The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Friday, July 23, 2010

War News for Friday, July 23, 2010

NATO is reporting the deaths of two ISAF soldiers in a helicopter crash in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, July 22nd. We assume these to be Americans.

The DoD is reporting what we suspect to be a new death previously unreported by the military. Staff Sgt. Brian F. Piercy died from a roadside bombing in the Arghandab River Valley, Helmand province, Afghanistan on Monday, July 19th.


US should perform postmortem of its nine-year performance

Pentagon Faces Growing Pressures to Trim Budget


Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: A rocket attack on Baghdad's fortified Green Zone killed two Ugandans and a Peruvian working for a U.S. security contractor hired to protect U.S. facilities in Iraq, the U.S. embassy said. Fifteen people, two of them American, were wounded in the attack.

#2: Two mortar rounds wounded three civilians in Abu Dsheir District, southern Baghdad.

#3: Gunmen opened fire at an Iraqi army checkpoint and wounded an army officer in central Baghdad, on Thursday, an Interior Ministry source said.

#4: A roadside bomb wounded three people in Baghdad's southeastern suburb of Madaen, on Thursday, an Interior Ministry source said.

#5: Four detainees, awaiting trial on terrorism charges, have broken out of Iraq's Karkh prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, says the justice ministry. The four, whose names are withheld, managed to break out of prison with the assistance of the warden. The escape was the second of its kind in less than two weeks. Another prisoner who was serving a life sentence for allegedly killing Margaret Hassan -- a British aid worker in Iraq -- broke out of the prison on July 14, a day before US forces handed over the facility to Iraqi forces. The high security detention center, formerly known as Camp Cropper, had once held the former dictator Saddam Hussein and other senior members of the Baath regime.


Diyala Prv:
#1: The death toll climbed to 16 in Wednesday's bombing of an outdoor market in a predominantly Shiite town in Iraq's Diyala province, police said Thursday. Another 32 people were wounded in the attack in Abu Sayda, north of Baghdad, including a number of women and children. The bomb was in a parked car and exploded in the market, which includes a clinic and a Shiite mosque.


Iskandariya:
#1: A roadside bomb wounded nine people in a cafe in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, on Thursday, police said.


Mosul:
#1: A civilian man was killed and a woman and two cops injured in an attack by unidentified gunmen in a crowded commercial spot in central Mosul city on Thursday, according to a local police source. “Gunmen opened fire today (July 22) on two policemen in their military vehicle while it was driving by in the area of Ghazi street, central Mosul, leaving them wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The incident also left a civilian man killed and a woman injured as both were in the line of gunmen fire,” he added.

#2: Unidentified gunmen shot down the imam and preacher of al-Salam mosque near his home in Mosul city on Thursday, according to a source from the Sunni Endowment Department in Ninewa. “Unknown gunmen killed Sheikh Fathi Ezzeddin al-Noaimi, the imam and preacher of al-Salam mosque in the village of al-Oraij, Mosul,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “Gunmen knocked on the door of Noaimi’s house in Zanjili area. The gunmen, identifying the sheikh, opened fire on him. He ran inside the house and then they ran after him and opened a volley of fire on him until he died,” the source explained, adding the armed men later escaped to an unknown place.

#3: A policeman was killed and five others wounded in two improvised explosive device attacks on a police patrol in western Mosul city on Thursday, a security source said. “Two IEDs went off successively on a police patrol in the area of Dorat al-Yarmuk, western Mosul, leaving a policeman killed and five others, including one civilian, wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The explosions caused damage to one of the patrol vehicles,” he said, adding the wounded were rushed to the nearby al-Jumhuriya hospital.

#4: “A civilian man was killed by unidentified gunmen fire on a main road in the area of al-Zanjili, western Mosul, and later escaped to an unknown place,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

Gunmen killed two civilians in two separate incidents in western Mosul, police said.

#5: “In another incident, an IED went off near an Iraqi army patrol in al-Islah neighborhood, western Mosul, leaving two soldiers wounded,” he added.

#6: “An IED went off near an Iraqi army patrol in al-Maarif neighborhood, northern Mosul, leaving three civilians, including a man and his son, wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#7: Two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near them in western Mosul, police said.

#8: Gunmen killed a baker and wounded his son when they stormed his bakery in western Mosul and sprayed it with bullets, police said.

#9: A sticky bomb attached to the car of a former officer in the Iraqi army killed him in western Mosul, 350 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: A sticky bomb attached to a car killed one person and wounded two others in Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: At least three people were killed in twin remote-controlled bomb blasts Friday in Tehsil Mamond area of Bajaur tribal agency, northwest Pakistan, local media reported. The victims include a local Peace Committee member Sardar Ali in the tribal area bordering Afghanistan.

#2-3: At least 21 militants were killed as Pakistani troops stepped up a ground and air offensive against militants Friday in Orakzai tribal area in the northwest of Pakistan, local media reported citing official sources. The 16 dead also included important militant commanders Suleman Mehsud and Hafeezullah while 12 others were injured in gunship helicopters shelling. Three hideouts of militants were also destroyed. In Kalaya area of Orakzai agency five more militants were killed. Two troops were injured in the clash, local sources said.

#3: Meanwhile, in Hungu district of northwest, police have defused a 12-kilogram remote-controlled bomb in the vicinity of Samana road.


MoD: Corporal Matthew James Stenton

MoD: Lance Corporal Stephen Daniel Monkhouse

DoD: Cpl. Julio Vargas

DoD: Cpl. Joe L. Wrightsman

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

.


C

We can go back and forth for weeks showing snippets of those that believed there were WMDs in Iraq. Many thought they were there, many did not.

But when former Pres Clinton, who had left office just two years prior to the war in Iraq and a member of the opposition party, stated that he was "surprised" that no WMDs were found is a pretty damn solid case that the US leadership thought Saddam had WMDs. Not necessarily in huge stockpiles but that we find some that were hidden and also the manufacturing capability to build more.

You can deny it all you want. But the general consensus was that he had them, not just from US intel but the majority of world intel including the French, German, and Russian intel communities even though these countries were against the war.

Wizzer



.

Cervantes said...

From the Carnegie Endowment:

Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from
Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence
failures noted above, by:

Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single “WMD threat.”
The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose,
distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war. (p. 52)
Insisting without evidence—yet treating as a given truth—that Saddam
Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. (p. 52)
Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present
in intelligence assessments from public statements. (p. 53)
Misrepresenting inspectors’ findings in ways that turned threats from minor to
dire. (p. 53)

Cervantes said...

Colin Powell, February 2001:

"[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq."

The Downing Street Memo, July 2002:

There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Cervantes said...

Iraq inquiry: Government ‘intentionally and substantially’ exaggerated WMD threat.

Cervantes said...

MI6 told Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq that a high-placed Iraqi source said that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence was passed to the US but was buried by the White House, according to a new book.

The book claimed that the former Prime Minister sent a top British spy to the Middle East in 2003 — three months before the invasion — to dig up enough intelligence to avoid war but that President Bush and Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, dismissed any claims or possible evidence that would stop military action.

Cervantes said...

Would you like me to continue? I could do this all day.

Cervantes said...

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

For example:

# On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."
# On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."

Anonymous said...

If I had the time to research all day or the inclination to do so, I could post article after article showing that there was ample evidence he had WMDs or the industrial capability to manufacture them. I could go through the UN UNSCOM reports and post snippets that showed suspicious findings, suspicious activities, attempts to obfuscate, and outright denial of cooperation in Iraq.

The fact that Bill Clinton, who left office just two years prior to the war, stated that he fully expected the UN would find WMDs in Iraq and that he was surprised that no weapons were found is about as definitive a statement one could get. As Pres, he was privy to the best intel we could gather from sources around the world.

There were many reasons that Saddam should have been removed. He was a very dangerous man that took irrational risks and establized a critical part of the world.

The main reason that WMDs became the casus belli is that most people believed he had them he had them. And they knew he was a desperate, irrational man. Too dangerous a combination to leave alone.

Wiz
.

Cervantes said...

People believed he had them because George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney and Ronald Dumsfeld were lying to them. It's that simple.

Cervantes said...

Of course, we know whose water the Wiz is carrying -- this doesn't come out of the blue. From Josh Marshall:

"One of the points Paul Krugman notes in his column I referenced below is that Karl Rove now wants to re-litigate the series of exaggerations and frauds the Bush administration used to game the United States into the Iraq War. This has been off the radar for some time. Not only is it some years ago (it occurs to me that you've got a decent number of young journalists who don't even have a clear living memory of all that went down) but most of the reality of what happened has actually been reported (notwithstanding a few whitewash congressional investigations conducted under the GOP majority) and is there for people to see.

But there's actually a lot that remained covered up. A whole lot. For a lot of reasons. Even the very broad outlines we mainly know, from a lot of really good post-war reporting by a lot of different shoe-leather reporters.

I think Mr. Rove's idea is that he and the other folks involved can try to rewrite the history -- or at least enough of a gloss for folks who aren't paying attention or are heavily invested in getting fooled -- while everybody is distracted, busy or just generally not watching. But I'd actually be eager to see this whole debacle re-litigated. I'm assuming this means all those involved are now ready? Eager to talk?"

uh huh.

Anonymous said...

So your saying that Pres Clinton also lied when he said that Saddam had WMDs. That Clinton lied about WMDs when he bombed Iraq for several days in 1998. That Clinton lied about WMDs so he could attack Saddam. That Clinton "cooked the books" on the intel on Iraq. That Al Gore, SecDef William Cohen, CIA head Tennet, Hillary, and the entire Clinton admin all went along with the big lie.

Wiz

Anonymous said...

I can get over the fact that all these people I know are dead but what I can't stand is taking the blame for what Americans do and not being allowed to see them off at their funerals. They were my friends and my family. I have more rights then nebody but chess is a fair game... join the Americans and make your money from blood,.

Ressurrector Ft. Sicktanick - Str8t To Hell (Satanic Shyt)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNfc4Bi6mN8

Anonymous said...

I can get over the fact that all these people I know are dead but what I can't stand is taking the blame for what Americans do and not being allowed to see them off at their funerals. They were my friends and my family. I have more rights then nebody but chess is a fair game... join the Americans and make your money from blood,.

Ressurrector Ft. Sicktanick - Str8t To Hell (Satanic Shyt)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNfc4Bi6mN8

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouztv-tRPKM&feature=PlayList&p=F31C4D5141FADC9D&playnext=1&index=6

Wife Beating in Islam - "The woman is totally isolated"

www.youtube.com
The Koran (Quran) allows men to beat their wifes, and here are the rules. After watching this, you will no longer be able to claim ignorance of Islam. QURAN 4:34 - "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them...

Anonymous said...

MAP 4.6 2010/07/23 11:19:23 -7.091 129.895 131.4 KEPULAUAN BABAR, INDONESIA

Anonymous said...

I thought that song was about Christians but it is about abortion where the Jewish man choses to kill children

Observer said...

Gee those awful spamposts follow the Wiz like a bad spell...oh I mean the Anonymous wiz.
What a loser...history HAS judged.
Wiz and all war-mongers = proud killers without remorse or apology.
DAngerous, irrational, and fully stocked with WMD.

Anonymous said...

I am glad it is time to get out of Iraq, we have done our best and must not continue sacrificing the lives of our young soldiers for more years to come. The young generation of Iraq needs to understand that they have to defend their country against the destructive forces operating there day by day and creating all that havoc with roadside bombs, sticky bombs and others. Besides our country is suffering economically and it is unjust we send billions of dollars out of the country, when we are losing jobs,need to invest in the health care system, education and other infraestructure in the country. Lets welcome our heroes and for all they have done.

Anonymous said...

Anybody who said in 2002 that Iraq had WMDs is either a liar or dumb as a rock.

Anonymous said...

Clinton is a liar.

Anonymous said...

BOTH Clintons.