Stars and Stripes reports that Yokosuka is more than ready to welcome the USS Kitty Hawk back home.
This is a base on the edge of its collective seat. With the Navy confirming that the USS Kitty Hawk and two of its escorts are expected home early next week, the place is ready to burst. Excited families are planning reunions and vacations; Navy officials are planning the "mother of all homecoming parties"; and local merchants are ready for a fleet of sailors with wallets fattened by the lack of any port calls during the four-month cruise. Everyone, including base officials, is getting ready for the return of some 6,000 sailors.
Quote of the Day - 2:
"Belgium and France will not guarantee our security. Germany will not guarantee the security of the Netherlands. I cannot imagine a world order built against the United States."
- Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, concerning a proposal from France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to create a non-NATO European defense force.
Quote of the Day:
"We ought to be beating our chests every day and saying, `We're Americans,' and smile."
- Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, while scolding reporters for dwelling on the shortcomings rather than the successes of the efforts so far by troops and aid organizations to restore civilian order and services throughout Iraq.
"Baghdad Bob" is still pathetic. Maybe Hillary could hire him to flack her new book, which purports to be non-fiction with about as much credibility.
Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, who denied to the end the presence of US forces in Baghdad, was turned down by US troops after trying to turn himself in, said the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing a Kurdish official. Sahhaf had been at his aunt's house in Baghdad for the past four days and wanted US troops to arrest him so that "they can protect him" but they refused since he was not on their "most wanted" deck of playing cards, said the paper, citing Adel Murad of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Mr Murad said Sahhaf was in Mosul before going to Baghdad and that some PUK partisans saw him in the northern city and that he even asked some of them to intervene on his behalf with US troops, but "we told him that we didn't want to be party to this matter", the paper added. The Kurdish official told the paper that US troops regularly patrolled near Sahhaf's hideout on Palestine Street in the Iraqi capital and that he sent some of his relatives to inform them of his wish to surrender, but they turned him down.
Quote of the Day:
"Saddam Hussein turned 66 today. He celebrated quietly with a few close friends in hell."
- David Letterman, Late Show with David Letterman
Mansoor Ijaz has written a devastating indictment of the Clinton administration's malfeasance on Iraq and al Qaeda. I've been convinced for a long time that the captured Iraqi archives would prove deep connections between Iraq and terrorists of every kind. Recently translated documents are starting to show just that. Clinton and his cynical operatives have the blood of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Americans on their hands.
The unearthing of documents directly linking Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization to Saddam Hussein this weekend may have hermetically sealed the Bush administration's case that dismantling Iraq's Baathist enterprise was in part necessary to undo terrorism's dynamic duo. But closing that case may reopen a Pandora's box for ex-Clinton administration officials who still believe their policy prescriptions protected U.S. national interests against the growing threat of terrorism during the past decade.
The London Telegraph's weekend revelations raise deeply disturbing questions about the extent and magnitude to which President Clinton, his national-security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, and senior terrorism and State Department officials - including Assistant Secretary of State for East Africa, Susan Rice - politicized intelligence data, relied on and even circulated fabricated evidence in making critical national-security decisions, and presided over a string of intelligence failures during the months leading up to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Analysis of documents found in the rubble of Iraq's intelligence headquarters show that contrary to conventional wisdom, Iraqi military and intelligence officials sought out al Qaeda leaders, not the other way around, and ultimately met with bin Laden on at least two occasions. They also show that channels of communication between al Qaeda and Iraq were created much earlier and were wider ranging in scope than previously thought. The timing of the meetings sheds important new light on how grave the Clinton administration's intelligence failures may have been.
I believe that as we continue to unravel the spaghetti strings that bound al Qaeda and Saddam's regime together in the coming months, we are going to learn that Iraq provided expertise, financial, logistical and intelligence support to al Qaeda terrorists in an unprecedented manner. The terrorists, emboldened by their state sponsorship, were able to then carry out their suicide missions almost with impunity.
The silence of Clinton officials charged with the responsibility of securing U.S. interests around the world, when faced with this compelling timeline of facts, is still deafening. The American people deserve candid answers for the difficult questions posed by their actions in addressing the growing threat of terrorism, and failing repeatedly to respond to meaningful offers of assistance from the very nations who because of their sponsorship of terrorism, best understood those who rose up to attack us.
More evidence today that the old world order is finally being reconfigured - the heart of "Old Europe" wants to undermine NATO. This will end up making the U.S. even more dominant, since these countries are not really serious about taking action; it's all spite and inferiority. They will invest less & less in their own military and America's willingness to protect them will surely diminish. It'll be interesting to see how "New Europe" responds.
The leaders of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg ended a mini-summit in Brussels by announcing plans for the creation of a joint military planning system by next year, and a multinational headquarters for European military operations in which Nato is not involved. The four countries - all members of Nato - also intend to set up their own rapid reaction force. They also want to launch a European Security and Defence Union, which others would be encouraged to join. Hopes that Europe was ready to move closer to a common defence and foreign policy have been left in tatters by the Iraq war, which split the EU into pro- and anti-war camps. The mini-summit has been criticised for worsening the rift - and critics pointed out that it had excluded the EU's biggest military power, the UK.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US saw no need for the proposed new EU military command. He also played down the significance of the summit agreement on defence. "Four of the nations of the (European) union have come together and created some sort of a plan to develop some sort of a headquarters," Mr Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "What we need is not more headquarters. What we need is more capability and fleshing out of the structure and the forces that are already there."
The Washington Times has a tough editorial today essentially supporting the critique of the U.S. State Department offered last week by verbal bomb-thrower Newt Gingrich. Among other good points, they point out that Newt's criticism is a re-expression of a sober 1991 (pre-Bush) bipartisan report that recommended three things: creation of a Homeland Security department, Pentagon reform, and State Dept. reform. Two of the three are well underway.
Because, make no mistake about it, the issue of State Department ineffectiveness is a deeply substantive, structural matter of vital and immediate importance to our national security. There is a broad, currently silent majority in Congress - both liberals and conservatives — who are not at all sanguine about the State Department's bureaucratic ineptitude and resistance to both congressional and presidential guidance over the last decades. Congress only lacks leadership and courage on this matter to give full voice to their deep concerns.
Quote of the Day:
"It would be a very big miscalculation for any potential foe in the world to think there is some environment the U.S. Army can't fight in. We can fight anywhere."
- Col. David Perkins, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division
Tony Parsons explains in The Mirror (UK) that he doesn't think "the British have it in them to truly hate the French... but it is different for Americans." As usual, Tony is on to something. Our distrust of France is building with each new revelation of duplicity by our sometime ally. GWB doesn't seem to me to be the kind of man who forgets treachery easily - and that's a good thing.
America has always distrusted France. Americans have found the French arrogant - which is a lot like George Best disapproving of someone because of their drinking habits. After the war with Iraq, that distrust has curdled into something much more vehement. In America today, there is a genuine hatred of France and the French, and it means that the Western alliance will never be the same again.
Americans feel that, only a generation ago, they set France free. This is true, of course - there are 75,000 American men and boys buried in European graves, and they are never given the respect they deserve. The French were also set free by the Russians destroying the German Sixth Army in the ruins of Stalingrad, and by the British, who faced down Nazism alone.
But the British and the Russians were fighting for their national survival. The liberation of France was a happy by-product of that battle. To Americans, who never had German bombs dropping on their cities, or German troops swaggering through their streets, the liberation of France looks more like a hugely costly act of charity. And are les bastards grateful? Non, monsieur.
"Why should we expect the French to help us get Saddam out of Iraq?" asked one American. "They didn't even help us to get Hitler out of France."
In America there is a massively popular website called Francestinks. com. As you would expect, it contains plenty of French jokes - "the only way the French were going in was if we told them we'd discovered truffles in Iraq" - but the overall tone is deadly serious. Americans died for a country that is ungrateful, decadent and yellow to the core.
The Times (UK) has a report on the "remarkable" escape of two British SBS commandos through Iraq and into Syria. This confirms reports from early April about an ambush in northern Iraq that could have ended badly.
Two British special forces commandos escaped capture by Iraqi forces by trekking up to 100 miles through enemy territory and desert to the Syrian border. One of the most stirring escape stories yet to emerge from the Iraq war ended with the two men being taken into custody by the Syrians, and the Prime Minister sending a personal envoy to Damascus to win their release. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence refuse to comment on an episode that had begun with the disastrous ambush of a secret British mission behind enemy lines, but details divulged to The Times suggest it was another case of triumph over adversity. Major Charles Heyman, Editor of Jane’s World Armies, said: “There’s no doubt whatsover this is the sort of high standard of evasion of the enemy on the ground we’ve come to expect of our special forces. It’s still pretty remarkable.”
The arrival home schedule for the USS Kitty Hawk has been announced.
The U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk will return from the Persian Gulf to its home port near Tokyo on May 6. The carrier and ships in its battle group left the port of Yokosuka in late January to join the U.S.-led war on Iraq. Aircraft from Carrier Air Wing 5, which had been deployed to the Kitty Hawk, will return to another nearby base on May 1, according to an announcement Monday from U.S. Forces, Japan.
Quote of the Day:
"We need to stay vigilant here. We haven't had the kind of long chains of transmission that we've seen in some other countries, but there is no reason why that couldn't happen here. So we are putting a high emphasis on early detection. We're putting a high emphasis on having the best possible containment in the health-care facilities, because that's where a lot of the community spread has started."
- Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
SARS has folks running scared -- and it's hard to argue with being too careful. Consider this a drill for biowar.
Parents and politicians expressed relief Sunday that an elementary school librarian who traveled to China, the country with the most cases of SARS, has decided to stay away from school for a week and a half. At least 10 parents were prepared to hold a protest at Bayview Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale today, after learning the school's librarian, Gayle Grossman, was expected to start back to work today. But citing concern for the parents' wishes, Grossman opted not to go to school until the incubation period for the virus -- 10 days -- had passed, officials said. 'She wanted to put the parents' minds at ease,'' said Kirk Englehardt, Broward County School district spokesman.
The search for WMD in Iraq took another turn this weekend. The Iraqis have practiced a high level of deception, but this may be the first solid find - there will be many, many more.
U.S. soldiers on Saturday found 14 barrels of chemicals in a vast weapons storage area in north-central Iraq, and three initial tests indicated that they contained a deadly mixture of cyclosarin nerve agent and mustard gas. The tan barrels were found in a 3.5-square-mile storage area that also contained missiles, missile parts, gas masks, protective gear, a stripped mobile weapons laboratory and large storage containers covered by camouflage netting. The area is two miles east of the town of Baiji in the Jabal Makhul, low, wind-worn mountains about 25 miles north of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
The barrels were on the ground next to a mobile laboratory that looked like a 1970s Russian truck with a cube on the back that was filled with sinks, a fermenter and other equipment. It had been stripped bare, apparently by looters. Lt. Col. Ted Martin, the commander of the 10th Cavalry unit that tested and secured the barrels, said the mobile lab had charts showing dosage amounts.
Lt. Victoria Phipps of Sherwood Ark., who heads the chemical reconnaissance team from the 10th Cavalry at the site, said three tests verified the presence of cyclosarin, a nerve agent, as well as a blistering agent, most likely mustard gas in liquid form, mixed together in a toxic slurry. The tests, she said, are 98 percent accurate. "There was so much intensity in that area it was hard to test further," she said. "The levels were very high."
Virtue is rewarded.
Pope John Paul has beatified a 17th-century friar credited with halting a Muslim invasion of Europe and in the process discovering the frothy coffee-drink cappuccino. More than 300 years after his death, Marco d'Aviano cleared the last step before sainthood, as the pope recognised the friar's miraculous work including curing a nun who had been bedridden for 13 years. History books also show that with a vast Ottoman Turk army beating a path to Vienna in 1683, d'Aviano was sent by the then-pope to unite the outnumbered Christian troops, spurring them to victory. As the Turks fled, legend has it they left behind sacks of coffee, which the Christians found too bitter, so they sweetened it with honey and milk. The drink, now supped by millions around the world, was called cappuccino after the Capuchin order of monks to which d'Aviano belonged.
Another smoking gun has been uncovered in Iraq, again by The Telegraph (UK) , which is on a roll with documents found in the ruins of Iraqi intelligence offices. Can't help but wonder if solid evidence will be found linking Iraq with the September 11 attack. Clues abound.
Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in Baghdad by The Telegraph have provided the first evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's regime. Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998. The documents show that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al-Qa'eda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. The meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad.
"Quote of the Day:
“As a big fan of Tolkien I believe that there is absolute evil but there is no absolute good in this world. The Lord of the Rings is about this simple truth. There is no absolute good but there are moments when everybody who shares the same values must be united to fight absolute evil, which does exist.”
- chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov
President George W. Bush gave an interesting interview this week with Tom Brokaw of NBC News, mostly about the Iraq war. GWB opened up quite a bit and we get a more detailed glimpse of his decision-making process. NBC has posted the transcript and video clips on the MSNBC site - it's worth checking out.
I was hesitant at first, to be frank with you, because I was worried that the first pictures coming out of Iraq would be a wounded grandchild of Saddam Hussein - but Saddam Hussein, who was not there at the time we started making the decision, would never show up - that the first images of the American attack would be death to young children.
And this is an interesting moment, because as time went on during the day, or that evening, the intelligence got richer and richer. In other words, the guy on the ground was calling in to the CENTCOM headquarters, who was immediately calling in to the White House more and more information. For example, he discovered that there was a bunker a hundred feet away from one of the houses - a bunker that had so much concrete and was likely to house Saddam when he arrived, and his kids, his boys.
And as the intelligence got richer, I got more confident with the notion that Saddam would, in fact, be there. And at 7:15 p.m. that evening, I gave the order for Tommy to proceed with an attack....
Stars and Stripes has a new story telling us about how one family back home in Yokosuka deals with separation from a husband & dad serving on the USS Kitty Hawk. The Internet is helping them stay in touch - one of the blessings of technology.
At 8 a.m., an inaudible garbled voice came through the baby monitor in Cindy Williams' living room. "That's Mercedes," Cindy says, running upstairs to see to the just-waking 2-year-old. Moments later, Cindy carries the toddler, still pajama-clad, downstairs. This is the official start of Cindy's workday. She is the wife of USS Kitty Hawk sailor Andrew Williams, a petty officer second class who spends much of his time away from the family. He has to because his country needs him. But that need leaves Cindy - and thousands of other spouses just like her - to play both mom and dad in a temporary one-parent home.
"We get to e-mail each other a couple times a day," she says. The night before, the two were online at the same time. "It was almost like a conversation." Andrew says he e-mails as often as he can - but it all depends on when the ship's server is working. And all the e-mails he receives, he saves on disk. Even toddler Mercedes gets typing time, he says. "She just bangs away at the keyboard. It looks like the Tasmanian Devil talking."
Wiliam McGurn has a thoughtful Opinion Journal article about the ongoing role of ROTC at Notre Dame University, including insightful comments by Father Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus, and the example set by Lt. Dustin Ferrell, a Marine officer seriously wounded in Iraq.
As long as we live in a world stained by original sin, [Father Hesburgh] says, nations will need armies. And as long as we require military forces, he believes it ought to be part of the university's mission to ensure they are populated with men like Lt. Ferrell.
"It's proper to all the things we do here and the patriotism we owe our country," says Father Hesburgh. "It's standing up for freedom, even when it's tough." This is not some Donald Rumsfeld clone; this is a man who helped start up the Peace Corps and put the first signature on a local peace petition questioning the Bush administration's entry into the Iraq war. And Father Hesburgh has company in Rachael Ferrell, the young lieutenant's wife, who gently lets it be known that honoring her husband's service does not necessarily make one a hawk.
"I don't have a problem with people who choose pacifism," [Lt. Ferrell] says. "But we're idealists too. And the officers I know believe that in choosing to serve we're living up to our ideals, not putting them aside."
Quote of the Day:
"It's very difficult to assess the value of various military options that the United States has because although we can know their feasibility, we can't know the North Korean response. North Korea is so impulsive and so unpredictable that logic may not apply. Relatively modest measures may bring catastrophic results. It's conceivable that even a naval blockade could result in a nuclear attack by North Korea on South Korea.
- Loren Thompson, military analyst - Lexington Institute
Again, the State Department seems to be working according to its own set of priorities. If this Reuters report is true, then heads need knocking.
North Korea first told State Department officials in March it reprocessed spent nuclear fuel, but the information was kept from officials in other parts of the government, presumably so as not to scuttle talks with Pyongyang, U.S. officials said on Friday. The incident, which was confirmed by two other sources, appears to underscore the bitter division and competition within the Bush administration -- particularly between the State and Defense Departments -- over North Korea policy.
The Washington Times has a detailed article about the risks of "fratricide" posed by the use of the Patriot anti-missile system. The Patriot has improved dramatically since the Gulf War but was the cause of three friendly-fire fatalities during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lt. Nathan White from the USS Kitty Hawk was one. The Patriot is a huge asset but obviously there's more to be done to safeguard the good guys based on post-campaign professional military analysis.
In his last e-mail message home before he died, 30-year-old Navy pilot Lt. Nathan White described the challenges his F/A-18C would face over Iraq. One of his top concerns was avoiding American Patriot air defense missiles. White, who graduated as the top pilot in his flying class, was shot down by a Patriot missile near Karbala, Iraq, on April 2, as he returned from a mission. With more than 1,000 aircraft over Iraq every day, White described the chaos of launching from an aircraft carrier and flying into the war zone. After an hourlong briefing on his mission, he would climb into the cockpit and be catapulted off the deck, reaching 140 mph in two seconds. Then he would navigate the system of "airborne highways" created by the military to keep planes from crashing into each other "and of course steer you clear of the army's Patriot batteries," White wrote. It was not a joking reference.
Terrific and lengthy list of what patriotism used to mean in Hollywood was published today at The Braden Files. Check out the whole thing.
Alec Guinness (Star Wars) operated a British Royal Navy landing craft on D-Day.
James Doohan ("Scotty" on Star Trek) landed in Normandy with the U.S. Army on D-Day.
Donald Pleasance (The Great Escape) really was a R.A.F. pilot who was shot down, held prisoner and tortured by the Germans.
David Niven was a Sandhurst graduate and Lt. Colonel of the British Commandos in Normandy.
James Stewart flew 20 missions as a B-24 pilot in Europe.
Clark Gable (Mega-Movie Star when war broke out) was a waist gunner flying missions on a B-17 in Europe.
more...
"Quote of the Day #2"
"He looks French."
- Unidentified White House adviser, on why John Kerry may be a loser in his presidential bid
Quote of the Day:
"They should not leave this series of discussions that have been held in Beijing with the slightest impression that the United States and its partners, and the nations in the region, will be intimidated by bellicose statements or by threats or actions."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State, on North Korea
150 SAS troops from Australia played an important role in the Iraq campaign. They are starting to tell their story... with typical Australian bravura.
The SAS may specialise in reconnaissance and stealth but in this war they took on a new dimension. It was not simply a matter of calling in air strikes or other forces to deal with an identified enemy: the SAS took on that task themselves, initiating numerous conflicts. Their targets were suspected sites for weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles from which troops of neighbouring states could be attacked. Using rocket-propelled grenades, machine-guns mounted on their long-range patrol vehicles or shoulder-mounted Javelin anti-tank missiles, they destroyed many in the opening days of the conflict. Along the way they encountered Iraqi forces trained especially to counter US, British and Australian special forces teams. They used modified utilities carrying heavy weaponry and often they disguised themselves as civilians or Bedouin tribesmen. They were, the commander says, "very experienced, very aggressive and very good at what they did".
Australian F/A18 bombers helped with air support. "It was nice to listen to an Aussie voice on the other end of the radio," the commander says. "It was even better when they told us we had won the World Cup."
Quote of the Day:
"I didn't shoot down an Apache or anything else.
"All that happened was that I went to the field, as I usually do early in the morning, and was surprised to find some bodies on the ground. I began to rub my eyes to make sure that what I was seeing was true or whether I was imagining it. When I realised that it was really true, I was overcome by fear and rushed to the nearest government post to inform them that there was a plane in my field.
"A large number of [Ba'ath] party members and security men came with me to investigate. They told me that it was an American Apache aircraft and made me stay with them until someone who they said was a senior official arrived. I didn't know who he was. They asked me to say what you have heard on the TV satellite channels - that I shot down the plane with an old gun, a Brno."
- Ali Abid Minqash, elderly Iraqi farmer, once widely reported to have downed an Army Apache attack helicopter in Iraq
Russian public figures seem to have lapsed into incoherent rambling. Perhaps too much vodka trying to cope with the implications of the muscular Coalition victory in Iraq, which has stunned the lumbering Russian politico-military establishment.
On a visit to France on the invitation of another friend of his, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Vladimir Zhirinovsky stunned journalists with the information, saying he was perfectly sure of the following facts: He said that Saddam would spend about a year underground. Then, for fear of the establishment of a radical Islamic state in Iraq, the United States will agree to restore Iraq to the way that it previously existed. Then, Saddam Hussein will be back in power. Finally, Iraq may become a federative state in which larger powers and authority will be given to the Kurds.
Russia last night warned of an imminent catastrophe in the Korean nuclear crisis, despite signs that progress had been made in groundbreaking talks yesterday between North Korea, the US and China. "It is probable that, as early as tomorrow, there will be a catastrophic development of events," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said. Mr Losyukov claimed the crisis over North Korea's nuclear arms program had "reached an extreme stage", but failed to give more details about his warning or what he meant by catastrophic.
Empty-headed Natalie Maines and the other Dixie Chicks are looking for sympathy, scoring a pandering interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC. They enjoyed the high of cheers and applause when they dissed the President in London, but now can't handle the subsequent hangover of bad publicity. Their discomfort is entirely deserved, and I'd still like to be near Greenville, SC next week for the start of their U.S. tour. The patriotic citizens of the Palmetto State may have a thing or two to say to these shallow performers.
In an interview airing on Primetime Thursday, Maines and her bandmates Emily Robison and Martie Maguire spoke to ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer about how they feel about the boycott of their music, the personal threats against them, and what led up to Maines' controversial comment. Maines said she made the remark "out of frustration. At that moment, on the eve of war, I had a lot of questions that I felt were unanswered." The comment was not scripted, Maines said, and it wasn't until the show was over that the band realized there would be a big reaction. "We don't plan things that we're going to say. And sometimes it backfires," Maines said. "We didn't walk off the stage going, 'Oh my God, I can't believe I said that.'"
Quote of the Day:
"I don't think that I would characterize what's going on in Iran as a democratic system. I don't think I would say that it fits the principles that I've just indicated. I think there are an awful lot of people in Iran who feel that that small group of clerics that determine what takes place in that country is not their idea of how they want to live their lives."
- Donald Rumsfeld, when asked if an "Islamic republic" like Iran would be acceptable as a future for Iraq
Breaking news! The Washington Post has located more anonymous officials in Washington who are wringing their hands about how unprepared and clueless we are in the effort to win the peace in Iraq. Sounds like the same cadre who were convinced we couldn't win the war. Maybe they're right, but maybe it's just a difficult, fluid situation and that's what we expected. (Adaptablity is a strength, not a fatal weakness.) Note that, despite this being a Page One story, the only named sources are two "former" officials quoted in the last paragraphs. "Journalism?"
As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country. The burst of Shiite power -- as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday -- has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
So, it turns out that Senator Feinstein's hubby has a big piece of the action with a defense contractor. What are the odds that the Left will cry "URS" as an epithet instead of "Halliburton" anytime soon? Two chances, neighbors: slim and none.
A planning and engineering firm co-owned by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband has been awarded a five-year Pentagon contract that could be worth up to $600 million. San Francisco-based URS Corp. announced Monday that the Army had hired one of its divisions and a partner to help with troop mobilization, weapons system training and anti-terrorism assessment. Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24 percent of its stock. The new contract is the latest lucrative defense job to be won by URS, which also works with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration among other federal departments. The firm was awarded an Army engineering and logistics contract in February that could be worth $3.1 billion over the next eight years.
Newt Gingrich has unleashed a fierce attack against the State Department and its culture of appeasement and Arabism. We can only hope this is the first signal of the beginning of a regime change at Foggy Bottom; State works routinely and tirelessly against the President's agenda. It has been appalling to watch Colin Powell either go native upon arrival in office, or show his true nature by siding with this permanent bureaucracy.
The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success. The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory.
The military delivered diplomatically and then the military delivered militarily in a stunning four week campaign. Now the State Department is back at work pursuing policies that will clearly throw away all the fruits of hard won victory.
America cannot lead the world with a broken instrument of diplomacy. America cannot lead in the age of democracy and 24 hour television with a broken instrument of international communications. America cannot help develop a vibrant world of entrepreneurial progress where countries grow into safety, health, prosperity and freedom for their people with a broken bureaucracy of red tape and excuses.
Columnist Tony Parsons is trying to talk Tony "Vanity" Blair out of a long-standing fascination with tighter bonding to the EU. Parsons is smart - let's hope Blair is too. Having already endured the public contempt of Old Europe, just-as-old Britain should know better by now.
Yes, winning a war breeds stupendous vanity in a Prime Minister. But if the one-sided scrap with Iraq taught us anything, it's surely that we need to break free from the European Union, not mate with it.
For all the rampant anti-Americanism in this country, there can surely be no argument that we share a bond with the United States that no country in Europe can compare to. We are tied to America by language, culture, blood, history and instinct. When I think of America, I think of Mark Twain, John F Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Martin Scorsese, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Marvin Gaye, Sugar Ray Leonard, Robert Kennedy, Marlon Brando, Stevie Wonder, Orson Welles, and on for ever, the countless American men and women who have shaped our dreams and the way we look at the world.
You could put a loaded gun to my head and I couldn't even name you one Belgian.
The war with Iraq proved that this country has no bond with its continental neighbours. They are a bunch of oil-hungry cynics, inveterate cowards and committed peaceniks. Perhaps if we shared their sorry histories we would be more like them. But we are not.
Richard Tomkins, UPI White House correspondent, was embedded with Bravo 1/5 - Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines - in Iraq. He's written his farewell report just prior to leaving for home; it's insightful and even emotional. In fact, he may have forfeited his credibility in the eyes of the journalists who did not get to observe American heroes close up and still believe their own deluded stereotypes. Some say the experiences of 500+ embedded correspondents may eventually change the anti-military and anti-American perspective of mainstream journalism - only time will tell, but maybe Tomkins has made a down payment.
It's difficult to convey the rich texture of the men who make up Bravo 1/5 and the special camaraderie among them. Words just aren't adequate enough. But they are truly a band of brothers. Even the company oddball, the Marine who somehow never seemed to fit in or pull his own weight, was looked out for and protected with the concern like that of a big brother looking out for an awkward sibling. Bravo 1/5, in a sense, proves two truisms this correspondent has discovered in 30 years of reporting, much of it in war zones: Sharing a foxhole is the ultimate bonding experience, and the word "cliche" needs a new definition.
According to the American Heritage College dictionary, "cliche" is "a trite or overused expression or idea" or stereotype. All too often it is used with a negative cast. Yet cliched characters and generalizations are based on truths. Take the characters in any war move you've ever seen. There is the jokester, the screw-up, the smart mouth, the lothario, the kindhearted sergeant with a tough-as-nails exterior, the good-natured medic and the caring-but-firm commander.
It's no wonder these characters exist on paper and celluloid. They exist in real life, just as the scenes of GIs passing out candy to civilians, sharing their last smoke or holding up a magazine pin-up to troops in a passing convoy. Cliched in the context of Bravo 1/5 should be a label of honor, because it mirrors America and is replicated throughout our society and military services.
Stars and Stripes reports on a memorial service in Atsugi, Japan, for the USS Kitty Hawk's pilot lost over Iraq.
Lt. j.g. Mike Odom stood before 1,000 people in the flight hangar at Atsugi Naval Air Facility on Thursday and quietly spoke of the selfless devotion of his colleague and friend, Lt. Nathan D. White. White died April 2, after ejecting from his F/A-18 Hornet over Iraq. He is the first member of Atsugi's close-knit community - and from the USS Kitty Hawk Battle Group - to die in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"Lieutenant Nathan White selflessly sacrificed himself above and beyond the call of duty," said Odom, who is officer in charge of the beach detachment of Carrier Air Wing FIVE, of which White's squadron was a part.
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
- The Collect for Easter-Day, The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
Quote of the Day:
Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger that the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say
Christ will rise on Easter Day.
- Phillips Brooks
Quotes of the Day:
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
- C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?"
"Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
The Left's ideas of "free speech" are disturbing and wholly self-serving.
Men and women pretending to be Red Cross officials have been calling families of troops deployed in Iraq, falsely telling them their loved ones were killed or are missing in action. "I'm astounded someone could be so cruel," said Sue Richter, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, which has set up a toll-free hot line (888/309-9679) for people to report such incidents. A spokesman for Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in San Diego, said he knows some families at that base have been victimized by these "absolutely false" phone calls. "We have a crisis response center here, where families of [deployed] Marines can call to get information. The crisis response center started getting a few calls from some very distraught wives, who had been telephoned by people who identified themselves as Red Cross representatives and who told them their husbands had been killed," said the spokesman, 1st Lt. Dan Rawson.
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"If possible, avoid wearing of the uniform when dining in public places." - from a "Protective Measures Awareness" notice sent to San Antonio's U.S. Army personnel by Maj. Gen. Darrel R. Porr on Friday. April 11, 2003, will be remembered as one of the saddest dates in Alamo City history. Because of recent instances of harassment of uniformed personnel, Porr, the commanding general at Fort Sam Houston, felt compelled to warn the men and women who serve under him to use caution when traveling, shopping and dining in San Antonio.
"Two separate incidents against military personnel have occurred," Porr reported. "In the first incident, two males on the city's Northeast Side made threatening gestures and pounded on the car window of a drill sergeant and his spouse while they were on their way home. The second incident involved two sailors, in uniform, who were accosted by several males who said, 'You'd better not go to war,' as they departed a River Walk restaurant."
(I see that the Riverwalk situation did have a happy ending)
One unofficial source I talked to said he had seen the police report of the incident on the River Walk, and he provided this description of the confrontation: "Some Marines who were nearby saw what was happening and went to the sailors' aid. The matter was then taken care of by combined military action."
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Actor Tim Robbins pleaded with listeners at the National Press Club yesterday to "defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism" after calling some members of the press "Aussie gossip rags" and "talk-radio patriots." Mr. Robbins took special aim at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, whose president canceled his appearance at an April 26 anniversary fete in Cooperstown, N.Y., for the 1988 movie "Bull Durham" because of antiwar remarks made by him and his live-in partner, actress Susan Sarandon.
Mr. Robbins dodged a question about news reports accusing him of physically threatening a Washington Post columnist at a post-Academy Awards party last month. The Post reporter had interviewed Miss Sarandon's mother, a Republican who said the couple had "brainwashed" her grandson about the war. In his speech yesterday, Mr. Robbins called the writer a "sadistic creep."
Quote of the Day:
"Pentagon officials say our military did not use the majority of the ammunition we brought to Iraq. They still have a lot of their ammunition. Which is not good news for Syria. That can’t be good news for Syria."
- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show
Former CIA director James Woolsey supports the idea that "our current struggle against terrorism and rogue regimes" means we are engaged now in World War IV (the Cold War against Soviet Communism being no. 3, which we won). That's a useful way to think about the world today, and pretty much literally true as well.
Victory in this world war will depend not only on our skill in battle and our effectiveness in rolling up terrorist cells. It will depend on our being able to split as many potential adherents as possible away from our main totalitarian enemies: Sunni Islamists (al Qaeda, its fellow travelers and financiers), Shiite Islamists (Tehran's mullahs, Hezbollah), and Syria, Libya, and Sudan (each with a somewhat different ideological cover story to justify oppression). We will not be able to do this by being feckless--a terrorist prosecution here, a cruise missile there. We have tried that, and it brought us Sept. 11. The democracies must rather change the face of the Middle East, as they have changed Europe.
To do so we need to move smartly to make common cause with the many millions of decent Muslims who want to live in freedom and at peace. Today our potential Muslim allies, even in this country, are often silent because they are intimidated by Islamists and theocratic fanatics. But the Muslim equivalents of Walesa, Havel, and Sakharov are out there. They need our help, and we need theirs. To avoid a clash of civilizations and to reduce the need for the clash of arms, we need to forge another alliance for freedom in this war like the one that won World War III.
A hero is retiring at age 94. Simon Wiesenthal may be one of the most dedicated men in human history. His experience is an inspiration, and a reminder that important, difficult things don't happen quickly. We will need his kind again and again, until all the tyrants and murderers are gone - one day.
Renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was quoted as saying on Thursday he would soon close his files after nearly half a century because his work to track down the perpetrators of the Holocaust was complete. "I found the mass murderers I was looking for, and I have outlived all of them. If there's a few I didn't look for, they are now too old and fragile to stand trial. My work is done," the 94-year-old told the Austrian weekly magazine "Format." "It is very difficult to get the public to really understand the crimes of these people," Wiesenthal was quoted in a statement released ahead of the magazine's publication on Friday. "Still I have to bother with people and groups that claim that the Holocaust never happened."
Wiesenthal spent decades tracking down more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals responsible for the mass murder of Jews in World War II and played a role in the capture of Adolf Hitler's close associate Adolf Eichmann.
Quote of the Day:
"On day three of the war I lost my CBOX oil pressure and had to set down in a field... We were approached by a local who was dirt poor but still proud, proud of his mud hut, his son, his 20 goats and his tomato patch. He spoke not a lick of English and I thought at first he was asking for food. Then I thought he wanted to sell me a box of tomatoes. In the best tradition of Arab benevolence and pride, he was offering us a box of his best tomatoes. It was all he had. All he could offer. Saddam's boys would surely put a bullet in his head if they knew. Wars bring out the best and worst in people. When he approached my boys were edgy and ready to waste him. We all learned a good lesson that day."
- Lt. Col. Steve Heywood, U.S. Marine Squadron Commander of HMLA-267, a Cobra 'gunship' helicopter squadron in Iraq, in a letter home
NPR's Michele Norris had a moving audio report Thursday from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, home of the U.S. military's largest mortuary. She interviewed some of the military personnel who care for the bodies of Americans who have died in the war in Iraq, including the Dover Honor Guard. The unit's Sgt. Mack said quietly, "We want it be picture-perfect." Everyone interviewed exemplified dignity, respect, and a strong sense of duty. The American military continues to impress.
Regardless of their rank or the circumstances of their death, the war dead that pass through Dover, and for now they're still arriving, are honored at every step as heroes.
Two new articles based on AP reporting paint a profile of Navy Lt. Nathan D. White, a USS Kitty Hawk F/A-18 pilot who was lost over Iraq. Sounds like he was a good guy.
Aviation was Navy Lt. Nathan White's passion. "Regardless of the destination, I feel I am trained and prepared for any mission or contingency," he wrote in an e-mail to his family. "I have to have faith that those at the helm have fully weighed the consequences and have determined that the resulting good will far outweigh the bad."
"He wasn't afraid of following his dream," his sister, Ana Mitchell, said. "Whatever Nathan did, he gave it 300%."
A Navy pilot killed when his fighter jet was apparently shot down by friendly fire over Iraq was a dreamer who constantly sought out challenges, his sister said Tuesday. Lt. Nathan D. White, 30, was killed April 2 when his F/A-18C Hornet was apparently shot down by a U.S. Patriot missile. The military said the incident remains under investigation. "He just had the nicest personality. There wasn't anyone who knew him that didn't like him. He could tell great stories. He was just captivating," said Ana Mitchell, White's oldest sister.
He graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and moved to Mesa, Ariz., to take a management job with a Dillard's department store. After a year in Mesa, White applied to law school and the Naval aviation program, deciding eventually to enter the Navy. "Nathan was a dreamer. The sky was really the limit for the possibilities he had," Mitchell said from her Provo home. "It sounded exciting. It sounded challenging, intense."
The Financial Times has a brief article describing further breakdown in the security relationship between Great Britain and France, nominal NATO allies.
Plans to allow the French government open access to details of the new [$4.4 billion] British aircraft carrier, discussed by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac at their Le Touquet summit in February, have been blocked by the British government. Ministers are keen to promote co-operation with the French on defence procurement, partly in the hope of winning orders for British companies when Paris commissions a second aircraft carrier this summer. But the souring of Anglo-French relations over Iraq rang alarm bells in government over the proposed extent of co-operation between the two governments on carriers.
STRATFOR published an analysis today, stating: "London's move is likely more than a matter of pique generated by diplomatic acrimony over Iraq. Instead, it appears that officials may have genuine concerns that sharing sensitive military information with France poses a security risk."
France is not an ally and an ongoing problem - more than an annoyance. Hard to see how this can improve without "regime change" in Paris.
The gray New York Times marvels at the wartime success of Fox News, ponders something called "the Fox effect," worries about the future of "objective" TV journalism, and profiles MSNBC's attempts to imitate Fox. They just don't get it, and probably never will.
This was supposed to be CNN's war, a chance for the network, which is owned by AOL Time Warner, to reassert its ratings lead using its international perspective and straightforward approach. Instead, it has been the Fox News Channel, owned by the News Corporation, that has emerged as the most-watched source of cable news by far, with anchors and commentators who skewer the mainstream media, disparage the French and flay anybody else who questions President Bush's war effort.
Fox's formula had already proved there were huge ratings in opinionated news with an America-first flair. But with 46 of the top 50 cable shows last week alone, Fox has brought prominence to a new sort of TV journalism that casts aside traditional notions of objectivity, holds contempt for dissent and eschews the skepticism of government at mainstream journalism's core. News executives at other networks are keeping a wary eye on Fox News, trying to figure out what, if anything, its progress will mean to them.
Quote of the Day:
In any conflict, however, this nation's greatest single asset is the kind of men and women who put on the uniform of the United States. The methods of war have changed, but the need for courage has not. And we've seen, once again, the courage of the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America. These are young Americans who engaged in furious battles -- then carried wounded enemy to medical treatment. These are young Americans willing to accept any danger to rescue one of their own. These are the kind of people who, when they are wounded themselves, ask to rejoin their comrades in battle. Some of our soldiers and Marines will never be returning to their families. And these are the men and women who our nation will honor forever.
- President George W. Bush, at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems Headquarters, Boeing F-18 Production Facility, St. Louis, Missouri
New Web site, WhichCountryIsNext.com, allows visitors to vote for their candidates for liberation. At the moment the vote leader is France, followed by Syria, Canada, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. Personally, I'd vote for the U.S. State Department, which would then make dealing with all the others much easier.
"Why should North Korea and Iran get all the glory? You Decide!"
Stars and Stripes reports that the USS Kitty Hawk's expected return to home port in Japan has families and friends excited.
It doesn't matter when, as long as it's soon. As news of the USS Kitty Hawk's impending departure from the Persian Gulf spread across its home port of Yokosuka Naval Base this weekend, excited families and friends began making plans for the crew's raucous welcome home. The USS Cowpens and USS John S. McCain also have orders to return to Yokosuka. The return trip could take anywhere from two weeks to more than a month, officials have said.For families in Japan, it can't be soon enough.
The news of the Kitty Hawk's impending return spread in classic Navy-base fashion. As media reports hinted two carrier groups could soon be on their way home, excited Kitty Hawk spouses spread the word via e-mails, phone calls and backyard chats. By Monday morning, most families had heard the news, though military officials were hesitant to confirm it.
Yokosuka Navy officials said they have not planned the homecoming party yet, but it would surely be an event. After returning from recent routine deployments, the ship has been greeted by purposefully understated welcomes and even Japanese protesters outside the gate. The news also was welcomed at Atsugi Naval Air Facility, where the carrier’s air wing is stationed.
Claudia Rosett in OpinionJournal.com dissects the explosion of anger expressed by rampaging crowds in a suddenly free Iraq, and the role played by falsity in sustaining all such regimes as the one we just deposed. Note her observations on the support for their lies provided by the "mannered talk" of the world's diplomats and mass media, who cooperate in building and maintaining a facade of normality for tyrants and psychopaths. Reflect also on how our elites recoil when the truth is uttered; e.g., "Axis of Evil," but how ordinary citizens handle the truth with aplomb.
But if tyranny demands doublethink from its subjects, it requires something similar of the tyrants themselves. They insist that they be loved and revered; their survival depends on their ability to keep such facades in place. Saddam, in his efforts not only to impress the world but to reassure himself, had to have his cheering crowds, wave at the adoring singing children and see his own image refracted endlessly in pictures and statues. Kim must count the floral baskets brought to his door, and catalog the gifts that attest to his power and importance, totting up the words of every flattering flunkey, the pomp of every state visit, as evidence that--yes, indeed--he is king of kings.
And yet, they know. The very thoroughness with which they arm themselves--the secret police, the networks of informers, the jails, the private guards, the bunkers and barriers and fortresses--all these things announce to the world how very well tyrants understand that they are hated. And how very scared they are. Despots make a devil's deal, in which the price of ruling by terror is that they themselves live constantly with the knowledge of their own depravities, and in fear of their own subjects. Their worst enemy is truth, and their worst nightmare is the moment when Mephistopheles arrives, inside the palace walls, to make his claim.
For Saddam, whether he is alive or dead, midnight has arrived. The looting is now winding down--and for that we can be grateful. There is nothing lovely in such anger. But the scenes, the rubbish, the broken glass, the plundered palace rooms, send a message very close to home for tyrants everywhere, broadcast in a language that perhaps none dare speak to them in person. It will be a powerful help in drawing a line against the rest of the Saddams.
Marshall Billingslea, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict, spoke at The Heritage Foundation last week and laid out a fairly detailed public summary of where we stand in the war on terrorism. Very worthwhile reading.
I am going to take this opportunity to: (1) update you on the strategy we are implementing in the global war against terrorism; (2) the progress and setbacks we have had in the war; and (3) to discuss the significant implications that strategy has for the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and Special Operations Forces (SOF).
I will give you the bottom line at the outset. The United States and its allies have made significant progress in destroying and disrupting key parts of the international terrorist network with which we are at war. Al'Qaida is an organization under great stress, with a leadership that seems increasingly less able to plan multiple large scale attacks because they are focused on the more immediate problem of evading coalition capture.
However, I caution that we are certain that we do not know all of the planning that al'Qaida has already done, and we are concerned that they may have set certain operations in motion before the most recent chain of events leading to Khalid Shaikh Muhammad's capture. Moreover, al'Qaida and affiliated terrorist organizations have proven capable of regenerating lost parts, and of changing tactics and techniques to adapt to our offensive efforts.
To put it simply: Al'Qaida and other related terrorist groups today remain intent on conducting devastating attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. At least some of their planning seems to contemplate the use of chemical or biological agents, in addition to their proven practice of using low-tech, conventional explosives to mount attacks with devastating consequences.
The French are starting to reap what they've sown, according to The Scotsman. Paybacks are hell, and just getting started.
Jacques Chirac's opposition to the war in Iraq and the desecration of Allied graves by anti-British vandals have ended France's reign as the UK's favourite holiday destination. A loss of 300,000 visitors and a 25 per cent drop in bookings in a month mean Spain is now officially Britain's top tourist venue after 14 years in second place. The French president's anti-war stance and the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" factor in the United States has also caused a decline in the number of US tourists. Tension between the UK and France increased two weeks ago when protesters desecrated a cemetery in northern France, daubing memorials with graffiti.
A spokeswoman for the French tourist office in London admitted UK bookings were "sluggish" and that there had been a downturn in US visitors. But some British companies are describing the "downturn" as a drastic decline.
Quote of the Day:
"Today President Bush announced that all this time he's been misprouncing the word 'Iraq.' He said it's actually pronounced 'Syria.' "
- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show
Trashing of the National Library and National Museum in Baghdad seems like the work of provocateurs, not just opportunistic "looting" by those who are impoverished or savage. Press accounts say American soldiers are "doing nothing." Hard to fault our soldiers, who have more immediate concerns & threats with which to deal, and cannot fully secure even hospitals. I would be interested in knowing more about who is inciting the civil violence.
Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq's National Library, leaving a smoldering shell Tuesday of precious books turned to ash and a nation's intellectual legacy gone up in smoke. They also looted and burned Iraq's principal Islamic library nearby, home to priceless old Qurans; last week, thieves swept through the National Museum and stole or smashed treasures that chronicled this region's role as the "cradle of civilization."
"Our national heritage is lost," an angry high school teacher, Haithem Aziz, said as he stood outside the National Library's blackened hulk. "The modern Mongols, the new Mongols did that. The Americans did that. Their agents did that," he said as an explosion boomed in the distance as the war winds down. The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu, sacked Baghdad in the 13th century. Today, the rumors on the lips of almost all Baghdadis is that the looting that has torn this city apart is led by U.S.-inspired Kuwaitis or other non-Iraqis bent on stripping the city of everything of value.
But outside the gutted Islamic library on the grounds of the Religious Affairs Ministry, the lone looter scampering away was undeniably Iraqi, a grizzled man named Mohamed Salman.
Iran is smarter than Syria.
Iran vowed to stop Iraqi leaders from fleeing into the country yesterday, saying they would be put on trial for war crimes if they slipped across the border illegally. Teheran's firm statement, in sharp contrast to the attitude of Syria, seems designed to avoid giving America any excuse to make Iran a target after the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"If any Iraqi leader wants to enter Iran legally, we will naturally reject it," the foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said. But if they come illegally, we will try them for the crimes they have committed against our people. "Iranian guards carefully watch any activities on our long western border with Iraq."
Various reports today that the USAF sent home the last warplanes based in Turkey that were used to patrol the northern "no-fly" zone over Iraq, and that they returned to Shaw Air Force Base in my home town - Sumter, South Carolina. I know some families are happier now. Sweet.
Stars and Stripes has a great tale of Mojo and Mad Dog, a pair of determined U.S. Marines who wouldn't take "no" for an answer when mere injuries (like a compressed spine) almost sent them all the way to the rear in Kuwait and away from their buddies. This will make a great sidestory in "Gulf War II: The Movie." Semper Fi, indeed.
Sgt. Christopher Merkle and Sgt. Jose Rodriguez weren't going to let a little truck accident stop them from finishing what they'd started. Merkle and Rodriguez, affectionately known as Mojo and Mad Dog to their fellow Marines, might have pulled off the biggest caper of the war in Iraq. They ducked doctors, begged rides and did everything short of stealing a Humvee to return to their unit, despite suffering injuries when a truck overturned with them in the back.
Merkle and Rodriguez, infantrymen with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines, returned to their unit late on March 30. Merkle’s helmet bobbled on his head and the flak jacket he wore was too small to close around his chest. His camouflaged chemical suit was torn down the leg. Rodriguez didn't look much better. His flak jacket also was the wrong size, and a bag of grenades hung from his side. The two had just completed a remarkable journey, dodging medical evacuation to Kuwait to return to their unit for the remainder of the war.
"There was no way we were going to the hospital," Merkle said. "It seems like it was a suicide mission to come back, but we couldn’t go back to the States and look these Marines in the eye knowing they were out there while we were eating ice cream."
Quote of the Day:
"There were boxes of Cuban cigars that said 'Odai Saddam Hussein' on them, hundreds of them. My guys smoked them."
- Army Capt. Ed Ballanco, of Montville, N.J., after taking control of Odai Hussein's luxurious compound inside the Presidential Palace compound in Baghdad
Political strategist Dick Morris has a good take in the NY Post on the potential for a sea change in how we view the mass media. Morris is focused on print and TV, but the same applies to the blogosphere. Millions of people have had virtually instant access to news and information about the war in Iraq, and blogging has expanded the impact. Reports indicate that even CENTCOM was closely monitoring both cable TV and warblogs for new data. At last there are counter-weights to established media spin and bias.
One byproduct of war is often a major change in media and news reporting. In the Civil War, photography was born. In World War II, Edward R. Murrow brought radio into its own with his dramatic reports of the Nazi blitz on London. In Vietnam, television became pivotal as images of bloodshed soured American backing for the war. The Gulf War saw the growth of CNN as all-news television became essential.
In the Iraq War, the public may well have learned not to trust the broadcast networks or the establishment newspapers. Never before have Americans had the chance to watch the establishment media while also seeing events unfold for themselves, live, on television. Our collective understanding of the dissonance between the two is breeding a distrust of the major news organs that will likely long outlast this war.
While CBS viewership dropped 15 percent from pre-war totals, ABC fell 6 percent and NBC gained an anemic 3 percent, the Fox News Channel audience rose 236 percent while CNN and MSNBC (with smaller audiences) recorded similarly impressive gains. Among younger viewers (18-34), CBS Evening News fell 16 percent while Fox News Channel gained fivefold.
Joe Kovacs ruminates today at WorldNetDaily on how various public figures might adopt the winning communication techniques of the pathetic "lovable liar," former Iraqi information minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf. Pretty funny.
What if some Americans with credibility problems adopted his technique of making lies entertaining? Could they free themselves from the pit of disdain? Can the Democratic Party save itself by emulating Baghdad Bob? Learning to be a bit more "Sahaf-spoken" as I call it just might do the trick.
- The Dixie Chicks: "Our initial assessment is that our careers will all die, but we're still ecstatic. Performing at birthday parties is a much more intimate and rewarding experience than having millions of adoring fans filling our bank accounts."
- Tom Daschle: "We Democrats are in control. They, the Republicans, are in a state of hysteria. Losers, they think that by stealing elections and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those bastards."
- The French: "We're coming to surrender or be burned in our tanks - if we had any."
No idea (yet) who William Rees-Mogg is, but he has a great take in The Times (UK) on liberty, democracy, and the vital role of the "American model."
The liberation of Iraq started on July 4, 1776.
Democracy is a continuous revolution. April 9, 2003, was Liberty Day for Iraq, the day on which one of the foulest of the 20th-century tyrannies was finally destroyed. The liberation of Baghdad was greeted with celebration as well as looting, and by ill-concealed dismay in Paris, Berlin, Moscow and the left-wing British press. It was unquestionably a victory for the United States, not only for the American forces, but also for the American model of society. The United States has for more than a century been the engine of global liberation.
The United States usually intervenes with reluctance - it took 13 years to get from the original invasion of Kuwait to the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime. The US has even tried to avoid intervention by propping up authoritarian regimes, as in modern Saudi Arabia. Yet the underlying American idea is the most revolutionary idea in the world. It is the idea of liberty, of human freedom, of self-government and of democracy. Without American, and often British, intervention, most of the present-day democracies would never come in to existence, or would not have survived, particularly the European democracies.
The American victory in Iraq is a warning to the tyrants and terrorists of the world. The momentum of liberty continues to accelerate. The dictators have had a very bad couple of decades; in 1980 the world was still “half slave and half free”. Now the remaining dictators, old Castro, young Assad, Kim Jong Il, mad Mugabe and the others, look foolish and obsolete, though still horrible. They must mend their ways or liberty and democracy will amend them.
DEBKA reports that Syria is playing a dangerous game in league with the deposed leaders of Iraq. If only part of what they say is true, the Syrian front may get interesting mighty fast. Note that the French foreign minister was in Syria this weekend, and idiocy usually follows in his wake. The Axis of Envy and yet another isolated despot continue to think they can succeed at brinksmanship.
Several thoughts occur: Israel will be key in dealing with Syria; they know that territory very well. The Israeli people are de facto human shields/hostages for Syria-based WMD, either homegrown or imported from Iraq. Both the Syrians and the Arabists in the State Department will work to sabotage a thoughtful solution to the Israel-Palestinian situation, keeping the area more unstable. Lastly, Iraqi fugitives in Syria may well mount a counter-attack and/or insurgency back in Iraq, with an eye to eventual return to power. Vital for the U.S. to plan on being in Iraq in force for a long time to come.
According to a DEBKAfile senior in the US administration, Assad, in addition to rescuing Saddam and his minions, is working with a will to de-legitimize the American war in Iraq and make sure it can never be justified. He is trying to achieve this by placing Iraq’s entire chemical and biological weapons arsenal in a safe repository, also placing the scientists and officials employed on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs out of reach in hidden locations. In this clandestine operation he was almost certainly assisted by Russian and French intelligence services, who share Assad's ambition to deny the United States any proof that its war on Iraq was just.
Stars and Stripes reports that the USS Kitty Hawk has received its official orders to return home to Japan. Sounds like some of the crew are hoping for a port call on the way - to check out cultural attractions, no doubt.
The rumors started a few days ago. The word "home" was on everyone's lips. Sailors roamed the USS Kitty Hawk in better spirits, whistling and singing songs. On Sunday, it became official. The aircraft carrier has orders to leave the Persian Gulf and steam home for Japan after 80 straight days at sea. Capt. Thomas Parker, the carrier’s commanding officer, made the welcome announcement Sunday afternoon. Sailors yelled "Whoo-hoo!" and "Finally!" They exchanged high-fives in the passageways.
Parker said it has been a bittersweet deployment. Carrier Air Wing 5, embarked on the ship, also lost a plane, an F-14 Tomcat, during the war. "The good news is, we got the crew back," he said of the two pilots who walked away unscathed after their F-14 suffered mechanical failure.
The air wing has flown about 2,000 combat sorties since the war started and, Parker said, won't be doing much flying on the homeward journey.
Andrew Sullivan is perceptive as always, today in The Times (UK) . Among other conclusions from reading his article, one would think this is a real bad time for Syria to roll the dice and harbor Iraq's Ba'athist fugitives.
Yes, in this war there were tragic civilian casualties. But the most significant factor was how few civilians died - fewer than in a few weeks of Saddam's murderous rule. This war was so precise that it inverted the usual pacifist worry. Saddam and sanctions killed millions of civilians. This war killed hundreds of civilians. In this case, war spared human life. This was the real shock and awe, and it is being absorbed by every dictator on the planet. Warfare is different now. America's technological edge needs only two things to make it lethal: political will and public support.
Those two things, as long as this president remains in power, are now in place. Bush’s approval ratings are close to 80%. Most Americans needed no legal case to see the connection between Iraq and 9/11. They knew their vulnerability; and they knew Saddam's malevolence and his goal of getting the most destructive weapons known to man. Case closed. The anti-war movement never gained traction. This matters. The only thing that can stop American power now is American resistance. No, this doesn't mean immediate invasions of Syria or North Korea, or indeed any military action in the foreseeable future. In all likelihood, the US will be too preoccupied building a civil state in Iraq, stabilising Afghanistan and hunting Al-Qaeda to intervene anywhere else. But Washington could if it wanted to. And for that reason alone, the importance of this war should not be underestimated.
America is in this battle for real. What you have seen is not only the belated conclusion of an old war; it has demonstrated the capacity for a new war - more precise, more ferocious and more mobile than ever before. Afraid? Don't be. But every would-be Saddam now is.
Ba'athist Syria seems to have an unquenchable thirst for mischief, but is getting some serious heat today for crimes past and present. Syria's record includes: terrorist, genocidal state itself; enabler of myriad international terrorists; conqueror of Lebanon; frequent supporter of Saddam Hussein's Iraq; ally of terrorist Iran; enemy of democratic Israel; probable owner of WMD; and now shelter for many of Iraq's Top 55 fugitives. All in all, maybe as much a deserving target as Iraq - just less of an imminent threat.
But we can look at a map of Syria's neighborhood and see an interesting correlation of forces: Turkey to the north; a West-leaning Jordan and savvy, determined Israel to the south; 300,000 American troops in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia; and the United States Navy sitting in the Mediterranean. Only vassal-state Lebanon acts as a buffer. Assad the younger ain't as clever as his unloved, departed dad, and now the U.S. can spare some time and attention. Iran is starting to make nice. Are the Syrians as smart?
STRATFOR sums it up today in a subscribers-only article:
Powell, the perennial good cop to Donald Rumsfeld's bad cop, made no threats, but the message delivered to Damascus was clear. The United States intends to follow up the close of the Iraq crisis by -- in effect -- running the table, and Syria is getting lined up for a shot.
Good news today about the Army POWs, and we all rejoice that they are free. But sad news about the missing F/A-18 pilot from the USS Kitty Hawk. We pray for his family and honor his sacrifice.
The Department of Defense announced today that Lt. Nathan D. White, 30, of Mesa, Ariz., was killed in action April 2 in Iraq. White was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron One Nine Five (VFA 195), based in Atsugi, Japan, and currently deployed with Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW 5) aboard USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63). White was the pilot of an F/A-18C Hornet lost over Iraq on April 2. The incident remains under investigation.
"Quote of the Day"
"Imagine how much easier the war on terror would go, if 3,000 or 4,000 al Qaeda types showed up in Iraq only to be gunned down by the Army and Marines. It might be the first time ever that the roaches came to the exterminator."
- Anonymous U.S. military contact, reacting to the new tape purportedly of Osama bin Laden urging his followers to go to Iraq and fight the infidels
Axis of Evil wannabe Fidel Castro culminated his latest spasm of repression this week with the summary execution of three hapless ferryboat hijackers. This pathetic tinhorn is hypnotically appealing to the utopian Left (and certain corporate/business types who envisage making tons of capitalist dollars in Cuba someday). On a regular basis, though, Castro thoughtfully blows up their chances at achieving "normalization." The idea that America has left this canker in place for 40 years is infuriating.
Rarely in its turbulent 44 years has Fidel Castro's regime reacted so harshly against so many. Cuba's sweeping crackdown on dissidents, capped by the swift execution Friday of ferry hijackers, exposes the insecurities of a government that feels even more threatened, defensive and vulnerable than usual. The stunning roundup of dissidents and the display of justice by firing squad comes at a surprising time, leaving Cuba watchers, both critics and defenders, groping for explanations.
Cuba claims it has been provoked, but its extraordinary reaction appears to be a show of toughness both to defy the United States and to halt a democracy movement that had begun to gather momentum.
Quote of the Day:
"Listen, we're an understanding people. We've got a long fuse, but at the end of the day, it's connected to a big-ass bomb."
- Dennis Miller, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Mansoor Ijaz cautions on NRO's The Corner that reports of the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear materials as benign should not be cause for complacency. There may not be quick answers on the WMD questions - Iraq has had years to develop methods of concealment.
I have received a number of mails today from readers (mostly the naysayer crowd) citing the Associated Press report that says U.S. troops may have inadvertently broken seals on IAEA-inspected drums of low-grade uranium ore at the Tuwaitha facility. This, says AP, was the cause for abnormal radiation readings. Maybe... But the U.S. Marines responsible for uncovering Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are not a bunch of school boys. These are some of the most highly trained and sophisticated nuclear engineers this country has. They had maps, blueprints of the buildings, detailed sketches from IAEA inspections and precise locations of where old low-grade uranium had been sealed and stored in drums when the IAEA was last there.
Whatever the Marines found there, and none of us know for sure until CentCom confirms what it was, it was dangerous beyond the limits Iraq was compelled to remain within by the United Nations and the IAEA.
The price of freedom is so damned high. And our soldiers have so much courage. Don't click here unless you can take a few minutes for some emotions.
As he lay there in the desert, a medic ran up to him, stepped on a mine and lost a leg too. These were the guys who were side by side. The soldier who had lost both legs said, in response to B. B. asking him what he could do for him, "Sir, I am fine. I have everything I need. I have nothing to complain about."
via The Braden Files.
Details of the lightning-fast preparation and execution of the March "decapitation" attack on Saddam Hussein have been told for the first time.
Two pilots from the Black Sheep squadron, deployed to al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, got the call. The leader was a lieutenant colonel nicknamed "Tooms." His wingman was a major named "Fuji." Air Force officials asked that their real names not be used. Their unit is normally stationed at Holloman Air Force Base in southern New Mexico. Tooms was not thrilled. A typical stealth fighter mission requires six hours of preparation. He had less than two. To reach Baghdad, some 700 miles to the north, before dawn, they had to be airborne by 3 a.m. local time. "We really needed to get into the airplanes," Tooms said.
Nor was he certain the mission would actually come off. The pilots had been through several false starts and scrapped missions in the days before the war. Adding to the uncertainty, they would be dropping some new bombs, using a new technique. Each plane carried two one-ton EGBU-27 Advanced Paveway IIIs, bunker-busters newly modified to use satellite guidance to find their target. They had not seen combat before. Only a few hours before the mission, test pilots in the United States dropped two of them simultaneously from a stealth fighter. Their next test would come over Baghdad.
Good news this morning for the crew of the USS Kitty Hawk and their families back home.
Now that the air war over Iraq is winding down, the Navy is seeking to send home, within days, two of the three aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf, the commander of all naval forces in the Gulf said Saturday. Vice Adm. Timothy Keating told reporters in a videotelecast news conference from his Gulf headquarters that the first to head home will likely be the USS Kitty Hawk, whose home base is Yokosuka, Japan. He said the USS Constellation, based in San Diego, may go home soon, too. He stressed that the decision is up to Gen. Tommy Franks, the overall war commander, and that no orders have been issued yet.
"We're anxious to get those folks back to their home ports as soon as we can,'' Keating said.
As explained by The Times (UK), imported terrorists have been, and still are, integral to Saddam's plans for resisting the Coalition invasion of Iraq. Tough for our troops, but it's sure been more convenient to kill these fanatics in Iraq instead of having to track them down inside their home countries later.
President Saddam Hussein imported hundreds of well-trained Islamic guerrillas before the war to spearhead his fight against American and British forces, Documents and captives seized by British troops in Basra reveal that the recruits were arriving in Baghdad from Muslim countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as little as ten days before the war began. They came to wage jihad against the Western military, and provided some of the fiercest resistance as the coalition advanced northwards. Survivors are still mounting occasional attacks in Baghdad and other cities.
U.S. officials are seizing on the guerrillas’ presence as evidence of links between Saddam and Usama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organisation — links that the Bush Administration has long cited as a justification for the war. The foreign fighters provide a "direct tie between Saddam Hussein and terrorist organizations", a Pentagon spokeswoman said last night.
British investigators are more cautious, but one officer involved in questioning the survivors told The Times: "These are not just zealots who grabbed a gun and went to the front line. They know how to employ guerrilla tactics so someone had to have trained them. They are certainly organised, and if it’s not bin Laden’s people, its Al Qaeda by another name. But they certainly came here to fight the West." Identity documents show the men came from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The Americans say they have also captured Chechens fighting with Fedayeen units close to Baghdad. The guerrillas were also in a different league from the rag-tag collection of volunteers who arrived in Baghdad before the war on buses from Jordan and Syria.
The "foreign legion" stunned British troops with their skills and fanaticism.
Be sure to check the April 11 Day by Day. Too funny.
Quote of the Day:
"It's an amazing thing when you see a person wounded, sitting there in a wheelchair or bound up in bandages and these different-looking metal things sticking out of them to hold them together. A young man looks you in the eye and says, 'I can't wait to get back to my unit. I hope I'm healed fast enough to get back to Iraq.' [These are] people who are willing to sacrifice for something greater than themselves, and I feel lucky as an American to be a part of a country where citizens are willing to do that."
- President George W. Bush, after visiting more than 70 wounded service members and their families at two military hospitals
The Moscow Times reports that the Russians are feeling serious FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt. It would appear that major powers on this earth are living in a dream world, or have been taking seriously the uninformed ravings of the Left. One would think that the first responsibility of military leadership would be to observe. Apparently, not so.
As the war in Iraq winds to its inevitable end, uneasy reflections are taking over Russia's political and military elite. No one in Moscow ever seriously believed that Saddam Hussein might indeed "defeat" the allied forces. But the speed and decisiveness of the offensive has bewildered many. Many Russian generals truly believe that a bombing campaign that leaves some buildings still standing is ineffective. Precision-guided munitions are widely considered to be costly pranks -- not real weapons. In Chechnya, we tried to use some of these gadgets, but they did not work, as most Russian officers and men have not been trained in how to use the limited number of modern weapons our military inherited from the Soviet armed forces.
The worst possible outcome of the war in Iraq for the Russian military is a swift allied victory with relatively low casualties. Already many in Russia are beginning to ask why our forces are so ineffective compared to the Brits and Americans; and why the two battles to take Grozny in 1995 and 2000 each took more than a month to complete, with more that 5,000 Russian soldiers killed and tens of thousands wounded in both engagements, given that Grozny is one tenth the size of Baghdad.
Russian generals were expecting another prolonged so-called non-contact war, like the one against Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2001 or the first gulf war in 1991, when a four-day ground offensive was preceded by a 39-day air bombardment. It was believed that the Americans were afraid of close hand-to-hand encounters, they would not tolerate the inevitable casualties, and that in the final analysis they were cowards who relied on technical superiority.
via BlogsOfWar.com
The Axis of Envy is trying to back up and go sideways at the same time. Note this story is on page A29 of the Washington Post. That seems like a good working definition of irrelevance.
The leaders of Russia, France and Germany today attempted to patch up deep differences with the United States and Britain over Iraq, saying after a meeting here that what mattered now was addressing the humanitarian crisis and the apparent anarchy besetting the country. Conferring just two days after the fall of Baghdad, the three heads of state generally avoided restating their opposition to the war. But they stood by their position that the United Nations, not U.S. and British forces, should oversee Iraq's reconstruction.
James Taranto had a perceptive comment in a Best of the Web blog this week, after reviewing more of the continuing inanities from the Left. Good words to keep in mind - the struggle is not futile.
Reading this stuff, it's easy to become dispirited. What hope is there for a world in which so many deluded people side with evil? Then again, they lost their fight to keep Saddam Hussein in power--and American democracy remains healthy, despite the malign influence of the antiwar left. (Time will tell whether the same can be said for the Democratic Party.) If that's true here, who's to say it can't be in the Arab world too?
Was referred to this compelling MSNBC link via Donald Sensing's blog. His comments:
MSNBC today broadcast video from Monday of the thick of a firefight by a 3d Inf. Div. supply column, some of the best video of the war. Cameraman Craig White, who has covered other wars, said on MSNBC that the fighting was so intense that he almost picked up a rifle and started shooting himself. He said the chaplain actually did so. Most of the soldiers were not infantrymen; White said it was the first time most of them had seen battle.
Lots of concerns, many legitimate, about women in combat. But we can't deny that lots of 'em have shown their quality for all to see.
Air Force Capt. K.C., a 27-year-old woman, was flying an A-10 attack plane above Baghdad when 150 bullets from anti-aircraft artillery fire riddled the tail of her aircraft and caused a fire, searing the exhaust pipe. "I could feel the jet get hit; I could hear the jet get hit," K.C. said. "I lost all hydraulics instantaneously, so I completely lost control of the jet. It rolled left and pointed to the ground, which is an uncomfortable feeling over Baghdad." She acted fast, trying to regain instrument power in the A-10. Then she grabbed the flight stick with both hands and pulled hard on the heavy instrument.
Finally K.C., a member of the Flying Tigers 23rd Fighter Group from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, made a rare emergency landing with no hydraulic power back in friendly airspace. The landing, with no instrument control of the aircraft, had been tried only three times in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, something not lost on K.C. at the time.
Less than 12 hours after she landed her plane, she was back into another A-10 cockpit, scrambling a combat search and rescue operation for her fellow A-10 pilot who lost his plane and had to eject over western Baghdad.
The embedded AP reporter onboard the USS Kitty Hawk has filed a good overall profile of life on the great ship.
Once a day, Capt. Thomas Parker's voice crackles through the small speakers built into virtually every room aboard ship. His message is simple. "Getting planes off the front end, that's what we're here for," the ship's commander says. "Getting warheads on foreheads." Once they start, though, the work sounds anything but uncomplicated. There's a loud whump, and a shudder runs through the ship, followed by a grating rattle. Through the network of pipes comes a constant hum; through the walls, an incessant hiss like a television broadcasting static. Noise aside, the 41-year-old Kitty Hawk - the U.S. Navy's oldest active ship - remains a giant, single-purpose machine out of German expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis."
Like the movie's subterranean city, the world below the Kitty Hawk's decks is a melange of levers, gauges, cables, pipes, rivets and bulkheads, maintained by coverall-clad workers. Upstairs, the jet-fired strike planes bombing Iraq leave and return with deafening regularity, day and night. They are launched with the help of steam-powered catapults, and stopped by cables drawn across the deck. Then they do it all again.
What a bunch of suckers.
It was a phenomenon of Arab brotherhood: From across the Mideast and even farther afield -- hundreds of young men made their way to Iraq to fight the U.S. and British "invaders." But with the fall of Baghdad and the absence of Iraqi leadership, some volunteers are returning home, disillusioned and angry at the failure of their jihad, or holy war. "We volunteered to defend Baghdad," said Firas Ali Abdullah, who returned to Syria with seven other Syrians and Lebanese on Wednesday. "Instead of giving us weapons to fight, they used us as human shields."
Turns out that many of Iraq's roustabouts and roughnecks are professionals and patriots. I'm just glad we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom fast enough to do our part: occupy those oilfields.
Just as Pentagon officials had suspected, the oil wells in southern Iraq were laced with explosives, ready to blow as the coalition forces advanced. But only a handful were actually detonated. "Many of them, even though there were explosives set in place, had the valves turned off, so that even if you had an explosion, it wouldn't necessarily damage the oil well," Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart said in Doha, Qatar, Thursday. When Iraqi oil workers were asked why they hadn't torched the oil fields, they responded: "We read your leaflets," Renuart said.
Coalition forces have dropped more than 43 million leaflets in the country in recent weeks -- including 1 million Wednesday alone -- urging the Iraqis to lay down their arms and refrain from destroying their nation's oil wealth. The Iraqis also had been listening to coalition broadcasts, Renuart said. And they agreed their oil infrastructure would be vital to the country's reconstruction. The Iraqi workers, Renuart said, had complied with orders from Saddam Hussein's regime for their own protection but had "ensured that true damage to the oil fields not occur."
The workers' refusal to destroy their own country's oil fields came as no surprise to petroleum industry experts. Iraq's oil industry workers have long enjoyed a reputation for both professional expertise and fierce patriotism.
Quote ot the Day:
"I don't like the idea of having the Americans here, but we asked for it. Why don't we see the Americans going to Finland, for example? They come here because our area is filled with dictatorships like Saddam's."
- Tannous Basil, a cardiologist in Sidon, Lebanon
Mansoor Ijaz reviews the overwhelming evidence, including discoveries made just today, that convincingly document the WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the implications.
George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism is now indelibly imprinted on his war ethic - America has proven it can conduct a politically correct, yet militarily precise war against a foe that by all counts had the mendacity and weaponry to draw Iraq and its citizens into Saddam's final hellfire.
Though there was never any doubt about the ultimate outcome of the war to liberate Iraq, it is worth recounting what has been achieved thus far. The naysayers, including some of America's most decorated military commanders and political leaders, should understand once and for all why this war had to be fought, and how ridding the world of the most dangerous threat mankind has possibly ever faced was necessary to insure he couldn't distribute Iraq's weapons of mass terror through networks of Islamist lunatics willing to martyr themselves.
Democracies exist to encourage vibrant debate about the issues that affect all our lives. But the Islamist threat, with legions of fanatics willing to give their lives at any cost to destroy our way of life, is no ordinary debate. It is one in which the naysayers better get on board fast because those who understand Islam's lunatic fringe, and how its sinister designs could co-opt even a sadomasochist like Saddam, cannot indefinitely carry the weight of those who don't, but still want to enjoy the freedoms our brave men and women are fighting, and dying, to protect.
A fallen hero was honored today on the USS Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf. He loved soccer.
Sailors and pilots held a memorial Thursday for a U.S. naval officer who died in a helicopter crash while serving on a British ship during the war against Iraq. Lt. Tom Adams was honored with a 21-gun salute and prayers in a service in the hangar bay of the USS Kitty Hawk, where he served before joining the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal last year under an officer-exchange program. Adams was killed March 22 when two Royal Navy Sea King helicopters crashed shortly after taking off from the Ark Royal. Six British crew aboard both helicopters also died. Adams, 27, from La Mesa, Calif., was a naval flight officer in VAW-115, the "Liberty Bells'' squadron of E-2C Hawkeye planes on the Yokosuka, Japan-based, USS Kitty Hawk. He manned radar and communications machines in the twin-propeller planes, notable for their huge saucer-shaped antenna.
After completing his tour with the Kitty Hawk, Adams applied for a post with the Royal Navy and was assigned last October to the Ark Royal, where he manned radar equipment aboard a Sea King early warning helicopter. Lt. John Joseph, 28, of Phoenix told mourners that Adams was an avid soccer fan and traveler - hobbies that led him to Japan and later to Britain. "It's no joke that he came to Japan for three years just to see a few World Cup games,'' Joseph said. "He said he was supporting America, but I think he was secretly going for the U.K.''
UPDATE: Stars and Stripes also filed a report on Lt. Adams and the memorial service onboard the Kitty Hawk.
The Shelby, NC family of Navy Capt. Pat Driscoll, commander of Air Wing 5 on the USS Kitty Hawk, has shared some of his e-mail correspondence with their local newspaper.
The Shelby Star also published a transcript of Capt. Driscoll's interview with CNN. The folks back home seem pretty proud.
The USS Kitty Hawk is still very busy fighting the war in Iraq. Lots of danger, and we are mindful of the ongoing risks.
US warplanes continued their bombing missions over Iraq even after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, according to media reports. Fighter-bombers from the aircraft carrier the USS Kitty Hawk dropped a total of 41 bombs, targeting tanks, trucks and other vehicles in Al Amarah in the southeast. Overnight, aircraft had dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a surface-to-air missile site and ammunition storage facility near Al Qayyarah on the northern front, said Dewalt. They also struck a radar site southwest of Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and a radar near Baghdad, he told reporters aboard the Kitty Hawk.
At the war command headquarters in Qatar, a military spokeswoman said bombers were targeting towns across northern Iraq. "Northern Iraq is being heavily hit by air attacks and special operation forces," said the spokesman.
Quote of the Day:
"As I watch him guide our country through this very difficult time, I can't help but wonder, 'Is this the same kid I used to spank?' "
- Former first lady Barbara Bush, speaking about her son, the President of the United States
The Guardian (UK) reports that an American tank round may NOT have caused the deaths of two journalists in Baghdad. Probably no one will believe anything else, but CENTCOM may say more over the coming days.
The BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan has cast doubt on whether the missile that killed two journalists in Baghdad today was fired by a US tank, speculating that Iraqi soldiers may have launched the lethal attack. The US military has admitted one of its tanks fired on the Palestine Hotel, the centre for most of the foreign media in the Iraqi capital. However, Gilligan said reports from central command in Qatar were starting to suggest US tank fire was not responsible for the deaths of Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman with the Spanish TV network Telecinco.
"I may be right in saying we're hearing from central command that they're starting to retract their apology for this incident," Gilligan told Radio 5 Live's drivetime show. He added that after examining the scene he concluded it was virtually impossible for the US tank to have fired on the 15th floor room.
"I have to say I rather doubt it and, having been underneath it and looking up now just before it got dark at the hole again in the side of the hotel, I still doubt it. For a start the damage to the hotel is superficial, it's only the masonry that's been torn off in a very small area, a tank shell would have done more damage I feel. Secondly the angle that the tank would have to have reached to hit that roof, it would more or less have had to have shot just round the corner and I don't think even the Americans have got those kinds of weapons."
Gilligan said although American tank fire hit other parts of the hotel, it was possible an Iraqi attack was responsible for the journalists' deaths. "This might have been the responsibility of someone else, maybe some Saddam Fedayeen with a rocket-propelled grenade, who did not like the fact the Reuters guy was shooting footage from his balcony at the time of the attack."
Barbara J. Makuch has an eloquent essay in today's Opinion Journal about what it meant for her family to suffer from tyranny and then be liberated by American might. Read the whole thing.
When American and Allied forces bombed Nazi Germany, the slaves, prisoners of war and concentration-camp inmates cheered. They were forced to work the fields and in the factories even as the bombers flew overhead. Yet they cheered. They knew that their liberation was at hand. Even as they knew they might not live to see their freedom, they cheered. The miserable existence that they endured under the boot of the Nazis and the Soviets would not break their spirit or resolve, or their love of the soldiers who were losing their lives to liberate them. They prayed for their liberators, never faltering in the belief that they would succeed.
I asked my mother what she thought of war. "It is a terrible thing, but if it means freedom to those who have none, if it means safety for the world, then there is no question what has to be done," She said. "Those who have not suffered under the terror of oppression, those whose lives have been privileged and free, will never understand the sacrifices of those who died for liberty and freedom. It is easy to criticize our leaders from the safety, warmth and comfort of their homes and mansions. While they eat the bread of America, and benefit from the democracy and freedom of speech afforded us by this great nation, they show the ultimate disrespect toward our President and our troops."
A fresh press report talks about the possibility of underground fighting in Baghdad. DEBKA has been obsessed by this for a while, but The Age in Australia is a mainstream source. This will be tough if enemy are still down there.
The last phase of the war for Iraq may be fought underground. US troops advancing upon Baghdad have encountered an elaborate underground network of tunnels and bunkers that could be used as last redoubts and possible escape routes for Saddam Hussein, if he is still alive, and other leaders of his regime. Situated beneath the renamed Baghdad International Airport, one of Saddam's major presidential palaces, and other locations in the city, the heavily fortified subterranean complex was designed to withstand even direct hits by heavy-duty bombs.
Saddam has been constructing his underground labyrinth for 20 years, spending as much as $US70 million ($A115.87 million) for one luxurious bunker complex with its own electrical and air-conditioning system. Fortified with steel and concrete and 60 metres beneath one of his palaces, it was considered beyond the reach of conventional bombs. In addition to providing possible refuge and escape for Iraqi fugitives, the tunnels and bunkers could be booby-trapped, military strategists said. They could also be used for the storage and possible deployment of chemical and biological weapons. Pentagon experts consider the confined space of a tunnel the worst possible environment in which to encounter weapons of mass destruction.
There was a lot of talk filling the air this weekend about Saddam's interest in "Black Hawk Down" - how Saddam thought the movie was so great that he sent copies to his commanders as a way to prepare them for the Coalition invasion. Kind of funny, since the whole idea is the epitome of military stupidity. Even irregulars couldn't get tactical training from a Hollywood movie. In fact, an ex-Special Forces guy on TV specifically said the movie offered no tactical insights. But then Saddam has no background as a military man; he came to power as a thug, and he's always been inept at both strategy and battlefield tactics. However, it is interesting to compare and contrast the Somalia and Iraq efforts, and the Washington Times published a good article yesterday. A Pentagon source summed it all up: "The big difference between Mogadishu and Iraqi urban areas is [our] guys know they have a president who is backing them."
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's strategy of creating a "series of Mogadishus" in Iraq's southern cities failed because the United States committed overwhelming firepower and political will, unlike in Somalia in 1993, Pentagon officials said yesterday. The sources said U.S. commanders are growing increasingly confident that the urban tactics displayed in uprooting the Fedayeen Saddam fighters in the south bode well for expected close-in attacks and tunnel-to-tunnel fighting in Baghdad.
The disaster in Mogadishu became legend among Islamic terrorists as a lesson in how to defeat the Americans. Several Pentagon sources say the Ba'ath Party regime repeatedly referred to "Black Hawk Down" in military training. As the allied invasion neared, Baghdad sent thousands of Fedayeen fighters into southern cities to create "a series of Mogadishus," one Pentagon source said. The source said the regime believed that if the Fedayeen caused dozens of combat deaths, the U.S. troops would leave, just as they did in Somalia. It didn't work. British and Americans methodically secured the cities of Basra, Nasiriyah, Najaf, Karbala and Kut, fighting door to door if necessary.
"You have to look at the basic context in which we fought," said a senior Pentagon official involved in war planning. "In Mogadishu, we were in the process of pulling out. We had already given an SOS. There wasn't any sense of mission in what we were doing. In Iraq, every Pfc. says we're here to kick Saddam's ass and liberate the Iraqi people. These people know what they are doing there. And that direction comes from the American president." He added, "The big difference between Mogadishu and Iraqi urban areas is these guys know they have a president who is backing them."
This is from last Friday, but may still be appropriate, so here it is as today's Quote of the Day:
"The bad news is it looks like Saddam Hussein is still alive. The good news: We still get to kill him."
- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show
Navy pilot Lt. Chad Vincelette from the USS Kitty Hawk made it back home to Virginia after ditching over Iraq. His family is sure glad to see him, but he says he's ready to go back if needed.
Vincelette, an instructor at the strike fighter weapons school at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, said he returned home to spend time with his family while the Navy investigates the mishap. He declined to give many details about what happened. The F-14 was heading back to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk after a bombing run April 1 when a mechanical failure forced Vincelette and the jet's radar intercept officer, who is from Georgia, to bail. It was the first confirmed report of a U.S. fighter going down in Iraq during the war. "I was kind of in a shock when the whole thing happened," Vincelette said. "We came down, landed safely and got picked up by the Air Force combat search and rescue guys." Vincelette, who said he was very nervous because he knew they had landed in Iraq, thanked his rescuers.
Controversial Israeli source DEBKA says that tough fighting is happening underneath Baghdad. No way to say yet if they are right, but they did first report on Iraqi leaders being spotted at the Syrian city of Latakiya on the Mediterranean coast, and that's being discussed on Fox News right now by one of Fox's military experts. Hmmm.
Beneath the heavily exposed surface battles, a fierce secret war is raging in the subterranean tunnels linking Saddam's four of five command and control fortress-bunkers spread out under the Baghdad region. DEBKAfile's sources reveal that US Special forces are locked in hand to hand combat with Special Republican Guards and Saddam's Fedayeen commanded by Uday Hussein. All that we know about the battle of the tunnels for the moment is that American forces uncovered two or three secret entrances to the underground labyrinth - two of them at the international airport of Baghdad after its capture. At least one of those entrances led to a broad underground highway system with roads some 12 meters wide through which two armored personnel carriers can pass each other comfortably. Some of these passageways are designed as blind alleys to lead interlopers astray; the ones leading to the command and control bunker-fortresses are guarded by Iraqi commandos.
Tony Parsons has written another great column in The Mirror (UK), this time on "the rebirth of pride in being British." A lot of his analysis applies on both sides of the Atlantic, but we can be grateful that Americans inherently won't allow themselves to stay down for long. Never have, never will - despite the efforts of the blame-America-first crowd.
When I see the faces of British servicemen who have given their lives in this conflict, when I see the wives and children they have left behind, young women made widows, small babies who will never know their dads beyond a fading photograph, I feel proud of them, and proud of the country that they called home.
The country we call home. On BBC News 24 they keep referring to the British forces in Iraq as "they" - as though the axis of weasels at BBC News 24 doesn't have their every penny funded by British people. They can burn all the Union Jacks they like in the streets of the Middle East, Pakistan and all those other fonts of democracy and freedom. They can string up effigies of Blair and Bush until the sacred cows come home. They can scream and shout about the Great Satan, the big cowboy and his pal the Yankee Poodle. They can sit on their spreading bottoms in the coffee shops of the Middle East, vowing to get up quite soon - really quite soon, honest - and embrace martyrdom to help their Iraqi brothers defeat the Western dogs.
But this fact remains - the British and American troops are not slaughtering the Iraqi people, they are setting them free.
In November 2002, author Robert D. Kaplan wrote an article in The Atlantic presaging the war in Iraq and looking forward to the even more strategic issue of how to handle Iran. This is a pertinent read, especially now that Iraq is being forcibly revamped.
Keep in mind that the Middle East is a laboratory of pure power politics. For example, nothing impressed the Iranians so much as our accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988, which they believed was not an accident. Iran's subsequent cease-fire with Iraq was partly the result of that belief. Our dismantling the Iraqi regime would concentrate the minds of Iran's leaders as little else could.
Vastly more developed politically than Iraq, Iran has a system rather than a mere regime, however labyrinthine and inconvenient to our purposes that system may be. Indeed, because so many major issues are matters of internal bargaining, the Iranian system is the very opposite of dynamic. Iran's foreign policy will change only when its collective leadership believes there is no other choice.
Iranian leaders were disappointed not to see an American diplomatic initiative in 1991, after the United States bombed Baghdad—which, like the shooting down of the civilian jet, had greatly impressed them. Also likely to have been impressive to them was President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech (Iran's orchestrated denunciations notwithstanding). Overtures to the moderates in Iran's elected government, as the White House has already admitted, have not helped us - we will have to deal directly with the radicals, and that can be done only through a decisive military shock that affects their balance-of-power calculations.
Kaplan's most recent book is Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. I haven't read it yet, but I'm going to asap.
Today is one of those sorta kinda anxious days. We're not sure if we got Saddam yesterday. Coalition forces are making amazing progress in Baghdad and all around Iraq, but lots of the media coverage is about the civilian toll from the war. Journalists are now casualties of American firepower, so we can count on more negativity (those bi-polar moods again). Our heroic troops are succeeding but it's hard, painful work.
So it's like a drink of cool, clear water to read this news from AFP:
More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot weapons from an army compound, a US officer said. Around 150 children spilled out of the jail after the gates were opened as a US military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment. "Hundreds of kids were swarming us and kissing us," Padilla said. "There were parents running up, so happy to have their kids back."
"The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party," he alleged. "Some of these kids had been in there for five years." The children, who were wearing threadbare clothes and looked under-nourished, walked on the streets crossing their hands as if to mimic handcuffs, before giving the thumbs up sign and shouting their thanks. It was not clear who had opened the doors of the prison.
via BlogsOfWar.com
Nothing succeeds like success, I suppose. This upsurge won't last; the Left Coast can be notoriously fickle. But it's gratifying for now.
A strong majority of Californians support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, even in the politically liberal San Francisco Bay area, according to a poll released Tuesday. In the first statewide survey published since the war began, 76 percent of Californians questioned in the Field Poll said they support the war, putting the state in line with finding from recent national polls. Last September, the Field Institute found 58 percent of respondents supported military intervention. That jump apparently helped buoy Californians' opinion of President Bush, whose approval rating sat at 61 percent, reversing a yearlong downward trend.
Although support for the war was lower in the Bay Area than the rest of the state, 63 percent of residents supported the war.
Quote of the Day:
"I do believe this city is freakin' ours."
- Capt. Chris Carter (3rd Infantry Div.), of Watkinsville, Ga., speaking from central Baghdad
Now NPR is reporting that rockets with live chemical warheads have been found in Iraq by the 101st. Other suspicious sites are in Coalition hands and being investigated right now. The WMD discoveries are rolling, now that the media has had a day or two to lament why the Coalition hadn't found any yet. This is going to develop rapidly this week, along with all the other action. Tommy Franks and his force are moving forward relentlessly.
Soldiers with the Army's 101st Airborne Division discover what they believe to be an Iraqi storage site for chemical warheads, U.S. commander says. Describing the discovery as a potential "smoking gun," the official says soldiers found in a warehouse outside Baghdad about 20 medium-range rockets with warheads containing sarin and mustard gases.
Knight-Ridder is reporting Sunday night that soldiers from the 101st Airborne have confirmed evidence of sarin nerve gas at a compound in Albu Muhawish, Iraq. Just the start of locating the hidden WMD.
U.S. soldiers evacuated an Iraqi military compound on Sunday after tests by a mobile laboratory confirmed evidence of sarin nerve gas. More than a dozen soldiers of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had been sent earlier for chemical weapons decontamination after they exhibited symptoms of possible exposure to nerve agents. The evacuation of dozens of soldiers Sunday night followed a day of tests for the nerve agent that came back positive, then negative. Additional tests Sunday night by an Army Fox mobile nuclear, biological and chemical detection laboratory confirmed the existence of sarin.
Sgt. Todd Ruggles, a biochemical expert attached to the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne said, "I was right" that chemical agents Iraq has denied having were present.
In addition to the soldiers sent for decontamination, a Knight Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman and two Iraqi prisoners of war also were hosed down with water and bleach. U.S. soldiers found the suspect chemicals at two sites: an agricultural warehouse containing 55-gallon chemical drums and a military compound, which soldiers had begun searching on Saturday. The soldiers also found hundreds of gas masks and chemical suits at the military complex, along with large numbers of mortar and artillery rounds.
The Times (UK) has an encouraging report in Monday's edition indicating that the Coalition has gotten good cooperation from a captured Iraqi general in Basra. Will be interesting to watch as the war unfolds to see if the regular Iraqi military has more integrity than the Ba'athists, Fedayeen, and other hardcore Saddam loyalists.
BRITAIN has offered an amnesty and refuge to one of Iraq’s top military commanders in exchange for the secrets he has passed on about Saddam Hussein’s regime, senior military sources said yesterday. The imprisoned brigadier-general, who studied at the Army Staff College at Sandhurst and speaks good English, was described by a British official yesterday as “a prize capture”. If he is allowed into Britain it is likely that he would be given a new identity and his whereabouts kept a closely guarded secret. It is understood that before talking, the general, who is the most senior Iraqi officer in the south of the country, insisted that British forces first rescue his family, who were hiding in Basra. They were said to be moving from house to house to evade Baath Party extremists who wanted to take them hostage to prevent the general from co-operating with his coalition captors. It is believed that the family was picked up more than a week ago during a night raid by special forces.
AP has filed a story detailing recent plots by Jemaah Islamiah, the Philippine-based Al Qaida terrorist cell group. The hunt goes on, all around the world.
When al-Qaida leaders decided an attack on a U.S. military shuttle bus was not spectacular enough, the Singapore-based operatives who proposed the idea meticulously planned to hit more daring targets. They laid out plans to blow up embassies of the United States and three other nations and had a chemist buy four tons of ammonium nitrate - four times the amount of explosive that Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building.
In chilling detail, Philippine intelligence reports obtained by The Associated Press also revealed plans to attack U.S. corporations and warships in Singapore and crash a hijacked plane at the country's international airport. The embassy attacks were foiled by U.S. investigators and allies in Southeast Asia as they entered the final stages - a mostly untold success during the war on terrorism. The success was tempered by the discovery that the explosives were not recovered.
Quote of the day:
"One of two things is true: Either he is dead, or he's alive and he's the world's worst general."
— Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on ABC.
The Scotsman newspaper has published a dramatic account of the British taking Basra today with American air support. They decided to test the water and found it to be "just right." I also like the article title: "Bagpipes play as Black Watch takes Basra."
The Iraqis were hiding in a bunker at the side of the road when the tanks first spotted them. There were four of them, waiting at a crossroads in the Al Hadi area of Basra, slotting another rocket-propelled grenade into their launcher to fire at the advancing British troops. The request to engage came over the commanding officer’s radio. A moment’s pause, and then the reply crackled back: "You are now clear to engage the bunker with four men with HESH and co-ax." High explosive shells and chain gun - that’s what the jargon meant, and nothing could stand in their way. Inside the bunker, the militia had only a few seconds left. The sound of a dull explosion rolled across the city. Over the radio, the Challenger crew reported the kill. "The target was engaged and the job was done."
On the other side of the bridge over the Shatt al-Basra canal, Lieutenant William Colquhoun had unpacked his bagpipes and sat on the turret of his Warrior waiting for the order to advance. As the sun attempted to poke through smoke rolling lazily across desolate marshland stretching away on either side of the bridge, wading birds were picking their way among the long grasses.
As he began to play, the sound of Scotland the Brave drifted across the bridge towards the city, competing with the clatter of rotor blades as four Cobra helicopters raced in to join the attack.
Before the off, the CO had told them they were going in to test the water. If it was cold, they were going to stay on. If it was hot, they were getting out of there. If it was just right, they were going to wallow around for a while. As the Challengers and Warriors sped along the roads into the city, they decided the reception they were receiving was just right. The CO decided they would stay on to wallow around a while.
David Von Drehle in the Washington Post compares GWB's conduct of the Iraq war to his political campaigns and finds striking similarities. Although the reporter can't help using phrases like "chesty, stick-to-your-guns style," the article is at least grudgingly positive. The conventional wisdom in Washington does admire a winner; they just can't shake the belief that Democratic stereotyping is true (GWB is dumb, doctrinaire, a religious fanatic, etc., etc.). We do know the smart set would definitely prefer Italian loafers to cowboy boots, and a leader who likes to stay up all night anguishing instead of going to bed on time.
The war in Iraq must feel familiar to President Bush, and not just because he is overseeing a campaign against his father's nemesis, Saddam Hussein. The war is a classic George W. Bush operation. To begin with, the plan defied conventional wisdom in favor of an aggressive early burst designed to intimidate his opponents. Add to that the relentlessly repeated message of inevitability. Long before the decisive battles were fought, Bush and his spokesmen began insisting they would win -- and they kept saying it even when things looked shaky. And when chest-thumping and the initial display of power failed to break the foe, Bush, in his trademark way, stuck to his blueprint, seemingly free of self-doubt, and counted on his troops to pull through.
"Like his campaigns, this has been a product of order, focus, having a plan and sticking to it and never blinking," said a longtime supporter. "I think he learned a lot from watching his father," said one loyal supporter of both Bush presidents. "His father got to be president by never taking any chances. George W. got to be president by taking some pretty bold chances. He also learned that anguishing doesn't pay. He doesn't let his own inner core be supplanted by the hand-wringing of policy wonks."
Stars and Stripes says that search and rescue efforts are still underway inside Iraq for the USS Kitty Hawk's missing F/A-18 pilot, and that flight ops have been cut back to merely 12-hours per day.
U.S. forces remain hopeful that a USS Kitty Hawk pilot survived being shot down over Iraq on Wednesday and will be rescued. "The search and rescue is ongoing for a reason," said Lt. Brook DeWalt, Kitty Hawk spokesman. "We have full hopes of recovering the pilot alive and well." "There's a slew of coalition forces searching for him," Lt. j.g. Nicole Kratzer said Saturday.
Meanwhile, Kitty Hawk sailors started to catch their breath Saturday as flight operations scaled back to 12-hour days. The air wing had been flying 15 hours a day for about two weeks. "We've gone up and down a few times," DeWalt said. Pilots said they welcome the respite, as temperatures rose this week.
"As it gets hotter, it starts to wear you out a bit more," said Lt. Cmdr. Herb Carmen, from Rock Island, Ill., a pilot with Airborne Early Warning Squadron 115. "When you get inside a plane, it's like a greenhouse. You start sweating like crazy [until] the air conditioning kicks in" about 30 minutes later.
About 70 sorties were scheduled for Saturday. On Friday, 113 sorties were flown, 57 of which were dedicated strike missions.
American soldiers have long been known for their generosity and decency, as well as their ability to kick the asses of bad guys. Cold War hero Gail Halvorsen is ready to un-retire and repeat his special contribution to humanity.
The pilot known as the Candy Bomber for air-dropping handkerchief-tethered chocolate and gum to the children of Berlin in 1948 wants to do the same for the kids of Baghdad. "I'd give my right arm to do it," said retired Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen. "I've had the experience of the reaction of the kids on the ground. It's just incredible."
When the Soviets formed a blockade around Berlin after World War II, Halvorsen and other U.S. pilots airlifted food, medicine and other supplies into the city. During that time, Halvorsen collected rations from his Air Force friends and began to quietly drop little parachutes of candy to the children. "I didn't have permission. I almost got court martialed," he recalled. Halvorsen later got permission, and he and his colleagues air-dropped 23 tons of candy to the German children.
Halvorsen still makes his trademark candy drops. In 1994, he flew a C-130 cargo plane over Bosnia and dropped candy-bar parachutes to the children there. And over the past year, he's made a dozen similar flights in the United States to demonstrate the drops to schoolchildren.
Halvorsen said he plans to ask his friends in the Air Force if he can make a candy drop over Baghdad once the war is over. "I'm planning on how to do that when the dust clears," he said.
Gail Halvorsen's story is told in his autobiographical account, The Berlin Candy Bomber, and in an inspiring, award-winning children's book Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot: A True Story of the Berlin Airlift and the Candy That Dropped from the Sky.
Surely there is an opportunity here for diplomat Hans Blix, who is in dire need of a new gig. He couldn't solve the Iraqi dilemma, but maybe the hedgehog crisis is within his abilities. Or maybe not... animal rights types can be at least as tough as Fedayeen.
Animal lovers were today stepping up their efforts to rescue as many hedgehogs as possible on the eve of a mass cull. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is due to begin its eradication of around 5,000 of the creatures in the Western Isles tomorrow night. The move, it says, is necessary to protect rare birds on the islands. However, volunteers have launched a desperate rescue operation in North Uist over the last week in a bid to save hedgehogs.
Code-named Operation Tiggywinkle - after Beatrix Potter's famous character - the animals saved would be relocated to the mainland. But so far volunteers have only managed to save six of the creatures as efforts have been hampered by bad weather causing the hedgehogs to hibernate for longer than expected.
Ross Minett, of the campaigning group Advocates for Animals, said: "We are here to rescue as many hedgehogs as we can before SNH get their grubby mits on them. Animal welfare groups, who have joined forces under the name Uist Hedgehog Rescue, are offering islanders 5 pounds for every live hedgehog delivered to its collection point.
Those behind the coalition include Advocates for Animals, the Mammal Society, the Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and International Animal Rescue.
John Leo ably dissects the cynicism and hypocrisy of the so-called "anti-war" movement.
President Bush is Ahab, the mad captain in Moby Dick, according to David Ignatius of the Washington Post and Richard Gere of the Hollywood left's foreign desk. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks Bush is Queeg, the mad captain of The Caine Mutiny. What's next, Captain Hook? Then we have the constant Nazi references.
A big problem with all the Hitler-Ahab rhetoric is that it is high on contempt and rage, leaving little room for any attempt to engage or persuade. Note that the depiction of the president as a deranged or Nazi paranoid is coming mostly from people who constantly tell us how passionately they oppose hate speech in all its forms. Also, the denunciation of Bush as Hitler is a favorite of people who shout "McCarthyism!" when anyone points out, accurately, that the antiwar movement has been organized by far-left activists who defend Mao, Castro, Milosevic, the mullahs of Iran, and the Stalinists of North Korea. The reason Bush is compared to Hitler so often is simple: All the other recent monsters are heroes to major antiwar organizers.
Tom Bevan, a blogger at RealClearPolitics, put it nicely: "It matters a great deal who is organizing the protests. I don't absolve the `true' antiwar protesters for taking part in a march organized by American-hating groups any more than I'd absolve someone who marched in a legitimate protest of immigration laws if it was sponsored by the KKK."
Michael Ledeen argues forcefully that the war on terror will not be complete if we stop at Iraq, and that Iran and Syria are an integral part of the strategic challenge. He notes that a naive State Department, as well as the CIA, has long fought against the idea of a wider conflict and will continue to do so.
The government is aware of Iranian terrorist operations inside Iraq, and there have been many stories reporting Syria’s campaign to send terrorists across the border to attack us. In truth, we didn’t need intelligence to know this was going on, because the Iranian and Syrian tyrants had announced it publicly. Assad gave an interview recently in which he proclaimed — in words that could have been taken right out of my book — that Lebanon was the model for the struggle that had to be waged in Iraq against Coalition forces. And Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a speech a few weeks ago in which he said that the presence of American troops in Iraq would be even worse for Iran than the hated regime of Saddam Hussein.
So they are coming to kill us, which means that there is no more time for diplomatic “solutions.” We will have to deal with the terror masters, here and now.
A new AP report says pilots from the USS Kitty Hawk are maintaining an aggressive pace as the cordon tightens around Baghdad.
Pilots say the sky over Baghdad is so congested with coalition planes that they worry more about in-flight collisions than Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. With U.S. ground forces converging on the capital, the supersonic warplanes that had been bombing Iraqi forces on the outskirts of the city now are concentrating on central Baghdad.
"As the ring tightens and the Marines and the Army come closer and closer to the center of Baghdad, the front lines get smaller and smaller," said Lt. Cmdr. Mark Johnson, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot aboard the carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf. "There's the same number of planes going up in a smaller and smaller airspace. It's getting hazardous from our own planes in the respect of running into each other," Johnson said.
Controllers are "stacking" aircraft at different altitudes to reduce the risk of collisions, but pilots say they still have to dodge each other. "You have to keep your eyeballs out for the other guys," said Lt. Cmdr. John Enfield, another F/A-18 pilot. "That ends up being one of your major time-consumers, just making sure you are safe from all the other airplanes."
Since the war began, flight operations aboard the Kitty Hawk have lasted about 15 hours a day. Most pilots have been flying one or two three-hour missions a day, and fatigue is beginning to set in. "A lot of the crews are really tired, the aircraft are getting kind of tired," said Johnson, of Redding, Calif. "I don't know what we can look forward to in the future, maybe a little bit of scaling back. It would be nice to get a little bit of extra sleep."
Stars and Stripes says that the pilots of the USS Kitty Hawk are still highly focused on their combat missions, even while the search continues for their missing comrade.
Fighter jets from the Kitty Hawk continued to bomb Iraqi targets Friday, including Baghdad's airport, while the search stretched into its second day for a fellow pilot possibly shot down by friendly fire. Central Command said a coalition Patriot missile may have brought down the F/A-18 Hornet at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday in central Iraq.
"It's speculation at this point," said Rear Adm. Matthew Moffit, Kitty Hawk battle group commander. "We don’t dwell on that." Carrier Air Wing 5 officials would not release any information on the pilot Friday afternoon because of the ongoing search-and-rescue mission. "Until we have positive identification, recovery of the pilot in particular or recovery of a body, it is still a combat search and rescue," Moffit said.
On Thursday, 21 Hornets and nine Tomcats from the air wing flew 61 dedicated strike missions in and around Baghdad, said Lt. Brook DeWalt, Kitty Hawk spokesman. They dropped 69 pieces of ordnance, including 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a fuel and hangar facility at Saddam International Airport — renamed Baghdad International Airport by U.S. forces — and 2,000-pound GPS-guided bombs on a nearby military complex.
Coalition air power is continuing to make adjustments to its focus on Iraq.
Dozens of US attack jets, air controllers and unmanned spy planes have gone on 24-hour alert over Baghdad to provide air support of American troops in what could be bloody urban combat, the commander of the US-led air war against Iraq said. "Today, we began to work a concept of operations for urban CAS (combat air support)," US Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Moseley said. He told reporters the plan included "forward airborne controllers over the city 24 hours a day and multiple sets of fighters with multiple munitions options." Lt Gen Moseley also said the Iraqi military as an organised defence in large combat formations "doesn't really exist anymore".
"The equipment is there and some of the people are there, but as far as corps and division strength, bringing to bear that combat power on the coalition, it's not the same as it was a couple of weeks ago," he said from his headquarters in Saudi Arabia.
This is surely a benchmark of determination and faithfulness. Those of us at home can only stand in awe.
Special forces who rescued a captured U.S. soldier this week dug up the bodies of her fellow soldiers with their bare hands, determined to bring their remains home, U.S. officials said on Saturday. The Pentagon said earlier that eight soldiers died in the same Iraqi ambush last month when now-rescued Private First Class Jessica Lynch was taken prisoner. The elite team that was sent to rescue Lynch on Tuesday night was directed by a local doctor to the graves where a total of 11 bodies were found.
"They did not have shovels in order to dig those graves up so they dug them up with their hands," Major General Victor Renuart told a news conference at war headquarters in Qatar. "They wanted to do that very rapidly so they could race the sun and be off the site before the sun came up."
"It's a great testament to the will and desire of coalition forces to bring their own home," he said.
Uh-oh, the peaceniks won't like this. And now victory is merely imminent. Just wait until victory is complete and the Ba'ath archives are opened to reveal the real scope of the Axis of Evil and all its friends.
Half of the American population supports U.S. military action against Iran if it continues to move toward nuclear weapons development, a poll released on Saturday showed. As the war against Iraq continues, the Los Angeles Times poll indicated support among Americans for a broader U.S. military role in Middle East. About 42 percent of those surveyed in the poll conducted April 2-3 said the United States should take action against Syria, if it was helping Iraq.
Media nannies are still wringing their hands that the Coalition hasn't taken Basra completely. Not to worry - our allies the Brits say they're ready whenever Tommy Franks says "Go."
British forces are now ready to advance and capture Basra, but need authority from the US High Command. Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Riddell-Webster, 42, the commander of the Black Watch battle group, said yesterday that the final push would need at least a brigade. The timing of a final attack would depend on intelligence estimates about the level of resistance and the progress made by US forces now on the outskirts of Baghdad. “I personally think this battle group could go and do Basra now,” he said just south of Iraq’s second city. “But we are a small cog in a very large military machine under US control.
Sixteen days into the battle of Basra, the British say that they are not besieging the city, but “isolating” it from Baathist and pro-Baathist military elements. All four key bridges which lead into the city centre are secured by British troops and they have taken strategic footholds — houses or industrial sites — from which to launch their operations.
The Scotsman profiles today's scruffy, low-rent version of the Mouth of Sauron:
The Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, has become the public face of Saddam Hussein’s regime since war broke out, but he is not considered part of the country’s ruling elite. Mr Sahhaf, a journalist by profession, gives daily briefings to the media about the progress of the conflict complete with rhetorical flourishes about the impending defeat of the invading US-led forces. This week, he has become Saddam’s mouthpiece, reading out the Iraqi dictator’s latest statements on national television. He flashed his trademark smile as he delivered the warning yesterday that Iraq was poised to launch "non-conventional" attacks on US soldiers at Baghdad’s International Airport.
According to Haidar AhmAd, of the Iraqi National Congress, Mr Sahhaf had a reputation from the start for being a party lackey. "He has always been known for his opportunism and was never popular at Iraqi Television. He will be remembered as a man who sacrificed everything for very little."
From The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien (author, scholar, soldier, veteran of the Battle of the Somme):
The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: "I am the Mouth of Sauron."
UPI is reporting tonight that the Iraqis who provided information leading to the "decapitation" attempt aginst Saddam in March have been caught and executed. Presumably the others in Saddam's inner circle who might consider cooperation with the Coalition already know about this. If not, we just made it harder to recruit a few more.
Three Iraqis who aided the CIA in the March 20 attempt by the United States to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were executed this week by Iraqi counterintelligence, former and serving U.S. officials told United Press International. A super-secret U.S. intelligence operation, working in Baghdad for weeks before the war, provided the crucial targeting data for the attack on Saddam and his sons, launched in an effort to pre-empt a full-scale war, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Delta and Special Forces units in the country had help from three Iraqi agents recruited by the CIA some time after June 2000, when the first CIA paramilitary teams secretly entered Baghdad to do reconnaissance and recruitment. Sources told UPI that Iraqi counterintelligence killed the three, shooting two and cutting out the tongue of a third, who bled to death. They said U.S. intelligence had learned this from their forces on the ground in Iraq. The March 20 operation involved more than 300 Special Forces, who moved into the country to join Delta troops and CIA paramilitaries, these sources said.
Good new AP story describes the real-time tactical adjustments being made over Iraq by Coalition pilots from the USS Kitty Hawk and elsewhere, based on what's needed to support ground operations.
Coalition ground forces are taking Iraqi positions around Baghdad so quickly that American fighter pilots are being forced to switch their bombing targets in flight. F/A-18 Hornet and F-14 Tomcat pilots have intensified direct attacks on Baghdad in recent days, after weeks of pounding dug-in defensive posts just south of the city. They are clearing the way for troops and flying support missions as well as hitting strategic targets. That means plans have changed quickly.
USS Kitty Hawk commander Capt. Thomas A. Parker said Friday his ship had dropped almost 620,000 pounds of bombs since the war started.
The story includes a somber note, too.
Pilots who bombed targets in Baghdad Thursday were from the squadron that lost a member a day earlier--the first fighter pilot to be shot down during the Iraq war. A combat search and rescue mission was still under way for the pilot, whose name was not released, though senior officials conceded they may be looking for remains.
Continued progress in the war on terror has been reported from the mountains of Afghanistan.
Afghan militia soldiers and blistering airstrikes by U.S.-led coalition planes have killed eight suspected Taliban fighters in the southern mountains, an Army spokesman said Friday. Another 15 suspects were taken into custody. The deaths and captures came during a 14-hour bombing campaign Wednesday and Thursday in the Tor Ghar mountains near the town of Spinboldak, where Afghan soldiers and U.S. special forces discovered a group of about 40 suspected Taliban at a transit camp.
The Washington Post is agog over the zooming popularity of the Fox News morning show. The fact that Fox is pro-American is apparently a cause for concern with the smart set. Anyone surprised?
"Good Morning America" it isn't. Nor is it the "Today" show or CBS's "Early Show." This is not your everyday feel-good, rise-and-shine TV show by any means. On Fox News Channel's weekday morning show, "Fox & Friends," they start out swinging. Just after coming on the air at 7 a.m. on Monday, for example, co-hosts E.D. Hill and Brian Kilmeade were off and galloping before the coffee was cold.
The with-us-or-against-us approach has helped "Fox & Friends" differentiate itself. It has also drawn viewers, pushing it far ahead of its cable news competition. "F&F" was already the top-rated show on cable among adults in its 7 to 9 a.m. time slot, with an average of 1.15 million viewers per day tuning in during the first three months of 2003. But its audience has exploded with the war. During the past two weeks, it has averaged more than 3.04 million viewers a day. Among the programs "Fox & Friends" is steamrolling is CNN's "American Morning," hosted by Paula Zahn. Zahn left Fox News to start the CNN program nearly 19 months ago.
The audience for "Fox & Friends" has grown so large of late that it has begun to rival the broadcast networks' venerable morning shows. Its war-spiked Nielsens are now almost identical to what those of CBS's "Early Show" -- the No. 3 wake-up program -- were in the week before the war started. That's almost unheard of, considering that the broadcast networks enjoy a huge promotional advantage over cable, and are available in far more households.
Empty-headed public nuisance Natalie Maines is unrepentent, at least while she's still outside the U.S., and the other Chicks are worried.
The Dixie Chicks are expressing concern for their personal safety since singer Natalie Maines uttered the now infamous anti-Bush statement, "We're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," to a London audience. "We've gotten a lot of hate mail, a lot of threatening mail," Martie Maguire told reporters in Australia. "Emily (Robison) had the front gate of her ranch smashed in. We have to have security when we get back to the States. It puts my well-being in jeopardy."
Maines, however, has reacted more flippantly to the situation, according to reports. The singer said, "The more flack I get for it, the prouder I am." She was also quick to point out that in her hometown of Lubbock, Texas, "only six people showed up," for a public Chicks CD-smashing protest. Maines's comment has also taken its toll on the Dixie Chicks' album sales, which have dropped a reported 52 percent.
But some more patriotic citizens have a message of their own to send. I wonder if the Ditsy Chicks will even show in the South Carolina Uplands.
Radio talk show host Mike Gallagher and his organization, Gallagher's Army, is putting together a Rally for the Troops concert for May 1st in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the same day the Dixie Chicks are planning to launch their U.S. tour for Home in neighboring Greenville. Southern rock mainstay the Marshall Tucker Band (which hails from South Carolina and whose frontman Doug Gray is a Vietnam veteran) will headline the event, and teenage country singer Ty Nelson will also perform. According to Gallagher, tickets will run $35 to $45, with free admission and VIP seating to anyone who comes to the event with a Dixie Chicks' ticket.
However, they will most likely be welcome in the People's Republic of Madison, Wisconsin. The French wine seeems very appropriate.
The Dixie Chicks might not be welcome in some parts of the country, but a Wisconsin politician wants the country music trio to know they have a home in Madison. Alderman Ken Golden this week proposed a resolution that calls for the City Council to play a Dixie Chicks CD during meeting breaks and directs the mayor to present the Chicks with keys to the city, French wine and a suitable welcome should they ever visit.
Some things are just eternal, like French obstinacy, British pluck, and Russian opportunism. Of course, the only buyers will be those countries who are confident they won't have to test their defenses against the American military.
The war in Iraq, which has seen stiff Iraqi resistance against US and British troops, has opened up market opportunities for Russian weapons used by Baghdad's forces, military experts said. "We got a great advertising gift for our weapons in Iraq," Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted as saying by the Interfax-AVN news agency on Friday. The conflict will "generate a surge in interest in anti-aircraft defences and radio-electronic equipment," predicted Alexander Nozdrachev, head of the state-run Russian Agency for Conventional Weapons, quoted by Interfax-AVN.
Russian weapons sales last year totalled 4.5 billion dollars (4.1 billion euros), concentrated mainly on just two countries, China and India, although Russia has expanded sales to other regions. "The war is useful for Russia. The Iraqi army is creating publicity for Russian weapons," respected business daily Vedomosti commented recently.
Tony Parsons writes biting, clear-eyed columns in the U.K.'s rabidly left-wing paper The Daily Mirror. Maybe he's the token conservative. Tony's been in the USA recently and wrote an amazing piece - here is an excerpt.
Throughout the 20th century, through two world wars and one Cold War, America gave all the blood and money Europe needed to keep it free. They feel that the current crisis has proved that Europeans are, when all is said and done, an ungrateful bunch of Euro bastards who do not give a flying baguette about the 75,000 American graves in Europe.
Anti-European feeling goes right across the board of public opinion, even among the millions of Americans who are passionately against attacking Iraq. America is united in feeling betrayed by Europe. America is finally starting to understand that - to Europe's eternal shame - there is an opinion that 9/11 was America's comeuppance.
Secretaries and waiters leaping from the top of the burning twin towers? The fault of American arrogance. A terrified four-year-old girl cowering at the back of a hijacked plane? Blame it on America's support for Israel. A stewardess with her throat slit by a carpet cutter? One in the eye for American imperialism. Those 3,000 dead, murdered on live television? Europe blames America. When 9/11 happened, you might have expected to see Palestinians dancing in the street. But who would have expected the grim look of satisfaction on the faces of old Europe?
But the British are absolved of Europe's sins... It has been good to be British in America these past few weeks. For America has been reminded that Britain is the best friend it has in the world, joined by blood, language, history, instinct and culture.
When will the British wake up from their pathetic little dreams of being Europeans and realise that we have been looking for our future in all the wrong places? Who wants to be European today? Who wants to be an ungrateful, unprincipled, two-faced, pacifist, Euro-grasping, oil-hungry Lilliputian? No matter what happens over the coming days and weeks, it is true what they say. The English Channel is far wider than the Atlantic.
Heard today on The Pat Gray Show, via KPRC-AM.
Planes from the USS Kitty Hawk are supporting the attacks against the Baghdad airport.
In support of the ground troops, Navy warplanes from the carrier USS Kitty Hawk dropped satellite- and laser-guided bombs on hangars and a fuel depot at the airport, and struck a nearby military complex. Coalition forces also bombed Iraqi Air Force headquarters in central Baghdad early Friday, one of many air assaults on the smoke-filled capital. Blasts on the outskirts before dawn shook buildings in the city center.
Knight-Ridder has the full story of the Iraqi man who facilitated the rescue of POW Jessica Lynch. It's quite a tale of universal human decency and courage.
The Iraqi man who tipped U.S. Marines to the location of American POW Jessica Lynch said Thursday he did so after he saw her Iraqi captor slap her twice as she lay wounded in a hospital. "A person, no matter his nationality, is a human being," the tipster, a 32-year-old lawyer whose wife was a nurse at the hospital, said in an interview at Marines' headquarters, where he, his wife and daughter are being treated as heroes and guests of honor. "He is an extremely courageous man who should serve as an inspiration to all of us to do the right thing," said Lt. Col. Rick Long, spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, "Don't worry." Then he walked six miles to the nearest U.S. Marines and told them where she was. He later returned to the hospital, at the request of U.S. commanders, to map the facility and count how many Saddam Hussein loyalists were there.
Anti-Semitism is burgeoning in France. A country that once seemed civilized in so many ways is imploding morally. Perhaps it was hollow all along.
At the end of March, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), the French government's human rights watchdog group, released a report that found, of 313 acts of racist violence last year, 193 were against Jews. "If the increase in the number of attacks aimed at the immigrant community is significant, the quantity of attacks aimed at the Jewish community has truly exploded," the report explained.
The war in Iraq is opposed by some 78 percent of France, according to a poll Sunday in the liberal daily Libération, and the massive antiwar movement has become intertwined with the movement for a Palestinian state. Signs like "No to War in Iraq, Yes to Justice for Palestine," punctuate the demonstrations.
The problem, as Jewish activists see it, isn't necessarily the support for Palestinians. It's the rejection of Israel. "It's become acceptable to not want Israel to exist," says Levy. Antiwar protesters in the eastern city of Strasbourg shouted, "Bush, Sharon, Hitler - where is the difference?" At protests around the country, Stars of David have been drawn entwined with a swastika.
Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis has an essay in today's Wall Street Journal. It's subscribers-only, but this excerpt captures a central point: the cost of blind, unthinking dissent at home and the relentlessly negative drumbeat of the mass media.
In purely military terms, the decision to go straight for Baghdad, bypassing the cities of the south, was no doubt a wise tactical choice. It did however leave the largely Shiite south under Saddam Hussein's control. He probably had insufficient regular forces there to cope with a major military assault, but the whole monstrous apparatus of surveillance and repression remained in place, and the people in the south knew very well what would happen to them if they revealed their real sympathies prematurely. Their understandable caution has been further reinforced by the strong and vocal opposition to the war around the world and more especially in the United States. This manifests itself in many ways and, under their very eyes, in the mostly critical questioning of the military by the media in the press briefings taking place on their doorstep.
For us in the West, this is the normal free debate of an open society. But Iraqis, both rulers and ruled, have had no experience of any such thing since the overthrow of the parliamentary regime and the establishment of the dictatorship almost 50 years ago. What they believe they see is indecision, hesitation, even weakness and fear.
This can only intensify their worry that once again the United States may flinch from finishing the job, and reach some kind of accommodation, if not with Saddam Hussein himself, then with some like-minded but more amenable successor, found among his entourage. There are indeed audible voices advocating just such a resolution of the conflict.
The public debate against the war will be similarly understood -- or rather misunderstood -- both by Saddam Hussein and by his subjects, and will have the unintended effect of encouraging him and discouraging them. The anti-war campaign will not end the war, but it will make it longer and harder.
Stars and Stripes has filed a report about reactions on the USS Kitty Hawk following the loss of an F/A-18C over Iraq and uncertainty about the pilot's fate.
"Everyone's pretty shaken up," said Lt. j.g. Collin Kightlinger, 29, an EA-6B Prowler pilot from Kingwood, Texas. While stateside air wings often live on opposite coasts, Carrier Air Wing 5 members are based at Atsugi Naval Air Facility, Japan. "We all live together," Kightlinger said. "We’re like a family."
"There's a sense of somberness, but it's a hopefulness," said Cmdr. Gary Carr, command chaplain. The ship's commanding officer, Capt. Thomas Parker, spoke about the crash in his afternoon address that goes out over the ship’s intercom. "I notice there's a rightful sense of solemnity on the ship, and I think that's entirely appropriate under the circumstances. … However, in any case, we’re going to continue with our mission," he said. "All the folks going over the beach tonight, be careful, and we'll be thinking about you."
"Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" I think Iraq has a new national motto.
NAJAF, Iraq, April 2 - In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today. What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?
"Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!" Around him, the crowd roared its approval.
Not sure if we have a Col. Klinger on our hands, or if he was just inspired to conduct a counter-demonstration to all those naked "peace" activists....
A National Guard battalion commander was relieved of command for running naked outside the barracks at Fort Bragg in February. Another officer is receiving a reprimand because of the Feb. 18 incident. Maj. Gen. Zannie O. Smith, acting commander of the 18th Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, informed Lt. Col. J.D. Webster of his intent to take away his job as commander of the 1st Battalion of the 130th Aviation Regiment, an Apache attack helicopter unit. Final action will be taken after the officers have been offered a chance to give a rebuttal. The lieutenant colonel was among several soldiers seen running naked outside their barracks.
The battalion is being certified as a Longbow Apache unit.
The lost F/A-18 from the USS Kitty Hawk may have been downed by a Patriot missile. CENTCOM would not confirm during the daily briefing in Qatar.
The U.S. military in the Gulf is investigating the downing overnight of a U.S. Navy F/A-18C fighter jet over southern Iraq, including the possibility that it may have been shot down by friendly fire.
VOA correspondent Alysha Ryu, traveling with U.S. forces in central Iraq, quotes what she calls the highest military sources in the field as telling her the single-seat F/A-18C appears to have been shot down by a coalition Patriot air defense missile. "What they believe happened this morning was that there were two Iraqi missiles that went up, and Patriots were called on to intercept those missiles," she said. "The Patriots went up, and they believe that the F/A-18C Hornet crossed the path of the Patriot and the Patriot knocked it down in error."
A U.S. spokesman at Central Command would only say the downing of the fighter is under investigation and no possible cause is being ruled out. Some reports had suggested the plane was downed by an Iraqi missile.
UPDATE: Central Command in Doha, Qatar issued this short statement today:
A Patriot missile may have downed the U.S. Navy F-18C Hornet which was flying a mission over Central Iraq at approximately 11:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m. EST) Wednesday. The circumstances of the incident are under investigation.
Interesting differences between U.S.and British tactics in Iraq are emerging. One of the impressive aspects of the campaign has been the adaptability of the Coalition forces to changing conditions. This article is the first time I've seen the word "feral" used as a compliment.
Coalition commanders have put together battle plans for Baghdad that they say draw heavily on the unorthodox but "very impressive" tactics adopted by British forces seeking the collapse of resistance in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. The British, with extensive experience handling the Northern Ireland problem, have proved adept at dealing with the Iraqi paramilitary forces, who at times have surprised U.S. forces elsewhere by behaving as terrorists rather than soldiers.
The British believe that their experience of relatively low-intensity conflict and dealing with resentful locals and paramilitaries from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, East Timor and Sierra Leone has equipped them to handle the conquest of Basra. In a cat-and-mouse war of attrition that puts military and psychological pressures on the increasingly rattled defenders, the British are applying carefully limited, though at times highly lethal, force.
The allies are loath to criticize their U.S. colleagues openly, but a British officer told Britain's Daily Mail, "The Americans ... are good at tank battles, but they're trying to fight one kind of war while the Iraqis are fighting another. That is what's hurting them." He said U.S. generals are starting to look at the British forces "and ask themselves some hard questions." "Quite frankly, the average British infantryman is far better. They're a tribe of feral monsters, but they're highly disciplined monsters. You don't want to get in their way," he said.
Officials have confirmed that the F/A-18 Hornet down near Karbala was from the USS Kitty Hawk, but no announcement yet about the fate of the pilot. Waiting on CENTCOM briefing now.
Iraq shot down a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet with a surface-to-air missile Wednesday, military officials said. There was no immediate word on the fate of the pilot. Statements released from U.S. Central Command said the twin-engine jet, flying from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, went down at about 3:45 p.m. EST. The plane went down near Karbala, a city about 50 miles south of Baghdad where fighting raged between U.S. Army forces and the Iraqi Republican Guard. Iraqi forces shot down an Army Black Hawk helicopter in the same area Wednesday.
Lt. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the Kitty Hawk, said the Hornet had flown a bombing mission over northern Iraq Wednesday. Other planes flying over Iraq at the same time reported seeing surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery fire in the same area in which the plane disappeared. Central Command said the downing is being investigated. Officials would not comment on search and rescue operations, but both Central Command statements said the military is committed to accounting for all coalition personnel.
Fox News has reported that an F/A-18 Hornet from either the USS Kitty Hawk or the USS Abraham Lincoln is down over Karbala, perhaps from a SAM. Story is still developing.
CENTCOM has released a very brief statement:
A Coalition F/A-18C, a single-seat aircraft, went down at approximately 3:45 p.m. EST today during ongoing Coalition air operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While the Coalition does not discuss the details of ongoing recovery operations, we are committed to accounting for all Coalition personnel. An investigation is ongoing. The name of the pilot is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Good news from The Sun (UK) that an SAS patrol was extracted successfully after being attacked while on a special ops mission in a remote part of Iraq.
An SAS patrol which ran into trouble deep inside Iraq was dramatically rescued and flown to safety, it was revealed yesterday. There were fears the ten-man team had been slaughtered or captured after Arab TV station Al-Jazeera screened footage of Iraqis surrounding and driving a Land Rover in the town of Baaj. The channel reported Coalition troopers had been killed in a clash at nearby Mosul - but ran no pictures of bodies or captured British soldiers.
Instead, it is believed the SAS men had abandoned their vehicles and flashed SOS messages to colleagues on their special-frequency radios. A Chinook helicopter was scrambled to go to their aid and given a pinpoint location for the team. The air crew then swooped out of the sky and rescued the missing men. It is understood some of the SAS group were injured, but not seriously. Before the airlift, they destroyed as much of their equipment as possible.
Last night highly-placed Ministry of Defence sources confirmed all the missing troopers had been rescued. A spokesman said: "There was an extraction operation. A certain amount of equipment was lost and this has been shown on Al-Jazeera television. We cannot go into further details because special forces were involved." A senior source said: "We can’t talk about the SAS in detail. But there is no question of ten dead or captured." SAS and Special Boat Service teams have been operating across Iraq for the last two months.
Our allies the Brits are using "snatch tactics" against the enemy in Basra as one of their alternatives to an outright invasion.
Wearing night-vision goggles, British commandos waded through swampy, knee-deep mud. They slipped into the besieged city of Basra and slowly closed in on their target. The Iraqi militia leader was in his house, sound asleep, his gun by his side. "We burst in, kicked the door down and dragged him out," said Capt. Craig Taylor of the 1st Fusiliers Y Company. "As we withdrew, we laid down fire on anything and everything, so these buildings would never be used again."
The snatch operation last week was one of many that British forces have conducted deep in Iraq's second largest city in a war of attrition aimed at Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and militia. The raids are designed to rattle Saddam loyalists and gain intelligence for a future push to take control of Basra.
Stars and Stripes has posted its account of the downed F-14A Tomcat fliers "Gordo" and "Vinny" from the USS Kitty Hawk.
An Air Force rescuer rushed to the two aviators after their F-14A Tomcat crashed in southern Iraq. "I remember him asking me if I could walk as he was helping me up," said "Gordo," who walked away with only scrapes on his wrists after ejecting from the malfunctioning fighter early Wednesday. "I told him I could run... just point the way." The pilot, "Vinny," also safely ejected when the Tomcat suffered a mechanical failure.
The Tomcat crashed following a long day of sustained sorties that started around 11 a.m. Tuesday. Through early Wednesday, the air wing dropped its most ordnance since the start of the war. The number of its sorties has increased to support ground troops in their push into northern Iraq. The squadron, based at Atsugi Naval Air Facility, Japan, is the only one that flies the F-14A Tomcat. From Tuesday afternoon through early Wednesday the air wing flew 69 dedicated strike missions in Basra and in and around Baghdad, involving 27 F/A-18 Hornets and 12 Tomcats. They dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of ordnance, said Lt. Brook DeWalt, Kitty Hawk public affairs officer.
Would be great to know more one day about this aspect of the struggle against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but for now we only get glimpses.
As American air and ground forces close in on Baghdad, teams of CIA paramilitary and Special Forces operatives are waging a quieter, unseen war in Iraq's shadows. They're stealing secret information, seizing key sites such as oil fields, "painting" targets for airstrikes, and even helping stage dramatic rescues - like the swoop into a Nasiriyah hospital early yesterday to rescue young Pfc. Jessica Lynch.
But perhaps their most important mission remains setting ambushes and other traps for top officials. Whatever the results of the March 20 strike against a site thought to hide Saddam Hussein and his sons, US secret forces continue their efforts to "decapitate" Iraq's ruling regime.
Leftist "anti-war" demonstrations are being funded by tax-exempt foundations and other groups. Some are willing to talk publicly about it. ANSWER is not.
The American antiwar movement is decked out with all the elements of the counterculture, but it is getting some very establishment funding. In a few months, foundations and donors have kicked in millions of dollars to help antiwar groups stage demonstrations, take out expensive newspaper and TV ads, maintain Web sites, hire and pay staff, and lease office space in high-rent New York, Washington and San Francisco locales.
Not all antiwar groups are forthcoming about their finances. One of the leading organizers of antiwar demonstrations, International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) refused to divulge its funding sources.
But The Christian Science Monitor says they may have wasted their money in terms of U.S. public opinion. Of course, a big reason why they have been marching hasn't been a quest for peace or truly mainstream support, but to energize their own radical base.
In the battle to influence public opinion, the antiwar movement's worst enemy may prove to be the television. Daily reports from the front lines put the troops foremost in American thought - an omnipresence that makes it easier for taxi drivers and hairdressers, white-collar workers and televangelists, to sympathize with the servicemen and -women, and to argue that protesters should be supporting those fighting in Iraq instead of holding rallies to oppose the war. Two weeks into the attack on Iraq, critics of the antiwar movement are becoming more outspoken, as emotions on both sides run high. The insults lobbed at antiwar demonstrators range from Boston hecklers calling them "traitors" to Minnesota's governor proposing that arrested activists should cover their own law-enforcement costs.
The Marines deep in Iraq are getting their Rice Krispie treats now, thanks to large quantities of can-do.
Marines gave the drive to Baghdad a major shot in the arm yesterday - creating a new military airport in one day. Not far from Baghdad, the Marines transformed one of Saddam's modern highways into a runway for massive C-130 cargo planes that have already started landing there. And they did it all in 24 hours. The newly created 3,500-foot landing strip in the midst of marshy terrain is perfect for delivering fresh ammo, fuel, food and even Rice Krispies Treats to U.S. forces pushing north to the capital. To create the strip, the Marines had to "shave" the highway of all obstructions. That meant clearing away everything from 3-feet-high median dividers to towering 30-foot lamp posts
Writing in the National Post, Mark Steyn has a blistering critique of Canada's position on the sidelines during the first great challenge of the 21st century. What Canada needs is to butch up, drastically reduce the national mindshare claimed by Quebec (and its ersatz French sentiments), and change its government back to the Tories under Joe Clark.
What's the latest from the Canadian people's heroic war with the Great Satan? After a week of sniping, random potshots and suicide bombs from Chretien fedayeen dispersed through strategically unimportant Canadian cities, one member of the ruthless ruling elite is showing signs of impatience with our long-time strongman: "I don't think things will change until our leadership changes," says David Pratt, Liberal chairman of the House of Commons Defence Committee. In the absence of regime change, Mr. Pratt thinks that one way to "patch this up just as quickly as we can" is for Canada to join the Coalition of the Willing if the Iraqis use chemical or biological weapons.
Got that, Yanks? We're a sovereign nation. So we don't want Cowboy Bush deciding our foreign policy. But we're happy for Saddam Hussein to decide our foreign policy.
The core problem is not our relationship to America, but our relationship to ourselves and our history. It's not the Americans who've infringed our "sovereignty," it's the Liberal Party, with their systematic dismantling of Canada's place in the world. On all the critical conflicts of our age -- the Great War, the Second World War, the Cold War -- Canada has been on the right side of history. Not this time. The Liberals are on the brink of their greatest triumph: Our international relations are turning into the guest list at Trudeau's funeral -- Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro and the Moroccan Minister of Scientific Research.
DEBKA claims to know that Saddam has left Baghdad. If true, it's interesting to speculate about where he'll go. He won't live in a cave or safe house like Osama; so which countries have the combination of prior relationship, tough security protection and a belief that America would not/could not stage an attack? Maybe North Korea or even Russia. Should be clues aplenty among the files and captives we are about to take.
The little hard information reaching DEBKAfile's most reliable intelligence sources is that Saddam and his sons departed Baghdad some days ago. They do not know where he went, or in what state of health, whether he traveled abroad for medical treatment or the family headed for a safe berth prepared in advance, or even if they arrived safely at their destination. But it is safe to say that Saddam and the senior members of his family are no longer at the helm of government.
The aircrew of a downed F-14 Tomcat from the USS Kitty Hawk, identified by their nicknames "Gordo" and "Vinny," have given a firsthand account of their experience in bailing out over Iraq.
The cockpit canopy exploded off and the two men were flung violently into the air. "It was a surreal experience, changing the warmth and comfort of the cockpit to a violent wind blast ... then hanging off a parachute and floating down over Iraq," said Gordo, 39, from Georgia. Hanging beneath their parachutes, they saw their multimillion-dollar fighter crash to earth and explode. There were few other lights and, thankfully, none of the flashes in the sky that meant anti-aircraft fire, which they had seen earlier in the mission. Gordo said his initial feelings about having to eject were anger and disbelief - "You can't believe it's happening to you" - which quickly turned to fear. "Once I was on the ground, I started shaking," he said. "It was not a very friendly place to be."
In another article from earlier today, Rear Adm. Matthew G. Moffit mentioned that the downed plane was from the VF-154 squadron and had some general observations about safety concerns.
Moffit said the pace of current operations was probably not a factor in the crash, although stress or fatigue on the pilots or the aircraft would be part of the investigation. He said carrier-based planes and crew could operate safely at a high level of intensity.
Moffit warned against complacency among pilots and air crews that launch fighters from carriers, and the ordnance crews that load them with bombs. "We have a tendency to lose more aircraft to mechanical and normal operating events than we do to combat," Moffit noted. "Complacency is our biggest enemy."
Two pilots from the USS Kitty Hawk were rescued today after ejecting over southern Iraq. Very glad to see they are OK. Also surprised to see the number of total rescues; hadn't heard that. Our folks are very busy.
Two U.S. Navy aviators were rescued Tuesday when their F-14 Tomcat crashed in southern Iraq, the Navy said. Both officers were in good condition, said Lt. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, where the plane was based. Mechanical failure, not hostile fire, caused the crash during a strike mission, DeWalt said. It was the first U.S. airplane to crash in Iraq during the war. A helicopter rescue team recovered the pilot and the radar intercept officer from the two-seat strike jet, DeWalt said. The rescue brings to 67 the number of coalition forces saved by combat search and rescue operations, DeWalt said.
CENTCOM added this brief announcement:
Coalition forces successfully rescued two U.S. Navy aviators after their F-14A “Tomcat” crashed earlier tonight due to mechanical failure. A combat search and rescue team successfully recovered the pilot and radar intercept officer and took them to a Coalition air base at approximately 5:50 p.m. EST today. Current reports indicate neither crewmember was seriously injured. A combat search and rescue team flew a rescue helicopter to recover the downed crew. Full details of the F-14 incident are unknown at this time and are under investigation
John and a few hardy colleagues at BlogsOfWar.com have been tracking the War, exposing the hardcore Left for what it is, and dealing with a lot of other strategic issues for 14 consecutive days and nights (and still counting). Weeks before that were spent preparing the intellectual and moral battlefield. Now the Library of Congress has offered him some great recognition. Much better than the daily hacking attempts, John. Congrats.
The Library has selected your site for inclusion in the historic collection of the 2003 War on Iraq Internet materials. On behalf of the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive will be collecting content from your website at regular intervals during the War.
SkyNews tells us today that at least one dog of war has been set loose. Go, Buster.
A real Dog of War has been hailed the hero of a British Army raid on an Iraqi stronghold. Explosives sniffer dog Buster unearthed a hidden cache of arms from an enemy camp in the southern Iraqi village of Safwan. The Springer Spaniel's find was followed by the arrest of 16 Saddam Hussein supporters. Brown-eyed Buster, who is five, took part in a raid launched by 200 troops. His handler, Sergeant Danny Morgan, 37, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps said: "The soldiers had found nothing so I unleashed Buster and sent him in."
Buster's haul included AK47 assault rifles, a pistol, grenades, ammunition and bomb-making equipment.Suitcases full of cash, a suspected stash of heroin and crack cocaine and pro-Saddam Hussein Ba'ath Party literature were also discovered in the buildings used by the mafia-style gangs.
Buster is so valuable to the army that he has even been given his own protective gear in case of chemical or biological attack. When Scud or gas attack warning sound, he leaps into a special sealed pen equipped with an electric motor that pumps air through a gas mask filter.
The war on terror outside Iraq continues. Check out these reports just from today.
Recent intelligence has the FBI worried that al Qaeda may be recruiting and training women to carry out terror attacks, trying to regain an element of surprise for a network thinned by arrests, officials say. For the first time in the war on terror, the FBI has issued a be-on-the-lookout bulletin for a woman, a Pakistani neurological expert, wanted for questioning in connection with Osama bin Laden's terror network. Analysts also are examining claims another woman made in an Arab newspaper that she was asked by bin Laden to open training camps for female terrorists.
Eleven people with suspected links to the al-Qaida terror network - including two of the government's most-wanted terror suspects - have been arrested in various parts of Yemen, a security official said Tuesday. The 11 suspects were arrested in various parts of Yemen on Friday and now are detained in the intelligence prison in the capital, San'a.
Britain's first convicted terrorists directly linked to al Qaida were tonight starting an 11 year jail sentence after they were found guilty of raising funds and recruiting people for Osama bin Laden's terror network.
Italian police have arrested an Egyptian, a Somali and two Iraqi Kurds suspected of having links to Islamic terrorist groups, anti-terrorism police said Tuesday. The arrests were ordered by Milan prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, who has been leading investigations into suspected Islamic cells in Italy.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs came out swinging today. Glad to see the good guys fighting back against the naysayers.
Reports that American forces went into Iraq undermanned are "bogus" and "not helpful" while the United States has troops in combat, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers expressed his annoyance with armchair quarterbacks who are second-guessing the battle plan, which has American forces poised to take Baghdad after 12 days of operations.
The response came following questions about charges in the New Yorker magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post that Rumsfeld had purposely held down numbers involved in the operation because he wanted to do it on the cheap. Some unnamed officers quoted in the articles allege that changes to the plan were forced down the throat of Central Command chief Army Gen. Tommy Franks.
"I don't know how (the reports) get started, and I don't know how they've been perpetuated, but it's not been by responsible members of the team that put this all together," Myers said. The chairman said unnamed officers who spoke to the press did not know the particulars of the Central Command plan on Iraq, or they were working to further their own agendas. "It is not helpful to have those kind of comments come out when we've got troops in combat, because first of all, they're false, they're absolutely wrong, they bear no resemblance to the truth, and it's just … harmful to our troops that are out there fighting very bravely, very courageously," he said.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page reminds us today that one of the reasons we are fighting in Iraq with half the force we used in 1991 is that our military is only half as large following years of reductions. The cuts were proposed by Bill Clinton and then voted for by short-sighted Remocrats and Depublicans in the Congress. Today our forces are using courage, skill, and technology, not sheer numbers, to their advantage. Most of the backbiting now is from disgruntled bureaucrats, outflanked military leaders, and covert action by utopians in the State Department. Rumsfeld has a nasty stable to clean out even here at home.
The Rumsfeld war plan also had to be designed with a far smaller military than we had in 1991. To refresh some memories, defense spending fell in absolute terms in seven of eight years of the Clinton Presidency. At the time this was called the "peace dividend," believe it or not. Colin Powell was able to deploy the Ronald Reagan war machine in 1991; Mr. Rumsfeld inherited the rump Clinton model, about 40% smaller in troops, older planes and ships.
Mr. Rumsfeld is a payback target now precisely because he bucked the military status quo. He has fought for more (and smarter) defense spending against a Congress that would rather build more highways and subsidize more corn fields. He has challenged the Army brass to do as well as the Marines in introducing technology and mobility into their strategic doctrine. Note that most of the critical TV generals are retired Army, not Air Force.
As for the war on terror, the Defense Secretary is among those who believe the best homeland security is to pursue terrorists in their havens. This is what the Iraq expedition is all about. The opponents of the Rumsfeld strategy have been horrified to discover that Mr. Bush agrees with this; or even worse, that Mr. Bush is driving the strategy that Mr. Rumsfeld is implementing. Thus the piling on Mr. Rumsfeld now in the hope of dividing the President from his Defense chief.
Mansoor Ijaz has spoken out again on the important idea that Arab- and Muslim-American groups need to support citizenship over "knee-jerk civil rights lobbying," and get clearly on the right side of democracy.
The voice of America's 6 million-strong Arab and Muslim population is dominated by special-interest groups such as CAIR, the American Muslim Council, and others who have hijacked the community's larger interests by expertly learning lobbying techniques of more experienced immigrant communities. They use elaborately constructed schemes to bring foreign money in to fund their operations and then make boisterous claims that they represent the community in matters of national importance. They do not.
They neither understand the value of the citizenship they so brazenly exploit, nor represent the growing but still silent majority of American-born and -educated Arabs and Muslims who are busy getting college degrees, decent jobs, and that first home. But not having the cash, or the time, to play Washington's power politics is no excuse for the next generation to forgo learning the central tenets of model citizenship that sometimes require personal sacrifice.