Iraq

What he said:

And to finish:

Jim Downey

Our guys out in Iraq don't get the recognition they deserve. Placed in impossible situations, surrounded by a country in which half the population hates your infidel guts, and the other half expects you to do their fighting for them, with impossible goals set by pencil-pushing political fuckwads back in Washington - they still manage to pull it out of the fire and make progress.

Case in point. Our military units in Sadr City have been tasked with helping the Iraqi Army take the lead in the fight against the Iran-trained and equipped "Mahdi Army" Shiite militia. So, when the other shoe drops and the bullets start flying, do the Iraqis step up to the plate?

Well, some of them do. Others? Not so much. They "bravely ran away", leaving a ragged hole in the combined Iraqi/American line for the militia to exploit.

[link] Major Sattar calmly explained that he was leading the remainder of his 80-man company away from the fight. As if to underscore the point, a convoy of Iraqi vehicles piled high with furniture was parked in front of the American position.

Abandoning the stronghold, however, would allow the militias to move in again and seed the road with roadside bombs. Other Iraqi units had stood their ground through several long firefights, and Captain Veath was surprised that the major’s unit was leaving after holding off another militia attack.

“You went through a whole battle and are now removing yourself?” Captain Veath asked incredulously. “Are any of your men dead?”

Major Sattar acknowledged that his unit had several wounded but none killed. But he and other Iraqi soldiers insisted that they were poorly equipped to battle the militias. Iraqi forces, they said, were short of ammunition, had only a few armored vehicles and were up against militia fighters they said were equipped and trained by the Iranians.

“We are not afraid,” the major responded.

He also complained that he had no means to communicate directly with the American troops.

“That is an excuse, and you know it,” Captain Veath shot back. He argued that one of the major’s platoons was situated just 100 yards from some of the American Stryker vehicles and that the two sides had agreed that the Iraqis could send a runner over to the vehicles to ask for help if necessary.

The Iraqi commander returned to his convoy and Captain Veath followed, promising a Stryker escort if the Iraqi soldiers would only return to their positions.

Dozens of excited Iraqi soldiers began to join in the discussion. As tempers flared and voices rose, Sergeant Angulo ordered the company’s soldiers to stay close to Captain Veath.

The Iraqi convoy drove off, and the Americans began to scramble to find a new Iraqi unit to plug the gap.

Look, folks, I wish this damned thing never started. Thanks, President Bush. However, the cold hard facts are that we are in this thing up to our eyeballs. We need to figure out a way to disengage from this war without completely destroying the country of Iraq, leaving it to the tender mercies of the Iranian theocracy. The regular citizens there don't deserve that.

What a clusterfuck.

Ah, great - the military has a new techno gizmo to use in the Global War on Terror: a hand-held lie detector! From the article:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

On Monday nights for the last couple of months I've been taking a beer brewing class. That part has been going well. This past Monday we had an interesting discussion about the United States policies surrounding torture. Out of 6 people I was the only one who flatly denounced the practice.

My reasons for denouncing the practice are mainly practical. If the United States uses torture or condones others using torture we can't be outraged when it's done to our citizens and military personnel. We also can't wholly rely on the information gained because the person being tortured will say anything you want them to in order to stop being tortured. You also have to wonder where the torture train stops...If it's OK to torture "terrorists" will it someday be OK to torture criminals? Will we be outraged if a possible criminal suspected of kidnapping is tortured in order to recover a missing child?

The responses I got in class weren't, in my opinion, morally sufficient. What I heard most was, "Well, 'they' are cutting the heads off of our soldiers". I don't follow the logic and if that logic were applied more widely a whole range of behaviors becomes possible based merely on the fact that other people are doing worse things.

What do you think?

A few days ago Jim wrote about Spec. Jeremy Hall, a soldier assigned to Fort Riley's 97th Military Police Battalion, who filed suit against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a "Maj. Paul Welborne". Jeremy's suit claims that after he was given permission to hold a meeting of atheists, he was harassed by a Major, and by his fellow soldiers for being an atheist. The suit also claims that the Major threatened to block his re-enlistment for being an atheist. Lately Spec. Hall has been threatened in emails and blog posts from his fellow soldiers.

The Army replied that they could not locate anyone named "Major Paul Welborne".

Well, today the suit was amended to correct the spelling of the Major's name. It is "Major Freddy Welborn", and lawdy, lawdy, he's got a MySpace page. His "Interests" are:

The study of God's Word, Evangelism, Grandchildren and Family, and those Men called by God to Preach the Gospel.

Major Freddy describes himself like so:

MAJ Freddy & HIS Girl's Blurbs
About me:
Warrior for the Lord Jesus Christ. Currently serving w/3rd Inf Div Civil Military Operations (Governance) in Baghdad Iraq. Carla & I place all our Faith & Trust in our Savior the Lord Jesus - who provides eternal life to anyone that believes that he is the Son of God, that he was born of a virgin, lived as God in the flesh (as man) was crucified, died, and was buried then rose from the grave the third day, then acended to the right hand of the Father - True repentance (turning away from Sin to God) Being born again, Forgivness & Justification occure to the True Believer in Christ when Baptized w/God's Holy Spirit. He who has the Son has life, he who has not the Son of God has not life. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. It is by GRACE that we are saved thru Faith - It's a free gift and can't be earned. I love the Lord Jesus more than words can express, and seeking to gain a stronger relationship w/Him. I'll finish Bible College upon returning from Opns Iraqi Freedom.

Farther down, we see this little gem of an image.

I think he's a little, um, confused about the whole "1st Amendment" thing.

Hang in there Specialist Jeremy Hall. Don't let the godbots get you down. Stay safe.

So, three weeks ago I wrote about the initial reports that the Air Force had managed to lose track of some of its nukes, and accidentally transported them across the country.

Well, the story just keeps getting better. From the Washington Post this past Sunday:

Three weeks after word of the incident leaked to the public, new details obtained by The Washington Post point to security failures at multiple levels in North Dakota and Louisiana, according to interviews with current and former U.S. officials briefed on the initial results of an Air Force investigation of the incident.

The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on the plane in Louisiana for nearly nine hours more before being discovered. In total, the warheads slipped from the Air Force's nuclear safety net for more than a day without anyone's knowledge.

So, Arecibo needs money. Not a lot of money. More than I have. But not a lot of money, as such things go.

Yes, the National Science Foundation has told the folks who run the Arecibo Observatory that they need to come up with outside funding to the tune of half their annual budget, or they will be shut down. How much is this? $4 million. From the news report:

But among astronomers, Arecibo is an icon of hard science. Its instruments have netted a decades-long string of discoveries about the structure and evolution of the universe. Its high-powered radar has mapped in exquisite detail the surfaces and interiors of neighboring planets.

And it is the only facility on the planet able to track asteroids with enough precision to tell which ones might plow into Earth -- a disaster that could cause as many as a billion deaths and that experts say is preventable with enough warning.

Newspapers are always happy to give column space to religious bigwigs to opine to their hearts' contents, and normally my eyes just skip past, knowing they will have nothing particularly fresh or insightful to say. But here's a column that's different. Written by a rabbi in ultra-blood-red born-again Idaho, it forcefully denounces the Bush misadministration's lies and acts of treachery that got us bogged down in the Iraquagmire. I was most impressed with the last sentence:

May we rise up together, as Christians and Moslems and Jews and other believers and atheists and agnostics, too, and demand that we, as a nation, support our troops in the only way that really matters — by bringing them home.

The full column is here, and well worth reading.

OK, you may have already heard about this. But if not, it is my pleasure to introduce yet another right-wing nut who is all for chucking out the Constitution, imposing martial law, and declaring George W. Bush to be President for Life because, see, it's all in the interests of Western Civilization.

And no, I'm not kidding. Here's a taste:

As there appears to be no sensible result of the invasion of Iraq that will be popular with his countrymen other than retreat, President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.

(This is a Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm post.)

There's a long article in today's Washington Post you should read, titled: A President Besieged and Isolated, Yet at Ease. It's an extensive survey of the current status of President Bush's mental condition as he suffers one downturn in popularity after another, staggers from one policy debacle after another, sees long-time aides and friends flee. It is insightful (though I do wonder at the lack of mention of Dick Cheney's role.)

But more than that, it is frightening. George W. Bush thinks that he's the Pope, or something akin to one. Confronted with a deteriorating situation on all fronts, due to his own bad decisions and the general ineptitude of his government, he nonetheless remains resolute in his convictions that he's doing God's work:

There's a surprisingly favorable review of Christopher Hitchens' new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything in today's Wall Street Journal Online. An excerpt:

Mr. Hitchens makes a passionate case against organized religion as well as theocratic, fundamentalist states. He writes that "religion is not unlike racism." "Literature is a better source of ethics and a better source of reflection than our holy texts," he says. "People should read George Eliot, Dostoyevsky and Proust for moral leadership."

A piece by Melik Kaylan titled "The Last Active Art Gallery in Baghdad" really hits home for me. I've mentioned before that I owned and operated a gallery of fine art for 8 years (for full info, see here), and something about some of the religious intolerance I had to deal with in that capacity.

But nothing like this:

Among the agonies imposed on Baghdad by tormentors in the guise of self-appointed religious enforcers is the proscription of fun. Novelty, convenience, any kind of post-Quranic ease from hardship infuriates them. Ice cream is an abomination, as is mechanized garbage collection, because such delights didn't exist in the time of the prophet. A story is told that last year, on a road overtaken by jihadis, a DVD purveyor was ordered to close because DVDs didn't exist in the time of the prophet. "Neither did the BMW you drove up in," he responded. "When you come back and tell me again on a camel, then I'll listen." They shot him some days later, for his insolence.

I was on my way to be the forward guard for our camping trip when I heard a piece on NPR that made my blood boil. It was about how the military was treating soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems. The official line is that they want to help and treat every soldier with problems. The reality on the ground doesn’t come close to that line.

According to the piece PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) manifests itself in many ways. It can include depression, drug and alcohol abuse, family problems, spousal abuse and problems with authority. One interviewee was the Sergeant Major of the Army who stated that above all the Army was concerned with “good order and discipline” which is pretty standard. He also stated that they would do what they could for the soldier but that “good order and discipline” was the most important thing.

The trouble with this is that in these cases good order and discipline is in direct conflict with the soldier’s and Marine’s state of mental health. So if those soldiers and Marines cross the line they’re disciplined in the standard way. That means, in many cases, that they’re kicked out of the service. Being kicked out of the service means that they’re then cut off from the health care that they need and deserve.

I understand the military’s dilemma. I DO understand the need to maintain good order and discipline and to maintain unit cohesion. However, when a member of the military has been diagnosed with a mental health disorder those members need and deserve care. Kicking them out seems to me to be the most irresponsible thing that the military can do.

If you haven't read this little-known anti-war short written by Twain, take a few moments and go through it. Not only is it pertinent to our current situation with Iraq, it points up the absurdity of Christians praying for victory in war. My understanding is that it is in the public domain, so I am going to post the entire thing (source: Wikisource, though this version matches others freely available).

Jim Downey

******************

The War Prayer
by Mark Twain

One summer while I was in college, a relative in the construction industry got me a job doing hot tar roofing. It was excellent money (union scale), but absolutely miserable work. I had to get up about five in the morning, and drive to the job site, then spend 8 - 10 hours up on a blistering hot roof in East St. Louis, doing all the physically demanding and horrid things one has to do to replace a 'tar' roof on a large commercial building.

Spend any time on right-wing sites, or on gun forums, and you will come across the right's infatuation with a Reagan-era fantasy movie called Red Dawn. The movie itself is fairly uninspired, some parts of it even comically bad, but it is held in the highest esteem by many who see it as the ultimate in American independence and resourcefulness in the face of totalitarianism. (If you haven't seen it, or don't remember it, the basic story is that the Soviet Union and Cuba stage a massive invasion of the US following a limited nuclear war - and a group of plcky high school students take to the hills to mount a resistance.) The message is that the stalwart Americans will be able to resist and eventually triumph over the invaders because we love our country and have guns. The cry Wolverines! is commonly used on gun boards to invoke this spirit of independence.

Matt Sanchez. So, he's a 36-year-old Marine Corporal in the reserves, a Columbia University student, and a Republican. He has been interviewed on Hannity & Colmes because of his allegations of abuse by "anti-military" lefty radicals at Columbia, posed for a picture with Ann Coulter...

...and he's a gay porn star who uses the name Rod Majors (among others) as his stage name.

I honestly don't see what the big deal is about this. He never lied about it, like Gannon and Haggard, and by all accounts seems like a decent, smart guy (except for the Republican part, I suppose.)

Of course, the right wing media machine is going to implode spectacularly. That'll be fun to watch.

(Tip of the ballcap to Hank Fox. Thanks Hank!)

I heard something the other day that stuck in my head. I was half-listening to the Diane Rehm show about Donald Rumsfeld, when one of the guests, Andrew Cockburn, related an anecdote that I could hardly believe: that during the election of 2004, George W. Bush was visiting his father for a bit of a break, and in the course of the meeting he asked his father "What's a neocon?"

Huh? I couldn't have possibly heard that right, could I? W couldn't have been so clueless as to not know what the driving force behind the debacle in Iraq was, could he???

I mean, I'm as willing as anyone here to believe that W is capable of just about anything, but still. I had to have heard that wrong, right?

Nope. Listen to the Diane Rehm show at the above link (free downloads available), starting at about 34:50.

And Timothy Noah wrote about this in Slate on Feb 23, quoting from Cockburn's new book about Rumsfeld:

OK, this is a rant. Probably just my mood. Probably because the person for whom I am a care-giver had a rough and restless night, and consequently so did I. Probably because I'm fighting a low-grade migraine, and everything just sort of pisses me off.

But can we fucking quit with the sports metaphors being applied to real war?

OK, it's not your fault. Maybe you, like me, just couldn't give a shit about the Superbowl, and were sick of hearing about it in every possible venue for the last week. Maybe you too heard this on NPR this morning, and wanted to tear your hair out:

"In honor of the Superbowl, it's the Fourth Quarter, we're losing, there's only a few minutes left in the game, we have the ball, and it's a long drive - but we have the chance to make the drive and win the game here."

Say, Andrew Sullivan points out something I noted last night but only in passing: Bush didn't directly invoke God at the end of his speech.

I didn't listen to the whole thing, only caught a little bit at the end. Frankly, I cannot stand to listen to the man talk, and I sure as hell won't watch his speeches on the TV. But I did catch the following closing:

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

The entire text is available on the White House's website. Scanning it, there's no mention of God. That's a very significant change from any other major speech Bush has given. Interesting.

Thoughts?

Jim Downey