Month: October 2004

Here’s the big story for tomorrow.

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

Josh Marshall

Michael Froomkin.

Obsidian Wings:

Since this was an IAEA site, its location, and what was there, was known to us before we invaded. What, exactly, were our troops doing that was more important than making sure terrorists didn’t make off with 350 tons of very high explosives that can be used either to trigger a nuclear weapon or to kill our troops? I honestly can’t think of any way at all that we could have let this happen. If it had been one guy sneaking in and making off with a document, maybe, but I would have thought that it would be impossible for people using heavy equipment to make off with 350 tons of stuff had we been making any serious effort to secure this site. So why didn’t we? What could we possibly have been thinking?
[…]
Just asking.

via Chris at Explananda

Steve Gilliard wrote what struck me as the most insightful take on the execution of almost 50 “cadets” or whatever they’re called in Orwellian-Iraqi – semi-“trained” Iraqi National Guards today:

They were betrayed by a member of that unit.

There is simply no other way 50 soldiers are massacred like this.

How many guerillas showed up to do this? A hundred? Or did the unit turn on each other? Something really bad happened here, something which screams total and complete lack of operational security. This was no accident and it was not happenstance.

Whoever waited for these men, waited with the full knowledge that they were coming and prepared to send a rather stark, brutal message.

Not only that soldiers are not safe, but that we can find you and kill you anywhere you go.

This kind of thing requires precise timing and serious force, enough to kill them in a fire fight. This may be the single most stunning guerilla attack of the war, and a real demonstration of strength. These were armed soldiers, trained soldiers and they walked into an ambush and were murdered. Yet, they were so trapped, they couldn’t resist and were shot. How does that happen to soldiers?

Stunning.

“It appears that they were ambushed by a large, well-organized force with good intelligence,” the source said.

Duh.

UPDATE: Spies suspected in Iraq police massacre

Duh.

A few days ago I posted a blog entry about a 70-year-old reservist called up for Iraq duty.

I recorded the segment from the evening news on KNTV (NBC in San Jose, California) and then transcribed the information into my blog entry. I received many emails from people asking if it was a joke or a hoax, and I assured them that the story was accurate.

Now I am informed by Mark Flaa that he played quite a joke on his father-in-law, 70-year-old reservist Ted Wallace.

Wallace contacted the TV station and gave them his story before his son-in-law could tell him he had played an elaborate joke on him. Flaa found out his father-in-law didn’t get the joke when he saw the news report himself.

No one I know has found this particularly funny.

I personally apologize for having helped to spread this disinformation.

Today, on the Weekend Interview Show, Scott Horton will be talking to the brilliant Alexander Cockburn, publisher of the great lefty newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn has received high praise from the none other than the Frumster, (that’s a much better link than the one to his dreary homepage, believe me)who called Cockburn an “anti-American of the far Left”.
I made a mental note many years ago, it reads “Read anything by anyone whom David Frum considers “anti-American”. This note has served me well ever since.
The second hour of the show will be devoted to heroic whistleblowers. Sibel Edmonds will be among the guests.
The show will run from 4PM to 6PM ET. It can be heard live on the internet.

Recommended reading

Good stuff at Noah Schachtman’s place, taking off from this must-read Washpost article. Schachtman: Bottom line: the Bush administration thinks fighting terrorism is like taking on the Mob; all you have to do is lock up the top bosses, and the gang will fall apart.

What a pleasant little world we’d live in, if that were true. It ain’t. Because Al Qaeda isn’t a mafia, with a small band of non-replaceable criminal chiefs. It’s a cancer. And, by misdiagnosing the problem, the White House is helping it spread. Pay special attention to Frances Fragos Townsend’s background and role in Bush’s strategy.

The next post, INSURGENTS = ENTREPRENEURS? links to John Robb’s site, Global Guerrillas. I’m kicking myself that I haven’t read this blog before. A sample:

The long history of warfare is dominated by military entrepreneurs. That dominance was overturned only recently (within an historical context) with the rise of the nation-state and its ideologically motivated armies. However, the trend is going in the other direction, and quickly. Military entrepreneurship is again on the rise. We can see the adoption of military entrepreneurs by the coalition in Iraq. Private military companies (PMCs) field the second largest military force in Iraq, after the US — the UK is a distant third.

This shift towards military entrepreneurship is even more pronounced in the insurgency in Iraq. Almost all of the guerrillas we are currently fighting were formed through this process. This should come as no surprise to readers of history (and particularly readers of this author, since it appeared here first). Arab warfare, until late in this century, was driven entirely by entrepreneurship. For example: Lawrence of Arabia, the father of modern guerrilla warfare, used combinations of direct payments and the promise of loot to build his forces. Faith played a major part, but it was almost always secondary.

Recent reports confirm from the US military analysts confirm the financial nature of the open source bazaar in Iraq:

• “Unlimited amounts” of violence capital for guerrilla entrepreneurs is flowing into Iraq from ex-Baathists, relatives of Saddam Hussein, Saudi sources, and bin Laden. Given global guerrilla ROIs (returns on investment) of up to 100,000 x, this should be cause for alarm.
• Loot from convoy hijackings, theft of oil through bunkering, and ransoms play a major part of the motivation for attacks. Fully 80% of the attacks fall into this category.
• A granular competitive market. There are over 50 guerrilla groups active in Iraq. The sheer diversity of the effort indicates a process that is very similar to historical patterns of Arab warfare.
• Price schedules for attacks. The going rate for placing an IED is $100-$300 (more for an RPG attack).

Read the rest…

All through this mess, I’ve been wondering, whenever someone makes an observation like “we are in danger of losing this war”, how exactly they would define winning this war. I suspected that the more blood had been spilt, the greater the chance that “we” had “won”.
Now, thanks to William L. Anderson, I finally know what “victory” is. Anderson reports that Victor D. Hanson recently gave a lecture, during a Hillsdale College cruise on the Rhine and Moselle rivers. The subject of the lecture was “What Would Patton Say About the Present War?” Hanson’s definition of victory:

“…we shall not be through with Islamic fascism until the governments of Iran and Syria cease their support, al-Qaedists are killed or in cuffs, and the greater Middle East autocracies are terrified of offering succor to terrorist offshoots. Anything less as our goal and we will be in a perpetual quagmire of reactive warfare.” Continue reading “Finally, a Definition of Victory!”