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

Category: Terror War

  • McChrystal reins in robot zombie ninjas

    Cortillaen sends us a link from the New York Times in which General McChrystal announces that he’s taking control of the Special Operation forces in Afghanistan because the locals and the UN claim that they’re responsible for the most civilian casualties;

    “In most of the cases of civilian casualties, special forces are involved,” said Mohammed Iqbal Safi, head of the defense committee in the Afghan Parliament, who participated in joint United States-Afghan investigations of civilian casualties last year. “We’re always finding out they are not obeying the rules that other forces have to in Afghanistan.”

    “These forces often operate with little or no accountability and exacerbate the anger and resentment felt by communities,” the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan wrote in its report on protection of civilians for 2009.

    Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, General McChrystal’s deputy chief of staff for communications, cautioned against putting undue blame on Special Operations forces. Since night raids are dangerous, and most missions take place at night, most of them are carried out by the more highly trained special groups. In January, General McChrystal issued restrictions on night raids.

    Yeah, I’m beginning to see a pattern here – the Afghan government complained when our drones were being too successful, and now the special operations are being too successful, as well apparently. Maybe we should ask the Taliban for our op-plans. At least, the Taliban can help direct our forces to targets that are far from any potential civilian targets.

    So where is Joe Biden who claimed that the whole war could be won with robot zombie ninjas. Doesn’t this kind of cut off at the knees his whole masterful idea?

  • ACLU, law community undermine our security

    If you haven’t read Debra Burlingame’s article at the Wall Street Journal entitled “Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers “, you really need to read the whole thing. Ms. Burlingame recounts the story of lawyers from Paul, Weiss legal firm’s distribution of Amnesty International-manufactured propaganda to their clients in order to undermine order and discipline among their clients in Guantanamo. The same propaganda that Anthony Camerino endorses for his own work with ACLU.

    Majeed Abdullah Al Joudi, the detainee in whose cell the brochure was first found, told guards he received the brochure from his lawyer. An investigation by JTF-GTMO personnel revealed that Julia Tarver Mason, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, had sent it to Al Joudi and eight of the firm’s other detainee clients through “legal mail”—a designation for privileged lawyer-client communications that are exempt from screening by security personnel. Worse, the investigation showed that Ms. Mason’s clients passed it to other detainees not represented by Paul, Weiss lawyers. In all, more than a dozen detainees received a copy.

    The Amnesty International brochure, handed out at a human rights conference in London, was a political advocacy screed in clear violation of that order, which was formulated to protect force security. Maj. Gen. Hood made a command decision. He banned the Paul, Weiss lawyers from access to Guantanamo. The DOJ notified the firm.

    In fact, from al Qaeda’s perspective, the Amnesty International brochure was better than the Manchester Manual. It cued detainees that the abuses at Abu Ghraib “were not an aberration.” The brochure told them that images from the Iraqi prison were consistent with “numerous allegations of torture and ill-treatment reported from detention centres in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay.”

    The message to the detainees was clear: If you want to claim you are being tortured, here is a vast menu of examples from which to choose.

    And of course, it can only get worse under the current administration who are only too willing to capitulate to their friends, the litigation-hungry cretins at the powerful law firms.

    Other incidents listed in the FOIA material included: a lawyer who was caught in the act of making a hand-drawn map of a detention camp’s layout, including guard towers; a lawyer who sent a letter to his detainee client telling him that “we cannot depend on the military to do the right thing” and conveying his message of support to other detainees who were not his clients; lawyers who posted photos of Guantanamo security badges on the Internet; lawyers who provided news outlets with “interviews” of their clients using questions provided in advance by the news organization; and a lawyer who gave his client a list of all the detainees.

    Makes you wonder why we even allow these imbeciles near detainees, doesn’t it?

    ADDED: At Ace of Spades, DrewM sets the lawyers of the John Adams Project straight.

  • The depth of the intellect at VoteVets

    dicksmith at VetsVoice is pushing the myth that we never would have caught Colleen Larose, known as Jihad Jane in the media, if we were so involved in profiling Muslims just because Larose happens to be a Caucasian. This is so specious, it is to laugh.

    How many Caucasians have been arrested who were involved in terrorism against Americans as compared to Muslims? Seriously. How many? You can count on two fingers. Apparently, we should be ignoring a few billion people and focus on those less-than-one-percenters, just because they’re an acceptable skin pigmentation to profile.

    Of course, that’s the kind of mud-puddle-depth of intellect we’ve come to expect from an organization led by a motor pool officer with three months in Kuwait.

  • Sometimes one has to wonder what is the point of even trying.

    I say this after reading this quote from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

    The high death toll from Pro-Government Forces (PGF) operations in Marjah, Helmand, a PGF airstrike targeting what appear to be civilian vehicles in Daikondi, and a suicide attacks and mine placement by Anti-Government Forces (AGF) suggest neither side to the conflict is taking sufficient precautions to prevent civilian deaths, as required under international law.

    So after all our Rules of Engagements that do everything possible to stop civilian deaths and despite all of this we are still seen on the same level as the Taliban and friends.

    Pro-Government Forces must exert greater care to distinguish between civilians and combatants in their offensive in Marjah.

    Except that I think that the only people even wearing any type of uniforms so this would not be a issue is us. Plus when they pose as civilians or Afghanistan police or Army that makes this challangeing to enforce is a understatement.

    But this is one just seems purely naive.

    The AIHRC also calls on Anti-Government Elements to observe their responsibilities to civilians by not using civilians as human shields, and not planting mines or other explosive devices in residential areas.

    Or this one.

    The AIHRC calls on the parties to the conflict to respect the laws of war. Warring parties must not use tactics that unduly endanger civilian lives and property.

    So do these guys really think that anyone in the Taliban would even consider any of this. Terror and fear keep these people in power and anything that challenges that they kill. But some people seem to not understand that still.

  • He has a name now.

    We have a ID on our John Doe that I wrote about in my last post thanks the efforts of IronKnight. The person in question is Staff Sergeant José Pequeño.

    When an insurgent pitched a grenade into his Humvee while he was reporting a suicide bomber, the explosion killed the driver and took the lower left two lobes from his brain. In the more than three years since he’s undergone a dozen and a half surgeries, his mother and sister have given up home, job, college, friends and all else to stay with him — and he has lived, despite his doctors’ predictions and expectations.

    And why did he volunteer to go back again?

    A US Marine Corps veteran and Army National Guardsman, Staff Sergeant José Pequeño returned to Iraq because he felt that would help some of his young Guardsmembers return home safely.

    Also it should be noted the difference in writing between the two authors.

    Tomorrow, take a moment to remember those who came home far from whole.
    Whether you believe in the war or not, the men and women who wear the uniforms of the US Armed Forces — and especially those whose service has marked them as irrevocably physically as it has spiritually and psychically — deserve a moment’s remembrance.

    Thank for that.

  • A thousand words indeed.

    Every once in a while I read the Rag Blog but stopped doing so as much because they just seem to copy whole articles and nothing else. But this one caught my eye. Here is the photo.

    Wounded Vet
    Wounded Vet

    I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy 22-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and who’s swell at the winter Olympic games.

    It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless goat droppings the public chooses to chew on. This is some American mother’s son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is screwed forever.

    I was agreeing with this and most people here have said through words and actions over the past years. So I thought maybe that this was going to be one of few post that I agreed with. But that was quick to change.

    How did this come to happen to this poor mother’s son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad things happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone that the war that blew off half of this poor boy’s head was based on out and out lies.

    It goes in to the usual statements on why everything we do and have done is beyond pardonable. But the thing that me upset is what is not being said. Like who is this person? What is his name? This author spend the first two paragraphs about how we are forgetting out those that are injured in this war. But seems to be perfectly happy letting this be a John Doe that to me seems is being used as just another prompt in his article. There is nothing about any of the issues or challenges that this Vet is facing or even if people can find was to help. Oh and there was the standard death count at the bottom of the article. Classy, just another way to show faceless death of our service members.

    Or unverifiable claims about civilian deaths. in a article that is suppose to be about why the media is ignoring our wounded Vets. Yes this is all in the same article.

    Because not content to ignore the current victims they support more crimes and call for more wars. Several years ago in Iraq parents waited for their children at a bus stop. An errant coalition missile struck the bus stop and blew the elementary school age children to pieces. Needless to say this wasn’t widely reported but the parents in a frenzy began fighting over the body parts of their children.

    You really think that things like that would not be noticed much less ignored the Press. Also because of the dateless event you can be ambiguous as you want to be leaving your detractors trying to prove a negative.

    So once again another service member gets used as a media prompt.

  • Iranian Influence in Iraq: Getting the Facts Straight

    A frequent argument against American policies in Iraq is that we have in essence made Iraq a proxy state of Iran by removing the Baathist regime and allowing the Shia majority to take control of a majority of the new government. This argument has become more frequently used to the attack the war in Iraq, especially in the wake of the Surge and declining violence in Iraq. With the parliamentary elections next week, some in the media have said that these elections will in effect enable Iran to dominate Iraq. However, to say that Iran currently wields or will eventually gain complete control over the current Iraqi government or Shia majority is to ignore many facts about the complexities of Iraq’s cultural and politics. There is no doubt that Iran has influence over certain Shia political groups and armed militias. However, there are ethnic, political, and foreign factors that prevent Iran from completely dominating Iraq.

    (more…)

  • Coast Guard Chief wants to slash Homeland Security role

    Remember when they moved the Coast Guard to the Homeland Security Department from the Transportation Department to more accurately reflect their role in the war against terror and bring them under the control of a central authority that could utilize them properly? Well, Obama’s pick to lead the Coast Guard wants to slash funding for incidentals like Guarding Our Coast and Training to Guard Our Coast, according to a memo the Associated Press got in their grubby little hands.

    An internal memo from Vice Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr., Obama’s nominee to become Coast Guard commandant, says that starting in 2012, he would slash funding for programs in the agency’s homeland security plan, including patrols and training exercises.

    The memo, marked “sensitive – for internal Coast Guard use only,” was obtained by The Associated Press.

    Papp’s outline is significant because it could mean major changes for the more than 200-year-old agency that took on substantial homeland security duties after Sept. 11, 2001. Obama’s 2011 proposed budget cuts for the Coast Guard have already caused outrage from some lawmakers.

    According to Papp’s memo, he would scale back the Coast Guard’s counterterrorism priorities in favor of running traditional search-and-rescue operations that save people in imminent danger on the water and maintaining the maritime transportation system.

    So I’m guessing the War on Terror has ended and no one told us.