| xxxx |
More than thirty years after the United States pulled its last military forces out of Vietnam it is safe to say that the majority of historians, political figures, and citizens view the United States’ decades long involvement in the Vietnam War as misguided. Given the benefit of hindsight, many have interpreted the war as a vain Cold War-era conflict fruitlessly fought during a time of great anti-Communist paranoia and leading to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and countless Vietnamese. The prevailing attitude about these assumptions has not changed much in recent years, even as the Vietnam War continues to drift further into the past. If nothing else, the orthodox view has strengthened with the passage of time.
In Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Publication Date: October 1, 2006; Cambridge University Press; $32) historian Mark Moyar boldly turns the traditional view of the Vietnam War on its head and offers a well-researched, well-reasoned and beautifully written account that reveals why so much of what many of us believe about the Vietnam War is wrong.
Moyar challenges many of the key assumptions that historians have made about the early years of the conflict, including:
The belief that Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh was not a true Communist but a Nationalist who would eventually turn against his Communist Chinese neighbors.
Moyar asserts that Ho was a fervent believer in Communism and would not have sacrificed Communist solidarity for the sake of Vietnam’s narrow interests.
That South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was an obtuse and tyrannical reactionary.
Moyar asserts that Diem was in reality a very wise and effective leader. Moyar also believes that American journalists in Vietnam in the early 1960s (particularly David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan) were duped by cultural differences and, as a result, engaged in misguided reporting that helped turn public opinion away from Diem.
That the domino theory was simple-minded paranoia.
Moyar believes that the domino theory was a valid assumption based on a sound understanding of the countries involved. As President Lyndon Johnson pondered whether or not to send US troops into battle the evidence overwhelmingly supported the conclusion that South Vietnam’s defeat would lead to either a Communist takeover or the wholesale switching of allegiances to China of most countries in the region. It wasn’t just paranoia; during these early years of the war North Vietnam and China were aggressively attempting to topple the dominos of Asia.
That an invasion of North Vietnam by US troops in the early to mid 1960s would have started a war with China.
While most historians agree with President Johnson’s assumption that an invasion of North Vietnam by US forces in 1964 or 1965 would have likely induced war with China, Moyar shows how the evidence proves that, at least until March 1965, the deployment of US ground forces into North Vietnam would not have prompted the Chinese to intercede.
- That the Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn’t a vital interest.
President Johnson at the time, as well as many historians since, argued that the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a secret supply line that ran from North to South Vietnam through the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, was not essential to the Communist war effort. New evidence shows how the Trail was a vital resource to the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam.
Basing his conclusions on a wealth of new material, including many North Vietnamese sources, Mark Moyar asserts that the Vietnam War might have been won during these early years, without the insertion of American ground forces, had some of these key blunders not occurred. Moyar believes that US intervention in Vietnam was based on sound assumptions and strategy and not, as many people have come to believe, wrongheaded hubris.
Triumph Forsaken is a remarkable book that will change the way we view one of the most contentious moments in US history.
Mark Moyar holds a BA summa cum laude in history from Harvard University and a Ph.
D. in history from Cambridge University. He is the author of Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong.
Moyar has taught at Cambridge University, Ohio State University, and Texas A M University. He is presently Associate Professor and Course Director at the United States Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia
I and two other Dogs have been promised review copies of Triumph Forsaken. We'll have more to say after we've seen them.
Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits.
But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch.
In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them.
Well, well, well.
It appears the Republicans actually can make the Foley controversy worse. As if it wasn't bad enough that John Boehner knew about Foley's track record of sexual harassment of his underage pages, now it turns out that Speaker Denny Hastert lied about what he knew and when he knew it. Roll Call reports that Thomas Reynolds (R-NY), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, in late winter or early spring of this year:
Republicans have to act swiftly to remove the stench of Foleygate from the party.
They need to demand the resignation of Hastert as Speaker, as well as Boehner as Majority Leader if he lied to protect Hastert. Allowing Foley off the hook was a mistake in judgment, but this is a betrayal of those who trusted Hastert to lead the House with dignity, honesty, and integrity. .
..
I hate having to defend Hastert, partly because and partly because it’s bad form to defend anyone in any way associated with a child molestation scandal, no matter how much the facts are in their favor.
But I think he’s getting here, at least based on what we know thus far.
Let’s back up. Two strands of Foley e-mail messages have emerged in the past two days.
...
Viv, if anyone ever tries to tell you your mama isn't really an Angel you send them to see me, OK? (H/T: )
Reader D. H.
sends an interesting news item from in New Orleans:
The FBI temporarily shut down and raided a handful of local convenience stores Thursday, leading Arab store owners to decry the search-and-seizure operations as racial profiling.
I’ve always hoped we wouldn’t have to suffer . I can stand videos of any of the other 18 — they’re all basically fungible — but to be taunted from the grave by the hijacker everyone recognizes is intolerable. I’m not sure we should even post it when it comes out.
We will, though, of course.
...
A previously unseen video made by Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been obtained by a Britain's The Sunday Times, the newspaper reported Saturday.
In editions available late Saturday, the paper said it had been handed the so-called martyrdom video, but did not reveal the source of the tape.
Yesterday the increase in cross-border attacks in Afghanistan in the three weeks since Pervez Musharraf signed a peace deal with the tribal chiefs in Waziristan and released thousands of captured Islamists. Today, the government of India now says that the train bombings in Mumbai this past July had :
Mumbai police Commissioner A.N. Roy said an intensive investigation that included using truth serum on suspects revealed that Pakistan's top spy agency had ''masterminded'' the bombings.
Roy said Pakistan's Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence, or ISI, began planning the attacks in March and later provided training to those who carried out the bombings in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
...
I haven’t watched yet, but various e-mailers who have are raving about it and asking us to link. It’s a documentary produced by British journalist David Aaronovitch that aired earlier this week on Britain’s Channel Five. Like our friend KP, Aaronovitch has become alarmed by the willingness of some of his colleagues on the left to apologize for Islamist savagery. They would have you believe, he says, that there are excuses for terrorism.
That must be the Democrats' reaction to the new videotape by al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri. Much as Osama bin Laden's video, released just before the 2004 election, embarrassed Democrats' by its close tracking with their talking points as articulated in Fahrenheit 9/11, down to My Pet Goat, Zawahiri's latest shows a keen awareness of the Democrats' election themes.
I haven't been able to find a full transcript, but has a little more information than most:
To U.S. President George W. Bush, Zawahiri brands him a deceitful charlatan and liar, and questions: “why don't you tell them how many million citizens of America and it's allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people’s sons in order to increase your profits?”
No blood for oil! ...
Leaders of the Democratic Party apparently think that attacking the Iraq war is the ticket to electoral success; over recent weeks, they have coordinated a series of attacks on the war, including the selective leak of misleading portions of the National Intelligence Estimate and Bob Woodward's just-released rehash of anti-war arguments. But how unpopular, in fact, is the war?
takes a look at recent poll numbers from belwether Ohio, and concludes: not as unpopular as the Democrats seem to think. .
..
.
.. As only Barone can, he shifts effortlessly from an analysis of this week's poll numbers to a delightful contemplation of the ways in which Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush resemble Charles II and William III, respectively. ..
.
, both of whom served as staff members on President Clinton's National Security Council while al Qaeda emerged and our government did essentially nothing to stop it, have a piece in the Washington Post called, Of Course Iraq Made It Worse. The title reflects the ipse dixit nature of column -- the authors' certitude that the threat of terrorism has become worse due to our action in Iraq substitutes for evidence of that proposition.
Benjamin and Simon brush off the absence of metrics supporting the proposition that there are more live terrorists prepared to attack U.S. civilians than there would have been had we backed down in our confrontation with Saddam and allowed him to remain in power.
Such evidence is impossible to produce, they say. Fair enough. But evidence about the number of times we and our friends have been attacked at home is readily available.
And the fact is that terrorists have not successfully attacked our homeland since 9/11, and that successful attacks against any western homeland have been few and far between. ..
.
Bruce Kesler, in The Augusta Free Press
Even though I'm across the country, in San Diego, the Senate race in Virginia has been on my mind. I'm disappointed that the news of the race has been about which candidate allegedly spoke which slurs decades ago, rather than discussion of the literally life and death issues at stake in whether and how to successfully complete stabilizing a less threatening key MidEast player, Iraq.
Both candidates seem to have lost sight of this issue. Perhaps it's the dynamic of their supporters and opponents having at each other.
But, either candidate can and should disown such distracters, and neither has. So, it seems more likely that both candidates don't see much to gain from engaging much on Iraq, as most minds are settled, and vote-affecting events there are really entirely out of their hands.
So, since the candidates have, in effect, chosen to engage on the field of slurs, either directly or through their surrogates, that is what we're left with to judge them by.
Although one or the other may be more correct or less egregious in their campaign's behavior, the point here is not to judge which but rather to say that neither has risen to the challenge of stature one would hope for from a candidate. ..
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As the election season approaches, the media senses blood in the water. More sharks than the usual suspects are circling. Anybody with special inside Washington DC access, like Bob Woodward, can point fingers at the administration and claim to know the inside story.
The past and ongoing failings of Iraq and Afghanistan as told to him by disgruntled still-serving and retired bureaucrats. Woodward has made a career of yellow journalism, dating back to Watergate and the demise of President Nixon.
The timing of his latest missive, a book entitled: State of Denial, to be released in the days leading up to the Congressional elections, makes me wonder about his true intentions. Woodward has done a remarkable job of ingratiating himself into the halls of power. His good old boy demeanor is quite smooth and gives him a leg-up as a darling of the media.
The liberal media salivates whenever he speaks and rarely questions his conclusions.
It's troubling to watch the latest feeding frenzy on television as the right-wing and left-wing media batlle each other for ratings. And Woodward keeps on selling more books to the gullible observers who take everything he writes as gospel.
If it were possible to capture all the energy expended in criticizing how past events were handled, the war on Islamic Fundamentalists would already be over.
Be prepared for an onslaught of spin, a deafening crescendo in the liberal media that the Democrats will soon be in control of Congress. The thought makes me personally ill.
Any incumbent Republican who told a fib in grade school is at risk of losing their seat. The issue is simple. Will the majority of voters be able to understand how important are the stakes involved?
I pray that they do.
I make when I do “head transfer” photoshops, too. You’d be surprised how hard it is to judge the size and how even minor adjustments to it can make the new image look absurd.
Whoever was responsible for the fake Michelle bikini shot shrunk the ’shopped-in head a bit to reflect the fact that the woman in the picture is leaning backward, such that her upper extremities should appear slightly smaller than the rest of the body. But he/she overdid it, and so you’re left with that Reuters-worthy abortion.
There are two ways we could play this, I guess.
One: call a libel lawyer, point them to Alex Pareene’s earlier post about Michelle and ping-pong balls, and see if we can’t fashion a little “actual malice” from the pattern here. Or two: fire with fire. It’d be a shame to have to go that route, but this nonsense has to stop.
I promise you this, though. If it does come to that, the shocking! new!
photos! we “discover” and circulate will be a lot more convincing than that amateur-hour crap currently running on Gawker Inc.
Here’s the Michelle wrote about Charlotte Church that inspired all this, .
..
The idiots are so blinded by hate they can't see a two-bit Photoshop from some hater's bogus Flickr site? And they couldn't bother to ask me before attempting to embarrass me and calling me a slut?
You embarrass yourselves.
Rather than demand that they take their lying lies down, I am asking that they leave their smears up for all the world to see.
I am also filing a complaint with UNC School of Law . the dean's contact information. This has gone too far.
...
Yes, I’ve seen the photo the . I saw it for the first time a few months ago when some loving, tolerant leftwinger emailed it to us here. It took me about 2.5 seconds to determine that whoever is in that photo, it’s not Michelle. Having worked with graphics for a number of years now, I have an eye for fakery, and that is as fake as an Adnan Haj classic. She and I talked about it a day or two after the loving, tolerant lefty emailed it to us and got a laugh out of it.
Well, a certain professor turned stalker and a conglomeration of guttersnipe blogs have tried today to pass that fauxtoshop off as the real thing. You’d think someone over in Nick Denton’s cesspool might have a decent eye for photo fakery, but apparently this one was just too good to check. So they’re running with it.
And while it’s one thing to get taken in by a hoax, as they all clearly have been, it’s another thing entirely to run with that hoax and turn it into a libel that is all your very own. That magnifies the offense quite a bit, at least to me. .
..
It's almost too pathetic to post a response, but the Wonkette benchwarmers really have no clue about weblogs, photoshops, or criticism -- and their on exposes them as wanna-bes. Michelle penned a cultural critique about the potential effect of trashy chic on young girls, as exemplified by Bratz dolls and the recent restyling of . Rather than actually responding with any intellectual criticism, Wonkette instead posted a picture that supposedly depicts Michelle in a bikini in 1992 -- as if that has anything to do with her critique of Charlotte Church.
Now, I've met Michelle Malkin and spent time at her house.
In fact, I've seen her standing next to a fridge a couple of times, and I can tell you that Michelle is significantly shorter than the woman in this photograph. ..
.
I have had a nice afternoon with my family. I was not going to post on the lying hate-mongers again, but they will not stop. If they think I am going to shut up about their continued , think again.
Mailed-By: gmail.com
Reply-To: writemalkin@gmail.
com
To: tips@wonkette.com
Date: Sep 29, 2006 8:13 AM
Subject: It's a photoshop, you idiots
Hours after my post noting that the photo was fake was published, Wonkette's sister site, , went ahead and published this: ..
.
Feel free to participate, but please: make sure your contributions are obviously false.
Because when you post things that are false without making clear they’re false, that’s called “libel.”
For example, ...
Softly it whispers, parting air,
The edge so sharp, so glistening;
And as it strikes beneath your hair,
Is anyone still listening?
The sword of Islam makes the slice,
And your severed head just rolls;
You’ve made the final sacrifice,
Loyal to your Liberal goals.
When others warned of futures dire,
You made root cause excuses;
You turned your faces from the fire,
Pursued your liberal muses,
Ignoring death-fired feudal fires,
Luring fools to paradise,
Fanatics facing Islam’s spires,
Whose sword above you lies.
Back when we tried to warn you,
You snickered and you sneered;
Imperial fools our view untrue,
Dumb dupes, who only feared.
Your enlightenment would show us
The path to worldwide calm,
So Jihadis would not blow us
All to hell with Islam’s bomb.
And now these decades later,
When Sharia rules our land,
Where Christians, disbelievers,
Feel the wrath of Islam’s hand,
I feel compelled to ask you Libs,
As that blade zips out your light,
Bloodies your precious, do-good bibs,
Might you think it’s time we fight?
After all the rancorous hoo-ha the Congress and the media have subjected us to, both the House and the Senate passed the compromise bill on establishing military tribunals and on permissible methods of interrogation of detainees. In both houses of Congress, the bill passed with thumping majorities--just over 60% in the House and by just short of two-thirds [65-34] in the Senate. In what follows, this post concentrates on the Senate vote, around 7 PM on 9-28-2006.
The actual roll call yielded few surprises, but a couple of those were mildly interesting. This blogger will leave it to wiser heads, such as to work out the political ramifications. One leap in the dark, though, before continuing.
The Supreme Court can count votes. IMHO the likelihood that SCOTUS will gratify The New York Times by striking down a law that is solidly backed by both branches that are answerable to the people is virtually nil.
A bill to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war,and for other purposes.
The other purposes comprise most of what we have been hearing about for months. According to liberal Democrats, amplified to 120 decibels by their media flacks, the Bush administration seeks to authorize torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the effort to obtain actionable intelligence from detainees. The administration claims that it is merely trying to establish guidelines to enable interrogators to function effectively without crossing the line into criminality.
The people's representatives have now agreed to support the administration. That should dampen the outcry, but of course it won't.
The question of military commissions requires a bit of background.
Going all the way back to 2003, a Guantanamo detainee named Hamdan challenged the system of military tribunals then in effect. The case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, wound its way through the courts eventually reaching the Supreme Court.
Exactly three months ago, the justices ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Hamdan, in a 5-to-4 decision. The decision, written by Justice Breyer, was Delphic in its ambiguity. In its WebMemo #1143, dated July 5, 2006 the made a valiant effort to decipher it--
The Administration can satisfy its legal and national security obligations by amending the rules and procedures governing the Administration’s military commissions to match more closely the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (already authorized by Congress), or Congress can explicitly authorize the proposed military commission process. What is critical is that the Administration move forward expeditiously, demonstrating once again its unswerving commitment to fight the long war according to the rule of law.
Done. Both houses of Congress have authorized military commissions to try detainees accused of war crimes. Although the bill was bitterly opposed by the Democratic leadership, there were enough Yeas from individual Democrats to create solid majorities, and lend a gloss of bipartisanship to the effort. As expected, the ineffable Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island voted Nay. The Maine Republicans split.
Susan Collins voted Yea, but Olympia Snowe abstained. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, after bloviating for months about grave risks to our noble tradition of civil liberties, supported the president whom he had bashed mercilessly in the runup to the vote. Go figure.
He took his lumps on an amendment to extend the right of habeas corpus to detainees, and then soldiered on in spite of that disappointment.
The 12 Democrats who defied their leadership deserve congratulations. As expected, Joe Lieberman went along.
Both New Jersey senators voted Yea, even the very liberal Lautenberg. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan may deserve a profile in courage considering the ethnic composition of her constituency. The real surprise to this blogger was the junior senator from West Virginia, Jay Rockefeller, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Long a very vocal critic of the president, he parted company with his senior senator and voted with the majority. It would seem he was against the bill before he voted for it. Does that presage presidential ambition?
The remaining Democratic Yea votes, whether they voted their conscience or their political future, merit honorable mention. After Lautenberg, Lieberman, Menendez, Rockefeller, and Stabenow they are, in alphabetical order--
Any reader who failed to break off to follow the link to should do so now to get the benefit of Ed's shrewd take on the vote, not to mention those of [some] of his commenters.
During the Second World War three American reporters achieved fame for their reporting from the front with the troops, and the books they wrote about the experiences.
Richard Tregaskis wrote Guadalcanal diary. Bill Maulden, best known for his cartoons of the dogfaces Willie and Joe wrote Up Front, and Ernie Pyle, the most revered of all, wrote Brave Men. After surviving the war Tregaskis and Maulden returned home to the daily grind of civilian journalism.
After surviving the campaigns form North Africa to Europe. Ernie Pyle was killed during the last days of the Pacific war. All three men were famed for focusing their attention on the lot of the common soldier, leaving the great matters of campaigns and strategy to others.
However, even they could not capture the immediacy and intensity of the individual soldier’s life. For reasons of security and morale much had to be omitted, and more toned down, removing the grittiness which might shock back home.
During Viet Nam, the relationship was entirely different, as the politicized media appeared to have taken sides and mutual suspicion between troops and journalists was the rarely achieved best relation.
This reviewer found that the war he was fighting and the war being reported were two totally unrelated events. To a great extent, losing the media battle was what lost the Viet Nam war. During the first Gulf War of 1991, military-media relations did not sink to the Depths of Viet Nam, but were still marked by mistrust.
During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, something new has happened, the rise of the internet and widespread blogging. Deployed troops can take their laptop computers with them and communicate home directly on a realtime basis. But so long as this is done by email, the effect is no more than letters home.
What has truly made the difference is the rise of blogging technology appropriated by the deployed troops for instantaneous communication. For the first time an individual warrior can aspire to tell his side of the story, not just to his immediate family and neighbors but to all the world. If today, Walter Cronkite were to report a litany of defeats, ending with a portentous And that’s the way it is , even before the administration spokesmen could cobble together a clumsy defense, he would be hooted down in cyberspace by angry soldiers denouncing his lies and telling their stories for themselves.
For some of us, the Bush administration’s greatest ineptitude has been its public relations effort, so lame it might have cost us the war under previous conditions, but saved today, by the troops themselves and their un-brigaded supporters back home. They are doing for themselves what Ernie, Bill, and Richard did sixty years ago, and arguably doing it even better.
The two largest and most important of these public milblogs certainly are and .
Not much is known of Greyhawk, the owner and commander of Mudville, save that he is a serving Air Force Officer living in Germany, and judging by the F-16s on his site banner, probably with the 52 Fighter Wing.
More is known about Blackfive. He is Matthew Currier Burden, who left the Army in 2001 with the rank of Major, after a long and active career, often at the pointy end of the spear.
In mid 2003 he took the name Blackfive for himself and his new website expressly to report the news which he felt the professional media were ignoring; since then, the site has gained a large following and today is the twentieth ranked blog by visits. Rated by the more subjective measure of quality, is easily within the top five sites (Though the Old War Dogs have picked up the scent and are baying on his trail.)
Now Blackfive has written a book, The Blog of War, published in paperback by Simon Schuster.
This book is the story of milblogging as told by the milbloggers in their own words, taken from their posts of the last three years. Extended selections are taken from fifty or more blogs, including a few which have subsequently suspended activity. Several of these blogs have contributed passages for more than one chapter.
The very nature of blogging tends to weed out the inarticulate and uncommitted, but Matt has selected the best of the crop. And he has done a further remarkable job of arrangement, choosing the order in which accounts appear, and linking them into a coherent and logical sequence. This is not as easy as it appears.
I know; my books are also based on collating related, but discrete narratives, so I have a special appreciation for what Matt has accomplished. Frankly, he has succeeded better than I. And finding just the right passage from each blog, assuring that the most important milblogs are all represented is a task involving heroic research of a sort which cannot be accomplished by search engine.
it requires eyeball examination of judgement of dozens of blogs, and thousands of discreet posts.
In the first chapter several of these bloggers explain to their families why they volunteered to go. Some of these accounts are heart-wrenching, and others inspiring.
The next chapter describes the living conditions, day-to-day, of troops stationed in the war zone. It seems that wars always take place in desolate and barely liveable places, and if the place, such as Italy or Northen France, were not intolerable at the start of hostilities, it quickly becomes so. Spartan living is a major factor which sets apart soldiers on active duty, all of them, including those assigned to non-combat duties.
And the living conditions in Iraq sound to me particularly unpleasant, even more after reading these accounts.
The next three chapters are entitled The Healers , Leaders, Warriors, and Diplomats , and The Warriors . Healers of course contains the accounts of the nurses, doctors, and corpsmen, and includes accounts of saving the wounded, and sometimes failing to do so.
And sometimes the wounded are Iraqis, even jihadis. The next two chapters seem remarkably close to each other. Leaders, Warriors, and Diplomats includes more accounts of elections and civic action, though these areas often blend seamlessly.
I might have placed The Healers third in the sequence rather than first, but that is a matter of author’s decision, and is a very minor difference in approaches. There is plenty of intense action and pucker here, and the chosen accounts communicate the experience with rare intensity. If you have friends or family over there, be sure to read these chapters, and you may better understand why they have come home more tightly strung and edgy than you remembered them.
War is not intended to be pleasant for anyone. These chapters in particular I had to read in relatively small doses.
Perhaps one of the most moving sections of this book for me was the chapter The Homefront , accounts blogged by anxiously waiting family members.
It is true that the folks back home who have never been to war cannot understand what war is really like for the troops participating. But it is equally impossible for those troops to completely comprehend the fears of those consigned to wait helplessly at home, knowing little and understanding less of what is going on. And powerless to do anything beyond worry.
The soldier becomes sensitized to the shriek of the siren, his wife to the ring of the telephone. This is a side of war I have not experienced. Matt’s book has helped me to make a start on understanding.
The Fallen relates the saddest experience, accounts of wives who have lost their husbands, and of soldiers who have lost a comrade in battle, perhaps right at their side. Again this is another essential chapter which must be read, but should be read in small doses. This is not the typical flowery sweet to die for.
.. tribute.
it is a much more powerful tribute to those who sacrificed their lives, and to those who sacrificed almost as much, those they loved.
The last chapter, Homecoming is a bittersweet ending, the joy of homecoming, and the difficulty, the shock of readjusting that is a part of the experience.
Finally the book’s Epilogue lists the bloggers whose contributions appeared in each chapter, and gives their names and a few details about each including an update on their current status.
As I had become quite fond of several of these individuals through their blogs, it was a treat to learn their names and details that have not appeared on their blogs.
I give Blog of War my highest recommendation. If you are a veteran, of any war, it will help you place your own experience in better perspective.
if you only know, or are related to a veteran or active warrior, this book is even more important for you to understand what is going on. I warn you, it should be read in small doses, but it must be read. Old soldiers aren’t supposed to get weepy-eyed, so I guess it must have just been a bad allergy season for me.
Never before has the American soldier been as well reported.
For maintaining and publishing this book, Matt Burden certainly has joined the elite circle of Richard Tregaskis, Bill Maulden and Ernie Pyle, perhaps at the lead of that list. This Old War Dog says a sincere and deeply felt, Thanks, Matt.
why I was to entice conservatives into endorsing World Trade Center?
Filmmaker Oliver Stone blasted President George W. Bush Thursday, saying he has set America back 10 years.
Stone added that he is ashamed for my country over the war in Iraq and the U.S. policies in response to the attacks of September 11.
We have destroyed the world in the name of security, Stone told journalists at the San Sebastian International Film Festival prior to a screening of his latest movie, World Trade Center. ..
.
Short clip this time. The section on the Pope and Darfur wasn’t subtitled, so I cut it. Was it a last-minute addition, perhaps? Or did simply get bored with his translation duties?
Most Muslims are moderate, she’s careful to emphasize.
The radicals can’t number more than, oh, 180 to 300 million.
I guess Dean Esmay knows what he’s writing about next week.
This is Mary K’s first foray into video editing, so rather than swipe the clip from YouTube, I’m going to make you watch it on her site.
She has thoughts on the Michelle-Esmay blogwar, too, so it’s worth your time. Click the image. .
..
There’s no other way to describe it. Read the synopses at the and, especially, the . Michael Yon told me a few months ago we’re very close to losing the war. It’s not hard to see why.
John Cole asks . I’m not sure what my answer would be, frankly.
The News actually has a second article about the book devoted to the Tenet and Cofer Black had with Condi Rice in July 2001 about their fears of an impending attack and a request for $500 million to go in and get Bin Laden ASAP.
Some of the rhetoric is absurd, particularly coming from “Slam Dunk” George–
Remember how there were initially three accusers who spoke to Salon? One was Dr. Ken Shelton, the other two were anonymous. One of them came forward today. And .
Days before being contacted by Salon, Sabornie said he had sent an unsolicited e-mail to Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a prominent liberal blogger at DailyKos.com, describing his memories of Allen’s racist behavior. Sabornie said he also has posted on the DailyKos site as a reader in 2004, criticizing the performance of President Bush.
It only runs three minutes, but for some reason it’s been broken into two parts. The audio’s a little dicey, too.
Still, it’s worth it.
Riddle: Why don't Congressmen use bookmarks?
A: They'd rather just bend over the pages.
I almost posted on this yesterday but didn’t want to float something when it was still unsubstantiated. The original report quoted a 16-year-old Congressional page as being when Foley chatted him up over e-mail and requested a photo. Sounded reasonably innocuous to me.
A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.
That’s another pickup for the Dems in the House. Can’t say I’m sorry about this one.
Sometimes people say that politics make them feel unclean, but this story will amplify that exponentially. Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida with an almost-assured re-election bid, has after . His abrupt departure leaves his organization bereft of its chair -- the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children:
Saying he was deeply sorry, Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from Congress today, hours after ABC News questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former congressional pages under the age of 18.
A spokesman for Foley, the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said the congressman submitted his resignation in a letter late this afternoon to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. ..
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If it is all true, and it seems very likely that it is, Rep. Foley has shamed himself, his office, his district, and his party.
I got back recently from Seattle, where good friends told me about their son's wonderful experience as a Congressional page earlier this year. Rep. Foley's apparent abuse of office and lecherous communications with a 16-year-old boy-- during what should have been one of the best times in his life as a page in Washington--is every parent's worst nightmare.
...
7/3/2006 - An Australian TV performs a simple and hilarious experiment on bridge security. How long can an average looking white tourist take pictures of security cameras before being bothered? What about an arab tourist? ..
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They’re posting that online, alongside .
Posting maps to an enemy’s house. That sounds familiar.
He says he’s “alone and abandoned,” but the article claims he’s under police guard 24-7. I think he means “alone and abandoned” by the state education ministry, which seems to have decided : .
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Of course, Oprah thinks is hot. So, you know.
This would make sense, sort of, if it was one of those beautiful-on-the-inside lists that feminists like to do for fat women. But except for the two Google geeks, the rest of the guys on there are actually pretty good looking.
And I mean that in the least gay way possible.
Bethany’s got a throat cold this week, so naturally the thing to do was to film outdoors in an off-the-shoulder sweater. A warning to the realVerse guys: if harm befalls her, my wrath will be terrible.
On the plus side, she’s milking that Kathleen Turner huskiness for all it’s worth.
It’s the morning after, our Liberal awakens from a fitful sleep, depressed. He can’t believe Bush won the election. He feels empty and angry. He is grieving as if he has experienced a profound loss.
### This story may be familiar to you. It was experienced, in one form or another, by millions of people around the world. Maybe, even yourself. It has become the driving force and simple theme for our documentary, RED STATE.
explains why waterboarding should be the interrogation method of choice in certain circumstances, namely when more conventional methods aren't working and the terrorist is believed, reasonably, to have vital information. Apparently, waterboarding has succeeded in breaking down resistance to providing truthful information every time it's been used (usually in less than a minute), even when the subject knows in advance that death is not a possibility. Moreover, the discomfort of waterboarding lasts for only a very short period of time and carries virtually no risk of long-term harm. ...
catches the demagogic Senator Leahy in what appears to be a gross misstatement of recent history. According to Daffyd, this is what Leahy said on the floor of the Senate:
Even though they [the Bush administration] had him [Osama bin Laden] cornered at Tora Bora, they yanked the special forces out of there to send them to Iraq.
But the Battle of Tora Bora took place in December of 2001, when there was not even a resolution on the table to invade Iraq. As far as I know, we sent no special forces to Iraq until . ..
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In this past Monday I raised the question that Mickey Kaus posed after watching Senator Frist on one of the Sunday television gabfests. The post prompted a response from Stephen Smith, Senator Frist's online communications coordinator, assuring us that Senator Frist isn't 'flaking out' and that he is committed to a cloture vote on the Secure Fence Act this week.
Yesterday Senator Frist fulfilled his commitment, securing a cloture vote that passed 71-28. Senator Frist on the vote at his site. Mickey Kaus eats no crow over his misdiagnosis of flakeout from Senator Frist's body language on the Sunday show.
However, apparently without reliance on body language, he now finds Senator Frist to be ...
Rush Limbaugh refers to the mainstream media as the drive-by media, a term that is all too often apt. This in today's New York Times reveals a case in point:
A front-page article on Sept. 14 reported that the inspector general of the Interior Department had accused top officials at the agency of tolerating widespread ethical failures. The article said that the inspector general in a 2004 report had described J. Steven Griles, a deputy secretary accused of more than two dozen ethical lapses, as a “train wreck waiting to happen.” That quotation was taken out of context.
The quotation said in full: “Framed within the context of a train wreck waiting to happen, the Department of the Interior was presented with its most complex set of ethical issues with Mr. J. Steven Griles appointment at a time that, following years of neglect, demise and compartmentalization, the ethics program was wholly incapable of addressing them.
”
The article also said that Mr. Griles resigned after the accusations against him surfaced. In fairness, the article should have made clear that his resignation came nine months after a government ethics office and his boss concluded that he had committed no ethical breach.
Note that Griles was appointed as Deputy Secretary in 2001, so the years of neglect, demise and compartmentalization occurred during the Clinton administration. ..
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During the Second World War three American reporters achieved fame for their reporting from the front with the troops, and the books they wrote about the experiences. Richard Tregaskis wrote Guadalcanal diary. Bill Maulden, best known for his cartoons of the dogfaces Willie and Joe wrote Up Front, and Ernie Pyle, the most revered of all, wrote Brave Men. After surviving the war Tregaskis and Maulden returned home to the daily grind of civilian journalism.
After surviving the campaigns form North Africa to Europe. Ernie Pyle was killed during the last days of the Pacific war. All three men were famed for focusing their attention on the lot of the common soldier, leaving the great matters of campaigns and strategy to others.
However, even they could not capture the immediacy and intensity of the individual soldier’s life. ..
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After all the rancorous hoo-ha the Congress and the media have subjected us to, both the House and the Senate passed the compromise bill on establishing military tribunals and on permissible methods of interrogation of detainees. In both houses of Congress, the bill passed with thumping majorities--just over 60% in the House and by just short of two-thirds [65-34] in the Senate. In what follows, this post concentrates on the Senate vote, around 7 PM on 9-28-2006. ..
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Everyone is focusing attention on Jack Murtha's current anti-war raging. And a few vets are going back even further to question the reality of his claimed military record and supposed heroism in Viet Nam. But what about all those years in between? Hasn't he been a good congressman in the interim? Decide for yourselves.
But first remember Abscam. ..
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Personal to chancuff : Blogs are free if you don't insist on being too fancy. Maybe you should get one. You've annoyed my Dogs for the last time. Don't let the door hitcha in the ass, son.
To our other reader's: Reasoned debate is welcome here.
Feel free to leave relevant comments when you're so inclined. There is no such thing as a comment that's relevant to 6 different posts.
OBTW, son: MURTHA SUCKS and trolling the comments on conservative blogs won't change that fact.
Subject:Fwd: NBC News Special Report . .
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Date:Fri, 29 Sep 2006 6:05 PM
The Pentagon announced today the formation of a new 500 man elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces. These Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Okalahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana boys will be dropped into Iraq and have been given only the following facts about terrorists:
1.
The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste like chicken.
4.
They don't like beer, Pickup trucks, Fishing, Country music, or Jesus.
5. They are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dale Earnhardt.
6. Their favorite movie is BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
We expect the problem in Iraq to be over by Friday.
I somehow managed to accidentally delete everything in this post from this point down. I think I can more or less retrace my steps and reproduce my thought process well enough to produce a good approximation of what was here. Here goes (I'll post bits and pieces as I go):
The Danish cartoonists aren't the only ones for offending the global jihadi mob. Now, French philosophy professor and secondary school teacher Robert Redeker is under police protection for penning a piece blasting Islamic violence in Le Figaro.
A French philosophy teacher was under police protection Thursday after receiving death threats over an article he wrote in a national newspaper that accused Islam of exalting violence , school and police officials said.
Robert Redeker has not attended classes at his secondary school near Toulouse in southern France since September 19, when his opinion column appeared in the right-wing daily Le Figaro.
He received written death threats in the form of emails.
On the face of it they were pretty serious, said the lycée's headmaster Pierre Donnadieu.
Earlier in the week DNC Chairman Howard Dean was in Austin to . In his speech Dean predicted “we are [Democrats] going to take back Texas” and the White House. Just kidding about the last part.
The Screw Loose Change boys e-mailed me when this story started pulsing, but I just wasn’t feeling it. No , no scandal.
That’s the rule around here.
That’s the Hot Air way.
Well, last night it all came together.
Here’s the saga, in sequence:
— Basic factual errors in idiot’s story raise suspicions.
— More factual errors spotted; is idiot also a liar?
— Idiot’s DD-214 scrutinized.
— Photoshop smoking gun!
It won’t take long to read them all, but if you only have time for one, read the last one. What is it about using photoshop to expose fraud that’s so insanely gratifying?
It’s not whether you win or lose. It’s whether you win or lose to .
Congrats to the Olberdouche, whose crappy, insulting, unwatchable show has singlehandedly made players of Headline News and CNBC in the cable-news ratings game. The bright spot is, there’s no one left to lose to. He’s exhausted the universe of possibilities, unless Nielsen wants to start measuring him against non-news networks like Home Garden TV. Which, perhaps, would not be to Olby’s advantage.
Would you rather watch a Keith Olbermann special comment or a fat woman explain the best way to tend a cabbage patch? The question answers itself.
The leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, that tries to recruit more radical Muslims to the Iraqi jihad. In doing so, Zarqawi's replacement shows why the US considers Iraq a central ground for the war on terror and how effective our effort there has been against the terrorists. Unbidden and apparently thinking it an attraction, Masri told his followers that the US-led Coalition has killed over 4,000 terrorists in Iraq: ..
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The Senate got bipartisan support for the passage of the White House's comprehensive terrorist prosecution bill this evening, putting an on a victory for the Bush administration. In the end, the bill and Bill Frist fought off attempts to bury the bill in amendments:
The Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that Republicans intend to use on the campaign trail to assert their toughness on terrorism.
The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end. The House passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and was expected to approve the Senate bill on Friday, sending it on to the White House.
But, remember, Islam is a religion of peace. If you don't believe it, they will teach you a lesson by calling for your assassination.
When is the West going to learn? You cannot compromise with evil, and Islam, in its present state as interpreted by a large segment of its adherents, is evil.
It advocates the worst human behavior: murder; mistreatment of women (who are but cattle in the eyes of righteous Muslims); absolute intolerance; censorship; fascism.
This is Nazism with a religious face. And that is the most dangerous of combinations.
In order to win this fight to the death, we must come to realize that the enemy is pure evil. And we must stand firm at every front. Any capitulation to the Islamofascists is a defeat for the West.
We already are undercutting ourselves and shoring up the terrorists by placing the mantle of political correctness over our entire strategy for dealing with the threat. So, instead of profiling the people who are doing the killing, we search grandmothers and Christian babies at airports and require Americans with impeccable credentials to subject themselves to humiliating searches and restrictions on their personal freedom. We are prohibited from painting the enemy in unflattering terms, such as rag head, at a time when jingoism would serve a useful purpose in firing up our citizens to pursue what must become a war of annihilation against the terrorists and those who would assist them (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, North Korea are at the top of that list).
We accept the vilest of racial/religious stereotyping when it is aimed at Jews, but balk at the slightest hint of criticism of the religion of Jihad, the cult of death. And roughly half of our population would rather concoct nut-case theories of the Bush Administration's complicity with the perpetrators of 9/11 and rewrite history (as Clinton and the Democrats are so good at doing) than face up to the tremendous challenge at hand: Destroying a dangerous movement that would incinerate the entire United States and everyone in it given half a chance.
Slowly, and not so surely, the discourse is changing within the Bush Administration to acknowledge that we are not fighting some nameless, non-ideological foe, but specifically Islamic terrorists and an Islamic movement that is bound and determined to convert or destroy all infidels, including Islamic infidels who do not ascribe to the perverted, Medieval tenets of the Wahhabist sect.
We need to take off the gloves, both physically in terms of the degree of violence and seriousness with which we fight this war militarily, and verbally, in how we describe the enemy and his twisted beliefs. We need to hate the enemy enough to utterly destroy him, and that will not happen as long as we wring our hands in self-deluding political correctness.
The enemy is a bunch of wild-eyed, brutal, utterly immoral, throat-cutting rag heads who adhere to a fascist belief system disguising itself as religion.
The appeasers, and that includes all Democrats except newly independent Joe Lieberman, are playing right into their hands. As soon as we recognize these fact and speak the truth, we will start winning this most necesssary of wars.
Vote early and vote often?
There's page after page of fascinating material out there, topics ranging from falling gas prices to a 'General's Revolt' at the DOD, but has much fun as all that stuff is...
it's time to focus.
In early November (unless you've voted absentee) decisions are going to be made. Decisions that will shape not only the next two years, but the long term future of this country.
That sentence sounds almost trite from over use, but consider what is at stake.
If there is a real threat from Islamic Imperialism?
Is our border situation is a threat to everything we consider to be American?
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I've stated both elements as questions, because a substantial percentage of our citizens do not consider either to be of consequence.
As I see it these are the only two issues to be decided.
Failure to deal with them may well make every other issue trivial.
Aside: I'm not a fan of politics and politicians. I have felt for years that we need to change the system to rid ourselves of the preening, pampered, princes in congress.
My choice would be to draft them out of the jury pool, house them in barracks and otherwise treat them like the military. But this is the system we have.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that Republicans intend to use on the campaign trail to assert their toughness on terrorism.
The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end. The House passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and was expected to approve the Senate bill on Friday, sending it on to the White House. .
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I got caught behind the curve on this story, for which I truly and sincerely apologize. It’s obviously a big one, and the nutroots has gone berserk over it even by normal berserker nutroots standards. Blazing blue WaPo columnist calls it “a defining moment for this nation.” The even bluer at Slate says it’s a “watershed”:
Now we are affirmatively asking to be left in the dark. Instead of torture we were unaware of, we are sanctioning torture we’ll never hear about. Instead of detainees we didn’t care about, we are authorizing detentions we’ll never know about. Instead of being misled by the president, we will be blind and powerless by our own choice.
And that is a shame on us all.
Slate’s actually put together a clickable that graphically illustrates all the things the CIA will be able to do to Ayman al-Zawahiri once they have him in custody.
Meanwhile, Greg Tinti’s got on the Senate floor comparing the bill to practices used by the Taliban, Saddam, or characters “in the fiction of Kafka.”
For sheer shrillness, though, one newspaper tops them all. : ..
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According to the man who served as his translator for the UN speech, .
Recognize that name, by the way?
And so the circle is complete.
When I say it’s worth reading this one in full, I mean it. The account of 500 filthy, bottom-feeding fundamentalists meeting in the most cosmopolitan city in the world is stomach-turning.
But here’s the can’t-miss. Imagine the propaganda value we could have wrung from this: ..
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September 28, 2006
The following email was sent to me by a gentleman named Monty Warner, a 1978 West Point and Army War College graduate who retired as a Colonel after 25 years of service. As you can see, he wrote in response to my recent article [Click -- BF] comparing America's response to December 7, 1941, to what we have not done after September 11, 2001....
U.S.-Mexico border fence may harm animal migration
A plan to fence off a third of the U.S. border to stop illegal immigration from Mexico may harm migration routes used by animals including rare birds and jaguars, environmentalists and U.S.
authorities warn.
The House of Representatives passed a bill this month authorizing the construction of about 700 miles (1,120km) of double fencing along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border, which was crossed by more than one million illegal immigrants last year. .
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Don’t get too excited. They had him up 12 six weeks ago and no other pollster’s seen that margin in Connecticut. ARG had it for Joementum nine days ago; I doubt he’s picked up eight points since then, especially with no good news from Iraq to bolster him. Still,
The likely margin is five points.
explains why.
That’s the good news. More good news: Murtha is looking less likely to be the choice for House majority leader, in part — oh, sweet irony — because his social policies are for the supreme soviet.
The bad news? ..
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What will Andrew Sullivan do now? The Democrat leader in the House is . The context is the debate on how to treat captured terrorists–do we aggressively interrogate them or not? Pelosi is in the “not” crowd, and the Bible is her guide:
“This is a time when the Golden Rule really should be in affect. Do not do unto others, what you would not have them do unto your troops, your CIA agents, your people in the field.
Well, Pelosi is actually misquoting the Bible, but nevertheless doesn’t this make her a “Christianist?” Or at least a “theocrat?” ...
In 1994, Fred Thompson was locked in a Senate campaign against an increasingly desperate opponent, Jim Cooper. During a debate, in response to what Thompson thought was an unfair attack, the once-and-future actor said in his most authoritative voice, Jim, it's one thing to lose an election; it's another thing to lose your honor. Cooper seemed to shrink, and I could tell then-and-there that Thompson would be the one going to Washington.
I'll leave it to others to debate whether, or to what extent, James Webb has lost his honor as a result of the smear campaign against his opponent Senator Allen.
But I do think it would have been honorable for Webb to have distanced himself from his netroots coordinator when that blogger attacked Allen for alleged deep-seated issues regarding his Jewish heritage. More generally, it would have been honorable for Webb to have denounced making that Jewish heritage an issue in the campaign. .
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Webb is also the ex-SECNAV who promised some honorable people a couple of years back that he'd go public with the truth about John Kerry's Other-Than-Honorable discharge, which was upgraded to Honorable during the Carter administration, then backed out when he was promised a key position in a Kerry administration. Sleazeball then, sleazeball now. Nothing new.
, calling out Michelle Malkin, is what is known in the business as traffic bait.
Keywords: Senator Frist, United States, Ernie Pyle, Bush Administration, White House, North Vietnam, Triumph Forsaken, Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh, Exploited Children
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