Category: Politics-US

It appears the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s efforts to remove Blackwater from Iraq has picked up allies in the US Congress:

Blackwater USA triggered a major battle in the Iraq war in 2004 by sending an unprepared team of guards into an insurgent stronghold, a move that led to their horrific deaths and a violent response by U.S. forces, says a congressional investigation released Thursday.

The private security company, one of the largest working in Iraq and under scrutiny for how it operates, also is faulted for initially insisting its guards were properly prepared and equipped. It is also accused of impeding the inquiry by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. [Richard Lardner & Mike Baker, AP]

So why is the US Congress holding hearings on something that happened over three years ago?  If this is so important how come these hearings were not held long ago?  It just so happens that many in the US Congress are just as eager as the Iraqi Interior Ministry to have Blackwater removed from Iraq.  If Blackwater is removed from Iraq that would mean US troops would have to take over the security duties which could impact President Bush’s promise to withdraw up to a brigade worth of troops by December. 

This is why bringing up something that happened in 2004 is of political significance now.  The problems with what happened with the Blackwater security team in 2004 is well known and it doesn’t take a Congressional investigation to determine that four guys driving in a truck through Fallujah in 2004 was not a good idea.  Now other incidents involving Blackwater are also being investigated:

The United States has not made conclusive findings about the five incidents, including the Sept. 16 deaths of at least 11 Iraqis, and a State Department official said Friday that investigators are not aware of any others.

The five, plus another incident that apparently did not kill anyone, were previously identified by Iraqi authorities. For now, those incidents are at the core of the review ordered by Rice last week, a State Department official said. [Anne Gearan & Matthew Lee, AP]

I am all for holding security contractors accountable but what is going on now is completely for political reasons.  Reports of unaccountable security contractors have been coming out of Iraq for years, but now Congress wants to do something about it?  To be fair the State Department and the Pentagon should have done something long ago about the legal status of security contractors to prevent the Iraqi Interior Ministry and opportune US politicians from jumping on this issue for political reasons long ago. 

Here is the latest attempt by the media and politicians to play politics with the military:

Independent ballistics tests commissioned by NBC News raise new questions about whether America’s fighting men and women really do have the best body armor available.

The Army insists the body armor troops are now wearing — called Interceptor — is the very best in the world. And, without question, those vests have saved lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But an NBC investigation suggests there may be something even better out there called Dragon Skin, a flexible body armor of interconnected ceramic discs.

What follows in the report is a very selective reporting of the facts that NBC News wants you to know about. NBC News is alleging that the US military is giving its soldiers inferior armor to save money and for political reasons. Of course this report is followed by well timed outrage from Democratic law makers:

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Here is the latest attempt by the media and politicians to play politics with the military:

Independent ballistics tests commissioned by NBC News raise new questions about whether America’s fighting men and women really do have the best body armor available.

The Army insists the body armor troops are now wearing — called Interceptor — is the very best in the world.  And, without question, those vests have saved lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But an NBC investigation suggests there may be something even better out there called Dragon Skin, a flexible body armor of interconnected ceramic discs.  

What follows in the report is a very selective reporting of the facts that NBC News wants you to know about.  NBC News is alleging that the US military is giving its soldiers inferior armor to save money and for political reasons.  Of course this report is followed by well timed outrage from Democratic law makers:

"In light of recent media reports suggesting that a particular body armor system may offer better protection than the system currently being used by our servicemembers, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Jim Webb (D-VA) – both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee – today called on Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker to initiate a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation to reassess the body armor systems currently being issued by all the military services and the Special Operations Command for effectiveness and reliability against the threats facing U.S. troops in combat," states a press release issued by the Clinton campaign.

This has caused the Army to come out and defend themselves from the false allegations:

The Pentagon news conference with Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, the Army’s top officer in charge of charge of body armor, detailed a series of tests that he says the current Interceptor system, currently issued to soldiers and Marines, has passed.

The unusual briefing aimed to refute what it calls inaccurate reporting by NBC after the network broadcast a series of reports in which correspondent Lisa Myers raised questions about the Interceptor body armor, which the military maintains is "the best, bar none."

[…]

"We have conducted the same test standard for all of our current body armor producers. Every one of them has passed with zero failures," Brown said. "This (Dragonskin) has passed with 13 failures. If they make a product improvement, we are willing to test again to that standard and see if they can make it."

Brown said DragonSkin suffered "catastrophic failures" by not being able to withstand temperature ranges from 60 degrees below zero to 120 above, a range that he says can be expected when vests are used in the arctic or put to use in Iraq. Interceptor has withstood these tests, Brown said.

What is especially troubling about this whole thing is that the US military had to release footage of all the tests so terrorists can analyze how to defeat US body armor.  What was probably the most damning information left out of the NBC report was that the Dragon Skin body armor weighs 47.5 pounds compared to the Interceptor armor that weighs 28 pounds.  How could NBC News leave such critical information as this out of their report?  It just shows that they are deliberately presenting only the facts that supports the narrative they want everyone to believe.  It is truly sad how bad the level of journalism in America has reached.  The media at one time played a critical role as a check and balance on the government, now it is nothing more than a propaganda organ and a political weapon for members of the government. I know members of the media read this blog and I would interested to read an opinion from someone in the media on the NBC reporting.

Anyway, at the rate this body armor debate is going, the Democrats will be advocating that we wear medieval armor like King Arthur pretty soon.  With the amount of weight on us that the Democrats want, it will slow soldiers down that much more and make it easier for the snipers to target soldiers and the Democrats will get all the body armor testing results they could possibly imagine. 

What is funny about this whole thing is that Marines won’t even wear heavier armor:

Extra body armor — the lack of which caused a political storm in the United States — has flooded in to Iraq, but many Marines here promptly stuck it in lockers or under bunks. Too heavy and cumbersome, many say.

Marines already carry loads as heavy as 70 pounds when they patrol the dangerous streets in towns and villages in restive Anbar province. The new armor plates, while only about five pounds per set, are not worth carrying for the additional safety they are said to provide, some say.

"We have to climb over walls and go through windows," said Sgt. Justin Shank of Greencastle, Pa. "I understand the more armor, the safer you are. But it makes you slower. People don’t understand that this is combat and people are going to die."

Staff Sgt. Thomas Bain of Buffalo, N.Y., shared concerns about the extra pounds.

"Before you know it, they’re going to get us injured because we’re hauling too much weight and don’t have enough mobility to maneuver in a fight from house to house," said Bain, who is assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. "I think we’re starting to go overboard on the armor."

For the best reporting on this, I highly recommend everyone go over to OP-FOR where a body armor expert provides some really great analysis of the NBC News report.  Here is a taste of the level of detail he gets into:

NBC News claims to have commissioned an independent, side-by-side test of Dragon Skin and the Army’s Interceptor vest. According to them, Dragon Skin outperformed the Army’s body armor in stopping the most lethal threats.

There are only two labs that are National Institute of Justice (NIJ) certified to run NIJ body armor tests. They are the HP White Laboratory in Street, MD and US Test Labs in Wichita, KS. A third lab, Chesapeake Testing in Chase, MD, is under NIJ review for certification. Additional military facilities certify body armor performance for DoD. NBC does not own one of them, nor does NBC appear to be pursuing a scientific approach at a licensed facility. A proper test would require over two dozen SOV 3000 Level IV Dragon Skin vests to be placed on a human torso model and shot by specific threat rounds at a standard range and impact velocity, from specific angles and impact points, and under a variety of contamination and environmental conditions that soldiers might face in combat. Fresh off the manufacturing line ESAPI would be shot for comparison, if further certification or validation (already awarded to the ESAPI) was needed.

Was the “Interceptor” ESAPI armor NBC tested government issued or procured independently? The markings on the armor seen in the video are unfamiliar and they appear to be independently procured non-issue plates from non-standard or non-qualified vendors. Wouldn’t a fair test use the fresh issue ESAPI plates, like the Pinnacle armor provided? Are the alleged ESAPIs NBC tested fresh and certified current production? Did they come from Pinnacle or a surplus store dumpster? There are six qualified vendors that have passed ESAPI first article protocol. The vendors deny providing plates to NBC. And none of them are Canadian.

There is a whole lot more so make sure you read the whole report. 

OP-FOR has a follow up report here as well that further debunks the NBC News claims.  However, just like everything else with this war none of these politicians, their media allies, and the loony left actually care what armor is better and what the troops want and need.  This is just another issue for the Democrats and the loony left to score political points with, manufactured by their media allies. 

To settle this, I think everyone in Congress who advocates that we in the military should wear Dragon Skin body armor should spend a year walking around Washington D.C. wearing 47.5 pounds of body armor.  The discomfort they experience won’t even compare to the heat of Iraq and Afghanistan with all the extra gear we carry in the military.  If Democrats like Senators Webb and Clinton want us to wear their armor so much, they should lead by example and wear the armor with us. 

However, this has nothing to do with armor, but politics.  The Democrats and the loony left have scored their political points and now the whole thing will proceed to blow over with the American public left with the perception that the US military is using substandard armor by an uncaring Pentagon leadership only interested is giving Haliburton like contracts to Bush political supporters.  It all nonsense, but the perception has been created and the politicizing of the military continues.

UPDATE: Yonhap has an article on Katrin Fraser along with the Donga Ilbo. The Donga is reporting that Fraser will probaby have little influence with Korea policy it sounds like:

Meanwhile, the White House designated Katrin Fraser, a professional diplomat in her early 30s, as assistant for Korean and Japanese affairs to succeed the post left by Victor Cha, who has recently returned to Georgetown University. Fraser has worked on international organization affairs in the State Department, but since her career in security policy affairs isn’t extensive, it is likely that her role could be limited to executive support. On a Fulbright Association assistantship, she taught English for a year at Mokpo High School in 2000.

Just what the White House needs, a Low Quality Foreign English Teacher helping direct US-Korea relations. Maybe she can help negotiate a hagwon bill of rights for all the English teachers in Korea.

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If I only had a dollar for every time I have heard this excuse. With that any remaining hopes I held of an improved Korea policy coming any time soon has been dashed after reading this in the Chosun about the new Asia director for the National Security Council Katrin Fraser:

Fraser lived in Korea for two years. In a contribution to the spring 2002 edition of the Korean Society Quarterly, she said that the Bush administration’s misunderstanding of Korean culture fanned anti-American sentiment here since 2001. Fraser discusses President Bush’s State of the Union address of 2002 in which he famously called North Korea part of an “axis of evil.”

She says South Korea’s “swift and largely negative reaction” came from two factors. One was a gradual buildup of anti-U.S. sentiment due to Bush’s rejection of engagement with North Korea, and the other “cultural insensitivity on the part of the Bush administration.” By calling North Korea “evil,” Bush offended against Korean norms of relationship management and communication, which focus on face-saving and “kibun,” she said.

“If the president had demonstrated an awareness of the importance of maintaining kibun in relating to Koreans (North or South), perhaps the South Korean response to his statement would have been more muted,” she writes.

As far as “kibun” is concerned Robert over the Marmot’s Hole pretty much summed this up very well:

The difference is that over the last 10 years, South Koreans have moved away from viewing North Koreans as “horned communist devils” and more towards viewing them as part of the tribe, so to speak. The issue then becomes one not of the Bush administration failing to understand the Korean cultural concept of gibun, but rather one of it failing to understand — or care about — the a) changing nature of Korean nationalism and national identity and b) the priority Seoul placed on improving relations with the North.

Additionally, Ms. Fraser is highly misinformed if she thinks the anti-US movement was jump started due to President Bush’s labeling of North Korea as part of the access of evil. These people existed well before 2002:

The anti-US movement was quite active since the 1980’s, grew greatly in the 1990’s, and was jump started not due to President Bush, but rather due to former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s June 2000 Inter-Korean Summit. After the Inter-Korean Summit Korean nationalism was sky high and much of the general Korean public thought unification was near and that the US was now the problem preventing it. This has since proven to be absurd with the disclosure that Kim Dae-jung bought the summit along with the follow on Nobel Peace Prize with a $500 million dollar bribe to North Korea and the continuing defiance of the international community with North Korea ballistic missile and nuclear tests. However, after that summit the Korean mind set was clearly that the US was the problem now, not North Korea.

Without this mind set, “The Great Water Dumping Scandal of 2000” would not have created such a massive anti-US backlash. There was no “misunderstanding of Korean culture” from President Bush back in 2000 to cause such a large anti-US back lash to a minor and a highly hypocritical incident.

The same can be said for the 2000 Koon-ni Range protests as well. That range has been used by the US Air Force for decades, but suddenly in 2000 it becomes a national issue spreading anti-US hate. The protests at the range continued for years afterward with the Korean government giving the US Air Force no alternate range to use. The US Air Force had to in fact fly crews to Thailand to conduct training there because of the Koon-ni Range issue.

Perhaps Ms. Fraser can point out the “misunderstanding of Korean culture” to those of us that were here in 2000 who remember this hate so well.

So how does it feel to be a propaganda piece?:

The North Korea colonel who served as Richardson’s guide smiled as he told the governor the ship was an example of continued U.S. aggression toward his country. Richardson and his traveling companion, former Veteran Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi, were then shown bullet holes circled in red paint and a video describing the maneuvering of "brazen-faced U.S. imperialists."

(…)

Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate who is in North Korea this week to collect the remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War, said the tour of the ship was "unpleasant."

Why in the heck was he touring this ship to begin with and allow himself to be used for propaganda purposes by the North Korean government?  He should have told his minders to shove the USS Pueblo tour up their collective asses. 

The seizure of the USS Pueblo was overt act of aggression against the United States with the murder of one crew member and the imprisonment and torture of the rest of the crew for nearly a year.  The vessel remains the only commissioned US Navy ship still remaining in enemy hands today.  I have always maintained that any negotiations carried out with the North Koreans should include the return of the USS Pueblo.  If the North Koreans want to make demands such as the return of the $25 million ill gotten dollars that was not in the Agreed Framework 2.0 than how come the US government cannot demand the return of the USS Pueblo?

What a disgrace to the memory of the former crew members of the Pueblo, that the only thing that Richardson can say after being used as a propaganda tool by the North Koreans is "unpleasant". 

You can read more about the USS Pueblo at my prior posting here.

HT: Ironically enough to Richardson

This is how our US Congress supports the troops:

Lengthy delays in finalizing supplemental war funding could force Army leaders to extend some soldiers’ tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

Army officials are planning cutbacks in home-station training, cuts in repair of predeployment training equipment and delays in upgrades to barracks and family facilities at stations worldwide if the president’s $94 billion supplemental request isn’t approved by Congress by April 15, Gates said at a media roundtable.

If the funding impasse stretches past May 15, he said officials will consider even more severe measures: canceling orders on all repair parts for equipment not related to war, reducing repair work at all Army depots and sharply cutting predeployment training of some brigade combat teams.

“This in turn will cause units in theater to have their tours extended, because other units are not ready to take their place,” he said.

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HT: MM

Yes you read that right, the answer to Iraq is to follow the Korean War model:

With respect to foreign policy, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world.
…
As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. “When comes the end?” asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.

I wonder if anyone has bothered to tell Senator Webb the US still has nearly 30,000 US soldiers in South Korea and that the Korean War has not ended.  Did Senator Webb go to the Uri Party school of history?  Let me get this right the Democratic "exit strategy" from Iraq involves keeping at least 30,000 US soldiers in Iraq 50 years from now and signing an armistice with who?  Iran?  Al Qaida?  I wonder if Senator Webb will be willing to be the US representative to the signing of the GWOT Armistice Agreement with Bin Laden, Assad, and Ahmadinejad sitting on the other side of the table from him?  Then the Democrats can rely on the UN to enforce the armistice as well as it does with Hezbollah. 

Plus when Eisenhower became President he did not immediately end the actual official combat of the Korean War as the senator claims.  The war raged on for months before the armistice was signed and the armistice was finally signed due to Eisenhower threatening to use nuclear weapons.  So using the Democratic model for success the US should threaten to nuke Iran in order to get the GWOT armistice that hopefully Senator Webb will be willing to preside over and sign.  After the signing the US should then sign a defense treaty with Iraq like the US did with South Korea after the Korean War armistice.  Then to top of the great Democratic "exit strategy" the US should then be expected to have troops in Iraq 50 years from now.  Should the US call this force USFI, United States Forces Iraq? 

Another reason why as bad as the Republicans are I could never support the Democrats, what a bunch of demagogues more interested in expanding their own political power than supporting the troops in Iraq. 

OFK has a great write up on what the Democrats should have said last night.  Very funny, but oh so true.

UPDATE:  The moonbats are saying that this picture is a right wing hoax and that the picture is not from the chow hall in Baghdad but actually England because of the British flag in the background.  Well the moonbats are wrong again.  I don’t expect them to admit though.  I’m sure they come up with some Bush/Cheny/CIA conspiracy theory behind it next.  Here is a picture of the blogger who broke the story taking a picture of him in the chow hall sitting in the same chair as Kerry and holding a current Stars and Stripes newspaper proving that this is the chow hall in Baghdad. 

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This picture via LGF, from a US soldier in Iraq is just priceless:

Here is the note that the soldier wrote with the picture:

This is a true story…..Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O’Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand. You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!

I have to wonder what Senator Kerry was thinking by going to Iraq in the first place?  I’m guessing he was hoping he would get some good photo ops with the troops in order to show that he is not anti-military.  Well it appears he isn’t going to be getting that photo op he is so desperately seeking any time soon.