Target Centermass

Author: Gunner

  • Are You Ready to Apocalyptically Rumble?!!

    The Iranian president apparently is.

    Read and despair.

    Cower. Pretend our enemies are simply better folk than the dreaded neocons fear.

    Or brace for what must be done. In this case, we’re not drawing the line in the sand; they are. Ace states the case briefly. I’ve left out his great dry-humor, entertainment-related portion, so just follow the link if you want that.

    We can’t let them have the bomb. If it means preemptive war– we canot let them have the bomb.

    Hat tip for all to the Jawa Report and its ominous accompanying graphic.

    A man, possibly mad but certainly driven by a religious belief that is fatalistic, is now within a finger’s grasp of nuclear weapons. A country dead-set on destroying Israel and, ultimately, the U.S., has toyed with European negotiators while hastening the globe into greater danger. Please do not think the U.N. will stem this tide; there will be flame. There will be explosions. For now, the location of those flames and explosions may be up to us. For now …

    The saddest thing about it all is that the Iranian populace probably thirsts more for a true democratic government than any other Islamic country. Perhaps there’s maneuver room yet …

  • Army Pledges to Equip GIs with Better Armor

    The body armor story. Yet again.

    The Army announced Wednesday that it plans to distribute 230,000 side-protecting armor inserts to troops in Iraq over the next year amid growing criticism that the Pentagon has delayed life-saving upgrades to body armor.

    Last year, the armed forces medical examiner found that 80 percent of the Marines who died of torso wounds from March 2003 to June 2005 in Iraq might have lived if their vests had contained additional protection for the sides, arms and neck.

    That report, leaked to news outlets last week, prompted Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) to summon Pentagon brass to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to explain delays and materials shortages that have plagued the armor programs of the Army and Marines.

    “We will complete the delivery of this particular equipment this year … 230,000 that will be done throughout this year,” Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said of the side plates.

    Sorenson refused to provide details on production and distribution, which annoyed some Democrats who attended the closed-door meeting. “We wanted to know why the Army has had all these delays and he didn’t have a good answer,” said one Senate staffer.

    Marine commanders requested improvements to side armor last June, but few of the inserts have made it to those fighting. That has prompted criticism from Senate Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who said hundreds of soldiers may have died as a result of inadequate armor.

    The Army blamed delays on material shortages and pointed out that it has altered its armored vest design seven times to date.

    As Confederate Yankee shows us, the Army is constantly testing and evaluating armor concepts, including even one that may just satisfy Sen. Clinton and bring about the threat of entire units becoming heat casualties.

  • Hamas Drops Manifesto Call for Israel Destruction

    Take this “development” with one freakin’ big grain of salt.

    Hamas has dropped its call for the destruction of Israel from its manifesto for the Palestinian parliamentary election in a fortnight, a move that brings the group closer to the mainstream Palestinian position of building a state within the boundaries of the occupied territories.

    The Islamist faction, responsible for a long campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis, still calls for the maintenance of the armed struggle against occupation. But it steps back from Hamas’s 1988 charter demanding Israel’s eradication and the establishment of a Palestinian state in its place.

    The manifesto makes no mention of the destruction of the Jewish state and instead takes a more ambiguous position by saying that Hamas had decided to compete in the elections because it would contribute to “the establishment of an independent state whose capital is Jerusalem”.

    The shift in emphasis comes as Hamas finds itself under pressure from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and from foreign governments to accept Israel’s right to exist and to end its violence if it wants to be accepted as a political partner in a future administration.

    The group is expected to emerge as the second largest party after Mr Abbas’s Fatah in the next Palestinian parliament. Opinion polls give it more than a third of the popular vote, built on a campaign against Fatah’s endemic corruption and mismanagement and failure to contain growing criminality, and by claiming credit for driving the Israeli army and settlers out of Gaza.

    But the manifesto continues to emphasise the armed struggle. “Our nation is at a stage of national liberation, and it has the right to act to regain its rights and end the occupation by using all means, including armed resistance,” it says.

    Gazi Hamad, a Hamas candidate in the Gaza Strip, yesterday said the manifesto reflected the group’s position of accepting an interim state based on 1967 borders but leaving a final decision on whether to recognise Israel to future generations.

    “Hamas is talking about the end of the occupation as the basis for a state, but at the same time Hamas is still not ready to recognise the right of Israel to exist,” he said. “We cannot give up the right of the armed struggle because our territory is occupied in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is the territory we are fighting to liberate.”

    This is not a case of a leopard changing its spots. Rather, the leopard would simply not prefer to talk about its spots … for now.

  • Mass. Guardsmen Sue for Post-9/11 Duty Expenses

    We all saw the beefed-up security as our oft-maligned “weekend warriors” (damn but I hated that phrase) stepped forth after September 11, 2001, and provided a comforting BDU-clad presence at airports and other facilities.

    Now, some of those troops want a little payback for their time on the clock.

    A group of National Guard soldiers who were ordered to protect possible targets after the Sept. 11 attacks sued the state and federal governments Wednesday, seeking tens of millions of dollars in living expenses they say were never reimbursed.

    The soldiers, who are from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, say they traveled hundreds of miles to security postings — such as Quabbin Reservoir, the Boston area’s primary water supply — and used their own money for gas, food and lodging, expecting to be paid back.

    But the soldiers say in their complaint that their requests for compensation were repeatedly denied until they were told by their commanding officers that they could be taken off their missions if they didn’t stop asking for reimbursement. The response, they said, had a “chilling effect.”

    “Plaintiffs concluded they could not seek the … reimbursement compensation they felt they were owed, without extreme and negative repercussions on their military careers,” the complaint reads.

    The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court by four soldiers, but it seeks to include hundreds of other guardsmen as a class action. It names the U.S. Department of Defense and the Massachusetts National Guard and seeks a total of $73 million in unpaid expenses.

    A spokeswoman for the U.S. Defense Department referred calls to the Justice Department, where spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment until after the agency reviews the lawsuit.

    The Massachusetts National Guard was investigating the allegations and had no immediate comment, said spokesman Major Winfield Danielson.

    I initially scoffed at this news, assuming that tales of individual woe were self-inflicted and that alternative but less preferable transportation, lodging and foodage were available but declined. I often took financial losses on drill weekends by choosing a hotel over a cot at the armory just for the sake of creature comforts and booze, so I had little sympathy for the soldiers involved … until I stumbled across the following in the story, the third article I’d read on the matter while trying to find details.

    The plaintiffs say that if the soldiers had been reimbursed properly, the state would have paid out tens of thousands of dollars per day in expenses, based on a minimum of $126 per day for every soldier in the roughly 320 Guard jobs involved in the mission.

    The plaintiffs multiplied that daily cost by the 1,570 days of the post-Sept. 11 mission to get the $73 million estimate, said John Shek, their attorney.

    The suit says federal law provides military personnel with meals and travel allowance while away from home on active duty. But Massachusetts guardsmen received orders that read: “Government quarters not available; … government meals are not available; … per diem: not authorized.”

    Shek said he knew of no other state where similar orders were given.

    If true, there’s a whole lot of explaining or paying needed.

  • Body Armor: a Quick Look

    Over the weekend, a Pentagon study on troop body armor and its effect on casualties made big AP news.

    Most torso wounds that killed Marines in Iraq might have been prevented or minimized by improved body armor, a Pentagon study found.

    The unreleased study last summer by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner looked at 93 fatal wounds from the start of the war in March 2003 through June 2005. It concluded that 74 were bullet or shrapnel wounds to shoulders or areas of the torso not protected by ceramic armor plating.

    […]

    According to a summary of the study obtained by The Associated Press, the 93 Marines who died from a primary lethal injury of the torso were among 401 Marines who died from combat injuries in Iraq between the start of the war and last June.

    Autopsy reports and photographic records were analyzed to help the military determine possible body armor redesign. A military advocacy group, Soldiers for Truth, posted an article about the study on its Web site this week. On Friday evening, The New York Times reported in its online edition that the study for the first time shows the cost in lives lost from inadequate armor.

    The study found that of 39 fatal torso wounds in which the bullet or shrapnel entered the Marine’s body outside of the ceramic armor plate that protects the chest and back, 31 were close to the plate’s edge.

    “Either a larger plate or superior protection around the plate would have had the potential to alter the final outcome,” the report concluded.

    Murdoc at Murdoc Online dissected the piece with a post where the title says it all about how increased armor could reduce casualties: So could carpet bombing and free-fire zones (hat tip to the Officer’s Club).

    There are limits. You need to be able to put your arms down. Otherwise laying there like a slug might be your only defense.

    Long-time readers of MO will know that I’ve been critical of the armor situation in the past. And I’ll continue to be critical in the future until absolute perfection is attained and US troops in combat zones are totally protected from every possible threat. But these stupid headlines and sensationalizing of a military study intended to improve our capability doesn’t help anyone.

    Well, let me correct myself right here. Sensationalizing this story, making it sound like negligence or inability to cope with enemy tactics is killing troops does help some. They’re called the “enemies of America”. And not all of them are not American. So many in the media seem so focused on the “good old days” of media glory that they appear unable to report on military matters in a meaningful way.

    Today, the military responded by pointing out that it is trying to find the proper armor that allows the best balance between troop safety and troop effectiveness.

    Protecting troops is a top priority, but weighting them down with so much body armor that they are practically unable to move is not the answer to the continued deaths and injuries among armor-wearing deployed forces, military officials said Wednesday.

    The Army and Marine Corps are rushing to buy and deploy improved body armor that provides more protection for the sides of the torso, which enemy sharpshooters have targeted as a weak point in U.S. troops’ body armor configurations.

    But military officials, called before the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss the status of the improvements, said they have not yet found a perfect balance between fully protecting troops and weighing them down so heavily that they cannot accomplish their missions.

    Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the Armed Services Committee chairman, said he was satisfied the services had the money and authority to get the necessary gear and understood the limitations.

    “Everything that can be done is being done,” Warner said.

    Full body armor, with all the associated plates and extra protection, can weigh up to 125 pounds, a particularly heavy load in the extreme climates of Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

    While at Texas A&M, I took a survey level course in American military history under the esteemed Dr. Joseph G. Dawson III. Many aspects and lessons of that class have stayed with me through the years, but one little piece of trivia stands out in my memory. Dr. Dawson pointed out that the average weight of arms and equipment carried by American troops into battle during the Revolutionary War was around sixty pounds. The average weight of the same carried by the typical American soldier in Viet Nam was … sixty pounds. I do hope that puts into a little perspective that 125-pound figure for full body armor. Oh yeah, don’t forget to add in weapons and ammunition. And rations and water. And needed communication devices. Yes, the troops could be encased in a cylinder of kevlar, but balance must be managed or the troops become worthless little knights, relatively safe from shrapnel and bullets but slow, ineffective and still prone to other dangers like RPGs.

  • Crisis as Iran Reopens Nuclear Research Plant

    Iran has taken the next step in its game of nuclear brinksmanship.

    Iran yesterday precipitated a fresh crisis over its nuclear programme by removing UN seals at a facility in the town of Natanz and announcing that it would begin research involving nuclear enrichment – which can produce weapons grade material.

    To counter, Russia has announced that it is “very disappointed” and “expressed deep concern” on the development. Great Britain, France and Germany, the Euro powers that have been in negotiation with Iran in hopes of halting the radical nation’s nuclear ambitions, announced that they “may meet on Thursday to discuss” the issue. The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency bravely rushed forth with a “predictably lame response” (for once not my phrasing for anything the agency has managed for years and years). Apparently, there was even a “global outcry” today, though I seemed to have missed it.

    With a tad bit more effort, the civilized world could have come across looking even more limp-wristed and weak … maybe.

    It is time, actually well past time, to admit that the Euro diplomacy path was a gambit doomed to fail. The U.S. was forced to allow it, as the Bush administration had been painted into a corner with all the false and politically-driven accusations of unilateral action and rush to war surrounding the Iraqi theater. From the beginning, there was a key fault with the negotiations — one side didn’t actually want them to succeed.

    Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

    —Dean Acheson

    The Euro-Iranian talks have been along the lines of the negotiations preceeding the Munich Agreement, as one side sought “peace in our time” while the other merely sought to buy time.

    The danger to the survival of Israel is evident, especially given the fanaticism of the current Iranian president and his backing hard-line religious leaders. What may be less evident but no less true is the danger the West would face by a nuke-capable and quite radical Iran stepping forth as leaders of the Islamist world.

    Unless science suddenly helps the European powers regrow a spine, the time has come for the only nations actually willing and capable of facing the threat to step up to the plate. I’m speaking specifically about the U.S. and Israel. Bloody action by one of the two may quickly be needed, though such wouldn’t be easy. Unfortunately, current global politics would prevent an overtly-combined action by the two. As the Islamist threat matures and becomes more evident, at least to those not completely and pathetically blinded, that sad political reality may change or become a less-pressing consideration when compared to the survival of our civilization.

  • Court Nominee Faces Tough Questions

    The senate committee hearings for Judge Alito are now in full swing.

    Judge Samuel Alito calmly deflected senators’ questions about abortion rights and presidential power Tuesday as he pledged to keep an open mind if confirmed for the Supreme Court and insisted that no person is above the law, including the president of the United States.

    During a marathon question-and-answer session spanning more than eight hours, Alito told Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that he believes in the right to privacy, as well as the principle of stare decisis, in which legal precedents should be overturned only rarely, for the sake of consistency in the law.

    “People have a right to privacy in their homes and in their papers and in their persons,” Alito said.

    The right to privacy, and the subsequent right to an abortion, is one of the issues that hangs in the balance with Alito’s nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, prompting repeated questions on the subject. Alito’s prominent mentions of the right to privacy and the power of precedent appeared to be an attempt to placate abortion rights supporters who fear he would vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion case.

    I’m not going to pretend that I’ve watched more than a few moments and, as I’ve said before that I think it’s already a done deal. What I have seen is about what I expected: Sens. Kennedy, Biden and Schumer essentially looking like caricatures of themselves while an atmosphere of oppressive tedium covers all.

    Tough questions? Ha! Let Llama Butcher Robert put forth the really challenging questions.

    On the other hand, as a concerned citizen, I feel it is my responsibility to participate in this process in at least some capacity. In that spirit, therefore, I offer

    ROBBO’S TOP TEN USELESS ALITO CONFIRMATION QUESTIONS:

    10. Yes or no – have you stopped beating your wife?
    9. If you had a hammer, would you hammer in the morning or the evening and why?
    […]

    Go read the rest. Personally, I think #5 just begs to be asked of this nominee.

  • Michael Yon: Call for Volunteers

    “Retired Military Persons Needed”

    Michael Yon is back from Iraq, but he wants the stories from the ground to continue.

    Now that I’m back in the United States for a time, trying wring every bit of information of the war out of the news, only to come up dry most days, it’s become clear that in just under a year, the media gap has morphed into a chasm. Before this thing becomes a black hole, it’s time for a few good men and women to put their military experience and expertise to use in an operation that can create an alternative channel that will allow frontline information to break through and be heard.

    This site gets much traffic from all around the world, from people searching for news from Iraq, making it an ideal place to host stories from deployed forces in harm’s way. Not comments, not those endlessly forwarded unattributed “true” stories that always seem airbrushed, but real stories about the ground situation. In my travels I’ve met many budding writers who are now wearing boots and carrying rifles, and I found their stories so compelling that I want the world to see.

    One antidote to the no news but bad news flu would be to let more of these voices be heard. A simple “call for stories,” would probably stuff the inbox with emailed submissions. Having already made my ongoing inability to read email well known on these pages, any information system predicated on my reading emails would clog before it launched. This is where the volunteers come in.

    If qualified and interested, go check out Yon’s call to arms … err, keyboards. Hat tip to the Fat Guy.

  • Top Revolutionary Guard Dies in Iran Air Crash

    A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. And a crash may be just a crash.

    Ahmad Kazemi, appointed last year as ground forces commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was among 13 people killed on Monday in a plane crash near the city of Urumiyeh, north-west Iran

    General Kazemi was one of a wave of promotions made last August by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after new president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad took office.

    Separate from Iran’s regular armed forces, the Revolutionary Guards have land, sea and air forces, and run a network of business activities. Iran’s reformists have long accused the Guards of playing too political a role.

    The aircraft, a French-made Falcon jet, came down because landing gear jammed, reported IRNA, the official news agency, which put General Kazemi among the 11 commanders killed.

    This was Iran’s second military plane crash in two months. On December 6, around 105 people, mainly journalists, died when a US-made military transport Hercules C-130 crashed into a residential building near Tehran’s Mehrabad airport after suffering engine trouble.

    Iran has a patchy recent history of air safety, with spare parts for both military and civilian aircraft subject to US sanctions.

    As I noted earlier, military aviation is a dangerous business. Still, given the recent radical behavior at the top of the Iranian government, I doubt I’m the only one with thoughts of the word purge.

    Even if, after all is said and done, the problem stems from continued American sanctions, do not turn here for tears.

  • Bomb defused at a San Francisco Starbucks

    Though it may be nothing, it should be noted that an improvised explosive device has been found here in the homeland.

    A San Francisco Starbucks is closed this afternoon after police defused a bomb placed in the bathroom.

    Police received a call reporting a suspicious package at the coffee house, located at 1401 Van Ness Ave., at 1:15 p.m. The police explosives ordinance unit diffused an improvised explosive device, or IED, around 2 p.m., Sgt. Neville Gittens said.

    Gittens said he could not comment on the size or type of device found or on its potential explosive capacity. A police investigation is ongoing.

    A man working at Sushi Bar Wayo next door to Starbucks said police told him there was a pipe bomb in the coffee house and that he needed to evacuate his restaurant.

    Ricardo Frias, a sales representative with Ellis Brooks Auto Center, located adjacent to the Starbucks, said a heavy police presence began at around 1 p.m. He said once the bomb squad arrived on scene an hour later, all auto center employees were directed to stand on the other side of the block-long store for about 30 minutes. He said he heard nothing when the IED was defused.

    Islamist terror? Doubtful. Radical far-left terror? Slightly increased likelihood, though Starbucks, with their overrated and overpriced concoctions, seems to be the Mecca of the home-grown radical. McDonald’s would seem the likelier target.

    Starbucks has issued a generic statement and authorities have made a generic claim of having leads.

    Someday soon, Islamist terror will return to our shores. I just don’t think this was it.