Grim's Hall

Scotsman.com News - Scotland - War veterans' anger at BBC's D-Day snub

June 6, 1944: The Scots

The Memorial Day edition of The Scotsman contains this piece of news:

ANGRY D-Day war veterans last night branded BBC Scotland "fools" for not producing a single programme to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landings.
Scottish troops played a key role in events of June 6, 1944, including the taking of Pegasus Bridge by Royal Marines under the command of Lord Lovat.
Veterans of "the longest day" said they were stunned that the broadcaster had not followed the rest of the BBC which is broadcasting five hours of prime time drama and 16 hours of documentary and live coverage of events on the Normandy coast....
A spokeswoman for BBC Scotland confirmed there would be no commemorative Scottish D-Day programmes: "There's nothing coming from up here in Scotland."

BBC Scotland may forget, but we have not. Let us start by taking a look at Lord Lovat's commandos.

One thing you probably don't know about Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade is that D-Day wasn't their first amphibious assault. They did so well at Sword Beach in part because they'd been involved in a disaster. Operation Jubilee was "intended to determine the practicalities of seizing an enemy-held port by direct assault, as well as forcing the Germans to divert troops to the defence of Occupied Europe. The assault force comprised 4,961 Canadians from 4th and 6th Canadian Brigades, 1,057 British Army and Royal Marine Commandos, and 50 US Rangers." The Allies threw six thousand of their finest into 'the Grim Gap of Death' just to see if it would work. The notion was to land the commandos first, to silence the big coastal guns at Dieppe in advance of the Canadians' landing. Pretty much the only part of this assault that went as planned was Lord Lovat's end, where his Commandos quickly took the batteries to which they'd been assigned. Cameron Highlanders assigned to support him advanced two miles inland to prevent the German positions being reinforced.

Nothing else went close to plan, and the Canadian forces suffered 68% losses in the assault. The retreat to sea accomplished, the survivors brought back lessons for D-Day: the need for artificial harbors, to avoid the necessity of capturing one of the so-well defended natural ports.

When D-Day finally came some two years later, Lord Lovat and his men were returned to the fray. Elements of the 1st Special Service Brigade (under the command of Free French fighter Cpt. Phillipe Kieffer) landed at Sword Beach with the 22nd Dragoon Guards, who wore green berets to the landing because "helmets were not manly." The 22nd had been raised from a combination of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoons ("Quis Separabit?" or "Who shall separate [Ireland from the UK]?") and the Royal Inniskilling Dragoons ("Vestigia nulla retrorsum!" or "No Steps Backwards!"). They advanced to the bagpipes.

The Scots were, on this occasion, filling the role the poor Canadians had held in Jubilee. Rather than being tasked with commando raids to silence the batteries, they were themselves the assault force. Fortunately, the team assigned their old role did the job just as well as they had done in 1942. A team of paratroopers rushed the German positions just before the landing, managing to do--in the face of superior German defenders--what 4,000 pounds of bombs had failed to do: silence the guns. The paras were killed, and two of the guns repaired; but their work gave the Scots breathing space.

Lord Lovat's remaining forces landed at Ouistreham, clearing the town and taking the Pegasus bridge. This you will have seen in "The Longest Day," which also featured the living piper from the invasion itself.

Worth noting in the history is the Kieffer prayer, a bold devotional offered on the morn of the assault:

Lord, I shall be very busy today. I may forget about You, but do not Thou forget about me.

In this they recalled the fighters of the Bannockburn, which the Archdeacon of Aberdeen remembered in his writings of 1330:

The Scottismen commonally
Kneelt all doun, to God to pray,
And a short prayer, there made they,
To God to help them in that ficht.
And when the English king had sicht
Of them kneeland, he said in hy:
'Yon folk kneel to ask mercy.'
Sir Ingram said: 'Ye say sooth now,
They ask mercy, but not of you.'

Quotes enough. But if you would have more, I refer you to a Scot patriot-poet, who wrote "The Piper of D-Day."

White House Commission on Remembrance

Memorial Day:

Did you know that there was a White House Commission on Remembrance, tasked with (among other things) keeping Memorial Day alive? It is the only active Presidential Commission to be established by Congress, which demanded it by force of law just toward the end of the Clinton Administration. It establishes the "National Moment of Silence," on the apparent theory that a whole day of rememberance is too much to ask. The commission explains:

In May 1996, the idea of the Moment was born when children touring Washington, DC, were asked what Memorial Day meant. They responded, "That's the day the pools open!"
On December 28, 2000, by Public Law 106-579, the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance was established. The Moment has the personal support of the President of the United States.

The moment begins at 3 PM local time, wherever you happen to be.

Marine Moms and Dads has proposed in addition a candle ceremony, to be held at 8 PM Iraq time. This means lighting a candle in the morning here (Pacific -- 9am Mountain -- 10am Central -- 11am Eastern -- 12pm), but the purpose is ceremonial. It is intended to honor the Fallen, and the living who soldier on.

SITE

On Which Topic:

The post directly below brings up a matter of some importance. We've all heard the warnings of a terrorist strike inside the US this summer. If you have a citizen's duty to the common peace, you ought to be aware of what the risks are.

The SITE Institute has published a translated target-selection manual (PDF Warning). It's worth looking over.

Southern Gentleman, Marine, Germanic Tribalist -- A Different Point of View

"Both the Right and the Duty":

Bjorn Patsson has a note from Houston, TX:

Wielding baseball bats and sticks, a crowd in northwest Houston on
Sunday chased down a man suspected of preying on neighborhood children in recent weeks.
"We know him. The whole neighborhood knows him," said Carlos Gonzalez.
Residents told police the 44-year-old man tried to lure children into his van last week while it was parked at a nearby elementary school. They also accused him of hugging a 12-year-old boy on Saturday while he was wearing women's clothing....
The residents cornered the man in a fenced-in yard near Granite and Bolin until police arrived.
The homeowner called police and pleaded with the crowd to not harm
the man. Gonzalez said the man dropped a bundle on the ground that contained a girl's shirt wrapped around several pictures of small children.
Officers arrested the man when they discovered the van he was driving had been stolen. They found several pairs of socks, a boy's T-shirt and a pair of girl's underwear inside the vehicle.
Though arrested for car theft, detectives were attempting to determine if he had been under investigation on child molestation or related charges.

Outstanding. But what to make of the police's rather bureaucratic response?

While nobody was hurt during Sunday's pursuit, officers said residents shouldn't take the law into their own hands.
"You need to call law enforcement and let us handle that," said
Houston police officer S.A. Burk.

Actually, "the law" says specifically that citizens may arrest suspected felons and hold them for peace officers. This is called a "citizen's arrest," and it has roots as deep as the Anglo-Saxon legal system that predates the Norman Conquest. Far from 'taking the law into your own hands,' this is merely doing your duty as a citizen:

Historically, in Anglo Saxon law in medieval England citizen's arrests were an important part of community law enforcement. Sheriffs encouraged and relied upon active participation by able bodied persons in the towns and villages of their jurisdiction. From this legacy originated the concept of the posse comitatus which is a part of the United States legal tradition as well as the English. In medieval England, the right of private persons to make arrests was virtually identical to the right of a sheriff and constable to do so. (See Inbau and Thompson, Criminal Procedure, The Foundation Press, Mineola, NY 1974.
A strong argument can be made that the right to make a citizen's arrest is a constitutionally protected right under the Ninth Amendment as its impact includes the individual's natural right to self preservation and the defense of the others. Indeed, the laws of citizens arrest appear to be predicated upon the effectiveness of the Second Amendment. Simply put, without firepower, people are less likely going to be able to make a citizen's arrest. A random sampling of the various states as well as the District of Columbia indicates that a citizen's arrest is valid when a public offense was committed in the presence of the arresting private citizen or when the arresting private citizen has a reasonable belief that the suspect has committed a felony, whether or not in the presence of the arresting citizen.
In the most crime ridden spot in the country, our nation's capitol, District of Columbia Law 23- 582(b) reads as follows:
(b) A private person may arrest another -
(1) who he has probable cause to believe is committing in his presence -
(A) a felony, or
(B) an offense enumerated in section 23-581 (a)(2); or
(2) in aid of a law enforcement officer or special policeman, or other person authorized by law to make an arrest.
(c) Any person making an arrest pursuant to this section shall deliver the person arrested to a law enforcement officer without unreasonable delay. (July 29, 1970, 84 Stat. 630, Pub. L. 91-358, Title II, ss. 210(a); 1973 Ed., ss. 23-582; Apr. 30, 1988, D.C. Law 7-104, ss. 7(e), 35 DCR 147.)
In Tennessee, it has been held that a private citizen has the right to arrest when a felony has been committed and he has reasonable cause to believe that the person arrested committed it. Reasonable grounds will justify the arrest, whether the facts turn out to be sufficient or not. (See Wilson v. State, 79 Tenn. 310 (1833).
Contrast this to Massachusetts law, which while permitting a private person to arrest for a felony, permits those acquitted of the felony charge to sue the arresting person for false arrest or false imprisonment. (See Commonwealth v. Harris, 11 Mass. App. 165 (1981))
Kentucky law holds that a person witnessing a felony must take affirmative steps to prevent it, if possible. [The Official Code of Georgia, Annotated, says the same thing: this is "both the right and the duty" of the citizen--Grim] (See Gill v. Commonwealth, 235 KY 351 (1930.)
Indeed, Kentucky citizens are permitted to kill fleeing felons while making a citizen's arrest (Kentucky Criminal Code ss. 37; S 43, §44.) [Aside: Georgia's law permits citizens to use the same degree of force as peace officers in making arrests. Neither are permitted, however, to shoot fleeing suspects in the back.--Grim]
Utah law permits citizen's arrest, but explicitly prohibits deadly force. (See Chapter 76-2-403.)
Making citizen's arrest maliciously or without reasonable basis in belief could lead to civil or criminal penalties. It would obviously be a violation of a suspect's civil rights to use excessive force, to torture, to hold in unsafe or cruel conditions or to invent a reason to arrest for the ulterior motive of settling a private score.
Civil lawsuits against department stores, police departments, and even cult deprogrammers for false imprisonment are legend. Anybody who makes a citizens arrest should not use more force than is necessary, should not delay in turning the suspect over to the proper authorities, and should never mete out any punishment ... unless willing to face the consequences.
As the ability of the powers that be to hold society together and preserve law and order diminishes, citizen's arrests will undoubtedly be more common as a way to help communities cope with the wrongdoers in out midst.

Attempting to protect and defend the common peace is both the right and the duty of a citizen. The important thing is to make certain that you are aware of the specifics of your own state's laws on the subject, and to act in accord with them.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

Intimidation:

Doc Russia has a piece today on US Marines as The Terminator. Apparently a 155mm shell used against the Marines produced no casualties, and didn't even seriously interrupt the patrol:

Now, I don't know about you, but I think that that has got to be seriously intimidating. Think about it; Abdul and Ahmed find themselves a 155mm arty shell, and bury it in a street with a remote detonator. They wait for a long time for the Americans to show up. Eventually, sure enough, here comes a squad of Marines down the road. Here is their chance. It's their chance to shake the Americans up that much more. They know that Americans don't have a stomach for war (or so CNN would let them think). So....BAM!
Shell goes off. Marines react instantly, and set up a perimeter, ready to cut loose like the wrath of God. Nothing. Abdul and Ahmed have already fled like the cowards they are, and are surely patting themselves on the back for the damage they have done.
The next day, Abdul and Ahmed are sitting around their coffees smug in their cowardly attack, when what do they see; Marines. AGAIN. and as they draw closer, Ahmed and Abdul get that ugly sinking feeling in their guts when they realize that these Marines are the same ones from yesterday- bloody fatigues and all.
Somewhere inside Abdul and Ahmed start screaming because nothing human could have survived that IED,
.......and they are afraid that nothing human did.

Pone tuas armas!

Belmont Club

Wedding Party:

Belmont Club has a letter from a friend:

These people are members of a clan well known in Anbar province. They are supposedly "shepherds" but they are really more like livestock owners. The herds are large and the business is profitable. After the spring rains end, and they just did, these people and other clans like them follow the herds through the desert. They pick that time because the grazing is better. Along the way they have small houses in oases which serve as something between camps and residences.
They are also into smuggling. Mainly they smuggle livestock into Syria where the prices are better. Do they bring back guns and people? Probably. And it can’t be ruled out they may have been hired to slip some Syrians into the country. Whole families join this migration. And they do get married.
This afternoon a very popular Baghdad wedding singer was buried -- his family and the survivors say he was entertaining at the wedding. The reason so many women and children died is that as is tradition, the women and children sleep together, the men apart often in tents watching the stock.
Some of the people there had traveled from Ramadi for the wedding just as people travel to attend weddings anywhere. There's a romance in Arab culture about the desert. Some Americans get married by lakes or in mountains. The reason they returned to Ramadi, 250 miles away, is because that's the clan's base. And having been out there, there's very little between Ramadi and the Syrian-Jordanian border except a mosque-rest stop and Rutba. The US had Rutba sealed off.
They weren’t seeking medical attention. They brought the victims home to bury them in their version of [our family] cemetery. Ramadi is the "home" of all members of the Bou Fahad clan, which is the one of all the victims. There were at least a dozen children killed. One was decapitated. One little girl about [my granddaughter]'s age had holes all over her legs...and in her chest. One boy was missing half his face. Quite a place, Iraq.
If the wedding party victims are lying, they may be failing to mention that XXX-number of Syrian fighters were camped 100 meters down the road, or that they had rented the place to fighters two days before or something like that. My experience in these things has been that people wouldn’t be faking the deaths of their wives and children.

The accounts remain confusing after several days. Both sides are asserting their stories without relenting on any point, and both sides have presented visual evidence in their favor. It seems odd to give smugglers in al-Anbar an equal expectation of truth-telling with US General officers; on the other hand, the smugglers were there, the Generals weren't, and the visual evidence isn't decisive.

It is starting to look like the truth falls somewhere close to what this letter-writer describes: a desert camp, used by smugglers and livestock-traders, was also housing foreign fighters moving through to join the Iraqi insurgency. The attack appears to have been a carefully considered raid rather than a simple airstrike, which is suggestive that the site had been watched for a while beforehand by someone like the Special Forces, CIA SOG, or Marine Recon. Given the confident statements by US command elements, they probably filed equally confident reports requesting the raid, which targeted "two of twenty five structures in the village of Mukhradeeb by the Syrian border... [with] a combination of aerial ordnance, infantry assault and finally demolition charges."

If that is correct, what was not understood was the degree to which the camp was being used by desert clans, and not just insurgents. It is in some ways unsurprising that surveillence would not reveal that. We know that the tribal cultures in particular go out of their way to make women invisible and cloistered, which would drastically cut down on the ability of our spotters to get a sense of families being in the compound. What you could plausibly see from a hide site would be lots of men moving around; you should be able to ID the types of heavy weapons, if they were exposed to view at any point.

If they had that, plus some local intel that suggested this camp was being used to insert foreign fighters, that would be enough to justify the raid on military grounds. If the cultural predisposition to keeping the women hidden and indoors caused the recon team not to be aware that there were lots of women and children in camp, that's a tragedy but not an atrocity--a tragedy in which the tribesmen carry most of the blame, for having chosen to take money to smuggle in foreign fighters and weapons.

The US military is at fault only for not being able to see through walls, as they certainly would not have attacked a building full of women and kids if they had realized what was in it. We know the raid was discriminate because it attacked only the two structures in the camp. At last, there's little to do--assuming this overview is roughly correct--except to pay the diaya for the dead, and warn the tribes sternly against aiding our enemies. The only certain way to avoid such tragedies, in a culture that hides its women and girls, is not to allow your camp to be used by the enemy.

Photos from Syrian border

Syrian Border Photos:

Multinational Corps Iraq has released this series of photos of material captured in the attack on the Syrian border. It includes a number of weapons, including .30 caliber machineguns and RPGs; passports from the Sudan and elsewhere; what appear to be drugs and needles; and cash.

Letter:

A Letter:

A letter home from a US Marine. Thanks to JHD, as usual.

Dad -

You probably heard that Mike was wounded this week. We take rockets and mortars from time to time and he got caught outside when a rocket came in. He was lucky as he only got hit with some shrapnel in the back of the head. Grateful that it was only a flesh wound. He was medivaced to a surgical unit. I got word that he was going to be medevaced to the surgical unit on my camp and went by that evening looking for him only to find out he went to a different treatment facility. They put some staples in his head and he hopped a helo to return to his camp and was back at work that night. He is a tough guy. In fact, I actually saw him yesterday as I had to go to his position for some business. It is always a quietly thankful moment when you see a guy who has been wounded or who you think was wounded and he turns out to be ok. Mike was actually embarrassed about the whole thing and shrugged off any mention of it as he feels like he is not "doing enough" right now.

We only were able to talk for a short time and I swear that within a few minutes I had forgotten about the whole thing until we shook hands when I had to go. He turned to leave and I saw the zipper of staples on the back of his head. He was going back to work.

You would be very proud of the Marines as they have been able to switch gears from intense offensive operations back to what we call "stability operations." Stability operations simply translates to getting out into the countryside and teaching Iraqi Police and soldiers how to do their jobs. More importantly, our priority is just making contact with them and trying to instill a sense of confidence and pride in what they are doing. As I have shared with you over the past 15 months or so, it is hard to imagine trying to establish a police force or "national guard" (the equivalent of what we are working with) out of a population that has never even seen such entities as we understand them. If you said National Guard in Missouri, most people would think "the guys who show up when there is a flood, blizzard or tornado to help people." Or maybe after 9/11, that guy at the drug store who left for Iraq for a year as part of an engineer unit.

Here, they simply have no paradigm of what such a force is. We have to sit down and go over the most basic principles of protecting the people by being there to help when there is a crisis on one hand and getting out on night ambush to keep the muj out of the village on the other. As a whole they did disintegrate or worse during the April fighting. I have heard a lot of false exaggeration about the fact that the Iraqi Army would not stand and fight with the Marines in Falluja or the Army in Baghdad. Nonsense.

I could tell you stories of individual heroics of Iraqi soldiers. One specific example is of an Iraqi SgtMaj who came into our lines during the first days of fighting in Falluja. He made his way through the mujahadeen and risked being killed by us to tell us that he was concerned about the ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) armory in town. He knew it was only a matter of time until the muj went for the armory to take the weapons. Honestly, I would have thought that they had already done it as the police stations and every other good piece of ground seemed to be occupied by the muj by that time. In short, he wanted to let us know that he was going back into the town to get the weapons. The Marines asked him if he wanted us to help. No. He only wanted us to take the weapons from him when he came back through. This guy took a couple young Iraqi soldiers with a truck and drove back through our lines into the hornets nest of Falluja. He went to the armory, emptied the weapons and ammo stored there and brought it back out through the fighting to us. We expected him to want to stay with us or to move on to Baghdad or some other safe area. He refused and stated that he was going back into the city as that was where his duty was. Not a coward by even the most cynical standard.

We had a group that showed up shortly thereafter. You have probably heard about them as they came out of Baghdad and on the way were ambushed a couple of times. By the time they made it here only 200 of 700 were in their ranks. I know that the public story is that they folded after a couple of days of fighting and disintegrated. They actually made it through three days of fighting. Not just taking a few rounds, they held through accurate machine gun fire, mortars and multiple assaults. They also moved forward and occupied positions on the Marines' flanks. After three days, we pulled them out. The Marines will tell you that they did a hell of a job.

The Marine Corps has been around for 230 years. We have many battles and history under our belts that instills in the Marines a profound sense of duty and tradition. Further, the culture has made peer pressure into a positive art form. Words like "selflessness" are not only used but are taught to every recruit. Show me another place in our society where a 20 year old guy worries more about letting his buddy down than his own well-being. This is true across the board. There are probably a few other places left that instill this but not too many where it holds together when the rubber meets the road.

The Iraqis had none of this going into Falluja. In fact they had and continue to have just the opposite. They live in a world of terror. For decades, Sadaam played one neighbor against another, one tribe against another, one sect of Islam against another and one race against another. Therefore there is never a sense of safety to the Iraqis even within their own tribes. Here if you join the police or the army, you are eventually approached by the terrorists and threatened. If they think you are a leader, they tell you that they will kill you and your family. The orders are simple, look the other way when you are on duty and leave when the terrorist show up. If you don't they will kill you and probably your family.

Imagine that young guy who joins the ICDC or police. He may be somewhat of an idealist when he gets out of our initial training but when he shows up to his unit, the muj have already infiltrated it and immediately make it clear that there is no hope of survival if he does not do exactly what they say. For good measure and effect, they regularly assassinate Iraqi policemen and soldiers just to make it clear that they will kill them on a whim. The guys that were in place prior to April lived in that world. We are working against it still. Without the tradition and culture of the Marine Corps and constantly thinking that their very presence next to us may get their families killed, I am amazed they made it for an hour much less than three days. We decided to pull them because this place needs young patriots. It does not need us to put them into a position where they will be ground down in intense combat or maybe to be killed when it is over. Hopefully they can be a nucleus for tomorrow's leaders. Time will tell.

We are back at it with the police and ICDC. With us are retired police officers from the US and other civilians who are trying to contribute. Police forces back in California are sending us equipment and expertise on training. The lesson that we have learned for this iteration is for us to focus first and foremost on our true strength and that is the character and decency of our Marines. Force of personality and personal example are more important to us right now leading up to the ineivitable violence this summer than the right radio for the Iraqis. For what it is worth, I think that is the right approach. If we demonstrate the best aspects of the Marines who they see every day, we are giving the young Iraqi men something that can never be taken from them. They are seeing the best part of a free people. Hopefully the lights will go on.

The enemy is confused right now. He goes to bed convinced he is going to win because he watches the Al Jazeera and then the US media and believes that we are a weak willed people who can be terrorized and who have a penchant for self-loathing. Then, he wakes up and he comes across a coalition check point and he sees a young Soldier or Marine who stands there like a rock and exudes strength and conviction. The same terrorist who was in the mosque the night before in a frenzy is now subjugated by the presence of a guy who does not match up with what he has been told and sees on TV. It must be confusing as all get out. Every day, he will continue to see in three dimensions the best that our society has to offer and their is no amount of sound bites that will trump that in the end.

In another email, I will share with you what I think is going to happen this summer. It will be a tough pull. However, we are prepared. We get reports of impending muj attacks on Marine positions and I am amazed at the universal response - "Good, that means we don't have to try to find them tonight." There is plenty of fight left in the guys. On a lighter note, the Iraqi people are coming back more and more to approach the Marines. When they are in private, they regularly tell us that we cannot leave and that they "need" us to stay. Of course they cannot say that publicly for reasons above.

I will close with something that was on my mind this morning when I punished myself by watching CBS news. I saw the anchor come on and just before he spoke, I told my rack mate "Lets see what the opening line is going to be...." Sure enough before he said anything else, he said "It just keeps getting worse and worse...." Yes, he was talking about Iraq. Honest to God we laughed at him. I'm not kidding. It is getting to the point where the Marines are getting past their anger at the talking heads and are laughing. To really get a rise out of them, requires a retired military officer who betrays his oath and stokes the fear mongering.

Do you remember when I came back last fall and people would ask about WMD and I would say that I did not care if we ever found any? The day we found the mass grave is vivid to me still. We found it up near the Iranian boarder. Very quickly people came from miles and miles away. We stood and watched the family members digging up bones and clutching remains as they sat in the dirt, rocked back and forth and cried. They were adamant that we should come over and look as they dug them up. Every single body had its hands and feet wired together with ROMEX. Each skull had a bullet hole in it except for a few that were smashed with a club or rifle butt. There were clearly men but also women and children. The grave never made the news as there were no media with us and it was small by Iraq standards. One detail that I found particularly outrageous was that the assassins left the identifications on the bodies as if they were so arrogant that it never occured that someday, someone would dig up the bodies and hold them accountable. I will never forget it.

That memory is vivid and relevant to me today as I feel like I was blessed to have been there and see it personally. To the people that cry that we should leave Iraq because we came here for the wrong reasons I would say "I don't care." Honestly, if I found out tomorrow that everyone in government knowingly lied and brought us here because Iraq grows the best sunflower seeds in the world it would not matter to me. We liberated a people from a regime that will go down in history as one of the most brutal ever. That would be enough.

However, we are now in a life and death struggle with an enemy who wants nothing more for us to leave so that they can bring their own brand of terror to the same people. Our biggest failings have been that, as a coalition, we have not been able to overcome our own-ham handed actions and horrible mistakes/crimes and simply convince the Iraqi people that we do in fact want to leave them a free and prosperous country where there is hope. The most successful way to do that is to continue to go out and show them every day and not to cut and run. And you know what? It is working. People are coming to us and talking to us even in the face of Abu Garayb and in the real threat of their own death.

Inside this country right now, there are extremists who have set up courts where in one room, they try Iraqis and in the next they kill them minutes later. Not fantasy - reality. Again, the death sentence? Accepting payment for damage we have done in fighting or in an accident. Taking a job working on a coalition base. Having a brother who has done his job in the police or ICDC.

Are people so naive as to think that if we left, things would get better? The country would implode and thousands of people would be killed. When the dust settled, a more dangerous Iraq would emerge and we would be even more hated throughout the world. It is that simple. We came here to help these people and at the same time to make the world a safer place for free people everywhere. If we leave too early, the people will suffer horribly and the world will have taken one giant step backward. Maybe we are slow on the uptake but it is pretty clear here what the right thing to do is and it is not to abandon the people to the terrorists.

I understand that some people are simply frightened by the violence - for good reason. To them I would say, hang in there. I see people every hour of every day that make me sure we are strong enough to be successful. To people that say our agenda is anything other than what I have written, I say that it does not matter because the young men and women doing the heavy lifting are doing it for the right reason and at the end of the day, the Iraqi people will benefit. They may never like us while we are here as there are thousands of years of culture that separate us. The fact that we are not popular does not change our moral obligation.

Please tell everyone that we are now bathing in coffee and loving it. I got on the Greenside yesterday. I sincerely appreciate the well wishes and share them with the guys (along with the coffee). I also appreciate the hopes that I keep my limbs as that lines right up with my own goals as well. If I could ask anything about the website, my guess is that people go to it to find out what is really happening. They also probably read the message board to be reassured that other people are holding the line. Regardless of what is posted there that may seem negative, please refrain from insulting someone who voices their opinion. Of course, if someone really gets froggy they are more then welcomed to go to boot camp, earn their ticket over here and put their money where their mouth is.

Love,

Dave

Southern Appeal

Indian Elections:

Irony abounds: one of the best quick summaries I've seen of the fallout from India's recent election comes from Southern Appeal, that collection of gentleman lawyers from Alabama. They are normally a good source for US legal commentary, but apparently their interests are wider than I suspected. Well done.

Marine Corps News> Marines capture, destroy large Iraqi insurgents' weapons stockpiles

Boom:

I've been eaten alive between work (who knew a Datuk was a kind of Malaysian knight?) and the move. However, our faithful spotter JHD has been keeping my in-box full of updates from the front. Take a look at these captured weapons, which were reportedly found via local intel. He sends also a pair of stories on USMC small boats. Seems like a pretty good gig to me, no pun intended.

Playboy Foundation Announces the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards

Playboy Scientists:

The Playboy Foundation has just given a "First Amendment Award" to the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood. Although ironic, the award is deserved. Aftergood publishes Secrecy News, occasionally cited by Grim's Hall, a publication that works to keep the citizens as informed as is reasonable and legal about the projects the government classifies. While respecting the need to protect such secrecy when American lives and interests are at stake, SN also believes that the citizens have a duty to be aware of, and therefore able to control, the government's activities. As I agree with that sentiment completely, I congratulate Mr. Aftergood on his newfound award.

Yahoo! Mail - grimbeornr@yahoo.com

In Iraq:

It's short both in length and detail, but the Naval news has a clip from the commander of the 2/2 Marines, 1MARDIV, I MEF. He says:

These Marines work under incredibly austere conditions, under the constant threat of lethal engagement, and they make miracles happen. Because of that, I know we're winning the fight against Terrorism. I know it because of that, and because I see it in the eyes of the Iraqi children.

Just a sound bite, of course, but it's good to know he feels that way.

Hat tip to JHD, who has been sending lots of emails loaded with good stuff lately. I'm still in the midst of moving, so light posting for a few more days.

UPDATE: The piece has moved to a new location. You can also find the archive of all past news videos if you like.

Getting Out the Vote:

Everyone knows it's an election year, and everyone probably remembers what happened to military absentee ballots in 2000. For those causes, the USMC has established a voting homepage for Marines and those interested in USMC issues. Any of you who are planning to vote by absentee ballot will find all the necessary forms and information there. Vote early, and read the FAQ to make it as hard as possible for certain officials to have your ballots disqualified.

Hat tip to JarHeadDad, who is doing Yeoman work in keeping us all on the ball about these issues. Thanks for that.

DefenseLINK News: New Commands in Iraq to Replace Combined Joint Task Force

Keeping Things Straight:

Now that we have two new commands in Iraq instead of CJTF-7, how are we going to keep them straight in our heads? It's worse since they have such similiar names: Multinational Corps Iraq and Multinational Force Iraq.

Kimmitt explained that Multinational Corps Iraq will focus on the tactical fight -- the day-to-day military operations and the maneuvering of the six multinational divisions on the ground. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz will command the corps. Meanwhile, Multinational Force Iraq will focus on more strategic aspects of the military presence in Iraq, such as talking with sheiks and political leaders, and on training, equipping and fielding Iraqi security forces.

So, to recap, the Corps will be doing most of the fighting. Hmm... maybe that won't be so hard to remember after all. :)

Belmont

The Belmont Club:

I'm finally getting around to doing what I should have done a while ago. I'm adding the Belmot Club to the top of the "Other Halls" list. Wretchard's is some of the best thinking out there on Iraq and elsewhere, and his analysis has been excellent at least since the start of the siege of Fallujah. I have mostly posted links to the things he writes with which I disagree, but it's worth noting that all of what he says is of high value.

Today he has several pieces that are worthwhile. I especially liked the reference to Greenmantle. I read Greenmantle while living in the People's Republic of China. The PRC pretty much bans English-language fiction written more recently than a century ago. As a result, during my time there I read a lot of classics that I hadn't gotten around to before--Moby Dick, Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps, the Arabian Nights, some of Shakespeare, and a lot of other things too. It was extremely valuable being cut off from popular culture for so long.

Greenmantle is a candid look at the mindset of First-World-War Britian. It was written by a fellow, John Buchan, who was the Tom Clancy of his day. It's filled with what John Derbyshire calls "the same mixture of disgust, paternalism, and respect that one finds in Kipling -- that was, in fact, normal among thoughtful, humane Englishmen at the height of the Empire." At first it strikes a modern American as ugly, encompassed as we are in a culture that forbids expression of disgust for cultural differences. Perhaps because I encountered it while living myself in a foreign nation, dealing each day with the clash of cultures, I came to appreciate what was indeed humane and valuable in that attitude. It's almost a necessary stance, if you're going to be able to deal respectfully with people whose culture includes and encourages things your own finds repulsive--including, especially, the treatment of women.

AFD

Happy Armed Forces Day:

In honor of AFD, I've spent the day at that most frequent and herculean of military labors: shifting house. My new residence is in that part of Virginia where Mosby's Rangers were raised. I've been loading, unloading, carrying, hauling, and otherwise exhausting myself since dawn. It's now nearly midnight, and it's the first time I've had to sit down.

It's going to be good to be in the South again. Georgia, not Virginia, is my home. Still, this part of the South feels very familiar, very much like the place where I grew up. It'll be a good spot to raise my own son, for the year or two until we shift house again.

Even though I haven't had much time to think of you and yours, I didn't forget. My best to all of you out there in the service. I'll save eloquence for some day when I'm not so tired. For now, just: Good on you, and good luck.

Southern Appeal

Rumsfeld:

There are a pair of essays on Rumsfeld today. You'll have seen the VDH essay, which is being broadly linked across the blogosphere. The other one is by the man who should have been the Democratic nominee for President, Joe Lieberman. It ran in the Wall Street Journal.

Both are deeply supportive of the SECDEF. The ultimate case for his continuing in office, though, comes from Baldilocks. There's really no argument against the point she raises, unless you believe that the Filibuster Congress would forgo the chance to humiliate the Administration in the months before the election. Do I believe that? Not a bit.

AFP

Big Win in USPACOM:

There is another GWOT success being reported by the AFP at this hour (no link so far).

A Filipino who acted as a conduit for funds from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network to the Abu Sayyaf group in the southern Philippines has been arrested, the Philippine government said Friday.
Khair Malvan Mundus, 40, who studied Arabic in Saudi Arabia, was arrested last week by intelligence agents in the southern city of Zamboanga, Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said.
Mundus was a 'direct intermediary of al-Qaeda funds,' channeled to Abu Sayyaf senior leader Khadaffy Janjalani to be used in 'bombing and other terroristic activities,' he told a news conference.
The funds financed a bombing that killed a US military adviser on Mindanao island in October 2002, he added.
Mundus told investigators he funnelled more than 3.5 million pesos (about 63,000 dollars) from Al-Qaeda to the Abu Sayyaf for various kidnapping and bombing attacks, Ermita said.
Among the attacks financed by this money was a bombing in the southern Philippines in October 2002 which killed an American soldier training local counter-terrorist soldiers and another blast in Kidapawan City later that month which killed seven people, Ermita said.
He also provided funds to buy a speedboat and weapons for the Abu Sayyaf and delivered uniforms and equipment used in the kidnapping of 21 foreign and local tourists and hotel staff from the Malaysian resort island of Sipadan in 2000.
Mundus stayed in Saudi Arabia from 1996 and 2003, supposedly to study the Arabic language, but he travelled between the Philippines and the Middle East numerous times in that period, the defense department said.
While in Saudi Arabia, he raised money for the Abu Sayyaf and had 'dealings with Al Haramain, a non-government organization that has been linked by intelligence agencies to terrorist activities,' the department added.
The Abu Sayyaf has been targetting Christians and foreigners in the southern Philippines since the early 1990s.
Washington and Manila have both linked the group to the Al-Qaeda network and in March, the government said the authorities had prevented a major terrorist attack in Manila with the arrest of several Abu Sayyaf militants.

Capturing a high-placed finance manager is always a major success in the GWOT. What is suggestive here is that this is the second one in weeks.

Yahoo! News - Marines Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stack

Wergeld:

Marines in Fallujah are paying the diaya, which is the Arabic version wergeld:

The village leader received $15,000 on behalf of residents in compensation for dead livestock, uprooted trees, damaged fields and other losses. The Marines tried to bargain him down to $10,000, but he stood firm.
The son of a man killed by gunfire while driving in a battle zone received $2,500. And a man who said his 7-year-old daughter was killed as she tended the family's sheep also received $2,500.
Now that the fighting between Marines and insurgents has tapered off in the area, the U.S. military is attempting to make amends with noncombatants who suffered. The Americans hope cash will win friends and help bring peace in this part of the volatile Sunni Triangle.
Under Marine rules, a payment for a death goes directly to the family. Payments for community losses can be funneled through an elder, sheik or village leader.
"I know we cannot replace your loss, but we would like to offer a small apology in the form of $2,500 so we can move on in friendship," Capt. Kevin Coughlin, judge advocate general for the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division, told the man who said his daughter had been killed.
"I accept your apology," said Saady Mohamed Abdala.

This seems oddly mercenary to the modern Westerner, but it is how peace is made in traditional societies. Our own was no exception. The fact that the diaya is accepted means that these persons are honor-bound to respect the peace made through the settlement. It is a very positive sign.

Marine Corps Moms

Option Two:

A few days ago I asked for opinions on the moral course of action for dealing with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib in light of new evidence. It appears that the military decided on option two--and, to their credit, decided on it months ago.

US forces freed Friday morning hundreds
of Iraqi prisoners from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail, which has been the platform of prison abuse scandals.
Several buses filled with detainees, escorted by US military vehicles, pulled out of the prison, toward the high way, heading to the capital.
Since the dawn, hundreds of Iraqis were at the main gate of Abu Ghraib prison west of baghdad waiting for their thousands of detainees inside the compound.
US officials had previously said that about 300 prisoners would be released on Friday, part of a months-old programme that the new commander of the jail said this week would cut the number of detainees to between 1,500 and 2,000 by the end of next month.
About 3,800 detainees were in Abu Ghraib earlier this week.

This is what we expect to see from the US military--decisive action coupled with an institutional commitment to honor and right action. That commitment is no small thing, not a trinket nor an ornament, to be set aside when the serious business of war is at hand. General Washington said: "Discipline is the soul of an army," and also, "Nothing is more harmful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army superiority over another." It is exactly in the times of war when these habits must be ingrained if they are not to be lost.

BLACKFIVE

Responsibility:

BlackFive correctly points out the failure of leadership at Abu Ghraib that needs to be punished. There have been a number of calls for the civilian leadership to step down. This arises from a general misunderstanding about the nature of the civil/military divide.

The military is under civil authority, but the keeping of discipline within its ranks is the duty and responsibility of military men and women. The system is self-reinforcing: the military is protected from the worst impulses of standing armies both by being under civilian authority, but it is also protected from being misused by those civilians by assigning every serviceman a personal duty to the lawful order. Even if Wolfowitz had personally commanded the abuse of prisoners, servicemen are obligated by oath and military law to disobey. It is not a choice. It is their duty.

Responsibility is one thing the military is good at assigning. In this case it lies with every command, staff, and noncommissioned officer who took an oath to keep order and discipline at this station, as well as the actual violators themselves. They all swore oaths, and have broken them. Guilt is one thing that can be divided without being lessened. General Karpinski bears it in full measure.

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

The Boy Scouts:

Grim's Hall is an enthusiastic supporter of the Boy Scouts. I was myself a Scout--I had the honor of achieving Life Scout rank, and was within two merit badges of my Eagle Scout badge when my troop dissolved due to the Scoutmaster no longer being able to run it, and no replacement being available. I should have found another troop and kept after it, but at the time the letdown was enough that I drifted away from the Scouts.

The Scouts come in for a positive mention in Brad Miner's new book, The Compleat Gentleman:

Winston Churchill was a big fan of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and of the gentlemanly qualities of early scouting, which Churchill considered 'an inspiration, characteristic of the essence of British genius, and uniting in a bond of comeradeship the youth not only of the English-speaking world, but of almost every land and people under the sun.' Baden-Powell's 1908 book, Scouting for Boys, stirred sentiments of 'knightly chivalry, of playing the game--any game--earnest or fun--hard and fairly[.]'....
Baden-Powell enisioned 'a new organization that would draw on wartime scouting lore and ancient codes of chivalry to teach boys the Victorian virtues. King Arthur's Round Table, Baden-Powell understood, resonated in boys' souls, for it symbolized the marriage of strength and goodness[.]'

Today, Arts & Letters Daily links to two pieces on the Scouts. The first is from the Atlantic, by Christopher Hitchens sneers at Baden-Powell and his 'no smoking, no drinking, pro-God outfit.' The second article, written by a less stellar writer, is nevertheless the stronger: it is merely a factual piece about the Boy Scouts of Iraq:

Former Navy commander Chip Beck said contacts he made in the city informed him that local Iraqi scouting councils in the 18 provinces had survived attempts by Saddam to cut off sources of funding, meeting places and communication between brother and sister organizations. The scouts were alive and waiting for a chance to resurrect themselves, he said.
"You still have some older scout leaders in their 40s who had been trained by the world scouting organization and knew the ethics and training and maintained it. They kept it up," Beck told Foxnews.com. "They're emerging battered and tattered, but in relatively good shape."
"The Arab region wants to welcome them with open arms and [is] looking for ways to help them," said Gabr, who spoke to Foxnews.com from the Arab Region Council in Cairo, Egypt, which is part of the world organization.
The long and impressive scouting tradition for Iraqi boys and girls dates back to the 1920s. Beck, who had been working with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Pentagon on communications systems in Baghdad, set about helping the Iraqis fix their scouting system earlier this year.
He placed articles in Arabic newspapers to garner support from the world and regional organizations and found they generated excitement among scouts in and around Baghdad.
"Unbeknownst to me, some Iraqi former scouts were gathering and planting seeds in an old camp that had been burnt down," said Beck.

Mr. Hitchens may sneer as he wishes at the ideals the Scouts offer. Here we see an element of comeradeship between the West and the Iraqi; here we see an ethic that resonated so strongly in the souls of boys that, as men--thirty years on, when the great terror ended--among their first thoughts was to rekindle its flame.

Cavalry Raiders

Cavalry Raiders:

Some of you noticed that BlackFive published a short series of photos from Iraq. I have a more from the same series (thanks to the fellow who sent them). The ones I'd most like to publish are the remnant of an IED attack in which some contractors were wounded--apparently they were operating alone and without military protection, although the Marines were able to get there in time to F3 ("find, fix and finish") their attackers.

However, for OPSEC reasons I'm going to hold off on those photos for a while, as well as the others that might give position information on this unit of Marines. I do have a couple of pictures of their convoy, however:

I'm told that the Marines have taken to calling themselves "JEB Stuarts" in honor of the great American cavalryman, who served the United States in the West, Kansas and Virginia, and the Confederate States from the outbreak of war until his death outside of Richmond. It's good to see him honored. These types of raids are central to the "Small Wars" approach we've discussed here before, as they help to create islands of security by attacking the enemy supply chain. Those bombs B5 posted pictures of will not now be used against us.

TIDES World Press Reports

Fatwa on the Death of Nick Berg:

For those of you who have seen the video, you noticed that the execution was preceeded by a seven minute speech. That speech has been translated and made available by the DARPA TIDES project. It is a "virtual"--that is, a machine--translation, so shades of meaning may be lost. The overall meaning is clear.

One thing to notice is how often the "compromise" in Fallujah is cited as evidence that Allah has given al Qaeda a victory against the most powerful nation on earth. Abu Ghraib is cited as a reason to fight, but al Qaeda has to convince people also that there is the prospect of success in fighting.

Praise to Allah who honored Islam with His support, humiliated the infidels with His power, controlled everything with His Command, and tricked the infidels. Prayers and peace be upon the one that raised the banner of Islam with his sword.
Nation Of Islam,
Great news! The signs of dawn have begun and the winds of victory are blowing. Allah has granted us a great victory, in one of his battles in Fallujah. Thanks to Allah alone.
Nation of Islam,
Is there any excuse left to sit idly by? How can a free Muslim sleep soundly while Islam is being slaughtered, its honor bleeding and the images of shame in the news of the satanic abuse of the Muslim men and women in the prison of Abu-Ghraib. Where is your zeal and where is the anger for the religion of Allah? And where is the jealousy over the honor of the Muslims and where is the revenge for the honor of the Muslim men and women in the prisons of the Crusaders?
As for you, scholars of Islam, it is to Allah that we complain about you. Don't you see that Allah has established the evidence against you by the youth of Islam, who have humiliated the greatest power in history and broken its nose and destroyed its arrogance?
Hasn't the time come for you to learn from them the meaning of reliance on God and to learn from their actions the lessons of sacrifice and forebearance? How long will you remain like the women, knowing no better than to wail, scream and cry?
One scholar appeals to the free people of this world, another begs Kofi Annan, a third seeks help from 'Amr Musa and a fourth calls for peaceful demonstrations as if they did not hear the words of Allah "O Messenger, rally the believers to fight!"
Aren't you fed up with the jihad of conferences and the battles of sermons? Has the time not come for you to lift the sword, which the master of the Messengers was sent with?
And we hope that you will not intervene as usual by denouncing what we do to please the Americans. The Prophet, the master of the merciful has ordered to cut off the heads of some of the prisoners of Badr in patience. He is our example and a good role model.
As for you, Bush dog of the Christians, we promise you things that will displease you. With Allah's assistance, hard days are coming to you. You and your soldiers are going to regret the day that you stepped foot in Iraq and dared to violate the Muslims.
Another message for the collaborator and traitor Pervez Musharraf; we say to you, we can not wait to welcome your soldiers. By Allah, we will target them before the Americans and will avenge the blood of our brothers in Wana and others.
As for you, mothers and wives of the American soldiers, we say to you that we offered the American Administration the chance to exchange this prisoner for some of the prisoners in Abu-Ghraib, but they refused. We say to you, the dignity of the Muslim men and women in the prison of Abu Ghraib and others will be redeemed by blood and souls. You will see nothing from us except corpse after corpse and casket after casket of those slaughtered in this fashion.
"So kill the infidels wherever you see them, take them, sanction them, and await them in every place"

UPDATE: Some of you seem to be worried about this being here. As you can see from the link, DARPA put it in the clear by posting it on the web on an unclass site. There's no security risk: pretty much every enemy in the world already knows what was said because they speak the language, Arabic, in which it was originally broadcast. I don't know why newspapers haven't published the transcript, except that they prefer to tell you what to think rather than letting you read source documents and decide for yourself.

M14 DCM Program To Counterbalance War Costs Petition

A Petition:

Doc Russia gives us a useful petition. It urges the government to sell used military M14s to the American citizen. For those in need of a history lesson on topic, the M14 rifle predated the M16 rifle. It is a thirty-caliber magazine-fed, gas operated shoulder weapon (7.62mm NATO, to be exact), and was the issue weapon when the USMC first deployed to Vietnam.

The military, in classic fashion, bought tons of these things even after the decision to replace it was made. They have been warhoused for thirty years. Doc estimates that, for every ten dollars the gov't charges per rifle, gov't revenues increase by about three million dollars. In addition, you make available at surplus prices a reliable, accurate rifle suitable for the whole range of civilian uses, from hunting to the defense of the home, to the execution--should some future terrorist attack or disaster require them--of militia duties. Although it is antiquated, it is NATO standard, and would be compatible with existing military stockpiles of ammunition.

Battelle Panel Forecasts Top Innovations for the War on Terror

Techies on the side of Right:

There's an article from Battelle on new technical innovations, designed primarily for the GWoT:

1. Forward-Looking Intelligence will anticipate terrorist actions and translate that information into an effective response.
2. Biological and Chemical Sensors that will mimic nature (biomimetics), to enhance detection of bombs, weapons, and chemical and biological threats.
3. Non-Invasive and Non-Destructive Imaging, such as the emerging terahertz (T-rays), will identify the contents of shipping containers, trucks, luggage, and sealed packages.
4. Non-Lethal Directed Energy Weapons Systems, such as the Vehicle Mounted Active Denial System (VMADS), which will be capable of stopping people and machinery, as well as interrupting or remotely triggering improvised explosive devices and land mines.
5. Comprehensive Space, Air, Land, and Sea Monitoring will be integrated with current and new technology to form a more effective global surveillance system.
6. 21st Century Public Diplomacy will help gain a better understanding of opposing cultures and values so that the United States and its allies can develop more effective strategies to prevent terrorism.
7. Electronic Tracking of Money will use new software and tagging technology to follow and effectively shut down key operatives in terrorist organizations.
8. Distributed Forces and an Interlocking Network using "enabling" technologies -- such as advanced mini-computers and communication networks -- will turn military forces into distributed sensors, as well as combatants, and allow them to provide information back to command headquarters.
9. Encouraging Public Awareness and Self-Identification of Terrorists through innovative applications of behavioral science will combat terrorist activity. Examples might include a global "Amber Alert" system to distribute multi-lingual information on known terrorists, and a program like the "America's Most Wanted" to help find terrorists.
10. Neutralizing Explosive Chemicals through a new generation of chemistry will render the compounds contained in common chemicals unusable as bombs.

Yankee ingenuity, I've heard it called, although as a Southerner I'd like to register a gentle protest.

Yahoo! Mail - bjarnr@yahoo.com

Heads Up:

Don't know if I have any Aussie readers anymore, but I used to. A newly discovered terrorist manual has named Australians as the prime choices for terrorists in Indonesia:

The manual, Targeting the Cities, specifies which foreign nationals to target in Muslim countries such as Americans in Saudi Arabia, French in Algiers and Australians in Indonesia. Terrorism expert Clive Williams said the document was significant as it named, for the first time, Australians rather than Westerners in general as the number one target in Indonesia. Mr Williams also said it appeared Australia was increasingly named in al-Qaeda documents as a result of involvement in the war in Iraq.

Stay alert, trust no one, keep your weapons handy. I seem to remember that will be swords, in your case.

BLACKFIVE: Captain Brian Chontosh - Someone You Should Know

A Marine:

Our man BlackFive has a story of a man who fought like an Officer of Marines, and won the Navy Cross:

Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack. He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the .50 cal unload on them.
Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across the machine gun and Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines. Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride.
And he ran down the trench.
With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers.
And he killed them all.
He fought with the M16 until he was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.
At one point he even fired a discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its grenade explosion.
When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis from his platoon's flank. He had killed more than 20 and wounded at least as many more.

One wonders what you have to do for the Medal of Honor these days. Semper Fi, Ooh-rah, out.

Edit Entry | FreeSpeech.com | MOVABLE TYPE

An Ethical Question:

I had a conversation with a colleague today on the prison situation in Iraq. There is an ethical question--or rather, a series of them--raised by the recent revelations, plus the claims by the ICRC that 70-90% of detainees are detained by "mistake."

I'd like to invite the board to comment.

The issue is this: what should we do with these detainees? My colleague asserts that they should simply all be released. Her reasoning is as follows:

1) It is wrong to hold potentially (to say nothing of probably) innocent people without trial, and,
2) We not only have not tried, but have no mechanism for trying, these potentially innocent people, therefore,
3) We should release them all.

The failure to do so, she asserts, is not only a PR disaster, but a moral failure.

I am reminded, however, that there was another PR disaster which preceded this one. In the first months after the fall of Baghdad, the US adopted a hands-off approach to security, attempting to avoid serving as policemen. The consequence was widespread chaos, especially in Baghdad itself: looting, roving gangs, armed robbery, rape, murder, and general brigandage. The roadblock system, out of which very many of these detentions arose, was a direct result of that chaos.

There is, in other words, another set of moral questions aside from the one she raises. We know Saddam released his prisoners and emptied his asylums. We have seen what happens when this particular group of people is loose. On the one hand, "this particular group" probably includes quite a few innocents, who could be released without harm. On the other hand, we have moral duties not only to the prisoners, but to all the Iraqi people--a moral duty not only to sort out innocence from guilt, but also to try to protect the free majority in the meanwhile.

That said, I don't believe a blanket release of the prisoners is a moral, or a feasible, option. The question is, what is the right--the moral--option? I have a few alternatives; I'd like to know what you think of them, and if you have others.

1) The current policy could be maintained. This policy holds that we should wait until Iraqi court systems are erected to adjudicate guilt. Positives: this system respects Iraqi sovereignty. Further, it aids legitimacy of the new government by giving them a task to perform that everyone wants done, such that people are apt to cooperate with it. Further, it aids stability in the long run by putting this government on a footing of independence from the US, as its first acts will include a popular overturn of unpopular American detentions. Negatives: this system requires a great deal of time, during which innocents will remain imprisoned. Not only the courts, but the laws will have to be decided upon before such a review process becomes feasible. This could take months, or potentially, years.

2) The military could begin an administrative process to review cases of detention. Persons held by the Coalition would be examined by a military officer, the report for the reason of their detention likewise examined, and a ruling made over whether or not they should continue to be detained. Due to sovereignty issues, such a review could release someone, but not convict them--those held over would be turned over to the Iraqi courts when they become available. Positives: this would probably be faster than waiting on the courts. It also respects Iraqi sovereignty. Negatives: an administrative process is less likely than the judicial one to arrive at the truth. Reports may be lost, for example, and witnesses (many of the arrests were made by the 3rd ID) rotated out of country. The military may err on the side of releasing people, in which criminals will get free; or they may err on the side of not doing so, such that people who go to trial under the Iraqi courts do so with the stigma of having been reviewed-but-held by the Americans. This could prejudice outcomes.

3) In many parts of the country, Sha'riah courts are operative--Moqtada al-Sadr has been running them, for example. While it would be politically impossible to allow Sha'riah judgments over persons not wishing them, detainees who request a judgment could be referred to a Sha'riah court for a quick ruling. Positives: these courts exist and are functional, and their authority is widely recognized. There could be some positive PR from the respect shown to Islam by the Coalition. Negatives: there is a chance that radical clerics might vote to release actual thugs in order to recruit them. There is a certainty that, once given legitimacy in this fashion, Sha'riah will everafter occupy a place as a parallel system of government in Iraq. Separation of church and state, and the long term stability of the government, would be made more difficult.

I am not including a UN tribunal as an option, largely because the UN has shown that it will cut and run in the face of terrorist bombings, and any such process will have to be made of stronger stuff. A multinational panel isn't impossible, but it would have to address that concern, without running afoul of the concerns mentioned in point (2) above.

Thoughts?

PH Kothegr

Ink for SOA:

A new blog has opened at this address, to discuss the idea of recycling used ink jet cartridges, the profits donated to Spirit of America. I myself have a nearly paperless office, and therefore generate few such used cartridges; but for those of you who work in paper-heavy offices, give it a look.

The Command Post - Iraq - Frisbees Over Fallujah

The Command Post:

Via The Command Post, we have a very cheerful image from Fallujah. I dropped by the Post to see what they'd dug up on last night's assassination-by-landmine in Chechnya. They have links to several Chechen news sources, which are worth looking over if you're interested in that theatre of the GWOT.

One of those had this interesting article on the importance of prostitution to Russia's economy:

Prostitution has been playing more and more important role in Russia's import of hard currency. In Istanbul, Turkey alone, let alone other profitable cities of Turkey such as Antalia, Marmaris, Adana, etc., several tens of thousands of Russian prostitutes are registered. And all across Turkey there are over 120 thousand prostitutes, who are only registered officially. With the average earnings of $ 100 a day they all earn at least $ 10 million dollars each day, which is about $ 300 million a month.
Three billion US dollars--this is the summary profit of Russian prostitutes in Turkey per year. And these are only the most conservative estimates! But if we add a number of other lucrative regions such as Europe (with about 200,000 Russian prostitutes), Indochina (40-50 thousand), etc., the annual Russian off-budget profits from prostitution will be no less than $ 10 billion US dollars.

The Islamic news service suggests that this is, of course, a sign of the moral worthlessness of the evil Russian republic. They report rumors that the government may be preparing to set up a cabinet-level ministry to legalize and encourage prostitution. Leaving those rumors aside, though, the sheer size of the industry is surprising. Ten billion US dollars is not small change for a cash-strapped nation, even if much of that money can't be getting out of the localities where it is earned.

Marine Corps News> 22d MEU (SOC) pushes deeper into Afghanistan

Marines Outside Iraq:

The 22d MEU (SOC) has opened a forward operating base--FOB Ripley--to perform security and stability operations in the Oruzgan province. There has been some factional fighting there recently. Oruzgan, one of the central provinces, is close enough to Kabul that instability there is of concern to the Afghan project as a whole, which is why the deployment of 22d MEU is justified.

Congratulations, meanwhile, to the 11th MEU, which won its SOC certification a month ahead of schedule. The 24th MEU is also going through its training cycle, preparing to deploy to Iraq.

Captain's Quarters

Marines in Fallujah:

Captain's Quarters has a piece on the Marines in Fallujah from the LA Times. Meanwhile, there's evidence in this USMC press release that the training at Parris Island doesn't prepare you for everything after all:

The bite of an Iraqi sand fly can debilitate a Marine, sailor or a whole unit, but with proper protection the parasitic infection it causes, leishmaniasis, can be prevented, according to Petty Officer 1st Class David A. Carroll, the preventive medicine chief with I Marine Expeditionary Force.

One bets they're not digging any graves for the little monsters.

Finally, the Chicago Tribune has an article (which I am quoting out of the Pioneer Press to avoid the Tribune's subscription walls--"The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it") on the Iraqi brigade:

Last month, Yasser Harhoush said, he fought with the armed insurgents battling U.S. Marines.

A week ago, the wiry, clean-shaven 28-year-old dusted off his old olive-drab Iraqi military fatigues and joined Fallujah's new army brigade under the command of a former general who served under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Now he carries a shiny black assault rifle as he patrols Jolan, a neighborhood where some of the fiercest fighting took place. He mans military checkpoints. And he says he and his comrades in the 1st Fallujah Brigade are the solution to the monthlong fighting between the insurgents and the Marines.

"We are protecting the city so the coalition forces cannot come here again," Harhoush said.

A mixed result, then, so far. But considering that two weeks ago we were killing his comerades in arms by the hundreds, that's more than you might expect.

FM 34-52 Table of Contents

Reference Material:

US Army Field Manual 34-52, "Intelligence Interrogation," can be found here. It seems to be the governing publication for the operations in Abu Ghraib that led to the questionable practices, although it appears to be undergoing 'field modifications' under the strain of the new war. If you are following the story, you may wish to make reference to it now and again.

Instapundit, on holiday for health reasons (get well, sir), links to this article by the Belmont Club.

My first thoughts at the news of the Abu Ghraib abuses, the Taguba Report and the Presidential mea culpa which followed was whether posterity would recall the incident in the same way the Christmas Truce in the first year of the Great War is remembered today. The last grasp at enforcing civilized standards of conduct before the brutality of the trenches coarsened men completely....
And in a small late-night restaurant in a back street, a small man in steel rimmed glasses told me, over fifteen cent beer, how he had attended a party given by some academic types the night before. They turned the evening into Commie-fest and gathered round someone he knew slightly as a minor functionary in the Red guerilla army in the expectation of edifying stories from the dark years. He was an ex-seminarian, quiet and softly spoken, who told them about his first mission to eliminate a Marcos informer somewhere in a village in southern Luzon. They forced the informer down from his thatch hut one evening, and to save money and avoid the noise of gunfire, cut his throat at the doorstep of his own home. The seminarian was given the honors and he remembered sawing the knife against the informer's windpipe. What struck him most of all, was the rubbery resistance of the cartilage and cries of the informer's children. 'Papa! Papa!' It took a long time to cut though his throat. Before the story was over all the academic bravos had slunk off, retreating like Daisy Buchanan into the 'vast carelessness' of their fantasy world, leaving the man in steel rimmed glasses to drink with the ex-seminarian, ironically improving the company.

One day Ted Koppel will read, in addition to the names of American soldiers who died in Iraq, the names of friends who will have died in another attack on New York. One day Nicholas de Genovea, the Columbia professor who called for a "million Mogadishus" will understand that it means a billion dead Muslims. And then for the first time, perhaps, they will understand the horror of Abu Ghraib while we all raise our glasses, sardonically like Robert Graves, "with affection, to the men we used to be".

This thought crosses my mind from time to time. As much as I respect the Belmont Club, however, I must disagree with the conclusion here. The Geneva Conventions (Appendix J of the 34-52 lists the relevant ones) were written by men who were thinking of 'the men we used to be.' They were adopted in 1949. For the men who wrote them, the Second World War was their background and the Third World War seemed increasingly likely. It is no utopian text.

We'll do what we have to do in order to win, and I'll be right there with you doing it as long as I live and have strength. Yet, we ought not to throw away our heritage so freely. If we are indeed looking toward the horrors of war, let us heed the warning of our fathers. They knew of what they spoke. What is coming may be awful, but we have in their counsel a shield. When a shield breaks, you cast it away: but not before.

deuddersun says...

Best to a Brother in Arms:

Condolences and prayers for US Marine and blogger Deuddersun and his family, who have suffered a death this week. If you have time and are of a mind, send a kind word their way.

Noble Eagle

Welcome:

Welcome to Noble Eagle, a new Milblog.

CI

CI:

Counterintelligence inside the US is at an all time high. We don't see it on TV, or read about it in the paper, due to the secrecy involved. However, it can be roughly tracked by following the public statements of the Foreign Intelligence Survellience Court.

The FISC is the court that approves applications for CI activities. Details of its cases are not, obviously, available to citizens for review. However, it does make occasional statements to Congress, some of which are public, such as this one. It states that 1727 applications were made to the court in 2003 for search warrants related to CI activities, of which four (4) were denied. This is up from 1228 the previous year, meaning that CI requests for search warrants in 2003 were 140% of 2002.

You can make of these numbers what you will, but there they are.

My Way News

Contractors:

Grim's Hall is one of the prime defenders of the use of contractors in Iraq and elsewhere. This is probably due in part to a vested interest--being a contractor is the way I've found to contribute to the war, and I want to continue contributing. On the other hand, a lot of the defense of contractors comes from experience. I have seen a fair amount of contract work up front, and I know that it provides a real and indeed an indispensible service to our country. Contractors provide skills in numbers that the military needs.

Human nature being what it is, however, if a good thing is to remain a good thing, accountability is important:

In a sign of continued problems with the tracking of contracts, Pentagon officials on Thursday acknowledged they have yet to identify which Army entity manages the multimillion-dollar contract for interrogators like the one accused in the Iraq prisoner abuse probe.

Pardon me, but what? I mean, this is a Pentagon problem rather than a problem with the contractor, but it's a serious problem. The government ought not to be spending taxpayer dollars in any case without a clear chain of accountability. We need to be able to call people to account for how they've spent (or misspent) our money, regardless of the project.

I think contractors do a world of good for the military, and I believe I have good reasons for saying so. Still, clear rules and guidelines are a wise precaution in any undertaking. It ought also to be an obligation of the government to account for how it spends our coin. It appears there has been a failure in both regards, at least in some cases. I know exactly which department signs my contracts, so it's not true where I work. I know too that the government can get it right some of the time, so there's no excuse for getting it wrong here.

My Way - News

Defensive Lasers:

The Nautilus project knocks down its target. I still remain astonished at this--I understand we have lasers in development that can destroy a 2-foot long artillery shell in flight. It's amazing stuff.

G.K. CHESTERTON: THE EVERLASTING MAN

Chesterton:

From The Everlasting Man:

Now it is very right to rebuke our own race or religion for falling short of our own standards and ideals. But it is absurd to pretend that they fell lower than the other races and religions that professed the very opposite standards and ideals. There is a very real sense in which the Christian is worse than the heathen, the Spaniard worse than the Red Indian, or even the Roman potentially worse than the Carthaginian. But there is only one sense in which he is worse; and that is not in being positively worse. The Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better.

It is also our business to be better. I take exception to our Mr. Reynolds, who is writing tonight:

That's a lot less courage than was displayed by the U.S. soldier who complained to his superiors about abuses at Abu Ghraib, resulting in an investigation that got his commanding general relieved in January -- months before this issue went public.

And also...

He's right -- more coverage of prisoner abuse in a week than they gave Saddam's torture and mass murder in a decade.

As to the first point, we can see that the Pentagon was able to act so long before the issue went public because they illegally classified it. I don't disagree with their decision--the law should probably be changed to permit just this kind of thing. Nevertheless, when you stack the deck, you don't get credit for guessing where the aces are. They were on top of it before others because they knew it was coming and took steps to keep others from knowing.

As to the second point, Chesterton was right. It may be only one sense in which this is worse than what went on in Saddam's Iraq, and it is not that it is positively worse. It is still a very real sense. It is our business to be better. Those who have betrayed us and our faith in them, and who have soiled the uniform that represents us all, they should face the firing squads. I wrote elsewhere:

The firing squad is exactly the right punishment for those servicemen directly involved in sexual torture, as with forcible rape. I suppose that just why I think so needs explaining.

Human nature is immutable. We would like to argue that Americans "aren't the kind of people" who engage in torture. That isn't so. The fact is that Americans are every kind of people; and, furthermore, that all kinds of people learn to torture.

Consider that we make the opposite argument in the case of democracy. We argue boldly what is yet to be proven, which is that Iraqis are just like any other kind of people, and can learn to do democracy. Yet we turn aside from what is definitively proven, which is that no human culture has been able to forgo torture.

If America is morally better than Iraq, it is not because the kinds of people who live in America are better. It is because the system is better, and it is better in exactly this way: it subjects all men to consequences (rule of law), while protecting those who search out the truth of what Americans have done (the press, the courts, the police, "whistleblowers," citizens who report crimes, even criminals who turn State's evidence).

Now that we know the truth, we must have the consequences. And what consequence should it be? Grant that human nature includes a certain disposition to torture, as evidenced by its universal practice; and that we want to prevent the incidence of torture completely; and that we cannot drive humanity out of our military, which is made of nothing else.

The only answer is to put so great a weight of shame and fear on torture that men, given the opportunity, will not practice it. The firing squad has the correct mix of effect and symbol. The effect--a quick but painful death--is terrifying. The symbol, meanwhile, is the squad itself. A few moments before they were your unit mates. Now they reject you; strip your uniform of its insignia; and then, executing their military function of Rifleman, gun you down as an enemy.

The administrative punishments still include the stripping of insigina and the casting out. But--if the man is no longer a soldier, he is still an American. These acts are treason as much as they are rape, torture, sexual abuse. The practitioners should be both driven out, and killed as foes.

In that way, the regiment is purged. The propensity to torture may remain in every man still in the unit, because it remains in all men. But by the practice of torture, the regiment--the Republic--is unstained. No lesser punishment is complete.

The UCMJ almost certainly doesn't allow for it now, but execution is the traditional punishment for rape in wartime. We should push to restore it. These soldiers have done more damage to the war than if they'd taken Indymedia's advice and fragged their officers. All that we've seen so far--even for the deaths--has been discharge without prison. That serves no function. If this happens again six months on, the cost to the war will be impossible to calculate.

We must not allow the sacrifices of the brave to be so wasted.

Mudville Gazette

Timeline:

If any of you are interested in getting the order of events at Abu Ghraib straight, the Mudville Gazette has undertaken to construct a timeline.

The Cool Blue Blog

Killings:

Jason Steenwk at Iraq Now confirms that the US military has demonstrated two criminal homicides of Iraqi prisoners--but contented itself with "less-than-honorable" discharges instead of prison time.

It has been said that the only good thing that can possibly come out of this is for the world to learn that 'we don't tolerate this kind of thing, and punish our own.' If even that lesson is going to be learned, we need to get along with that punishment. If the military justice system is going to insist on administrative punishments for criminal homicides, the President needs to get involved personally.

Secrecy News 05/05/04

Torture & Secrecy:

The government has begun the process of shaking out the lawbreakers who were involved in the torture in Iraq. The general in charge was suspended in January; today it is reported that there have been a host of suspensions of soldiers who were not involved with torture, but who should have been involved in oversight. There are also legal charges being filed against the MPs who engaged in torture.

One set of people who may be facing charges probably did not expect to be: the people who classified the reports of torture, to give the government time to investigate before the story broke. That proves to be illegal:

But the classification may have been more than simply unnecessary. It might have been a violation of official policy, which forbids the use of secrecy to cover up crimes:

"In no case shall information be classified in order to ... conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error [or to] prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency...," according to Section 1.7 of Executive Order 12958, as amended by President Bush (EO 13292).

That section of the order states in full:

Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations. (a) In no case shall information be classified in order to:

(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;

(3) restrain competition; or

(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.

(b) Basic scientific research information not clearly related to the national security shall not be classified.
(c) Information may be reclassified after declassification and release to the public under proper authority only in accordance with the following conditions:

(1) the reclassification action is taken under the personal authority of the agency head or deputy agency head, who determines in writing that the reclassification of the information is necessary in the interest of the national security;
(2) the information may be reasonably recovered; and

(3) the reclassification action is reported promptly to the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office.

(d) Information that has not previously been disclosed to the public under proper authority may be classified or reclassified after an agency has received a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552) or the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a), or the mandatory review provisions of section 3.5 of this order only if such classification meets the requirements of this order and is accomplished on a document-by-document basis with the personal participation or under the direction of the agency head, the deputy agency head, or the senior agency official designated under section 5.4 of this order.
(e) Compilations of items of information that are individually unclassified may be classified if the compiled information reveals an additional association or relationship that: (1) meets the standards for classification under this order; and (2) is not otherwise revealed in the individual items of information. As used in this order, "compilation" means an aggregation of pre-existing unclassified items of information.

Some rethinking of this law is probably in order due to the nature of the current war. This is a tricky situation. On the one hand, we need to be able to keep these kinds of problems "in-house" long enough to develop a response. The explosive nature of these charges would have been heightened if we could not point to the fact that we've been working since January to try to correct the problems. On the other, we need to prevent the government from covering up illegal activity by classifying it. It would probably be wise to alter the law to permit a short "waiting period" before an automatic declassification. That would not only prevent abuses of the secrecy system, but also light a fire under the people whose job it is to handle these investigations.

UPDATE: The ISOO has opened an investigation into this matter. Developing (slowly, as with any gov't bureaucracy).

Report (html format)

"Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003"

The annual report by the State Department is now available in HTML.

Marine Corps News> Gearing up isn't easy

Kitted Out, II:

If you thought poor Kaplan had it tough, take a look at what the Marines do. Thanks to JHD for the link.

DARPA TIDES Iraq Reconstruction Report No. 185

DARPA on Torture:

The DARPA TIDES project ("Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization" according to the homepage--I hate it when people go to that length to be clever with their acronymns) has assembled and posted comprehensive coverage of the torture allegations.

BLACKFIVE

No One Gets Left Behind:

No one:

Luci was left without a family when an Army unit departed Baghdad, said Maj. Gen. Amos. This presented the general with the perfect opportunity to assume responsibility for the courageous dog and her sole surviving puppy from a litter of five.

"Luci was working with Army Special Forces on the streets of Baghdad and over a period of time, she kept following them around whenever they went on patrols," the general said. "Luci was credited with saving their lives a couple of times because of her ability to sniff out an ambush and bark to alert them."

When 3rd MAW went into Baghdad about a month and a half ago to drop off some wounded Marines, Luci and the pup were brought out to the airplane and were taken back to Al Asad, the general said.

The Right Coast

USSC:

The Right Coast has correctly analyzed the current status of the Supreme Court:

it struck me once again that what the Supreme Court is doing is not really law, and that they are not really a court. They make policy decisions about what should be done. They are in truth a legislature composed of unelected worthies, a kind of house of lords. But if this is true, we should call them not "Justice," but something more indicative of their true function....

He has suggestions. Hat tip: Southern Appeal.

The Atlantic | May 2004 | How Do I Look? | Kaplan

Kitted Out:

Robert Kaplan has an article in the Atlantic on the subject:

I was attracted to one Web site, BotachTactical.com, which advertised "Clearance: Great Products at Blowout Prices." It offered machine-washable Point Blank Concealable Armor with removable panels. Another Web site, BulletProofME.com, offered similar vests to "put the odds back in YOUR favor."

But I didn't want concealable armor that fit under a shirt--I am not a Secret Service agent, a police detective, a convenience-store clerk in a high-crime area, a drug lord, or a Mafioso. I wanted tactical body armor that fits over a shirt or a jacket. And the array of tactical body armor offered on the Internet seemed endless.

Friends in the Marines and the Army Special Forces recommended that I buy a vest and plates that gave Level III or IV protection. With that in mind I found a Military Outer Tactical Vest (OTV) I liked for $790 at Bullet ProofME.com, and an even nicer Paraclete Modular Armor Vest--a "hybrid composite [of] Goldflex and Spectra-flex"--sold by Lightfighter.com for $1,990, with soft-armor panels and Velcro pockets for hard-armor trauma plates....

I also had to choose a color. The vests that interested me came in black, plain tan, smoke green, woodland camouflage, and desert or tricolor camouflage.... My decision was further complicated by the Marines. They wear digital cammies in a pattern different from the woodland and tricolor designs of the other services. Would they be offended if I wore woodland?

Offended? Probably not. It would only confirm what they already know, which is that you're not one of them. Go for the "smoke green."

GIs, Shiite militiamen in Najaf trade fire

AP: Iraqis Commit Suicide

In another lesson on press bias, if one were needed, we have this introductory sentence to an AP article on today's attacks:

U.S. forces in Najaf came under their most intense attack yet by Shiite militiamen in a clash Monday that may have killed up to 20 Iraqis.

You got that, right? Shi'ite militiamen led an intense attack that killed twenty of themselves.

I really miss the days of the old Army war correspondants, who would have written, "They attacked us heavily, but we killed about twenty of them." Failing that, could we at least have "In spite of their most intense effort yet to engage US forces directly, the Shi'ite militias were handily repulsed, with up to twenty fruitlessly throwing their lives away in a battle against US soldiers."

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