Target Centermass

Category: War on Terror

  • Bomb Found on Commercial Flight in Iraq

    The terrorists were foiled in another attempt to take down one of their decades-long favorite targets, as a commercial airliner has again escaped their horror in Iraq.

    A homemade bomb was found Monday on a commercial flight inside Iraq, prompting additional screening measures to go into effect at Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. Embassy said.

    No further details were released and the statement did not say whether the affected flight had arrived or was preparing to depart.

    “American citizens are encouraged to review their travel plans to determine whether travel on commercial carriers servicing Iraq is necessary at this time,” the embassy said.

    Commercial flights resumed to and from Baghdad on Nov. 15 after being suspended for a week under a state of emergency declared on the eve of the U.S.-led assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

    Aircraft flying into and out of Baghdad have been fired on frequently by insurgents, and planes take a number of precautions to minimize attack.

    On June 27, insurgents fired on an Australian C-130 military transport after takeoff from Baghdad’s airport, killing an American passenger and forcing the aircraft to return.

    To say that Iraq, especially Sunni Iraq, is still a dangerous place is quite the understatement. I contend that it is just as erroneous to say the situation is hopeless.

    And what is it with radical Moslems and airplanes? I know they crave the fiery spectacle like a crackwhore wants the rock, but they soon need to realize any hope they have for success (at least in the short- to mid-term) is to face the American forces and bite the bullet, literally and figuratively. Civilian targets are not helping them with the Iraqi populace.

    Back to the planes thing — I’m just glad their were no Islamists around Kitty Hawk in 1903.

  • Iraq Elections Set

    After the idea was floated on Friday that elections may be delayed, Iraqi officials are now saying that the current violence will not be allowed to interfere and elections will go on as planned.

    Iraqi authorities set Jan. 30 as the date for the nation’s first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and pledged that voting would take place throughout the country despite rising violence and calls by Sunni clerics for a boycott.

    Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said voting would push ahead even in areas still wracked by violence — including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the volatile Sunni Triangle.

    The vote for the 275-member National Assembly is seen as a major step toward building democracy after years of Saddam’s tyranny.

    But the violence, which has escalated this month with the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah, has raised fears voting will be nearly impossible in insurgency-torn regions — or that Sunni Arabs, angry at the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown, will reject the election.

    If either takes place, it could undermine the vote’s legitimacy.

    Ayar insisted that “no Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province.”

    ….

    The clerical leadership of the country’s Shiite community, believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq’s nearly 26 million people, has been clamoring for an election since the April 2003 collapse of the Saddam regime, and voting is expected to go smoothly in northern areas ruled by the Kurds, the most pro-American group.

    However, Sunni Arabs, estimated at about 20 percent of the population, fear domination by the Shiites. Sunni clerics have called for a boycott of the vote because of the Fallujah attack.

    But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was important that elections be held as promised.

    “If they are delayed, it would be a sign that the chaos, terror, can succeed in destroying whatever chance we have for democracy in Iraq,” he said.

    The government has launched a campaign against some hardline Sunni clerics accused of fueling the insurgency or allowing weapons to be hidden in their mosques. On Friday, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided Baghdad’s Abu Hanifa mosque — one of the country’s most important Sunni mosques.

    During the January election, Iraqis will choose a National Assembly to draft a new constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005.

    Voters in January also will select 18 provincial councils and in Kurdish-ruled areas a regional assembly. Iraqis living in at least 14 foreign countries also can vote for the National Assembly.

    A stable, legitimate government could enable the United States to begin drawing down its 138,000-strong military presence and gradually hand over security responsibility to Iraqi forces.

    “Having elections in Iraq are very important, and having them on time is also so important for the Iraqi people to have more security in Iraq,” said Salama al-Khafaji, a Shiite member of the interim Iraqi National Council, a government advisory body.

    Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said 122 political parties were registered for the elections. The commission has asked the United Nations to send international monitors, and 35 experts already have arrived.

    I support this decision to proceed as planned. The terrorists cannot be given the idea that they can stand bloodily in the path of progress successfully. Nor can overly much concern be given to the Sunni turnout, as any boycott of a democratic process will be to their own detriment. If they choose to proceed down that path, it will only be a hard-learned lesson in democracy.

  • Iraq’s Iwo Jima Gets Scant Media Respect

    Jack Kelly, national security writer for the Post-Gazette, is dismayed by the recent American action in Fallujah, not just by the rapid and dominating success of the American forces but also by the horrendous media coverage.

    The rule of thumb for the last century or so has been that for a guerrilla force to remain viable, it must inflict seven casualties on the forces of the government it is fighting for each casualty it sustains, says former Canadian army officer John Thompson, managing director of the Mackenzie Institute, a think tank that studies global conflicts.

    By that measure, the resistance in Iraq has had a bad week. American and Iraqi government troops have killed at least 1,200 fighters in Fallujah, and captured 1,100 more. Those numbers will grow as mop-up operations continue.

    These casualties were inflicted at a cost (so far) of 56 Coalition dead (51 Americans), and just over 300 wounded, of whom about a quarter have returned to duty.

    “That kill ratio would be phenomenal in any [kind of] battle, but in an urban environment, it’s revolutionary,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, perhaps America’s most respected writer on military strategy. “The rule has been that [in urban combat] the attacking force would suffer between a quarter and a third of its strength in casualties.”

    The victory in Fallujah was also remarkable for its speed, Peters said. Speed was necessary, he said, “because you are fighting not just the terrorists, but a hostile global media.”

    I posted columns previously by both Kelly and Peters. The two together are a lethal combination.

    Fallujah ranks up there with Iwo Jima, Inchon and Hue as one of the greatest triumphs of American arms, though you’d have a hard time discerning that from what you read in the newspapers.

    The swift capture of Fallujah is taxing the imagination of Arab journalists and — sadly — our own. How does one portray a remarkable American victory as if it were of little consequence, or even a defeat? For CNN’s Walter Rodgers, camped out in front the main U.S. military hospital in Germany, you do this by emphasizing American casualties.

    For The New York Times and The Washington Post, you do this by emphasizing conflict elsewhere in Iraq.

    But the news organs that liken temporary terrorist success in Mosul (the police stations they overran were recaptured the next day) with what happened to the terrorists in Fallujah is false equivalence of the worst kind. If I find a quarter in the street, it doesn’t make up for having lost $1,000 in a poker game the night before.

    The resistance has suffered a loss of more than 2,000 combatants, out of a total force estimated by U.S. Central Command at about 5,000 (other estimates are higher) as well as its only secure base in the country. But both the Arab media and ours emphasize that the attack on Fallujah has made a lot of Arabs mad. By this logic, once we’ve killed all the terrorists, they’ll be invincible.

    “The experience of human history has been the more people you kill, the weaker they get,” Thompson noted.

    For the Arab and European media, the old standby is to allege American atrocities. In this they have had invaluable assistance from Kevin Sites, a free lancer working for NBC, who filmed a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi feigning death in a mosque his squad was clearing. Al Jazeera has been showing the footage around the clock.

    The mutilated body of Margaret Hassan, the aid worker kidnapped in Baghdad last month, has been discovered in Fallujah, as have torture chambers. Residents of Fallujah have been describing a reign of terror by the insurgents. But it is the Marine’s alleged “war crime” that is garnering the most attention.

    The Marine did the right thing. The terrorist he shot was not a prisoner, was not attempting to surrender and was not a lawful combatant under the Geneva Convention. The squad had other rooms to clear, and couldn’t afford to leave an enemy in their rear. The San Jose Mercury News described how Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes was shot to death by an Iraqi who was “playing possum.”

    “It’s a safety issue pure and simple,” explained former Navy SEAL Matthew Heidt. “After assaulting through a target, put a security round in everybody’s head.”

    Journalists quick to judge the Marine are more forgiving when it comes to the terrorists. “They’re not bad guys, especially, just people who disagree with us,” said MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

    And journalists wonder why we are less popular than used car salesmen.

    I do wonder about the relevance of the historical rule of thumb for guerrilla success that Kelly cites. In the conflicts used to establish this 7:1 casualty ratio threshold, has any successful anti-guerrilla campaign ever had to endure a “friendly” media that felt the need to balance or mitigate every success and amplify every setback or sidestep? After all, that is the current behavior of the American and global media, the main conduit of information between our troops on the battlefield and our citizenry here at home.

  • 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.

  • Iraqi Unrest May Delay Elections

    Iraqi and American officials have now stated that terrorist activity is endangering the Iraqi election timeline.

    Elections in Iraq scheduled to take place by Jan. 31 may be postponed because of continued widespread violence or a coordinated boycott by Sunni Muslims, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

    “I believe we have a good chance of still meeting the target,” Iraqi Ambassador Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaidaie said at the United Nations. “If, however, at the time it is determined that we need a bit more time, then that situation will be reviewed” by policy makers.

    Under Iraq’s interim constitution, voters would cast ballots by the end of January for a national legislature, which would form a permanent government and write a lasting charter.

    President George W. Bush said Nov. 13 that successful elections in Iraq would be “a crushing blow” to terrorists, and “inspire” democratic change throughout the Middle East, ultimately making the U.S. more secure.

    Security has worsened in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle up to the northwestern city of Mosul, one U.S. official said.

    “We’re worried that in some areas — again, not all, in some areas — it would now be difficult to have elections,” said Bill Taylor, director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. “And it’s that kind of work that we need to do between now and January so that we can have elections in the entire country.”

    Asked about the threat by Sunnis in central Iraq to boycott the election of a 275-member national assembly, Sumaidaie said there might be a delay “if all the Sunnis act as a group.” He added that such unity is “unlikely” because the Sunni leaders who have threatened the boycott don’t represent the entire religious minority of Iraq.

    Unrest spread just after U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Nov. 8.

    Air Force Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, today disputed a statement by Marines Lieutenant General John Sattler that the Fallujah siege had “broken the back” of the insurgency, saying it was too early to tell.

    ….

    Sumaidaie said his confidence that elections can be held in January grew after the U.S.-led incursion into insurgent-held Fallujah. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s decision to increase the number of the election advisers in Iraq also was a good sign, he said.

    “The position of the Iraqi government is that we should plan on holding the elections on time,” he said. “We accept that there continues to be violence in different parts of the country, but the outcome of the recent military operation in Fallujah has been very positive. We clearly have reduced the terrorists’ ability to launch an organized campaign. What happens in the next weeks will be important.”

    Sumaidaie said the UN is about to increase its staff in Iraq to about 60 workers, double the number there now. That should be enough, he said, for the UN to play an important “supervisory” role in the elections.

    UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said that, while Annan is deploying more people to Iraq, he was “not aware of any decision by the secretary-general to raise the ceiling further.”

    Sumaidaie said he is confident that next week’s international conference on Iraq in Egypt would also improve the security situation by producing new commitments from Iran and Syria to secure their borders to prevent terrorists from entering.

    This ain’t good news. That delays at this point in the ballgame are even being considered can only come across as weakness to both the terrorists and the Iraqi people. The gloves are slowly coming off, with the taking of Fallujah and today’s raid on a Mosul mosque. However, the Iraqi government better be willing to shift into ruthless mode pretty damn quick.

    To further counter the instability and danger presented by the terrorists, the US is likely to up the number of American boots on the ground as the elections near.

    Commanders in Iraq probably will expand their troops by several thousand as the January elections approach, the No 2 commander of US forces in the Middle East said yesterday.

    Lt Gen Lance L Smith told a Pentagon news conference that no final decisions have been made and that the size of the troop increase will depend in part on whether the insurgency grows or weakens in the aftermath of the Fallujah offensive, which he called a major success.

    Smith estimated that commanders would ask for about a brigade’s worth of extra troops, which would be roughly 5,000. He said that probably would be achieved by keeping some units that were scheduled to serve 10 months in Iraq for an extra two months. He did not name the units.

    There now are about 138,000 US troops in Iraq, he said.

    “We will make a further assessment as we get a little bit closer” to the elections scheduled for late January, “and as we understand what the impact of Fallujah is on the entire country,” he said.

    Smith said he believed that terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still in Iraq but that the US-Iraqi offensive this past week had eliminated Fallujah as a Zarqawi base of operations.

    Any substantial delay in the elections must absolutely be avoided. The Iraqi people need to feel the government is their own.

  • Iraqi Militant Group Threatens Election

    I blogged last night that the pending elections have the terrorists fighting not only the American and Iraqi forces but also the clock in Iraq. Today, the terrorists made it quite obvious that they know and fear this.

    An Islamic militant group in Iraq warned Muslims to skip the country’s coming elections, and said anyone who runs for office would be branded an infidel and “punished in the name of God.”

    ….

    The militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, said in a statement published on its Web site: “We ask all Muslims to respond to God’s calling and avoid showing up at the election posts.”

    The group warned that voting sites would be targeted “because they are infidel posts.”

    Iraq’s interim government plans to hold elections for a transitional parliament in January, and the offensive against insurgents in Falluja was meant to restore interim government control over that area ahead of the vote.

    “We warn everyone who will run in this election that by doing so, he chose to be an infidel and that he will be punished in the name of God,” Ansar al-Sunna said. “The same will go to the American crusaders and their allies, their collaborators who support these elections.”

    The group claimed responsibility for the October killing of a Kurdish police chief in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, calling it a warning to Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani. The militants consider Kurdish leaders traitors for cooperating with U.S.-led forces in the invasion of Iraq.

    It also claimed responsibility for the killings of three KDP members in September and 12 Nepalese contractors in August.

    The group said elections were meant “to deceive the people that they are free and that they can elect their own president and government in a democratic and free approach.” It also denounced efforts to bring democracy to Iraq as an “infidel curriculum.”

    The statement said Muslims had a duty to fight U.S. troops and “to work on establishing the rule of God in our country.”

    These are not hollow threats, as the terrorists in Iraq are more capable and more internationally supported than their counterparts who could not affect the Afghan elections in October. It should be noted, though, that every suicide attack, every dead terrorist, every bit of arms seized between now and the election is a hit on the impact the Islamists and Saddamists can have immediately prior to and on election day. However, to lay low, bide their time and conserve their assets would be counterproductive to their need to maintain an atmosphere of terror and lawlessness. The coalition’s efforts are against them, time is against them, and the Iraqi people are not for them.

    If you’ve ever wondered how Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Fallen felt as the evil spirit Azazel hopped from person to person, each in turn hauntingly serenading Denzel with the Stones’ Time Is On My Side, ask one of the Islamists in Iraq. (Great, now that song’s stuck in my head. Damn you, Azazel!)

  • Probe of Marine’s Disappearance Re-opened

    I refrained from posting on the swarm of allegations around the disappearance and subsequent resurfacing of US Marine Hassoun when the story originally was made known. Now, in the wake of the Fallujah campaign, there’s this news.

    Military investigators have re-opened the case of U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Wassef Hassoun after several personal items — including his military ID and civilian passport — were found in Falluja, the city where he disappeared in June.

    Hassoun reappeared July 7 in Lebanon, where he was born and has relatives.

    What happened to Hassoun during that time has been a mystery to military investigators who recently closed two separate investigations into the disappearance.

    Because of the new evidence, the case of Hassoun’s disappearance is unexpectedly open again. Investigators are assessing the evidence found in Falluja.

    After the initial report that Hassoun was missing, military officials assumed he had walked away from camp. He was listed as a deserter.

    His status was changed to captured after the release of a videotape that showed him blindfolded with a sword suspended over his head. A few days later, a posting to three Islamist Web sites claimed Hassoun had been beheaded.

    Hassoun denied being a deserter and staging his own kidnapping.

    A Marine Corps official said representatives of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services did not interview Hassoun until after he completed his 30-day home leave, following his repatriation back to the United States.

    Hassoun may now be interviewed again, the official said.

    Hassoun’s civilian passport, military identification card and his military uniform were all found, sources said.

    The uniform was described by those familiar with the case as being in “remarkably good shape.”

    Other items with Hassoun’s name on them, but which the sources declined to describe, were also found. It appeared that some items of identification were altered, the sources said.

    Hassoun’s personal weapon disappeared from the camp just outside Falluja at the same time he did. It was never recovered.

    Also, an amount of cash he had has not been found, sources said.

    Two weeks ago, the NCIS presented its findings on two ongoing investigations into Hassoun’s disappearance.

    One investigation was a missing-person case. The other was a criminal probe into whether there was a breach of national security or classified information.

    Marine Corps officials would not say what those findings were. The findings were presented to the top commander of the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Camp Lejeune, Hassoun’s unit.

    While not restraining from posting it, I will continue to refrain from commenting on it and will advise others to do the same. There is so little publicly known at this time that an innocent Marine may be harmed or an Islamist investigation may be impaired. No prediction. No guessing. No opinion. At this time.

  • Iraq Insurgents on the Run but Not Gone

    Almost as if dismayed that the terrorist activity in Iraq did not cease immediately with the commencement of the Fallujah operation, the Associated Press is taking an oft-dubious look at the American and Iraqi efforts against the radicals.

    U.S. commanders in Iraq say the insurgents are on the run. The problem is that when the insurgents are chased from one place, such as Fallujah, they pop up elsewhere, to deadly effect.

    It happened in Mosul this week and in Baqubah — with car bombings and attacks on police stations — as well as in Ramadi, a provincial capital just west of Fallujah. The scope of violence in those places is far smaller than in Fallujah. It also shows that the overwhelming technology and firepower of the U.S. military have not broken the back of the insurgency.

    It appears unlikely that the Pentagon will send substantially more troops to Iraq than the 140,000 already there. U.S. commanders believe a bigger force would just give the insurgents more targets.

    The Pentagon seems likely to stick to its current approach: confront the insurgents wherever they appear, building up the number of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers and other security forces, and hoping the political footings of a democratic Iraq take hold quickly.

    In the meantime, the U.S. death toll continues to grow. It now exceeds 1,200 since the war began in March 2003. At midmonth, November ranked as the second deadliest month for U.S. forces, with more than 90 dead.

    The central question, many believe, is more political than military. Will support for the resistance grow or shrink as a result of what happened in Fallujah, which was the insurgents’ main base? More broadly, will enough Iraqis accept the Americans’ lead to form a viable government?

    I know it’d be extremely difficult to gather and is rather ghoulish of me, but I’d like to see some reasonable estimates of bad guys bagged. I’ll wager it would go far into putting the American deaths into perspective.

    I feel it would behoove our efforts to at least publish more information on the prisoners taken to date, information such as breakdowns of nationalities and, among the Iraqi nationals held captive, data on their backgrounds (e.g. prior criminals, Saddamists). This could crush any notion both home and abroad that we’re opposing a popular movement of the Iraqi people fighting occupation and are, in fact, facing the brutal, desperate efforts of thugs and radicals with either selfish or Islamist motivations.

    “Whether the sparks (from Fallujah) light other fires all over Iraq or burn out” is still a question, said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    The signs so far appear unfavorable.

    On Wednesday a suicide car bomb killed 10 Iraqis in the northern city of Beiji, U.S. forces fought insurgents for three hours in Ramadi. In Fallujah, there was sporadic fighting. On Tuesday a prominent Iraqi insurgent claimed the battle for Fallujah was only the start of an uprising.

    Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a senior Central Command officer, said in an AP Radio interview Tuesday that once the Fallujah offensive began, the insurgents attacked in other parts of the country to show “they still were a potent force.” In his view, they lost more than they gained.

    To hear him and other American officers tell it, the U.S. plan is working. They do not expect to end the insurgency. Rather, they aim to suppress it enough to permit people throughout the country to elect a national assembly, which would draft a new permanent Iraqi constitution.

    Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, said during a visit to Iraq this week that the Fallujah offensive was a major blow to the insurgents. He said the only way the U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies can be defeated is if they lose their will.

    “But we are also under no illusions. We know that the enemy will continue to fight,” he told the Pentagon’s internal news service.

    Unlike the traditional guerrilla warfare scenario where the insurgents win by not losing and those in power lose by not winning, today’s Iraq stands as an exact reversal of that military rule. The closer the government and the Iraqi people get to representative democracy, the more they grasp self-rule and freedom, the greater the chance of failure for the terrorists. Just as the Americans and the interim government is on the clock to pull off elections, so too are the terrorists up against the wall to prevent public belief in the democratic concept and acceptance of any election results. An elected government that the Iraqi people feel they have a vested interest in would be greatly detrimental to the efforts of the so-called insurgency.

    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the outcome ultimately rests in the hands of the Iraqi people rather than the U.S. military. He predicted that a “tipping point” will be reached that changes the momentum in favor of those who want democracy to succeed in Iraq.

    “More and more of the Iraqis will be angry about the fact that their innocent people are being killed by the extremists … and they won’t like it,” he said recently. “They’ll want elections, and the more they see the extremists acting against that possibility of elections, I think they’ll turn on those people.”

    The Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, made a similar point Wednesday in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

    “This ultimately is not going to be won in the kinetic sense — in battle. It’s going to be won in having Iraqis taking ownership and investing their own personal sweat and blood,” he said.

    However the AP tries to balance (read spin negatively) the news, progress is being made. We are killing the insurgents. By the freakin’ bushel. The effects of anger in the Arab world over the filmed shooting of a wounded bastard by a US Marine will be tempered by anger within Iraq at the execution of humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan. There is no more reporting of no-go zones for the US military. Every day is a day that the Iraqi national army grows in size and proficiency. Each Iraqi civilian death caused by the terrorists will become a sign of the terrorists’ impotence against those they actually wish to fight.

    In short, we are not losing the peace and, because of that, we are winning it.

  • The Age-Old Problem During, Between and After Wars

    War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

    —Winston Churchill

    The above quote is most assuredly true and unavoidable. War is a series of traps, a string of opportunities for error. Perhaps the most difficult pitfall to avoid actually begins before combat commences. In fact, it begins immediately in the aftermath of the previous conflict, be it a small engagement or a worldwide conflagration of hostility, and continues on into the next conflict. Put simply, the mistake I write of is the misuse or neglect of possible lessons to be learned. I’ll leave it to Cyril Falls to put it more eloquently:

    Those who study warfare only in the light of history think of the next war in terms of the last. But those who neglect history deprive themselves of a yardstick by which theory can be measured.

    The obvious mistake is to misinterpret or neglect the abundant information available, be it from failures or successes. An example of this would be the successful torpedo-plane attack on Taranto in early World War II. The Japanese chose to learn from the British air success against a shallow, sheltered harbor, while the Americans learned little or nothing from the sinking of three Italian battleships. Result: five American battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor, less than thirteen months later.

    The more subtle trap is to fall into the thinking that the next war will be fought in the manner of the previous one. This leads to limitations on both strategic and tactical thinking and their subsequent effect on training and preparation. Drawing from WWII again, an easily identified example is that of the French. Having seen the trench warfare, relatively stable fronts and bloody results of attacks against fortified positions, the French relied too heavily on this experience with their dependence on the fixed fortifications of the Maginot Line. Result: the capitulation of France to Nazi Germany in just six weeks.

    During my time in the National Guard, I saw first-hand this type of thinking, at both a strategic and tactical level. Even into the latter ’90s, much of the US armor training was based on the planned defense-and-counterattack of the anticipated massive tank showdown with the Soviets in Europe. On a small-scale level, my platoon was going through a move-to-contact engagement on the tank simulators at Ft. Knox (I’m talking about the old platoon-to-battalion level SimNet, which may or may not still be in use). The exercise was late in the day and the platoon reacted poorly to the eventual enemy attack. Overnight, the platoon leadership planned for the same exercise, anticipating the meeting with the OpFor to be in the same location. Sure enough, as the engagement was rerun the following morning, the enemy were in the same location and were decimated. We had made a mistake and been rewarded for it — wrong lesson learned.

    Military history is replete with examples of both lessons that were failed to be grasped and lessons that were learned too rigidly. How best to avoid this trap? Learn the lessons of the previous conflict but don’t allow them to exclusively dictate doctrine or tactics. Innovate while anticipating innovation. Despite the above case of Pearl Harbor, along with my own examples and many more throughout our history, the modern American military has generally been pretty good about this, overcoming the potential pitfalls with flexibility and innovation. One of my old lieutenants liked to say, “We train in chaos.” (He also, in his fair share, was fond of saying, “I’ll get the next pitcher.” He’s still a dear friend.) This has been noticed by our foes as well, as a Soviet military document apparently held the following gem:

    One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine.

    So far in the war against Islamist terror, this potential trap has played to our advantage. In Afghanistan, the Taliban felt secure without a build-up for a repeat of the Soviet engagement. In Iraq, Saddam and his military seemed paralyzed when the ground onslaught took off without a lengthy air campaign, as was expected from the first Gulf War. In both, the US used innovation and adaptation to overcome the enemy without allowing them the luxury of benefitting from their acquired experience.

    A trio of historical examples are driving today’s war — Viet Nam in general, Tet specifically, and Mogadishu. The Islamists are hoping that a slow bleed or a sudden hemorrhage will cripple the will of the American public.

    Which is stronger — the will of the American people to succeed or their fear of the failures of our history? The hopes of our current enemy based on our past or the future imaginative actions of the American military?

    I anticipate having children someday. They and their children will live in the world that results from the answer to that.

  • U.S. to Probe Shooting of Wounded

    It looks like another tragedy, another submission of a human being to the demons of war, may possibly have occurred in Fallujah.

    The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines inside the mosque.

    The incident played out as the Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, returned to the unidentified Fallujah mosque Saturday. Sites was embedded with the unit.

    Sites reported that a different Marine unit had come under fire from the mosque on Friday. Those Marines stormed the building, killing ten men and wounding five others, Sites said. The Marines said the fighters in the mosque had been armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles.

    The Marines had treated the wounded, he reported, left them behind and continued on Friday with their drive to retake the city from insurgents who have been battling U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq (news – web sites) with increasing ferocity and violence in recent months.

    On the video as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

    The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner laying on the floor of the mosque but neither NBC nor CNN showed the bullet hitting the man. At that moment the video was blacked out but the report of the rifle could be heard.

    The blacked out portion of the video tape, provided later to Associated Press Television News and other members of the network pool, showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body, possibly the head. His blood splatters on the wall behind him and his body goes limp.

    Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

    The events on the videotape began as some of the Marines from the unit accompanied by Sites approached the mosque on Saturday, a day after it was stormed by other Marines.

    Gunfire can be heard from inside the mosque, and at its entrance, Marines who were already in the building emerge. They are asked by an approaching Marine lieutenant if there were insurgents inside and if the Marines had shot any of them. A Marine can be heard responding affirmatively. The lieutenant then asks if they were armed and fellow Marine shrugs.

    Sites’ account said the wounded men, who he said were prisoners and who were hurt in the previous day’s attack, had been shot again by the Marines on the Saturday visit.

    The videotape showed two of the wounded men propped against the wall and Sites said they were bleeding to death. According his report, a third wounded man appeared already dead, while a fourth was severely wounded but breathing. The fifth was covered by a blanket but did not appear to have been shot again after the Marines returned. It was the fourth man who was shown being shot.

    A spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters in the Pentagon (news – web sites), Maj. Doug Powell, said the incident was “being investigated.” He had no further details, other than to confirm the incident happened on Saturday and that the Marines involved were part of the 1st Marine Division.

    The CNN broadcast of the pictures used pixilation to cover parts of the video that could lead to public identification of the Marines involved.

    NBC’s Robert Padavick told members of the U.S. television pool that the Pentagon had ordered NBC and other pool members to make sure the Marines identity was hidden because “they (the military authorities) are anticipating a criminal investigation as a result of this incident and do not want to implicate anybody ahead of that.”

    In New York, NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said the network did not broadcast the prisoner being shot because of the “graphic nature” of the video.

    If the evidence on this tape and the accompanying allegations are true, this soldier needs to be prosecuted.

    Evidence may find him innocent, or circumstances may hold sway over the extent of his penalty. He must be prosecuted, however, as he seems to have violated orders and US-signed accords.

    There may come a time when this conflict requires such barbarity (which was known in other heroic efforts, e.g. WWII) but that time has not come yet. There may be a time when the gloves are truly off and the media are muzzled to save our civilization, but we ain’t there yet. Let’s watch how the UCMJ wheels roll on this one.