This post submitted by reader Randy Daitch.

~ Alan

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I discovered this morning, on Memorial Day, a letter sent by my father to my mother, when he was serving in an army medical detachment in British Guiana, in April 1943. Next Sunday marks the 29th anniversary of my father’s passing. His words would surely resonate with our soldiers overseas today:

LETTER DATED APRIL 1943, FROM MAURICE DAITCH, IN BRITISH GUIANA, TO SELMA ROSENBERG, IN WINDSOR ONTARIO, SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE THEIR MARRIAGE:

Our countries are fighting a war, and I am a soldier - a fighter for the common cause. At present my leaders have seen fit to place me in a position of comparatively little danger. I’ll not complain, but accept the verdict of my commanders as to the best place in the scheme of things for me.

I’ve heard men say that they would rather be a live coward than a dead hero. I would rather be neither. I believe that while it is great to die for one’s country, it is even greater to live for it. But if it ever comes to the choice of losing, to the Nazi hordes, our way of life, or dying in the attempt to maintain that way of life, I’ll choose the latter.

Sweetheart, I miss you much, but whether I see you soon or later does not really matter. The important thing is that there is a job to be done, and if there is to be any of peace, freedom and security in the future - do it, and do it well, we must.

Until I return then, my love, keep me close to your heart, and I will remain happy in the knowledge that some day, soon I hope, I’ll return and there will be no more waiting, wondering, worrying, for either of us, and we will be eternally happy in one another’s arms.

With all my love,
Maury

This is my Memorial Day post, inspired by the original (also posted here):

Within a commemorative area at the western side of the memorial is recognized the sacrifice of America’s WWII generation and the contribution of our allies. A field of 4,000 sculpted gold stars on the Freedom Wall commemorate the more than 400,000 Americans who gave their lives. During WWII, the gold star was the symbol of family sacrifice.

This post was submitted by reader TexasGal.

~ Alan

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FREEDOM’S WARRIORS

Free people can never live free without the commitment of those who are willing to risk all even to giving their lives to secure that freedom. Lest we forget not all that have made the ultimate sacrifice wear the uniform. But I would like to borrow from the words of Charles M. Province:

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It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag,

and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.

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These aren’t only American ideals; these are the ideals of free people of the world. Through the efforts of dedicated men and women the history of the world is changed not only by the stopping of aggression but also by the liberation of the oppressed from tyranny.

God’s Blessing to all those who serve in the defense of freedom, and liberty. God’s Strength to all those who bear the burden from this pursuit, may they recover and truly know the merit of their contribution. And God’s Peace to all those family and friends who loose loved ones through the ultimate sacrifice of lying down ones life for another. Truly life is measured by deed, not by length.

To all of them, I say Thank You.

TexasGal

From the White House Commission on Remembrance:

Along with other Americans, you are asked to observe the National Moment of Remembrance on Memorial Day, Monday, May 31, 2004 at 3:00 p.m. local time (duration: one minute). The time 3:00 p.m. was chosen because it is the time when many Americans are enjoying their freedoms on the national holiday. The Moment does not replace the traditional Memorial Day observances. It is intended to a be a unifying act of remembrance for Americans of all ages. As you participate in the Moment you are helping reclaim Memorial Day for the noble and sacred reason for which it was intended—to honor those who died in service to our Nation.

The Palm Springs Desert Sun pays Memorial Day tribute here.

Memorial Day is a time of remembrance for the sacrifice of this country’s sons and daughters who have given their lives in war for the United States. By custom, the observance has become a day for all Americans to remember their dead. It is a time to contemplate what America and its people have lost — and gained.

This Memorial Day is especially poignant in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, which claimed the lives of some of the Coachella Valley’s own. They and the loved ones they left behind are in our thoughts and prayers today …

Written by reader and blogger Chap, and originally posted here.

~ Alan

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Today, my friends and classmates meet in Talloires and Normandy, for a reunion and to be present for the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion. I cannot attend because I go to sea too soon and I wish I were there. I would gladly violate my personal boycott of French products for this occasion.

This isn’t emotional writing–it’s just history, and history that affects how I do my job today.

The American submarine force defines itself through its actions in the Pacific. The British submarine force, however, had significant exploits in the Atlantic. One of these operations enabled D-Day to happen.

In the Pacific, the US submarines Nautilus and Argonaut, small diesel boats, embarked two hundred and twenty two Marines led by a Colonel Carlson, who had spent time in China and took the phrase “work together”–gung ho–for the Marines’s own. They performed a raid on Makin Island. While the Marines were ashore the submarines went destroyer hunting. Upon the completion of the raid, some of the Marines weren’t there. They had been captured by the Japanese and beheaded.

I had the honor, once, of meeting some of these Marines, although I didn’t understand who these geezers were at the time. (Yes, I was an idiot.) I just knew they had done something important that they wouldn’t talk about. Fifty-some years later, they went back and found their compatriots and brought them home.

Some important lessons about amphibious warfare were learned on the Makin Island raid. More painful lessons were learned at the cost of innumerable Canadians at an early landing in Dieppe–on the tactical level, it was a bloody disaster on the level of a Gallipoli attack. Strategically, the Dieppe landing bought time and more importantly taught lessons that paid off on D-Day.

One lesson learned by the British was that you had to know where you were landing and what type of beach you were landing at. For this, they used a team called the COPP, and small submarines called X-Craft.

Tiny, weak, short legged X-Craft were small boats. A lieutenant commanded. They were towed to their operation area, a dangerous and exhausting feat in itself. They could carry things–explosives on a belt on the outside–but also small boats with people in it.

In other amphibious landings, some landing craft discharged troops in the wrong place, or landed where the sand was too soft for the machinery, causing men to die before they even could get to the beach. To counter this, pairs of men were put on tiny folding canoes and sent out on the submarines to perform beach feasibility surveys (what we call them today, anyway). In my last ship we did much the same as they did them–but we ride in a lot more comfort, and they invented it.

The survey complete, the X-craft beached themselves and turned lights on as navigation beacons for the ships riding in. The Americans refused this help and some of their craft landed a mile off target.

From a local history:

The southeastern tip of the Island housed the Most Secret of all establishments. COPP (Combined Operations Pilotage Parties) was based in what is now Hayling Island Sailing Club: a band of adventurers who had volunteered for Special Service without being told what this involved! Here the 57 officers and men, expert canoeists, swimmers and survivalists -trained in all weathers in strictest secrecy. Like the famous Cockleshell Heroes, their targets were those impossible for conventional attack and usually so dangerous that a COPP mission was regarded as a one-way ticket. COPPs specialised in the unorthodox - and on many occasions it worked.

Midget submarines, or Xcraft, 50ft long, 6ft wide, displacing 30 tons, were crewed by COPPists. Packed together inside were diesel engines (2 Gardineror Perkins), electric motor, air compressor, batteries, escape compartment-cum-heads, and canisters to re-cycle foul air. Then there was the crew and their gear, all the navigation and signalling instrumentation, food, water - every inch of space held some piece of equipment, some lever or wheel…or the cramped men. Keeping silence during a mission meant no movement: the hull plating was only 3/8 inch thick: in fact the crew could hear German asdic pinging off their hull, time for evasive action! Xcraft of the 12th Submarine Flotilla played a vital role on D-Day. They were to guide inthe first assault boats to the correct landing areas of Sword and Juno beaches. COPPists on an advance recce, using canoes, had secured samples from these beaches which proved the ground suitable for the advance-guard heavy tanks. Canoes used were folboats and could carry 480lbs; a tiny sail of camouflaged parachute silk could be hoisted on the mast, whose other function was for mounting a powerful signalling lamp.

Lt George Honour, RNVR had (most unusually) been briefed about the D-Day COPPs mission three weeks in advance. Such was the degree of secrecy demanded that he dared not go for a run ashore during that tense waiting period. He was to command X23 with a Sub/Lt and an Engine-Room Artificer as crew, but taking two extra men: navigation experts. This made for much increased discomfort in the tiny vessel.

X23 was ordered to sail on 2nd June, and was towed towards the French coast. Here the midget submarine was submerged for l7hrs 59mins. This detailing of the EXACT length of time indicates the ghastly strain of prolonged inactivity in confined quarters and foul air. On June 3rd they moved cautiously to within 1 & 1/2 miles of the beach, and checking their position through the periscope found they were spot-on - and German soldiers could be seen playing on the beach!

Expecting 5th June to be D-Day, the Xcraft thankfully surfaced after a further 12 hours underwater, to await their coded message via the BBC. Nothing. In great anxiety they tuned in again at 01.00: Invasion postponed 24 hours; this meant an extra 24 hours of hell waiting on the bottom. At 04.45 on 6th June they surfaced for action and flashed the guiding lights for the in-coming armada as planned. The crew watched landing-craft forging ahead to the beach and our troops swarming down the ramps to wade ashore, ant-like on the great sweep of sand.

The job done, X23 turned away for its rendezvous with HMS Largs; this proved the most dangerous time of the whole operation. Vessels of every kind were charging towards the shore - nothing should stand in their way now - least of all a tiny, barely visible midget submarine!

These guys were in desperate times, living in small metal tubes to try and make a difference. They were the first to land at D-Day. They weren’t celebrated in movies and song. They knew the chances were slim–three X-craft didn’t return from the Tirpitz attack just previously. But they did it anyway.

And they weren’t American. They were brothers-in-arms saving American lives with their efforts.

For this Decoration Day, I hope you will take a thought about the sacrifices being made around the world by all of us, and the Americans who died hard and without recognition–but who made the difference. Let us strive to live up to their ideals.

Chap.

Thanks, Mates.

Signed: the Usual Suspects.

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty.

For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine-guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting only ninety could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your ‘lives fought for life…and left the vivid air signed with your honor’…

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge - and pray God we have not lost it - that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

- Ronald Reagan — Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, June 6, 1984

Seems as potent now as it was then. You can view the original online here.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Daniel Henninger reminds us of the ultimate sacrifice, and the opportunity to visit our National Cemeteries this day:

There are 16,897,000 living veterans, which makes for a very large band of brothers. At a big cemetery like Calverton on Long Island, they’ll do 7,300 burials a year. Standing in this cemetery on a wet day, staring out at field after field of white gravestones in perfect rows, each marked with a name and a war, one frankly has the expectable, and welcome, feelings of gratitude and respect. Still, one can’t help but feel overtaken by the awful, indiscreet largeness of war’s claims on the living. Amid Calverton’s stillness, the cemetery’s director Rick Boyd offers without prompting: “Each one of these people had a particular service story, and I often wish I could know what they were.”

Read the rest.

This post was submitted by reader Max in our comments.

~ Alan

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Many years ago, before 9/11 the world was a different place, but America’s young men and women were still going into the face of danger, I had the Great Honour to soldier along side 1st Armoured Division, if not a combat zone, then the most heavily mined piece of land in the world.
Two memories spring to mind:

A young American NCO, attempting to defuse a mine(he was not qualified and was not following SOPs) he recognised the weapon as a potential threat to his soldiers, and more importantly to the civilian population. He died, instantly and without any pain.

Two weeks later, I HAD to go into a minefield (Duty Call), SoP said I went alone. Half way towards my particular objective, a hand touched my shoulder, it was a young Specialist (Female, wrong side of the tracks, poor white trash, once). She said, “I don’t want you going in here alone Sir, I’ll be with you”.

I’m not an American, though I am proud to say that I am a Friend of America.

The young ladies name was Teresa Hawkins, the young NCO’s name (I will not publish). I would ask that all the readers spare a moment not only for the valiant dead, but also to remember those Brave Americans who have not had to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Max

This post was submitted by reader Marymcl in our comments.

~ Alan

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Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will rescue him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him,
and show him my salvation.

Psalm 91

safe home, all our soldiers, then and now

This post was submitted by reader Different Kind Of Button in our comments. It’s been posted in many places, including Blackfive, and Mr. Phelps is indeed on the list.

~ Alan

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Chance Phelps was wearing his Saint Christopher medal when he was killed on Good Friday. Eight days later, I handed the medallion to his mother. I didn’t know Chance before he died. Today, I miss him.

Over a year ago, I volunteered to escort the remains of Marines killed in Iraq should the need arise. The military provides a uniformed escort for all casualties to ensure they are delivered safely to the next of kin and are treated with dignity and respect along the way. Thankfully, I hadn’t been called on to be an escort since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. The first few weeks of April, however, had been a tough month for the Marines.

On the Monday after Easter I was reviewing Department of Defense press releases when I saw that a Private First Class Chance Phelps was killed in action outside of Baghdad. The press release listed his hometown the same town I m from. I notified our Battalion adjutant and told him that, should the duty to escort PFC Phelps fall to our Battalion, I would take him. I didn’t hear back the rest of Monday and all day Tuesday until 1800. The Battalion duty NCO called my cell phone and said I needed to be ready to leave for Dover Air Force Base at 1900 in order to escort the remains of PFC Phelps.

Before leaving for Dover I called the major who had the task of informing Phelps’s parents of his death. The major said the funeral was going to be in Dubois, Wyoming. (It turned out that PFC Phelps only lived in my hometown for his senior year of high school.) I had never been to Wyoming and had never heard of Dubois.

With two other escorts from Quantico, I got to Dover AFB at 2330 on Tuesday night. First thing on Wednesday we reported to the mortuary at the base. In the escort lounge there were about half a dozen Army soldiers and about an equal number of Marines waiting to meet up with their remains for departure. PFC Phelps was not ready, however, and I was told to come back on Thursday.

Now, at Dover with nothing to do and a solemn mission ahead, I began to get depressed. I was wondering about Chance Phelps. I didn’t know anything about him; not even what he looked like. I wondered about his family and what it would be like to meet them. I did pushups in my room until I couldn’t do any more.

On Thursday morning I reported back to the mortuary. This time there was a new group of Army escorts and a couple of the Marines who had been there Wednesday. There was also an Air Force captain there to escort his brother home to San Diego. We received a brief covering our duties, the proper handling of the remains, the procedures for draping a flag over a casket, and of course, the paperwork attendant to our task. We were shown pictures of the shipping container and told that each one contained, in addition to the casket, a flag. I was given an extra flag since Phelps s parents were divorced. This way they would each get one.

I didn’t like the idea of stuffing the flag into my luggage but I couldn’t see carrying a large flag, folded for presentation to the next of kin, through an airport while in my Alpha uniform. It barely fit into my suitcase.

It turned out that I was the last escort to leave on Thursday. This meant that I repeatedly got to participate in the small ceremonies that mark all departures from the Dover AFB mortuary. Most of the remains are taken from Dover AFB by hearse to the airport in Philadelphia for air transport to their final destination. When the remains of a service member are loaded onto a hearse and ready to leave the Dover mortuary, there is an announcement made over the buildings intercom system. With the announcement, all service members working at the mortuary, regardless of service branch, stop work and form up along the driveway to render a slow ceremonial salute as the hearse departs. Escorts also participated in each formation until it was their time to leave.

On this day there were some civilian workers doing construction on the mortuary grounds. As each hearse passed, they would stoop working and place their hard hats over their hearts. This was my first sign that my mission with PFC Phelps was larger than the Marine Corps and that his family and friends were not grieving alone.

Eventually I was the last escort remaining in the lounge. The Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant in charge of the Marine liaison there came to see me. He had Chance Phelps’s personal effects. He removed each item; a large watch, a wooden cross with a lanyard, two loose dog tags, two dog tags on a chain, and a Saint Christopher medal on a silver chain.

Although we had been briefed that we might be carrying some personal effects of the deceased, this set me aback. Holding his personal effects, I was starting to get to know Chance Phelps. Finally we were ready. I grabbed my bags and went outside. I was somewhat startled when I saw the shipping container, loaded three-quarters of the way in to the back of a black Chevy Suburban that had been modified to carry such cargo. This was the first time I saw my cargo and I was surprised at how large the shipping container was.

The Master Gunnery Sergeant and I verified that the name on the container was Phelps’s then they pushed him the rest of the way in and we left. Now it was PFC Chance Phelps’s turn to receive the military and construction workers honors. He was finally moving towards home.

As I chatted with the driver on the hour-long trip to Philadelphia, it became clear that he considered it an honor to be able to contribute in getting Chance home. He offered his sympathy to the family. I was glad to finally be moving yet apprehensive about what things would be like at the airport. I didn’t want this package to be treated like ordinary cargo yet I knew that the simple logistics of moving around a box this large would have to overrule my preferences.

When we got to the Northwest Airlines cargo terminal at the Philadelphia airport, the cargo handler and hearse driver pulled the shipping container onto a loading bay while I stood to the side and executed a slow salute. Once Chance was safely in the cargo area, and I was satisfied that he would be treated with due care and respect, the hearse driver drove me over to the passenger terminal and dropped me off. As I walked up to the ticketing counter in my uniform, a Northwest employee started to ask me if I knew how to use the automated boarding pass dispenser. Before she could finish another ticketing agent interrupted her. He told me to go straight to the counter then explained to the woman that I was a military escort.

She seemed embarrassed. The woman behind the counter already had tears in her eyes as I was pulling out my government travel voucher. She struggled to find words but managed to express her sympathy for the family and thank me for my service. She upgraded my ticket to first class. After clearing security, I was met by another Northwest Airline employee at the gate. She told me a representative from cargo would be up to take me down to the tarmac to observe the movement and loading of PFC Phelps. I hadn’t really told any of them what my mission was but they all knew.

When the man from the cargo crew met me, he, too, struggled for words. On the tarmac, he told me stories of his childhood as a military brat and repeatedly told me that he was sorry for my loss. I was starting to understand that, even here in Philadelphia, far away from Chance’s hometown, people were mourning with his family. On the tarmac, the cargo crew was silent expect for occasional instructions to each other. I stood to the side and saluted as the conveyor moved Chance to the aircraft. I was relieved when he was finally settled into place.

The rest of the bags were loaded and I watched them shut the cargo bay door before heading back up to board the aircraft. One of the pilots had taken my carry-on bag himself and had it stored next to the cockpit door so he could watch it while I was on the tarmac. As I boarded the plane, I could tell immediately that the flight attendants had already been informed of my mission. They seemed a little choked up as they led me to my seat.

About 45 minutes into our flight I still hadn’t spoken to anyone expect to tell the first class flight attendant that I would prefer water. I was surprised when the flight attendant from the back of the plane suddenly appeared and leaned down to grab my hands. She said, I want you to have this as she pushed a small gold crucifix, with a relief of Jesus, into my hand. It was her lapel pin and it looked somewhat worn. I suspected it had been hers for quite some time. That was the only thing she said to me the entire flight.

When we landed in Minneapolis, I was the first one off the plane. The pilot himself escorted me straight down the side stairs of the exit tunnel to the tarmac. The cargo crew there already knew what was on this plane. They were unloading some of the luggage when an Army sergeant, a fellow escort who had left Dover earlier that day, appeared next to me. His cargo was going to be loaded onto my plane for its continuing leg. We stood side-by-side in the dark and executed a slow salute as Chance was removed from the plane.

The cargo crew at Minneapolis kept Phelps’s shipping case separate from all the other luggage as they waited to take us to the cargo area. I waited with the soldier and we saluted together as his fallen comrade was loaded onto the plane.

My trip with Chance was going to be somewhat unusual in that we were going to have an overnight stopover. We had a late start out of Dover and there was just too much traveling ahead of us to continue on that day. (We still had a flight from Minneapolis to Billings, Montana, then a five-hour drive to the funeral home. That was to be followed by a 90-minute drive to Chance’s hometown.)

I was concerned about leaving him overnight in the Minneapolis cargo area. My ten-minute ride from the tarmac to the cargo holding area eased my apprehension. Just as in Philadelphia, the cargo guys in Minneapolis were extremely respectful and seemed honored to do their part. While talking with them, I learned that the cargo supervisor for Northwest Airlines at the Minneapolis airport is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves. They called him for me and let me talk to him. Once I was satisfied that all would be okay for the night, I asked one of the cargo crew if he would take me back to the terminal so that I could catch my hotel’s shuttle. Instead, he drove me straight to the hotel himself.

At the hotel, the Lieutenant Colonel called me and said he would personally pick me up in the morning and bring me back to the cargo area. Before leaving the airport, I had told the cargo crew that I wanted to come back to the cargo area in the morning rather than go straight to the passenger terminal. I felt bad for leaving Chance overnight and wanted to see the shipping container where I had left it for the night. It was fine. The Lieutenant Colonel made a few phone calls then drove me around to the passenger terminal.

I was met again by a man from the cargo crew and escorted down to the tarmac. The pilot of the plane joined me as I waited for them to bring Chance from the cargo area. The pilot and I talked of his service in the Air Force and how he missed it. I saluted as Chance was moved up the conveyor and onto the plane. It was to be a while before the luggage was to be loaded so the pilot took me up to the board the plane where I could watch the tarmac from a window. With no other passengers yet on board, I talked with the flight attendants and one of the cargo guys. He had been in the Navy and one of the attendants had been in the Air Force. Everywhere I went, people were continuing to tell me their relationship to the military. After all the baggage was aboard, I went back down to the tarmac, inspected the cargo bay, and watched them secure the door.

When we arrived at Billings, I was again the first off the plane. This time Chance’s shipping container was the first item out of the cargo hold. The funeral director had driven five hours up from Riverton, Wyoming to meet us. He shook my hand as if I had personally lost a brother. We moved Chance to a secluded cargo area. Now it was time for me to remove the shipping container and drape the flag over the casket. I had predicted that this would choke me up but I found I was more concerned with proper flag etiquette than the solemnity of the moment. Once the flag was in place, I stood by and saluted as Chance was loaded onto the van from the funeral home. I was thankful that we were in a small airport and the event seemed to go mostly unnoticed.

I picked up my rental car and followed Chance for five hours until we reached Riverton. During the long trip I imagined how my meeting with Chance’s parents would go. I was very nervous about that. When we finally arrived at the funeral home, I had my first face-to-face meeting with the Casualty Assistance Call Officer. It had been his duty to inform the family of Chance’s death. He was on the Inspector/Instructor staff of an infantry company in Salt Lake City, Utah and I knew he had had a difficult week.

Inside I gave the funeral director some of the paperwork from Dover and discussed the plan for the next day. The service was to be at 1400 in the high school gymnasium up in Dubois, population about 900, some 90 miles away. Eventually, we had covered everything. The CACO had some items that the family wanted to be inserted into the casket and I felt I needed to inspect Chance’s uniform to ensure everything was proper. Although it was going to be a closed casket funeral, I still wanted to ensure his uniform was squared away.

Earlier in the day I wasn’t sure how I’d handle this moment. Suddenly, the casket was open and I got my first look at Chance Phelps. His uniform was immaculate a tribute to the professionalism of the Marines at Dover. I noticed that he wore six ribbons over his marksmanship badge; the senior one was his Purple Heart. I had been in the Corps for over 17 years, including a combat tour, and was wearing eight ribbons.

This Private First Class, with less than a year in the Corps, had already earned six. The next morning, I wore my dress blues and followed the hearse for the trip up to Dubois. This was the most difficult leg of our trip for me. I was bracing for the moment when I would meet his parents and hoping I would find the right words as I presented them with Chance’s personal effects.

We got to the high school gym about four hours before the service was to begin. The gym floor was covered with folding chairs neatly lined in rows. There were a few townspeople making final preparations when I stood next to the hearse and saluted as Chance was moved out of the hearse. The sight of a flag-draped coffin was overwhelming to some of the ladies. We moved Chance into the gym to the place of honor. A Marine sergeant, the command representative from Chance’s battalion, met me at the gym. His eyes were watery as he relieved me of watching Chance so that I could go eat lunch and find my hotel.

At the restaurant, the table had a flier announcing Chance s service. Dubois High School gym; two o clock. It also said that the family would be accepting donations so that they could buy flak vests to send to troops in Iraq. I drove back to the gym at a quarter after one. I could’ve walked you could walk to just about anywhere in Dubois in ten minutes.

I had planned to find a quiet room where I could take his things out of their pouch and untangle the chain of the Saint Christopher medal from the dog tag chains and arrange everything before his parents came in. I had twice before removed the items from the pouch to ensure they were all there even though there was no chance anything could’ve fallen out. Each time, the two chains had been quite tangled. I didn’t want to be fumbling around trying to untangle them in front of his parents.

Our meeting, however, didn’t go as expected. I practically bumped into Chance s step-mom accidentally and our introductions began in the noisy hallway outside the gym. In short order I had met Chance s step-mom and father followed by his step-dad and, at last, his mom. I didn’t know how to express to these people my sympathy for their loss and my gratitude for their sacrifice. Now, however, they were repeatedly thanking me for bringing their son home and for my service. I was humbled beyond words.

I told them that I had some of Chance’s things and asked if we could try to find a quiet place. The five of us ended up in what appeared to be a computer lab not what I had envisioned for this occasion. After we had arranged five chairs around a small table, I told them about our trip. I told them how, at every step, Chance was treated with respect, dignity, and honor. I told them about the staff at Dover and all the folks at Northwest Airlines. I tried to convey how the entire Nation, from Dover to Philadelphia, to Minneapolis, to Billings, and Riverton expressed grief and sympathy over their loss.

Finally, it was time to open the pouch. The first item I happened to pull out was Chance’s large watch. It was still set to Baghdad time. Next were the lanyard and the wooden cross. Then the dog tags and the Saint Christopher medal. This time the chains were not tangled. Once all of his items were laid out on the table, I told his mom that I had one other item to give them. I retrieved the flight attendant’s crucifix from my pocket and told its story. I set that on the table and excused myself.

When I next saw Chance’s mom, she was wearing the crucifix on her lapel. By 1400 most of the seats on the gym floor were filled and people were finding seats in the fixed bleachers high above the gym floor. There were a surprising number of people in military uniform. Many Marines had come up from Salt Lake City. Men from various VFW posts and the Marine Corps League occupied multiple rows of folding chairs.

We all stood as Chance’s family took their seats in the front. It turned out the Chance’s sister, a Petty Officer in the Navy, worked for a Rear Admiral the Chief of Naval Intelligence at the Pentagon. The Admiral had brought many of the sailors on his staff with him to Dubois pay respects to Chance and support his sister. After a few songs and some words from a Navy Chaplain, the Admiral took the microphone and told us how Chance had died.

Chance was an artillery cannoneer and his unit was acting as provisional military police outside of Baghdad. Chance had volunteered to man a .50 caliber machine gun in the turret of the leading vehicle in a convoy. The convoy came under intense fire but Chance stayed true to his post and returned fire with the big gun, covering the rest of the convoy, until he was fatally wounded.

Then the commander of the local VFW post read some of the letters Chance had written home. In letters to his mom he talked of the mosquitoes and the heat. In letters to his stepfather he told of the dangers of convoy operations and of receiving fire. The service was a fitting tribute to this hero. When it was over, we stood as the casket was wheeled out with the family following. The casket was placed onto a horse-drawn carriage for the mile-long trip from the gym, down the main street, then up the steep hill to the cemetery.

I stood alone and saluted as the carriage departed the high school. I found my car and joined Chance s convoy. The town seemingly went from the gym to the street. All along the route, the people had lined the street and were waving small American flags. The flags that were otherwise posted were all at half-staff. For the last quarter mile up the hill, local boy scouts, spaced about 20 feet apart, all in uniform, held large flags. At the foot of the hill, I could look up and back and see the enormity of our procession.

I wondered how many people would be at this funeral if it were in, say, Detroit or Los Angeles probably not as many as were here in little Dubois, Wyoming. The carriage stopped about 15 yards from the grave and the military pall bearers and the family waited until the men of the VFW and Marine Corps league were formed up and schools busses had arrived carrying many of the people from the procession route. Once the entire crowd was in place, the pallbearers came to attention and began to remove the casket from the caisson.

As I had done all week, I came to attention and executed a slow ceremonial salute as Chance was being transferred from one mode of transport to another. From Dover to Philadelphia; Philadelphia to Minneapolis; Minneapolis to Billings; Billings to Riverton; and Riverton to Dubois we had been together. Now, as I watched them carry him the final 15 yards, I was choking up. I felt that, as long as he was still moving, he was somehow still alive.

Then they put him down above his grave. He had stopped moving. Although my mission had been officially complete once I turned him over to the funeral director at the Billings airport, it was his placement at his grave that really concluded it in my mind. Now, he was home to stay and I suddenly felt at once sad, relieved, and useless. The chaplain said some words that I couldn’t hear and two Marines removed the flag from the casket and slowly folded it for presentation to his mother.

When the ceremony was over, Chance s father placed a ribbon from his service in Vietnam on Chance s casket. His mother approached the casket and took something from her blouse and put it on the casket. I later saw that it was the flight attendant’s crucifix. Eventually friends of Chance’s moved closer to the grave. A young man put a can of Copenhagen on the casket and many others left flowers.

Finally, we all went back to the gym for a reception. There was enough food to feed the entire population for a few days. In one corner of the gym there was a table set up with lots of pictures of Chance and some of his sports awards. People were continually approaching me and the other Marines to thank us for our service. Almost all of them had some story to tell about their connection to the military.

About an hour into the reception, I had the impression that every man in Wyoming had, at one time or another, been in the service. It seemed like every time I saw Chance’s mom she was hugging a different well wisher. As time passed, I began to hear people laughing. We were starting to heal.

After a few hours at the gym, I went back to the hotel to change out of my dress blues. The local VFW post had invited everyone over to celebrate Chance’s life. The Post was on the other end of town from my hotel and the drive took less than two minutes. The crowd was somewhat smaller than what had been at the gym but the Post was packed. Marines were playing pool at the two tables near the entrance and most of the VFW members were at the bar or around the tables in the bar area. The largest room in the Post was a banquet/dinning/dancing area and it was now called The Chance Phelps Room. Above the entry were two items: a large portrait of Chance in his dress blues and the Eagle, Globe, & Anchor.

In one corner of the room there was another memorial to Chance. There were candles burning around another picture of him in his blues. On the table surrounding his photo were his Purple Heart citation and his Purple Heart medal. There was also a framed copy of an excerpt from the Congressional Record. This was an elegant tribute to Chance Phelps delivered on the floor of the United States House of Representatives by Congressman Scott McInnis of Colorado.

Above it all was a television that was playing a photo montage of Chance’s life from small boy to proud Marine. I did not buy a drink that night. As had been happening all day, indeed all week, people were thanking me for my service and for bringing Chance home. Now, in addition to words and handshakes, they were thanking me with beer. I fell in with the men who had handled the horses and horse-drawn carriage. I learned that they had worked through the night to groom and prepare the horses for Chance’s last ride. They were all very grateful that they were able to contribute.

After a while we all gathered in the Chance Phelps room for the formal dedication. The Post commander told us of how Chance had been so looking forward to becoming a Life Member of the VFW. Now, in the Chance Phelps Room of the Dubois, Wyoming post, he would be an eternal member. We all raised our beers and the Chance Phelps room was christened.

Later, as I was walking toward the pool tables, a Staff Sergeant form the Reserve unit in Salt Lake grabbed me and said, Sir, you gotta hear this. There were two other Marines with him and he told the younger one, a Lance Corporal, to tell me his story. The Staff Sergeant said the Lance Corporal was normally too shy and modest to tell it but now he’d had enough beer to overcome his usual tendencies. As the Lance Corporal started to talk, an older man joined our circle. He wore a baseball cap that indicated he had been with the 1st Marine Division in Korea. Earlier in the evening he had told me about one of his former commanding officers; a Colonel Puller.

So, there I was, standing in a circle with three Marines recently returned from fighting with the 1st Marine Division in Iraq and one not so recently returned from fighting with the 1st Marine Division in Korea. I, who had fought with the 1st Marine Division in Kuwait, was about to gain a new insight into our Corps. The young Lance Corporal began to tell us his story. At that moment, in this circle of current and former Marines, the differences in our ages and ranks dissipated we were all simply Marines.

His squad had been on a patrol through a city street. They had taken small arms fire and had literally dodged an RPG round that sailed between two Marines. At one point they received fire from behind a wall and had neutralized the sniper with a SMAW round. The back blast of the SMAW, however, kicked up a substantial rock that hammered the Lance Corporal in the thigh; only missing his groin because he had reflexively turned his body sideways at the shot.

Their squad had suffered some wounded and was receiving more sniper fire when suddenly he was hit in the head by an AK-47 round. I was stunned as he told us how he felt like a baseball bat had been slammed into his head. He had spun around and fell unconscious. When he came to, he had a severe scalp wound but his Kevlar helmet had saved his life.

He continued with his unit for a few days before realizing he was suffering the effects of a severe concussion. As I stood there in the circle with the old man and the other Marines, the Staff Sergeant finished the story. He told of how this Lance Corporal had begged and pleaded with the Battalion surgeon to let him stay with his unit. In the end, the doctor said there was just no way he had suffered a severe and traumatic head wound and would have to be med evaced.

The Marine Corps is a special fraternity. There are moments when we are reminded of this. Interestingly, those moments don t always happen at awards ceremonies or in dress blues at Birthday Balls. I have found, rather, that they occur at unexpected times and places: next to a loaded moving van at Camp Lejeune’s base housing, in a dirty CP tent in northern Saudi Arabia, and in a smoky VFW post in western Wyoming.

After the story was done, the Lance Corporal stepped over to the old man, put his arm over the man’s shoulder and told him that he, the Korean War vet, was his hero. The two of them stood there with their arms over each other’s shoulders and we were all silent for a moment. When they let go, I told the Lance Corporal that there were recruits down on the yellow footprints tonight that would soon be learning his story.

I was finished drinking beer and telling stories. I found Chance’s father and shook his hand one more time. Chance’s mom had already left and I deeply regretted not being able to tell her goodbye. I left Dubois in the morning before sunrise for my long drive back to Billings. It had been my honor to take Chance Phelps to his final post. Now he was on the high ground overlooking his town.

I miss him.

Regards,

LtCol Strobl

This post was submitted by reader Jonathan Cook.

~ Alan

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I just wanted to share our family’s Memorial Day offering:

My wife’s great-uncle Hiram Clifford Pitts (Clifford to family and friends - he did not like Hiram), from Fort Pierce, FL enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1942 leaving his mother, six siblings, and a fiancee behind. He became a 2nd LT flying a P-38 with the 96th Fighter Squadron/82nd Fighter Group/12th Air Force (later 15th Air Force). He was first based in North Africa and later Sicily and mainland Italy. By December 1943 he had three confirmed air victories and two probables. There is one account that states he may have had other victories, but the record isn’t clear and many of his personnel records were destroyed in a fire in a records repository in St. Louis.

On Christmas Day 1943, while escorting bombers over Italy his plane was damaged either directly or indirectly during a mid-air collision with an Me-109. He was able to bail out of his plane. His parachute did not open.

At that same time one ocean and half a sea away, his mother woke out of her sleep and knew Clifford was gone. She received official notification of his MIA status in January 1943. His status was changed to KIA in June 1944. We have a picture of her standing somberly as a Purple Heart is pinned to his empty uniform. In all, he received the Purple Heart and an Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters. His body now rests in Plot A/Row 13/Grave 30 at Florence American Cemetary in Florence, Italy. He shares that hallowed ground with 4,401 other American service members.

So, on this Memorial Day I want to pay my respects in Clifford’s memory to all those heroes past and present, known and unknown who gave all for the freedom we enjoy.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Cook

This post was submitted by reader Stephen.

~ Alan

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Elements Of Chance (originally posted here)

You there! under shaded haven true
In ease, who fill your days near shelter’s bole.
How ill is known…of leaves o’er arching you,
Broad trunk and branch conveyed of Monticello soul.

…Of at your feet strewn green, and brown, and gray
Imparting rustle massed of plaintive cries;
Grand knotted roots drink deep in streaming clay,
From such a flood at plaint, wellsprings there in reprise.

They’ve taken fire in half a million fights
At other houses, quarters—park and square.
Great stretches done to black—oppression’s blight
Ran dark, diseased with ruin over there.

On other houses, quarters—park and square,
And others living fearful, pinched and hard—
Reflect and ponder; ruin ever there—
And why it is so quiet in your yard.

Such ones! who plunge their hands in living seethe
Such cast, such die—lest all should come to harm.
Distinct it is when any cease to breathe;
He held him as his blood dripped off his arm.

Forgone the time and forfeited the sweet;
Their greatest sacrifice, as some would say.
Good words alleged by unattached elite
Who speak of sacrifice in common way.

But such! they measure not as you or I;
Uneasy they, to dwell at tyrant’s let.
The things we may allow can never vie
For those who live no value under threat.

And burnt off from their rule our banal score;
Accorded minds were cast, then forged anew.
There matters much, and little, when at war—
Not high, not low, not whence, but what they do.

Then how are we to take the measure say,
When Tillman, Chance, or Dunham—others fall.
Why, see them as they are! they willing weigh
Their measure, simply said, at all for all.

Outside them, never shortage drought or dearth
Of disaffected, boasting pained complaint.
Yea, betters show us duty on this earth,
And some are something very near a saint.

Though Heroes live and die to scattered care,
There’s honor understanding honor’s guard.
Reflect and ponder; who is willing there
And why, it is so quiet in your yard.

This post was submitted by reader A. Saadya.

~ Alan

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Just a simple word of thanks to all those who are currently serving in
the military of the United States and its allies, and especially to our
Commander-in-Chief, President Bush.

For those men and women of every conceivable ethnic group who gave their
lives to protect our country, I stand humbly for a moment of silence. I
can never fully appreciate your sacrifice. May you rest in peace.

A. Saadya

This post was submitted by reader Wayne Fielder.

~ Alan

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Staff Sergeant Arthur Lee Tackett joined the Army in 1942 as a member of
the 82nd Airborne. He completed Basic Training at Fort Bragg and moved
on to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, to join the new 101st Airborne gaining
the Glider Infantry Badge. He took part in the D-Day invasion, marched
through France and Belgium, endured the seige of Bastogne and worked his
way back home in 1945 to see his 3 year old daughter for the first time.

Sergeant Tackett began a new career with Ashland Oil Company in
Catlettsburg Kentucky as a Welder. Hanging up his Sergeant stripes
replacing them with the Ruptured Duck lapel pin. He raised his daughter
to eventually become a Registered Nurse. He reluctantly accepted the
fact that she eloped to marry her husband which he quickly grew to like
both as son in law and friend. He spoiled his new grandson as often as
possible until 1976 when he died of lung cancer.

His wife called him Tack. His daughter called him Dad. His son in law
called him Mr. Tackett. His friends called him Art. His grandson
called him Papaw.

His grandson wasn’t old enough at the time of his death to even consider
discussing the war and his experiences during the war. The fact is that
he never talked much about the war to anyone. It was sufficient for him
that he did what he had to do. In the years after Sergeant Tackett’s
death, his grandson researched the activities of the 426th Quartermaster
Company of the 101st Airborne Division and came to respect the man in a
way the Sergeant would probably find quite entertaining.

I miss you Papaw.

This post was submitted by reader Jeff B.

~ Alan

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On this special day, I hope that all living free people will stop and pray/give thanks to all the men and women that sacrificed the wonderful life we take for granted. We should also stand in awe of the men and women that live to this day with the memories of the admission they paid, while we got in free. If those that wish to change this country, from what our heroes fought to preserve, cannot clear their minds for one day to reflect and respect, may I be worthy of those hero’s sacrifice and have tolerance for one day.

On Tuesday, I will continue to digitally defend the heartland from the enemy within and castrate those within reach.

PS. I must say what a pleasure it has been, in hard times, to meet the finest people on Com-Po.

PS Disclaimer: X, NNTK, Tony F., Pass, liberals, etc., who are all real enemies of freedom and the United States.

PSS. Beer is good.

This post was submitted by reader Richard Santalesa.

~ Alan

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Memorial Day - What’s the price of freedom?

Every Memorial Day weekend I watch a WWII war movie. For this Memorial Day weekend I rented Bataan, courtesy of Netflix. Bataan was released in 1943, during WWII, before we returned to the Philippines, and included a very young, pre-I Love Lucy, Desi Arnez as Corp. Felix Ramirez. I was stuck home today waiting for the siding guy to give me an estimate, and so I popped the movie in. This movie would appall the Euro can’t-we-all-get-along crowd.

The plot centers around a single squad of thirteen men. There’s no sweeping battle field; no epic tactics involved. Thrown together from other units the squad’s mission is: blow up a bridge, and prevent the “Japs” from crossing and outflanking the remains of the U.S. army to the south. Everyone in the squad dies by the end. Let that sink in. That’s a 100% KIA rate by the time the final credits roll.

Yet, they accomplished their mission, and if any one line stands out — again the movie is not an epic — it’s the line the Sgt., played by Robert Taylor, speaks to one young soldier. He delivers it at the point when the squad has been whittled down to three, and has just finished a brutal hand-to-hand battle with grenades flying like spitballs, thumping tommy guns spitting clouds of smoke, bayoneting galore, and a samurai sword decapitation (though sans today’s level of gore). The Sgt. states, without fanfare, that “it doesn’t matter where a man dies, as long as he dies for freedom.”

But do those words still resonate in 2004? What would we do today, given a political climate evidenced by Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, and their minions, were we called upon to fight an all-out-war that would absolutely result in large casualties? On one level the question’s more rhetorical than practical, given our military superiority, and the level of technical precision and prowess today’s military brings to bear compared to the pre-digital WWII era.

Although the world of 2004 is not the world of 1941, and I have great faith in the American people, I wonder if the intestinal fortitude needed to ensure we remain the “land of the free and home of the brave” remains. As a law student, the creeping federalization of criminal law, and the rise of zero tolerance idiocy troubles me deeply. But, freedom ultimately boils down to enough people sharing the values our country was founded upon, and being willing to fight for them.

Living in northern Queens, New York City, where the nearest main thoroughfare is Francis Lewis Blvd., I enjoy asking people if they know who Francis Lewis was [bio here]. Few do. Few know he signed the Declaration of Independence, or that his

“house [in what is now Whitestone, Queens,] was plundered by a party of British light horse. His extensive library and valuable papers of every description were wantonly destroyed. . . . [the British] thirsted for revenge upon a man, who had dared to affix his signature to a document, which proclaimed the independence of America. Unfortunately Mrs. Lewis fell into their power, and was retained a prisoner for several months. [She died shortly after her release.]”

Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence 193-197 (New York: William Reed & Co., 1856); see also Benson J. Lossing, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (reprinting the original 1848 edition).

The price of freedom can be very high. Can it ever be too high? Would I be willing to — knowing it would mean the loss of everything, the death of my dear wife, and a future populace that cared little about my sacrifice — have signed the Declaration? That’s a question one can only answer honestly alone in the middle of the deep dark night. The price of freedom can be very high — as it was for virtually every signer of the Declaration, (see What Happened to the 56 Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence, available at http://www.patriotparty.us/documents/bios/price.htm). Granted, Francis Lewis and the other signers couldn’t know what fate awaited them, but surely they knew with certainly what their fate would be should the British capture them.

Memorial Day is the day we, as Americans, reflect on the sacrifices made by those who could and did answer the question of “what’s the price of freedom?” It’s a question worth revisiting every year.

30

Michele and I posted Friday that we’d accept and post on the Op-Ed page any Memorial Day tribute or thoughts readers would forward. We’ve received several, and will be posting them here throughout the day. We’ll continue to do so through midnight EDT tonight; email any submissions to alan at command-post dot org.

We’ll also be bringing you the best professional memorials we can find, and will also be posting those in this space.

And finally, to the families of those who gave the last full measure: you have my wishes and my gratitude.

General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.): 10 mistakes in Iraq War strategy.

Finally: an antidote for the nattering nabobs of negativism in the American mainstream media: an interview with the no-nonsense Jon Schaffer of the band “Iced Earth.” As posted on the “Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles” website:

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BW&BK: “This next question is controversial so I’m letting you know before we proceed. Some political analysts have articulated the view that what happened on September 11 was justified due to America’s presence in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. Some political analysts view it as retaliation for what the US has done in the Middle East in the past. As a Canadian, I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this view that’s been put forth by analysts.”

JS: “No, it wasn’t justified. Not at all. And anybody who says so needs to have their fuckin’ head examined.”

BW&BK: “Do you think 9/11 will be viewed as the first event in the US empire’s decline and fall?”

JS: “No. This is not an empire, first of all. If the United States was an empire, your country would be our 51st state.”

BW&BK: “I understand.”

JS: “Let’s get real. We don’t do that. It’s not our thing. Colin Powell did an interview and the interviewer called the United States an empire and used this bullshit fuckin’ socialist language and his response was, ‘The only land we’ve ever asked for is enough for the kids who don’t come home. In all the countries we’ve gone and liberated as far back as WWII, the only land we’ve asked for is for our soldiers that died.’ There’s an over-whelming amount of jealousy and resentment out there. When you’re the leader, everyone comes to you when they need help. But then they shit on you every chance they get. You can never please everybody all the time. No matter what you do. You can try to do the best things, and no matter what someone is out to get you and tear you down. It’s in that way in any scale of leadership. I don’t care if it’s a personal thing or a country or a commander of a battalion. It’s human nature, it’s unfortunate. But it’s the way it is.”

- - - - - - -

- - - - - - -

BW&BK: “I’ve got one more question here.”

JS: “Ok.”

BW&BK: “Do you think the Democrats or a leftist government would do some good in the US? Because, like I said, I’m from Canada and we’ve always had a left-of-centre government. And we don’t seem to have a lot of the problems the US has — crime and poverty aren’t as rampant here. Do you think a leftist government could do something positive for the States?”

JS: “No. There have been times throughout the history of the country where it’s happened. But the whole idea of this country is not to have a government tit. We don’t stand for that. There are people who would probably like that, and they should probably move to Canada. I don’t want a Big Brother dictating my life. It’s a lack of drive. The people who want that stuff are the people who never really got their hands dirty and busted their asses to achieve something. There’s a big difference. It’s the difference between us and a lot of places. If I live on the streets as a teenager to make my goals a reality or I pay my dues or if I’m a student who’s gone to school for 12 years to attain some career and then I get out of school and work my way up through a certain business or whatever, I don’t feel like I should be taxed to death to pay for all these government programs that the leftists want. I’m an independent person, the smaller the government the better. Government should not be ruling people’s lives. It’s bullshit and that’s not what we’re about. I know the ultra-liberal thing is let’s throw a bunch of money at something and that’ll fix it. Well, I think the facts prove that’s horseshit. The Republicans — the party of Lincoln — but in the last 30 or 40 years the black voters have been voting big-time…”

BW&BK: “Democrat.”

JS: “Democrat, yeah! But where have the Democrats gotten the blacks? Look at it for what it is. You guys have a whole different way of looking at things up there. That’s fine, but it’s not our thing.”

BW&BK: “I understand.”

JS: “The majority of the people here would rather — and I’m talking about the doers, not the people who want the hand-outs, or are the victims, or blame all their troubles on others — don’t want government in their lives dictating what they should do. People like me who bust their asses to achieve something and a specific goal, we don’t want to be taxed to death. We want to be in control of our lives. And that’s the American way. If it’s too hard for you, well then leave it. What else can you say? I’ve never said the United States is an easy place to live. But the reality is that you can come from absolutely nothing and accomplish anything. And that’s worth a lot.”

BW&BK: “I agree. So, that’s pretty much it for the interview. I want to thank you for doing this interview because I know how these controversial interviews can sometimes go. But you were really insightful, and that was really cool.”

JS: “The thing is, you’re going to spin this however you want and I have no control over that. That’s what most of the guys in the press do. I’ll give an interview, and then they’ll edit out certain things. It’s like CNN, the Communist News Network. You deliver a story a certain way and try to get people to think a certain way. So, it’s basically in your hands. You or your editor can make it look however you guys want it to. At the end of the day, I don’t really give a fuck what people think. And you’re more than welcome to print this. I am who I am. I don’t have to answer to anybody. I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done to get where I am. I’m an honest guy and I’m a straight shooter. And you can print all that. I won’t be judged by another human being, especially some snot-nosed kid who’s never had to work a day in his life for anything. You know how it is, man. A lot of people think they are a wealth of knowledge. I have real-world education. I left high school when I was 16, but I graduated from the school of hard knocks.”

BW&BK: “And you know what? That’s valuable. There’s a lot of shit you learn on the streets you can’t learn in a classroom.”

JS: “Totally, man! I know several people who were in college for six years and are now making 30 grand a year. It’s all about attitude, man. And that’s what I love about my country. That I was able to split at 16 and just work towards a specific goal. But, I didn’t make excuses either. If I failed, I took responsibility for it, I learned from it and I picked myself up and moved on. It’s the people who always say, ‘Man, my girlfriend didn’t want me to go to practice.’ Whatever, I’ve heard a million excuses. They’ll blame it on some other deal. Those are the ones who never make it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s being in a band or any other goal. Unless you take responsibility for your own actions and you’re hard on yourself and you push yourself and you take responsibility for your own actions and you’re honest with yourself.”

BW&BK: “I’m glad you ended it on that note. I’m as proud to be Canadian as you are to be American. Your words speak for themselves, and I don’t know how I could spin this story.”

JS: “Well, that’s cool. But the way you asked your questions, you were asking biased questions. Calling our president the Bush regime? That’s a tainted thing, dude. That’s not like saying, ‘How do you feel about President Bush?’ Saying ‘Bush Regime’ is a bullshit way of saying it. That’s spin, alright? But you can say it however you want. It’s in your hands. You’re the one who has to live with it, not me. Because I’m cool with who I am. I’m doing an interview for the DVD tomorrow.”

BW&BK: “Oh yeah?”

JS: “Yeah, so the fans can actually hear direct and see me and hear me talking and saying it. And they’ll know who I am. They won’t have to go through the dickheads at Blabbermouth who take things out of context and spread lies and innuendo.”

BW&BK: “(chuckles) I understand, man.”

JS: “The fans will see the real deal with the DVD.”

BW&BK: “Well, thanks a lot for the interview, I really appreciate it like I said.”

JS: “You got it, man.”

BW&BK: “Alright, see you on tour, dude!”

JS: “See ya! Bye.”

- - - - - - -

Via Andrew Sullivan (under “HARD ROCK VS. CHOMSKY”).

Here’s the website for Iced Earth. I think I’ll go buy one of their CD’s. Good job, mate!

And, while I’m one the topic, there’s something that’s really been bothering me lately. I’m sick and tired of everyone (including way too many conservatives) saying President Bush and the Administration did a good job of waging the war, but have done a bad job of “managing the peace.” I think this is utter, laughable, inane bullshit.

We took a country that has never known democracy or individual liberties - and which was in a state of utter disrepair with regard to its public services and infrastructure. We’ve taken this basket-case country and we’re on the verge of an interim Iraqi government leading to free elections.

We’ve put down brutal insurgency after brutal insurgency and we’ve brought basic services to the people (schools, hospitals, power, water, food, telephones, internet access, etc.).

In short, I THINK WE‘VE DONE AN AWESOME JOB OF MANAGING THE PEACE! And in my humble opinion, anyone who doesn’t think so is a gutless-wonder arm-chair quarterback. If we listened to these gutless wonders we’d never do anything - we’d just wring our hands over the “complexity of the situation” and leave blood-stained brutes like Saddam Hussein in power forever.

The anti-war whiners around the world have no credibility. If they’d gotten their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power - filling mass graves - and Uday Hussein would still be picking women off the streets of Baghdad to rape and kill them. Nice morality you have there, anti-war lefties.

Don’t listen to them, troops. Most of us know the truth: you’ve done an outstanding job at winning the war and you’ve done an outstanding job of managing the peace!

God bless you and keep up the good work!

And President Bush: you’ve done a great job too. I may be one of the few to come right out and say it (in even the conservative blogosphere). Great job. Here’s hoping for four more years.

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

This Monday is Memorial Day in the United States, our annual day of remembrance for those who have given their lives in military service of our country. With the war in Iraq, Memorial Day this year promises to be more poignant than in several years past. As such, we want to honor our war dead on these pages as well.

On Monday, May 31st, Michele and I will publish readers’ Memorial Day remembrances on our Op-Ed page. Remembrances may reflect on the meaning of the day, or may offer a memorial to a particular person or people who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country, regardless of war or theater. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the day, remember a particular person, or just say thank you to those who have served, we welcome your words.

We will accept and post any submission as we receive it and without editing, presuming it is appropriate to the tenor of the call above, and that it honors our standards of respectful and civil discourse.

If you’d like your thoughts, or your remembrance of a fallen soldier or soldiers, to be posted this Monday, please email your submission to alan at command-post dot org.

[The following was written by Matt of the weblog BlackFive. It originally appeared here and is reprinted with permission of the author. We thank Matt of allowing us to share this story with you, especially with Memorial Day approaching]

Major Mathew Schram’s Memorial Day

Memorial Day is like any other day when you’re in an Army at War.

On Memorial Day, May 26th, 2003 at approximately 7:00AM, Major Mathew E. Schram was leading a resupply convoy in Western Iraq near the Syrian border. Major Schram was the Support Operations Officer for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (out of Ft. Carson, Colorado). He had responsibility for organizing the logistical arm of the regiment - ensuring that the Cavalrymen never ran out of food, fuel or ammo.

Normally, Major Schram would not accompany the convoys as his responsibilities kept him at the main resupply point. However, due to the problems with attacks on supply convoys (i.e. Jessica Lynch’s 507th aintenance Company ambush), he decided to lead this one. He also decided that there was a side benefit to the ride - he would be able to talk with the field commanders and troops that he supported. Major Schram wanted to make sure that his “customers” were happy. Anyone who knew Mat Schram knew that he was obsessive-compulsive about making sure “his soldiers” were taken care of…that’s why he was one of the top logistical officers in the US Army.

Major Schram’s convoy consisted of eight vehicles - one 5,000 gallon water tanker, two 3,000 gallon water trucks, one water pump truck, two 5,000 gallon fuel tankers, one truck with MREs and bottled water, and Major Schram’s command Humvee (bumper numbers: S&T 323, 344, 350, 237, 210, 204, 219, and HQ12).

The convoy was headed North from Al Asad Airbase - Foward Operating Base (FOB) Webster (grid coordinate KC 640 430) along Route 12 to FOB Jenna (KC 360 748).

After delivering supplies at Jenna, the convoy would continue on to Al Qaim - FOB Tiger (GT 146 911) which had the 1/3 Armored Cavalry.

At 7:15AM, vicinity KC 6514 6181, Major Schram’s convoy approached a ravine where the bridge crossing the ravine had been destroyed. The convoy had to go down the embankment, into the ravine, and back up the other side to get back onto the highway.

Once the lead vehicle started up the far bank of the ravine, the convoy came under intense fire from Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), machine guns, and small arms fire. It was an ambush. Fifteen Iraqi insurgents had been waiting by the ravine.

An RPG hit the lead tanker vehicle, disabling it in the kill zone. It was a perfect ambush set up. If the insurgents could knock out the first and last vehicles, then the entire convoy would be stuck in the kill zone. Bullets flew from insurgents on both sides of the ravine. The insurgent grenadiers were trying to concentrate fire on the last American vehicle to bottle Major Schram’s convoy in the ravine. The attackers would then be able to kill the Americans at
will.

Major Schram ordered his driver, Specialist Chris Van Dyke, to accelerate from their position in the convoy into the insurgents’ positions. Major Schram sent a
message to Headquarters for help and began returning fire out of the Humvee. The Iraqi grenadiers recognized the threat and shifted their fire from the rear truck to Schram’s Humvee, HQ-12.

Multiple grenades exploded at the front and rear of HQ-12. Specialist Van Dyke was blown out of the vehicle. Once he stopped rolling on the ground, he got up and ran back to HQ-12. He got back in and drove the Humvee out of the Kill Zone.

When he turned to get orders from Major Schram, Van Dyke realized that his Major had been killed. Even though he wore body armor, two 7.62 rounds had gone through his armpit (where there is no body armor coverage) and struck his heart, killing him instantly.

The Iraqi insurgents had fled after they fired their grenades at HQ-12 which was heading for them at full throttle.

Immediately, from a nearby FOB, two Apache helicopter gunships were launched along with a MedEvac helicopter. A Quick Reaction Force from FOB Webster was on the scene in less than ten minutes. Aside from the death of Mathew Schram, the convoy suffered only two wounded. Specialist Van Dyke was wounded in his hand and was able to continue his mission. One other
soldier in the lead vehicle suffered a broken femur from the initial grenade attack.

The MedEvac brought Major Schram’s body and the injured soldier back to the hospital at FOB Webster.

The military conducted a funeral for Major Schram in Iraq. Two hundred soldiers were present. Everyone that knew Mat loved him.

The military said it would take ten days to get Mat Schram’s body to his family in Wisconsin. It took less than a few days. Also, in a few days after the
ambush, the Army had rounded up all of the attackers and put them in prison.

I was at my desk at work on Tuesday, June 3rd. The phone rang. I looked at the caller ID to see that it was a call from Ft. Leavenworth. I picked it up. It was John, a friend of mine and Mat Schram’s. We had all served together years ago and had stayed in touch. He told me to sit down. I did. He told me
that Mat had been killed in Iraq.

After composing myself, we finished our conversation and I promised to see John’s wife, Patti, at the funeral. John had to be at Special Operations Command and couldn’t make it.

I shut the door to my office, sat back down at my desk and wept for a long time.

At the funeral, Mat’s family displayed his last letters and emails that he sent. All were strong, positive messages (sooo very Schrambo-like). Here’s an example of the kinds of things that Mat told his family (from the Green Bay Gazette):

Phil Schram of Hartland said his brother had visited Wisconsin over Christmas. The family knew then war was likely. Mathew Schram had been involved in the first Persian Gulf War and, later, in Somalia.

“He was anxious to get over there and get to work. He loved the military. He loved the structure. He loved serving under George W. (Bush),” Phil Schram
said.

The one part that I left out of this post is that Major Schram’s convoy was followed by a car with a Newsweek reporter in it. Once the action began, the reporter and his driver turned and got the hell out of there. If it wasn’t for Mat’s charge up into the ambushers, they never would have made it out of there alive.

Newsweek never ran a story about my good friend, Mat. It took a few weeks for me to decide what to do.

I had been reading Stephen Den Beste, Bill Whittle, Frank J.’s IMAO, and Misha for awhile at that point.

I started Blackfive and decided to write about Mat and other Americans like him - people that Newsweek would never tell you about.

It’s Mat Schram’s blog as much as it is mine.

So, today, on the anniversary of the sacrifice of my friend, please take a moment to pray for the families who have lost their loved ones in our fight against terror. Mat would have liked that.

One last note, there is a way to contribute to help Mat’s fellow Officers attend graduate school. Some of Mat’s family and friends got together to create:

The Major Mathew Earl Schram ALMC-LEDC/FT Endowed Fellowship

The fellowship, for Florida Institute of Technology’s School of Extended Graduate Studies ’ (SEGS) Ft. Lee, Va. center, will support U.S. military officers
enrolled in the SEGS Logistics Executive Development Course (LEDC)-Florida Tech (FT) cooperative graduate degree program. The program is at the Army Logistics Management College at Fort Lee. Major Mathew Schram
graduated from this school in 2001. This is the first fellowship established for a Florida Tech SEGS center.

The endowment will support one or more annual fellowships for military officers. The first fellowship will be awarded for the fall 2004 semester. To make a contribution to the fellowship, call the Florida Tech Office of Development at (321) 674-8962.

About the author: Matt started in the U.S. Army as a Private in 1985 and left in July of 2001 as a Major. His last assignment, before he resigned a few years ago, was as Executive Officer (second in command) for a team at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

[Ed note: You can read more stories like this over at BlackFive. I especially recommend Taking Chance Home, or any of the posts listed here.]

Lately, it seems that not a day can pass without Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, John Kerry and their ideological soul mates in the mainstream media making acerbic comments about how the Bush administration has handled the war on terrorism. For those of us who disagree with them, it is easy enough to “attack the attackers” and many people, myself included, have done exactly that. However, in and of itself, that is not an adequate response. Instead of debating whether or not the war on terror has been a failure, the truth, that war on terror has been an overwhelming success so far, must be told.

Despite what we hear daily from the “nattering nabobs of negativity” in our country, we should be proud of the magnificent job that George W. Bush, his administration, our troops, and our intelligence services have done fighting the war on terrorism. In perhaps the two most perfectly executed military campaigns ever waged on this earth, our troops smashed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s regime, freeing 50 million people from tyrants who had made the lives of their people into a living hell.

In Afghanistan, we were told going in that the war would be long, difficult, and perhaps even unwinnable. A lesser man than George Bush might have gotten weak kneed at the prospect of sending our troops into a “mountainous Vietnam” and found some sort of excuse not to go. But, not only did we take the fight to our enemies in Afghanistan, we bombed Al-Qaeda’s camps, decimated the Taliban, drove them out of power in less than two months, and sent our enemies running to Pakistan and remote caves on the Afghan border, where they live even today as hunted men. This is even more impressive than it sounds since our defeatist press was crying “quagmire” & “Vietnam” as we bombed our enemies into oblivion.

Then in Iraq, we removed Saddam Hussein, an anti-American tyrant & sponsor of terrorism who started two wars of aggression in the region while he simultaneously raped, tortured, and butchered his own people with a zeal matched by few figures in modern history. Once the war began, the performance of our military was again incomparable. Saddam’s forces were defeated, scattered to the four winds in less than a month, even as the press, a week into the war, was again baying the dreaded “V word” loud and often.

Since then, the occupation of Iraq has been tougher than anticipated, but our troops have performed superbly under the most difficult of circumstances and Iraq is on track towards Democracy. As expected, the press has obsessively focused on the negatives: looting, violence, & Abu Ghraib. But on June 30th, sovereignty will be handed over to the Iraqis and in January of next year, the Iraqis are scheduled to have national elections to go along with the local elections that have happened across most of Iraq already. A cesspool of terrorism & anti-American hatred is being turned into a democracy, one that may help push the whole region towards freedom, because of the rock ribbed leadership of the Bush administration and the brilliant and determined performance of our soldiers on the ground.

But wait, there’s more! Even if there were a terrorist attack inside the continental United States tomorrow, our intelligence agencies and the oft demonized John Ashcroft should be praised for successfully defending the homeland from Al-Qaeda for more than 2 1/2 years of war. How many people would have believed that was possible on September 12, 2001?

Of course, it may have been easier than some had expected to protect our country from Al-Qaeda since roughly 2/3rd’s of Al-Qaeda’s leadership has been captured and around 3000 rank and file members of Al-Qaeda have been “incapacitated” since 9/11. Perhaps that’s also one of the reasons why, in 2003, annual international terrorist attacks dropped to their lowest level since 1969.

Furthermore, formerly “terrorist friendly” nations like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Libya are now fervently pursuing terrorists inside of their own borders. And speaking of Pakistan and Libya, a nuclear arms ring based out of Pakistan is now out of business and one of its best customers, Libya, has now given up its WMD programs and is attempting to rejoin the family of nations. All of this is thanks to George Bush’s diplomacy.

However, all of these triumphs for America are ignored by grandstanding politicians and a hostile press which incessantly snipes at the Bush administration, usually over comparatively minor issues. What must be understood is that they’re missing the forest for the trees. Despite the setbacks and difficulties we’ve experienced, President Bush has accomplished more on the foreign policy front in less than one full term than the last 4 Democratic Presidents, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton, did combined!

All this brings to mind a Theodore Roosevelt quote that’s a favorite of mine,

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.”

“The man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood” is one George W. Bush and waging a war on terrorism in an age when defending America has become a partisan issue must certainly be considered “daring greatly”. We are lucky to have such a man in the White House, because like other great American Presidents of times gone by, he is leading America towards victory in a worthy cause.

<b?Note: The following editorial was posted by “DennisThePeasant” at Roger L. Simon’s blog comment’s section. I am posting it here with permission, because it is excellent.

Those who are calling Iraq a disaster have the wrong criteria, and Vietnam comparisons are only appropriate in the nature of some of the internal conflict in the US.

If you accept the premise that the War On Terror is a necessity and that the forces of Islamic Totalitarianism cannot be dealt with via the Police/Crime Model, then the inescapable conclusion is that the invasion of Iraq is a complete and total success.

After 9/11, the first and foremost problem facing the United States was quite simply, “How do we force our enemies to engage us on terms most favorable to us?” The Jihadists purposefully designed a strategy to enable their forces to engage the United States in an asymmetrical fashion, thus attempting to neutralize overwhelming U.S. advantages in men, material, striking power and mobility.

The U.S. faced exactly the same problem in Viet Nam, and Gen. Westmoreland, hamstrung by the Johnson Administration’s bizarre rules of engagement, failed over the course of years to design a strategy that allowed the U.S. to engage on terms that allowed our advantages to be utilized to maximum effect.

In fact, it took Gen. Giap’s Tet Offensive to actually create the conditions for the U.S. to engage under favorable terms, and the result was a complete military defeat of the Viet Cong and North Viet Nam’s Army regulars (Gen. Giap has said so in several different interviews). The U.S. could not defeat the Communists because they could not force them to fight sustained engagements on terms that allowed the U.S. to maximize its’ military advantages.

The genius of the Iraq Invasion is that it immediately took the initiative away from the Jihadists and handed it to the U.S. military, thus neutralizing the Jihadists ability to wage asymmetric war at the times and in the places of their choosing. For political reasons understood by all in the Middle East, the Jihadists have no other choice than to stand and fight on U.S. terms at the time and place dictated by the U.S.. This is because they cannot allow an Middle Eastern democracy, created, nurtured and sanctioned by the U.S. to exist. The had to fight in Iraq first and foremost, and not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to.

Similarly, the settling, very early in the conflict, of a date for creation of an Iraqi government forced the Jihadists to enter into a conflict at the time of our choosing. U.S. forces were in place at the time of the setting of that date, the Jihadist forces were not. It would be a fare bet that the Jihadists have been forced to field a weaker force than they would have had they the additional time to recruit, train and arm their forces.

Thus, the Iraq War has solved the single most difficult problem that faces a army of overwhelming power going up against a guerilla force…how to force the guerillas to fight on the army’s terms. George Bush’s “Bring it on” was not false bravado, it is the expression of a Commander-In-Chief’s complete understanding of what was necessary strategically to enter the War On Terror under conditions favorable to the U.S. rather than the Jihadists.

It should also be remembered that if there is the possibility of ‘quagmire’ in Iraq, the risks fall equally on the Jihadists and the U.S.. Quagmire in Iraq is a two-way street. Despite the fanaticism we have seen from many in their ranks, their sustained appeal to Arabs in the Middle East is very much a function of their military success. Martyrdom may appeal to some under any conditions, but history has shown (even in the case of Japan’s Kamikazes) for the vast majority martyrdom has no appeal if it is viewed as being in furtherance of a hopeless cause.

The longer the U.S. has forces in the field, killing Jihadists at rates that far exceed their own casualties, the greater the probability that the Jihadists have difficulty in sustaining their operations. The Arab World may have looked at 9/11 as a Jihadist success, but with casualities mounting and no battlefield or political success to speak of, it is doubtful Iraq can be viewed to date by Arabs as a Jihadist success.

Beyond that, U.S. occupation of Iraq has removed all Arab leverage on the U.S. with regards to basing troops in the region, and has put about 1/5th of known oil reserves under the physical control of the U.S.. Again, decreased Arab leverage in the long run.

Simply put, there is no possibility of the U.S sustaining an actual military defeat in the field in Iraq. Period. The only way the U.S. can “lose the war” is to choose to lose the war. As with Viet Nam (and just about the only meaningful parallel with Viet Nam I can find in Iraq), this choice will be a politcal one, rather than a military one.

(cross-posted from Winds of Change.NET)

David Wong’s memorable and hilarious “I Want a Real War Sim…” is a darkly funny video-game rant that captures the state of modern warfare better than 99.9% of the news publications out there. His rant comes complete with altered screenshots from games like Command And Conquer, Starcraft, et. al. and begins with:

bq.. 1. …where I spend two hours pushing across a map to destroy a “nuclear missile silo,” only to find out after the fact that it was just a missile-themed orphanage.

I want little celebrities to show up on the scene and do interviews over video of charred teddy bears, decrying my unilateral attack. I want congressional hearings demanding answers to these atrocities.

2. On the very next level I want to lose half of my units because another “orphanage” turned out to be a NOD ambush site. I want another round of hearings asking why I didn’t level that orphanage as soon as I saw it, including tearful testimony from a slain soldier’s daughter who is now, ironically, an orphan.

It keeps getting better from there, bringing in CIA field agents, Starcraft monsters, Nude Zero-Gravity Futureball, ass-covering doublespeak - and of course, France - as it builds inexorably toward the Nicholsonesque rant at the end.

This one is destined to be a humour classic. Big Hat Tip to Winds of Change.NET reader Larry Ice for recommending it.

The political silly season is upon us and even partisans such as I are fed up…for a while. Kerry is too easy a target to be satisfying. So today’s effort is a few of my thoughts about what happens next. I think we all realize that whoever is elected in November much of our policy will not change as it is being driven by outside events. However it is worth considering what comes after, when ideology begins to drive the agenda again, will it be pragmatism, isolationism or idealism? Or a combination?

As we approach the 60th anniversary of D-Day, Americans have bugun a serious internal debate over our role in the world, what we want or expect from it in the near term and the future. Since 9/11 the “debate” over a pre-emptive foreign policy has become increasing polarized and vicious as the hate America crowd gleefully predicts our decline and ultimate withdrawal as the world’s police.

I think they’re partially right, America is ideologically split, half wish to create a utopian world government, and the other half is fed up with spilling blood and wasting treasure on ingrates. The upshot is that we will incrementally retreat from the world political stage. We will soon invent and adapt our way out of fossil fuel dependency, we agree on the necessity to do so as quickly as possible. Our technological lead and the world-wide brain drain will continue fuel our economic expansion, intellectual and global financial influence. America is still dynamic; we are replacing our population, by a steady native birth rate and immigration, at a sustainable rate.

Europe is not; birth rates have fallen below a sustainable rate and by mid-century Europe will not be able to sustain production and social programs. Europe’s current comity will devolve into the old hatreds and grudges. Russia will ascend to a dominant position, having lost the cold war, Russia’s hard liners will settle for governing the EU and the Mediterranean rim. NATO will be disbanded by common consent and an American unwillingness to fund it, replaced with an EU defense force. There will never be another Normandy or Kosovo. I think that is the one policy area Americans now agree upon.

Once we withdraw economically and strategically from the Middle-East, Israel will resolve its dilemma, if it has not done so by that time. However, that doesn’t mean that Islamic theocracies will rise to fill a power vacuum in the Middle East. Once the West no longer requires oil, the Arabic world will have little income and will fall further into poverty, anarchy and further behind the technology curve. Ironically, our decline of influence in the region magnifies theirs a hundredfold.

One only needs to look to whom the French are sucking up to in order to see where the next power rises: in the East. It’s too soon to predict how America fits into that scenario, but adaptation is one of our strengths, however rigid theocracies will not survive a “clash of civilizations” with China.

The latter part of the 21st century and perhaps most of the next will be dominated by the sheer weight of China’s population, economic engine and the blind ambition of its government.

Hate America? Can’t wait for you to meet China.

The big news today would be Terror, with a capital T.

‘They Are Going to Attack and Hit Us Hard’
Sources: Major terror attack possible this summer
Terror fear
Agents in Country Said To Be Planning Attack

Am I suprised? Not at all. Scared? You bet. Then again, I’ve been scared since September 11, 2001. However, two and half years have gone by and we have yet to be attacked again on American soil.

Today’s frightening headlines are brought to in you part by an International Institute of Strategic Studies report stating (pdf format) that al Qaeda still has 18,000 members.

The spin that followed went in two different directions, depending on your outlook. What’s not up for argument is that the Iraq war has strengthened the terrorist base in the Middle East. Where paths diverge is when you ask why.

The left will maintain that our occupation of Iraq has so angered the Arab world that they signed up by the thousands to join the jihad against America.

I am going to beg to differ.

The people who joined the ranks of al Qaeda (and I will say that while the report states AQ has 18,000 members, it’s a good bet that most of those members are recent inductees) and other terrorist organizations since March of 2003 were jihadists beforehand. They were in the death-to-America camp long before we landed in Iraq. But the gathering of forces in Fallujah, Pakistan and other hotspots gave these sideline terrorists strength by numbers. Muqtada al-Sadr and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are no different that Jim Jones or David Koresh, in that they have cult-like followings, people following them blindly into battle. The battles themselves, even the enemies may be different, but in the end, the loyalists of both men will meet the same fate as the followers of Jones and Koresh. Who deals that fate out - their own leaders or their enemies - is all that remains to be seen.

While the war in Iraq has certainly been a catalyst for jihad recruitment, let’s not delude ourselves (I’m looking at the left here) into thinking that the hatred and death wishes did not exist beforehand. Which makes the Iraq war less of a reason and more of an excuse. Some of these terrorists have been sharpening their knives for years, just waiting for that moment when they could rise up with thousands of others and whoop their war cries. Iraq is it. al-Sadr knows this. al-Zarqawi knows this. If bin Laden is still alive, he knows it. Every jihad leader worth their 72 virgins fully understands that the war in Iraq is the opportunity of a lifetime; it’s like Bill Gates getting an invitation to the graduation ceremony of The School For Brilliant Computer Programmers. It’s a grand buffet of potential employees. And that’s what Iraq is to Arab terrorists; a buffet. The leaders are lining up and filling their plates, even coming back for seconds. Them’s good eatings! I swear I overheard someone say that once at a buffet

So, while Iraq is not the reason for the upswing in threat theory, it is the central force at play here. I’m pretty sure that most of the recent al Qaeda recruits don’t give a damn about what we are doing in Iraq. They just want to be where the action is; they just want to be part of the game. And the game is getting huge.

Their hatred for us - and thus, their death wishes upon us - did not begin with the start of the invasion of Iraq. I think that should be obvious to anyone who lives with their head above the sand. You can go back to February 1993, but that’s just a stopping point on the long, long timeline of the Arabs v. U.S. World Tour. We could take you back to 1983 if you’d like, too. How about 1979? Different factions, you say? Different countries? Different terrorist groups? Yes, but no.

It’s all related. It’s all steeped in the history of radical Islam, in the history of militant Arabs - a history of a movement that demands a call to arms against the west and against Israel.

Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing more than giant gathering places for all these factions to come together and join up for the same cause. Think of it as a reverse Lord of the Rings, where a combination of races and tribes spend generations battling together against Sauron. Here, we have a combination of countries and terrorists groups battling together against America. Combine forces. Work together. You can strike the enemy harder and faster that way. So into battle they go, finally learning that singularly, they probably could not launch a great attack against their common enemy, but together they can finally conquer that bastard. Which would be us.

Us. That includes you with the anti-war sign. And you, with your conspiracy theories. It includes whether you are voting for Bush or Kerry, whether you drive an SUV or a hybrid, whether you listen to Hannity or Franken. It includes those of you who don’t care about politics, who don’t watch the news. We are their enemy. Do you think that Sauron would have taken the time to find out if anyone was sympathetic to him before he unleashed his evil army upon the tribes? Hardly. Which is why it really is an us v. them world.

Usama bin Laden’s network appears to be operating in more than 60 nations, often in concert with local allies…

The U.S. occupation of Iraq brought Al Qaeda recruits from across Islamic nations, the study said. Up to 1,000 foreign Islamic fighters have infiltrated Iraqi territory, where they are cooperating with Iraqi insurgents, the survey said.

Hmm. Do you still want us to leave Iraq? Still want us to pack up our troops and go home? I’d venture to say that most of those Islamic fighters are hanging out in Fallujah and Najaf, using mosques, shrines and holy cemeteries as their base. Should we attack any of those places, we’re the bad guys. Never mind that the people who want to burn down America are hiding in those holy sites. We can’t go after them, lest we be labeled the aggressors.

Meanwhile, they are making plans, signing up new recruits, combining forces, sharing weapons and plans and generally becoming the lone horseman of our apocalypse. All right under our nose, in the countries that we our currently occupying. Yet so many want us to leave those countries. So many think we are wrong for being there, that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, that Afghanistan is a waste of our time. A little wake up call might be in order, but I do not wish for your wake-up call to come in the form of an explosion.

I do not want to leave the investigation and rooting out of terrorists and discovery of potential terrorists plots to the FBI or CIA. Sure, they’ve been doing a pretty good job (when they haven’t been arresting the wrong people). All those flights that were grounded back in the winter showed me that our intelligence is working, but I think this war on terror has been stripped down to the most primitive level. It’s not intelligence alone that will save us. It’s the war that will, in the end, save us from doom. While all these forces are gathered in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably Pakistan, we need to let our troops loose to do the right thing. The right thing is? Protecting us from the what ifs that rattle inside our heads every time we watch the news or read a paper.

“There is clearly a steady drumbeat of information that they are going to attack and hit us hard,” said another senior federal counterterrorism official, who described the intelligence as highly credible.

The summer of 2002 was what I called the Summer of Fear:

Summer of Fear. That’s what this is. No matter how much you say you do not fear them, you don’t believe the hype, you don’t watch the news, I am willing to bet that the drone of a crop duster flying over your house will send you running for a gas mask. I’m willing to bet that you feel it. You feel the blanket of unease that our own security agencies have covered us with.

I’m waiting for the comic book ending. For the superheroes to band together and form an alliance and kick the shit out their enemies. Or at least foil their evil plans and put us all back into our safe, comfortable place, where panic doesn’t spark the air, where our lives don’t exist in a constant state of electricity, like we just collectively stepped on a third rail.

That was when the terror alert changed nearly every day, where every morning brought another new warning, another shout to be vigilant, be alert. Hell, I couldn’t be more alert if they stuck toothpicks in my eyes.

Two years later, I still believe in superheroes. I still believe we will win the war on terror. But you have to let us win it. You cannot stand between our troops and a holy shrine if that shrine is crawling with people plotting terror attacks. It doesn’t even matter if the plans they are drawing out are against us, or Israel or the citizens of Baghdad who are just trying to find some kind of good life. Because we are all part of the same coalition, the same combined force of tribes and nations that are gunning for the bad guys.

So, what to do with these headlines today? Do I cower? Do I end up the way I did in 2002, with a case of agoraphobia? Or do I trust that we will prevail?

Choosing trust is much more relaxing, I’ll tell you that. It’s better than fearing planes and avoiding trains and dreaming of underground bunkers and rockets red glare landing at my feet.

Yes, they are coming for us. Well, they are going to try their damndest. And we cannot, and should not ever think of standing in the way of those who are going to protect us from them. We know where they are. They are in Afghanistan and they are in Iraq and, brace yourself, they are right here on our soil. Those who are already here are just waiting for instructions. It is our job to cut down those who are supposed to give those instructions out. It is our job to cut the ties between here and there and that means mainly striking them over there.

To cut and run from Iraq now would be to lose the war on terror. I don’t think that’s what you want, is it? Ridicule all you want. Choose your theories. Ignore at will. Laugh, point finger and call it all a lie. What does it take to make some people see that the war on terror is real, that our enemies are not a result of the Iraq war, but the result of a culture war.

I suppose that if 3,000 dead in one day didn’t convince them, nothing will. But you can bet that if a bomb ever dropped on their neighborhood, they would be the first ones crying that we didn’t take the war on terror seriously enough.

I hope it never comes to that. I hope we never have to say we were right about the terrorists coming for us. And if they never come, to the left it will all have been a bold lie, rather than a good job done by those fighting the terror war.

I am not going to spend my summer hiding under the bed again. I am going to trust that we will get this war won, despite those who want to stand in our way. That’s not to say I’m not scared because I still shake in my boots some days, especially when I think about the Olympics. But I am not as convinced of the coming Armageddon of America as I used to be. A lot has changed in the two years since the Summer of Fear. Main thing is, I figured out who the real enemy is, and it’s not us. Those guys coming toward us with swords raised and torches blazing? splinter cells and offshoots make for one pretty big army of darkness coming at us. I hope that we have the strength to take them down.

I had a piece in Sunday’s Mobile Register that might be of interest to Command Post contributors and readers.

It is on the role played by the ‘net (and blogs) in covering the news of the Nick Berg beheading.

The piece is linked from here.

Every time John McCain or Chuck Hagel make some criticism of the President, on the war or any other topic, the mainstream media echo chamber replay the tape ‘til it’s worn. But Joe Lieberman’s supportive remarks regarding the war seem to dissipate into the ether. For example, Lieberman made some great comments last night on “Paula Zahn Now,” but I don’t see a trace of them in the papers or on tv, even though he’s a sitting Senator and former presidential/vp candidate:

ZAHN: Senator lieberman, will the plan in place work? We just had Secretary Albright on who more or less suggested that it is unrealistic.

LIEBERMAN: There are obviously no guarantees here. But I do think tonight the President did what he has to do in this speech and in the ones that will follow in the next weeks, which is to shore up American support, to remind the American people why we must win this battle against the terrorists and the Saddam loyalists. And to remind them that he has done some of the things that his critics asked him to do, including me. He has now gone to the United Nations. He has now increased the number of American troops there and is prepare to send more to keep the security so that democracy can take hold. So, I hope that all of us in both parties who have said that we have to stay in Iraq and finish the job in pursuit of our own values and of our own security will pull together and make it happen, and not be part of a chorus of doubters that will undermine the support of the American people more. We’ve to stay united here as best we can to support our troops, but to support our cause. In my opinion, this is the test of our generation. And if we don’t win it in Iraq, we’re going to face it much closer to home in the years ahead.

. . . ZAHN: And yet Senator Lieberman, there are obviously three disparate factions that this government has to worry about uniting: the Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis. Do you have concerns about that? Short-term and long-term?

LIEBERMAN: It is a democracy is not easy. It is sometimes messy, you know? But the folks in Iraq, thanks to the courage and skill of the American military have options before them that they never would have dreamed they would have today and that’s because Saddam, that brutal dictator is gone. And we have the United Nations in there now, through Ambassador Brahimi, trying to negotiate an agreement between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. I believe he can do it. But what is most important is that before long the Iraqi people are going to get to do it. They will get to vote. And I think if the American people don’t lose — if we don’t lose our will, we’re going to look back with real pride at what our troops have done and what we can do together for the Iraqis, but also to secure our values and our security.

Here’s a quote from a French European MP, from May 2001 :

Il faut que nous envisagions - je n’hésite pas à le dire - à doter la partie arabe d’une force suffisante, y compris d’une force nucléaire suffisante, pour qu’Israël ne se croit pas tout permis. C’était la politique qu’avait engagée mon pays dans les années 70 en dotant l’Irak de l’arme nucléaire. Nous l’avons détruite.

For the French-Challenged, here is the European parliament’s official English transation :

I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force.

Although the quote stands on its own, there’s an article on the Parliamentarian, the various influential posts he’s held in the French Government and the UN, (as well as in the European Parliament) over at A.E.Brain, the Blog.

Michael Moore has Jumped the Shark

When even the BBC (no great fan of Dubya) says :

But this is a Michael Moore film and, while that does not mean he is wrong, it must be watched with a critical eye.

You know that some people are catching on.

From The Australian, by

Jim Nolan, an industrial relations lawyer and veteran ALP member, writes frequently on human rights issues.

(ALP - Australian Labor Party, equivalent of AFL/CIO wing of the US Democrats) :

Moore’s “documentary” claims may not be true, but to use John Pilger’s formulation explaining the left-wing tabloid Daily Mirror’s fabricated pictures of British soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners – “They may not be true, but what they represent is true.” If the objective is anti-Americanism at all costs, it’s a small price to pay to overlook inconvenient “facts”.

Last week, Christopher Hitchens nailed Moore and the European intellectual climate which gave rise to this fawning phenomenon. “Speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well,” Hitchens said, “it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.”

In a world where “representations” trump reality, however, it’s no wonder that Moore’s “documentary” was awarded the top prize at Cannes yesterday. This is the same mindset that regards the disgraceful treatment of Iraqi prisoners as the moral equivalent of the act of Islamist fanatics in hacking off the head of a non-combatant in Iraq. Moore’s indignant “anti-imperialism” over Iraq makes a convenient existential leap right over Saddam’s republic of fear and the 200,000 mass graves, just as he silently omitted the Kosovo genocide, so as not to blunt the drama of his “documentary” sequence.

Moore is on record as hailing the already grotesquely misdescribed “resistance” as the equivalent of the minute men – the American revolutionaries – a statement so lacking in seriousness as to border on the unhinged. But don’t hold your breath for Moore to be pressed on this.

From Reuters, via the stridently Anti-war, Anti-Bush Sydney Morning Herald :

The jury president, cult film director Quentin Tarantino, insisted the prize was not political.

<sarcasm>Neither was Moore’s Oscar for best ‘Documentary’</sarcasm>… But at least this time, the enthusiasm was undeniably genuine. An unpresidented(sic) 15-minute standing ovation, no less.

But the critics disagreed, arguing this was a heartfelt attack on the Bush administration that was designed to stir disillusioned Americans into voting in November.

Well ( must resist… must resist… no, I can’t stop it..) DUH

Moore’s loathing of Bush is palpable in every shot. The President is painted as a politically incompetent buffoon.

The influential trade paper Variety called the deftly edited movie “a blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet” and the Hollywood Reporter agreed, dubbing it “an election year device”.

Of course, the SMH also quotes the pean to Moore in the Guardian :

Look at what’s happening in the US, where the press is notoriously unenthusiastic about left-wing dissent. My own email always contains a good number of correspondents from the US who complain that pro-abortion or anti-war articles in this paper would not see the light of day in the mainstream press there.

But now America has Michael Moore. He’s huge. Huge personally - a great big, hairy doughball of a man. He’s huge commercially. He’s huge on the web. And he’s huge in the scale of his ambition - he is determined to bring down George Bush.

At the Cannes Film Festival we have been treated to Moore doing what he does best, a lumbering rampage. Not for the first time, corporate America has played straight into his hands. Disney has decided not to distribute Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary about Bush and the war, despite spending $US6 million ($8.5 million) on it through its Miramax division.

Moore is crying censorship and complaining that Disney’s Michael Eisner told his agent that he did not want to anger Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida, because tax breaks worth many millions of dollars were at stake.

There you go. I guess you really can fool some of the people, all of the time. here’s a little - er - Moore on the subject, from the Guardian’s stablemate, The Observer :

Moore arrived in Cannes by his traditional mode of transport - on a wave of controversy. Disney had announced that it would not distribute his new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, in America, which left the film’s producers, Miramax, a division of Disney, looking for a new partner. Moore accused Disney of censoring his film to protect the tax breaks its Disneyworld complex enjoys in Florida, the state controlled by Jeb Bush, brother of the President (Fahrenheit 9/11 details the cronyism and corruption of the Bush regime, as well as its failings in the ‘war against terror’).

Disney countered that Moore had known for more than a year that it would not handle the film and was only complaining now to publicise his film. Nevertheless, the director once again successfully positioned himself on the moral high ground in a battle against a multinational corporation. He finessed the same manoeuvre with Stupid White Men, his bestselling critique of American capitalism, by claiming that Harper Collins had tried to suppress the book, and that it only agreed to publish him following a protest by librarians.

Moore, the king-sized millionaire, walking testament to American consumption, is a master of making himself appear the little guy. He told reporters that before Disney, Mel Gibson’s company, Icon, had also dropped the film, following a phone call from a man in Washington who told Icon that if they continued with the film Gibson would no longer be welcome at the White House. Icon denied the story, but how could they prove that the mysterious Washington caller did not exist?
[…]
Moore is arguably the most ideological and emotive editor since Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet propagandist who developed a kind of didactic montage.
[…]
In the past, Moore has been accused of twisting chronology and events to suit his agenda. While neither Bowling for Columbine nor Roger and Me can be accused of major factual errors, both trade on a series of misleading implications. For example, in Bowling for Columbine the audience is led to believe that the two teenage killers at Columbine high school may have been inured to violence by the proximity of a local weapons factory. Yet it later emerged that the factory produced nothing more lethal than rockets to launch TV satellites. The film critic Richard Schickel labelled Moore ‘the very definition of the unreliable narrator’.

Not forgetting the fact that the two killers didn’t go Bowling beforehand… a trivial issue, had it not been for the fact that Moore knew this, and went ahead with the title anyway. Moore by his own admission has never let mere facts get in the way of his portrayal of a Larger Truth.. The article continues:

I ask him why his old friend and longtime collaborator Ben Hamper, a former Flint auto-worker whom he helped become a writer, told the New Yorker magazine, in among a number of otherwise flattering comments, that Moore ‘didn’t treat people well’.

‘Right,’ says Moore, rising to the charge, ‘and then he sent me a letter saying that he said that while he was drunk. He has a horrible alcohol problem and I don’t really want to talk about it,’ he says, going straight on to talk about it, ‘because I feel bad because he’s a friend….
[…]
What I think, after my short time in his company, is that Moore is a man you would not want as an opponent, but also one you’d think twice about calling a friend. Though a talented film-maker and a clever showman, a populist who knows how to play the maverick, he is too often both big-headed and small-minded. In his desire to be seen as the decent man telling truth to power, he is too ready to blame those less powerful than himself for his shortcomings. He was justly revered in the Palais, but out on the street no one had a kind word to say about him

From all accounts, due entirely to Moore’s very selective editing, it’s the most blatantly political, yet emotionally powerful film since a stylistically similar work, The Eternal Jew. Which also got an enthusiastic reception in France. That unsubtly-edited work ‘justified’ the removal of Jewry from Europe. This unsubtly-edited one ‘justifies’ the removal of Bush from the Presidency. No Film Critic has made the comparison in public yet, but it’s obvious. It must be in the back of their minds, but they don’t say it, as to do so would invite unjust and, frankly, disrespectful comparisons that would trivialise the Holocaust. Moore (for all his faults) is no Nazi, despite his penchant for surrounding himself with what in a thankfully bygone age would be called ‘Negro Servants’. But it’s undeniable that his techniques and style are straight from Goebbels.

UPDATE : And a Hat Tip to reader Reid. From The Scotsman :

“BUSH is an idiot.” If I say this about ten thousand times, it can become a bestselling book: if I slip a few jokes in it (and a few rude words) it can be a stand-up comedy routine. With a camera, it can be a blockbuster film.

Just ask Michael Moore, a baseball-cap-wearing comedian who has turned his hand to literature and made Stupid White Men - an anti-Bush polemic - a worldwide bestseller in an era when people were supposedly fed up with politics.

The secret of his success: his books are billed as fact, but contain myths woven together with conspiracy theory. He has discovered a powerful trick being copied by authors hungry for fortune - and, increasingly, by politicians hungry for votes.
[…]
Mr Moore takes up the story: “Nobody could go up in the sky. Except the administration allowed a private Saudi jet to go to five American cities and pick up 20 members of the bin Laden family and get them out of the country. And the FBI was very upset that they didn’t get to interrogate them.”

This is truly remarkable. But it is also flatly untrue - as proven by the bipartisan 9/11 Committee, which found that the planes with Saudis took off only after airspace reopened and the FBI had interviewed 22 of the 26 suspects. The White House was not involved.

This is, sadly, by no means the only myth masquerading as fact in Moore’s bestselling books. There are entire websites devoted to nailing down the parts where he’s dressed up gossip as gospel, or concocted entire arguments.
[…]
A while ago, he was challenged by CNN about “glaring inaccuracies” in Stupid White Men. “This is a book of political humour. So, I mean, I don’t respond to that sort of stuff, you know … How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?”

A wonderful caveat. Mr Moore makes his money from people who think the facts he presents are true. His Oscar was for documentary, not fiction. Yet his policy, it seems, is to make ‘em laugh - even if that means bending the truth.

Mr Moore is neither venal nor stupid. He has become the world’s richest comedian by taking a political theme, sexing it up with a few deliberate distortions and then dressing it all as fact: even if this means misleading his audience.

From a two part essay by Bill Whittle:

Catastrophes are only catastrophes; disasters are only disasters: they are not the end unless we decide they are. And so, let us, right here and now, decide that they are not the end. Because this is something we need to understand, something we need to feel deep in our bones: We are so strong, as a nation, that nothing can stop us when we set our minds to something. Nothing. We can only stop ourselves. All the players know this to be true. Al Sadr knows it. France and Germany know it. The Jihadis know it. The UN knows it. You and I know it.

Because we, the American people, are the only ones who can decide whether or not to give up in failure and defeat or carry on to the victory of a free and stable Iraq, we find we ourselves – the common, average American – are to be the battleground. We are the soldiers. We are the weapons. We are the targets of the enemy strategy. Our hearts, our spirit – that is the front line. All the players know this, too. This is our war, more than it is the Marines’ or Al Quaeda’s.

Our war. Ours.

So we need to find the strength to fight this war. And this search will not be a quick or easy one, for our strength lies both obvious and on the surface in some places, and in other places, very, very deep.

This is a critical, essential search, for the manifest strengths and beauty of our Western Society have been under such sustained attack, for so long, that we are beginning to believe this parade of lies launched against us. We have to stop it. We have to fight it. And we have to beat it. On this everything else depends.

This will be a long and circuitous journey. I’m sorry; I wish it were not so. But we must, we must find the strength we need to sustain our spirits against an onrush of negativity, pessimism, defeatism and despair that is so deadly precisely because it is so antithetical to the natural character of the American people.

I urge you all to go read the rest.

A Blogger’s nephew has just been killed in Iraq.

My Mother just woke me up with a call to tell me that my nephew, Jeremiah, was killed in Iraq. He was giving some children candy and Frisbees when he was hit by shrapnel.

Everything is sketchy at the moment and I’m too upset right now to go into it. We’re still trying to find out what we can about it, so there’s really not much else I can tell you. All I can say is that I’m just shocked and devastated.

In 46 years on this planet, I’ve seen some deaths. Some quick, others…not. I’ve spent some time in Oncology wards, and watched people, some tragically young, just fade away, just one of those things that happen, with no particular point to it. Every doctor, nurse or EMT has seen this.

It’s tragic that someone with so much potential should have his life cut so short. But if you’re going to go… then dying while handing out candies and Frisbees to kids of a country you’ve just liberated, that at least has some meaning, some purpose.

But for those personally involved, the price is awfully high. Let us not forget them, neither the dead brought back from Iraq, nor their friends and families.

CNN demonstrates its true colors yet again… a shameful red.

MAARIV: CNN deliberately disseminating disinformation

CNN has deliberately played fast and loose with UN figures to create a false impression as to the impact of IDF operations in Gaza on the Palerstinian civilian population.

During the 6 pm (Israel time) news broadcast, while reporting on IDF operations in Rafah, the red flashing news strip mentioned 11,00 Palestinans as having being made homeless. The clear inference was that this was a result of the current operation.

Later on during the news broadcast Jim Clancy quoted “updated UN figures” as 13,00 homeless Palestinians, while airing a piece called “sounds and sights of Gaza”, in which IDF tanks were shown in action in Rafah.

UNRWA spokesperson Paul McCann told Maariv International that the 13,000 figure refers to Palestinians who have lost their homes since the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000.

CNN’s Jerusalem bureau stood by their version, saying that the 13,000 referred to Palestinians made homeless “either in the last 24 hours or the past week”.

Maybe Eason “Dollars For Dictators” Jordan should take a break from boffing Danny Pearl’s widow and spend some of his budget on calculators and history books?

Can media bias affect the outcome of world events - even of wars?

Apparently so, based on the below article by Arnaud de Borchgrave:

- - - - - - -

Any seasoned reporter covering the Tet offensive in Vietnam 36 years ago is well over 60 and presumably retired or teaching journalism at one of America’s 4,200 colleges and universities. Before plunging into an orgy of erroneous and invidious historical parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, a reminder about what led to the U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia is timely.

Iraq will only be another Vietnam if the home front collapses, as it did following the Tet offensive that began on the eve of the Chinese New Year, Jan. 31, 1968. The surprise attack was designed to overwhelm some 70 cities and towns and 30 other strategic objectives simultaneously. By breaking a previously agreed-upon truce for Tet festivities, master strategist Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap in Hanoi calculated that South Vietnamese troops would be caught with defenses down.

After the first few hours of panic, the South Vietnamese troops reacted fiercely. They did the bulk of the fighting and took some 6,000 casualties. Viet Cong units not only did not reach a single one of their objectives - except when they arrived by taxi at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, blew their way through the wall into the compound and, guns blazing, made it into the lobby before they were wiped out by U.S. Marines. But they lost some 50,000 killed and at least as many wounded.

Gen. Giap had thrown some 70,000 troops into a strategic gamble that was also designed to overwhelm 13 of the 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. But Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Viet Cong troops in South Vietnam. Yet that was not the way it was reported in U.S. and other media around the world.

It was television’s first war. And some 50 million Americans at home saw the carnage of dead bodies in the rubble and dazed Americans running around.

As the late veteran war reporter Peter Braestrup documented in “Big Story,” a massive, two-volume study of how Tet was covered by American reporters, the Viet Cong offensive was depicted as a military disaster for the United States. By the time the facts emerged a week or two later from Rand Corp. interrogations of prisoners and defectors, the damage had been done. Conventional media wisdom had been set in concrete. U.S. public opinion perceptions changed accordingly.

- - - - - - -

America’s most trusted newsman, CBS’ Walter Cronkite, appeared for a standup piece with distant fires as a backdrop.

Donning helmet, Mr. Cronkite declared the war lost.

It was this now famous television news piece that persuaded President Lyndon Johnson six weeks later, on March 31, not to run for re-election. His ratings had plummeted from 80 percent when he assumed the presidency upon John F. Kennedy’s death to 30 percent after Tet. Approval of his handling of the war dropped to 20 percent, his credibility shot to pieces.

Until Tet, a majority of Americans agreed with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson that failure was not an option. It was Kennedy who changed the status of U.S. military personnel from advisers to South Vietnamese troops to full-fledged fighting men. By the time of Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, 16,500 U.S. troops had been committed to the war. Johnson escalated all the way to 542,000.

But defeat became an option when Johnson decided the war was unwinnable and that he would lose his bid for the presidency in November 1968. Hanoi thus turned military defeat into a priceless geopolitical victory.

With the Viet Cong wiped out in the Tet offensive, North Vietnamese regulars moved south down the Ho Chi Minh trails through Laos and Cambodia to continue the war. Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America’s resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi’s grasp.

- - - - - - -

Whatever one thought about the advisability of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States is there with 100,000 troops and a solid commitment to endow Iraq with a democratic system of government. While failure is not an option for Mr. Bush, it clearly is for Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, who called Iraq the president’s Vietnam. It is, of course, no such animal. But it could become so if congressional resolve dissolves.

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam’s unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, he made clear the anti-war movement in the United States, which led to the collapse of political will in Washington, was “essential to our strategy.”

Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers “gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.”

America lost the war, concluded Bui Tin, “because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.”

Kennedy should remember that Vietnam was the war of his brother, who saw the conflict in the larger framework of the Cold War and Nikita Khrushchev’s threats against West Berlin. It would behoove Kennedy to see Iraq in the larger context of the struggle to bring democracy not only to Iraq but also to the entire Middle East.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times and United Press International. He covered Tet as Newsweek’s chief foreign correspondent and had seven tours in Vietnam between 1951 under the French and 1972, during the U.S. involvement.

- - - - - - -

Hat-tip to R. Holden of mcgop.net.

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

I’ve had Neil Diamond’s America playing in my head since last night. I believe they may have played part of the tune on the Simpons last night (a pretty unfunny episode that had the potential to be hilarious), but I know it was playing in my dream.

In my dream we were fighting a war, or being bombed - it was hard to tell the difference. There were scattered parts of houses, trees and bodies laying about and I tripped over a dead dog as I ran. I held a newspaper over my head (the New York Times) to shelter myself from the exploding sky, which lit up with a combination of fireworks and just plain fire. As I tripped over this dead dog (which looked more like a stuffed Clifford than a real dog, even though I knew in the dream the dog was very real), the Neil Diamond song played on loudspeakers, the same verse over and over: Everywhere around the world/They’re coming to America/Every time that flag’s unfurled/They’re coming to America, repeat the last line about ten times before going back to the infinite loop. I hugged the dead dog and cried a gallon of tears into its matted fur, begging it to wake up. I looked into its huge, dead eyes, opened wide, each one about as wide as a manhole and I saw the fireworks and explosions reflected in the eyes. I pulled down the lids and kissed each one softly as the eyes closed. The song kept playing. I climbed on the dead dog’s back, laid my head down and slept inside my dream.

So I dreamed about war and part of the dream was about the Olympic flag-waving flap and this isn’t suprising considering it was what was on my mind when I fell asleep. And while my dreams are never easy to analyze, I’m going to go out on a limb here and analyze what that dog represented.

Pride, of course. The dog is pride. Oversized to some, dead to others, reflecting the glory of America while at the same time reflecting the war.

I still cling to this pride. In fact, I cling harder each time someone begs me to let go. I do not participate in the self-loathing of America that is so fashionable these days. I can’t.

See, I used to be a self-loather. I used to be one of those people who wouldn’t hang a flag outside their house. I freely admit to this - and still keep markers of this attitude in my journal - because I like to mark my steps from here to there.

I woke up. It took just one day, a couple of off-the-path planes and about 3,000 deaths to wake up that pride that had been dormant since grade school, back when American pride was a subject as basic as math and reading.

I assumed the pride I was feeling was just a result of the desperate, passionate grief I was experiencing. I had a need to be with others who felt that grief and it just so happened that all those fellow grievers were waving flags and blessing America. I reluctantly began (so to speak) waving my flag as well. And it felt good.

I renewed my relationship with America. I remembered all the wonderful things about her. It was easy for me; I was never in as deep as some of the self-loathers I knew. I always respected my freedoms, I always pointed out to people that we do live in the greatest country on earth despite all our protests about it. What probably made the break from them so easy is that they mistrusted me when I spoke like that, as if I were some narc infiltrating their secret loathers club. Honestly, I was embarrassed to be the only one on the block without a flag, the only one who wouldn’t sing the National Anthem at a ball game. It seemed absurd in many ways, yet I was trying my hardest to keep in step with the my fellow loathers and any slip off the edge of anti-Americanism would get me a tongue lashing from one person or another.

So I reintroduced myself to America. It felt right. It felt good. There was one night in particular that brought me around full circle; it was a night in September, 2001 spent driving around the neighborhood, witnessing and singing and candle lighting and a community sense of pride so strong that I finally broke down and cried me a river. And it was that night that my leftist friends were gathering in some protest about Bush, saying we should give the Muslims the benefit of the doubt because, surely, Bush was at fault for 9/11. He did it. He planned it. And from there it was the whole root cause thing. There would be people standing on milk crates, screaming into megaphones, shouting out “Why do the hate us?”

It made me sick and that night marked the beginning of the end of my relationship with the self-loathers.

I met America again. I met my freedoms and my rights (which were not being taken away as some would have me believe). I remembered all that is good about this place, the deep yet soothing voice of Mrs. Reese, my third grade teacher, booming in my head, renewing that pride that sometimes only an innocent eight year old can feel. Sometimes an adult can feel it, too.

I didn’t want to be with the loathers anymore. They were only adding to my feelings of trauma and despair. They were taking an ugly, brutal event and making it even uglier. They were painting black over black over black, the layers of hatred and bile so thick that you didn’t even know what was underneath anymore. The message on the wall appeared some time after 9/11: Hate at all costs. They were the only words peeking out of the black, the only thing they had left to offer. I wanted to love. I wanted to feel pride. I wanted to make good on the threats to avenge the 3,000 deaths. I wanted to kick some ass, take some names and hug a whole lot of people.

For this I was shunned by the loathers. I should be thankful for that, I suppose. They kind of kicked me out of their club and I ended up here, proud of my country, proud of our soldiers and proud to be an American.

Sure, there are people within those groups - Americans, soldiers, pick any other defined group - that will momentarily shake my pride. But I know that these people are abberations. I know that’s not what the core of America is about. Republican or Democrat, east or west, north or south, most people do feel pride in this country. It’s not strictly a conservative thing. It’s not even a pro-war thing. You can be against all kinds of things but still have pride in your country. It takes a special kind of self-loather to hate this place so much that they would embrace the lies and propaganda of those who want us dead rather than embrace the words of the people who are protecting their freedom.

I keep thinking of Jim Craig, wrapped in the American flag after the U.S. hockey team beat Russia. I think of what Americans felt that day, the amazing surge of pride that came through and I don’t remember anyone making fun of that pride or belittling it.

Then came 9/11 and we again wrapped ourselves in flags and suddenly we were jingoistic. And now they don’t want our athletes to wave the US flag during the Olympics.

What happened to pride? Or are there more people proud of their loathing and hatred than there are who are proud of our freedoms? Are there more people willing to pick and choose the goats of the country than people who will point out the heroes? Or are the loathers just louder?

I weep for this country. I don’t recognize it anymore. I want to be the third grader holding her hand over her heart and saying the pledge with fierce pride. I want it to be 1980 and I’m standing in my living room bursting with pride as I watch the hockey team. I want it to even be 1991, the beginning of the Gulf War I, when ever single tree in this neighborhood was adorned with a giant yellow ribbon.

I love my country. I love America. I don’t understand Americans who don’t.

Reporter Toby Harnden of the British Daily Telegraph describes a conversation with an American journalist. Somehow, I’m not even remotely surprised:

“But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.

She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it.”

JimK has the full article. Read, as they say, the whole thing.

UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens makes a similar point: “It’s now fairly obvious that those who cover Iraq have placed their bets on a fiasco or “quagmire” and that this conclusion shows in the fiber and detail of their writing.”

But don’t forget, folks, the real problem with journalistic ethics is… Fox News. L.A. Times Editor John Carroll says so.

We’ve covered Abu Ghraib extensively at Winds of Change.NET, from regular briefing links and the Kurdistan Observer’s perspective and the Abu Ghraib’s horrors under Saddam to:

• Armed Liberal’s Abu Ghraib and Abu Graib != My Lai;
• Sensing on Abu Ghraib (“…there is no but”); and
• Trent Telenko’s Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: A Contrarian’s View.
• I’d also like to mention Chief Wiggles’ recent post, written by an interrogation specialist who has served in Iraq. He is also the founder of the Operation Give toys for Iraq drive.

Time for a legal perspective. Bob Harmon is a former US Army Reserve Military Police officer, and current head of the Marin County California ACLU. As Trent Telenko noted in his recommendation: “Bob has a unique perspective of the problems there from both the military and international legal points of view.” He has published one law review article on the Yamashita command-responsibility case, which is very much on point re: Abu Ghraib, and like Trent he has also covered sexual harassment in the military.

FUBAR: Reflections on the 15-6 Report
by Bob Harmon

The Army’s 15-6 report on the incidents in the Abu Ghraib prison, and at other holding facilities in Iraq, suggest much more than the abuses themselves…

Read The Rest…

There are those who say we can’t help Iraq become a Democracy; they’re wrong. They say we should pull out; they’re mistaken. They claim it’s pointless to continue, but they have no sense of history or perspective.

To those who say…

A lot of Iraqis have soured on the occupation and don’t like American troops!: Gee, I wonder how popular American troops were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki a year after we dropped nukes on them? How about in Dresden where we, along with along with the British, firebombed the city and killed 30,000 people? Even though we weren’t loved, we still made it work in post-war Japan and Germany. Certainly our troops today can do the same thing in a country like Iraq where our soldiers are dealing with a population that is, for the most part at least, grateful to us for removing Saddam.

All the Iraqis hate us because of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Democracy is impossible now! I’ve seen little evidence beyond pure supposition to support that. In fact, to the contrary, there’s more than a little evidence that the majority of Kurds and Shias weren’t terribly upset by the idea that Sunnis, who had been torturing their people for decades, were getting a dose of their own medicine. That’s not to say that what happened at Abu Ghraib helped matters, but the idea that it was some sort of crippling blow to Democracy in Iraq is sheer nonsense peddled for the most part by the same people who opposed the war in Iraq all along.

It has been more than a year since we invaded, why isn’t Iraq Switzerland yet? People don’t usually put it like this, but this is in effect what they mean. What I say to that is “Was our occupation in Germany or Japan done in a year”? How long did we have to stay in South Korea helping them towards freedom? To think that we should be able to take a war torn country full of people who have lived under a tyrant their whole lives and magically transform them into a stable, prospering, democracy in little over a year is expecting too much, too soon.

Look how many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. We can’t keep that up!: We should never forget the American lives lost in Iraq, nor the soldiers who have been wounded. It’s a terrible thing for an American to have to die or lose a limb fighting in a foreign land. Moreover, we should not minimize the grief and hardship it causes for their friends and families. There’s no such thing as “light casualties” to someone who has had a loved one killed or injured in combat.

However, we must also remember that we have lost a very small number of soldiers in Iraq compared to other conflicts America has been engaged in during our history. Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, from the time we invaded until now, it has been roughly 14 1/2 months. In that time, we’ve had 784 fatalities in Iraq. Let’s say we lost that many every year from now on in Iraq. According to the statistics I gathered from the United States Combat Casualty Digest, it would take…

717 years to = the 562,130 American lives lost on both sides of the Civil War

148 years to = the 116,708 American lives lost in WW1

520 years to = the 408,306 American lives lost in WW2

69 years to = the 54,246 American lives lost in the Korean War

74 years to = the 58,219 American lives lost in the Vietnam War

Make no mistake about it, we’re capable of hanging in there. Especially since cutting and running now would mean that the soldiers who have already given their lives would have died in vain.

We need more troops in Iraq to succeed and why haven’t the marines rampaged through Fallujah yet? We’re not doing enough militarily to win in Iraq right now!: The generals in Iraq are not currently asking for more troops and the marines on the ground in Fallujah ultimately made the decision to hand that city over to Iraqi forces. Our military forces are not only the best the world has ever seen, they’re on the ground in Iraq and have a better understanding of what’s going on than anyone stateside. As far as I’m concerned, they have a better handle on combat operations in Iraq than any grandstanding politicians, knowitall ex-generals, or pontificating pundits. I trust our military’s judgement in these matters and so should everyone else.

Why don’t we have a plan? If we had a plan everything would be smooth sailing. Without a plan we can’t succeed!: Look, there is no such thing as an “Idiot’s Guide to Turning Arab Nations Into Democracies”. It has been tougher than expected in Iraq, but on the other hand there have been local elections, we turn over partial sovereignty at the end of June, we have elections scheduled for Jan of 2005, Al-Sadr’s unpopular insurgency is petering out and Fallujah is quiet for the moment. Obviously, we do have a plan and it’s working, even if things haven’t been as smooth as we’d like.

Why aren’t the Iraqis doing something for themselves? We have to handle all the security and they don’t even care!: Right now, there are 200,000 members of the Iraqi Army, Civil Defense Corps, police services, border patrol and infrastructure protection agency and we’re adding more of them and improving their training all the time. We don’t know how long it’ll be until the Iraqis can handle their own security without our help, but that time is getting closer every day.

Make no mistake about it, the biggest threat to Iraqi Democracy is not civil war between the Sunnis and Shias or a major uprising against the US, it’s American resolve. If we have the courage to persevere, we can help the Iraqis rule themselves instead of — to our eternal shame — abandoning them to some “benevolent” dictator or pulling out before they’re ready and creating the conditions that would make a civil war likely. What we’re doing is right, just, in our interests, and succeeding. At this point, we just need to stick in there, support the troops, and most importantly, don’t go wobbly on Iraq!

(Cross-posted from A.E.Brain, the Blog.)

Since the media is concentrating on 6 month old photos from Abu Ghraib jail, showing psychological torture, it’s only right to show some photos taken at the same or similar places, slightly earlier. Photos courtesy of the resistance group, Free Iraq.

Warning, these photos are gruesome.

Here is one victim.
And another, slightly more recogniseable.
And another.
An another….

Here is one survivor.
And another.

Questions have been asked as to how did the guards get a (dog)leash or a hood?
Well, here is some of the equipment that was used until relatively recently.

In case it’s not blindingly obvious, these are the results of Saddam’s regime. These images are all over a year old, because that’s when this horror was stopped. Not by ‘investigative journalists’. By the US military. But you won’t read about that in the papers.

If anyone thinks the shameful acts of some US MPs are just a case of ‘same business under new management’, then may I suggest they get a prosthetic sense of proportion, as they obviously don’t have one.

Those barbarities were also put an end to, by the same people. Not by ‘investigative journalists’. By the US military. But you won’t read about that in the papers, either.

Many of us were soldiers at one time or another. Mine was during the Vietnam War. John Kerry is now running on his record as a “war hero” but to many of us, he was something else. He met with the enemy while a member of the United States Navy and then he used their propaganda to slander his country and his fellow soldiers. Have you met veterans who were spit on when they returned? I wasn’t, but a friend of mine was while walking, in uniform, with his wife through San Francisco Airport. I hold John Kerry and his sponsors from Hollywood (including Jane Fonda) partly responsible for that and many worse consequences.

Between the time that John Kerry was a war hero, and John Kerry (did you know I am a war hero) the Senator emerged as a presidential candidate, he published a book (which he will not allow to be republished) which showed his view of the American Soldier. If you miss the meaning, remember the Iwo Jima Memorial or look at the picture a couple of articles down from this one.

Here is the cover

Here is a post about another statue that says thanks to our troops, this one made by an Iraqi artist who had previously spent his life making bronze busts of Saddam.

It is Armed Forces Day here in the States.

A single holiday for citizens to come together and thank our military members for their patriotic service in support of our country.

A NATION’S STRENGTH
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What makes a nation’s pillars high
And it’s foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?
It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.
Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.
And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.
Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor’s sake
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly…
They build a nation’s pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

Thank you.

Photo taken at the Nassau County War Memorial located in Eishenhower Park, East Meadow, Long Island. If you’d like, you can see more photos of the memorial here

The Taliban, Saddam, and other terrorists have seen what happens when a president firmly wields America’s big stick. Fortunately, President Bush also understands the value of the carrot. Gadhafi, who has felt America’s stick several times in the past, finally decided to pursue the carrot after years of supporting terrorism. In an extraordinary move, Gadhafi agreed last December to dismantle Libya’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. Since then President Bush has been slowly rewarding Libya’s good behavior by first allowing Americans to travel to Libya and recently moving to allow resumption of oil imports and most commercial and financial activities.

This has two key benefits. First, it shows that we reward nations for good behavior. Second, it will also eventually put more oil on the market (Libya’s oil production is about half of what is was before Gadhafi consolidated his power and lead his country down the terrorist path).

Libya still has a long way to go before they are fully trusted again. President Bush is being careful to keep some restrictions on Libya – I imagine he will carefully remove them as Libya continues to improve. However, it is nice to see some progress.

Libya serves as a dramatic counterpoint to Syria who continues to resist the war on terror. So three days ago, President Bush waved a stick in their direction by creating an executive order forbidding all American companies from selling goods to Syria other than food or medicine.

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, hereby determine that the actions of the Government of Syria in supporting terrorism, continuing its occupation of Lebanon, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.

Wretchard has some interesting comments on how this action continues to put pressure on the traditional Sunni leaders. I do not know enough about these politics to judge, but Wretchard’s comments seem reasonable. For my part, I think Bush also timed this to closely follow the events in Libya. Bush continues to use both the carrot and the stick in his war on terror, at least the part that is visible to onlookers. I strongly believe that President Bush is also using the stick and the carrot behind the scenes, but if this is done properly, we will never hear of it - at least not for twenty-five years or so.

We do indeed live in interesting times.

Dan Koppel: I'm your announcer Dan Koppel here with my co-hosts Peter Brokaw and Laurie Malkin. It's late in the third quarter and the Damascus Jihadis have the LA Lakers on the ropes. It has been a dominating performance by the Jihadis...

Peter Brokaw: You said it Dan! Nothing has gone right for the Lakers tonight and coach Phil Jackson's gameplan is the likely culprit. Do you agree Dan?

Dan Koppel: Absolutely! This whole game has just been an embarrassing travesty for Laker fans...

Laurie Malkin: Guys, I hate to disagree but the Lakers are leading 108-24...

Dan Koppel: Come on Laurie, show some professionalism and stop your mindless cheerleading for the Lakers...

Laurie Malkin: Ok Dan, what you need to understand is...

Peter Brokaw: OH MY, OH MY, OH MY! Karl Malone has fouled one of the Jihadis! That is his second foul of the game leaving with him with only four more to go before he fouls out!

Dan Koppel: This thing is over without Malone, I repeat OVER! If Malone fouls out, the Lakers are DOOMED to go down to ignominious defeat!

Peter Brokaw: Holy Moly, Yassir Bin Laden, point guard for the Jihadis has made his free throw! That's another point on the board for the Jihadis and a huge, huge, failure by the Lakers! Did I say HUGE failure?

Dan Koppel: Yes you did Peter and rightly so! It's Lakers ball again. They're going down the court and it's a pass to Shaquille O'Neal and as he dunks, he's fouled by Jihadi center Muhammad Al-Sadr who is out of the game with his 6th foul.

Laurie Malkin: Wow! That's Shaq's 15th dunk of the night!

Peter Brokaw: Yes, yes Laurie -- like anyone cares about how many dunks Shaq gets.

Dan Koppel: (Yawn) Oh, I'm sorry everybody, I was falling asleep hearing about Shaq's dunks. Like there's anyone in the audience who'd want to know about that.

Peter Brokaw: MY GOODNESS, Shaq has missed a free throw! Shaq! Has! Missed! A! Free! Throw!

Dan Koppel: How can these Laker fans be expected to sit through this type of drubbing Peter?

Peter Brokaw: I just don't know Peter, I just don't know....hey, wait a second! Jihadis small forward, Deir Atta, has run into a group of small children in the crowd, yelled something about "infidels", and has blown himself up! What a tragedy...

Laurie Malkin: Oh my God! What sort of psychopaths are these Jihadis?

Dan Koppel: Now Laurie, I didn't want to say anything, but earlier today as I was coming in the building I noticed that Gary Payton turned down a young Jihadi fan who requested an autograph. So can we really say that the Lakers haven't done anything just as bad as the Jihadis here today?

Peter Brokaw: Quite right Dan! You know who I blame for this debacle?

Dan Koppel: Lakers coach Phil Jackson obviously...

Peter Brokaw: That's right, Phil Jackson!

Laurie Malkin: What?!?!

Dan Koppel: Well, as expected, this game has been called on account of suicide bombing. The league will probably want to finish the game at a later date, but is there really a point?

Peter Brokaw: I agree Peter, can't they just call this one a Jihadi victory and let it go at that?

Dan Koppel: Yes Peter, I never thought the Lakers had a chance. Maybe, just maybe, if the Lakers give this one up, it'll make them a little more humble and it may even cool off their hot rivalry with the Jihadis.

Peter Brokaw: I agree Dan! LA Lakers: fire Phil Jackson and just give up!

Laurie Malkin: But the Lakers are winning and...

Peter Brokaw: Oh good grief Laurie, stop being such a Lakers apologist for once in your life!

Dan Koppel: I agree wholeheartedly Peter! Well, that's it for this week! We'll be back to cover the rest of this one if the Lakers insist on continuing towards certain defeat.

Peter Brokaw: Oh goody, another quarter full of fouls and missed free throws inbetween all those dunks and that scoring Laurie seems to find so impressive for some reason...

Dan Koppel: Let's just hope the Lakers fans have the common sense to call it quits and demand the Lakers don't finish this one out.

Peter Brokaw: Agreed!

I am angry tonight. I hope other Americans are also.

Some of us have long understood the depths of the barbarian evil confronting us. Too many others refuse to understand, even after today’s beheading of an innocent American civilian.

At a meeting today with a nice, intelligent businessman of South Asian descent, the subject of the war came up. In his part of the world, he said, all the butchery of war is shown. He was sure that we would never have completed our Iraq invasion if our media showed the all the gore.

Although he lives at least part time in the United States, he believes our media hid those pictures to promote for the war. He doesn’t realize that the majority of our news media personnel were and are against the Battle of Iraq. He doesn’t understand that they hide the gore because they think we cannot handle it.

Our media has decided to act in loco parenti. They don’t want to show mere citizens the full bloody truth. Of course, this hasn’t stopped them from bombarding us with degrading and prurient images from Abu Ghraib. It hasn’t stopped them from bombarding us over and over again with pictures of Americans, not representative of America or our military, badly abusing suspected killers.

This gentleman had a point, although his inference was far from the mark.

Stop the censorship!

Let Americans see the whole picture.

Show the video of the jumpers of 9-11 - all the way to the ground, as often as we had to see the prison photos.

Show the full video of today’s beheading.

Show American civilians risking their lives to rebuild the Iraqi power system.

Show the videos of Iraqi professionals murdered by Ba’athist terrorists in order to derail the rebuilding.

Show the videos of Iraqi tanks destroyed by bombs filled with concrete instead of explosive, to avoid killing the innocent people in the houses near the tanks.

Show the full videos of the Fallujians desecrating the remains of the American civilians they had just killed; show the joy they express in stabbing and cutting and then hanging the remains from a bridge.

Show how little damage was done in order to pacify Fallujiah and show the civilians allowed to flee to safety before that opation.

Show the full video of our wounded soldiers as they fall, suffer or die while fighting those who would rule Iraq by violence.

Show our soldiers risking their lives in combat to avoid unnecessarily killing innocent Iraqis. Show what our firepower could do if we chose to save our soldier’s lives instead of the innocent Iraqis.

Show Saddam’s videos. Make the entire world watch them. Show them as often as the prison videos are shown.

Show the pictures of the Israeli children after they have been murdered by Palestinians.

Show the video of Palestinians dancing with the bloody body parts of Israeli soldiers they have killed. Make sure our multi-culturalists see how those Palestinians respect the Jewish cultural need to bury all parts of their dead.

War is hell. Post 9-11, so is the alternative.

Show us all of the truth!

Let’s see how our citizens balance the events and necessities of this war against the death cult of radical Islam.

I trust our citizens to come to the right conclusions.

Our Censors do not.

Stop the Censorship!

[Also published at Useful Fools blog]

Not around Israel - around the U.N.

Via A Collection of Thoughts.

This is a duplicate of the original post at the nikita demosthenes website.

Liberals said the war in Iraq was “all about the oil.” “No blood for oil,” they said. If the war was about the U.S. stealing oil (as opposed to giving it to the Iraqi people so they could use the income - rather than Saddam to build more palaces & to bribe UN, French, and Russian officials) - then why is the price of gas so high right now?

See, for example, this monthly price chart for crude oil.

Hmm. I suppose the U.S. isn’t stealing the Iraqis’ oil. And - too bad for the UN - the oil for food money is no longer available for Saddam or anyone else to bribe UN, French, and/or Russian officials.

This is a copy of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

Well, he’s a teenage boy, and that in itself is dangerous enough.

This is a follow-up post to Mostly Armless, an Op-Ed article of August 2003. From the Sunday Times, via AliAbbas.Net :

Since a few weeks after their arrival in London in August, Ali and his friend Ahmed, who lost a leg and a hand in the Iraq conflict, had been driven several times a week to Queen Mary’s hospital, 10 minutes from their temporary London home, for rehabilitation sessions. These would teach them how to use their new limbs, once delivered.
[…]
Meanwhile, Ali tried to wait patiently for the new arms and began to refine his skills: playing a Game Boy with his feet, unwrapping a Kit Kat with his toes — even partially dressing himself by using his feet to push a T-shirt over his head.

In September Ali’s bionic right arm was ready for the final fitting. All the mechanical elements — socket, elbow, wrist and hand — had been fashioned into a perfect, pale-brown whole. “I was very eager to see the arm, and when I did I was overjoyed,” says Ali. It was similar to one he had been shown in Kuwait, where he has been looked after before being taken to Britain. His prosthetic specialist, Nick Hillsdon, slid the new limb on to his shoulder and attached it, with Fiona’s help, with temporary straps so that Ali could wear it unsupported.

The arm felt heavy; though it was approximately the same weight as the right arm he had lost, it seemed heavier, as his real arm had been supported by muscles and tendons. “I just thought, ‘I’ve got to get used to it; I have to’,” recalls Ali. “I was very eager to start practising. When I finally got to put the arm on, Ahmed peeled an orange for me and I used my artificial arm to eat it. I was so happy.”

However, his uncle Mohammed, who accompanied Ali from Iraq and now looks after him, says it was only at that moment that Ali fully realised the prosthetic arms would never be able to compensate for his missing limbs. “He had hoped he would be able to use the arms for doing plenty of things, principally washing and going to the toilet; and although they brought him hope, he realised he had to dramatically scale down his expectations.”

Ali’s second arm, an electric one, arrived a few weeks later. It boasted a new designer detail — a Manchester United tattoo that Ali had requested a few weeks earlier.

For the first time in more than six months he would be able to look in a mirror and see a reflection of himself whole.

“When I first saw my reflection in the mirror I thought, ‘Look, they’re mine!’” Ali recalls brightly. “I didn’t think they’d look this good. I thought no one would be able to tell the difference.”

Ali loved looking normal again. Uncle Mohammed’s eyes brimmed with tears. They had been through so much. But Ali’s arms can never be real substitutes for those he lost, and in some ways his greatest challenge was beginning just as the media attention began to fade.

Another digestive biscuit shattered. Ali giggled as crumbs flew in all directions for the third time that afternoon. “Hmm, shortbread fingers might do it,” said Fiona.

The idea was to hold a biscuit and practise revolving the wrist until it aligned the biscuit with his mouth, allowing a big bite. But digestives clearly weren’t up to the job. Fortunately, shortbread proved more successful.

Ali had had few problems mastering his wrist. Operating the electric hand was much more difficult. “Learning to open and close the hand was a struggle,” recalls Fiona. “Ali could get movement, but only sometimes. His challenge was to learn exactly which muscle he needed to tense to make the fingers respond, and he was finding it difficult to isolate the pectoral muscle beneath his armpit. Instead, he kept flexing the remaining bit of bicep, which produced nothing but frustration. “It was very difficult at first and I sometimes got cross,” he remembers.

In October Ali was allowed to take his new limbs home, with the words of his occupational therapist ringing in his ears: “Try to wear them about an hour a day.”

He needed to make using the arms a habit: Fiona had observed how Ali was inclined to favour his feet when presented with a task. “Being able to use both his feet and his prosthetic arms is important,” she says, “but I’ve had to make a lot of deals with him: ‘Do a little bit with your arms, then you can use your feet’.”

He has gradually been encouraged to wear his arms for longer. “So far he is able to open a door and use a computer,” his uncle Mohammed explains. Ali is also learning to write but he can’t bathe himself yet. “He understands that he is still in the practising and learning phase,” says Mohammed.

In the future Ali will be free to choose how often he wants to wear his arms. “It will be for Ali to decide,” says Nick Hillsdon. “He’ll try lots of different types of arm in the next few years, I’m sure. I can see him wanting a lightweight pair of cosmetic arms for playing football or for mucking about in, just to give him a bit of balance and so he feels he looks normal.”

Ali’s scars are healing well, and within the next couple of years their angry purple colour will fade. They are already much more elastic, which means it is easier for Ali to move around. He has found great comfort in having two hands at the ends of his sleeves, but although he has made great progress in mastering the functionality of the arms, he sometimes chooses to switch the hand and wrist off.

It turns out that he wasn’t particularly interested in the silicone “glove”, which mimics real skin, that Nick Hillsdon showed him in November. Intricately painted and detailed, it fits snugly over the pink plastic arms, but it made his hands seem too large for his body. “The fingers look a bit too much like sausages with the silicone glove bulking them up. We might have another go, but Ali really wasn’t that bothered either way by the silicone,” says Nick.

Ali recently delighted in demonstrating how he can now use his arm when he met two young Iraqi patients who have arrived here for prosthetic limb treatment. And in a recent television interview, while Nick was talking about the technical challenges of Ali’s arm, Ali impishly switched the hand on and sat sweetly while it revolved round and round.

While Ali is still growing, new sockets will be built for his arms every two to three years. Nick expects he will be ready to receive a larger hand when he is 15 or 16. He also expects Ali to benefit from advances in technology. “By the time Ali is in his early twenties I hope he will be able to operate his hand and arm by electronic signals direct from the brain rather than the muscle,” Nick says. “This would allow him to think the word ‘open’ and the hand would respond.” Ali Abbas could become the bionic man.

Ali will never be ‘normal’. By his courage and tenacity, he’s already shown that he’s far better than that. I can easily imagine him as an Olympian representing Iraq in a future Paralympics. Or even Manchester United.

One of the first things they teach in both college level marketing and communications courses is that the message that bad publicity delivers is often not what the senders or the sufferers think it will be. This is the case with the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal. I believe it is far too soon to know how this scandal will play with Iraq’s ethnically fractured public, and the wider Arab world.

This is a fact that War on Terrorism Doomies like Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen ignore in their emotional tirades against the Bush Administration. This emotional zaniness has even infected normally level headed Fareed Zakaria.

You doubt it? Well, set your way back machine dial to the late 1980s - early 1990s and then remember what ex-Soviet citizens told us of Soviet propaganda.

Read The Rest…

DFW STAR-TELEGRAM: Nader faces deadline to get on Texas ballot

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader faces an uphill battle to get on the Texas ballot, despite the determined efforts of campaign volunteers who want to offer voters another choice besides the dominant two-party system.

Monday is the deadline for Nader to submit to the Texas secretary of state the 64,076 signatures of registered voters required to list him on the ballot for the November election.

Texas is one of the states with the most difficult requirements. Nader, 70, failed in April to get on the ballot in Oregon. That state’s law permits a one-day convention of 1,000 for a candidate to get on the ballot, but Nader drew fewer than 750 people then.

Nader is 70?

Nader is older than Reagan was when he was campaigning for President in 1980. Where are the throngs and masses of liberals screaming that Nader is too old to serve that were screaming to the rafters that Reagan, at one year younger, was already a doddering old dangerous fool?

Oh… wait… they’re probably all over 70 now, too, and they know well enough to keep their mouths quiet because when you’re that old you should stay out of Presidential politics.

From Admiral Quixote’s Round Table:

I recently attended the National Pastors Convention in San Diego with several thousand pastors from many different denominations. During one of the general sessions, the Master of Ceremonies introduced a pastor from Uzbekistan. He had traveled the farthest to attend the convention. I don’t remember his name, and even if I did, I know I couldn’t pronounce it. However, I do know this: I will never forget this man.

Right away, I liked him. He was humble, sincere, and gracious. He apologized for his broken English, though I thought he spoke very well. As the MC interviewed him, he began to share about his ministry in his country that borders Afghanistan. He talked about the church he pastors of a few hundred people. He also shared how it is illegal in his country to be a Christian. You see, his church is an “underground” church. Amazingly, his city also has 3 “underground” Christian schools. He talked about how the Christians have been arrested and even killed in his country.

Then, as the interview was about to end, he began to speak very urgently and passionately. He said something to this effect: “I would like all of you to know that my church and the Christians in my country are praying that President Bush will be reelected.”

I was stunned. I knew that this gathering had to include many pastors from all over the political spectrum and I was certain this would not go over well. Immediately, there were murmurings and rumblings throughout the audience and the MC seemed a little uncertain about what to do next.

However, this pastor would not be denied. Grasping the microphone firmly in his hand, he continued, “The officials in my country are afraid of President Bush, so they don’t persecute Christians as much. Under Clinton it was very bad for us. Many of us were arrested, put in jail, and some were killed. With Clinton, it was very bad. But under President Bush, it has been so much better, so we are praying for him.” [boldness added]

The murmuring ended. It was suddenly very quiet. The MC paused. Then he just asked us to stand and pray for this man and we did so with great passion.

Choking back tears, I was immediately struck with this realization in my heart: this coming election was not just about me or my church or my country. This coming election would affect the entire world. And while there are many Christians and churches in this country that may not support our current President, there is a group of Christians halfway around the world who are desperately praying for his reelection.

Fox News Watch today had a segment discussing the prisoner abuse scandal. Never once did they consider the question of whether the photographs should have been released.

The following is my letter to the show:

I am shocked that nobody asked: “Should the pictures have been aired?”

Journalists have a first amendment right not to face prior restraint. With this comes a duty to behave as responsible citizens.

In the case of this story, the release of the pictures was irresponsible. Americans will die because of that action, and 60 Minutes II must have known that. The journalistic watchdog function could have been performed in this case without showing the photos, some of which will appear on terrorist recruiting posters and web sites for decades. Of course, it wouldn’t have provided nearly as juicy a scandal, but it might have saved many American lives. Waiting two weeks was not enough.

This was classified information. The person who released it to the media is a criminal. Were it not for the enormous political power of the media, a grand jury (or military equivalent) would have been convened to determine the identity of the leaker. If necessary, journalists would have been ordered to reveal their source. They would then take great pride in going to prison instead.

Why do you folks think you have not only a right, but a duty to release information very damaging to our effort to fight terrorism? Is it because it is a political year?

I admire Fox news, but I cannot admire anybody on your panel after the arrogance demonstrated by your failure to even realize that such a question is valid.

You people should be ashamed, if such an emotion is allowed in media personnel.

Consider me dismayed and disgusted

The media now assumes that possession of information confers an automatic and unfettered freedom, even an obligation, to release it, regardless of the resulting harm to the nation.

By far the greatest damage resulting from the prisoner abuse situations was the release of photographs. Had those not been released, the situation would have been appropriately handled by the steps already in process. Journalists could even have used their normal “gotcha” against the administration on this issue without releasing the photographs. But that wasn’t enough for them.

The consequence of the release of those pictures is potentially catastrophic. We are fighting a war for the “Hearts and Minds” of Muslims, especially in the Middle Easter. Information is a very important weapon and a very important defense in that war.

If we lose that war, we will have to fight a potentially much broader and vastly more destructive war, both to us and especially to countries that are involved with terrorism. Remember Dresden and Hiroshima, and extrapolate.

Am example of the damage done can be seen at the Iraqi blog Healing Iraq. It contains the writings of Zeyad, a young Iraqi dentist. Zeyad had been supportive of the occupation, even when one of his cousins was apparently killed in another rare incident of abuse (which is also under investigation). Zeyad understood that these events were rare. But now, Zeyad appears to have given up on us.

Thank you, 60 minutes II, for costing us an ally, and for humiliating and angering a good person.

Ironically, the release of those pictures may damage the military’s ability to prosecute those who abused the prisoners. Again, the media didn’t care.

As exemplified by 60 minutes and the Fox News Watch panel, the media simply doesn’t care. They are so arrogant and isolated in their own value system that the question apparently didn’t occur to them.

The pictures caused a scandal. The political scandal will follow the normal script for these. But the international damage may result in the death of many Americans.

Here is their Code of Conduct. You will find no mention of the national interest in it.

Note: Also published at Useful Fools blog.

Time for some real journalism.

On the weblog Iraq The Model, Iraqi MD Ali interviews a friend and fellow doctor about his experience working for a month in Abu Ghraib prison. His interview provides crucial context and Iraqi perspective sorely (and intentionally?) missing from pictures leaked by CBS 60 Minutes II:

Abu Ghraib, other parts of the picture

Yesterday a friend of mine, who’s also a doctor, visited us. After chatting about old memories, I asked him about his opinions on the current situations in Iraq. I’ve always known this friend to be apathetic when it comes to politics, even if it means what’s happening in Iraq. It was obvious that he hadn’t change and didn’t show any interest in going deep into this conversation. However when I asked him about his opinion on GWB response to the prisoners’ abuse issue, I was surprised to see him show anger and disgust as he said:

This whole thing makes me sick.

Why is that?! I asked.

These thugs are treated much better than what they really deserve!

What are you saying!? You can’t possibly think that this didn’t happen! And they’re still human beings, and there could be some innocents among them.

Of course it happened, and I’m not talking about all the prisoners nor do I support these actions, and there could be some innocents among them, but I doubt it.

Then why do you say such a thing?

Because these events have taken more atention than they should.

I agree but there should be an investigation on this. There are other pictures that were shown lately, and there are talks about others that will be shown in the near future.

Yes, but what happened cannot represent more than 1% of the truth.

Oh I really hope there would be no more than that.

No, that’s not what I meant. What I’m saying is that these events are the exception and not the rule.

How do you know that!? I must say I agree with your presumption, but I don’t have a proof, and I never thought you’d be interested in such issue!

I was there for a whole month!

In Abu-Ghraib!? What were you doing there!?

It was part of my training! Did you forget that!? I know you skipped that at Saddam’s time, but how could you forget that?

Yes, but I thought that with the American troops there, the system must have been changed.

No it’s still the same. We still have to do a month there.

So tell me what did you see there? How’s the situation of the prisoners? Did you see any abuse? Do they get proper medical care? (I was excited to see someone who was actually there, and he was a friend!)

Hey, slow down! I’ll tell you what I know. First of all, the prisoners are divided into two groups; the ordinary criminals and the political ones. I used to visit the ordinary criminals during every shift, and after that, the guards would bring anyone who has a complaint to me at the prison’s hospital.

What about the “political” ones?

I’m not allowed to go to their camps, but when one of them feels ill, the guards bring him to me.

Are the guards all Americans?

No, the American soldiers with the IP watch over and take care of the ordinary criminals, but no one except the Americans is allowed to get near the political ones

How are the medical supplies in the prison?

Not very great, but certainly better from what it was on Saddam’s times. However my work is mainly at night, but in the morning the supplies are usually better.

How many doctors, beside you, were there?

There was an American doctor, who’s always their (His name is Eric, a very nice guy, he and I became friends very fast), and other Iraqi doctors with whom I shared the work, and in the morning, there are always some Iraqi senior doctors; surgeons, physicians…etc.

Why do you say they are very well treated?

They are fed much better than they get at their homes. I mean they eat the same stuff we eat, and it’s pretty good; eggs, cheese, milk and tea, meat, bread and vegetables, everything! And that happened every day, and a good quality too.

Are they allowed to smoke? (I asked this because at Saddam’s times, it was a crime to smoke in prison and anyone caught while doing this would be punished severely).

Yes, but they are given only two cigarettes every day.

What else? How often are they allowed to take a bath? (This may sound strange to some people, but my friend understood my question. We knew from those who spent sometime in Saddam’s prisons, and survived, that they were allowed to take a shower only once every 2-3 weeks.)

Anytime they want! There are bathrooms next to each hall.

Is it the same with the “political” prisoners?

I never went there, but I suppose it’s the same because they were always clean when they came to the hospital, and their clothes were always clean too.

How often do they shave? (I remember a friend who spent 45 days in prison at Saddam’s times had told me that the guards would inspect their beards every day to see if they were shaved properly, and those who were not, would be punished according to the guards’ mood. He also told me that they were of course not allowed to have any shaving razors or machines and would face an even worse punishment in case they found some of these on one of the prisoners. So basically all the prisoners had to smuggle razors, which cost a lot, shave in secrecy and then get rid of the razor immediately! That friend wasn’t even a political prisoner; he was arrested for having a satellite receiver dish in his house!)

I’m not sure, from what I saw, it seemed that there was a barber visiting them frequently, because they had different hair cuts, some of them shaved their beards others kept them or left what was on their chins only. I mean it seemed that they had the haircut they desired!

Yes but what about the way they are treated? And how did you find American soldiers in general?

I’ll tell you about that; first let me tell you that I was surprised with their politeness. Whenever they come to the hospital, they would take of their helmets and show great respect and they either call me Sir or doctor. As for the way they treat the prisoners, they never handcuff anyone of those, political or else, when they bring them for examination and treatment unless I ask them to do so if I know that a particular prisoner is aggressive, and I never saw them beat a prisoner and rarely did one of them use an offensive language with a prisoner.

One of those times, a member of the American MP brought one of the prisoners, who was complaining from a headache, but when I tried to take history from him he said to me “doctor, I had a problem with my partner (he was a homosexual) I’m not Ok and I need a morphine or at least a valium injection” when I told him I can’t do that, he was outraged, swore at me and at the Americans and threatened me. I told the soldier about that, and he said “Ok Sir, just please translate to him what I’m going to say”. I agreed and he said to him “I want you to apologize to the doctor and I want your word as a man that you’ll behave and will never say such things again” and the convict told him he has his word!!

Another incidence I remember was when one of the soldiers brought a young prisoner to the hospital. The boy needed admission but the soldier said he’s not comfortable with leaving the young boy (he was about 18) with those old criminals and wanted to keep him in the isolation room to protect him. I told him that this is not allowed according to the Red Cross regulations. He turned around and saw the paramedics’ room and asked me if he can keep him there, and I told him I couldn’t. The soldier turned to a locked door and asked me about it. I said to him “It’s an extra ward that is almost deserted but I don’t have the keys, as the director of the hospital keeps them with him”. The soldier grew restless, and then he brought some tools, broke that door, fixed it, put a new lock, put the boy inside and then locked the door and gave me the key!

Did you witness any aggressiveness from American soldiers?

Only once. There was a guy who is a troublemaker. He was abnormally aggressive and hated Americans so much. One of those days the soldiers were delivering lunch and he took the soup pot that was still hot and threw it at one of the guards. The guard avoided it and the other guards caught the convict and one of them used an irritant spray that causes sever itching, and then they brought the prisoner to me to treat him.

So you think that these events are isolated?

As far as I know and from what I’ve seen, I’m sure that they are isolated.

But couldn’t it be true that there were abusive actions at those times that the prisoners were afraid to tell you about?

Are you serious!? These criminals, and I mean both types tell me all about there “adventures and bravery”. Some of them told me how they killed an American soldier or burned a humvee, and in their circumstances this equals a confession! Do you think they would’ve been abused and remained silent and not tell me at least!? No, I don’t think any of this happened during the time I was there. It seemed that this happened to a very small group of whom I met no one during that month.

Can you tell me anything about those “political” prisoners? Are they Islamists, Ba’athists or what?

Islamists?? I don't care what they call themselves, but they are thugs, hey swear all the time, and most of them are addicts or homosexuals or both. Still very few of them looked educated.

Ah, that makes them close to Ba’athists. Do you think there are innocents among them?

There could be. Some of them say they are and others boast in front of me, as I said, telling the crimes they committed in details. Of course I’m not naive enough to blindly believe either.

Are they allowed to get outside, and how often? Do they have fans or air coolers inside their halls?

Of course they are! Even you still compare this to what it used to be at Saddam’s times and there’s absolutely no comparison. They play volleyball or basketball everyday, and they have fans in their halls.

Do they have sport suits?

No, it’s much better than Saddam’s days but it’s still a prison and not the Sheraton. They use the same clothes but I’ve seen them wearing train shoes when they play.

Are they allowed to read?

Yes, I’ve seen the ordinary criminals read, and I believe the political are allowed too, because I remember one of them asking me to tell one of the American soldiers that he wanted his book that one of the soldiers had borrowed from him.

So, you believe there’s a lot of clamor here?

As you said these things are unaccepted but I’m sure that they are isolated and they are just very few exceptions that need to be dealt with, but definitely not the rule. The rule is kindness, care and respect that most of these thugs don’t deserve, and that I have seen by my own eyes. However I still don't understand why did this happen.

I agree with you, only it’s not about the criminals, it’s about the few innocents who could suffer without any guilt and it’s about us; those who try to build a new Iraq. We can’t allow ourselves to be like them and we can’t go back to those dark times.

As for "why"; I must say that these few exceptions happen everywhere, only in good society they can be exposed and dealt with fast, while in corrupted regimes, it may take decades for such atrocities to be exposed which encourage the evil people to go on, and exceptions become the rule.

What happened in Abu-Ghraib should be a lesson for us, Iraqis, above all. It showed how justice functions in a democratic society. We should study this lesson carefully, since sooner or later we'll be left alone and it will be our responsibility to deal with such atrocities, as these will never seize to happen.

-By Ali.

From A Line in the Sand blog:

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To summarize my thoughts, this war has had a major social affect that few have discussed in detail. Before this war, a regularly debated topic was whether females should serve on the front lines, in infrantry units, in combat. As we are in the midst of a war with no front lines, where the most dangerous jobs include transportation and convoy security, all soldiers are forced to sharpen their infantry skills, to be ready for an ambush at every turn. In this way, women today are in fact serving on the “frontlines”. They are doing their jobs with tenacity, with strength, and with courage. As a soldier, they have proven to me time and again, that the debate is over, that the topic is now irrelevant. The discouraging side note to all this is that for at least one of those we have viewed in the pictures, is that it has come at a cost of completely disposing her of the female qualities that indeed make a woman so much different than a man, at times one could even say better.

What this war needs in addition to the strength and courage that is being providing by our outstanding forces, is the compassion that women bring to many situations. The Iraqi people are still in need, they need to believe that good will come from all of this when it is said and done, essentially they need to be nurtured into knowing that we are not imperialists, but remain idealists dedicated to the belief that freedom can be theirs and that self-rule in a republican government can better their lives.

In every action we take in Iraq, we must consider how this need is being addressed. If it becomes a topic that is not touched, their will be no change, theocracy or dictatorship will return, and the lives lost will be in vain. My plea is that we refocus the debate, that we no longer address why women are detrimental to combat, but why they are benificial. Let us not destroy our natures for eqaulity, for if we have widdled away at who we are to achieve that equality, we have simply all become the same and we will be stifled in our efforts to advance an appreciation for life, liberty, freedom, democracy and human rights.

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It is not yet time, as American’s so quickly have a tendancy to do, to wash our hands of the past and stand together to look forward to a brighter tomorrow. Indeed, it is still time to question ourselves and look within as I stated on May 1, and 2 in this blog. The point in which we will exhibit the strength of our country, of our repubic, is when after we conduct this personal re-assessment we move forward and seek justice for the actions of the few that tarnished a nation. It will be done, and it will help us close this chapter in America’s perpetual struggle to improve the world around us. We must not forget however, that it is not just the United States that lives in a digital age, in fact those in the Middle East have probably viewed these pictures more than many of us. This stain will not be erased from their conscience, nor should it, but it is my hope that they will see one day that these crimes were in fact shown before the entire world, and the perpetrators were punished for their actions. Perhaps they too will see that we do not simply seek justice, but we find it, and carry it out to its fullest extent.

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This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

This item speaks for itself, literally.

A listener wrote a letter to Congressman Pete Stark, D-Fremont:

Pete Stark
House of Representatives
239 Cannon HOB
Washington D.C. 20515

Dear Mr. Stark,

I am appalled that you voted against today’s House Resolution 627, Roll Number 150. This measure would have shown publicly that you condemn the abuse of the prisoners in Iraq while simultaneously commend the service of the fine men and women who are serving in Iraq that bring honor to the uniform that they wear and to the Nation that they serve.

There are many Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coastguardmen from your 13th Congressional District who are serving with pride and distinction . These men and women bring great credit upon their hometowns and the State of California.

Your “NO” vote is an indication that you do not support the troops who selflessly serve our nation and in many cases have given the ultimate sacrifice so that you might have the freedom that you enjoy as a citizen of this great Nation. Further, your “NO” vote on this resolution is a disgrace to the people of this district who have elected you.

I urge you to stop your contemptuous display of bitter partisanship and your politicization of this War. Your actions are very divisive and destructive to the morale of our troops and the morale of our nation. I know that a majority of the population of the 13th Congressional District are very strong in their support of our soldiers and in their support of the War in iraq. Your “NO” vote today reflects that you are way out of touch with the people of this district.

Very Sincerely,

Daniel L. Dow

Click here to listen to Congressman Stark’s response. You will be shocked. Maybe not.

[The following originally appeared at Moderate Voice]

ANALYSIS: A ‘TURNING POINT’? THE PRISONER PHOTOS, BUSH, RUMSFELD & THE IMAGE

The controversy over American military guards’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners has reached a new level (or low). And that’s bad news for the Bush administration, Karl Rove and U.S. policy planners.

The bottom line is that this controversy, fed by the almost daily release of more shocking photos splattered on newspaper front pages and on internationally-broadcast cable news services, has veered the Bush White House, the Bush election campaign, and U.S. diplomats into full fight-or-flight damage control mode….and off course. We hope they know how to multiple-task..

The still-growing controversy over the photos and calls for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation stem from genuine concerns that American prison guards seemingly morphed into Iraqi prison guards plus good, old-fashioned politics. And, in a way, that still doesn’t explain why what has happened is so catastrophic. That’s due to a host of issues, including a major underlying one.

Just a few of issues to ponder:

—HOW WOULD YOU FEEL? The photos showed a chamber of horrors for (most likely guilty as hell) Iraqis with smugly grinning young and/or beefy guards standing over them. The photos make the prisoners look sympathetic and brutalized.

—SO THE GLOVES ARE BACK ON THE MILITARY? After 911, many politicos and citizens of both parties, with steely determination in their eyes, declared the gloves would be off in the battle against terrorism and the military would be allowed to do its job. This controversy indicates most Americans just want the gloves pulled down…not off. Or is that wrong? WERE they doing the military’s job? Or abusing their power in the military?

—WAS THIS PRELIMINARY WORK FOR CIA INTERROGATORS? The issue is now: was this part of their job, to unofficially “soften up” prisoners for interrogation? If the word went down quietly that prisoners needed to be terrorized, how high up can that order be traced? To the CIA? Pentagon? White House?

—WHAT IF IT WAS LIFE AND DEATH INFO? If it was crucial to extract info that could save thousands of American troops lives or or millions of American’s lives on the U.S. mainland would any tactic needed to extract info (i.e. torture) be justified? And, if not, and a disaster did take place, what kind of recriminations would follow later for the military being constrained until after the fact?

—CAN THE U.S. STILL TALK ABOUT CLOSING THE TORTURE CHAMBERS AND RAPE ROOMS? Probably yes. But the stock line will have to be revised — and the way to revise it is for the most severe punishment possible for the guards and any higher-ups, if indeed orders from above were issued.

—WHAT DOES IT DO TO U,S. POLICY AND INTERESTS ABROAD? It complicates everything. I used to write from Spain, India and Bangladesh, all countries with a reported semblance of friendship towards the U.S. But there always was resentment about that Rich Uncle Sam with his consumer-driven and supposedly violent culture. Now dump in several cups full of Muslim fury about fellow Muslims being humiliated (and by a woman in some of the photos yet) and it’s evident that repairing the damage will be tough, if not impossible.

—DOES THIS MAKE THE U.S. MORE RIPE FOR TERRORIST ATTACK: Most likely whatever is on the drawing board was started before this incident. But this ensures terrorists that they will be cheered in some parts of the world for another huge attack on the U.S. or U.S. interests — so it stands to reason that it could encourage them to speed up their timetable or launch operations that were iffy.

—WHAT DOES IT MEAN POLITICALLY? Karl Rove might as well have invested his $60 million in pro-Bush ads in Enron stock (actually, he probably HAS). The once-unbeatable advertising theme of GWB as the steadfast wartime President is going to be harder to sell since, except to Republican partisans, it’s now going to remind other voters of huge screw ups.

—WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR DONALD RUMSFELD: An unlovely day today testifying in Congress and the possibility he will get strong hints that he could help Bush by moving on. Bush family loyalty plus Rumsfeld’s own genuine heroism on 911 suggest he won’t be fired no matter what…but he could be encouraged to quit. The Democrats will demand his resignation and the Republicans, circling the wagons, will nix the demands.

Yet, there’s an even BIGGER ISSUE. Yesterday NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski said that when he asked a Pentagon contact about the soldiers alleged to be involved, the Pentagon official replied, “You mean the six morons who lost the war?”

Centerfield’s Todd Pearson calls the photos ” an unmitigated disaster. I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid that history will judge this as a turning point.”

The reason: the abuse photos, the fact the Pentagon had an official report on the abuse for several months and nothing happened, and the President’s delayed apology all were fierce body blows to the U.S. IMAGE.

Images count…and they endure:

—The IMAGE of a young Abraham Lincoln before the war contrasts with the nearly worn out one at the end of the war…a lasting image of the toll of war on a President.
—The IMAGE of Nazi concentration camps with skeletal prisoners cemented for all time the IMAGE of Nazism as a brutal, animalistic-like cult.
—The IMAGE of Franklin Roosevelt standing while making a speech hid the truth, that he needed a wheelchair and crutches. But his handlers kept THE IMAGE intact.
—The IMAGE of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald communicates for all time the turbulence of those uncertain days — and the mafia-linked man in the black hat rubbing out JFK’s accused killer fed conspiracy theories that continue today.
—The IMAGE of a terrorized little girl struck with napalm running down the street in Vietnam on one horrible afternoon — and a Vietnam general putting a bullet into the head of a prisoner — defined that war’s blanket brutality.
—The IMAGE of planes flying into the World Trade Center on 911 generate feelings of a dark day when the unthinkable happened.
—The IMAGE of a bearded Sadaam Hussein, scraggly and probably smelling like a city dump, being pulled out of a spiderhole instantaneously undercut the regal, powerful image his regime had cultivated about him.

So the IMAGE of these grinning soldiers forcing Iraqis into weird positions…and forcing Iraqis to do unspeakable acts to themselves and each other… will live on for many years. And the images will be used by U.S. foes as quick-to-understand “proof” that Americans humiliate their captives. They’ll also be used to recruit terrorists, justify some future big hit on U.S. military forces, lead to some Americans who are kidnapped in Iraq to be brutally treated or murdered, and teach young kids about what Americans are “really like.”

It’s nearly impossible to erase such images —- images that don’t require knowledge of any kind of language or a translator — with words. Only decisive action can combat a bad image. And only quick action can stop the looming damage.

The Context for Analysis

The most important fact in examining this issue is that we are at war. Many of us believe, with good reason, that this war is as dangerous to our country as any war we have fought in the last 100 years. Furthermore, the key in this war is changing the minds of those who would commit terrorist acts against us or those who would employ or aid them. This is extraordinarily important. given the newly appreciated combination of two factors: the potential capability of a few terrorists to cause vast damage possible with weapons likely to be available to terrorists if we lose this war ( nuclear weapons, possibly with additives like cobalt to create much worse fallout than normal, contagious, possibly genetically engineered biological agents, and less deadly weapons such as dirty bombs, non-contagious biological weapons, and chemical agents like “nerve gas”); and, the existence of loosely coupled terrorist movements which have the intent to cause such damage and are willing to sacrifice their lives in the process.

This situation has never before existed in the history of man.

Even those who do not believe the war situation to be as dangerous or widespread as stated above should understand that many American’s lives are at daily risk in Iraq.

1) Why this scandal is an important issue.

2) The perpetration of and the punishment for those acts, including the punishment of the appropriate members of the chain of command.

3) Whether there was a cover-up for political reasons.

4) The release of the photographs and the failure to prevent that leak.

5) Damage Control in the War on Terror

6) The Need for Interrogation

Why This Scandal is Important

The primary importance of this issue is the damage to the War on Terror from the release of the photographs. Because the Middle Eastern Islamic world counts on rumors (and hostile satellite TV) for information due to the suppression of news by its non-democratic regime, these pictures will validate any rumors of

American abuse of Arabs (or Persians or other Muslims) of bad intentions of Americans towards Iraq, of lack of American respect for Arabs. This will validate those who spread those rumors, granting additional weight to other rumors (we are there only to steal their oil, the Jews are behind this and want to wipe out Islam or drink Islamic blood, etc – the standard anti-Semitic and anti-American libels), our women are disrespectful (which, of course, they are by Islamic standards, but that one picture of the female guard pointing and mocking a male prisoner’s genitals hits right at the heart of this issue in a way very damaging to us).

In the absence of the pictures, this is not an important issue. It is a case of what happens in war – rare instances of serious misbehavior by soldiers, usually properly punished, as is in process now. It is rare because the American Armed Forces are normally very professional, but is impossible to prevent completely. Ironically, the very rarity of this action in Vietnam is one reason that Vietnam Veterans harbor much ill will towards John Kerry, because he claimed that we did far worse acts, and that they were normal, daily, and approved by many levels of command. Already, Kerry partisans are using this event to justify his 1971 statements.

Military Justice System

As far as I know, the military justice system was and is working. I don’t know the details, but those who are analyzing it need to do so without the hindsight bias of knowing that the photographs were released (since at the time of the investigation they were not). Furthermore, we must recognize that the military justice system does offer protections to soldiers (not as many as the civilian system), and regardless of their actions, those soldiers have to be afforded due process. Given the circumstances, the process needs to be reasonably transparent (consistent with our objectives in the War on Terror). Whether it should be fully transparent should depend on the impact that would have on the war, not the desires of the press or politicians either defending or opposing the administration.

Cover-up for Political Reasons
There does not appear to be a political cover-up, although I suspect some levels of cover-ups will be found in the Pentagon. The investigations were announced long ago. If the announcements did not include details, that is appropriate for two reasons: the right of even those sadistic guards to justice, and more importantly in this case, the damage the details would cause to the war effort by their impact on the Middle Eastern population.

Release of the Photographs
This entire investigation should have been classified at the top-secret level, because the resulting damage is at a level corresponding to the release of top-secret information. Furthermore, it would have allowed the proper punishment of whoever gave this to the press, which is severe for that class of information (although whistle-blower laws might have prevented the prosecution). Much of the judgment of whether classification was appropriate depends on who knew about the existence and amount of dissemination of the photographs.

However, given the irresponsible and gotcha nature of our press, this classification, had the details leaked out, would of course been criticized as a political cover-up and would have created even a larger scandal. Given the irresponsible nature of the Democrats and Kerry, much damage to our war effort would have been made from this “scandal.” Kerry is already capitalizing on this event.

Whoever released those photographs to the press caused the nation enormous damage. It is important that the individual and any in the chain who passed the information rather than reporting it to appropriate authorities be tracked down and punished (and that includes any authorities who were notified and failed to take appropriate action). Those individuals, probably without realizing it, caused the nation as much damage as the original perpetrators. They should be suitably punished. Furthermore, anyone in the command structure who knew, or should have known, of the existence and characteristics of those photographs is guilty of negligence if they failed to take appropriate action to ensure the secrecy of the photographs – including notifying their superiors and properly controlling their subordinates.

The way those photos traveled through the press needs to be reported, although I don’t know if it will. Those who chose to publish the pictures first are deserving of the condemnation of the American people, as they contributed immense damage to the war effort. The press’ job should not be to report everything, but to act responsibly. Somebody did not. Whether that somebody was American press or not is of course important, in any case.

Sixty Minutes is apparently the first source in the media. Americans who understand that we are at war should now understand that Sixty Minutes is
irresponsible and has gravely damaged the nation. I would argue that they and their sponsors should be boycotted

Of course, Sixty Minutes has the First Amendment right to produce programming which results in the deaths of Americans, but we have the right, as citizens whose lives and those of our loved ones are now at increased risk to hold them accountable for their incredible irresponsibility.. Sixty Minutes did not have a duty to publicize those pictures and should not have done so. The arrogance of many in modern media is shown by their <a

href=”http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000292.html”>Code of Ethics and how they actually behave regarding it.

The press’ job should not be to report everything, but to act responsibly.

The only excuse for the actions of Sixty Minutes would be an absolutely certain knowledge that the pictures would be released anyway. Even then, they had a duty, as American citizens, to notify the Administration of what was coming, in order to allow the United States to minimize the damage to our war effort. Political issues should not come into this. They should have treated this revelation the same as if they had discovered a bomb about to go
off in a military installation, except in this case, it would be a very, very big bomb.

This leads to Rumsfeld. There is no question in my mind that Rumsfeld owes America an apology. That he failed to do so in yesterday’s press conference was
wrong and worrisome. The failure to apologize was only justifiable if the apology would have damaged our war effort (which I doubt). Rumsfeld is ex-military and knows the principle that he is responsible for the failures of his subordinates. He should show it.

Rumsfeld knew that photographs existed. If he knew the nature of them and failed to take measures to assure they wouldn’t be released, he should be fired or if he is really that critical to the war error, a watchdog should metaphorically be strapped to his ankle to compensate for his obvious lack of judgment in the areas of information warfare and politics.

Bush has chosen to publicly punish Rumsfeld by reprimand. That may be sufficient. It is, for an administration that normally does not go public against its
members, a severe punishment. You don’t replace wartime leaders if you don’t have to, but let’s see the facts – to use a trite but useful phrase: “what did
he know and when did he know it,” and what did he do about it.

A careful reading of Bush’s comments today shows that he plans to have Rumsfeld remain on his cabinet, but he did not say he would remain defense secretary.

Damage Control in the War on Terror

President Bush did the right thing by appearing on Arabic television - assuming that what was actually broadcast was his entire appearance and it was properly translated. Whether he should have directly apologized or not I would leave to those who understand the various Arab cultures. I would not, by the way, listen to the Middle Eastern “experts” at most universities, as that field has been taken over by a single ideology which is anti-American.

As an aside, and as I have suggested before, diplomatic or covert action needs to be taken against media outlets in the middle east which are consistently anti-American and which lie about us. We should not do this to Iraqi media, as that would be counterproductive to the creation of democracy, unless those media directly incite violence, as Sadr’s did. But the opinions of individuals in the region are critical to the war effort. The stations which intentionally inflame our enemies with what they know to be lies, and whose reporters are conveniently present at ambushes where our soldiers are killed, are objectively agents of the enemy, are very harmful to us, and appropriate action needs to be taken against them.

If the administration is not actively working to reduce the damage from Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Iranian stations broadcasting in Arabic, then it is failing in an important theatre of this multi-theater war.

The Need for Interrogation

In a guerilla war and counter-terrorism operations, intelligence is extremely important and hard to get. On the one side, we need to encourage people to come forth, and that is done by winning trust and providing rewards and safety. Read the old Chief Wiggles blog from the time he was working in the Green Zone as an intelligence officer to get a good perspective on this.

At the same time, captured hostiles need to be interrogated. A few of the actions shown in those photographs may have been appropriate measures, if done in the right circumstances, for the right reason, under the control of well trained interrogation experts.. Every indication is that this was not the case. Furthermore, most of the actions are not permissible or, for that matter, effective. Although intelligence personnel may have been involved, they didn’t provide proper supervision or were themselves out of control.

We need to make sure that our ability to carry out hostile interrogations using powerful techniques is not lost due to this event. That would greatly increase the strategic damage to our cause, and would be the sort of improper political restrictions that hurt us during the Cold War.

Let’s never forget the story of Ashley Faulkner of Lebanon, Ohio - and why we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place: to protect our nation and all our families from the scourge of terrorism.

During his visit to the Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon, President Bush stops to hug Ashley Faulkner, who lost her mom in the Sept. 11 attacks. - Photo by Lynn Faulkner

Since September 11, 2001 - and before even then - there have been far too many victims. There has been too much senseless violence. But let’s try not to become numb to the individual stories. Let’s especially not forget the quiet victims - like Ashley Faulkner of Lebanon, Ohio.

Ashley lost her Mom, Wendy Faulkner, in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, almost three years ago now. Ashley is now a 15-year-old Mason High School student in Lebanon, Ohio. Ashley hasn’t been protesting, she hasn’t been holding press conferences, she hasn’t been testifying before the 9-11 Commission, and she hasn’t been on the Today show, or Hardball, or any other TV show. She’s just been dealing with her pain over the loss of her Mom day by day.

With all the violence and all the sadness that surrounds us, let’s never forget the story of Ashley Faulkner of Lebanon, Ohio, and the stories of people like her who mourn quietly every day. And let’s never forget why we, as a nation, waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place: to help protect our nation, family’s like Ashley’s, and all our families, from the scourge of terrorism.

Please visit the Wendy Faulkner Memorial Children’s Foundation and give what you can.

And please support our troops and their noble mission. And don’t be afraid to praise their - and our - noble mission.

Via the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Drudge Report.

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

August 1st, 1944

After one of the bloodiest months of fighting in Europe, House Republican leaders called for all United States forces to be withdrawn from Europe. “This is a quagmire,” said one house member. “There is no evidence whatsoever that Nazi Germany had any connection to the attacks of 12/07 and fighting with Germany is a distraction from our war on Japan. We need to finish the job in the Pacific before getting involved in Europe’s problem and besides, it’s not as if Nazi Germany is an imminent threat to America. They haven’t even been able to conquer Britain. Besides, isn’t this a matter for the League of Nations?”

Asked about reports that there were some concentration camps in Europe, another House member replied, “He [FDR] has never said that this was about liberating the concentration camps in his 12/08 speech. In fact, how could he [FDR] say a word about this when we ally ourselves with dictators such as Josef Stalin and Chang-Kai-Shek?”

One Republican Senator opined that, “FDR has squandered all the good will we built up from WW1 in a few short years and for what? So we can conquer Japan and Germany to acquire cheap radios and German automobiles. It’s about enriching FDR’s Wall-Street buddies”.

On the other hand, some Republican leaders say that this was an attempt by President Roosevelt to distract Americans from the depression. “He [FDR] has had no success with his domestic agenda, his New Deal isn’t working, and he is trying to deflect attention away from his failure to stack the Supreme Court. So rather than deal with the issues people are really care about right now like the environment and subsidies for the dying buggy whip industry, Roosevelt took what should have been a law enforcement matter to be settled between the State Department and Japan and turned it into another War of 1812!”

Among some of the criticism of FDR’s European policy is the way the Administration is allying itself with resistance leaders. “I don’t trust either one of them [Charles De Gaulle and Tito].”They have been feeding the so-called allies phony information. If we had a Republican President, we’d have better allies who could shoulder more of the burden instead of this fraudulent coalition that FDR has put together.”

There were reports that Nazi Germany had chemical weapons, but house members scoff at those. “If Nazi Germany had poison gas, do you think they would have already used it? Roosevelt lied and people died!”

Others criticized the President for the way the operation to Europe came about. Former WW1 military commanders criticized the Invasion of Normandy as “Reckless”. “It’s obvious that we barely had enough troops to prepare ourselves for the German counter offensive” one critic said. “Our jeeps were inadequately design to handle the new German’s panzerfaust anti-tank weapon and we are stretching our troops too thin in both Germany and Japan. I don’t even know what we’re trying to do and I doubt Roosevelt does either. If only we had a plan, we wouldn’t be taking so many casualties.”

A GOP congressman summed it all up by saying “It was arrogant and reckless for Roosevelt to use Pearl Harbor as an excuse to drag us into a world war and I only hope we can get him out of office so we won’t have to waste anymore of our young men’s lives on this mess he got us into.”

Thanks to RWN reader Perry Bullock for coming up with the concept and writing a significant chunk of this piece.

Dear Mr President:

’Hello,’ he lied. One of the best book titles I know of.

We former US diplomats applaud our 52 British colleagues who recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair criticising his Middle East policy and calling on Britain to exert more influence over the United States.

Well, we like the influence Blair has had so far, and their troops have done a pretty good job in Iraq, so I’d say I like the influence that Britain has had on the U.S. But I think they want to change Britain’s policies as well.

As retired foreign service officers we care deeply about our nation’s foreign policy and US credibility in the world.

I believe that. I also believe that they are deeply invested in a process that it fundamentally broken, much as the retired buggywhip makers were distraught at the changes that internal combustion brought. I’ll skip over the little detail (made often by others) about their British colleagues being on the Arab dole, and I won’t dig into Googling all the names and seeing how deeply this group’s hands are shoved into Arab pockets.

Read The Rest…

As a Vietnam Veteran, I have made it my mission this year to provide information to other veterans about Kerry’s post-war activities. Polls show that my work and that of many, many other veterans is almost done. Most vets despise Kerry for very good reasons.

All but the most partisan veterans, given the facts, will come to the same conclusion. I would hope open minded Americans who are not veterans will also reach that view. One does not need to be a veteran to be an honorable American, and one does not need to be a veteran to understand the issues raised here.

The medal issue was a little side show. It showed that the man is dishonest, but that is hardly a new revelation. It showed he didn’t respect his fellow soldiers, but that isn’t new either. My own few ribbons are at Patt Tillman’s Tempe, Arizona memorial - I think that’s a better use for them.

The problem with John Kerry is not that he was anti-war when he came back, but that he cooperated with the enemy, meeting with them in Paris and then spreading their propaganda in an infamous speech and Q&A session before a Senate Committee. At that speech he recommended that we surrender with no guarantee of ever getting any of our POWs back. Speaking on behalf of the enemy, he assured us that our troops would be given safe passage out of the country. He continued this sort of activity at rallies around the country, riding the resulting publicity into office. Both his comrades in the VVAW and the FBI (which was watching them) concluded that he was a political opportunist using the VVAW to achieve fame. That he would give aid and comfort to the enemy as part of his opportunism is shocking.

His history shows not the honest disagreement guaranteed all of us by the First Amendment, but the intentional use of dishonesty, all slanted to be harmful to our nation, without even mentioning the terrible crimes of the enemy. His pattern of dishonesty continues to this day as this article shows.

His actions not only demoralized Americans, they started a number of myths which persist to this day - myths which damaged veterans: the word monster is used by Kerry in describing us; he falsely asserted that we routinely engaged in atrocities; he painted us as mentally damaged as a result of the horrible things that we supposedly had done. But that’s just personal.

More importantly, Kerry aided the enemy and damaged the country - both in our Vietnam War effort , in the general war against Communism (which he said was not winnable), and to this day because of the false slanders he made which much of the world still believes. He painted our military as approving routinely of atrocities,which he asserted were commited “on a day-to-day basis”. He claimed he had committed war crimes, which leads one to ask why he hasn’t volunteered to be prosecuted. He claimed we “razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.” Trying to establish racism, he claimed we used weapons against “oriental human beings” that we would never use against Europeans. He claimed that Blacks were the highest percentage of casualties, which is false.

Follow the links and read his words. The North Vietnamese were so pleased with his speech that they played it to our POWs in Hanoi to break their will.

Kerry’s most recent cover-up was a few weeks ago, when he had to amend his official biography to show that he was actually a sworn officer in the regular naval reserve during his anti-war activities. Previously, he had carefully concealed this fact.

His biography had shown service from 1966-1970 and 1972-1978. Having joined the Navy 2 days after John Kerry, I suspected that he was in the reserves during the two year gap, but the Boston Globe reported that Kerry was honorably discharged in 1970. That was a lie - Kerry received his only honorable discharge in 1978. Interestingly, the biography on his page for veterans shows service only from 1966-1970, probably because he knew veterans would be suspicious of a two year gap.

His original biography was altered before his service records were released to not show his service dates at all.

His biography for veterans is still there, with the misleading statement about him requesting discharge in 1970, tied to a cleverly worded implication that he left the Navy in 4/29/1970 (implying a discharge). Ironically, the biography now cites the Boston Globe article as a source, as if John Kerry can’t substantiate his own records, which are mostly available here.
John Kerry’s actual service record is on his site here.

Of course, today the news came out (see the main command post page) that every commander Kerry ever had in Vietnam has signed a letter saying he is unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Also, veterans reading this, please do not believe his campaign’s assertion that he did not have a significant association with Jane Fonda. As one of the major organizers, she was the person who made the Vietnam Veterans Against the War hold their (now discredited by still cited) “Winter Soldier” “investigation” in Detroit instead of New York City. As a good little Marxist, she wanted to be closer to “the workers.” Kerry, contrary to his statements, was a significant participant in that event.

Kerry’s campaign is right that there is a fake picture showing Fonda with Kerry. However, they have used that fact successfully to confuse the media into believing that there is no valid picture of the two together. But there is a genuine photo of them at an event where both were speakers.

Most of the allegations made here against Kerry are easily proven, since they are all taken from his own words, spoken under oath (although in all fairness, given the number of lies he told in the same session, do we believe him?). “Stolen Valor” by Vietnam Veteran B.G.Burkett and Glenna Whitley provides additional information, as do contacts with some of the participants in the events and other books.

Details of Kerry Service Date Coverup.

Kerry’s Cover-up of his participation in the meeting where assassination of Senators was discussed.

Former POW, Admiral and Senator accuses Kerry of treason, without using that word.

….. and on a more recent topic…

Kerry campaign literature, 1984, with his position on defense spending.

….. organizational

Links: A site and BBS for veterans or family members (Vietnam war or otherwise, US Military or other, must oppose Kerry)

You have to ask yourself: do the policy positions matter when they come from a proven habitual liar who is despised by most veterans including most from his own unit, and who has been engaged in cover-ups right up until the present?

As for his war hero status, Benedict Arnold was a war hero too, and spent a lot more time fighting for his country than John Kerry did.

I love irony, don’t you? Today, May 1st, The EU officially welcomed the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe into the fold of free nations.

Hundreds of thousands of Hungarians celebrated their former communist country’s entry into the European Union with midnight parties in the streets of Budapest as the EU welcomed 10 new states on Saturday.

Fireworks lit up the sky above Heroes’ Square in the Hungarian capital as the national anthem was played, followed by Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, which is the EU’s anthem.

“Hungary has returned to Europe and the values which Hungary has held dear for more than 1,000 years,” Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy said as a gigantic eight-meter (25-foot) hourglass was turned over to begin marking the nation’s time in the EU.

Hungarians had kicked off celebrations with the tolling of a flower-shaped bell at noon Friday and then took to the streets for evening parties.

“We are finally triumphing over our misfortunes,” Medgyessy said at the bell ceremony. “Our integration (into the EU) can be a historic turning point.”

“We were the gates of Europe already but now we will be that from the inside,” he said.

Misfortunes.

Indeed.

As I read and watch the reports of European celebration arrive on the wires, TV and subscription services, I smile and recall Churchill’s remarks in 1942 after Alexander and Montgomery turned back Rommel’s forces at El Alamein and the war turned.

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. ”

Little did we know at the time that another forty-seven years of American fortitude was required before the walls Churchill aptly dubbed “The Iron Curtain” lifted from Eastern Europe, the Baltic and the CCCP.

A job well done America.

Of course, no one will speak our name today in the EU love fest as the Hungarians, and others join the EU, rightly so, however, it is their choice and they make it freely. That’s payment enough in my book, all we can hope to achieve. We spend our treasure, sacrifice our lives and then quietly walk away, satisfied. This celebration today is our best reply to the naysayers and accusers that we are an imperialistic power.

One can’t help but point out that John Kerry and the Dems were on the wrong side of history in defeating the Soviets, just as they are now wrong in the war on terror. If Kerry were President today, not only would Saddam Hussein still be digging mass graves and paying off the UN and our “friends”, but had Jimmy Carter defeated Ronald Reagan, Hungary might well still be occupied by the Soviets.

In the current war on terrorism, we must draw on our Cold War experiences with the Soviet Union; we must now take a hard-line against militant Islam and terrorist states, while nurturing democratization and alliances within the Islamic world. We can best defend ourselves by fuelling the liberalization of repressive Islamic and despotic Arabic societies. We have unleashed the information genie from its bottle in the Middle East; it will destroy those who seek to suppress it, just as it did in the Soviet Union. Once people see and hear how others live, that others have choices; the pressure from within cannot be withstood. It would be extremely foolhardy for us to disengage now. It will not be easy, but we face the same choice that we did in 1948 in Berlin.

We must look beyond the partisan rhetoric of the political season, and the self-serving and narrowly focused media obsession with appeasement and retreat, for we now face the greatest threat to our existence since an aggressive, nuclear-armed Soviet Union held much of Europe in its iron grip.

Should the war on terror take forty-five years to win, chances are that I will not be here to witness the celebrations across the Arab world, just as much of my parent’s generation are not here to witness the end of what they began in 1941. But our children and grandchildren will benefit or suffer by what we do now, that is an inescapable fact.

Let’s stand here in the middle of the road for a moment, where people are rational and thoughts are based in common sense.

These photos make me sick. After all our talk about winning hearts and minds, after all our posturing about saving Iraqis from torture and rape, what were these people thinking as they committed these heinous acts? Not only perpetrating the acts, but videotaping them, as if it were some frat boy stunt that would get them laughs at the next keg party.

Left or right, Democrat or Republican, the one thing rational people can agree on here is that the people responsible for the torture must be held accountable and be made to pay the full penalty allowed under law, including death should that photo of the dead Iraqi prove to be of a person who died at the hands of these soldiers.

I specifically say “under law” because that is what America is about. Due process. Laws. Crimes being punished. What the soldiers in those photos did went against every one of those concepts. They became the enemy. And, if you paid attention to your mother when you were little, you would know that two wrongs do not make a right. In fact, adding wrong to wrong makes everything worse.

These men and women, small a group as they may be, have cheapened our efforts in Iraq. They have also committed a form of treason, in that they gave aid and comfort to our enemy by providing them with propaganda material that will fuel Arab hatred towards us for years to come. The result of the photos will be much more than head shaking, finger pointing and “you are just like them” accusations. The result will be heard in the forms of bombs and blasts and many more dead Americans. Should a terrorist attack happen on American soil and these photos are referenced as basis for the attack, then those soldiers will be responsible for the deaths incurred. Should our troops be attacked, ambushed, killed, tortured and their bodies paraded around like party balloons, those soldiers will be responsible.

The few moments of juvenile, scornful glee they got from demeaning those Iraqi prisoners will have repurcussions the soldiers never gave thought to.

And that’s the view from the middle, where sane and reasonable people meet.

Should we venture to the far side of the street - go left or right, it doesn’t matter - the sanity and reason start to shred. The farther you walk, the less comfortable you feel.

On the far left, you have the people who think this torture is a good thing, because it will make Bush’s ratings go down. To paraphrase and sum up what the view from this side of the road is:

• Yess! Now we can just wait for Kerry’s numbers to go up. Bush is so dead!
• This is the way all soldiers are. These guys were just stupid enough to tape it.
• All those women prisoners are being raped by U.S. soldiers every day. How can we logically conclude anything else?
• This is how soldiers have always viewed brown skinned people.
• This is worse than anything Saddam ever did. Let’s just open our own torture chambers!
• The orders to do this stuff came from high up.
• They will get away with it because the Bush ass kissers will justify the action and demand that the charges - whatever they may be - be dropped.
• This is worse than 9/11. I hope there is another 9/11 just to prove that you reap what you sow
• These people are representative of all U.S. and British soldiers.
• They were really Halliburton mercanaries.

Yep, that’s the far left, who look at the tapes and see a moment of victory.

Now, let’s cross the street again and head over to the far right. To paraphrase and sum up:

• There are no bad soldiers, this is made up
• It’s a conspiracy by the left, someone staged the whole thing to discredit our soldiers
• This can’t be true, so al Jazeera must have made the whole thing up
• They were only doing what the Iraqis did to their own people
• The prisoners probably deserved it
• Man, I wish I was there to join in
• The Arabs made up the whole thing just to have an excuse to terrorize us again
• Oh, like Kerry didn’t torture people in Vietnam

Most people will look at this and say, so what? These are fringe people. Ignore them.

But the fringe can no longer be ignored. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and other technological marvels that can spread information faster than you can say Conspiracy!, the fringes are now being heard loud and clear. And if we are hearing them, then the radical Arabs are hearing them. And both sides will add something to their already poisonous mix of hatred, ignorance and violence that has been stirring for years. The far left will give them the strength and encouragement needed to proceed with their jihad, knowing that there are Americans who might very well cheer when their terrorist acts are set in motion. The far right will give them all the ammunition and evidence they need to bolster their beliefs that Americans are egocentric elitists who believe they can do no wrong.

The big problem, as I see it, is that nobody is paying attention to us folks here in the middle of the road. Those who seek revenge for these acts of torture will only look to the left or the right for their encouragement and/or evidence.

We are Americans and, as thus, we follow American rules, which tend to be civil. There are always going to be a few who won’t play by the rules and it’s usually those few that get the most press.

Of course, this all should get press. The soldiers in those photos should have their faces plastered on the front page of every newspaper around the world. They should be made examples of. And, because we are Americans, they will be found, prosecuted and made to pay for their actions. That’s a good thing but, for some, it’s not enough. For those who already hated us and now have turned that hatred up a notch, the soldiers pictured in those photos represent all Americans and, as such, America and its people must suffer. And we will. I truly believe that we will. I will, in advance, blame the guilty soldiers for any terrorist attacks that happen here in the near future, just as I will blame them for any ambush or attack our troops suffer today. It doesn’t matter whether these attacks had already been planned; I am sure that many Arabs, looking at these photos today, will have a familiar phrase running through their heads today: Faster, please.

And the funny thing is, we all suffer. Far left, far right, somewhere in the middle, we all end up victims eventually as long as we keep giving the radical Muslims fuel for their fire. It won’t matter whether you stood behind them or railed against them, either way we are pretty much screwed. All of us.

We can thank a few bad apples for making the next attack on US troops possible. We can thank the far left for cheering the Arabs on as their hatred rises and we can thank the far right for for their continued denial that there is such a thing as a bad American. We can thank every soldier who took part in the torture session. We can thank the US media for focusing on this in such a way that they make the stench of the guilty men and women permeate the entire armed forces.

I abhor what was done to those Iraqi prisoners. But I also abhor what was done to the very same people under Saddam’s regime. I abhor the fact that thousands of people have come out of the woodwork to denounce these actions and (rightfully) villify the soldiers who committed them, but failed to make so much as a peep while Saddam was torturing, killing, maiming and raping. And I abhor those who are justifying the torture and abuse of the Iraq prisoners while lashing out against Saddam’s bullies for the very same thing.

Look in the mirror, everyone. How many faces do you see?