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

Category: Terror War

  • Well, so much for being a chickenhawk

    The Army just sent me an email asking me if I’m still interested in going back on active duty. Durn tootin’ I am.

    Details to follow. I’ve got to get in shape.

  • Naive Obama; invade Pakistan

    In a stunning display of naivete`, Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press, would invade Pakistan to kill “terror leaders” without local permission;

    Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

    Well, if that’s not naive personified, I don’t know what is. Of course, the Democrats all think that the goal of our war against terror is to “get” bin Laden, as if all the terrorists in the world would just cease activities as a result. We’ve all seen how quickly terrorist leaders are replaced when we’ve removed them from their operations, well, all of us except the Democrats apparently.

    The goal of this war is to deny these heathens an unassailable training and operational base like the al Qaeda enjoyed in Afghanistan – it’s not to kill their leaders. That’s something out of the Middle Ages. Since Napolean, Grant and Sherman, the rest of the world understood that the only successful way to defeat and enemy is to deny them resources. Hitler’s Russian campaign failed because he targeted cities instead of seizing the Soviet Union’s resources first and strangling the Soviet Army.

    And can you imagine the howl we’d hear from the Left if George W. Bush had said this? Harry Reid would be trampling Congressional pages rushing to get to the microphone to condemn this plan as “expanding the war” and he’d probably throw in some Nixon and Cambodia references for good measure.

    Reuter’s gets the big money quote on Obama’s plan for failure;

    Obama also criticized President George W. Bush’s emphasis on al Qaeda in Iraq and said as president he would end the war in Iraq and refocus efforts on the al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    “The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before our invasion — and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan,” Obama said.

    So, simply by denying that there’s a war against al Qaeda in Iraq, that’ll solve the problem. The war against terror isn’t about revenge for 9-11, Barack, no matter how hard you want that to be so. It’s about our future and making terror attacks too expensive in terms of lives and treasure for our enemies. And we don’t do that by making enemies out of our few allies in the war.

  • Murtha and the mullahs share strategic goals

    So how much more do we need to prove we’re at war with Iran? How about this gem from the Washington Time’s Sara Carter;

    Four terrorists linked to an Iranian smuggling operation — responsible for targeting coalition forces with powerful bombs — were captured yesterday in Iraq, according to Defense Department officials.

    The announcement came as U.S. officials continue to investigate links between Iran and insurgents seeking to destabilize the region and who target U.S. forces on the ground.

    “I would say that it’s clear to us that there are networks that are smuggling weapons, both explosive-formed projectiles, IEDs, as well as mortar and other capabilities from Iran into Iraq,” said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander in Iraq.

    “And in fact, we believe some training is also going on inside of Iran. We have seen in the last three months a significant improvement in the capability of mortarmen and rocketeers to provide accurate fires into the [coalition] Green Zone and other places. We think this is directly related to training that was conducted in Iran.”

    But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because the US held “talks” with the Iranians in Bahgdad this week. how’d it turn out?

    During the groundbreaking talks, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker accused Iran of spurring the violence in Iraq by arming and training Shi’ite militias. He warned that no progress can be made unless Iranian behavior changes.

    Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi countered that Tehran is trying to help Iraq deal with the security situation, but Iraqis are “victimized by terror and the presence of foreign forces” in their country. 

    Of course, John Murtha, that brave and persistent warrior who only thinks about this country and our national security, in response to Iranian intransigence, unilaterally declared war against Iran;

    Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, said he will introduce a measure next week that would begin pulling out troops within 60 days after its introduction.

    Oh. Did I read that wrong? So that’s Murtha’s answer to the possibility that we stand to be cut off from our oil imports from the Gulf – race to the rear. Yeah, that’ll scare the mullahs. As I’ve said before and documented on these pages, Murtha’s persistance to surrender is so the anti-war-at-any-price crowd will run a screen on his ample flank for his corrupt dealings in his own district.

    So in effect, Murtha is running a screen for the Iranian mullahs. Murtha is bent on making the world a more dangerous place to line his own pockets in the near future. We can’t stop Murtha and we can’t stop the mullahs.

    We’re starting to look a little pathetic.

     

     

  • Pledging our sacred honor

    “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

    Those are the last words a civilian speaks when he or she leaves the world behind and goes into the military. There is no end date (the first enlistment oath in 1775 was only good for a year), there are no extenuating conditions to avoid executing the oath on every day. It is what it is.

    In a world of empty promises and endless litigation over the meaning of “is”, it’s almost comforting to know that there are people who take this oath seriously – the people who are more committed to the ideals of liberty and freedom than many of the people they defend.

    Every once in a while, a derelict slips through – someone who just mouths the words without taking the time to understand what they’ve promised, or they have no intention of obeying their promise to the American people, or they’ve already made a pledge to serve their own selfish interests.

    That, apparently, was the case with Scott Thomas Beaucamp. He had no intention of serving the American people – instead he was serving himself. His intention was to rocket to journalistic fame clinging to the skirt of his pampered Leftist fiance` by recording “no shit” war stories that privates tell each other to whittle away the mind-numbing seemingly endless hours spent on all-night guard duty.

    The first day on active duty teaches every private that he won’t make it without his comrades. One might teach him how to put a gloss on his brand new boots, another might show him how to fold his ten socks, another might toss him a canteen to prevent dehydration in the scalding heat of the Georgia sun, another might toss him an extra twenty rounds to hold off the last few assaulting maniacs, or bandage his wounds to keep him alive until he gets to the aid station.

    A new private learns that he pledges his honor to his country, his sergeant owns his ass, but he pledges his life to his fellow soldiers. Without them, he doesn’t have a chance, without him, they don’t stand a chance.

    Beaucamps never learned that lesson. He’s spent the last few months disparaging his fellow soldiers. How could a few stories injure his comrades? Well, let’s read a particularly odious comment left on The New Republic’s “The Plank” in response to Beauchamp’s admission to his ID;

    Mosaic (14 of 263)
    posted by jeopel on 2007-07-26 09:00:04 
    Take the word “diarist,” say it to yourself a few times. What, exactly, are the truth claims made by a diarist? Hmmm.

    Now, take the known facts about military recruitment, the lowering of standards, especially the increase in moral waivers. Statistically, are known felons, sociopaths, etc., more likely to commit crimes or exercise bad moral judgment than other citizens? Hmmm.

    Pieces of a mosaic, if you will.

    Or this:

    let me clarify (43 of 263)
    posted by MrCookie1 on 2007-07-26 12:10:59
    I have no idea if Beauchamp is a hero…though the fact that he is fulfilling his military obligation in a combat zone separates him from 99.99% of Talkbackers, (nod to butchie, jackson, and my main man teccy)

    What I do know is this: He exists. He is assigned to a combat unit. His unit – or squad or battalion or whatever it is actually called – was in the area he says it was. His unit found bones of dead Iraqi children. As for the zig zagging doggy killing, that has not been verified.

    So, hero? I don’t know. Honest, it appears that he is honest, or about as honest as most of us are in this world.

    What I do know is that it is rare that posters can somehow find the courage to admit they are wrong. What I think I am seeing, especially in that reptile thomson’s posts, is the beginnings of a Swift Boating of this young man. War supporters lecture us ALL the time about supporting the troops but they have no qualms about disrespecting, accusing, and villifying a soldier who they believe may have a different political agenda.

    No one is saying this guy is a hero. He is what is says he is though. He has declared himself. I rather think I will grow old and long in the tooth before any of the “heroes” attacking him on this board will ever find the courage to do the same.

    So the short version of these two posts is; well, what do you expect from the dredges we recruit? Oh, and why don’t you chickenhawks join, too.

    Well, MrCookie1, combat soldiers are more honest than anyone on the face of the planet – lies get people killed. Propagating lies get even more people killed. Take my word, Beauchamps’ diary is packed with lies – and I know lies about soldiering. And I can back up my experience.

    And then, over at the Weekly Standard, another blog entry from Michael Goldfarb records nonesense from the Columbia Journalism Review from Paul McLeary entitled “Why do conservatives hate the troops?”. McLeary writes;

    How dare a college grad and engaged citizen volunteer to join the Army to fight for his country! (Which is something that most of the brave souls who inhabit the milblog community prefers to leave to others.) While there are some very legitimate questions about what Beauchamp wrote, nothing, it’s worthy of note, has been proved false yet. But that hasn’t stopped the sharp knives of a slew of bloggers from coming out.

    Well, since Beachamps’ First Sergeant (he’s the ranking noncommissioned officer in Beachamps’ company, Mr. McLeary – I figured you needed to be told that by the string of ignorant crap you spewed) tells us it’s all false in his email to GI Jane;

    I can assure you that not a single word of this was true.

    Sounds definite to me.

    And, for your information, the milblog community is made up of former and current members of the military (hence the term) and their spouses – I speak as an attendee of the last Milblog Conference. You’ve never seen so many buzzcuts and heard so many “Yes, sir”s in your life (I’m betting).

    But as to your “How dare he…” question. How dare he indeed. How dare he break his oath to his country, how dare he break that unspoken oath to his comrades. I’ll let Shakespeare’s Henry V explain it to you so you might understand;

    That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
    Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
    And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
    We would not die in that man’s company
    That fears his fellowship to die with us.
    This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
    He that shall live this day, and see old age,
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
    And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
    And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
    Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
    But he’ll remember, with advantages,
    What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
    Familiar in his mouth as household words-
    Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
    Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
    Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
    This story shall the good man teach his son;
    And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

  • Scott Thomas Beauchamps; shithouse scribe (Updated)

    I’ve been reading the stories from Michael Goldfarb and National Review that The New Republic published from some formerly unidentified soldier named Scott Thomas who turns out to be named Scott Thomas Beauchamps. Since these stories been published and republished across the ‘net, I won’t bother to repeat the stories this youngster wrote. I kinda figured they were bullshit stories from the get-go, but I wanted to wait and see how this played out before I said anything. Well, it’s not played out yet, but I do have a few thoughts, especially since the young man supposedly happens to be in an infantry company in which I served during  the days of yore.

    The stories I read that he claims to have penned all seem false to me – some have defended the tales with their own brand of forensic psychiatry saying that young men pumped up with testosterone and ranging about a wild country with loaded fully automatic weapons have a tendancy to do things others might not think possible. Well, that’s just horseshit, too.

    These men we send to fight our wars come from our hometowns, they’re raised in our neighborhoods, they sit next to us in our church pews, they date our daughters. They know how to act – and none that I know would intentionally run over a dog.

    In fact, after Desert Storm, when we were still trying to bring some level of civilization to the areas behind the retreatng Iraqis, my battalion commander instructed the company commanders to send their snipers out to dispatch the roving bands of stray dogs. My troops were in an absolute rage about this – one of my squad leaders got relieved when our company’s sniper couldn’t seem to kill the dogs with one shot and the squad leader confronted him, fairly agressively – too agressively for the commander’s tastes. I can prove my story, by the way, Crotchety Old Bastard was a Platoon leader in the same company and I’m sure he remembers the incident. (Update note: He does remember it.)

    And any Bradley driver who can see up over the right side and drive that 26-ton monster with enough precision to catch a dog unawares – well, the Army better not ever let him out. 1600 horses are not quiet, and 26 tons are not maneuverable.

    As far as making fun of an injured woman because of a disfigurement beyond her control, resulting from an enemy action – bullshit. If she’d been a fat cow from the ambulance platoon whose rolls of lard were hanging out the bottom of her BDU blouse, I might make a different call – but not in this case. if there’s one thing warriors respect it’s those who’ve looked the dragon in the eye and lived.

    I had a friend, Tim Martin, whose memorial you can see on my website, who was disfigured since I knew him – 1974 until his death in 1993. The whole right side of his face was melted – you can see in some of the photos. I never knew why because I never asked him. No one I know ever asked him why – because it didn’t matter. He was a rockhard soldier with a heart of gold and it didn’t matter to anyone why he was disfigured. And although Uncle Jimbo is a bit confused about when Tim was injured, he can certainly attest to Tim’s injury and the way he was treated by the people with whom he served.

    And putting a child’s skull on your head – sorry, but infantrymen never know when their next shower will be – putting an exhumed skull anywhere on your body is just unsanitary and his squad leader would’ve knocked the troop into his next rotation. I know it seems trivial to most people, but anyone who has really been an infantryman, not the kind in the movies, knows the importance of personal hygiene – and the dangers of ignoring personal hygiene.

    From reading Beauchamp’s blogs, I get the impression that the little weasel heard some stories in the latrine while he was pounding his pathetic little pecker, blew them out of proportion and then marketed them to The New Republic – which swallowed them hook, line and sinker. I guess it’s not really their fault since they wouldn’t know a track pad from shit-on-a-shingle, what with them being a bunch of chickenshit civilian pussies and all.

    Even if it did happen, and I have absolutely no reason to think that any of these shithouse rumors did happen, it shouldn’t reflect on the outstanding work that all of the other guys who have the misfortune to serve with a lying sack of dung. Heck, I served in the same division as Timothy McVeigh in Desert Storm – doesn’t mean that I’m probably going to blow up a federal building, does it?

    This mealy-mouthed little pussy will get reamed by his First Sergeant and Platoon Sergeant real well – reamed so well that you could drive an Abrams up his ass before they’re through and the truth will then come out. But the damage to our troops’ reputations has already been done – which all The New Republic wanted to do anyway – all we can do is work to repair that damage.

    Hey Alpha Company 1-18th Infantry – the beer’s on me when ya’all get to DC. Count on it.

    UPDATED: Little Green Footballs and Ace of Spades have circumstantial evidence that Beauchamps is connected to The New Republic by marriage.

    UPDATED again: GI Jane at The Foxhole has an email exchange from Beuchamps’ First Sergeant who assures us these stories are false and that Scott Thomas has “other underlying issues”. I get the impression that the boy will end up pushing Schweinfurt to Paris from the front-leaning postion. 

    (Note: GI Jane graciously offered to reproduce the email here, but I’d prefer ya’all give her your traffic – she has a great blog and ya’all deserve to read her stuff in her own house. Thanks.)

  • Links to keep you busy; Best of the Web as I see it

    First, from Don Carl out in California who emailed me this YouTube link. Apparently, our soldiers have more than al Qaeda to worry about in Iraq.

    Skye at MidnightBlue (who looks fabulous in her new silk dress, by the way) sends along a link to to her reportage (complete with photos) on the Cindy Sheehan demostration in Philly on Tuesday. Skye and the patriots who live in our nation’s first capitol apparently ran the old bag out of town like our brothers and sisters in Charlotte. Eagles up!

    For those of you who are still operating under the misapprehension that the Left still supports our troops, check out this post by Chap at Chapomatic. If the links he posts don’t make you angry, you’re a stronger person than I am. Mred at Invicible Armor berates the Democrats for recreating the fall of Saigon in Baghdad. If that’s not enough to get your blood boiling, read COBDanny’s post about the Demo candidates and the yearly Kos.

    By way of Curt at Flopping Aces, I read that  Ace at Ace of Spades thinks he knows who “Scott Thomas” is. More background on “Scott Thomas” from Chickenhawk Express, Gateway Pundit and Laughing Wolf at Blackfive. While you’re at Blackfive, see Uncle Jimbo’s post on Okinawa Jack Murtha’s latest chickenshit plan to surrender to anyone that will accept his portly being. 

    And Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that the Pentagon claims that al Qaeda is looking for unconventional weapons. Wonder where they’d get ’em from?

    GI Jane at The Foxhole has the last word on Ward Churchill.

    Mike at Lamplighter has staggering statistics on modern human trafficking.

    Scott Thomas Update: Since GI Jane commented, I’ve done some looking around and see I’m faaaaaar behind the proverbial Eight-Ball on this. Powerline  and Michele Malkin are out front.

    Wouldn’t you just know it that I was in A Co. 1/18th (Scott Thomas Beauchamps company) when they were part of the 3rd Brigade of the 24th Division (for the old troops that was after they were redesignated from the old Dollar-Ninety-Seven Brigade at Benning). I hope his first sergeant lights his young ass up.

  • Taliban Guantanamo Grad takes the easy way out

    Abdullah Mehsud, Guantanamo Class of ’04, decided it was better to blow himself to smithereens than to end up in a Pakistani prison according to the Globe and Mail;

    Abdullah Mehsud, 31, spent over 2 years in Guantanamo.

    Shortly after his release in March 2004, Mr. Mehsud shot to prominence by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working in South Waziristan, a region known as a hotbed of support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

    “He was killed in a house in Zhob,” Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said, referring to a district of southwest Baluchistan province neighbouring Waziristan.

    A counter-terrorism squad acting on a tip-off raided the house belonging to a senior official from the pro-Taliban Islamist party of Fazal-ur-Rehman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly.

    “We asked them to surrender but they opened fire,” Mira Jan, the chief administrator for Zhob, told Reuters.

    But how could this be? Abdullah signed a pledge that he’d avoid violence before he was released from Guantanamo. Surely, there’s some mistake. There’s no way those poor innocents held captive in Guantanamo could harm anyone.

    From a three-year-old Reuters story;

    Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, at times with deadly consequences.

    […]

    The former prisoners include Abdullah Mehsud, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee linked to Al Qaeda who oversaw the recent kidnapping in Pakistan of two Chinese engineers, one of whom was killed.

    On Friday, Pakistani soldiers began a massive search for Mehsud, 28, who returned to Pakistan in March after about two years’ detention at Guantanamo. Pakistan officials say he has forged ties with Al Qaeda since then.

    Oh, so there’s been a massive search for Abby since 2004. From a BBC profile of Abby;

    In a telephone interview with the BBC in 2004, Mehsud told our correspondent that he led his fighters by example by taking risks and surviving in tough conditions.

    Criticising US policies toward Muslims, he said the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was a provocation for the followers of Islam and must be avenged.

    So what do we do now? Now that we’ve suddenly, just today, learned that terrorists don’t keep their word? What’s the alternative to Guantanamo since we can’t imprison thugs and apparently we can’t release them on their own recognizance. What do the brilliant human rights advocates on the Left suggest we do?

    Seems we have a tiger by the tail.

  • Sheehan and her tens of tens in DC

    The media has pretty much tossed Cindy Sheehan aside as their “ultimate moral authority” figure on the war against terror. She’s been on a whirlwind tour of the South spreading her ultimate moral authority over everyone who’ll listen. She finally made it to DC yesterday with her tens of tens supporters (about 300, actually) and the best coverage I’ve seen is from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank;

    As a retiree, Cindy Sheehan was the Michael Jordan of the peace movement.

    “I am going to take whatever I have left and go home,” she announced in her May 29 “resignation letter” as antiwar activist. “Good-bye America.”

    The retirement — and Sheehan’s attempt to “be normal,” as she put it — lasted exactly 34 days. On July 2, she un-retired after hearing that President Bush had commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. And yesterday, bullhorn in hand, she led a march of demonstrators from Arlington National Cemetery to the Capitol, where she ended the day by getting arrested.

    Yeah, that’s what did it, Scooter Libby’s pardon. She probably heard in the local Starbucks (where she was panhandling) someone said “Bush can’t do that” and she accepted it as legal advice. Or she just got tired of not being on the nightly news.

    Sheehan then waded into constitutional law, and the little- known mandatory impeachment clause. “Impeachment is not a fringe movement — it is mandated in our Constitution,” she asserted. “Nancy Pelosi had no authority to take it off the table. If she takes impeachment off the table, what else will she take off the table — the First Amendment?”

    It’s funny how the Left always finds things that aren’t in the Constitution. There must be a broom closet somewhere of all of the rules the founders didn’t want to clutter up the one-page document and then gave the keys to the industrial-age equivalence of a moonbat who drags out the dusty unknown rules on cue.

    Milbank claims that the Sheehanistas were a bit paranoid;

    …by yesterday Sheehan even thought the planes departing from National Airport were conspiring against her. “They stepped up the air traffic,” she complained as a jet interrupted her speech.

    The paranoid also may have been suspicious about the low-flying military helicopter as the marchers crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge, or the man in the car with U.S. government plates who took pictures of the demonstrators as they reached the Tidal Basin — “for personal use,” he claimed.

    Yup, all of the airlines got together and decided to make their flights all leave while Cindy was speaking to the tens of tens gathered to hear her screech. Be sure to read the whole Milbank article – finally a fair treatment of Sheehan, replete with accounts of counter protesters from Free Republic and Gathering of Eagles.

    Aside from Milbank’s video, I haven’t found any pictures yet.

    But actually, Sheehan’s experience with the Democrats should serve as a warning to all single-issue voters, especially the Republicans (who tend to throw the party under the bus whenever a candidate doesn’t support our particular cause – resulting in eight years of Clinton). Sheehan was an icon of the anti-war Left, and now in the words of Bob Parks of Black and Right, she’s the Paris Hilton of the anti war Left – in just 34 days.