This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • Trouble in my old AO

    I was very saddened to see that a series of bombings in the city of Hit in Iraq killed eight including the family of Lt. Col Suleiman (the BBC says he was a major but he wasn’t), the leader of a counter-terrorism unit in Hit. After my battalion left Ninawa province, my company was assigned an AO that stretched from the western outskirts of Ramadi all the way up to the city of Haditha. In the middle of that AO was the city of Hit, which was about six klicks south of the COP we were posted at. During my time in Hit, there wasn’t a lot of insurgent activity. There were weak attempts at placing IEDs that targeted convoys moving from Al Asad Airbase along MSR Bronze and of course the occasional pot-shot at our posts and helos flying into our COP. RKG-3s, like everywhere else in the country at the time, were also a problem. One of the reasons why Hit, which at one point was literally controlled by insurgents, was so quiet during my time there was because an effective Iraqi police and counter-terrorist force had been trained and deployed in the city, which was led by Lt. Col Suleiman. The Iraqis were able to do most operations on their own and almost never requested our help. Iraqi forces even had an EOD capability in our AO, and on one occasion were able to defuse a complex magnetic IED on their own, without any assistance from our Navy EOD attachment. Of course, it wasn’t perfect in Hit. The mayor was extremely corrupt and used money the Americans gave him to hold parties that resembled something out of Miami Vice at his home along the Euphrates River. Some of the local IPs were related to known insurgents and were helping them elude American and Iraqi forces. But the progress made in just a short time is amazing and shouldn’t be ignored.

    When most media outlets report these incidents, they seem to relish in the carnage they cause. For years most of the chattering class in the media predicted and even cheered on complete failure in Iraq. When the surge worked and violence subsided, many media outlets turned to magnifying isolated attacks or political failures in an attempt to show that Iraq was on the verge of coming apart. I remember when I was in Iraq on several occasions reading New York Times and Washington Post articles about bombings in Baghdad, Mosul or up the road in Ramadi and the writers implying that the whole country was on the verge of coming apart. There were was a lot of this type of hysteria in the lead up to the June 30th deadline to withdraw from the cities, with many predicting that once the Americans left these cities would explode. Of course this never happened, and for the most part, Iraqis were able to fill the void left by departing American forces.

    The bombings in Hit do not mean that the city will come apart and explode into violence, as some people predict and secretly want. The Iraqi Security Forces (most likely with little or no American help) will attempt to track down the savages who committed these acts of violence down and if they catch them, well, lets just say that the Iraqis’ version of GITMO is a hole in the desert. Take that last part however you want…

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    Iraqi Army rehearsing for a raid in Hit

  • Rupert Hamer, RIP

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    I know that many people here have a dislike of the media when it comes to reporting conflicts, but I thought that deserves a post.

    A British journalist has been killed in an explosion while covering the war in Afghanistan. Rupert Hamer, 39, the defense correspondent of the Sunday Mirror newspaper, was with the US Marines in Helmand province when he was killed by a roadside bomb.

    Because sometimes we forget that some of the reporters go through the same risks and hardships many of our troops see every day. But sometimes to do not get seen in the same light as our service-members.

    Tina Weaver, Editor of the Sunday Mirror, said: “Rupert believed that the only place to report a war was from the front line and, as our defense correspondent, he wanted to be embedded with the US Marines at the start of their vital surge into southern Afghanistan. He left on New Year’s Eve with photographer Phil Coburn, determined to be there from the start. It was his fifth trip to Afghanistan.”

    So in closing leave you with this;

    David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “Rupert Hamer died in the course of important work informing the world about the situation in Afghanistan. I pay tribute to his efforts, and those of Philip Coburn, undertaken in the most dangerous of circumstances.” Jim McLean, a Times journalist and friend of Hamer since childhood, said: “Rupert was a born reporter. There was never another job he would have wanted to do.”

    He leaves a wife and three children aged 6, 5 and 19 months.

    Video added.

  • The perception of Obama comes back to reality

    JammieWearingFool reads the New York Times so we don’t have to, and the NYT tells us that there’s a perception out there that President Obama is a wimp on National Security. Really? I hadn’t noticed.

    It’s not just coming from Republicans (for example, Dick Cheney’s accusation that Mr. Obama is trying to pretend that the country isn’t at war). Now barbs are coming from the center too. This week’s Foreign Policy magazine has a provocative cover: Mr. Obama next to Jimmy Carter with — gasp — an “equals” sign in the middle. New York Times/CBS polling shows that public approval of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy dropped 9 points to 50 percent between last April and November. Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the Daily Beast blog two weeks ago that Mr. Obama needs to toughen up with his adversaries. “He puts far too much store on being the smartest guy in the room,” Mr. Gelb wrote. “He’d do well to remember that Jimmy Carter also rang all the I.Q. bells.”

    The Washington Post reports that Obama is failing in the perception of his domestic agenda as well;

    In winning the White House, Barack Obama’s team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in dominating the communications wars with opponents. In office, virtually the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the administration’s actions on the two biggest domestic issues — the economy and health care.

    Translation (I ran the paragraph through Babelfish’s Media to English); campaigning is easier than actually accomplishing stuff.

    Stuff like giving us a tax credit which ended after six months instead of a permanent tax cut and standing around with their collective finger in their collective nose wondering why the economy doesn’t get better. Standing on the edge of a huge tax increase because they won’t extend the Bush tax cuts and wonder why businesses won’t invest in jobs.

    An erratic health care plan that changes every time someone talks about it. A Congressional Budget Office that knuckles under to Democrat threats and produces faulty numbers. A homeland security director that issues two opposing evaluations of our security within twelve hours.

    A known terrorist who clams up as soon as he’s read his Miranda rights. Another known participant in the worst terrorist attack in our history gets most of the evidence against him tossed out of court. All because the administration thinks terrorism has a legal solution.

    Obama’s centerpiece of his national security plan was to close Guantanamo – where’s that going? He tried to return some detainees to Yemen, until the blogs and the media convince him that it’s a bad plan and does a 180 degree shift of that policy.

    For Pete’s sake, nearly a year into his presidency, over eight years since 9-11, he announces that we’re at war with al-Qaeda.

    But Axelrod said the best antidote to all the criticisms aimed at the White House and to declining poll numbers will be a genuine turnaround in the economy.

    “People are unsettled and unhappy about that, and they should be,” he said. “The politics will follow the progress, and as we climb out of this terrible hole that we’ve been in, the politics will respond.”

    You’d be more convincing if you took your finger out of your nose, Dave.

  • Whoever heard of such a thing?

    Matthew Yglesias is throwing a hissy at his place because of some former Bush “officials” who won’t support Obama based on a New York Times article by Peter Baker who writes;

    A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama’s policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama’s anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him.

    Yglesias writes;

    It’s really staggering what this says about the ethical caliber of the people we’re talking about. These are the toughest issues out there. Obama is, they think, doing the right thing. But some of them don’t want to say he’s doing the right thing because that might make Dick Cheney mad and they’re timid, gutless careerists? And others don’t want to say he’s doing the right thing because their feelings are hurt that a Democrat said bad things about his grossly unpopular Republican predecessor? For this they’re going to undermine support for policies that they themselves believe are keeping the country safe?

    Staggering? Really? Six people who Baker calls “officials” (they could be Pentagon janitors for all we know) and that’s supposed to be staggering.

    What about the scores of “gutless careerists” that opposed the Bush policies for eight straight years on the public airwaves even though they knew in their tiny black hearts that what Bush was doing was an appropriate response?

    What about that list of Democrats who came out for attacking Iraq in 1998, voted for Saddam’s removal in 2002 and then spent six years crying crocodile tears over the Bush policy of preemption? What about those Senators who spent more than six years crying about the PATRIOT Act after they voted for it? Did those three congressmen who stood on the roof of Saddam’s palace really think Saddam was more trustworthy than Bush – or were they being gutless careerists?

    There are tons of things they can be crying over in regards to Republicans, but this is nit-picking.

  • Not soft on terror?

    In 1949, Mao Zedung (or however we’re supposed to spell it these days) successfully seized the reigns of the mainland Chinese government and US Republicans charged that the “Democrats lost China”. That’s what was in the back of Lyndon Johnson’s mind when he sent combat troops to Vietnam in reaction to the fuzzy details of the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” that filtered back to the White House – Johnson didn’t want to be known as the guy who lost Indochina.

    A decade later, Jimmy Carter lost Iran, Nicaragua and the Panama Canal and a decade later Bill Clinton lost Somalia – all of those have come back to bite us. Now, Barack Obama is in danger of losing the war against terror. So the Washington Post feels an urgent need to defend the young president;

    Words first. “Evil does exist in the world,” Mr. Obama said in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. “Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.” In his weekly radio speech Saturday, he disposed of the war-vs.-law-enforcement canard, pointing out that in his inaugural address he made it clear that “0ur nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred and that we will do whatever it takes to defeat them and defend our country, even as we uphold the values that have always distinguished America among nations.” “

    But actions speak louder, and Mr. Obama’s actions — often at the cost of enraging his party’s liberal base — have also demonstrated tenacity and pragmatism blended with a necessary reassessment of the flawed policies of his predecessors and a recommitment to the rule of law. He wants to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, which is all to the good given its stain on the national character, but he has delayed that goal until acceptable alternatives can be found. He has brought criminal charges against some terrorists, but he has also sent others to be tried by military tribunals. He has invoked the authority of the executive to have lawsuits dismissed because they risk exposing state secrets. In addition to the new troop deployments, he has aggressively used predator drones to strike at terrorists, including outside Afghanistan. Even before the failed attack, his administration has been working aggressively with Yemeni authorities to deal with extremists there.

    See how brave he is – he enraged his party’s base. Like they’ll start suicide bombing the White House, or vote Republican in protest. Whew! How courageous. Don’t you wish he’d enrage our enemies instead?

    His administration announced today that they won’t open a new front in Yemen despite the fact that three strikes in our own country have their origins in Yemen;

    The U.S. does not plan to open a new front in Yemen in the global fight against terrorism despite closing its embassy there in the face of Al Qaeda threats, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.

    “We’re not talking about that at this point at all,” White House aide John Brennan told Fox News when asked whether U.S. troops would be sent to Yemen.

    “The Yemeni government has demonstrated their willingness to take the fight to Al Qaeda,” he said. “They’re willing to accept our support. We’re providing them everything that they’ve asked for.”

    Like they provided McChrystal with everything he asked for?

    See how much “smart power” worked against Iran – they won’t even let John Kerry get a visa;

    On Saturday, Iranian legislators stepped up the rhetoric against the news that Kerry was considering traveling to Tehran with the blessing of the White House.

    “The Islamic Republic of Iran has no plans to negotiate with any American official, unless the country (the U.S.) changes its policies,” member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Zohreh Elahian said, according to Fars News Agency.

    Yeah, the US has to change it’s policies, while Iran murders dissidents and locks up thousands more.

    But don’t let the Washington Post catch you calling him soft on terror.

  • Morons of the highest order

    David Brooks of the New York Times inspires Glenn Greenwald and Alan Colmes to call Americans names for demanding that our government do it’s best to keep us safe. Brooks first;

    History is not knowable or controllable. People should be grateful for whatever assistance that government can provide and had better do what they can to be responsible for their own fates.

    That mature attitude seems to have largely vanished. Now we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents — who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can’t.

    Greenwald’s echo;

    …the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on — as usual — by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will — in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation — Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction — just as we saw this week — is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens.

    Colmes just nods like a good Leftist bobblehead.

    I’ll just remind the three morons that the Constitution charges the government to “provide for the common defense” – it doesn’t say to pass out food stamps or had out cash from one part of our society to another. It doesn’t tell the government to determine the minimum width of theater seats. It certainly doesn’t tell the government to tax the living shit out of people in California to pay for new guard rails in Maryland’s hinterlands. Nor does it mandate that the federal government stick it’s fingers in huge car companies and huge banks.

    How. Dare. You. Three. Retards. Call. Us. Names?

    When the government was warned no less than twice (once by the bomber’s own father…by name) that this shit stain was planning something, and the government couldn’t summon the testicular fortitude to actually stop him. When they were following Hasan’s trail to terror, when they were trailing Carlos Bledsoe and couldn’t stop him. This isn’t a case of one terrorist slipping through – it’s the latest in a series that have slipped through since January.

    Brooks, of course, thinks that Napolitano is innocent because it’s the system that’s flawed;

    There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy.

    Well, it’s a start. Napolitano’s demonstrated incompetency over the last year certainly doesn’t deserve one more penny from the tax payers.

  • Cheney strikes a nerve

    With speculation about the culpability for the latest failed attempt by a terrorist, Dick Cheney spoke to Politico and charged that the current administration seems to be avoiding the fact that we’re at war with terrorists;

    “[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe,” Cheney said in a statement to POLITICO. “Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.”

    That certainly is the way it appears. Obama set aside the war to focus on his domestic agenda this year – an agenda that seems to be failing, by the way. Anyway, the Administration took the time out to post on their blog about Cheney’s comments;

    First, it’s important that the substantive context be clear: for seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq – a country that had no al Qaeda presence before our invasion – Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. Meanwhile, al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe-havens that have grown over a period of years. It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq, and actually focusing our resources on the war against al Qaeda – more than doubling our troops in Afghanistan, and building partnerships to target al Qaeda’s safe-havens in Yemen and Somalia. And in less than one year, we have already seen many al Qaeda leaders taken out, our alliances strengthened, and the pressure on al Qaeda increased worldwide.

    Yes, that’s the way it happened – if you ignore all of the facts. Thank goodness that Obama started winding down the war in Iraq – his opposition to the surge probably help speed that along. When the administration can’t muster enough hyperbole, they call in Eugene Robinson Pulitzer Prize-winning dunce at the Washington Post to make unbelievably naive statements

    …Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was given training — and probably the bomb itself, which involved plastic explosives sewn into his underwear — by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. It happens that at least two men who were released from Guantanamo appear to have gone on to play major roles as al-Qaeda lieutenants in Yemen. Who let these dangerous people out of our custody? They were set free by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

    Reminiscent of the Left blaming the first Bush Administration for not taking out Saddam Hussein and saddling the Clinton Administration with the problem. Robinson has been advocating for the release of Guantanamo detainees for half-a-decade – yet this bombing attempt was the Bush Administration’s fault. It’s as if they don’t realize that “Google” was invented.

  • Just let ’em all go

    While the Obama Administration had us distracted with the health care debate this weekend and the plan for putting Gitmo detainees in IL, the media had us fixated on snowfall and cops with guns, under the table the Justice Department was releasing some Guantanamo detainees back where we got them.

    One of our readers, bdaman sent us a BBC link (since our own media doesn’t seem too interested in the war against terror these days)

    “These transfers were carried out under individual arrangements between the United States and relevant foreign authorities to ensure the transfers took place under appropriate security measures,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.

    “Consultations with foreign authorities regarding these individuals will continue.”

    Yemenis account for almost half of the 198 detainees who remain at the US military base in Cuba. But officials fear many could re-join militant groups if sent back to Yemen.

    Well, “officials fear”, but apparently none of them are in the Justice Department. Uncle Jimbo of Blackfive and In The Crosshairs fame tells us about the most disturbing of this weekend’s bunch;

    This is not some poor bastard who was scarfed up in Afghanistan and sold to us by some warlord. We conducted a raid into Somalia specifically to capture this guy and now he is just back on the street? I kinda doubt it was the military changing their minds that he was a High Value Detainee, so we have the Attorney General and his friends in the terrorist fellow travelers camp to thank for this.

    But this isn’t important enough for our own media to cover, so there are lots of questions that won’t be answered. At The Weekly Standard Blog, Thomas Jocelyn writes;

    In other words, the DOJ and Foggy Bottom control transfer decisions, not the military officials who have been responsible for detaining, interrogating, and analyzing the intelligence collected on each Gitmo detainee. That is not surprising. Lake’s comments reinforce what we’ve known for some months. The DOJ, in particular, plays a leading role in President Obama’s interagency review board, which in turn makes transfer decisions.

    So the war against terror is just another police action with the politicians and law enforcement agencies operating as the military. Naw, that doesn’t scare me.