Introspections

2009-01-26T20:55:00.001-08:00

2009-01-14T21:10:00.000-08:00

2009-01-12T07:53:00.001-08:00

October 3rd 1993

2008-10-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

Lest We Forget...

CW4 Raymond Frank
CW4 Clifton Wolcott
CW3 Donovan Briley
MSG Gary Gordon
MSG Timothy Martin
SFC Matthew Rierson
SFC Randy Shughart
SSG William Cleveland
SSG Daniel Busch
SGT James Joyce
SSG Thomas Field
SFC Earl Fillmore
SGT Cornell Houston
SGT Dominick Pilla
SGT Lorenzo Ruiz
CPL James Cavaco
CPL James Smith
SPC Richard Kowalewski
PFC James Martin

RIP men. You'll never be forgotten.

Kunar 173rd ABN

2008-07-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

Soldiers recount deadly attack on Afghanistan outpost
By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, July 19, 2008

Spc. Tyler Stafford, 23, a soldier from Company C, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), recounts the hours-long fight that killed nine of his comrades as he recuperates at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Sgt. Jacob Walker, 29, recuperating at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, was wounded in Wanat, Afghanistan, when the forward operating base came under attack early Sunday morning.

Spc. Tyler Stafford and Sgt. Jacob Walker talk about the attack.

Everything was on fire. The trucks. The bazaar. The grass.

It looked surreal. It looked like a movie.

That was what Spc. Tyler Stafford remembered thinking as he stepped onto the medical evacuation helicopter. The 23-year-old soldier would have been loaded onto the bird, but the poncho that was hastily employed as his stretcher broke. His body speckled with grenade and RPG shrapnel, the Vicenza, Italy, infantryman walked the last few feet to the waiting Black Hawk.

That was Sunday morning in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province. At a forward operating base — maybe as big as a football field — established just a few days prior.

Outnumbered but not outgunned, a platoon-plus element of soldiers with 2nd Platoon, Company C, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team accompanied by Afghan soldiers engaged in a fistfight of a firefight.

After maybe two hours of intense combat, some of the soldiers’ guns seized up because they expelled so many rounds so quickly. Insurgent bullets and dozens of rocket-propelled grenades filled the air. So many RPGs were fired at the soldiers that they wondered how the insurgents had so many.

That was July 13. That was when Stafford was blown out of a fighting position by an RPG, survived a grenade blast and had the tail of an RPG strike his helmet.

That was the day nine Chosen Company soldiers died.

It was just days before the unit was scheduled to leave the base.

The first RPG and machine gun fire came at dawn, strategically striking the forward operating base’s mortar pit. The insurgents next sighted their RPGs on the tow truck inside the combat outpost, taking it out. That was around 4:30 a.m.

This was not a haphazard attack. The reportedly 200 insurgents fought from several positions. They aimed to overrun the new base. The U.S. soldiers knew it and fought like hell. They knew their lives were on the line.

"I just hope these guys’ wives and their children understand how courageous their husbands and dads were," said Sgt. Jacob Walker. "They fought like warriors."

The next target was the FOB’s observation post, where nine soldiers were positioned on a tiny hill about 50 to 75 meters from the base. Of those nine, five died, and at least three others — Stafford among them — were wounded.

When the attack began, Stafford grabbed his M-240 machine gun off a north-facing sandbag wall and moved it to an east-facing sandbag wall. Moments later, RPGs struck the north-facing wall, knocking Stafford out of the fighting position and wounding another soldier.

Stafford thought he was on fire so he rolled around, regaining his senses. Nearby, Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling, who later died in the fight, had a stunned look on his face.

Immediately, a grenade exploded by Stafford, blowing him down to a lower terrace at the observation post and knocking his helmet off. Stafford put his helmet back on and noticed how badly he was bleeding.

Cpl. Matthew Phillips was close by, so Stafford called to him for help. Phillips was preparing to throw a grenade and shot a look at Stafford that said, "Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first."

This was only about 30 to 60 seconds into the attack.

Kneeling behind a sandbag wall, Phillips pulled the grenade pin, but just after he threw it an RPG exploded at his position. The tail of the RPG smacked Stafford’s helmet. The dust cleared. Phillips was slumped over, his chest on his knees and his hands by his side. Stafford called out to his buddy three or four times, but Phillips never answered or moved.

"When I saw Phillips die, I looked down and was bleeding pretty good, that’s probably the most scared I was at any point," Stafford said. "Then I kinda had to calm myself down and be like, ‘All right, I gotta go try to do my job.’ "

The soldier from Parker, Colo., loaded his 9 mm handgun, crawled up to their fighting position, stuck the pistol over the sandbags and fired.

Stafford saw Zwilling’s M-4 rifle nearby so he loaded it, put it on top of the sandbag and fired. Another couple RPGs struck the sandbag wall Stafford used as cover. Shrapnel pierced his hands.

Stafford low-crawled to another fighting position where Cpl. Jason Bogar, Sgt. Matthew Gobble and Sgt. Ryan Pitts were located. Stafford told Pitts that the insurgents were within grenade-tossing range. That got Pitts’ attention.

With blood running down his face, Pitts threw a grenade and then crawled to the position from where Stafford had just come. Pitts started hucking more grenades.

The firefight intensified. Bullets cut down tree limbs that fell on the soldiers. RPGs constantly exploded.

Back at Stafford’s position, so many bullets were coming in that the soldiers could not poke their heads over their sandbag wall. Bogar stuck an M-249 machine gun above the wall and squeezed off rounds to keep fire on the insurgents. In about five minutes, Bogar fired about 600 rounds, causing the M-249 to seize up from heat.

At another spot on the observation post, Cpl. Jonathan Ayers laid down continuous fire from an M-240 machine gun, despite drawing small-arms and RPG fire from the enemy. Ayers kept firing until he was shot and killed. Cpl. Pruitt Rainey radioed the FOB with a casualty report, calling for help. Of the nine soldiers at the observation post, Ayers and Phillips were dead, Zwilling was unaccounted for, and three were wounded. Additionally, several of the soldiers’ machine guns couldn’t fire because of damage. And they needed more ammo.

Rainey, Bogar and another soldier jumped out of their fighting position with the third soldier of the group launching a shoulder-fired missile.

All this happened within the first 20 minutes of the fight.

Platoon leader 1st Lt. Jonathan Brostrom and Cpl. Jason Hovater arrived at the observation post to reinforce the soldiers. By that time, the insurgents had breached the perimeter of the observation post. Gunfire rang out, and Rainey shouted, "He’s right behind the sandbag."

Brostrom could be heard shouting about the insurgent as well.

More gunfire and grenade explosions ensued. Back in the fighting position, Gobble fired a few quick rounds. Gobble then looked to where the soldiers were fighting and told Stafford the soldiers were dead. Of the nine soldiers who died in the battle, at least seven fell in fighting at the observation post.

The insurgents then started chucking rocks at Gobble and Stafford’s fighting position, hoping that the soldiers might think the rocks were grenades, causing them to jump from the safety of their fighting hole. One rock hit a tree behind Stafford and landed directly between his legs. He braced himself for an explosion. He then realized it was a rock.

Stafford didn’t have a weapon, and Gobble was low on ammo. Gobble told Stafford they had to get back to the FOB. They didn’t realize that Pitts was still alive in another fighting position at the observation post. Gobble and Stafford crawled out of their fighting hole. Gobble looked again to where the soldiers had been fighting and reconfirmed to Stafford that Brostrom, Rainey, Bogar and others were dead.

Gobble and Stafford low-crawled and ran back to the FOB. Coming into the FOB, Stafford was asked by a sergeant what was going on at the observation post. Stafford told him all the soldiers there were dead. Stafford lay against a wall, and his fellow soldiers put a tourniquet on him.

From the OP, Pitts got on the radio and told his comrades he was alone. At least three soldiers went to the OP to rescue Pitts, but they suffered wounds after encountering RPG and small-arms fire.

At that time, air support arrived in the form of Apache helicopters, A-10s and F-15s, performing bombing and strafing runs.

When the attack began, Walker was on the FOB. He grabbed an M-249 and started shooting toward a mountain spur where he could see some muzzle flashes. Walker put down 600 to 800 rounds of ammunition.

He got down behind the wall he was shooting from to load more ammo and was told they were taking fire from the southwest. He threw the bipod legs of his machine gun on the hood of a nearby Humvee. A 7.62-millimeter caliber bullet struck Walker’s left wrist, knocking him to the ground. A soldier applied a tourniquet to Walker and bandaged him.

Walker and two other wounded soldiers distributed their ammo and grenades and passed messages.

The whole FOB was covered in dust and smoke, looking like something out of an old Western movie.

"I’ve never seen the enemy do anything like that," said Walker, who was medically evacuated off the FOB in one of the first helicopters to arrive. "It’s usually three RPGs, some sporadic fire and then they’re gone … I don’t where they got all those RPGs. That was crazy."

Two hours after the first shots were fired, Stafford made his way — with help — to the medevac helicopter that arrived.

"It was some of the bravest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life, and I will never see it again because those guys," Stafford said, then paused. "Normal humans wouldn’t do that. You’re not supposed to do that — getting up and firing back when everything around you is popping and whizzing and trees, branches coming down and sandbags exploding and RPGs coming in over your head … It was a fistfight then, and those guys held ’ em off."

Stafford offered a guess as to why his fellow soldiers fought so hard.

"Just hardcoreness I guess," he said. "Just guys kicking ass, basically. Just making sure that we look scary enough that you don’t want to come in and try to get us."

Internet Jihad

2008-07-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

A world wide web of terror

Jul 12th 2007
From The Economist print edition

BY HIS own admission, he never fired a single bullet or “stood for a second in a trench” in the great jihad against America. Yet the man who called himself “Irhabi007”—a play on the Arabic word for terrorist and the code-name for James Bond—was far more important than any foot soldier or suicide-bomber in Iraq. He led the charge of jihad on the internet.

In doing so, Irhabi007 was a central figure in enabling al-Qaeda to reconstitute itself after the fall of the Taliban and its eviction from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda (“the base”) and its followers moved to cyberspace, the ultimate ungoverned territory, where jihadists have set up virtual schools for ideological and military training and active propaganda arms.

Irhabi007 pioneered many of the techniques required to make all this happen. He was a tireless “webmaster” for several extremist websites, especially those issuing the statements of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Intelligence agencies watched powerlessly as Irhabi007 hacked into computers, for instance appropriating that of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to distribute large video files, and taught his fellow cyber-jihadists how to protect their anonymity online.

Despite his celebrity, this was not good enough for Irhabi007. “Dude,” he complained to a fellow cyber-jihadist (who called himself “Abuthaabit”) during one encrypted web chat, “my heart is in Iraq.”
Abuthaabit: How are you going to have enough to go there?

Irhabi007: I suppose someone gotta be here!

Abuthaabit: This media work, I am telling you, is very important. Very, very, very, very.

Irhabi007: I know, I know.

Abuthaabit: Because a lot of the funds brothers are getting is because they are seeing stuff like this coming out. Imagine how many people have gone [to Iraq] after seeing the situation because of the videos. Imagine how many of them could have been shaheed [martyrs] as well.

Irhabi007's desire for real action may have led to his downfall. He was not only involved in a dispersed network of jihadi propaganda, but also, it seems, in a decentralised web of terrorist plots. In October 2005 police in Bosnia arrested a cyber-jihadist who called himself “Maximus”, a Swedish teenager of Bosnian extraction called Mirsad Bektasevic. He and three others were later sentenced to jail terms of up to 15 years for plotting attacks that were to take place either in Bosnia or in other European countries.

Among the material recovered from Mr Bektasevic's flat, police found 19kg of explosives, weapons, a video with instructions for making a suicide vest and a video recording of masked men proclaiming their membership of “al-Qaeda in northern Europe”. On his computer they found evidence of contacts with other jihadists across Europe. Among them was Irhabi007.

Two days later, British police raided a flat in a terraced house in west London next to one of the rougher pubs in Shepherd's Bush. After an altercation, they arrested Younis Tsouli (pictured above). The elusive Irhabi007 turned out to be the 22-year-old son of a Moroccan tourism board official and a student of information technology. Two other men, also students, were arrested at the same time, although Mr Tsouli had never met them except on the internet.

The trial of Mr Tsouli and his co-defendants—Waseem Mughal, a British-born graduate in biochemistry (aka Abuthaabit), and Tariq al-Daour, a law student born in the United Arab Emirates—came to an end this month when they belatedly pleaded guilty to charges of incitement to murder and conspiracy to murder. The court also heard that Mr al-Daour ran a £1.8m credit-card fraud and used the funds to buy equipment for jihadi groups. Mr Tsouli and Mr Mughal used stolen credit-card numbers to set up jihadi websites. Mr Tsouli was sent to jail for ten years; the others received shorter sentences.

There have been several arrests in Denmark, where a 17-year-old man of Palestinian origin was convicted last February for his involvement in Mr Bektasevic's plot. Three others were found guilty, but the jury's verdict was overturned. Irhabi007 has also been reported to be linked to plots in America, where two men living in Atlanta, Georgia, have been charged with planning attacks against civilian and military targets in and around Washington, DC, including the Capitol, the World Bank, the George Washington Masonic Memorial and a fuel depot. According to the indictment, the two men—Syed Ahmed, 21, and Ehsanul Sadequee, 19—sent Irhabi007 photographs of the proposed targets, and also travelled to Canada to meet fellow plotters and discuss attacks.

Many of the details are still subject to court restrictions. But these interlinked investigations underline the words of Peter Clarke, the head of the counter-terrorism branch of London's Metropolitan Police, who said in April that his officers were contending with “networks within networks, connections within connections and links between individuals that cross local, national and international boundaries”.

In light of this month's failed attempts to set off car bombs in London and at Glasgow airport, allegedly by a group of foreign doctors and other medical staff, one exchange of messages found on Irhabi007's computer, in a folder marked “jihad”, makes intriguing reading. “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad for Allah's sake and to take the battle inside damaged America, Allah willing,” ran part of it.

The message purported to set out a plot to attack a naval base, apparently Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida, with the aim of achieving the “complete destruction” of the USS John F. Kennedy, an aircraft carrier, and 12 escort vessels, as well as blowing up “clubs for naked women” around the base. “The anticipated number of pig casualties is 200-300,” said the author, unidentified except for the boast that he had been discharged from the Jordanian army. He claimed to have the support of a pilot who would provide air cover for the operation, but he lacked one essential piece of information that he asked Irhabi007 to provide: a guide for making car bombs. The FBI said it had investigated the plot at the time and found it to be “not credible”.

Nevertheless, the capability of the internet to promote terrorism is worrying intelligence agencies. According to America's National Intelligence Estimate in April 2006, “The radicalisation process is occurring more quickly, more widely and more anonymously in the internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.”
Bomb.com

Past technological innovations, such as telephones or fax machines, have quickly been exploited by terrorists. But the information revolution is particularly useful to them. To begin with, encrypted communications, whether in the form of e-mail messages or, better still, voice-over-internet audio, make it much harder for investigators to monitor their activity. Messages can be hidden, for instance, within innocuous-looking pictures.

More important, the internet gives jihadists an ideal vehicle for propaganda, providing access to large audiences free of government censorship or media filters, while carefully preserving their anonymity. Its ability to connect disparate jihadi groups creates a sense of a global Islamic movement fighting to defend the global ummah, or community, from a common enemy. It provides a low-risk means of taking part in jihad for sympathisers across the world.

The ease and cheapness of processing words, pictures, sound and video has brought the era not only of the citizen-journalist but also the terrorist-journalist. Al-Qaeda now sends out regular “news bulletins” with a masked man in a studio recounting events from the many fronts of jihad, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya or Palestine. Jihadi ticker-tape feeds provide running updates on the number of Americans killed (about ten times more than the Pentagon's death toll).

Battlefield footage of American Humvees being blown up to shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Great) appear on the internet within minutes of the attacks taking place. The most popular scenes are often compiled into films with musical soundtracks of male choirs performing songs such as “Caravans of Martyrs”. Jihadists have even released a computer video game, “Night of Bush Capturing”, in which participants play at shooting American soldiers and President George Bush. Inevitably, experts say, jihadists have also started to create “residents” in the virtual world of Second Life.

As well as war fantasies, there is sometimes also a dose of sexual wish-fulfilment. A video recording by a Kuwaiti ideologue, Hamid al-Ali, declares that a martyr in the cause of jihad goes to paradise to enjoy delicious food, drink and a wife who will “astonish your mind” and much else besides; her vagina, apparently, “never complains about how much sex she had”, and she reverts back to being a virgin.

The internet is awash with communiqués from insurgent groups extolling their own success or denouncing rivals. Even the most hunted figures, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-most-senior figure in al-Qaeda, regularly put out video statements commenting on political developments within just a few days.

In short, the hand-held video camera has become as important a tool of insurgency as the AK-47 or the RPG rocket-launcher. As Mr Zawahiri himself once put it in an intercepted letter to Zarqawi, “More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.” Or as one jihadi magazine found on Irhabi007's computer explained: “Film everything; this is good advice for all mujahideen [holy warriors]. Brothers, don't disdain photography. You should be aware that every frame you take is as good as a missile fired at the Crusader enemy and his puppets.” Just before his arrest, Irhabi007 had set up a website that, he hoped, would rival YouTube, to share jihadi videos. He called it Youbombit.com.
Of jihad and camels

The internet's decentralised structure, with its origins in military networks designed to survive nuclear strikes, now gives jihadi networks tremendous resilience. Jihadi websites constantly come and go, sometimes taken down by service providers only to reappear elsewhere, sometimes shifted deliberately to stay ahead of investigators. As one expert put it: “It's like the old game of Space Invaders. When you clear one screen of potential attackers, another simply appears to take its place.”

The number of extremist websites is increasing exponentially, from a handful in 2000 to several thousand today. Some are overtly militant, while others give jihad second place to promoting a puritanical brand of piety known as “salafism”, that is modelled on the earliest followers of the Prophet Muhammad and regards later developments as degenerate. Most are in Arabic, but some have started to translate their material into English, French and other languages to reach a wider audience.

The most headline-grabbing material on the internet is the military manuals—whether as books, films or PowerPoint slides—giving instruction on a myriad of subjects, not least weapons, assassination techniques, the manufacture of poisons and how to make explosives. But intelligence agencies say there is nothing like having hands-on experience in a place like Iraq, or at least a training camp. In the latest attempted attacks in London and Glasgow, for example, the attackers clearly botched the manufacture of their car bombs even though many of the alleged plotters were well educated.

Still, internet-based compilations such as the vast and constantly updated “Encyclopedia of Preparation”, as well as militant e-magazines such as the Tip of the Camel's Hump (used to mean “the pinnacle”) found on Irhabi007's computer, make it easier for self-starting groups around the world to try their hand at terrorism. The Dutch counter-terrorism office, which publishes many of its studies on extremism, concludes that the existence of virtual training camps “has the effect of lowering the threshold against the commission of attacks”.

Many jihadi websites put their most inflammatory information and discussions in password-protected areas. Here participants can be gradually groomed, invited to take part in more confidential discussions, drawn into one-on-one chats, indoctrinated and at last recruited to the cause.

But the very anonymity that the internet affords jihadists can also work against them; it lets police and intelligence agencies enter the jihadists' world without being identified. Many postings to web forums are filled with (rightly) paranoid postings about who is watching. A lengthy posting on a Syrian jihadi site in 2005, entitled “Advice to Brothers Seeking Jihad in Iraq”, said raw recruits offering only “enthusiasm or impetuousness or love of martyrdom” were no longer wanted. Instead, the mujahideen needed money and experienced fighters, but they should not assume that the smuggling routes through Syria were safe. It advocated communicating in secret through trusted sources in mosques rather than on the internet, noting that “this forum, like the others, is under...surveillance; any information is obviously not secret, so any individuals you meet and correspond with on the forums cannot be trusted at all.”

Contributors to jihadi web sites are regularly told not to divulge secrets. When news of Irhabi007's arrest emerged last year, some of the postings stressed the need for greater caution online. One of these, signed by “Badr17”, gave the warning “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.”
Open university of jihad

One of the most prolific al-Qaeda strategists is Abu Musab al-Suri. He is now in American custody, but his 1,600-page opus, “The Global Islamic Call to Resistance”, survives. It advocates the creation in the West of self-starting, independent terrorist cells, not directly affiliated to existing groups, to stage spectacular attacks.

For many who study the jihadi websites, however, the bigger danger is indoctrination. The Dutch domestic intelligence service, the AIVD, regards the internet as the “turbocharger” of jihadi radicalisation. Stephen Ulph, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, an American research institute that monitors terrorism, says the internet provides an open university for jihadists. At least 60% of the material on jihadi websites deals not with current events or with war videos, but instead concerns ideological and cultural questions. Jihadists, Mr Ulph says, are fighting less a war against the West than “a civil war for the minds of Muslim youth”. In this process of radicalisation, “the mujahideen attract the uncommitted armchair sympathiser, detach him from his social and intellectual environment, undermine his self-image as an observant Muslim, introduce what they claim is ‘real Islam', re-script history in terms of a perennial conflict, centralise jihad as his Islamic identity, train him not only militarily but also socially and psychologically.”

A key text is the ever-expanding e-book, “Questions and Uncertainties Concerning the Mujahideen and their Operations”, which seeks to arm jihadists with responses to questions and doubts about their actions, ranging from the admissibility of killing Muslims, the use of weapons of mass destruction and the acceptability of shaving one's beard for the sake of jihad. “It is important we do not get distracted by focusing on organisations rather than against ideology,” argues Mr Ulph.

The point is underlined in a study by the Combating Terrorism Centre at America's military academy at West Point, which has tried to “map” the most important ideological influences by searching citations in jihadi online documents. Top of the list is Ibn Taymiyya, a scholar who lived at the time of the medieval Mongol invasions. He strove to return Islam to the pure faith of Muhammad's followers, advocated jihad to repel foreign invaders and taught that Mongol leaders who converted to Islam were not really Muslims because they did not implement sharia. These ideas strike a chord with today's jihadists, who see Americans as the new Mongols.

Osama bin Laden does not make the top ten most-cited figures, even among modern authors. Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the theorist jailed in Jordan (and who directly inspired Zarqawi), is regarded as a higher authority. And Mr Zawahiri, the ubiquitous internet propagandist who is often described as the real brains behind al-Qaeda, does not even figure in the jihadists' intellectual universe.

Western intelligence agencies trawl the internet to look for evidence of terrorist plots, but lack the resources or desire to challenge the wider ideology. In a global network, outside the control of any single government, attempts to close down extremist sites are little more than short-lived harassment. What is needed is a systematic campaign of counter-propaganda, not least in support of friendly Muslim governments and moderate Muslims, to try to reclaim the ground ceded to the jihadists.

“Intelligence agencies are dealing with the problem once people have manifested themselves as existing terrorists,” says Professor Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terrorism at Georgetown University. “We have to find a way to stanch the flow. The internet creates a constant reservoir of radicalised people which terrorist groups and networks can draw upon.”

So Irhabi007 may be off the internet, but others like him remain. Among the most prolific is a figure who roams the web by the name of, yes, Irhabi11.

Supreme Court of what?

2008-06-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court, in their 'sage' wisdom has granted enemy combatants rights to trial in US courts. Paid for by US taxpayers, who will pay for their capture, their detainment, their defense, and ultimately their day in court. Perhaps an entire lifetime in a federal prison.

HOW IS THIS IS MY BEST INTEREST AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN?

Another defeat for the American people, hammered down out throats by a US Federal Government most of us can barely comprehend any longer.

The war within

2008-06-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

6 Mexicans dressed as cops kill Phoenix man
Police find body in home riddled with more than 100 bullets
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Six men in police tactical clothing are suspected of shooting a man to death, firing more than 100 rounds into his Phoenix home in what some are calling a Mexican drug cartel hit performed by members of the active Mexican Army.

Special Assignments Units heard shots coming from a nearby neighborhood and began to drive toward the noise Sunday. Detectives said once police gained entry into the home, they found the body of Andrew Williams, 30, shot numerous times, according to Arizona Daily News.

"We have seen an increasing amount of these type of violent crimes in the past five months," Phoenix Police Sgt. Joel Tranter said. "We want the public to realize that these types of crimes will not be tolerated in Phoenix."

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., said Tuesday on 550 KFYI-AM the he had acquired an internal memo identifying one of the suspects as a former member of the Mexican military, and he interviewed Mark Spencer of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. The men were said to be wielding AR-15 assault weapons and wearing full body armor and black assault gear similar to uniforms worn by Phoenix police tactical teams.

Detectives were alarmed to find more than 100 rounds of ammunition in the bullet-riddled home, along with marijuana and body armor, the Arizona Daily News reported. Just as more investigators appeared on the scene, they saw a suspicious red Chevrolet Tahoe driving through the neighborhood. Three men jumped from the vehicle and ran, but police arrested them. Spencer said the men expected to ambush police but ran out of ammunition.

Daniel Garcia-Saenz, 24, Manual Garcia-Trejom, 25, and Rodolfo Madrigal Lopez, 19, each wore tactical clothing and had helmets and weapons in the vehicle.

Police believe the hit was drug-related and are looking for three more suspects in the case.

Drug-related violence has been escalating and reportedly is shifting from Mexico to U.S. border states since Mexican President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa ordered troops to fight the cartels.

El Universal, a Mexico City-based newspaper, reported 38 people killed in Mexican drug cartels Tuesday, the highest number reported one a single day this year.

Eighteen of the deaths took place in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, where 2,800 troops have been assigned to fight cartel trafficking and violence.

The newspaper reported more than 1,833 people have been killed in Mexico's drug trade-related violence this year.

Iraq

2008-06-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day Rememberances 2008

2008-05-23T08:04:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day Rememberances 2008

Eulogy for a Veteran

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the Gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the mornings hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

-Author Unknown

In Memory Of:

Paul Sweeney (US Army 3rd SFG) Killed Oct 30th 2003, Khunar, Afghanistan

Jerry Zovko (US Army-DoD Contractor) Killed April 2004 Fallujah, Iraq

Luke Petrik (US Army-DoS Contractor) Killed 2005 Iraq

Nathaniel Garfield Hill (US Army-Retired SGM- DoD Contractor) Killed 2005 Basra, Iraq

Michael “Mac” McInnis (US Navy-DoD Contractor) Killed 2006, Mosul, Iraq

Guy (Bear) Barattieri (US Army/USMA West Point/DoD Contractor) Killed October 2006, Baghdad Iraq

Rod (K2) Richardson (USMC/DoD Contractor) Killed October 2006, Baghdad Iraq

Ronald “Catdaddy” Johnson (US Army-Retired CW3-DoS Contractor) Killed 2007 Baghdad, Iraq

Mohammad Iqbal (Afghan Federal Narcotics Interdiction Unit) 2005 Killed by Taliban in Khandahar Province

Rah Manullah (Afghan Federal Narcotics Interdiction Unit) 2005 Killed by Taliban in Kandahar Province

Jack McCracken (USMC-DoD Contractor) Suicide 2006 Pennsylvania, USA

Many fine memories of you on this day friends.

~Junkyard

Marcus Luttrell

2008-05-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

Navy SEAL recounts combat action

2008-05-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-local_woundedseal1_0420apr20,0,1445361.story?page=1

Infractus

2008-05-04T00:22:00.000-07:00

Have you ever read the stories of men who's hearts have been broken by watching the painful decline of their nation?

Our politicians are corrupt and self serving, our institutions filled with greed, our lands invaded with illegal immigrants, our attorney's liberal to a fault colluding our laws and rights. Our industry traded for luxury, our dollar becomes our god.

I am heavy with sadness. I once believed that we were indeed a shining beacon on a hill, but I see this mirage up close, and my heart is filled with sadness.

In Memory

2008-04-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

3 years ago today. R.I.P. forever.

Obert, Jason
McGovern, Stephen Matthew
Gore, Robert Jason
Petrik, Luke Adam
Smith, Eric
McGovern, Steve
Hundley, Curtis Ramadi
David “Pat” Patterson

************************************

Originally published in 2005 @ http://www.starbeacon.com/

By MARK TODD

Staff Writer

mtodd@starbeacon.com

CONNEAUT — The war in Iraq has claimed its first Ashtabula County victim.

Luke Petrik, 24, a Conneaut High School graduate, was among the six American civilians killed when a helicopter was shot down — reportedly by a missile — Thursday north of Baghdad, a family member confirmed Friday.

Petrik was working for Blackwater Security Consulting, a subsidiary of Blackwater USA, said Eldridge “Chip” Smith of Conneaut, a stepfather.

A former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Petrik joined the security company in November, Smith said.

“He trained with them and then returned to Iraq on Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “He started working embassy security, then transferred to a rapid response team.”

Family members learned of Petrik’s death Thursday night, Smith said.

“Around 3 p.m. Thursday I was reading the news (on the Internet) about a helicopter that had gone down,” he said. “I turned on the TV and got some more news.”

After learning Blackwater contractors were aboard, Smith said he called the North Carolina company.

“I had a really bad feeling,” he said. “The only thing I could get out of Blackwater was that they were going to notify families (of victims) in person. I contacted Luke’s mother and told her my concerns. (Blackwater) told her late Thursday night.”

A tearful Diana Spencer, Petrik's mother, said Friday night her son felt he was doing important work in Iraq.

“He enjoyed his work,” she said. “He was very focused, very patriotic and felt he was protecting his country.”

A plaque Petrik received after his discharge from the Army Rangers summed up his character, she said. “It says, ‘To a friend, a mentor and the living embodiment of the Ranger creed.’ That says everything about Luke.”

Petrik was one of 11 people aboard a Bulgarian Mi-8 helicopter chartered by SkyLink Aviation of Toronto. The helicopter was flying to Tikrit for a U.S. diplomatic security detail, according to news reports. The flight originated from a section of heavily-guarded Baghdad that is home to Iraq’s parliament and diplomats.

The U.S. government routinely hires security personnel for diplomats and activities of people connected with the government, a State Department spokesman said.

A spokesman for Blackwater could not be reached for comment early Friday evening, but a statement on the company’s Web site expressed sympathy for the victims.

“This is a very sad day for the Blackwater family,” said Gary Jackson, company president.

In addition to the six contractors killed in the helicopter attack, a seventh died Thursday in a roadside explosion. At least 18 Blackwater employees have died in Iraq.

“We lost seven of our friends to attacks by terrorists in Iraq and our thoughts and prayers go out to their family members,” Jackson said.

The attack was believed to be the first against a civilian aircraft in Iraq since the country was invaded in March 2003.

That invasion gave Petrik, a paratrooper with the 3rd Ranger Battalion, his first glimpse of Iraq. Previously, he served two combat tours in Afghanistan, the first beginning soon after the 9/11 attacks.

Petrik’s dedication, sense of duty and toughness was legendary among his family. He broke two bones in his foot while parachuting into the country, and was slated to be airlifted to a medical hospital in Germany for treatment, Smith said. Just before the plane was scheduled to leave, Petrik walked away and hitchhiked across three countries to rejoin his company, Smith said.

“That’s a true story,” he said.

Petrik, who was single, was a member of the CHS Class of 1999. He enlisted a few weeks after graduation. Students were informed of Petrik’s death Friday morning and a moment of silence was observed.

“I knew Luke fairly well,” said CHS Principal John Plosila. “He was one of my scouts when I was a Boy Scout leader. From the time Luke was in scouting he had an interest in the military.

“A number of teachers remembered Luke,” Plosila said. “He touched a lot of people, more than most students. He was an exceptional kid and very, very intelligent. His loss saddens us all.”

Petrik was sent to Afghanistan in late 2001 to join the hunt for Osama bin Ladin, the terrorist leader who masterminded the 9/11 attacks. In January 2002, during a visit to Conneaut, Petrik told the Star Beacon about the firefights he experienced in that country.

“I’ve been through a lot of live-fire training situations, but nothing like this,” he said at the time.

Petrik was discharged in December 2003, and did security work at a Virginia nuclear power plant before he was recruited by Blackwater, Smith said. His return to Iraq late last year — this time as a civilian — was an eye-opener, Petrik told his family.

“It was his belief things weren’t nearly as bad as the media portrayed them,” Smith said.

Petrik corresponded regularly with family via e-mail, and in one of his most recent messages said he wanted to return to the military, Smith said.

“Luke told me he had made up his mind,” he said. “He missed special operations work, and was in the process of attempting to join the Navy SEALS.”

To prepare for Navy duty, Petrik honed his swimming skills in one of the palace swimming pools that once belonged to Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s deposed leader, Smith said.

“He apologized to me (for his decision) because he knew I would be worried,” Smith said. “The Blackwater job was OK, but he had a warrior’s heart and had to do what he loved.”

Welcome Home Staff Sergeant

2008-04-19T07:54:00.001-07:00

DUSTWUN no more. Rest In Peace Keith Maupin. You were never forgotten.

http://www.pownetwork.org/gulfII/maupin.htm

In plain sight

2008-04-02T21:15:00.001-07:00

http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2008-02-ESTF.pdf

Winston Churchill

2008-02-23T19:26:00.001-08:00

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia
in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent
in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture,
sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the
followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this
life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his
absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay
the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a
great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but
the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who
follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being
moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has
already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at
every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong
arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the
civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

Sir Winston Churchill; (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50
(London)

DUSTWUN: Keith Maupin

2008-02-07T10:03:00.000-08:00

No. 1: The Only Soldier Missing in Iraq

MIA

By Brian Mockenhaupt

He didn't walk off the plane, showing that smile his folks miss so much. He wasn't carried off, either, draped in a flag. In the biggest ambush of the war so far, Matt Maupin simply vanished.

The boy is gone. But where? That's the suffocating weight. When Matt was young, they would just yell out the door or walk over to the neighbors' house and grab him. Now there is nothing they can do. Keith and Carolyn Maupin wonder and worry and believe that people are out looking for him. They cast away the demons of doubt and negative thought. They imagine how he's spending his days. They tell him to stay strong, someone's coming. They thank people for their cards and prayers and the yellow ribbons they tie around their trees. They find solace in the support of so many, but they're still alone in all of this. Their boy left for Iraq and didn't come home.

So they wait. Most evenings you'll find Keith and Carolyn at their Yellow Ribbon Support Center in a strip mall near Batavia, Ohio, just outside Cincinnati. For two years, they've been shipping care packages of toiletries, candy, snacks, and stationery to service members in Iraq. Thousands of boxes. In each one are ten pictures of their son in desert fatigues, behind the wheel of an Army truck. Stickers on the backs of the photos read: I'M CAPTURED IN IRAQ , AND PRAYERS CAN SET ME FREE. They say their son knows they're doing everything they can. "And I think he would be really hurt if he thought we weren't doing anything," Keith says. "He'd give up, and we can't be having him give up." They worry that people will forget about him, forget that he's lost in Iraq. This storefront is their campaign office, the nerve center of their effort to keep him in the public eye and keep pressure on the military. "What they're doing isn't working," Keith says. "There has to be something else. It's not my job to figure out what that is. It's my job to stay on their asses until they find him. Two years is too damn long."

Pictures of Maupin cover the walls, along with posters and cards of support from across the country and from Iraq. Locals cycle through to pack boxes and drop off donations. They talk about how Maupin is a good kid, an all-American kid. How he drives that red Mustang. How he played football. How he's tall and strong with a thick, broad back. How he likes Dr. Pepper and Smarties. They say he's mischievous, kind, and a little bit shy. That he joined the Reserves to pay his own way through college. They say it's a shame what happened.

Long before Iraq, Maupin brought his parents along to meet a recruiter. Something about the sales pitch turned him off, he said no, and Carolyn and Keith, a former marine, were fine with that. But the idea came back a couple years later, and this time he visited the recruiter by himself. "I've gotta do what I've gotta do," he said when his parents asked him why. They'd always told the kids the same thing: Treat people right, get good grades, and you can go wherever you want in your life. They hadn't figured on the war. "Matt, you know, you go to Iraq, you better be willing to kill that guy," Keith said. "Because if you don't, he's going to kill you dead."

"Don't worry about me," Maupin said. "I'll be coming home." He said that to a lot of people around town before he left. Now they look at the silhouette on the black POW/MIA flag, and they see Maupin, the only soldier missing in this war.

His buddies knew early on that he was gone, after they'd done a quick head count and started cobbling their stories together. No one saw him disappear, but he wasn't with them, so they knew he was still out there. And at that moment, he wasn't the only one. In fact, if you climbed into one of those trucks that morning, you had a one-in-four chance of not making it from point A to point B. If you weren't captured or killed, you were probably wounded. Less than half arrived unbloodied. And if you weren't wounded, then you were damn lucky, because who could run through that and not get hit? So they clustered together and worked on the puzzle. They sorted through which trucks made it, which ones broke down, and which ones blew up. All they really needed to do was look west and count the black pillars shifting in the breeze. Not far away, gunfire and explosions still crackled and boomed. The fight continued on that warm spring day, with the dead trucks burning like giant funeral pyres, pumping dense smoke into the cloudless sky. That was the kill zone of the biggest, longest ambush American soldiers have faced in Iraq. That was April 9, 2004, Good Friday and the one-year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, the day the tanks pulled down the statue of Saddam.

Keith Matthew Maupin went to war at twenty as an Army truck driver, arriving in Iraq in March 2004, a few weeks before America found out just how bad the insurgency would be. He deployed with the 724th Transportation Company, an Army Reserve unit from Bartonville, Illinois, trained to haul the supplies that feed a nation's war machine. But that task had been farmed out to KBR, an arm of the Halliburton Company, so the 724th would protect the KBR trucks as armed escorts. The unit they were replacing drove with them for several days, teaching them about the routes and possible road hazards�an occasional roadside bomb or a few rounds of small-arms fire.

In phone calls and letters home, Maupin told his parents that Iraq sucked, that he wanted to be back in America. But he was proud to be a soldier, proud to contribute something to the war. He was always that way. On the high school football team, he didn't play as much as he'd hoped, but he never missed a practice. His enthusiasm didn't waver and he didn't complain. He didn't complain as a soldier, either, and soldiers see bitching as their birthright. Instead he was quiet and earnest and determined. Ask him to do something and he'd never tell you no. He'd just work hard and fast and get it done, something he learned early on as a twelve-year-old kid sweeping up and emptying trash cans at the AmeriStop gas station to earn his own money. He was friendly with everyone in his platoon but preferred to be on the fringe, laughing at a joke instead of telling one, and he didn't mind being alone. Every night in Iraq he lifted weights at the gym and rode his bike around camp, machine gun slung across his back. He'd been studying nutritional sciences at the University of Cincinnati, and he loved to work out, but Carolyn thinks this was something different. Maybe he could feel a bad day coming. Maybe he knew he'd need his strength.

By mid-March Maupin's unit was on its own, escorting fuel convoys all over central Iraq. The missions ran smoothly until April 6, when a convoy was ambushed in the town of Hit, west of Baghdad. Even that wasn't too bad. They killed three insurgents, all of the rocket-propelled grenades missed, and when they later surveyed the damage, they counted only two bullet holes among all the trucks. They came back from the mission pumped up from their first contact but wondering if maybe this wouldn't be as easy as they had thought. And the bits of news they heard gave more cause for worry. The Marines were pummeling Fallujah, a hasty response to the killing of four American security contractors. In Baghdad, simmering tensions with Moqtada Al-Sadr exploded, and he sent forth his giant private army to wreak havoc. The violence spread fast to outlying cities. The roads were treacherous, and supplies weren't getting through.

Maupin and the guys in his unit didn't know it, no one did, but the country was exploding. Just ask the guys from the 724th about it now. "It was fucked up from the beginning," says Specialist Dustin Row, who drove a gun truck that day. "It was all kind of rigged together. I was nervous as hell. We all were."

Second platoon, led by First Lieutenant Matt Brown, was scheduled to move fuel to Al Asad air base, northwest of Ramadi, on April 9. Six Army gun trucks and humvees would escort seventeen rigs pulling seventy-five-hundred-gallon tanker trailers of JP8, the diesel fuel used to power everything from tanks to helicopters. Two more KBR employees would drive "bobtails," rigs without trailers, to pick up stranded tankers if any of the trucks broke down. Two soldiers from another unit would tag along in an unarmed humvee to learn the route.

Late on April 8 the mission changed. U.S. forces stationed at Baghdad International Airport were calling for an emergency resupply. Lieutenant Brown heard about the change after midnight. The convoy would leave Camp Anaconda and drive south on Route Tampa to Route Irish, the notorious airport road famed for its frequent car bombings and IED attacks. The soldiers woke early the next morning to prep their trucks and weapons. Leaders of the 724th had ordered their convoys to carry double the normal load of ammunition after hearing intelligence reports that insurgent activity had picked up across Iraq. Shortly be�fore the convoy was scheduled to leave, the route changed again. An IED had been discovered at the Route Irish entrance to the airport. The convoy was redirected to the airport's north gate. No one from the 724th had driven this route. They brought in a soldier from another unit to serve as a guide, though he'd been through the north gate only once. And with good reason, he said. The route is dangerous.

Indeed. The Army color-codes its roads: green, amber, red, and black. The 724th was told its route was amber, meaning little expectation of enemy activity. That morning the roads�routes Sword and Cardinals�were actually black: enemy attack imminent or ongoing. Minutes before the convoy pulled out, the highway-safety office at Camp Anaconda tried to send an e-mail to the 172nd Corps Support Group, the unit that oversaw the 724th. "Sorry," the e-mail read, "looks like Sword is closed until further notice." But the soldier who wrote the e-mail sent it to himself by mistake.

If Maupin and his buddies had talked to soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, which was responsible for the area they were about to drive through, they would have turned off their trucks and gone back to bed. The Abu Ghraib district, a sliver of towns north of the airport that stretches west from Baghdad to the noto�rious prison, had never been a safe place for U. S. soldiers. Rocket attacks, mortar fire, and IEDs were commonplace. But since April 7, the neighborhood had turned downright nasty.

Insurgents had been dumping dozens of white-phosphorous and high-explosive mortars on U. S. soldiers at an outpost just north of the airport compound, next to the north gate. They sniped at the soldiers from the massive buildings of an abandoned milk factory nearby. They stepped into the streets long enough to fire RPGs, then ducked back into the warren of alleyways in the town's market. The Americans stormed the milk factory to silence the snipers, called in artillery strikes, and fired into the market, starting a blaze that burned down the rickety vendor stalls. But the fighting spread. Abu Ghraib is most�ly Sunni, and these were Sunni fighters, wearing civilian clothes with red-checkered kaffiyeh scarves wrapped around their heads. At the same time, Al-Sadr's Shiite Mahdi Army militiamen were moving into Abu Ghraib. The two groups don't share many goals or views, but in early April they found common cause in trying to kill Americans. They came in cars and minivans packed with weapons. They burst into local houses and set up fighting positions. They seeded the roadsides with bombs. By the morning of April 9, 1st Cavalry units were firing at two-man RPG teams moving into positions near Route Sword. And the rules of engagement had changed. Men wearing black clothes and green headbands and armbands�the Mahdi Army uniform�were fair game, armed or not.

Maupin's platoon knew none of this. As they drove away from Camp Anaconda and south toward Baghdad, Iraq looked the same as it did every other day�parched, dusty, and vaguely hostile. But after the convoy turned west on Route Sword, northwest of Baghdad, the traffic thinned. And empty roads are dangerous roads. You're much better off sharing the streets with taxis and delivery trucks and kids riding bicycles. Then the traffic was gone. Brown watched a man sprint away from the road. A truck blown up in an earlier ambush burned on the roadside. A lone U. S. tank, parked near the highway, fired into the buildings to the south. That was odd. Someone in the tank waved at the convoy, a what-in-the-hell-are-you-doing-out-here sort of wave. Brown had the same thought. "I think we're in some trouble," he told the guys in his truck.

The machine guns opened up first. Fighters hiding in ditches and houses tore into the convoy, front, back, and middle. Then came the rockets and mortars and bombs.

Chunks of cement and debris and tires littered the highway. The garbage bags beside the road were too evenly spaced, a per�fect daisy chain of IEDs. This was well planned. Up ahead a truck burned near an overpass, partially blocking the road. "Go right!" Brown shouted to his driver, Private First Class Jeremy Church. "Now!" Church swung the humvee across a patch of dirt onto an access road running parallel to the highway. Some trucks followed, others stayed on the main road. The convoy was falling apart. But keeping sense of the whole was futile. Everyone was caught up in his own struggle.

Brown found a target, flicked off the safety on his rifle, and started to squeeze. A gunman beat him to it and a bullet drilled a hole through his windshield. Brown's head snapped, his helmet flew into the backseat, and bullet fragments split his forehead and shredded his left eye. Church, driving with his left hand while firing out his window, felt glass spray across the right side of his face. He turned to look at Brown, who put his hand to his face and felt something between his palm and his cheek. That was his eye. His fingers slid inside his scalp. He tried to talk but the words weren't coming. He looked around the truck. Everyone else was alive and fighting.

An IED thundered beside the truck, blowing out the left front tire.

Church dug out a field dressing and told Brown to cover the wound. Brown doesn't remember saying anything before passing out, but he did, looking at Church through his one good eye: "We need to get the fuck out of here."

The radio barked with urgent voices, calls for help. "You gotta keep pushing through!" Church yelled. "You can't stop!"

Stopping wasn't intentional. That just happened. That's what bullets do to engines. Drivers mashed the gas, but the trucks slowed and their cargo burned, throwing a wall of black smoke across the highway.

Specialist Dustin Row, in the eighth truck, drove into the darkness and aimed his truck for the patch of light on the other side. The curtain of smoke parted and a rocket sang in from the right, punching through the tanker in front of him. Fuel splashed onto his truck, like someone had done a cannonball into a pool. Row turned on his windshield wipers and hoped everything didn't burst into flames.

Bullets whined, zipped, cracked, and pinged, all those sounds that tell you they're way too close. They smacked against the trucks, loud as golf balls whacked into sheet metal. Mortar rounds hit the highway, throwing up balls of smoke. Row saw explosions in the sky, airburst mortar rounds blowing up above the trucks.

"You know what?" he told his gunner, Specialist Craig McDermott. "This is bad." But McDermott didn't hear him. He was rocking away with the .50-caliber machine gun, throwing out bullets so big they punch fist-sized holes in the brick-and-mud houses and nearly break people in half.

There was another problem: Of the nineteen KBR trucks, which accounted for three fourths of the convoy, only six had soldiers riding shotgun. Maupin was one of them. The trucks were unarmored, the men protected by Kevlar helmets and body-armor vests�which often can't stop rounds coming in from the sides. And because the ambush started on the left, the soldiers would have to fire with their barrels inches from the drivers. But many of the drivers didn't care. They said shoot anyway. Some soldiers kicked out the windshields of the fuel trucks, making it easier to engage gunmen. Soon fire was coming from the right as well. Maupin, who carried an M249, a light machine gun fed by a two-hundred-round drum, would have had plenty of targets.

Brown woke up for a moment. He didn't open his eye, but he could hear the gunfire, and he could hear that flat tire and the thump, thump, thump flat tires make. The time be�tween thumps was so drawn out. Is that possible? We're going so slow. This is not good.

If you're ambushed on foot, you're in trouble. Without cover to hide behind, the best you can do is rush the enemy, break through his line, and fight him close. Yes, you might be shot down in the process, but you'll die for sure if you stay in the kill zone. Vehicles are different. When you're driving, it's speed and suppressive fire that win an ambush. Throw out enough rounds to keep the enemy ducking while you race out of the kill zone. Not today. The 724th was outgunned and losing speed.

Row saw Church's humvee a few hundred meters ahead, crawling across the overpass and onto Route Cardinals. Maybe they would make it through this. Just then, behind Church, a tanker wrapped in flames rolled off the side of the overpass, tumbled down the embankment, and landed on its crumpled roof. Maybe they wouldn't.

Farther back in the convoy, a limping KBR truck exploded and drove off the side of the road right in front of Private First Class Jarob Walsh, who rode as the shooter in the KBR truck just behind. Walsh believes this was Maupin's truck. He watched the truck drive through a ditch, its tanker in flames, and toward a group of buildings. He didn't see anyone getting out as his truck passed. In the middle of the convoy, if there was still a middle, Sergeant Bryan Watson watched muzzle flashes twinkle in windows and on rooftops. He fired back with his MK19, a massive automatic grenade launcher. Near the end of his first can of ammunition, a bullet sliced through the meat at the bottom of his tricep, clipping his elbow and chipping the bone. A sharp pinch, that's what it felt like. Watson ducked down into the cab for more ammo and a bullet tore into his driver's shoulder. They worried about that for a moment, and when they looked up, they were alone on the highway. Lost in the smoke, they'd missed the turn for the off-ramp and continued on Route Sword, with a KBR truck tagging along. They'd have to find their own way out of the kill zone. Watson stood up to reload his weapon and a bullet carved a furrow across the back of his neck and an RPG slammed the back of the truck, blowing off a tire. Their truck lumbered on.

Several trucks did make the turn onto Cardinals. And then the fight became frantic. Along Route Sword, the buildings are a hundred meters off the road, but Route Cardinals is a narrow road that cuts first through a dense commercial area and then through a thick palm grove, with trees a few feet from the street. Rockets screamed past and fighters sprang from behind buildings and trees, sprayed their AK-47's wildly, and ducked down again. The convoy, mangled as it was, benefited from the militiamen and insurgents' lack of training. Had they taken the time to aim, they would have killed many more soldiers and drivers.

Row slid lower in his seat, trying to hide from the bullets. He drove and fired and went pretty much deaf from McDermott firing that .50-cal. "Hobbit, you okay?" Row yelled, calling McDermott by his nickname.

"Can!" McDermott shouted. Row swung his arm back and grabbed another hundred-round can of ammunition. That was the ninth can. Only one more left.

Row fired his M16 until he ran out of ammo. I'm fucked, he told himself. I'm done. And then he saw salvation, an Abrams tank in the middle of the road. Three gunmen fired at them from a rooftop. McDermott cut them down. And then they were safe, just outside the milk factory. Two thirds of the convoy was missing. Church hopped in- to a 1st Cavalry humvee and headed back into the ambush, where more than two dozen men still struggled along the route. A few were already dead.

The kill zone was desperate and lonely. Drivers and soldiers abandoned mangled trucks and hid in ditches or behind the burning rigs, trying to flag down a ride. The two bobtail trucks, originally at the back of the convoy, navigated the wreckage, looking for survivors.

Up ahead, just after watching Maupin's truck catch fire and run off the road, Walsh and Ray Stannard, his KBR counterpart, drove onto the overpass. An RPG slammed into their truck, knocking it over. Walsh smashed through the windshield with his gun and the two scrambled out and moved in different directions, looking for a ride. Walsh hopped onto the running board of a passing KBR truck. Most of the tires were blown off or shredded. The truck rolled on its rims.

Walsh held tight to the passenger-side mirror and swept his M16 back and forth, firing at gunmen. The mirror snapped but the passenger, Tommy Hamill, grabbed the back of Walsh's armored vest, catching him as he fell. Walsh climbed onto the front of the truck and lay across the hood, using the steady platform to take more careful aim. More bullets ripped into the engine and the truck finally died. Walsh, Hamill, and the driver, all wounded, left the truck and ran toward a passing humvee, which had picked up Stannard a few minutes earlier, farther back on Route Cardinals. Walsh and the driver dove in an open door, and the group pulled away, not knowing Hamill was still outside, running up behind them. Within minutes he was captured, hustled into a car, and driven away.

Before the humvee died on Cardinals, the group picked up another KBR driver, already mortally wounded. The truck was now stuffed with bloody bodies. They bandaged one another's wounds, and those who could fight, soldiers and drivers, faced outward, trading shots with insurgents. A round caught Private First Class Gregory Goodrich in the chest, above his heart and just above the plate in his body armor. He'd soon be dead. The soldiers fired their dwindling ammunition and waited for an RPG to finish them. Instead came several Bradleys and humvees. The Bradleys moved farther down Cardinals, firing into the buildings and palm groves, cutting down fleeing gunmen. To make room for the wounded, Church stayed behind with another soldier, taking cover behind the wrecked humvee. Those ten minutes, waiting to be picked up or killed, earned Church the Silver Star, the first given to a Reserve soldier for actions in Iraq.

At the milk factory, Sergeant First Class Christopher Kowalewski loaded several wounded into his Bradley for the one-mile drive to the hospital. When he unloaded them a few minutes later, two of the five were dead. He drove back into Abu Ghraib and headed west on Cardinals. The road was full of burning trucks but was otherwise empty. An RPG sailed past the front of his Bradley. Black smoke poured from the tankers and covered up the early-afternoon sun, casting an eerie twilight over the kill zone. Kowalewski rode with his head poked out of the turret, surveying the wreckage. The flames of a burning tanker singed his face. The breeze cut a window in the smoke, and he saw a driver at the wheel, in flames, still wearing his helmet.

On Easter morning, the charred trucks smoldered along the highway west of Baghdad, and in Batavia, Keith Maupin floated in a boat on Lake Waynoka, fishing for bass. He cast and reeled, cast and reeled, and the bad feeling set in. He told Larry Reynolds, his fishing buddy, that they needed to go home. He didn't know why, they just did, and soon a friend called and told Keith a Major Mark Magalski was looking for him, asking to come by the house and talk. So that was the feeling. He knew there were only two reasons for house calls: Matt was hurt or dead. He didn't know about the third possibility.

"I'm not gonna like this shit, am I?" he said to Magalski as they walked inside.

Keith and Carolyn Maupin divorced fifteen years ago, but they stayed close and live in the same small town, where the grapevine is fast, faster at least than Magalski. Carolyn was driving home from a family visit in Indiana when Keith got the news. She stepped into the small brick ranch, the house where she'd raised Matt, where he'd lived until leaving for his deployment, and walked down the hallway and into his room. She keeps the answering machine there, another reason to be around her boy every day. His football pictures and honor-roll awards. The jackets and hats he wore until he left for Iraq. The clothes that smell like him. A photo of Matt riding a roller coaster with his little brother, Micah, who works on helicopter communications systems in the Marines. The machine chirped its cryptic message: "Oh, Carolyn, I'm so sorry to hear about Matthew." Five minutes later the doorbell rang and Magalski presented the official version: Matt's convoy was ambushed near Baghdad on Friday, and he was missing. The military's term is DUSTWUN: duty status�whereabouts unknown. Yes, that's bad news, but he's only missing, Carolyn reasoned. This could be worse.

The grapevine worked its way through town, and soon people were tying yellow ribbons all over Batavia. And they brought food. Sandwiches, salads, trays of lasagna. A half dozen dinners a day. So much food that Carolyn's friend Karen Hargis said stop. She made a schedule, and the Maupins didn't cook for months. People made a lot of patriotic desserts, too. Red-white-and-blue cakes with flags made from berries. That's Batavia.

While Cincinnati creeps closer, Batavia is still more farm town than bedroom community, though you wouldn't know at first sight. The center of local life seems to be the nearby sprawl of shopping plazas and suburban convenience just off the interstate. Maupin worked there, at the Sam's Club. On the Monday after Easter, Cathy Amshoff hung a yellow ribbon at the Sam's Club photo lab, where she works, and she printed a few pictures of Maupin in his Army uniform to hang in the store. In the coming months the store would print more than a hundred thousand.

The week passed like that, with people watching the news and putting up ribbons. On April 16, Amshoff came to work and found the manager, Mitch Cohen, in his office. She told him Maupin had been taken prisoner. Calm down, he said. Calm down. Don't say anything. We don't want to scare anyone. Cohen walked out onto the floor, into the sea of giant TVs, and turned on the news. There was Maupin, on every screen, big and small. The video, originally aired on Al Jazeera, showed Maupin flanked by men holding rifles, scarves wrapped around their heads. Employees and customers clustered around the TVs and gasped and cried. The group called itself the Sharp Sword Against the Enemies of God and His Prophet and said Maupin might be traded for prisoners held by the Americans. He wore his desert camouflage uniform and a boonie cap, with the brim rolled back across his forehead. He looked scruffy and tired and scared. His bottom lip drooped and quivered. His nostrils flared. Rose Earls had worked with him in the store's center section�clothes, books, patio furniture, holiday decorations. "The most heartbreaking thing of all was him trying not to cry," she says. "That was horrible."

But seeing Matt gave Keith and Carolyn cause to celebrate. At least their boy was alive. The video also introduced Batavia to the world, and the Maupins lost what was left of their private lives. For the next month, you couldn't go anywhere around town without seeing a news crew. A police car parked in the driveway to keep reporters away. The media practically camped outside Glen Este High School, Maupin's old school, where Carolyn works as a school-bus dispatcher. The chain-link fence around the bus yard had become a hasty bulletin board, with red-white-and-blue cups stuffed in the holes, spelling out messages of support. WE LOVE YOU. PRAY. USA LOVES M ATT. And that made a good backdrop for news reports.

Magalski, the casualty-affairs officer, saw Keith and Carolyn every day. He attended prayer vigils with them and served as a buffer from the media. But he had little news about their son other than the usual: They're looking for him.

In the days after the attack, U. S. forces found shallow graves along the ambush route holding the bodies of Sergeant Elmer Krause and four KBR drivers�Jack Montague, Tony Johnson, Jeffery Parker, and Stephen Hulett. That left four men missing: Maupin and KBR drivers Tommy Hamill, William Bradley, and Timothy Bell. Hamill, also being held by insurgents, escaped three weeks after the ambush, on May 2.

On June 28, Al Jazeera aired a second video, a few hours after the Coalition Provisional Authority returned sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. A figure in a camouflage uniform, shown only from the back, sits before a hole in the ground. He is identified as Maupin. Then someone shoots the figure in the back of the head, though Al Jazeera did not air that portion. In a statement, the group said Maupin was killed because America refused to change its policies in Iraq, and to avenge martyrs killed in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria. The Maupins refused to believe the video. They studied still frames and said they saw nothing in that form that resembled their son. The Department of Defense analyzed the tape for more than a month before calling it inconclusive. The video, apparently shot at night, was too dark and grainy to clearly identify the figure, who does not speak on the tape. The Army expressed doubts that the tape even shows a real execution. Maybe they were shooting a dummy, made to look like a soldier. If it was Maupin, why wasn't the body left somewhere U. S. forces would easily find it? People around Batavia said much the same. "Iraqis are so proud to cut someone's head off and throw it out in the street," Amshoff says. "Why haven't they done that with Matt?"

So if the execution wasn't real, then what happened to Maupin? This is where his story grows murky and dark. There are many reasons for this, starting with America's assumption that it would sweep into Iraq, subdue its army, and help a thankful people fix their country and build a democracy. A vigorous, effective, and adaptive insurgency was, in large part, unanticipated, so there were no tools in place to fight one. Intelligence efforts initially focused on satellite imagery and electronic surveillance, assets that made U. S. forces so dominant on the battlefield. What they did not have, what every beat cop needs, is human intelligence, sources, snitches. And many of those who knew where and how to find information�intelligence officers in Iraq's police and army�had been fired. Some of them simply switched hats and were now running the insurgency.

Into this intelligence vacuum, Iraq gave birth to its kidnapping phenomenon.

The kidnappings, particularly of foreigners, have led several contractors and aid groups to leave Iraq. Those that stayed channeled large portions of their budgets into protection. Security contractors thrived. Reconstruction slowed, giving Iraqis more reasons to be frustrated with the coalition. By the time Maupin was captured, the insurgent groups were mastering the tactic, learning from one another. Those who cared more about money could simply sell the hostage for a few thousand dollars to someone with a political message. Of course, no one knew what Maupin's captors were about, because no one had heard of the Sharp Sword Against the Enemies of God and His Prophet.

In the days and weeks after the convoy attack, U. S. troops chased every rumor looking for Maupin. They found his truck where it had rolled to a stop north of the Sword access road, burned out and empty. They searched for him with tracker dogs. They raided houses across Abu Ghraib, kicking in doors and turning up nothing. Maupin was ever present in prepatrol briefings. Don't forget about this guy. He's still out there. The guys from the 724th kept running their missions, looking at every farmhouse and alleyway and backseat of a passing car, hoping they'd see Maupin waving for help.

In the Fall of 2004, the unit I was deployed with took over the areas along routes Sword and Cardinals. We were still unwelcome in Abu Ghraib and were regularly shot at, rocketed, mortared, and blown up. We carried Maupin's picture and asked people if they'd seen him. No one ever said they had. But we detained plenty of people, mostly for building or planting bombs or stockpiling weapons. Maybe in prison they'd be more apt to talk, we figured, when they were alone with the interrogators.

And some interrogations do yield useful information. No matter the reason a person is detained, he'll likely be asked if he knows anything about weapons of mass destruction, about Captain Michael Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq in the first Gulf war and is still missing in action, or about Matt Maupin and the April 9 attack. In early January 2005, a detainee said he knew where an American killed in the ambush had been buried and led U. S. forces to William Bradley, one of the missing KBR drivers. He lay in a shallow grave near the intersection of Sword and Cardinals. The Army believes that Maupin was riding in Bradley's truck.

Maupin and Bell were then the last two men missing from the attack. A few days later, my company was given a military intelligence target packet for people involved in Maupin's capture. A detainee had fingered a local gang as the men shown in a photo celebrating near a burning truck after the convoy attack. This was a good mission.

We would hit the village well after dark. The assault force would be more than three hundred strong, including Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and Iraqis from an elite commando unit. There would be attack helicopters in the air, and far above them an AC-130 gunship doing lazy loops, waiting for word to loose its cannons and miniguns. We'd originally planned on doing the raid with several humvees and a couple dozen soldiers. That seemed adequate. But this mission had attracted high-level interest and had turned into a show of force.

We drove north to Route Sword, onto the overpass, and west on Cardinals. In the green and black of our night-vision goggles we saw huge helicopters hovering over the target houses. We sped through the dark and surrounded the village. The helicopters disgorged their commandos. They hit the houses in unison, tossing flash-bang grenades through the front doors. The concussions from those can make your nose and ears bleed. The teams moved through the houses, matching stunned faces to the packet of mug shots.

In a nearby building they conducted hasty interrogations, and an old man said he knew where an American had been buried. Throughout the night we'd talked about the possibility, however slim, of finding Maupin alive, locked in a back room in one of those houses. How amazing that would be. The guys who brought home the POW. Now we listened over the radio as one of our platoons dug at a suspected grave site. Navy SEALs, finished with their part of the raid, came to help. But digging brought no discoveries. We detained several men and went home, with Maupin still missing.

Over the past two years, U. S. forces have conducted a hundred missions more searching for Maupin. Tips filter down, someone knows something about Maupin, and ground units are dispatched to investigate. In April 2005, an informant identified two places he might be buried in Abu Ghraib. My company commander, Captain Scott Shaw, sent one of his lieutenants to an Internet caf� to Google "how to conduct an archaeological dig." Build a grid in one-meter squares. Dig methodically. Sift the dirt. Any recovered remains would be sealed in a bag and shipped to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for DNA analysis. The next day the 3rd Platoon dug at two sites. They poked the ground with probes meant for finding land mines and scanned the area with ground-penetrating radar usually used for locating hidden weapon caches. They dug for hours, until the sun was high and hot, turning up five thousand square feet of ground, a foot and a half deep. "Nothing," Shaw says. "Not a scrap of clothes. Not a damn thing."

Today, U.S. forces have still not found any solid evidence of Maupin's fate, but over the past two years they have become better at analyzing, disseminating, and acting on information that comes in, whether it's about Maupin or the thousands of Iraqis or foreigners kidnapped each year. In July 2004, a Hostage Working Group was formed at the American Embassy in Baghdad. The group, which includes an Army representative who is in Iraq solely to look for Maupin, meets every other day in the Green Zone to discuss new kidnappings and ongoing cases.

U.S. forces have improved their ability to act quickly on new information. On March 23, a detainee told interrogators he knew the location of three kidnapped peace activists. The fourth hostage, an American, had been executed two weeks earlier. Within three hours, U. S., British, and Canadian Special Forces raided a home north of Abu Ghraib and found the hostages, unguarded. But kidnappers still grab hundreds of people each month. More than a dozen Americans�including Maupin and Bell�are still missing in Iraq, and an average of fifteen Iraqis are snatched every day.

A week after the peace activists were rescued,Christian Science Monitor correspondent Jill Carroll, held hostage for eighty-two days, was freed by her captors, which caught the Americans by surprise. The Hostage Working Group had worked aggressively on Carroll's case and had plenty of tips to follow, much more information than it has on Maupin. This intelligence-gathering infrastructure was not in place when he was captured, and those early days are critical. Kidnappings follow a predictable pattern. The victim is usually moved several times in the first days and weeks after capture. A ransom note is delivered to a family or embassy, or a video shows up on Al Jazeera. Witnesses are interviewed. Tips filter in. And then information dries up. The trail goes cold. More time is spent on Maupin than any other kidnapping victim in Iraq, but the leads have thinned. "In my view the chances are pretty slim," says Dan O'Shea, who until recently was coordinator of the Hostage Working Group. "But I personally gave up hope on Roy Hallums."

Hallums, an American working for a Saudi company that supplies food to the Iraqi army, was kidnapped after a gun battle in Baghdad on November 1, 2004. In January 2005, the kidnappers released a video with Hallums asking Arab leaders, particularly Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, to save him. Qaddafi did call for Hallums's release, but months passed with no word. In September 2005, U. S. forces detained someone with knowledge of the kidnapping, who led them to a farmhouse south of Baghdad where he was being held, bound and gagged. He was rescued September 7, after 311 days in captivity, the longest a hostage has been held and found alive.

Insurgents could be holding Maupin at a remote farm like that, or in the back room of a house in Baghdad, or in another country. Intelligence experts say all of this is unlikely, given the insurgents' penchant for using hostages to make political statements and killing them when demands are not met. But the possibility remains. A group could be holding Mau-pin as the ultimate bargaining chip, insurance against the capture of a key insurgent leader.

In Batavia, there's another theory: An Iraqi woman, too scared to tell anyone, cares for Maupin in her home. That's just a feeling some people have.

Spend a day with the volunteers at the Yellow Ribbon Support Center or drive through town, past all the yellow ribbons, past all the pictures in the windows of homes and businesses, and you start to feel that everyone in Batavia must be waiting for Maupin's return. Waiting to see him back at work in the center aisle at Sam's Club, where he still has a job because he's on military leave. There are other views, but they're voiced privately, in quiet conversation, not meant to sound cruel, only pragmatic.

"One individual is getting too much attention," Gene Payne tells me. "There's still a war going on. Matt Maupin's not going on. That's the thing." Payne quickly offers this qualifier: "We're all veterans here." Payne was working on a beer at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 9630. I wondered what the vets thought of Maupin and the war. Like most places these days, when the subject is Iraq, the color inside the VFW is decidedly gray. "We don't belong there, never did," Payne says. "When I went to Korea, they told me the reason we're going over there is so they don't come over here. That's bullshit. That's nine thousand miles away."

I order a can of Coors, for $1.75. When Nati, the bartender, learns I'm a vet, she puts down two quarters on the bar in front of me. "Members' discount," she says.

"The grainy photograph�that wasn't definitive in anyone's mind," Jim Fraley tells me. He flew Hueys on the Czech border in the early seventies. "Early on, the hopes were up. But as time goes on, your hope, you don't lose it, but it dims."

Karen Kennedy, here to see her friend Nati, has lived around Batavia for nearly half a century, since third grade. She remembers when the local boys started coming back wounded and dead. She remembers the dedication to them at the Clermont County Fair demolition derby in 2004. Before she talks about Maupin and what happened to him, she takes a short breath and her face slackens, softens, as though she feels bad about the bitter truth she's putting forth. "Oh, he's dead," she says. "All the shit they've done to us. And all the shit we've done to them. That boy's gone." Before I met Keith and Carolyn, I figured they must oscillate between hope and de�spair, their moods carried on the currents of the news from Iraq, the rumors, the months and months of worry. I found something very different. They have bad days, no doubt. But for Keith and Carolyn, there is only one pos�sible outcome: Their boy will come home, with a story to tell. Keith rarely fishes these days. That's what he and Matt used to do. He quit his job installing siding and windows and now he works at the center full-time. He knows he's doing some�thing good here. The dozens of computers they sent to Iraq for Internet caf�s. The $85,000 they raised this spring for scholarships in the names of thirty-two dead soldiers and marines with ties to southern Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. The hope this gives people. The pride. The patriotism. But he does this for himself, too. Before the volunteers have come in for the day, Keith sits alone with Matt, all those pic�tures of Matt. He feels close to him here. He glances at the clock and does the quick math. Thirteen hours left today. They've got thirteen hours to call and tell me they found Matt. His beard reaches down to his chest now. On a visit to Cincinnati, President Bush asked him when he was going to cut it. When you bring home my boy, Keith told him. That was one of seven times they've met the president.

Several soldiers have gone missing during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all except Maupin have been recovered, alive or dead, within days. Most recently, two Army privates were captured by insurgents in June at a checkpoint south of Baghdad. Within hours of the abduction, a massive effort was mobilized as eight thousand American and Iraqi troops closed off the area for miles. They searched with helicopters, boats, and unmanned reconnaissance planes. They kicked in doors and searched hundreds of houses. The media flooded the Maupins with calls, asking if they had any words for the missing soldiers' families. Carolyn told them to keep their faith, keep believing. Three days later, U. S. troops found the mutilated, tortured, booby-trapped bodies of Kristian Menchaca and Thomas L. Tucker. Keith figures the pressure was too much, so the insurgents killed the soldiers and dumped the bodies. Had such a large-scale effort been made for Matt, he says, his son may have shared the same fate. "It's probably just as well they didn't send anyone in," he says.

But now Keith's tired of waiting, and he worries that the men holding his son will be killed fighting the Americans, and then he'll never be found. "The only thing I know is it don't get any easier," Keith says. "If Matt don't walk off that plane, there ain't never gonna be any closure. Like all these families that have lost soldiers, they talk about closure. There ain't no damn closure. He's gone. How can you have closure on that?" But this is beside the point, more of a rant, because plenty of boys have died in Iraq, but his son is not among them. "I just believe in my heart that Matt's alive," he says. "I just hope he understands when to talk and when to shut up and that he knows to do what they tell him to do."

At Carolyn's house, this faith is everywhere. In the living room and her bedroom are collections of angel figurines, sent from around the country, a reminder that angels are watching over her son. His room is so crowded now that there's barely room to walk. The flags and quilts and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. The pictures and gifts. Ten thousand letters. From Greece and Holland. St. David, Arizona, and Winfield, Kansas. There's a cardboard box in here, too, unopened. That's the last box of Maupin's belongings from Iraq, the personal items they'd used to give the dogs his scent for the search. She can't bear to touch it. She'll leave that for her son to do.

Carolyn sleeps maybe four hours a night and stopped dreaming when her son left for Iraq. But she has visions, one vision in particular. Matt sits in a round room, surrounded by insurgents. American soldiers move toward the building, count to three, and kick in the door. He dives for cover, and when he rises, he's safe. Come on, Matt, we're going home. Same scene, every time.

When they find him, she wants him to be the one to call. No more phone calls from the Army. She wants to hear his voice. And when he walks off the plane, after she's said her thanks to God, she'll tell her son how much she missed him. She'll ask if he could feel them thinking about him, praying for him. "I don't know if I'm even going to know who he is," she says. "I'll know who he is, but with all of the changes that may have taken place with him, will I know him? Or will we have to get reacquainted? I don't know what he's gone through. I don't know anything. And he's all alone."

If she loses her faith, if she doesn't believe, then Matt will really be alone. She's heard the stories from Vietnam, about families that gave up hope, everyone except the mother, she always believed. And five years later, here he comes, home from the war. Those stories give Carolyn strength.

When the exhaustion bears down, she'll play a CD of Elvis spirituals, she'll touch her son's picture and pray that someone finds him. Maybe this year. Maybe he'll be home for Christmas. The tree is out in the dining room, still decorated for him, all lit up, just as it's been for the past two years. Matt loves Christmas.

Article submitted by member, Major Allen Boothby 21 December 2006

Our Northern Brothers

2008-01-29T00:32:00.001-08:00

One Canadian soldier killed, one injured in Afghanistan

Allison Lampert, Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, January 15, 2008
More On This Story

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - One Canadian soldier was killed and a second was injured when their armoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb Tuesday in Kandahar's Zhari district.

They were traveling on a routine patrol in the Arghandab region, about 10 Kilometres North of Kandahar City, when their vehicle struck the improvised explosive device. The injured soldier is being treated at the Kandahar Air Field hospital and is said to be in good condition.

Canadian Forces authorities wouldn't release the type of vehicle being used for "security reasons."

It's the third incident in the last three days involving roadside bombs, which are responsible for the deaths of the majority of the 77 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2002. On Monday, a soldier was treated for minor injuries after his vehicle struck an IED in Kandahar's volatile Panjwaii district.

On Sunday, four soldiers were also injured when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the town of Zangabad, 35 kilometres Southwest of Kandahar City in the Panjwaii district. They were working to clear mines from a dirt road in the rural area.

The soldiers -- all male -- were said to be in good condition, and two were released from hospital.

Canadian soldiers, who have set up a strong network on the ground in Zhari district, are now moving into Panjwaii, south of the Arghandab River. For 2008, the Canadian Forces is planning to set up a stronger presence there, including building a district centre, a police headquarters and paving roads in the rural district.

"Panjwaii is our next focus," Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche, commander of the Canadian forces in Afghanistan, said in a recent interview with reporters. "So a lot of work still has to be done in Panjwaii and you know it's still a challenge."

Three Canadian troops have died since Dec. 30, when 27-year-old Gunner Jonathan Dion was killed after a roadside bomb detonated near his light armoured vehicle west of Kandahar.

Cpl. Eric Labbe, 31, and 41-year-old Warrant Officer Hani Massouh died Jan. 6 when their light armoured vehicle rolled over in wet conditions. The two soldiers were travelling in the turret of a LAVIII with another pair of soldiers inside the vehicle to set up camp for the night.

All three soldiers were members of the Valcartier, Que.-based Royal 22nd Regiment, commonly known as the Van Doo.

A Canadian diplomat has also been killed in the central Asian country.

Amid the heavy death toll, the federal Liberals insist Canada's combat role in Afghanistan must end by the scheduled end date of February 2009. However, the Liberals have not ruled out Canadian troops maintaining some presence in the country beyond that date for training, civilian protection and reconstruction in less hostile regions.

Shut it down and arm it to the teeth, the US/Mexico border

2008-01-19T21:53:00.000-08:00

YUMA, Ariz. - A Border Patrol agent trying to stop a vehicle that had illegally entered the U.S. was struck and killed Saturday in southeastern California, agency officials said.

The agent was killed about 20 miles west of Yuma in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, a spot along the border that is popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts and frequently used by smugglers.

The agent attempted to impede the vehicle's progress before he was hit, but the Border Patrol did not immediately have more information, said agent Eric Anderson, a spokesman for the agency's Yuma sector.

The name of the agent killed was not immediately released because his family had not been notified.

Witnesses told the Yuma Sun newspaper that agents were chasing a Hummer and a Ford pickup on Interstate 8 when the vehicles turned into the dunes and fled toward Mexico. The agent was trying to place spike strips in their path and was struck by the Hummer, they said.

"Mexican authorities are using every means at their disposal to arrest the people responsible" for the slaying, said a statement released Saturday night by Mexico's Foreign Relations department.

The Imperial Sand Dunes are the largest dunes in California, extending north of the border for 40 miles and averaging five miles wide.

Soft Power Article

2008-01-08T05:46:00.000-08:00

by Jim Mannion Thu Dec 13, 11:51 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - After six hard years of war, the United States is awakening to the idea that "soft power" is a better way to regain influence and clout in a world bubbling with instability.
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And nowhere is the change in thinking more advanced than in the US military, which is pushing for greater diplomacy, economic aid, civic action and civilian capabilities to prevent new wars and win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates caught the spirit in a much praised speech at Kansas State University last month, calling for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian instruments of power.

Such an appeal would have been unthinkable not long ago, as Gates himself acknowledged, saying it was a "man bites dog" story.

"I think having stubbed our toe badly on Iraq, people are realizing that we weren't doing that well, and it's time for a change," said Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor and former senior Pentagon official.

Nye popularized the term "soft power" in books and essays which argue that a key source of US clout is its ability to attract friends and allies by investing in the international good.

"Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism," a report by a commission Nye co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, warned last month. As a result, it said, "Suspicions of American power have run deep."

The United States needs to pursue a positive vision that goes beyond the war on terrorism, it said.

The response of the Bush administration has been "a mixed bag," Nye said.

"But I do think that the view that we have not had smart power in terms of combining the various instruments we have, that we have underinvested in soft power, is represented in the Gates' remarks," he said.

Gates pointed to the huge disparity between the Pentagon's half trillion dollar budget and the State Department's 37 billion dollars.

Its 6,600 diplomats amount to the crew of a single US aircraft carrier, he said.

The US Agency for International Development has been slashed from 15,000 to 3,000 people, and the US Information Agency was dismantled, he said.

Underfunded and undermanned, US civilian agencies have not kept up with the demand for experts in war zones, leading to bitter complaints from US military officers that they have been left holding the bag.

General James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, recalled recently that after the march on Baghdad in 2003, his marines were sent to stabilize southern Iraq.

"We were told to expect local governance teams and governance support teams which would help us with those functions and many, many more," he said. "Those teams did not arrive."

Marines have to be prepared to perform those tasks in future conflicts, he said.

But the right answer is to fund agencies "that we know are going to be players with this soft power (so) that they could develop sort of an expeditionary mentality and people who are anxious to get overseas and get their hands dirty," Conway said.

The State Department is seeking funding for a deployable corps of civilian experts.

But it is the military that has taken the lead in thinking about ways to harness civilian expertise to create security, raising fears in some quarters of a more militarized foreign policy.

The model is a new Africa Command that the Pentagon is establishing to help strengthen security in a troubled continent.

It is supposed to have a senior State Department official as its deputy and components from other civilian agencies.

"The risk is that it may end up being overly military and not enough of the others in part because of money and bodies. State for example is very worried about it for that reason," said Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to NATO.

The military wants civilian agencies to do more to prevent wars, but is not waiting for them to get their act together, analysts say.

Instead, it has stepped up thinking and planning for what it calls "phase zero," military jargon for conflict prevention.

"I think they've come to the conclusion that insurgencies are really hard to fight. And so it would be better if they could not have the conflict in the first place," said Robert Perito, an expert at the US Institute of Peace.

"In conflict prevention, of course, there is very little military component to that. It's mostly all political and economic. That's the other thing that is going on," he said.

Leeeeeeroy Jenkins!

2008-01-07T21:45:00.000-08:00

Murphy's Law enters the world of online fantasy gaming. The dialog is unintentional comic genius. Fantasy role player is issuing OPORD (operations order) when one of his fire team deviates from the plan and issues his war cry. The effect on his team members is a comic riot. Enjoy! LEEEEROY JENKINS!!!!

Lest We Forget

2007-12-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

On Dec 19th 1989, the United States commenced operations to rid Central America of the dictator Manual Noriega. Operation Just Cause was a success, and many valuable lessons were learned which saved many lives later.

RIP:

Rangers

SSG Larry Barnard, B-3/75
PFC James Markwell, C-1/75
PFC John Price, A-2/75
PFC Roy Brown, A-3/75
SPC Phillip Lear, B-2/75

18 other service members lost their lives and 347 wear scars that will be with them for a lifetime.

Al Qaeda in 2008

2007-12-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

Courtesy http://stratfor.com

Al Qaeda in 2008: The Struggle for Relevance

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

On Dec. 16, al Qaeda's As-Sahab media branch released a 97-minute video message from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. In the message, titled "A Review of Events," al-Zawahiri readdressed a number of his favorite topics at length.

This video appeared just two days after As-Sahab released a 20-minute al-Zawahiri message titled "Annapolis -- The Treason." In that message, al-Zawahiri speaks on audio tape while a still photograph of him is displayed over a montage of photos from the peace conference in Annapolis, Md. As the title implies, al-Zawahiri criticizes the conference.

Although the Dec. 14 release appeared first, it obviously was recorded after the Dec. 16 video. Given the content of the Dec. 14 message, it most likely was recorded shortly after the Nov. 27 Annapolis conference and before the Dec. 11 twin bombings in Algeria. The two latest releases are interrelated, however, given that the still photo of al-Zawahiri used in the Dec. 14 message appears to have been captured from the video released two days later.

After having been subjected to two hours of al-Zawahiri opinions in just two days, we cannot help but wonder whether anyone else is listening to this guy -- and, if so, why? This question is particularly appropriate now, as we come to the time of the year when we traditionally prepare our annual forecast on al Qaeda. As we look ahead to 2008, the core al Qaeda leadership clearly is struggling to remain relevant in the ideological realm, a daunting task for an organization that has been rendered geopolitically and strategically impotent on the physical battlefield.

Devolution

The theme of our 2007 al Qaeda forecast was the continuation of the metamorphosis of al Qaeda from a smaller core group of professional operatives into an operational model that encourages independent "grassroots" jihadists to conduct attacks, or into a model in which al Qaeda provides the operational commanders who organize grassroots cells. We referred to this shift as devolution because it signified a return to al Qaeda's pre-9/11 model.

We noted that the shift gave al Qaeda "the movement" a broader geographic and operational reach than al Qaeda "the group," but we also said that this larger, dispersed group of actors lacked the operational depth and expertise of the core group and its well-trained terrorist cadre.

Looking back at the successful, attempted and thwarted attacks in 2007, this prediction was largely on-target. The high-profile attacks and thwarted attacks were plotted by grassroots groups such as the one responsible for the attacks in London and Glasgow, Scotland, or by regional affiliates such as al Qaeda's franchise in Algeria, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The core al Qaeda group once again failed to conduct any attacks.

British authorities have indicated that the men responsible for the failed London and Glasgow attempts were linked in some way to al Qaeda in Iraq, though any such links must have been fairly inconsequential. The al Qaeda franchise in Iraq has conducted hundreds of successful bombings and has a considerable amount of experience in tradecraft and bombmaking, while the London and Glasgow attempts showed a decided lack of tradecraft and bombmaking skills.

Regional Franchises

The al Qaeda nodes in Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula and Indonesia were all quiet this year. The Egyptian node has not carried out a successful attack since announcing its allegiance to al Qaeda in August 2006. Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Indonesian franchise, has not conducted a successful attack since the October 2005 Bali bombing, and the Sinai node, Tawhid wa al-Jihad, did not conduct any attacks in 2007. Its last attack was in April 2006.

The Saudi franchise conducted only one successful operation in 2007, a small-arms attack against a group of French and Belgian nationals picnicking near Medina, which resulted in the deaths of four Frenchmen. This is a far cry from the peak of its operational activities during the summer of 2004. The Yemen node also conducted one attack, as it did in 2006, a July 2 suicide car bombing against a tourist convoy that resulted in the deaths of eight Spaniards. The Moroccan element of AQIM attempted to carry out attacks in March and April, though the group's inept tactics and inadequate planning resulted in the deaths of more suicide bombers than victims.

These regional nodes largely have been brought under control by a series of successful campaigns against them. Police operations in Saudi Arabia, the Sinai and Indonesia have provided some evidence that the groups have been trying to regroup and refit. Therefore, the campaigns against these regional nodes will need to remain in place for the foreseeable future to ensure that these organizations do not reconstitute themselves and resume operations.

We noted in our 2007 forecast that AQIM had not yet proven itself. However, the series of attacks by AQIM this year demonstrated that the group is resourceful and resilient, even in the face of Algerian government operations and ideological divisions. In fact, AQIM was the most prolific and deadly group in 2007 outside of the active war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. With al Qaeda in Iraq facing serious problems, AQIM is in many ways carrying the torch for the jihadist movement. With other regional nodes seemingly under control, the U.S. and other governments now can pay more attention to AQIM. Throughout the coming year, the Algerian government likely will receive much more assistance from the United States and its allies in its efforts to dismantle the group. AQIM -- the former Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) -- has existed since the early 1990s and its dedicated cadre has survived many attempts to eliminate it -- though it likely will be pressed hard over the next year.

In a Nov. 3 audio message, al-Zawahiri said the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) had formally joined the al Qaeda network. This came as no real surprise, given that members of the group have long been close to Osama bin Laden, and al Qaeda has a large number of Libyan cadre, including Abu Yahya al-Libi, Anas al-Libi and Abu Faraj al-Libi (who reportedly is being held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.) The LIFG-al Qaeda link became apparent in September 2001, when the U.S. government identified the LIFG as a specially designated terrorist entity (along with the GSPC and others.)

Although Libyans have played a large role in al Qaeda and the global jihadist movement, the LIFG itself has been unable to conduct any significant attacks. Historically, Libyan security forces have kept the LIFG in check to the point that most high-profile Libyan jihadists operate outside Libya -- unlike the AQIM leadership, which operates within Algeria. It will be important to watch this new node to see whether it can ramp up its capabilities to conduct meaningful operations inside Libya, or even in other countries where the group has a presence -- though we doubt it will be able to pose a serious threat to the Libyan regime.

Another relatively new jihadist presence appeared on the radar screen Feb. 13, when the Fatah al-Islam group bombed two buses in the Lebanese Christian enclave of Ain Alaq, killing three people. Following the Lebanese army's efforts to arrest those group members believed responsible for the bombing, the group holed up in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, where it endured a siege by the Lebanese army that began in March and lasted until early September. Shaker al-Abssi, the leader of Fatah al-Islam, is said to have links to former al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Along with al-Zarqawi, al-Abssi was sentenced to death in Jordan for his suspected involvement in the 2002 killing of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. He served a three-year jail sentence in Syria and then moved into Nahr el-Bared to establish Fatah al-Islam, which is believed to be controlled by Syrian intelligence. While Fatah al-Islam lost many of its fighters during the five-month siege, we have received intelligence reports suggesting that the Syrians are helping the group recover. The intelligence also suggests that the more the Syrians cooperate with U.S. objectives in Iraq, the more they will press the use of their jihadist proxies in Lebanon. In pursuing such a course, the Syrians are playing with fire, which may well come to haunt them, as it has the Saudis and Pakistanis.

Iraq's Contribution

Events in Iraq likely will have a significant impact on the global jihadist movement in the coming year. Since the death of al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq's operational ability steadily has declined. Furthermore, the organization appears to be losing its support among the Iraqi Sunnis and apparently has had problems getting foreign fighters into the country as of late. This could indicate that there will soon be an exodus of jihadists from the country. These jihadists, who have been winnowed and hardened by their combat against the U.S. military, might find the pastures greener in the countries they enter after leaving Iraq. Like the mujahideen who left Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal, they could go on to pose a real threat elsewhere.

Additionally, since 2003 Iraq has been a veritable jihadist magnet, drawing jihadists from all over the world. If there is no possibility of seeking "martyrdom" in Iraq, these men (and a few women) will have to find another place to embrace their doom. The coalition's list of foreign jihadists killed in Iraq shows that most of the fighters have come to the country from places such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco, but jihadists also have come from many other countries, including the United States, United Kingdom and European Union. Jihadists in these places might opt to follow the example of the July 2005 London bombers and martyr themselves in their countries of residence.

Jihadists in Iraq have had the luxury of having an extensive amount of military ordnance at their disposal. This ordnance has made it relatively simple to construct improvised explosive devices, including large truck bombs. This, in turn, has made it possible to engage hard targets -- such as U.S. military bases and convoys. Jihadists without access to these types of weapons (and the type of training they received in Iraq) will be more likely to engage soft targets. In fact, the only group we saw with the expertise and ordnance to hit hard targets outside of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 was AQIM. As we forecast for 2006 and 2007, we anticipate that the trend toward attacking soft targets will continue in 2008.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Despite U.S. and NATO forces' repeated tactical victories on the battlefield, al Qaeda's Afghan allies, the Taliban, continue to survive -- the critical task for any guerrilla force engaged in an insurgent war. Following a pattern that has been repeated many times throughout Afghan history -- most recently in the war following the Soviet invasion -- the Taliban largely seek to avoid extended battles and instead seek to engage in hit-and-run guerrilla operations. This is because they realize that they cannot stand toe-to-toe with the superior armaments of the foreign invaders. Indeed, when they have tried to stand and fight, they have taken heavy losses. Therefore, they occasionally will occupy a town, such as Musa Qala, but will retreat in the face of overwhelming force and return when that superior force has been deployed elsewhere.

Due to the presence of foreign troops, the Taliban have no hope of taking control of Afghanistan at this juncture. However, unlike the foreign troops, the Taliban fighters and their commanders are not going anywhere. They have a patient philosophy and will bide their time until the tactical or political conditions change in their favor. Meanwhile, they are willing to continue their guerrilla campaign and sustain levels of casualties that would be politically untenable for their U.S. and NATO rivals. The Taliban have a very diffuse structure, and even the loss of senior leaders such as Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Obaidullah Akhund has not proven to be much of a hindrance.

Just over the border from Afghanistan, Pakistan has witnessed the rapid spread of Talibanization. As a result, Islamabad now is fighting a jihadist insurgency of its own in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province. The spread of this ideology beyond the border areas was perhaps best demonstrated by the July assault by the Pakistani army against militants barricaded inside the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Since the assault against the mosque, Pakistan has been wracked by a wave of suicide bombings.

Pakistan should be carefully watched because it could prove to be a significant flash point in the coming year. As the global headquarters for the al Qaeda leadership, Pakistan has long been a significant stronghold on the ideological battlefield. If the trend toward radicalization continues there, the country also could become the new center of gravity for the jihadist movement on the physical battlefield. Pakistan will become especially important if the trend in Iraq continues to go against the jihadists and they are driven from Iraq.

The Year Ahead

Given the relative ease of getting an operative into the United States, the sheer number of soft targets across the vast country and the simplicity of conducting an attack, we remain surprised that no jihadist attack occurred on U.S. soil in 2007. However, we continue to believe that the United States, as well as Europe, remains vulnerable to tactical-level jihadist strikes -- though we do not believe that the jihadists have the capability to launch a strategically significant attack, even if they were to employ chemical, biological or radiological weapons.

Jihadists have shown a historical fixation on using toxins and poisons. As Stratfor repeatedly has pointed out, however, chemical and biological weapons are expensive to produce, difficult to use and largely ineffective in real-world applications. Radiological weapons (dirty bombs) also are far less effective than many people have been led to believe. In fact, history clearly has demonstrated that explosives are far cheaper, easier to use and more effective at killing people than these more exotic weapons. The failure by jihadists in Iraq to use chlorine effectively in their attacks has more recently underscored the problems associated with the use of improvised chemical weapons -- the bombs killed far more people than the chlorine they were meant to disperse as a mass casualty weapon.

Al-Zawahiri's messages over the past year clearly have reflected the pressure that the group is feeling. The repeated messages referencing Iraq and the need for unity among the jihadists there show that al-Zawahiri believes the momentum has shifted in Iraq and things are not going well for al Qaeda there. Tactically, al Qaeda's Iraqi node still is killing people, but strategically the group's hopes of establishing a caliphate there under the mantle of the Islamic State of Iraq have all but disappeared. These dashed hopes have caused the group to lash out against former allies, which has worsened al Qaeda's position.

It also is clear that al Qaeda is feeling the weight of the ideological war against it -- waged largely by Muslims. Al-Zawahiri repeatedly has lamented specific fatwas by Saudi clerics declaring that the jihad in Iraq is not obligatory and forbidding young Muslims from going to Iraq. In a message broadcast in July, al-Zawahiri said, "I would like to remind everyone that the most dangerous weapons in the Saudi-American system are not buying of loyalties, spying on behalf of the Americans or providing facilities to them. No, the most dangerous weapons of that system are those who outwardly profess advice, guidance and instruction …" In other words, al Qaeda fears fatwas more than weapons. Weapons can kill people -- fatwas can kill the ideology that motivates people.

There are two battlegrounds in the war against jihadism: the physical and the ideological. Because of its operational security considerations, the al Qaeda core has been marginalized in the physical battle. This has caused it to abandon its position at the vanguard of the physical jihad and take up the mantle of leadership in the ideological battle. The core no longer poses a strategic threat to the United States in the physical world, but it is striving hard to remain relevant on the ideological battleground.

In many ways, the ideological battleground is more important than the physical war. It is far easier to kill people than it is to kill ideologies. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on the ideological battleground to determine how that war is progressing. In the end, that is why it is important to listen to hours of al-Zawahiri statements. They contain clear signs regarding the status of the war against jihadism. The signs as of late indicate that the ideological war is not going so well for the jihadists, but they also point to potential hazards around the bend in places such as Pakistan and Lebanon.

The Hajj

2007-12-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Courtesy http://stratfor.com

The Hajj: Challenges and Opportunities

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

More than 2 million Muslims from around the world are expected to travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj, that annual pilgrimage to Mecca that runs this year Dec. 18-21.

Because of the history of violence during the Hajj -- some of it extreme -- Saudi officials step up security during the period, and last week they concluded what they called the country's largest-ever anti-terrorism security sweep -- an operation that resulted in the arrest of more than 200 suspected al Qaeda militants. Riyadh said the operation was intended as a warning to militants who would seek to abuse the event and disturb the pilgrims. Because of past debacles during the Hajj, the Saudi government nowadays can be expected to deal with any militant activity quickly and harshly.

The Hajj brings Muslims from all the branches of Islam together in one city -- a city controlled by the Saudi government, which rigorously follows the conservative and strict interpretation of the Wahhabi branch of the Hanbali School of Islamic jurisprudence. Sometimes this mixture makes for volatile confrontations, such as during the 1987 Hajj, when Saudi forces took action to suppress an anti-U.S. demonstration by Iranian pilgrims. The resulting confrontation between the security forces and protesters left more than 400 pilgrims dead and hundreds wounded. Following the incident, the Saudi government severely limited the number of Iranians allowed to attend the Hajj. Two bombings during the 1989 Hajj are believed to have been carried out in reaction to this anti-Iranian policy, and the Saudi government executed 16 Kuwaiti Shia found responsible for the attacks.

Perhaps the most dramatic incident related to the Hajj occurred Nov. 20, 1979, when, shortly after the end of the Hajj, hundreds of heavily armed militants led by Juhaiman al-Utaibi seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, taking several hundred lingering pilgrims hostage. Al-Utaibi, a former officer in the Saudi Arabian National Guard, condemned the Saudi government as corrupt and said that his brother-in-law, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was the Mehdi, the long-awaited redeemer of Islam foretold in Islamic holy writings. The mosque's seizure led to a two-week siege that resulted in the death of hundreds of pilgrims and militants, though the actual number of casualties is unknown, given Riyadh's reluctance to reveal details of the embarrassing event. In addition to the casualties inside the mosque, reports suggest that some 127 military personnel were killed and more than 400 wounded in the operation. The militants who survived the siege were tried and executed by the Saudi government.

The violence in Mecca that year had widespread repercussions. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini blamed the United States for the seizure of the mosque and, on Nov. 21, 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad was burned to the ground by an angry mob. On Dec. 2 of that year, the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, was attacked and burned, resulting in the withdrawal of all U.S. government officials from the country until 2004.

Due to the sheer number of people involved in Hajj activities, many mishaps also have occurred over the years, including people being trampled, accidentally pushed off overpasses and killed in accidents involving cooking fires. During that last Hajj, 345 people were killed in a stampede during the ceremonial "stoning of the devil" and 76 people died when a hostel in Mecca collapsed in a narrow street. During the 1987 Hajj, 340 people were killed in the tent city in Mina when a cooking fire got out of control and raged through the crowded tents.

Although the Saudi government focused on the militant element during its recent security sweep, it would be a huge public relations risk for al Qaeda or other jihadist groups to use the Hajj as an occasion to conduct violent actions, given that the Muslim public would take a dim view of the disturbance of such an important ritual. Indeed, most of the past disturbances and violence during the Hajj have been instigated by Shiite actors, who operate from a different calculus. Even al-Utaibi waited until after the Hajj had officially ended to seize the Grand Mosque.

The Hajj, however, offers a number of unprecedented opportunities for militants to conduct a range of nonviolent activities.

The Saudi government requires special visas for people who wish to participate in the Hajj and attempts to screen out militants and other potential troublemakers. These efforts, however, are plagued by the same problems that afflict the screening systems of other governments, such as translation issues, problems in intelligence-sharing and document and identity fraud. In addition, it is difficult to verify the identity of an individual from an area that keeps no official records, or where records have been destroyed during war. For example, it is next to impossible to determine the true identity of an Iraqi, Palestinian, Somalian or Afghan tribesman, yet thousands of pilgrims have been granted visas to travel to Saudi Arabia from these locations.

This problem of vetting applicants also is significant in cases in which the government issuing identification documents might also have militant ties, such as Iran and the Hamas-controlled Palestinian authority in the Gaza Strip. Hamas representatives have told the media that they smuggled 2,200 passports out of Gaza via a tunnel this year, and that the passports were taken to the Saudi Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, for Hajj visas. The flood of visas issued by Riyadh as a result of this smuggling operation prompted the Egyptian government to open its border with Gaza on Dec. 3. The border had been sealed since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June, meaning travelers going from Gaza to Egypt had to pass through Israeli territory -- under the watchful eyes of Israeli officials. The opening of the border for the Hajj presents an unprecedented opportunity for Hamas to get operatives in and out of Gaza free from Israeli scrutiny.

Once pilgrims arrive in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government carefully controls their travel and, because of past events, makes special efforts to monitor those from places such as Iran. However, the sheer volume of people attending the Hajj makes it physically impossible to closely monitor the activities of the vast majority of the pilgrims. Furthermore, due to the closed nature of Saudi society and the fact that non-Muslims are forbidden to enter Mecca, it will be very difficult for intelligence and security officers from other countries to follow terrorism suspects to the Hajj or to monitor their activities once they are in Mecca.

This means that in addition to viewing the Hajj as a potential opportunity to stage attacks, militant operatives also can use the vast crowds as an ideal setting to conduct meetings or pass documents or messages via courier. For an organization such as al Qaeda, the pilgrimage to Mecca is an opportunity for representatives from all of its regional and affiliated groups to meet -- with very little chance of being monitored. Such a feat would be difficult at any other time and place.

The importance of meetings during the Hajj season has been highlighted in several biographies of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, including one on the PBS Frontline Web site. According to that biography, which purportedly was authored by an anonymous source close to bin Laden, the wealthy bin Laden family hosted hundreds of foreign pilgrims at their many homes during the Hajj season. The pilgrims who stayed in the bin Laden family homes while Osama was growing up reportedly included prominent Muslim politicians, jurists, theologians and militant leaders -- individuals who appear to have had a profound influence on the emerging world view of the young bin Laden.

Obviously, al Qaeda is not the only militant group that could take advantage of the Hajj gathering to meet. A group such as Hamas that has been largely isolated from the outside world also could use the Hajj as a chance to meet with operatives and supporters from the United States and Europe.

Militant groups also could use the Hajj as an excuse to relocate operatives for future operations. The Israelis undoubtedly will be watching very closely to see how many of the 2,200 pilgrims Hamas sent from the Gaza Strip do not return. It will perhaps be even more interesting for the Israelis to learn where these individuals go from Mecca. The travel patterns of Moroccan, Egyptian, Algerian and other militants leaving the Hajj will be likewise interesting to the United States and other concerned governments.

The Hajj also opens up the opportunity for militant groups to engage in fundraising. In addition to the well-documented use of donations to Muslim charities to finance militant groups, for many years now intelligence reports have indicated that wealthy donors from Saudi Arabia and other countries literally provide bags of cash to representatives of militant groups. This method of receiving large cash donations from wealthy and sympathetic Muslims has become even more important in the post-9/11 world, in which bank transactions and charities increasingly are scrutinized. Such cash can then be sent out of the country using the unofficial hawala system, or physically carried by a courier. During a time of such heavy travel and heightened weapons checks, a nondescript bag containing cash easily can be passed through an X-ray machine and carried onto a plane.

The NIE Report

2007-12-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

http://stratfor.com
The NIE Report: Solving a Geopolitical Problem with Iran

By George Friedman

The United States released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Dec. 3. It said, "We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." It went on to say, "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." It further said, "Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."

With this announcement, the dynamics of the Middle Eastern region, Iraq and U.S.-Iranian relations shift dramatically. For one thing, the probability of a unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear targets is gone. Since there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program, there is no rationale for a strike. Moreover, if Iran is not engaged in weapons production, then a broader air campaign designed to destabilize the Iranian regime has no foundation either.

The NIE release represents a transformation of U.S. policy toward Iran. The Bush administration made Iran's nuclear weapons program the main reason for its attempt to create an international coalition against Iran, on the premise that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. If there is no Iranian nuclear program, then what is the rationale for the coalition? Moreover, what is the logic of resisting Iran's efforts in Iraq, rather than cooperating?

In looking at the report, a number of obvious questions come up. First, how did the intelligence community reach the wrong conclusion in the spring of 2005, when it last released an NIE on Iran, and what changed by 2007? Also, why did the United States reach the wrong conclusions on Iran three years after its program was halted? There are two possible answers. One is intelligence failure and the other is political redefinition. Both must be explored.

Let's begin with intelligence failure. Intelligence is not an easy task. Knowing what is going on inside of a building is harder than it might seem. Regardless of all the technical capabilities -- from imagery in all spectra to sensing radiation leakage at a distance -- huge uncertainties always remain. Failing to get a positive reading does not mean the facility is not up and running. It might just have been obscured, or the technical means to discover it are insufficient. The default setting in technical intelligence is that, while things can be ruled in, they cannot simply be ruled out by lack of evidence.

You need to go into the building. Indeed, you need to go into many buildings, look around, see what is happening and report back. Getting into highly secure buildings may be easy in the movies. It is not easy in real life. Getting someone into the building who knows what he is seeing is even harder. Getting him out alive to report back, and then repeating the process in other buildings, is even harder. It can be done -- though not easily or repeatedly.

Recruiting someone who works in the building is an option, but at the end of the day you have to rely on his word as to what he saw. That too, is a risk. He might well be a double agent who is inventing information to make money, or he could just be wrong. There is an endless number of ways that recruiting on-site sources can lead you to the wrong conclusion.

Source-based intelligence would appear to be the only way to go. Obviously, it is better to glean information from someone who knows what is going on, rather than to guess. But the problem with source-based intelligence is that, when all is said and done, you can still be just as confused -- or more confused -- than you were at the beginning. You could wind up with a mass of intelligence that can be read either way. It is altogether possible to have so many sources, human and technical, that you have no idea what the truth is. That is when an intelligence organization is most subject to political pressure. When the intelligence could go either way, politics can tilt the system. We do not know what caused the NIE to change its analysis. It could be the result of new, definitive intelligence, or existing intelligence could have been reread from a new political standpoint.

Consider the politics. The assumption was that Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons -- though its motivations for wanting to do so were never clear to us. First, the Iranians had to assume that, well before they had an operational system, the United States or Israel would destroy it. In other words, it would be a huge effort for little profit. Second, assume that it developed one or two weapons and attacked Israel, for example. Israel might well have been destroyed, but Iran would probably be devastated by an Israeli or U.S. counterstrike. What would be the point?

For Iran to be developing nuclear weapons, it would have to have been prepared to take extraordinary risks. A madman theory, centered around the behavior of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was essential. But as the NIE points out, Iran was "guided by a cost-benefit approach." In simple terms, the Iranians weren't nuts. That is why they didn't build a nuclear program.

That is not to say Iran did not benefit from having the world believe it was building nuclear weapons. The United States is obsessed with nuclear weapons in the hands of states it regards as irrational. By appearing to be irrational and developing nuclear weapons, the Iranians created a valuable asset to use in negotiating with the Americans. The notion of a nuclear weapon in Iranian hands appeared so threatening that the United States might well negotiate away other things -- particularly in Iraq -- in exchange for a halt of the program. Or so the Iranians hoped. Therefore, while they halted development on their weapons program, they were not eager to let the Americans relax. They swung back and forth between asserting their right to operate the program and denying they had one. Moreover, they pushed hard for a civilian power program, which theoretically worried the world less. It drove the Americans up a wall -- precisely where the Iranians wanted them.

As we have argued, the central issue for Iran is not nuclear weapons. It is the future of Iraq. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 was the defining moment in modern Iranian history. It not only devastated Iran, but also weakened the revolution internally. Above all, Tehran never wants to face another Iraqi regime that has the means and motivation to wage war against Iran. That means the Iranians cannot tolerate a Sunni-dominated government that is heavily armed and backed by the United States. Nor, for that matter, does Tehran completely trust Iraq's fractured Shiite bloc with Iran's national security. Iran wants to play a critical role in defining the nature, policies and capabilities of the Iraqi regime.

The recent U.S. successes in Iraq, however limited and transitory they might be, may have caused the Iranians to rethink their view on dealing with the Americans on Iraq. The Americans, regardless of progress, cannot easily suppress all of the Shiite militias. The Iranians cannot impose a regime on Iraq, though they can destabilize the process. A successful outcome requires a degree of cooperation -- and recent indications suggest that Iran is prepared to provide that cooperation.

That puts the United States in an incredibly difficult position. On the one hand, it needs Iran for the endgame in Iraq. On the other, negotiating with Iran while it is developing nuclear weapons runs counter to fundamental U.S. policies and the coalition it was trying to construct. As long as Iran was building nuclear weapons, working with Iran on Iraq was impossible.

The NIE solves a geopolitical problem for the United States. Washington cannot impose a unilateral settlement on Iraq, nor can it sustain forever the level of military commitment it has made to Iraq. There are other fires starting to burn around the world. At the same time, Washington cannot work with Tehran while it is building nuclear weapons. Hence, the NIE: While Iran does have a nuclear power program, it is not building nuclear weapons.

Perhaps there was a spectacular and definitive intelligence breakthrough that demonstrated categorically that the prior assessments were wrong. Proving a negative is tough, and getting a definitive piece of intelligence is hard. Certainly, no matter how definitive the latest intelligence might have been, a lot of people want Iran to be building a nuclear weapon, so the debate over the meaning of this intelligence would have roared throughout the intelligence community and the White House. Keeping such debate this quiet and orderly is not Washington's style.

Perhaps the Iranians are ready to deal, and so decided to open up their facility for the Americans to see. Still, regardless of what the Iranians opened up, some would have argued that the United States was given a tour only of what the Iranians wanted them to see. There is a mention in the report that any Iranian program would be covert rather than overt, and that might reflect such concerns. However, all serious nuclear programs are always covert until they succeed. Nothing is more vulnerable than an incomplete nuclear program.

We are struck by the suddenness of the NIE report. Explosive new intelligence would have been more hotly contested. We suspect two things. First, the intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program consisted of a great number of pieces, many of which were inherently ambiguous and could be interpreted in multiple ways. Second, the weight of evidence for there being an Iranian nuclear program was shaded by the political proclivities of the administration, which saw the threat of a U.S. strike as intimidating Iran, and the weapons program discussion as justifying it. Third, the change in political requirements on both sides made a new assessment useful. This last has certainly been the case in all things Middle Eastern these past few days on issues ranging from the Palestinians to Syria to U.S. forces in Iraq -- so why should this issue be any different?

If this thesis is correct, then we should start seeing some movement on Iraq between the United States and Iran. Certainly the major blocker from the U.S. side has been removed and the success of U.S. policies of late should motivate the Iranians. In any case, the entire framework for U.S.-Iranian relations would appear to have shifted, and with it the structure of geopolitical relations throughout the region.

Intelligence is rarely as important as when it is proven wrong.

Pat Buchanan

2007-11-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

Ray Borbon found this beauty over on chep-net. I had to copy and paste over here too.

NEW BUCHANAN BOOK DECLARES ‘END OF AMERICA’
Sun Nov 25 2007 20:40:15 ET

**Exclusive**

“America is coming apart, decomposing, and…the likelihood of her survival as one nation…is improbable — and impossible if America continues on her current course,” declares Pat Buchanan. “For we are on a path to national suicide.”

The best-selling author and former presidential candidate is on the eve of launching his new epic book: DAY OR RECKONING: HOW HUBRIS, IDEOLOGY AND GREED ARE TEARING AMERICA APART.

This time, Buchanan goes all the way:

“America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive.”

The U.S. Army is breaking and is too small to meet America’s global commitments.

The dollar has sunk to historic lows and is being abandoned by foreign governments.

U.S. manufacturing is being hollowed out.

The greatest invasion in history, from the Third World, is swamping the ethno-cultural core of the country, leading to Balkanization and the loss of the Southwest to Mexico.

The culture is collapsing and the nation is being deconstructed along the lines of race and class.

A fiscal crisis looms as the unfunded mandates of Social Security and Medicare remain unaddressed.

All these crises are hitting America at once — a perfect storm of crises.

Specifically, Buchanan contends:

• Pax Americana, the era of U.S. global dominance, is over. A struggle for global hegemony has begun among the United States, China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam

• Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a product of hubris and of ideology, a secular religion of “democratism,” to which Bush was converted in the days following 9/11

• Torn asunder by a culture war, America has now begun to break down along class, ethnic and racial lines.

• The greatest threat to U.S. sovereignty and independence is the scheme of a global elite to erase America’s borders and merge the USA, Mexico and Canada into a North American Union.

• Free trade is shipping jobs, factories and technology to China and plunging America into permanent dependency and unpayable debt. One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush

• “Sovereign Wealth Funds,” controlled by foreign regimes and stuffed with trillions of dollars from U.S. trade deficits, are buying up strategic corporate assets vital to America’s security

• As U.S. wages are stagnant, corporate CEOs are raking in rising pay and benefits 400 to 500 times that of their workers

• The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to our survival as one nation than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq

* European-Americans, 89% of the nation when JFK took the oath, are now 66% and sinking. Before 2050, America is a Third World nation

• By 2060, America will add 167 million people and 105 million immigrants will be here, triple the 37 million today.

• Hispanics will be over 100 million in 2050 and concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans believe belongs to them

Buchanan’s Recommendations:

• A new foreign-defense policy that closes most of the 1000 bases overseas, reviews all alliances, and brings home U.S. troops

• A purge of neoconservative ideology and the “Cakewalk” crowd” from national power.

• To avert a second Cold War, the United States should “get out of Russia’s space and get out of Russia’s face,” and shut down all U.S. bases on the soil of the former Soviet Union

• To reach a cold peace in the culture war, Buchanan urges a return to federalism and the overthrow of our judicial dictatorship by Congressionally mandated restrictions on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

• To end the trade deficits and save the dollar, Buchanan urges a Hamiltonian solution: a 20% Border Equity Tax on imports, with the $500 billion raised to be used to end taxation on American producers

• To prevent America becoming “a tangle of squabbling nationalities” Buchanan urges: No amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal aliens; a border fence from San Diego to Brownsville; Congressional declarations that children born to illegal aliens are not citizens and English is the language of the United States; and a “timeout” on all immigration.

Developing…

Democratics Congress: Cut and Run

2007-11-16T02:51:00.000-08:00

Here's what I have to say to these Democrats who vote for these types of financial cuts. Here on the ground we have made HUGE progress towards eventual victory and peace. Some of us don't even agree with the reasons we came here, but we feel a sense of responsibility to finish this thing off the right way, with a notch in the win column. withholding funds says you don't care about the millions of men and women who have sacrificed hugely to fight an unpopular war. One that many of you voted to GET US INTO. Now that we are making some amount of progress after some mistakes in the beginning you just want to cut and run? Democratic congress? You're not MY congress, I'd sooner move to Canada than bow to your leadership.

**************************************************************************

Democrats say the tough approach is needed.

"Everybody knows that the president is stuck in his place, a place where he wants a 10-year war," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

This week, the House passed, 218-203, a $50 billion bill that would pay for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — about one-fourth of the amount Bush wants — but require that troops start coming home. The measure sets a goal of ending combat by Dec. 15, 2008.

The Senate planned to vote as early as Friday on the measure, although it was not expected to pass. Democrats hold a narrow majority and 60 votes are needed for the measure to advance.

Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday that if Congress was unable to pass legislation that sets a timetable on the war — the most likely scenario — they would drop the issue until next year. In the meantime, Democrats say, the Pentagon can eat into its $471 billion annual budget without being forced to take drastic steps.

"The days of a free lunch are over," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that unless Congress passes funding for the war within days, he will direct the Army and Marine Corps to begin developing plans to lay off employees and terminate contracts early next year.

Gates, who met with lawmakers on Wednesday, said he does not have the money or the flexibility to move funds around to adequately cover the costs of the continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There is a misperception that this department can continue funding our troops in the field for an indefinite period of time through accounting maneuvers, that we can shuffle money around the department. This is a serious misconception," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.

As a result, he said he is faced with the undesirable task of preparing to cease operations at Army bases by mid-February, and lay off about 100,000 defense department employees and an equal number of civilian contractors. A month later, he said, similar moves would have to be made by the Marines.

Some members of Congress believe the Pentagon can switch enough money to cover the war accounts, Gates said. But he added that he only has the flexibility to transfer about $3.7 billion, which is just one week's worth of war expenses. Lawmakers, he said, may not understand how complicated and restrictive the situation is.

Iraq: Positive Signs by George Friedman

2007-11-14T01:23:00.000-08:00

Report courtesty of Strategic Forecasting Inc. Reprinted with permission based on attribution.
www.stratfor.com

Iraq: Positive Signs

By George Friedman

The latest reports concerning the war in Iraq suggest the situation is looking up for the United States. First, U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties continue to fall. Second, there are confirmed reports that Sunni insurgents controlled by local leaders have turned on al Qaeda militants, particularly those from outside the country. Third, the head of U.S. Central Command, in an interview with the Financial Times, implied that an attack against Iran is a distant possibility.

It is tempting to say the United States has turned the corner on the war. The temptation might not be misplaced, but after many disappointments since 2003, it is prudent to be cautious in declaring turning points -- and it is equally prudent not to confuse a turning point with a victory. That said, given expectations that the United States would be unable to limit violence in Iraq, and that Sunni insurgents would remain implacable -- not to mention the broad expectation of a U.S. attack against Iran -- these three points indicate a reversal -- and must be taken seriously.

The most startling point is the decline in casualties, and particularly the apparent decline in sectarian violence. Explaining this is difficult. It could simply be the result of the more efficient use of U.S. troops in suppressing the insurgency and controlling the Shiite militias. If that were the only explanation, however, it would be troubling. Standard guerrilla warfare doctrine holds that during periods of intense enemy counterinsurgency operations, guerrillas should cease fighting, hide weapons and equipment and blend into the civilian population. Only after the enemy shifts its area of operations or reduces operational tempo should the guerrillas resume combat operations. Under no circumstances should insurgents attempt to fight a surge.

Therefore, if we were considering U.S. military operations alone, few conclusions could be drawn until after the operations shifted or slowed. In addition, in a country of 25 million, the expectation that some 167,000 troops -- many of them not directly involved in combat -- could break the back of an entrenched insurgency is optimistic. The numbers simply don't work, particularly when Shiite militias are added to the equation. Therefore, if viewed simply in terms of military operations, the decline in casualties would not validate a shift in the war until much later, and our expectation is that the insurgency would resume prior levels of activity over time.

What makes the situation more hopeful for the United States is the clear decline in civilian casualties. Most of those were caused not by U.S. combat operations but by sectarian conflict, particularly between Sunnis and Shia. Part of the decline can be explained by U.S. operations, but when we look at the scope and intensity of sectarian fighting, it is difficult to give U.S. operations full credit. A more likely explanation is political, a decision on the part of the various sectarian organizations to stop operations not only against the Americans but also against each other.

There were two wars going on in Iraq. One was against the United States. The more important war, from the Iraqi point of view, was the Sunni-Shiite struggle to determine who would control Iraq's future. Part of this struggle, particularly on the Shiite side, was intrasectarian violence. All of it was political and, in a real sense, it was life and death. It involved the control of neighborhoods, of ministries, of the police force and so on. It was a struggle over the shape of everyday life. If either side simply abandoned the struggle, it would leave a vacuum for the other. U.S. operations or not, that civil war could not be suspended. To a significant extent, however, it has been suspended.

That means that some political decisions were made, at least on the local level and likely at higher levels as well, as several U.S. authorities have implied recently. Civilian casualties from the civil war would not have dropped as much as they have without some sort of political decisions to restrain forces, and those decisions could not be made unilaterally or simply in response to U.S. military pressure. It required a set of at least temporary political arrangements. And that, in many ways, is more promising than simply a decline because of U.S. combat operations. The political arrangements open the door to the possibility that the decline in casualties is likely to be longer lasting.

This brings us to the second point, the attacks by the Sunnis against the jihadists. Immediately after the invasion in 2003, the United States essentially attempted to strip the Sunnis -- the foundation of Saddam Hussein's strength -- of their power. The U.S. de-Baathification laws had the effect of eliminating the Sunni community's participation in the future of Iraq. Viewing the Shia -- the victims of Hussein's rule -- as likely interested not only in dominating Iraq but also in retribution against the Sunnis, the Sunni leadership, particularly at the local level, supported and instigated an insurgency against U.S. forces. The political purpose of the insurgency was to force the United States to shift its pro-Shiite policy and include the Sunnis, from religious to Baathist, in the regime.

Given the insurgency's political purpose, the power of U.S. forces and the well-organized Shiite militias, the Iraqi Sunnis were prepared to form alliances wherever they could find them. A leading source of support for the Iraqi Sunnis came from outside Iraq, among the Sunni jihadist fighters who organized themselves under the banner of al Qaeda and, weapons in hand, infiltrated the country from outside, particular through Syria.

Nevertheless, there was underlying tension between the local Sunnis and the jihadists. The Iraqi Sunnis were part of the local power structure, many having been involved in the essentially secular Baath Party, and others, more religious, having remained outside the regime but ruled by traditional tribal systems. The foreign jihadists were revolutionaries not only in the sense that they were prepared to fight the Americans but also in that they wanted to revolutionize -- radically Islamize -- the local Sunni community. By extension, they wanted to supplant the local leadership with their own by supporting and elevating new local leaders dependent for their survival on al Qaeda power.

For an extended period of time, the United States saw the Sunni insurgency as consisting of a single fabric. The local insurgents and the jihadists were viewed as the same, and the adopted name of the jihadists, al Qaeda, caused the Americans to see them as the primary enemy. Over time, and particularly since the death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the United States has adopted a more nuanced view of the Sunni insurgency, drawing a distinction between the largely native Iraqi insurgents and the largely foreign jihadists.

Once this occurred and the United States began to make overtures to the native Iraqi insurgents, the underlying tensions between the foreign jihadists and the Iraqi insurgents emerged. The Sunnis, over time, came to see the jihadists as a greater danger to them than the Americans, and by the time U.S. President George W. Bush last visited Iraq, several Sunni leaders were prepared to be seen publicly with him. The growing animosities eventually turned into active warfare between the two factions, with al Qaeda being outnumbered and outgunned and the natives enjoying all of the perks of having the home-court advantage.

From the U.S. point of view, splitting the Sunni insurgency politically and militarily was important not only for the obvious reasons but also for influencing the Shia. From a Shiite point of view -- and now let's introduce Iran, the primary external backer of Iraq's Shiites -- the worst-case scenario would be the re-establishment of a predominantly Sunni government in Baghdad backed by the U.S. military. The political accommodation between the United States and the Iraqi Sunnis represented a direct threat to the Shia.

It is important to recall that Hussein and his Baathist predecessors -- all Sunnis leading a predominantly Sunni government -- were able to dominate the more numerous Shia for decades. The reason was that the Shia were highly fragmented politically, more so than the Sunnis. This historic factionalization made the Shia much weaker than their numbers would have indicated. It was no accident that the Sunnis dominated the Shia.

And the Shia remained fragmented. While the Sunnis were fighting an external force, the Shia were fighting both the Sunnis and one another. Given those circumstances, it was not inconceivable that the United States would try, and perhaps succeed, to re-establish the status quo ante of a united Iraq under a Sunni government -- backed by U.S. power until Iraq could regenerate its own force. Of course, that represented a reversal of the original U.S. goal of establishing a Shiite regime.

For Iran, this was an intolerable outcome because it would again raise the possibility of an Iran-Iraq war -- in which Iran might take another million casualties. The Iranian response was to use its influence among the competing Shiite militias to attack the Sunnis and to inflict casualties on American troops, hoping to force a withdrawal. Paradoxically, while the jihadists are the Iranians' foe, they were useful to Tehran because the more they attacked the Shia -- and the more the Shia retaliated -- the more the Sunnis and al Qaeda aligned -- which kept the United States and the Sunnis apart. Iran, in other words, wanted a united Sunni-jihadist movement because it would wreck the emerging political arrangements. In addition, when the Iranians realized that the Democrats in the U.S. Congress were not going to force a U.S. withdrawal, their calculations about the future changed.

Caught between al Qaeda and the militias, the Sunnis were under intense pressure. The United States responded by conducting operations against the jihadists -- trying to limit engagements with Iraqi Sunni insurgents -- and most important, against Shiite militias. The goal was to hold the Sunnis in the emerging political matrix while damaging the militias that were engaging the Sunnis. The United States was trying increase the cost to the Shia of adhering to the Iranian strategy.

At the same time, the United States sought to intimidate the Iranians by raising, and trying to make very real, the possibility that the United States would attack them as well. As we have argued, the U.S. military options are limited, so an attack would make little military sense. The Iranians, however, could not be certain that the United States was being rational about the whole thing, which was pretty much what the United States wanted. The United States wanted the Shia in Iraq to see the various costs of following the Iranian line -- including creating a Sunni-dominated government -- while convincing the Iranians that they were in grave danger of American military action.

In this context, we find the third point particularly interesting. Adm. William Fallon's interview with the Financial Times -- in which he went out of its way to downplay the American military threat to Iran -- was not given by accident. Fallon does not agree to interviews without clearance. The United States was using the interview to telegraph to Iran that it should not have undue fear of an American attack.

The United States can easily turn up the heat again psychologically, though for the moment it has chosen to lower it. By doing so, we assume Washington is sending two messages to Iran. First, it is acknowledging that creating a predominantly Sunni government is not its first choice. Also, it is rewarding Iran for the decline in violence by the Shiite militias, which undoubtedly required Tehran to shift its orders to its covert operatives in Iraq.

The important question is whether we are seeing a turning point in Iraq. The answer is that it appears so, but not primarily because of the effectiveness of U.S. military operations. Rather, it is the result of U.S. military operations coupled with a much more complex and sophisticated approach to Iraq. To be more precise, a series of political initiatives that the United States had undertaken over the past two years in fits and starts has been united into a single orchestrated effort. The result of these efforts was a series of political decisions on the part of various Iraqi parties not only to reduce attacks against U.S. troops but also to bring the civil war under control.

A few months ago, we laid out four scenarios for Iraq, including the possibility that that United States would maintain troops there indefinitely. At the time, we argued against this idea on the assumption that what had not worked previously would not work in the future. Instead, we argued that resisting Iranian power required that efforts to create security be stopped and troops moved to blocking positions along the Saudi border. We had not calculated that the United States would now supplement combat operations with a highly sophisticated and nuanced political offensive. Therefore, we were wrong in underestimating the effectiveness of the scenario.

That said, a turning point is not the same as victory, and the turning point could turn into a failure. The key weaknesses are the fragmented Shia and the forces and decisions that might emerge there, underwritten by Iran. Everything could be wrecked should Iran choose to take the necessary risks. For the moment, however, the Iranians seem to be exercising caution, and the Shia are responding by reducing violence. If that trend continues, then this really could be a turning point. Of course, any outcome that depends on the Shia and Iranians doing what the United States hopes they will do is fragile. Iran in particular has little interest in giving the United States a graceful solution unless it is well compensated for it. On the other hand, for the moment, Tehran is cooperating. This could simply be another instance of Iran holding off before disappointing the United States, or it could mean it has reason to believe it will be well compensated. Revealing that compensation -- if it is coming -- is the next turn of the wheel.

Which side are you on anyway?

2007-11-12T00:06:00.000-08:00

## Posted for the benefit of liberals who can't think straight, and only believe what ## http://moveon.org tells them.

Hot Water for Blackwater
The real story doesn't run to script.

By Mark Corallo

I woke up Thursday morning, checked the Blackberry, and found an e-mail from a television-producer friend asking about comments attributed to me by the New York Times about Blackwater USA. Remembering my lengthy conversation with a reporter about the security firm, I expected a thank-you call from my former clients. Then I read the story. I'm not naïve and I'm no rookie in dealing with the media. But when one spends 40 minutes on the phone with a highly respected reporter, singing the praises of a company that does heroic service to our country, one expects those comments to be reflected in the story.

When the Times's John Broder called me about Blackwater, he wanted to know what I made of the company's recent public-relations push. My response was that it was long overdue: For far too long, the State Department gagged Blackwater, barring them from defending themselves from unfair attacks in the media and by liberal congressman trying to score political points with the MoveOn.org crowd.

I explained that the men of Blackwater were true patriots, heroes who volunteered to go into harm's way to protect the lives of American diplomats and elected officials, some of whom were attacking the very company that kept them safe overseas. Yet because the antiwar Left (most vocally supported by liberal Democrats in the House and Senate) wanted to score political points, they constantly accused Blackwater of being unaccountable and above the law. Nothing, I said, was further from the truth, and these so-called legislators should be ashamed of themselves for being ignorant of the statutes governing the conduct of security contractors overseas.

I went on at length about the vision and commitment of Blackwater's founder and owner Eric Prince. Instead of spending the rest of his life relaxing on the interest from a sizeable inheritance, Prince decided to become a Navy Seal. While serving on active duty he realized that the Navy lacked the facilities to conduct the kind of training that would make our soldiers, sailors, and Marines even more proficient and skilled war fighters. When he left active service, he created Blackwater USA and dedicated his life to making America even safer.

I told Broder stories of bravery from Blackwater employees in Iraq, who suffered injury and death to save the lives of the American civilians in their care. I told him about the standards to which Blackwater holds its employees — standards that exceed those of our armed forces. I told him of their dedication to the rule of law and the Constitution.

I told him of a cable from a State Department employee who literally watched Blackwater heroes die while rescuing her from enemy attack in Baghdad — how she owed her life to them and would never be able to repay them. I then told him that when Blackwater was being dragged before Henry Waxman's oversight committee back in February in a blatant effort to help a civil lawsuit, the State Department would not allow them to even quote from that diplomat's message in order to describe what Blackwater is really about.

I told Broder that our uniformed military are not trained to do personnel security missions — that it would be too costly and a waste of their time and talents. I reminded him that for every soldier deployed forward, it takes eleven support personnel behind them. Blackwater can support 50 security professionals with one support employee back in the States. I told him that for all the talk about the high cost of security contractors, the cost of having our soldiers do the job would be three or four times higher to the taxpayer.

I told Broder that I stopped representing Blackwater for a number of reasons, chief among them my inability to help them under the State Department's gag order. I told him of sitting in a meeting with the State Department's contracting officer, who told the company's representatives that if they so much as popped their heads up in the media, he would ruin them. I did say that — as would be true of just about any corporation — there were some inside Prince's organization (but not Prince or his senior team) who were unsophisticated in the ways of Washington and didn't understand or particularly like the congressional-oversight process.

I did say that there were a couple of guys who had a "cowboy mentality." But those comments were in the context of the company's image — a necessary one for business purposes. Let's face it, nobody is going to hire a bunch of wimps or trust their lives to guys who aren't willing to act with speed and determination under fire. So the cowboy tag was a double-edged sword.

At the end of my conversation with Mr. Broder, he said that "after this story, the company ought to send you a check." I told him I didn't want money from Blackwater. I was just glad that I could finally tell their story, defend them, take a few hard whacks at the elected officials and bureaucrats who were so ungrateful to these brave men who were protecting them from an enemy that draws no distinction between uniformed military and civilians. I'm pretty sure that Dennis Kucinich would not have appreciated the things I said about his ignorant ranting, his uninformed accusations, his general idiocy.

A million people will tell me that I shouldn't be surprised that the New York Times mischaracterized my comments and omitted 99.9 percent of what I said because it didn't fit the story the Times wanted to tell. They'll tell me that I should have expected it and that I should never have trusted a reporter from the country's leading left-wing newspaper. But I did expect more, and still do.

I'm not holding my breath for a retraction, but I am sorry I ever spoke to the New York Times about Blackwater. Blackwater is a great company that protects Americans in hostile environments. They haven't lost a single one of the Americans in their care, despite suffering over 30 deaths and countless injuries. They are maligned daily for doing exactly what their government has asked them to do, and they do it better than anyone else in the business. And their main client — the U.S. State Department — refuses to tell the real stories of the real people who owe their lives to these heroes.

I'm glad that Blackwater has decided to defend itself, even if it means losing contracts. I'm betting the State Department bureaucrat who threatened to ruin them can't wait to "review" their contracts — another reason why one of the biggest outrages here is the inability to fire incompetent, abusive career civil servants.

So today I'm again left wondering why Eric Prince doesn't just fold up the tents and head to the beach. I know the answer — same reasons why guys who have seen combat over and over go back and face the fire. Those are reasons that the liberals and the media cannot comprehend.

— Mark Corallo, a consultant with Corallo Comstock, Inc., is a former DOJ spokesman who represented Blackwater in private practice in 2006.

Canadian Exchange Rate

2007-10-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

The US dollar is now valued less than the Canadian dollar. I now give a buck and get .95 cents back. I can remember doing ice climbing trips in Banff when I would get 1.65 Canadian for my single note. A full .70 cents in value depreciated since around 2001.

I'm looking forward to the day when the current administrations a$$ gets hit by the door on the way out. Maybe giving all our money to the stinking Arabs, and the price of gas still going up isn't in our national interest after all.

Baghdad 2003

2007-10-25T20:23:00.001-07:00

Lt. Michael P. Murphy USN

2007-10-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Lt. Michael P. Murphy USN family will be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on his behalf. He is the third US service member to receive the medal since Operation Enduring Freedom kicked off in 2001.

http://www.navy.mil/moh/mpmurphy/index.html

Israeli Raid targets Syrian Nuclear Site

2007-09-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

ISRAELI commandos from the elite Sayeret Matkal unit – almost certainly dressed in Syrian uniforms – made their way stealthily towards a secret military compound near Dayr az-Zawr in northern Syria. They were looking for proof that Syria and North Korea were collaborating on a nuclear programme.

Israel had been surveying the site for months, according to Washington and Israeli sources. President George W Bush was told during the summer that Israeli intelligence suggested North Korean personnel and nuclear-related material were at the Syrian site.

Israel was determined not to take any chances with its neighbour. Following the example set by its raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak 1981, it drew up plans to bomb the Syrian compound.

But Washington was not satisfied. It demanded clear evidence of nuclear-related activities before giving the operation its blessing. The task of the commandos was to provide it.

Today the site near Dayr az-Zawr lies in ruins after it was pounded by Israeli F15Is on September 6. Before the Israelis issued the order to strike, the commandos had secretly seized samples of nuclear material and taken them back into Israel for examination by scientists, the sources say. A laboratory confirmed that the unspecified material was North Korean in origin. America approved an attack.

News of the secret ground raid is the latest piece of the jigsaw to emerge about the mysterious Israeli airstrike. Israel has imposed a news blackout, but has not disguised its satisfaction with the mission. The incident also reveals the extent of the cooperation between America and Israel over nuclear-related security issues in the Middle East. The attack on what Israeli defence sources now call the “North Korean project” appears to be part of a wider, secret war against the nonconventional weapons ambitions of Syria and North Korea which, along with Iran, appears to have been forging a new “axis of evil”.

The operation was personally directed by Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, who is said to have been largely preoccupied with it since taking up his post on June 18.

It was the ideal mission for Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier and legendary former commander of the Sayeret Matkal, which shares the motto “Who Dares Wins” with Britain’s SAS and specialises in intelligence-gathering deep behind enemy lines.

President Bush refused to comment on the air attack last week, but warned North Korea that “the exportation of information and/or materials” could jeopard-ise plans to give North Korea food aid, fuel and diplomatic recognition in exchange for ending its nuclear programmes.

Diplomats in North Korea and China said they believed a number of North Koreans were killed in the raid, noting that ballistic missile technicians and military scientists had been working for some time with the Syrians.

A senior Syrian official, Sayeed Elias Daoud, director of the Syrian Arab Ba’ath party, flew to North Korea via Beijing last Thursday, reinforcing the belief among foreign diplomats that the two nations are coordinating their response to the Israeli strike.

The growing assumption that North Korea suffered direct casualties in the raid appears to be based largely on the regime’s unusually strident propaganda on an issue far from home. But there were also indications of conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials and intelligence reports reaching Asian governments that supported the same conclusion, diplomats said.

Jane’s Defence Weekly reported last week that dozens of Iranian engineers and Syrians were killed in July attempting to load a chemical warhead containing mustard gas onto a Scud missile. The Scuds and warheads are of North Korean design and possibly manufacture, and there are recent reports that North Koreans were helping the Syrians to attach airburst chemical weapons to warheads.

Yesterday, while Israelis were observing Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the military was on high alert after Syria promised to retaliate for the September 6 raid. An Israeli intelligence expert said: “Syria has retaliated in the past for much smaller humiliations, but they will choose the place, the time and the target.”

Critics of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, believe he has shown poor judgment since succeeding his father Hafez, Syria’s long-time dictator, in 2000. According to David Schenker, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he has provoked the enmity of almost all Syria’s neighbours and turned his country into a “client” of Iran.

Barak’s return to government after making a fortune in private business was critical to the Israeli operation. Military experts believe it could not have taken place under Amir Peretz, the defence minister who was forced from the post after last year’s ill-fated war in Lebanon. “Barak gave Olmert the confidence needed for such a dangerous operation,” said one insider.

The unusual silence about the airstrikes amazed Israelis, who are used to talkative politicians. But it did not surprise the defence community. “Most Israeli special operations remain unknown,” said a defence source.

When Menachem Begin, then Israeli prime minister, broke the news of the 1981 Osirak raid, he was accused of trying to help his Likud party’s prospects in forthcoming elections.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads Likud today, faced similar criticism last week when he ignored the news blackout, revealed that he had backed the decision to strike and said he had congratulated Olmert. “I was a partner from the start,” he claimed.

But details of the raid are still tantalisingly incomplete. Some analysts in America are perplexed by photographs of a fuel tank said to have been dropped from an Israeli jet on its return journey over Turkey. It appears to be relatively undamaged. Could it have been planted to sow confusion about the route taken by the Israeli F-15I pilots?

More importantly, questions remain about the precise nature of the material seized and about Syria’s intentions. Was Syria hiding North Korean nuclear equipment while Pyongyang prepared for six-party talks aimed at securing an end to its nuclear weapons programme in return for security guarantees and aid? Did Syria want to arm its own Scuds with a nuclear device?

Or could the material have been destined for Iran as John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has suggested? And just how deep is Syrian and North Korean nuclear cooperation anyway?

China abruptly postponed a session of the nuclear disarmament talks last week because it feared America might confront the North Koreans over their weapons deals with Syria, according to sources close to the Chinese foreign ministry. Negotiations have been rescheduled for this Thursday in Beijing after assurances were given that all sides wished them to be “constructive”.

Christopher Hill, the US State Department negotiator, is said to have persuaded the White House that the talks offered a realistic chance to accomplish a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-1953 Korean war, in which more than 50,000 Americans died. A peace deal of that magnitude would be a coup for Bush – but only if the North Koreans genuinely abandon their nuclear programmes.

The outlines of a long-term arms relationship between the North Koreans and the Syrians are now being reexamined by intelligence experts in several capitals. Diplomats in Pyongyang have said they believe reports that about a dozen Syrian technicians were killed in a massive explosion and railway crash in North Korea on April 22, 2004.

Teams of military personnel wearing protective suits were seen removing debris from the section of the train in which the Syrians were travelling, according to a report quoting military sources that appeared in a Japanese newspaper. Their bodies were flown home by a Syrian military cargo plane that was spotted shortly after the explosion at Pyongyang airport.

In December last year, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Seyassah quoted European intelligence sources in Brussels as saying that Syria was engaged in an advanced nuclear programme in its northeastern province.

Most diplomats and experts dismiss the idea that Syria could master the technical and industrial knowhow to make its own nuclear devices. The vital question is whether North Korea could have transferred some of its estimated 55 kilos of weapons-grade plutonium to Syria. Six to eight kilos are enough for one rudimentary bomb.

“If it is proved that Kim Jong-il sold fissile material to Syria in breach of every red line the Americans have drawn for him, what does that mean?” asked one official. The results of tests on whatever the Israelis may have seized from the Syrian site could therefore be of enormous significance.

The Israeli army has so far declined to comment on the attack. However, several days afterwards, at a gathering marking the Jewish new year, the commander-in-chief of the Israeli military shook hands with and congratulated his generals. The scene was broadcast on Israeli television. After the fiasco in Lebanon last year, it was regarded as a sign that “we’re back in business, guys”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2512105.ece

Who needs friends like this?

2007-07-31T00:46:00.000-07:00

Hey, here's an idea. Purchase the rights to some land bases for our troops to remain strategic, and leave these Iraqi turds to their civil war. US foreign policy needs to wake up!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20043428/

By Aram Roston and Lisa Myers
NBC News Investigative Unit
Updated: 8:56 p.m. ET July 30, 2007

Desperate shortages of drugs and medical supplies in Baghdad's overcrowded hospitals are confronting the victims of violence. But the shortages are not because of a lack of money.

Medicines and supplies have been siphoned off and sold elsewhere because of corruption in the Iraqi government's Ministry of Health, according to a draft U.S. government report obtained by NBC News.

The report, written by U.S. advisers to Iraq's anti-corruption agency, analyzes corruption in 12 ministries and finds devastating and grim problems: "Corruption protected by senior members of the Iraqi government," the report said, "remains untouchable."

Should be required reading

2007-07-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/news/finalSalute/

Rocky Mountain News reporter Jim Sheeler and photographer Todd Heisler spent the past year with the Marines stationed at Aurora's Buckley Air Force Base who have found themselves called upon to notify families of the deaths of their sons in Iraq. In each case in this story, the families agreed to let Sheeler and Heisler chronicle their loss and grief. They wanted people to know their sons, the men and women who brought them home, and the bond of traditions more than 200 years old that unite them.

Maj. Doug Zembiec

2007-07-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

LEST WE FORGET

By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 17, 2007; B01

The turnout seemed entirely fitting for a Marine who was described -- with little apparent hyperbole -- as the toughest guy in the house. More
than 1,000 mourners, from generals to civilians, packed the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis yesterday to honor Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec, who was killed last week outside Baghdad.

Five hours later, after the sound of taps had faded over his coffin at Arlington National Cemetery, came what Zembiec, 34, might have considered the finest tribute of all.

About 40 enlisted men gathered under a tree, telling stories about their
former commander. Some had flown in from as far away as California, prompting one officer to observe: Your men have to follow your orders;
they don't have to go to your funeral.

The men knew firsthand how Zembiec, who lived outside Annapolis, had come to be known as the Lion of Fallujah.

The story is one of their favorites. It was 2004, in the Jolan district of Fallujah, and Zembiec was a captain. They were on a rooftop, taking fire from AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. They tried to radio an Abrams tank below to open fire in the direction of the enemy. No good.

Zembiec raced down the stairs and out to the street and climbed onto the
tank. Gunnery Sgt. Pedro Marrufo, 29, who watched from the rooftop, remembers Zembiec getting a Marine inside the tank to open the hatch.
Insurgents shot at Zembiec as he instructed the men in the tank where to
fire.

Cpl. Chad Borgmann, 28, who went to Zembiec's funeral from Camp Pendleton, Calif., said yesterday that boarding tanks during firefights
and similar actions is typically the work of enlisted men. If a lance corporal falls, there are 40 to take his place. But there are fewer captains, Borgmann said, and fewer still who always seemed to be out in front.

"He let us know it was his privilege to lead us," Borgmann said, walking
back to a car through the graves of Arlington before heading out to meet
up with his Marine buddies at the Clarendon Grill.

Zembiec, born in Hawaii, the son of an FBI agent, was a two-time all-American wrestler at the Naval Academy before graduating in 1995. His most recent U.S. posting was in Arlington.

For years, Zembiec had drawn the attention of Marines and journalists alike. He served in Kosovo and was on his fourth tour in Iraq, said Col. John Ripley, a retired Marine and close friend. His numerous military honors included a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

Through it all, he remained an unabashed warrior. "A terrific day. We just whacked two [insurgents] running down an alley with AK-47s," he told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 2004. Of the 168-member unit he commanded, about one-third suffered casualties.

"From Day One, I've told [my troops] that killing is not wrong if it's for a purpose, if it's to keep your nation free or protect your buddy," he told the Times. "One of the most noble things you can do is kill the enemy."

Mourners heard a sampling of Zembiec's sentiments yesterday. "Never forget those that were killed," he once wrote. "And never let rest those that killed them."

As many as 15 generals filed into the pews of the historic chapel, with its cavernous ceiling and towering windows exposing blue skies. Other men, in suits, with the bearing of retired military officers, stood straight with clutched fists at their sides while quietly singing the Marines' Hymn. Many others appeared to be Zembiec's peers, 30-something couples, men with the close-cropped hair of Marines, and some of the women pregnant.

Mourners heard about Zembiec's family life. His wife of two years, Pamela, and their 1-year-old daughter, Fallyn, sat up front.

"Become the greatest husband and father ever," Zembiec had written in a
note to himself.

The Marine had compiled such axioms and exhortations in notebooks, xcerpts of which were read aloud by a close friend, Eric L. Kapitulik, who also recounted this story:

While Zembiec was stationed at Camp Pendleton after the Fallujah campaign, his parents visited. Zembiec and his father, Don, drove onto the base to shoot skeet and were stopped at the gate by a young Marine. Are you Captain Zembiec's father? the Marine asked. Yes, his father said.

"I was with your son in Fallujah," the Marine said. "He was my company commander. If we had to go back in there, I would follow him with a spoon."

Kapitulik read heavily from Zembiec's notebooks. One of the quotes was particularly long, amounting to what Kapitulik said was a summary of
Zembiec himself.

"Be a man of principle. Fight for what you believe in. Keep your word. Live with integrity. Be brave. Believe in something bigger than yourself. Serve your country.

"Teach. Mentor. Give something back to society. Lead from the front. Conquer your fears. Be a good friend. Be humble and be self-confident.

"Appreciate your friends and family. Be a leader and not a follower. Be valorous on the field of battle. And take responsibility for your actions."

Kapitulik said the creed came from the man who knew Zembiec the longest,
as indicated by the major's written description: "Principles my father taught me."
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Iran is Killing Americans

2007-07-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Educate yourself.

http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/06/targeting_the_irania.php

Feel Safer?

2007-07-17T07:05:00.001-07:00

In post 9/11 how does this make YOU feel? It makes me angry.

Undercover congressional investigators posing as West Virginia businessmen obtained a license with almost no scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that enabled them to buy enough radioactive material from U.S. suppliers to build a "dirty bomb," a new government report says.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071101895.html?hpid=topnews

Brian Massey

2007-05-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

A new friend, Brian Massey perished in a fall from the west rib of Denali.

R.I.P. Brian, many fine summits ahead, dark days past.

A full news story can be read here:

http://www.adn.com/front/story/8896317p-8796351c.html

The Praetorian

2007-05-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

Together, you and I, we've fought the war, lived in the war, become the war, sacrificed for the war.

Tell me. Show me. Where can we hide from the war?

What memory will we will pull from these days to refresh ourselves, to cauterize our wounds? Will we talk of the fine spring days we spent, what fine spring days would those be? Our scrapbooks filled with days small among years. A sprinkling of sunshine in the mists, the light of tomorrow always dim. We walk on unsteady footing, always one step behind. Our faith strong, but I can hear it in our voices, a weariness setting in.

The days are only numbers now. The mechanisms we use to sustain ourselves, words, thoughts, ideas. I have said them, I have heard them. Like the ancient Romans our politicians argue ceaselessly, while the republic falters. The Legions sent far from home, suffering while the masses take little notice. Where will our Thermopylae take place? What distant shore will our hero's be forgotten from?

You and I, we have fought together, and you have been brave. I see this now. Home. You keep it in my memory, for our son, and I wait under the sun of a distant place to return to you.

My friend, my wife. I think of you always, but the war...

Mike "Mac" McInnis

2007-03-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

Mike passed away a few weeks ago in Cyprus, where he was working for a television crew that was doing work in high threat areas around the world. Mike was a former Navy SEAL, an ardent student of Brazilian Jui Jitsu, and generally a fun guy to be around. I met Mike working on the Bremer detail in 2004, crossed paths in Moyock again in 2004, and corresponded with him on occassion. In his last email he had written about streaking through the Parthenon in Greece wearing a Toga made from a hotel bedsheet and the police chasing him around Athens. He was a wild man, and I won't ever forget him. He joins a long list of good men taken by the wars abroad.

Rest in peace Mike. We'll meet again across the dark waters.

Home again

2007-02-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

72 hours.

I'm like a transient, but I've mastered the artform of transitioning between worlds. So far, 2 kickboxing workouts, and 2 weak mountainbike rides. The new Nomad is actually a bit different from the Enduro, but seems OK. My 1st impression is that it is not as good as the Enduro, but time will tell. It's a gorgeous bike, solid. The crux is mainly getting used to the geometry, and the stiffness. MisterX suggested that it was tire pressure that was deflecting the rear end, but I have enough riding to know it's the stiffness of the frame. It was tossing me around quite a bit, where the Enduros softer metal absorbed the shock. Also the standover is significantly higher, and the cockpit feels like it wants to throw me up high over the front tire.

Number 11 and I had to curtail the training the last week I was in Afghanistan, and combined with all the new guys I was training, our training tempo fell off quite a bit. Now that I am home though it looks like former PKA champion Dave Kakea and I are going to start training so I am planning on getting my bell rung pretty soundly.

Spent a few hours arguing the war online with amateurs, but quickly grew bored of that. I just don't think some people get it. They never will. Particularly the libspeak Canadians.

That's about it for now. I find my enthusiasm for so many things dwindled by familiarity. The juice used to be in new places, new faces, new challenges, but hitting the same things close to home is just getting too tedious. And the winds of change are upon us. Construction, new jobs, kids, time. It all seems to contrive to take away those silent places I sought previously. We are going to seek a greener pasture. Somewhere new, where we can settle down. The gloom and hustle of western Washington has become the new California. The developers won't be content until they put a new church on every square inch of forest, like we need another place to numb the masses, or a new stretch of pavement. There has to be someplace left.

A Long Pause to Remember You By

2007-01-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

When we raise a glass and toast "absent friends," the pause to remember gets longer and longer.

Ronald "Catdaddy" Johnson
Former Grenada Ranger, Task Force 160 pilot, Purple Heart recipient, retired Warrant Officer, "Assmonkey Aviation veteran", my good friend. A modern Viking, a modern warrior. Look for me when I take my place in the hall brother, we will raise our glass together, and fight again in the morning.

The State of Disunion

2007-01-23T23:43:00.000-08:00

I don't really have much to say right now. Truth is, the days of my window of candor into your world is closing fast.

Mjollnir and I lost several near and dear friends today in Baghdad. Some of the best guys I've ever known. To us, me, these issues are not debates. This is our lives, this is the world we live and exist in. Nothing that is ever argued on a website or on the news will ever be anything other than a mosquito buzzing around my ears, and occasionally annoying enough to swat at. Everytime one of us crosses the black river of loss, we lose a brother, and I feel guilty for being left behind.

My generations band of brothers is slowly closing ranks, and circling around ourselves, as our collective experiences begin to transcend the 4 years that the average man has sat by, done nothing, felt nothing, argued semantics. Our reality has altered. This is the modern world, supposedly connected, but entirely disconnected. Numbed by a false reality. It was then, and continues to be, the man in the arena who counts. I count myself fortunate to be among that small brotherhood.

Like our brothers in Vietnam we stand on the precipice of betrayal. The lazy, obscene, and entitled begin to disenfranchise the warriors who stood up and said "I will go". There is no draft, we are all volunteers, knowing our chosen profession, we went forward willingly. We sought only the support of those who cried "Forward" from the rear. We trusted those same voices would quell the voice of defeatism that has clung tenaciously to the American pysche since the days of L.B.J.

I can let you know, that we begin to feel increasingly isolated. We sense the betrayal that the politicians lay at our feet, and we feel we will be sacrificed for their failings. Our kids and grandchildren will pay the price for their cowardice.

We speak openly among ourselves about the weakness of the American people, who so eagerly opened Pandoras box, and then frightened by the ghosts that came out, have done nothing but try and close it again. Or who stand silently by, like the silent majority did during Vietnam, and let the minority dictate the future.

No foreign enemy has ever defeated the modern American military, instead it will be the very institutions we swore to uphold that will crumple like a nameless, faceless coward in the face of a threat which is growing everyday and will seek the most vile ways to continue to propogate this war unless we soundly thrash and defeat them on their own doorstep. I would desire to continue to take the fight to enemy, learn from the mistakes, move past the Bush/Rumsfeld doctrine and into "Common Sense" doctrine. Common military sense means we will have to go one step past, and widen the war, finally punish the government who so loudly proclaims itself the protaganist against which we will have to eventually fight. They are pincered, and in the game of Risk we hold the high ground, the intitiative, and we can command the element of surprise.

The Soviet Union was months away from total victory in Afghanistan, and lost the initiative due to two events. The destruction of the large munitions cache outside of Kabul, and the downing of three MI-24 helicopters out of the airfield in Jalalabad. They could have regained it by sending in more conditioned firstline combat troops and adjusting their tactics, but they were encumbered by the weight of their own disbelief that they could lose. If they had crossed the frontier into Pakistan they would have crippled the insurgency, and sent a strong message that they were willing to risk total war for victory. The western powers no doubt would have capitulated to avoid WW3.

In Vietnam, the US had effectively destroyed the Viet Cong during the Tet offensive. The US military had also soundly defeated the North Vietnamese Army, leaving them gutted and useless. If the American people had left their yellow streak behind, and picked up the banner of victory, we would have ended that war on a totally different note.

I am not talking about cutting and running. Those of us on the wall seek victory, and we are willing to risk escalation if we know we will be given the tools to annihilate our foe and humilate his satellites. We have families at home, and we know the risks more than most. We know what we leave behind, and that we may never see the light of it again. But we have a heritage, that is greater than us as individuals, and our sense of self preservation must remain subordinate to the love we feel for those back home. If not us who will stand up? Would I let my son fight the battle I was too much of a coward to fight? Will my grandson live in a country emasculated by my generations failing? Will I forget the friends who have crossed the dark river, will I turn my back on them also?

The Black River

2007-01-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

Today I lost another friend in Iraq. I can't say his name right now, because I don't know if the next of kin were notified. I can only say he was a great guy to be around. My memories of him are of his sense of humor, his smile, his laughter. He was a straight shooter, always keen, always alert. He flew me under the crossed swords in a sort of farewell. Losing someone is a slow process. It takes time to comprehend that the event is real, and that you can't just send an email to get a response. In some ways you never accept it.

Rest in Peace my friend. Many have crossed the black river of loss, and they wait for you there. We will meet again. We will remember and honor you in the years to come.

Goodbye America

2007-01-15T22:52:00.000-08:00

I am not sure who wrote this, but I feel it is important to begin to educate yourself on this issue.

Goodbye America!*

*FOR THOSE OF YOU ON THE "CONSERVATIVE" SIDE OF THE FENCE, READ THIS AND
LEARN TO UNDERSTAND YOUR FEELINGS BETTER THAN EVER.*

*FOR THOSE OF YOU NOT ON THE "CONSERVATIVE" SIDE OF THE FENCE, READ AND
LEARN FROM A FORMER DEMOCRATIC GOVENOR.*

*Please take the time to read this; it ought to scare the pants off you!

We know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context
his thoughts are particularly poignant. Last week there was an
immigration overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to
capacity by many of America's finest minds and leaders. A brilliant
college professor by the name of Victor Hansen Davis talked about his
latest book, "Mexifornia," explaining how immigration - both legal and
illegal was destroying the entire state of California . He said it would
march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American
Dream.

*

*Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and
gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America . The audience sat
spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the
United States . He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too
self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that
hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time.
Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and
that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit
suicide.'"

*

*"Here is how they do it," Lamm said: "First, to destroy America , turn
America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country."
History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and
antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a
blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a
society to be bilingual. The historical scholar, Seymour Lipset, put it
this way: "The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do
not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy." Canada,
Belgium, Malaysia, and Lebanon all face crises of national existence in
which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and
Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France
faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.".

*

Lamm went on: Second, to destroy America , "Invent 'multiculturalism'
and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an
article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no
cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black
and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely to prejudice and
discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.*

*Third, "We could make the United States an 'Hispanic Quebec' without
much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As
Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: "The apparent
success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have
been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance
that once dictated ethnocentricity and what it meant to be an American,
we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together." Lamm
said, "I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and
culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl
metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural
subgroups living in America enforcing their differences rather than as
Americans, empha sizing their similarities."

*
*"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least
educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated,
and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass
have a 50% dropout rate from high school."*

*"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations
and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in
ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.' I
would get all minorities to think that their lack of success was the
fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all
minority failure on the majority population."*

*"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship,
and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I
would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people
worldwide! are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they
are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is
against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes
to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks
believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common
language and literature; and they worshipped the same gods. All Greece
took part in the Olympic games. A common enemy, Persia , threatened
their liberty. Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to overcome
two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured
political divisions. Greece fell. "E. Pluribus Unum" --*
*From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on
the 'pluribus' instead of the 'Unum,' we will balkanize America as
surely as Kosovo."*

*"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits; make it taboo to
talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word
similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion ! and
paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'xenophobe' halt discussion
and debate. Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having
established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the
doctrine of 'Victimology,' I would next make it impossible to enforce
our immigration laws I would develop a mantra: That because immigration
has been good for America , it must always be good. I would make every
individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of
millions of them."*

*In the last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow.
Profound silence followed. Finally he said, "Lastly, I would censor
Victor Hanson Davis's book "Mexifornia." His book is dangerous. It
exposes the plan to destroy America . If you feel America deserves to be
destroyed, don't read that book."*

*There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous
cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that
room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically,
quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today.?
Discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the
foundation of our educational system and national cohesiveness. Even
barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as
we celebrate 'diversity.' American jobs are vanishing into the Third
World as corporations create a Third World in America - take note of
California and other states - to date, ten million illegal aliens and
growing fast. It is reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." In that
story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building:?
"War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."*

*Governor Lamm walked back to his seat. It dawned on everyone at the
conference that our nation and the future of this great democracy is
deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don't get this immigration
monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California
wildfire and destroy everything in its path, especially/The American
Dream/**.

If you care for and love our country as I do, take the time to pass this
on just as I did for you. Trust me, NOTHING is going to happen if ! you
don't!*

Life Without Trivial Moments

2007-01-09T03:44:00.000-08:00

War plans are drafted and improvised all the time. Israel has certainly demonstrated in the past that it is willing to engage in regional warfare over the nuclear issue. Iraq's nuclear facilities were wrecked in a raid over two decades ago. I flew over that area in 2004, and the damage was evident.

Israel has had this plan, or a similar one since the Iranians began developing their baseline facilities. There is no question about that whatsoever. The question you need to ask yourself is WHY is this information being leaked to the press now?

Furthermore, there is obviously growing evidence, which cannot be ignored by even the most liberal of persons. That there is a sense of global entitlement among the Islamic faithful, that they can come into ANY country, ANY region, and because of the openness of these western societies, they try and strong-arm their way into a dominant position. They lie, manipulate, cheat, riot, and yes MURDER, to get their way. The evidence is in the news everyday. France, riots. Holland, murders. Why are we not taking this aggression more seriously? Because the average Joe hasn't been dealt the bad cards yet. I come home to a country that is in denial about the state of the world. The average person on the street knows so little about the world just past their nose, it's sad and it leads to a weakened society. These blissful ignorant think they can shake a magic wand, wish the world into a better place, yet never raise a hand to make it better. They believe that being informed through news sources can vindicate their rhetoric they spew on chat rooms and in Starbucks. This is the level of their commitment to one side or the other. Whether that is democratic or republican, the red seems to be more action oriented as witnessed by the millions who have stood up, raised a hand, and gone towards a modern event, which I would define as greater understanding through proximity to the events themselves.

If the Democrats were truly invested they would be working a consistent civic program over in Iraq or Afghanistan to try and install strong infrastructure. They would be coming in blue waves in the same manner that the red boys from the Southland, the Midwest, and sunny California flock to recruiting stations. The Peace Corps would be waving its freak flag high over Ramadi, over Palestine, over Somalia. However, no they don't, those are red boys over there for the most part, risking it all.

Meanwhile. The majorities of educated stuffy blues sits back, and watch the news. Criticizing every nuance of the world they know through proxy, or through rumor. Or they tuned it out, they think music or a strong wish for peace, or poetry is the saving grace. It's not pragmatic, it's isolationist on a personal level. Their mindset fed to them by proactively submissive journalism that went out of vogue in the turbulent sixties. There are things worth fighting and dying for. The paradigm of counter culture journalism is dead. Rise again, and inspire us with Nationalism and pride in what our nation has accomplished. Honor our friends by treating them as equals and not as subjects in our empire of Capitalism.

What we understand is that you have to be in the game to win it, whatever your beliefs. Despite what the many air thieves in D.C. and throughout the nation believe, we serve a higher purpose. What I mean is we serve the national interest, as we understand it through our day-to-day dealings, and not the petty interests of partisan politics. We honor those who have stood before us and refused to lie down. We honor our grandfathers and our fathers, and remember the sorrows of those left behind.

The question needs to be asked, how far does a diverse and tolerant society engage these cultures before enough is enough? Mexico, with your continual pushing and prodding, how long must we carry you before you bring us down to your level?

The Pelosis, the Clintons, and the Kennedy's of the world, with their view from up high in the white palace fail to take into consideration the little man down on the border whose livelihood is being swallowed by their greed and inattention to detail.

Chavez? You want to set yourself up as a virtual fiefdom in opposition, and then let us all be willing to give him his come-uppance. You are a dog who barks from afar and lies down at the stranger’s feet when he understands that loud noises will not dissuade a strong man from his purpose.

For every one of us in the US today, there is an opposite who wants nothing to do with the world at all. And one more who feels the opposite entirely. Remember that the enemy resides within as well as from the outside. Apathy, extremism, denial, angst, sedition, all exists within the borders of what you hold most dear. We are not like the fading dinosaur, there are many out there just like us, and they remain true to their words, their upbringing, and their beliefs.

The United States should be defending itself and it's interests on a much broader plane. The current situation is contained conflict, but it is clearly spreading, and if the liberals and yellow democrats would quit whining we could take it all the way.

People cringe today when citing casualty figures. Today 3000. More good Americans than 9/11. I empathize with those who have experienced loss in this war, but let's not forget that we did not start it. Maybe bad foreign policy contributed to it, but we did not systematically draft up plans and resources to commit what amounts to a well orchestrated military strike, by trained and idealistic soldiers for a cause. Remember that we have had the capability for over 50 years to dominate the world militarily or through nuclear means, yet we do NOT.

Remember too that on one island, in one stepping stone, in a matter of a few short weeks on Iwo Jima 7000 marines lost their lives, and that shortly thereafter over 12,000 Marines lost their lives on Okinawa in 2 months. What if in that time period we had the gutless disease that we have now permeating our society? The sick minded selfishness, which drives men to be blind in the face of aggression. Will this be our legacy to our children and our grandchildren?

I believe this is as much a battle for the soul of our nation, as it is a clash between ideologies. I understand that a man all the way across the world is entitled to believe differently, and I do not pretend that our way of capitalism is always the best way. I have seen medieval villages, unchanged by time, and I tell you it was like a vision of something beautiful. It echoed peace, and the green terraced fields, and the children running among the yellow flowers was enough to take your breath away as we rolled through with our armor and our weapons. I was glad to be gone quickly, so we did contaminate their pristine world. It is not these people we fight. It never should be.

I do believe we have lost our way, but capitulation is not the way to find our destiny again. Our destiny will involve letting go of the belief that we are in any way superior because we have the most technology or the fastest cars, or the a life of ease free from toil is my birthright. These things will not make us great. Our willingness to share, while maintaining a strong national identity and security, will characterize our generation as at least being equal to the great Americans who have proceeded us into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. What nation would wage war against us if we brought medicine enough to cure disease? What shaman would speak against us if we free his children from starvation, and give them the ability to raise their own afterwards? We can build monuments that rise towards the sky and defy gravity and God, but we cannot provide for human beings?

We want to be viewed as conquerors and liberators, albeit in a modern sense, but we have to act the part, and we have not done so in the classic fashion. Technology might have changed, but what is in men’s hearts remains as true today as during the Roman and Greek eras. Win the population, give them hope and freedom, work and prosperity, and they will do the rest themselves.

Hike

2006-11-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

Joy

2006-11-20T21:01:00.000-08:00

Let me just say it loud for all to hear. Korin and I both agree that Apple Macintosh has been a breath of fresh air in a world of stale PC smog. You turn it on, and POOF! like computer magic there it is. Total bootup time from push of button to being able to open an application is about 6-7 SECONDS.

With our old PC's, you would turn it on, go make coffee, put in a couple fo waffles for Cole, pour your coffee, stir in some creamer, walk back to the office, and the HP would just ABOUT be ready to go. The graphics are incredible, all the devices simply just work. There is no device driver this, install this patch, goobly-gook, yakity-yack. The software that came with the machine is so far all top-notch, and the .mac online architecture is great. My battery lasts for about 8 hours playing music, and I overall I have zero complaints. My laptop is razor thin, weighs nothing, has one cable. Excellent for travelling.

Well, in case you are wondering, Vaultedsky is hibernating for now. I am working some other online projects devoted to outdoor pursuits, and my emotional ties to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq are becoming less and less prevelant, as I begin to mentally distance myself from the damage that our bloated, inept politicians have caused. Just trying to make the best of all situations as always.

Cheers

T34 graveyard

2006-10-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

This is a frontal view of a scrapped T34 located on the Shomali plain of Afghanistan. A famous tank, a famous location. Now nothing more than a rusted hulk which serves as reminder of failed expeditions to this country known for its failed military expeditions. Will we escape the fate of the British and Russians? Or will we go down as just another imperial power who failed to win the hearts of the people? Who can say.

2 years

2006-10-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

VaultedSky blog is 2 years old this month.

I started this blog after I let http://vaultedsky.com expire, a project I never firmly started. I was in Chesapeake, Virginia living in a corporate apartment when I made my first entry here. That first entry entitled, "An Afternoon on the Tigris", was written in Baghdad in the fall of 2003. At the time I spent most everyday patrolling on the edge of the "Green Zone", and this story was about my early experiences in Iraq.

Anyway, I am not even sure if anyone reads this blog, and I have began to work on other writing projects including a blogged revision of Alpinelite, my former climbing/adventure website. If you are wondering why the post count on this blog has dropped then that would be your answer. Feel free to leave a comment if you are interested in knowing the link to alpinelite. That website is more for myself anyway.

Mary Oliver: In Blackwater Woods

2006-09-05T00:33:00.000-07:00

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

-- Mary Oliver

Comments Allowed

2006-08-06T21:14:00.000-07:00

I changed some settings to allow comments once again. I briefly started experiencing some spam-bots so I shut comments down for a long time. Feel free to add a thought if you choose. There will be a delay before your comments show up as I have chosen a moderated style.

Thanks

A Prelude to Fidelity

2006-08-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Four years ago I was stumbling through a dream that had gone awry. I wanted to live in the mountains, climb them, ski them, overnight in them, and I was. The days spent in spring sunshine on a ski slope are like sparkling diamonds in my memory. The grey, blue winters shuffling through deep snow are like remnants of a dream come true. The sound and sensations of a life less travelled, and grounded in harmony remain with me as a chance taken and reward bestowed. Somehow though it all felt wrong. The climbing and skiing felt great, but the direction it was taking me in was going nowhere fast. I felt adrift, without real direction. The circumstances that had led me to this place were not satisfactory, and I was feeling the pull of more normal pursuits. Job was not high on that list; however relationship, family, home were beginning to intrude into the fortress of solitude that I had been living.

Ghosts from the past haunted me that spring as I returned to real work for the first time in 15 months. Faces from a yesterday I had thought long gone flitted around like the wraiths of a life never obtainable, and left me deeply troubled inside. I finally left the solitude of my mountain condo when the spring snow finally hardened and became unskiable. Those last few days booting steps up the snow I had trod for 7 straight months felt like an inevitable changing of the guard. Spring had sprung in many ways, and I retreated to the warm valleys at the mountains feet to regroup.

In a software lab I found the trap has sprung. I was confined once again in a world which wounds a man deeply. For many months I had wandered the boreal forests like a wild animal. Listened to the song of the cold winter creek as I hopped across it's exposed rocks and scrambled up the steep banks of snow. In long periods of silence I had listened only to the sound of my mind as it digested the soft sounds of wilderness lost in a long winter. The blanche' world of ice and snow, the joy of warm coffee, and pillows of soft powder replaced by toil in the digital bitmine. A factory of dull personalities who I shared no joy with. I sunk into the contract like a convict sinks into a long prison sentence. Try as I might I could not muster the work ethic to make this place work for me. Thoughts of ski patrolling, fighting summer forest fires, and guiding icy mountains could not be lightly shaken. Nor could the feeling that life was somehow offering me a crossroads. That fate would intervene to guide me on a path which has become the beauty that I know now. The world turned and I turned with it to face my tomorrow.

The Castle Moat

2006-07-31T09:16:00.000-07:00

Today I had one of the interpreters purchase an english language translation of the Qur'an for me to study. I feel that reading this book will provide more insight into these people, these cultures, and these lands. This is a valuable way to pass my time, and I feel the rewards will be great. Closing yourself off to other ideas, cultures, and histories leads to misunderstanding, which leads to fear, which in turn leads to anger, which leads to hatred. All you have to do is look around the world today to see evidence of this. I have felt the anger myself, and I struggle to remain upright. However, it is hard to ignore the fact that many of these people here are good people worthy of respect. Their hearts are in the right place, and they believe much the same way we do. They believe that we are all children of one God, and that we are simply tribes with different histories. I was told this by an older Muslim man, which was a pleasant surprise to hear. He told me one day that the communists sent him away to work in the east when he was younger, and that he rarely saw his family, and children for NINE years. He did not choose that path. It was imposed on him, and he accepted it stoicly. In these parts of the world people are not often given choice. In my country of birth, people feel that the freedom to choose is their birthright, and the freedom they experience is the result of luck. Our shores are sheltered, and many of our people have grown soft. It is sometimes hard for me to reconcile the excesses I see at home, with the lack of basics I see around certain parts of the world. I have seen sick children in village after village with no hope. I have seen mutilated men reduced to begging to survive. I have seen insanity unmasked and in the open for all to see. There is such little pity, but there is always a handout. The way of the world is difficult to get your mind around, and judging it by our own standards is absolutely futile. You have to see the world through others eyes to understand, and even then you are only an outsider. One thing I feel more and more as I grow older is compassion. A trait in my younger days could only be viewed as weakness. The world was black and white, then gray, and now finally colors I feel. I feel them inside, and the color of compassion is vibrant and alive. Hatred and anger is black, sullen, and dismal. There is wisdom to be learned, there is light to walk in, there are other colors to know. I turn on MTV and I am depressed by what I see. Our lesson to our children is that it is better to burn out than to fade away. I'm not buying into it. It's all like white noise crashing into my ears, distracting my mind from more important songs. Like the song of a baby, the song of a loving wife, the symphony of the wind and rain. Is there any song more important than those? I think not. I will continue to be on guard against the things which bring nothing but disappointment.

Happy

2006-07-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

I forgot I wanted to write about two things. One was that when I was jumping off the high dive I kept thinking about how I would throw baby Cole into the "Foof" or bean bag and how much he loved it. He would land on all fours, laugh, wiggle off the top, and back up again into me so I could pick him up for another toss in the "Foof". When I was jumping into the water from the diving board the other day I was kind of amused to realize I was doing the same thing. I would jump off, get all goofy happy, and then crawl out of the pool to do it again. It's a good feeling to realize just how much of a kid still lives inside yourself. Baby Cole has his foof and I have my splash.

The other thing was I spend hours sometimes just staring at pictures of Korin, Cole, and Hana. Or of home. Or watching little videos I have made. The other day I caught myself almost talking to the photos, like I was there or something. Sometimes when I come home after being gone, I catch Korin talking to Hana or her herself. I guess we all deal with loneliness, and seperation in our own ways. It makes me happy when I realize how much I love them. I am looking forward to the day when I come home, and we look at each other and say that this tough time is over. That I am done, and I am home for good. Then we will reach another level of happiness by being together without interruption, and I can throw Cole into his Foof and listen to his laughter.

50 times defeating boredom

2006-07-29T03:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we got a break from the agent trainees for the 1st time in 3 weeks. Normally we are a 16-18 hour a day ball of instruction and physical training. In the 100 degre heat this can sap your spirit. So yesterday I spent half the day just sitting in my room blocking out the camp outside my door, and the other half in the brand new pool. There is a ten foot high dive in the deep end, so I jumped off it FIFTY TIMES, swam a lap to the other end and repeated. One of the Kiwi's (New Zealander), a Maori tribesman, came by in the afternoon and called me a "Water Baby", meaning I love the water. Quite a compliment from a Maori. Well "Mate" I says, if I had a dirt jump bike here I would spent the majority of that time building doubles and tables and riding the bike around camp. So I guess the pool is my placebo. I agreed to take this gig, and admittedly it is the best of the contracts I have worked. However, it is the MOST BORING contract I have worked. I told my wife this is a retirement home for IC's. If I had a fast forward device I would crank that sucker up and get this place behind me for good. "Number 11" just taught me how to drive a CAT front end loader, so that's good I guess. And today we took a long spin around KMTC (Kabul Military Training Compound) with myself in the "Up-Gunner" slot behind an M2 .50 caliber machine gun. It's a lot like surfing. You stand up and brace yourself with the gun in the turret while the driver off roads over some serious terrain. You have to wear goggles and a piece of cloth over your nose and mouth to keep the dust out. Mostly it just felt HOT and inconvenient. I would rather lay around in my room in the AC. I must be getting old, or smarter, or just plain fed up. Maybe it's a combo of all three. Can't wait till May 2007. Whistler mountain, Korin, Cole, Hana, I belong to you all from May till September 07. I promise to never complain about a day of that summer.

Tonight, back to hot PT in the afternoon with the agent trainees. And tomorrow I start my exclusive block of instruction. Yippeee! 12 hours a day with these knobs all to myself. Insert Glock into mouth-Pull trigger.

The Terms of Psychic Warfare

2006-07-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

Never Changes the things I feel inside

Sit by a lake and cry

Like a shingle on a roof in a windstorm

Should I let loose and fly?

~Bob Mould

It's been a long time since I left my home in Colorado.

Almost 2 decades have past since my childhood, and memories linger with me from those days. I often find a deep melancholy there, to see that so much time has gone by, and to feel the many unsolved mysteries still haunting me. These are the scars that are left which never mend. Like the night I knew I would never be with my real father again. At three years old I can remember them taking me from him. A man I barely remember, yet torn apart from me. Now with a young son at home, I cannot comprehend. I could not comprehend then, and I cannot understand now. I can only take solace in the fact that it was not my fault. I vow I will not repeat the faults of the father. I fell far from the tree, and rolled away forever.

So many good memories, but what sad endings they became. Kraig Snyder, my brother, my friend, my mentor. What has become of you? I was told you are lost in the bottle, forever. Your child, only a distant memory for you now. What potential you had, what purpose. You were the best of my many friends, but how you have fallen. Never to rise again. I can do nothing for you. If I could, I would speak to you one last time through the haze of your drunken stupor, and remind you who you were when I knew you. During those days when we were younger, and we were inseperable. You have chosen your path and I have chosen mine. Goodbye my friend...goodbye.

Lisa, what has become of you? Does the blade still hover over your wrists, or have you found peace yet? I was too young and filled with life to share your pain when your father was dying, but I was there, and I remember the fallout. I pray your heart has mended and you have found peace in this life.

Tiahrt. I remember everything, and I looked for you for a decade. Memories like pure white shining light, but Melanie put up walls too high to climb. Our unhappy home lives were mysteries to us then, and now they are wounds to heal with time. With you there is closure and peace between us. Husker Du lyrics for you. "You can live at home".

Figured it out that I'd been wasting all my time

And time was eating at my soul

Now I find comfort only somewhere in my mind

Free to pursue another goal

Walk, walk away, keep on walking away

I can be fine,

I can be free

I can beautiful without you torturing me

Walk, walk away,

keep on walking away

Go

You can live at home now

You can live at home now

There is the taste of youth in those memories, and the beginnings of a life I have known. I am still confused by what it is I knew there. Was it happiness, or was it something else? And if it was happiness what was the source, and what was the catalyst? Time has stood still for me there. No new memories, no future. I loved growing up there. Warm summers by the lake, jumping from tree branches into the Poudre River, long winter walks in the silence of the frost. Like a ripple on the water it started there and spread slowly through my life. I feel it still. It is still there waiting for me to return.

The Palace of my Memories

2006-07-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

We've been standing in the 95-100 degree heat for the past 5 days. Standing there for 8 hours a day at the bottom of a dusty, hot, ravine cooking our brains. Coaching men to shoot pistols efficiently is dry tedious business.

The sky around us is light blue, and tinged with the dust that floats over the valley below. The entire land around us is the color of desert tan, and uniform in it's appearance. Hazy mountains surround us on all sides. This is Afghanistan as it has been since time began. Dustdevils rise into the sky, funneling up, and up, till they blow themselves out. Soon another appears to take it's place. I stand and stare up at the brown hillsides and imagine myself building trails and riding my mountain bike down them. I find myself withdrawn and disinterested in the whole process I am supposed to be facilitating.

To my right on the hill above me, the Italians are joyfully climbing the rock faces they have equipped. They are out here everyday, climbing, laughing, learning. I find myself growing more and more resentful of the juxtaposition between America and the rest of the world. Apparentally the only thing the Italians have to do here is bang pitons into the rock and climb, while I swelter in the heat, and babysit. Maybe they have it right, and we are simply the Crusaders that we have been accused of being. I guess this is what I get paid to do, and I am paid well for my time, but I can't help thinking that there has to be more to life than this. I know there is, I have been there, and I have seen it. However, for 7 or 8 months a year that dream is nothing more than that. A distant dream, so far away. I am tired. I am tired of this life, the travel, the people. Just about everything that has anything to do with my career. I can't wait to move on, and put all this in the past. Someday this will all just be a memory, and I wonder if I will remember these days with fondness, or simply as time gone by? I suspect the latter. I never missed the military, and I will probably never miss this either.

I miss the sound of my son rustling around in his crib in the morning, the sharp crack of him smacking his baby bottles into the wooden sides of his crib. The smell of fresh coffee, the sound of hissing steam from a teapot. Singing baby songs and watching Bob the Builder. Sesame Street, green mountains, cool air, soft carpet under my feet, the options of living life under freedom are so many. Would I ski this morning, or ride my bike, or hike a trail?

But these are dreams and options for another day. The war remains, intruding into my life like a bad dream that I can't wake up from. The war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the war on the insurgency, the list goes on and on. What is wrong with people? What has become of the life we never had the chance to envision? A pipe dream. The war machine rages, and now we hear rumor of another front in Israel, Lebanon, and possibly Syria. Some opine that this is the opening days of World War 3. It makes me weary to think of what that means. I envision hard days ahead. Maybe, just maybe they won't involve me. Maybe there is light at the end of my tunnel. Have I done enough? Have I done enough yet? Can I go home, and remain there forever? In "Band of Brothers" the captain is heard to pray to God after a viscous battle that if He will spare him he will go home to his farm, and live quietly in peace. All my life was the prospect of war before me. I dreamt of the glory of it as a boy, entertained myself with games of war, strategized with toy soldiers, suffered hardships designed to strengthen myself for it. The armor remains, but the insides have somehow turned their face away. On a hillside in the Cascades is adventure a-plenty. There seems little adventure here. What remains here is angst, aggravation, false motivation, lack of commonality with those around me. I am not better than them, I have evolved though. I want nothing more than to live on that farm, in quiet, in peace. I want to shield my family from the world around us. I guess that's why I am here...if not me...than who? Who will stand on the wall and stare into the face of the war machine. I think of the young men on Flanders Fields who died by the hundreds of thousands. Oh God, please don't let that become me.

Rudyard Kipling wrote eloquently about this dry and dusty land in his poem "The Young British Soldier"

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,

Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:

So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,

And wait for supports like a soldier.

Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Go, go, go like a soldier,

Go, go, go like a soldier,

Go, go, go like a soldier,

So-oldier of the Queen!

I return to my trailer in the afternoon, and burrow into the air conditioned sanctuary. In the later afternoon I will have to venture back out to conduct physical training. Last night was 800 pushups meted out over a 2 1/2 hour torture session designed to weed out non-hackers and traumatize those who think their will be stronger than mine. Mixed in between is a touch of propaganda and nationalism to touch the emotions and fire the spirit. I remember back to my drill sergeants. Those men of iron in the brown round, who's memories and lessons are forever imprinted in my soul. Names like Roynon, Nettles, Pearman. Almost two decades later their legacy resides here in Afghanistan. I have become them, and they are my fathers in a certain sense. Will these Afghan men look back someday and see my tutelage in their own words and actions? Who can say?

I sit here and pour over pictures of my son. I find myself lost in the memories of such a short time ago. Our ride to Leavenworth to visit Dan's chicken ranch. Our family afternoon at the zoo. Birthday cake facial masques. Languid afternoons by the inflatable pool in our backyard. My body aches with fatigue, my nose is thick with the dust that floats high in July. My mind is clear with memories of Korin, Cole, Hana...a better place, a better time, the palace of my memories. Of you and home.

July 1 in a strange land

2006-07-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

4 long days of travel...Seattle-Denver-D.C-Newark-Delhi, India-Kabul, Afghanistan. Thank God for 1st class. Tired, sore, sad, very sad. I miss my family, I miss my life at home.

2006-06-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

The tao of postholing. Picture taken by Sean Halling on the shoulder of Kendall Mountain, Snoqualmie Pass.

2006-06-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

A stylized version of our Freund Canyon photo.

2006-06-09T22:16:00.000-07:00

A happy little boy

2006-06-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

Close up.

2006-06-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

Dirt mustachio

2006-06-08T13:42:00.000-07:00

Stan's Overlook, Rattlesnake Ridge. Snoqualmie Valley below.

2006-05-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

Myself and Greg Wall prior to shuttling The RatPac. I had to bring out the big travel bike when my trailbike snapped in half on a flat landing after executing a 3 foot drop.

2006-05-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Mt Stuart. Crown Jewel of the north central Cascades.

2006-05-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

RatPac outside of Cle Elum is a stunted downhill trail. L-R Keith, Steve, Ray, Myself. Photo by Bryan Rybolt. That's Bryan's unmanly Honda car in the background.

2006-05-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

Baby Cole World

2006-05-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Still raining....still dreaming...

2006-05-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

Mother and son.

2006-05-20T22:44:00.000-07:00

Our small family at the zoo.

2006-05-20T22:43:00.000-07:00

Running in the Woodland Zoo family area.

2006-05-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

Cole's and my first visit ever to the Woodland Park Zoo. First visit for our family. A memorable time.

2006-05-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

Summer means pool time. Cole carries his fishing pole everywhere he goes.

2006-05-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Give me an "L"!

2006-05-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

Let me show you how these bubbles work dad.

2006-05-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

Greg Wall, Ray Borbon after riding up Ranger Creek. Halfway down Skookum flats for this photo. The rivers in Washington have been really high the past week and White River was no exception.

2006-05-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Ray Borbon and myself at the top of the Freund Canyon descent, Leavenworth area.

2006-05-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

Post hike machismo shot. Baby Cole brandishes his weapon while dad makes goofy faces at the camera.

2006-05-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

Reading regulations prior to hiking is very important. Baby Cole bones up on his knowledge at the 4th of July Creek trailhead. Leavenworth, Washington

2006-05-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

Cole giving the finger

2006-05-10T21:03:00.000-07:00

Excited trail traveler. With baby, 2 bottles, diapers, fish crackers, animal cookies, wet wipes, dad's water bottle, cell phone, keys this pack weighs 45 pounds. Now you know why baby is laughing!

2006-05-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Crazy Dan and his protege'. Is that hair painted on or real?

2006-05-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

Cole and the fighting rooster @ Cappellini's hacienda and chicken farm.

2006-05-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

Washing belly meat in the sink bath. Post birthday cake ho-down.

2006-05-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

Inaction Jackson

2006-05-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

Wearing dads big hat.

2006-05-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

Out of control

2006-05-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

Birthday Cake. Happy birthday son. 1 year old.

2006-03-31T02:30:00.000-08:00

ODA 362

2006-03-31T02:28:00.000-08:00

Leaving their mark on construction projects around the world. ODA 361.

2006-03-31T02:27:00.000-08:00

Goofy Afghan and pro-Tailban Farsi writing on bullet pockmarked wall, central Afghanistan.

2006-03-31T02:24:00.000-08:00

Tora Bora from Jalalabad. The Achin Valley area.

Paul Sweeney

2006-03-26T03:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.engine167ladder87.com/honorary.html

Paul Sweeney was a soldier in my squad while serving with the 2nd Infantry Division. Cpl Sweeney, as I knew him then, was one of my most respected team leaders. His attitude was always top notch, his performance was exemplary, and he always had a smile even at the worst moments. I remember he was the guy still sporting a fresh can of Copenhagen 3 weeks into a field exercise, but he never hesitated to share his private stash around. He liked to wear his patrol cap broken down Ranger style, a unit he greatly admired, and always looked out for the men under his guidance. I was lucky that he came to my squad, and honored to have served alongside him. Right before I left the Army he came to me to ask me what I thought about him going to SFAS to try out for the Special Forces. I told him that I thought if he wanted to make a career out out of the service that this was the best option he could take. That he would be with men who shared his drive for professionalism, and he would be doing the best thing for his country.

I am glad to see that he reached his goal, and became one of those men who stand up for us everyday. I was deeply saddened to hear of his loss which I did not know about until fairly recently. As a recent father myself, I feel pain that his children will not know their father, but I hope they will know he was among the best this country has to offer. I hope his wishes of seeing them become professional men, living in peace is honored. Others, including myself, will take his place on the wall to help insure his dream comes to fruition.

God Bless you Paul. I will see you on the other side of the dark water.

2006-03-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

Moving along fixed lines.

2006-03-15T03:15:00.000-08:00

Rappelling off the mountains around Kabul.

2006-03-15T03:09:00.000-08:00

Knot tying test. Clove hitch, muenter, figure 8, among others. Each man had to tie each knot correctly in 30 seconds.