Month: August 2005

A reminder for Mrs. Sheehan

In 2003, another military mother was considering joining an anti-war demonstration. She was dissuaded by this letter[*1] from her son:

Dear Mom,

It’s really your decision to march if you want to or not. You are the one who has to decide if what we are doing out here is right or not. My opinion is not yours.

I do, however, have things I would like for you and Grandma and everyone else at home to know.

I am a United States soldier. I was sworn to defend my country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. People may not agree with the things we are ordered to do. I would like to address those people by telling them that terrorism is not only a threat to us as Americans, but to many other innocent people in the world.

What type of country would we be if we didn’t defend the rights and freedoms of others, not because they’re Americans, but how about just because they’re human?

We live in a country where people feel secure with their daily lives. They do business like usual and don’t worry about the thought of terrorism actually happening to them.

The people of 9-11 thought the same thing. We now know that it can happen to anyone at any time.

Yet as Americans we’re afraid of losing our soldiers to defend our security. I can only speak for myself when I say that my life is an easy expense to ensure that my family and friends can live in peace.

I strongly believe in what we are doing and wish you were here to see for yourselves the honor and privilege that American soldiers aboard this ship are feeling, knowing that we are going to be a part of something so strong and so meaningful to the safety of our loved ones. Then you would know what this potential war is about.

We will stand tall in front of terrorism and defeat it. We as soldiers are not afraid of what may happen. We are only afraid of Americans not being able to understand why we are here.

I ask for your courage as Americans to be strong for us; I ask for your understanding in what we believe is right. I ask for your support in what we are sworn to do: defend our country and the life of all.

We will succeed in our task and will end the threat of terrorism in our back yard. We will also end the threat of terrorism in our neighbors’.

We have to remind ourselves of what this country stands for: life, liberty and justice for all. In order to maintain those rights we have to stop the threat of terrorism.

I am proud to be here. I will be coming home, but not until I know that it’s going to be safe for all Americans and for everyone I love.

My family is first. My country is where they live. I will defend it.

Lonnie J. LewisNavy corpsmanC Co. 1/4 WPN PLTUIC 39726FPO AP 966139726

P.S. Mom, please send this to everyone who has a hard time understanding why we are here. Ask the paper to put what I’ve said in a column so that others will know why we are here and what we are here for.

I love you all and will be home soon. I left my address so that if anyone feels like writing to let me know how they feel, they can.

“Supporting the troops” means that you support what this corpsman writes, as his is the opinion of the majority of our military. Opponents of the “war on terror” are falling into the classic military mistake of fighting the last war. Vietnam was over thirty years ago. This is a different time, this is a different war, this is a different military.

Able Danger: The 9/11 Commission Scandal

This story is–jawdropping. The 9/11 Commission ignored reports that military intelligence knew Mohammed Atta met was part of an al-Qaida cell in Brooklyn a year before the 9/11 attacks. Why? Apparently, because it didn’t fit into the Commission’s timeline. Congressman Curt Weldon is not happy with the Commission[*1] :

“The 9/11 commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house,” Weldon wrote in his letter Wednesday night.

“Therefore it is no small irony,” Weldon pointed out, “that the commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention.”

The 9/11 Commission was already seriously tainted by the inclusion of Clinton Administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie “I Built The Intelligence Wall” Gorelick. Now it appears that the Commission is in full CYA mode[*2] .

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Sept. 11 commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday.

Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission’s follow-up project called the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, had said earlier this week that the panel was unaware of intelligence specifically naming Atta. But he said subsequent information provided Wednesday confirmed that the commission had been aware of the intelligence.

The information did not make it into the final report because it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta’s whereabouts before the attacks, Felzenberg said.

The National Review has, fittingly, a review of What We Know[*3] :

* The 9/11 Commission Report, which everyone and their brother praised as a comprehensive and definitive analysis of the flaws in U.S. counterterrorism operations before 9/11, now has at least one giant glaring hole in it. One cannot help but wonder what else got left out, because some staffer or staffers seemed to think it wasn’t important enough. I relish the wording in this comment: “The 9-11 Commission’s job was to find and connect all the intelligence dots that obviously didn’t get connected prior to 9-11, and then recommend how we can connect the dots better and faster next time. It wasn’t part of their job to erase the dots they didn’t like, before connecting. Doing that, implies that their conclusions were arrived at well before the investigation was complete.”

Most intriguing question on the list: What were the documents that Sandy Berger was caught stuffing down his pants in the National Archive?

Family splits with Cindy Sheehan

Hometown newspaper[*1] reports that other members of the Sheehan family disagree with mother Cindy’s vocal anti-war demonstration:

In an e-mail to a San Francisco radio station, Cherie Quartarolo, a sister-in-law and godmother of Sheehan’s son, who was killed in action in Iraq in 2004, said: “We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son’s good name and reputation.’

She is being victimized, willingly or unwillingly, by a cynical anti-war movement that thinks nothing of exploiting a mother’s grief to advance their short-sighted agenda. By short-sighted, I mean: What do they think Iraq or the world would be like if the U.S. leaves Iraq to the barbarians?

Morning Whip, August 11, 2005

#10: Latest on the Air America scandal
#9: Girls like girly web sites
#8: Royals lose again
#7: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launch scrubbed again
#6: The Stones sell out
#5: Baghdad mayor tossed out
#4: Confirmed: Iran sends arms to Iraq
#3: Iraqis want more services
#2: Iraqi forces won’t be ready until next year
#1: Remember Hiroshima? Remember Pearl Harbor!

Remember Hiroshima? Remember Pearl Harbor!

Ralph Kinney Bennett at Tech Central Station[*1] remembers Hiroshima and what happened before the Bomb dropped, with the help of veteran Harold Agnew:

He was a young weapons scientist during World War II. He flew in the chase plane behind the Enola Gay and observed the detonation of the first nuclear weapon at Hiroshima.
. . .
Recently a Tokyo television network flew him to Japan to participate in a “discussion” with survivors of the atomic bombings. He was gracious. He was informative. He listened.

But when the group demanded an apology, Harold Agnew stood up and uttered three little words:

“Remember Pearl Harbor!”

The “discussion” was over.
. . .
In a later interview, reported in the Post, Agnew explained, “Many Japanese still refuse to take responsibility for what they did. They can point at us. But believe me, they did some awful bad things. We saved Japanese lives with those bombs — an invasion would have been worse.”

It’s intellectually lazy to wring hands about Hiroshima and Nagasaki without remembering the years of horror which preceeded those awful events. Perhaps as many as a million Japanese lives were spared due to the use of the Bombs. Dropping Little Boy and Fat Man was as neccessary as it was horrific. That is what war is: necessary and horrific.

Iraqi forces won’t be ready until next year

For you “timetable” fans, “a top U.S. military official” speaks[*1] :

Both Americans and Iraqis need “to start thinking about and talking about what it’s really going to be like in Iraq after elections,” said the military official, who spoke in an interview on the condition he not be named. “I think the important point is there’s not going to be a fundamental change.”

The official stressed that it was “important to calibrate expectations post-elections. I’ve been saying to folks: You’re still going to have an insurgency, you’re still going to have a dilapidated infrastructure, you’re still going to have decades of developmental problems both on the economic and the political side.”

Not only is Iraq saddled with years of Saddam’s abuse and neglect and with centuries of backwards-thinking Islamic oppression, it is also struggling to rebuild while fighting off fanatic thugs bent on only destruction. And the anti-war wackos back here in the West want to know when we can leave. Here’s a thought: maybe never. We’re still in Japan and in Germany sixty years after World War II. Because we were “humane,” because we did not utterly defeat and ruin Iraq but were merciful, it may actually take longer to bring that country fully into the world community than it did with our WWII opponents.

Iraqis want more services

Christian Science Monitor[*1] report:

Turki says he has a number of friends who have shut small businesses because of intermittent power, and worries that a weak economy will lead to an even less stable Iraq than the one now.

“We have two problems: the terrorists and the government that is stealing from us,” he explains.

He gestures to a tangle of wires hanging from a utility pole outside his shop, which he said exploded about a month ago.

A repairman from the Ministry of Public Works showed up a few days later and then demanded bribes from all of the businessmen on the street to get electricity to the neighborhood up and running again.

“We wouldn’t pay – we’re fed up with this stuff. The Americans can’t fix it and the government is just out for themselves. What did we vote for anyway?”

I’ll make the Timetable Chorus a deal: They give us a timetable for when the Iraqis can establish reliable basic services, and I’ll give them a timetable for withdrawing Western forces from Iraq.

Confirmed: Iran sends arms to Iraq

British intercept Iranian arms shipment[*1] into Iraq:

Britain yesterday described as “unacceptable” the smuggling of weapons from Iran into Iraq after revealing that a consignment was intercepted at the border between the two countries.

While complaints have been made in the past, it is relatively rare to have concrete evidence of such smuggling.

The British embassy in Tehran raised the issue at a meeting with the Iranian foreign ministry. Officials relayed the government’s concern and pressed Iran to acknowledge that there was a problem that should be dealt with.

I’m sure that diplomacy will deal effectively with this issue. After all, it’s been so successful in convincing the Iranians not to resume their nuclear program. Yep.