Target Centermass

Author: Gunner

  • Happy Thanksgiving, Y’all

    Thank you for visiting Target Centermass. In return for your kindness, I give you this wonderful editorial from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

    T-Day, ready-to-eat

    Pause a moment over your Thanksgiving turkey to remember those whose only repast today will be labeled MRE, for “meals-ready-to-eat.”

    Two days ago, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops and police commandos began an offensive against Sunni Muslim insurgents in a group of lawless towns southwest of Baghdad, popularly known as the “triangle of death.” Call it Fallujah, Round Two.

    Americans being Americans, the U.S. military dubbed the new push Operation Plymouth Rock. It began in the town of Jabala but was planned to reach across the Sunni area southwest of Baghdad, where rebels rule the streets after scaring off police.

    It’s the gritty urban warfare that many observers warned would come. The enemy wears no uniform. Civilian casualties haunt young Americans to whom the deaths of innocents is an abhorrent reality.

    What they face today and tomorrow is almost impossible for most of us to imagine — like missing a meal, or taking Thanksgiving dinner out of plastic stamped “MRE.”

    On this day — and every day — we remain grateful for the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform.

  • Gadhafi Claims Reward Too Small for Giving up WMD Pursuit

    After cringing at the headline and thinking, “Great, Libya’s at it again,” I found myself somewhat surprised by the content of Gadhafi’s complaint.

    Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says the international community should have offered Tripoli a better payback for renouncing its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

    Mr. Gaddhafi told France’s Le Figaro newspaper that he was “a bit disappointed” that Libya was not better rewarded for what he described as Tripoli’s contribution to international peace. In clearer terms, that translates as Libya’s decision last year to scrap its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

    That decision has led to the end of years-long United Nations sanctions against Libya, and helped improve diplomatic ties between the North African country and a number of Western nations. That includes relations with France whose president, Jacques Chirac, arrived in Tripoli Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Chirac’s visit to Libya is the first by a French head of state in more than half a century.

    British, German and Italian leaders have also visited Libya in recent months.

    But Mr. Gadhafi told Le Figaro that in exchange for scrapping its weapons program, Libya should at least receive guarantees from the international community to protect its national security, and help in transforming its weapons material for peaceful, civilian use. The Libyan leader specifically faulted Japan, Europe and the United States.

    Since Libya was not rewarded, Mr. Gadhafi warned, other countries like North Korea and Iran would not be inclined to follow Libya’s example and dismantle their own weapons programs. He said he had already had talks to this effect with officials from the two countries.

    Yes, I feel Gadhafi’s move should be rewarded more than it has been, though perhaps not to the extent Gadhafi actually wishes. I certainly concur with assurances of national security, at least in terms of outward threats, and assistance in “civilizing” Libya’s weapons material seems reasonable.

    I would hesitate towards rushing to any other immediate rewards, and that hesitancy is driven by two factors. First, there should not be so much of an immediate reward so as to actually induce other nations to get the idea that starting and dropping WMD programs is the way to a fast buck. Second, Gadhafi still has much he can do to better the lives of Libyans, including granting them a greater voice in their own governance. Further rewards should be held in reserve for such steps.

    One reward I would most assuredly and whole-heartedly back would be for the English-speaking world to reach a consensus on the spelling of dear ol’ Moammar’s name. The above article spells it Gadhafi. This article has it as Kadhafi. Actually, here’s a site with thirty-freaking-two variations. This needs to be resolved. Perhaps this is something the United Nations could actually manage.

  • Ukraine on the Brink

    Amid threats of strikes, promises of disruption, cries of fraud, and even a bizarre allegation of candidate poisoning (hattip OTB), Ukraine is pushing itself towards the brink of anarchy in reaction to the results of their presidential run-off election.

    Opposition leaders called Wednesday for a nationwide strike to shut down factories, schools and transportation after officials declared Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin prime minister the winner of a presidential runoff election that many countries denounced as rigged.

    The call by reformist candidate Viktor Yushchenko and his allies for an “all-Ukrainian political strike” risked provoking a crackdown by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma’s government, which has said the opposition’s actions in the aftermath of Sunday’s bitterly disputed runoff were, in effect, preparations for a coup d’etat.

    A strike could also further divide the country: Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych drew his support from the pro-Russian, heavily industrialized eastern half of the country, while Yushchenko’s strength was in the west, a traditional center of Ukrainian nationalism.

    To prevent the crisis from widening, Yanukovych said negotiations with Yushchenko’s team would begin Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported, citing Ukrainian television. The opposition has said, however, that it would talk only about a handover of power to Yushchenko.

    The Central Election Commission’s decision to declare Yanukovych the winner “puts Ukraine on the verge of civil conflict,” Yushchenko told hundreds of thousands of his cheering supporters who massed for a fourth straight night in central Kiev’s Independence Square.

    After the speeches, many demonstrators headed to the presidential administration building, the site of a tense standoff with riot police Tuesday night. The police presence was heavy again, with about 40 buses disgorging well over 1,000 officers with helmets and shields who stood in phalanxes up to eight deep outside the building.

    The election was denounced as fraudulent by Western observers, who cited ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and other irregularities.

    ….

    The commission said Yanukovych got 49.46 percent of the vote and Yushchenko 46.61 percent.

    “With this decision, they want to put us on our knees,” the Western-leaning Yushchenko told the crowd, which responded with chants of “Shame! Shame!” and “We will not give up.”

    Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz said the opposition was “organizing citizens, stopping lessons at schools and universities, stopping work at enterprises, stopping transport … and, thus, we’ll force the authorities to think about what they are doing,”

    Yuliya Tymoshenko, Yushchenko’s key ally, said his followers would “surround all government buildings, block railways, airports and highways.”

    “We have a strict intention to seize power in our hands at these sites,” she said, vowing a “consistent struggle that will lead to the destruction of this regime.”

    She also said that the opposition would go to Ukraine’s Supreme Court on Thursday to protest the alleged election fraud, and urged supporters to remain on the square and not let down their guard.

    ….

    Kuchma, the outgoing president, said Yushchenko supporters were trying to carry out “a coup d’etat.” He called “on all political forces to negotiate immediately” and on the international community to “refrain from interference in Ukraine’s affairs.”

    Kuchma called the election “an examination of the maturity and democracy of all the Ukrainian people.”

    “We will pass this exam,” he said.

    The election commission announcement came after a flurry of statements on the possibility of negotiations to find a compromise, which Kuchma had proposed earlier.

    Mykola Tomenko, a lawmaker and Yushchenko ally, told Yushchenko supporters earlier Wednesday that the opposition would negotiate “only about the peaceful handing over of power to Yushchenko by Kuchma.”

    Yushchenko claimed victory Tuesday over Yanukovych in the presidential run-off and, in a sign he would not back off, took a symbolic oath of office.

    The election has led to an increasingly tense tug-of-war between the West and Moscow, which considers Ukraine part of its sphere of influence and a buffer between Russia and eastward-expanding NATO.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has already congratulated Yanukovych on his victory, and the Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament denounced the Ukrainian opposition for its “illegal actions.”

    ….

    Lech Walesa, the founder of Poland’s Solidarity movement, will travel to Ukraine to act as a mediator in the standoff over the disputed presidential elections there, his son told The Associated Press.

    In addition, the Netherlands planned to send a special envoy, Niek Biegman, to Ukraine as part of its role as current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency.

    Opposition supporters have taken over blocks of Kiev’s main street, setting up a giant tent camp. Yanukovych supporters also became increasingly visible in Kiev, setting up hundreds of tents of their own on a nearby wooded slope. But many of their camps had been dismantled by Wednesday night.

    I’m not familiar enough with the situation to comment, other than I think many of us are going to become much more knowledgeable very soon. It should be noted that both the U.S. and Canada have rejected the results.

    Do go read the article on the alleged poisoning of Yushchenko. The before-and-after pictures are simply astounding.

  • Blogroll Time

    I can’t find anything I feel like blogging, and I’m blaming the upcoming holiday. Unless something strikes me, I’m just going to spend a little bit of time updating the blogroll. Suggestions are always welcome.

  • World Bank: Palestinians Live in Poverty

    Palestinians — the people of paradox.

    They simultaneously drive one towards sympathy and disgust. They have been manipulated on the world stage by the whole of the Arab world for over a half-century but have continuously chosen to dance to the tune of the martyrdom. One feels pity for generations raised upon the rock of hatred, only to have said pity wiped out in a moment by their jubilation after hearing of 9/11. One marvels at a people that held in such beloved regard a terrorist-in-chief that stole billions at their own expense but, by their own actions, continue to subject themselves to worsening poverty.

    Despite a slowdown in fighting, the Palestinian economy remains crippled by four years of violence with Israel, with nearly half the population living in poverty on less than $2 a day, the World Bank said in a report released Tuesday.

    The international development bank paints a dire picture in its first assessment of the Palestinian economy since May 2003. Economic activity has plummeted, while poverty and unemployment climbed sharply since the current wave of violence began in September 2000, the report said.

    The report was issued ahead of next month’s meeting of international donors, including the United States and European countries, whose money sustains the Palestinian economy.

    The report cites Israel’s “closure” policies — a series of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and products meant to boost Israeli security — as the main cause of economic hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

    It also calls on the Palestinians to carry out further economic reforms.

    An Israeli official replied that the Palestinian violence is responsible for the downturn in the Palestinian economy. “The Palestinian economy was growing in the years leading up to the terrorist uprising,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

    According to the report, the Palestinian economy recovered slightly in 2003 after two years of sharp decline. It cited a slowdown in violence and drop in Israeli curfews in Palestinian areas as well as a modest rebound in the Israeli economy for the improvement.

    Economic activity has stagnated in 2004, and remains well below the pre-uprising levels, the report says.

    Per capita gross domestic product has fallen to about $930 this year from $1,490 in 1999, according to the bank. Unemployment shot up to 27 percent from 12 percent during the same period, while the poverty rate has more than doubled to 48 percent from 20 percent.

    Those figures translate into 1.7 million Palestinians living below the poverty line, set by the World Bank at $2.10 a day. Nearly one-third of those people, or 600,000 Palestinians, live below the “subsistence” level of $1.50 a day — the amount necessary to meet basic nutritional needs, according to the bank.

    The hope for these people is that Arafat is now gone. The choice to move forward is theirs to make.

  • Bomb Found on Commercial Flight in Iraq

    The terrorists were foiled in another attempt to take down one of their decades-long favorite targets, as a commercial airliner has again escaped their horror in Iraq.

    A homemade bomb was found Monday on a commercial flight inside Iraq, prompting additional screening measures to go into effect at Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. Embassy said.

    No further details were released and the statement did not say whether the affected flight had arrived or was preparing to depart.

    “American citizens are encouraged to review their travel plans to determine whether travel on commercial carriers servicing Iraq is necessary at this time,” the embassy said.

    Commercial flights resumed to and from Baghdad on Nov. 15 after being suspended for a week under a state of emergency declared on the eve of the U.S.-led assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

    Aircraft flying into and out of Baghdad have been fired on frequently by insurgents, and planes take a number of precautions to minimize attack.

    On June 27, insurgents fired on an Australian C-130 military transport after takeoff from Baghdad’s airport, killing an American passenger and forcing the aircraft to return.

    To say that Iraq, especially Sunni Iraq, is still a dangerous place is quite the understatement. I contend that it is just as erroneous to say the situation is hopeless.

    And what is it with radical Moslems and airplanes? I know they crave the fiery spectacle like a crackwhore wants the rock, but they soon need to realize any hope they have for success (at least in the short- to mid-term) is to face the American forces and bite the bullet, literally and figuratively. Civilian targets are not helping them with the Iraqi populace.

    Back to the planes thing — I’m just glad their were no Islamists around Kitty Hawk in 1903.

  • Five Dead in Wisc. Hunting Dispute

    I’m not a hunter. I have nothing against it, and many in my family have been hunters. Luckily, none of them have every seen story like this, just another of the kind that drove my creation of a “WTF?!!” category.

    A dispute among deer hunters over a tree stand in northwestern Wisconsin erupted Sunday in a series of shootings that left five people dead and three injured, officials said.

    The alleged gunman, a man from the Twin Cities area, was arrested Sunday afternoon at the line between Rusk and Sawyer counties, according to Sawyer County sheriff’s officials.

    The violence began shortly after a hunting party saw a hunter occupying their tree stand, Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle told KSTP-TV of St. Paul, Minn. A confrontation and shooting followed.

    One of the shooting victims radioed back to the deer shack for help, he said. When more hunters came to the scene, they also were shot, Zeigle said.

    The shootings happened in the town of Meteor in southwestern Sawyer County, County Sheriff James Meier said in a news release. Three people were taken to a local hospital, Meier said.

    The three wounded were taken to hospitals in Marshfield and Rice Lake, where officials said one was in critical condition, one was serious and one was fair.

    Wisconsin’s deer gun hunting season started Saturday and lasts for nine days.

    Bill Wagner, 72, of Oshkosh, was about two miles away near Deer Lake with a party of about 20 other hunters.

    After they got word of a shooting, it took him and others about three hours to round up the rest of their party. He said they heard sirens, planes and helicopters and noticed the surrounding roads blocked off.

    “When you’re hunting you don’t expect somebody to try to shoot you and murder you,” he said. “You have no idea who is coming up to you.”

    The incident won’t stop their hunt, Wagner said.

    “We’re all old, dyed-in-wool hunters,” he said. “We wouldn’t go home because of this but we will keep it in our minds.”

    In other news, there’s still plenty of meat available at my local grocery store.

  • Iraq Elections Set

    After the idea was floated on Friday that elections may be delayed, Iraqi officials are now saying that the current violence will not be allowed to interfere and elections will go on as planned.

    Iraqi authorities set Jan. 30 as the date for the nation’s first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and pledged that voting would take place throughout the country despite rising violence and calls by Sunni clerics for a boycott.

    Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said voting would push ahead even in areas still wracked by violence — including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the volatile Sunni Triangle.

    The vote for the 275-member National Assembly is seen as a major step toward building democracy after years of Saddam’s tyranny.

    But the violence, which has escalated this month with the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah, has raised fears voting will be nearly impossible in insurgency-torn regions — or that Sunni Arabs, angry at the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown, will reject the election.

    If either takes place, it could undermine the vote’s legitimacy.

    Ayar insisted that “no Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province.”

    ….

    The clerical leadership of the country’s Shiite community, believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq’s nearly 26 million people, has been clamoring for an election since the April 2003 collapse of the Saddam regime, and voting is expected to go smoothly in northern areas ruled by the Kurds, the most pro-American group.

    However, Sunni Arabs, estimated at about 20 percent of the population, fear domination by the Shiites. Sunni clerics have called for a boycott of the vote because of the Fallujah attack.

    But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was important that elections be held as promised.

    “If they are delayed, it would be a sign that the chaos, terror, can succeed in destroying whatever chance we have for democracy in Iraq,” he said.

    The government has launched a campaign against some hardline Sunni clerics accused of fueling the insurgency or allowing weapons to be hidden in their mosques. On Friday, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided Baghdad’s Abu Hanifa mosque — one of the country’s most important Sunni mosques.

    During the January election, Iraqis will choose a National Assembly to draft a new constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005.

    Voters in January also will select 18 provincial councils and in Kurdish-ruled areas a regional assembly. Iraqis living in at least 14 foreign countries also can vote for the National Assembly.

    A stable, legitimate government could enable the United States to begin drawing down its 138,000-strong military presence and gradually hand over security responsibility to Iraqi forces.

    “Having elections in Iraq are very important, and having them on time is also so important for the Iraqi people to have more security in Iraq,” said Salama al-Khafaji, a Shiite member of the interim Iraqi National Council, a government advisory body.

    Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said 122 political parties were registered for the elections. The commission has asked the United Nations to send international monitors, and 35 experts already have arrived.

    I support this decision to proceed as planned. The terrorists cannot be given the idea that they can stand bloodily in the path of progress successfully. Nor can overly much concern be given to the Sunni turnout, as any boycott of a democratic process will be to their own detriment. If they choose to proceed down that path, it will only be a hard-learned lesson in democracy.

  • Iraq’s Iwo Jima Gets Scant Media Respect

    Jack Kelly, national security writer for the Post-Gazette, is dismayed by the recent American action in Fallujah, not just by the rapid and dominating success of the American forces but also by the horrendous media coverage.

    The rule of thumb for the last century or so has been that for a guerrilla force to remain viable, it must inflict seven casualties on the forces of the government it is fighting for each casualty it sustains, says former Canadian army officer John Thompson, managing director of the Mackenzie Institute, a think tank that studies global conflicts.

    By that measure, the resistance in Iraq has had a bad week. American and Iraqi government troops have killed at least 1,200 fighters in Fallujah, and captured 1,100 more. Those numbers will grow as mop-up operations continue.

    These casualties were inflicted at a cost (so far) of 56 Coalition dead (51 Americans), and just over 300 wounded, of whom about a quarter have returned to duty.

    “That kill ratio would be phenomenal in any [kind of] battle, but in an urban environment, it’s revolutionary,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, perhaps America’s most respected writer on military strategy. “The rule has been that [in urban combat] the attacking force would suffer between a quarter and a third of its strength in casualties.”

    The victory in Fallujah was also remarkable for its speed, Peters said. Speed was necessary, he said, “because you are fighting not just the terrorists, but a hostile global media.”

    I posted columns previously by both Kelly and Peters. The two together are a lethal combination.

    Fallujah ranks up there with Iwo Jima, Inchon and Hue as one of the greatest triumphs of American arms, though you’d have a hard time discerning that from what you read in the newspapers.

    The swift capture of Fallujah is taxing the imagination of Arab journalists and — sadly — our own. How does one portray a remarkable American victory as if it were of little consequence, or even a defeat? For CNN’s Walter Rodgers, camped out in front the main U.S. military hospital in Germany, you do this by emphasizing American casualties.

    For The New York Times and The Washington Post, you do this by emphasizing conflict elsewhere in Iraq.

    But the news organs that liken temporary terrorist success in Mosul (the police stations they overran were recaptured the next day) with what happened to the terrorists in Fallujah is false equivalence of the worst kind. If I find a quarter in the street, it doesn’t make up for having lost $1,000 in a poker game the night before.

    The resistance has suffered a loss of more than 2,000 combatants, out of a total force estimated by U.S. Central Command at about 5,000 (other estimates are higher) as well as its only secure base in the country. But both the Arab media and ours emphasize that the attack on Fallujah has made a lot of Arabs mad. By this logic, once we’ve killed all the terrorists, they’ll be invincible.

    “The experience of human history has been the more people you kill, the weaker they get,” Thompson noted.

    For the Arab and European media, the old standby is to allege American atrocities. In this they have had invaluable assistance from Kevin Sites, a free lancer working for NBC, who filmed a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi feigning death in a mosque his squad was clearing. Al Jazeera has been showing the footage around the clock.

    The mutilated body of Margaret Hassan, the aid worker kidnapped in Baghdad last month, has been discovered in Fallujah, as have torture chambers. Residents of Fallujah have been describing a reign of terror by the insurgents. But it is the Marine’s alleged “war crime” that is garnering the most attention.

    The Marine did the right thing. The terrorist he shot was not a prisoner, was not attempting to surrender and was not a lawful combatant under the Geneva Convention. The squad had other rooms to clear, and couldn’t afford to leave an enemy in their rear. The San Jose Mercury News described how Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes was shot to death by an Iraqi who was “playing possum.”

    “It’s a safety issue pure and simple,” explained former Navy SEAL Matthew Heidt. “After assaulting through a target, put a security round in everybody’s head.”

    Journalists quick to judge the Marine are more forgiving when it comes to the terrorists. “They’re not bad guys, especially, just people who disagree with us,” said MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

    And journalists wonder why we are less popular than used car salesmen.

    I do wonder about the relevance of the historical rule of thumb for guerrilla success that Kelly cites. In the conflicts used to establish this 7:1 casualty ratio threshold, has any successful anti-guerrilla campaign ever had to endure a “friendly” media that felt the need to balance or mitigate every success and amplify every setback or sidestep? After all, that is the current behavior of the American and global media, the main conduit of information between our troops on the battlefield and our citizenry here at home.

  • Marine Rushes From Iraq After Wife Shot

    You think there’s random violence in Iraq? Tell that to the Marine who rushed from Fallujah to be with his wife as she fights for her life after a tragic shooting in the good ol’ US of A.

    A Marine serving in a war zone in Iraq rushed back home to be with his pregnant wife Friday after she was wounded in an apparent random shooting in a supermarket parking lot.

    “You can only imagine how it would make me feel, being where I was at,” Lance Cpl. Justin Cook, 23, said.

    The Marine was pulled from his combat unit in Fallujah on Monday, and told his wife Julia, 21, had been shot in the head. She is due to deliver the couple’s son in February.

    Justin Cook said his mind raced at the news — “a whole whirlwind of emotions, from anger (to) fear.”

    After three sleepless nights of travel, the Marine was at his wife’s bedside Friday in the York Hospital intensive-care unit, where a nursing supervisor said she was in serious condition.

    Authorities said Julia Cook, who had been living with her parents in Mannsville, N.Y., while awaiting the birth of her son, was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was visiting high school friends Sunday night when someone opened fire with a shotgun, then drove away.

    Noel Gomez, 19, arrested six hours later, told detectives he decided ahead of time on a location where he wanted to kill someone, according to his arrest affidavit. He is jailed without bond, charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.

    The York public defender’s office said Friday that Gomez’s lawyer was unavailable for comment.

    Gomez’s relatives told the York Daily Record he had been exhibiting unusual behavior for the past five years.

    “I feel sorry for him, I really do,” Justin Cook said.

    The Marine said his wife had one operation and more are expected. They have been married almost two years, and have picked out a name for their son — Calvin.

    “She is quite the feisty fighter, and she doesn’t let anything get her down,” Cook said.

    If there’s anything tougher than a US Marine, it just might be a Marine’s wife. My best wishes and hopes go out to Lance Cpl. Cook, his wife Julia and their family.