Target Centermass

Author: Gunner

  • U.S. Identifies Remains of Vietnam MIAs

    The long uncertainty has come to a close for a dozen families.

    When Army Sgt. Glenn E. Miller was listed as missing in action after a fierce gun battle in Vietnam in May 1968, his girlfriend figured he had been killed – even though there was never any proof.

    Thirty-seven years later, the remains of Miller, a Green Beret, and the 11 Marines who died alongside him have been identified and returned to the United States. It’s the largest group of MIAs identified from the Vietnam War, the Defense Department said Tuesday. There are still 1,815 other MIAs from the war.

    All the men’s families have met with representatives of the Marines and Army, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s missing personnel office. Five of the soldiers will be buried by their families; the others will be buried as a group in Arlington National Cemetery in October.

    […]

    The soldiers were killed May 9, 1968, during a 10-hour battle on a football field-sized area along the Laotian border in South Vietnam, Greer said. They were part of an artillery platoon airlifted in to support a unit that was at risk of an attack from nearby North Vietnamese forces.

    Go read for the names of all recovered and the reactions of those who have been waiting for so many years. I can certainly understand the families who have decided to privately bury their returned loved ones, but I also find it especially fitting that seven of the twelve will be interred with the comrades they have been sharing ground with since I was a newborn.

    Thank you, gentlemen, for your shared sacrifices. Rest well, at home at last.

  • Sub Rescue Team Tells of Drama

    Against the odds, against the water and most definitely against the clock, the Brits involved now talk about their decisive role in the this weekend’s rescue of a trapped and desperate Russian submarine.

    The Royal Navy-led team, which received a heroes’ welcome at Prestwick Airport, said they had repeatedly struck the mini-submarine with their remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) to reassure the Russians that a rescue was under way.

    The submariners, entombed for three days in 600ft of water at the bottom of the Pacific, responded by tapping on its hull, rather than speaking, to conserve oxygen.

    Go give it a gander. It’s short — too short, really, as I look forward to more.

    Let’s see what the Silent Service bloggers have, shall we? Chapomatic has links to three interview stories from the stranded. Meanwhile, Lubber’s Line at Ultraquiet No More has links to several stories covering the opening of what would seem to be a great big Russian blame-storming session.

  • Suppressed Suicide Bomb Story?

    Dr. Rusty Shackleford at the newly-remodeled Jawa Report is on the case of an apparent bus bombing in China. It’s mighty hard to believe that the Chinese would ever try to quash a story.

  • Bosnian War Criminal Arrested

    Don’t cry for him, Argentina.

    Milan Lukic, one of the most wanted war criminals from the carnage in Bosnia, was due to appear before a judge in Buenos Aires yesterday after being captured on Monday.

    After seven years on the run from war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Lukic was seized outside his apartment in Argentina, after collecting his wife and daughter at the airport.

    “When he got out of the taxi, police appeared everywhere,” said the superintendent of the building. “He had lots of money on him – dollars, euros.”

    Lukic is unlikely to be transferred to the tribunal for several weeks. Argentina is not party to the fast-track transfer agreements that former Yugoslav and some European countries have agreed with the tribunal.

    Lukic was first named and his alleged crimes detailed in the Guardian in 1996, and he was charged two years later. The indictment accuses him of the “extermination of a significant number of Bosnian Muslim civilians, including women, children and the elderly”.

    […]

    Lukic’s chosen hiding place has fuelled investigators’ suspicions that Argentina is becoming a safe haven for Serbian fugitives, as it was for Nazi war criminals. Most of Lukic’s fellow indictees have hitherto gone underground in Bosnia, Serbia or Russia, but he is the second alleged war criminal from the former Yugoslavia to be found in Buenos Aires. In June, extradition from Argentina to Serbia was agreed for Nebojsa Minic, wanted for war crimes in Kosovo. “There may be a network there,” said one official close to the investigation.

    Argentina — still the destination of choice for war criminals on the lam.

  • Carnival of Liberty VI

    The latest installment of the Life, Liberty, Property community‘s Carnival of Liberty is up over at Fearless Philosophy For Free Minds. Go read another fine collection of posts from a libertarian slant.

  • Fallen Soldier’s Mother Vows Vigil to See Bush

    I would like to think that this woman has suffered and is acting with the best of intentions.

    President George W. Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has had since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here over the weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq now.

    Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says that she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington state. But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Bush’s 1,600 acres, or 650 hectares, in Texas on Saturday, the 48-year-old Sheehan, of Vacaville, California, was transformed into a media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.

    Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Bush will see her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road. Early Sunday afternoon, 25 hours after she was turned back as she approached Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch, Sheehan stood red-faced from the heat at the makeshift campsite that she vowed would be her home until the president relented or left to go back to Washington.

    A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.

    […]

    As the mother of an Army specialist who was killed at age 24 in the Sadr City section of Baghdad on April 4, 2004, Sheehan certainly has a compelling story. She is also articulate, aggressive in delivering her message and armed with a story most White House reporters had not heard before: how Bush handles himself when he meets behind closed doors with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq.

    The White House has released few details of such sessions, which Bush conducts regularly as he travels the country, but it generally portrays them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share the grief of the families. In Sheehan’s telling, though, Bush did not know her son’s name when she and her family met with him in June 2004 at Fort Lewis. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as “Mom” throughout the meeting.

    By Sheehan’s account, Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Sheehan said she broke in and told Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought he could imagine what it would be like because he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war.

    “I said, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to go there,”‘ Sheehan said, recounting her exchange with the president. “He said, ‘You’re right, I don’t.’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for putting me there.”‘

    Compelling, indeed. Down right heart-breaking. But is it accurate?

    According to Sheehan’s hometown paper, her story at the time she met with the president was very different.

    Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.

    “I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,” Cindy said after their meeting. “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.”

    The meeting didn’t last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son’s sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.

    […]

    The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

    For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

    For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.

    “That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,” Cindy said.

    As to not knowing the name of Sheehan’s son, this story points out that the families of seventeen lost soldiers were present in this gathering, one of many the president has willingly chosen to face for no gain of his own.

    Sheehan now disavows her earlier thoughts on that meeting.

    ”I was still in shock then,” Sheehan said. “Now, I’m angry. I want the troops home.

    As I stated at the opening, I want to think the best of Sheehan’s intentions. I owe that to her son, a volunteer who gave the ultimate sacrifice. I do, however, believe that she is being manipulated in this matter, however willingly it may be.

    From the International Herald Tribune piece, the media swirl is no accident.

    It did not hurt her cause that she staged her protest, which she said was more or less spontaneous, at the doorstep of the White House press corps, which spends each August in Crawford with little to do, minimal access to Bush and his aides and eagerness for any new story.

    She did not go camping out at Crawford alone. Instead, she went there as part of the Veterans for Peace Impeachment Tour, so forget that spontaneous stuff. I know not of Sheehan’s politics but, from the bio page of the veterans on this tour, I can find the following gem:

    This administration has committed crimes on a scale rivaling the criminals of World War II.

    Sheehan has surrounded herself with people who absurdly equate the actions taken so far in the war against radical Islamist terror with the likes of the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking and the outright murder of hundreds and thousands of POWs.

    I will not question Sheehan’s motivations and I will acknowledge her loss and pain. I will also ask that she look at those around her and consider if she is following the best course in her attempt to honor her son.

    Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee led me to the local-paper version and gives his thoughts here.

  • Women Say the Darnedest Things

    For example, the girlfriend fiancee said yes.

    Target. Cease fire.

  • Race to Rescue Crew of Russian Sub

    Tragedy may be striking the Russian submarine service again, and the clock is ticking.

    Russia was last nightracing against time to rescue seven sailors stranded in a mini-submarine on the Pacific Ocean floor with as little as 24 hours’ air supply – an accident with echoes of the Kursk submarine disaster in which 118 seamen died.

    Though on a far smaller scale, the accident came a week before the fifth anniversary of the sinking of the Kursk, a state-of-the-art nuclear submarine.

    […]

    The Russian AS-28 mini-submarine, itself a rescue vessel, was taking part in a military exercise off Kamchatka in the Russian far east when its propeller snagged a fishing net. As it tried to pull free, naval officials said, the net became wrapped around the propeller and the submarine came to rest at a depth of 190m.

    The US was last night airlifting an unmanned Super Scorpio rescue submarine from San Diego and a Japanese rescue ship was steaming towards the stricken submarine, responding to Russian requests for assistance.

    But Admiral Viktor Fyodorov, commander of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, insisted the Russian navy, with 10 of its own ships in the area, could rescue the crew before its dwindling air supplies ran out. The admiral told Russian television that equipment was in place to snare the submarine with cables and tow it to shallower water.

    The bulk of my submarine knowledge comes from Tom Clancy novels, so I’m not even going to pretend to speak authoritatively on this story. Let me instead direct you to members of the Silent Service on my blogroll.

    Chapomatic provides a summary and several links.

    Meanwhile, over at Ultraquiet No More, a relatively new group blog for “submariners and submarine enthusiasts,” PigBoatSailor has maintained a frequently-updated post all day and Bubblehead provides more info this evening. Vigilis adds some touching words to his brethren ‘neath the waves.

  • Washington, Kabul Agree to Transfer Afghan Prisoners

    This development is certainly a concession to the negative spotlight continuously focused on the Gitmo detention facilities.

    Prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center and the U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan would be handed over to the custody of Afghan authorities.

    For its part the Afghan government accepts responsibility for the returnees and will work to ensure that they do not pose a continuing threat to Afghanistan, the coalition, or the international community.

    Not all Afghans however will be handed over.

    Some could remain at Guantanamo indefinitely. Fifteen have been selected to be tried by special military commissions.

    I harbor little hope that these transferred detainees will be kept as securely as they obviously are in the isolated Gitmo. On the other hand, I have great doubt that they will be kept as secure in their persons or treated as humanely by their Afghan captors. Quite the conundrum — some scum may escape, possibly to find their way again to the battlefield, but some scum may finally get the treatment that they deserve.

    I truly doubt this maneuver will relieve any of the pressure on the Gitmo detentions. Rather, it may encourage those participating in the intermittent frenzy. On the whole, I’d rather enemy combatants not subject to the Geneva conventions be kept stuck on an island for the duration. By duration, I certainly mean until the radical, expansionist Islamist threat is no longer a threat. Should this mean the detainees only leave Gitmo as elderly corpses in body bags, well, so be it.

  • Talk to me, Goose

    Well, it certainly seems that I’ve lost my blogging edge of late. Jet wash, flat spin, got to punch out … okay, enough of that silly zoomie theme.

    Let’s turn to the blogroll for help.

    • First, it seems that the Associated Press has gotten caught with a little anti-war editorializing in the headline of a story that’s already tragic enough. Later versions of the story carried a more appropriate headline, but graphical evidence of the switcharoo was blogged by Captain Ed of Captain’s Quarters. Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee has even more.
    • The Mudville Gazette hit a little bump in the road today when Mrs. Greyhawk’s always-anticipated Dawn Patrol post was lost without saving. Later, Greyhawk decided to rub it in a little.
    • Chad at In the Bullpen analyzes the news of a new video tape from terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri.

      In all fairness, Zawahiri and Al Qaida threatened England before Blair was in power, but why let the facts get in the way of a rambling psychopath.

    • JohnL at TexasBestGrok finally resurrects his SF Babes Poll with a Stargate Atlantis contest. Previous winners can be drooled over at in his Gallery of SF Babes.
    • Did you know a tank has heavier armor than other military vehicles? In a fisking after my own heart, Paul at Wizbang! tears apart a “news” piece whose author seems surprised by that fact.

      So let me see if I understand about this new “weakness” that has been “exposed.”

      An Amphibious vehicle does not have the same armor as a tank. — I’ll type that again in case the shock of this sudden revelation might be too much to comprehend…. An Amphibious vehicle does not have the same armor as a tank.

    • Speaking of tanks, ol’ tanker Eric of Eric’s Grumbles Before the Grave ponders what it means to support the troops, beginning with the extremes.

      The left screams that “support the troops” means immediately ending a war they deem illegal and immoral, bringing the soldiers home, giving up everything they have accomplished and pretending that the world is now full of flowers and sweetness. The right, on the other hand, claims that “support the troops” means that you must blindly support the President, no matter what, in terms of foreign policy. Of course, neither side says this in this fashion, that is my interpretation of their insanity.

      There’s obviously plenty of room for debate in this area, and Eric is always up for a discussion in his comments section.

    • Over at Ace of Spades, Ace finds another reason to hate the European Union — cleavage control. You have to love any writing that includes the phrases “ale-trollop” and “lager-slut.”