Archive for the 'War & Warfare' Category

Michael Fumento sent me a note linking to an update of his “Band of Brothers” article (The Weekly Standard).  Go on over to his web site and take a look at both his blog and two newsletters directly from Ramadi.  Oh, by the way.  Michael intends to go back to Ramadi in September.

Band of Brothers Update

FNC is just reporting that Israeli rockets have for the first time in this conflict hit Lebanese military installations and killed Lebanese soldiers.  I have watched for several days now wondering what Israel is doing.  It would appear that they are attempting to make the balance of Lebanon learn the very hard way that it is going to be hurtful to allow Hezbollah to occupy southern Lebanon, thus forcing Lebanese troops to pick a fight with Hezbollah.  However, the Strategy Page reminds us that there was civil war in Lebanon for years:

July 16, 2006: Iran aside, there hasn’t been a really noisy response from the Moslem world about Israel’s military operations against Lebanon. Notably subdued is the response from the Arab countries; it’s mostly been mumbling about the plight of the Palestinians and such. Could this mean that the principal Arab leaders are not all that unhappy to see Hizbollah get it in the neck? After all, most of the Arabs are Sunni, while Hizbollah and Iran are Shia. The exception that proves the rule is Syria, which has a Shia leadership. But most Arabs fear Iran, not because most Iranians are Shia, but because Iranians are not Arabs. Iran has been the regional superpower for over three thousand years. Iran is building nuclear weapons. Iran is backing Shia Arab factions in Iraq that would support turning Iraq into an Iranian ally. Also scary is the fact that Iran is currently run by a religious dictatorship. Most Arabs have noted how that worked in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan and want no part of it. Worse, the Iranian religious leadership believes that they would do a better job running the Hejaz (the region of Saudi Arabia containing Mecca and Medina and the most holy places in Islam). For centuries, the Turks kept the Iranians out of the Hejaz. But who would keep nuclear armed Iranians out? Perhaps worst of all, what if Iran tried attacking Israel with nukes, and both nations went at it with nuclear weapons. Iran has loudly proclaimed its aim of destroying Israel, but Israel has nuclear weapons, and no desire to be destroyed. The Arabs would be caught in the middle of all this.The Sunni Arab world always saw Hizbollah as an Iranian branch office on the Mediterranean. Hizbollah was also seen as one of the reasons the Lebanese civil war, that began in 1975, went on for so long (until 1990, when everyone called it quits, mainly because of sheer exhaustion). Sunni Arabs also take a dim view of how the Shia Alawite sect has controlled Syria (a majority Sunni country) for two generations. The Syrian Alawites hang on via subsidies from Iran. Sunni Arabs have always despised Shia, and would like to see the Lebanese and Syrian Shia put in their place (subordinate, very subordinate). Having Israel do a lot of the heavy lifting is seen as an added bonus.The increasing openness of the Lebanese government about wanting to disarm militias may have sparked Hizbollah’s cross-border raid into Israel. Hizbollah leadership may have decided that the best way to avoid being disarmed was to provoke a crisis with Israel. There’s a chance that all Lebanese would unite to defend against the Israeli attacks. In the wake of that, Hizbollah would again be national heroes, not a private, Islamic radical militia run by Iranian religious fanatics. 

Is it not possible that Israel, which seems to know everything about everything in the middle east because of its intelligence capabilities, does not know or see that the Lebanese government cannot force Hezbollah out?  They have tried, and it led to the civil war that existed for so many years.

Also while watching FNC, I found myself in agreement with Maj. Bob Bevelacqua.  It seems strange.  I have always found him to be an unceasingly obnoxious, preening, arrogant know-it-all, self-proclaimed expert on everything in the world, usually giving commentary that ends up running counter to the administration’s positions (e.g., I have heard him side with Sen. Kennedy before).  But on this I agree.  He was livid over Israel’s targeting of Lebanese infrastructure, essentially saying that it will effect changes that are directly contrary to their aim.

I believe that Israel has a small window of opportunity.  This window seems even to be there with the rest of the middle east.  It seems that everyone would give them a pass, so to speak, to go in and destroy Hezbollah.  But right now they are targeting Lebanese infrastructure and military installations.

The strategy is puzzling to say the least, and perhaps deadly in the worst case.  Israel cannot let this opportunity slip away without massive changes in the nature and makeup of southern Lebanon.  If these changes do not result from this exchange, Hezbollah will be strengthened, they will claim victory, they will be completely unopposed in Lebanon, Iran and Syria will escape without so much as their proxy being taken out, the focus will have been taken away from the Syria/Iran connection to terror and the Iranian nuclear program, and radical Islam over the middle east and beyond will feel a sense of accomplishment over not just the survival of the Shia version of UBL (Nasrallah), but the victorious challenge he made to Israel and the U.S.

Time is slipping away.  What is Israel doing?  Exchanging rocket for rocket and targeting infrastructure that has absolutely nothing to do with Hezbollah?

It is time to unleash the dogs of war.  Will they do it?

On July 11 I posted a press release by Joseph Casas (along with a little editorial commentary), attorney to John Jodka, detailing the difficulty in defending a case in which they have not even been able to get experts to the alleged scene of the crime.  But just prior to this press release came another article I should have picked up on, published in the North County Times – The Californian.  We learn, among other things that:

Civilian attorneys for eight Camp Pendleton men accused of murdering an Iraqi civilian in April said Tuesday that military lawyers assigned to assist their clients have been too busy to provide much help on the cases.

The seven Marines and one Navy corpsman have hired civilian attorneys in addition to being assigned military counsel, the latter of whom are said to be bogged down with large caseloads.

“(It’s) the issue of the moment, one which prompted a scream from me this weekend,” Carlsbad-based attorney David Brahms, a retired Marine general hired to represent Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington, said Tuesday. “The government proudly proclaims that they have given each of the eight (accused men) two military counsel.

“It’s a bit illusory because neither of the counsel offered to me have the time to do anything.”

Brahms said the two military defense attorneys are well-qualified and eager to assist. But one of the men, Brahms said, is a Miramar-based Marine with about 30 other cases on his plate. The other is based in Rhode Island and is in the middle of moving his family to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Jane Siegel, one of two private attorneys hired to represent Pfc. John Jodka III, an Encinitas native, said the lack of help thus far could affect their ability to defend the men against a team of what she said were top-flight military prosecutors.

“It is ridiculous to say that there is equity in counsel,” Siegel said. “There are five experienced prosecutors with nothing else to do, sitting in offices and working these cases, and we are still in the starting blocks waiting (for the assigned attorneys to be made available).”

…..

Siegel, a retired Marine colonel, said that one of the military attorneys assigned to assist in Jodka’s case is a reservist who is not slated to return to duty until Aug. 1.

No firm date for the Article 32 hearings has been set, Gibson said, adding that he was uncertain how the sessions would be sequenced. The hearings will determine if their clients will face trial.

Attorney Victor Kelley, representing Thomas, said he believed that about half of the hearings could get pushed back to September because of the defense work that remains to be done.

Siegel also said that she and her co-counsel, Joseph Casas, would like to delay the hearings until they can speak with witnesses from the men’s battalion.

Among the things we learn is that the press release by Joseph Casas was on point.  It didn’t turn to the left or the right or exaggerate in the least — it was straight and true.  Also among the things we learn is that the civilian lawyers cannot get even the most basic of help from the Marines in order to prepare the defense of the Pendleton 8, to wit, the lawyers defending the Pendleton 8 have not even been able to debrief the witnesses, and their clients are in a death penalty case.

The whole time, the Pendleton 8 are sitting in the brig while their case might be suffering irreparable prejudicial harm.  I said it in the last post … I’ll say it in this post.  I don’t know what happened in Hamdania.  But I do know one thing.  This just isn’t right.

You might notice that I am posting this in two categories: war and politics.  I will continue posting in both categories until the end of the case.  If the Pendleton 8 are found guilty and the case seems to me to have been straight and true, I will leave all posts concerning the Pendleton 8 alone.  The posts belong in both categories.  But if they are found innocent, I will go back and delete the “war” category and ensure that all posts are in only the “politics” category.  Why?  Because this whole thing will have been entirely political.

It has been widely known for some time that Hezbollah has been funded by Iran, but that they also have members and supporters in the U.S.  Some of these supporters have worked hard at raising monies for Hezbollah.  But the presence of Hezbollah cells in the U.S. goes far beyond financial resourcing of the main Hezbollah forces in souther Lebanon.  A Washington Times Editorial from May 20, 2005 notes that:

Although the organization has yet to launch an attack on U.S. soil, its U.S. activities are far from benign. Its work in this country has two major purposes: One is to raise money and smuggle arms to Hezbollah fighters, often by criminal activities ranging from credit-card fraud to cigarette smuggling; and the other is to conduct surveillance behind enemy lines, with a possible eye toward launching attacks on U.S. targets in the event of an armed conflict between the United States and Tehran. Like his backers in Iran, Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah routinely denounces the United States and Israel as his organization’s main enemies. Given the events of September 11, and given Hezbollah’s own record of kidnapping, torturing and killing Americans when it has had the opportunity, we ignore the group’s operations in this country at our peril. 

This admonition is especially salient as we face off the Iranians over potential nuclear weapons.  Lest we think that since Hezbollah’s primary enemy is Israel they are not also focused on the U.S., Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has some words for us:

“The people of the region will receive [America] with rifles, blood, arms, martyrdom and martyrdom operations,” Nasrallah said in a speech delivered a week before the war began. His remarks were broadcast on Al Manar, the group’s Beirut-based satellite television station.“In the past, when the Marines were in Beirut, we screamed, ‘Death to America!’ ” Nasrallah said. “Today, when the region is being filled with hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, ‘Death to America!’ was, is and will stay our slogan.”

As to their capability, funding, training and motivation, no one should doubt that they are capable of much more than Al Qaida has been able to perpetrate thus far.

Many terrorism analysts and experts rate Hezbollah as the best organized and most competant Islamist terrorist organization in the world.  With an annual budget of likely well over $100 million coming from Iran, Syria and its criminal organzations in the West, it boasts more than 25,000 men under arms.  Having pushed Israel out of its security zone in southern Lebanon and the American and French peacekeepers our of Beirut, they are arguably the most successful terrorist organization of the modern era.

The events of 9/11 actually were somewhat of a thorn in the side of Hezbollah, causing focus on terrorism — including Hezbollah — when Nasrallah would rather have had the opportunity to prepare for his jihad without the pot being stirred up by Al Qaida.  His positon is:

Let the entire world hear me.  Our hostility to the great Satan [American] is absolute … regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, “Death to America” will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan.  Death to America!

At least seven Hezbollah operations have been uncovered by the FBI and State Department (see here).  There are even Hezbollah operations in Latin America, and a Mexican smuggling ring that specializes in getting new terrorists across the border.

Now we learn yesterday — July 15 — the following information from the London Times:

IRAN’S president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended a meeting in Syria earlier this year with one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, according to intelligence experts and a former national security official in Washington.

US officials and Israel intelligence sources believe Imad Mugniyeh, the Lebanese commander of Hezbollah’s overseas operations, has taken charge of plotting Iran’s retaliation against western targets should President George W Bush order a strike on Iranian nuclear sites.

Mugniyeh is on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists

It is being reported that:

The London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Saturday that “Washington has information according to which Israel gave Damascus 72 hours to stop Hizbullah’s activity along the Lebanon-Israel border and bring about the release the two kidnapped IDF soldiers or it would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences.

Foxnews (from AP) is reporting:

JERUSALEM — A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday. Elite Iranian troops helped fire the missile, a senior Israeli intelligence official said.

One sailor was killed and three were missing.

The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship late Friday.

The official added that the troops involved in firing the missile are from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an elite corps of more than 200,000 fighters that is independent of the regular armed forces and controlled directly by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Initial information indicated the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces. But the army’s investigation showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

“We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah,” Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press. 

I have always wondered about the difference between Israeli intelligence and U.S. intelligence.  How can Israel get the rapid, accurate and meaningful intelligence that they do in a region of the world that hates them so deeply?  Why can’t the U.S. do the same thing?  Israel relies on intelligence to keep their nation secure, and so their future depends on it.

Does the future of the U.S. depend any less on getting good intel with feet on the ground?  In fact, if we are at war with Iran (by proxy, because Iran is the terror-master in the middle east as Michael Ledeen has always been quick to point out), why don’t we know more than we do about where they are with their weapons programs?

Update posted on July 20, 2006.  Stay tuned.  Coming soon to the Captain’s Journal are our own proposed plans for war with Iran.  The Defense Department plans discussed below will fail.  Included will be the outline for a comprehensive strategy, justification and intended results.

**** SCROLL FOR UPDATES **** 

It is pretty much universally acknowledged that (a) Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and (b) Iran is behind not only the existence of Hezbollah, but also the kidnappings of the Israeli soldiers and therefore the current situation in the middle east.  Iran has been conducting war by proxy since the creation of Hezbollah with the help of Syria, and for some reason, Ahmadinejad has chosen this point in time to start a war.  He also doesn’t seem to be too troubled by any response he might receive from Israel or the U.S.  His bluster and threats shows that he believes Iran to be immune from a successful retaliatory strike from Israel (and it would seem that he believes the U.S. to be too hamstrung by lack of intelligence and/or political baggage at home to act decisively in the middle east).  On at least some of this, he might appear to be correct.

Seymour Hersh over at The New Yorker did a fascinating piece back in April entitled “The Iran Plans.”  In this very good piece, we learned that there has been fairly directed planning to knock back the nuclear infrastructure in Iran with a bombing campaign, supplemented if necessary by special operations at specific nuclear sites.  While I don’t doubt that planning has been and is underway, I was skeptical when I read this: it is prima facie absurd to walk into this with an illusions of victory without a high cost (politically and militarily).

Here was my thinking.  We will likely not use tactical nuclear weapons.  The world will be outraged, especially if we attack using nuclear weapons without first having irrefutable evidence of a nuclear program.  An attack of this nature invariably destroys the evidence we need.  The Iranians have had a chance to study our conventional capabilities in Afghanistan, and have buried their centrifuges deep enough that we cannot effect them.  In fact, I would predict that the facilities are deep enough under ground to avoid destruction — with some safety margin.  If I was the engineer responsible for designing the defense features of the facilities, that is what I would do.

So what is really needed are boots on the ground.  I have serious doubts that there is any foolish planning for regime change or occupation of Iran at the Pentagon.  If the U.S. actually goes into Iran, it will be to retrieve centrifuges and weapons-grade fissile material.  The Army is too slow and lumbering to place inside Iran (with the possible exception of the 82nd and 101st Airborne; but use of them would be disastrous for reasons that would take me far afield).  There aren’t enough special forces operators for this to be exclusively a special forces war.  Therefore, the Marines have to do it.  They are designed for rapid, mobile and intense warfare with no support from anyone but the Marines (i.e., the MEU).

Now.  Proceeding from here, there is no way to get Marines to the sites that they need to be at.  For example, the primary enrichment site — Natanz — is about 250 miles from the border with Iraq and 450 miles from the border with Afghanistan (see here for map).  Many other potential nuclear sites are just as far, if not further, from either border (or the Persian Gulf).  The primary method of transport to hot zones, the helicopter, hasn’t the range to get Marines to these sites.  The new MV-22 (the Osprey) has a range of 242 nautical miles carrying 24 troops (using a conversion of 0.869 nautical miles to miles, this is 278 U.S. miles).  It is possible, though not likely, that we would choose this method of transport, if the Osprey could carry more troops.  This capacity is not enough.  Moreover, the MV-22 is not quite ready for service and there aren’t enough of them.  The target date for deployment is early 2007.

But then again, what is needed to stop the nuclear program is to set up a temporary perimeter around the nuclear sites, remove the fissile material if there is any, take the centrifuges, and then get out.  If bombing alone will not work, there aren’t enough special forces to do it, and there is no way to get enough special forces or Marines there to begin with, then what about all of this war planning with Iran?  How will this come off?

This was my thinking when I first read Hersh’s first article.  Fast forward to just a few days ago, and Seymour Hersh has posted another interesting piece entitled “Last Stand: The military’s problem with the President’s Iran policy.”  A whole host of problems are becoming apparent to the military planners and strategists, and an apparent mini-war is going on in the Pentagon and State Department over if and just how such a thing as an attack on Iran would come off.

A senior military official told me, “Even if we knew where the Iranian enriched uranium was—and we don’t—we don’t know where world opinion would stand. The issue is whether it’s a clear and present danger. If you’re a military planner, you try to weigh options. What is the capability of the Iranian response, and the likelihood of a punitive response—like cutting off oil shipments? What would that cost us?

I have received this press release from Joseph Casas:

Hamdania: Press Release from Legal Counsel Joseph Casas

Representing PFC John J. Jodla III

July 11, 2006

“Perplexing Lack of Official Cooperation in Hamdania Case”

* Today is day 60 of confinement for PFC Jodka and the rest of the Pendleton 8.

* We have requested tons of evidence and have received nothing but the preliminary investigation – we have yet to get a full autopsy report.

* We’ve made several key expert/investigator requests and a site visit request – all of which are still unanswered … yesterday we requested a status on our requests and I have yet to receive a reply.

* The grave concern is that we have an Article 32 in early August (either week 1 or week 2) to prepare for and we don’t have what we need to defend this case.

* To make matters worse, appointed military defense counsel is out of the area (in 29 palms) and most of the military defense counsel are being recalled to active duty (i.e., reservists), out of area, and don’t have a place to work out of.  If the military is going to appoint defense counsel to assist the civilian counsel, then they can’t just do so using smoke and mirrors, they must appoint defense counsel that can truly assist in the defense.

* Time is of the essence in this case, the Marines are facing the death penalty!

Joseph N. Casas, J.D., M.B.A.

Casas Law Group, P.C.

Attorneys & Counselors at Law

www.casaslaw.com

End of Press Release, beginning of my comments.  This is all still current with the caveat that Casas has been contacted by the prosecutors who have told him that they are working on his requests.  Overall, my impression of all of this is that this is just plain wrong.  I keep hearing that the military justice system is the best on earth.  The military will not allow the guilty to go unpunished nor the innocent to be punished.  They are the fairest of the fair.

Well, tell me when all of this fairness starts.  Is there a date that I should be on the lookout for?  Good grief!  Legal wranglings begin soon and no one from the defense team has been able to get to the scene of the alleged crime (through no fault of their own).  How do you properly defend a case like this?  How do you take pride in a system that so far has given the defense nothing, not even an opportunity to see Hamdania?

Well, looky here!  Surprise, surprise.  Cooperation between Iran and North Korea.  I am sure that both Iran and North Korea need the missiles and nuclear technology to protect themselves against all of those threats (you know, Kuwait’s threats against Iran, and Liechtenstein’s threats against N. Korea).

In another post I made a few days ago, I criticized the MSM for failure to go into Ramadi (while I also sent people to another Michael Fumento article), saying they were too cowardly to do it.  Someone (incredibly) came to the defense of the MSM, and an argument ensued, until, that is, Michael Fumento weighed in.  He brought the argument to a swift and decisive conclusion, saying:

Insofar as I repeatedly noted in my Weekly Standard article that Todd Pitman was with me in Ramadi, it’s hardly a state secret. Todd is a good reporter and courageous, but his one-time stint in Ramadi (he’s back at home in Africa right now) cannot make up for the lack of MSM coverage in Ramadi or other areas outside Baghdad. As I noted in response to a letter to the Weekly Standard, it’s easy enough to google “Ramadi