Friday - August 31, 2007

Tank Command

I was crawling around the internet tonight and came upon this one.  Rock on baby.

From the poster of the video:

True enough.  If you watch closely, you’ll see this bad boy has taken some hits and is no worse for the wear.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/31/2007 at 07:57 PM   
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   Saturday - August 11, 2007

Sacrifice

From the good Dr. Jeff.

Here is a bit I found on CNN. It so much reminds me of the sort of mistakes we made in Viet Nam. When we pulled out many of the Viet Namese who had helped us fight the Viet Cong, were slaughtered and tortured. When our politicians talk of cut and run, they make no provision for these good people. Not only would giving up our fight in Iraq and Afghanistan be a total waste and give victory to some of the vilest scum on the planet, but these interpreters and many others would be plunged into a living (while they lived anyway) nightmare.

They are scared that we will not follow through on the commitment we made.
They have ample reason to be scared. All they have to do is look at our history in Viet Nam and Somalia and get the latest quotes from the New York Times.

I believe that we owe it these people and the world in general, to keep our commitment and stay the course.

Iraqi interpreter: ‘Now I have no future’

BAGHDAD, Iraq—The young Iraqi known as Ronnie fears for his life. Nearly four years ago, as a recent high school graduate, he signed up to be an interpreter for the U.S. military. It seemed like a good job at the time. Today, he is a marked man.

“I swear, my god, every other night, I have a nightmare that some militia is trying to kill me,” he says. “I’ve lost hope. I can’t see any future to this country. That’s why most of the interpreters want to get out of Iraq.”

But for Ronnie and thousands of other interpreters working with the U.S. military, getting out is unspeakably difficult. And with insurgents and death squads viewing them as collaborators with the enemy, going back home isn’t a realistic option, either.

“[W]e drove by my house, and you know how painful it is that when you see your house and you can’t stop to see your dad or your brother or your mom to say ‘Hi,’ “ Ronnie says.

To help take care of people like Ronnie, the U.S. government is offering 1,000 special immigration visas over the next two years for Iraqis and Afghans working with U.S. forces. But that accounts for just a small percentage of the roughly 9,000 interpreters working with the United States in Iraq. Tens of thousands of others work with various government agencies and contractors. The numbers don’t include the interpreters’ families.

“Many people have the perception that it’s just the U.S. soldier here sacrificing. And that is a misperception,” says Lt. Col. Steve Miska, the commander at the base where Ronnie works.

The lieutenant colonel worked closely with two Iraqis who were killed.

“Nidal had been here for four years. He ran a store downstairs. He had a wife and four children, but he would live here [on the military base] because of the dangers,” Miska says. Nidal was killed one day on his way back home.  Miska: U.S. has moral obligation to help interpreters »

Then there was Jack, an interpreter with whom Miska had spent a lot of time. “He had a wife back in Balad. The Sunni insurgents in Balad were after him for quite some time. His wife was pregnant and ended up losing twins, and he decided he was going home to be with her.”

That was the last time Miska saw Jack.

“America has a strong obligation to keep faith with the Iraqis and Afghans who have worked so bravely with us—and have often paid a terrible price for it,” a bipartisan group of U.S. senators wrote in a June letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. The senators are urging the Bush administration to expedite the process for reviewing visa applications for Iraqi and Afghan interpreters.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/11/2007 at 09:59 AM   
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   Tuesday - August 07, 2007

Try It Again Punk

Taliban stages brazen attack on U.S. base

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AP)—A group of 75 Taliban militants tried to overrun a U.S.-led coalition base in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a rare frontal attack that left more than 20 militants dead, the coalition said in a statement.

Let’s see: 75 in, 55 out. That’s a 27% kill rate.  Come on boys, you can do better than that.

The insurgents attacked Firebase Anaconda from three sides, using gunfire, grenades and 107 mm rockets, the coalition said. A joint Afghan-U.S. force repelled the attack with mortars, machine guns and air support.

They bring sticks, we bring airplanes.  Sounds like a good show.

“The inability of the insurgent forces to inflict any severe damage on Firebase Anaconda, while being simultaneously decimated in the process, should be a clear indication of the ineffectiveness of their fighters,” said Army Capt. Vanessa R. Bowman, a coalition spokeswoman.

Indeed.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/07/2007 at 03:10 PM   
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Assumptions

When we look at a fact, it is done through a set of base assumptions that we already have.  For example, when we look at the grand canyon, we see the work of millions of years of erosion working its way through a mile of rock.  Carving and pulling the canyon deeper and deeper each year.  I learned this in school and it seemed intuitive.  After all, I knew rocks were “hard” and it would take a very long time to erode one away.

Or would it?

When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18^th, 1980, there was a massive deposit of pumice on the north fork of the Toutle river.  Within five days a pit had developed in the pumice that was over 100 feet deep, with dendritic patterns of gullies and rills, mimicking what we would normally classify as thousands of years of erosion.

On March 19^th, 1982, an explosive eruption of Mount St Helens melted a thick snowpack in a crater, creating a massive mudflow north of the mountain.  This mudflow cut into the pumice dam on the Toutle River, creating a new drainage pattern.  By August, 1984, this drainage has cut over 100 feet of rock into what is now called the “Little Grand Canyon”

So how long did it take to form “the” Grand Canyon?

We don’t know. 

You see, what we can observe is what is real today.  When we look at the canyon, we have a set of facts that we can observe, but they all exist today.  People talk about “looking back in time” with the fossil record, but the fossils exist in time today.  We can only guess about what happened to them to cause them to be here today and that guess is based on our pre-existing base assumptions.

I told you that so I could tell you this.

This is not a discussion over young earth vs. old earth or creationism vs. evolution (we’ll have that discussion at another time), but rather about the military.

I never got that worked up about the Abu Graib “torture” story, or the Haiditha “civilian killings” or more recently, the Scott Beauchamp story.  The reason is that my base assumptions are that the military are generally doing the right thing.  I assume that when they cleared that area in Haiditha, there was a darn good reason for it.  I don’t dispute that civilians got killed, but I take great exception to the charge that they were killed deliberately.  If they were using extraordinary techniques in the Abu Graib prison to get information that was crucial to saving our guy’s lives, my base assumption is that it was a good thing to do.

So Scott Beauchamp writes a story for the New Republic saying that our guys are committing all kinds of atrocities and the Left goes ape.  Their base assumption is that the military men and women are baby killers and this story simply proves it.  Mine, on the other hand, is that the MSM are generally liars, especially when it comes to war reporting, so I distrust everything I read at first.

Recognizing that your assumptions drive your view of facts in that your mind fills in the history automatically is a great bit of information.  It’s helpful for me to check my reactions to things as well as to gauge the reactions of those with whom I disagree.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/07/2007 at 10:10 AM   
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   Tuesday - June 19, 2007

Operation Arrowhead Ripper

The surge is on.

BAGHDAD (AP) - About 10,000 U.S. soldiers launched an offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq northeast of Baghdad early Tuesday, killing at least 22 insurgents, the U.S. military said.

The raids, dubbed “Operation Arrowhead Ripper,” took place in Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province, and involved air assaults under the cover of darkness, the military said in a statement. The operation was still in its opening stages, it said.

On Monday, military officials said U.S. and Iraqi forces had launched attacks on Baghdad’s northern and southern flanks to clear out Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida fighters and Shiite militiamen who had fled the capital and Anbar during a four-month-old security operation.

A top U.S. military official said American forces were taking advantage of the arrival of the final brigade of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to open concerted attacks.

“We are going into the areas that have been sanctuaries of al-Qaida and other extremists to take them on and weed them out, to help get the areas clear and to really take on al-Qaida,” the senior official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the operation. “Those are areas in the belts around Baghdad, some parts in Anbar province and specifically Diyala province.”

Begin leftist whining in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

** Update **
Via Bryan at Hot Air

As the Times notes, the reason for the Diyala offensive is to stop the sectarian violence by shutting off AQ’s supply of car bombs; the mosque bombing presumably is their reply. If you missed them in April, you’ll absolutely want to revisit these hair-raising Times and WaPo reports, published coincidentally on the same day, on the depth of jihadi entrenchment in Baquba, where the offensive’s begun. The city’s a witch’s brew of “former members of the Saddam Hussein army and paramilitary forces, the Fedayeen; angry and impoverished Sunni men; criminal gangs; Wahhabi Islamists; and foreigners,” writes the Times, suggesting that this may well end up being the nastiest battle of the war. Michael Yon frames the battlefield:

They are ready for us. Giant bombs are buried in the roads. Snipers—real snipers—have chiseled holes in walls so that they can shoot not from roofs or windows, but from deep inside buildings, where we cannot see the flash or hear the shots. They will shoot for our faces and necks. Car bombs are already assembled. Suicide vests are prepared.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/19/2007 at 05:09 AM   
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   Thursday - June 07, 2007

D-Day, 2007

What if the Normandy invasion happened this year; how would the MSN cover it?

They folks over at The Combat Report have a pretty good idea.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/07/2007 at 02:50 PM   
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   Wednesday - May 16, 2007

Heroes

Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Mark A. Camp
(COLUMBUS DISPATCH)

In May of 2005, Marines stationed in Anbar province began a week-long hunt to root out insurgents and foreign fighters in the volatile areas around the Syrian border. Dubbed Operation Matador, those tasked with carrying out the mission encountered enemies who had dug in and were ready to fight: deadly roadside bombs, sniper attacks, and several well-planned ambushes.

One day after the operation began, then-Lance Cpl. Camp and his company were sent to New Ubaydi on a house-clearing mission. As Camp’s squad entered one of the houses, insurgents hiding in a closet and in an underground crawlspace opened fire, shooting four Marines. Camp, outside, heard the gunfight and immediately ran inside to help. Three separate times he entered and exited the building to recover his squad members and clear the house of insurgents.

On May 11, Camp was again tested. This time, his company was heading to another small town to clear other insurgent strongholds. Camp was standing at the top hatch of his amphibious assault vehicle when he noticed an eerie silence. Camp was instantly on alert – but that could not stop the roadside bomb that detonated at that moment, hitting the vehicle and throwing the man standing next to Camp into a nearby field.

Shrapnel dug into Camp’s right thigh, and the explosion lit his hands and face on fire. He was thrown back into the burning vehicle, and he began beating out the fires all over his body and head.

Then, Camp heard the call of one of his teammates still trapped inside. As he crawled back into the wreckage, heat was cooking off ammunition all around him, ammunition that ricocheted inside even as insurgents continued to fire from outside. And then there was another explosion. Camp fell back out of the vehicle, on fire once more. Again, he beat his body until the flames subsided.

His comrade was still in the vehicle. So Camp went back inside and tried to grip the Marine’s pack, his helmet – anything – but by then Camp’s skin was melting from his hands. Camp later told the Columbus Dispatch, “I [was] screaming for someone to help me . . . someone with fresh hands.” Finally, some Marines answered his calls, and pulled Camp and the other Marine free.

For his actions and bravery, Camp was awarded the Silver Star on May 15, 2006.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/16/2007 at 04:08 PM   
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   Monday - April 16, 2007

Heroes

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Christopher S. Adlesperger

When then-Pfc. Adlesperger and his squad approached a house on Nov. 10, 2004, in the treacherous city of Fallujah, they entered into one of the most difficult and dangerous battlefield situations: they faced an entrenched enemy in an urban setting – with an entrenched machine gun. As they entered the house, a volley of insurgent fire and grenades rained down upon them, immediately killing Adlesperger’s point man and injuring two others.

Without pause, Adlesperger took control and moved out front, despite receiving minor wounds. As Adlesperger began firing back from the point position, he became the main target of enemy fire – but, with most of his squad pinned down by insurgent fire, he had no choice but to push forward on his own.

Adlesperger single-handedly cleared the stairs to the rooftop, which allowed the unit to move injured Marines upstairs to receive medical attention. And as U.S. forces gathered for a major assault on the building, Adlesperger, still inside, began moving from one spot to another, eliminating enemies in close quarters or forcing them to move out of entrenched positions to areas where U.S. forces were waiting. Finally, an assault vehicle broke through a wall on the main floor.

Adlesperger rejoined his platoon and demanded to take point for the final attack on the entrenched machine gun. He entered the courtyard first, and eliminated the final enemy at close range. By the end of the battle, Adlesperger was credited with having killed at least 11 insurgents. One month later, Adlesperger was killed while clearing other houses in Fallujah.

For his actions on Nov. 10, 2004, Adlesperger was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross on April 13, 2007. 

“By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of enemy fire and utmost devotion to duty, ... Adlesperger reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service,” read the citation letter that made the award official. The letter is signed by Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter.

-- Story courtesy of: Family Security Matters

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/16/2007 at 12:46 PM   
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   Friday - April 13, 2007

More Biased Reporting?

Blackfive has an interesting letter from a guy who is there on the ground.  He says the Parlament building is not even in the green zone.  But we keep hearing the MSN spout how this “insurgent” had to cross no fewer than six checkpoints to get to there.  WTF?  Who is right here?

Actually, depite the reporting I’ve heard from CNN, BBC and NPR, which keeps up the ominous drone of doom about the terrorists breaching the Parliament buliding in “the heart of the heavily fortified Green Zone,” the FACT is the Parliament buliding is NOT IN the Green Zone. We turned it over to the Iraqis in 2006. And when it was, it was at the outer NW edge of the Green or International Zone.

Of course, no one here especially expects the press, with its now, 4 year old biases to get it right. But that being said, I am beginning to believe there is something else going on here that this episode illustrates, which in an unfortunately perverse way, suggests deeper progresss.

Developing......

Posted by Drew458     on 04/13/2007 at 01:37 PM   
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   Thursday - April 12, 2007

Liquor Bottles and Light Bulbs

The “Patton Doctrine”

Heh

Posted by Drew458     on 04/12/2007 at 08:40 AM   
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   Monday - April 09, 2007

Heroes

It all began on the night of March 13, 2006 as a squad of US soldiers patrol the deserted streets of Ramadi and the promise to “never leave a fallen comrade behind” becomes grim reality ....

Sgt. Row, the point man, was leading the soldiers through dark, narrow alleys in the city of Ramadi as the squad headed back to base. Suddenly two men darted into a nearby house – and at that hour, Row saw that as a clear sign of imminent danger. He stopped the team, but within seconds the street exploded with an onslaught of machine-gun and small-arms fire, RPG explosions, and hand grenades. The squad dropped to the ground and directed fire at the enemy’s position.

Alvarez moved to a covered position to reload his weapon, and he noticed one of his comrades had been hit and was lying in the middle of the firefight. Without hesitation, Alvarez rushed into the kill zone to check the soldier’s vital signs – but it was too late. He covered the soldier’s body with his own and continued firing on the enemy. When he ran out of ammunition, Alvarez stood up and started dragging the soldier out of the line of fire. Row, who was pinned down nearby, provided cover fire as Alvarez struggled to move the body. When Wilzcek and Pushkin saw Alvarez’s difficulties, they ran into the open to help. But as the three moved back toward cover, two RPGs exploded 10 meters away, knocking them down and sending a volley of shrapnel into Alvarez’s right knee. The men stood up and continued dragging their comrade to the safety of a nearby courtyard.

After establishing a safe area for the injured, Pushkin and Wilzcek ran back and forth several times from the courtyard into the line of fire to rescue trapped soldiers. Meanwhile, the RPG explosions had also injured Row’s elbow with shrapnel. Even so, he continued firing on the enemy position to help the others reach safety. Once everyone was clear, Row, who was alone in the middle of the street, called for help. As Row remembered later, “I was trapped in the street, and [Pushkin and Wilzcek] pulled me out of there.”

The squad was now in the courtyard and medical assistance was being administered – but their work was not done: enemy fire continued to light up the area. When the squad started planning the next phase, Alvarez refused to be moved with the other injured soldiers, staying to help in the fight.

The insurgents, seeing the evacuation in progress, focused their fire on the rescuers. Wilzcek, already on the roof, began firing back. After clearing the rooms below, Pushkin and his team hurried up to the roof to help Wilzcek. Row grabbed a Bunker Defeat Munition – a shoulder-launched explosive for use against fortified positions – but his injured elbow prevented him from using it. He ran up to the roof, handed the weapon to Pushkin, and helped guide Pushkin toward the targets. With Row and Wilzcek providing cover fire, Pushkin took aim and fired – destroying the enemy’s position and killing a number of insurgents. With that, the squad was able to leave the area safely.

For their actions, Wilzcek, Alvarez, and Pushkin were awarded the Silver Star for their bravery and actions; Row was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor.

Article From: Family Security Matters website

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/09/2007 at 12:04 PM   
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   Tuesday - March 27, 2007

Heroes

Here’s more news from the front lines about our outstanding young men and women in uniform. Cpl. Warrick’s story is only one of many I receive from CENTCOM every week.

I remember when I used to live in a country that celebrated men like Cpl. Warrick, talked about them on the news and made movies about them. That was this country fifty years ago.

Nowadays, people celebrate by burning American flags in our streets, the news media concentrates all their attention on drug-addicted celebrities and the movies are all about homosexual cowboys and lovable gangsters.

Do you miss the America that was as much as I do?

Soldier Performs Life-Saving Actions Despite Life-Threatening Wounds
(US CENTRAL COMMAND) - March 27, 2007

Sept. 18, 2006, was a typical morning for platoon medic Cpl. Warrick: The sun was bright, and U.S. military police and Iraqi policemen were conducting their usual transitional training at the Al Huria police station in Iraq.

Suddenly, without warning, small-arms fire erupted from all directions. The base was under siege. Coalition forces concentrated fire on the attackers, but then a speeding pick-up truck crashed through the entrance and careened toward the center of the station.

The truck detonated its 200-pound aircraft bomb, throwing Cpl. Warrick several meters and knocking him unconscious. Rubble from the explosion buried him. Warrick’s platoon leader saw what happened and quickly pulled him from the debris.

Warrick’s legs were on fire – so the platoon leader used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. When Warrick regained consciousness, he realized that he was badly burned – but he also realized that if he sat in one place, he would go into shock. He requested morphine, but his medic bag was buried in the burning building.

As a medic, he knew that without pain medication, his only choice to avoid slipping into shock was to stay active. So he climbed through a hole in the building to see how he could assist. With a heavy stream of fire still raining down on the station, and suffering from third-degree burns over 45 percent of his body as well as shrapnel wounds and smoke-inhalation injuries, Warrick went about the work of a medic: He assessed injured soldiers and Iraqi policemen – and told the nearby support battalion what injuries they could expect. That vital information helped save the lives of seven Iraqi policemen.

Warrick realized he couldn’t fight off the shock much longer, so he moved to the north side of the station where he could be evacuated to the medical station himself. For his life-saving actions while suffering from life-threatening wounds, Warrick was awarded the Silver Star on Dec. 11, 2006.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/27/2007 at 05:01 AM   
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   Friday - March 23, 2007

Good Show

Right then.  The Queen did right by one of our boys yesterday.

Marine Maj. William Chesarek, left, is the first U.S. pilot to earn the British Distinguished Flying Cross since World War II. British army Pvt. Michelle Norris, right, became the first woman ever to be awarded the British Military Cross at the same ceremony

Major gets British Distinguished Flying Cross

England’s Queen Elizabeth II awarded the British Distinguished Flying Cross to a U.S. pilot for the first time since World War II during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London on March 21, according to a Corps release.

Marine Maj. William Chesarek was serving as an exchange officer with England’s 847 Naval Air Squadron in Amarah, Iraq, last year when British forces on the ground came under “repeated attack from rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire from insurgents using large, hostile crowds for cover,” the release said.

Chesarek spent five hours flying overhead in a British Lynx helicopter identifying targets and covering the British troops on the ground, the release said.

“Given the serious threat to the forces on the ground, and the inability to return fire given the crowds of protesters, Chesarek elected to fly repeated passes at very low level, under heavy small-arms fire and at least one near-miss from an RPG, in an attempt to distract and disperse the crowds,” according to the release.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/23/2007 at 08:36 AM   
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   Thursday - March 22, 2007

The Surge is Working

Even though its only in the beginning stages.  This, according to the NY Post

March 20, 2007—‘I WALKED down the streets of Ramadi a few days ago, in a soft cap eating an ice cream with the mayor on one side of me and the police chief on the other, having a conversation.” This simple act, Gen. David Petraeus told me, would have been “unthinkable” just a few months ago. “And nobody shot at us,” he added.

Petraeus, the new commander managing the “surge” of troops in Iraq, will be the first to caution realism. “Sure we see improvements - major improvements,” he said in our interview, “but we still have a long way to go.”

What tactics are working? “We got down at the people level and are staying,” he said flatly. “Once the people know we are going to be around, then all kinds of things start to happen.”

More intelligence, for example. Where once tactical units were “scraping” for intelligence information, they now have “information overload,” the general said. “After our guys are in the neighborhood for four or five days, the people realize they’re not going to just leave them like we did in the past. Then they begin to come in with so much information on the enemy that we can’t process it fast enough.”

In intelligence work - the key to fighting irregular wars - commanders love excess.

And the tribal leaders in Sunni al Anbar Province, the general reports, “have had enough.” Not only are the al Qaeda fighters causing civil disruption by fomenting sectarian violence and killing civilians, but on a more prosaic but practical side, al Qaeda is bad for business. “All of the sheiks up there are businessmen,” Petraeus said. “They are entrepreneurial and involved in scores of different businesses. The presence of the foreign fighters is hitting them hard in the pocketbook and they are tired of it.”

Posted by Drew458     on 03/22/2007 at 08:31 AM   
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