There never seems to be a “bottom” to the depravity of some men’s souls. Although we are assured that we are not as depraved as we could be, one really has to wonder about that when we read articles such as the one below.  No wonder some of the writers at the Gray Lady are so jaundiced.

Iraq Weapons Are a Focus of Criminal Investigations

August 28, 2007

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 — Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal investigators, Congressional, law enforcement and military officials, and specialists in contracting and logistics, in Iraq and Washington, who have direct knowledge of the inquiries. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because there are continuing criminal investigations.

The inquiries are being pursued by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other agencies.

Over the past year, inquiries by federal oversight agencies have found serious discrepancies in military records of where thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces actually ended up. None of those agencies concluded that weapons found their way to insurgents or militias.

In their public reports, those agencies did not raise the possibility of criminal wrongdoing, and General Petraeus has said that the imperative to provide weapons to Iraqi security forces was more important than maintaining impeccable records.

In an interview on Aug. 18, General Petraeus said that with ill-equipped Iraqi security forces confronting soaring violence across the country in 2004 and 2005, he made a decision not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place before distributing the weapons.

“We made a decision to arm guys who wanted to fight for their country,” General Petraeus said.

But now, American officials said, part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

The enormous expenditures of American and Iraqi money on the Iraq reconstruction program, at least $40 billion over all, have been criticized for reasons that go well beyond the corruption cases that have been uncovered so far. Weak oversight, poor planning and seemingly endless security problems have contributed to many of the program’s failures.

The investigation into contracts for matériel to Iraqi soldiers and police officers is part of an even larger series of criminal cases. As of Aug. 23, there were a total of 73 criminal investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, Col. Dan Baggio, an Army spokesman said Monday. Twenty civilians and military personnel have been charged in federal court as a result of the inquiries, he said. The inquiries involve contracts valued at more than $5 billion, and Colonel Baggio said the charges so far involve more than $15 million in bribes.

Just last week, an Army major, his wife and his sister were indicted on charges that they accepted up to $9.6 million in bribes for Defense Department contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

Investigations span the gamut from low-level officials submitting false claims for amounts less than $2,500 to more serious cases involving, conspiracy, bribery, product substitution and bid-rigging or double-billing involving large dollar amounts or more senior contracting officials, Army criminal investigators said. The investigations involve contractors, government employees, local nationals and American military personnel.

Questions about whether the American military could account for the weaponry and other equipment purchased to outfit the Iraqi security forces were raised as early as May of last year, when Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a request to an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the matter.

But federal officials say the inquiry has moved far beyond the initial investigation of hundreds of thousands of improperly tracked assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols that grew out of Senator Warner’s query. In fact, Senator Warner said in a statement to The New York Times that he was outraged when he was briefed recently on the initial findings of the investigations.

“When I was briefed on the recent developments, I felt so strongly that I asked the Secretary of the Army to brief the Armed Services Committee right away, which he did in early August,” Senator Warner said in a statement.

An Army spokesman declined to comment on the briefing by the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren. In a sign of the seriousness of the scandal, the Defense Department Inspector General, Claude M. Kicklighter, will lead an 18-person team to Iraq early next month to investigate contracting practices, said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

Mr. Morrell said Mr. Kicklighter, a retired three-star Army general, would stay in Iraq indefinitely to investigate contracting abuses, and was empowered to fix problems on the spot or take action if his team identified potential criminal activity.

Congressional officials who have been briefed on the Defense Department inspector general’s inquiry said Monday that one focus would be on weapons, munitions and explosives. In addition, Mr. Geren, the Army secretary, is expected to announce later this week the creation of a panel of senior contracting and logistics specialists to address any systemic problems they identify.

Senator Warner’s request last May for an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the accountability of weapons and equipment given to Iraqi security forces underscored concern about the issue.

That federal agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, responded with a report in October 2006 that found serious discrepancies in American military records of where thousands of the weapons actually ended up. The military did not take the routine step of recording serial numbers for the weapons, the inspector general found, making it difficult to determine whether any of the weapons had ended up in the wrong hands.

In July 2007, the Government Accountability Office found even larger discrepancies, reporting that the American military “cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi security forces as of Sept. 22, 2005.”

James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Over the weekend, NPR reported on a family’s loss of a second son in Iraq. This is not the first time such a thing occurred in America’s ongoing struggle for freedom. From the Revolutionary War to the present, American families have sacrificed multiple sons on domestic and foreign battlefields. May we all take a moment to lift up this family before the Savior’s throne.

California Family Loses Second Son in Iraq War

by Terry Phillips

Weekend Edition Sunday, August 26, 2007 · A California family is suffering the loss of a second son in the Iraq war.

Twenty-one year-old Nathan Hubbard was killed in last week’s crash of a Blackhawk helicopter.

His brother Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard was killed by a roadside bomb in Ramadi in 2004. A third brother is still deployed in Iraq, but he is returning home now to be with his family.

One of the biggest farces in recent memory is the war no drugs, particularly the war on drugs in Muslim states and enclaves.

As recently as the mid to late nineties, our government was well aware of the connectedness of Muslim drug crops being used to finance radical Jihadists and their Islamofascist attacks throughout the Western world. Even before we sent the US Armed Forces into Kosovo to protect the Muslims against the so-called evil Serbs, the pipeline of dope was well established between Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the follow-on pipeline to the most radical Islamic states.

Today, the drug-financed Jihadist terror continues unabated in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as providing financing for Al Qaeda’s far-flung operations throughout the world. Thus, from the President on down, the American people are consistently lied to with the assistance of the DEA, the American military, and the main stream media (MSM) - including the New York Times whose article on the Taliban narco operation appears below.

Until our political structure is accountable to the people, its subordinate entities (e.g., the DEA, US military, State Department, etc.), and the MSM will continue to perpetuate the lies that Muslims (1) worship the same God as Christians, (2) live alcohol and drug-free lives, (3) are overwhelmingly “moderate,” and (4) the Jihadists rely on rich financiers (e.g. bin Laden) to support their worldwide network of terror. The truth is far different and our federal government knows it.

August 26, 2007

Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again

By DAVID ROHDE

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Aug. 25 — Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.

The report is likely to touch off renewed debate about the United States’ $600 million counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been hampered by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.

“I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy,” said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report’s overall findings. “And I think that we are finding one.”

Mr. Wood said the current American programs for eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods should be intensified, but he added that ground spraying poppy crops with herbicide remained “a possibility.” Afghan and British officials have opposed spraying, saying it would drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban.

While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials familiar with the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south, where Taliban insurgents urge farmers to grow poppies.

Although common farmers make comparatively little from the trade, opium is a major source of financing for the Taliban, who gain public support by protecting farmers’ fields from eradication, according to American officials. They also receive a cut of the trade from traffickers they protect.

In Taliban-controlled areas, traffickers have opened more labs that process raw opium into heroin, vastly increasing its value. The number of drug labs in Helmand rose to roughly 50 from 30 the year before, and about 16 metric tons of chemicals used in heroin production have been confiscated this year.

The Western officials said countrywide production had increased from 2006 to 2007, but they did not know the final United Nations figure. They estimated a countrywide increase of 10 to 30 percent.

The new survey showed positive signs as well, officials said.

The sharp drop in poppy production in the north is likely to make this year’s countrywide increase smaller than the growth in 2006. Last year, a 160 percent increase in Helmand’s opium crop fueled a 50 percent nationwide increase. Afghanistan produced a record 6,100 metric tons of opium poppies last year, 92 percent of the world’s supply.

Here in Helmand, the breadth of the poppy trade is staggering. A sparsely populated desert province twice the size of Maryland, Helmand produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Myanmar, Morocco and Colombia. Rampant poverty, corruption among local officials, a Taliban resurgence and spreading lawlessness have turned the province into a narcotics juggernaut.

Poppy prices that are 10 times higher than those for wheat have so warped the local economy that some farmhands refused to take jobs harvesting legal crops this year, local farmers said. And farmers dismiss the threat of eradication, arguing that so many local officials are involved in the poppy trade that a significant clearing of crops will never be done.

American and British officials say they have a long-term strategy to curb poppy production. About 7,000 British troops and Afghan security forces are gradually extending the government’s authority in some areas, they said. The British government is spending $60 million to promote legal crops in the province, and the United States Agency for International Development is mounting a $160 million alternative livelihoods program across southern Afghanistan, most of it in Helmand.

Loren Stoddard, director of the aid agency’s agriculture program in Afghanistan, cited American-financed agricultural fairs, the introduction of high-paying legal crops and the planned construction of a new industrial park and airport as evidence that alternatives were being created.

Mr. Stoddard, who helped Wal-Mart move into Central America in his previous posting, predicted that poppy production had become so prolific that the opium market was flooded and prices were starting to drop. “It seems likely they’ll have a rough year this year,” he said, referring to the poppy farmers. “Labor prices are up and poppy prices are down. I think they’re going to be looking for new things.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Stoddard and Rory Donohoe, the director of the American development agency’s Alternative Livelihoods program in southern Afghanistan, attended the first “Helmand Agricultural Festival.” The $300,000 American-financed gathering in Lashkar Gah was an odd cross between a Midwestern county fair and a Central Asian bazaar, devised to show Afghans an alternative to poppies.

Under a scorching sun, thousands of Afghan men meandered among booths describing fish farms, the dairy business and drip-irrigation systems. A generator, cow and goat were raffled off. Wizened elders sat on carpets and sipped green tea. Some wealthy farmers seemed interested. Others seemed keen to attend what they saw as a picnic.

When Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Donohoe arrived, they walked through the festival surrounded by a three-man British and Australian security team armed with assault rifles. “Who won the cow? Who won the cow?” shouted Mr. Stoddard, 38, a burly former food broker from Provo, Utah. “Was it a girl or a guy?”

After Afghans began dancing to traditional drum and flute music, Mr. Donohoe, 29, from San Francisco, briefly joined them.

Some Afghans praised the fair’s alternatives crops. Others said only the rich could afford them. Haji Abdul Gafar, 28, a wealthy landowner, expressed interest in some of the new ideas.

Saber Gul, a 40-year-old laborer, said he was too poor to take advantage. “For those who have livestock and land, they can,” he said. “For us, the poor people, there is nothing.”

Local officials said all the development programs would fail without improved security.

Assadullah Wafa, Helmand’s governor, said four of Helmand’s 13 districts were under Taliban control. Other officials put the number at six.

Mr. Wafa, who eradicated far fewer acres than the governor of neighboring Kandahar Province, promised to improve eradication in Helmand next year. He also called for Western countries to decrease the demand for heroin.

“The world is focusing on the production side, not the buying side,” he said.

The day after the agricultural fair, Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Donohoe gave a tour of a $3 million American project to clear a former Soviet airbase on the outskirts of town and turn it into an industrial park and civilian airport.

Standing near rusting Soviet fuel tanks, the two men described how pomegranates, a delicacy in Helmand for centuries, would be flown out to growing markets in India and Dubai. Animal feed would be produced from a local mill, marble cut and polished for construction.

“Once we get this air cargo thing going,” Mr. Stoddard said, “it will open up the whole south.”

That afternoon, they showed off a pilot program for growing chili peppers on contract for a company in Dubai. “These kinds of partnerships with private companies are what we want here,” said Mr. Donohoe, who has a Master’s in Business Administration from Georgetown University. “We’ll let the market drive it.”

As the Americans toured the farm, they were guarded by eight Afghans and three British and Australian guards. The farm itself had received guards after local villagers began sneaking in at night and stealing produce. Twenty-four hours a day, 24 Afghan men with assault rifles staff six guard posts that ring the farm, safeguarding chili peppers and other produce.

“Some people would say that security is so bad that you can’t do anything,” Mr. Donohoe said. “But we do it.”

Mr. Wafa, though, called the American reconstruction effort too small and “low quality.”

“There is a proverb in Afghanistan,” he said. “By one flower we cannot mark spring.”

Lately a number of articles critical of the war in Iraq have been posted on this blog. In order to present the other side of the argument, the following short piece originally appeared in the Patriot Post.

The Moderator

Democrats change position on Iraq

A sure sign that the Treason Lobby is fresh out of ideas is their resort to that last bastion of hope, “glass-half-empty” politics. In this case, now that the Demos’ “quagmire” whining has been squelched by General Petraeus’ recent counterinsurgency victories in Iraq, the Left is beside itself as to how to cast these overwhelming triumphs into abject failures. Enter “half-full-glass” politics. Specifically, because military gains—no matter how remarkable—have not resulted in peace, love and harmony among Iraqi’s various political blocs, smooth-brains on the Left are confident they have worthy a rationale-du-jour for “bringing the troops home” (AKA, surrendering in Iraq). The theory is that since there has been no “political reconciliation” (to use The Washington Post’s term) among Iraqi factions, these concrete successes mean little, if anything.

Notwithstanding its inability to survive a giggle test, this argument is nonetheless gaining popularity among second-echelon Democrats, who feel obligated to undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq. While Democrat presidential candidates stumble over each other to be first in the “I’m-toughest-on-terror” line—a line each candidate must toe, if he/she ever wants the label “President” to precede his/her name—the real yeoman’s work of Planet Democrat’s inhabitants centers on dismantling efforts to further freedom and democracy in Iraq, through whatever means possible. The Seditionists have tied their hopes for power in 2008 to U.S. failure in the Middle East, independent of the consequences. Let’s just hope America—as well as the rest of the world—isn’t forced to face those consequences.

Many “patriotic” Americans do not see the reality of war. Death is sanitized and the wounded are hidden from public view. In addition to the physical scars, the mental and emotional scars can far out live the horror resulting from the body’s wounds. In fact, the traumatic stress nearly all combat veterans must eventually deal with creates lasting wounds to the soul - the mind, will, and emotions. Often these scars of the soul are so debilitating, a veteran never returns from a war.

In today’s New York Times, there is an article in the Art Review section that portrays the very REAL face of war. Our prayers go out to these veterans, their families, and for the country that found it necessary that these young men and women sacrifice so much at such a young age.

The Moderator

August 22, 2007

Art Review | Nina Berman

Words Unspoken Are Rendered on War’s Faces

By HOLLAND COTTER

One of the more shocking photographs to emerge from the current Iraq war was taken last year in a rural farm town in the American Midwest. It’s a studio portrait by the New York photographer Nina Berman of a young Illinois couple on their wedding day.

The bride, Renee Kline, 21, is dressed in a traditional white gown and holds a bouquet of scarlet flowers. The groom, Ty Ziegel, 24, a former Marine sergeant, wears his dress uniform, decorated with combat medals, including a Purple Heart. Her expression is unsmiling, maybe grave. His, as he looks toward her, is hard to read: his dead-white face is all but featureless, with no nose and no chin, as blank as a pullover mask.

Two years earlier, while in Iraq as a Marine Corps reservist, Mr. Ziegel had been trapped in a burning truck after a suicide bomber’s attack. The heat melted the flesh from his face. At Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas he underwent 19 rounds of surgery. His shattered skull was replaced by a plastic dome, and a face was constructed more or less from scratch with salvaged tissue, holes left where his ears and nose had been.

Ms. Berman took this picture, which is in the solo show at Jen Bekman Gallery, on assignment for People magazine. It was meant to accompany an article that documented Mr. Ziegel’s recovery, culminating in his marriage to his childhood sweetheart. But the published portrait was a convivial shot of the whole wedding party. Maybe the image of the couple alone was judged to be too stark, the emotional interchange too ambiguous. Maybe they looked, separately and together, too alone.

“Marine Wedding,” the portrait’s title, was not Ms. Berman’s first encounter with wounded Iraq war veterans. She photographed several others beginning in 2003, and 20 of her portraits were published as a book, “Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq” (Trolley Books, 2004), with an introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. These pictures, accompanied by printed interviews with the sitters, have been traveling the country, and 10 are now at Bekman.

None are as startling as “Marine Wedding,” even when the disability recorded is more extensive. Former Spc. Luis Calderon, 22, of Puerto Rico, had his spinal cord severed when a concrete wall he was ordered to pull down — it was painted with a mural of Saddam Hussein — fell on him. He is now a quadriplegic, though this is not immediately evident from his portrait. Nor can we see from the photograph of Spc. Sam Ross, 20, of Pennsylvania, that he lost a leg in a bomb blast, which also caused permanent brain damage.

Almost all the veterans in Ms. Berman’s pictures look isolated, even if someone else is present. And a sense of loneliness comes through in their brief interviews. Mr. Ross, separated from his family, lives by himself in a trailer. Mr. Calderon, who waited months for veterans’ benefits, says he feels abandoned by the military; because he was not wounded in combat, he has not been awarded a Purple Heart.

Spc. Robert Acosta, 20, a Californian who lost a hand in a grenade attack, says he is psychologically unable to resume his former social life: “I don’t like dealing with the questions. Like, ‘Was it hot?’ ‘Did you shoot anybody?’ They want me to glorify the war and say it was so cool.”

Mr. Acosta’s interview has the only overt anti-war sentiment in the Bekman show, and there are few words of bitterness or recrimination. Mr. Ross calls combat in Iraq the best time of his life. Randall Clunen of Ohio remembers the excitement of search missions in Iraqi homes as a peak experience. Sgt. Joseph Mosner, at 35 the oldest in this group, was 19 when he enlisted. “There was no good jobs,” he said, “so I figured this would have been a good thing.” He still thinks so, despite his severe facial scarring from a bomb explosion.

Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, left brain-damaged and blind by an artillery attack, once had plans for medical school. but says: “I don’t have any regrets. I had some fun over there. I don’t want to talk about the military anymore.” He claims, as do others, that he has no political opinions.

Ms. Berman adds no direct editorial comment to the presentation. She has said in interviews that she started photographing disabled veterans soon after the war began mainly because she didn’t see anyone else doing so. In what may be the most intensively photographed war in history, the visual documentation has been selective. The fate of the injured veterans was not a public issue until news reports about substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

This background provides the context for Ms. Berman’s photographs, which are themselves tip-of-the-iceberg images. No matter what the viewer’s political position, the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement. Mr. Acosta makes that statement outright: “Yeah, I got a Purple Heart. I don’t care. I don’t need anything to prove I was there. I know I was there. I got a constant reminder. I mean like all the reasons we went to war, it just seems like they’re not legit enough for people to lose their lives for and for me to lose my hand and use of my legs and for my buddies to lose their limbs.”

And “Marine Wedding” speaks, as powerfully as a picture can, for itself.

“Nina Berman: Purple Hearts” continues through Aug. 30 at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street; (212) 219-0166, jenbekman.com.

In a typical reality check, the truth is revealed concerning how the military monolith speaks with the “don’t do as I do, do as I say” voice to the troops. Taking the RHIP (rank has its privileges) to a new steroid-enhanced level, the Department of Defense clearly demonstrates that its top decision makers don’t have any more understanding about operational security than they do about prosecuting the war against a crafty insurgency.

This should come as no surprise to anyone on the left or right of the political spectrum because today’s general officers are just as bad (if not worse) than GEN (Ret) Wesley “The Perfumed Prince” Clark was as the former NATO CINC. Engaging in the same level of political loyalty over loyalty to their subordinates in uniform, these GO’s have sacrificed truth for political expediency in their quest to garner then next star.

Granted, the example former SecDef Rumsfeld made of General Shinseki gave plenty for the GO’s to think about, but don’t we all have to wonder if some of these “leaders” ever came under enemy fire? If they could withstand the fear associated with seeing the elephant, why are they so cowardly now?

A serious question indeed.

The Moderator

Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security

By Noah Shachtman 08.17.07 | 2:00 AM

For years, the military has been warning that soldiers’ blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual’s blog.

The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.

The results were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, after the digital rights group filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.

“It’s clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs,” said EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. “Bloggers, on the whole, have been very careful and conscientious. It’s a pretty major disparity.”

The findings stand in stark contrast to Army statements about the risks that blogs pose.

“Some soldiers continue to post sensitive information to internet websites and blogs,” then-Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker wrote in a 2005 memo. “Such OPSEC (operational security) violations needlessly place lives at risk.” That same year, commanders in Iraq ordered (.pdf) troops to register their blogs “with the unit chain of command.”

Originally formed in 2002 to police official Defense Department websites (.mil), the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, or AWRAC, expanded its mission in 2005. A handful of military bloggers, including then-Spec. Colby Buzzell, were seen as providing too many details of firefights in Iraq. Buzzell, for one, was banned from patrols and confined to base after one such incident, and AWRAC began looking for others like him on blogs and .com sites.

But AWRAC hunted for more than overly vivid battle descriptions. It scoured pages for all kinds of information: personal data, like home addresses and Social Security numbers; restricted and classified documents; even pictures of weapons. When these violations were found, AWRAC contacted the webmaster or blog editor, and asked that they change their sites.

“Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be,” an official Army news story warned bloggers.

Within the Army, some worried that the blog-monitoring had compromised AWRAC’s original goal.

“My suspicion … is that the AWRAC’s attention is being diverted by the new mission of reviewing all the Army blogs,” reads an e-mail (.pdf) from the office of the Army Chief Information Officer obtained in EFF’s FOIA lawsuit. “In the past they did a good job of detecting and correcting (website policy compliance) violations, but that is currently not the case.”

On one blog, AWRAC found photos showing bomb damage to a Humvee; on another, a description of a mountain near a base in Afghanistan; on a third, a video about “morale concerning incoming mortar.” AWRAC discovered a secret presentation on the official, unclassified Army Knowledge Online network. It found a map of an Army training center in Texas on a second .mil site. A “colonel’s wife’s maiden name” was caught on a third.

The documents unearthed by the EFF also show that AWRAC’s investigations may have been meant to discourage any Army blogging — not just correct security flaws. One soldier-blogger noted that “The DoD (Department of Defense) is cracking down … and I wouldn’t be able to continue blogging.” AWRAC’s internal response: “The word is getting out.”

“I won’t be blogging anything cool probably while we’re here,” another soldier wrote. “I remember really enjoying a few blogs at the beginning of the war, but they were pushing the limits a little bit on OPSEC and I don’t plan to get anywhere near those limits.” AWRAC’s answer: “GO ARMY!”

The AWRAC monitoring is part of an ongoing struggle in the military over digital media. To some, these new forms of communications are security risks waiting to happen. Others welcome soldiers posting to blogs, online video sites and social networks as information warfare, combating a wave of Islamist propaganda online.

This spring, the Army released stringent new rules (.pdf) telling soldiers to stop posting to blogs without first clearing the content with a superior officer. “Personal websites of individual Soldiers (to include web logs or ‘blogs’) are a potentially significant vulnerability,” Army Regulation 530-1 noted.

The guidelines’ author, Major Ray Ceralde, cited the Pentagon’s take-out pizza orders as an example of potentially damaging information that a blog might leak. Days later, the Army issued a “fact sheet” which seemed to back away from the rules — without officially retracting them.

The overlapping guidelines created a climate of confusion for soldier-bloggers. Sgt. Edward Watson, a blogger currently deployed with the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad, was threatened by his company’s commander for perceived transgressions of the blog policies.

“They wanted to give me an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment) for a regulation I was clueless about, and they never brief anyone about starting or running blogs,” Sgt. Watson told Wired News in an e-mail. He was eventually allowed to keep his website — after removing some of the more detailed entries.

Overall, the new documents reveal, AWRAC found few security breaches on soldiers’ sites — at most, 28 in more than a year. That’s a fraction of the thousands of violations found on official sites.

(The precise number of breaches is unclear. In AWRAC’s presentations, numbers contradict one another, or are transposed from one month to the next. For example, AWRAC came up at different points with five separate figures for the number of .mil pages scanned in September 2006. The documents show that the number of breaches may have been as high as 4,052 on official military sites, and as low as 14 on blogs.)

To D.J. Elliott, a blogger and former intelligence officer, the statistics — however uneven — are proof that “the milblogs (military blogs) are policing their own far tighter than officialdom is.”

“Most of the milblog(er)s are there or have people close to them there,” he wrote in an e-mail to Wired News. “They maintain OPSEC because it is personal to them. Self-preservation. It is risking them and/or theirs.”

Army spokesman Gordon Van Vleet seemed to agree with that assessment. One “factor that contributes to fewer violations being found on blogs is that in general the blogger is conscientious about their duty to not provide information that could be considered an OPSEC violation,” he wrote. “Often these bloggers are stationed in the combat areas and they more than anyone understand the importance of security and the potential impact any OPSEC violations could have on themselves and their fellow Soldiers, Airmen and Marines.”

For more on this story as it develops, check in on the Wired blog Danger Room.

The following op-ed piece appeared in the NY Times today.  It is authored by a number of non-commissioned officers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division.  If the assertions are true, then this piece continues to build upon a mounting body of evidence that the US military has succumbed to the same predilection that poisons the American State Department — viewing the world through our country’s desired field of vision, not what is truly being seen.

The Moderator

August 19, 2007

Op-Ed Contributors

The War as We Saw It

By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Seems GEN (Ret) Wesley “The Perfumed Prince” Clark is at it again. Although we can agree that Islamofascist terrorists are not Soldiers, they are not criminals either. They fall into a special category — a category that will undoubtedly be defined by the American people after the next massive Islamofascist attack on this country. Meantime, this is the latest “opinion” from a Clinton shill:

Why Terrorists Aren’t Soldiers

By WESLEY K. CLARK and KAL RAUSTIALA

THE line between soldier and civilian has long been central to the law of war. Today that line is being blurred in the struggle against transnational terrorists. Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to categorize members of Al Qaeda and other jihadists as “unlawful combatants” rather than treat them as criminals.

The federal courts are increasingly wary of this approach, and rightly so. In a stinging rebuke, this summer a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., struck down the government’s indefinite detention of a civilian, Ali al-Marri, by the military. The case illustrates once again the pitfalls of our current approach.

Treating terrorists as combatants is a mistake for two reasons. First, it dignifies criminality by according terrorist killers the status of soldiers. Under the law of war, military service members receive several privileges. They are permitted to kill the enemy and are immune from prosecution for doing so. They must, however, carefully distinguish between combatant and civilian and ensure that harm to civilians is limited.

Critics have rightly pointed out that traditional categories of combatant and civilian are muddled in a struggle against terrorists. In a traditional war, combatants and civilians are relatively easy to distinguish. The 9/11 hijackers, by contrast, dressed in ordinary clothes and hid their weapons. They acted not as citizens of Saudi Arabia, an ally of America, but as members of Al Qaeda, a shadowy transnational network. And their prime targets were innocent civilians.

By treating such terrorists as combatants, however, we accord them a mark of respect and dignify their acts. And we undercut our own efforts against them in the process. Al Qaeda represents no state, nor does it carry out any of a state’s responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens. Labeling its members as combatants elevates its cause and gives Al Qaeda an undeserved status.

If we are to defeat terrorists across the globe, we must do everything possible to deny legitimacy to their aims and means, and gain legitimacy for ourselves. As a result, terrorism should be fought first with information exchanges and law enforcement, then with more effective domestic security measures. Only as a last resort should we call on the military and label such activities “war.” The formula for defeating terrorism is well known and time-proven.

Labeling terrorists as combatants also leads to this paradox: while the deliberate killing of civilians is never permitted in war, it is legal to target a military installation or asset. Thus the attack by Al Qaeda on the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000 would be allowed, as well as attacks on command and control centers like the Pentagon. For all these reasons, the more appropriate designation for terrorists is not “unlawful combatant” but the one long used by the United States: criminal.

The second major problem with the approach of the Bush administration is that it endangers our political traditions and our commitment to liberty, and further damages America’s legitimacy in the eyes of others. Almost 50 years ago, at the height of the cold war, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the “deeply rooted and ancient opposition in this country to the extension of military control over civilians.”

A great danger in treating operatives for Al Qaeda as combatants is precisely that its members are not easily distinguished from the population at large. The government wields frightening power when it can designate who is, and who is not, subject to indefinite military detention. The Marri case turned on this issue. Mr. Marri is a legal resident of the United States and a citizen of Qatar; the government contends that he is a sleeper agent of Al Qaeda. For the last four years he has been held as an enemy combatant at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

The federal court held that while the government can arrest and convict civilians, under current law the military cannot seize and detain Mr. Marri. Nor would it necessarily be constitutional to do so, even if Congress expressly authorized the military detention of civilians. At the core of the court’s reasoning is the belief that civilians and combatants are distinct. Had Ali al-Marri fought for an enemy nation, military detention would clearly be proper. But because he is accused of being a member of Al Qaeda, and is a citizen of a friendly nation, he should not be treated as a warrior.

Cases like this illustrate that in the years since 9/11, the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism has created more problems than it has solved. We need to recognize that terrorists, while dangerous, are more like modern-day pirates than warriors. They ought to be pursued, tried and convicted in the courts. At the extreme, yes, military force may be required. But the terrorists themselves are not “combatants.” They are merely criminals, albeit criminals of an especially heinous type, and that label suggests the appropriate venue for dealing with the threats they pose.

We train our soldiers to respect the line between combatant and civilian. Our political leaders must also respect this distinction, lest we unwittingly endanger the values for which we are fighting, and further compromise our efforts to strengthen our security.

Wesley K. Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO, is a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles. Kal Raustiala is a law professor and the director of the Burkle Center.

Navy Divers Look for Victims

MINNEAPOLIS - An elite team of Navy divers joined the search for victims of the interstate bridge collapse Tuesday, bringing to the job lessons learned from such disasters as TWA Flight 800 and the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

The team of 16 divers and a five-member command crew arrived a day earlier. Once their gear arrived before dawn Tuesday, several divers immediately entered the Mississippi River even though local officials encouraged them to wait until daybreak.

“Two in the morning, they dove into the water,” Minneapolis Police Capt. Mike Martin said, calling them “the best divers in the world.”

“These guys make our SWAT guys look humble,” Martin said.

Navy Senior Chief David Nagle said the divers wanted to get a feel for the area and were in the water for about two hours. Divers were back in the river by late morning, removing concrete rebar and other debris.

Also Tuesday, state officials laid out tentative plans for the bridge reconstruction, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty said his office was considering a victims’ compensation fund.

The dive team’s arrival raised hopes of speeding up the recovery operation. At least eight people are missing and presumed dead in last week’s collapse, with perhaps more still in the river. Five people are confirmed dead.

Joining the Navy team was an FBI dive crew, doing forensic work for the investigation. Their tools included a small unmanned submarine equipped with a robotic arm. “It’s basically crime-lab-underwater kind of work,” Martin said.

The Navy and FBI team bring experience and technology far beyond what’s been available to local search crews, who complained they have been hampered by dangerously unstable wreckage and a rapid current.

The Navy divers will be tethered to above-ground oxygen tanks, so they can stay in the water much longer than local divers, who had been using scuba tanks. Heavy-duty equipment will allow divers to cut through steel wreckage. The Navy also has sophisticated sonar to scan for bodies.

Mark Phillips, owner and publisher of PS Diver Monthly, a newsletter for public safety divers in Lumberton, Texas, called Navy divers “the big guns.”

A disaster “as monumental as the Minnesota bridge collapse is going to be above and beyond any local agency’s capacity, regardless of where they are,” he said.

Phil Newsum, executive director of the Association of Diving Contractors International, said searching a river such as the Mississippi is tough for divers. The current can knock loose and carry pieces of debris, and it stirs up mud that makes visibility nearly zero.

The Navy team will likely use its sonar to identify objects in the river that roughly match the size of a human body.

“Their imaging technology is tremendous, but once you identify where something is, you go in and you’re essentially diving by Braille,” Newsum said. “You’re going by feel only. That’s tremendously challenging.”

It’s also emotionally difficult work, Newsum said. “You have to get your head right before you go down there, because you’re recovering a human being.”

Navy divers assisted in the reclamation of historic sunken ships including the ironclad Civil War ship the Monitor. After the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, N.Y., they made more than 700 dives to recover bodies and reclaim wreckage to help the government investigation. Navy divers recovered both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

People across the city were invited to observe a moment of silence at 6:05 p.m., the time of the bridge collapse six days earlier.

Residents also gathered at parks near the collapsed bridge and upstream, removing their hats and bowing their heads. At one observance, people threw flowers into the Mississippi River poured a vial of water into the river after blessing it.

“This is how we can really reverence the silence of the dead,” said Sister Rita McDonald of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

At 6:06 p.m., bells tolled at City Hall and churches.

Four people still hospitalized with injuries from the collapse improved Tuesday to serious condition, leaving only one person in critical condition. About 100 people were hurt in the disaster.

State officials announced tentative plans for the replacement bridge, with five lanes each way instead of four. The new bridge also might be built to accommodate bus rapid transit or light rail in the future.

Officials said that they will start narrowing the field of potential contractors this week, and that they hope to select the builder by Sept. 1. The deal will include incentives for early completion.

But Pawlenty said the aggressive timeline - the goal is to have it open before the end of next year - won’t mean corners are cut.

“We are going to get this bridge built safely, No. 1,” he said at a news conference. “So we’re not going to go so fast or emphasize speed that the bridge isn’t done well or done correctly.”

Pawlenty had no details of how a victims’ fund might work, saying only that his office was exploring it.

US Cav’s ON Point posted an editorial concerning this past Sunday’s Meet the Press (NBC) in which Tim Russert interviewed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In addition to SefDef Gate’s refreshing honesty, The Gray Lady actually printed some good news coming from Iraq. The Lady quoted Brookings Institute analysts Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack as saying,”There is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.” Who would have ever thought the NY Times would print such a quote?

The Moderator

Editorial: Some Refreshing Honesty - August 7, 2007

08-07-2007, 01:24 PM • by ON Point

I hope you watched SectDef Robert Gates Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

When asked about how “The Surge” was progressing, Sect Gates replied that the plan was doing well militarily, but he was very disappointed in the Iraqi Government. From their taking a summer holiday while American ( and Iraqi ) boys were fighting and dying, to their incessant in-fighting as the country collapses…with 4 more Ministers resigning today, to the current stories of how the country’s infrastructure is falling apart…it was a relief to hear an honest answer from someone in the Administration.

This is a frustrating war on which to report. It’s not a ‘normal’ war, like WW2 or Korea, and it’s not even being fought against someone with recognizable opponents on their own capital city, like Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam. Everyone we capture claims his name is Mohammed, and we’re reduced to doing retinal scans in order to identify the insurgents we arrest. Forget capturing their capitol, we’re finding these guys in their kitchens or outside in the weeds.

Even more frustrating is that President Bush keeps insisting that we can “win” this war, yet never mentions to the American people that this is an insurgency - a guerilla war - that historically takes 11 years to finish. Eleven years is a long-term commitment; with WW2 lasting only four years, you’d best get the American public to roger-up for this one. “Getting even” for 9/11 we all understand and agree…but “bringing democracy to Iraq?” It’s time he got on national television and accurately explain why being in Iraq is of equal importance to America as being in Afghanistan.

And that’s the frustration felt by almost every one of the military men to whom I’ve been speaking in the last few months. The situation on the ground IS getting better - in certain areas. But it’s all due to local efforts – Sunni’s and Marines in Anbar – the Army and various Shia tribes north of Baghdad in Diyala area…the local Iraqi desperately wants to return to a normal life, and finally understand that they need to co-operate with the American troops in rooting out the local militia and insurgent forces. They also understand that the Maleki government is either too-Shia oriented, too corrupt, or too incompetent to do this on their own, and so they’re finally beginning to work with our troops.

Which brings me back to Secretary Gates. Direct, brutally honest, yet soft-spoken, he’s rapidly becoming the Administration’s point man on explaining events in Iraq to us, as well as delivering the “frank and serious” messages to Prime Minister Maleki that he needs to hear from the American government.

It is obvious that the current Iraqi political situation will not continue indefinitely, and the clock in Washington is ticking even faster than the one in Baghdad. Secretary Robert Gates deserves considerable credit for his unvarnished reports on the situation in Iraq; surely the 165,000 American troops now in Iraq and the American people deserve a better vision of the mission’s goals than we have now.

Andrew Lubin