Marine Called Haditha Shootings Appropriate

By Josh White

A sergeant who examined the scene hours after Marines killed two dozen Iraqis in Haditha last year said the shootings appeared to be an appropriate response to a coordinated insurgent attack, according to a sworn statement obtained by The Washington Post.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060824/wl_nm/iraq_dc

Top US general hails progress in Baghdad clampdown
By Ibon Villelabeitia
Thu Aug 24, 10:04 AM ET

The top U.S. general in the Middle East praised a major security clampdown in Baghdad on Thursday and said Iraq was far from civil war.

On a day when three car bombs and two roadside bombs killed four people and wounded 24 in the capital, General John Abizaid told reporters: "I think there has been great progress on the security front in Baghdad recently. We are very optimistic that the situation will stabilize."

The U.S. military has sent reinforcements to Baghdad to help the government take back the streets from sectarian militias and death squads, who have been blamed for the killing of thousands in violence that has raised fears of civil war.

Abizaid, who met General John Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said comments he made earlier this month before the U.S. Senate in which he said the sectarian violence in Iraq was the worst he had seen had been misrepresented.

"I never said that Iraq was one foot from civil war. It is amazing how you say things sometimes and they get reported differently. I believe there is danger of civil war in Iraq, but only a danger. I think Iraq is far from it."

U.S. commanders have said the clampdown -- which has put an additional 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces on the city's streets -- has produced a sharp decline in violence in some deadly Sunni and Shi'ite neighborhoods.

"THE BATTLE OF BAGHDAD"

In an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad repeated statements made by Iraqi and U.S. leaders that the operation to pacify Baghdad was a make-or-break mission.

"The battle of Baghdad will determine the future of Iraq, which will itself go a long way to determining the future of the world's most vital region," Khalilzad wrote.

Khalilzad said that in July Baghdad experienced "a 10 percent increase over the already high monthly average" of violent incidents, leaving 2,100 people dead.

He said 77 percent of the casualties were the result of sectarian violence, "giving rise to fears of an impending civil war in Iraq."

Violence claimed more lives on Thursday, and the U.S. military announced that two U.S. soldiers had been killed in Baghdad in the last 48 hours.

A car driven by a suicide bomber killed two civilians in the religiously mixed eastern neighborhood of New Baghdad and wounded nine people, including two policemen.

Another car bomb targeting a police patrol in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya killed two civilians, police said.

An Interior Ministry spokesman denied on Thursday media reports that the minister had escaped an assassination attempt on Wednesday in the religiously mixed district of Doura.

The spokesman said an explosion had occurred in an area in Doura 10 minutes after an Interior Ministry motorcade had driven past but that the minister had not been present.

In the south, British troops abandoned their base in Maysan province, which had been under almost nightly attack, and prepared to head deep into the marshlands along the Iranian border to hunt gun smugglers.

The 600 soldiers will form a highly mobile unit traveling in stripped-down Land Rovers armed with heavy machine guns and will have no permanent base.

U.S. and British officials have accused Iran of arming Shi'ite militias blamed for much of the sectarian violence, as well as for attacks on foreign troops.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin)



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http://english.people.com.cn/200608/25/eng...825_296735.html

Reservists forced to fight in Iraq by 'back-door draft'



With bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stemming the flow of volunteers the US marine corps has been forced to call up reserves for compulsory service.

The involuntary call-up, seen as a "back-door draft" by Pentagon critics, is the first since the start of the Iraq war, and will begin in a few months when an initial batch of up to 2,500 reservists is summoned back to active service for a year or more.

The army has already sent 2,200 reservists back to the front of which only about 350 went voluntarily.

The marine corps announcement is in contrast to predictions by US commanders a few months ago that the number of American troops in Iraq could be reduced from about 130,000 to 100,000 by the end of the year.

Those plans were shelved as sectarian violence worsened.

There are now 138,000 American troops in Iraq, of which 22,000 are marines.

One mobile marine brigade due to return to base in Alaska last month after a year in Iraq has had its tour extended by four months, being sent to Baghdad to help Iraqi government forces try to stem the nation's slide towards civil war.

"All that happy talk about getting down to 100,000 by the end of this year, that's not on the cards for this year," said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military thinktank in Washington.

"Instead, they might bump up the numbers even further They are going to do whatever it takes to keep a lid on this damn thing in Baghdad, because if there's anywhere it's going to fly off the handle it's in Baghdad.

The marine corps will be drawing on its 59,000-strong "individual ready reserve," recent veterans who served in the corps less than four years ago.

The compulsory mobilisation of the reserve is normally ordered only in case of national emergency, but this year there were not enough reservist volunteers to fill the gaps in marine ranks.

Colonel Guy Stratton, who is in charge of the marine's mobilisation programme, said that the most urgent need was for engineers, intelligence officers, military police and communication specialists.

Gary Anderson, a retired marine colonel and now a Pentagon adviser on Iraq, said the call-up reflected the strain the Iraq war was putting on the force. "We're in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and we still have commitments in the Far East. I think if Iraq was the only game in town, it would be different," he said.

"Quite frankly some of these guys have gone to Iraq two or three times, and they feel they've done their bit It's going to put a strain on them. Both people and equipment are getting worn out. There's an old saying - long wars ruin armies, and I think that's an accurate statement."

Jack Reed, a Democratic senator on the armed services committee, said the marines and army were "stretched perilously thin and the equipment is seriously degraded."

Source: China Daily

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools...nts/5278654.stm
Concern over US army recruitment
By Robert Hodierne
Presenter, BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents


As the "war on terror" drags on, the US military is finding it difficult to fill its ranks and there are growing concerns some recruiters are breaking the rules.


Nearly five years into the war, with conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the death toll is approaching 3,000 servicemen and women.
The pressure to sign up new recruits against this background has challenged the US military.

The problem is especially acute for the army.

It had a goal of bringing in 80,000 new soldiers in the financial year that ended on 30 September 2005.

It finished that year with just 73,000 recruits.

This year the army appears to be on target to reach the 80,000 goal but to do so it has had to double the top enlistment bonuses for recruits from $20,000 to $40,000.

It has also had to loosen medical standards, forgive more minor criminal offences, raise the age limit for new recruits from 35 to 42 and accept more people who did not finish high school.


Casualty rates

The burden of finding and signing up new soldiers falls on 8,000 army recruiters scattered through nearly every town of any size in the US.


But the burden of fighting the war is not spread evenly among Americans.
Small towns suffer a disproportionate number of the casualties.

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents visited such a town - Kokomo, Indiana, which has a population of just 46,000.

Four young men from Kokomo have died in the war, the same number as from much larger towns - Boston, Atlanta, Washington.

The programme wanted to know if recruiters there are having a tougher time these days finding volunteers.

Sergeant 1st Class Gil Lang runs the six-man recruiting station in Kokomo.

He has no doubt about what is keeping people from signing up.

"The biggest thing is the war - it's the war," he said.

"People believe what they see on TV - they show the bad things and not the good things that are going on as well. And I believe a lot of families are just scared of that."

Cold calls

One of Sgt 1st Class Lang's best recruiters is Sergeant 1st Class Larry Arnold.


A career soldier with a charming line of fast-paced chatter, Sgt 1st Class Arnold circulates through town like a salesman.
He visits local high schools and colleges and drops by the government office where the unemployed come looking for jobs.

He stands in front of a busy convenience store handing out his business cards and eyes fellow customers as he eats lunch in a local cafe.

Sgt 1st Class Arnold also does something every day that is the subject of controversy in America - he makes cold calls to high school students trying to talk them into signing up.

He tells the students about the financial help the army can give them for their college education, the bonuses and how the training can help in their future careers.

He uses lists of students that federal law requires the schools to provide to military recruiters.


Pressure is always there. It's the army, it's your mission, and they drill that into you every day
Sgt 1st Class Lang

The law - passed in 2001 before the 11 September attacks - grew out of the military's frustration that some public schools banned recruiters from visiting campus.
Others put severe restrictions on their access and many refused to provide phone lists.

Today, the schools have no choice and the summer before their final year of secondary education, it is not uncommon for students to get calls from every branch of the service.

The army recruiters in Kokomo will make 300 calls a day, Sgt 1st Class Lang told the programme.

"Pressure is always there. It's the army, it's your mission, and they drill that into you every day," he added.


Rule-breaking

The pressure to meet goals in an environment where potential recruits - and their parents - read daily about the mounting death toll has caused increasing numbers of recruiters to misbehave.

In order to meet their goals, recruiters have encouraged potential recruits to lie about medical conditions that would disqualify them, such as asthma or attention deficit disorder.


PROGRAMME INFORMATION
Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 24 August, at 1102 BST
Listen to the programme

Some recruiters have shown young people how to cheat on the drug tests that are mandatory.
In the three years prior to the start of the war, the army says it caught an average of 93 recruiters a year in some sort of impropriety.

In the last three years that number jumped to an average of 126.

The same pattern repeats itself for the other services as well.


Days to go

It is easy to see how recruiters could be tempted.


I was tempted, no doubt about it, running out of time
Sgt 1st Class Larry Arnold

With less than four days to go, Sgt 1st Class Arnold still needed one more recruit to meet his goal of signing up two new soldiers.

If he fails, he will have to attend a punitive counselling session in his own time on a Saturday.

If he fails often, it can hurt his chances for promotion.

Sgt 1st Class Arnold met 17-year-old Matthew, a quiet boy who may or may not be able to graduate from high school in the spring of 2007. He was not certain.

If that was not enough cause for concern, Matthew's mother also confided that her son was taking two medications a day for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Despite that clearly disqualifying medical condition, Sgt 1st Class Arnold admitted he was tempted to sign him up anyway.

The army does not test for the presence of ADHD drugs so it is possible to conceal this condition.

Some recruiters have been caught encouraging people to do just that.

"I was tempted, no doubt about it, running out of time and I know when the deadline is. But we move on and we find the next one," Sgt 1st Class Arnold confessed to the programme.

The good news for Sgt 1st Class Arnold is that the day before his month-end deadline he found a second recruit.

Overall, the Kokomo station signed up nine new soldiers, one more than its goal.

In Kokomo, despite the unusually high casualty rate, there remains a large pool of young people attracted to the army for a combination of reasons, including both benefits and their sense of patriotism.

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 24 August 2006, at 1102 BST and will be repeated on Monday, 28 August 2006.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/prog...nts/5278654.stm

Published: 2006/08/23 22:48:02 GMT

© BBC MMVI

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Democrat...ainst_0825.html
Democrats plot 'no confidence' vote against Rumsfeld

RAW STORY
Published: Friday August 25, 2006

The Democrats may be preparing a strategy to punish President Bush for allowing Donald Rumsfeld to continue to serve as Secretary of Defense, according to an item at the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog.

To shift the Iraq discussion from troop withdrawals to questions of accountability, Washington Wire reports, Democrats may attempt to attach a "vote of no confidence" to defense spending legislation in Congress. Democrats hope that Republican moderates seeking to distance themselves from the Bush war effort would support the measure, making it difficult for the White House to easily defeat the legislation.

Washington Wire added that Rumsfeld has indicated privately that he has no intention to resign.

Earlier this week, journalist Laura Rozen reported at her blog that President Bush may be testing the waters on replacing Rumsfeld after six years in office.

The Washington Wire item can be accessed at the Wall Street Journal's website.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082406R.shtml

Supporting the Troops
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 24 August 2006

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address spoke pointedly of caring "for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," of the solemn responsibility held by this nation to those who served and died in her service. A plaque outside the Veterans Administration building in Washington, DC, bears these exact words. It is a motto, a mantra, and today, an utterly unfulfilled promise.

Consider the following.

The Bush administration's most recent budget framework includes $910 million in cuts to the Veterans Administration. 2,615 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and yet efforts to double the death benefit for soldiers killed in active duty have been forcefully resisted by the White House. Pay raises for soldiers have been capped. The tax-cut mantra of the White House has not trickled down far enough to assist the troops on the line; soldiers fighting overseas and soldiers deployed for extended periods have not been deemed worthy of even minimal tax relief, while billions of dollars in tax cuts are gifted to the wealthiest among us.

Nearly 20,000 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, but must wait nearly six months before being seen by a VA hospital. The prescription co-pay costs for veterans were doubled in Bush's proposed 2005 budget. His 2004 proposed budget would have eviscerated funding for the education of military children. The White House formally opposed allowing National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon's health care program. Perhaps worst of all, the White House quietly attempted to cut combat pay for all soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this measure was quickly scrapped after it became public.

This from the man whose staged photo-ops with serving soldiers have become the stuff of lore. This from the man whose defenders denounce critics with the line, "Why don't you support the troops?" This from an administration filled with officials who, almost to a man, had other priorities when they were called to serve.

The question of how, exactly, one can and should support the troops has been a live political hand grenade over the last several years. Do you support the troops by backing Bush and the Iraq occupation to the hilt? By quashing criticism because it might affect soldier morale? Or do you support the troops by advocating for their removal from the vortex of a failed and deadly policy?

These are, for sure and certain, questions of life and death. They are also, however, political questions all too often dominated by sound bytes and talking points. True assistance to American soldiers, within all this noise, is difficult to find.

Enter the Patriot Guard Riders.

It began with the funeral of Army Specialist Edward Lee Myers, who was killed in Iraq on July 27, 2005. His funeral was scheduled for August 5th, in St. Joseph, Missouri. Word got out that Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church intended to stage a protest demonstration at the funeral. Phelps and his group believe that America is doomed because of its tolerance for homosexuals, and sees the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq as divine judgment. They began showing up at soldier's funerals to broadcast this message.

D.C. "Big Dog" Hannah and his fellow veterans would have none of it. "The Missouri chapter of Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association," said Hannah in an interview, "established a plan to attend the funeral to shield Eddie's family from the protesters. CVMA contacted other groups; notably the VFW, American Legion and American Legion Riders (ALR), Leathernecks Motorcycle Club - made of current and former Marines - and the Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club. On the day of the funeral, eight protesters stood in a ditch across the road from the church parking lot, waving signs and screaming obscenities. Among their group were four children, wearing t-shirts with obscene phrases. 20 bikers and 15 other veterans stood between them and the church. When the Phelpses chanted, the bikers drowned them out."





"One of those veterans' groups," continued Hannah, "was American Legion Post 136 in Mulvane, Kansas. Members of Post 136 moved past talking, to action. The ALR chapter at Post 136 met on the evening of August 7, and appointed a committee to organize an ALR service mission to honor fallen soldiers and shield their families from funeral protests. The officers of ALR Post 136 recognized the need to have other veterans' groups, civic groups, and regular citizens involved, and began to make contacts across Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. The group they organized gathered for the first time at the funeral of Army Sgt. John Doles on October 11 in Chelsea, Oklahoma. At that time, the group did not have a name, because it was an ALR service mission."

"The name 'Patriot Guard,'" continued Hannah, "was announced on October 27 at the funeral of SPC Lucas Franz of Tonganoxie, Kansas. The bikers from CVMA, Leathernecks, VVMA, and ALR, and vets from VFW and the American Legion, were joined by our brothers and sisters from the community. Total attendance was over 100 motorcycles and 200 people standing between the WBC and the family. I rode to that funeral, and stood proud and angry with good men and women who wanted to honor a soldier, and protect his family. Following a funeral Mission Ride in Redmond, Oklahoma, on November 8, Jeff Brown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, talked to the Patriot Guard officers from Post 136, and formed a nationwide communications network. That network, the natural evolution of the Patriot Guard into a national organization, is today's 'Patriot Guard Riders.'"

There it is. Simple, eloquent and effective actions taken to respect and defend soldiers who offered that last full measure of devotion.

"Even as the Westboro Baptist Church fades into irrelevance," said Hannah, "our mission and focus remain to honor those who have given their lives in service, and to support their families and communities. We will be here long after Fred Phelps meets whatever justice waits for him after he draws his final breath. Because of the requests of families and community leaders to become involved, PGR expanded our mission to include funeral Mission Rides for veterans, particularly Vietnam vets; and law enforcement officers, firefighters, and emergency medical services members killed in the line of duty. We are frequently invited to sendoff and welcome home events for military units. We were invited to attend the funerals for the Sago Miners in West Virginia, after the Westboro Baptist Church announced their protest."

"We also ride to raise funds for vets in VA hospitals and retirement homes," said Hannah, "and to visit those shut-in vets. Our 'Help on the Homefront' program organizes activities for veterans' support; activities and fundraisers for families with deployed members; and fundraisers for scholarship programs like the American Legacy Scholarship (an American Legion project for the children of military personnel killed in action)."





Anyone seeking to paint political motivations over the actions of the Patriot Guard Riders need not apply. "In the PGR," said Hannah, a self-described pagan, veteran and biker, "we leave our politics at the curb. I know Republicans and Democrats; liberals and conservatives; politically active and politically apathetic. I haven't met any Communists or Anarchists yet, but we may have them. Among the bikers, 'small L' libertarian philosophy is common. Older vets are more likely Republican than Democrat. Younger Riders, including new vets, may lean more to the left. I don't ask, and I don't care."

"Last month," said Hannah, "I was Ride Captain on a funeral Mission Ride for PFC Brian Bradbury of St. Joseph, Missouri. At the church, an achingly beautiful young woman wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign and 'I Ain't Gonna Study War No More' approached me. She handed me a page of poetry she had written and said, 'I feel like I had to come, but I don't know if I belong here.' I handed her a flag, walked her to the line in front of the church, and gave her a hug. She belongs, perhaps more than most of us do."

"Caring for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," said Lincoln. The government isn't doing it; this administration, in particular, seems all too willing to create new veterans while dispensing with the systems of care that tend to them after their service is concluded. Men like Hannah, and the riders of the Patriot Guard, have taken matters into their own hands. They stand for the families of the fallen, they raise funds for disabled veterans and their families, and they do so for one simple reason.

They support the troops.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

-------

Home / Archive / Feature / Slam-Dunk Wars Don't Equal Wins
Slam-Dunk Wars Don't Equal Wins
August 21, 2006

Boston University's Andrew Bacevich weighs in on why military victories don't always produce positive long-term results.

The article appears in the Los Angeles Times, Monday, August 21, and is available in its entirety here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...inion-rightrail


Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. He is the author of several books, including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.

Washington's Masochistic Policy in Iraq
August 08, 2006

Cato Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter questions the logic behind staying-the-course in Iraq.

The article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, August 8, 2006, and is available in its entirety here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...EDGOBIQ0FQ1.DTL


Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a founding member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

'Long War' a Tragic Misstep
August 11, 2006

David Isenberg reviews Charles Pena's Winning the Un-War for the Asia Times.

The article is published at Asia Times Online, and is available in its entirety here:

http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HH12Aa01.html


David Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the British American Security Information Council, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, and an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, Washington.

Paying Tomorrow's Military
July 14, 2006

MIT's Cindy Williams, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, says that non-cash benefits may not be the best way to attract and retain service members.

The article was published in the Summer 2006 issue of Regulation, and is available in its entirety here:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv29n2/v29n2-1.pdf


Cindy Williams is a principal research scientist in the Security Studies Program of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the co-editor, with Curtis Gilroy of Service to Country: Personnel Policy and the Transformation of Western Militaries (MIT Press, 2006).

Posted by coalition at July 14, 2006 12:55 PM

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/VIDEO_Mi..._Army_0825.html
VIDEO: Military to review Tillman, Army deaths

RAW STORY
Published: Friday August 25, 2006


BBC News describes as a "public relations disaster" a newly announced investigation by the US military into the deaths of Army soldiers, including that of Cpl. Pat Tillman, in video obtained by RAW STORY.

BBC Washington correspondent James Westhead, in referring to Tillman's case, describes "evidence of a whitewash and a cover-up."

"This is very damaging for the Army," Westhead reports. "[It's] trying to appear as transparent as possible."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060825/pl_af...ry_060825195406

Rumsfeld says Baghdad violence is coming down
by Jim Mannion

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US and Iraqi troops have reduced the levels of violence in Baghdad but whether that lasts depends on a difficult reconciliation process.

Rumsfeld and Iraq's visiting deputy president Adil Abd al-Mahdi skirted the question of what to do about Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite cleric whose followers are believed to be behind much of the sectarian violence.

Mahdi, speaking after the hourlong meeting, indicated that Sadr should be dealt with as a political leader separate from his militia.

"We have to distinguish between the political line and the militia line," Mahdi told reporters.

"He is supporting the government, he has ministers in the government. And we are trying to distinguish between the undisciplined groups from the disciplined ones," he said, referring to Sadr.

Senior military officials this week accused Iran of stoking the violence in Iraq by arming, funding and training Shiite militias.

The meeting came amid reports from military commanders in Iraq that violent incidents in Baghdad have come down by 40 percent in the past three weeks as US and Iraqi troops have cordoned off and cleared some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods.

Rumsfeld said he had discussed the situation with his top commanders in Iraq and was encouraged by the turnaround.

The military's efforts "have been successful in the sense that we are seeing a reduction in the levels of violence, and in the numbers of attacks, in the areas particularly that the forces have been able to clear," Rumsfeld said.

"Iraqi forces have been doing a very good job," he added.

Thousands of US troops were brought into the capital earlier this month amid fears that spiralling sectarian violence could descend into all-out civil war, pitting Shiites against Sunnis.

Some analysts believe the situation had become a low-level civil war with elements of the Iraqi security forces either abetting the violence or looking the other way.

But Mahdi said the improved security situation in Baghdad was "our answer to all those talking about civil war in Iraq. We don't think we are leading to one."

Rumsfeld said that while the use of more US troops has tamped down the violence, the real test "is what happens thereafter."

"The important thing is for the Iraqi government to achieve success with the reconciliation process, it is important that they deal with the militia issue, which has been raised," he said.

Government ministries also needed to be strengthened, he said.

"It is not purely a military problem. And it is not going to be solved purely by military forces," he said.

Mahdi said dialogue was underway with disparate groups

"We have to see the result. We have to see the impact of all this. More people are coming but we have to really work this," he said.

Rumsfeld said Iraq's leadership was committed to the reconciliation process.

"Admittedly it is a lot easier to talk about it than to do it," he said.

"It's been done in other countries. I believe it can be achieved here. They are going to have to work very hard on it, and it's going to take them time. But it is a process, not an event," he said.



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Violence down 40 percent in Baghdad: US commander Fri Aug 25, 11:41 AM ET

Violence in Baghdad has dropped by 40 percent since US and Iraqi troops entered select neighborhoods to clear out cells of Shiite and Sunni extremists, a US brigade commander said.

Colonel Robert Scurlock said 29 murders had been committed in the Amiriya area of western Baghdad the month leading up to the operation, making it one of the city's most violent.

But since his troops went in on August 13, only three murders have been reported, he said.

"In the month of July in Baghdad, there were 52 violent actions a day," he said. "And the two weeks since we began the operations, the attacks have dropped down 41 percent."

Scurlock commands the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for western Baghdad, a 300-square-kilometer (116-sq-mi) area with a population of nearly 1.3 million people.

He said about 3,500 US troops were operating in western Baghdad alongside 5,000 Iraqi troops, roughly double the number of troops there before the operation began in early August.

Surging sectarian violence sparked fears of an all-out civil war, prompting US commanders to bring more troops in from around the country and extend the tour of some 3,700 troops.

Scurlock said his forces, elements of the 172nd Stryker Brigade and Iraqi police and army have sealed off and gone into Amiriya, Shula, Noor and Ghazaliya.

He said they are confiscating illegal weapons, registering legal weapons and vehicles and taking a census of the neighborhoods.

The troops also are organizing trash clearing operations to put people to work, and meeting with neighborhood councils.

Scurlock said there have been attempts to sabotage the effort through intimidation.

"Two days ago, we were conducting one of these meetings, made tremendous progress, laid out a plan for the road ahead," he said.

"And then on the way home, we had the head of the district advisory council receive threatening phone calls, and we had an assassination attempt on another one of the members," he said.

Scurlock was vague about the role of the militias in the violence.

"It may be radical elements of certain organizations. But there is no evidence that they're being really directed from anywhere at a higher level," he said.

"I mean, there are different agendas out there and there are many people out there that are trying to counter our efforts and that don't want to see the Iraqi government succeed, and we deal with each one of them individually," he said.

He said there were anecdotal reports of Iranian involvement but he had seen no evidence of it.




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Europe Pledges 7,000 Peacekeepers
Associated Press | August 25, 2006
BRUSSELS, Belgium - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Europe had agreed to provide the "backbone" of a peacekeeping force for Lebanon, providing nearly half of a 15,000-member contingent.

European officials said it would take up to three months to get all the troops on the ground.

Speaking after an emergency meeting of European foreign ministers, Annan also said has "firm commitments" from Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and was consulting with Turkey about joining the peacekeeping force.

Israel has said it would oppose the deployment of troops from Muslim nations with which it does not have diplomatic ties, saying their inclusion would make it impossible for Israel to share vital intelligence information with the U.N. force.

"Europe is providing the backbone of the force," Annan said. "We can now begin to put together a credible force."

By pledging 6,900 troops, European countries overcame initial concern about being caught in the middle between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah, which agreed Aug. 14 to lay down arms under a U.N. brokered cease-fire after 34 days of fighting that claimed hundreds of lives and caused significant damage, especially in Lebanon.

France, in particular, had held back from promising a large contribution and demanded a clearer definition of the mission and the rules of engagement.

Annan said he asked France - which dramatically increased its pledged contribution to 2,000 troops late Thursday - to lead the 15,000-member mission until February 2007.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Annan gave guarantees for the safety of European troops and on rules of engagement, and that France wanted an arms-free "exclusion zone" in south Lebanon.

"We think the best solution for disarming Hezbollah is to make an exclusion zone with the retreat of the Israeli army on one side and the deployment of the Lebanese army on the other, reinforced by the U.N. troops," he said.

"Our objective is clear, to disarm Hezbollah," Douste-Blazy said, but added that military force was not the answer. "The only solution is to have a political solution."

Annan said Hezbollah could not be disarmed by force.

"The troops are not going there to disarm Hezbollah, let's be clear on that," he said.

Douste-Blazy said he hoped all five permanent U.N. Security Council members - the United States, China, Britain and Russia, in addition to France - will send troops to participate in the force.

"The Europeans should not be the only ones. We hope particularly that the permanent members of the Security Council will participate, as well as Muslim countries," he said.

The United States has explicitly ruled out participation in the peacekeeping force. The U.S. often provides logistics for U.N. peacekeeping forces - which it is expected to do in Lebanon - but as a rule it does not provide troops unless it is commanding the force.

Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said the entire U.N. force should be in place within two to three months. Annan said he hoped the force would be able to start deploying in "days, not weeks."

The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, called on Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon. Ending the blockade has been linked to forming a U.N. force.

Israel said it would lift the blockade after the Lebanese army and the bolstered international force take control of the country's ports and borders to prevent Hezbollah guerrillas from importing new arms.

"The minute they are there, we will be able to lift it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. The statement left unclear at what point Israel would consider there would be enough troops on the ground to lift the blockade.

Israel is maintaining the blockade, despite the cease-fire, to prevent Hezbollah from rearming with the help of its Syrian and Iranian patrons. Regev said preventing the guerrillas from importing new weapons was a key element of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for the cease-fire.

Regev declined to comment on Annan's statement about the participation of Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh in the peacekeeping force.

In New York, a U.N. official said the world body is expected to hold another formal meeting Monday for countries that have expressed interest in contributing troops to the peacekeeping force. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because there has been no official announcement.

About 150 French soldiers - an engineering team - landed Friday at Naqoura in southern Lebanon. They joined 250 of their countrymen already in Lebanon, and raised to 2,200 the number of peacekeepers already in the south.

Those UNIFIL troops, in place since the 1970s, have been widely considered ineffectual and have been dogged by a vague mandate.

Ambiguities remain in the recent U.N. resolution, but it does considerably clarify the rules of engagement, authorizing the expanded U.N. force to "to take all necessary action" to prevent hostile activities wherever peacekeepers are stationed.

The peacekeepers will help 15,000 Lebanese troops extend their authority into southern Lebanon, which has been controlled by Hezbollah guerrillas, as Israel withdraws its soldiers after a monthlong attack.

Annan said that the U.N. force would be able to deploy along the Lebanese-Syrian border to help prevent weapons shipments to Hezbollah, but only if the Lebanese government asked for such help. Lebanon, to date, has neither asked for this nor ruled it out - but Syrian President Bashar Assad has strongly objected.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,...1328840,00.html

Exclusive: The Pentagon Plans for an African Command
by Sally Donnelly
Time Magazine
The Pentagon is close to approving a command for Africa, where poverty and corruption
make it a vulnerable area for extremists and terrorists

http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src...ste-rumsfeld%2F

Gen. Batiste: Rumsfeld ‘Served Up Our Great Military A Huge Bowl of Chicken Feces’
Today on MSNBC, retired General John Batiste — former commander of the First Infantry division in Iraq — said that it was “outrageous” Rumsfeld was still in charge of the Pentagon. Batiste added, “He served up our great military a huge bowl of chicken feces, and ever since then, our military and our country have been trying to turn this bowl into chicken salad.” Watch it:

Transcript:

Donald Rumsfeld is still at the helm of the Department of Defense, which is absolutely outrageous. He served up our great military a huge bowl of chicken feces, and ever since then, our military and our country have been trying to turn this bowl into chicken salad. And it’s not working.

Filed under: Iraq
Posted by Judd at 5:25 pm

Permalink | Comment (16)


16 Comments »
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Chicken feces… Isn’t that Rummy’s middle name?

Comment by unbelievable — August 25, 2006 @ 5:28 pm

Chicken "expletive deleted": That describes all the Neocon warmongers that have never served in the military.

Comment by For Truth — August 25, 2006 @ 5:28 pm

Can Dubya’s incompetence get any worse? Fire Rumsfeld!

Comment by turtle — August 25, 2006 @ 5:30 pm

How much longer will it be before ACTIVE DUTY generals start publicly saying these things?

Comment by RealScientist — August 25, 2006 @ 5:33 pm

Remember, folks, Rummy and the rest only look incompetent if you judge their actions against their stated goals. If you consider their actions in the light of their actual goals, they’re right on track.

Comment by TripMaster Monkey — August 25, 2006 @ 5:34 pm

gosh, general, don’t hold back… tell us how you REALLY feel…!

And, yes, I DO take it personally

Comment by profmarcus — August 25, 2006 @ 5:36 pm

Why this certainly brings new meaning to getting your salad tossed, does it not? =]

Comment by Trinary Suka — August 25, 2006 @ 5:38 pm

I wonder what the Las Vegas odds are that General Batiste will be smeared before Monday?

Comment by Briseadh na Faire — August 25, 2006 @ 5:40 pm

He deserves the Medal Of Freedom…Rumsfeld deserves prison (along with Bush, Cheney, Rove, et. al)

Comment by BlueGregInRedFlorida — August 25, 2006 @ 5:44 pm

Mmmm. Chicken feces..

Anyone for seconds? (Iran)

Comment by WORFEUS — August 25, 2006 @ 5:44 pm

The Three Stooges - Rummy - Bushy - Cheny Shoot in Face….you see, they need to stick together because their identity comes from each other. Split them up and it all falls down. They are just a scuzzy streeg gang that happens to run the United States of America

Bastards

Comment by s — August 25, 2006 @ 5:44 pm

It doesn’t take a genius to tell the difference between chicken "expletive deleted" and chicken salad.

-Dnab Slieg J.

Comment by grytpype — August 25, 2006 @ 5:45 pm

http://www.unseatbush.com/images/3stooges_war.jpg
sorry about the tiny image, try this one =]

Comment by Trinary Suka — August 25, 2006 @ 5:49 pm

more and more, the public will ask for accountability

Comment by nym@alias.net — August 25, 2006 @ 5:49 pm

codependent criminals is what they are

Comment by n — August 25, 2006 @ 5:50 pm

Anyone for seconds? (Iran)
Comment by WORFEUS — August 25, 2006 @ 5:44 pm

I scared the chicken feces out of my third period class today. They are all boys, who were grumbling about their required Government class run by a very unpopular teacher. I told them that the reason they should care about government is because the Marines just had to call up their reserves because not enough people were signing up to fight in Iraq, and now that Bush was talking about attacking Iran, who did they think would be getting drafted into that war?

They all started saying that their mothers had already told them that they were moving to Canada if a draft were installed.

I then told them that if a Recruiter came into our room that they had my permission to leave the room and I would take the consequences for their actions. That it was their right to leave and I would defend it. Some told me they were already getting targetted in the parking lots at school and Movie theatres. 16 and 17 year old boys. It’s appalling.

Comment by unbelievable — August 25, 2006 @ 5:50 pm

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http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,111334,00.html

GIs Exchange Fire with Militants in Mosque
Associated Press | August 25, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces fired tank rounds at a mosque in the restive city of Ramadi Friday and exchanged heavy fire with militants inside, the U.S. command said, as Iraqis looted a base in the south after it was vacated by British troops.

One U.S. soldier was lightly wounded and three people were reportedly killed inside the mosque, while five people were killed elsewhere in Iraq in a relatively peaceful day in the country wracked by sectarian and Sunni insurgency violence.

Militants inside the Al Qadir Al Kilami mosque fired small arms, machine guns and rocket propelled grenades at U.S. forces, a statement by the U.S. command said. They also hurled hand grenades and a bomb, it said.

American soldiers returned fire at first, and finally unleashed several rounds from M1 tanks into the mosque, said the statement. "The mosque suffered serious structural damage to the dome and minaret," it said.

It said the attack occurred at about 12.30 p.m., a little before Friday prayers were due to start. It was not known if any worshippers were already inside.

Ramadi police reported that three people were killed and 23 people were wounded, but it was not possible to independently confirm the information. The U.S. statement said enemy and civilian casualties were unknown, but one soldier was injured who later returned to duty.

Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, is the capital of Anbar province, a vast area where support for Sunni insurgency runs strong. Most American combat casualties this month have been in Anbar.

In the southern Shiite city of Amarah, scores of Iraqis Friday poured into Camp Abu Naji from where British troops had pulled out Thursday morning to redeploy along the border with Iran to crack down on weapons smuggling.

The looters took away everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes, stripping the camp - which had come under almost daily attack while under British control - to the ground, an Associated Press reporter saw.

"There are only a few soldiers at Abu Naji camp. Some of the residents were carrying weapons so they (the soldiers) did not want bloodshed and with such a big number, they cannot stop them," said Dhaffar Jabbar, spokesman for the Maysan governor's office.

One of the looters told a reporter that the goods from the camp are the "spoils of war and we are allowed to take them." He ran away without identifying himself.

Still, Iraq was quiet, as is usually the case on Fridays when vehicles are banned in Baghdad where much of the violence has occurred in recent months in the tit-for-tat attacks by Sunni and Shiite extremists, and Sunni insurgents.

Five people were killed Friday including two worshippers at a Shiite mosque in the southern city of Basra during an exchange of fire between the mosque guards and gunmen. A police officer was killed in a drive-by shooting in downtown Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad. Iraqi army soldiers reportedly shot and killed two recruits and injured 10 others outside a recruiting center in southern Kut after they threw hand grenades.

The British pullout was one of many planned in the south over coming months as U.S.-led coalition forces hand over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces and redeploy elsewhere.

Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has said his national unity government plans to gradually take over security for all of Iraq's provinces within the next 18 months.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,111080,00.html
Change in Iraq is Needed
Joe Galloway | August 24, 2006
The president's news conference this week was as close to a declaration of policy bankruptcy as anything seen so far in his stewardship of the 3 1/2-year war in Iraq.
With his poll numbers still down around his ankles and even some key Republicans questioning the wisdom of staying the course in Iraq, President Bush flatly declared there will be no withdrawal of American troops before noon Jan. 20, 2009.

I believe it was Will Rogers who said when you find yourself in a hole the first thing to do is quit digging. The president knows he's in a hole and he's still digging furiously and promising he won't quit digging. Ever.

What kind of sense does this make?

We have a corps of fine senior military officers who learned how to adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield in a realistic computer-generated war game known as Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) for division commanders (two star generals) and corps commanders (three star generals) and their staffs.

They start off with about 20 percent of the intelligence they need and a battle plan that won't survive first contact with the enemy. A couple of days into the exercise the game is halted, temporarily, and the commander stands up in front of everyone and criticizes his own plan and decisions. He enumerates his mistakes -- and the BCTP staff is happy to make public note of them.

He redraws his war plan and the game resumes. He has adapted to the bloody reality of any battlefield and made the necessary changes.

But when your commander in chief and your civilian overlords in the Pentagon refuse to acknowledge any mistakes, they thwart all that training and shut off any possibility of positive change and adaptation.

This is precisely what has been going on for all the years of our war in Iraq, and the president and his men can't see their way clear to do what every two-star Army general knows how to do.

Sen. John McCain is a hawk on Iraq. He doesn't believe an American withdrawal will do anything but encourage our enemies around the world. But McCain, who hopes to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, is a realist.

Just a day after Bush put his cards on the table -- a busted flush -- McCain bemoaned the administration's predictions that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be "some kind of day at the beach."

McCain, a Navy fighter pilot who spent years in a North Vietnamese prison, recited a devastating litany of ridiculous quotes from Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the unfolding disaster in Iraq:

"Stuff happens, Mission Accomplished, Last throes, a few dead-enders."

Said the Arizona senator: "It grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be."

Had not. Have not. And will not.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney: Hear no evil, see no evil, and evil -- to paraphrase former Sen. Bob Dole's quip when shown a photograph of Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon standing side by side.

To be sure, the president did indicate that he and the Republicans are not entirely without an Iraq strategy: They will do their best this fall to cast the Democrats as cowards who would "cut and run" for suggesting that we begin drawing down our too-small force in Iraq by year's end. Now that's a refreshing change of view, with Karl Rove's DNA smeared all over it.

The president did admit a certain level of personal frustration with the "violence," a.k.a. civil war, that is raging in Iraq while the democratically elected government we installed stands by and watches a nation shake itself apart.

The answer is not to stay the course, Mr. President, it is to change the course. Adapt to the realities on the battleground. You face a determined Sunni insurgency and, now, a civil war in which revenge killings fill the streets and ditches and river banks with the corpses of Iraqis.

What's needed, and has been desperately needed since the summer of 2003, is a strong counter-insurgency program. And a viable counter-insurgency campaign is police work, not the work of regular Army and Marine troops with Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, artillery and air strikes.

Until we get that simple fact, and act on it, all we are doing when we kill or drag off another presumed insurgent to Abu Ghraib prison is create two more insurgents, or three, or four, or however many there are in that guy's family.

There are people inside and outside our military who know how to do this work well. But until they are free to act on that knowledge the cause in Iraq is lost, lost, lost and the president's words are no more than wasted air.

Copyright 2006 Joe Galloway. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.

Iraq or Bust
August 18, 2006
Charles Pena addresses the destructive policies the Pentagon has employed to maintain the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Some believe this is reason to expand the Army, which will provide no short term relief, except for the politicians. Pena suggests a more logical long term solution.

A prominent group of U.S. defense experts, chaired by former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and including retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John Shalikashvili, has issued a clarion call that "two-thirds of the Army's operating force, active and reserve, is now reporting as unready." General H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, has also acknowledged that more than two-thirds of the Army National Guard's 34 brigades are not combat ready. Apparently, the active duty Army claims to be in better shape but is suffering from the same problem. One Army official admits that active duty Army units serving in a war zone are 100 percent combat ready, but not other units. Other data reported to the House Armed Services Committee implies units deployed to Iraq are also in low readiness. According to Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker, the primary problem is a funding shortfall resulting in an inability to repair or replace equipment as it is being used up in conflict. Schoomaker's assertion implies that if the equipment problem can be fixed, the U.S. Army can prevail in Iraq. But even if current equipment shortfalls can be remedied (General Schoomaker believes the Army needs more than $17 billion in 2007 and General Blum thinks it could cost as much as $21 billion for the Army National Guard), the real problem in Iraq is not just equipment; it includes manpower and perhaps a bit more.

Earlier this year, military and Pentagon officials hinted that they hoped U.S. troop deployments in Iraq would drop to 100,000 by the end of this year. But now, the plan is to increase troop levels to roughly 135,000 boots on the ground. However, it is not possible to keep 135,000 troops deployed in Iraq (or anywhere else) indefinitely. The ones in Iraq and elsewhere must eventually be relieved by fresh troops, since excessively long or too frequent periods of time away from home creates the risk that soldiers will decide against a military career. For a professional volunteer military force to be able to retain soldiers over time, the rule of thumb for active duty units is a 3:1 rotation ratio (meaning three units are needed to keep one unit fielded). So keeping 135,000 troops in Iraq requires an additional 270,000 for rotation or a total of 405,000 soldiers. This number is precariously close to the total size of the active duty Army, about 500,000 troops. Moreover, the U.S. Army has another 64,000 troops deployed elsewhere overseas that requires a total of 192,000 troops to sustain it. So when you do the math, the Army is about 100,000 soldiers shy of being able to keep up the current deployments. (Of course, if we were fighting a war of national survival -- such as World War II -- troop rotation would not be an issue. We would field as many troops for as long as necessary until victory was achieved. But Iraq and virtually all other U.S. foreign military deployments have nothing to do with national survival.)

Moreover, using the National Guard and Reserves to fill the gap is not the answer. As of the beginning of August, a total of nearly 90,000 members of the Army Reserve and National Guard have been mobilized (that number has been as high as 163,000), and as much as 40 percent of the force in Iraq has consisted of Guard and Reserve. In the past four years, more National Guard and Reserve soldiers have been called to active duty than were cumulatively mobilized since the Cuban Missile Crisis (including for the Vietnam War, the Cuban refugee crisis, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Desert Storm). Plus there is a ripple effect rotation ratio problem for the Reserves and National Guard. Because these are part-time soldiers, the rotation ratio believed to keep them enlisted is between 7:1 and 9:1. Using 8:1 as an average, the current mobilization requires a total force of 720,000 citizen soldiers -- which pretty much accounts for all of the Army Reserve and National Guard force.

The solution applied to the rotation problem caused by Iraq has been twofold. First, deployments have been extended to keep troops in Iraq for longer than normal. Recently, the Defense Department announced that the deployment of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team -- more than 3,500 troops -- will continue for as long as an extra four months in an effort to boost security in Baghdad. Second, the Iraq mission has forced the military to resort to the use of "stop-loss" orders to prevent soldiers from leaving the military when their terms of enlistment expire. In November 2003, the Army issued stop-loss orders for the 110,000 soldiers whose units were preparing to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. In January 2004, stop-loss orders were issued covering 160,000 Army soldiers who were returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other deployments. And in January 2006, the Army stop-loss program forced 50,000 soldiers into extended duty. But extending deployments and stop-loss are like the little Dutch boy trying to plug all the holes in the dike with his fingers. There are only two real solutions. One is to increase the size of the Army, but this is problematic given that the Army is barely meeting recruiting goals to maintain its current end strength. But even if the Army could be expanded, 135,000 troops in Iraq are not enough.

According to conventional wisdom, the force ratio required for imposing stability and security is 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants, which is what the British -- often acknowledged as the most experienced practitioners of such operations -- deployed for more than a decade in Malaysia and more than 25 years in Northern Ireland. With a population of nearly 25 million people, to meet the same standard in Iraq would require a force of 500,000 troops for perhaps a decade or longer. Paradoxically, however, a large American ground force in Iraq would just make the problem worse -- confirming that the United States is an occupying power and increasing support for the insurgency. Worse yet, a larger military contingent in Iraq removes any shred of doubt from the case made by the radical Islamists that the West is invading Islam, which only encourages the Muslim world (regardless of their sympathies towards al-Qaeda) to unite against the United States. So if military victory in Iraq is a quixotic quest, that leaves the second choice, which is to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq before the Army goes bust.

Charles V. Pena is an adviser on the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, and a senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. He is the author of Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism (Potomac Books, 2006).


This commentary first appeared at the Taylor Marsh political blog at
http://www.taylormarsh.com/ on Aug. 16, 2006, and was distributed by the Straus Military Reform Project.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152AP_Rumsfeld.html
Saturday, August 26, 2006 · Last updated 7:57 p.m. PT

Rumsfeld defends extended tours in Iraq

By ROBERT BURNS
AP MILITARY WRITER


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld waves a he leaves for Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska were he met privately with 172nd Stryker Brigade families, the unit's home base, Saturday Aug. 26, 2006. Rumsfeld will meet with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Sunday and will participate in a ceremony for a memorial of the World War II, Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease program in Fairbanks. Rumsfeld will also to tour the missile defense site at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks. (AP Photo/Al Grillo)
FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- In a lively but polite give-and-take, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fielded questions Saturday from wives and other family members of Alaska-based soldiers whose combat tours in Iraq were abruptly extended just as they prepared to return home this month.

"It is something we don't want to do," Rumsfeld told several hundred family members who gathered in a gymnasium at nearby Ft. Wainwright, home of the 172nd Stryker Brigade. The unit's deployment to Iraq was extended by up to four months to bolster U.S. firepower in the Baghdad area.

"But in this case we had to," he added, referring to the decision made in late July to extend the 172nd.

Asked whether the Army was preparing another brigade to take over for the 172nd in case the intended improvements in Baghdad are not achieved by mid-December, Rumsfeld said he could make no promises.

"I wish I had a magic wand and the power to say yes. I don't," he said. "I will do everything in the world I can do to see that they are not extended beyond the 120 days."

Reporters, including five who traveled with Rumsfeld from Washington, D.C., were not permitted to cover his meeting with the family members, which lasted about an hour. But a wife who made a video tape of the event showed it to reporters afterward.

One wife asked Rumsfeld why the 172nd was doing house-to-house searches in Baghdad instead of the kinds of combat operations they are trained to perform. Rumsfeld disputed her assertion, saying that 95 percent of the house-clearing operations are being done by Iraqi troops.

In an interview during his flight to Fairbanks, Rumsfeld said he saw no reason for the soldiers or their families to be angry at him.



"I don't put it in that context," he said. "These people are all volunteers. They all signed up. They all are there doing what they're doing because they want to do it. They're proud of what they do. They do it very, very well."

Asked why reporters would not be permitted to cover his meeting with the family members, Rumsfeld at first replied, "I don't have any idea. I haven't addressed the subject." Later he said he makes it a practice to make all family meetings private.

A newly formed Alaska chapter of the Military Families Speak Out group issued a statement in Fairbanks saying it would make a public call for the Bush administration to bring home the 172nd and all other U.S. troops. It quoted Jennifer Davis of Anchorage, whose husband is a member of the 172nd.

"I am totally frustrated, disappointed and heart broken," she said in the statement. "Just when I thought we were going to be able to resume a `normal' life and when I thought the nightmare was over, the nightmare was extended."

Rumsfeld said in the in-flight interview that the 172nd Brigade was an effective force during its nearly one-year deployment to the Mosul area in northern Iraq. He said the soldiers performed well in the short time since they shifted to Baghdad as part of an effort by U.S. commanders to quell sectarian killings.

"They did a terrific job in Mosul and they're already doing an excellent job in Baghdad," said Rumsfeld, indicating that commanders chose to extend the 172nd Brigade in part because of their extensive experience in Iraq.

The brigade's tour was extended by up to 120 days, bringing them close to a Christmas return date. Rumsfeld said he would make no promises that the full brigade would be back home by the holidays.

"I'd love to be Santa Claus. I'm not," he told reporters.

If it turned out that by December, U.S. commanders in Iraq felt they needed an unscheduled infusion of troops, "our first choice obviously would be to have them be someone other than the people we just extended," Rumsfeld said. "But I'm not going to get into the promises business. That isn't my style."

On Sunday, Rumsfeld and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov planned to participate in a ceremony in Fairbanks for a memorial of the Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease program. During World War II, nearly 8,000 U.S. warplanes were flown to Fairbanks by U.S. pilots and turned over to Soviet pilots for use against the Germans.

Rumsfeld also was to tour the missile defense site at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks, where interceptor rockets in underground silos are being developed for potential use in the event of a long-range missile attack on U.S. soil. A test of portions of the system is scheduled to be held in a few days.

Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?

By Samuel H. Preston and Emily Buzzell

The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for U.S. forces are being documented by the Defense Department with an exceptional degree of openness and transparency. Its daily and cumulative counts of deaths receive a great deal of publicity. But deaths alone don't indicate the risk for an...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

Democrats Split Over Timetable For Troops

By Jim VandeHei and Zachary A. Goldfarb

Most Democratic candidates in competitive congressional races are opposed to setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, rejecting pressure from liberal activists to demand a quick end to the three-year-old military conflict.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

Reuters seeks Pentagon probe on journalist's "unlawful". death:

Reuters news agency urged the U.S. military on Sunday to investigate the killing of one of its journalists by American troops in Baghdad a year ago.
http://tinyurl.com/hdxa3

===
You wouldn’t catch me dead in Iraq:

Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly...643-531,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2700500_pf.html

Rumsfeld Unsure of Ability To Intercept Korean Missiles

From News Services
Monday, August 28, 2006; A02



FORT GREELY, Alaska, Aug. 27 -- After his first look inside the nerve center of the U.S. missile defense system, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday sounded a note of caution about expectations that interceptors poised in 10 underground silos here would work in the event of a missile attack by North Korea.

Asked at a news conference whether he believed the missile shield was ready for use against a North Korean missile like the one test-fired unsuccessfully on July 4, Rumsfeld said he would not be fully convinced until the multibillion-dollar defense system has undergone more complete and realistic testing.

"A full end-to-end" demonstration is needed, Rumsfeld said, "where we actually put all the pieces" of the highly complex and far-flung missile defense system together and see whether it would succeed in destroying a warhead in flight.

Rumsfeld also said North Korea does not pose a military threat to South Korea, calling Pyongyang more of a danger as a distributor of weapons to other countries and perhaps terrorists.

"I think the real threat that North Korea poses in the immediate future is more one of proliferation than a danger to South Korea," he said.

Rumsfeld said it is clear that the overall condition of the North Korean military has deteriorated.

Later Sunday, Rumsfeld met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov. They discussed the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as Russian concerns about an announced U.S. plan to remove nuclear warheads from some Trident long-range missiles aboard submarines and replace them with conventional warheads for potential use on short notice against terrorist targets.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,111575,00.html

Vets Exposed to Radiation Lose Ruling
Knight Ridder | August 28, 2006
WASHINGTON - Radiation exposure took Alice Broudy's husband a generation ago.

This week, a court ruling sliced away at her bid for redress.

In a quiet ruling that nonetheless resonates nationwide, a federal appellate court rejected efforts by Broudy and others seeking claims on behalf of "atomic veterans." The same court simultaneously rejected bids by other veterans exposed to biological and chemical agents.

Taken together, the dual rulings by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will likely impede many veterans hoping for compensation. At the very least, it will complicate future claims.

"It's a significant ruling," Washington-based attorney David Cynamon, who represented veterans in both cases, said Friday. "Unfortunately, it's a significantly bad ruling."

A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman couldn't be reached to comment.

Broudy, a resident of California's Orange County, has long been seeking full compensation for the death of her husband, a Marine major who was repeatedly exposed to radiation. She has company.

George Woodward, who lives north of Wichita, Kan., in the town of Miltonvale, was exposed to radiation during a 1955 test blast. Kathy Jacobovitch, a resident of Vashon Island, Wash., lost her father through exposure to contaminated ships in Puget Sound. Ernest Kirchmann, a 62-year-old Navy veteran who lives south of Minneapolis in tiny West Concord, who's filed a separate lawsuit, was exposed during a 1964 nuclear submarine accident.

"It isn't just my personal case," Broudy said Friday. "It's the entire veterans community. It makes me so angry."

Broudy married her husband, Charles, in 1948. Three years earlier, he'd walked the war-poisoned streets of Nagasaki. Within a decade, he was facing radiation in the Nevada desert. He died of lymphatic cancer in 1977. Though she has since received partial compensation, Broudy has been confronting the federal government for more. She has now lost three separate lawsuits.

"This closes the door," Cynamon said of the latest appellate court ruling, which was issued Wednesday. "It will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for individuals who are victimized by government cover-ups."

All told, an estimated 220,000 U.S. soldiers were allegedly exposed to radiation in the 1940s and 1950s. Some, such as William Yurdyga of Sacramento, Calif., claimed in an earlier lawsuit that they were exposed following the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic blast. Others claimed exposure during Cold War testing.

The three-member appellate panel wasn't ruling on whether the atomic veterans deserve compensation. A 1988 law provides that. To succeed, though, veterans must prove they were present at a radioactive site and that they contracted a radiation-related illness or were exposed to a cancer-causing radiation level.


Required military test records can be elusive. A 1973 fire destroyed many veterans' records, and veterans consider alternative "dose reconstruction" estimates inaccurate.

"You send a Freedom of Information Act request," Broudy said, "and you wait and you wait and you wait, and then maybe you get a piece of it, or you get nothing at all because they say it's classified."

The latest lawsuit sought to force Pentagon officials to release all relevant records. In the opinion written by Appellate Judge Thomas Griffith, appointed by President Bush last year, the court panel agreed unanimously that atomic veterans couldn't compel a massive release of all the Pentagon's relevant documents.

Instead, individual veterans must file individual claims.


If the Pentagon is "covering up records of medical tests that describe the amount of radiation to which these veterans were exposed, FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act) provides a potential remedy," Griffith wrote.

A new study by Melinda Podgor for the Elder Law Journal found that 18,275 atomic veterans had filed for compensation as of October 2004. Only 1,875 claims were granted.


On a separate but related legal track, veterans such as Columbia, S.C., resident John Goricki and Homestead, Fla., resident Richard B. Holmes were pursuing claims following exposure during the Shipboard Hazard and Defense project of the 1950s and 1960s.

Project SHAD allegedly exposed up to 10,000 soldiers and sailors to biological and chemical agents. Like the atomic veterans, SHAD survivors claim that the Pentagon clings to secret information. Like the atomic veterans, they couldn't persuade the appellate court to order the release of all relevant documents.

The veterans "can still seek, through FOIA, the documents they believe they need to pursue their benefits claims," the appellate panel ruled.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

Copyright 2006 Knight Ridder . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Rumsfeld Meets With Russian Counterpart
Agence France-Presse | August 28, 2006
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov here in Alaska Sunday to discuss events in North Korea and the Middle East.

Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about Pyongyang, which on July 5 test-fired six short and mid-range missiles and one long-range missile, the Taepodong-2. All missiles fell harmlessly in the Sea of Japan.

The meeting, held at the Pike's Waterfront Lodge hotel, was scheduled to last a half hour and was to be followed by a meal

Before the meeting, Rumsfeld visited Fort Greely, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Fairbanks, where US 10 anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) are positioned in underground silos.

The missiles are a key part of the US missile defense system, designed to shoot down enemy missiles fired at US soil.

The system consists of a network of early warning satellites, targeting and tracking radars, a command center based in the western US state of Colorado, and missile interceptors deployed in Alaska and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

After visiting the site Rumsfeld fingered North Korea as a dangerous weapons proliferator.

"I think the real threat that North Korea poses in the immediate future is more proliferation than a danger to South Korea," he said.

The North Koreans "have been among the leading ballistic missile developers in the world and the leading ballistic missile proliferators in the world, working with Iran and with various other countries," Rumsfeld added.

Commenting on North Korea's July 5 tests, Rumsfeld said he believed it was probably important "from their standpoint to test these things so they can sell them."

Alaska has been chosen as an ABM deployment site because of its geographical location that allows the United States to protect itself against attacks coming from both the East and the West.

While the ability of the controversial anti-missile shield to function in real-life conditions is being questioned, US President George W. Bush has insisted it had a reasonable chance of shooting down a missile.

Only five out of 10 tests of missile interceptors have been successful. The last successful one dates back to 2002, but it was followed by two failures.

The US goal is to have 40 interceptors deployed in Alaska in the next years.

In the future, Washington envisions deploying interceptor missiles in Europe. However, the US Congress has not yet appropriated funds for that.

The US attitude towards missile defense "in western Europe today is much more positive than it was 10 years ago," Rumsfeld said.

Speaking earlier to reporters aboard his plane on his way to Alaska, Rumsfeld said the United States now had at its disposal a missile defense system "that is getting better every month."

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

Copyright 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,111522,00.html
Sacrifice is Not in Vain
Frank Schaeffer | August 28, 2006
Salisbury, Mass. -- The Marine Corps has just announced that it is calling back several thousand Marines from inactive reserve units. After Sept. 11, all our president asked of most Americans was to go shopping, travel and maintain the economy. But our service members are asked to make sacrifices most Americans wouldn't dream of.

Many Americans are saying that our troops are sacrificing in vain. They are wrong. So are those who claim that if you want to support the troops, you have to support the president. Both misunderstand the meaning of military service in our democracy.

My youngest son, John, joined the Marines in 1999. Bill Clinton was president. The nightmare of Sept. 11 was still in the realm of the unthinkable. John was trained to serve as a Marine wherever he might be sent, not for any particular war. He served five years and returned safely from two combat tours in Afghanistan -- a "good war," according to most pundits and opinion polls -- and after a mission in Iraq, a war gone "bad."

I was fortunate. My son survived. A friend lost her only child.

Mindy Evnin's son was killed in Iraq. On a sweltering day last month, my wife and I drove from our home in Massachusetts to Burlington, Vt., to visit Mark's grave. Standing in front of that young Marine's headstone, I was overwhelmed by sorrow, fury at our president's mishandling of the war and by gratitude for Mark's life well-lived. Those emotions aren't as contradictory as they might seem.

I e-mailed a civilian friend about visiting Mark's grave. "To me," he answered, "the soldiers who are dying in Iraq should not have been there in the first place. ... If they die, they will have died in vain because the war is all a tissue of lies and/or failed policies."

Did Mark and thousands of others die in vain?

We need to take a step back from the bitter debate over the Iraq war and look at the deeper meaning of service. Does it change when wars go badly? If Mark had been killed in Afghanistan, would that have been a more noble sacrifice than being killed in Iraq?

Maybe it would be helpful to consider the significance of service in a less politicized context. When a fireman runs up the stairs while everyone else runs down, the value of his action is unrelated to who started the fire, or whether those saved are "worthy." And the morality of his action doesn't depend on his motives or whether his leaders are truthful or wise. It is all about what he does once he's called upon to act on behalf of all of us.

While we are busy looking out for ourselves, that fireman is busy looking out for us. His willingness to serve is a victory for community, social responsibility, compassion and bravery.

What did Mark die for?

He did not die for George Bush's ever-changing rationalizations: "finding WMD," "freeing Iraq" or "bringing democracy to the Middle East." And in all probability, if he was like my son, Mark never thought much about why he volunteered. The point is, he did, and in combat he acted on the belief that the Marines standing next to him were more important than he was -- and, by extension that his country was more important than his individual right to comfort and safety.

Service in our democracy is not about politics. My son's volunteering in the Clinton era, then being sent to two "Bush wars," one "good" and the other "bad," handily illustrates the fact that the act of volunteering has nothing to do with fighting any war in particular and everything to do with service for service's sake.

Volunteering is a pre-political statement. And if you believe that American democracy is worthwhile, no matter what its imperfections, then the act of volunteering to be sent wherever your country needs you must be acknowledged as a priceless gift from the individual citizen to his or her country. This gift's morality doesn't depend on the rightness or wrongness of any war but on the soldier's high-stakes commitment to the value of our democratic experiment.

Mindy wrote me: "I don't know if Mark was a 'hero.' He did what he was asked to do, and he did it without hesitation. ... Maybe that is heroic."

It was. Our troops volunteer with no guarantee of success. They serve with or without support from other Americans. Now, some are being recalled involuntarily to participate in the fragile exercise of self-rule by equipping our government "of the people" to take action.

There are several thousand Marines who thought that their time of duty was done. Now they are going to be sent back into combat. They will be unhappy, even angry. Some will believe the president is wrong to send them, and their families will be sick with worry. But our Marines will go.

Their lives -- and, inevitably for some, their deaths -- present us with a stark question: Is citizenship only about enjoying personal preferences, or should we take responsibility for those around us, and by extension for our country?

We don't all need to serve in the military, but in the face of the sacrifice of those who do, what is our excuse for just going shopping? How we answer the question posed to us by their service will decide the health, morality and ultimately the survival of our democracy.

This column first appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,111542,00.html

Sounding Retreat
Frank Gaffney | August 28, 2006
Urban legend has it that populations of wild rodents known as lemmings periodically commit mass suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs. In fact, these critters do no such thing. It remains to be seen, however, whether American voters will this Fall do the functional equivalent of the lemming leap: Electing politicians who seductively promise retreat from a strategy of forward defense, thus imperiling large numbers of our countrymen abroad and possibly at home.

No longer are such politicians found only on the far left of the Democratic Party. To be sure, MoveOn.org and its champions in Congress are still among the most vociferous in demanding precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. Now, however, Hillary Clinton -- an erstwhile supporter of the liberation of the Iraqi people -- has found it necessary to realign with her defeatist base. She evidently hopes to do so without explicitly recanting her vote for the war by helping Ned Lamont defeat Joe Lieberman, a fellow Democrat who remains unrepentant about seeking Saddam Hussein's overthrow.

So strong is the siren's call of defeatism at the moment that even some Republicans are succumbing to it. For example, Rep. Chris Shays has just returned from the most recent of many visits to Iraq and joined those declaring that a timetable for beginning to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq must be set, without regard for the conditions on the ground or the consequences of our doing so.

The defeatists typically offer two rationalizations for this course of action. The first contends that we need to retreat so as to compel the Iraqis to make the "tough decisions" about their own future that our presence and support allows them to postpone.

Unfortunately, the decisions that will almost certainly flow from the perception -- let alone the reality -- that America is once again abandoning the Iraqi people will translate into the rise of another repressive authoritarian regime there, this time probably one closely aligned with Iran. Such an outcome would not be good for freedom-loving people in Iraq and elsewhere, including here.

The defeatists' second rationale is even more disingenuous. They complain bitterly that we do not have enough troops in Iraq to win. Yet, with few exceptions, they are unwilling either to increase the deployment there or otherwise to build up our military to contend with current and future needs.

This line fails to acknowledge that war is a come-as-you-are affair. The United States faced the dangerous post-9/11 world with the armed forces and defense industrial base it had left following the 1990s, when many of today's defeatists cashed in yesterday's so-called "peace dividend." It takes a relatively short time to dismantle large parts of our military's power-projection capabilities and infrastructure, and decades to reconstitute them.

Dangerous, short-sighted and historically ignorant are all apt descriptions of a policy that fails to invest in the U.S. military in peacetime. But failing to invest sufficiently in our defense capabilities in time of war is reckless in the extreme. At some point, such behavior breeds not just defeatism. It assures defeat.

Today, the U.S. Army's soaring personnel costs leave it with insufficient resources both to support our combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and to maintain the readiness of units not presently in the fight. Even worse are shortfalls in the procurement of equipment needed to conduct tomorrow's, possibly quite different wars.

The Navy's shipbuilding program is on a trajectory that is wholly inadequate to assure freedom of the seas, on which not only our security but our economic well-being critically depends. The same is true of the modernization program for the Coast Guard, an institution whose duties vastly exceed its capabilities. If anything, this mismatch will become more grievous with the proliferation of seaborne threats to this country.

The Marine Corps is facing its own serious resource, investment and manpower challenges. One symptom of its condition was last week's announcement that the service must recall some long-serving members of its Individual Ready Reserve to active duty.

The Air Force has just seen its contractors begin shutting down the Free World's only production line for highly capable, heavy-lift transport aircraft, the C-17. This plane is an indispensable part of America 's ability to project power. The planned inventory is insufficient to assure that we will be able to do so where and when we will need to in the future.

American voters are badly served by leaders who suggest that national security can be achieved on the cheap, especially in time of war. The reality is that abandoning Iraq will not save either lives or dollars in the long-run. Such a course will intensify the danger posed to our country and way of life from Islamofascists, their sponsors and friends.

The public must be told the truth. This war is not just about Iraq and will not be over if we retreat from the conflict there. It will likely get worse before it gets better. It will require greater sacrifice -- indeed, a national mobilization -- if we are to prevail. Those who suggest that the alternative is less painful and costly are at best disingenuous.

In fact, history tells us that confronting foes like ours later, rather than now, under circumstances of their choosing rather than ours, will entail a far higher price in lives and national treasure. Informed voters, given the choice, will reject the lemming-leap of defeatism and its inevitable high toll.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.


Copyright 2006 Frank Gaffney. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.

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Amazing Special Offers from the Barnes Review Magazine
HUGE SPY SCANDAL GOES UNREPORTED

BIGGEST SECURITY BREACH SINCE ‘POLLARD’ IS IGNORED BY MEDIA

By Mike Blair


The military continues to say very little about the apprehension of a sailor who has been accused of selling highly classified information from a U.S. nuclear attack submarine to unspecified countries. A Navy source in Norfolk, Va., where accused spy Petty Officer Third Class Ariel J. Weinmann is being held, told American Free Press that it is one of the worst cases of espionage in U.S. history.

While Russia has been mentioned as one of the countries involved in the ring, there have also been reports that top secrets were handed to Israel.

At first, press reports cited Russia as being the only country to receive top-secret files that Weinmann allegedly stole from the nuclear attack submarine, the SSN-706 Albuquerque. However, the Saudi Arabian newspaper, Al- Watah, reported on Aug. 8 that sources close to the investigation said Israel did receive stolen secrets.

Since then, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) officials have categorically denied reports that Israel was given the computer secrets.

Weinmann’s father, Robert, told Associated Press that Weinmann is not Jewish. He said his family’s heritage is German.

Al-Watah reports that Weinmann’s betrayal is the biggest spy case since Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst caught in 1985 providing secrets to Israel.

Pollard was convicted and is currently in prison for life despite several attempts by the Israeli government to free him.

Weinmann faces court-martial and possible life in prison. He allegedly deserted from the U.S. submarine on July 3, 2005, and was arrested last March 26 by U.S. Customs officials at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Some $4,000 was found on him in $100 bills.

Investigators also found computer storage devices, computer discs and a notebook that contained information that reportedly prompted federal agents to inspect the computerized records, from which they discovered top secret information from the submarine.

Investigators kept the case under close wraps until Weinmann appeared before a hearing July 25 at the Norfolk base. He has been charged with desertion, larceny, destroying U.S. military property, failure to obey orders or regulations and espionage.

The Navy report alleges that, while “serving at or near Bahrain, Mexico, and Austria,” Weinmann engaged in espionage “with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, [attempted] to communicate, deliver or transmit classified confidential and secret information relating to the national defense, to a representative, officer, agent or employee of a foreign government.”

(Issue #35, August 28, 2006)

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Rumsfeld lashes out at Bush's critics
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces "a new type of fascism" and likened critics of the U.S. war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis.

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the Bush administration's critics as suffering from "moral or intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security. His remarks amounted to one of his most pointed defenses of President Bush' war policies and was among his toughest attacks on the president's critics.

Speaking to several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failure to confront Hitler in the 1930s. He quoted Winston Churchill as observing that trying to accommodate Hitler was "a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last."

"I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," he said.

"Can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?" he asked.

"Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world's troubles?"

Rumsfeld spoke to the American Legion as part of a coordinated White House strategy, in advance of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to take the offensive against administration critics at a time of doubt about the future of Iraq and growing calls to withdraw U.S. troops.

Rumsfeld recalled a string of recent terrorist attacks, from 9/11 to deadly bombings in Bali, London and Madrid, and said it should be obvious to anyone that terrorists must be confronted, not appeased.

"But some seem not to have learned history's lessons," he said, adding that part of the problem is that the American news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive.

He said, for example, that more media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor.

He did acknowledge that the U.S. military has its own "bad actors — the ones who dominate the headlines today — who don't live up to the standards of the oath and of our country." But he added that they are a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and lies and distortions being told about our troops and about our country," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was addressing the American Legion convention later Tuesday, and Bush is scheduled to speak here later in the week. On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld made separate addresses to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev.

Rumsfeld made similar arguments in Reno about doubters of the administration's approach to fighting terrorism, saying too many in this country want to "blame America first" and ignore the enemy.

Rumsfeld's remarks ignited angry rebukes from Democrats.

"It's a political rant to cover up his incompetence," said Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., a former Army officer and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Reed said he took particular exception to the implication that critics of Pentagon policies are unpatriotic, citing "scores of patriotic Americans of both parties who are highly critical of his handling of the Department of Defense."

Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), the hawkish Pennsylvania Democrat who voted in favor of the war but recently called for troops to withdraw, said in a statement: "It's interesting to me that they generalize the support for the war. They're not realistic with the fact that there's no progress."

Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., chimed in that Rumsfeld's remarks were trying to "shoot the messenger" rather than examine failed policy.

Rumsfeld defended the war in Iraq, saying that while U.S. military tactics have changed as conditions on the ground have changed, the administration's war strategy has remained constant: "to empower the Iraqi people to defend, govern and rebuild their own country."

In arguing against giving up in Iraq, he said people should know from history that wars are never easy.

"You know from experience that in every war — personally — there have been mistakes and setbacks and casualties," he said. "War is," as Clemenceau said, `A series of catastrophes that results in victory."



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS / TROOP DEPLOYMENTS
Why Involuntary Call-Ups in All-Volunteer Military?
From Times Staff Writers
August 27, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps announced plans last week for involuntary call-ups of Marine reservists to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's some background:

Question: Who's getting called up?

Answer: Those who stand to be summoned are Marines who recently have completed four years of active duty and are serving the remaining years of their eight-year service commitment in a reserve program known as the "individual ready reserve."

Q: Do all Marines go from active duty to the individual ready reserve?

A: No. Some join reserve units that have monthly drills. Some remain attached as reservists to active-duty units. About 59,000 are in the individual ready reserve. They are not attached to reserve or active-duty units but are available as individuals to volunteer or be called up for duty in units that have vacancies.

Q: How many will be called up?

A: The Marines estimate there are 1,200 jobs that may need to be filled on an involuntary basis. Call-up guidelines allow commanders to summon up to 2,500 Marines and to subsequently call up additional groups of 2,500.

Q: Do some volunteer for this duty?

A: Yes. The Marines regularly post newly created jobs or jobs that have become vacant because of casualties or discharges and encourage members of the individual ready reserve to volunteer. They are paid for the duty.

Q: Why not fill all the openings with volunteers?

A: The Marine Corps would prefer to do that. But the number of volunteers has been declining, and the commitment of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has remained constant. So commanders foresee a time when they have openings near the front lines and no Marines available to fill them.

Q: The Pentagon has said it's meeting its recruiting goals. So how can there be a shortage of Marines?

A: The Marines have been meeting their recruiting goals (the Army missed its goal last year; the National Guard and Army and Navy reserves are struggling this year).

However, when a unit is serving in combat and Marines are killed or wounded, commanders can't fill those jobs by simply moving Marines from other units, because that would create new vacancies. Instead, they call for help from reserves.

Up until now, that call has been answered by volunteers.

Q: Weren't the number of troops in Iraq supposed to go down this year?

A: Yes. Since early 2005, top commanders have predicted that "substantial reductions" in the numbers of U.S. forces would occur in 2006. President Bush expressed a similar hope in his State of the Union speech in January. But persisting violence has prevented commanders from going ahead with withdrawals.

Q: How many troops do we have over there?

A: As of last week, there were 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, including about 22,000 Marines.

Q: Bush administration officials talk about the all-volunteer force. Are the troops in Iraq all volunteers?

A: They all voluntarily joined the military. But as in the case of the Marines in the individual ready reserve, many had little or no choice about going to Iraq.

Q: How many others were given no choice?

A: It's difficult to say for sure. The Army tapped its individual ready reserve in 2004, mobilizing about 5,000 inactive soldiers. About 2,200 Army ready reservists continue to serve, about 1,850 of them involuntarily.

In addition, many military units have been held in Iraq beyond their scheduled tours. While the Pentagon could not provide exact current numbers of troops affected by such extensions, there were more than 13,000 in Iraq at the end of last year.

Viewed another way, however, when the Pentagon mobilizes and deploys an entire military unit, its members do not necessarily have a choice to go or stay, either. The difference is that some are sent to Iraq, or kept there, through variations on normal deployments.

Q: Is this like a military draft?

A: Some call it a "backdoor draft." But the United States abolished compulsory military service in 1973, moving to an all-volunteer military based on recruiting.

Still, by adapting the rules to send people to Iraq who didn't expect to go, or to keep people there longer than they expected, commanders are stirring up some hard feelings among service members and their families.

Q: We have 138,000 troops in Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says there are 2 million available. So why does the military seem to be under strain?

A: The 2 million includes all the active-duty services, reserves and National Guard. But the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has fallen heavily on the Army, which has about 500,000 members worldwide, and the Marines, with 179,000.

Nearly eight out of every 10 members of the Army and Marines have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them more than once. Army rules tend to limit combat deployments to a year; Marines send their members to fight for seven months. With the war in its fourth year, nearly a third have been deployed more than once.

When Army recruiting numbers plummeted last year, commanders tweaked standards and recruitment procedures. Now, numbers are beginning to look better, though congressional investigators have expressed concern about some recruiting tactics.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060826/ap_on_...ons_immersion_2
Army immerses soldiers in weaponry
By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM, Associated Press Writer

In the early months of the war in Iraq, Army Spc. Paul J. Sturino was getting ready for guard duty one morning when another soldier accidentally fired a bullet into his neck.

"Somehow it went off," his mother Christine Wetzel said as she recounted the official reports documenting her 21-year-old son's death on Sept. 22, 2003.

"I just think we're sending young, young people into situations that they're not ready for," she said from her home in Rice Lake, Wis. "They're inexperienced with weapons. ... Things happen and we pay the price."

The Army has begun taking steps to reduce accidental discharges through a new weapons immersion program fully implemented this year throughout the Army's 16 training facilities.

Sturino, assigned to the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Ky., was one of 21 soldiers killed by accidental discharges in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, according to the Army's Combat Readiness Center. Eighty-nine others were injured.

"Losing one U.S. soldier because of a negligent discharge or not handling the weapon right is one too many," said Col. Paul Fortune, commander of the 23rd Quartermaster Brigade at Fort Lee, near Petersburg and 25 miles south of Richmond.

Under the new program, "We put the weapon in the hands of the soldier as soon as possible to give them an opportunity to be familiar with how the weapon operates," Fortune said.

Soldiers receive their M-16 rifles — and blank ammunition — on the third day of training and keep it with them for the next six to 12 weeks, depending on the length of training. The only time they do not have their weapons is when they enter chapels or clinics, or when the rifles are checked in for the weekend.

It's part of the "train as you fight" mentality that the Army hopes will keep soldiers safe.

Soldiers such as Pvt. Kenneth Dykeman, 21, of Portland, Ore., carry their gun to class, physical training and even have it nearby as they sleep. At night, Dykeman keeps his weapon under his mattress, with the rifle's magazine in his locker.

"Most likely we're going to Iraq, and when we get there, if you don't handle your weapon during training, you're going to forget," Dykeman said. "It helps you get closer to your weapon, know the characteristics, know what your rifle can do, so when you're out there in the field, you know how to keep yourself safe."

The program is significantly reducing negligent discharges, said Col. Kevin A. Shwedo, director of operations, plans and training for the Army Accessions Command. The average company used to experience about five negligent discharges every four hours. Now, he said, "if you hear a single discharge, that's a lot."

Even in the training environment, soldiers are required to keep a round of ammunition in their chambers and clear their guns before entering any building. Metal barrels filled with sand rest slanted on sandbags outside every building for soldiers to clear their weapons.

"It's a constant practice to teach them these rules and responsibilities," Fortune said before checking weapons at random in the cafeteria. "We want to teach them that there is no such thing as the front line."

In recent years, the only time soldiers at Fort Lee would see their weapons was when they practiced shooting. Commanders say the change reflects the need for soldiers to be ready to engage in the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And Wetzel, who lost her son, agrees with that logic.

"I wholly endorse more contact with those weapons under safe circumstances ... to have more exposure to that weapon and more safety training," Wetzel said, adding that both of her sons had only one week of total weapon training when they entered the Army. "It should be second nature: safety first."

It took the Army until early 2005 to "come up with enough horsepower" to implement the program, Shwedo said. Officials ran into road blocks including finding enough weapons, ammunition and supplies, and Cold War-era regulations against putting weapons on training bases, he said.

"We have got to prepare every soldier for the possibility that they would go immediately in to fight," Shwedo said.

The program is part of the Army's new initiative to make training more relevant and apply lessons learned from troops coming back from deployment.

"We save lives every day that we train soldiers how to properly handle their weapons," he said.

___

On the Net:

Training and Doctrine Command: http://www-tradoc.army.mil/

Accessions Command: http://www.usaac.army.mil/



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Rumsfeld: US military can handle other threats despite Iraq Tue Aug 29, 4:07 AM ET

The US military could handle another war despite deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

"I get asked from time to time, if your forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the US military sufficiently stressed or strained that it really couldn't deal or cope with a problem in another part of the world," Rumsfeld told troops at an air force base in Nevada.

"The answer is no, that's not correct. We are capable of dealing with other problems where they occur," he said, answering a question about military options for the nuclear crisis with Iran.

"I feel comfortable ... our country is able to fulfill the responsibilities the American people expect of us and that the president is charged with," he said.

Rumsfeld warned potential enemies that the United States remained ready to take military action to defend its interests.

"It would be unfortunate if other countries thought because we have 136,000 troops in Iraq today that therefore we are not capable of defending our country or doing anything that we might need to do," Rumsfeld said.

The Pentagon has recently extended tours of US troops in Iraq and called up reserve Marines to quell violence in Iraq unleashed after the US-led invasion in 2003. Apart from Iraq, the US also has more than 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, and defense analysts say the deployments have put an enormous strain on the military.

"We have a large active force, we have a large reserve force, we have that ready reserve that drills the selective reserve and we have a large number of individual ready reservists who have an obligation that runs to depending on the circumstance for the remainder of their six-year period and we have allies."

Rumsfeld said that 42 countries were working with the US military in Afghanistan and 34 governments were "helping us in Iraq."

He added: "You can't do everything and you can't do everything at once.

"But some of the capabilities that we need the place where we are using most of the capabilities right now are the ground forces in Iraq