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

Category: Terror War

  • ElBaradei carrying Islamic Republic’s water

    Sometimes its enough to make a reader go cross-eyed trying to follow ElBaradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency and their seemingly useless reports on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Like report issued Friday (UPI link);

    International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei is calling for more documents from Iran to assure its nuclear activities are peaceful.

    In a report on nuclear safeguards in Iran released only to the IAEA board of governors, ElBaradei called on Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment-related activities and provide additional documents to prove enrichment activities are for peaceful objectives, IAEA reported.

    “As a result of Iran running an undeclared nuclear program for almost two decades, there has been confidence deficit on the part of the international community about the intentions (and) future intentions of Iran’s nuclear program,” ElBaradei said in a statement.

    “Therefore the (U.N.) Security Council asked Iran to suspend its enrichment-related activities. I hope that Iran will continue to work closely with the Security Council, to create the conditions for Iran and the international community to engage in comprehensive negotiation that would lead to a durable solution.”

    So Iran reads this report and then trumpets that they have succeeded in pulling the wool over the world’s eyes once again (IRNA link);

     The 11-page report said that the agency has “made good progress in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran’s past nuclear activities.

    “We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, which is the scope and nature of Iran’s enrichment program,” ElBaradei added.

    He stressed in the report that in connection with the alleged weaponization studies, the agency has “not seen any indication that these studies were linked to nuclear material.”

    Citing ElBaradei’s report, Aqazadeh said the file will no longer remain at the IAEA’s agenda and the agency would monitor Iran as routine work.

    But, this morning’s Wall Street Journal tells a different story about Nobel Laureate ElBaradei and his mechanizations as head of that agency;

     The report represents Mr. ElBaradei’s best effort to whitewash Tehran’s record. Earlier this month, on Iranian television, he made clear his purpose, announcing that he expected “the issue would be solved this year.” And if doing so required that he do battle against the IAEA’s technical experts, reverse previous conclusions about suspect programs, and allow designees of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an unprecedented role in crafting a “work plan” that would allow the regime to receive a cleaner bill of health from the IAEA — so be it.

    Mr. ElBaradei’s report culminates a career of freelancing and fecklessness which has crippled the reputation of the organization he directs. He has used his Nobel Prize to cultivate an image of a technocratic lawyer interested in peace and justice and above politics. In reality, he is a deeply political figure, animated by antipathy for the West and for Israel on what has increasingly become a single-minded crusade to rescue favored regimes from charges of proliferation.

    Mr. ElBaradei assumed the directorship on Dec. 1, 1997. On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, engaged in covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather, exported nuclear technology around the world.

    In 2003, Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi confessed to an undetected weapons effort. Mr. ElBaradei’s response? He rebuked the U.S. and U.K. for bypassing him. When Israel recently destroyed what many believe was a secret (also undetected) nuclear facility in Syria, Mr. ElBaradei told the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh that it is “unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility,” although his agency has not physically investigated the site.

    The IAEA’s mission is to verify that “States comply with their commitments, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other non-proliferation agreements, to use nuclear material and facilities only for peaceful purposes.” Yet in 2004 Mr. ElBaradei wrote in the New York Times that, “We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security.”

    So, ElBaradei sees a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic as a counter balance to a nuclear-armed Israel in the region. Will the Nobel Committee revoke his prize when the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv?

  • Leftwingnut Anarchists Vandalize D.C. Army Recruiting Office

    In an act of violence reminiscent of the Vietnam War ‘protests’, Code Pink assholes along with a contingent of leftover 1960’s SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) moonbats, trashed a U.S. Army recruiting office in D.C.

    Katie O’Malley reports:

    (more…)

  • Two Cubas

    Don Surber found an article in the Telegraph about tortured prisoners in Cuba;

    Four dissidents released from Cuban prisons after 5 years of captivity showed their bruises and gave their testimony of the horrors they endured.

    The AP didn’t report on it. The NYT and Washington Post didn’t report on it. I don’t expect the major networks to report on it.

    Naw, the Washington Post carried a self-serving piece of garbage from two lawyers chasing ambulances in Gitmo instead;

    As you read this, we expect to be in Guantanamo, meeting with the man President Bush mentions when he talks about the intelligence gained and the lives saved because of “enhanced” interrogation techniques. We represent Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah in a legal effort to force the administration to show why he is being detained. And this week, with our first meeting, we begin the laborious task of sifting fact from fantasy. Yet we worry it may already be too late.

    We shouldn’t expect the Washington Post to worry about real human rights violations in that island prison, when two shysters can make up better stories to play to the ignorant and pliant readership of that rag.

    From the Telegraph story;

    Mr Castillo, 50, a journalist who wrote articles critical of the regime, told The Sunday Telegraph: “It was terrible. It was like being in a desert in which sometimes there is no water, there is no food, you are tortured and you are abused.

    “This was not torture in the textbook way with electric prods, but it was cruel and degrading. They would beat you for no reason even when you were in hospital.

    “At other times they would search you for no reason, stripping you bare and humiliating you. There was one particular commander at a jail in Santa Clara who seemed to take delight in handing out beatings to the prisoners.”

    Mr Castillo, who claims he was denied proper medical aid for diabetes and heart problems, added: “We are nothing more than a reflection of the human cost of the fight being waged by the Cuban people.”

    Compared to the horrors of Gitmo;

    …he has gone through quite an ordeal since his arrest in Pakistan in March 2002. Shuttled through CIA “black sites” around the world, he was subjected to a sustained course of interrogation designed to instill what a CIA training manual euphemistically calls “debility, dependence and dread.” Zubaydah’s world became freezing rooms alternating with sweltering cells. Screaming noise replaced by endless silence. Blinding light followed by dark, underground chambers. Hours confined in contorted positions.

    Mr. Castillo was beaten for writing his opinion, Zubudayah was alternately hot and cold for facilitating the death and injury of innocent people. So which does the Washington Post give column space? The one with a pair of free Washington lawyers.

  • Fact checking the fact checker

    ABC News is so Obama. So Obama that they’ll carry his water. That’s what happened today. Jack Tapper decided to investigate the story Obama spun last night in the debate about the infantry platoon leader who was apparently scrouging weaponry for his undermanned platoon in the local weapons bazaar.

    The Army captain, a West Point graduate, did a tour in a hot area of eastern Afghanistan from the Summer of 2003 through Spring 2004.

    Prior to deployment the Captain — then a Lieutenant — took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but — in ones and twos — 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.

    The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men.

    Obama made it sound as if these problems were all occurring today – not 4-5 years ago when we were still trying to figure out what kind of war this going to be.

    I’m guessing that understrength units in the 10th Division were brought up to strength before they deployed to Iraq by cross-loading units. It also means that this young lieutenant’s platoon wasn’t up to full strength, either – there’s no way he had a full strength platoon in an understregth unit. If this happened at all, to man all of the major weapons systems unit-wide, the Division G-1 probably moved people by specialty to where they were needed. Since the captain admitted that his platoon was only assigned four Humvees, 24 men was more than he can handle anyway. In the Army we call it task force management. Iraq and Afghanistan were two different wars each having different personnel requirements.

    At Fort Drum, in training, “we didn’t have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed.”

    What ammunition?

    40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun (“50 cal.”)

    That’s hardly the “ammunition” shortage that Obama described is it? But there’s more;

    Also in Afghanistan they had issues getting parts for their MK-19s and their 50-cals. Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem.

    “It was very difficult to get any parts in theater,” he says, “because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most — so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan.”

    “The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons,” he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or “Dishka”) on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.

    Now they needed training time in Drum for the .50 cal M2 and the 40 mm, but they didn’t need any training time for a Soviet machinegun? Amazing troops.

    I can’t imagine there being supply problems in a 9,000-mile supply train. So the problem wasn’t with the weapons the troops needed to perform their daily missions, there weren’t ammo shortages and weapons shortages.

    I find it difficult to believe a responsible platoon sergeant would let his troops duct-tape a Soviet-era 12.7 mm (.51 cal) machinegun to their vehicle since no weapons mount would sufficiently and safely attach a foreign weapon to their Humvee.

    Oh, and up-armored Humvees weren’t even an issue for Afghanistan during this captain’s tour. Roadside bombs were strictly a problem in Iraq at the time.

    Of course, it’s all milbloggers’ fault;

    I might suggest those on the blogosphere upset about this story would be better suited directing their ire at those responsible for this problem, which is certainly not new. That is, if they actually care about the men and women bravely serving our country at home and abroad.

    Pound sand, goober. Just because you talked to some guy, that doesn’t make the story true. The ammo shortages and spare part shortages had been chronic problems in the military since before 1999 – so don’t give me your sanctimonious horseshit about caring for the troops. Why is it we’re hearing about five years later, where was your punk ass five years ago? One reason we’re hearing about it so much later might be because it’s false. Dumbass.

    Ace smells something fishy. Uncle Jimbo has General Obama “In the crosshairs”. Michael Goldfarb reports Congressional inquiries.

  • Obama is a babe in the woods

    Barack Obama just lost any chance to be president. This clip will haunt him from now until November;

    [youtube kda4_5lFkZM nolink]

    The jist of it comes from Curt of Flopping Aces;

    OBAMA: You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

    And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

    Now, I know what vacuous point he’s trying to make; because of the war in Iraq, our troops’ resources are stretched too thin, but let’s look at this thing.

    First of all, An Army captain running a platoon must be one dicked-up captain. A platoon sergeant lets a second lieutenant pretend to run a rifle platoon, not a captain.

    Secondly, a rifle platoon (my full Bradley rifle platoon was 35 men with a forward observer and a medic attached, so I’m wondering about the 39-men thing) would NEVER split it’s troops to different theaters – something about command and control, small unit leadership and unit cohesiveness just makes that stupid right from the git-go. What would the Army have to gain by sending parts of units to different missions hundreds of miles apart instead of just sending one intact unit of the size it needs?

    The “using Taliban weapons” story is a crock, too. Maybe they used the weapons they captured for a myriad of reasons (the AK is virtually indestructible and impervious to dirt, the distinctive sound can confuse the enemy as to who they’re exchanging fire with for a moment, the AK makes a good club, etc…) but not because they couldn’t get supplies.

    Obama makes it sound like the Army just swaps out rifles when they run out of bullets. Now it may be possible someone in an extended exchange grabbed up an AK when they burned through their basic load (about 200 rounds in my day), but that’s not the fault of poor supply – that’s an over-abundance of targets.

    A commenter at Flopping Aces makes the excellent point that if Obama is so concerned about supplying our troops in theater, why did he vote against supplying them?

    Honestly, this sounds like the old Viet Nam war stories I used to hear from people who repeated stories they heard from other people who weren’t “there” either.

    But, then, we can’t expect Obama to know a thing he’s talking about because he’s never been fitted for a pair of combat boots, he’s never fired an AK or an M16 and he probably couldn’t spot a Humvee unless it was alone in a parking lot of BMWs. He wouldn’t know how First Sergeants and Sergeants Major turn over rocks looking for the stuff their troops need to survive in combat.

    And no mission even starts if the troops don’t have what they need to win the day.

    Obama is a babe in the woods – a very stupid, gullible, ignorant babe in the woods.

    Confederate Yankee writes;

    This leaves us with two possibilities.

    Barack Obama is a liar. He (or someone he plagiarized) simply made the tale up out of the whole cloth.

    Barack Obama is a rube. Anyone with any sense of how the military works at all would immediately sniff this out as a series of false stories. Perhaps Barack Obama, the man who would be Commander in Cheif, is so ignorant of all matters military that he could be easily fooled by a fraud.

    Neither possibility says anything good about Obama.

    Crotchety Old Bastard gets his licks in;

    He is either a pathological liar or dumb as a frigging stump. In either case, he is totally unfit for any office and especially the Presidency.

    Stuart Koehl at The Weekly Standard Blog;

    Overall, I think Obama would be better sticking to his “message of hope”–hope that nobody will ever ask him to make any substantive statements on military affairs, ever again.

  • Kinsley; ignore your lyin’ eyes

    Today in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley in an aptly titled opinion piece “Defining Victory Downward” tries to send out the message to the anti-war/anti-Bush troops that all is not lost (from their perspective) the “surge” isn’t working. So convoluted is his reasoning, at first Kinsley feels a need to redefine the word “surge” downward for us.

    I don’t know who invented this label, but the word “surge” evokes images of the sea: a wave that sweeps in, and then sweeps back out again. The second part was crucial. What made the surge different from your ordinary troop deployment was that it was temporary. In fact, the surge was presented as part of a larger plan for troop withdrawal.

    Although he is right, in some respects, his whole premise for the failure is that the tide of troops hasn’t swept back out yet – well, except for only 30,000 troops (nearly 20% of the surge forces) who’ve been rotating back for the last three months. But in typical Leftist fashion, Michael declares the surge a failure because there might still be 100,000 troops in Iraq a year from now (62% of surge strength).

    But the whole strategy of the surge was to stabilize the situation in Iraq so that a political solution to Iraq’s balkanized tribes could be worked out without mortar shells falling on them every ten minutes. It has never been about reducing our troops under a deadline – some nebulous Kinsley cooked up in his apparently-adled mind.

    In fact, Charles Krauthammer, in the same issue of the Washington Post, reports on some of the political solutions that have been reached in recent weeks;

    First, a provincial powers law that turns Iraq into arguably the most federal state in the entire Arab world. The provinces get not only power but also elections by Oct. 1. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has long been calling this the most crucial step to political stability. It will allow, for example, the pro-American Anbar sheiks to become the legitimate rulers of their province, exercise regional autonomy and forge official relations with the Shiite-dominated central government.

    Second, parliament passed a partial amnesty for prisoners, 80 percent of whom are Sunni. Finally, it approved a $48 billion national budget that allocates government revenue — about 85 percent of which is from oil — to the provinces. Kurdistan, for example, gets one-sixth.

    What will the Democrats say now? They will complain that there is still no oil distribution law. True. But oil revenue is being distributed to the provinces in the national budget. The fact that parliament could not agree on a permanent formula for the future simply means that it will be allocating oil revenue year by year as part of the budget process. Is that a reason to abandon Iraq to al-Qaeda and Iran?

    But Democrats feel a need to keep moving the goal posts while the political game continues, otherwise they’d have to admit the failure of their ideas and their politics at some point. Admitting that the surge is working wouldn’t be very encouraging to the Democrats allies in al Qaeda and Iran and end the war before the Democrats can shoulder aside Republicans and take credit for the victory.

    Besides, I don’t see Michael Kinsley declaring Bosnia a failure because we still have troops there 12 years after President Clinton told us they’d be withdrawn.

    Welcome Pajama Media and Lamplighter readers

  • Iraqis sweep up derelicts

    The Iraqi Interior Ministry made huge sweeps through Baghdad today according to the Associated Press;

    The Iraqi Interior Ministry has ordered police to round up beggars, vagabonds and mentally disabled people from the streets in Baghdad to prevent them from being used by insurgents as suicide bombers, a spokesman said Tuesday.

    The decision came after a series of suicide attacks, including two female bombers who struck pet markets in Baghdad on Feb. 1, killing nearly 100 people. Iraqi and U.S. officials have said the women were mentally disabled and apparently unwitting bombers.

    The people detained in the Baghdad sweep will be handed over to governmental institutions that can provide shelter and care for them, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said. “This will be implemented nationwide starting from today,” he said.

    “Militant groups, like al Qaeda in Iraq, have started exploiting these people in a very bad manner to kill innocents as they do not raise suspicions,” Gen. Khalaf said. “These groups are either luring those who desperate for money to help them in their attacks or making use of their poor mental condition to use them as suicide bombers.”

    Hmmm, “beggars, vagabonds and mentally disabled people from the streets” sounds like hordes of Democrat suicide voters that the Democrats have been recruiting over the last forty years. I wonder how long it’ll be before some Democrat congressmember complains that the Iraqis are warehousing the poor and mentally ill. That they should let the poor saps make their own decisions about where they live.

    I think it’s an exceptionally good sign that Iraq is getting proactive in the war against cold-hearted thugs. It sounds like they’re more than ready to stand on their own two feet – and our troops can come home soon because there’s no need for them to be there.

  • Washington Post latest anti-Army tear

    First let me clarify that I certainly support our women in uniform – my close friendship with fellow author on this blog and 30-year Army combat veteran GI Jane demonstrates that. However, Washington Post’s latest attack on the military establishment is so petty it doesn’t belong on the front of today’s edition. In “Short Maternity Leaves, Long Deployments“, Ann Scott Tyson writes;

    Many female soldiers hoping to start families face the prospect of missing most of their child’s first year. The Army grants six weeks of maternity leave before a new mother must return to her job or training, and four months until she can be sent to a war zone. The Marine Corps and Navy allow from six months to a year before a new mother must deploy.

    The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe strains on the Army, including longer deployments in which soldiers serve 15 months in the war zone, followed by 12 months at home. Under that system, a woman who wishes to have a child and remain with her unit must conceive soon after returning home so she can give birth, recover and prepare for her next overseas tour.

    It seems to me that a responsible pair of parents wouldn’t want to bring their child into a situation which risks the absence of one or both parents for extended periods of time.

    The constraints on reproduction, child-rearing and family are a key factor leading many female soldiers to quit the Army, and have discouraged many civilian women from considering enlistment, according to Army officials. Surveys show that time away from families, because of long, frequent deployments, is the top reason for soldiers to leave the Army. The willingness of women to serve in the military has dropped faster than that of men in recent years, from a high of 10 percent among 16- to 21-year-olds in November 2003 to 4 percent last July, according to periodic youth surveys on “propensity to serve” conducted for the Army.

    Well, it looks like American women have found a solution to their dilemma – they get out or they don’t join. SO why is this a front page story? I’m so sure that aren’t millions of women waiting to join the military if only they’d extend the maternity leave to, say, five years like the Post seems to suggest is reasonable.

    …said Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, deputy Army surgeon general for force management.

    “We need to look at the fact that many women want to serve but they also want to be mothers,” Pollock said. “It’s a medical issue, it’s a mental health issue. Your ability to bond with your children is . . . very important.”

    Pollock said last summer that she had proposed that the Army double the time women are exempt from deployment from four to eight months, noting that she would prefer 12 months. “That addresses the need for breast-feeding that is important for health, and also allows for optimal bonding time,” she said.

    So far, Army policy remains unchanged, spokeswoman Cynthia Vaughan said this month. Senior Army officials declined requests to explain the reasoning behind the current policy.

    Other services grant longer exemptions, and all have generally shorter deployments: The Navy exemption is 12 months, and the Marine Corps’s is six months, and deployments average seven months for both. The Air Force has a four-month exemption, but its deployments average only four to six months.

    Well, since all of the services have different policies according to their force needs in theater, the Army arrived at their policy logically. But, if a woman wants to serve in the military she has an array of choices, doesn’t she? She certainly doesn’t need the Washington Post reporter with her a the recruiting station to help her.