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U.S. Review of Battle Disaster Sways Strategy on Afghanistan http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/asia/03battle.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
That firefight, a debacle that cost nine American lives in July 2008, has become the new template for how not to win in Afghanistan. The calamity and its roots have been described in bitter, painstaking detail in an unreleased Army history, a devastating narrative that has begun to circulate in an initial form even as the military opened a formal review this week of decisions made up and down the chain of command.
The 248-page draft history, obtained by The New York Times, helps explain why the new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing so hard for a full-fledged commitment to a style of counterinsurgency that rests on winning over the people of Afghanistan even more than killing militants. The military has already incorporated lessons from the battle in the new doctrine for war in Afghanistan.
The history offers stark examples of shortcomings in the unit’s preparation, the style of combat it adopted, its access to intelligence, its disdain for the locals — in short, plenty of blame to go around. ...
Commanders may have been distracted from the risky operation by the bureaucratic complexities of handing over responsibility at the brigade level to replacements — and by their urgent investigation of an episode that had enraged the local population, the killing a week earlier in an airstrike of a local medical clinic’s staff as it fled nearby fighting in two pickup trucks.
Above all, the unit and its commanders had an increasingly tense and untrusting relationship with the Afghan people.
The history cited the “absence of cultural awareness and understanding of the specific tribal and governance situation” and the emphasis on combat operations over the development of the local economy and other civil affairs, a reversal of the practices of the unit that had just left the area.
The battle of Wanat is being described as the “Black Hawk Down” of Afghanistan, with the 48 American soldiers and 24 Afghan soldiers outnumbered three to one in a four-hour firefight that left nine Americans dead and 27 wounded in one of the bloodiest days of the eight-year war.
Soldiers who survived the battle described how their automatic weapons turned white hot and jammed from nonstop firing. Mortally wounded troops continued to hand bullet belts to those still able to fire.
The ammunition stockpile was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, igniting a stack of 120-millimeter mortar rounds — and the resulting fireball flung the unit’s antitank missiles into the command post. One insurgent got inside the concertina wire and is believed to have killed three soldiers at close range, including the platoon commander, Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom.
The description of the battle at Wanat — the heroism, the violence and the missteps that may have contributed to the deaths — ends with a judgment that the fight was “as remarkable as any small-unit action in American military history.”
The author, the military historian Douglas R. Cubbison, also included a series of criticisms in his review, sponsored by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that laid blame on a series of decisions made before the battle.
The draft report criticized the “lack of adequate preparation time” before arriving in Afghanistan, which meant there was little training geared specifically for Afghanistan, and not even a detailed operational plan for the year of combat that lay ahead.
Pentagon and military officials say those initial criticisms are being revised to reflect subsequent interviews with other soldiers and officers who were at Wanat or who served in higher-level command positions. After a round of revisions, the study will go through a formal peer-review process and be published.
The battle stands as proof that the United States is facing off against a far more sophisticated adversary in Afghanistan today, one that can fight anonymously with roadside bombs or stealthily with kidnappings — but also can operate like a disciplined armed force using well-rehearsed small-unit tactics to challenge the American military for dominance on the conventional battlefield.
From Inside Military, Strong Rebuke Of Ban On Gays http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113434316&ft=1&f=1001
Gay rights activists this week hailed as groundbreaking the Pentagon's decision to publish an essay calling for the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
The analysis of the 15-year-old policy, which bars openly gay Americans from serving in the military, was notable not only for its systematic repudiation of arguments that gay service members harm military unit cohesion, but also for its unusual source and placement.
To see that article in an official Pentagon publication, as opposed to hearing an activist on this issue, gives credence to a lot of people who perhaps wouldn't be sympathetic. It's so incredibly important.
- U.S. Army veteran and gay rights activist Jarrod Chlapowski
It was written by active Air Force Col. Om Prakash, and it appeared in the Joint Force Quarterly, a journal published for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the National Defense University Press.
"This is the first time that repeal has been argued so forcefully in an official Pentagon publication. Period," says Kevin Nix of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which provides free legal services to those affected by the policy and lobbies for its repeal.
"We think it is significant — a breakthrough moment," Nix says.
Pentagon officials caution that Prakash's piece made its way into the chairman's journal because it won an annual Defense Department essay contest. It was not commissioned by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation's top uniformed officer.
"Broadly speaking, it is the chairman's magazine, and he wants it to be a forum for open debate and discussion for issues in the military writ large," says Capt. John Kirby, Mullen's spokesman.
"But there was no intention with the publication of this article to send any subliminal message to the force or the country about Don't Ask, Don't Tell," he says.Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has said he will have a hearing on the law this month. Mullen, who has said any change in the ban "would require sound policy revisions and leadership," has agreed to appear before the committee.
A Senate bill advocating repeal is expected to be introduced in coming weeks; it would mirror the House version, which has more than 175 co-sponsors.Prakash's just-the-facts-ma'am essay, which argues that cohesiveness and morale are harmed, not helped, by the gay ban, can only aid arguments on Capitol Hill, says U.S. Army veteran Jarrod Chlapowski, who is openly gay. He has been working on the repeal issue since he left the military in 2005.
"One of the big things we've been waiting on is for the Pentagon to be more active in repeal, because Congress says that the Pentagon is the key," Chlaposwki says.
"To see that article in an official Pentagon publication, as opposed to hearing an activist on this issue, gives credence to the argument for a lot of people who perhaps wouldn't be sympathetic," he says. "It's so incredibly important."
Though some opponents of Don't Ask, Don't Tell have urged President Obama to issue an executive order halting continued implementation of the policy, permanent change has to come from Congress, which passed the original ban.
"It's more efficient to focus on Congress, because ultimately, it will have to be repealed through them anyway," Chlapowski says.
Prakash works in the Pentagon for the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. In his essay, he argues that the law has undermined the integrity of the military and that it flies in the face of equal rights — regardless of whether one views homosexuality as a choice or a genetic inevitability.
More than 13,000 service members have been ousted since the policy was adopted in 1993; there are now an estimated 65,000 active gay and lesbian service members.
Sumatra quake 'levelled villages' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8288525.stm
Thousands of people may have died in remote village areas when a powerful earthquake struck Sumatra last week, emergency workers and officials fear.
Reports suggest some villages were razed to the ground, with access roads torn apart by the quake preventing medical teams reaching the injured.
Aid is now arriving in Indonesia, but hopes are fading of finding survivors in the worst-hit city of Padang.
More than 1,000 people have died in the city. About 3,000 others are missing.
Dems in Despair Finally Find a Champion Who Won't Back Off Defending Sanity: The Unlikely Hero is Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida. http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/9507
ThinkProgress.org offers this account of Grayson's dust-up with the Rethugs on healthcare reform:
Yesterday, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said the Republican health care plan is “don’t get sick,” and if you do get sick, “die quickly.” After offering those facetious and sadly accurate remarks, Grayson came under criticism from Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who demanded that Grayson apologize on the House floor. Speaking to reporters this afternoon, Grayson said, “Yes, it was tongue-in-cheek. I’m surprised I have to explain that, but that’s the way it goes these days.” He added that he’s “not taking any of it back” and will “stand by what I said.” When asked if he would apologize, Grayson offered this response:
“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I would like to apologize to the dead.”
Citing a statistic that 44,789 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance, Grayson said, “That is more than ten times the number of Americans who died in the war in Iraq, it’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died on 9/11. …It happens every year.”
Grayson added in another apparent dig at the GOP, “We should care about people even after they are born.”
Grayson apologized one last time.
“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner,” he said.
“I don’t think the Democrats need to be on defense,” Grayson told reporters. “I think we should be on the offense and not the defense, and that’s where I plan to stay"
On CNN later, Grayson said words that were like finding water after a decade in the desert:
"I'm not the one who should apologize, they should apologize to America." He added, "Democrats have to have guts. And now we have to have the guts to take the majority that the American people gave to us and do something with it. And what we have to do is solve people's problems."
A Palestinian boy aims a toy gun as he stands next to a mural of militants in the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp. The Arabic graffiti reads: “Many people held weapons but few used them against their enemies.”
By Peter Scheer — Michael Moore's latest look at what's wrong (and right) with America is a lot better -- and a lot more radical -- than some of the brie-eaters reviewing it think.
What’s
wrong with the American economic system? That’s what “Capitalism: A
Love Story” auteur Michael Moore wants to know, and Sen. Bernie Sanders
is on hand to answer him in his latest installment of Brave New Films’
“Senator Sanders Unfiltered” series. (Hint: It has something to do with
“an unfettered, cowboy-type capitalism” that stems largely from the
Reagan era.)
That
last bit in the headline isn’t just to get your attention—there are a
few valid reasons for its inclusion among this week’s “LRC” topics
(paging Roman Polanski ... or was that David Letterman?). However, more
substantial fare precedes that part of the discussion, including talk
of unemployment, Wall Street’s most wanted, and Obama’s growing
Afghanistan problem.
Truthdig
editors Robert Scheer, Peter Scheer and Kasia Anderson unchain
themselves from their laptops long enough to weigh in about the week’s
news, Michael Moore’s economic epic and a new phone made partly from
corn. If that’s not eclectic, we don’t know what is.
By Peter Scheer — Michael
Moore’s latest look at what’s wrong (and right) with America is a lot
better—and a lot more radical—than some of the brie-eaters reviewing it
think. It’s a cry from the soul of a man who sees the whole country
turning into his hometown hell of Flint, Mich.
It’s official: Movie marketers can no longer afford to ignore social networking sites. This may strike some as a foregone conclusion (i.e., duh),
but those in the industry who are still resisting the all-consuming
pull of online vortexes like Facebook and Twitter are doing so at their
own peril, according to the new “Moviegoers 2010” report.
Getting
a grip on the economic catastrophe that rocked the country during the
fall of 2008 is no easy feat, what with so many players, back-room
deals, bills, upswings and meltdowns to consider. Updated
By Joe Conason — Listening
closely to the politicians with the most clout in the debate over
health care, it is startling to discover how little they actually seem
to know about the subject.
By Eugene Robinson — Could
it be that the conservative culture warriors who portray Hollywood as a
cesspool of moral bankruptcy have been right all along? Not really. But
in the case of Roman Polanski, the Puritan scolds definitely have a
point.
By David Sirota — The
Washington Establishment clearly believes elected officials should
defer to the military, no matter what that pesky Constitution says.
By William Pfaff — What
could and should have been celebrated this week in Beijing is the
resumption of effective power in the People’s Republic by the
modernizer Deng Xiaoping.
By Stanley Kutler — During
his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly called for expanding
the war in Afghanistan. Be careful what you wish for.
By Ellen Goodman — My
favorite moment so far in the health care debate was when Arizona Sen.
Jon Kyl argued against mandating maternity benefits as part of a basic
insurance coverage. “I don’t need maternity care,” he blurted out. At
which point, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow quipped, “I think your mom
probably did.”
By E.J. Dionne — The
strangest aspect of the debate over a public option for health coverage
is that the centrists who oppose it should actually love it.
By Marie Cocco — The
Senate Finance Committee’s health care debate has given Michael Moore
hours of footage for his next cinematic assault on the system.
By Robert Scheer — Communism
once was, as the Islamic terrorist threat is today, presented as an
undifferentiated revolutionary impulse that could never be
diplomatically accommodated without sacrificing our own security or,
indeed, our freedom. The various communist nations and movements, like
those currently led by a polyglot collection of Islamist radicals, were
stripped of any complexity, be it in their national identity or
ideology.
Fallen financier Bernard Madoff’s brother, sons and niece are now in legal hot water after a court-appointed trustee filed suit
against them on Friday for allegedly pocketing “ill-gotten gains” they
received from Madoff’s fraudulent business ventures, according to The
Wall Street Journal.
Good
to know there are some seemingly dyed-in-the-wool GOP types who are at
least partly open to some of the health care reform proposals knocking
around the halls of Congress. Count among that tiny minority the former
Senate Republican chief Bill Frist, who says he’d vote for the measure despite its shortcomings.
Economic news and pessimistic views: U.S. unemployment
increased slightly to 9.8 percent and, moreover, this figure shows the
crisis is far from over, experts say. Joblessness is at a 26-year high.
The 2016 Summer Olympics will not find their home in the Windy City: Chicago was eliminated
Friday in the competition to host the Games and the honor was given to
Rio de Janeiro, marking the first time the Olympics will take place in
South America.
A study in The Lancet medical journal has shown that more than half
of those now born in wealthy nations—including the U.S.—will live to be
at least 100 years old. The leader of the study says: “Increasing
numbers of people at old and very old ages will pose major challenges
for health-care systems.” U.S. legislators, are you listening?
The partisan nonsense meter hit a high Thursday following a protracted bout of bickering
in the House that heated up after Florida Rep. Alan Grayson made his
views about his Republican colleagues eminently clear, but he’s not
sorry, and he’s not apologizing—at least not yet. This does not please
said colleagues, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t in a hurry to
appease them either.
Stick A Fork In It: It's Done The Fascists Wonhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/Stick-A-Fork-In-It-It-s-D-by-Jon-Faulkner-090918-468.htmlIn the non-existent, National Health Care debate, Bill Clinton, speaking to a group of health care activists, encourages them, "I want us to be mindful we may need to take less than a full loaf." Less than half a loaf. Not an even half, no, less than half. This is the mindset which has delivered the American people to their current state of subservient helplessness, and who better to express it than the less than half a democrat himself, Bill Clinton. Van Jones, White House Special Adviser for Green Jobs, offended the republicans and was asked to resign. Better the Right Wing loonies are assuaged rather than risk their ire Obama reasoned, clearly showing himself as more than half a coward.
Republican hypocrisy is breathtaking.
They have taken their cue from Limbaugh, Beck and Fox News, until today lying has become their primary talent. The contempt they hold for the American people is immeasurable. For any liar who can strain credulity as they do must necessarily be contemptuous of the recipients of those lies. Without the slightest care they tear the nation asunder as they invoke their self congratulatory righteousness. The fact that millions of Americans tolerate them, and indeed, admire them for their directed hatreds, tells the entire story of the United State's fall. For fallen it is. A large portion of the billions of taxpayer dollars delivered to Goldman Sachs will later this year pay some 30,000 of its employees bonuses averaging $700,000 each. This outrage is successfully veiled as the republican media machine accuses Obama of various criminal activities ranging from a conspiracy to kill off Grandma and Grandpa, to arranging for a socialist takeover of the U.S. which wouldn't be such a bad idea considering how well the banks have done with socialism.
Nukes aside, the real problem with Iran
Beirut, Lebanon - It was pure drama: The leaders of the United States, Britain, and France stepped onto the stage at the Pittsburgh Group of 20 meeting last week to unveil Western intelligence that showed that Iran had a second nuclear fuel enrichment facility under construction, which Iran haddeclared to the International Atomic Energy Agency the preceding Monday.
The Western leaders gathered inPittsburgh implied that their revelation was just as devastating for Iran as a credible player.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates subsequently pronounced Iran to be "boxed in" and "in a very bad spot now." But anyone who listened to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's interview with Time magazine's correspondent on the day of the presentation, and to subsequent Iranian statements, can gather that Iran, at least, does not see itself asboxed in.
Far from it. Mr. Ahmadinejad exuded confidence and nonaggressively counseled President Obama not to go down this route.
It might seem counterintuitive to most Americans and Europeans, but Ahmadinejad's advice might be worth pondering.....Already, the nonaligned majority and most Muslim states support the Iranian rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Already, the nonaligned majority and most Muslim states support the Iranian rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Since its origins, the IPCC has been open and explicit about seeking to generate a ‘scientific consensus’ around climate change and especially about the role of humans in climate change
I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.
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