Iranian 107mm rockets recovered after attack on U.S. FOB Hammer in Iraq, July 2007

Playing a very dangerous game:

The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary.

Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The U.S. plans to publicize the weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.

The allegations, which couldn't be independently verified, mark a further hardening of U.S. rhetoric on Iran, which senior American officials now describe as the greatest long-term threat to Iraq.

This month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian support for Shiite extremist groups had grown. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said for the first time that he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew about the shipments.

Iran has long denied that its government knowingly funneled weapons into Iraq or trained Shiite militants there. It has derided the U.S. claims as propaganda. Several senior U.S. military officials said the weapons caches would undercut the Iranian denials and provide new evidence of continuing Iranian support for Shiite militants across Iraq.

"You can see the manufacturing dates right on the armaments themselves," one senior commander in Baghdad said. "These are very clearly weapons that were made in the last month or so."

Markings, of course, are easy to fake, and the truther fringe of the "Bush lied, people died!" sect are sure to accuse the Administration and/or elements of the military with doing just that. Much harder to fake, however, are the materials used, certain tool marks, and other mechanical and electrical components. Taken together, the component pieces form a unique signature that EOD experts can read like a fingerprint. As far as our military is concerned, the markings only serve to confirm what explosive experts could already tell from even unmarked weapons.

This is a stupid mistake by Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime, coming at a time when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is celebrating stunning military successes in Basra and other parts of the Shia south against Iranian-backed "special groups" within Muqtada al-Sadr's Madhi Army militia. The recovery of this cache can only help Iraq's central government grow even more cohesive, upsetting hopes for a failed Iraqi state and U.S. defeat.

Iran's foreign policy is turning out to have been very poorly calculated as of late. One can only wonder what their next gaffe will be, and what affect it may have on the hardline regime in Tehran.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:06 AM | Comments (70) | Add Comment
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The San Francisco Chronicle posts this without question:

More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco.

The rights of hundreds of thousands of veterans are being violated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, "an agency that is in denial," and by a government health care system and appeals process for patients that is "broken down," Gordon Erspamer, lawyer for two advocacy groups, said in an opening statement at the trial of a nationwide lawsuit.

He said veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day - a number acknowledged by a VA official in a Dec. 15 e-mail - and the agency's backlog of disability claims now exceeds 650,000, an increase of 200,000 since the Iraq war started in 2003.

We're looking at the conflation of multiple claims here, so lets take them one at a time:

More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco.

There is no way to get a constant figure of X per week, but if they are presuming that 120/week figure from the beginning of the Iraq War on March 20, 2003, we're talking 1860 days (not including today), rounding down to 265 weeks * 120 suicides/week = 31,800 suicides of Iraq and Afghan War veterans.

If we instead presume they arrived at 120/week starting with the October 7, 2001 war with Afghanistan, we're looking at 2389 days (not including today), rounding down to 341 weeks * 120 suicides/week = 41,920 suicides of Iraq and Afghan War veterans.

Are they trying to tell us between 31,000-41,000 modern war veterans have committed suicide, and we're just now starting to notice, five years later?

The 18/suicides a day figure seems to quietly leave out which wars are covered, and could be construed to assume the aging veterans of WWII, Korean, Vietnam, and other campaigns as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. It would seem prudent to assume that many of these may be due to issues perhaps unrelated to PTSD caused a half-century or more before in many instances.

If they do mean all veterans, regardless of war, but measure from the start of the Afghan war at a rate of 18 suicides a day, we wind up with 43,002 suicides for all veterans of all wars during this time period. If we instead use the 18 suicides/day figure from the beginning of the Iraq War, we wind up with 33,480 suicides for all veterans of all wars during this time period.

Are they trying to tell us between 33,000-43,000 U.S. military war veterans have committed suicide in the past 5-8 years, and we're just now starting to notice?

According to the math cited here, the VA may be shorting veterans on care, but they excel at hidden burials.

We are not treating out veterans with nearly the care and respect for their service as we should, but I'd be shocked if we were losing as many as these figures suggest.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:16 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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1 Interesting numbers to be sure. I can state for fact that Veterans (of that "ALL" category) are dying at high rates based simply on observations regarding VA Home admittance figures. I highly doubt they are dying due to suicide. My ex-father-in-law was just admitted yesterday to a VA home in NE. Their waiting list is pages long. He only waited 2 months though. That means a lot of residents at this particular facility are dying rather frequently. He's a Korean era vet who never went to Korea though. So he simply can't qualify for PTSD.

Posted by: Mark at April 22, 2008 05:09 PM (4od5C)

2 This does not make any sense. National Suicide Statistics (2005) show a total for the entire nation at 32,637. That is the latest tally I can find. http://www.suicidology.org/associations/1045/files/2005datapgs.pdf

Posted by: Sara at April 22, 2008 05:18 PM (Wi/N0)

3 "...if they are presuming that 120/week figure from the beginning of the Iraq War on March 20, 2003 .... "If we instead presume they arrived at 120/week starting with the October 7, 2001 war with Afghanistan ..." I think the problem is in presuming either. It seems clear they're saying the CURRENT rate. Well, currently there are several million vets from all three wars. No time to look up the number. In any event, dollars to doughnuts their source is NOT the VA but CBS News's own "investigation" that I ripped apart here: http://www.fumento.com/military/suicide.html

Posted by: Michael Fumento at April 22, 2008 05:35 PM (oLg2s)

4 The numbers do seem wrong. However, I've been led to understand it is a real problem. My first cousin returned home two weeks ago from a blood clot in his lungs associated with his spending his duty in Iraq crouched up in a turret. He's dealing with some real issues from the stress and being targeted all the time in their vehicle, and is (as his dad says) a real head case. He got to see his wife and baby daughter a week ago and due to readjustment problems, tried to kill himself after some minor family argument he couldn't handle. He's being treated at Walter Reed and they're adjusting medications. From what my uncle has explained, it's a problem they're overwhelmed with there. Granted, this is just anecdotal data and one point does not a trend make, but from what we've learned, the stresses our soldiers are under with the constant hidden threat is a factor. Say a prayer for our guys and more importantly, be there for them when they come home.

Posted by: redherkey at April 22, 2008 05:36 PM (kjqFg)

5 Unfortunately the VA is what we can all expect if we get "universal health care." The government can't run anything worth a damn

Posted by: Capitalist Infidel at April 22, 2008 05:46 PM (kNqJV)

6 I know of two suicides that would be counted as military suicides and neither were combat-related. One was an active duty guy who came home after a year long Vietnam tour to find his wife in bed with another man. The other was a family argument where the father mocked him as being "only half the soldier his buddies in WWII were." Both left notes detailing their reasons. Both would be classified as military suicides. My experience over my husband's long career was that those who went into the service with prexisting baggage and/or attitude problems usually didn't fare all that well psychologically. Many became drug addicts or alcoholics and were, in general, a mess. But, I would venture to say that they would have probably ended up the same way anyway, although it might have take longer.

Posted by: Sara at April 22, 2008 05:50 PM (Wi/N0)

7 I hear so many horror stories about the VA, I figure they must be true. However, 2 years ago, my cousin called on the VA for help with my Uncle. He was a WWII vet who was with McArthur in the Philippines. I spent some time with them during that period and I was very impressed with what the VA provided for him. He was outpatient, living with my cousin, but they provided wheelchair transportation any time she needed it, they sent in a hospital bed, a special wheelchair, even nurses aide help for her so that she could still work nights. All his medication was free, as were any first aid or sanitary supplies she needed for my Uncle's care. And they provided all his therapy, even picking him up at home 3 times a week to take him to the hospital facility. This is my only exposure to the VA care I've had, but I was impressed and so was my cousin. BTW, this was in Pittsburgh.

Posted by: Sara at April 22, 2008 05:57 PM (Wi/N0)

8 I agree with Sara. I was a token phone guest on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation when two men discussed the planned emotional deprograming service the government intended to help returning War on Terror veterans. I described my unusual experiences, and one man said I was a "perfect storm" the sort of person the program was designed to help. I had some problems when I returned home, but I never drank, did drugs or deviated from the course I had set for myself. Some of the worst experiences happened after my return home, since Vietnam Era veterans received a less than perfect welcome. To this day, I don't like anti war protesters.

Posted by: James at April 22, 2008 06:05 PM (EUX3a)

9 When I first heard of this a few months ago, I too was skeptical. Here's your source document, a CBS investigation from last year. I was writing an editorial about the reports, which I was concerned might be statistical projection. But the CBS data were hard counts of state death certificates. Actually an impressive piece of work.

Posted by: km at April 22, 2008 06:28 PM (mrk0R)

10 KM, you might want to read the earlier comment from Mr. Michael Fumento, who looked at that CBS investigation already and posted about it above.

Posted by: C-C-G at April 22, 2008 06:54 PM (RP0Mk)

11 Well, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, veterans are twice as likely as non veterans to commit suicide. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2007/male-veterans-have-double-the-suicide-rate-of-civilians.shtml Given that there are approximately 23,532,000 veterans in the US (VA statistics as of Jan '0 and approximately 300,000,000 people living in the US, that would mean that approximjately 765 non veterans commit suicide each week, which should put our suicide death rate in the neighborhood of 39,780 non veterans per annum. If we assume that the additional 6240 veterans are then added to this number we find, not too surprisingly, that a deviation of over 42% from the reported numbers. I would call that a gross exaggeration (of course others may call it a lie).

Posted by: David at April 22, 2008 07:51 PM (98dot)

12 Remember the missing children craze of the 80's? The plantive pictures on milk cartons? "Have you seen me?" Before long, the numbers of missing children exceeded the numbers of troops killed in Vietnam. It was only when someone did a bit of thinking and realized that those numbers couldn't possibly be right that it was discovered that the number of legitimatelly missing kids was actually in the very low double digits a year--for the nation. Seen any plantive milk cartons lately? I suspect that something similar will soon happen with this issue. Such always happens when the media relies on what they believe ought to be true rather than what is. Tragic how reality so often follows conservative lines of thought rather than liberal, isn't it?

Posted by: Mike at April 22, 2008 09:28 PM (ewSYJ)

13 It sounds like "whole cloth" was involved.

Posted by: Neo at April 22, 2008 10:58 PM (Yozw9)

14 Where do you THINK they get Soylent Green? This explains a lot.

Posted by: George Bruce at April 23, 2008 02:37 PM (v4XVE)

15 I wonder why this story has dropped from every major publication today? In testimony today, a VA critic says the suicide rate for vets in 2007 was estimated at between 3.2 abd 7.5 times the public rate. In 2004 the public rate was 32,459 x 7.5 = 243,443 suicides? X 3.2 = 103,869? I can't find the figures for 2007, but if they were close to the 2004 totals are they really trying to tell us that between 103,869 and 243,443 veterans killed themselves last year? I'm sorry but I think that is patently absurd. It is most likely that they "attempt" suicide in those numbers, and who is the verifier of the "attempt"? What are the criterion in labeling an "attempted suicide"? The VA most definitely needs to be restructured and needs to cater to our vets, but I don't think pushing such and absurd meme is the way to go about it. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/23/BADL10A15L.DTL&hw=va+vets+suicide&sn=001&sc=1000

Posted by: Cheryl at April 23, 2008 04:16 PM (CHJ2J)

16 Cheryl, remember they're talking "rate", i.e. numbers per hundred thousand or whatever such measure they use, not "total" numbers. So it all depends on the number of veterans to begin with. The following numbers are rough, back-of-the envelope calculations taken from figures above, but the math process is the idea I'm addressing here. If there are 32,000 suicides in one year in the US population of 300 million, that's a rate of 10.7 suicides for every 100,000 people per year. If the veteran rate is 3.2 times that, what they're saying is the suicide rate among the vets would be 34.2 per 100,000 per year. But, of course there aren't 300 million vets. To get the total number of vet suicides in one year you would use the following math. The number of vet suicides per year would be 23,000,000 vets x (34.2 suicides / 100,0000 vets) = 7866 suicides per year. I have no idea if the numbers used are accurate, so I don't know if they reflect the true situation and give a reality-based result, but that's the math you need to use to get to the numbers you're looking for.

Posted by: kcom at April 23, 2008 05:45 PM (GjT73)

17 And using the same math, the high end number would be 18,446 per year.

Posted by: kcom at April 23, 2008 05:49 PM (GjT73)

18 Excellent, so we can't even treat our veterans the way we should and the Dems seem to think that we can give health care to the entire country? We can't treat the 10 or so percent that have sacrificed so much, lets wait until we can do that, OK? And those suicide rates have to be total crap, that means that about 5% of people that come back kill themselves.

Posted by: Jeff at April 23, 2008 09:07 PM (ueKJq)

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Was a busy weekend and I didn't get a chance to get into my copy of Michael Yon's Moment of Truth in Iraq beyond skimming a few pages, though I'm going to try to carve time out of my schedule to read it tonight. If it is anything like his dispatches, I'll probably devour it in one extended sitting.

It is already up to #68 on Amazon's bestseller list and Glenn Reynolds notes that is #1 in military books (and that it is excellent. He also notes that Mike has a page dedicated to help promoting the book so it gets in your local bookstores and libraries, and I'd simply note that if you really want the local library to stock it so that others might read a perspective of the war they might not get anywhere else, you can always buy multiple copies of Moment of Truth in Iraq and donate them directly to the library yourself.

As you already know by now, Mike is supported by his readers and his readers alone, so by purchasing his book, you're supporting his work.

Besides... wouldn't it send a message to Congress if we could make a book promoting the efforts of the Next Greatest Generation the #1 book in America?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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My friend Iraq War combat journalist Michael Yon just published his newest book, Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope.

He sent me a copy, which was waiting for me when I got home last night. I'm going to try to carve some time out in my schedule to read it at some point this weekend or early next week and read it so I can give you a review.

Mike has spent more time embedded with soldiers in Iraq than any other journalist period, and therefore has a very good idea of what is actually happening in Iraq, something that rational people should consider when they read this article from him in today's Wall Street Journal.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:58 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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For reasons rational people will never fathom, lefty bloggers and blog readers are filled with glee over, well, this:

There was once a blog called Joe Biden Is Thugged Out. (I swear this is true.) Biden just proved why. He asked Ryan Crocker, who used to be ambassador to Pakistan, whether it would be better for U.S. interests to go after Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Crocker, in an impossible political position -- give the correct answer and humiliate the Bush administration; give the administration's answer and look like a fool -- dodged as much as he could. Then Biden forced him down. Crocker: "I would therefore pick Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

Biden "forced him down" how, exactly?

Clearly Ackerman, the flickering bulbs at Think Progress and other gloating liberals didn't actually hear how Crocker responded.

Let's go to the videotape:

BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region?

CROCKER: Mr. Chairman, al Qaeda is a strategic threat to the United States wherever it is--

BIDEN: Where is most of it? If you could take it out, you had a choice, the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there, and said, 'Mr. Ambassador, you can eliminate every al Qaeda source in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or every al Qaeda personnel in Iraq, which would you pick?'

CROCKER: Well, given the progress that has been made against al Qaeda in Iraq, the significant decrease in its capabilities, the fact that it is solidly on the defensive and not in a position as far--

BIDEN: Which would you pick?

CROCKER: I would therefore pick Al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

So despite the cleverly truncated quote at Think Progress (seriously, when are lefty bloggers going to tire of being set up and used as fools by these shills?) and Ackerman's own deceptive forgetfulness, what Crocker actually told Biden is that our military had severely damaged the operational capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq (by 75-percent in the last year alone, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry) and knocked it into a defensive posture where it is far less of a threat.

How much less of a threat?

According to StrategyPage.com, Osama bin Laden admitted defeat in Iraq on Oct 22, 2007, a sentiment that Marine Colonel Richard Simcock shared contemporaneously as it related to al Qaeda's former strongholds in al Anbar in specific. Battered, tattered, and lethally-harassed by coalition soldiers at night and former Sunni Iraqi allies during the day, al Qaeda's morale in Iraq is crushed, along with most of it's capabilities.

Thanks to Iraqi and coalition efforts, Al Qaeda in Iraq is beaten, fragmented, and on the verge of a final collapse, according to the terror organization itself. With this enemy almost defeated, it is only common sense that Crocker would select the remaining al Qaeda hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border as being the greater threat.

I guess Ackerman can pretend that Crocker's quite logical response--to advocate the targeting the terrorists that are still alive, instead of those we have already dispatched--is humiliating to the Bush administration, but outside his insular nutroots community, in a land where common sense prevails and truncated quotes are not swallowed at face value time and again, Crocker got the better of this exchange by merely pointing out that we've run out of al Qaeda in Iraq to kill.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:44 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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It becomes increasingly more amusing to watch the "impartial" international news media attempt to spin away unmistakable signs of progress in Iraq. The latest example of this sad phenomena is Reuters' account of Muqtada al Sadr's threat to end a ceasefire:

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened on Tuesday to end a truce he imposed on his militia last year, raising the prospect of worsening violence just as top U.S. officials prepare to testify on Iraq in Washington.

Sadr urged his Mehdi Army to "continue your jihad and resistance" against U.S. forces, although he did not spell out if this was an explicit call for attacks on American soldiers.

His warning came a day after Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki threatened to bar Sadr's movement from political life if the anti-American cleric did not disband his militia.

Despite the more than 7-month-old ceasefire, Sadr's followers have clashed with Iraqi troops and U.S. forces in the south of the country and Baghdad in the past two weeks in the country's worst violence since the first half of 2007.

al Sadr's Madhi Army suffered hundreds of KIAs—some estimate place as a high as 1%-2% of his entire militia—in operations across southern Iraq in recent weeks. The failure of the militia and the success of Iraqi forces has encouraged top Sunni, Shia and Kurdish members of the Iraqi government to form a unified front that has demanded that al Sadr disband the Madhi Army, or run the risk of having his party being disbarred from Iraqi politics.

Sadr's threat to end the truce is the most desperate political option available to him, and one of the few options he has left. His power has been drawn largely from the threat of withdrawing the ceasefire, but if that ceasefire is withdrawn, al Sadr has few more cards to play, and the resulting combat would likely mirror last recent combat on a much larger scale, perhaps resulting in far more physical destruction to his forces.

Sadr did not win in Basra, and runs the risk of having his militia destroyed if he decides to send it into combat again against an Iraqi Army that is far more competent than al Sadr's militiamen.

Muqtada al Sadr's relevance in Iraq will be determined by the choices he makes in coming days. The only real real question is how much his relevance will be diminished.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:07 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has referred to a "two-bit security guard" in the Green Zone in Baghdad who would not let him into the gym without having the proper ID.

What a jerk.

His political opponent Lance Sigmon is capitalizing on the statement, as he should, but I think those who are claiming that McHenry belittled a soldier are probably not accurate, or are at least jumping the gun.

The Green Zone certainly has American personnel, but many are Iraqis or foreign security personnel.

Somehow, I don't think the liberals at Think Progress who have built a reputation lately of getting the facts wrong would care nearly as much if McHenry had uttered his comments to a security guard contracted through Blackwater, even though they face many of the same risks.

Update: Yep, Amanda at Think Progress screwed up again. The guard in question was not a soldier, but instead was what liberals like to refer to as a "hired killer," or as the rest of us call them, a security contractor.

Amanda either needs a break, a new fact-checker, or a new career.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:59 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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No detail at all in the report, but I think it logical to assume that if the news was that "there's nothing going on," then China would not have bothered to contact the IAEA. The assumption must be that Iran is progressing with their nuclear weapons program, and that China is growing uncomfortable with that progress.

It will be interesting to see what slips out about the details of the Iranian program provided by China to the IAEA. Have the Chinese now determined that Iran has become a threat to their national security as well?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:46 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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