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

Category: Terror War

  • Josh Simpson: Live up to the creed, socialismo o muerte!

    The folks at 9/11 Families for America sent a link to an interview of Benji Lewis and Josh Simpson (who I wrote about the other day) conducted by Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who was nicknamed the “Sweetheart of the Revolution” by Hugo Chavez for her blind and undying support for the Chavezistas. Of course, she supports Chavez’ revolution from the comfort and splendor of her Manhattan apartment and law offices.

    Anyway, Golinger, who also writes for the uber-Left, pro-Chavez website Venezuelanalysis, doesn’t bother to check the background of her interviewees. This is from the bio at the end of the interview;

    Josh Simpson, 27 years old, was a Sargeant [sic] in the US Army Counterintelligence Division. He was in charge of interrogations and source operations in Mosul, Iraq from 2004-2005. His actions resulted indirectly in the deaths of hundreds of Iraquis [sic].

    (more…)

  • Obama extends combat tours of some troops

    Fox News announces that some troops have had their combat tours in Afghanistan extended by the Obama Administration;

    Members of the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters serving in Afghanistan have been told their tours will be extended by 52 days from 12 months to nearly 14 months.

    Hundreds of officers and non-commissioned soldiers were told this weekend that they would have to stay longer so that their replacements in the 101st Airborne Division could have 12 months at home — a sign at how stretched the forces remain.

    In case you’re wondering what Democrats said when President Bush did the same thing (Washington Post);

    “The Army has attempted in vain to stabilize a rotational scheme for an unstable and open-ended strategy,” said Carl M. Levin (Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Once again, the failures of this administration are being underwritten by our troops.”

    Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the new policy will have “a chilling effect on recruiting, retention and readiness.”

    Obama also criticized Bush for extending combat tours – but I guess that was before he realized that the real world is different from the rhetorical flourishes of a campaign.

  • NYT’s James Glantz’ smoke and mirrors

    James Glantz who was New York Times’ Baghdad Bureau chief in 2007, writes a clearly misleading article today in the Times related to contractors in Afghanistan. The misperception begins in the title “Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan“;

    Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.

    Of course the illusion here is that these “contractors working for the Pentagon” are all security personnel ranging the countryside fighting the war our soldiers won’t fight. Glantz perpetuates his illusion;

    What is clear, the report says, is that when contractors for the Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed — as when civilian interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or members of the security firm Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad — the American effort can be severely undermined.

    You have to read every line of the article to find out that he’s not talking about just private security contractors. Buried in the middle of the article is a single line;

    The 68,197 contractors — many of them Afghans — handle a variety of jobs, including cooking for the troops, serving as interpreters and even providing security, the report says.

    So basically, Glantz is worried because uniformed troops aren’t cooking their own meals, hauling their own trash, doing their own laundry and sewing. Our soldiers are doing more trigger pulling operations while locals are doing the mundane functions that we’ve had to retain active duty people to accomplish through the centuries. Not to mention local interpreters who don’t have to be trained (like the troops whom it costs thousands of dollars and many months to train).

    dicksmith at VetVoice recognizes Glantz’ mischaracterization of the situation but can’t avoid a reflex reaction;

    Simply put, having more contractors than uniformed troops on the ground in a combat zone is unacceptable. We need to ween ourselves off the use of contract labor in combat all together.

    Of course, that’s easy for dicksmith to say, he doesn’t much care that all of those dreary tasks would have to be accomplished by someone – and so what if it drains manpower. He’s not going back, so what does he care?

  • George Will is wrong, wrong, wrong

    Last night, I wrote briefly about the impending George Will column in the Washington Post in which Will says we should withdraw from Afghanistan. I have nothing against George Will – in fact he and I had a nice short chat one night at the National Press Club several years back and I found him to be an affable and brilliant fellow. But, this is way out of his lane, as Uncle Jimbo wrote last night.

    Will wrote;

    So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

    Oh, Pakistan matters because it has nukes? How very Cold Warrior of you, George. Afghanistan sure mattered in September 2001, didn’t it?

    That’s typical inside-the-Beltway drivel. The best way to get some political cover is to send in some SpecOps guys occasionally to score cheap and meaningless victories against a burgeoning threat just to get the ruling party through the next election. It’s reminiscent of the Clinton aspirin factory/Bedouin tent attacks of the late 90s. Big flashy explosions that shifted little mounds of sand around the desert.

    We’re dealing with an enemy that declares a victory every time one of them successfully farts without getting a Hellfire shot up his bum. Our withdrawal from Somalia is what precipitated this war on terror – pulling our forces “off-shore” (anyone who saw a shore in Afghanistan, please tell us about it) will only embolden those stone age cretins and encourage even more attacks against our interests.

    How many times during the Bush years did we suffer the slings and arrows from the Left about how we didn’t fix Afghanistan in 1988 – now twenty years later, they’re ready to follow the same strategy. And George Will is giving them the political cover to set us up for the next attack as well as rebuild support with Democrats’ far Left constituents just as they are beginning to oppose Obama. Good one, George.

  • Anti-war crowd starving for attention

    cindysheehanpressweb
    There was a New York Times article this weekend that seems to be making the Left warm in their collective crotch area. “American Antiwar Movement Plans an Autumn Campaign Against Policies on Afghanistan” is making the rounds on the anti-war blogs as some sort of clarion call.

    Anticipating a Pentagon request for more troops there, antiwar leaders have engaged in a flurry of meetings to discuss a month of demonstrations, lobbying, teach-ins and memorials in October to publicize the casualty count, raise concerns about the cost of the war and pressure Congress to demand an exit strategy.

    But they face a starkly changed political climate from just a year ago, when President George W. Bush provided a lightning rod for protests. The health care battle is consuming the resources of labor unions and other core Democratic groups.

    (more…)

  • It’s back on, baby!

    The Washington Times’ Christina Bellantoni reports that the “war on terror” is back on. Well, sort of;

    After the Obama administration banned the phrase “war on terror,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs resurrected it Monday when speaking about a expected new report about troop levels in Afghanistan.

    Asked about Mr. Gibbs’ choice of words, White House aides wouldn’t say whether it was a slip of the tongue or intentional.

    So after a few months of struggling inan overseas contingency operation, we’re back in a war on terror. I guess it can’t be because experts are worried about Afghanistan. And, oh, Ace of Spades links to a National Review report that George Will will call for troop pull out from Afghanistan.

    Obama didn’t start the war, but if he doesn’t win Afghanistan, it’ll be decades before a Democrat gets in the White House. Maybe he’ll stop playing word games, stroking the Far Left and finally get down to business.

  • Suicide bomber news

    The Stars & Stripes reports that Pakistan claims that they wiped out a suicide bomber training camp in Swat last night;

    Army helicopters strafed the camp late Friday night after local residents tipped off security forces to its location on a small island in the Swat River opposite the town of Charbagh, said Lt. Col. Akhtar Abbas, the army spokesman in Swat. The army had in July declared the area, about six miles east of the valley’s main town of Mingora, cleared of militants except for small pockets of resistance.

    Intelligence reports linked the camp to attacks that killed a total of 10 soldiers and civilians this month, he said.

    What is suicide bomber training i asked myself? Then I remembered this clip from An American Carol and figured this is the kind of stuff they try to avoid.

    In other suicide bomber news, The Washington Times’ Sara A. Carter reports that the other night, a suicide bomber got a little too close to the Saudi royal family;

    Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the deputy to and son of Interior Minister Prince Nayef, was injured Thursday night at his office in Jeddah by a suicide bomber who infiltrated the receiving line at an iftar – the meal that breaks the fast at the end of the day during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

    U.S. officials are closely watching developments in Saudi Arabia and take “seriously” the attempt on Prince Mohammed’s life, a U.S. counterterrorism official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of the subject.

    “This is the closest al Qaeda has gotten to a member of the Saudi [royal] family,” the official said. “Terrorism in Saudi Arabia is always a concern. The Saudis have had a really strong counterterrorism campaign in the last several years, and we’re seeing al Qaeda react to it.”

    The Saudi government has claimed to have defeated al Qaeda in their country a few years back, but no one can beat these clowns unless you kill every last one of them. Those intellectually stunted anti-war folks need to take this as a lesson.

  • Is Panetta out?

    I first read of the rumor that CIA chief Leon Panetta offered his resignation on Wednesday at Ace of Spades. The White House denies those reports, however. Fox News wrote that ABC News reported a shouting match in the White House;

    ABCNews.com on Monday cited reports that Panetta, frustrated by several administration actions and discussions with regard to the CIA, got in a “profanity-laced screaming match” with a senior staff member last month and has also threatened to leave. Panetta reportedly was upset over potential plans to open an investigation into alleged CIA abuse of terror suspects.

    Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal writes this morning that Panetta is the White House’s fall guy for their erratic policy on torture and the CIA agents who followed their orders;

    If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it’s that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president’s designated fall guy.

    The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that’s riled by his decisions to retain some Bush-era counterterrorism policies. He’s facing Congressional liberals still baying for Bush blood. He’s hired Attorney General Eric Holder, who is giving the term “ideological purity” new meaning. Mr. Obama’s way to appease these bodies? Hang the CIA and Mr. Panetta out to dry.

    Actually, it explains Obama’s odd choice of Panetta for the office of CIA Director in the first place. Putting the highly-partisan Eric Holder in the Justice Department and a politician like Panetta at the CIA guaranteed Obama a shot at distracting us from his domestic agenda while the obamistas pursued the Bush Administration’s policies. Who knew that Panetta would take his job seriously?

    Yesterday, Ace reported that the Wall Street Journal quoted the CIA’s IG report that Pelosi did indeed know about interrogation techniques that the CIA employed. So I guess the Obama Administration will eventually have to rid themselves of Panetta since they don’t need him to pass their domestic agenda.

    In the Washington Post this morning, Obama advisers tell the Post that it’s impossible for the President to move forward without looking backward;

    “I think he is determined to make sure we are on the right course going ahead, but you cannot just ignore the past, especially when Congress is doing its inquiries and reviews and we’re going to be facing these issues as a result of court cases, as a result of congressional actions,” [John O. Brennan, an assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism] said. “I think he is making sure that he makes the best decisions, and sometimes you cannot just wipe the slate clean. You have to deal with what the facts are, or you have to actually try to make sure you can ascertain the facts — as opposed to the hyperbole that is out there.”

    Yeah, like we able to deal with the facts from the 9-11 Commission in regards to the Clinton legacy as it related to the September 11th attacks. Remember how Jaime Gorelick was able to block an effective examination of those facts?