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

Category: Terror War

  • Napolitano FINALLY Admits The Obvious About The Ft. Hood Massacre

    From Fox News (Emphasis my own):

    “Violent Islamic terrorism … was part and parcel of the Ft. Hood killings,” Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday morning. “There is violent Islamic terrorism, be it Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen or anywhere else, [and] that is indeed a major focus of this department and its efforts.”

    Political correctness has governed the Army’s and DHS’s handling of the Ft. Hood massacre since day one, blatantly ignoring Hassan’s ties to Islamic extremists in this country and overseas. The fact that the Napolitano now admits that this was act of Islamic terrorism does not make up for the fact that the DHS and Army deliberately ignored the obvious for months.

    More importantly, it does not make up for the fact that the Army and DHS bear responsibility for the deaths of those 13 American soldiers at Ft. Hood by repeatedly ignoring the fact that Hassan was an Islamic radical.

  • Bellavia: Our Mission is Finally Accomplished… Anyone Care?

    One of the best friends of this blog, David Bellavia, puts down his snarky pen and ruminates publicly about the cost of the war in Iraq and what it shouldmean to Americans. He begins;

    I understand that there are individuals who opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning and I believe their passion, although misguided at times, is rooted in a deep desire for peace. What always baffled me was the reaction they had to pro-victory veterans when we came home. As if we were some robotic arm of the Bush White House. It was foreign for them to understand why winning in Iraq was so important.

    And ends;

    If you can’t bring yourself to give the living the sense of accomplishment for winning a war that many claimed was endless, at least humor the dead. Allow them to rest knowing that the war that took their lives was won because of their sacrifice.

    Is that too much to ask for?

    I tried to add a few thoughts to David’s post, but it’s impossible. Go read the whole thing.

  • Interrogator Camerino plays lawyer, fails

    Late last week, the Justice Department announced that it probably didn’t have a reason to prosecute the White House legal team upon whose opinion the Bush Administration built their interrogation policy. As lawyers argue from their particular point of view, DOJ’s mind seems to be made up. This from the Washington Post;

    “When you combine all this with the threat reports that were being done and everything, I don’t know whether anyone crossed the line,” former department lawyer Jack Goldsmith said. “I certainly couldn’t say that myself. I don’t even know what the standard is.”

    Of course, since at least some of the discussion is about interrogation, Anthony Camerino, formerly known as Matthew Alexander, thinks he has something important to say on VoteVets and the Huffington Post;

    When I took the oath as a military officer, I don’t remember any mention of sunny or dark days. I swore to support and defend the Constitution and to faithfully discharge my duties on all days. Isn’t this the essential element of leadership? A ship doesn’t need steering when the river is its steady guide.

    What part of the Constitution covers interrogations, Tony? And since when have you become a lawyer? Because countless lawyers can’t agree with each other, why does a interrogator suddenly think he has the education to make policy for the administration? Getting paid by the George Soros Foundation and the ACLU doesn’t make you a legal expert.

    Camerino’s opinion is based purely on his pocketbook. Camerino gets paid to have the opinion that what the Bush Administration engaged in was torture. How else could a major in the Air Force afford to pay cash for a $300k condo on Capitol Hill? I also wonder how, if he disagrees so vehemently with the government, he’s accepting a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and planning to deploy to conduct interrogations this summer.

    I also have problems with the Air Force for those exact same reasons. Do they think so little of the troops on the ground, that they’d put a Soros-funded, ACLU-trained pseudo-lawyer to be in charge of a unit of interrogators? The man is obviously a self-serving boob, so what scares the Air Force?

  • Behind Taliban Lines?

    I thought the video where Al Jareea was showing the insurgents arresting people who voted in the Afghanistan election to a quite possibly a painful death was bad enough. One guy wanted to take it further.

    Late last summer, while reporting a story for FRONTLINE, veteran Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi through channels put out word that he would like to interview one of the new Taliban commanders leading a growing insurgency in the country’s northern provinces.

    Yep for those who where in Afghanistan out on patrols this guy was chatting it up with those that wanted to kill you.

    In this excerpt from Behind Taliban Lines, the militants — members of an extremist group called Hezb-i-Islami, which fights alongside the Taliban throughout the country — have holed up in a safe-house near their target and are beginning to build the bombs that they hope will stop an American supply truck and a jeep filled with Afghan police, both of which they plan to subsequently attack with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

    The excuse that the writer gives is that he is helping the West better understand these groups. In his own words:

    At the time he filmed this scene, Quraishi did not know the target of the attack, but it was clear to him — as it was throughout his time with the militants — that it was critical for a Western audience to see for themselves what was taking place here, deepening our understanding of the tactics, training, and mind-set of the insurgents who control vast regions of the country beyond the reach of the central government.

    There are so many lines in this story to quote it was hard not to just post the entire story but one thing that should be noted is that even with the obvious free publicity and propaganda, they had no issues about having though of beheading him.

    “Mirwais took my hand; he took me aside,” Quraishi says. “He said: ‘Brother, I invited you here as a guest. I know your plan is to be here for 14 days, but I’m really sorry.’” Two men had arrived from Pakistan—likely from Hezb-i-Islami and Al Qaeda—and they demanded to know why an outsider had been allowed in to film among the fighters. “‘They keep telling me that you are a spy and we have to behead you.’”

    But he found out that once again the overall truth with these groups.

    Indeed, as the men of Central Group proceed toward their target, Quraishi meets a young bomb maker from Uzbekistan who says he was trained by Al Qaeda.

    “America started this war in Afghanistan so that European countries like England and America would be safe,” he tells Quraishi. “But they should know that once the mujahideen conquer Afghanistan, … we’ll aim for the Middle East and Europe.”

    Their words now ours.

  • Operation New Dawn: WTF?

    The people who came up with the name Operation New Dawn

    When I woke up this morning, I got a message from my friend and paratrooper James who is currently in Afghanistan fighting the good fight. He asked me if I was “ready” for Operation New Dawn. Right away I assumed it was one of two things: 1.) the name of the bar-hopping campaign James and I will conduct when James is on R&R or 2.) the name the DoD is giving to  the operation to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. However, I was wrong. Operation New Dawn will be the new name for Operation Iraqi Freedom, starting September 1st. My reaction to this new name was a combination of laughter, disbelief, and anger.

    (more…)

  • Five Fort Jackson soldiers

    We were talking about it last night in emails when CBN released their story about five Fort jackson soldiers who were being investigated for plotting to poison the food of their fellow soldiers. At the time, I thought it was odd that they were hatching such a potentially complex plan with little chance of success. About that time Fox released their story;

    The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, “there is no credible information to support the allegations.”

    Now that sounds fishy – they’ve been investigating for more than two months yet there’s no credible evidence? There’s either no evidence and they stop investigating, or there’s enough evidence to justify two months of investigation.

    Crush at Blackfive links to the Palmetto News;

    Army officials, however, denied the allegations and said none of the men were Muslim

    Crush points out that the soldiers were all in a language program for Arab speakers;

    So 09L’s – who speak Arabic, Dari, Pashtu, Farsi or Kurdish as a first language, who may also be in contact with other Jihadists in Pakistan – aren’t Muslim?

    There’s funny shit going on in the Army Department. They tried to hide the fact that Nidal Hasan survived his gun shot wounds at Fort Hood, now this. I’ll grant you that this food poisoning plan was childish and ill-conceived, but a threat is a threat. And the Army seems more concerned about the public finding out there’s a Muslim plot afoot than they are about catching these buffoons and punishing them. If there’s some grand plan, I wish they’d tell us what it is instead of waiting for bloggers to throw up a smoke screen for them – that part seems to rate a fail.

    In fact, that’s why I’ve been so slow in writing about this story.

  • Oh, yeah, I feel safer

    Rurik sends this article about the competency of the people who are protecting us – apparently they’re arming our criminals, too;

    Nearly 180 Department of Homeland Security weapons were lost — some falling into the hands of criminals — after officers left them in restrooms, vehicles and other public places, according to an inspector general report.

    The officers, with Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “did not always sufficiently safeguard their firearms and, as a result, lost a significant number of firearms” between fiscal year 2006 and fiscal year 2008, the report said.

    In all, 243 firearms were lost in both agencies during that period, according to the January report from Inspector General Richard Skinner. Of those, 36 were lost because of circumstances beyond officers’ control — for instance, ICE lost a firearm during an assault on an officer. Another 28 were lost even though officers had stored them in lockboxes or safes.

    But 74 percent, or 179 guns, were lost “because officers did not properly secure them,” the report said.

    What? Did they carry their weapons in their pockets? How do you leave your handgun in the restroom? Did the evil Bush Administration not buy them holsters? What were they doing in the restroom that made them set their weapon down and forget it? A little wide-stance action?

    Have you ever been on a military base upon which a weapon was lost? We once lost a .45 pistol on a jump into Alaska. We did a battalion on-line police call in minus 30 degree weather on the drop zone for hours until we finally found the weapon which had fallen from several hundred feet into the 3-feet of snow. And Homeland Security leaves their handguns in public restrooms.

  • USA Today on How Vets Feel About The Hurt Locker

    USA Today has run an article that discusses how many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have different opinions on the accuracy and quality of the movie The Hurt Locker. The author of article, Gregg Zoroya, does an excellent job of gauging veterans’ responses to the movie, presenting an array of opinions including those of Army of Dude and Bouhammer, who are both quoted in the article. I highly encourage you all to read the article, it is one of the few times the MSM has done a good job of reporting on how vets feel about a particular issue (albeit not a very important one).

    I personally enjoyed The Hurt Locker and thought it got a lot of things right about Americans in Iraq. In particular, I enjoyed how the movie mostly stayed out of the politics and how the insurgents were portrayed for exactly what they are: a bunch of savages who don’t care who they harm or kill in their strive to attain their goals. I felt that generally EOD’s mission was properly portrayed (a couple ridiculous adventures notwithstadning) and the opening scene in my opinion was a dead-on accurate depiction of how an EOD mission usually works.

    Of course there were many technical errors (involving everything from uniforms to rank) and ridiculous side-stories that involved EOD doing everything from helping private military contractors kill a sniper to the EOD team leader running alone through the streets of Baghdad at night. But you got to remember that this is a Hollywood movie, and there will always be a dramatic license taken with war movies.

    Overall, compared to the other trash that has come about Iraq, the Hurt Locker is a good war movie and the first real decent portrayal of Americans in Iraq by Hollywood.