May 29, 2008
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq – A Coalition force service member was removed from his duties today amid concerns from Fallujah's citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct.Multi-National Force - West initiated an investigation into reports that a coin with a Bible verse written in Arabic was distributed to Iraqi citizens as they passed through a Fallujah entry control point. If the allegation is substantiated, appropriate action will be taken.
"Regulations prohibit members of the coalition force from proselytizing any religion, faith or practices," said Col. Bill Buckner, MNC-I spokesman, "and our troops are trained on those guidelines before they deploy."
"This has our full attention," said Col. James L. Welsh, chief of staff, Multi-National Force - West. "We deeply value our relationship with the local citizens and share their concerns over this serious incident."
This was reported earlier today by McClatchy, but quite frankly, when a news organization runs items under the tagline "truth to power," by an author also published by al Jazeera, I like to get confirmation first. I've got a request in for more details on this, and will update again if they have additional information.
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Speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted that the surge failed, and insists that if there is any progress, it is because Iran allowed it.
Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn't happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn't accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.
Pelosi's needful delusions means that dictator-loving, Jew-hating 9/11 conspiracy-theorist Cindy Sheehan is not the most insane candidate vying for California's Eight District House seat.
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"Notable progress" has been made in Iraq despite persistent problems, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday at an international summit to promote peace in the violence-wracked country."If we were asked to use just one word to describe the situation in Iraq today, I would choose the word 'hope,'" Ban said at the Stockholm, Sweden, conference. "Iraq is stepping back from the abyss that we feared most."
Barack Obama, of course, refuses to see any signs of progress in Iraq as a matter of policy and self-interest. His campaign is wedded to the leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party, who insist that failure is the only acceptable opinion in Iraq. The freshman senator from Illinois still publicly advocates headlong retreat from Iraq within 16 months of taking office if elected, and will not be swayed by stark warnings from international experts and regional governments that such a retreat would reverse all the gains paid for by coalition casualties, and perhaps trigger events as severe as a regional war that would impact energy markets and economies globally.
Right now, the greatest threat to Iraq's future isn't Iran, militants, or sectarian divides, but an inexperienced defeatist from Chicago.
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May 28, 2008
It is perhaps progress in this commentary piece for a journalist to admit that Obama needs schooling— I do find it amusing that he refers to McCain as "the professor" and Obama as "his callow student"—but he grossly overestimates the size of al Sadr's faltering organization by an enormous amount, while downplaying Madhi Army defeats at the hands of the Iraqi security forces in recent weeks.
Iraq will almost certainly be one of the central issues in November -- if McCain is lucky it will remain relatively calm with casualties relatively low. But there is a wildcard named Moqtada al-Sadr, the 34-year-old Shiite leader of a 2 million man army.When the surge began, al-Sadr instructed his army to lie low. Why fight an increased American force? But we all saw what happened a few weeks ago when al-Sadr loosed his men in Bashra and Bagdad -- violence flared, casualties spiked -- before calling another truce.
I'd like for Mr. Donaldson to explain where he got a figure of 2 million for the collection of neighborhood militias, street gangs, and "special groups" that make up the JAM (Jaish al Mahdi). Most estimates of the group have not put numbers larger than roughly 60,000 strong at any point in the conflict, and present numbers are said to be in rapid decline even now because of their growing unpopularity among Iraqi Shia.
I'd also like Donaldson to justify his dishonest portrayal of events in Basra and Baghdad. In both cities the Madhi Army suffered horrific losses at the hands of Iraqi security forces before suing for peace out of a sense of self preservation, and in both cities, Iraqi soldiers and police continued to relentlessly push into neighborhoods formerly dominated by Madhi Army thugs event after these "treaties" were agreed upon. In Basra, Iraqi government forces now rule virtually uncontested as they continue to carry out targeted strikes against wanted members of the Madhi Army. GoI security forces entered Sadr City with an unexpectedly large number of soldiers equipped with heavy armor, surprising the militiamen, who have yet to formulate a response.
Donaldson is obviously as much an Obama cheerleader as he is a journalist, but his 37-years in the business don't give him the right to make up his own reality.
Stick the facts, Sam. One Dan Rather at a time is enough.
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Iraqi soldiers carry M-16s as they stand guard in Sadr City. AFP Photo by Ali Yussef
If the Iraq War is "lost" as journalists, politicians, and other Democrats continue to shrilly insist, then why is the Iraqi military choosing American weapons?
It isn't because American M16s are better than AK-47s for the needs of the Iraqi military (they aren't), but because Iraqis are impressed by American soldiers and want to emulate them.
Do you think they would be so eager to adapt our gear if we were losing?
Me neither.
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May 23, 2008
One of Zahara's uncles, Dhia Rahi Shaie al-Koreishi, 34, a taxi driver, and her grandmother, Um Fadhil al-Koreishi, were killed by the blast."The heart of this family has been ripped out," said Alaa Rahi Shaie, 29, another uncle, who was stoic in describing the death of his brother. "This is his blood," he said, indicating red splotches in front of his home. "And the remains of his head are over there."
He pointed at a large mound of dirt. A group of young boys dug out the remains and then showed visitors a black bag filled with clumps of hair and scalp.
Family members and neighbors said they didn't see anyone in the area fire rockets. Two black funeral banners hung outside the battered home to honor the dead.
I'm sure some of my readers are more familiar with Muslim burial rites than I (just about anyone would be), but I've always been under the impression that Muslims were very careful to respect the dead and bury them as intact as possible shortly after their demise. Banners honoring the dead are nice. Not treating their remains like kabob scraps is nicer.
Does the claim here of the remains of Dhia Rahi Shaie al-Koreishi's head being unceremoniously dumped in a sack and buried by the family in a dirt pile where children perform ad-hoc exhumations strike anyone else as being odd, even for what we've heard of Iraq?
As for the apparent premise of the article that AGM-114M Hellfire II missiles take an inordinate number of civilian lives... well, I'm not sure what to tell you.
Hellfires are preferred for being one of the most accurate missiles currently deployed, and it has the added benefit of having a smallish explosive warhead, making it somewhat less dangerous than some other weapons systems that we could deploy.
The Post does not make any attempt to distinguish how many of the 251 Iraqis killed by Hellfire missiles were Shiite militiamen, Iranian-trained " Special Groups" operatives, and how many were real non-combatant civilians.
While the Post article was less than clear on this point, it seemed possible that Uncle brains-in-a-bag could have been one of the two men loading rockets into a vehicle who were watched for hours before being killed, and grandma might have simply had the misfortune of having her son followed home by a missile. Or they could have been innocent bystanders... we simply don't know.
We do know that the video accompanying the article shows several strikes on obviously armed fighters (including a large group caught red-handed firing rockets), with no obvious civilians nearby. Still, in urban combat civilians will always run the risk of being casualties, and we are making attempts to minimize that possibility now through tactical decisions made, and in the future via new weapons systems. The 5.3 lbs Spike missile, at just over two-feet long will hopefully provide just as much precision with less collateral fragmentation than the Hellfire in future urban conflicts.
Even then, the best advice for civilian in urban conflict areas is simple: don't stand to close militiamen and terrorists.
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May 22, 2008
The U.S. military, in a shift, has postponed the release of a report detailing allegations of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, according to people familiar with the matter.The military had initially planned to publicize the report several weeks ago but instead turned the dossier over to the Iraqi government, these people said. The Iraqis are using the information to pressure Tehran to curb the flow of Iranian weaponry and explosives into Iraq, these people said.
Me, writing here at Confederate Yankee on May 8 in a post titled Why You Won't See the Iranian Weapons We've Captured in Iraq:
...hopes of a diplomatic solution between Iran and Iraq have forestalled the U.S. military press conference displaying captured weaponry first expected in Baghdad over a week ago.The press conference was delayed in hopes that an Iraqi delegation to Tehran bearing evidence of Iranian weapons captured by U.S. and Iraqi forces in recent fighting could resolve the issue as a matter between the two neighboring states.
Unsurprisingly, Iran has disputed the evidence, and as a result, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered a special committee to compile evidence captured by both American and Iraqi forces. Once the evidence is compiled, it is hoped that this would help inform the committee in putting forth a coherent Iraqi policy on Iranian involvement in smuggling weapons into Iraq. That policy will be presented to the Iranian government in hopes of stopping Iranian smuggling of weapons and preclude a conflict between the two nations, according to U.S. military sources. Iran and Iraq fought a war from 1980-88 that claimed approximately one million lives when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, and the political goals of neither Shia-dominated government would be well-served by a return to conflict.
Perhaps by June, the media will also come to my conclusion on what this means to Iranq/Iran relations, as well.
It is getting harder and harder for the media to keep up with the turn of events in Iraq. Many had been wedded to the "quagmire" theory of assumed stasis leading to assured defeat and withdrawal, a theory still coveted by most senior Democrats and the online activist left. They bitterly cling to this theory because of the amount of political capital they have invested in it, even though that theory is being directly countered by evidence mounting at a blistering pace.
Iraq is not free from terror or outside influence and will not be for years to come, but the facts are that the insurgent groups, terrorist organizations, and rogue militias in Iraq are collapsing before the onslaught of increasingly fierce and competent Iraqi security forces, civilian-provided intelligence, and gutsy civilian leadership, backed by U.S. forces. We'll leave it for the historians to decide at which point the corner was turned and victory was assured, but some things are certain.
Anyone still attempting to claim that coalition and Iraqi forces are fighting in a lost cause or a endless quagmire as of mid-May, 2008, is doing so in direct opposition to the facts on the ground.
Your only response should be wondering what they are trying to sell you, and why.
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May 20, 2008
Why, it's just like hearing it from Bush directly!
Responsible journalists don't run stories this poorly sourced as a rule, but exceptions are almost always made when the stories are sensational enough, and the story is something that journalists, editors, and many readers want to believe. That is why variations of this story of an impending attack on Iran have been recurring for the past couple of years, and no doubt will continue until President Bush leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, at which point the same rumors will be passed down to (hopefully) President McCain.
The story repeats because elements of it ring true enough for those convinced that a military strike against against the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism and arms used to kill American soldiers since 1983 is an act of a fascist dictatorship, and also for those that have the good sense to recognize that reducing the capabilities of a rogue nuclear and asymmetrical warfare threat promising genocide as a matter of state policy is a common sense act of survival for the greater good of man.
It is quite possible that certain events before January of 2009 could trigger preemptive strikes upon Iran by the present Administration, Israel, or perhaps even both nations acting in concert. I rather doubt such rumor-mongering helps anyone, however, beyond creating full employment in Palestinian phone banks calling on behalf of the pacifist candidate Obama.
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May 16, 2008
Read Totten's review The Real Iraq, and if you haven't yet read Yon's book, or would like to donate copies to your local library so that other people can, click the image above to order from Amazon.com.
I'd note that both Yon and Totten are independent journalists, and traveling to and through combat zones to bring you stories the media won't tell is both expensive and dangerous, so please consider contributing at their sites, Michael Totten, and Michael Yon.
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May 14, 2008
Here is an enlarged and cropped version of the photo as tweaked in PhotoShop to focus on the wound. I got as close as I could without distorting the image significantly.
As you can see, the bullet is being pulled nose first, suggesting that it penetrated though the outside of the woman's arm and passed through the interosseous membrane between the ulna and radius to stop at some point on the inside part of her forearm.
All combat rifle cartridges commonly used should have fully penetrated this woman's arm completely with a significant (and ghastly) exit wound if not impeded by either hitting a barrier of some sort, or coming from an extreme distance away. I'd love to see a higher resolution version of this photo to see if we could determine what kind of rifle cartridge this was.
Whatever the bullet is, I'm pretty sure it isn't one of these.
5/20 Update: After speaking with Associated Press resources in New York, trauma surgeons, and other resources in Iraq, this photo is confirmed as the extraction of a bullet that hit the woman in the photo after being fired from a considerable distance, and after the bullet had expended much of its energy. Additional still footage is said to exist showing the entry wound, and there is also said to be videotape of the extraction.
This was not a staged photo, just a strange physiological response to an uncommon wound.
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Iraq's want peace, are are willing to destroy the belligerents among themselves if it leads to a prosperous future. Here is one Iraqi's story.
More, please.
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The interview was entitled "Bush warns of Iraq disaster," and in it, President Bush warned of the regional consequences of the kind of a premature, headlong retreat from Iraq. Such a retreat is favored by Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has pledged to withdraw American forces in 16 months.
Such a withdrawal window is not logistically feasible without abandoning costly American military equipment and supplies, and the cost of destabilizing Iraq's security is feared as a threat by every country in the region, and cannot be overemphasized.
Iraqis fear a return to sectarian conflict that may rapidly escalate into the genocide of hundred of thousands and the displacement of millions if their nation collapses due to a too-quick, timetable-based American withdrawal such as the one Obama has repeatedly promised.
Turkey fears an attempt by Iraqi Kurds to form their own country in the wake of a U.S. retreat, and would invade northern Iraq (they are already making multi-day raids, along with air and artillery strikes). Jordan, saturated with refugees only just returning to Iraq in past months due to the success of the surge, would face a new flood of Iraq refugees that would threaten the nation's economy and national security. Syria would face similar mass immigration problems, compounded by possible Turkish incursions to root out Kurdish rebels in northeastern Syria.
Saudi Arabia and Iran, already sharing sharp words over Hezbollah's actions in Lebanon, will engage in a proxy war in Iraq that many expect may erupt into an open regional war.
Such a conflict would shut down Persian Gulf shipping and drive the price of oil astronomically high (how would you like $10/gallon gasoline, or higher?), impacting financial markets worldwide, negatively impacting billions of people, with those in developing nations hardest hit.
In short, the headlong retreat promised by Barack Obama will plunge the Middle East into conflict and wreck economies worldwide, including our own. It would be, in every sense, the disaster President Bush mention in his interview.
How did liberal members of the media and bloggers react to the interview? They ignored a direct policy conflict of global importance between a sitting U.S. President and his would-be successor, in order to write grade school-level snark.
I expect very little from the media. I see they delivered.
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May 12, 2008
Iraqi and American forces continue to pound gangs and Iranian-trained and equipped "Special Groups" in the massive Baghdad slum called Sadr City. Fighting continues despite al-Sadr's impotent call for a truce, and an "anaconda strategy" of squeezing out combatants while choking off of their resupply lines continued, as a wall slicing off the southern end of the slum reached 80% completion.
In Mosul, an Iraqi-led, American-backed assault on Mosul, al Qaeda's last urban stronghold in Iraq, has begun, targeting the last significant bastions of al Qaeda and aligned insurgents in Iraq after the success of the "surge" in the Baghdad region and the Sunni civilian uprising against al Qaeda in Al Anbar over the past year.
The war in Iraq is not over, but no serious person can argue that Iraqi government forces and the coalition military forces backing them are not now dictating the terms and tempo of the conflict in Iraq. They and are imposing their will with considerable success upon areas deemed as unapproachable and lost as recently as weeks and months ago, and have won the support of the overwhelming majority of an Iraqi people tired of war and extremist ideologies.
And yet...
We still have an entire political party predicating their future success on a U.S. and Iraqi government defeat in Iraq. They abhor American soldiers with a spittle-flecked passion, find them to be thugs and criminals of the highest order, and deep down in their heart of hearts, think that American solders would torture innocent civilians and kill merely for sport, if only the watchful eyes of the media were no there to keep them in check.
They view a certain rising American politician as their only salvation in a regional conflict that vexes their very souls. They see his promises of "hope" and "change" and unconditional dialog with Nasrallah or Ahmadinejad and other regional leaders as a gateway to the kind of world they want to live in. They fear John McCain will prove to be a second George Bush.
But enough about the Iranian mullacracy.
I'm just glad we don't have Americans that act this way.
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May 09, 2008
Members of the women's group began bringing placards and pink banners to the center Friday, where they are expected to rally later in the morning, armed with spells and pointy hats for a "Witches, clowns and sirens day.""Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.
The group's Mother's Day week of themed protests, which included days to galvanize grannies and bring-your-daughter-to-protest, appears to have done little to boost its flagging numbers.
All those drugs taken in '68 really had an effect, didn't they?
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May 08, 2008
In recent weeks American forces have claimed to have captured even more Iranian weapons, including those that were new, apparently manufactured in 2008. In addition, Iraqi government forces are said to have captured a significant number of weapons of suspected Iranian manufacture during military options in and around Basra over the past month. On top of the weaponry captured, recently-released information claims that Shiite militiamen were trained by Hezbollah in Iranian terrorist camps near Tehran, and that some of those militants have been captured, and have resided in U.S. military custody for several months providing valuable intelligence.
But if solid physical evidence of Iranian military interference has been captured, then why hasn't that evidence been presented to independent experts for verification? Why hasn't that material been presented to a skeptical world media, still unwilling to believe governmental claims at face value after Saddam Hussein's WMDs turned out to be ghosts?
The answer is both simple and pragmatic: hopes of a diplomatic solution between Iran and Iraq have forestalled the U.S. military press conference displaying captured weaponry first expected in Baghdad over a week ago.
The press conference was delayed in hopes that an Iraqi delegation to Tehran bearing evidence of Iranian weapons captured by U.S. and Iraqi forces in recent fighting could resolve the issue as a matter between the two neighboring states.
Unsurprisingly, Iran has disputed the evidence, and as a result, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered a special committee to compile evidence captured by both American and Iraqi forces. Once the evidence is compiled, it is hoped that this would help inform the committee in putting forth a coherent Iraqi policy on Iranian involvement in smuggling weapons into Iraq. That policy will be presented to the Iranian government in hopes of stopping Iranian smuggling of weapons and preclude a conflict between the two nations, according to U.S. military sources. Iran and Iraq fought a war from 1980-88 that claimed approximately one million lives when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, and the political goals of neither Shia-dominated government would be well-served by a return to conflict.
Iraqi foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari is urging Iran and the United States to rejoin stalled security talks after U.S. officials described negotiating with Iran "meaningless" without Iran stopping military interference in Iraq, and Tehran accusing the U.S. of "massacring" Iraqis as operations in Baghdad's Sadr City against Shia militias continue. The resumation of talks is presently deemed unlikely, but if the Iraqi committee completes its mission and determines that Iran has in fact been supplying training and weaponry to Shia militias presently fighting against the Iraqi military forces, the Iraqis will have a diplomatic weapon to use against Tehran that may force the Iranian government to stop its suspected supply of weaponry into Iraq, and it's training of Shia militiamen by Hezbollah terrorists and Iran's military.
The diplomatic pressure the Iraqi commission could bring to bear with it's findings could deepen divides in Iran's government between moderates and hardliners. Moderate former President Mohammad Khatami has recently made statements that some are interpreting as an admission that the current hardline regime as supplying weaponry and training to militants in Iraq and elsewhere.
Iran's weapons may be taking the lives of American and Iraqi troops in Iraq right now, but with the Iraqi government's creation of a committee to build an official Iraqi policy position on Iran's interference, Iran's weapons may turn out to be a greater diplomatic weapon for Iraq.
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