gunfire that we realized had been prepared for our arrival.

Several U.S. officers said they suspected that the insurgents had been tipped off by sympathizers in the local Afghan security forces or by the village elders, who announced over the weekend that they were accepting the authority of the local government.

"Whatever we do always leaks," said Marine Lt. Ademola Fabayo, 28, a New Yorker who was born in Nigeria and is the operations officer for the trainers from the 3rd Marine Division. "You can't trust even some of their soldiers or officers."

Sniper rounds snapped off rocks and sizzled overhead. Explosions of recoilless rifle rounds echoed through the valley, while bullets inched closer to the rock wall behind which I crouched with a handful U.S. and Afghan officers.

Lt. Fabayo and several other soldiers later said they'd seen women and children in the village shuttling ammunition to fighters positioned in windows and roofs. Across the valley and from their ridgeline outposts, the Afghans and Americans fired back.

At 5:50 a.m., Army Capt. Will Swenson, of Seattle, WA, the trainer of the Afghan Border Police unit in Shakani, began calling for air support or artillery fire from a unit of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. The responses came back: No helicopters were available.

"This is unbelievable. We have a platoon (of Afghan army) out there and we've got no Hotel Echo," Swenson shouted above the din of gunfire, using the military acronym for high explosive artillery shells. "We're pinned down."

The insurgents were firing from inside the village and from positions in the hills immediately behind it and to either side. Judging from the angles of the ricochets, several appeared to be trying to outflank us to get better shots.

"What are you going to do?" Maj. Talib, the operations officer of the Afghan army unit, asked Maj. Williams through his translator.

"We are getting air," Williams replied.

"What are we going to do?" Talib repeated.

"We are getting air," Williams replied again, perhaps knowing that none was available but hoping to quiet Talib.

At 6:05 a.m., as our position was becoming increasingly tenuous, Swenson and Fabayo agreed that it was time to pull back and radioed for artillery to fire smoke rounds to mask our retreat.
"They don't have any smoke. They only have Willy Pete," Swenson reported, referring to white phosphorus rounds that spew smoke.

Fifty minutes later, as a curtain of white phosphorus smoke roiled across the valley, Swenson and Fabayo unleashed an intense volley of covering fire while the rest of us sprinted back some 20 yards to a series of dirt furrows, weighed down by our flak vests and water carriers.
The two officers raced back to join us. Everyone jumped up and ran for the next stone wall. Everyone but me. Afraid that too many people were jammed together as they raced, offering easy targets, I waited behind for a break in the gunfire, an Afghan border police officer crouched next to me.

TIME TO MOVE
We soon noticed that the insurgent snipers were trying to outflank us again. I saw one up on a small rise fire and miss us by several feet. My companion decided that it was time to go and bolted away across the wash, but the gunfire grew too intense, and again I pulled my body into the dirt and rocks.

I wasn't as terrified as I was angry: angry at the absence of air support, angry that there was no artillery fire, angry that Williams' interpreter had been killed, angry at the realization that the operation had obviously been betrayed and angry at myself for not bolting with the others.
I knew it was time to move when I saw a gaggle of Afghan soldiers pounding through the boulders past me, their commander, a bright 26-year-old lieutenant named Ruhollah, hopping between two of them, a bullet wound in his groin. Staying put was no longer an option.
Bundling my legs beneath me and grabbing the small bag I use to carry my pad, pens, glasses and other necessities, I sprang and ran, trying to weave as bullets kicked up dust around me.
I reached the next wall and plunged behind it, nearly falling on top of Swenson, Fabayo and several badly wounded U.S. soldiers.

As Fabayo cracked off rounds, Swenson lay flat on his back, clasping a pressure bandage to the shoulder of one soldier with one hand and holding the microphone of his radio in the other, calling out insurgents' positions to two U.S. helicopters that finally had arrived.

It was now 7:10 a.m., and with the helicopters prowling overhead and firing into the hillsides, the incoming gunfire slackened enough for us to move again.

I stumbled down the valley to safety after I helped one of the injured soldiers into a medivac helicopter. Capt. Swenson and Lt. Fabayo headed off to find vehicles and, together with Cpl. Meyer, crashed back up the way we'd just fled to retrieve the bodies of the dead Marines and any other casualties they could find.

ABOUT THE REPORTER
McClatchy's Jonathan S. Landay, who was ambushed with U.S. Marines in a remote Afghan village Tuesday, is a veteran foreign affairs reporter with long experience in South Asia, Iraq, the Balkans and Washington.
Landay covered South Asia — including Afghanistan — as well as the Balkans from 1985 to 1994 for United Press International and for The Christian Science Monitor. He joined the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau in 1999.

He was part of the Knight Ridder team, with State Department correspondent Warren P. Strobel and Bureau Chief John Walcott, that investigated and disproved the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program and ties to al Qaida.
The team won a National Headliner Award for "How the Bush Administration Went to War in Iraq," a 2005 Award of Distinction from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism for "Iraqi Exiles Fed Exaggerated Tips to News Media," and a 2007 Edward Weintal Prize from Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy for the Iraq coverage.
The McClatchy Co. acquired Knight Ridder in 2006, and Landay is now the senior national security correspondent in the McClatchy Washington Bureau and a regular contributor to the bureau's Nukes & Spooks blog. He regularly travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan and other trouble spots.

Exit Strategy, Nation Building, State Building or What?- II 1955-1975

2009-09-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

As I have noted, much has been made of the terms “Nation Building” and “Exit Strategy” by the printed press and the visual media. I am not certain that either knows just exactly what these entail. This is a bit about Exit Strategy or lack thereof.

I want to apologize in advance for the truncated and chopped up history below, but I hope it will serve to make my point. We somehow have forgotten how to win a war.

When I went to the U. S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College 40 years ago (Class of 1969), “Nation Building” was not a topic that was discussed. But 40 years may have clouded my memory. Nevertheless, I suspect the general feeling was this was something the State Department or some other “They” did. Marines went ashore to take a foothold; i.e., in simplistic terms, a port and an airfield, necessary to allow follow-on forces (read this to mean Army and Air Force) to have a safe place to continue further operations.

The “Exit Strategy”—when the Army and Air Force were firmly ensconced, the Marines would back load and move out. But subtle changes were beginning to take place. Although the Marine Corps was still the amphibious force, they had begun to take on some of the characteristics of a land army during the Korean War. Instead of landing, securing a beachhead and making way for the Army to take over, the Marines came and stayed to the bitter end.

The “Exit Strategy” for Korea—The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade landed in Korea on August 2, 1950 to join with Army forces that have been there since July. The Marine Corps’ First Marine Division left in March 1955 when the Army moved units from Japan to Korea and took over Marine Corps positions! This division had 4,004 dead and 25,864 wounded. The First Marine Division returned to Camp Pendleton, California with little thought to returning to the Far East in just over a decade.

Believe it or not, Americans were in Vietnam in 1945. As a matter of fact, the first American killed in Vietnam was Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey, head of American OSS mission. He was killed by Vietminh troops while driving a jeep to the airport. Reports later indicated that his death was due to a case of mistaken identity -- he had been mistaken for a Frenchman.

In 1950, we provided $15 million to the French and we also provided some military advisors. Six years later, the US Military Assistance Advisor Group (MAAG) assumes responsibility, from French, for training South Vietnamese forces. The following year, thirteen of these advisors were wounded in a bombing incident in Saigon. 1959 brought the deaths of Major Dale R. Buis and Master Sergeant Chester M. when guerillas struck at Bienhoa. By the end of 1963, there are 16,300 U.S. military advisors in Vietnam.

On August 2, 1964 three North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly fire torpedoes at the USS TURNER JOY and the USS MADDOX , which were located in the international waters of the Tonkin Gulf, some thirty miles off the coast of North Vietnam. The attack comes after six months of covert US and South Vietnamese naval operations. A second, even more highly disputed attack, is alleged to have taken place on August 4. It was learned later that these attacks did NOT happen. (Remember the WMD in Iraq?)

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is approved by Congress on August 7, 1964 and authorizes President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The resolution passes unanimously in the House, and by a margin of 82-2 in the Senate. The Resolution allowed President Johnson to wage all out war against North Vietnam without ever securing a formal Declaration of War from Congress. (Doesn’t this look like what happened when President Bush was given similar authority the tragedy of September 11, 1991, to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.")

By the close of 1964, the U.S. had 23,000 military advisors on the ground. I don’t think Congress or anyone else had any idea that more than a decade would go by before we abandoned our war efforts in Vietnam.

In February 1965, General William Westmoreland, our military commander in Vietnam requests two battalions of Marines to protect the Danang airbase. The first American combat troops, 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed in Danang in March 1965. Just over four years later (April 1969) there are 543,400 American forces in Vietnam. At this same time, 33,641 Americans have been killed—more than we lost in the Korean War. We began to grow weary of the war and President Richard M. Nixon meets with South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu to inform him that American troop strengths are going to be drastically reduced. A month after meeting with Thieu, Nixon sends a secret letter to Ho Chi Minh seeking and end to the war. In August 1969 Henry Kissinger secretly meets representatives of the Hanoi government in Paris to begin serious negotiations on a peace settlement. Troop withdrawals are started and by the end of 1969 some 115,000 American troops have come home. The death toll has grown to 40,024. By June of 1970, the Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but the fighting continues.

Seven years later that last of the American combat troops are withdrawn, but there are more than 16,000 advisors still in-country. Although the Paris peace agreement is signed in January 1973, it takes two more years, 30 April 1975 before the last 10 Marines are finally evacuated. You remember the picture of the helicopter leaving from the roof of the embassy. So regardless of how you want to count it, 15 years or 30 years, we lost some 58,000 killed, 153,329 wounded and nearly 2,000 still missing in action. We dropped more bombs than in all of World War II and Korea combined. Their combined explosive power was perhaps 100 times as much as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Children of those who served are still feeling the effects of the tens of thousand of gallons of Agent Orange we sprayed.

And our exit strategy—we tucked our tails between our collective legs, came home and licked our wounds.

Is this to be our fate in Afghanistan and Iraq? Will we be there 15 years or 30 year? We couldn’t win in Vietnam with 500,000 troops, how are we going to win in Afghanistan with 150,000? Or 200,000 or 300,000 or … What is our exit strategy?

Exit Strategy, Nation Building, State Building or What?

2009-09-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

I keep seeing/hearing these terms bandied around by the press and the visual media. I am beginning to wonder if they have a clue as to what they really mean.

I wrote to Dr. Tom Barnett--

"Tom--

We keep talking about "Exit strategy". I attended USMC Command and Staff College 40 years ago (Class of '69) and I don't remember ever discussing "Exit strategy". We never seem to exit anywhere--we always leave remnants around--grandchildren and perhaps some great grandchildren of WWII folks are now serving in Germany, Italy and Japan.

But exit we must from Iraq and Afghanistan before we leave from exhaustion. Do we wait until our body count gets to 58,000 or what?"

And he replied:

"You're right. We don't exit. We always stay behind, and then those regions stop having war. That's what the Leviathan does.
And we've been enormously successful at it."

But I guess I have to say that this only applies in those battles that we win; i.e., WWII and although we didn't "win" in my estimation, we did leave troops in South Korea. Oh yes, we did leave nearly 2,000 behind in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China--we call them "Missing In Action"! And the tens of thousands buried and MIA in Europe and the Far East after WWII.

I'm not talking about military missions in other countries--we have plenty of them--I'm talking about the "Exit Strategy" we are supposed to have for Iraq and Afghanistan. We keep being reminded of it.

Do we have such strategies? And, if so, what are they?

More to follow. All comments gratefully accepted!

U.S. deaths in Afghanistan headed for another record

2009-08-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

I originally started this as an e-mail to several military veterans I know. One of them, a retired Army officer asked me to put it out on a blog. The comments I have received won't be in the form they would have been received in so please bear with me. I have tried to put the comments in the right order and I have one more that is on another computer so I will post it tomorrow. This is lengthy, but I believe the discussion is very good and I hope you will take the time to review it.

You will find that I am "Podge" here--my nickname.

George
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If this sounds all too familiar, then why is the American public not reacting? Is it that we don't really care how many of our young men and women are sacrificed, yes I said "sacrificed", for a nation that has been the "graveyard of empires"? Or is it ignorance or apathy? We obviously believe that we can do a better job than the Russians or even the British so long ago, but at this point that does not seem to be the case. During some of their 10 year campaign, the USSR had as many as 106,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan. At that time it was thought that the USSR was the second most powerful country in the world. Yet a ragtag group managed to drive them out of their country. We are approaching those numbers. Together with coalition forces, western troop numbers stand at 87,000+ and growing.
While the Afghans continue to increase their production of opium and have elections that are fraudulent at best, they contribute few forces to fighting the insurgency. They prefer to let others do the fighting and dying for them. What's wrong with this picture?
I don't ask you to agree with me, I simply ask you to ask yourself, "What is the Hell are we doing there?" If you come up with an honest answer, please let me know. Apparently I and our civilian and military leaders don't have a clue.
George Harris

McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Wed, Aug. 26, 2009
U.S. deaths in Afghanistan headed for another record
Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: August 26, 2009 07:55:52 AM
WASHINGTON — With the deaths of four U.S. soldiers Tuesday, the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan now has lost more troops this year than in all of 2008, and August is on track to be the deadliest month for American troops there since U.S. operations began nearly eight years ago.
The numbers reflect the rising pace of combat in Afghanistan and come at a difficult time, just as Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is considering asking for more U.S. troops even as opinion polls show that a majority of Americans think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth the cost.
Underscoring the deteriorating situation, a massive explosion late Tuesday shook the southern city of Kandahar, leveling dozens of businesses as people were breaking the daylong fast of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Local officials said at least 37 civilians were killed and another 100 were injured.
Afghans also are awaiting results from the Aug. 20 presidential election as the top candidates claim the lead. A runoff will be held if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the nationwide vote; the protracted uncertainty could lead to more violence. Partial results released Tuesday showed President Hamid Karzai running slightly ahead of his nearest competitor, with 40 percent of the counted votes.
In July, 45 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan, the highest monthly toll this year. So far in August, 40 Americans have died, many in the south, and Pentagon officials say privately that with nearly a week left in the month, they expect August to exceed July's number. Americans make up the majority of the 63 coalition troops killed so far this month; 75 coalition soldiers died in July.
In 2008, total coalition deaths were 294, 155 of whom were Americans; the 2009 total through Tuesday was 295, of whom 172 were Americans.
There are currently 63,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The four Americans who died Tuesday were killed when an explosion hit a convoy in Kandahar province. U.S. officials didn't disclose the identities of the soldiers or of their unit and did not say where the convoy was precisely when it was struck.
Senior U.S. military leaders have warned that troop deaths were likely to rise as the Obama administration sent an additional 17,500 troops and 4,000 trainers to Afghanistan. Those forces began arriving in Afghanistan earlier this summer, including thousands of Marines who launched a major offensive in southern Helmand province. Roughly 6,000 of those forces are still en route.
Under McChrystal, the U.S. is expanding its presence into parts of southern Afghanistan, including Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where coalition forces have never had enough troops to displace the Taliban.
Kandahar city is the country's second-largest and the spiritual capital of the Pashtuns, the ethnic group that comprises virtually all of the Taliban. And more than 90 percent of Afghanistan poppy production comes out of Helmand.
"We are not surprised," said a senior Pentagon officer who asked for anonymity so that he could discuss the casualty figures candidly. "We knew this would happen."
The increase in casualties comes at a time that public support for the war appears to be eroding. A Washington Post-ABC News polls released last week found that for the first time, a majority of Americans don't think the war is worth fighting.
Members of Congress are expressing concerns about U.S. progress in a country known as the graveyard of empires.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a proponent of sending more troops to Afghanistan on Sunday called the trends in Afghanistan "very alarming and disturbing" on ABC News, while Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a member on the Foreign Relations Committee, told his home state's Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper that he wants a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"I think it is time we ought to start discussing a flexible timetable when people in America and Afghanistan and around the world can see where we intend and when we intend to bring our troops out," Feingold said, according to the paper.
Interviews with Afghans show that they are fed up as well. Many say they don't want help from the U.S., the Taliban or their central government; they just want to be left alone.
Haji Agha Lalai, the head of the provincial peace and reconciliation commission and a Kandahar provincial council member, visited the scene shortly after Tuesday night's bombing. In a telephone interview, he said he was told by a police officer that a large tanker truck was moving through the neighborhood when the explosion occurred.
"The houses along a 20-meter (66 foot) section of roadway were completely destroyed," he said.
The bombing happened as there are growing charges of massive fraud in the presidential election, which the U.S. and its allies had hoped would produce a stable government that would cooperate closely on the Obama administration's new strategy for defeating the Taliban-led insurgency.
Preliminary results released Tuesday by the Independent Election Commission showed that with 10 percent of polling stations counted, President Hamid Karzai was running slightly ahead of his closest challenger and former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, 40.6 percent to 38.7 percent.
Just before the IEC announced the results, Abdullah intensified his charges that Karzai had used his control over the government to orchestrate a campaign of "wide-scale fraud."
Using stronger language than in previous days, Abdullah warned that he'd "not allow a big fraud to determine the outcome of the election" and would "not make deals" in return for dropping his charges, like accepting a top post in the new government.
Six other candidates issued a joint statement warning that the volume of rigging complaints had many people "seriously questioning the legitimacy and credibility of the results."
(Youssef reported from Washington and Landay reported from Kabul. McClatchy special correspondent Hashim Shukoor in Kabul contributed to this article.)

Comment from Al Alborn:

George,

You asked for opinions, here’s what I consider an honest answer. This is all publicly available information.

The CIA drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan using the Afghan’s as our surrogates (it wasn’t just the “ragtag” bunch you refer to… although they were quick studies and did learn how to fire a Stinger missile rather quickly). The introduction of Stinger Missiles (which we packed in on Mules) and other modern armaments shifted the balance of firepower by giving the Mujhahadeen a tool to knock the Soviet Hind Helicopters (their principle weapon) out of the sky. The bad news is that we pulled out without rebuilding the Country allowing the Taliban to take over. One of our “allies” during the war against the Soviets was our friend Osama. Since our operation was covert, he (and other tribal leaders) was able to claim credit for expelling the Soviets (and became a National Hero in the process). It is generally conceded that we created the conditions and armed the terrorists (there are still Stingers floating around) that lead to both attacks on the World Trade Center and our overt return to Afghanistan (to clean up the mess). Some say we should have stayed out of Afghanistan in the first place as Soviet domination of this region would have resulted in a more stable region (discounting any moral arguments). On the other hand, the Soviet Union’s loss of their war in Afghanistan was one more event that lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall (a “bright side”?)

Radical Muslims have a 100 year plan to restore the Caliphate (Muslim form of Government) globally. They would like to return to 12th Century borders in 50 years and the rest of the world by the end of this Century. Their plan is attached FYI. I think we should show this plan to more people so they understand the threat. As you have seen, they are what we call an Asymmetric threat leveraging non-traditional tactics and stateless actors to wage war. Their leadership is distributed globally; however, they generally operate out of Afghanistan. They actually are highly regarded in the Afghan & Pakistan (as well as some areas in Africa and other regions of the world) tribal regions because they provide basic social services, medical assistance, and education (such that it is) in areas the Government ignores.

To the point: our soldiers have not wasted one drop of blog in Afghanistan. They understand we can fight and win (both the war and hearts and minds) in Afghanistan now (and do what we should have done after the Soviets left) or fight in the streets of New York and Los Angeles in 50 years (or sooner, if we pull out). As someone who has spent a number of years overseas (many of them supporting special operations), I have noticed that while we are an impatient people who think in terms of months folks in Asia and the Far East tend to think in terms of decades and Centuries. There’s no good “short term fix” here. We got to get this right… and there’s a possibility that we won’t. I’d like to at least try. If you haven’t read Charlie Wilson’s War, I suggest you pick up a copy.

God bless our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines and God Bless the United States of America… and thank you for your service to our Country, George.

Regards,

Al

Comment from Jim Zimble (VADM MC USN [Ret])

George -

I fully agree with you. Afghanistan was the Russian Vietnam ... and it appears to be ours as well. That's one country that will never achieve a true democracy; it's a collection of warring tribes in a no man's land - a tribute to feudalism. I don't think even an all-out, WWII style war effort could succeed there.

Comment from Captain Yuri Tabach, USN:

When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan I was a young Ensign in the U.S. Navy. When all of my brothers-in-arms were watching "Russians" crossing the bridge from Afghanistan back into the USSR, the entire brigade got up and started applauding and congratulating each other with the victory over the russkies. I did not join them in this "victory". Few days later, "well-wishers" in cheap suites showed up asking me if I was a communist since I did come from USSR. I said that I was not. Then they asked me why I was sympathetic to the soviet defeat in Afghanistan. I stated, "Now that we stopped them from bleeding out there, we will start to bleed our selves". The two brilliant protectors of our nation's safety did not get what I was saying. I was polygraphed again.

My reply to Al Alborn:

Al,

I appreciate your candor and the information. As near as I can count, the World Islamic Mission is in at least 21 countries around the world. The World Islamic Mission--One Ummah One Vision claims their goal is "the promotion of peace, love and understanding amongst all people", I believe there are few but Muslims who really believe this. IMHO,"all people" means all people who are believers--Christian, Jews and all other religions are excluded.

I know from conversations with you that you did work that not many of us knew about and I know of at least one other on this list who did similar things. But I diverge from your idea that young Americans dying in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else in that area is going to prevent fighting, "in the streets of New York and Los Angeles in 50 years (or sooner, if we pull out). To stop Islam from growing would require that we destroy Islam and that isn't going to happen. We have to find a way to peacefully bring world religions together, which no one seems to have been able to do for at least 5,000 years. Short of that, we and the rest of the non-Islamic world have to maintain eternal vigilance.

The World Islamic Mission says it wants to extend, "a hand of love and brotherhood to all seekers of truth." Beware of the extended hand, it may well hold a sword to remove your head if you are not a "seeker of truth"; i.e. a believer in the, " prophetic traditions of God's final Messenger - Muhammad (peace be upon him)and the promotion of the pure teachings of Islam based on The Holy Qur'an." Killing a few here and there will not do the trick.
- How many young Americans have to die before peace is achieved?
--58,000 killed in Vietnam did not stop the advance of communism in that country. Will it take 58,000 more dead in
Iraq/Afghanistan before we figure out what we are doing is not the answer?
- How will we know when peace is achieved?
- Who do we make peace with?
- Who is in charge?
- Do we fight in every country where the World Islamic Mission is ensconced?

I, too say God Bless our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines and God Bless America and our Allies. Thank you and all the folks on this list for your self-sacrifice and duty to our great Nation.

V Rspy,

George

NOTE: Several quotes are from the World Islamic Mission website.

Comment from Dennis McGann, CDR MSC USN (Ret)

found the entire exchange interesting. I deleted all of the address information, as well as your last names (leaving just George & Al) and forwarded it to a couple of work friends for their observations, which I will probably share, protecting their identities similarly.

Both are young (mid-30s) and both have been here for quite some time. One is a Jordanian degreed EE (UIC, and been here at least since his undergraduate days), the other a Palestinian whose education is unknown, but who is hard-working, quite successful (in the same business as I and the Jordanian -- Telecommunications), very intelligent, and very articulate. Neither is what I would term a radical, in any sense, but both have at one time or another expressed concern about paths we have taken as a country (mostly back in the GWB days, during which there was much about which to be concerned -- lately I think we've all been too busy in this volatile economic environment to allow for deep philosophical geo-political discussions).

Comment from Al Alborn:

Splendid! I would love to hear their opinion (although I have a few friends from that part of the world… and their response tends to be rather consistent).

Regards

Al

Comment from Al Alborn:

George,

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

There are Muslims, Christians, and Jews who resort to violence to advance their particular set of beliefs. I (like most rational people) do not believe their particular religions. In this case, I am not talking about Muslims in general sense. I know those of the Muslim faith to be peace loving people with values similar to mine. I am talking about Islamic Militants who misquote and misuse the Quaran for their own purposes (just as the Bible and perhaps the Torah has and continues to be misused.) What makes this war unique is the fact that we are not fighting a state (ergo, the term Stateless actors), we are fighting an idea. In today’s smaller world where people are connected virtually by the internet, we are fighting a new kind of war of ideas.

Trying to “stop Islam” is not what this is about (and certainly not a worthy goal). Trying to “stop Islamic Radicals” specifically (since they are a clear and present danger to the homeland) and terrorists in general is (what this about).

As for your questions, I won’t be so presumptuous as to attempt to answer them. I do know that “doing nothing” is not an option… and I would rather take the fight to them than wait for them to come here.

I’m familiar with both wars. This isn’t Viet Nam.

Regards,

Al

My reply to Al Alborn:

Al--

First, let me tell you about the astute Ensign. Yuri Tabach is now an O-6 and a Navy Foreign Area Specialist. Before he did this, he was a pharmacy officer in the Navy Medical Service Corps. He is wise beyond his years and has seen many things during his military career. He has spent a bunch of years overseas and I suspect is read in on more things than he will ever admit. He also happens to be a Russian Jew and has seen and suffered at the hands of anti-Semites.
I realize that a generalization about those of the Islamic faith is patently wrong and I know that many have been killed in the name of God, Yaweh, or whatever name you want to assign to a Supreme Being. But I might be on safe ground to say that Muslims have been the worst of the lot. When they were conquering most of the known world, a lot of folks who were not “true believers” or would not convert to Islam went on to their greater reward. Even today, otherwise “peaceful” Muslims destroy their own , using Sharia to support their mayhem—Saudi Wahabists are perhaps the best example.
I know there are peaceful Muslims, but I them to be a bit disingenuous since I don’t see or hear them condemning what the Islamic Militants are doing. I will live and let live and I do have Muslim friends, but I sometimes find it difficult to be fully comfortable about the general intentions of Islam.
In an article released by the Associated Press today:
“The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan released his new counterinsurgency strategy Thursday, telling troops that the supply of militants is "effectively endless" and that U.S. and NATO forces need to see the country through the eyes of its villagers.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal said troops "must change the way that we think, act and operate." McChrystal hopes to install a new approach to counterinsurgency where troops will make the safety of villagers the top priority, above killing an endless supply of militants.
"An insurgency cannot be defeated by attrition; its supply of fighters, and even leadership, is effectively endless," the new guidelines said.
When U.S. and NATO troops battle a group of 10 militants and kill two of them, the relatives of the two dead insurgents will want revenge and will likely join the insurgency, the guidelines say, spelling out the formula: "10 minus 2 equals 20 (or more) rather than 8."
"This is part of the reason why eight years of individually successful kinetic actions have resulted in more violence," McChrystal said.
He called on troops to think of how they would expect a foreign army to operate in their home countries, "among your families and your children, and act accordingly," to try to win over the Afghan population.”
I would say that General McChrystal has perhaps begun to unravel the Gordian Knot. As I previously noted, not one of our military leaders today has ever witnessed a victorious ending to a real war. How could we expect them to know what the end of this one would look like? Nor would I expect any of us to be able to answer the questions I have posed because I don’t think there are any answers. Winston Churchill once said of the USSR, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. I believe that is the situation we find ourselves in when it comes to our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe when they have killed 50,000 or 60,000 of our finest, we will figure it out. And I continue to irrigate the soils of the Middle East with American blood. There are many variations on this theme, but Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." -- John Adams, 1772
I, too, am familiar with this war, with Vietnam, with Korea and to a limited extent World War II. I have held the dying in my arms, I have seen the light go out of their eyes and I have smelled their blood and the smell of death. I know war—I’ve looked it in the face and smelled its fetid breath.
God bless our military folks and our Nation.

Comment by Al Alborn:

George,

Actually, I am familiar with Capt Tabach’ work. I read an article of his in (I think it was) the Foreign Service Officer’s magazine on terrorism a couple of years ago… good stuff.

I believe this war will be won in the marketplace, not the battlefield. When Afghans have jobs, schools, and the right to buy and sell what they want (Adam Smith et.al.) they will join the industrialized world and there will be peace. If you want examples, just look at the Marshall Plan in Europe and McArthur in Japan. We consider it ridiculous to contemplate these powers (the EU or Japan) using war to resolve differences. We need to bring third world nations into this circle. Right now, the only jobs available to young Afghans are those offered by the Islamic Fundamentalists. Most of the people we are fighting are just like the folks we send to fight… young men and women who need a job. I’m a “swords to plowshares” person these days; however, it takes both.

For a reading list, I would suggest Dr. Tom Barnett’s The Pentagon’s new Map (and his subsequent books). Take a look at Petraeus’ strategy (and he put McChrystal in place because he understands this strategy while his predecessor did not) and you will find he tends to agree with Barnett (as do many in this town).

You really need to start a blog, George.

Regards,

Al

I have received two comments from a long time friend, CDR Bill Silva--

truly wish our civilian and military leaders would call what is going on by it's proper names - murder and mayhem. This is not an insurgency, so counterinsurgency is the wrong military solution. We will never defeat murders with a "hearts and minds" programs. They didn't work in a realinsurgency (Vietnam), why to we think they will work now? We laughingly define craziness as, "Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results" - folks, all this fancy military jargon and operations are crazy!. Murder in all countries of the world is illegal, yet the world stands by and tolerates it because it is carried out by non-state players. The world is a single place and there must be higher order laws to deal with world wide criminal behavior. What is taking place is not within the purview of the Geneva Conventions, yet we spend inordinate amounts of time playing games with the future. We must protect their rights and ensure that we act civilized - horseshit!!!!! The only inalienable right we should recognize for terrorists and their supporters is their right to die! Telling someone holding a gun to your head that their behavior is intolerable is about as useful talking to a rock.

What we are facing has nothing to do with patriotism and honor; is is solely an act of survival at its lowest level. As far as "most" of the terrorists being Muslim, that is a fact, however that fact is surrounded by a number of important factors. Muslims make up the largest single religious group of poor and down trodden in the world - making them easy targets for terror leaders. Sitting at the right had of Allah is probably the only good thing they can see in their future. For the terrorists, Muslims are easy pickings. Ah, you say that the terror leaders are Muslims. They are no more Muslims than I am. They are murderer's, plain and simple, who have found a ready source of fighters whoare easily dupped into dying for Allah. Everything about terrorism violates the very tenets of the Muslim faith. I think sometimes we allow our penchant for sterotypical thinking to cloud our vision. George raise some good historical points about the history of a minority within the Muslim faith, but we must also remember non-Muslim action taken in the name of Christianity (Crusades) are no different.

If we continue to distrust our neighbors because they are different and associate them with the acts of a few, then we do a true disservice to those who have died for the preservation of freedom. Our own Constitution tells us that man is created with certain inalienable rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - I don't recall reading anywhere that these rights apply only people of a certain faith. Western civilizations continued grouping of terrorists and Muslims does nothing more than widen the aritificual gap that already exists and provides the terrorists with the very propoganda that drives their recruiting apparatus.

As warriors, we are chided to "know our enemy." Maybe in our quest for the fast life, it has become more appealing to accomplish this by grouping the enemy into large, discernable groups - I suspect that Sun Tzu would be turning over in his grave with this interpretation of this element of the Art of War. It's kind of ironic that when Hitler and his allies attempted to encapsulate the world under the Nazi banner that we didn't determine that all germans and Japanese were warmongers.

We tread in a place of great peril when we allow ourselves to fall prey to notion that terrorism is a by product of Muslim or any other religion, political group, or the like. The risk we run is that same we face in our personal lives. If, as a parent, I continually tell my child that he is no good and will never amount to anything, he will begin to believe me and act out accordingly - why would we think it would be any different if we used this same strategy with a group of people.

Terrorism is not a religion, anymore than rape is lovemaking. Terrorism is a learned behavior embraced by a group of people; people without the slightest respect for others outside of their circle. If we are to win this war on terrorism, then we must learn to segregate terrorists from all other forms of life, groups, etc.

Bill

And this is the second, albeit no less passionate--

George:
Terrorism is a blight that we as a civilized world have not and will likely not come to grips with anytime soon. You are certainly aware of my experience in this area and I know you know that I am not a supporter of war (even though I spent 35 years going back) iwthout a cause. The problem is that we are not fighting a war, we are fighting an ideology. As Al said, the terrorists (I will not pay them the respect of calling them militants - they are flat out murderers who have not respect for life; theirs or yours). have (and have had for a number of years) a well thought out and executed 100 year plan to return to the past, when Mohammed walked the earth, when all in the area was a series of Caliphates ruled by Caliphs. Mohammed saw this as an anchor on thier ceivilization and one holding them back from advancing, hence the Quaran. Not unlike western christianity, the breakdown started when man placed themselves in a superior role that Allah and started creating the Sharias (Muslim religions law). As a student of cultures and religions, the Sharias in no way follow the teachings nor the word of Mohammed, much like western religion doesn't really follow the words of Christ.

The terrorists (regardless of religion) has stepped away from their core and are waging a war neither based in fact nor the dogma of the (fill in the religion) faith.

Shocking as the following may sound, it is the only answer to dealing with terrorists - total eradication (men, women and children). As harsh and cruel as this may sound, facts are facts. Terrorist women give birth to terrorists, kill a terrorist parent and you have guaranteed terrorist children. We will never satisfactorily deal with terrorism using rules other than theirs and it is not pure foolsihness if we and the rest of the world think we can rehabilitate terrorists. It would be easier to teach a fish to breath air than it is to rehabilitate murders of this sort. We must begin to look on terrorists as we have the viruses and bacteria that affect our bodies. The only diseases that medical science has been successful with is those that were completely eradicated. Look at the number of years society believed that Small Pox was a disease of history, and then we found out that there were still strains being kept within the military industrial complex. Not only were there strains of Small Pox alive and well, there were man made mutant strains (super Small Pox). Funny thing, we also have "super" terrorists as well. There should be an international force whose sole job is to hunt down and eliminate terrorists and there should be international law that makes terrorism punishable by instant death - no reprieve. If one is a terrorist or supports terrorist actions in any way we can introduce them to our new reality show named "Meet Your Maker!" I have had many say, but how do really know they are a terrorist - I believe you taught me that if it hade webbed feet, quacked and waddled, it was most likely a duck. We have the technology and capability to track each of everyone of these clowns, but we hold back use of them for fear of international and, even worse, national criticism from bleeding hearts. This is not an environmental exercise were we are trying to protect a species or our rain forests - it is an all out battle for the very life of civilization as we know it - pure and simple. As you are fully aware, I've done a "little" duck hunting and I never shot anything but ducks - never the stray goose or pheasant. Our operators frequently have to operate on rumors since we are unable to provide them with true intelligence. The Israelis are the only ones with the guts to do what's right and stand willing to be criticised by the rest of the world. These people make Hitler and others like him look like Mary Poppins. Their planning and actions are precise and they do not and will not waiver from their plan until we remove the breath from their lungs.

It's time for the world to wake up and make a decision as to whether or not we will tolerate this form of mass murder. Unfortuneately, we are sending the wrong people to fight them, in fact are first error IS to fight them. We target them and erase them - international law be damned, but we do it correctly and we don't lie to the citizens of any country. The idea of dying in a Jihad will suddently lose it's appeal to many when they see their fellow terrorists turning up on the street, in alley ways, were ever, with a nice clean .22 caliber orifice in their head. It's amazing how suddenly many will lose their ardor for their cause - world domination! This isn't a field exercise; it is the future we face if we don't act decisively and without hesitation. We are not dealing with people "pressed" into service to defend their country, we are dealing with murderer's - no quarter should be asked and none given.

I, like you, hate that our young men and women are over in Afghanistan and other foreign shores dying trying to fight a war that is so horribly mismanaged. It even makes me sicker when our so-called military leaders are willing to sacrifice our young servicememers for "acts of torture" to save a governments face. we have to quit trying to fight fire with squirt guns - we will never put out any flames in this fashion, we will merely send good young men and women to an early grave - which we seem to be getting better at each time we engage in conventional warfare against unconventional riff raff. Maybe the time has come when we need to re-evaluate our pompous and arrogant atitude as a government and inititate swift and without mercy - let their God provide their mercy when they reach their final destination. As a nation we are playing right into their hands by permitting them to use their greatest weapon - time! They will simply out wait us because they know that the world has no stomache for a protracted engagement. The terrorists are not in this for the short haul, they are committed to fight as long as necessary to achieve their goals.

The UN needs to get off their collective asses and make the tough decision; the terrorists or our son's, daughters, husbands, wifes, etc. There is no room on this planet for two civilizations to flourish. As I said above, terrorism should be an international crime punishable by death - no ifs, ands, or buts. The worlds Special Operation's Forces have the skills, ways, and means to carry out the mission. I have lost a number of brother SEALs in this war because they were not permitted to perform their duties - there's a reaon why we have no Social Work billets in Special Ops. And lest those of you who do not know me think I supported GWB and boys actions, you have sorely misread me. Terrorims is a world problem and the people of the world must participate in this campaign. GWB and boys mistake was to keep our actions quiet and lie to the American people. The people must be brought into this fight, they must be told the truth about the risks they face from inaction. Our government kept quiet their actions and we have progresed very little because of that. As distasteful as terrorist eradication may be, the people of the world must be told the truth and kept informed. The time for negotiations have lapsed, now we must reposess the goods of those who haven't been making their payments on time. It only takes one voice to start the necessary ball rolling - but no one has the guts to take the first step; we either walk or we fall. We are running out of time and the more we waste discussing and debating the required actions, the higher the price we will pay.

George you know I love you dearly, but this time, you are asking the wrong question - how many of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines must die before we realize we are in the wrong war. My friend, this is the only war worth waging as its outcome will determine the future of this planet. We spend hours debating global warming and pollution - great philosophical causes. If we don't eradicate terrorims, the planet will not last long enough for all these "green" issues to become relevant. Before we devote all of our time to a "green" environment, we must first expereince a "red" environment. I'm thelast of the mohicans in my family, but I have friends around the world who are trying to bring up the next generation - without the correct action, the next generation may be nothing more than a distant dream.

The world's battle cry must; "Death to terrorists and all who aid and abet them!" No more bleeding heart, sociological rhetoric or the word society will become another idea whose definition is no longer applicable.

Imagine what this would read like if I was passionate about my feelings.

R/Bill

More troops for the Army

2009-07-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just announced that the Department of Defense will add 22,000 more soldiers to the Army. The problem is this--not only are Islamic extremists killing and maiming our military personnel, we are adding to their misery through shortened "dwell" times, which leads to greater personnel turbulence. "Dwell time" is the time that units spend back in the States after finishing a tour of duty overseas--particularly Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the dwell time for most units is supposed to be 15 months, the increased operational tempo has shortened this to less than a year. The result, troops are being returned to combat more frequently than they expected or were promised. Secretary Gates announced in March of this year that the Army will end their STOP LOSS program (sometimes called a "Back Door Draft") in which military personnel are held on active duty beyond the end of their enlistment. However, it will be two years before the last of of the 13,200 soldiers serving under "stop loss" rules are allowed to leave the service. No one can predict how many will vote with their feet and leave when given the opportunity. This is part of the reason for the 22,000 troop increase.

The other reasons most often stated has to do with reducing the "perstempo" or shortened dwell time and increasing the pool of personnel available for combat duty, thus increasing "readiness"; however that is defined.

When I challenged the endorsement of this increase by the Military Officers Association of America, it was implied that I was unpatriotic and that I was all for increasing the misery of military personnel.

What I am for is for getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Defense has said that we might be in Afghanistan for another decade, which will make our stay there almost 20 years--the longest war we have ever been involved in. Yes, we have been in Europe and Japan for more than 60 years and in Korea for more than 50 years, but they aren't shooting at us. There is nothing to-date that leads me to believe that Islamic extremists will relent--they are in this for the long haul. Another decade means nothng to them.

We lost more than 58,000 folks in Vietnam and we have lost more than 5,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers of those that have suffered injuries that have forever altered their lives is mind boggling. Perhaps as many as 150,000--so many that the Veterans' Administration is unable to provide adequate care for all of them. More and more "Wounded Warrior" programs are cropping up where injured veterans are being cared for outside military and veteran facilities.

If creating a readiness crisis is what is required, then I am all for it. Something has to get the attention of our leaders in governemtn and in the military establishment.