I’d again like to pause and thank those who have blogrolled or linked to Target Centermass.
First, thanks to the following fine blogs for adding TCm to their blogrolls:
Second, thanks to the following for recent links to TCm:
As always, if you’ve linked or blogrolled Target Centermass and I haven’t found you, please send an email or post a comment. No good deed should go unacknowledged.
Please, please, pretty please extend daylight savings time.
If Congress passes an energy bill, Americans may see more daylight-saving time.
Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.
“Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, who along with Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, co-sponsored the measure.
The amendment was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is putting together major parts of energy legislation likely to come up for a vote in the full House in the coming weeks.
“The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,” said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.
The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.
Do it for the energy savings. Do it for whatever reason you can come up with, just do it.
I am most assuredly not a morning person, and this move would give me a little bit more daylight during the time I actually am awake. Yeah, I’m just that selfish.
Scratch some more bad guys, this time at the hands of the Saudis.
Another top terrorist was killed yesterday morning after security forces raided his hide-out in the south of the capital.
Abdul Rahman Al-Yaziji, terror suspect No. 15 on the list of 26 most wanted in Saudi Arabia, was shot dead in the Southern Industrial Area of Riyadh.
A source told Arab News that security forces had received information about the terrorist’s whereabouts from terror suspects who were apprehended in Al-Rass two days ago.
The source added that security officers surrounded an old building in which he was hiding at about 9 a.m. yesterday morning and blocked off all roads leading to the area.
Officers then raided the building and a gunbattle between the terror suspect and police ensued.
After a three-hour exchange of fire, the suspect tried to flee the building on foot in a desperate bid to escape. He was shot dead after he refused to give in and continued to fire at police officers, the source added.
[…]
The battle was the latest in ongoing clashes between suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists and security forces.
An intense 60-hour clash in the northern town of Al-Rass in the Qasim region, which broke out when security forces attempted to encircle a militant hide-out, ended late Tuesday with the deaths of 14 gunmen.
[…]
Meanwhile, a source told Arab News’ sister publication Asharq Al-Awsat that many of the terrorists who surrendered in Al-Rass two days ago told police that they did not know which city they were in because they were smuggled into the city disguised in black abayas.
The incident is not the first where terrorists have abused the Saudi female traditional dress to escape being searched at checkpoints and travel freely between cities in the Kingdom.
Last year in a raid that took place in Al-Jazirah district in Riyadh, some terrorists fled the scene in black abayas. And a large number of abayas were found in raids on terror cells in Makkah, Madinah, Taif and Qasim.
Yesterday’s killing put the number of terror suspects killed by security officers in the Kingdom in the past three days in a row to 15. They included Abdul Kareem Al-Majati and Saud Al-Otaibi, two most wanted terrorists.
With Al-Yaziji’s killing, the number of terrorists still on the run from the list of 26 is now down to three — Saleh Al-Aufi, the alleged Al-Qaeda commander in Saudi Arabia’s Talib Al-Talib, and Abdullah Al-Rashoud.
Imported cross-dressing terrorists — not that there’s anything wrong with that, except for the terrorist part.
Gathering of the Blogs — Hosted by Ith at Absinthe & Cookies.
Sport Kilt — kilts easy on the budget, limited selection but some clans available, as well as desert camo.
Alexis Malcolm Kilts — kilts moderately priced, with a wide selection including tartans of all the branches of the U.S. military.
Interactive Weaver — Design your own tartan.
The Black Watch — the famed Scottish regiment that briefly served along side Americans in Baghdad.
Save the Scottish Regiments — a campaign to, well, save the Scottish regiments.
ElectricScotland.com — all things Scottish on the internet, be it history, geneology, clans or travel.
A report released yesterday by the United Nations stated that no significant progress had been made in efforts to spread democracy through the Arab nations.
In a long-awaited report, intellectuals and reformers say they have seen no significant advances toward democracy in the Arab world in the past year.
The third Arab Human Development Report, released yesterday under United Nations auspices, says most measures have been “embryonic and fragmentary” and have not amounted to a serious effort to end repression in the region, which has some of the world’s most authoritarian governments.
The United States, which says it aims to promote democracy in the region, contributed to an international context that hampered progress through its policy toward Israel, its actions in Iraq and security measures affecting Arabs, according to the report.
The report, covering the year from October, 2003, was written before the election in Iraq and street protests in Lebanon that Washington cites as evidence of change.
[…]
“Some of the views expressed by the authors are not shared by UNDP or the UN . . . [but the report] clearly reflects a very real anger and concern felt across the region,” UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown wrote.
The most controversial sections describe the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies as violations of freedom and obstacles to development.
During the launch address, Ms. Khalaf said that more than 10 per cent of Arabs live under occupation. “Occupation is a confiscation of rights by violence.”
The report says occupation has given governments an excuse to postpone democratization, forces Arab reformers to divert their energies and strengthens groups that advocate violence.
It accuses the United States of undermining the international system by repeatedly using or threatening to use its UN Security Council veto, enabling Israel to build Jewish settlements and extend its barrier in the West Bank.
The U.S. response to the September, 2001, attacks on the United States added to the ambiguity in the Western attitude to human rights in the Middle East, it says.
“The ‘war on terror’ has cut into many Arab freedoms. . . . An unfortunate byproduct in some countries has been that Arabs are increasingly the victims of stereotyping, disproportionately harassed or detained without cause.”
As always, the failures of the Arab world are always spun to either be caused by or prolonged by the Israelis and the Americans. It’s never the fault of those actually opposing democracy.
It’s a sign of the interesting times we live in when a brand new report is already shown to be obsolete and in great need of revision after events on the ground in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.
At least 18 American soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan yesterday, the biggest single loss of US life since Operation Enduring Freedom began in autumn 2001.
The army Chinook came down in bad weather in featureless desert near the south-eastern city of Ghazni.
Afghan officials said the bodies were all in US military uniform. The army said last night that 18 people, including crew members and passengers, were listed on the flight manifest and that two remained unaccounted for.
Lieutenant Cindy Moore said that the Chinook was on a routine flight from the troubled south-east of the country to the main US airbase at Bagram, north of Kabul.
A second Chinook on the mission arrived unscathed.
Ghazni’s police chief, Abdul Rahman Sarjang, said that the weather at the time of the crash was cloudy with strong winds. Witnesses said one of the helicopter’s two sets of rotor blades appeared to be damaged before it hit the ground.
There were no reports or indications of ground fire and no claim of responsibility from any militant organisation.
Americas’s previous highest single loss of life was when eight soldiers died in an arms dump explosion in January last year.
My gratitude to these soldiers for their sacrifices in a theater that, barring one election, only seems to receive attention in times of trouble. My sorrow and best wishes to the families for their losses.
UPDATE, 7 APR 05: Per CNN, of the 18 aboard, 13 soldiers and 3 American contractors are confirmed killed. 2 soldiers are currently classified as missing.
Today is Tartan Day, 2005 edition. And here’s my family tartan:
I’m still researching to find any clan affiliation, as my surname is a sept to multiple clans.
The Scots of the blogosphere are celebrating the day with a Gathering of the Blogs, so feel free to peruse those links for a wealth of Scottish-related postings.
I expected that, after Sunday’s artful compromise on a Sunni speaker for the National Assembly, the pieces of the next Iraqi government would quickly fall into place. And so they have.
The major political parties of Iraq agreed Tuesday evening to appoint a president and two vice presidents at a meeting of the national assembly on Wednesday, breaking a two-month deadlock and taking the first significant step in forming a new government.
The presidency council will have two weeks from its appointment to name a prime minister, who will select a cabinet. The new government would then have to be approved by a majority vote of the assembly, according to the interim constitution.
The main Shiite and Kurdish political blocs have agreed to name Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, as president; Adel Abdul Mehdi, a prominent Shiite Arab politician as one vice president; and Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the Sunni Arab president of the interim government, as the other vice president, said Hussein al-Shahristani, a vice speaker of the assembly.
The agreement breaks an enormous impasse between the main parties that had threatened to destroy the confidence built up during the Jan. 30 elections, when Iraqis defied insurgent threats to walk in droves to polling stations.
A two-thirds vote by the 275-member assembly is required to install the presidency council, and so the Shiite and Kurdish blocs, which together can meet the two-thirds requirement, haggled for weeks over a range of issues, from control of oil revenues to the role of Islam in the new government.
[…]
Shahristani, a nuclear physicist and prominent member of the Shiite bloc, said the presidency council could officially appoint the prime minister as soon as late Wednesday or Thursday. The leading candidate for that job is Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the head of the Dawa Islamic Party, a religious Shiite party.
A government of the Iraqi people, by the Iraqi people, and for the future of the Iraqi people and, quite possibly, all of the people of the global community.
Gee, no pressure there.
Much like the recent Athens Olympics, one has to feel a tinge of angst at the pending gathering of luminaries and throngs of masses heading to pay their respects and show their love for the late Pope John Paul II. Obviously, the Italians are concerned about security.
Italian air force jets are ready to scramble. Police are burrowing through the labyrinth of drains and aqueducts under the city looking for bombs. Snipers are staked out on strategic rooftops.
The millions of people and the 200 foreign delegations expected for Pope John Paul II’s funeral Friday offer a tempting target for any terrorist group hoping to score a spectacular strike. Authorities insist they have taken all possible measures to prevent such an attack.
“Precautions have been taken for airports, stations and all the other places where people gather,” said an official of the Rome prefect’s office, which is responsible for coordinating the security apparatus.
Air traffic over central Rome likely will be banned Friday, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The military-civilian airport of Ciampino may be closed to commercial flights, and traffic to and from the main airport at Fiumicino, 16 miles from Rome, may be curtailed, the official said.
Radar is scanning the air for any irregular activity, ready to alert pilots on standby. Helicopters have begun regular patrols.
Italy has not been a direct target of international terrorism in recent years. But in the 1970s and 1980s, the Italian Red Brigades cowed the nation, and Palestinian groups struck with devastating effectiveness.
Methinks communists fighting the Cold War and Palestinians begging for international attention aren’t really the feared parties that are driving these measures. Could it be … ahem … Islamist terrorists?!!
But like all European security networks, Italy has heightened its anti-terror efforts following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and last year’s train bombings in Madrid.
The Europeans have strengthened their cross-border cooperation and the sharing of information, though many experts say it has not gone far enough.
Italian authorities have arrested dozens of suspects, aided by a new international terrorism charge introduced following the New York attacks.
In Milan, where prosecutors have investigated Muslim extremist cells based in the north of Italy, a judge handed down the first al-Qaida-related guilty verdict since the Sept. 11 attacks, convicting seven Tunisians for helping recruits for al-Qaida get fake documents.
The suspects included Essid Sami Ben Khemais, the alleged logistics head of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist operations in Europe.
Hmmm … an al-Quida presence is known in Italy and throughout Europe. However, I’m sure if you ask commie Italian journalist and part-time faux-hostage Giuliana Sgrena, she of the ever-morphing tale of horror (hat tip to the Jawa Report), the real danger is the expected presence of those dastardly Americans.
Dozens of monarchs, presidents and prime ministers will attend John Paul II’s funeral, including President Bush, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Authorities also are expecting as many as 4 million pilgrims, mourners and tourists. Poland’s Foreign Ministry said 2 million people were expected from that country alone.
Such an inviting target of massed infidels for the Islamists. The pope’s fading health was no secret and his passing has been but an eventuality for some time, possibly adequate time to have laid groundplans for an action.
Despite this, I have a good vibe about this, speaking strictly from a security point of view, for several reasons. First, it would have been extremely difficult to plan anything on a concrete basis, as actual timing was unknown. Second, despite all the talk of the American military’s being stretched thin, so too is the effective reach of the terrorists, who are slowly being forced to decide between exporting serious bloodshed or keeping any kind of credible threat in the current theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Third, Pope John Paul II was loved by a great many, and his life full of devotion and effort was respected practically across the board. To target this moment could spell the death knell of the radical Islamic movement.
Sure, I was a treadhead, but even I know the Army needs wheels. And wheeled vehicles, specifically the Humvees and Strykers, have certainly been in the news as a result of their participation in the Iraqi theater. Let’s check the latest, shall we?
U.S. Commanders Seek More Armored Humvees
For the fifth time in the past year, U.S. commanders running the war in Iraq have told the Army to send more armored Humvee utility vehicles to protect U.S. troops.
Just as the Army was reaching its target of 8,279 factory-built armored Humvees for delivery to Iraq, U.S. Central Command last month raised the bar again, to 10,079, Army officials disclosed Tuesday.
The Army has been accused by many in Congress of lagging behind in providing armor protection for troops, hundreds of whom have been killed or wounded in ambushes and roadside bombs in Iraq. The Army says it has pressed the vehicle manufacturer for as many as possible, and it has been chasing a moving target set initially at 1,407 by commanders in Iraq in August 2003.
When the war began in March 2003, few might have imagined that the all-purpose Humvee, the modern version of the unarmored Jeep, would need to be reinforced in large numbers. But soon they became a prime target of the insurgents’ roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.
By April 2004 the requirement for factory-built armored Humvees had reached 4,454, and commanders in Iraq subsequently raised it to 6,223 in June, 8,105 in August and then to 8,279 in December.
Those are in addition to thousands of regular Humvees to which makeshift armor and ballistic glass have been added to reinforce their doors and windows against the blast from roadside bombs and land mines. Armor also has been added to supply trucks and older troop carriers.
The new armored Humvee target of 10,079 is not expected to be achieved before July, according to Army projections based on the factory’s recently increased production rate of 550 vehicles per month. It will take a few additional weeks beyond July to ship the extras to Iraq.
Will that delivery be the end of the prolonged controversy? I seriously doubt it. Hell, it probably won’t even be the end of the numbers game.
Army officials acknowledge that putting armor on Humvees is not a perfect solution. For one thing, it has added to the wear-and-tear on the heavier vehicles and increased fuel consumption, thereby requiring even more supply convoys that are a common target of insurgents.
“No amount of effort in armoring will make our soldiers completely invulnerable, but we owe it to them to provide the best possible protection,” Army Secretary Francis Harvey wrote in a letter to the editor of USA Today on Monday.
Wise words, remaining true through every evolution of warfare.
Soldiers Hail New Stryker Troop Transport
For soldiers inside the U.S. Army’s newest troop transport vehicle, the armored combat Stryker rides like a cross-town bus as it sways softly atop its rubber tires, its brakes hissing quietly — before the back shoots open and troops leap onto the streets of one of Iraq’s most dangerous cities.
Some 300 Strykers are patrolling northern Iraq after their September 2003 introduction — vanguard of a multibillion dollar program that commanders say boosts their chances in a largely hit-and-run battle with insurgents.
Rank-and-file soldiers hailed the Stryker during recent patrols in Mosul as faster, quieter and safer than other combat vehicles — despite last week’s internal Army study that found numerous design flaws.
“We’ve been hit with (roadside bombs) and rocket-propelled grenades several times. We have taken direct machine-gun fire,” said Spc. George May of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis, Wash. “The Stryker has saved everyone’s lives at least once. It’s perfect for what we’re doing, which is urban warfare.”
Strykers are designed to carry troops on patrols and into combat — like Bradley fighting vehicles, or the Humvees that have came under criticism for lacking proper armor. But while the boxy Strykers somewhat resemble tanks, they generally lack heavy cannons and are propelled by wheels instead of tracks.
[…]
Soldiers say the Stryker is quieter, allowing them to sneak up on the enemy. And they say its partially jerry-rigged armor guards them better than Humvees.
Unlike the tank-like, tracked personnel carriers that predominate across the rest of Iraq — such as the Bradley — the four wheels on either side of the 19-ton Stryker give it speed, stealth and mobility that allows it to outmaneuver insurgents, officers say.
“For what we’re doing, I think the Stryker is excellent,” said May, a 27-year-old native of Upper Dublin, Pa.
The Strykers themselves have also not beem free of concern.
Still, an Army report from the Center for Army Lessons Learned found the vehicle bogs down in mud and the engine strains under 5,000-pound armor added by the Army.
The metal mesh armor, designed to deflect rocket-propelled grenades and large shrapnel from improvised bombs, has earned it a nickname: “the bird cage.”
The report also said the armor’s extra weight has caused problems with the automatic tire pressure system, requiring crews to check the tires three times a day.
“The Army should not put inadequately tested equipment in the field, as it creates a false impression that the troops are properly equipped to fight in combat,” said Eric Miller, who investigates defense issues for the oversight group.
It is interesting to read of the future force the Army plans to field.
The $7 billion Stryker program is intended as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal: a high-tech family of fighting systems known as the Future Combat System, expected to include unmanned ground and aerial vehicles.
