Hello,
Today is just one more day in a year of long days. I'm only 14 days away from getting ready to go on leave. I can't wait. It will suck coming back, no doubt about it. I entertained the thought early on in this deployment of just not taking leave. In the end, I figured I owed it to myself and my family to go back when I could. it was nicely timed so that it's almost right in the middle of the deployment. When I get back we'll be more than 50% done.
So this past weekend LTG (R) Ricardo Sanchez, the Combined joint Task Force-7 (CJTF-7) Commander from 2003-2004 (or maybe until 2005, I can't remember). Anyway, he commanded what has morphed into Multi National Force-Iraq (MNF-I). He came out and said that this is a nightmare over here, with no end in sight. It was interesting the way he framed it. Basically he was saying that the political leadership constrained the military from fighting the war the way it should have, particularly by limiting force size. This is a man who many hold liable for the insurgency flourishing during the summer and fall of 2003. Thomas Ricks, in his book Fiasco is especially hard on his leadership. Maybe he's had time to reflect on what he could have done differently.
He also had little good to say about the surge. I wonder if what he is saying is representative of what other retired Generals are thinking. I just saw the Senate Minority Leader from Kentucky on the TV last night saying that the surge is working and we're making remarkable progress over here...that means the talking points are being sent out again. It ain't "working," everyone. The enemy knows that, and the soldiers know that. he made the statement to the effect that things in the south were quiet and peaceful. This is the same place where the Brits left and handed local control over to the Shiite militias. Quiet? Peaceful? How in the world can the surge be working there when there are no soldiers there? I am totally mystified by that statement. Again, the talking points have been distributed, and they are coming back out on the news. I am hoping that things work out here; I am not encouraged by what I have seen and what I know. So Mrs. Clinton, I hope you're paying attention. When you come in to office you need to have a plan ready to execute immediately.
OUT
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Keeping us busy
So we had another rocket attack this past week. I'm a little bit surprised that the news got out so fast. They had the story nailed within about 12 hours. I don't think it was because MNC-I had a press release, either, although I'm sure they had to say something after the news got out. Fortunately, no one in my unit was injured, Unfortunately, 2 soldiers were killed and almost 40 were wounded. A couple of TCN's were injured, too. You know there are some places in this world that have dire poverty when the people will come to this place for a job.
So I think I talked about my fraternity brother in my last post...it is so ironic to run into him here. We hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, and it takes a war to bring us back together.
I was told that the statistics being reported about the numbers of insurgents being killed and captured are, shall we say, a little bit misleading. Units out there are fighting people who are connected through a spiderweb of alliances, tribal affiliations, gang affiliations, and sect affiliations. When the "insurgents" are killed and captured, however, they are reporting that they were members of Al Qaida. on a couple of levels, this is dishonest. First, a lot of the anti-coalition activity in the Baghdad area is done by Shia groups who hate Al Qaida in Iraq (AQIZ). Second, there is a great deal of internecine fighting going on between the Shia groups; they are jockeying for control. Third, the Sunni-Shia fighting that does occur is between Sunni and Shia. So all of these activities get counted as "anti-coalition" attacks or events, which clearly they are not. I don't want to sound like I'm nit-picking here, but what is being reported ends up being wrong, which then ends up influencing policy, which then produces a solution to the wrong problem--which then gets implemented, with the expectation that positive results will flow from it. It just won't work like that. We have soldiers doing a tremendous amount of work here, and that ends up getting wrapped around a policy that will not succeed. What amazes me is how the morale stays as high as it does. I think what happens is that the soldiers (who think about it) tend to internalize their doubts and keep them to themselves. Saying them out loud is tantamount to saying the Emperor has no clothes. And the soldiers plug along, doing the work of the superhero because that's why they came here.
One of my objectives here during this time was to do some informal professional development. I set out to read 5 books from the Army Chief of Staff's reading list. It is a list compiled for Officers and NCO's to use for learning about leadership in history, and to make the leaders of today think about what the leaders of the past have faced and how they solved the challenges of warfare and leadership, etc. So I have read two books already, and I'm on my third--The Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant. It's actually a pretty readable book. Anyway, his take on the Mexican War, while I'm sitting in my CHU in the middle of Baghdad, is really kind of interesting. The Mexican War was 160 years ago, but it just demonstrated to me that officers of that time faced the same moral dilemma some of us struggle with in this war. And that's about all I've got to say about that.
I ordered a laptop, so when i get that online I'll be back to more frequent posts and I'll be putting up pictures again. Having to go to the MWR facility to post is a little inconvenient and I can't plug a thumb drive into the terminals here. I have a bunch of cool photos that I haven't been able to show, so in the next few weeks I will be putting a lot up. I go on leave next month, so I probably won't post too much then, but we'll see. Until next time...
OUT
So I think I talked about my fraternity brother in my last post...it is so ironic to run into him here. We hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, and it takes a war to bring us back together.
I was told that the statistics being reported about the numbers of insurgents being killed and captured are, shall we say, a little bit misleading. Units out there are fighting people who are connected through a spiderweb of alliances, tribal affiliations, gang affiliations, and sect affiliations. When the "insurgents" are killed and captured, however, they are reporting that they were members of Al Qaida. on a couple of levels, this is dishonest. First, a lot of the anti-coalition activity in the Baghdad area is done by Shia groups who hate Al Qaida in Iraq (AQIZ). Second, there is a great deal of internecine fighting going on between the Shia groups; they are jockeying for control. Third, the Sunni-Shia fighting that does occur is between Sunni and Shia. So all of these activities get counted as "anti-coalition" attacks or events, which clearly they are not. I don't want to sound like I'm nit-picking here, but what is being reported ends up being wrong, which then ends up influencing policy, which then produces a solution to the wrong problem--which then gets implemented, with the expectation that positive results will flow from it. It just won't work like that. We have soldiers doing a tremendous amount of work here, and that ends up getting wrapped around a policy that will not succeed. What amazes me is how the morale stays as high as it does. I think what happens is that the soldiers (who think about it) tend to internalize their doubts and keep them to themselves. Saying them out loud is tantamount to saying the Emperor has no clothes. And the soldiers plug along, doing the work of the superhero because that's why they came here.
One of my objectives here during this time was to do some informal professional development. I set out to read 5 books from the Army Chief of Staff's reading list. It is a list compiled for Officers and NCO's to use for learning about leadership in history, and to make the leaders of today think about what the leaders of the past have faced and how they solved the challenges of warfare and leadership, etc. So I have read two books already, and I'm on my third--The Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant. It's actually a pretty readable book. Anyway, his take on the Mexican War, while I'm sitting in my CHU in the middle of Baghdad, is really kind of interesting. The Mexican War was 160 years ago, but it just demonstrated to me that officers of that time faced the same moral dilemma some of us struggle with in this war. And that's about all I've got to say about that.
I ordered a laptop, so when i get that online I'll be back to more frequent posts and I'll be putting up pictures again. Having to go to the MWR facility to post is a little inconvenient and I can't plug a thumb drive into the terminals here. I have a bunch of cool photos that I haven't been able to show, so in the next few weeks I will be putting a lot up. I go on leave next month, so I probably won't post too much then, but we'll see. Until next time...
OUT
Saturday, October 6, 2007
First one of the month
I am now unable to post from the pc on my desk. That makes writing this blog extremely difficult to do. Mainly because I am reduced to using a laptop from the Pre-Cambrian period in one of the "internet cafes" here on the installation. It's tough using older equipment; it's even harder to use it when overuse has caused the keys on the keyboard to be virtually unreadable for most letters.
It took me about three tries to write that.
Lots to talk about, but I can't really do it here with this laptop. I will be writing for the next two days. I also need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow I am running in an Army Ten-Miler "Shadow Run" here at VBC. A shadow run is a ten-miler being run on the same day as the official one, just somewhere else in the world. I'll be able to tell my kids and grand kids that I ran a shadow run in Baghdad one day. That's kind of cool.
Next time I write I will be on a better computer. Maybe I'll order a laptop now since the commander back home ok'd the purchase. But I want to talk about spending 48 hours here with a fraternity brother who also happens to be here in the Army. I hadn't seen him in probably 10 or 12 years, and it took a war to get us back together. Amazing. And I also have more to say about the rest of what's going on. And I have some awesome pictures. So, this has taken me about 25 minutes to type, and I've about had it. Talk to you all later. Be safe.
OUT
It took me about three tries to write that.
Lots to talk about, but I can't really do it here with this laptop. I will be writing for the next two days. I also need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow I am running in an Army Ten-Miler "Shadow Run" here at VBC. A shadow run is a ten-miler being run on the same day as the official one, just somewhere else in the world. I'll be able to tell my kids and grand kids that I ran a shadow run in Baghdad one day. That's kind of cool.
Next time I write I will be on a better computer. Maybe I'll order a laptop now since the commander back home ok'd the purchase. But I want to talk about spending 48 hours here with a fraternity brother who also happens to be here in the Army. I hadn't seen him in probably 10 or 12 years, and it took a war to get us back together. Amazing. And I also have more to say about the rest of what's going on. And I have some awesome pictures. So, this has taken me about 25 minutes to type, and I've about had it. Talk to you all later. Be safe.
OUT
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
More fallout from the Report
Hey folks, just keeping it real in the field--out in Baghdad, Iraq, where in the mornings now it's actually pleasant and in the afternoons it's about as hot as it is at home on a hot summer day. In short, It has gotten pretty livable here.
I have been doing a little more reading this week--not reading the report from GEN Petraeus so much as reading some analysis done prior to the delivery of his report. I read another short paper from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org) regarding the effort over here. The title sums up the writer's thesis:
"America's Last Chance in Iraq: Changing US Strategy to Meet Iraq's Real Needs"
It is yet another short, fascinating analysis of the war done by CSIS. The first sentence should be read by every news anchor in the "Liberal News Media" before each story on the war: "America has no good options in Iraq, and the odds of any form of enduring success are even at best." The author, Anthony Cordesman, goes on to add what I think is the seminal point that the conservatives AND the liberals are really missing: that we have a moral obligation to take responsibility for what has happened here. Those who say that the "surge is working" and those who want immediate withdrawal are both failing to acknowledge that this is no longer an experiment in democracy, no political science class practical-exercise. There has been a huge amount of carnage and destruction here on the human side that we as a nation are morally accountable for. I never voted for The Decider, but enough people did that we now have this train wreck on our hands. We all have to come together to solve it.
As a logistician over here, I can tell you he is right on point when he enumerates the challenges of withdrawal. He also points out that we do not control the battlefield--in other words, there may be a time where we are forced out at a time not of our own choosing. In my opinion, when we decide to leave, the items that require the most effort to evacuate out of here are what the Army calls "major-end items;" i.e., trucks, tanks, MRAPs, weapons systems, etc. They obviously need to be some of the last things to leave with any unit that rolls out of here. If we take most of the usable major end items, demilitarize or destroy the ones that we don't want, and sell the remainder to the central government we should be pretty happy. They facilities here are no great shakes, but we need to stop using temporary solutions for them and start building lasting infrastructure that can be turned over to the Iraqis. Our failure to address the needs of the people has so embittered segments of the population towards us that some of this stuff might get destroyed anyway. I've said before that some of the mistakes here just can't be undone. Mr. Cordesman writes that the ideological nightmare of half-formed plans and the incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the beginning are two of the crucial early issues that have shaped the present situation.
Another interesting point Cordesman brings up is the situation in the southeastern part of the country. There was no surge there. The surge was mainly in Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala. The British were the primary force down south until recently; now the Shi'ite militias are in control. 30% of the country's population and 80% of the oil exports are down there. The oil constitutes 90-95% of the entire government revenues, and this asset is in the hands of rival Shi'ite factions. Question: What do you think they are doing with the money? Hmm. Another interesting fact is that numerous factions are being supported by Iran, presumably because they are hedging their bets on who will come out on top. Furthermore, Iran is just as confused as we are about the alliances and loyalties of these groups. They are not controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, or the government of al-Maliki, or the Iranians for that matter. A lot of the factions are criminal enterprises.
I'm getting worn down by all this. It's like reading bad news every damn day. Is there room for optimism? Always. But realism needs to take hold in Washington, and I think that the question of how well the Iraqis can take over for us is summed up pretty well in Cordesman's report. The Iraqi Army is showing great promise, but we can't push too much onto them too soon or they'll cave. The regional police will end up being sectarian in composition in most places. And the national police "cannot be healed or reformed. They are a symbol of sectarian cleansing and Shi'ite abuse of Sunnis." Not a pretty picture. These NP's are infiltrated by the Shi'ite militias and just are useless.
I was going to post some pics, but the internet here has royally sucked for about three weeks, and stuff downloads and uploads so slowly that I don't have the patience. I have attempted to upload a picture for 20 solid minutes and...nothing. I'll try again next time.
OUT
I have been doing a little more reading this week--not reading the report from GEN Petraeus so much as reading some analysis done prior to the delivery of his report. I read another short paper from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org) regarding the effort over here. The title sums up the writer's thesis:
"America's Last Chance in Iraq: Changing US Strategy to Meet Iraq's Real Needs"
It is yet another short, fascinating analysis of the war done by CSIS. The first sentence should be read by every news anchor in the "Liberal News Media" before each story on the war: "America has no good options in Iraq, and the odds of any form of enduring success are even at best." The author, Anthony Cordesman, goes on to add what I think is the seminal point that the conservatives AND the liberals are really missing: that we have a moral obligation to take responsibility for what has happened here. Those who say that the "surge is working" and those who want immediate withdrawal are both failing to acknowledge that this is no longer an experiment in democracy, no political science class practical-exercise. There has been a huge amount of carnage and destruction here on the human side that we as a nation are morally accountable for. I never voted for The Decider, but enough people did that we now have this train wreck on our hands. We all have to come together to solve it.
As a logistician over here, I can tell you he is right on point when he enumerates the challenges of withdrawal. He also points out that we do not control the battlefield--in other words, there may be a time where we are forced out at a time not of our own choosing. In my opinion, when we decide to leave, the items that require the most effort to evacuate out of here are what the Army calls "major-end items;" i.e., trucks, tanks, MRAPs, weapons systems, etc. They obviously need to be some of the last things to leave with any unit that rolls out of here. If we take most of the usable major end items, demilitarize or destroy the ones that we don't want, and sell the remainder to the central government we should be pretty happy. They facilities here are no great shakes, but we need to stop using temporary solutions for them and start building lasting infrastructure that can be turned over to the Iraqis. Our failure to address the needs of the people has so embittered segments of the population towards us that some of this stuff might get destroyed anyway. I've said before that some of the mistakes here just can't be undone. Mr. Cordesman writes that the ideological nightmare of half-formed plans and the incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the beginning are two of the crucial early issues that have shaped the present situation.
Another interesting point Cordesman brings up is the situation in the southeastern part of the country. There was no surge there. The surge was mainly in Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala. The British were the primary force down south until recently; now the Shi'ite militias are in control. 30% of the country's population and 80% of the oil exports are down there. The oil constitutes 90-95% of the entire government revenues, and this asset is in the hands of rival Shi'ite factions. Question: What do you think they are doing with the money? Hmm. Another interesting fact is that numerous factions are being supported by Iran, presumably because they are hedging their bets on who will come out on top. Furthermore, Iran is just as confused as we are about the alliances and loyalties of these groups. They are not controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, or the government of al-Maliki, or the Iranians for that matter. A lot of the factions are criminal enterprises.
I'm getting worn down by all this. It's like reading bad news every damn day. Is there room for optimism? Always. But realism needs to take hold in Washington, and I think that the question of how well the Iraqis can take over for us is summed up pretty well in Cordesman's report. The Iraqi Army is showing great promise, but we can't push too much onto them too soon or they'll cave. The regional police will end up being sectarian in composition in most places. And the national police "cannot be healed or reformed. They are a symbol of sectarian cleansing and Shi'ite abuse of Sunnis." Not a pretty picture. These NP's are infiltrated by the Shi'ite militias and just are useless.
I was going to post some pics, but the internet here has royally sucked for about three weeks, and stuff downloads and uploads so slowly that I don't have the patience. I have attempted to upload a picture for 20 solid minutes and...nothing. I'll try again next time.
OUT
Friday, September 21, 2007
Long week
Hello,
This has been a long week. Ramadan is in full swing, and the natives have decided they're going to get a little restless at night. It's not as dangerous as it is annoying. So, during the day they can't eat, drink or smoke at all. After sunset they eat. I guess after they get a full tummy they decide to go out and make some mischief. It will be nice when it's all over.
It's also been a long week because I spent all of last week giving a technical review to a bunch of proposals. Some of that was some dense reading. And at night, after I was done, I had to come in to the office and catch up on stuff I couldn't do during the day. This week has been like two weeks packed into one. And while it is cooling off at home, we are still having daytime highs hovering around 110 degrees. I know I've said this before, but I don't know how the Iraqis can stand it. They get power for a few hours a day if that, and have to sleep in the humid, hot night air. It's cool at night now (at least it feels cool; it could be 85 degrees for all I know) so it's not as bad as July and August, but still. At least when Saddam was in power they had that much.
Speaking of Saddam, I am finishing up a book called, The Generals War, by Bernard Trainor. It's amazing to read it now since it was published in 1995. There are names in there from the Bush Administration (Failure #2) like Powell and Cheney, but also people like Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad. I just got through the last chapter and I'm reading into the Epilogue, and I'm serious, it's hard to read the last two chapters. Trainor didn't have a Magic 8-Ball, but he ties a lot of the "problems" we faced through the '90's with Saddam to the indecisive conclusion of the war. Reading that book, you really get a whole different sense of what happened during the war than one got reading the papers or watching the news at that time. Then, you knew the Air Force had done a lot of damage, but you got the idea that the Army had been fighting tooth and nail to get up into Iraq near Basra. It was actually the Marines who did most of the ground fighting. Furthermore, because Schwarzkopf was such a rigid thinker he didn't pick up clues along the way that should have told him the enemy wasn't going to stand and fight. That assumption guided his entire approach to the ground piece of the war. His objective was to destroy the Republican Guard. He never achieved it. He stopped the war--or allowed it to be stopped--before that happened, and it allowed Saddam to recover a lot of his fighting capability. That enabled him to hold on to power. We also stirred up the Shiites in southern Iraq, and they thought we'd come help them rise up. Problem was, when Bush was saying that he hoped the Iraqi people would rise up and topple Saddam, he really meant that he wanted to see someone in the military topple him; he didn't want the Shia to do it. So there was never any thought given to helping them as they got crushed by the units that streamed out of Kuwait and were reconstituted. By the way, 12 years later, these were the same Shia that Vice President Cheney said "would welcome us as liberators." He must have hoped they had one hell of a short memory.
Schwarzkopf comes out in the book as an interesting individual. He seemed to lose his spine when he had to confront Powell at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another thing that probably had negative effects at the end of the First Gulf War, and DEFINITELY had negative effects in the second one, was the military's absolute insistence that they were the ones who decided when they would leave the battlefield. This is what I mean: CENTCOM, commanded by Schwarzkopf, had every intention of getting the soldiers out of the Middle East as quickly as possible. That makes you incapable of really asserting yourself after the cease-fire. If things go wrong, you're already shipping personnel and equipment home, and the military had no intention of sticking around to enforce the peace. This group of officers were of the Vietnam-generation officer corps, and felt that the civilian leadership had abused them. They weren't going to allow it again. Well, because of the itch to get outta Dodge, Saddam stayed in power and we invaded 12 years later. And, oh by the way, when we invaded this time, again, the military had no plan to stick around to enforce the peace. The "Generation V" officers, after being subjected to a war they felt the civilians had lost for them, AND a decade (the 1990's) of peace keeping missions, felt a revulsion towards anything not directly related to the prosecution of war. The whole "we don't do peace-keeping" attitude ended up blowing up in their faces. If they did a little more peace-keeping they would have had to do a lot less war making.
And look where we are now. We have The Decider, a man utterly devoid of ideas and credibility, shooting off his mouth about a newspaper ad from MoveOn.org. I guess running off at the mouth about something like that keeps him from having to come up with a solution for the way out of this war. And again, going back to the book, when I see names in there like Wolfowitz and others it just makes my skin crawl. You know, we're still here and clowns like that are long, long gone. The Decider will transition from a completely broken president to a completely broken ex-president in about 16 months.
Anyway, I highly recommend the book. I'll blog some more shortly, and I promise I'll have some good pictures.
This has been a long week. Ramadan is in full swing, and the natives have decided they're going to get a little restless at night. It's not as dangerous as it is annoying. So, during the day they can't eat, drink or smoke at all. After sunset they eat. I guess after they get a full tummy they decide to go out and make some mischief. It will be nice when it's all over.
It's also been a long week because I spent all of last week giving a technical review to a bunch of proposals. Some of that was some dense reading. And at night, after I was done, I had to come in to the office and catch up on stuff I couldn't do during the day. This week has been like two weeks packed into one. And while it is cooling off at home, we are still having daytime highs hovering around 110 degrees. I know I've said this before, but I don't know how the Iraqis can stand it. They get power for a few hours a day if that, and have to sleep in the humid, hot night air. It's cool at night now (at least it feels cool; it could be 85 degrees for all I know) so it's not as bad as July and August, but still. At least when Saddam was in power they had that much.
Speaking of Saddam, I am finishing up a book called, The Generals War, by Bernard Trainor. It's amazing to read it now since it was published in 1995. There are names in there from the Bush Administration (Failure #2) like Powell and Cheney, but also people like Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad. I just got through the last chapter and I'm reading into the Epilogue, and I'm serious, it's hard to read the last two chapters. Trainor didn't have a Magic 8-Ball, but he ties a lot of the "problems" we faced through the '90's with Saddam to the indecisive conclusion of the war. Reading that book, you really get a whole different sense of what happened during the war than one got reading the papers or watching the news at that time. Then, you knew the Air Force had done a lot of damage, but you got the idea that the Army had been fighting tooth and nail to get up into Iraq near Basra. It was actually the Marines who did most of the ground fighting. Furthermore, because Schwarzkopf was such a rigid thinker he didn't pick up clues along the way that should have told him the enemy wasn't going to stand and fight. That assumption guided his entire approach to the ground piece of the war. His objective was to destroy the Republican Guard. He never achieved it. He stopped the war--or allowed it to be stopped--before that happened, and it allowed Saddam to recover a lot of his fighting capability. That enabled him to hold on to power. We also stirred up the Shiites in southern Iraq, and they thought we'd come help them rise up. Problem was, when Bush was saying that he hoped the Iraqi people would rise up and topple Saddam, he really meant that he wanted to see someone in the military topple him; he didn't want the Shia to do it. So there was never any thought given to helping them as they got crushed by the units that streamed out of Kuwait and were reconstituted. By the way, 12 years later, these were the same Shia that Vice President Cheney said "would welcome us as liberators." He must have hoped they had one hell of a short memory.
Schwarzkopf comes out in the book as an interesting individual. He seemed to lose his spine when he had to confront Powell at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another thing that probably had negative effects at the end of the First Gulf War, and DEFINITELY had negative effects in the second one, was the military's absolute insistence that they were the ones who decided when they would leave the battlefield. This is what I mean: CENTCOM, commanded by Schwarzkopf, had every intention of getting the soldiers out of the Middle East as quickly as possible. That makes you incapable of really asserting yourself after the cease-fire. If things go wrong, you're already shipping personnel and equipment home, and the military had no intention of sticking around to enforce the peace. This group of officers were of the Vietnam-generation officer corps, and felt that the civilian leadership had abused them. They weren't going to allow it again. Well, because of the itch to get outta Dodge, Saddam stayed in power and we invaded 12 years later. And, oh by the way, when we invaded this time, again, the military had no plan to stick around to enforce the peace. The "Generation V" officers, after being subjected to a war they felt the civilians had lost for them, AND a decade (the 1990's) of peace keeping missions, felt a revulsion towards anything not directly related to the prosecution of war. The whole "we don't do peace-keeping" attitude ended up blowing up in their faces. If they did a little more peace-keeping they would have had to do a lot less war making.
And look where we are now. We have The Decider, a man utterly devoid of ideas and credibility, shooting off his mouth about a newspaper ad from MoveOn.org. I guess running off at the mouth about something like that keeps him from having to come up with a solution for the way out of this war. And again, going back to the book, when I see names in there like Wolfowitz and others it just makes my skin crawl. You know, we're still here and clowns like that are long, long gone. The Decider will transition from a completely broken president to a completely broken ex-president in about 16 months.
Anyway, I highly recommend the book. I'll blog some more shortly, and I promise I'll have some good pictures.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Drama
So we got some incoming this past week. Had a little drama. Fortunately no one in my unit was hurt, so that's a good thing. I have been so busy that I really haven't had much time to take a whole lot of pictures. And we're definitely forbidden from taking pictures of anything that may get damaged from fire from the outside.
The workload here is just going up and up. We are getting just a ton of materials and supplies that were ordered by the unit we relieved, and my piece of land to store it in is starting to get pretty cluttered.
Anyway, the big news of the week, aside from our own little drama, was the drama taking place in Washington. You know, the Democrats are really disappointing me. I don't know what's going on over there, but they have had 10 months to come up with alternative plans to counter what The Decider has "decided" to do, but they've come up with nothing. They should be going on the offensive here, and the silence is just deafening. I can't believe they aren't out there picking apart the report and the testimony delivered last week. The violence here is down? Really...I just spent a week reviewing construction proposals, and every one of these proposals had a plan to house the workers in a compound within the walls of the base they were building on. It wasn't for convenience, because these companies were going to hire Iraqis. It was for security so the workforce didn't get killed. They were also discussing keeping the materials from being stolen or destroyed on the roads. If the security situation is so "good," if "the surge is working," why is this necessary? What "work" was the surge supposed to do?
i found one comment GEN Petraeus made to be particularly noteworthy. He said words to the effect that most if not all of the military goals of the surge had been met. I don't disagree with that statement. The problem is, and the so-called "Liberal News Media" never quite got the implication of that statement, the goal of the surge was a political one, not a military one. Meeting the military objectives was supposed to enable the political objectives to happen. By The Decider's own math, the government here is not meeting all 18 benchmarks. I'd love to give an 'atta-boy for making a nice effort, but people are dying over here. Americans, Iraqis, and even a few coalition forces. "Nice try's" are pretty irrelevant when the killing and the ethnic cleansing go on without pause. I tell people, what would you think if there were as many killings in Baltimore (or wherever you live) every day or every week as there are here? You'd think it was complete chaos. If not chaos, you'd probably wonder how people can live like that and not be irreparably harmed. But hey, all we hear from the right-wing G.O.P. TV on Fox, and the Lazy News Media of the mainstream, is that "the surge is working." If I see one more Republican Senator or Congressman mouth those words on TV I will just throw up.
The troops here are tired. The morale from what I can tell is pretty good, but damn they are tired. And a few people who are "outside the wire" guys with some experience under their belt wholeheartedly agree with the Jones Report (referenced in an earlier post): the Iraqi Security Forces cannot do the job. Period. They can't now, and won't be able to a year from now. But hey, with the crew making the decisions now, it's all about being able to blame the guy who follows Bush. It's gonna be a Democrat if they pull their heads out of their fourth point of contact (military for "ass"). And I can see it now: that the Democrats will be in a situation of no-win choices. And the Republicans will be lobbing bombs from the sidelines, as if 8 years of filth and lies and misguided, dogmatic policies never happened. I don't have a crystal ball, but believe it, folks. That day is coming.
Tomorrow I'll try to get some interesting pictures. I got a tripod, so now when I take longer-range shots they'll be steady. We'll see. Talk to you in a bit...
The workload here is just going up and up. We are getting just a ton of materials and supplies that were ordered by the unit we relieved, and my piece of land to store it in is starting to get pretty cluttered.
Anyway, the big news of the week, aside from our own little drama, was the drama taking place in Washington. You know, the Democrats are really disappointing me. I don't know what's going on over there, but they have had 10 months to come up with alternative plans to counter what The Decider has "decided" to do, but they've come up with nothing. They should be going on the offensive here, and the silence is just deafening. I can't believe they aren't out there picking apart the report and the testimony delivered last week. The violence here is down? Really...I just spent a week reviewing construction proposals, and every one of these proposals had a plan to house the workers in a compound within the walls of the base they were building on. It wasn't for convenience, because these companies were going to hire Iraqis. It was for security so the workforce didn't get killed. They were also discussing keeping the materials from being stolen or destroyed on the roads. If the security situation is so "good," if "the surge is working," why is this necessary? What "work" was the surge supposed to do?
i found one comment GEN Petraeus made to be particularly noteworthy. He said words to the effect that most if not all of the military goals of the surge had been met. I don't disagree with that statement. The problem is, and the so-called "Liberal News Media" never quite got the implication of that statement, the goal of the surge was a political one, not a military one. Meeting the military objectives was supposed to enable the political objectives to happen. By The Decider's own math, the government here is not meeting all 18 benchmarks. I'd love to give an 'atta-boy for making a nice effort, but people are dying over here. Americans, Iraqis, and even a few coalition forces. "Nice try's" are pretty irrelevant when the killing and the ethnic cleansing go on without pause. I tell people, what would you think if there were as many killings in Baltimore (or wherever you live) every day or every week as there are here? You'd think it was complete chaos. If not chaos, you'd probably wonder how people can live like that and not be irreparably harmed. But hey, all we hear from the right-wing G.O.P. TV on Fox, and the Lazy News Media of the mainstream, is that "the surge is working." If I see one more Republican Senator or Congressman mouth those words on TV I will just throw up.
The troops here are tired. The morale from what I can tell is pretty good, but damn they are tired. And a few people who are "outside the wire" guys with some experience under their belt wholeheartedly agree with the Jones Report (referenced in an earlier post): the Iraqi Security Forces cannot do the job. Period. They can't now, and won't be able to a year from now. But hey, with the crew making the decisions now, it's all about being able to blame the guy who follows Bush. It's gonna be a Democrat if they pull their heads out of their fourth point of contact (military for "ass"). And I can see it now: that the Democrats will be in a situation of no-win choices. And the Republicans will be lobbing bombs from the sidelines, as if 8 years of filth and lies and misguided, dogmatic policies never happened. I don't have a crystal ball, but believe it, folks. That day is coming.
Tomorrow I'll try to get some interesting pictures. I got a tripod, so now when I take longer-range shots they'll be steady. We'll see. Talk to you in a bit...
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The "Report"
So, the CG of Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) has given his testimony to Congress. Bush did an excellent job of minimizing expectations, and predictably, the Democrats failed the country. Great. Looks like we're staying the course until January 20, 2009.
The thing that angers me is that this is such a colossal waste. Not just American lives, but hundreds of Iraqis are killed every week. The White House may direct that the statistics get massaged to reflect what they want, but Jesus, the situation isn't a whole lot better here. We still can't leave the base. They are still firing junk on our position. Guys are still dying. And what is happening in Washington? They're playing footsie under the bathroom stall. What a damn disgrace.
The surge has done such a great job, it's "working" so well, according to John McCain and others, that when we bid construction contracts they have to build a compound for these guys to live in for their safety. That's pretty standard. Amazing. We still run convoys with armed escorts up and down the roads. When will The Surge That Is Working end that practice? I was watching The News Hour on PBS over here and Jim Lehrer asked Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) if he thought Gen Petraeus was "spinning" the report to reflect what he wanted it to say. Lugar's response was very interesting. I am paraphrasing because it was like 14 hours ago that I saw it, but he basically said that Petraeus came prepared to deliver a point of view and he defended that point of view. To my ears, calling it a "point of view" was significant. Here is a Senator who is widely acknowledged to have credibility in foreign affairs saying that the guy was not presenting a balanced, objective report. I mean, hey, what would have happened if he reported that this is a total fiasco? He's have been awarded The Solid Brass Balls Award and been shown the door. Besides, they are all complicit in this mess and they truly want the chance to make right with it all. I can respect that. But damn, this mission is lost, folks. Lost.
So what do we do now? In my own humble opinion, I think that what we need to do is start making deals. We will never, ever create a government here that replicates our own. In fact, Sen. Lugar pointed out on the News Hour this morning that the Iraqi Constitution--the one we strong-armed them into creating--specifies that the central government does not have the sort of power that ours has; the power is decentralized. I think the conservatives would call this concept "States' Rights." Here it is done to acknowledge the power and influence in this culture of clan and tribal ties and lines of authority. Man, and the Neoconservatives that created this mess just thought that we could come in here, knock off Saddam, and all would be well. How childish. And people voted for them? I would be ashamed to have that much blood on my hands, I know that much. But I tend to think that Bush sleeps like a baby at night. He's got a place waiting for him when he goes to the next world.
Till next time, go to this website and read the Jones Report regarding the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF): http://forums.csis.org/isf.pdf
OUT
The thing that angers me is that this is such a colossal waste. Not just American lives, but hundreds of Iraqis are killed every week. The White House may direct that the statistics get massaged to reflect what they want, but Jesus, the situation isn't a whole lot better here. We still can't leave the base. They are still firing junk on our position. Guys are still dying. And what is happening in Washington? They're playing footsie under the bathroom stall. What a damn disgrace.
The surge has done such a great job, it's "working" so well, according to John McCain and others, that when we bid construction contracts they have to build a compound for these guys to live in for their safety. That's pretty standard. Amazing. We still run convoys with armed escorts up and down the roads. When will The Surge That Is Working end that practice? I was watching The News Hour on PBS over here and Jim Lehrer asked Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) if he thought Gen Petraeus was "spinning" the report to reflect what he wanted it to say. Lugar's response was very interesting. I am paraphrasing because it was like 14 hours ago that I saw it, but he basically said that Petraeus came prepared to deliver a point of view and he defended that point of view. To my ears, calling it a "point of view" was significant. Here is a Senator who is widely acknowledged to have credibility in foreign affairs saying that the guy was not presenting a balanced, objective report. I mean, hey, what would have happened if he reported that this is a total fiasco? He's have been awarded The Solid Brass Balls Award and been shown the door. Besides, they are all complicit in this mess and they truly want the chance to make right with it all. I can respect that. But damn, this mission is lost, folks. Lost.
So what do we do now? In my own humble opinion, I think that what we need to do is start making deals. We will never, ever create a government here that replicates our own. In fact, Sen. Lugar pointed out on the News Hour this morning that the Iraqi Constitution--the one we strong-armed them into creating--specifies that the central government does not have the sort of power that ours has; the power is decentralized. I think the conservatives would call this concept "States' Rights." Here it is done to acknowledge the power and influence in this culture of clan and tribal ties and lines of authority. Man, and the Neoconservatives that created this mess just thought that we could come in here, knock off Saddam, and all would be well. How childish. And people voted for them? I would be ashamed to have that much blood on my hands, I know that much. But I tend to think that Bush sleeps like a baby at night. He's got a place waiting for him when he goes to the next world.
Till next time, go to this website and read the Jones Report regarding the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF): http://forums.csis.org/isf.pdf
OUT
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