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


Tuesday, May 10, 2011

War News for Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Romanian MND is reporting the death of a Romanian ISAF soldier from an IED blast in Zabul province, Afghanistan on Tuesday, May 10th. Here's what we believe is the ISAF release.

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldier from an IED attack in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Monday, May 9th.


U.S. in limbo over Iraq troop presence


Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: A sticky bomb detonated in a four-wheel drive vehicle carrying Salam Abdullah Ibrahim, managing director of the cement factory in Zaafaraniyah, killing him, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The incident occurred in the morning when Ibrahim was driving to work in Baghdad's southern district of Doura, the source said.

#2: In a separate incident, Yassin Mostafa al-Janabi, member of Baghdad Provincial Council, escaped unharmed when a roadside bomb struck his convoy while moving in Baghdad's western district of Ameriyah, wounding a bodyguard and a passerby, the source added.

#3: Also in Baghdad, a roadside bomb ripped through al-Shaab district in northern the capital and wounded two civilians, he said.

#4: Three people were wounded on Monday in a bomb explosion in southeast of Baghdad, a security source said. “An improvised explosive device went off near a vegetables store in al-Ghadier region, southeast of Baghdad, wounding three people,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Diyala Prv:
#1: In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, four men and a woman were wounded in two roadside bombs and a sticky bomb attacks in and near the capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a source from the provincial operations command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.


Tikrit:
#1: Separately, an explosive expert policeman was wounded while he was defusing a roadside bomb on a main road south of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, the source added.


Samarra:
#1: A civilian has been killed and three others injured when a group of unknown gunmen tossed a hand-grenade on a checkpoint in Samarra city on Monday, according to a police source. “A group of unknown gunmen, have tossed a bomb from a fast car on an Iraqi police checkpoint in central Samarra on Monday night, killing a civilian and seriously wounding thee others, including a policemen,” the police source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Shirqat:
#1: In Salahudin province, a roadside bomb went off near a car carrying Lieutenant Colonel Nadhim Hussien Nasir, chief of al- Shirqat police station, seriously wounding him, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The blast took place as Nasir was driving to work outside the town of al-Shirqat, some 250 km north of Baghdad, the source said.


Kirkuk:
#1: Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire and killed an off-duty policeman in the city of Kirkuk, police said.


Al Zab:
#1: A roadside bomb went off and wounded a teacher in the town of al-Zab near the city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.


Tal Afar:
#1: One civilian was killed on Monday by gunmen in west of Mosul, according to a civilian source. "Gunmen opened fire on a civilian in Talafar, west of Mosul, killing him on the spot," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: Hundreds of insurgents launched a large-scale attack Tuesday against police in Afghanistan's remote Nuristan province, a part of the country that is largely controlled by the Taliban, officials said. Provincial police chief Gen. Shams-ul Rahman Zahid said about 400 Taliban fighters were involved in the attack, which started after daybreak, targeting checkpoints around a base housing police reserve units located about 11 miles (18 kilometers) south of the provincial capital of Parun. Zahid, the provincial police chief, did not say how many police were under attack or the size of the security force based in Nuristan although it is thought to be small.

#2: U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan are striking back against the Taliban's annual spring offensive with helicopter raids targeting a key border area that has long served as a base for the insurgents. U.S. Army paratroopers with the 101st Airborne Division fly into a remote district of eastern Paktika province, bordering Pakistan. Bermel district is a key battleground in a new NATO plan for securing Afghanistan, 10 years after the U.S.-led invasion. In Bermel, the paratroopers spend hours tracking suspected Taliban and mapping their fighting positions. The Taliban respond with sporadic rocket fire. The Americans fire mortars in response. The two-day patrol ends with no casualties on either side, though six Americans died a few days earlier in a similar assault in neighboring Kunar province.


R/MND: Corporal Constantin Laurentiu-Lixandru

R/MND: Corporal Cătălin-Ionel Marinescu

2 comments:

Dancewater said...

Pictures from inside a Baghdad hospital

Dancewater said...

Iraq's hospitals in terrible shape

But on a moderately busy day at the hospital’s emergency room, a newborn died because proper-size IV catheters, about $1 each, were not available. And as the first shift began on a slow Tuesday, Majid Abdullah lay unconscious on clean blue sheets, wrapped in white bandages covering blast wounds, in his 12th hour of waiting for a ventilator bed, as the ones promised to the ER were still words on paper.

“Maybe he will die,” doctor Layth Salim whispered. “Maybe we will find a bed.”

As security has improved and a semblance of calm has settled over Iraq, doctors say the biggest menace to patients these days is not so much a lack of money, basic training or even supplies. Rather, they say, it is the skewed priorities of a corrupt, often indifferent Health Ministry that has gone on spending sprees in certain realms while leaving basic health care to flounder.

The problems are emblematic of the wider dysfunction of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government as a whole, a bubble of elites for whom ministries are treated as spoils of bare-knuckled political battles, with key positions often going to the well connected rather than those with technical expertise. To some extent, such issues are common to developing nations, which is what Iraq essentially is, having been plunged backward by years of war.

But to a large extent, the dysfunction has been enabled and well modeled by the United States, whose $61 billion reconstruction effort included nearly $1 billion poured into the Iraqi health sector, spending followed by audits that documented huge cost overruns, delays, poor planning and waste.