Target Centermass

Category: War on Terror

  • 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.

  • Brits Find Soft Touch Doesn’t Work under Fire

    As the storied Black Watch Regiment rolled north to take up position near Baghdad, I blogged about the British hope to replace the Americans’ heavy-handed approach towards the insurgents with a softer, gentler approach. Once they reached their destination, the soldiers of the Black Watch met a different kind of enemy than they had faced around Basra.

    The much-hyped conceit about Britain’s soft military touch in Iraq had a hard landing on a road south of Baghdad one November morning, when an Iraqi car accelerated toward a British checkpoint and a young gunner fired a blizzard of bullets through its windshield.

    The soldiers from Scotland’s Black Watch regiment didn’t stick around to determine whether the dead driver was an aspiring suicide bomber or just a man impatient to get through the backup of traffic. But the myth might have died along with him.

    The troops of the regiment also met cold, hard reality about American tactics.

    In postwar Iraq, contrasting images have percolated through media coverage of the alliance: the martial Americans on one hand, looking to crush the insurgency through force, the world-weary British on the other, choosing accommodation over provocation. The implication was that something in their tactics or temperament made British soldiers better suited than Americans to cope with the insurgency here.

    But the October deployment of the Black Watch to these badlands controlled by Sunni extremists provided the first chance to compare the two countries’ operating styles under the same level of danger.

    Until the Black Watch moved north, the British military had been operating exclusively in southern Iraq, where the violence, while simmering, has not matched the mayhem in the American sector around Baghdad, the capital. The relative calm allowed the British to adopt a less bristling posture on patrol, to wear their soft regimental berets instead of Kevlar helmets and to keep their weapons lowered rather than peering at Iraqis through gun sights.

    It also gave rise to a certain smugness among British officers and media, which cast the contrast as one between the “heavy-handed” Americans and the less hostile tactics of “the lads.” There were jokes over beers in Basra that, to an American, the concept of winning Iraqi hearts and minds meant one bullet to the heart, one to the head. And the British media even coined a phrase to describe the British style, dubbing the less robust approach “softly, softly.”

    The Black Watch tried to bring that culture north with them when they merged operations with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit based south of Baghdad in a deployment that ended Saturday. The British began the assignment patrolling in their berets. They handed out leaflets in Arabic explaining they were a “Scottish” regiment in case Iraqis mistook them for Americans, and proclaimed they had come only to help build a safe and free Iraq.

    Insurgents responded with two suicide car bombings and a roadside bomb in the first week of operations, killing four British soldiers and gravely injuring two others.

    The shooting of the Iraqi driver at the checkpoint came just an hour after the second car bomb had blown the legs off two of the gunner’s colleagues.

    “The threat here is at the other end of the spectrum from what we faced in Basra,” said Black Watch Capt. Stuart MacAulay, sitting on the edge of a bunker at Camp Dogwood. “After the suicide bombings against us, I went to an American soldier I know here and put my hands up. I said, ‘I confess, I was one of those who sat around in Basra criticizing your approach.’ And I’m embarrassed that I criticized American tactics without ever being here and without having met them.”

    People lie all the time, especially in sentences that begin with the phrase “I hate to say I told you so, but ….” In this case, I cannot say I told you so. I doubted, but held out enough hope that I restrained.

    I should’ve known better. Our British allies certainly know better now. The Islamists and Saddamists know only one language. Luckily, it is one in which our weapons are already fluent.

  • Mall Security Getting Anti-Terror Training

    The AP is reporting on a small trickle of effort to actually begin increasing security in the homeland. Using Israel as a model for both the anticipated type of attacks and the means to prevent them, mall security personnel are slowly getting anti-terror training.

    In a shopping mall outside Hartford, past the Abercrombie & Fitch and the cell phone kiosks, tucked away by the Barnes & Noble, a conference room full of security guards is learning how to spot suicide bombers.

    They are being taught blast patterns and behavior profiles, how a bomb is packaged and how a bomber is recruited.

    Suburban shopping mall security guards — whose jobs usually consist of watching for shoplifters and shooing away loitering teenagers — are receiving the type of training that just a few years ago was reserved for the Israeli police and the U.S. military.

    “If they’re carrying a bag, look for that white-knuckle grip. … They’re carrying that package and they’re holding onto it for dear life,” Patrick Chagnon, a Connecticut State Police detective and national counterterrorism instructor, tells his class of 10 students as the Shoppes at Buckland Hills mall bustles with holiday shoppers carrying bags and boxes of all sizes.

    Chagnon’s students are also told to watch for people wearing oversized clothes, and are instructed to make eye contact with shoppers and look for either extremely focused people or those who won’t return a look. Another tip-off: Terrorists often ritualistically shave their bodies before carrying out a suicide bombing, he says.

    Around the country, enrollment in these suicide bombing classes has increased in the past year, and the students include not just elite SWAT team members, but also local patrol officers and private security forces.

    “Everyone has an obligation to be a soldier in this war,” Connecticut Homeland Security Director John Buturla says.

    In Israel, mall security guards, bus drivers and hotel managers are added eyes and ears for the police. That is what state and federal officials are trying to build in the United States.

    In New York City, for example, apartment doormen and supers are being trained to be on the lookout for cars or trucks that are parked outside for a long time; for anyone who takes pictures of the building or lingers too long outside; and for new tenants who move in with little or no furniture.

    The International Council of Shopping Centers held about 20 anti-terrorism classes this year and plans dozens more next year, says Malachy Kavanagh, who helps organize training for the organization. A class of mall security directors recently received training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., he says.

    ….

    Such training frequently is met with skeptical questions: Is al-Qaida really going to attack a Connecticut shopping mall? Anti-terrorism instructors say a bombing is nearly twice as likely at a commercial establishment than at a government building or military installation.

    “A mall is packed with people. Government buildings usually are not,” says Uri Mendelberg, a former Israeli military official whose company, ISDS International, teaches a three-day, $1,300 course on suicide attacks in Springfield, Mass. Mendelberg says about 60 people, including security agents for major U.S. corporations, have taken his class since it started last year.

    Chagnon’s lectures for mall security officials on how to prevent suicide bombings are paid for by the state and run about four hours.

    “It will happen. You just need to make sure it doesn’t happen here,” he tells the security guards. “If terrorists know that `Mall A’ has good security and `Mall B’ doesn’t, where are they going to go?”

    Of course it will happen. I fully believe that we will see jihadist terrorism against our citizenry, apart from the planes-into-buildings obvious. I’m truly surprised it hasn’t already began, considering the state of our borders and the seemingly lax nature of our neighbors.

    The numbers in this story that have gone through anti-terror training are rather depressing. These are the sort of numbers we should’ve seen in spring of 2002.

  • 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.

  • Iran Offers to Train Iraqi Police

    Iraq must find it refreshing to have such helpful neighbors.

    Iran offered to train Iraqi police and border guards two days before it was scheduled to host a meeting of security chiefs from Iraq’s neighboring states, the official news agency reported Sunday.

    It was unclear how Iraq would respond to the Iranian offer. The countries fought a war from 1980-88 that killed or wounded nearly one million people on both sides.

    “The Islamic Republic is ready to train Iraqi police and border guards and even equip them as well as help with the country’s reconstruction,” said Ali Asghar Ahmadi, Iran’s deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

    Ummm … I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a country helping train Iraq’s security when that country is blatantly working to undermine Iraqi security.

  • Iran Group Signs Up Suicide Volunteers

    Just in case you were wondering about Iran and their role in the war against radical Islamist terrorism, there’s this little bit of planning for international atrocities.

    The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie.

    It looked at first glance like a gathering on the fringes of a society divided between moderates who want better relations with the world and hard-line Muslim militants hostile toward the United States and Israel.

    But the presence of two key figures — a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards — lent the meeting more legitimacy and was a clear indication of at least tacit support from some within Iran’s government.

    Since that inaugural June meeting in a room decorated with photos of Israeli soldiers’ funerals, the registration forms for volunteer suicide commandos have appeared on Tehran’s streets and university campuses, with no sign Iran’s government is trying to stop the shadowy movement.

    On Nov. 12, the day Iranians traditionally hold pro-Palestinian protests, a spokesman for the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement said the movement signed up at least 4,000 new volunteers.

    Mohammad Ali Samadi, the spokesman, told The Associated Press the group had no ties to the government.

    And Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters recently that the group’s campaign to sign up volunteers for suicide attacks had “nothing to do with the ruling Islamic establishment.”

    “That some people do such a thing is the result of their sentiments. It has nothing to do with the government and the system,” Asefi said.

    No government involvement or support? I call bullshit.

    Yet despite the government’s disavowal of the group and some of its programs, there are indications the suicide attack campaign has at least some legitimacy within the government.

    The first meeting was held in the offices of the Martyrs Foundation, a semiofficial organization that helps the families of those killed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war or those killed fighting for the government on other fronts. It drew hard-line lawmaker Mahdi Kouchakzadeh and Gen. Hossein Salami of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

    “This group spreads valuable ideas,” Kouchakzadeh told AP.

    ….

    Iranian security officials did not return calls seeking comment about whether they had tried to crack down on the group’s training programs or whether they believed any of Samadi’s volunteers had crossed into Iraq or into Israel.

    Suicide attacks against civilians, including an author, as valuable ideas? I call bullshit.

    In general, Iran portrays Israel as its main nemesis and backs anti-Israeli groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It says it has no interest in fomenting instability in Iraq and that it tries to block any infiltration into Iraq by insurgents — while pleading that its porous borders are hard to police.

    The focus on Israel is obvious, as it has long since become the modus operandi of all oppressive Moslem governments — focus the anger of a suffering, economically-beleaguered people outward towards anyone external who can possibly be blamed. This is not new to the current ruling zealots in Iran, but the hoped-for hatred is nowhere near as cultivated among the Iranian populace as it is among other Moslem peoples, such as the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Palestinians.

    Regarding the Iranian government’s interest in augmenting the instability in neighboring Iraq, it is an absolute necessity. The Iranian people will be a rather restive bunch were a successful democracy to take hold right next door, as there is already a pro-Western sentiment among many of the citizenry.

    In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support a 1989 fatwa against Rushdie issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But the government also said only the person who issued the edict could rescind it. Khomeini, angered at Rushdie’s portrayal of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in “The Satanic Verses,” died in June 1989.

    I’m guessing fatwas don’t have a statute of limitations.

    Samadi claimed 30,000 volunteers have signed up, and 20,000 of them have been chosen for training. Volunteers had already carried out suicide operations against military targets inside Israel, he said.

    But he said discussing attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq “will cause problems for the country’s foreign policy. It will have grave consequences for our country and our group. It’s confidential.”

    As devoted Muslims, members of his group were simply fulfilling their religious obligations as laid out by Khomeini, he said.

    In his widely published book of religious directives, Khomeini says: “If an enemy invades Muslim countries and borders, it’s an obligation for all Muslims to defend through any possible means: sacrificing life and properties.”

    Samadi said: “With this religious verdict, we don’t need anybody’s permission to fight an enemy that has occupied Muslim lands.”

    Islam is not an evil religion per se, but it does seem to provide quite fertile ground for evil to grow. The radicals governing Iran, just like the Wahabbi radicals in other parts of the Islamic world, have happily kissed their ties to modern civilization goodbye. These animals have chosen to surrender their humanity, though this fact should not be projected on the Iranian population as a whole.

  • U.S. Sends in Saddam’s Old Commandos

    Reuters is reporting that the U.S. has created a team of police commandos, comprised of former Iraqi army officers and special forces, and is employing them south of Baghdad.

    Twenty months after toppling Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops still battling his followers in the heartland of Iraq’s old arms industry are hitting back with a new weapon — ex-members of Saddam’s special forces.

    For five months, Iraqi police commandos calling themselves the Black Scorpions have been based with U.S. Marines in the region along the Euphrates south of Baghdad, which roadside bombs, ambushes and kidnaps have turned into a no-go areas and earned it the melodramatic description “triangle of death.”

    “All of them were previously officers in the Iraqi army or special forces,” the Scorpions’ commander, Colonel Salaam Trad, said at the Marines’ Kalsu base near Iskandariya on Saturday.

    “But Saddam was dirty and no good for Iraq.”

    The performance of this SWAT team, as the Americans call it, could be a critical test of how U.S. forces can hand over to Iraqis to meet their goal of withdrawing from a stable Iraq. U. S. officers in the area say they are increasingly optimistic.

    “The hardest fighters we have are the former special forces from Saddam’s days,” Colonel Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told reporters.

    Praising their local knowledge and fighting skills, Johnson singled out one man who fought against him at Nassiriya, the hardest battle of last year’s brief war against Saddam’s army.

    “If I could have an Iraqi security force guy who’s honest, reliable and dependable, it’s worth five Marines,” he added.

    Captain Tad Douglas, who leads almost daily raids with the Scorpions, said he believed it was a unique experiment that made use of the Iraqis’ feel for their home province of Babylon.

    “Ninety-five percent of our intelligence is from the SWAT,” he said. “They can put a guy in a cafe in the way we never could … They have a good finger on the pulse.”

    U.S. officers are reluctant to discuss how big the SWAT team is and Trad and Douglas brush off questions on what they may or not have done to each other in last year’s war.

    “It doesn’t matter to me what they did. They’re staunchly anti-insurgent,” said Douglas, who dismissed suggestions their training under Saddam might have made them too violent.

    “We just had to polish them up a bit,” he said. This week, Johnson has stepped up raids against insurgents in an operation code-named Plymouth Rock, hoping to keep pressure on Sunni rebels after their rout at Falluja to the northwest.

    Of Johnson’s 5,000-strong force in the region, which was once the heart of Saddam’s arms industry and base of the Medina armored division of the elite Republican Guard, more than 2,000 are Marines, 850 British soldiers and the rest Iraqi.

    At the camp 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Scorpions are very visible, wearing the khaki jumpsuits of Marine special forces and black mustaches traditional in the Iraqi military.

    Occupying powers have a long and patchy history of creating local units and Iraqi forces in other regions have had mixed success. This month, thousands of police in the northern city of Mosul fled or changed sides when Sunni insurgents took charge.

    Johnson acknowledges the loyalties of some Iraqis in his force may be divided but says they “want to be on the winning side” and is confident that U.S.-led troops can end what he sees as limited and decentralized violence by at most a few thousand disgruntled Saddam supporters and local bandits.

    Iraqi police here have stuck to their posts despite killings of comrades in bomb attacks and murders of off-duty officers: ” They don’t cut and run, despite their losses,” Johnson said.

    Clearly exasperated by the “triangle of death” tag, he said: “I’m getting more optimistic every day.”

    As for Colonel Salaam, a small, wiry man of 32, he shrugs off insurgent threats to himself and his family and says what he wants is: “Freedom, a new Iraq, peace.”

    This move is no great surprise. It is an easily-made mistake to lump in professional soldiers with the evil regimes that control them. Look at the officers of the Wehrmacht and their entangled relationship with the Nazis as an example.

    Much more could’ve and probably should’ve been done sooner with the Iraqi army, had it not been dispersed and disbanded. Granted, many would have to have been filtered out, but this story shows there were certainly some professional gems lost that could currently have already been serving for the betterment of their country.

  • Allawi, Shias: No Delay on Iraq Vote

    Despite yesterday’s petition for delay, Iraqi officials are insisting that the January 30 balloting for the 275-member National Assembly should proceed.

    Iraq’s main Shia parties insisted today that elections should go ahead on January 30 as planned, rejecting mounting calls from Sunni and secular politicians to postpone the polls because of guerrilla violence.

    The dispute threatens to widen sectarian divisions in a country already racked by lawlessness and widespread unrest. A statement by 42 Shia and Turkmen parties, including the influential Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said a postponement would be illegal.

    Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said if the election was postponed, “this would mean that the terrorists have been able to achieve one of their main objectives”.

    The Shia statement followed a petition yesterday by 17 Sunni and secular groups for a delay of up to six months to ensure the broadest possible participation in the elections.

    The parties that backed the petition drawn up after a meeting yesterday at the house of elder statesman Adnan Pachachi included the Iraqi National Accord of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the two main Kurdish parties.

    Allawi’s spokesman said today the Prime Minister took very seriously his obligation to hold elections by the end of January, as mandated by Iraq’s interim constitution and a UN Security Council resolution. But the statement left open the possibility of a postponement.

    “The Prime Minister is aware of the statement made by some parties yesterday, calling for a delay in holding elections,” spokesman Thaer al-Naqib said. The statement said Allawi believed “the key to a building real and lasting democracy and stability in Iraq is ensuring all Iraqi citizens can vote”. It added that “he does not believe that a delay will necessarily make such broad participation any easier to achieve”.

    I agree with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s statement that a delay would appear a victory for the terrorists.

  • Iraq Sunnis Want Election Delayed

    Despite the election being set for January 30, some in Iraq are now petitioning for a delay.

    Several political groups in Iraq are calling for the postponement of national elections, scheduled for January 30. The parties, mostly Sunni Muslim, Kurdish and secular groups, cited security concerns as their reason for calling for the delay.

    Saying that the interim government cannot guarantee the safety of voters at polling stations, the groups are calling for the postponement of Iraq’s elections by up to six months.

    A petition was signed Friday in Baghdad at the home of influential Sunni Muslim elder statesman Adnan Pachachi. Three interim government ministers attended the meeting.

    The petition is the latest effort waged mostly by Iraq’s minority Sunni population to delay the elections, fearing that violence in Sunni Muslim areas, such as Fallujah, Baquba, Samarra, Tikrit and areas around Baghdad, would prevent Sunni Muslims from voting in January. Several Sunni groups have threatened to boycott the elections, if they are held in January.

    Numerous Sunni clerics associations have repeatedly called for the elections to be postponed. However, most of Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslim population want to move forward with the elections, following decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Muslim.

    A senior official with Iraq’s Interior Ministry said holding the elections in January as planned would be a blow to insurgents in Iraq, who are attempting to prevent the elections from being held. The official said postponing the elections would only fuel the insurgency.

    So now the threatened Sunni boycott is based on the expected security situation in January? Previously, it was to be based upon our going into Fallujah. We’ve done that and they’re still only threatening. The Sunnis want the election delayed because it will further entrench their minority status. The terrorists want the elections delayed indefinitely because it will bring the government to the people.

    These elections need to go forward as soon as possible, and, right now, January seems possible.

  • 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.