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


Monday, August 30, 2010

War News for Monday, August 30, 2010

NATO is reporting the deaths of two ISAF soldiers from an IED attack in an undisclosed area in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, August 28th.

NATO is also reporting the death of an ISAF soldier in an unspecified insurgent attack in an undisclosed area in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, August 28th.

NATO is also reporting the deaths of two more ISAF soldier from an unspecified insurgent attack in an undisclosed area in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, August 28th.

NATO is also reporting the death of an ISAF soldier in an insurgent attack in an undisclosed area in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, August 29th.

NATO is also reporting the death of an ISAF soldier in an IED attack in an undisclosed area in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, August 29th.


U.S. has blown billions on Iraq reconstruction

Obama Nears Pivotal Mideast Moment


Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: Hussein Salman, the deputy head of the Shi'ite Endowment, was unharmed when a sticky bomb attached to his car went off in Baghdad's northwestern district of Kadhimiya, an Interior Ministry source said.


Abu Ghraib:
#1: Gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi army and police, killing one soldier and wounding three other people, including one policeman, in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad, police said.


Kirkuk:
#1: Two children were killed in a blast from a hand-grenade in Kirkuk on Sunday, according to a senior security official in the city. “Two children – five and six years of age – were killed after they tampered with a hand-grenade they found in the district of al-Riad,” Brig. Sarhad Qader, the director of the Kirkuk Districts’ Police Department (KDPD), told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Mosul:
#1: Gunmen threw three hand grenades and blew up a wooden cart as a police patrol was passing by, wounding 10 people, including one policeman, in central Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

#2: One insurgent was killed as he was trying to plant a bomb in a small town west of Mosul, police said.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: Three gunmen were killed on Monday while booby-trapping a car east of Falluja city, said a local police source. “The incident occurred near a gasoline station in the al-Garma district, east of Falluja,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. He did not mention further details, but said that the gunmen also planted two roadside bombs nearby the area.

#2: Two people were killed when a bomb in their car went off in the town of Garma, 30 km (20 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. Police said they believed the car had been equipped for a suicde mission.

#3: A roadside bomb wounded three policemen when it went off near their police patrol in the city of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: Afghanistan An Afghan district chief was killed Monday in a bomb blast targeting a security meeting in a key eastern city, the latest in a series of brazen but largely unsuccessful insurgent attacks in the volatile region. Lal Pur district head Syad Mohammad Palawan died when a bomb planted on his car exploded as he was driving into a government compound to attend a meeting of provincial security and political leaders in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said police spokesman Ghafor Khan. Insurgents apparently planned for the bomb to explode inside the compound where it could potentially have caused far greater destruction, Khan said. Three of Palawan's bodyguards were wounded, Khan said, while the Interior Ministry put the figure at five.

#2: Elsewhere, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry reported four soldiers were killed and another wounded Sunday in a roadside bombing in Wardak province. A fifth Afghan soldier was killed and another hurt in a bombing in Helmand province's Nad Ali district.

#3: In the southeastern province of Zabul, 24 Taliban traveling by truck and motorcycle were captured while trying to cross the border into Pakistan, said provincial government spokesman Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar.

#4: Fifteen Taliban militants, including a rebel commander, were killed in fighting with security forces in Afghanistan, Xinhua reported Monday. The fighting took place Sunday in Wardak province, 40 km west of Kabul. “Taliban militants attacked a convoy of international troops in Lalam village of Syedabad district Sunday, but the troops retaliated killing 15 insurgents, including their commander Mullah Fazal Rahman,” said Shahidullah Shahid, spokesman of the provincial government. Rahman was a key Taliban commander in the area. There was no casualty among the Afghan and the NATO-led troops.

#5: At least four NATO supply oil tankers were completely destroyed by militants Sunday near Torkham in northwest of Pakistan. Militants attacked NATO tankers supply caravan with rockets turning four of them into ashes in Khyber Agency tribal area near Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Xinhua said, citing local media reports. No casualties were reported in the attack.

#6: Afghan security forces seized two trucks filled with ammunition headed for the airport in the capital Kabul, the Afghan intelligence agency said in a statement. It said the ammunition was illegal and was going to be transported outside the capital to an unknown destination.


DoD: Petty Officer 3rd Class James M. Swink

4 comments:

Cervantes said...

Ray Odierno tells Anthony Shadid:

“We came in naïve about what the problems were in Iraq; I don’t think we understood what I call the societal devastation that occurred,” he said, citing the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf war and the international sanctions from 1990 to 2003 that wiped out the middle class. “And then we attacked to overthrow the government,” he said.

The same went for the country’s ethnic and sectarian divisions, he said: “We just didn’t understand it.”

To advocates of the counterinsurgency strategy that General Odierno has, in part, come to symbolize, the learning curve might highlight the military’s adaptiveness. Critics of a conflict that killed an estimated 100,000 Iraqis, perhaps far more, and more than 4,400 American soldiers might see the acknowledgment as evidence of the war’s folly.

Asked if the United States had made the country’s divisions worse, General Odierno said, “I don’t know.”

“There’s all these issues that we didn’t understand and that we had to work our way through,” he said. “And did maybe that cause it to get worse? Maybe.”

Uhuh. Now they tell us.

Anonymous said...

SHOCKING: Top secret video shows US helicopter killing civilians in Iraq

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6OTb5xeFHU

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Collateral_Murder,_5_Apr_2010

Dancewater said...

Not only did they not know what they were doing, they did not give a shit either.

And it is abundantly clear that the presence of the US military in Iraq made things worse for Iraqi - MUCH WORSE.

Anonymous said...

Shocking alright.