Target Centermass

Category: Military

  • AWOL Soldier Seeks Canadian Help

    An American is making headlines for deserting and begging our neighbor to the north for refuge.

    An American soldier who fought in Afghanistan two years ago but deserted and fled from the United States before he could be sent to Iraq has launched a long-shot bid for political refuge in Canada.

    Jeremy Hinzman, 26, has appeared before Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, claiming he would face persecution if sent home to the US.

    Mr. Hinzman testified that while his comrades regarded him as a “soldier’s soldier”, he realised over time that he could not kill another human being.

    I wonder if the brave troops Hinzman left behind still consider him a “soldier’s soldier.” Actually, no, I don’t. I think his former comrades could come up with more colorful terms now.

    The South Dakota-born soldier of the 82nd Airborne Division is claiming refugee status based on his contention that he was right to refuse to fight in the war in Iraq, which he says is illegal and violated human rights.

    Mr Hinzman said he had requested conscientious objector status in the US in 2002.

    But his case failed and he was sent to Afghanistan, where he eventually made 18 combat parachute jumps.

    Late last year he learned he was to be deployed to Iraq, prompting him to flee to Canada early this year with his Laotian wife Nga Nguyen and two-year-old son, Liam.

    His case, and that of two other fugitive American soldiers, has stirred sympathy in Canada, which opposed the Iraq war.

    But it has also raised fears that a positive ruling could spark a flood of US deserters across the border, as the toll of the Iraq war and occupation deepens, having already cost more than 1000 US lives.

    The chances of Mr Hinzman getting refugee status are seen as slim. No such decision has ever been made in Canada.

    ….

    He testified that his growing awareness that killing was wrong was partly born from an interest in Buddhism and attendance at Quaker religious meetings.

    Outside, a knot of anti-war supporters, waved banners reading, “Let him stay.”

    Yes, please let him stay, Canada. We’ll keep the red, white and blue, and y’all can coddle our yellow.

    Should he remain in Canada as a deserter, Hinzman’s citizenship should be revoked if possible. If it can’t be, that’s a shame that I would love to see corrected. Should any such deserters elect to return, I would like to see Hinzman and his ilk given a choice: prison or finish service in one of the historical roles of conscientious objector, such as a medic or chaplain’s assistant. See, I have a heart, especially for Quaker Buddhists.

  • Eight Sue to Stop Stop-Loss

    A group of soldiers currently on active duty have filed suit to end or prevent extensions of their enlistment period.

    Eight U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Kuwait filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the U.S. military’s “stop loss” policy, which forces them to serve beyond their enlistment contracts.

    Lawyers for the active duty soldiers sued Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior military officials and asked to be immediately released from military service, saying they had served out their contracts.

    The U.S. Army has implemented a “stop loss” policy that prevents tens of thousands of soldiers designated to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the military even when their volunteer service commitment is over.

    Spec. David Qualls said he enlisted with the Arkansas National Guard on July 7, 2003, under a program that allows a veteran to serve for one year before committing to full enlistment, but when he wanted to quit a year later, he was told he could not return home from Iraq to his wife and daughter in Arkansas.

    “What it boils down to in my opinion is a question of fairness,” Qualls, 35, told a news conference to announce the suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington. “I feel it’s time to let me go back to my wife.”

    ….

    Qualls, who said he supported the war in Iraq, took an 80 percent wage cut to serve his country and said he was falling behind on his car and house mortgage payments.

    “I spent the last nine months in that combat zone (in Iraq). I don’t think I am being unpatriotic. I believe I have fulfilled my duties,” he said of his wish to quit.

    I have sympathy for SPC Qualls and all those unwillingly extended. I have pity for their plights and various difficulties and am grateful for their service to date.

    That said, these eight now need to suck it up, square themselves away and do their duty.

    Lawyers representing Qualls and the others said the military’s decision to force people to stay longer than they had signed up for amounted to a back-door draft, a claim the military has strongly rejected.

    ….

    “When we ask a young person to risk his or her life in harms way, we owe it to that young person to fully explain the circumstances they may confront so far as the length of service,” said [lawyer Staughton] Lynd. “That was not done here.”

    Lawyer Jules Lobel, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said he would try to prove the soldiers were fraudulently induced to join the military in what he said was a classic “bait and switch” operation.

    I enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard on April 10, 1990. On that date, I was well aware that I could be activated and forced to leave my civilian life behind. On that date, I certainly knew that my enlistment could be extended at the military’s discretion. I knew this because it was made clear in the paperwork I signed that day before I raised my right hand.

    The print wasn’t that damned fine.

  • U.S. Tells Summit Landmine Cut Planned

    The U.S. released a surprise statement to the international landmine summit in Nairobi, promising to ban its usage of anti-personnel mines by 2010 … almost.

    The world will have to wait until 2010 before the United States of America bans the use of anti-personnel landmines.

    This is the message the military superpower sent to the delegates attending the first review conference of the anti-personnel Mine Ban Treaty held in Nairobi.

    In an unsigned press release distributed to the delegates, the US statement said between now and 2010, the possible use of persistent anti-personnel landmines will be restricted only to “our security treaty obligations in South Korea and any possible use outside that country will require presidential authorisation”.

    The US announced it had increased its mine action budget by 50 percent over the 2003 levels for a new total of $70 million per year.

    This is a wise maneuver, showing a willingness to cooperate against an international menace, yet still both retaining an out in case of need and maintaining a realistic view of the weapon’s current role as a deterrence on the Korean peninsula.

  • China launches ICBM-capable submarine

    According to officials at the U.S. Department of Defense, China has launched its first submarine designed to carry an intercontinental nuclear payload.

    The submarine is, at a minimum, months away from having missiles installed and going on a cruise, one official said, discussing foreign weapons developments only on condition of anonymity. Still, it is further evidence of China’s intentions to expand both its nuclear weapons and submarine forces, officials say.

    It was widely known China was building the new class of nuclear-missile submarine, called the Type 094 but the launch is far ahead of what U.S. intelligence expected, one official said.

    The launch was first reported in the Washington Times newspaper. The newspaper reported U.S. intelligence spotted the sub at a shipyard 400 kilometres from Beijing.

    It would be China’s first submarine capable of launching nuclear weapons that could reach the United States from the country’s home waters, officials said.

    The Chinese military has also been developing a new class of submarine-launched ballistic missile, called the JL-2, that is expected to have a range in excess of 7,400 kilometres. The Type 094 submarine would carry these missiles but it is not clear whether the missiles are ready for deployment.

    Previously, China has had only one submarine capable of launching nuclear missiles, called the Type 092, or Xia, class. In 2001, a Pentagon report said the Xia was not operational. Its missiles were of an older class that could fly only 1,000 kilometres.

    Successful cruises by the Type 094 would give China a new strategic deterrent against the United States, no longer limited to land-based ICBMs and weapons carried on aircraft. But U.S. defence officials said China lags behind the United States in its ability to hide submarines from sophisticated sonars and other sensors.

    By all accounts, China severely lags behind the U.S. in practically every aspect of naval technology, and this class should be easily trackable by American attack submarines.

    The Chinese will have a potential impact in three important areas with this launch. First, they are placing an added burden for the American navy to monitor and possibly counter. Second, they will add to the importance of a viable missile defense for the U.S. and an additional stressor on matters concerning Tiawan. Third, they just gave Tom Clancy another storyline.

  • U.S. to Expand Force in Iraq

    As expected, the U.S. is upping its number of boots on the ground in preparation for the upcoming elections.

    The United States is expanding its military force in Iraq to the highest level of the war — even higher than during the initial invasion in March 2003 — in order to bolster security in advance of next month’s national elections.

    The 12,000-troop increase is to last only until March, but it says much about the strength and resiliency of an insurgency that U.S. military planners did not foresee when Baghdad was toppled in April 2003.

    Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy operations director of the Joint Staff, told reporters Wednesday that the American force will expand from 138,000 troops today to about 150,000 by January.

    The previous high for the U.S. force in Iraq was 148,000 on May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations were over and most soldiers thought the war had been won. The initial invasion force included thousands of sailors on ships in the Persian Gulf and other waters, plus tens of thousands of troops in Kuwait and other surrounding countries.

    The expansion in Iraq will be achieved by sending about 1,500 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, N.C., this month and by extending the combat tours of about 10,400 troops already in Iraq. Those 10,400 will be extras until March because the soldiers who were scheduled to replace them in January will arrive as planned.

    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved the moves Wednesday, according to a Pentagon statement.

    “They are the most experienced and best-qualified forces to sustain the momentum of post-Fallujah operations and to provide for additional security for the upcoming elections,” the statement said.

    The Pentagon originally expected to train and equip enough Iraqi government forces to fill the security gap in the weeks leading up to the elections, but that hope was not fulfilled.

    The military is reluctant to extend soldiers’ combat tours because of the potential negative effect it could have on their families, and thus on their willingness to remain in the service. In this case, Gen. George Casey, the most senior U.S. commander in Iraq, decided it was necessary to keep up pressure on the insurgents while also providing security for the elections.

    Another small increase before the voting would not surprise me.

  • Seven Ft. Hood Soldiers Die in Helicopter Crash

    Seven troops, including a fellow Aggie, died when their Blackhawk apparently ran afoul of both bad luck and bad weather.

    Six soldiers and a brigadier general from Fort Hood died today when a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter crashed near Waco after hitting the guy wire of a television station tower in heavy fog.

    The accident occurred about 7 a.m. between the Central Texas towns of Moody and Bruceville-Eddy. The UH-60 Blackhawk was flying from Fort Hood to the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana. Col. Jonathan Withington said all seven of those on the aircraft were members of the 4th Infantry Division.

    “Our condolences and our hearts go out to the families and friends of the seven soldiers aboard this aircraft,” he said.

    The helicopter was headed to check out equipment being readied for use in Iraq, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, spokesman for the Fort Hood-based 4th Infantry Division. The names of the victims, all from Fort Hood, were not immediately released by the military.

    A military official at the home of Brig. Gen. Charles B. Allen told The Associated Press that Allen was among those killed. In his 27-year career, Allen, an assistant division commander for the 4th Infantry Division, was stationed at several U.S. and overseas military posts and also worked at the Pentagon.

    Brad and Becky Christmas of Wagon Mound, N.M., were notified today that their son, Capt. Todd Christmas, was among those killed, said family friend Patti Goetsch, who answered the phone at the family’s ranch.

    Christmas, 26, had just returned to Texas after spending Thanksgiving with his family, she said. She said the Texas A&M graduate, who joined the Army in 2001, served a year in Iraq, where he received the Bronze Star. She said he had been based at Fort Hood since the spring.

    “He was doing what he loved,” Goetsch said. “He was a career military man. He was proud to serve his country.”

    ….

    The helicopter hit a guy wire that stabilizes a 1,800-foot television broadcasting tower, Jerry Pursley, general manager of Waco-Temple-Killeen television station KXXV, told the Associated Press. The tower itself was not hit, he said.

    The tower’s lights stopped working early last week after strong storms hit the area, Pursley said. The station notified the Federal Aviation Administration, he said. The agency’s spokesman in Texas did not return a phone call to The Associated Press seeking comment.

    Other reports state that the FAA gave the television station a fifteen-day window to repair the lights and sent out notifications of the danger.

    Texas A&M has a fairly unique tradition to honor Aggies who have passed. At an annual gathering with a long and storied history and called Aggie Muster, the names of those Aggies lost over the past year are read, with family or friends or fellow Aggies answering “Here” to signify the continued presence of the lost in our lives.

    For Capt. Todd Christmas from a fellow Aggie and former serviceman, “Here.” And thank you, sir.

  • Schools Win Battle Over Campus Military Recruiting

    In a ruling destined to be appealed and hopefully overturned, a federal court has ruled the colleges can bar military recruiters without financial repercussions from the Department of Defense.

    A federal appeals court on Monday barred the Defense Department from withholding funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.

    The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a decade-old federal law which allows withholding the funds infringes on the free speech rights of schools that wish to limit on-campus recruiting in response to the military’s ban on homosexuals.

    Ruling in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of more than a dozen law schools, a three-judge panel said the government’s threat to withhold funding amounted to compelling the schools to take part in speech they didn’t agree with.

    “The Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives,” the court wrote.

    By a 2-1 vote, the panel overturned an earlier decision by a federal judge that those challenging the law were unlikely to prevail at trial.

    The ruling affects all institutions of higher learning, but the case revolved around law schools because most had developed policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

    Monday’s ruling represented the first time a court has barred the government from enforcing the law.

    The Justice Department, which represented the government in the case, said it was reviewing its appeal options. “The United States continues to believe that the Solomon Amendment is constitutional,” the agency said in a statement.

    One judge on the panel wrote a stinging dissent, saying he was disturbed that law schools would ignore the consequences that a recruiting ban would have on the military’s ability to compete with law firms for young talent.

    “They obviously do not desire that our men and women in the armed services, all members of a closed society, obtain optimum justice in military courts with the best-trained lawyers and judges,” Judge Ruggero John Aldisert said.

    He said he disagreed with plaintiffs who argued that the schools were being asked to violate their own anti-discrimination policies by welcoming recruiters who won’t take openly gay men and women.

    The two-judge majority based its decision in part on an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the Boy Scouts of America could bar homosexuals from becoming scouts or troop leaders.

    The court reasoned that if the Boy Scouts could legally reject gays because it had a core belief that homosexuality is illegitimate behavior, then other institutions could impose an opposite type of restriction if it had a core value that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.

    Realize first that we’re talking about an all-volunteer military that discriminates on a variety of factors in its hiring policies. I don’t recall my tank being wheelchair-accessible. Because of the special role that the military plays, it has long been legally held that even some constitutional rights are surrendered or curtailed for its members.

    This ruling essentially seems to give a free hand to law schools and other institutions of higher education to ordain any aspect of the military that they feel is discriminatory and banish recruiters as they see fit. Well, without the ruling, they could already do this, but with the understanding that there could be financial repurcussions. The schools want to fight what they view as discrimination by the government with discrimination against the government, as long as it doesn’t hit the bottom line.

    The Boy Scout rationale seems flimsy, and I expect this to be a short-lived hit against recruiting. Hopefully, anyway, as I’m sure a large chunk of left-leaning, anti-military professors and administrators are currently busy right now drooling over telling the folks in uniform to stick it. This ruling is probably the equivalent of Pavlov’s bell for hippie holdovers in academia.

  • International Landmine Summit Opens

    Representatives of 143 countries opened a conference in Nairobi, Kenya today with calls for a “total ban of production, stockpiling and use of anti-personnel landmine to make the world mine-free.”

    In his opening remarks, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said “unless all the existing stocks are destroyed, and unless production of these lethal weapons is brought to an end, the threat posed by landmines will continue to be with us.”

    He urged governments to intensify conflict resolution efforts by resolving conflicts before they escalate into full-scale war.

    Jointly organized by the United Nations, International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Kenyan Coalition Against Landmines, the Nairobi Summit on a Mine-Free World, has brought together senior government officials of 143 countries across the world.

    The summit, to be held in Kenya’s capital Nairobi from Nov. 29 -Dec. 3, will see the first review conference of the milestone Ottawa Convention and the most significant event of the treaty since its signing in 1997, according to the organizers.

    During the conference, participants will review the progress of the efforts made in ridding the world of landmines, and produce a concrete action plan for the next five years.

    The President-Designate of the Nairobi Summit Wolfgang Petritsch also called at the opening ceremony for increased efforts and action to address the man-made humanitarian catastrophe posed by landmines.

    “The problem of anti-personnel mines is unique, as the solution to it is within our reach if we maintain the same intensity and even increase in coming years as we have in the past. My expectation is that the summit will propel us close to our dream of a world free of landmines,” Petritsch said.

    The Ottawa Convention, officially known as the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, was signed in 1997 and entered into force in 1999.

    Africa is the world’s most mine-affected region and many saw it as fitting that the First Review Conference of the Ottawa Convention is being held in Africa.

    The U.S. is not attending the conference, nor is it a signatory to the Ottowa Convention. Forty-two other countries, including Russia and China, also chose to not sign the convention. The main sticking point for the U.S. is the Korean peninsula, where anti-personnel mines are a large part of defense plans against a North Korean invasion. It should be noted that the U.S. has stated that it shares “common cause with all those who seek to protect innocent civilians from indiscriminately used land mines.”

  • 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.

  • 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.