An American Lion

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The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton

Norman Rogers recounts the summer he spent hiding from the stern love of his father and living as the world-famous “frisky mole boy” in the Groton, Connecticut sewer system. The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton seduced the women of the town and solved crimes, all while subsisting on a steady diet of depravity and confusion.

Rampage of the Innocents is my unfinished but brilliant Historical Romance Novel (now, with more sex and violence for my teenaged readers)

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    An American Lion

    Entries in Defense (322)

    Friday
    Sep102010

    Does Anyone Get the Fact that Our Enemies Know This?

    The National Journal has an excellent piece up about military spending; to cite anything from it is to cross a line for me. I typically cite other blogs and news items; I don’t cite the things found in magazines because those are written by freelance writers (typically) and I feel like I’m stealing from them. I have no problem stealing from a news organization or another blogger; I stole this post from a blog, in fact. I copied everything from it and just put it here under my name. I steal everything. I even stole a glance over my shoulder and saw no one doing anything half as brilliant as what I do. That’s not to say that I don’t admire a lot of good writers and bloggers. I don’t, of course, because I am a jealous God and all that mularkey. Clever, yes?

    Oh, come now. Clever doesn’t get you laid these days.

    Money gets you laid.

    And money is defending our nation. If we have money to defend ourselves, then every American can sleep safe and sound tonight knowing that our interests abroad have a level of protection that no other nation can match.

    The problem is, we’re running out of money. And, when we do, steep cuts will need to be made. That is when our enemies, who are real and need to be held in check, will take advantage of our drastic steps to realign what we defend and what we do not defend.

    Anyway, to get back on task, let me draw your attention to this graphic:

    Graphic from The National Journal

    Now, there are many ways to react to this. I’ll tell you the right way to react to this.

    With humility.

    That’s right. Humility. Because only a solid dose of humility will get us back on track. I do not mean taking a knee before our enemies. I mean, we need to have the humility necessary to extricate ourselves from “security and training operations” in one hundred and twenty different countries around the world. Yes. 

    We have a presence, or “boots on the ground” in 120 countries. That’s ridiculous. Our interests are not found in that many countries. We have clear enemies and places where we must stand between them and oblivion, and that’s nothing to minimize. Are we really examining what is, and what is not, a priority right now? Have we become too proud of own presence to know when we don’t really need to extend ourselves in all of these different directions?

    That’s what hubris brings you—the belief that you are the world’s policeman and the world’s answer to whatever ails it. This breeds a dependence on American military and economic power that cannot be sustained forever. We must find a way to have the humility to say “you know what, we can’t help Namibia with their internal issues right now” and we need to have the humility to say, “I’m sorry, Peru, but you’re going to have to build a world-class military on your own dime.” And I’m being general, not specific, because I don’t know if we are in Namibia or Peru, but when you talk about 120 different countries around the world, Namibia and Peru are bound to be one of those, assuming there even still is a Namibia.

    We cannot have a massive around-the-globe footprint as the sustained, permanent policy of the American defense establishment. And where is the State Department? The State Department should have some presence or policy in 120 different countries—really, all but two, but I digress (North Korea and the other one, Cuba, I think).

    This is the price we now pay for the bureaucratic wrangling that occurred between Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. Brief though it may have been, their tenure was a disaster for America’s future. We are suffering because of these fools and their incompetence. Why not name names? Too impolite? Well, I wouldn’t go to those kinds of parties anyway. My outlook tells me that we are in need of humility, not schmoozing.

    Tuesday
    Sep072010

    Why Would You Leak This Information?

    Someone in the CIA wants to gin up liberal outrage over torture:

    A former CIA officer accused of revving an electric drill near the head of an imprisoned terror suspect has returned to U.S. intelligence as a contractor, training CIA operatives after leaving the agency, The Associated Press has learned.

    The CIA officer wielded the bitless drill and an unloaded handgun — unauthorized interrogation techniques — to menace suspected USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri inside a secret CIA prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003, according to several former intelligence officials and a review by the CIA’s inspector general.

    Adding details to the public portions of the review, the former officials identified the officer as Albert, 60, a former FBI agent of Egyptian descent who worked as a bureau translator in New York before joining the CIA. The former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because many details of the incident remain classified.

    I will probably reveal a little more of my opinions that I wish to on this subject, but let me say, categorically, we have known that “torture” does not work for as long as there has been torture. Forget the soft-headed arguments of liberals and conservatives in this country—torture is what you do to punish someone when you think they’re not telling you what you think they know. No one tortures a subject when there’s the possibility that killing them will stop the flow of vital information. You torture someone when you want to send a message, tear them down emotionally and physically, or carry out a brutal form of repression against the enemies of the state.

    The behavior listed above is torture, of that you can be certain. But it’s the torture practiced, in varying forms all over the world, in police stations and whatnot in order to panic a suspect into confessing or giving up information. Have you ever sat down and watched NYPD Blue? There are, to much lesser degrees, similar interrogation tactics employed there in order to get people to give up vital information when they are holding out; there is no “ticking time bomb” situation that comes to mind, however. The police have a vested interest in getting people to give up information. They can and will stretch propriety in order to accomplish this task. Rights will be stepped on. But, as far as saying “if we don’t torture subject x, there will be a bomb that will go off in city y,” forget about it. That’s a plot device in a bad show or movie.

    The technique that “Albert” utilized was un-American, and yet, Americans have certainly played the torture game in wars past. It was used in Vietnam, Korea, World War II, and so on, to varying degrees, and it is all well documented. These are the mistakes of history and we, as the enlightened superpower that we really are, must learn from those mistakes. 

    Punishing “Albert” was correct; and yet, the situation that he found himself in was nebulous and vague. He likely had tacit authorization to employ certain measures and, given his background, he acted accordingly. The failure here is really bureaucratic and administrative. No one should have allowed him to interrogate a subject unless he had been trained and briefed on the laws at hand, on the ramifications from deviating from them, and on basic human rights and decency. Ethics are rarely instructed to those who are assumed to already have them. In this case, “Albert” and his ethics were barely acquainted. Was this because he was pressured to get information? Or was this because the process of interrogating people was flawed, ambiguous, and not easily understood by the people thrown into a difficult situation and told to produce information?

    When an employee breaks the law, there are a number of reasons for it. It could be their own greed, their own ignorance, or a desire to please their boss. I think that, in this case, it was a desire to please the boss. Now, was the boss disciplined? Yes, apparently so. Was his boss taken to task? Hmm.

    If the man at the top isn’t responsible, then who is? Apparently, not “Albert.” He’s back on the job. Something about him made the bosses very happy. If so, then leaking this is one boss fighting another boss, and this is a clear attempt to divide President Obama from his base. When the liberal base of the President can point to his hypocrisy on the issue of torture, then someone is accomplishing something we do not yet fully understand. This is a smokescreen, and the real maneuvers are being masked from view. 

    Sunday
    Sep052010

    Would This Be a Good Time to Bring Up Iraq?

    Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Ubaidi, center, inspects the site of a suicide attack accompanied by soldiers at a military headquarters in Baghdad, on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

    Yes, there’s still something of a war in Iraq:

    Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

    It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.

    The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.

    Sunday’s hour-long assault was the second in as many weeks on the facility, the headquarters for the Iraqi Army’s 11th Division, pointing to the failure of Iraqi forces to plug even the most obvious holes in their security.

    Duck, Cletus. Those sons of bitches are still shooting at you. Apparently, no one told the Iraqi Army that it was their turn to get their hands dirty fighting to preserve and protect their own country. How much do you want to bet that the ones that ran away will still get paid next month to do nothing?

    We may not have a very large footprint in Iraq (although, 50,000 troops is a hell of a lot of troops to me) and we may have ended combat operations, but let’s not forget this one very salient fact—there is no middle class in Iraq anymore. Anyone with the means to do so has fled. What’s left are a lot of very scared people at the mercy of whatever happens in their general vicinity. It is the collision of a corrupt government, an ally in retreat, and an entrenched opposition that thrives on murder and mayhem. It is not a recipe for sunshine and puppy dogs and happy times.

    Sunday
    Sep052010

    Thomas Friedman Reaches the Wrong Conclusion

    When Thomas Friedman says:

    … as [Michael] Mandelbaum notes, “When Britain could no longer provide global governance, the United States stepped in to replace it. No country now stands ready to replace the United States, so the loss to international peace and prosperity has the potential to be greater as America pulls back than when Britain did.”

    After all, Europe is rich but wimpy. China is rich nationally but still dirt poor on a per capita basis and, therefore, will be compelled to remain focused inwardly and regionally. Russia, drunk on oil, can cause trouble but not project power. “Therefore, the world will be a more disorderly and dangerous place,” Mandelbaum predicts.

    How to mitigate this trend? Mandelbaum argues for three things: First, we need to get ourselves back on a sustainable path to economic growth and reindustrialization, with whatever sacrifices, hard work and political consensus that requires. Second, we need to set priorities. We have enjoyed a century in which we could have, in foreign policy terms, both what is vital and what is desirable. For instance, I presume that with infinite men and money we can succeed in Afghanistan. But is it vital? I am sure it is desirable, but vital? Finally, we need to shore up our balance sheet and weaken that of our enemies, and the best way to do that in one move is with a much higher gasoline tax.

    America is about to learn a very hard lesson: You can borrow your way to prosperity over the short run but not to geopolitical power over the long run. That requires a real and growing economic engine. And, for us, the short run is now over. There was a time when thinking seriously about American foreign policy did not require thinking seriously about economic policy. That time is also over.

    An America in hock will have no hawks — or at least none that anyone will take seriously.

    He’s utterly wrong.

    We are no where near the end of our “wars of choice” in this country. In fact, our International footprint is not going to shrink; it’s going to expand in order to protect our markets and our supply of raw materials. It’s going to expand or we’ll lose access to valuable markets and see International trade, shipping, commerce and manufacturing grind to a halt, stopped by the forces of corruption and insurgency. We will see vital trading partners become paralyzed by their own unhappy people and our ability to ship things back and forth to places like India will come under the purview of pirates and gun runners.

    The rest of this century will be marked by wars for scarce resources. Mark my words.

    Thursday
    Sep022010

    General Thomas McInerney is Counting on Something

    Thomas McInerney, wearing two stars but you already knew thatIf this doesn’t put an end to the lucrative career that retired General Thomas McInerney has enjoyed since getting out of the United States Air Force in 1994, then I do not know what will:

    I try to ignore the birther movement unless it inducts someone important — a congressman, for example. The (sigh) American Patriot Foundation’s announcement that Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (ret.) has signed an affidavit supporting court martialed birther Lt. Col. Terry Lakin is actually a pretty big coup.

    How wild is McInerney’s statement? This wild: 

    [I]t is my opinion that LTC Lakin’s request for discovery relating to the President’s birth records in Hawaii is absolutely essential to determining not merely his guilt or innocence but to reassuring all military personnel once and for all for this President whether his service as Commander in Chief is Constitutionally proper. He is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship. This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to our Constitution, the Commander in Chief must now, in the face of serious— and widely held— concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy in these records is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here.

    And is McInerney a serious person? Yes. He’s a West Point graduate who ran the Alaskan air command during the Exxon Valdez disaster. As recently as August 5, he was featured on Fox News and referred to as a network contributor — he’s typically referred to as a network military analyst. He writes and comments fairly frequently about how America could bomb Iran.

    I believe that “all military personnel” are sufficiently relieved to know that their Commander in Chief is President Obama. You can’t help but note that we have civilian control over the military and these challenges to civilian authority cheapen that control. When President Bush was Commander in Chief, there was no nonsense allowed. The anti-Bush elements in this country never hesitated to denigrate his authority to command; there should be no tolerance for any effort to denigrate President Obama. You may not support the man, but partisan politics have no place when it comes for the principle of civilian control of the military.

    General McInerney is engaging in a form of sedition, one that probably pleases his media handlers but does not put him in serious legal jeopardy. Good for him. He has the free right to align himself with people who engage in semantics and nonsense (these people are the version of Al Gore was elected President! that has never been adequately stamped out).

    Never expect consistency when money is on the line. General McInerney is counting on being able to make money off of this move. That’s the only explanation for making this public. The individual in question, LTC Lakin is a decorated Veteran but he missed movement and cannot follow orders; he should be court-martialed and stripped of his rank.

    Tuesday
    Aug312010

    You Pull the Trigger, You do the Time

    I don’t think your fancy lawyer is getting you off, Cletus:

    A soldier was fasting to meet strict military weight guidelines and nearly catatonic when he shot and killed a supervisor who denied his vacation request, his attorney said Monday.

    Attorney William Cassara said Army Reserve Sgt. Rashad Valmont was dehydrated, exhausted and delirious when he burst into Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado’s office in nearby Fort Gillem in June and shot him six times.

    Valmont, 29, faces a premeditated murder charge. The details of the shooting were revealed for the first time Monday at a military hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial. No immediate recommendation was issued.

    The military routinely requires soldiers to pass physical tests and meet body-fat requirements to be eligible for promotions and advanced training courses.

    But Cassara said another sergeant, Tracy Mosley, ordered Valmont to lose an additional 3 percent beyond the minimum body fat requirements to attend a course he had long sought. He said his client spent weeks trying body wraps and sauna treatments and starving himself to meet the standards.

    “He showed some form of diminished capacity, some sort of delirium in the days and hours leading up to this incident,” Cassara said. “He was in a near-catatonic state, a near trance. And after being belittled, humiliated and berated … you’re on this crash course.”

    The thing is, the man did it to himself. If he was out of shape and overweight, then whatever “delirium” he put himself into was a direct result of his own actions. How, then, can you claim any sort of mitigating circumstance? There are wrestlers all over the country who could get away with murder if this were the case.

    This is just another case of “how can I get my client to skate?” I don’t think it will work in this case. The situation with Valmont is fairly cut and dried to me. He was too fat for the military. They were holding him to the standards in place. He didn’t like it. He tried to lose a lot of weight with stupid methods. He went berserk and killed that poor man. Now his lawyer is trying to get him off. I hope it does not work.

    What about the Master Sergeant who was killed? Isn’t there any sympathy for him? Why is there any sympathy at all for Valmont? I’ll tell you why. There is a belief out there that everything the military does is an evil conspiracy of vicious intent. Most Americans do not subscribe to this, but a subset of radical leftists do. If you don’t believe in personal responsibility, then you probably think some fat little jackass who kills someone because he cannot handle the stress of failure is innocent.

    The problem is, the military has to try to stress people out in order to see who can hack it and who can’t. This individual failed to take responsibility for his actions and killed an innocent man. That’s all.

    Wednesday
    Aug182010

    A Flim Flam and a Crock of Unadulterated Horse Shit

    Pardon my French, but we're being misled and lied to:

    The last U.S. combat troops were crossing the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, bringing to a close the active combat phase of a 7½-year war that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, forever defined the presidency of George W. Bush and left more than 4,400 American service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.

    But wait:

    The timing of the final departure was a closely held secret, occurring in dramatic fashion two weeks ahead of the Aug. 31 deadline President Barack Obama had set to withdraw combat forces and close Operation Iraqi Freedom, which the U.S.-led multinational coalition began March 20, 2003, in the belief that Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the West.

    In a statement, Obama called the troops’ withdrawal a “milestone in the Iraq war” and said, “I hope you’ll join me in thanking them, and all of our troops and military families, for their service.”

    At one point, the United States had blanketed the country with nearly a quarter-million-strong combat force; by the end of the month, Obama said, about 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in the country, in a non-combat role providing support and training for the Iraqi military.

    Fifty thousand "advisers?" President Obama could bring all of these troops home and no one would notice. There is no peace movement in this country. The American people don't give a flying fig whether or not someone else's kid is in harm's way anymore. At no point should anyone conclude that having 50,000 troops in Iraq means we have won something or ended the war. If that's what it takes to train the Iraqis (and, actually, a number of those troops have to guard the sprawling U.S. embassy complex), then who is stupid enough to swallow this bitter pill? Not me, brother. Not me.

    Nothing has ended. Wake me up when my blog works again and when there are fifty Marines and a CIA station chief in Iraq. Then, and only then, will we know that the war is "over." 

    Friday
    Aug132010

    Not a Firm Deadline in General Petraeus's Mind

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    It's useful to note that David Gregory has lost nearly every speck of credibility he may have once had climbing, literally, over the cold, dead body of Tim Russert to become the voice of reason and the Establishment for NBC News. This man is being used to sell things and even he knows what those things are. He has that knowing smirk that tells you what's what. I think he's far too glib in this interview, but that's my taste. I tend to prefer the people who talk to newsmakers to have a bit of dignity. Dignity can't sell a war anymore to the American people. We need telegenic news celebrities to accomplish this.

    President Obama has been fairly succinct on this front:

    As a candidate, Obama called Afghanistan a war worth fighting, as opposed to Iraq, a conflict he opposed and has since begun easing out of.

    A new survey by the Gallup organization, released Tuesday, showed only 35 percent of Americans now approve of Obama’s handling of the war; 55 percent disapprove.

    He made no direct reference to public opinion Tuesday night, although he seemed to touch on it when he said, “The American people are understandably focused on rebuilding our economy and putting people to work here at home.”

    “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home,” he said flatly.

    When speaking publicly, that "conditions" clause becomes more evident, however:

    Our overarching goal remains the same:  to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

    To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan.  We must deny al Qaeda a safe haven.  We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government.  And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future. 

    We will meet these objectives in three ways.  First, we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban's momentum and increase Afghanistan's capacity over the next 18 months.

    The 30,000 additional troops that I'm announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 -- the fastest possible pace -- so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers.  They'll increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight.  And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans. 

    Because this is an international effort, I've asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies.  Some have already provided additional troops, and we're confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan.  And now, we must come together to end this war successfully.  For what's at stake is not simply a test of NATO's credibility -- what's at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.

    But taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.  Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.  We'll continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul.  But it will be clear to the Afghan government -- and, more importantly, to the Afghan people -- that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country. [bold=emphasis mine]

    The man is quite a lawyer, in any case. He has his escape hatch and General Petraeus has seized upon it. Too bad there is still this pesky detail:

    CIA Director Leon Panetta's assessment comes as President Barack Obama advances a risky new war plan that relies on 98,000 U.S. troops to prop up the Afghan government and prevent al Qaeda from returning. No longer overseeing the commander in chief's mission is Gen. Stanley McChrystal, sacked this past week in a stunning shake-up in U.S. military leadership after his critical comments about the White House.

    "We're seeing elements of progress, but this is going to be tough," Panetta told ABC television's "This Week."

    He said al Qaeda's evolving attack strategy increasingly relies on operatives without any record of terrorism involvement or those already in the U.S. As for Osama bin Laden, Panetta said it's been years since the U.S. had good intelligence about his whereabouts.

    Panetta estimated there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda militants operating inside Afghanistan, with the rest hiding along Pakistan's mountainous western border. He said U.S. drone strikes and other spy operations have helped to "take down" half of al Qaeda's senior leaders.

    If there really are "fewer than 100" then the President has met his goals and all he has to do now is order the withdrawal. There is no justification to keep fighting the Taliban when there are virtually no al Qaeda left. We cannot invade Pakistan openly, but we can continue to use drones and Special Forces troops to continue to assassinate key leaders (as much as I hate the use of drones, I am a realist and I doubt they will stop being used). We don't need over 130,000 men and women in Afghanistan to accomplish that task. There is a strong case to be made that making peace with the Taliban is preferable to another decade of war--except that Hamid Karzai and his narco-trafficking brother probably wouldn't survive a reordering of the political establishment in Afghanistan. Is anyone bothering to ask the Pakistani ISI what we should do? Don't we need their permission nowadays?

    There is simply no reason, military or otherwise, to keep all of those troops in Afghanistan. Just by using the logic laid out by the President, there are more al Qaeda in Yemen, North Africa, and probably in a few other hotspots around the globe than there are in Afghanistan, but most of our troops are now tied down in the one place al Qaeda has been defeated. How did General Petraeus get his job and how does he keep it after openly speculating that we will need to "change" the timeline of the July 2011 withdrawal?

    Anyway, it's President Obama's war now, and it has been for some time. I hope he figures out that the way out of a war is to stop listening to the Generals and the Admirals and to start listening to the diplomats.

    Here's to paying attention to those pesky details.

    Friday
    Aug132010

    A Spectacular Failure on the Part of the Afghan National Army

    They're not ready for anything, are they?

    An ambitious military operation that Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban fighters battering an Afghan battalion in a remote eastern area until NATO sent in French and American rescue teams.

    The fighting has continued so intensely for the past week that the Red Cross has been unable to reach the battlefield to remove the dead and wounded.

    The operation, east of Kabul, was extraordinary in that it was not coordinated in advance with NATO forces and did not at first include coalition forces or air support. The Afghans called for help after 10 of their soldiers were killed and perhaps twice as many captured at the opening of the operation nine days ago.

    When you say "not coordinated," what it really means is that someone within the Afghan ministry of defense or screwups or corruption basically wanted these troops to be chewed to pieces and destroyed. You can bet that no one in that unit was a constituent of the people who sent them to die. It was probably a battalion with ties to a rival or a figure in disfavor. There's that possibility, or there's the possibility that anyone with connections to the patronage system that put them in that battalion either ran away or didn't bother showing up for work that day.

    The Afghan National Army does not put the fear of God into any of their opponents. In fact, they're better at killing Americans than they probably are at killing hard core Taliban.

    This is a stunning detail:

    The operation began when the Afghan Army sent a battalion of about 300 men from the First Brigade, 201st Army Corps, into a village called Bad Pakh, in Laghman Province, which is adjacent to the troubled border province of Kunar. Their operation, which began on the night of Aug. 3, was to flush out Taliban in a rugged area where they had long held sway. First, using the Afghan Army’s own helicopters, a detachment was inserted behind Taliban lines, while the main part of the battalion attacked from the front.

    But, according to a high-ranking official of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, the plan was betrayed; Taliban forces were waiting with an ambush against the main body of troops. Then the airborne detachment was cut off when bad weather grounded its helicopters, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

    In the confusion, the 201st Army Corps commanders lost contact with the battalion. The battalion’s Third Company — 100 men — took particularly heavy casualties, the official said, although he did not have a number. He said many of the company were killed, captured or missing, and as of Wednesday at least, the status of the rest of the battalion remained unclear.

    However, the senior American military official said the battalion had not been lost. “We know exactly where that battalion is,” he said, “although there are several soldiers unaccounted for and several killed.” He estimated that “about 10” soldiers had been killed and that no more than a platoon were missing, meaning up to 20 soldiers.

    A battalion is NOT a 300 man unit. That's a few companies, but not a battalion. Where were the heavy weapons and the support sections? Where were the supporting weapons that could have been used to stiffen a defensive perimeter? Whenever a unit becomes engaged with an insurgent force, the age-old tactic is for the insurgents to "hug the belt" and minimize the possibility of being hit from the air. What should have been an assault lasting a few hours (insurgents hit and the disappear before a superior force can hit it from the air, with artillery, or end up being surrounded) lasted over a week? That's incredible.

    When the article says that the unit had "about 300 men" then there were either companies left behind or there were a number of soldiers who failed to show up for the operation. See above on that theory.

    For the Afghan army to have no idea what the status of the battalion is to say that there is no command and control and no leadership. These were dregs thrown into an ambush and a slaughter. A good many of them melted away, apparently, or were of questionable loyalty.

    We're fighting and dying to prop up this sort of an ally? They don't even care about their own. They have lost control of a battalion on the battlefield. They are the worst sort of incompetents.

    Sunday
    Aug082010

    Yet Another Failure to Act in the Defense of the United States of America

    Three federal police agents were gunned down along a highway in Puebla state in July. (Ulises Ruiz Basurto, EPA)Few things bother me more than the out of control drug war in Mexico. Well, that's a misnomer. This war spans most of Mexico and the American Southwest. It has spread into the suburbs of Phoenix, throughout Texas, and is being played out wherever the drug cartels operate. So, really, this is a war that has real implications for the safety and security of American citizens and, to be be really real, it has nothing to do with illegal immigration. The illegal immigrants are too poor to buy the prime weed being smuggled into this country, you see.

    My friends at Stratfor have long been on top of this issue, but here's a particularly good piece from the Los Angeles Times:

    Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the United States, amassing bigger fortunes and extending their dominion at home with such savagery that swaths of Mexico are now in effect without authority.

    The groups also are expanding their ambitions far beyond the drug trade, transforming themselves into broad criminal empires deeply involved in migrant smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in contraband such as pirated DVDs.

    Undeterred by the 80,000 troops and federal police officers arrayed against them, gunmen frequently take on Mexican forces in the open. Operatives of one group, the Zetas, did so in northern Mexico this spring when they blockaded army garrisons. In June a group believed to be linked to another organization, La Familia, ambushed federal police in the western state of Michoacan, killing 12 officers in early morning light.

    If three or five or twelve law enforcement officers were gunned down in this country by the Zetas, it I want to believe that it would cause a sensation. It would spark outrage. It would motivate us to do something, no matter how feeble or misguided. And yet, this is happening on a regular basis in Mexico as this war spins off into new areas of corruption and greed. It is, in fact, being played out here now but not on a scale necessary to draw the American people into a substantive debate on whether or not our government is doing enough. In fact, we are not doing anywhere near enough. This fellow Calderon is no partner and he is no leader. He is symptomatic of Mexico's corrupt political establishment.

    When will someone in a position of power wake up and realize just how devastating this problem could be if the wrong gunmen shoot the wrong law enforcement officers on the wrong side of that porous border?