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

Category: Terror War

  • DoD blocks release of “torture” photos

    The Stars and Stripes and the Associated Press report that the Secretary of Defense has invoked new powers to keep photographs from the Abu Gahraib incident from the public;

    The Obama administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court late Friday saying that Gates has invoked new powers blocking the release of the photos.

    The American Civil Liberties Union had sued for the release of 21 color photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans. Federal courts had rejected the government’s arguments to block their release, so Congress gave Gates new powers to keep them private under a law signed by President Barack Obama last month.

    Gates’ order specifically cites the 21 pictures sought by the ACLU, plus 23 additional ones cited in a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. However, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the order covers all photographs from investigations related to the treatment of individuals captured or detained in military operations outside the United States between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 22, 2009.

    Gates’ new powers were included in a budget bill for the Homeland Security Department.

    Of course, the ACLU is in a snit;

    Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, said the group will continue to fight for the release of the photographs, arguing that Gates’ order was overly broad.

    “We think the photos are an important part of the historical record. They are critical to the ongoing national conversation about accountability for torture,” Jaffer said. “It sets a bad precedent for the government to be suppressing information that relates to government misconduct.”

    Jameel Jaffer heads the ACLU’s Torture Report project which is currently digging through the Bush Administration’s public documents looking for someone to blame for heinous crimes of discomfort perpetrated against some Bronze Age subhumans. Among Jaffer’s staff is Matthew Alexander, the kinder, gentler interrogator – regular readers will learn all about the pseudonymous author of the book “How To Break A Terrorist” tomorrow morning in a TAH exclusive that was months in the writing.

  • AP: troop morale declines in Afghanistan

    Stars & Stripes runs an AP article on declining morale among troops in Afghanistan;

    Both surveys showed that soldiers on their third or fourth tours of duty had lower morale and more mental health problems than those with fewer deployments and an ever-increasing number of troops are having problems with their marriages.

    The new survey on Afghanistan found instances of depression, anxiety and other psychological problems are about the same as they were in 2007. But it also said there is a shortage of mental health workers to help soldiers who need it, partly because of the buildup Obama already started this year with the dispatch of more than 20,000 extra troops.

    Is it really surprising, if it’s true? The media reports only the bad aspects of the war while ignoring the gains, the President can’t bother himself to actually make a decision about how to end this conflict, Congress virtually ignores the troops while they focus on a domestic agenda and buying patronage.

    I remember jerk-assing around before Desert Storm while the politicians kicked us back and forth. COB6 and I were 15 km. inside of Iraq nine days before the ground war began when we got jerked out while the politicians gave each other reach-arounds. The Iraqis took advantage of the opportunity to fire a couple of Frog missiles at us while we were going back to Saudi Arabia – they didn’t hit any of us, but it certainly made us feel like we were retreating.

    That kind of horseshit plays with troops minds – they want to win, they don’t want be pawns in a tug-of-war of egos and agendas.

  • Still waiting

    The Washington Post tells us this morning that the President will will make a “Decision soon on troops for Afghanistan“. In my considered opinion, nothing about this decision will be “soon”.

    “It’s a matter of making certain that when I send young men and women into war, and when I devote billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money, that it’s making us safer,” Obama said.

    The period for “making certain” has long passed. It’s now a period of making compromises and keeping voters from defecting. A matter of national security has become a matter of electioneering and instead of listening to the generals, Obama is listening to Code Pink and MoveOn. The advice from General McChrystal has taken a back seat to advice from David Axelrod.

    The Post is so embarrassed by Obama’s indecision, the article, entitled to address the Afghanistan issue, spends two pages discussing our foreign policy with Japan instead probably because there’s not much to discuss about Obama’s failure to display any measure of leadership on this issue.

    Yeah, he makes a big show out of meeting mourners at Arlington, speaking at Fort Hood, saluting fallen soldiers returning from the war, but in the leadership area and making actual decisions that don’t include iconic photos, he’s sorely lacking.

    Just A Grunt sends us these two media links from an interview with a soldier injured at the Fort Hood shootings who discusses the comparison of the visits of former-President Bush and current-President Obama.

    (The links are about a third of the way down this page under the picture of the Fort Hood sign)

    ADDED: Oh, great, WaPo changed the title of their article.

  • Hasan’s pattern of misbehavior

    We all remember how the other day the government explained away the “benign” emails between Fort Hood murderer Hasan and the radical cleric Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Well, in an exclusive report, the Washington Times reports that Hasan had other contacts with several other Islamic extremists.

    Fort Hood shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been in contact with numerous Muslim extremists — some of whom are under federal investigation — before last week’s rampage, two U.S. officials told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

    Maj. Hasan made some of the contacts while visiting known jihadist chat rooms on the Internet, according to one of The Times’ sources, a senior FBI official. He said that several people with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact had been the focus of investigations by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

    And no one thought there was a problem?

    The military intelligence official said, “Those connections, except for Awlaki, could be explained innocently. But all of them together form a very concerning picture.”

    “I may run into contact with shady people through coincidence, through social events, etc.,” he said. “But at some point you start saying like, ‘Huh? Why are you coming in contact with all these charming people?’ ”

    “Huh?” indeed.

    The Washington Post reports on the discussion of Hasan by his peers at Walter Reed;

    The idea that Hasan attend the lectures, which he did late last year or early this year, came up during discussions among the psychiatric staffs of the hospital and the Army’s medical university about what was perceived as Hasan’s lack of productivity and his constant interest in Muslims whose religious beliefs conflicted with their military duties.

    “You’re at an institution of higher learning. He seems to want to do work in an area no one knows anything about,” the staff member, who also requested anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak publicly, said of the order. “You don’t want to close him down just because it’s different.”

    So everyone is concerned about Hasan’s behavior, so what do they do about it? Promote him and send to a unit that’s about to deploy him to the war. Makes perfect sense to me. It certainly explains why I didn’t become Sergeant major of the Army – I couldn’t meet the high standards that the Army apparently uses for promotion criteria.

  • Those “benign” emails

    How can there be benign emails between an Army Major and a radical imam who encourages terrorism? (USAToday link)

    The personal website for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two Sept. 11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero.

    One U.S. official said Monday that the government had discovered electronic communications that showed Hasan had reached out to the imam, Anwar Aulaqi, in the past. But investigators said late Monday there was no indication Hasan was directed to attack or had help in the massacre last Thursday.

    The posting Monday on the website for Aulaqi, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three Sept. 11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military post last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

    From Fox News’ Special Report;

    If those emails are so benign, why can’t we see them? I’m telling you that since the Army’s Chief of Staff thinks that losing our diversity is more tragic than losing 13 soldiers, I want to see those emails. I don’t trust the government’s judgment when it comes to my security lately.

    By the way, the Chicago mayor blames you gun-clinging fundamentalists for the actions of an Allah-clinging fundamentalist according to Gateway Pundit.

  • The “trickle” is on!

    According to the Washington Times, President Obama has decided to listen to his general and start his own “surge” in Afghanistan. But it’s less like a surge and more like a trickle;

    Military officials said Obama will have choices that include a phased addition of up to 40,000 forces over some six months or more next year, based on security conditions and the decisions of NATO allies.

    Several officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been made also said Obama’s announcement will be much broader than the mathematics of troop numbers, which have dominated the U.S. debate.

    Officials said a substantial increase in troops is all but inevitable, but the precise number is less important than the message that an expansion and refocus of U.S. commitment in Afghanistan would send.

    Boy, that ought to scare the be-jeebus out of those militants – knowing that the math isn’t as important as the message. The message ought to be worth a few hundred extra al Qaeda lives. The message I see is that the administration is acting real reticent about committing a sufficient number of forces to win the war in Afghanistan. It looks to me as if he’s found a way to vote present on being decisive.

    A decisive commander would have all of his troops on the ground as soon as the mountain snows recede (since he couldn’t summon the fortitude to decide during this year’s fighting season), but this guy won’t even have all of his forces on the ground in the Spring. And they’ll be trickling in during a six month period. Yeah, my confidence level is high.

  • Veterans lobbying Congress today

    While the dithererer-in-chief contemplates his inaction, veterans groups are stalking Congress in their offices this morning. Vets for Freedom are meeting as I type this to plan out their day in the halls of Congress in conjunction with Michelle Bachman’s troops.

    Meanwhile, VoteVets’ Executive Director focuses on the really important issues, according to Politico;

    In 2007, Veterans for Freedom supported the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq, and VoteVets.org opposed it, advocating a drawdown from Iraq instead. But for now, the organization is still debating its position on the war in Afghanistan, said VoteVets Chairman Jon Soltz, and it is concentrating its efforts on climate change.

    Don’t forget Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. While Obama fiddles over the war in Afghanistan, Jon Soltz prefers to focus his energies on social issues because whenever he shoots his big mouth off over actual military and veterans’ issues, somehow he always turns out to be wrong. It’s hard to believe that someone who has over three months experience in a combat motor pool could be wrong about military issues, but apparently it happens.

    How many things can you find wrong in this paragraph;

    The [VFF]’s founder, David Bellavia, who in 2008 ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New York, attacked Kerry and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in 2005 for supporting statements that Iraqis wanted the United States to leave their country, claiming in an article on FrontPageMag.com that the comments were “a political attack on the troops, an attack that is aiding our enemy.” The publication is run by Holocaust denier David Horowitz.

    Bellavia was ONE of the founders of VFF, he didn’t unsuccessfully run for Congress (the party machine asked his to withdraw in favor of a candidate who could fund his own campaign) and I have no idea where the article’s author, Jen deMascio, got the idea that David Horowitz is a Holocaust denier – but I’ve got an email into her to get her source on that specious charge.

    Of course, deMascio, has found a group she likes out of the three she discusses – the new one that I introduced to you the other day “Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan” and our new friend Jake Giliberto, who just happened to email me after the last piece I did on his. But DeMascio writes;

    “Listen, you’ve got to stop falling in love with the military solution; it’s not feasible,” said Jake Diliberto, one of the group’s founders. “This is a war of poverty and cultural misunderstanding, and it’s an Afghan problem that we don’t have the means or the wisdom to figure out.”

    So what’s Jake’s solution? Just let Afghanistan go back to being a stone age shit hole like we did in 1988. That worked out well for us the first time, didn’t it? Well, the “Rethinking Afghanistan” was started by a filmmaker and we know how much more intelligent filmmakers think they are than the rest of us – so let’s ask Hollywood to formulate our foreign and defense policy instead of generals.

    I like Jake, he’s real friendly and fairly bright, but he’s being used by the peace movement, just like all of those IVAW clowns. The peace movement doesn’t care about them or their opinions beyond the fact that they can wear T-shirts proclaiming the proper message.

  • Huffpo nimroddery

    Some dolt who goes by the name of Ryan Grim did exactly no research or background on this article at Huffington Post about some IVAW schlubs schlepping through the halls of Congress spreading their halfwit opinions.These two IVAW members are new to me and don’t have profiles at IVAW; Brock McIntosh and Jake Diliberto. Neither has a DoD record at Military.com, so they’re probably new civilians. But this Grim guy is a dolt. He writes about Vets for Freedom;

    A new pro-war group calling itself Vets For Freedom plans to begin lobbying Congress Thursday, pushing for an escalation.

    Yeah, IVAW was formed 18 months before VFF, so VFF is a “new…group”. More than likely, Grim didn’t have the gumption or wherewithal to do a bit of googling and find out that VFF isn’t all that new. Just new to his ignorant ass. According to his bio at HuffPo Grim is “the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post”. So much for any real news coming out of HuffPo’s congressional staff.

    So, master researcher Grim begins by taking shots at VFF’s Thomas Cotton with help from Diliberto;

    Diliberto went mano a mano on CNN with VFF rep Thomas Cotton. Cotton had a simple appeal to authority: He’s for whatever General Stanley McChrystal wants — and that’s more troops.

    Before they went on, says Diliberto, he could hear his opponent prepping himself. “He kept repeating, ‘General Stanley McChrystal. General Stanley McChrystal. General Stanley McChrystal.’ ”

    Backers of escalating the eight-year-old war present a variety of complex arguments, but at their heart is Cotton’s mantra: “General Stanley McChrystal. General Stanley McChrystal. General Stanley McChrystal.”

    Yeah, here’s a transcript of the interview. Cotton mentions McChrystal twice – the same number of times the interviewer, John Roberts, mentions McChrystal’s name. But that doesn’t make the pro-victory guys sound as bad as Grim likes them to sound.

    Devon Read explains his child-like understanding of the conflict in Afghanistan;

    The kind of training Afghans don’t need, the soldiers say, is military. We’ve been training young men to fight in Afghanistan for decades, they note, and look where it’s gotten us. An overwhelming number of soldiers trained by the U.S. go on to fight for the Taliban instead, which was itself originally trained by the U.S., notes Read. “So if we train 400,000 soldiers and 200,000 go fight for the Taliban, what have we gained?”

    So, their solution? Just let Afghanistan go back to being an Islamist shit hole like we did in 1988.

    I watched Diliberto on Larry King last night to get his side straight from him since I can’t trust HuffPo. I’m beginning to wonder if Diliberto is even in IVAW. Larry King says he’s a member of “Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan” which I suspect sprang from the intellectually vacuous, Leftist navel-gazing YouTube video entitled “Rethinking Afghanistan“. So apparently, Grim didn’t even get Diliberto’s affiliation right.

    But anyway, Diliberto’s plan for Afghanistan is to send cops out to arrest and imprison al Qaeda, I guess because no one is doing that already, huh? He claims more troops won’t solve our problem. He went up against that new VFF group’s ED, Pete Hegseth and Pete wore Diliberto’s ass out. I was hoping that Larry King would have video this morning, but alas, none.

    See I don’t get this; when Shinseki said we needed more troops in Iraq, the Left said we needed to listen to Shinseki. When Petreus said we needed more troops in Iraq, the Left said it was fruitless. Now McChrystal says we need more troops in Afghanistan, no one wants to listen to the generals.

    The thing about this Larry King interview is that no one mentioned IVAW, although this DIliberto has some kind of tie to IVAW, nor did they mention that Wes Clark (who was also on the show) is on the board of VoteVets. Funny, huh?