COUNTERCOLUMN: The Adjunct of Evil

Christopher Hitchens serves up a tantalizing morsel with his customary bitter herbs.

Now comes a document from the files of the Iraqi secret police, or Mukhabarat, dated March 28, 1992, and headed routinely, "In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate." It is a straightforward listing of contacts and "assets," quite unsensational until it comes to the "Saudi front," where we find the name "Osama bin Ladin/he is well-known Saudi businessman, founder of Saudi opposition in Afghanistan, had connection with Syrian division." Of course, this is not a smoking gun.

It's a shame there's no link. The reader cannot assess the provenance of this information. Hitch doesn't say how he knows about it.

It's a failure of transparency.

Stand by for about a dozen right wing bloggers (like me?) to start fulminating about how the liberal media's not covering the story.

Well, I can start with Hitch. Where's the beef, bro?

Splash, out

Jason

How else can you explain the decision to take this AP text:

Consumers, an important force shaping the economic recovery, spent modestly in March, helping the economy log solid growth in the last quarter.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that consumers boosted their spending by 0.4 percent last month. That followed another 0.4 percent increase in February, according to revised figures. February's increase was double the 0.2 percent advance reported a month ago.

Americans' incomes, meanwhile, also rose solidly in March, increasing by 0.4 percent. That came on top of a 0.5 percent gain in February. The increase was encouraging because income growth is a main factor in people's willingness to spend in the future, economists said.

``With the March rise in personal income, there is a solid base of ready cash to fuel spending increases,'' said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

...and label it with this headline?

Consumer Spending Rises by 0.4%, but Misses Expectations.

Link.

I can see the NY Times sports headlines for the next year already.

American Women Gymnasts Dominate World Championships, Still Too Skinny.

Marlins Pitcher Josh Beckett Throws No-Hit Shutout, but Walks Four.

Anna Kournikovna Wins Wimbledon. Socks Don't Match

American Swimmer Wins Hundred Meter Freestyle, But Gets Soaking Wet

Lance Armstrong Wins Another Tour DeFrance; Appears Out of Breath, Fatigued


Putzes.

Splash, out

Jason

An officer now serving in Iraq weighs in on the flap over Ted Koppel's decision to devote much of a Nightline broadcast to reading the names of American dead in Iraq:

Koppel was on Al Franken's show on Air America (Libby/lefty talk radio) THIS MORNING condemning the administration's efforts in Iraq. You tell me if there are other personal and political motives involved.....

If McCain were truly interested in a fully informed American public as he indicates in his statement, then he'd be pounding on Koppel's door to get him to show the good things those soldiers were doing in Iraq when they died.


My own unpolled sense is that most soldiers would be pretty uncomfortable with--if not downright offended--by Ted Koppel's decision to decontextualize their sacrifices by simply reading off the names one by one on the air.

I could say it's another example of how network media is out of touch with the sensibilities of military families, but that would oversimplify things. It's entirely possible that had ABC News realized exactly how this plays with the Joes and their families, they would take the same decision utterly

It would certainly make for pretty boring television.

It doesn't matter if the motivation is to undermine popular support for the war by listing the names in numbing monotony, or if it's somehow a clumsy catharsis on the part of ABC News staffers. In either case, the drive is to serve the interests of the staffers of ABC News. Not the soldiers and Marines themselves, and not the viewing public.

It's media narcissism.

I think there are instances where it is appropriate to list our honored dead by name. It's certainly not an unprecedented practice.

But in this case, it's an obnoxious one.

Splash, out

Jason

According to Drudge, it was in fact an American serviceman who blew the whistle.

The Belmont Club is setting the standard.

A North Georgean has all the goods on Rene "Tillman Got What Was Coming To Him" Gonzalez.

Including a bunch of other essays he's written.

To wit:

"The Jews left the Nazis only to become the new Nazis of the world." (also from the Daily Collegian.)

Not for the faint of heart.

Oh, here he is in an Amazon book review referring to Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell, along with Clarence Thomas, Ward Connelly, and Shelby Steel as "Zip Coons."

Welcome to the Wild and Wacky World of the American Left.

Splash, out

Jason

[CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE NET] posted by Jason : 14:39 EST 0 transmissions this net

London's Daily Mirror has photos of the abuses of detainees at Abu Gharaib prison here.

It's still not clear to me how widespread the abuse was. Is this limited to one platoon, or one shift, or one cell block? Or was this endemic to the entire Abu Gharaib garrison?

What's amazing to me is that it took a civilian who recieved the images back home to turn them into authorities. That no soldier blew the whistle sooner.

Splash, out

Jason

Here's an email I received from a mutual fund company employee, taking issue with my characterization of market timeing.

The "market timing" phrase used in the current mutual fund
industry scandal is actually a misnomer. A more fitting name might be time
zone arbitrage or fund pricing arbitrage. Market timing as it has been
defined in the past (though not recently) is perfectly legal and is the
primary method stock and bond speculators use to beat the market. For
example one might move their money out of bonds into stocks or cash or
something else if they felt their was going to be a change in market
dynamics. So those ads for market timing really are for something different
that the illegal and/or immoral actions taken by some mutual fund companies.
As a employee of a mutual fund company, I know that the time zone arbitrage
that was taking place was generally the work of a few bad apples. though I'm
not sure how upper management allowed it to happen.



My response: Hey, if someone buys into a Rydex or ProFunds fund, he ought to expect to be subsidizing market timing activity. But in cases where the prospectus states the fund doesn't allow market timing, and the fund management lies to shareholders and allows it anyway for certain favored clients on the sly, then that's fraud.

And market timing costs shareholders an estimated $5 billion a year, according to Stanford economist Eric Zitzewitz.


In yesterday's I was specifically referring to market timing, and NOT to late trading techniques, or specifically to date line/time zone arbitrage, except that market timers often use those techniques to determine specific entry points into certain funds.

So it's tough to separate the two practices.

I will agree with the letter writer that a garden variety commercial market timing system which calls for just a couple of trades a year is not terribly destructive to most funds returns, as long as only a few people practice the technique.

Heck, I'm a market timer in a sense, too. I shouldn't talk. I bought Vanguard Emerging Markets aggressively last summer, as soon as I got Internet access in Iraq. But China feels bubbly, and can't sustain its prodigious rate of growth. Brazil's had a great run, but overall the fund had begun to sputter out even on good news, and so I raped the other shareholders in the fund by it off completely at the beginning of April. (It saved me a 6% loss over the last month!)

I may buy some back if emerging markets lose30% off their peak or so.

But then, I will admit to being evil.

It's just interesting to see the dichotomy between Dr. Paul Farrell's buy-and-hold advice on the one hand, and the companies which advertise on the site

It's easy to see why management allowed the criminal abuses to occur, though: Greed. They were simply bribed by the prospect of fees from 'sticky money.'

And when it comes to the main street investor, the financial services industry is too often an ethics-free zone.

Splash, out

Jason

A reader points out that there has been at least one case where a militia unit defeated a well-drilled, professional army: at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Looking it over, though, the Texans were well led. And the Mexicans did not behave like a professional army. They did not post sentries or otherwise providing for their security, and allowed themselves to be surprised by the Texan assault, when they should not have been.

Nevertheless, yes, a force comprising mostly Texas militia did defeat General Santa Anna at San Jacinto in 1836.

Jason

That's the only way I can describe what was clearly going on at Abu Gharaib prison under the command of Brigadier General Janice Karpinski all year long.

Between May and September 2003, my company was responsible for a 24-48 hour EPW holding area (a jail), which sometimes held up to 35 detainees at a time. Over the summer, I personally transported hundreds of them, along with their personal effects, to a larger EPW holding area and intelligence screening facility run by the 3rd ACR at Al Asad Air Base.

I can say that on these dozens of times I visited the facility there, I witnessed no instances of abuse comparable to what was described by 60 Minutes II and the BBC. I know the Chief Warrant Officer and lieutenant in charge of the EPW holding facility were well respected by their troops, and would not have tolerated such abuses. And the sergeant I worked most closely with in signing over the detainees personal effects was extremely vigilant in ensuring that everything was properly transferred.

Even so, I did witness a few problems. One detainee was transferred to me with a blunt trauma head injury I could not account for in the paperwork done when he was first arrested. It apparently happened after he was arrested, under coalition care.

When a combat soldier is assigned to guard an EPW, he is usually angry at seeing his buddies get shot up, and has unbridled power over the detainee. If he's immature or has a cruel or sadistic streak in him, you have the makings of abuse.

What I observed, though, was that when soldiers interact with EPWs, the person they are most concerned with communicating with is often not the detainee, but his or her peers. The danger is that they will try to outdo each other with displays of braggadocio, machismo, callousness, and inappropriate humor. And Abu Gharaib is a good example of what happens when that tendency among immature soldiers is not monitored and corrected by their noncommissioned officers and company grade officers.

And that requires constant effort, and constant vigilance on the part of all leaders in the unit.

All officers are trained in the basics of the Geneva and Hague conventions as part of their precommissioning programs in ROTC, the acadamies, or at OCS. And they're briefed again while they're in their basic courses, before they join their units.

According to both the BBC and 60 Minutes II, the Army investigation reports that this unit of military police had not conducted training on the proper care and handling of EPWs in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and US policy.

If true, this represents a breathtaking dereliction of duty on the part of the chain of command.

But that only goes so far.

It should not take a formal class for soldiers to know that the deliberate humiliation of detainees is unprofessional and wrong.

And SGT Chip Frederick's lame excuse that he and his men 'had no training whatsoever' holds no water. SGT Frederick is an NCO and a full time corrections officer in his civilian job. If his men were not trained in the law of war, it was his job to train them. In the absence of specific guidelines from his chain of command on the Geneva convention, as a professional corrections officer, he had the skills to train them.

So while BG Karpinski bears overall command responsibility, she was also apparently let down by the SGT Fredericks of the unit, along with whoever Frederick's lieutenant, captain, and company commander.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and is a stain upon the Army's honor.

It cannot be tolerated.

Splash, out

Jason

Got my CBS Marketwatch Mutual Funds newsletter in my email box today.

The lead story is about how mutual fund companies like Janus who got caught with their grubby fingers in the market-timing* cookie jar are trying to put behind them the fact that NY Attorney General Elliott Spitzer caught them red-handed conspiring to screw their shareholders.

The thing is, when I look down at the sponsored links advertising on their email newsletter, two of the five advertisements are for market timing systems. At least one of them specifically issues buy and sell signals for market timers on mutual funds, including the Rydex Funds and the Fidelity Select Gold fund, as well as for small cap funds, where the lower liquidity means higher trading costs and bid/ask spreads, which means timing activities are even more destructive to the average buy-and-hold shareholder.

So CBS Marketwatch will pay lip service to the buy and hold investor. But they'll take ad revenues from companies who work to make suckers out of them through market timing.

More, it's obvious that these parasites are still finding willing hosts in the mutual fund industry, although mostly with a few funds.

So if you're a buy and hold mutual funds investor, check your prospectuses carefully. Avoid funds that cater to or tolerate systemic market timing by these firms and their clients. Specifically, avoid Fidelity's sector funds, the Rydex funds, ProFunds, and any open-ended sector funds which attract timers' money.

Further, to really get to know an industry, watch the ads, as well as the editorial content. After all, in vendito veritas

In sales, there is truth.

Splash, out

Jason




*For those of you who aren't mutual fund junkies, market timing, along with late-trading, is sort of the investors' equivalent of defacating on the seat. Sure, it can get the job done. But it's screws everyone else in the fund who buys and holds, because they have to pay for the fund timers' trading costs, and keep extra cash in the fund to hedge against redemptions. Which means they lose out a few points on every market gain.

But it's good for fund companies who want to attract assets, since they get a percentage of everything they manage. And it's good for fund timers, who need a host organism to feed off of. It just hurts everyone else. Like you and me.

Well, just when you thought the government could not possibly be stupider, along comes this gem, courtesy of the five-sided freak show we call the Pentagon:

Pentagon Rule Would Bar Contractors From Carrying Guns in Iraq.

(Knight-Ridder) ORLANDO, Fla. - As the insurgency and violence in Iraq intensify, the Department of Defense has proposed a new rule for most of the estimated 70,000 civilian contractors working in the war-torn region: They can't carry guns.

Deidre Lee, the Pentagon's director of procurement and acquisition policy, whose office proposed the rule, said it was designed to settle one of the biggest questions facing contractors: "to arm or not to arm."

It is a life-or-death issue because "we don't have the military providing security for our contractors," Lee said.

At the same time, a top department official acknowledged that the war effort was suffering a "brain drain" of civilian workers who were fleeing Iraq because they did not feel safe.

The measure is supported by Kellogg, Brown and Root officials, who argue that they'll lose insurance coverage on employees when they pick up weapons.

Now, the measure would permit military commanders to allow contractors to carry firearms. And it's hard to imagine a commander saying 'no.' It's just one more memorandum that has to be written and somehow delivered across a battlefield to whatever ignorant loser rear-echelon bureaucrat is asking for it.

KBRs argument that armed contractors are more likely to be shot at or kidnapped is, frankly, delusional. Daniel Pearl wasn't armed. And neither were the three Japanese kidnapping victims from earlier this month. The World Trade Center wasn't exactly targeted because of the Phalanx miniguns on each roof.

And when the contractors were ambushed and killed and strung up like sheep carcasses in Fallujah, I can guarantee you they would not have been let go simply because they were unarmed.

The insurance for the workers is a nonissue. They can be adopted into the same risk pool as American servicemen, and pay SGLI premiums--probably elevated premiums, to reflect the brief time of their service in Iraq (military personnel pay premiums during peacetime and wartime as well, spreading the risk out over many years), but that can be figured out by actuaries, and the cost passed on to the US government.

The liability factor for Halliburton is a slightly more difficult issue. If they allow their contractors to carry firearms, over the objections of retarded bean counters in air conditioned offices who have no conception what the risk tradeoffs are in Iraq, then they potentially expose themselves directly to bank-breaking lawsuits on the part of aggrieved families.

Hey--ever hear of purchasing a rider?

Ever heard of reinsurance?

And if the insurance industry gives them a hard time, Insurance regulators could weigh in and force the issue.

It wouldn't be that hard, since supporters of the bill are proposing that we create an additional layer of expense to hire private security firms to protect KBR convoys. And presumeably someone insures them.

So there's a model actuarial table to start with.

It seems to me that A.) Halliburton and the other contractors are pushing the military to provide better security to their convoys in a kind of game of 'chicken,' B.) Since Brown and Root is compensated on a cost + percentage of cost basis for most services, they are trying to inject an extra layer of expense in order to increase their total earnings, or C.) Someone in the procurement office is weighing a post retirement offer to join a private security firm and would like the military-industrial complex to owe him a favor.


Whatever it is, ol' Joseph Heller himself couldn't come up with a more absurd plot line than this one.

Splash, out

Jason

(Via Grim's Hall)

Beautiful essay on BlackFive's blog here.

I won't dilute it or cheapen it with commentary.

Read it.

Jason

...or so says Rene Gonzalez in The Daily Collegian.

Gonzalez is a University of Massachussetts graduate student. Oh, and a nominee for Andrew Sullivan's Sontag award for moral equivocation and left wing idiotic lunacy.

I don't think IraqNow is going to give out an award for this guy.

I'd much rather deal with dissent the Tommy Franks way.

Splash out

Jason

UPDATE: Here's a response from the U. of Mass. President. Even the State Senate issued a condemnation! (This kid's gonna write a book and make millions.)

This is what happens when an officer spends too much time in rich units.

"They were not intended to be on the front lines," [1st Armored Division Major General Martin] Dempsey said of the unarmored vehicles. "In a linear battlefield, Humvees always operated behind the front lines - in most cases even out of artillery range. Iraq isn't a linear battlefield. As we find ourselves in a low- to mid-intensity conflict, and we have all these vehicles designed for a linear battlefield, they come up short."

Well, that's just not true.

First of all, every airborne or air assault infantry battalion in the Army has a Delta company, which at full strength comprises five antitank platoons of four TOW vehicles and two command Humvees each. The other light infantry battalions may just have a section. But in any case, they are NOT equipped with the uparmored models, the M1045 or similar variants.

Further, these anti-tank units are routinely assigned to "conduct a screen," or perform a security, early warning, and counterreconnaisance mission forward of friendly units in the defense, and forward or to the flanks in the offense. This is what they expect to do on a linear battlefield with relatively secure rear areas (is there such a thing? Has there EVER been such a thing in the history of modern mechanized warfare?)

(Yeah, some Fort Benning/Leavenworth types can quibble with my terminology and MTOE terms. But I'm trying to keep the jargon to a minimum for a nonmilitary audience. So Nmnyah!)

When rear areas are not secure, though, the emphasis for these companies and platoons will often switch to an emphasis on convoy security. Indeed, in training environments, one or more of these platoons are detailed to escorting battalion logistics convoys, or in some circumstances, escorting the Battalion command element.

Further, the uparmored Humvee is far from ubiquitous even in Armored units. For example, prior to my coming to Florida in 2000, I had the pleasure of serving as a tank platoon leader and executive officer in the 2nd Battalion, 123rd Armor. (And it was a pleasure, guys! You guys were great!).

Now, every tank battalion also has a reconnaisance platoon. And our reconnaisance platoon was equipped with--you got it--the M966s. Not the uparmored variety.

Now, General Dempsey isn't going to be able to convince me that a reconnaisance/scout platoon is supposed to operate in a secure, rear area. Because I've been an anti-armor platoon leader and a scout platoon leader once upon a time. And an HHC commander with a scout platoon under me. And I happen to have read the ARTEP and field manuals for both kinds of units cover to cover.

(Not that I'm God's gift to the Army or anything. I'm not. But it seemed like the thing to do at the time.)

Nevertheless, General Dempsey seems to be arguing that on a linear battlefield, scouts function like MPs--providing security to rear areas. And anti-armor platoons don't mass fires forward or screen, but are really just a kind of heavily armed tugboat for Battalion logistical convoys.

The argument runs counter to decades of doctrinal development at Knox, Benning, Leavenworth, NTC, and JRTC. And I've got the manuals to prove it.

But it gets even stranger.

By claiming that the arrangement of Humvees within maneuver units was really designed for a linear battlefield, he raises the obvious question: didn't anybody plan for a nonlinear battlefield? I mean, isn't it part and parcel of maneuver warfar theory to mass your maneuver elements to achieve a decisive breakthrough, bypass strongpoints, and concentrate overwhelming firepower on critical vulnerabilities in the enemy's rear?

And when you supply units which have bypassed other enemy and gone for the Hail Mary, aren't those logistical elements themselves operating in a nonlinear battlefield?

In short, isn't it the goal of the maneuver theory junkies and AirLand battle fetishists to permanently and decisively un-linearize the battlefield?

I mean, we did project eventually taking Baghdad, right? At which time the mission could have reasonably been expected to center on garrison duty, civil affairs, and security missions within the cities themselves, with the garrisons connected to the logistics system through the existing network of highways, themselves running through other cities. Right? I mean, what other form could the occupation have taken?

And we didn't expect insurgents to target our supply lines? We thought Al Qaeda and the other whackos would just roll over? Was the whole 'flypaper strategy' a hoax?

If true, this is a rosy scenario that makes the Reagan Administration's first budget look like it was written by a bipolar Eeyore in a depressive phase.

Anyway you slice it, we screwed up. Either we did not expect the Iraq conflict to be nonlinear (which is hard to believe), or we did not adjust our tables of organization and equipment to reflect the nature of low to mid-intensity urban guerrilla warfare.

This strikes me as far and away the most likely view. At my very lowly, catfish, bottom-dwelling scumsucking level, that was exactly the case.

As an HHC commander or executive officer, I could not request equipment I didn't even know existed.

And I didn't know the high-tech protective vests existed until I saw some Air Force forward observers show up with them (hey, where'd you get those from?), and I didn't know the uparmored Hummers existed in any quantities until I got to Iraq. And I didn't know the Blue Force Tracker satellite system existed until I asked the 3rd ACR for a commo plan for my convoys and they said "oh, we just use the BlueFor. We can see your location on this computer!

Ummm...we're Guard. We don't have, you know, budgets. We don't have BlueFor. What's BlueFor?

If I had known they existed in January-March 2003, I would have requested all of them before the fight even started.

Battalion, Brigade, Division, and Corps staffs are simply not all-seeing. They're made up of hardworking but imperfect people living in families of varying functionality all over the military who are working their nuts off and doing the best they know how.

A healthy environment for brainstorming and a respect for the experiences of all kinds of soldiers of all ranks can go a long way towards helping commands anticipate equipment and logistics problems.

But sometimes things only become apparent in hindsight. And sometimes you've got to see a piece of equipment in action before it can occur to you you can request it.

But no matter how you slice it, General Dempsey's linear battlefield explaination just doesn't hold water.

Splash, out

Jason

Another reason why OIF II has it better than the first rotation ever had.

(Via wonkette)

That's how much less a temporarily mobilized reservist receives in housing compensation, compared to his active duty counterpart, according to a March 15 Pentagon report.


Policy wonks can read the whole report here. (Scroll down to page 22.)

Normal people can read the Army Times' synopsis of the issue here.

So much for the "One Army" concept.

Splash, out

Jason

Here's an Iraqi voice on the prospect of UN headship in Iraq:

Now wait a minute! Is that the same useless, half corrupted organization that supported Saddam, and still support his likes in the name of preserving the international wall? Is that the same organization that left Iraq and the Iraqi people after the 1st terrorist attack? I hope they are speaking of something other than that.

I hope they want to give the UN some role and not a real role in shaping the future of Iraq, because seriously, I doubt if the UN officials ever care about what Iraq really needs.

Nope.


Splash, out

Jason

Good old Hack is at it again. And this time firing with a tighter shot group than usual.



Why is the armored Humvee in such short supply when after-action reports have been shouting its praises since 1993?

For sure, there's been no shortage of cash. Since the need for these obviously essential lifesavers became apparent, the Pentagon has ordered more than $5 trillion of toys - from irrelevant big-ticket items like Star Wars II, to fleets of VIP jets to fly generals and politicians to and fro, to Gen. Tommy Franks spending almost half a million dollars on a VIP show-and-tell stage he had sent from the USA to Qatar so he could spin the Iraq War in a slick "Today" show-like setting.

Meanwhile, in this high-tech day and age, the troops are actually back to the same old sandbags and jury-rigged plates of steel welded to their vehicles that my recon platoon used at the end of World War II when we were fighting Tito's insurgents in northern Italy.

Link.

You go, Hack!

Splash, out

Jason

Phil Carter, proprietor of the Intel Dump and contributor to Slate.com, is featured in an NPR interview segment here.

(Of course, they don't mention Intel Dump. Just Slate. Grrrrr. But I guess it saves Phil from paying for extra bandwidth.)

Splash, out

Jason

Man, if you're the only Democratic candidate in the field, and you lose the Village Voice, things are pretty bad.

Via Glenn

Without any U.S. reported KIA in the action.

This is what happens when a raggled "militia" confronts a modern, trained, professional force. This is what always happens.

There's a certain romance that surrounds the term "militia." But that aura is misplaced. Even deceptive. Militia units have never been able to stand up for long against a determined attack conducted by an organized professional combined arms team.

Even the colonial militia got its ass kicked all the way across the New World. Washington couldn't make headway until he got his own regulars in the Continental Army, and buttressed them with professional Hessians and other European troops. The Viet Cong was destroyed as soon as it sought a general engagement. Partisan resistance forces could only attain the most local and limited success against the Nazis, and were regularly chewed up and spat out when confronted by competent Wehrmacht and SS units. The fiery but erratic Celts could not stand up against the relentless engineering and war machinery of Julius Caesar.

When my unit was in Ramadi fighting a mix of Saddam loyalist insurgents and 'out-of-towners,' or jihadist foreign fighters from May 03 through February, time and again the insurgents would get to fire the first shots. And time and again they would miss. And time and again they were pinned down by our own machine gun fire, outflanked, and killed.

Yes, drooling simians like Michael Moore, caught up in the dreamy romanticism of ignorance, have likened the Iraqi militiamen to the minutemen of the revolution.

Here's a little secret, though.

The minutemen used to get their asses handed to them on a platter.

Yes, the Iraqi insurgent has demonstrated a MacGyver-like genius for improvised munitions--fashioning detonators out of car alarms and garage door openers and TV remote controls. He has proven adept at intimidating ordinary Iraqis through fear. And he's pretty good at waylaying cars full of laundry women and murdering them. And he's boldly cut the throats of five-year-old children of suspected collaborators.

But a marksman he is not. He tends not to use the sights on his AK-47s at all. About half of them don't even have a stock. They look cool, though. And their rugged looks appeal to the average macho idiot these guys tend to recruit.

But their arms are next to useless except at point blank range. Everything else they do is just 'spray and pray.'

But the spray and pray method always fails against a disciplined force of marksmen.

Unless a cease fire agreement holds, we will see the same tactics played out time and again, with similar results for the insurgents.

If the US forces are clumsy, the insurgent may get some political play. And that is certainly his hope.

But on the tactical level, directly confronting US forces over a city is a derivative of a death wish.

Splash, out

Jason

What part of "Freedom" don't you understand?

Journal Entry

15 May 2003

Al Asad Air Base, Iraq

A runner from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Support Battalion ("Muleskinner") came by the Battalion field trains today with a message for the Battalion XO or S-3 to call the 3rd ACR headquarters down in Ar Ramadi as soon as possible. The Bn XO is still in Jordan, though, and the Bn S-3 is out at the Hadithah Dam with the Battalion command group, out of radio range. We don't have phone lines set up, and are having trouble with the satellite phone. The only communication out there is by messenger. As the acting S-4, or logistics and supply officer, I'm the only member of the battalion staff at Al Asad. So I walked down to Muleskinner's HQ to make the phone call on the DNVT.

I got the 3rd ACR's S-3 on the line, and he gave us a change of mission:

FRAGO

We are to relinquish control of AO Patton, including Hadithah, to the 1st Squadron, 3rd ACR, and begin moving our elements to Ar Ramadi. Our new mission is to secure the city of Ar Ramadi, effective on or about 23 May, with a few days built in for our guys to conduct right seat rides with the 3rd Squadron, which is already down there.

We'll be setting up in the Southern Palace compound. I'll have to make sure the line haul of vehicles coming in from Jordan meets us in Ar Ramadi, and coordinate to recieve the expected CLIX [spare parts] resupply dump on order down there instead of here at Al Asad.

I expressed my concern about vehicle readiness to the 3rd ACR and they seemed to understand that, even if we do get the spare parts dump we ordered (about 700 of them!), it will take days to get them installed and begin to get our vehicles up and running.

As of this writing, the Battalion Commander has no idea about the change of mission. I've got no coms with him. I'm waiting for the trucks which just dropped him, the mortar platoon, and the Forward Aid Station off at Hadithah Dam to return. At that point I'll grab the trucks and round up a security element of infantry, and turn them around and go right back out to Hadithah so I can deliver the message.

That's the only way I can explain this NPR story on the recent Doonesbury strips, in which longtime character B.D. gets his leg blown off in Iraq.

The commentator--a Cambridge, MA-based freelance radio producer named Dan Walker, says that "I know that B.D. is not a real person. I know that he's a cartoon character. But like I said, he's the only person I know in Iraq."

We've had over 300,000 people rotate through Iraq and Afghanistan, and this informed member of the media doesn't know a single one?

Dude, you have got to get out more.

You think media people might hang around one another too much?

After all, reserve and Guard units have been called up from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachussetts, and New Hampshire already.

If he had an ROTC unit at his college, chances are excellent that he would indeed have gone to school with someone who served in Iraq. Well, that's a pretty big "if" in that part of the country.

But when a media figure in a media center has to turn to a cartoon to find his only personal connection to the war in Iraq, then one has to pause to consider the yawning gap between the warrior class and the media professionals whose job it is to cover them.

But it's not just Dan Walker.

Check out New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has something even more breathtaking to share:

"Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago argues that America is now experiencing a fourth Great Awakening, like the religious revivals that have periodically swept America in the last 300 years. Yet offhand, I can't think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization."

Well, actually, there are a few closeted evangelicals out there. Even in journalism, and even in New York. They just keep their mouths shut in the company of other journalists. It's bad for their careers. They know all about blue-state "tolerance."**)

But at least these two commentators understand that they're out of touch with significant segments of the population.

They understand their unknowns. These are their known unknowns.

But if they don't know a single deployed soldier, or a single evangelical, then imagine their unknown unknowns. The things they don't know they don't know.

Splash, out

Jason

**On Ash Wednesday, 2001, Ted Turner insulted CNN staffers observing Ash Wednesday at a retirement party for anchorman Bernard Shaw, saying "What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks? You should be working for FOX."

This Washington Post article correctly frames the Red State v. Blue State argument, even as it subtly displays its own unwitting condescension towards middle-American voters.

It doesn't bode well for our beloved republic.

More and more Americans in a highly mobile society are choosing to live among like-minded people. University of Maryland political demographer James Gimpel has documented the rise of a "patchwork nation," in which political like attracts like, and ideologically diverse communities are giving way to same-thinking islands. A recent analysis sponsored by the Austin American-Statesman, comparing the photo-finish elections of 1976 and 2000, made this clear. While the nationwide results were extremely close, nearly twice as many voters now live in counties where one candidate or the other won by a landslide. Person by person, family by family, America is engaging in voluntary political segregation.

If present trends continue, the red/blue divide is going to become even more pronounced as time goes on, as the tendency of people to move to live among their own kind accelerates in a kind of self-reinforcing spiral of political Balkanization.

(Just look at this map of political fundraising hotspots within Los Angeles!

If you know LA, then you know that the entire valley is fairly densely and evenly populated. But the huge majority of the donations comes from a few square miles around Santa Monica, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills.)

And so given the fact that we have so many national news organizations with their operational headquarters within a few blocks of each other in Manhattan, the political demographics of our country is becoming more and more important to understanding coverage.

Nevertheless, the article falls prey to a regionalism and subtle intellectual bias of its own.

On Red states philosophy: The idea that faith should inform our public space, and that absolutes, rooted in the Bible, should guide us in our public life.

When Bush extols "entrepreneurs," insists on tax cutting and deregulation, and promotes drilling and logging; when he professes a born-again faith and appeals to traditional norms on issues such as marriage and cloning; when he disdains intellectual subtleties in favor of plain-spoken verities, he is carrying the flag for Red America.

Hey, WaPo...why the scare quotes around the word entrepeneur? You guys got a problem with Warren Buffett or something?

Kerry hoists the Blue flag whenever he embraces environmentalism, labor unionism and regulation; when he emphasizes the complexities of issues and urges an internationalist foreign policy; when he gives precedence to tolerance over tradition and dissent over conformity.

Ok, so red-staters are given to 'absolutes,' while blue-staters emphasize the 'complexities of issues.'

Read another way, blue-staters are enlightened beings inhabiting an ethical and moral plane so high they have to stick their schnozzes in the air to control the epidemic nosebleeds among their heady society, whereas red-staters tend to be knuckle-dragging. mouth-breathing troglodytes incapable of processing information except when meted out to them from the pulpit in prepackaged, just-add-venom homily.

In other words, as the Post has so embarrasingly written before, they're poor, uneducated, and easy to command.

Right.

Splash, out

Jason

(Thanks to Cori Dauber for pointing out the article.)

Next time you open your local paper and see an op-ed piece by an expert academic, read it with a healthy dose of scepticism. Because as one Washington Post reporter was dismayed to learn:

the "by" in a scholar's byline may well be a ruse, a duplicitous means of inducing a lobby-authored, lobby-funded piece into print and onto the public agenda.

Well, gee. Imagine that.

It turns out, though, that there's a small industry devoted to the recruitment of professors and other high-credibility names willing to sign their name to a PR firm's essay for publication in order to sway public opinion. The technique is really part and parcel of a staple of the PR trade: Astroturfing.

The article singles out a nuclear industry PR firm, but Astroturfing happens every day at in other fields. It would be interesting to see a similar "literary DNA" analysis of other expert op-ed pieces on other topics.

Here's a dirty little secret: it even happens behind the scenes among military bloggers. Yes, Virginia, there is a vast, clandestine milblogging conspiracy. We'll sometimes email each other about a particularly interesting or entertaining subject, or about a good cause that deserves publicity, or another milblogger who's down and can use some support.

I don't think Astroturfing is always necessarily a bad thing, provided a system of disclosure is in place and the reader knows what he's getting. But advocates and activists need to organize, too. And helping people express a message they already substantially agree with is just part of living in a marketplace of ideas.

I mean, if astroturfing disappeared tomorrow, then the only thing PR firms would have left to do is come up with more stupid stunts.

And do we really need that?

But now that the Washington Post has exposed the practice (not that it was that big a scoop to begin with), I don't think it's unreasonable to expect opinion page editors to do a little due diligence, and input a key sentence or two into Lexis/Nexis or Factiva to make sure material hasn't been rehashed from another piece under another byline, and thus their paper is not being used as an unwitting tool to decieve their readers.

The technology to do that exists now. Indeed, companies specializing in anti-plagiarism software are undergoing a post-Jayson Blair boom, as editors vow to prevent what happened at the Times from happening at their newspaper.

So...

Write your local paper and tell them no more excuses.

:-)

Splash, out

Jason

Phil Carter, author of the excellent Intel Dump, has a good logistical primer for the layman in today's Slate.

Taking a short break from blogging until Sunday. Stay tuned!

Jason

From an Israeli Army soldier currently attending Columbia:

The ban on ROTC and JAG does not mean an absence of
military personnel on campus. At the business school, there is a
student group for military personnel entering the business world.
About 4-6% of students, based on anecdotal evidence, have a
military background. Other schools may have similar groups (I
think the law school used to have one, but it became defunct due to
lack of interest). Also, undergraduate student groups occasionally
bring military personnel as speakers; undergraduates, as
individuals, can - and do - join ROTC programs at Fordham and other
universities.

I am not convinced by your suggestion that the ROTC ban is the
cause, or a major cause, of Columbia's turning out journalists who
are ill-equipped to report on military matters. A Columbia
journalism student with whom I spoke today told me that the general
tenor among his classmates was anti-military, anti-police, typical
left-wing liberal. I question whether such students would engage
with issues and events organized by ROTC cadets on campus; frankly,
I don't believe an active ROTC program at Columbia would do much to
change J-school students' opinions. From what I gather, it is not
Columbia that is inculcating anti-military attitudes in the
journalism students - that attitude is baggage that they bring with
them to campus. Having reservists in the class might help, but of
course the ROTC ban has nothing to do with the admission of
reservists to the J-school.

In response, I don't believe that Columbia's relationship to antimilitary sentiment is correlative, not causative.

I don't have figures yet, but a 4-6% veterans representation on a college campus strikes me as a bit low. Especially for a higher ed institution with some strong graduate programs for older students, such as Columbia's J-school has.

Given the fact that the New York metropolitan area contains seven of the lowest ten recruiting counties in the country, they should be aware that they are already fairly isolated from that subculture within the U.S.

If the military were any other underrepresented group, they'd be working hard to recruit people from that pool.

I suppose it's too much to remind them that campus diversity is usually considered a good thing.

I'll do some digging, though, and find out what the average % of veterans is per college campus, and we can compare that to Columbia.

Jason

Looks like the New York Times still can't tell soldiers from Marines.

Note to editors: If the units in question are mixed, go with the word "troops" or "forces."

If your field reporters can't tell soldiers from Marines by now, after we've been at war for 2 1/2 years, get new ones.

(Hey, at least they didn't illustrate the story with a photo of a klansman)

DOH!!!!

Splash, out

Jason

A Reserve MP speaks out:

Am I wrong for assuming that Reservists and National Guardsmen are part-timers? How is it that the active duty troops like 1AD were only doing six-month rotations while we are doing one year? If so then, why did all of the active-duty units we saw coming in behind us leave already?

Good question.

There's already an MP shortage. Treat your reserve units like that and as soon as they get home it will only get worse.

The 82nd Division also arrived in August and is pulling its troops out now, after a 6 month rotation, although in fairness they bounce back and forth from Iraq to Afghanistan.

They don't have MPs?

The 4th Division, which just came home, doesn't have active duty MPs?

Here's a particularly nutty example:
The 3rd Bn, 124th Infantry Regiment, out of the Florida National Guard, crossed the border with the 3rd Infantry Division and was attached to it during the march up to Baghdad. Everybody thought the 3rd ID did a great job, and when their families started piping up and the griping started to become an embarrassment to Rumsfeld and the Administration, they were quickly ushered home.

But not the 3-124th Infantry. Those guys who had fought all the way to Baghdad as part of the 3rd Infantry Division were stripped from their parent unit and got to watch the Active Duty guys go home, just as the part-timers got the word like everybody else that they'd be extended for a year boots-on-the ground.

Sure, we needed the light infantry more than we needed the mech monkeys of the 3rd ID at that point. And yes, we need the MPs something awful, too.

It is kinda tough to explain to the troops, though.

Splash, out

Jason

Check out Ollie North's love in with the Marines in my old stomping grounds at Ar Ramadi.

Now check out this paragraph:

But the Marines do it - far from home, in the dark of night, after working all day, and while everybody else is tucked safely in bed. These 18, 19, and 20 year olds, who are part diplomat, part warrior, are taking the terrorists off the streets one by one. They have already seen more death and destruction and have had more responsibility than their civilian peers will ever have. And they do it all with grace, modesty and courage.

Do Marines do things with grace? Mmmm, maybe. Courage? Absolutely! The Marine Corps tradition of personal courage and sacrifice is unparalled among any fighting force of its size.

But modesty?????

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Splash, out

Jason

C.C. Kraemer loathes the idea of a draft, and lets us know why here.

He overstates his case by a long shot.

Webster was not alone in recognizing that to take a young man forcibly from his life and compel him to give up his right to himself says one thing: The government supercedes the sovereignty of the individual.

By that line of thinking, Kraemer ought to declare himself a conscienscious objector to the Federal Income Tax. We'll see how far that gets him.

Also, by his logic, the Franklin Roosevelt Administration represented an orgiastic triumph of Fascism.

I don't think a draft is practical, nor would it be cost effective. I simply do not believe that the Federal Government could find productive employment for millions of young Americans. The problem, of course, is that the bureaucrats who would run such a program would try anyway.

So except in times of national emergency, or in times like the Great Depression, when it was neccessary for the Government to provide a massive Keynesian stimulus to the economy, I am not a draft supporter.

But I'm not ideologically opposed to the idea.

Rather, a draft, in theory, would level the burden of arms by including a portion of the affluent students from the families who have benefitted the most from the economic and political freedoms secured by America's armed forces.

It is particularly galling, in this context, that some of our elite universities--with tuitions well out of reach of Montgomery GI Bill benefits--continue to prohibit ROTC programs on their campuses.

Put simply, if we do have a draft, we should start with the students of Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and Yale.

Splash, out

Jason

I swear to God this looks like something out of The Onion:

TOKYO, April 22 — The young Japanese civilians taken hostage in Iraq returned home this week, not to the warmth of a yellow-ribbon embrace but to a disapproving nation's cold stare.

"You got what you deserve!" read one hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. "You are Japan's shame," another wrote on the Web site of one of the former hostages. They had "caused trouble" for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill the former hostages $6,000 for air fare.

Alas, this is not satire. This is straight out of the New York Times.

And now it's time for an IraqNow Stupid Factoid:

Asian-American women have the highest suicide rates of all women in the US between the ages of 15 and 24.

Be quick to forgive.

Splash, out

Jason

Al Jazeera has photos of US troops flexcuffing women and 8 year old girls.

Nice.

The patches on the soldiers helmets identify them as members of the 3rd Infantry Division, out of Fort Stewart GA (with a detachment at Fort Benning).

I'm not sure if any 3rd Infantry troops are there right now. Most of them--if not all of them--came home last fall. If some of them rotated back I wasn't aware of it. Which tells me that chances are good that these are old photographs from before September. Honestly I'd be surprised if they were recent.

I can say that it just wasn't done in our neck of the woods. On the very rare instances when my battalion did detain a woman--the only time I remember that happening was when we picked up the sister of a known resistance figure who sources told us was an insurgent coordinator herself--we just called to the local sheikh and he had someone come out and pick her up. And she remained under effective house arrest at the sheikh's house for a day or two--on the sheikh's personal guarantee--while we sorted out the information we had, went through available documents, etc.

After a day or two, she was released.

More often, though, our troops would go on raids, and the women would offer them tea.

These chicks obviously look like hard-line Saddam loyalist trained killers. Especially the little one. Definitely a dead-ender.

Splash, out

Jason

Check out this funny series of photos of a Washington DC protest over the Gitmo detainees from INDCJournal

Look at the media cage. There's almost as many media as protesters!

And all the cameramen are out there eager to make the protests look as big as possible, of course. Because nobody wants to go out with a crew and have to come back to face the news director and say "well, we were wrong. Nothing happened."

News types are ambitious, and they want to get on TV. If they spend all morning out there with nothing to show for it on the evening news, then they've failed. Do too much of it, too expensively, and they're out of a job.

So they're going to try to package things to make the protest actually appear as something other than a joke--to lend substance and conflict to their story. So they'll do their damnedest to overdramatize the image.

Of course, if they did serious commentary and analysis of the case while using the court as a backdrop, that's one thing. But if they at any point mentioned the protesters with a straight face, and tried to fill the frame with them at any point, then they misled you.

INDCJournal boils it down to this:

Does it bother anyone that this nearly infinitesimal group of protestors has such a disproportionate impact on the public debate via the misleading dramatization provided by a national news correspondent?

Thanks to INDCMedia for pulling the curtain back on the Wizards of Air.

Splash, out

Jason

Hat tip: Glenn

Link.

How can Columbia University--home to our nation's most prestigious school of journalism--possibly turn out reporters and editors able to understand and cover the armed forces, when the University makes a policy of insulating the military from campus? Indeed, how is that possible when the intellectual climate at Columbia is such that ROTC programs have been banned for more than thirty years?

Splash, out

Jason

That's right, Splashers. My terminal leave ends soon, at which time I am discharged from active duty, and the days of the Army paying me to stay home and blog come to an end.

Which means I revert to my former life as a journalist.

Which also means it's time for me to start networking like mad looking for work.

So I'll start with my very best friends in the world--a couple of thousand hard-core splash-heads who come to read this blog.

I'll start with the premise that you keep coming here because it's entertaining, provocative, informative, or challenging.

If you are an editor, or publisher, or marketing/advertising directory and you need lively, timely, accurate copy, well-sourced and on time, and written for your specific audience, then I can help.

You already know some of my military writing. And if you've been following along for a while, you've seen my soldier's finance tips and other financial writing.

Here are a few more examples of my published work in investing, personal finance, and taxes.

If you think I can be a good fit for your organization or publication, let's talk.

Email me and I'll send you a resume and some representative clips in national publications, and together we'll solve problems and serve your readers.

Splash, out

Jason

I Get a lot of emails asking me 'what does 'splash, out mean?'

Well, in the United Kingdom, it means 'to spend a bunch of money.' Roughly analogous to the American expression, 'to shell out.'

That's not where I got it from, though.

The term actually comes from the procedures for calling for and adjusting indirect fires, such as artillery and mortar fire.

So maybe it does mean, "shell out," after all.

Splash, out :-)

Jason

An alert reader, serving in Iraq points out that Al Jazeera conveniently omits the fact that the Mayor of Basra blames Al Qaeda for the attack.

Nice catch.

For what it's worth, I thought this was a really cool sentence:

Occupation forces managed to limit the extent of the fighting by calling in air support.

A nice, solid, basic article from Al Jazeera, with just the right touch of detached irony.

Too bad we can't count on similar balance from London's Evening Standard and the UK Telegraph, huh?

Splash out

Jason

Keep an on how the news magazines and other outlets cover this morning's awful series of bombings in Basra.

Many of the news outlets consciously decided to air the graphic, borderline pornographic photos of US security workers getting mutilated and strung up on a bridge like sheep carcasses. (Here's the one the New York Times picked for their front page.) Yes, news editors knew that they would be incredibly disturbing and hurtful to to the families of the victims to see their loved ones so desecrated. But those outlets who released them made a calculated judgement that the news value in the photos outweighed the sensibilities of a handful of families.

Fine. I'm comfortable with that.

In addition, news editors had to capture the singularity of the event We had already seen mobs of irate Iraqis and hundreds of burning cars. This event was different than what had happened hundreds of times before. (Well, something similar already happened in Mosul last year, but there were no compelling images available, so as far as the news was concerned, it didn't really happen. The Fallujah mob apparently had a PR guy with them who knew how to reach the media.)

Indeed, courtesy of the Poynter Institute, here's how the New York Times reached their decision on which photo to run.

The photos served to illustrate the viciousness of the opponent and the virulence of his hatred for Americans, and focused renewed debate on why we are there, and given that there is still a sizeable element in the Iraqi population willing to kill Americans and mutilate their corpses, whether we can ever truly win.

Cool.

I'm comfortable with that, too.

But this morning, terrorists incinerated two school buses full of Iraqi children. Yet the only imagery I've seen is of the sterile exterior of the bus, if the bus is visible in the frame at all.

Now, in this case, we don't have the downside of American families seeing their own loved ones charbroiled five million times over in the pages of Newsweek. The chances that the families of the young Iraqi victims are small, indeed.

Yet the media is keeping a more respectful distance.

Ok, I'm comfortable with that, too, in and of itself. But why the difference in policy?

Here's one reason:

The Fallujah photos focused the debate on whether we've accomplished squat in the year since Baghdad fell.

Photos of the Basra schoolchildren would focus the debate on how we can get at the bastards who did it, and tear their guts out by the roots.

That's the only way to fight and win wars. And the media is just not comfortable with that.

Splash, out

Jason

This is one of the most egregious examples of 'slanting' I've ever seen:

Headline: 42% Want Our Troops to Quit Iraq

"Nearly half of voters want British troops to pull out of Iraq, a new poll showed today as yet another country announced it was withdrawing from the international coalition in the country."
Link.

Of course, another way to say this is "A strong majority do not want British troops to pull out of Iraq."

It came as Honduras became the latest nation to pledge a pull-out of its 370 soldiers

The term 'latest' implies a trend. But Honduras is really only the second nation to do so, although they were just joined by the Dominican Republic this morning. Of course, there's no mention of the fact that Italy, Poland, Japan, Bulgaria, and other nations have all affirmed their commitment to see their rotations through.

No. That wouldn't serve this newspaper's obvious intent in spinning the news.

amid rising violence

Ok. Well, except that violence is actually decreasing this week, but ok.

and public opposition to America's bypassing of the UN.

Whoosh!!!!!! Where did that come from??? Is that even still an issue? Especially since the Bush Administration is including UN officials in the planning of the return of sovreignty to the Iraqi people, and has signaled its willingness to sign on to much of the UN proposal.

Of course, no mention of that, either.

You know, this article doesn't even read like news. It reads more like an essay in The Nation.

George Bush made clear his anger at Spain's decision to withdraw its 1,300 troops from Iraq in a terse five-minute phone call to the country's Prime Minister.

Wrong. Actually, the Prime Minister called Bush. Get your facts right, Standard.

Some 27 per cent said soldiers should be withdrawn immediately

Wow. That's pretty, umm, unimpressive.

Backing for the war slumped from 53 per cent in January to just 41 per cent today, while Mr Blair's personal ratings remained at minus 20 points.

Now this is the only decent paragraph of the whole story. Of course, it doesn't come until the very end.

Of course, the Standard still ought to be good for wrapping up your fish and chips.

Splash, out

Jason

A Republican Senator suggests we may need a draft.

From Agents France-Presse.

Again, I don't think that's neccessarily an awful thing.

Well, maybe it would seem that way for some people who think they're better than people who serve in the Armed Forces.

Which is another good reason for the draft.

Splash, out

Jason

The Oil for Food scandal isn't just the purview of a few conservative cranks at the Wall Street Journal and their cheerleaders in the blogosphere anymore.

ABC goes with the story, and airs out the 'smoking gun,' a 1998 memo from Saddam's oil mullah detailing a transfer $ 3.5 million worth of oil contracts to Benon Sevan, a former UN Undersecretary General, who actually ran the Oil for Food program for six years.

As noted here, earlier documents also implicate a former Interior Minister of France and a British Member of Parliament.

Sure, the Wall Street Journal got it here, first, weeks ago. And according to the Journal's sources, the scale of the fraud committed is actually twice as large as that put forth by ABC.

But ABC is harder for UN apologists to ignore.

The New York Times glosses over the Benon connection here...and buries Benon's name 10 paragraphs deep into the story.

This is a UN Undersecretary we're talking about here, people. He headed the largest humanitarian relief program ever. He headed it. And He stole millions.

His boss, Kofi Annan--who tried to diffuse the scrutiny early on, has a son who may also be implicated, through his role in a Swiss company who also had dealings with the oil-for-food program.

You think Annan is going to be motivated to provide energetic oversight?

Splash, out

Jason

"The spigot is willing; but the flush is weak."

...And an anonymous source at that!

Several people have written in asking me to comment on this piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph

My take: this article is a piece of garbage that wouldn't even pass muster in a high school journalism class. Here's why:

1.) The entire article is based on an interview with one source.

2.) The source is anonymous.

3.) The source claims to be speaking for the "British chain of command."

4.) The reporter doesn't even make a game attempt at verifying or corroborating the story told by his anonymous source by interviewing other British officers. You'd think a British reporter would be able to find someone willing to talk to him!

5.) He makes no attempt to contextualize the story with the fact that British troops have been concentrated in the anti-Saddam Shia south all along. American troops, on the other hand, have been concentrated in the Sunni triangle--including Ramadi, Fallujah, and Tikrit--and had always been facing a very different war.

6. The headline uses 'officers' in the plural form, even though only one officer is anonymously attributed as saying anything like that. So the paper's editors are buying into this crap.

If the reporter had done a little more, well, reporting, then one of three things would have happened.

1.) He would have found no one to corroborate the first officer's claim.

2.) He would have found other officers who would flatly contradict the first officer's claim.

3.) He would have found more officers who would corroborate the claim--hopefully on the record.

In the first instance, there's no story.

In the second instance, the story is actually positive.

In the third instance, he would have had a story, but it would look nothing like this piece of trash. It would have been well sourced with reactions from several British officers, and possibly a reaction from the Americans as well.

But in no case would a properly reported article look like this one.

It's a fine example of how not to write a news story!

Where are the Telegraph's guidelines on anonymous sourcing? Don't they tell their reporters that if a source wants to stay off the record, then you'd damn well better be able to verify his story somewhere else?

The Telegraph should have sent this right back to the reporter and told him not to hand in any more copy until he did his $&#*ing job.

I mean, Jayson Blair did better job of reporting when he was plagiarizing from home!

Splash, out

Jason

One reader takes James Dunnigan to task over the ICBM story:

About the ICBM motors, the fuel in solid rocket motors degrads after time the Soviets have had a bad time with this. This is the main reason the Air Force is replacing them, just in case the fuel is aging. Bad time to find out they don't work when you need them. And while they might work now, the replacement will take a while. Now they might be spending extra for EPA safe motors, I don't know. I don't think it really emissions when they are launched, but rather the eventual disposal of them, when they become old. The stray page is a great site, but sometimes they tell half the story to sensitize the story.

Another reader rakes me over the coals over my treatment of Jim Catalupo's death:

I can't help but think this was kind of a cheap shot...of the sort you'd pounce on if you saw it elsewhere. First, how do you expect the company spokesperson would announce the news of a death? With a laugh and an elbow-jab?

Second, do you *know* his death had anything to do with eating poorly, and of McDonalds food in particular? The fact is, when people get old, they can and do have heart attacks even if they eat well and exercise regularly. Unless you know otherwise, you're doing what you pick apart sloppy reporters for doing.

Yeah, I'll admit, the post was insensitive and in poor taste. You won't find me gloating in perverse glee over the death of Rachel Corrie, though.

Another reader:

They mentioned their difficulties shooting at the Fedayeen thugs et. al., as those courageous scum bags dashed across open streets behind children on bicycles. As they are using our values against us, can we not return the favor? I read about General Pershing in the Philippines, ( I believe it was Pershing), who, having captured some Moros, summarily shot all but one. The dead were buried in pigskins, and the one released to tell the story to his pals. You can imagine the impact on the rest of the Moros. (I believe Muslims believe they will be denied entrance to heaven when so buried.) Why the hell can't we do the same? Or tell the bastards our bullets are dipped in pig grease, or something?

St. Paul, MN



My take: Pershing did not have to worry about a wider audience. In the absence of CNN and Al Jazeera, the only people likely to receive Pershing's message were the Moros in the Philippines.

In this case, though, it is critical to separate the radical Islamists from moderate Muslims. If we can do this successfully, and follow up with well executed tactical operations to kill the radicals, we win. If our policies are perceived as insensitive toward Islam, or if the war is perceived in the muslim world as a war against Islam itself, rather than radical killers and thugs on the fringes, we lose.

Tactics like Pershing's would not serve our strategic goal of separating the radicals from the populace.


Our Swiss friend writes in:

I am appalled by your hardliner stance on Israel-Palestine (remember, creating enemies).
this drives Jordanians into anti US camp.

Look. I'll make it so simple even a Euro-lefty can understand it. Hamas is a terrorist organization. They blow up shops and school busses full of teenagers and children. They blow up restaurants and cafes full of families. They've done it again and again and again. Sheik Yassin was its founder. Rantisi was its head.

The Israeli offensive against Hamas's leadership has resulted in a reduction in the rate bombings and has therefore saved innocent lives.

I know Jewish lives don't count for much in Europe, but for some reason, Jews themselves are rather attached to them.

How selfish of them.

Splash, out

Jason

...Latin-American Vagicil Sales Skyrocket


Honduras is yanking its 370 man contingent from Iraq, according to this report from the Reuters "news agency."

But note the way they frame the story in the lead paragraph:

In a blow to President Bush and his coalition partners in Iraq, Honduras followed Spain on Monday in announcing it will pull its troops out of the country.

Why the needless appendage "In a blow to President Bush?"

Does it really qualify as a 'blow?' After all, Spain was a lot more important. And there's no sign the other centroamericano countries are wavering in their commitment to finish out their present tours. So it's not like we really fear Honduras setting off a domino effect, here.

Why not whip out some negative capability here, take the intrusive reporter's analysis out of the news (the analysis was lousy, anyway), and get the flip out of the way of the story?

Here's another way:

Honduras is pulling its 370 troops out of Iraq, Honduran officials said Monday, citing rising levels of violence and political pressure following Spain's similar announcement over the weekend. Spain is currently providing the parent unit for the Honduran contingent, as well as several other Spanish speaking countries, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.

Just the facts.

The 'blow to the Bush administration' sticks out like a thumb in the reader's eye.

So why the comment?

Oh, I forgot.

This is Reuters.

Splash, out

Jason

B.D.'s been hit!!!!

Garry Trudeau's taking on some very potent subject matter.

Good for him.

Stay tuned.

Tom Brokaw has announced that December 1st will mark his final broadcast as anchor of NBC News.

Will he ever be able to pronounce the word "President?"

Splash, out

Jason

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used...

Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere.



From veteran military writer James Dunnigan at Strategy Page.

That's where all that body armor and up-armored Humvee money went. That's why the USMC has to hold a f#$&ing bake sale to get Iraqi TV and radio stations up and running. That's why we're running a deficit and financing it by floating 15, 20, and 30 year bonds to be repaid by kids now in the fifth grade while baby boomers insist on social security payments at their expense.

Splash, out

Jason

(Hat tip: Peter at Eyelinematch.)

From today's New York Times:

"We are trying to use peaceful negotiations to try to bring the situation in Falluja to an end," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, chief spokesman for the military command here. But he said there was "a very clear understanding" that if the agreement did not "bear fruit, that the Marine forces out there are more than prepared to continue offensive operations."

Now there's a man who understands diplomacy!

The New York Times carries such clout in the literary world that a thumbs down from one of their reviewers can make the difference between a book making the bestseller list at Borders or the Bargain Bin at Wal-Mart.

And so it follows that the assigning editor of the book review section of the New York Times can make or break a book--and kick the rudder of the cultural ship to the left or right--simply by choosing whether to send the book to a likely ideological friend or foe.

Reader tip: Never read a Times book review--or anyone else's--without first Googling the name of the reviewer.

The new Bob Woodward book, Plan of Attack, is out on shelves, now, to fellative Hosanna by the Times' Pulitzer prize-winning Michiko Kakutani entitled "A Heady Mix of Pride and Prejudice Led to War."

Kakutani, it turns out, is no friend of neoconservatism. Indeed, here she is just last January on David Frum and Richard Perle's new book An End to Evil: Winning the War on Terror.

The title of this new book by David Frum and Richard Perle, ''An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror,'' says it all. It captures the authors' absolutist, Manichaean language and worldview; their cocky know-it-all tone; their swaggering insinuation that they know ''how to win the war on terror'' and that readers, the Bush administration and the rest of the world had better listen to them.

Neither the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that might have posed an imminent threat to America, nor the failure to establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 seems to have given the authors pause. They argue that ''even in the absence of stockpiles of weapons Saddam was known to have created, the threat from his programs was undeniable.''

Link.

For any book critical of Administration hawks, the Times Book assignment editor could not have picked a friendlier book reviewer than Kakutani. The deck was stacked. Kakutani is a known ideological foe of Cheney, Bush, Rice, and neoconservatism. And the Times chose her.

This is how they keep the finger on the scale.

Now, in fairness, Kakutani cannot exactly be relied upon to slather praise upon the heroes of the left. Regarding Hillary Clinton's book, Living History, she writes:

Overall the book has the overprocessed taste of a stump speech, the calculated polish of a string of anecdotes to be delivered on a television chat show.

Link

So she can certainly swing a bat from both sides of the plate. But with Hillary, her problem was with the execution, not with the author herself. But when it comes to the neocons within the Bush Administration, it's clear that she holds a set of assumptions so diametrically opposed from them that they cannot be said to receive a fair shake.

But Woodward couldn't pay for a better reviewer.

At least in the Frum and Perle review, her world view is evident in the article. It's clear as Alaska air where she's coming from, and she writes the review one would expect of someone hostile to the neoconservative point of view. She is viscerally hostile to the Bush Administration.

But you can't tell that from her review of Plan of Attack. It reads like a normal review from a reasonably impartial critic who thought that Woodward wrote a very good book.

Here's an idea:

With every new book review the New York Times or anyone else publishes, include a link to the last ten reviews from that reviewer on books in a similar category. Or force reviewers to adhere to a star-rating scheme and provide 5-10 words describing each book they've reviewed over the last three years or so and include them with the dead-tree additions, right there with the article.

We cannot and should not expect book reviewers to be without biases. A truly objective reviewer would probably write a lousy column.

But we can expect transparency and disclosure from our newspapers.

Splash, out

Jason

James R. Cantalupo, the 60 year-old head of the McDonald's Corporation, died of a heart attack, said a company spokesperson with a straight face.

Here's the Associated Press's Stephen Manning, writing on a problem we've known about in Iraq since day one: Leishmaniasis--a disease transmitted by sand flies, and common throughout the middle east and South America.

The lesions will eventually go away on their own and would not affect a soldier's ability to serve.

Hey, Stephen--you cannot trust the Army to discuss its own medical issues! The Army's always been very concerned with limiting its liability.

Dig a bit deeper, though, and you find that there are actually two kinds of leishmaniasis, both transmitted by sand flies. The first is cutaneous, and the second is visceral.

For example, here's the Center for Disease Control:

The manifestations of visceral leishmaniasis, such as fever, weight loss, enlargement of the spleen and liver, and anemia, typically develop months, but sometimes years, after a person becomes infected. If untreated, symptomatic visceral leishmaniasis typically is fatal.

Now that's a different kettle of fish!

Here's the hole in the story: are there any documented cases of visceral leishmaniasis among soldiers?

Not to be to trigger happy about this subject. 90% of all documented cases of visceral leishmaniasis occur in Brazil, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sudan.

So my gut tells me that it's unlikely that there are any cases of visceral leishmaniasis yet among soldiers.

Nevertheless, it's useful to make the distinction between the two varieties of the disease, and to keep a sharp eye out for any instances of the visceral strain.

The reporter might have mentioned that its malaria season again, too. And soldiers are once again taking their anti-malarial pills: usually Doxycycline--or, if they can't tolerate the Doxy, then Mefloquine. But Mefloquine has been associated with bouts of violence, psychotic episodes, and depression.

So military doctors have a decision to make: Force doxy-intolerant soldiers to take the Mefloquine until we can rule out the side effects, or take their chances with malaria.

Tune in.
Turn on.
Splash, out

Jason

Match the following statements with their authors.

"The Administration's campaign has been a disaster. It turned a guerrilla war into a real war, and the real losers are the civilians."

"I had doubts about the bombing from the beginning. I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic arena."

The President "Has no plan for the end. He ought to exercize some leadership and admit [the mistake], and come to some sort of negotiated end."

"It's not useful for the President's spin machine to be out there saying [the enemy] is weakening...Nothing has changed."

Our forces face "a quagmire. A long, protracted, bloody war."

"I strongly believe we need a simultaneous withdrawal [of the enemy forces], have a stopping of the bombing, and the simultaneous insertion of international peacekeeping forces."

"When Ronald Reagan saw that he had made a mistake in putting our soldiers in Lebanon, he admitted the mistake. And he withdrew from Lebanon."

So who said these things? Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, Al Gore, and Barbara Boxer?

No.

John Kerry, Cynthia McKinnon, Howard Dean, and Hillary Clinton?

Wrong again.

Those statements were uttered by Republicans Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, and Don Nickles. In 1999. And noted by Slate's William Saletan.

Here's his prophetic closer:

Some Democrats call Republicans who make these arguments unpatriotic. Republicans reply that they're serving their country by debunking and thwarting a bad policy administered by a bad president. You can be sure of only two things: Each party is arguing exactly the opposite of what it argued the last time a Republican president led the nation into war, and exactly the opposite of what it will argue next time.

Heh. Losers.

Nice work, Bill.

By the way Milosevic's doing prison time.

Splash, out

Jason

Looks like the hard-line approach taken by the "hard-line" prime minister Ariel Sharon is getting results--and saving Israeli lives.

From today's New York Times

Israel's killing of Dr. Rantisi in a Saturday night missile strike, and a similar attack on March 22 that took the life of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, are the two most dramatic examples of the sustained Israeli offensive against the group. While the Israeli military actions have generated retaliatory bombings in the past, the overall number of Palestinian attacks has dropped substantially since they peaked in the spring of 2002...

After more than 50 suicide bombings in 2002, the figure declined to 20 last year. With a half-dozen bombings so far this year, the trend is similar to last year.

Israel has significantly weakened Hamas over the past two years, and it is not clear whether the most dangerous Palestinian faction can deliver on its pledge to launch a renewed wave of suicide bombings, as it has done frequently in the past.

Link.

Beautiful.

Israel didn't get to pop Sheik Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi because some doddering bearded clown in a sheet got heatstroke on a mountain top and stumbled down with their itineraries etched out in a devine scrawl on tablets of granite.

Yassin and Rantisi were betrayed.

The Israelis knew where they were going, what time they would be there, and who would be traveling with them. They even had descriptions of the cars.

That's what good human intelligence will do for you.

And as long as Hamas is busy devouring itself looking for the traitor in their own midst, it's not going to be able to coordinate any major offensives.

This is the beauty of the strategic offensive.

The killing of a leader has value and repercussions far beyond the leader's own death. As long as the Israelis keep aggressively going after them, Hamas has to devote minds and man-hours to defensive measures. They'll have to travel in smaller groups. Their cells will have to operate in more isolation from one another. They will have to rein in communications. They will have to spend scarce resources on expensive MANPADS--which means less money is available for offensive operations.

They will have to employ decoys. They will have to vary their routines. Which makes it hard to do little things like remind everyone "hey, don't forget, we have the truck-bomb committee making meeting on Tuesday!"

Remember too, that Hamas has lost a major state sponsor in Saddam Hussein. So cash flow ain't what it used to be.

Men avenge small offenses. They cannot avenge large ones.
--Niccolo Machiavelli


Hamas vows of revenge are now becoming irrelevant.

They haven't avenged Sheik Yassin's death yet. So now are they going to come up with two revenge cycles now instead of just one? It's not even clear they can properly avenge the first death.

Israel lost nothing by killing Rantsini. Hamas was doing their best to kill Israelis already. They aren't going to do their ultra-double-best now, just because Ransini's dead.

Israel will lose nothing by killing the next Hamas leader. And the next one after that. Bonus points if they can kill them within a month of one another. Now that the Israelis are killing Hamas leaders wholesale, then killing additional Hamas leaders--one after the other--is almost a risk-free course of action.

Meanwhile, if taking the helm at Hamas amounts to a death sentence, Hamas will soon find it hard to recruit quality senior level management for the posts. Their top talent will mysteriously find something better to do.

And now it's Hamas who has to live in fear.

Keep the 'skeer' on 'em!
--Nathan Bedford Forest

An attack in one place can have effects far removed from the immediate objective. And when the attack is pressed, effects can compound themselves exponentially.

Success begets success. When Saddam Hussein was captured, sources in the Sunni triangle started singing like birds.

When the Russians pierced the Axis line as they initiated their counteroffensive at Stalingrad, Romanian units miles away broke and fled.

Small, local successess, skillfully and ruthlessly exploited, can be leveraged into huge gains.

Such is the terrible beauty of the calculus of war.

Splash, out

Jason

Journal Entry

15 May 03
Al Asad Air Base, Iraq

We've started occupying the Iraqi city of Hadithah, Hadithah Dam, and the villages south of the dam in earnest. Our Battalion tactical operations center, with the Battalion commander, executive officer, operations officer, and ops sergeant major, is setting up inside Hadithah Dam now.

Hadithah Dam is actually an important piece of real estate. It provides much of the electricity for the entire Euphrates river valley all the way down to Baghdad, I gather. US Special operations forces seized it early in April, and have been hit several times by Iraqi counter-spec-ops teams, including artillery, possibly operating out of the city of Hadithah.

If they do have artillery, it would be almost impossible for them to be operating out of anywhere else.

We are very concerned about attempts to sabotage Hadithah Dam, in order to deny electricity to the river valley and discredit US forces and foment unrest. It might also be possible for them to abruptly flood the whole valley with a massive release of water. Saddam's just the kind of malicious bastard who might do that.

We've begun pulling reconnaissance on a former Iraqi army colonel who's been intimidating and threatening the local populace in Hadithah. He has not threatened US forces yet, but some of the villagers have come to US forces asking for help and protection from this guy.

Yesterday an element from Bravo company drove by the entrance to the military housing compound where the guy lives, and we confirmed that the entrance is guarded by men with AK-47s. We have the gate and guard on video. He was trying to conceal the weapon from US troops. The B company element drove away without engaging. Wise move. No need to tip our hand.

Bravo company followed up by dispatching four squads in an all-night reconnaisance of the perimeter of the housing complex. Don't know what they found out yet.

The Battalion is considering conducting a raid-and-snatch for the colonel, then use one company to conduct a search of all 600 houses.

I'm not too keen on picking a fight yet, before we have the battalion's vehicles up and running. We still don't have hardly any tactical vehicles or vehicle mounted radios, and no communications between Hadithah dam, Hadithah village, and our trains here at Al Asad.

No coms, no medevac flights from the battle. That much can be arranged with proper planning and coordination, though. We could request some Bradleys or tanks and helicopter support from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Aviation radios are good. We probably won't get an air cap for the entire 600-house search, though, which will take a day or three.

No sign yet of the line haul from Jordan. It could be another two weeks to a month. It's hard to find Jordanian truck drivers willing to drive this far into Iraq. The Jordanian government is also a little skittish about US military vehicles driving into Iraq from their territory.

Flying in is ok. And they're even cool with the line haul of US military equipment on civilian trucks. But when US soldiers are driving their own vehicles down Jordanian highways, headed to Iraq, that puts them in an uncomfortable situation politically.

The result downrange is an infantry unit out in Indian country that doesn't have the equipment it needs to accomplish its mission.

As most of you know, I've recommended Vanguard funds on this blog several times. I use them myself.

Look for Vanguard to make a major announcement at about 9 AM monday morning.

I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that Vanguard--which has always pitched itself within the mutual fund industry as "more ethical than thou"-- been caught with its pants down, allowing larger shareholders to make late day trades on more advantageous terms than small shareholders, in violation of its prospectuses filed with the SEC. That's a big deal, actually--especially in the wake of a number of scandals in the mutual fund industry.

(Scroll down a little for the story on the excellent www.fundalarm.com.)

It doesn't really change my recommendation, or my reason for using Vanguard in the first place. Vanguard's reprehensible behavior probably cost me $1.87 over the course of the last year.

But I jut thought I'd give you a heads-up so you can watch the "mea culpas" on monday and make up your own mind.

Splash, out

It turns out that the Israeli killing of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi occured just hours after a bombing at a Gaza border crossing killed one Israeli and injured three. Hamas is claiming responsibility.

Where is the condemnation of Hamas by the EU?

How can a border guard be considered a legitimate target, but not the leadership of the organization which targets him?

Europe's always been pretty weak on confronting terrorism--or even calling it what it is--so long as the victims are Jews.

Splash, out

Jason

Der Biss lacks all conviction, but Die Wurste are full of passionate intensity.

Britain condemns the Israeli killing of another alleged Hamas leader.

Here's another headline from a couple of years ago:

U.S. Kills Al Qaida Leaders by Remote Control

I don't get it. It's ok for the US to launch missiles at Al Qaeda leaders in cars in Yemen, but it's not ok for Israel to the same thing right in their own back yard?

How many people does Hamas have to murder before the Israelis are allowed to kill them right back, just as we are killing Al Qaeda and Saddam Fedayeen?

A little intellectual honesty, please, Mr. Straw.

Splash, out

Jason

Jason

I haven't seen anyone pick this up yet, but...

The title of Bob Woodward's latest book, Plan of Attack, is a very barbed allusion to a poem called "The General" by the great war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Splash, out

Jason

(Contribute to IraqNow's book review and coffee swilling fund! Purchase Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack)

The New York Times deigns to look down its nose at Washington D.C. blogosphere gadfly Wonkette--and delivers one unwitting laugh line after another in a precious example of accidental self-parody.

Here's the link.

Laugh line #1: When the notoriously unreliable Drudge Report blared the stunning headline in February that Senator John Kerry had had an affair with a woman on his staff, the gossip columns in Washington's newspapers did not print a word

Now, remember, this is the newspaper that gave us the serial fabrication of Jayson Blair. Indeed, the Times kept Blair on the payroll for months after his supervisor wrote "We have to stop Jayson Blair from writing for the Times. Right now."

Suppose a senior White House employee had hacked out a pre-9/11 email to the President: "We have to stop Mohammed Atta from taking flying lessons and allowing boxcutter knives on commercial planes. Right now."

Suppose further that the President took no action.

What would be the editorial position of the New York Times? That's right--they'd be screaming for heads to role for dereliction of duty. Why didn't the President follow up?

Which is why for the newspaper which made a star out of Jayson Blair to heave the unreliable label around about anybody else is, well, deliciously ironic.

I'm sorry. Did I say "ironic?" What I meant to say is "ain't that just like a rat calling a fox a "pointy-snouted varmint."

Laugh line #2: Her main competition in town, The Reliable Source, a regular feature in The Washington Post, has held a near monopoly since its debut in 1992. Richard Leiby, who took over from Lloyd Grove last fall, said on Friday that the newspaper's standards limit what he can write. "There really is not a gossip column at The Washington Post," he said. "We're really writing fairly rigorously sourced items of news interest, as opposed to who's sleeping with whom."

This from the guy who outed the romance between Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane, and CNN's Eason Jordan.

Not to be outdone, The Reliable Source's former penman, Lloyd Grove, tries to stake out the moral high ground, by insisting he had the scoop that Newt Gingrich was being unfaithful to his wife, but didn't run it.

Says Grove: "I haven't lowered my reporting standards just because I'm in New York rather than Washington."

Zing!

Laugh line #3: Mr. Leiby described her as a "foulmouthed, inaccurate, opinionated little vixen."

What class.

The Columbia Journalism Review scolded Ms. Cox for covering the Kerry intern rumor as if it were true.

Hey, CJR--what about the UK Telegraph, which went with the story at almost the same time Drudge did?

And you're worried about a little blog?

Laugh Line #4: "I just don't think that readers in Washington are that eager to hear about sex lives."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Splash, out

Jason

Michael Totten, in an essay in Tech Central Station, says it's time to embrace the ugly truth: Western Europe is an ally no more. So let's stop pretending they are, and cut a neutrality deal. We'll kill terrorists on your behalf, and you admit your neutrality and get out of our way:

If Europeans don't feel comfortable taking the war against the terrorists into the heart of the Middle East, Americans can and will do the dirty work for them. Americans will do it with or without their blessing or help. We'll do it not to spite them but because we have no choice.

If they feel their support in the Terror War puts them at risk of attack, as the Spanish clearly do, their best option is to cut a deal with the United States: deputize America to fight the war for them. They can do this quietly. We will fight for Germany, for Spain, and for France. In return, they will wage no anti-American campaigns and make no complaints about how we fight or about American "unilateralism."

We will be fighting for them against our common enemies. Europeans had nothing to gain but oil contracts and the illusion of gratitude for playing the role of Saddam Hussein's and Yasser Arafat's lawyer. They'll get attacked by fanatics all the same.


A lot of people wouldn't like this arrangement. Some Europeans would grouse that they don't pull enough weight in the world. Some Americans would complain that Europeans are defense freeloaders. But that's basically the way it is already. All I'm suggesting is that both Europe and the US accept and "institutionalize" reality.

The excerpt doesn't do it justice. Read the whole thing here.

Via Eyelinematch.

The Nation's claims that US Marine snipers are firing on ambulances and cutting off access to at least one of Fallujah's hospitals are being corroborated independently in The Guardian.

Why?

Splash, out

Jason

The Finance Asia chief copy editor is so fired.

(From John of Arrrrgggh!)

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.

--Michael Moore.

Isn't it funny how almost every Iraqi corpse who comes through the morgue at the Fallujah hospital mysteriously becomes a noncombatant?

I have no doubt that innocent people are losing their lives in Fallujah. But some of the newspaper reports on Iraqi casualties strike me as a little, well, credulous.

I keep hearing that U.S. Marines have killed over 56 Iraqi children in Fallujah. And every day, the director of the Fallujah hospital mentions more.

But according to this guy's account--republished in The Nation, there's more to the story:

We left the city as part of a long convoy of civilian vehicles loaded with families. On the way, we passed groups of mujahedeen at their posts, among them defiant armed boys as young as 11.

[emphasis added]

The author also describes a small boy yelling "We will be mujahedeen until we die!"

Now, the author uses the word 'boys' in the plural form. So he's not talking about one isolated incident. The insurgents' use of child-soldiers appears to be fairly common in Fallujah. (The numerous children in the photos from the mutilating Fallujah mob a couple of weeks back bear this out.)

The problem is, this guy can cite hospital officials that most of the dead and wounded are civilians, and then note that many of them are women and children, without noting the apparent irony here.

Now, call me quaint, but as soon as an 11 year-old walks onto a battlefield and picks up an AK-47, he becomes a combatant.

I don't hold the child morally responsible for anything, particularly. Rather, I blame his parents for not slapping him upside the head and telling him to stay inside and study Koran until this whole siege thing blows over and he can go back to school. Which I'm sure most Iraqi parents are doing--even in Fallujah.

So it seems, anyway, because the guy also writes that Fallujah's streets are deserted, except for bands of mujahedeen on every other street corner, with kaffiyehs covering their faces.

So if the only people on the streets are mujahedeen, then how are all these women and children getting wounded?

Yes, there are going to be innocent people hurt, and killed in Fallujah, and we all hate that. Well, the guys on our side hate that. The mujahedeen never gave a rat's ass for the Iraqi people in the first place.

But it is the nature of assymetrical warfare in the media age that the weaker belligerant in a conflict is going to nestle itself in and among the innocent, in order to inoculate itself against the superior firepower of the stronger side.

Americans need to understand what is happening. And reporters need to more finely delineate between combatants and noncombatants, and not be so easily manipulated by "hospital sources."

Splash, out

Jason

The site was down for much of 16 April. Little glitch with server maintenance. But the good people at Blogger.com have me up and running again! Thanks for your patience!

Jason

Here's Daniel Pipes, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times:

I therefore counsel the occupying forces quickly to leave Iraqi cities and then, when feasible, to leave Iraq as a whole. They should seek out what I have been calling for since a year ago: a democratically minded Iraqi strongman, someone who will work with the coalition forces, provide decent government, and move eventually toward a more open political system.

Geez, that would be a help. Have anybody in mind?

A 'democratically minded strongman.' Is he serious?

Splash, out

Jason

Associated Press: Europe rejects purported Bin Laden truce

LONDON - Key European nations, including Iraq war opponents Germany and France, vigorously rejected a truce offer purportedly from Osama bin Laden on Thursday, saying there could be no negotiating with his al-Qaida terrorist network.

In Italy, a nation shocked by the killing of an Italian civilian captured by militants in Iraq, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said it was "unthinkable that we may open a negotiation with bin Laden, everybody understands this."

French President Jacques Chirac, one of the firmest opponents of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, was equally clear: "No dealings are possible with terrorists."

Germany, which is now helping train Iraqi police, also strongly rejected the truce offer. "Any attempt to split Europe will fail," said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Spain's incoming Socialist government - which promised to pull all 1,300 Spanish troops out of Iraq - also denounced the message.

"What we want is peace, democracy and freedom," said incoming Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

Says British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw: "One has to treat such claims, such proposals, with the contempt they deserve."

Nice.

In other news, two huge, spherical orbs of iron have mysteriously sprouted from the Bavarian Alps, in what scientists are calling "the tectonic event of the century."

Splash, out

Jason

Kilt-Wearing Marine Plays Bagpipes in Iraq.

No wonder the truce didn't hold up in Fallujah.

It's probably a Bb chanter, too.

Bastard.

Ok, not only can the UN not protect a Serb village within small-arms range of one of its compounds; now they can't even protect people from being assaulted by UN diplomats inside their own f&#@ing building!!!!

Link.

The UN has a tribunal now. Let them use it. Switzerland should sprout a pair and eject these so-called "diplomats." Better yet, the UN should immediately revoke their recognition of the Cuban UN representatives as "diplomats" and allow the Swiss government to prosecute them under Swiss law.

And the Swiss government should sprout a pair and push for it.

Of course, that won't happen.

Splash, out

Jason

Interesting little tidbit from Freedom House at the bottom:


A Freedom House delegation recently returned from Geneva, where it presented its annual list of the "Most Repressive Societies" to the Commission on April 2. Five of the fifteen countries are members of the [Human Rights] Commission.

Here's another example of an easy factual error that one lousy veteran on the New York Times editorial staff could have easily caught and corrected.

"Last night, they were all around us — in front of us, in back of us, everywhere," said Lt. Lewis Langella, who commands a squad of snipers and infantry on Falluja's outskirts. "They were throwing a whole lot of lead at us, and we were throwing a whole lot back."

Link.
Well, Hoo-rah for Lieutenant Langella. But here's a clue for the New York Times editors:

Lieutenants don't command squads. They command platoons and sometimes companies. Sergeants and Staff Sergeants lead squads. A platoon comprises 2-5 squads.

I can guarantee you that Langella was leading a platoon. Not a squad.

You can't just look at a bunch of guys and call them a 'squad.'

The rest of the article's really good--it's just that the reporter doesn't quite understand what he's looking at, when it comes to military terminology. Which is ok if he's got good newsroom backup.

In the case of the New York Times' military desk, he doesn't.

How long have we been at war, now?

Splash, out

Jason

Katrina vanden Heuvel (hey, there's a cool name!) has some sharp observations about a gradual sea-change in the military political culture.



It may be anecdotal but three stories in last week's newspapers offer a sharp sense of the growing ambivalence military veterans and families feel toward this Administration. The once rock-solid GOP military voting bloc could become a domestic casualty for Bush. And, as the New York Times reports , with a large number of military personnel living in battleground states like Florida, West Virginia and New Mexico, even small changes in military voting patterns could be decisive in November.

"The President is on probation with military voters," says Peter Feaver, professor of Political Science at Duke University and an expert on military-civilian relations.

She's probably onto something--and it's a trend I noticed last year among hundreds of mobilized registered Florida voters in Iraq.

A year and a half ago, support for George Bush in my Florida Guard unit was overwhelming. And very few soldiers voiced scepticism about the U.S. decision to go to war to depose Saddam Hussein, overall. They were as eager to see the guy get taken down as anyone, and by and large, more than willing to be a part of that process. My sense was that at the time we were mobilized, support for the decision to go to war in Iraq probably ran 70-20-10 in the enlisted ranks, and even stronger than that among officers.

Support for the Bush policy took an abrupt flip on its head around September, though, when the expected rotation home by December 7th was announced null and void, and we were told we were going to spend a year 'boots-on-the-ground.'

Morale plummeted in the ranks, Bush supporters pretty much held their tongues to avoid pissing off the newly minted (and fully-armed) anti-Bush zealots, and had Terry McAuliffe paid a visit to us at Hurricane Point in Ramadi, he could have raised thousands in donations to Democratic coffers.

Support for Democrats in the ranks was further buttressed by the actions of Senator Bill Nelson, who was very public very early on about calling for equitable treatment of Guard and Reserve soldiers, and made a point to tour the State talking to the families of over 1,500 deployed National Guardsmen.

My sense is that the pendulum swung back towards normal with the passage of time. I wouldn't overstate the issue at a national level, and the phenomenon may have been more pronounced in Guard and reserve units, which suffered from lower morale than active duty units throughout the conflict.

But there's also no getting around the fact that such a large percentage of the mobilized guardsmen in OIF I (Operation Iraqi Freedom I, or the first rotation) do indeed come from Florida--the most hotly contested of all the battleground states.

Florida's even more important in 2004 than it was in 2000, because the winner in Florida gets 27 votes in the electoral college instead of just 25.

So from this soldier's perspective, vanden Heuvel's instincts are correct. Republicans can no longer count on the military demographic as reliable votes--at least to the extent they once could.


Splash, out

Jason


P.S., You know there's no Army or Marine Corps veterans in The Nation's editorial offices, though, or they wouldn't have mentioned the "Army's 225th Battalion."

"225th Battalion" makes absolutely no sense. Fortunately, The Nation provides a link to the unit: It's the Army's 225th FORWARD SUPPORT Battalion. Which conveys a lot more information, and is the proper way to refer to the unit.

Just another example of how a little newsroom diversity can provide a little insulation against looking stupid.

Air America posts a defense in their business dispute with Arthur Liu, the owner of their Chicago and Los Angeles affiliates.

Oh, I'm sorry--did I say they posted a defense? I'm sorry--what I really meant to say was their leadership stopped watching Romper Room long enough to have a milk-throwing fit.

And in the process possibly opened themselves up to a defamation of character lawsuit.

My favorite part was the thinly veiled racism.

"Not funny." Heh.

Nice.

Splash, out

Jason

UPDATE: It looks like Air America finally got some adult supervision into the nursery, because the original press release--with its snide remarks making fun of Liu's name and Chinese heritage, and the statements that Air America was going to deal with the matter by takeing a crowbar to Liu's head ("Figuratively, of course," caveats the original memo)--has been removed from the website.

Agents France Presse has the story here. Their characterization of the original memo as 'tongue-in-cheek' is--ummmm--charitable.

Jordan snags a bunch of terrorists before they strike, according to CNN.

Jordanian security last week intercepted three trucks, believed to be traveling from the northern border with Syria, that were packed with explosives intended for government buildings, the U.S. Embassy and a number of hotels.

Authorities arrested a number of people over a period of nearly 10 days. Jordanian security agencies had been on high alert following the arrest of two alleged terrorists on April 1.

In a letter to Gen. Saad Khair, the head of Jordan's intelligence department, King Abdullah said the scheme was unprecedented in terms of the quantity of explosives, the means of the attack and the targets.

Link.

In other news, U.S. troops in discovered and attacked an IED factory in Habbaniyah yesterday, killing 16 insurgents. Habbaniyah is about 50 miles West of Baghdad, roughly halfway between Fallujah and my old stomping grounds at Ramadi. It's a small town, but it's always been very dicey. Many soldiers have lost their lives along the stretch of Highway 10 between Habbaniyah and Ramadi--mostly to IEDs. They used to come in to our aid station at Combat Outpost, on the east end of town, where we had our battalion surgeon. Sometimes we could get them out in time, sometimes, unfortunately, we couldn't.

So the destruction of the IED factory and the deaths of these insurgents is a beautiful and happy thing. That same group of people is probably responsible for several deaths in the 1-34th and the 1-16th, in the 1st Infantry Division.

Oh, and 957th Multi-Role Bridge Company out of the North Dakota Army National Guard? That was your blood payback, too, for Kenneth Hendrickson and Keith Smette. Chances are good that these guys were the ones responsible for their deaths--by roadside bombs--last January.

My sense is it was a pretty important little operation--it was very unusual for insurgents to fight in their own homes and lairs. Usually when US troops came-a-knocking, the insurgents would come along quietly. Which was good for everyone. Their wives and children were often in the same houses.

In this case, though, it looks like they were cornered and chose to go down swinging. Hey, I can respect the stupid, pathetic losers for that. It saves on the coalition forces detainee processing sheet paperwork.

It's also unusual to find 16 insurgents in the same place at the same time. The report I'm reading mentions no U.S. casualties in the operation.

It also tells me that we still have good friends of our own in Habbaniyah willing to give us useful, actionable information.

This is good news all around.

Splash, out

Jason

...So first Military.com runs an ABC story called National Guard Losing Members, which quotes a Rhode Island Guard official as saying recruitment levels are 25% off last years' levels.

Now, just 3 weeks later, Military.com runs this story:

Military Numbers are Rising:

Despite a rising tide of combat deaths and the prospect of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come, Americans continue to volunteer for duty and are re-enlisting at record rates. Even the Army National Guard, which has had 150,000 citizen soldiers mobilized for up to a year, has seen retention rates "going through the roof," said Guard spokesman Maj. Robert Howell. "Mass exodus has not been the case in the Army National Guard," said Howell, deputy chief of the Strength Maintenance Division at the National Guard Bureau in Washington.

The Guard was prepared to lose up to 18 percent of units returning from lengthy deployments, but it has averaged just 16.6 percent, with some as low as 12.6 percent, Howell said.

The Guard fully expects to again reach its recruiting goal of 56,000 members this year, to maintain its total strength of 350,000.

The Guard's goal for first-term re-enlistments , for those with less than six years of service, had been 65 percent this fiscal year but has rocketed to 141 percent - which indicates that additional members re-enlisted early, usually to take advantage of bonuses.

What gives?

Although it doesn't match what I'm seeing so far (I believe my battalion's losses will be heavy, but nobody can leave for another 90 days), I'm inclined to trust the more recent story--it's based on much broader data and has a national spokesperson--something ABC couldn't be bothered with, I guess.

I guess I'm seeing an unrepresentative sample of the Guard here in Florida.

Splash, out

Jason

So Air America, liberals' answer to Rush Limbaugh, has been pulled off the air in two of its biggest markets, supposedly for nonpayment of bills, including allegedly bouncing a check to their Chicago affiliate.

"That is an outright lie," said Evan Cohen, Air America's chairman, in a statement. "Multicultural Radio Broadcasting's conduct in this matter has been disgraceful.... [I]t is a clear violation of their contractual obligations."

I don't know. Maybe there was no agreement on a security deposit in advance. But a bounced check is kinda hard to fake.

The real tragedy here is that listeners ought to have a viable liberal voice on national talk radio, but millions of listeners may never get to hear it.

Bouncing a check, calling your business partner's behavior "disgraceful" in a nationally respected newspaper, and taking two of your precious few affiliates to court within two weeks of hitting the airwaves is no way to endear yourself to future stations.

Can we please get some adult supervision over at Air America?

Splash, out

Jason

P.S., note the provocative but fundamentally inaccurate and misleading headline: "Liberal Radio Stations Silenced."

This isn't part of some vast right wing conspiracy to silence liberal radio here. This is just a case of ineptitude on Air America's part. If they don't make it through the first loop, then they will have no one to blame but themselves.

PPS: You can listen live on the Web here.

Well, that was fast!

Here's Ms. Parker,

Thank you for getting in touch. I heard about the Easterbrook blog item from a
couple of readers and, upon taking a look, was struck by the similarities. To
answer your implicit question, I wrote my column April 8, a day before Mr.
Easterbrook posted his item on April 9. I make no accusations because I'm a firm
believer in the 'idea cloud.' That is, lots of people get the same idea at
approximately the same time. The 'what-if' conceit was fairly obvious. As a
matter of record, two items:

1. I wrote a 'parallel universe' column a year ago. This was my second
installment;
2. I write my columns according to set deadlines -- 3 p.m. Mondays and
Thursdays. I wrote the column in question immediately following Condi's
testimony on April 8. You are welcome to confirm this with my editors and I will
gladly provide phone numbers.

Additionally, I personally emailed the column to the editor of Jewish World
Review on April 8 because he was preparing his weekend edition and asked for it.
He posted it the morning of April 9, which you may confirm by visiting
www.jewishworldreview.com and clicking on my column. I'm sure Binyamin would be
happy to confirm.

If you have further questions, please let me know. And again, thanks for getting
in touch. I appreciate your professionalism. I'm copying this to my editors at
my home paper, The Orlando Sentinel, and at my syndicate, Tribune Media
Services.

All the best,
Kathleen Parker

And sure enough, another alert reader passes on a link to Ms. Parker's 'parallel universe' column from almost two years ago--May 22nd, 2002.


Well, it works for me. Just like fawniks.

And thanks to Kathleen Parker for taking the time to write.

Splash, oops

Jason

The Orlando Sentinel's Kathleen Parker has written a column that bears a marked resemblance to Gregg Easterbrook's Alternative History, published two days earlier at the New Republic.

Here's Easterbrook's background graf:

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.


Here's Parker's:

Absent absolute proof of such an imminent attack, Bush's Sept. 10 bombing of Afghanistan earned him international condemnation and, in all likelihood, an indictment in coming weeks.

Easterbrook:

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

Parker:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, appearing last night on Larry King Live, said the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal likely would bring charges of genocide against Bush.

Finally--and most significantly, in my view--here's Easterbrook's kicker:

Announcing his candidacy for the 2004 Republican presidential nomination, Senator John McCain said today that "George W. Bush was very foolish and naïve; he didn't realize he was being pushed into this needless conflict by oil interests that wanted to seize Afghanistan to run a pipeline across it." McCain spoke at a campaign rally at the World Trade Center in New York City.


...and here's Parker's:

In a flourish of irony and the spirit of bon vivant for which the new president is widely known, Kerry gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's Tower One.

Is it live? Is it memorex? Is it plagiarism? Or is it the inevitable result of two authors independently pursuing a common rhetorical device?

Check 'em both out. You make the call.

Splash, out

Jason

To win without fighting is the acme of skill.
--Sun Tzu


One Marine Staff Sergeant has some pointy things to say about the Army:

"Marines like to be on the offensive," said Staff Sgt. Steve Marcil. "We're not like the Army. Our job is to move."

Call me quaint, call me old-fashioned, call me an old stick-in-the-mud. But somehow the Army was able to operate in Fallujah all these months. It was a team of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach county police officers from my own battalion--the Florida National Guard's 1st Bn, 124th Infantry--who managed trained hundreds of Iraqi police officers in downtown Fallujah last December and January.

Sure, the Army screwed up in rotating five different battalions through Fallujah by the end of the year. And it was always a rough neighborhood for American troops. (No, it didn't help when some jittery troops who had just arrived in country killed 8 Iraqi Police officers and managed to shoot up the Fallujah hospital, either, but that's another story.)

But before the USMC starts to throw a lot of rhetorical ordnance at the Army, it might be wise to consider this question:

Wouldn't the acme of skill be in not getting our asses kicked out of Fallujah in the first place?

Splash, out

Jason

You can't make this stuff up, folks!

Headline: 9/11 Panel Is Said To Offer Harsh Review of Ashcroft (New York Times, 13 April, 2004)

Headline: Ashcroft Gets A Free Pass (Slate, 13 April, 2004)

Splash, out

Jason

Here's a recent message to the electorate from the Nader campaign:

Today enlistments in the Reserves and National Guard are declining. The Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards, as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place.

Young Americans need to know that a train is coming, and it could run over their generation in the same way that the Vietnam War devastated the lives of those who came of age in the sixties.

Man, don't you hate it when you lose your tin-foil hat?

Seriously, though--I'm not convinced a draft would be an altogether bad thing. Most soldiers I talk to--of all ages--pretty much feel the same way. Hell, if it forces our urban media centers--particularly in the northeast-- to pony up their fair share of recruits, it might pay some big dividends in reducing the yawning cultural gap between the red and blue counties.

As it stands, though, 2.3% of the male youth population in Hillsborough county, Florida enlists in the service each year. Contrast this with New York, New York, which has male enlistment rate 0.5%--less than a quarter of that number. Seven of the lowest 10 counties were found within commuting distance of the editorial homes of NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, CNN, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and The New Yorker.

Think veterans are going to be proportionately represented in their editorial offices? Do you suppose this might affect the way the military is covered in the national press?

Splash, out

Jason

The John Kerry campaign released a cool new economics statistic: the Middle Class Misery Index.

Essentially, the index is a composite of seven different indicators: median family income, college tuition, health costs, gasoline cost, bankruptcies, the homeownership rate, and private-sector job growth.

Check out the link for the graph.

Now, those of us who remember a time before ubiquitous Internet access also remember another metric called "The Misery Index." The Misery Index was simply the sum of the unemployment rate and and the inflation rate.

I think the "Middle Class Misery Index" is an interesting and potentially useful shorthand for describing economic cycles and their effects on the middle class. But it's not useful this year.

Here's why: 1.) There's nothing in the index that's predictive of future trends. Every indicator in the Middle Class Misery Index is a trailing indicator--describing bad times which are behind us.

2.) Gasoline is a commodity. Indeed, it's a very volatile commodity, and for that reason, economists often exclude the price of fuel when computing inflation figures. Gasoline prices are only useful when adjusted for inflation or measured against some other contemporary benchmark, such as wages. Adjusted for inflation, gas prices are still far below their $2.94/gallon peak, in 1980.


3.) Note the absence of broad inflation figures and the unemployment rate itself in the Middle Class Misery index. If they were important guages of middle class misery to begin with (a questionable assumption in the case of inflation figures, to the extent the middle class A. a heavily leveraged and B. maintains the largest share of its net worth in its home--which rises with inflation, unlike bonds, which get killed). Here's where we ought not to let political campaigns dominate our economic thinking.

The reason the original Misery Index figures are excluded is because the unemployment figures for the last recession have been comparatively moderate (compared to, say, the 1981-82 recession, in which unemployment reached nearly 11%), and inflation has been extremely low by historical standards. What's more--and here's a forward looking indicator here: inflation expectations are near multi-decade lows, using long-term interest rates as a proxy. (Nobody's going to deliberately lend money at rates below the expected inflation rate).

If the misery index were a pot full of pasta, then, it wouldn't stick to the wall. The Kerry campaign had to cook the data a little more, throw out the CPI, focus our attention on fuel prices only during the last three years (during a war in the middle east, no less. Hey, THAT doesn't bias anything, does it?) and cherry pick two narrow fields which have outpaced inflation: college costs and health care premiums, no matter how you slice them. (They outpaced inflation under Clinton, too, by the way. They don't have much to do with presidential policies. Their cost could be hidden from the taxpayer through subsidies and they'd STILL outpace inflation).

Cooking the data is called 'data mining.' Which is, in statistics, a dangerous practice. If you're cooking data to arrive at the truth, that's one thing. But usually people cook data to arrive at the conclusion that best serves their interests. And that's what's been done here.

I think there's a lot of potential use in the Middle Class Misery Index, if they fix its built-in biases. But right now, it tells me a lot more about the economic cycle than it does about presidential policy, and it tells me a lot more about the people who designed it than it tells me about the economy at large.

Splash, out

Jason

Hat tip: Mudville Gazette


Update: Gregg Easterbrook weighs in here.

Kerry's index can make you giggle because, in order to be manipulated such that George W. Bush has "the worst record of any president ever," indicators must be chosen that give a great economic rating to Jimmy Carter. Check the Kerry campaign's graph, halfway down the page. When were times best by this index? At the end of the Clinton administration, and in 1978. Can you find one single person in the United States who would want a time-machine ride to the economic conditions of 1978?

He brings up some other points, too. Good read.

Military.com notes that recruiting and retention rates are for some National Guard units are way off last year's levels.

Things have improved markedly for Guardsmen and reservists since last summer--when a glance at the letters page of any Southwest Asia edition of the Stars and Stripes would have led one to wonder if active component and reserve component troops were going to give up the fight against the Fedayeen and turn against one another.

Intercomponent resentment was fierce, and morale was markedly lower among reserve and guard units than it was among active duty units. The lengthy deployment was only a part of the problem--we were also hurt by condescension from active duty soldiers, and a separate-but-equal pay and promotion system that wasn't so equal after all. (I.e., nearly 100% of national guardsmen experienced a significant pay problem while on active duty.)

For months, Pentagon officials have been denying there was a problem with Guard and reserve morale. They said it hadn't shown up in retention figures yet, and so it was too early to tell.

Out in Iraq, at the 'boots-on-the-ground' level, we knew better. "Of course it hasn't shown up in retention figures. We can't quit yet!" the troops would shout at the newspaper.

If there is a silver lining to this dark cloud, it's that as the exodus of experienced troops begins, it's going to become harder and harder for Pentagon officials to stick their head in the sand about Guard and reserve affairs.

Yes, we have taken some important steps. Allowing states to promote deployed officers against vacancies at home** was welcome step forward.

But it doesn't help to have Pentagon guys like Charles Abell, principal deputy under the Secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, come on the record and say that my soldiers who complain about the broken reserve component personnel system are being 'disengenuous.'

I'm sorry, Chuck. When I went into the Guard, nobody told me or any of my troopers that they would go from March to August in the zone before we collected the same hostile fire pay the active troops were getting without a problem--and even then you had the embarrassing spectacle of a batallion S-1 writing congress and the governor on behalf of his men to get the military pay system to fix the problem.

I don't remember anybody telling us "oh, by the way--those allotments through which you make sure your wife or dependents can have money to subsist on while you're away--those are for active duty troops. That's not for you."

Nobody explained to my troops that they're the only idiots in the DoD who, after serving 20 years, have to wait until age 60 to collect retirement benefits (Federal employees can collect at age 55, while active duty retirees can collect immediately upon retiring--for some as young as 37.)

Everybody knew we could get called up at any time, of course. But nobody knew our entire promotion system would nearly freeze for the entirety of that year. Nor did anybody explain to us that if we were mobilized as guardsmen, our NCOs and officers were not eligible to attend the same career schools that the active duty troops were going to all summer (although the Army did, eventually put a stop to anybody leaving Iraq to attend a service school.)

Nobody briefed us to say "hey, since you're reserve component, we can't enroll you directly in the Thrift Savings Program since you're on a different pay system."

I don't think the Army deceived us. Not in the slightest. Really, it had been so long since a massive deployment of reserve component soldiers for more than a year at a time, that we just hadn't thought through these issues.

Hey, lessons learned. We're all professionals.

But the Pentagon's 'blame it on the soldier' attitude is, well, a little hard to take. Nobody's being anywhere near as disengenuous with the Pentagon as the Pentagon is being disengenuous with itself.

Splash, out

Jason

**(Since guard and reserve officers--unlike active duty officers--could not leave their units to accept slots that would lead to promotion, many reserve officers who were already selected for promotion were stuck, and forced to watch active duty officers who are years junior to them transfer to the slots and take the promotion. Allowing states to promote deployed guard officers against vacant slots in their home states ameliorated the problem somewhat--at least for guard officers. NCO promotions and USAR promotions remain problematic.)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Neither the Bush administration nor the Clinton administration "put its intelligence agencies or law enforcement agencies on a war footing" prior to September 11, 2001, former FBI director Louis Freeh on Tuesday told the commission investigating the attacks of that date.

Link.

Nice little detail noted by CNN: Former Senator Bob Kerrey dignifies the murderers of 9/11 by referring to them as "soldiers."

WTF, over????

Splash, out

Jason

Geez, guys--I have a little irreverent fun at Jesus' expense and give advice to Satan and it doesn't bother anybody. But the minute I mention Navy incentive pays my hotmail account turns to Flame Wars III.

Go figure.

Anyway, yet another sailor takes umbrage with my reference to them mint-julep-sipping swabbies on them Nimitz-class aircraft carriers:

No one on a submarine is reading it while sipping lemonade in
an internet café, trust me on that one. Many of the things I've done at in
my 12 years at sea onboard submarines I think of as routine but could be
considered "imminent danger" by any definition. The O-2 you described may
have quite a few carrier take-off and landings under his belt and returned
from dodging SAMs in a no-fly-zone. A discussion about the compensation
differences between with Armed services could have been done without the
condescension.

Yeah, I didn't mention submarines, since that's its own thing--there's nothing in the Army that's really comparable to submarine duty.

Nevertheless, using my own rank as the point of comparison, an O-2 on a submarine collects $325 a month incentive pay. An E-4 with four years in might collect much less than that--maybe $95 dollars, depending on accrued sea time. So Navy personnel are compensated to an extent for the risks and hardships of submarine duty.

A carrier pilot with my time in commissioned service would collect $650/month flight pay, if all his time were in aviation service. This in addition to $225/ month hostile fire pay, if he actually were "dodging SAMs." Then there's 'hazardous duty incentive pay,' which for Navy personnel is a minimum of $150/ month, for non crew-members, and up to $250 for a crew-member, non-AWAC.

I see nothing in navy regs which prohibits concurrent receipt of anything except career sea pay and hardship duty pay, which is yet another category of special incentive pays, separate from hazardous duty and imminent danger pay.

Further, the Navy authorizes "command at sea pay" to officers in command billets between the ranks of O-3 and O-6.

There is no comparable kicker for, say, an Army infantry company or battalion commander in Fallujah.

So, let's see... If I were dodging SAMs as a carrier pilot instead of RPGs and IEDs as an infantry officer, then I'd be collecting up to $1285/month extra, in various hazardous duty incentive pays, as compared to the $225/month I got in hostile fire pay.

(And before you say that the surface-to-air missile is a totally different level of threat, bear in mind my infantry battalion did lose one soldier--an attached truck driver from the 603rd Transportation Company killed by a SAM in a helicopter over Fallujah in January. His name was Craig Davis.)

Using an E-4 with 5 years service as a proxy for enlisted rates: a carrier deck crew member with two years' sea time serving in the Persian Gulf collects $525 in incentive pay. ($150 in hazardous duty pay, $225 in hostile fire pay, and $160 in career sea pay. Stop me if I'm screwing this up.)

The same E-4 with five years' service in my infantry unit collects $225 hazardous duty pay for crashing doors in Fallujah.

My point is NOT to belittle the Navy. My point is simply to point out some issues of interservice pay equity.

Should a carrier deck crewman be collecting more than TWICE the incentive pay as a combat infantryman?

Splash, out,
Jason



References: http://buperscd.technology.navy.mil/bup_updt/upd_CD/BUPERS/MILPERS/MILPERSMAN%20%207220%20-%20MILITARY%20PAY.PDF (The Navy Pay stuff is way at the bottom)

http://www.dfas.mil/money/milpay/pay/2004paytable.pdf

What goes around comes around.

Patrick Lasswell hangs me out to dry on Navy pay structures:

Check your numbers. When I was in, the progression on Sea Pay was for the length of time you were stationed aboard a ship. In the case you quoted, you would have had to spent 11 years on continuous sea duty.

Patrick's right. My first source was an incomplete table. So I went directly to the source. Scroll down a bit, and the horizontal axis of the Sea Pay table is clearly labeled "Cumulative Years of Sea Duty."

Busted.

Assuming six months out of every year at sea, then, an O-2 with 11 years in would be drawing $185/month sea pay last year and not $335/ month.

So I should have taken my own advice and gone straight to the primary source: DFAS. Mea culpa.

Now, as for the rest of your horseshit.

Uh, oh...here it comes!

I spent six of my eight years onboard destroyers. While much of my time was spent in air-conditioned spaces, by no means was all of it. I have seen heat casualties without number, and worked myself to heat exhaustion and dehydration a few times, too.

Really? Wow. Heat casualties. No kidding!

I also have spent time in the yards when the interior temperature at night got down to 18 degrees.

That warm, huh? :)

I've spent time in the Fort Knox motor pools where the exterior temerature during the day got down to 5 degrees. There've been lots of troops in environments far colder than that, although I haven't been, personally. My troops weren't drawing special pay for that, either though.

I somehow doubt that much of your time in Iraq, that I very much appreciate, was spent taking heavy rolls.

Naw. We didn't have anything like a ship's bakery on board.

Finally, when the Army was living in quarters in Germany, the US Navy was deploying to every ocean and going in harm's way. When you were risking hand grenades in discos, the USS Stark was taking Exocet missiles in the Gulf.

Hmm...I don't think the 79 Americans wounded and 3 killed at the LaBelle Disco were drawing field pay or hostile fire pay at the time. Nor do I believe the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea felt all that safe on the DMZ.

I don't begrudge the Army getting a better cut for deployment pay now that they are finally off the dime, but you can take your talk about the Navy having it easy and shove it.

Oh, I wouldn't say the Navy has it easy, by and large. There's certainly lots of hardship and sacrifice borne by the Navy, in times of peace and war alike. The entirety of my point was to point out a discrepency between Army and Navy compensation. If Navy guys (and gals) can double dip sea pay and hostile fire pay, then it seems to me that in comparison, the Army's getting a raw deal.

More reader letters:

Why spell the name of the country Rumania (Passion movie review)? It doesn't aid in pronunciation (row-ma-knee-a is close to how a native says it) and there are some complicated ethnic infighting issues which lead anti-romanian bigots to prefer this particular spelling. Romania comes from the latin for New (neo) Rome (Roma). The link back to the latin times makes a real hash of hungarian irredentist claims that they were robbed at Trianon and they should get Transylvania back. I just wonder why you would pick a variant spelling that has so much nasty political baggage.

I am so going to stay out of the Romania-Hungarian irredentist squabble. I don't have a dog in that fight. Actually, my dog is so far away from that fight that he can't mark his territory on a Bucharest fire hydrant without getting slapped with a roaming charge.

Really, I never thought about it before at all. I spelled it "Rumania" because of a really really cool recording from the Klezmer Conservatory Band I heard when I was 13.

They called it "Rumania" in Yiddish, so I've called it "Rumania" ever since, and never thought much about it. But looking around at other stylebooks, they all prefer "Romania" to "Rumania."

So I'm planning on adding it to my stylebook.

In the interests of fairness, though: are there any anti-Romanian bigots out there who would like to weigh in?

Here's my feel-good letter of the year:

I've been reading your blog and just read your Financial Tips entry. Because of my husband's service in the desert, we actually qualified for Earned Income Credit this year. In January, I made contributions of $3,000 EACH to Roth IRAs and TOTALLY MISSED the line and form where that is recorded.

I just created my amended return, which I will send off after April 15, which shows an additional $938 refund.

While I had already made the contribution, your discussion made me wonder why I didn't remember seeing a special retirement account credit. That's when I discovered the error on our form.

Debbie E.,
No hometown given

That's great to hear. The rest of you should give it a shot! If you haven't contributed already, contribute!!!!!! I mean, where else can you get up to 50% return on $2,000 (Or $4,000 under some circumstances, if you're married) right off the bat, automatically, Plus the benefits of decades of tax-free compounding?

It's a no-brainer, soldiers! Put off that new Harley and do what I tell you.

If you've already contributed and done your taxes, you may want to file an amended return to claim the credit. A lot of you will be in the same boat Debbie's in.

I get a charge out of your success stories, too, so do write me!

Another reader writes in to remind me that there was no operation named "Noble Crusade." Bush simply used the term 'crusade' to describe the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda--a term his administration was forced to apologize for the next day.

As I said--mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima f@^#ing culpa.

Splash, out

Jason

[CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE NET] posted by Jason : 23:58 EST, Monday, April 12, 2004 0 transmissions this net

Strategy Page has an interesting article on a movement within the Army to pay soldiers "field pay," which would be something similar to 'Sea Pay' for Navy personnel.

The U.S. Army is considering paying soldiers serving overseas in hostile environments (not necessarily combat zones) special pay. It's being called "field pay." This concept is based on the U.S. Navy's "sea pay." The U.S. Navy has long paid sailors extra pay for time spent on board a ship at sea. This "sea pay" compensates for being away from the comforts of home, or at least the civilian amenities found outside naval bases. It's also compensation for the prohibition (since 1914) against alcoholic drinks on board. The pay varies according to rank, time in the navy and other factors. Currently, enlisted sailors get $50 to $646 per month, warrant officers $180 to $730 and commissioned officers $100 to $535.

Link.

Hmmm...let me get this straight. Under the Navy's "Sea Pay" program, as an O-2 with 11 years in, for sipping lemonade and watching movies on an air conditioned aircraft carrier with its own gym and internet cafe and cool ports-of-call like Hobart, Honolulu, and Hong Kong, the Navy would have given me $335 dollars/month in sea pay just for showing up.

I spent almost all of the last year in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq dodging IEDs and RPGs, catching mortar shells on dozens and dozens of occasions, watching my buddies get shot up and leave my compound on a stretcher, and I'm qualified for $250 a month hostile fire pay.

Even an E-4 would be making more in sea pay than he would getting shot at in Iraq in the Army, once he hits his third year of service.

Oh. Navy personnel operating in a combat zone are entitled to both Sea Pay and hostile fire pay.

Nice.

See, this is why I usually steer young kids who ask me about the military to Navy and Air Force recruiters first.

Quite frankly, they take better care of their people.

Splash, out

Jason

Have you sold a house since May 6, 1997?

If so, you may be able to save yourself a boatload of money this year. I mean, thousands of dollars in some instances.

Here's how:

In order for you to qualify for the capital gains tax exclusion, the law normally requires sellers of houses to have owned the home for at least two years, and to have actually lived in the house for at least two years of the last five.

But this requirement is an onerous one for military families, who are routinely undergo PCS (permanent change of station) moves every one to three years--and are often deployed in the interim.

Under the new tax law, though, military people can 'stop the capital gains' clock for service-related deployments.

That means that if you bought a house, say, in 1995 but PCS'd in 1998, and sold the house in 2003, having spent all that time away from the home at different duty stations, you can still qualify for the exemption, even though you hadn't lived in the home at all for five years.

The reason: The clock stopped when you PCS'd.

The law was written to apply retroactively to May 6th, 1997. But you can work the law to your benefit going backwards and forwards. Meaning that you can claim a new exclusion on a home you sold years ago. Or, you can now sell an existing home (into a hot real estate market) and claim an exclusion, even if you haven't lived in the house for more than five years. Which may or may not influence your decision to sell.

Some caveats:

1.) You can only stop the clock for 10 years.
2.) You can only stop the clock on one residence at a time.
3.) The transfer or duty station has to be 50 miles away from the house or more, and for a minimum of 90 days.

And yes, normally you have only three years to file an amended return. But for this provision the deadline has been extended to November 10th, 2003.

In order to file an amended claim the credit--and potentially get a huge refund--fill out a form 1040X. Write "Military Family Tax Relief Act" across the top of the form, in red ink.

Splash, out

Jason

Greg Easterbrook imaginatively reminds us that hindsight is 20/20.

A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan...

Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of "a disgusting exercise in over-kill."

The short version: Prior to 9/11, the United States simply did not have the political will to go after Al Qaeda (or Saddam Hussein) in any kind of decisive way. Not the President (Social Security reform was an easier sell, and he abandoned that idea, too.), and not Richard Clarke, and certainly not Bob Kerrey and the other grandstanders on the committee.

But read the whole thing.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Splash, out

Jason

...So after three weeks of meaning to, I finally overcame the deadly sin of sloth, got off my duff, laid my blood-money on the cinema counter, and went to see Mel Gibson's version of The Passion of the Christ.

A few observations, and things I would have done differently...

First, and most importantly: Monica Belucci, the Italian actress who plays Mary Magdelene, has been vetted by the IraqNow editorial staff, and we--no, make that, I, have declared her officially hot.

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, we can get to the more trivial matters of assessing the artistic, historical, and theological merits of the film.

Overall--for what it is, and for what Gibson apparently intends for it to be--a vivid portrayal of the final hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and a gruesome account of the brutality of his death--it is riveting, and definitely worth a look.

If it were my screenplay, I would have probably tread more lightly on the Jungian nightmare aspects of the film.

Case in point: The skinny bald guy who appears constantly throughout the film who's supposed to represent evil.

(no, not THAT bald guy!)

Now we first encounter Evil guy in the Garden of Gesthemane, where he represents temptation--in the insidious guise of sympathy and understanding. As Christ pleads with the Father to "let this cup pass from my lips," the still small voice of Satan soothingly counsels, "No man can alone bear the sins of the world on his shoulders," whispers Evil. "It is too much."

Ok, I was with Gibson so far. I thought that was an effective way to portray the temptation--and writ large, the way evil works in all our lives--the soft and coaxing siren that leads us to avoid the real crises and challenges in our lives and leads us to, well, blog.

But Jesus finally says "not my will, but thine, be done," and victory over temptation is complete. With these words, Jesus dies to self and selfishness, offers himself in perfect submission to be the instrument of God, and only a fool could not get the message.

Mel Gibson, of course, knows that it's fools who make expensive movies profitable, though, and doesn't halt the sequence with the words of Christ. Instead, he invests another 30 seconds or so in coaxing a serpent out from between evil's legs, and letting it slither around Jesus's feet for a few seconds, before Gibson finally transmits his already clear message to the least among us by having Jesus crush the serpent's head under his foot.

Got it, Mel. Thanks.

Mike Myers, Eat Your Sacred Heart Out!

Now, ok--I'm down with the metaphysics of the crucifixion and scourging and the victory over death. And I can buy into the idea that a titanic battle between Good and Evil was fought that day. And I can therefore buy into a certain amount of interaction between this world and the spiritual world.

I was even with Mel when the little kids who were taunting Judas after his betrayal became demons. I'm sure that the whole world must have seemed that way to Judas--and that would have been his motivation to commit suicide in the very effective "Where's A Rope When You Need One?" scene.

(By the way--I loved the Cheshire Cat grin on the face of the dead donkey. That image alone was worth the price of admission.)

But the Evil Bald Guy shows up throughout the movie. In one scene--during the long and draining scourging of Christ, he actually shows up cradling another, diminutive Evil Bald Guy in his arms.

That's right--I couldn't make something like that up, folks! Mel Gibson meets Mini-Me.

But I can find no mention of an Evil Bald Guy of any size in that role in the Gospel. Ok, I'm all about artistic license. I loved Jesus Christ Superstar. But his role was inconsistent. For example, having first attempted to sabatoge the sacrifice of Christ in the opening sequence, he seems to spend the rest of the movie delighting in it--even egging it on. Helping come to pass.

Now, I'm not a charter member of the Evil Bald Guy Association. But if I were, I wouldn't have made such a mess of it. Any real, self-respecting Satanic figure worthy of the name--having failed to lure Christ into temptation (c'mon, He's God. The contest was rigged from the get-go!), would immediately go to work on the easier targets--the knuckle-dragging troglodytes in the Roman army, and the morally blind scribes and Pharisees. He could have sabatoged the crucifixion by, say, trying to convince the Romans to break some bones. By appearing as a centurion and stopping the soldiers from casting lots and dividing up his clothing (Psalm 22, v. 19), offering Christ water to drink, Or by encouring them to break a bone--thereby rendering the sacrifice of Christ at variance with the proscribed sacrifice of the passover lamb in the Old Testament (Exodus 12: 46, Psalm 34:20 , and Numbers 9:12

A REAL Satanic figure would have tried to separate the Crucifixion as it happened from the way it is prophesied in the Old Testament, and the way it is foreshadowed in the Jewish feasts.

And herein, sadly, lies Mel Gibson's missed opportunity. The viewer is vaguely aware that the trial and crucifixion occur during Passover--but there is no connection made between the two intimately-connected events. Indeed, the Christian cannot separate the crucifixion from Passover, because the crucifixion's metaphorical meaning is entirely rooted in the Passover.

A House Built Upon Sand

Gibson's Passion unfortunately, is decontextualized from its biblical foundations. Or more precisely, Gibson assumes his viewership can bring their own contextualization to the movie, from a simultaneous understanding of Christian and Jewish religious thought and practice.

Very few people, alas, are conversant with both sides of the equation. And so layers of meaning--and layers of mutual understanding--are lost to both Jewish and Christian viewers.
And without a firm grasp of the old testament lamb metaphor, Yom Kippur, sacrifice, and the vitality of Mosaic Law on the part of Christians, and a simultaneous grasp of the Christian idea that Christ was a Lamb of sacrifice, and that Christ was simultaneously God, and herein lies the profundity of the sacrifice and the expression of God's love, then the Passion of the Christ appears banal.

It's been said by one critic that the movie is really a mirror. How you perceive it reflects more about you than it does about Christ. I agree. But I wish that the movie could have been more of a two-way window between the two traditions than a mirror.

Perhaps with all the discussion, it is becoming just that.

Which brings us to the question of the hour:

Is the movie Anti-Semitic?

Here's what most goys don't get: non-Christians do not share the same set of cultural associations that Christians do.

Christians associate the Crusades with a noble struggle on behalf of God's will; Jews and others (with a more finely delineated grasp of history, in my view), associate it with pogroms and monstrous atrocities such as nailing Jewish babies to fenceposts--a favorite pasttime of crusaders in transit through Europe on the way to the wars.

We see this cultural misunderstanding manifest even today--to wit: the Bush Administration's original, tin-eared and ignorant label for the war against the Taliban: "Operation Noble Crusade." The very name of the operation threatened to undermine the needed support of other Muslim countries, because of this differing historical perspective. Fortunately, the name was quickly changed.

More en point, I see churches still hanging "Passion Play" signs on their bulletin boards. But while Christians associate "passion play" with holidays and wonder and bring their children, many Jews still associate the term with a prelude to a rape. Which in some ways it was.

Is The Passion an anti-semitic portrayal of Jews? My review is decidedly mixed.

No portrayal of the trial and execution of Christ which is remotely faithful to the Gospels is going to portray Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin as all sweetness and light. That is simply not possible for an intellectually honest person. To suggest that a negative portrayal of Caiaphas, the priests, and the mob calling for Christ's crucifixion is, in and of itself, anti-semitic is to suggest that all portrayals of the trial and execution of Christ must be anti-semitic. Shall we just never refer to one of the great singularities of world civilization at all? I would argue that to suggest that any portrayal of Caiaphas is by definition anti-semitic is itself an anti-semitic position, because it buys into the underlying assumption that a specific, corrupt political body in 1st Century C.E. Judea is somehow representative of Jews today: an absurd and vile assumption.

So if Gibson's portrayal is going to be anti-semitic, then the devil is going to be in the details. And in that vein, it is truly unfortunate that at least one of the Pharisees--one given to screaming rants, as it happens--looks for all the world like a Nazi propaganda cartoon from Der Sturmer. So in this regard, I believe Gibson's critics have a point. And while, ok, it's not entirely unreasonable to imagine that 1st century Jews looked Jewish (although I have my doubts about that, too), Gibson should have known the kind of scrutiny his film would have received. One or two careless decisions, and the anti-semitism flap has been a terrible distraction from Gibson's intended message.

We Don't Scourge; We Fisk

A couple of other minor quibbles: Gibson's portrayal of King Herod--as a soft, pudgy mascara-wearing libertine-- doesn't move anything beyond Joshua Mostel's portrayal in Jesus Christ Superstar. (Prove to me that you're no fool--Walk across my swimming pool!). Indeed, it even lacks the redeeming virtue of humor. I would have liked to have seen Herod portrayed as an altogether different kind of person. For one thing, he would have been significantly older than Jesus at the time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Herod Antipas (Not Herod the Great--his father, who died in the year 4 BCE) would have been old enough, at the time of Jesus's birth, to have sent his soldiers to Bethlehem looking to kill Jesus--hence his brief exile in Egypt. Herod would not have been exercising State power before he became a legal adult at the age of 13. So if Christ was about 33 at the time of his death, Herod could not have been younger than 46. Add another 4 years or so (give or take a few years) to account for the date we know Herod the Great died, and he must have been 50 years old.


The Mother of All Performances

James Cavieziel is no great shakes, but doesn't get much of a chance to be. His Jesus is basically a vehicle for abuse. He seems to have little intrinsic personality throughout most of the film. You gotta bring your own Jesus baggage in with you to get much out of his role.

Hristo Shopov is deft and restrained, and as the "I can't believe these rabble-rousing nutcases want to KILL this guy" Pilate.

Monica Bellucci is touching in her role as Mary Magdalene. Gibson has her as the prostitute Jesus saves from stoning ("let him without sin cast the first stone"). She is warm and human and comes across as devotion and faith personified.

Did I mention she's hot? Yes I did.

But the real tour-de-force performance comes from Rumanian actress Maia Morgenstern. Morgenstern, as Mary, does more than play a role in a film. She does more even, than make Mary come alive. Any decent actress does that. And what reward is there in that? Do not even the B-movie actresses do the same?

No, Morgenstern's performance transcends the screen. Her performance transcends even the suspension of disbelief. Rather, through her performance, the audience becomes Mary. She does not allow us to maintain the rational detachment of the sceptic. Her presence forces us to view the scourging and execution of Christ through the eyes of his mother. When Jesus collapses under his cross for the second time, Mary--who had been following him through the procession, witnessing everything, and trying to get near him--Mary runs up to him and kneels near him and tries to comfort him, saying "Yeshua, I'm right here," She takes all of us with her.

And THAT--in a hundred small ways throughout the film--is more than anything else what makes The Passion memorable.

Verily I say unto you, the Academy will remember her when they vote for the Oscars.

The Bottom Line

The movie does not stand on its own merits. It is not a complete, self-contained unit, and is not meant to be. It is no substitute for doing your own homework. Christians should first prepare themselves by understanding more about Jews and Judaism. Jews should learn more about Christianity on its own terms. Everybody should do some reading about the historical context of the time.

Then, see the movie. I mean, I can't bear the burden of seeing it for all of you. It's too much for one man.

Happy Easter

Splash, out

Jason

(P.S., I mentioned Monica Bellucci was hot, right?)

Good things happen when you won't give in and they know you aren't going to!

Splash, out

Jason

An Iraqi dentist has some excellent insights into the insurgency from Southern Iraq.

Money quote: "If you even consider negotiations or appeasement, we are all doomed."

Start at the top and scroll down.

Got a son, daughter, or spouse serving in a combat zone? Then you're eligible for a break on the Federal Exise Taxes resulting from any phone calls from service members originating in combat zones. All you have to do to avoid paying them is send a letter, called a 'certificate of exemption,' to the telephone service provider.

According to the IRS, the letter should read something like this:

EXEMPTION CERTIFICATE
(Overseas Telephone Calls)
(Date)..........20...
I certify that the toll charges of $.......... are for telephone or radio telephone messages originating at..............(Point of origin) within a combat zone from..............(Name) a member of the Armed Forces of the United States performing service in such combat zone; that the transmission facilities were furnished by ......(Name of carrier); and that the charges are exempt from tax under section 4253(d) of the Internal Revenue Code.
………………………..........
(Signature of Subscriber)
………...............................
(Address)


To recover any FCC charges you've already paid, you can get a refund from the U.S. Government. Fill out an IRS Form 8849, and an 8849 Schedule 6.

What a country!

Splash, out

Jason

NBC's Kevin Seitz, asking General Kimmit if the Army plans to use special operations forces to mount a hostage rescue.

Says the Ranting Professor:

Excellent question, Kev. Why not also ask for the time and place when such a mission will be launched -- hell, see if you can find out where to position your cameras to get a good view of the extraction.

And they wonder why the press is held in low regard.

Nice one, Kev.

Splash, out

Jason

From the Daily Kos:

"Two American soldiers and several 'contractors' are missing in Iraq.'

Why the use of ironic quotes?

If I had some reason to believe that the missing contractors are something other than 'contractors,' then I would feel an obligation to spell it out, rather than rely on insinuation to lead the ignorant to draw conclusions unsupported by fact.

I would also have the grace to make that point by discussing private security industry in Iraq at large, and not to slime the missing.

Obviously, Kos's mileage varies.

Splash, out

Jason

My best guess is that within about 4-6 weeks the Sadr brigade and Mahdi militias will have gone to ground once again, or be destroyed by American forces, at which time we will see a return to the baseline levels of violence and insurgent activities we have seen over most of the winter.

I hate to fall into the tired saw that "the only thing Iraqis understand is force." Iraqis aren't dogs. But they do understand force very well. And they will soon find out that amateur militias unsupported by regular troops don't last very long in the face of a determined onslaught by the opposing force's regulars.

The militiamen have taken control of several cities at the moment. They cannot hold them. If they try, they will be dispatched very handily. Which will cost the militia a lot of the short-term support they've built up--which is still a minority of the Shia community.

Sistani is still the stronger and wiser man. Iraqi's aren't totally clueless--they'll figure this out, soon. And they'll realize that Sadr brings nothing but suffering to his people.

Mostly, Iraqis don't want to kill or be killed. They want to keep their heads down, rebuild their country, send their children to school, and get on with their lives. More than anything, they want security. So far, Coalition forces and our allies in the Iraqi Police have been hard-pressed to provide it. But Al Sadr will be further discredited when it becomes apparent to the Iraqis that he can provide even less.

Insurgency will come in and out of fashion. But Iraqis will soon tire of the idiots in their midst causing trouble and attracting disruptive coalition troops. And when their towns are retaken, there will be many willing sources eager to finger the militia ringleaders.

That said, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of executing a meaningful transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities on schedule, as promised. Whether the governing council is ready for it or not.

No more Balfours. If the West keeps only one promise to indigenous people this century, this one ought to be it.

If it happens, and happens in a public way that Iraqis can understand, then much of the wind will be taken out of Sadr's sails. Sistani will reassert control of the Shia in his masterful way (he's the smartest guy in country by far), and we will begin moving towards elections.

At this point Al Qaeda will make a concerted effort once again to disrupt political elections with mass casualty-producing attacks designed to turn Shia and Sunni Moslems against one another, as we saw last spring. They will also target coalition nations as each nation approaches elections, in an effort to embarrass hawks in each country and get doves elected to office--a strategy used to tremendous effect in Spain last month. Countries percieved as weak will get extra attention from Al Qaeda, for the same reason battleground states get a lot of attention from Presidential campaigns. It's a matter of return on the investment of limited resources. (More on this in a later post).

If, on the other hand, we reneg on the sovereignty promise, we will only strengthen the hand of the insurgent, as all the worst suspicions about the occupying forces and our government's motives will have been, in Iraqis' eyes, confirmed.

And then the scenario is much bleaker.

Splash, out

Jason

P.S., Intel Dump has a more pessimistic outlook. Scroll down a bit.

Journal Entry: 13 May 2003

2030 Hours

Al Asad Air Base, Iraq

Problem: We're only receiving two 1-litre bottles of water per soldier per day. In the absence of a reliable bulk water supply, that is not enough to sustain light infantry in the field. The industry standard is 8 gallons/soldier/day. We must solve that problem!

We took on a monster when we kicked off the mission without any of our organic vehicles. We bit off too much. We'll muddle through somehow, though. But we should not have taken or been assigned the mission without the communications and support assets on hand, or expressly committed by the 3rd ACR to make it happen. I'm not sure if the mechanized guys realize how austere our setup is--particularly with no water trailers or vehicle-mounted radios.

A few guys at the 3rd Armored Cavalry's support squadron have been a huge help: Captain Mack, for one--don't know his first name, He's in the squadron admin-log operations center,--and Major Matthew Schram, who I think is the operations officer.

Also working the issue of an evac vehicle for the aid station. None was budgeted.

1127 Hours: Collected statements on a vehicle accident for which I was appointed the investigating officer. I find no evidence of negligence.

We received 3 bottles of water per man for tomorrow. I'd rather have 4, but we can go on three for a while. One of our LT's came to me asking for more water. He thought one bottle was for hygiene, and went through the whole bottle. NOPE!

Rats all over the building. Arab style squat-latrines in the main building. But HHC's building has western-style latrines. Much better.

Asked for and got a medic to go on tomorrow's convoy to Baghdad. A vehicle was fired on yesterday in Fallujah, so things are still dicy.

Time's running out on the deadline for taking advantage of this fabulous tax credit!

In a nutshell, the government is offering a substantial match to low-income individuals who contribute to a retirement plan. Depending on your adjusted gross income, you may be eligible for up to a 50% match on the first $2,000 you contribute.

Here's where being a reservist or Guardsman comes into play: If you are in the reserves or Guard, and you were mobilized early last year, and sent to a combat zone, then in most cases everything you made in the combat zone does not count towards your AGI.

That means chances are great that even though you were making active duty wages last year, you'll still qualify for the low-income credit.

It's up to $1,000 in free money, people. Take the opportunity!

If you haven't contributed to a Roth IRA for 2003 yet, do it now! You only have until April 15th. After that you lose the opportunity forever.

Splash, out

Jason

PS: For Novice Investors Only

Now, I'm a soldier at heart, so unlike certain international terrorist organizations in 2001 I'm going to make my intel specific enough to be "actionable."

If you're a flat-out novice investor, just starting out, I encourage you to claim your free money by taking the following steps:

1.) Go to the TIAA-CREF website and open a Roth IRA for you and your spouse, if any. Contribute as much as you can without risking disaster if your car breaks down or something else unexpected happens. I'd start with the Equity Index Fund.

OR

Go to the Vanguard website, and select either the Total Stock Market Index or Vanguard 500. If you're over 40 or so, try the Vanguard Asset Allocation, which balances your holdings between stocks and bonds, and so is a bit less volatile.

I chose the above funds because they're middle-of-the road funds which are free to get into (no sales charges to commissioned agents) and they're very inexpensive to own relative to other funds.

OR

Go to the Fidelity Funds site, and click on "Freedom Funds." Pick the one with the year closest to the year you expect to retire. If you don't want to worry about fundpicking at all, these are great "fire-and-forget" funds. They're managed to take some risks to make some money now, but they'll become less risky as you get closer to retirement age. This is the way to go if you just want your fund to make money for you on autopilot.

Then: Educate yourself. Do it now. Don't rely on scheisters and sharks to do it for you.

Here's a great place to start: Financial Planning for Dummies, by Eric Tyson.





It's a pretty basic book--but it's extremely readable and is the best 'ABC's of Personal Finance' book I've read. And I've actually read a lot of them. Tyson knows how to boil things down in ways that are easy for the novice to understand.

Fund junkies--you're on your own for now.

Email this link to them that need it!

Jason

One reader suggests a different course of action on the POW lawsuit:

The POWs did not suffer $600,000,000 in pain and suffering and real damages. The amount was obviously meant to be a punitive judgement.

There is nobody left to punish.

The right thing to do is to compensate the POWs for their real losses that resulted from the torture, and treat the rest of the money as odious debt.

Don't give up on the French just yet!

It turns out that they've been buying up boatloads of of a pro-American treatise called "Anti-Americanism," a pointed--even scathing--critique of the hypocrisy and unthinking reflexiveness of the anti-American cult whose views have become so fashionable throughout the world.

The book was originally written in French by Jean-Francois Revel, and became a bestseller there. It's is now available in English.

Here's a lengthy review by John Parker, writing for the Asia Times.

Money passage:

The most notable characteristic of Anti-Americanism, as a text, is the blistering, take-no-prisoners quality of its prose. Even those diametrically opposed to Revel's views would be forced to acknowledge his skills as a pugnacious rhetorician who does not eschew sarcasm as a weapon.

A few examples will suffice: referring to anti-war banners that proclaimed "No to terrorism. No to war", Revel scoffs that this "is about as intelligent as 'No to illness. No to medicine'." Responding to the indictment of the United States as a "materialistic civilization", he says: "Everyone knows that the purest unselfishness reigns in Africa and Asia, especially in the Muslim nations, and that the universal corruption that is ravaging them is the expression of a high spirituality."

Shameless plug department: You can read more reviews, and purchase the book here:



I wish I could could link to a New York Times book review. Unfortunately, despite Anti-Americanism's bestselling status in France, America's "Newspaper of Record" has not yet deigned to publish one.

Instead, though, here's a list some recent related books that did merit their attention:

Occidentalism: The West in The Eyes of its Enemies (Jan 25th, 2004)

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Jan 4th, 2004)

The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (by George Soros) (Jan 4th, 2004)

Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq (Jan 4th, 2004)

Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation With The World (Jan 4th, 2004)

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American World Order (Jan 4th 2004)

(Link to NYT Review on above books)

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. By Noam Chomsky (Jan 4, 2004).
(Link.)

Ooops--the NYT did review Bill Bennett's book, "Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism," back in mid 2002.

Nope, no media cultural bias here, folks!

Splash, out

Jason

...And comes back with an interesting challenge of her own:

Dear Jason,

Thanks for your kind words about my book Nickel and Dimed.

Re my column in The Progressive: I didn't make up my numbers, but drew them all
from published newspaper accounts of poverty in the US military. If anything was
out of date, I am truly sorry, but the amount you cite for current combat pay --
$225 a month compared to $150-- still seems to me dreadfully inadequate to the
risks involved.

And why is it a Marxist rant to talk about the starving of the American welfare
state (which wasn't much to being with) under our "war president"? I was making
a historical observation: that wars have generally led to more benefits for the
class that does the fighting, not fewer. Can't I point this out without being
labeled as a Marxist?

Yes, I agree that some people serve out of patriotism rather than lack of
economic choices -- it's just that the latter have been the more common reason
within my own extended family. If you have some information showing that the
military is evenly divided among the social classes, I'd be amazed to see it.
I'm hardly the first to note that an "economic draft" has replaced an actual
draft.

Finally, though I no longer live there, lay off Key West! Maybe you didn't know
that it's just outside of a major Naval Air Station on Boca Chica, and chock
full of military people?

Best,

Barbara Ehrenreich

My own response: I don't think it's neccessary to show that the military is "evenly divided among the social classes." It's not going to be, because the American people are not evenly divided among the social classes. Wealth and income (the two terms are very different, and not neccessarily correlated except for the poorest and richest) is not distributed linearly, but as a bell curve.

Second, I have no problem separating the idea from the person. It's certainly possible to posit a Marxist explanation for a historical phenomenon or event without one's self being a Marxist. Historical Marxism is simply a framework for analysis, and every bit as legit as realism.

And yes, I would continue to argue that explaining the growth of veteran's benefits as a way of insulating the ruling classes from the proletariat--essentially a defensive measure of class warfare--is at its core a Marxist argument.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

On a related note, many of you wrote in suggesting that since Ehrenreich didn't understand the military pay system in this article, it taints her credibility in her book, "Nickel and Dimed."

I disagree. Nickel and Dimed relies on her own personal experiences and observations while trying to make ends meet on menial jobs, not on her understanding of military pay, or military culture. It's a separate issue.

I still think it's worth a read. I'm all for class mobility and the American dream. I believe in it. Hell, I rely on it.

But what conservatives constantly forget--and it makes me want to tear my hair out, sometimes--is that the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder is very sticky. Upward mobility relies on the efficient use of income over and above the subsistance level. And because of a variety of factors--poor financial services in poor areas, no access to cheap grocery stores, lack of available public transportation, and predatory credit practices at rent-to-own shops and check cashing stores (more on those guys in a coming post), it is far, far more difficult to move from the first rung to the second than it is to move upward from there.

To get an idea of the marginal utility of wages at different points on the economic ladder, consider this vignette: I drove my car to Publix one afternoon last weekend to go grocery shopping. I'm lucky I have a car don't have to use the expensive convenience store down the street.) I saw a cab pull up in front of the store, and out comes a pretty African American woman about my age. She's wearing a Publix apron. And in the store she goes to start her shift.

Think of it: She probably spent $6 in cab fare--nearly an hour's wages, at market rates around here--just to get to work.

Busses will not be running at midnight, when she gets off shift. If she can't get a ride home, she will have spent nearly 25% of her take home pay that day just to get to work and back.

That's what many of us in the middle class spend on housing.

You don't have to be a bleeding heart. But you ought to understand it!

Many thanks to Ms. Ehrenreich for taking the time to respond!

Splash, out

Jason

Dow loses 90 points on security concerns.

Developing...

The Bush Administration has gone to court to keep former US Desert Storm POWs who were tortured during the Gulf War from collecting a $653 million dollar judgement against the Saddam regime.

Their reasoning? Iraq is no longer on the President's list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the money is needed for the rebuilding of Iraq.

"What's at stake is the President's ability to conduct foreign policy," says the lawyer for the US.

My take: it's a stupid argument for a sound decision.

Let's look at the argument first:

Allowing the judgement to stand would only very marginally affect the President's authority to conduct foreign policy. Given the Republican controlled congress and the Bush Administration's incredible deficit spending binge, it's not as if $0.653 billion adds up to real money, in the grand scheme of things.

I wish the real conservatives on both sides of the aisle would fight pork barrel pirates and special interest groups for their money as hard as the Administration is fighting the veterans that this government sent into harm's way in the first place.

That said, I think there's a strong case to be made for overturning the judgement on its own merits. The idea is rooted in doctrine of Odious Debt.

(See also my December 16th post here.)

In a nutshell, the judgement was against Saddam Hussein and his regime. They were the ones who captured and abused the US POWs in the First Gulf War. The Iraqi people had nothing whatsoever to do with it. They had no say in the matter. They had no opportunity to select their own leaders. There was no democratic process in Iraq, through which the Iraqi people could influence policy whatsoever. They themselves were victims of the same monsters who tortured and sexually assaulted our servicemen and women.

As such, the Iraqi people bear no moral culpability for the crimes against our POWs.

And yet...and yet...

The odious debt argument collapses when one turns to analyzing moral hazard. The American POWs cannot be compared to a creditor under odious debt doctrine. Saddam Hussein's creditors financed his regime with full knowledge of his crimes, and full knowledge of the lack of democracy in Iraq, and with full knowledge that the money they extended to him would not be used to benefit the people of Iraq, but would instead go to support a brutal, oppressive, murderous regime in its suppression of its people.

As such, creditors to regimes such as Hussein's share a measure of moral culpability with the regime itself.

The American POWs share none of these attributes with Iraq's foreign creditors.

So it's not a cut-and-dried issue on either side. And yes, $653 million goes a lot further in Iraq than it does here.

My solution:

1.) The money belongs to the Iraqi people. It was stolen from them in the first place. It should be used exclusively for their benefit.

2.) When the United States invaded Iraq and took over the country, it assumed responsibility for any existing claims filed against Iraq by US citizens, in the same way one who purchases a business assumes responsibility for any accounts payable outstanding.

3.) The servicemen and women were sent to the Gulf by the people of the United States. Our elected representatives knew the brutality of the Saddam regime. They knew that any US servicemen or women captured would very likely be abused, tortured, or even killed. Our POWs were captured, and tortured, while serving the interests of the people of the United States. The US Government should make good on the judgement from other funding sources.

Splash, out

Jason

Here's an early Associated Press report on the bombing of a Fallujah mosque by the USMC, in which about 40 Iraqis were killed.

The emphasis is mine.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a mosque compound filled with worshippers Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to nearly all of the country.

The strike came as worshippers had gathered for afternoon prayers, witnesses said. Temporary hospitals were set up in private homes to treat the wounded and prepare the dead for burial.

Link.


There's an old adage among journalists: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

These reporters must really trust their mothers, because they bought the 'worshippers' story 100%, and even passed it off as fact, right in the lead paragraph.

Now, I've also noted on this page that first reports are almost always wrong. And the very early reports on any event--whether from a newspaper or in a military report--are going to contain information that doesn't pan out as you collect more information, gather and interview more witnesses, and learn more about the context.

But still, characterizing the Iraqi dead as "worshippers," knowing that supporters of the insurgency had every reason to lie to reporters about their combatant status, is an act of incredible credulity, to coin an oxymoron.

That's where transparency in reporting comes in. If the combatant status of the dead in the Mosque was uncertain, or unverified at the time the report was filed, then the reporter should have said so, or simply used some more neutral language.

Here's a better way: "Some 40 Iraqis were killed today when US Marines called in air strikes on a Fallujah mosque. Local townspeople close to the scene said the mosque was filled with worshippers. US officials have not yet commented on the airstrike."

This example says the same thing, really. But the characterization of the dead as 'worshippers' is attributed to Iraqis. And so the reader is able to reach his own conclusion about the reliability of the original source. He also learns that the reporter has not yet unearthed the other side of the story.

And it also saves the reporter from embarrassment when the more information emerges.

Contrast the AP piece with this Washington Post article from later in the day.

From page 2 on the website:

As the Marines fought their way into the Fallujah, Byrne and other officers said, about 40 armed men opened fire on the Americans with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades from a bunker at the Abdelaziz Samarrai mosque. Four Marines in a Humvee several blocks away were wounded.

...and so it emerges that the people in the mosque were not worshipers, but insurgents using the mosque as a base of operations against US troops. The story is corroborated by the US wounded.

No, the reporter shouldn't neccessarily take the US commander's story at face value, either. The US commander insists, for example, that no noncombatants were killed.

I would argue that it would be very difficult for any US commander to know this for certain, and I wish the reporter had pressed him for details about how he could be sure about this.

Here's the best way to do it: compare the number of weapons captured at the scene with the number of bodies. American commanders should be willing to show them to the reporter. Indeed, when my unit was fighting in Ramadi, we would routinely lay out the weapons captured and allow any reporter who wanted to to take pictures and count them.

In this case, if the number of weapons is 40 or more, the 'statement that no non-combatants were killed' is a fairly reasonable assertion, given the evidence available to us, and the fact that several hours had elapsed between the first contact and the time the airstrikes were called in, giving any legitimate worshippers plenty of time to get out.

But again, through transparency in reporting, the reader should be given enough information to assess the reliability of the source's statements himself.

Splash, out

Jason

Happy April, everyone! I hoped you guys kept your receipts!

If your duties took you on an overnight stay 100 miles or more away from home, you can now deduct most unreimbursed expenses related to transportation, meals, and lodging, beginning with tax year 2003. You can't go hog wild, though--you can only deduct up to what the federal government pays its own employees for travel expenses. You can also deduct 36 cents per mile for use of your POV on these trips. (Details are here. Scroll down to page 33.)

Best of all, these are "above the line" deductions. Which means that you can claim them even if you don't otherwise itemize deductions. You don't have to fill out a schedule C, and you still get the benefit of your full standard deduction.

But you won't find these deductions itemized on a form 1040, though, like an IRA contribution or a teachers' expense deduction. Noooooo! nothing can be easy for us reserve component soldiers, can it???

I guess the NEA has more pull with the suits at the IRS than us grunts.

So instead, the bastards are going to make you jump through a couple of hoops.

Here's how to claim the deductions. Follow along carefully.

1. When you put together your returns, you download form 2106 (Employee Business Expense), or a Form 2106 EZ (Unreimbursed Employee Business Expenses.)

2. Use one of those two forms to figure the deduction amount.

3. Fill out an IRS Form 1040. (Don't us a 1040 EZ or you'll miss the deduction!) Write the letters "RC" and the deduction amount on the dotted line. NOT in the box. The dotted line.

4. Add this figure to all your other deductions specifically itemized in lines 23-32.

5. Write the resulting sum into the box on 33.

6. Send this link to every guardsman or reserve soldier or family member in your distribution list, so I can rule the world so they can claim the deduction, too.


Stay tuned--more finance and tax tips on the way!

Splash, out

Jason

Journal Entry

13 May 2003
Al Asad Air Base, Iraq

--A couple of notes, here. Nobody can flirt like an Arab woman! They learn fast to say it all with their eyes, I guess. I've only seen two adult women in western dress so far. Both near Baghdad. Most women around here are unveiled, though.

Issues: The taps are running at Al Asad, but our samples indicate E. Coli contamination, according to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's medical troop in their support battalion. It's ok to bathe in, and wash clothes, just keep it out of your mouth.

There's an outdoor swimming pool here, and the 3rd ACR has set up a water purification unit there, and is pumping water out of the swimming pool. So that's our immediate source of fresh water.

The only medical trend here so far is sand fleas. There have been no incidents of dysentary, cholera, or other similar diseases in the 3rd ACR so far. But give us time.

Trying to think through a logistics problem here: I'm trying to police up seven water trailers for upcoming operations, which is seven more than we have. Here's the situation: The troops are here, but the vehicles aren't. All our vehicles, with the exception of four gun trucks and ten 5-ton trucks attached to us from the 603rd Transportation company--essentially on loan to us from the 3rd ACR--all of our vehicles are still in Jordan, awaiting a line haul which has yet to be scheduled. Our support platoon, along with our battalion XO and maintenance section, is still in Jordan. No idea when they'll be coming forward.

Meanwhile, we've got a security mission on our plate in the Hadithah area which is going to require that we disperse all three of our line companies over a 20-30 mile area--and support them from Al Asad, which is an hour and a half away.

The most immediate supply requirement is water. And each company is going to go through 400 gallon water trailers a day, easily. More if there's a lot of dismounted operations going on, and if we begin cooking. Each line company has 120-130 soldiers. The basic planning assumption is 8 gallons per soldier per day. You can do 4 gallons/soldier/day for short periods, but that assumes no allowance for bathing, cooking, or hygiene.

What that means is Each line company is going to need two resupplies of water each day. Which in turn means that I will need two water trailers for each of the three line companies. One to sit at the companies and one for me to take back with me to refill. That's six. I'll drop off a full trailer and pick up an empty trailer twice each day. Plus I'll need an additional water trailer for the headquarters guys back here at Al Asad. So that makes seven.

When the mobile kitchen trailers get here, we'll have to disperse them among the line companies. We're too far away to cook from back here, where water supplies are more plentiful. Regulations only allow us to keep food in mermite containers for 4 hours before we have to throw it away. Between prep time, vehicle load out time, convoy briefings, and deliveries at each company's location, we could not reliably make the delivery to every company within the time allowed.

So it's MREs for now, anyway. When the MKTs do get here, and if we try to cook T rations or A rations, that will significantly increase each company's requirement for potable water.

Essentially, by coming out here without our full complement of vehicles (and the radios that go with them!) we're dumping a lot of problems on the shoulders of the 3rd ACR.

Lots of people are pretty resentful of being out here right now, with so much vital equipment back in the rear. We have zero organic medical evacuation assets, and communications are extremely poor. Companies will be so spread out that we may have no contact between them except by courier. Which is slow, and which will eat up still more vehicular assets we don't have yet.

There's nothing in a light infantry battalion's structure and equipment which designs it to operate so far apart.

I'm hearing that the line haul may arrive around the 20th-21st of May. It can't come soon enough.

...Not that that's particularly a surprise.

From the USA Today op/ed page:


Today, evidence suggests U.N. officials abused the program, enriching themselves, Saddam and favored foreign companies. The Iraqi Governing Council has hired accountants and lawyers to investigate Iraqi documents it says provide proof of corruption and fraud in the oil-for-food program.


Iraq's media have cited at least 270 suspects, including French and Russian firms, a senior U.N. official and a company linked to the son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites). Last month, a U.S. congressional investigation estimated that Saddam siphoned $10 billion or more from the program in kickbacks and bribes.


The charges could be shrugged off as the unfortunate but all-too-typical type of corruption that defines both dictators and international aid programs, except for one thing: The scandal tars an organization that could play a crucial supporting role in U.S. efforts to turn Iraq into a stable democracy.

Splash, out

Jason

(Credit: Instapundit)

Long time readers will recall a series of posts on the exercise of leadership at the small unit level. Yes, the emphasis of this blog has always been on military affairs, and I try to devote at least some content to leadership studies.

The military is an excellent laboratory for the development of leadership and management skills. But it is not the only one, and I'm always eager to learn from the inspiring example of great leaders from all walks of life.

Our example today--our case study, if you will, is from the music industry. It's an intimate audio clip of one of the great bandleaders of our time at the height of his motivational powers. In just a few short minutes of audio, we'll hear the Maestro expound on everything from dressing for success to attention to detail to the importance of bedrock integrity, in one of the most scintillating moral treatises since Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

It's a must for any junior officer, NCO, cadet, or anyone else who wants to improve his own skills as a motivator, as a mentor, as a leader.

I'm a believer in multidisciplinary learning. So in order to get the most out of the clip, I urge you to first get ready to follow along in this self-instructional guide.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the legendary Mr. Paul Anka.

Hat tip: Allahpundit.com

Well, now we know there are no veterans working at The Progressive, or somebody could have caught this godawful piece of reporting.

I was hoping for better, because Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of the excellent "Nickeled And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," has actually done a lot of worthwhile reporting about the daily struggles of America's working class.

But let's take a closer look at the article.

Headline: Bush's Odd Warfare State.

Here's one way our President proposes to "support our troops": According to his 2005 budget, the extra pay our soldiers receive for serving in combat zones--about $150 a month--will no longer count against their food stamp eligibility.

It's never good to blow a fact in the very first sentence of a piece. Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay is $225/month. Not $150. In fairness to Ms. Ehrenreich, there are several websites out there which still have outdated information on them.

Lesson learned: use primary sources for stuff like this.

Market forces ensure that a volunteer army will necessarily be an army of the poor.

Wow...there's that left-wing condescension again. I guess in Ehrenreich's little Key West fantasyland, nobody joins the service because they simply want to serve their country, or because it's a family tradition, or because they are attracted to the challenge, or because they don't want their middle class parents to have to go into debt to finance college, or they don't want to go into debt themselves. Or that they were outraged at September 11th, and simply joined up to take the war to Al Qaeda where they lived.

Oh, no. That wouldn't fit into the Progressive paradigm. It's much more convenient to think of us as unwilling stooges--poor, uneducated, and easily led, to paraphrase a notorious characterization--in this case, of conservative Christians--from the Washington Post. A characterization for which the Post later apologized.

Frontline battle troops, most of whom have been in the military for about a year, earn less than $16,000 a year--which puts them at about the level of theater ushers and Wal-Mart clerks. Even second lieutenants, at a starting salary of $26,000 a year, earn less than pest control workers and shoe repairers.

Well, it's pretty obvious Ehrenreich doesn't quite know what she means when she says "frontline battle troops." There are very few privates out there in the infantry units. The vast majority of the real frontline battle troops are actually E-4s and above. Even in their first year of service, E-4s pull in more than $18,600 per annum, and more than $19,600 in their second year of service, and that's in base pay. Throw in BAH Type II for a married soldier (assuming 0 differentials. He earns more money if he has children) and he's really making $25,887 per year in his second year of service.

The military pay scale is all laid out for you here.

Except that while he's deployed, he's also getting hostile fire pay ($3,000 per year), family separation pay ($3,000 per year) and an allowance for per diem expenses of 3.50 per day, or 1,277.50 per year. So now we're up to $33,164.50.

But money earned in a combat zone is exempt from federal income tax. So assuming the soldier's in the 15% tax bracket, that income yields an after-tax equivalent of $38,139.18 per year.

And we haven't even figured in the value of free food for the soldier while he's deployed, or free medical care for the soldier's dependents.

So Ehrenreich's $16,000 per year figure--while not far off the mark if the soldier's a screw-up and doesn't get promoted and you only count base pay--is wildly inaccurate when it's vetted by someone who actually knows what he's doing.

And the LT? The first year 2nd Lieutenant while deployed in Iraq, makes an after-tax equivalent of $61,462.67 (somewhat less than that, actually, because he's in a marginal 15% bracket, not an effective one. But you get the idea.)

Where ELSE can you be 19-24 years old and pull in that kind of salary?

No, they aren't getting rich. But they sure shouldn't be considered "working poor," either.

Had the Progressive happened to have a veteran somewhere in their office--from any service-- he would have known Ehrenreich's figures were wrong.

So when the Bush Administration, in its frenzied rush to transfer more wealth to the already wealthy, hurts the working poor, you can count the troops among them.

No, not really. Junior enlisted soldiers do have to pinch pennies to make ends meet, but unlike the permanent underclass Barbara Ehrenreich describes in Nickel and Dimed, these soldiers are upwardly mobile. They have the option of making the Army a rewarding career, or they can get out and take advantage of the Montgomery GI Bill and pay for some or nearly all of college in certain circumstances, or use the VA Home Loan programs to purchase a home for nothing down, or all of the above.

Their situation cannot be usefully compared to the real working poor in America. Soldiers are not a permanent underclass. But 40 year old Wal-mart stock clerks are. And their problems have totally different causes and totally different solutions.

The mother of a Marine reports that her son had to charge nearly $1,000 on her Visa card for items not issued by the military, like camouflage paint and socks.

...And she believed him?????

And Ehrenreich bought the story hook, line, and sinker? Whatever happened to scepticism in reporting?

(By the way, camoflage face paint is an issue item. The NSN number is 6850-01-262-0635. Same with socks, within reason. Black or olive drab wool socks can be ordered through the supply system. The NSN number is 8440-00-543-7778.)

You might imagine that our "war President," as he styles himself, would be in a rush to enrich the frontline troops, but last August his Administration proposed to cut the combat pay bonus of $150 a month.

Wrong again. Or at least, incomplete. The Pentagon didn't plan to cut the allowance of $150/month. They wanted to cut it to $150/month, from $225. Congress had passed a temporary authorization to increase the allowance by $75 a month. But that authorization was due to expire last fall. But soldiers' paychecks--the ones actually getting shot at, anyway--were never in any real danger of being cut. Sure, it was a politically idiotic idea, but the plan was to authorize pay raises from other funding sources to compensate--most likely by replacing the existing 'hostile fire pay' system a more flexible system of "hardship pay," which could be more finely delineated to reflect the hardships and dangers at different duty stations.

But the Army Times broke the story, and the political outcry was such that the adult supervision in the White House had to lend some adult supervision to the milk-throwing bean-counters set up at the kiddie tables in the romper-room basement setups in the Pentagon, and scrap the plan, and it never came to fruition.

Somebody must have pointed out that an election year was just around the corner, because this little trial balloon was quietly punctured. In fact, the 2005 budget offers to double the military death benefit received by families of the fallen from $6,000 to $12,000.

Sounds good. In fact, it may make death financially preferable to surviving in a damaged state.

Now, this is just peachy, isn't it?

In his 2005 budget, Bush proposes to raise veterans' health care costs--through increased drug co-payments and a new "enrollment fee"--thus driving an estimated 200,000 vets out of the system and discouraging another million from enrolling.

I don't buy these numbers. Whose estimate is she quoting? A little transparency, please!

The rest is basically a neo-Marxist rant about European states historically using welfare benefits to appease the roiling masses, and blah blah blah.

I don't fault Ehrenreich here, particularly. She understands the plight of the working poor better than most. And Nickel and Dimed is an engaging and enlightening read. I'd recommend it to anybody. Especially conservatives!

But between the glaring factual errors, the total misunderstanding of military pay and benefit structures, and the condescending cultural elitism built into her prose, it's clear that Ehrenreich has no idea how to report on the military community. Neither does the editorial staff at The Progressive.

And it shows.

Editors: How many veterans do you have your newsroom?


Splash, out

Jason

Introducing Noam Chomsky's new blog, Turning the Tide.

You can read a rather fawning overview of his life and work here.

Unfortunately, I don't see an email link on the blogsite, which I understand. But if you really want to email the guy, you can email him through MIT.

Splash, out

Jason

"Right Wing Republicans:" 7,920 matches.

"Left Wing Democrats:" 1,760 matches

Splash, out

Jason

I get a lot of people asking me "what kind of care packages should I send to Iraq?"

Well, things have changed a lot since the early days of the occupation, when most of us would have raffled off our sisters for a can of Gatorade mix.

Now, the vast majority of troops in Iraq have access to a reasonable chow hall and PX once in a while, and they're now able to buy the neccessities of life.

But one thing they don't have access to, in most cases, is a decent library.

Which is why I was pleased to find Books For Soldiers on the Internet. Check it out. I know donations--thoughful donations--of books are appreciated, and a good library of books can make a real difference in a soldier's quality of life overseas. And good books are read over and over and over. Even older ones. We had a couple of copies of Catch 22 and they always had a long waiting list. I had one for a while and it was like a curse."Are you done yet? Are you done yet?"

Leon Uris was another popular author with a waiting list. Tom Clancy. Robert Heinlein. 20th Century classics and semi-classics in general did very well. DVDs, too--especially war-movies and erotic thrillers.

Don't hesitate to donate good stuff along these lines, either through Books for Soldiers or directly to loved ones. The good books get passed around until they wear out.

Splash, out

Jason

P.S. Don't forget to send some Spanish-language books, too!

Instapundit has one for the ages from the Associated Press.

Headline: Bush Loyalists Pack Press Office

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq

[Ed. note: I swear to God this is NOT a parody from The Onion.]

One-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern.

[Ed. note: Hmmm. Almost one third of Americans reliably vote Republican themselves. So the Baghdad press office actually votes like America. The reporter may be onto something else here: executive branch government spokespersons often try to paint news in a positive light. Wow, now there's a scoop! (Not!!!!!!!)]

One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications — known as stratcom — is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives.

[Ed. note: This guy does a great job so far in firmly grasping the obvious. Let's see how sceptical he really is.]

Putting a sharp strategist like him in the press room is a campaign masterstroke, said Bob Boorstin of the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan political think-tank in Washington.

Hmmm. Yellow flag. I never trust anyone who tells me a political think-tank is 'nonpartisans.' Non-partisan people don't bother starting up political think tanks.

You know they're in trouble if they shipped Rich Galen over there," said Boorstin, who worked on four presidential campaigns, all Democratic.

[Ed. note: This is good reporting, as far as it goes, and Krane does a good job establishing Boorstin's credibility, as far as it goes. It doesn't demolish Boorstin's credibility at all, but it does give the reader a chance to assess Boorstin's motive for themselves--an important and commendable nod toward transparency in reporting, which is to be applauded.]

There's some deep questions about whether (the U.S. invasion) was a good idea. Wherever and whenever they can, Bush's political people are manipulating whatever they can," he said.

[Ed. note: Nice little jab. But you can't fault it, because it's obviously absolutely true.]

"Is that a surprise? No. Would Democrats do it? Yes. But it's particularly noxious because people's lives are on the line."

Link.


Well, let's put aside the obvious idea that the Democrats would--and have--manipulate news coverage as much as they could when lives are on the line, too. I can tell you that my own informal sense is that soldiers were not particularly put off by the idea that the Baghdad press office is wanting to guide reporters to cover positive aspects of the Iraq reconstruction. They boys already know what this reporter apparently doesn't: that an attempt at positive spin by Administration spokespersons is part of the game.

See, our soldiers are every bit as smart as--and in many cases, better educated than--journalists of comparable age and experience levels assigned to cover them. I know this is a hard idea for a lot of journo-types to swallow, because so many of them have grown up steeped in condescension towards us working class rubes who were somehow "seduced by the siren song of Jingoism."

No. What the soldiers found particularly noxious was the lack of interest in the positive accomplishments--the rebuilding of schools, the rebuilding of a banking system, the training of Iraqi law enforcement personnel, the capturing or killing of mid-level insurgents.

But let's get to the root of the matter, here. The AP reporter characterizes the Center for American Progress as "nonpartisan."

Now, any time a reporter characterizes a think tank as nonpartisan, it makes me instinctively want to reach for my pistol. But that, in the long run, is counterproductive. So instead, let's visit the CAP's "non-partisan" website and investigate the claim ourselves.

Without even scrolling down, I can see the following links:

"Bush Record Still Worst Since Hoover"

"Economic Policies Have Failed Workers"

"WH [White House] And West Virginia: A Legacy of Leaving Families and Workers Behind."

"Flip-Flopper In Chief: Bush Record Shows Different Stands on Important Issues."

"Inequality In America"

"Caught on Tape: Powell Has No Answer to CAP's Question"

"First Chapters Library: Preview the Latest Progressive Books"


But wait: there's more. Had the AP reporter bothered to look beyond his rolodex, he would have found that the Center for American Progress is headed by its founder, John Podesta--as in the former Chief of Staff to the Clinton White House and long-time Democratic Party advisor John Podesta.

And Podesta himself wouldn't even tell you the Center for American Progress is "nonpartisan."

Rather, he's quoted as saying he wants American Progress to lay the philosophical groundwork "for an enduring progressive majority."

Now, Podesta's a good guy. But to characterize either Podesta or American Progress as "non-partisan" demonstrates, at best, an embarrassing credulity on the part of Kane and his Associated Press editors.

Splash, out

Jason

Nice bit of reporting from the L.A. Times here.

Note that the reporters include direct quotations from 12 different sources, in Washington and Fallujah, and included some Iraqi voices as well as Americans.

That's a lot of hustle, and it pays off in a damn good article.

My own suspicion is that the counteroffensive against those responsible for this mob violence is already underway, in a very quiet fashion.

Fallujah's a big town, but it isn't that big. People who grew up in Ramadi all their lives, for example, knew who the other Ramadi people were--if not by name, at least by neighborhood or tribe.

And Iraq isn't Somalia. Iraq has a police force of its own which is perfectly able to make arrests--often all they need is a name.

Put the two together, and mix in a critical mass of sheikhs who have a lot to lose by falling out of the good graces of coalition forces, and I believe there is every reason to expect that many of those in the mob scene who were foolish enough to show their faces on camera will soon find themselves either dead, or sporting orange jumpsuits in Abu Gharaib prison.

It isn't neccessary for US forces to get involved in a provocative, high profile, large-unit movement-to-contact counterattack. Given that US forces were looking to largely pull out of volatile areas like Ramadi and Fallujah anyway, as recently as last December, we may not see one at all. Especially if the intelligence side of the battle goes well.

Instead, we may see something like the following:

1.) No matter how bad anti-American sentiment is in Fallujah, there are still going to be a certain number of Fallujans who for whatever reasons are perfectly willing--even eager--to provide intelligence to coalition forces. Local commanders and intelligence officers, down to the company command level, will sit down with our reliable sources and say "roll tape."

2.) Once the tape is rolling, we'll just take careful notes while the source looks at the video and says "oh, I know that guy--he runs a vegetable stand on Highway 10...And that's Mohammad's brother Khamal. I don't know exactly where he lives, but he lives in Sheik Thamir's neighborhood. Thamir will be able to tell you. Hey, doesn't Thamir have a contracting business?"

3.) Commanders at all levels should carefully compare notes at this point. We routinely assess the reliability of sources in the past, and that reliability is passed on with every intelligence report. Crosscheck the results of each interview. It's not unusual for a source from one tribe to falsely implicate a neighboring tribe--or a neighbor--simply to settle an old grudge over who ran over so and so's sheep back during the British Occupation, or something. Look especially for any information about anyone on the tape corroborated by two or more sources.

4.) Have the mayor of the town present the sheikhs to the Americans, one by one, for interviews. Sheikhs are often scumbags. But they are usually very pragmatic scumbags. That's how they got to be Sheikhs. The conversation may go something like this:

American commander: Thank you very much for coming to see us. We apologize for the early, 10 AM appointment. We appreciate you having shown so promptly at 1:30 PM. We would like to discuss the recent unpleasantness in your neighborhood. We know we can count on your cooperation. You have always been a good friend. When that business is done, we would also like to discuss a future contract building 20 permanent structures for Iraqi Civil Defense Corps troops. We believe your firm might be a good match, and it could provide many jobs for your people. Would you care for some tea/Pepsi/single malt scotch?

Sheikh: I appreciate your interest, and I look forward to working with you. Please be assured I will do everything in my power to assfu--, er--assist you in your mission. I have no other motive but the lining of my purse--er, I mean, the prosperity and security of the people of Fallujah.

American commander: We appreciate your support. Moreover, we have every confidence in your leadership and integrity, and we know you are strong enough and honorable enough to assume full responsibility for everything that happens in your neighborhood. Of course, we will hold you personally responsible for any problems with your tribe. But this is because we respect your wisdom and the prestige you clearly have among the people of Fallujah.

Sheikh: I am a river to my people.

American Commander: Please make yourself comfortable. I am going to show you a series of videotapes--roll the tape please. We have already identified which individuals belong to you, personally, Sheikh. Of course, we would like to give you the opportunity to participate in our rewards program, by simply confirming each person's name and place of residence with us. Naturally, we have a list. By the way, thank you for the excellent work you did rebuilding the septic system underneath the local school. I look forward to many mutually beneficial projects in the future.

Now, can you please confirm the name and place of residence of this person shown in this video?

..And so it goes. Interview after meticulous interview. Raid packets are prepared on each house. Aerial photographs are enlarged to show each house and the surrounding houses from above to each commander. Grid coordinates are provided. Our Iraqi friends begin to reconnoiter the homes, again to confirm or deny the existence of each person there, or at least someone matching the description.

The American commanders summon the chief of police if Ramadi, hand him the list, and say "Bring us these people. By noon on friday. Or you're fired and we'll find another police chief who can actually do his job. By the way, tell your brother we'd like to see him about another oh-so-lucrative gravel pouring contract, which will provide jobs for many members of your family.

And so it goes. The Iraqi police go out, and pick up person after person, in the dead of night. They simply disappear. No, they aren't killed. They just wind up in the back of a truck with a hood over their heads and a tag on their collars. And then they, too, are interviewed. They, too, get to watch the tape. They, too, are quizzed about who they were with--who's that guy next to him--where does he live? What tribe? Where does he work.

And there's a second series of raids, which may involve coalition forces, or it may not.

The bottom line is, all this can be accomplished without a single tank column marching provocatively down Highway 10 and the middle of Ramadi. No muss, no fuss, no gory mess.

The longer it takes for the Marines to reoccupy Fallujah in force, the better and more smoothly I would suspect the USMC--Iraqi police cooperation is, and the better the intelligence picture is developing.

In an urban counterinsurgency, patience is a virtue, and careful meticulousness is often to be prized above bravado.

There's a story I got from the movie "Colors" about two bulls standing on a hill, looking at a herd of cows. The young bull says to the old bull, "Hey, gramps...whaddaya say we run down the hill and f#@k one of those cows?"

And the old bull says to the younger bull, "No, son. I've got a better idea. Let's walk down, and f#^k them all.

It's not always possible to walk down, rather than run. But if we are able to walk down the hill and f#@k all of those cows, we may never really know what happened. Some sleazeballs will disappear off the streets of Fallujah and nothing more will be said.

Minor quibble: Why spell it "Fallouja" instead of "Fallujah," like the rest of the English language media, guys? It doesn't get you any legitimacy points. All it does is make sure that your article--and all your hard work--is excluded on all Nexis-Lexis, Factiva, Dow Jones Interactive, and Google searches.

Splash, out

Jason

Correction: An alert reader reminds me that the movie I mentioned was "Colors." Not "Cops." I regret the error.

...Only this time it's the press!!!

See also this delightful little morsel on coverage of the romance between Daniel Pearl's widow Mariane, and CNN reporter Eason Jordan.

Richard Leiby: Okay, my Peeps (marshmallow and otherwise), we'll get straight to big controversy. Basically, should a gossip columnist report on people's PERSONAL LIVES? Here's a typical email flaming me for my report on Mariane Pearl (the widow of Danny Pearl of the Wall Street Journal) and her relationship with a top CNN exec (who is still married): :

"Subj: Pathetic journalism -- why cover gossip?

"I am a former CNN employee and I am disgusted with your coverage of Eason Jordan's alleged affair with Marianne Pearl. It seems to me that Washington Post Reporters have too much time in their hands and are becoming part of that zealot, puritan band wagon that permeates the American media. Why would we care about an executive's personal life? How can you go so as far as calling his poor wife? Why don't you look into your own newsroom to sniff for some dirt really worth printing? Here is a headline, Post Reporters lack depth, insight on war in Iraq and many other matters."


I say in return: We are reporters. We cover a lot of human behavior, and we even cover Michael Jackson.
Was it a good idea for CNN to put Mariane Pearl on the air this week with her attorney, seeking a piece of the 9/11 victims' compensation fund, without disclosing that she is deeply involved with Eason Jordan, who handled CNN's coverage of the Pearl case and heads CNN's editorial board? Just asking!

Via Romanesko and Poynter Online--a one-stop shop for all the latest in journalistic navel-gazing and feces-throwing. Bookmark it. It's a great site for journalists, and for anyone else who wants to be an informed media consumer.

Splash, out

Jason

Headline: Fear of New Bomb Attacks Grows in Spain

MADRID (Reuters) - High-speed trains to southern Spain began running again on Saturday after a bomb found on the line was defused but fears grew that Islamic extremists could strike again after the Madrid rail bombings...

El Pais newspaper reported that Spain is the main al Qaeda base in Europe and said police believed al Qaeda could strike again here.

Spain was once used as a rear base by Islamic militants, but having failed with attempted attacks in other European countries, "sleeper cells" were now carrying out operations in Spain, El Pais said. Police suspected 200 people in Spain of cooperating with radical Islamic groups, it said.

Several newspapers reported that the Spanish embassy in Egypt had recently received a letter signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades and al Qaeda threatening to attack embassies, consulates and other Spanish interests in north Africa and the southern and eastern Mediterranean region.

The letter said the attacks could be avoided if Spain withdrew its soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan [emphasis mine] in the next four weeks, El Mundo newspaper reported.



Link.



Do not be fooled by the small size of the explosive charge on the rail line. This was a serious attempt at a mass casualty-producing attack, on a par with last month's attack in Madrid. It only takes a small charge--easily concealable in a backpack--to snap a rail. And that's all they needed to do. The high speed of the train--well in excess of 100 mph--would do the real killing.

Call it "leverage." Because that's what it is.

And so Spain has replaced its government, and pledged to pull out of operations in Iraq. And yet attacks continue, and its people still live in fear.

And they will continue to live in fear as long as Al Qaeda and its ilk percieves Spain as the political weak link in the coalition it has demonstrated itself to be.

Now that Al Qaeda knows they can be bullied out of Iraq, they have already raised the stakes to bully them out of Afghanistan. And when they get their way in Afghanistan, they will use either terrorism or assassination attempts to intimidate them into releasing terrorists from Spanish prisons.

And whether the Spanish continue to succumb to that or not, Al Qaeda will continue to kill Spaniards for no other reason than they are free people--just as they targeted westerners in a Bali nightclub two years ago.

Insurgents targeted Italian troops in Nasiriyah, detonating a bomb that killed 26 people.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stood firm.

It's not Italian rail lines that are still being attacked.

There is no appeasing Al Qaeda. There are no deals. There can be no separate peace. Unilateral pacificism yields no dividends for the weak.

The war against Al Qaeda is a war of annihilation.

There are no reliable defensive measures against Al Qaeda. Terrorists are intelligent beasts who go to school on their enemy. Any defensive countermeasure will quickly be identified and worked around.

Spain cannot guard its entire rail network simultaneously. If it does, it will be forced to leave other critical infrastructures unguarded. Sun Tzu wrote 2,000 years ago that a general cannot defend everywhere at once. If he is strong on his left, his right is weak. If he is strong on his right, his left is weak. If he tries to be strong everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.

If defense is futile, and neutrality is a non-option, then it follows that the only course left to Spain--and to free nations everywhere--is to attack Al Qaeda in its nests. To go abroad and rob them of their bases of support. To make their logistics and financing impossible. Deny them safe havens to do their recruiting and training. Deny them and their state sponsors the media domination it takes to recruit and retain operatives. To fight and win the war of ideas forward.

And ultimately, to practice some leverage of our own. As we make headway in the war of ideas forward, to use our new human intelligence sources to find Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq and whereever else they are, smoke them out of their caves and cut them down as they flee. To hunt them down in their tenements and turn them into corpses rotting in the backs of coalition trucks.

Spain is already at war with Al Qaeda. It has been for years. It has no choice.

It never did.

Splash, out

Jason

Well, I ain't gonna become rich doing this. And I sure as heck am not going to attract thousands per month in political banner ads like Kos does (and a VERY few others.)

I was kicking around the idea of doing a series of book reviews, including something like a "Top Five Reading List" for ROTC Cadets and junior officers, and some record reviews, too.

Anyway, I'm pleased to have become an Amazon Affiliate.

If you like IraqNow, and want to keep it going, there's an easy, painless way you can help support it: Come to IraqNow, and click on the banner to do your book shopping. It will take you directly to Amazon. It costs you nothing extra, but it enriches Jeff Bezos, and when that happens from IraqNow, Jeff sends me a check! And when Jeff sends me checks, it means I can spend more time blogging and less time selling articles.

And everyone benefits, except those pesky locally-owned, neigborhood independent bookstores.

What a country!

:-)

I kid thee not.

(Unfortunately, I had to link to a screen shot. Kos went back and reedited his post to something else entirely.)

Kos is currently ranked number 20 on Technorati's 100 Biggest Blogs, and probably the mover and shaker for Democratic Party politics in the blogosphere. He's not normally out on the lunatic fringe. I hope this is an aberration.

I should say that I had the privilege to meet many civilian contractors and security professionals from all over the world. Most of them were there supplementing coalition forces security, or providing needed logistical or security services to US troops and to the Iraqi people.

Most of the American contractors I talked to had served 20 years on active duty with the US military in one capacity or another.

Unlike my troops, these guys could have left at any time, just by saying "I quit" and catching a ride to Baghdad or Kuwait. Instead, despite the risks, they chose to stay.

They are, in every sense, our partners. And their families, I'm sure, loved them and missed them and feared for their safety just as fervently as ours.

Anyone who tries to force a moral distinction between our soldiers and these civilians who served alongside us--who dismisses them as "mercenaries" in it for the "pecuniary interests alone," and anyone who buys into that idea, is merely displaying a frightening degree of ignorance.

Splash, out

Jason

"He promised that he would have a real coalition. He has a fraudulent coalition."

Senator John Kerry, October 27th, 2003



NATO formally welcomed seven new members into the alliance on Friday, stretching its security umbrella to the borders of Russia and prompting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to reassure Moscow that it should not feel threatened.

The NATO ministers also issued a statement calling for greater coordination against terrorism, and the new members expressed enthusiastic support for deeper NATO involvement in Iraq.

From today's New York Times.

Splash, out

Jason

Journal Entry

12 April 2003
Al Asad Air Base, Iraq

Couldn't get the gun truck escort for the return trip to Baghdad Airport. So we didn't have radio communications at all, except for the two manpack radios we brought along, so the lead and trail vehicles could talk to one another. Don't like that at all.

Nevertheless, I left leading a convoy of 10 five ton trucks [from the 603rd Transportation Company, based in Fort Polk, Louisiana] for Baghdad International Airport at 0530 hrs today. Arrived at Baghdad International Airport at 1030 AM to pick up the remainder of headquarters company. One truck went down and had to be towed to the airport and left there, so we had to leave one platoon--the attachment of forward observers from the 2-116th Field Artillery--at the airport until other transportation could be arranged.

Somewhat more antiamericanism in Baghdad today, compared to yesterday. You could just feel it in the air. Rest of the journey was OK.

Saw a bombed out tank with big, scarlet letters handpainted on the turret: "AMRIKA NO."

Also saw "WE LOVE GEORGE BUSH" painted on the side of a couple of houses.

The kids were great. Drove past a school in one of the cities West of Baghdad with a couple of hundred 5-7 year olds and they all ran to the edge of the road as we passed screaming and yelling and flashing the 'thumps-up' sign. [Note: I did not have a map with me at the time; I now believe this city to have been Fallujah.]

They must get a lot of candy thrown to them from passing convoys. I briefed the guys not to throw candyto the kids from moving vehicles. Hate to see one get hurt. But I did tear up seeing the children this AM.

Perhaps in lieu of throwing out candy, we can donate it, with school supplies, to the local schools?

Some excitement this afternoon on the way back from Baghdad International Airport. I was in the back of a truck full of soldiers and we had made a brief stop on the side of the road near a village to let a truck catch up with us. [This would have been about 10 miles northwest of the Iraqi city of Hit.]

Heard two bursts of light machine gun fire from just outside the truck--about 10-12 shots in all. Several seconds went by and there was no contact report. "What the fuck, over?!!!" I hollered.

No response. The truck ahead of us thought we were taking fire, though. Well, they WERE taking fire, from one PFC H., one of the truck drivers attached to us from the 603rd Trans Company.

H. was dismounting the vehicle, and apparently the weapon malfunctioned. It cannot be put on "Safe," our armorer, SPC F., confirms. The weapon shot forward, launching rounds through the front fender of the truck I was riding in, and the rounds ricocheted off of the tailgate of the truck in front of us, which was also packed with troops.

Miraculously, noone was hurt. H. wasn't supposed to have a round locked in the chamber anyway. [Note: at that time, the official guidance from CFLCC Headquarters was that magazines should be in the weapon, but no rounds should be chambered. It wasn't long before everyone ignored that, though, and kept a round chambered all the time when we left the gate. The guys who had been in country longer than we had been were ALL ignoring the rule. ]

H. was pretty shaken up. As were the guys in the truck in front of us whom he almost killed.
I found H. with his weapon disassembled in his hands, I put my arm around him and embraced him and chewed his ass at the same time--mostly for not yelling "accidental discharge!" His supervisor and I would have a discussion about maintenance and inspection later.

Funny--I thought for sure we had made contact, but I felt no fear whatsoever at the time. A few moments later I could feel the adrenaline rush ebbing from my body, and felt drained, but at the time I just felt my brain whirr trying to process the information my senses were telling it--just like a training exercise.

Was appointed to acting Battalion S-4 [staff officer in charge of supply and logistics] today, until our regular S-4 arrives from Jordan. Big job.

Moved the whole battalion into a couple of disgustingly filthy buildings at Al Asad. I feel like we're living in the world's biggest petri dish. Who needs a bio weapons program? Just lose the war and have the Americans move into your facility! Brilliant!!!

Many of my brother and sister milbloggers are waxing enthusiastic over a proposed bill that would punish corporations who discriminate against mobilized Guardsmen and reservists by debarring them from participating in government contracts.

It sounds good, but beware the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a returning Guardsman has an employment dispute with Maryland Advanced Development Labratory, which makes the Viper Antisniper System--a piece of equipment really just coming into its own now, which has the potential to save US lives in Iraq (mostly by killing the bad guys before they have a chance to get off a second shot.)

Suppose further the Army needs Maryland Advanced Development Lab technicians in the field to advise local commanders how to best employ and maintain the systems, or even just install it. And postulate further that the Army has just ordered dozens of these things, at an outrageous unit cost to the taxpayer.

Now, the reservist, or the Department of Labor, can take his case to court. If MAD Labs loses, they're out. Which means the technicians don't get their contracts renewed. Which means the systems--already purchased--don't get properly maintained, if they get installed at all.

Who really loses? US Troops in Iraq.

Suppose it isn't MAD Labs. What happens if Kellog, Brown and Root--who run almost every chow hall in country--lose? What if it's General Motors? Raytheon? Halliburton? AT&T?

Should we dismantle the phone calling centers--the ones hundreds of thousands of deployed soldiers rely upon in order to stay in touch with their families and civilian employers?

Should we stop distributing phone cards?

I'd rather see us keep our contracting options open. There's no reason we need to craft a law that will eventually have us painting ourselves into a corner, legally commiting the government to a stupid course of action.

If reemployment laws need to be strengthened, let's do it by increasing potential fines, by holding managers guilty of USERRA violations personally liable, alongside the companies.

But let's not craft a law that forces judges to compromise the war effort--to compromise the interests of thousands of soldiers who need good, well maintained equipment and quality MWR, and who rely on thousands of government contractors to provide them--in order to satisfy the letter of the law with respect to the reemployment rights of a single soldier.

Contracts should be awarded, and retained, based on who can provide the best service at the best price. Let the contract and procurement process proceed according to its own logic. Let's not contaminate it with well-meaning but counterproductive "Feel Good" legislation.

Splash, out

Jason

[CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE NET] posted by Jason : 00:06 EST, Friday, April 02, 2004 0 transmissions this net

I'll be fiddling Friday, April 2nd, at the Frog and Toad, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Show starts at 7. Music of the British Isles. If you're in the area, I'd love to meet you!

Slainte,
Jason

Another reader wrote in complaining that liberals' knowledge of history goes "as deep as a coat of paint."

I disagree.

I believe liberals tend to be very weak on European and Russian history, but are much, MUCH stronger on, say, Latin American history, particularly with regard to US policy there.

And so it happens that the Marxist model, economic determinism, explains the excesses of US policy towards Latin America pretty well--better than most other international relations models. And so you have the tendency of people with strong interests in Latin America to gravitate toward adopting liberal politics, because economic liberals tend to have a distrust of corporations such as United Fruit (A central corporate figure in Latin America throughout the 20th Century) and Halliburton (Iraq).

Conversely, those who take a strong interest early in life in European history, tend to gravitate toward the realpolitik models of guys like Hans Morganthau, who argues that in a chaotic, lawless world arena, nations tend to make foreign policy decisions based on power, force projection, and security concerns, rather than to placate corporate interests.

And it so happens that the realist model explains US policy initiatives in post war Europe--containment, the Marshall Plan, the extention of the Marshall Plan to the Eastern bloc (which was declined) a heck of a lot better than the Marxist model.

And so the Europhiles become hawks, who tend to become conservative, while those with interests in North v. South conflicts--which tend to be more economic than military--tend to become neoMarxists, and therefore tend to become dovish.

This blog happens to focus on the war in Iraq, the war on terror, its coverage in English language media in the west, and the cultural and political battles over the same, which have their vortex in Europe and the United States.

Latin America is largely irrelevant here.

If this were, instead, a blog on Latin American conflicts, politics, and north-vs. south, First world v. developing nations conflicts, most current IraqNow readers would probably think I was screaming pinko Chomsky chump.

Splash, out

Jason

An Australian reader writes taking me to task for being a little hard on the French in my last post:

France was actively opposed. They
may not have done very well against the German tanks,
due to inferior tactics, but their heart was in the right
place.


Understand that when I say France could not manage a coherent opposition to Naziism and the German war machine, I'm referring specifically to Vichy France, and the phenomenon of collaborationism with Vichy authorities when it came to handing Jews over to Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann.

As part of the Armistice agreement with Germany, France, now led by Henri Phillipe Petain after Renaud's resignation, agreed to hand over all Jews living in France to Germany.

In fact, tens of thousands of French Jews were actually betrayed to German authorities under color of French law.
The Vichy French regime started its own version of the Gestapo, the Milice, to help the Gestapo hunt down Jews and resistance fighters. At its peak, the Milice, or Service d'Ordre Legionnaire, employed 35,000 goons, whose singular and selfless devotion to multilateralism and international cooperation led them to practice the torture of Jews and resistance members right alongside their German counterparts.

I'm also referring to entire French formations--particularly the garrison of Syria, and naval garrisons at Dakar in Senegal and Mers el Kebir in Oran--switching sides and actually fighting against Free French and British soldiers on the side of the Nazis.

It should further be noted that Petain was NOT a hand-selected pro-fascist 'puppet' raised from obscurity by the by the Germans. He was actually the Vice Premier of France at the time of the German invasion.

He was joined in his grand sellout by Maxime Weygand--again no pro-fascist flunky before the war appointee: he was instead the remarkably nuanced commanding general of the French Armed Forces.

So it cannot be said that France was, in the whole, committed to the defeat of Naziism and Fascism. Rather, Despite the unbelievable courage of a few men like Jean Moulin and Charles Delestraint, and women like Odette Sansom, large swathes of French society and government even activelycollaborated with it, and did so to an extent unmatched in any of the Western occupied powers.


Splash, out

Jason

Journal Entry

May 11th, 2003. Mother's Day [Hi, Mom! Just wanted to make sure you knew I didn't forget!]

Al Asad Air Base, Iraq

Left Baghdad Int'l Airport in an 11 vehicle convoy for Camp Webster, at Al Asad Air Base, to link up with our battalion commander, LTC Hector Mirabile, and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Interesting journey.

Response to the presence of my convoy was overwhelmingly positive. Especially among children, who ran alongside the convoy in the towns shouting "I love you! I love you!"

I suppose that will be true as long as we have more candy to give away than the bad guys.

Throwing candy from convoys is stupid. Saw a little boy run into traffic chasing some candy thrown by one of the vehicles behind us and almost got hit.

Almost no damage to civilian areas. Saw several destroyed tanks deployed within villages with no apparent damage to adjacent buildings less than 50 feet away. Their deployment usually made no tactical sense to me. Poor fields of fire, no cover or concealed route of withdrawal, although better positions were available nearby. Most of them were T-72s, which would indicate they were probably Republican Guard, I believe. But I also saw a few T-62s, which would be from the regular army units.

Their crews either died in suicide positions, or abandoned their tanks. It's impossible to tell which, now.

Very little natural beauty, except along the Euphrates (?) river (I still don't have a map).

Passed many small farms. Almost no modern farming equipment, rudimentary irrigation. Populace was very poor by American standards, but did not appear to be starving.

Teenage girls would smile sweetly at the troops in the convoy. Family units would often wave and smile enthusiastically, even from hundreds of meters away from the road. Men would wave, and some blew kisses. A few military aged men were more reserved. Kids were wildly enthusiastic.

Saw a kid of about 8 years old today, driving a cement truck near Baghdad International Airport.

Almost killed in a vehicle accident on the way out there today.

I noticed that several--perhaps a dozen--Iraqi jet fighters were out in the open, near Al Asad Air Base, untouched by Allied bombs. Surprised us. Was there a deal cut? Were they thinking ahead and leaving Iraq with enough power to deter Iran?

Showered via a garden hose into a middle eastern-style 'squat' commode. Very unsanitary.

Linked up with 3rd ACR's Support Squadron (Call sign: Muleskinner). Our sector is apparently quiet. One former Iraqi Army officer in our area of operations is reportedly intimidating the public in one of the towns near Hadithah, and wants to be a warlord. He is not threatening US troops. The locals are turning to the US for help. Which is good, I guess, if we can provide it.

The Iraqi children are cute as buttons, God bless them. I hope we do right by all of them.

Tommorrow, I leave with the trucks to pick up the rest of the company at Baghdad International Airport, and take them back up here. Journey takes about 6 hours, total. That's a 12 hour round trip. Figure an hour to load up, and the occasional pee break, and we'll have to move very fast to get there and back in daylight. I told SSG Best, the truck platoon sergeant, to fuel tonight, and to stage his platoon out in front of the building at 0500. I'll give the convoy brief at 0515, and we'll roll not later than 0530. That ought to have us rolling out the gate at first light.

Passed a Presidential palace. The juxtaposition of opulence and poverty is striking. "Oil for Palaces Program" is right!

A European Reader takes my 10 May journal entry and dissects it line by line.

It's an interesting window into the mind of the European left and how they view the war in Iraq, so I'll post his take, along with my own response, line by line.

Journal: …during and after the war to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein.

Reader's Response: What is wrong with your memory? Stick to reasons given to your parliament and UN (WMD Iraq –Al Queda link) and do not adapt to the new “Bush line / argument”.

My response: Memory??? This is verbatim something I wrote on 10 May 2002. Baghdad had fallen just a couple of weeks before. Were you guys born cynics? Or did you grow up rooting for the Astros or something? It so happens that those of us who were in the ranks were very conscious of the evils perpetuated by the Saddam Hussein regime--evils which we did not fully appreciate by a long shot until we saw the country with our own eyes, and heard the stories of systematic rape, torture, and murder under the old regime from the people themselves.

In point of fact, the Bush and Blair administrations did, indeed, attempt to drum up political support for the war on humanitarian grounds, with the release of such items as this dossier on human rights violations in Iraq.

Nevertheless, Thomas could not believe--could not comprehend that Christ had risen from his Tomb until he could physically put his fingers in His wounds.

You can read all the dossiers you want, but until you see one disfigured Iraqi body after another--hands that look like they've been taken apart and put back together again, knees that bend backwards from encounters with sledghammer-wielding Mukhabarrat goons, men missing ears, former soldiers' forearms bent crooked from being broken by Ba'athist officers for minor offenses, when you see these kinds of things with your own eyes, as I have, and many other soldiers have--and see that they were actually commonplace
in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, then you do not know--you cannot know-- the extent of the terror.

And having not lived under it myself, neither can I. I only talked to survivors--who's experience, as survivors of Saddam's torture cells, may not have been all that typical.


The human rights angle is not a new angle; it just wasn't the chief argument the US put forth to the United Nations, simply because we had no reason to believe that any organization which could, without any apparent sense of irony, appoint Libya to chair its Human Rights Commission, could possibly give a rat's ass about human rights.

But human rights was always part of the equation for us. I certainly knew it by May of 2003, or I would not have framed the war as a 'liberation' myself, nor bothered to carry a photograph of Anne Frank around with me to remind myself of why I showed up in the first place.


Reader: Just accept you were in an ill prepared occupation after a wrong war at the wrong time. You 100,000 plus troops would have been better in Afghanistan to secure and rebuild that country.

My response: I've written here before that any amateur knows tactics. The professional understands logistics. Afghanistan is a landlocked country. There are no handy seaports in nearby supportive host nations we could use to stage theater level logistics out of.

There were no modern road or rail networks sufficient to support a 100,000 man force. Pakistan's support is sketchy--largely dependent upon the actuarial chances of President Musharraf. Moreover, A heavy US log presence in Pakistan or Uzbekistan sufficient to support 100,000 troops, even if it were possible would create an attractive terrorist target in and of itself, and serve to undermine support where we need it most--and perhaps further destabilize Musharraf.

So, let's see: you can spend $87 billion to deploy 100,000 soldiers to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan, where their presence would represent a marginal contribution, at best, to US policy aims in Afghanistan, which were already mostly achieved with the routing of the Taliban, while substantially increasing strategic risks in the process WRT a nuclear power, or...

You can deploy the same 100,000 troops and spend the same $87 billion, get rid of Saddam Hussein, eliminate the risk that he would eventually develop WMD and use them against the US or against Israel, eliminate a major source of terrorist funding in the region, end US dependence upon Saudi Arabian military and logistics facilities, send a powerful message to Libya and anyone else who wants to develop WMD, while taking no additional risk of terrorism attacks on US troops in the region (they'd be just as targeted in and around Afghanistan as they are in Iraq), AND still achieve the principal US aims in Afghanistan.

That's a no-brainer.

Journal Entry May the world be a safer and better place for the sacrifices we make here today.

Reader response: That’s wishful thinking, this war (and Bush support of Sharon) created just a few millions more US haters.

I am sure you follow the results of research and opinion pools of the US standing in the world.

My Response I'm not concerned with short-term blips of fickle public opinion in foreign nations--in fact, I couldn't care less. It's a nonissue for me. Rather, I'm far more concerned with US credibility and the strategic situation in the middle east looking forward decades from now.

20 years from now, we may well look back and realize we blundered. But NOT for the reasons you cite. Anti-US sentiment in Europe is nothing new. I mean people were blowing up McDonald's restaurants in France under the Clinton administration.

I just don't have a great deal of faith in the moral discernment of populations of countries such as France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Sweden which, when civilization's great moment of crisis came, couldn't even formulate a coherent opposition to Hitler and the Holocaust.

But I guess Americans just lack the neccessary veulerie to see things in a really nuanced, European way.

Enjoy those Jerry Lewis movies.

Splash, out

Jason