This is a fascinating read. One thing really stands out, the concern about getting the targets right and avoiding civilian casualties.
Major E, my formation leader walks into the briefing room, still in his jeans. He’s been called to come ASAP. What’s happening? He asks me. I update him, and we brief for our mission quickly. He is concerned about making mistakes, and bombing the wrong targets. He is experienced, and has been around long enough to see mistakes happen and innocent civilians killed.
He emphasizes that there is no rush, that we must check and recheck every coordinate we receive, make sure we understand EXACTLY what we are supposed to target.
“Get ready to receive targets,” announces the flight controller as we approach. Major E and I read back the information, verifying with the flight controller that we have no mistakes.
I sure wish I hit the “bad guys” and that there were no civilians hanging around the place.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah indiscriminately fires a rocket-a-minute at Israel
JERUSALEM, July 18 (UPI) — Shelling of Israel by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon reached a peak of one missile a minute for an hour Tuesday as Israel’s air force stepped up bombing runs.
By midday Tuesday, more than 1,000 missiles and other rounds had been fired into Israel in the weeklong cross-border barrage, the Arutz Sheva newspaper reported. However, while some Israeli injuries were reported, there were no fatalities, Ynetnews reported.
Howard Dean on the crisis in the Middle East,
â??If you think what’s going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn’t, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn’t get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians.â?Â
Yes, he just said moral authority and Bill Clinton in the same sentence. And thank God Clinton solved the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, just imagine how difficult things would be now if we had to deal with that on top of everything else. Ah, the good old days, when AlQaeda was free to do their work uninterrupted. When they were attacking American interests around the world, slaughtering innocents at the World Trade Center in 1993, at our African embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, at military barracks in Saudi Arabia and onboard the USS Cole. Back when the world’s leading terrorist was the most frequent visitor to the White House (Arafat). The good old days indeed.
You have to wonder what the Republicans ever did to deserve Howard Dean. Is he the Manchurian candidate, secretely programmed to help the GOP every time he opens his mouth?
Our good friend Matt at Blackfive.net comments on one of the comments from one of our visitors regarding Kevin’s blog post “What-an-honor-pundit-review-hosts-editors-desk-podcast-at-militarycom” I could not agree more. Thanks Matt.
Over at Pundit Review on a post about their producing the Military.com’s Editor’s Desk Podcast this week, there’s a commenter claiming that questioning one’s patriotism is just a way to silence debate.
It could easily be argued that removing the patriotism question from the table is really the way to silence debate. Six months ago, I wrote the following about military blogs and our role in this war (and, yes, I do question the patriotism of the New York Times when they MANIPULATE words to fit their own template rather than tell the truth) – read on:
Matt concludes his post with these profound words and I could not agree more.
Until they are pro-victory, it’s not much of a stretch to say that they are not patriotic.
entire post here.
Thanks to Pundit Review’s friend at JihadWatch Janet Levy for sending this outstanding article entitled “Beheading Nations – The Islamization of Europe’s Cities”
For anybody ignorant enough to believe that there is no active global Jihadist movement/threat whose sole purpose is global Caliphate and imposition of Sharia Law on every nation in the world this article is a must read.
We will also be discussing this issue tonight on the program with military subject matter expert Ralph Peters who has writen an outstanding book I would highly reccomend called “Never Quit The Fight.”
We have seen videos on TV of Muslim Jihadis beheading infidel hostages. Less attention has been paid to the fact that Muslims are beheading entire nation states. Although this is happening in slow motion, it is no less dramatic. Historically, the major cities have constituted a country’s “head,” the seat of most of its political institutions and the largest concentration of its cultural brainpower. What happens when this “head” is cut off from the rest of the body? In many countries across Western Europe, Muslim immigrants tend to settle in major cities, with the native population retreating to minor cities or into the countryside. Previously, Europeans or non-Europeans could travel between countries and visit new cities, each with its own, distinctive character and peculiarities. Soon, you will travel from London to Paris, Amsterdam or Stockholm and find that you have left one city dominated by burkas and sharia to findâ?¦â?¦yet another city dominated by burkas and sharia. For some reason, this eradication of unique, urban cultures is to be celebrated as “cultural diversity.” Britain’s population is projected to rise by more than seven million in the next 25 years. The predictions were even greater than those made by the Migrationwatch UK think-tank, whose forecasts had been dismissed in the past as alarmist. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, said the figures were ‘”staggering.” “They totally demolish the Government’s claim that it has a ‘managed migration’ policy. In fact they show that immigration into the UK is out of control.” British citizenship has been granted to nearly one million foreign nationals since Labour and Tony Blair came to power in 1997. “Grants of citizenship have quadrupled under the present Government. This is a direct result of their ‘no limits’ immigration policy.” “Immigration on this scale is changing the nature of our society without public consent. It is no longer acceptable.”
Iâ??m not a big fan of reviews that hail something as â??importantâ?Â, but Ralph Peters new book Never Quit the Fight, is the exception to the rule. Given the state of the Middle East, and of our own resolve here at home, I am quite comfortable with that statement. Ralph Peters is telling some cold hard truths that we ought not ignore.
Peters has unassailable credibility as a strategist and as an honest broker. Read a few sentences about Rumsfeld and the occupation of Iraq and his agenda becomes clear, he is about fixing problems and positioning freedom for future success against tryanny.
Had we planned to botch the occupation of Iraq, we hardly could have done worse than the administration did without a plan. Despite inadequate support and abysmal civilian leadership, our troops saved us from disaster.
This is classic Ralph Peters, he is a realist and an optimist.
He has a keen understanding of the threats we face because he has talked with the enemy, traveled in their countries and studied their religion. He displays supreme confidence that we can win this struggle, if we chart the right course.
His conclusions as to how we do that are not for the meek or politically correct. His assessment of Islam is brutal. His takedown of Europe is devastating.
They can dish it out abundantly, but continental Europeans can no more take criticism than their welfare armies could have taken Baghdad.
…For Europeans..-â??freedomâ? means freedom from things; from social and economic risk, from workplace insecurity and personal responsibility, from too much competition in the marketplace or too much scrutiny of governing elites.
For Americans, freedom means the freedom to do; To make our own way, to struggle, to achieve, to rise (to climb social, educational, or economic ladders), to move beyond our parentsâ?? lot in life and give our children better chances still.
His critical words are not spared for the US military or the government. His warning about the corrosive impact of mass media is spot on.
A paradox of our time is that the overwhelmingly secular global media-a collection of natural-born religion-hatersâ??have become the crucial accomplices of the suicide bomber fueled by rabid faith. Mass murders are lionized as freedom fighters, while our own troops are attacked by the press they protect for the least waywardness or error.
This book really makes you think, about the long-term war we face with Islamic radicals, and about the immediate needs we must address in order to fully, robustly meet this challenge. As events unfold daily in the Middle East, Peters book becomes an essential resource. Every news and political junkie will be better off for reading Never Quit The Fight.
The House Energy Committee released a report today that debunks the 2001 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ) Report that purported to demonstrate that man made “global warming” was occuring as evidenced by the 1 degree “warming” over the last 100 years. Paleoclimatologist Michael Mann worte the initial Report in 1999 on which the IPCC based its report.
The report commissioned by the House Energy Committee, due to be released today, backs up and reinforces that conclusion. The three researchers — Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University — are not climatologists; they’re statisticians. Their task was to look at Mr. Mann’s methods from a statistical perspective and assess their validity. Their conclusion is that Mr. Mann’s papers are plagued by basic statistical errors that call his conclusions into doubt. Further, Professor Wegman’s report upholds the finding of Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick that Mr. Mann’s methodology is biased toward producing “hockey stick” shaped graphs.
The lead researcher Mr. Wegman also offers this interesting insight regarding “social-network analysis”:
Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. “As analyzed in our social network,” Mr. Wegman writes, “there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis.” He continues: “However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.”
In other words, climate research often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge. And Mr. Wegman’s social-network graphs suggest that Mr. Mann himself — and his hockey stick — is at the center of that network.
By the way, Al Gore cites the flawed and now questionable 2001 IPCC Report in his book and movie to demonstrate man made “global warming” is occuring.
Read entire article here.
Thank you Papijoe for forwarding this along via discardedlies.com
Fighting Hezbollah
A thimbleful of cognac to Gregg at Pundit Review Radio and to papijoe for pointing out Lebanese support for Israel’s actions:
24. A message to the IDF
Please free our beloved tortured country from these crazed mullah-followers. Free our land from these bloody syrian and iranian agents. we want to live in peace.Please take caution to focus your attack where they are and not attack christian areas. we support you and bear you no ill will.
May god bless you.
Lebanese christian , Damour area
And check this one out:
22. Please no more empty words
I beg of Israel not to back off!!!!!!Please ignore the world and really go after hizbalah.
hizbalah is a foreign iranian/syrian implant in our beloved lebanon.
wipe them out , kill their leaders one by one. we want to live in peace with civilized nations.
Thank you
farid of lebanon