Taliban 2.0 - Made possible by POTUS & Hillary

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

These are the three kindest words I can use in conjunction with the dunderhead that sits in the White House and the failure that was his Secretary of State.

Obama & Hillary caused this issue in Iraq to become reality by emboldening the Jihhadists, arming them in Libya, failing in Benghazi and showing them that our WH would be unwilling to do anything to save our own people.

Take a good look at this HUMVEE as you and I paid for it.  It sits abandoned in Tikrit as Iraq's military was unable to defend themselves. Obama allowed this to happen with his cowardly cut & run.

Experts said so in 2008-2010.  Iraq was not ready to defend themselves.  They needed more time.  But President Stompy Foot decided in his infinite wisdom to withdraw our forces.

What an idiot.  Now, all we fought for and all we did to help Iraq will go to waste due to one imbicile who should never have been allowed to be POTUS.

I'd go on further but all it's doing is making me angrier.  I was in Fallujah from 2004-2005 and I saw the suffering of the Iraqis.  That will be nothing compared to what ISIS will do to them.

Taliban 2.0 - The shitstorm has yet to begin and it all falls on the idiot that fools elected President.

He owns this.

Being Home is the best & working with The Home Base Program

Been home for a month now and things are just starting to feel normal again. By normal I mean that I am starting to feel like I will be home and stay home. The first few weeks felt like a R&R as most time at home while deployed is 2-3 weeks.


Now, with Summer in place, I am looking forward to the things I missed over the last few years - 4th of July, Barnstable County Fair, Cape League Baseball and some time at the beach.
I am also working with the Home Base Program out of Massachusetts General Hospital. The VA has proven to be pretty useless as they don't listen and don't want to see things as they are. The VA seems dedicated to downplaying the issues that you have as if they validate them, it will be a "cost" to them. When it comes to the VA, it comes down to $$, not what is best for the Veteran.

The Home Base Program has been put together by MGH and the Red Sox foundation. If you are a Veteran of Iraq and/or Afghanistan and need help, they will assist you free of charge. The staff is attentive and focuses on what is needed, not what it costs.

I highly recommend you look into this great program. Click on the link below.

http://www.homebaseprogram.org/general-information.aspx

Gen. Stanley McChrystal writes about " The Courage to Change "

As a student of Leadership and a HR Professional, I have spoken to many about " change " and why it is so difficult for people.

WE are creatures of habit....each one of us has our daily routines and we use these to set our schedules on a daily basis. By doing so, we can control our life and try to have an expectation of what to expect.  I try to help others understand that "change" is the one true constant in life. 

Here, General Stanley McChrystal talks about how he had to come to grips with change to make sure his efforts and the efforts of his troops were effective.

This is part one of his posting and I will follow-up with part two when it is published.

The Courage to Change

By General Stanley McChrystal

May 14, 2013

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130514223634-86145090-the-courage-to-change?trk=NUS_UNIU_PEOPLE_FOLLOW-megaphone-fllw

 

In the spring of 2004, while riding in the back of a darkened helicopter that flew low across the desert floor of Western Iraq, I had an alarming realization. My team and I were en route back to our headquarters in Balad, Iraq, having spent several hours with one of our units based outside Fallujah, a troubled city in Anbar Province. My visit had, as usual, allowed me to spend time with incredible people doing exceptional work. But a few hours on the ground had confirmed a nagging sense I’d had for several months—and I knew then that the road ahead was to be even more difficult than I had first anticipated.

At 49 years old, I was a two-star general, and less than a year into what would ultimately be an almost five-year tour as the Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command. Within two years I would be wearing a third star, and would ultimately spend almost the entire command tour forward deployed in combat zones. My position placed me in charge of thousands of the United States’ most elite service-members, men and women who had been screened and tested at multiple levels throughout their careers to make it into the military’s most demanding units. I commanded Army Rangers and special operators; the most highly-selected Navy SEALs; the best helicopter pilots in the world; the Air Force’s finest medics and communicator;, and a host of brilliant specialists whose diverse expertise was required to keep our organization moving. We were thousands strong, dispersed around the globe, and by any measurable standard the best trained and most rigorously selected organization that the battlefield had ever seen. My force comprised people selected (amongst other qualities) for their inability to accept anything but victory: We were hard-wired to win.

All of this made my revelation that spring all the more difficult. We were losing. There were no front lines to measure, no enemy higher-headquarters to spy on. This type of conflict was new to us. My units were nightly engaging Al Qaeda in Iraq’s fighters, but our enemy’s influence continued to spread. We were pushing ourselves to our physical and mental edge, but the enemy network was expanding faster than we could move. Most importantly, every metric I could think of was trending negative: al Qaeda acts of violence were on the rise, shadow governments were surpassing the influence of local authorities, civilian casualties were steadily rising, car bombs were exploding every day in Baghdad. Meanwhile, my organization simply had no more capacity, human or technical. Like most soldiers, I’d never contemplated finding myself on the losing side in a war, but I was increasingly convinced that this was what if felt like.

The word—losing—pounded in my head as the hot desert air whipped through the helicopter. I had felt it in my gut for several months, and my visit that night had confirmed it for me intellectually.

But the challenge was this. Our people weren’t losing: They won all their fights. Our units weren’t losing: They could point to their progress. Every element of my several-thousand-strong task force was effectively and steadily winning when it came to their area and their problem set. Yet, collectively, we were still losing. The challenge we faced, I was beginning to realize, was unlike anything we’d ever encountered—or, worse, anticipated—as a possibility.

The members of our force in Anbar were risking their lives every night to address the problem they faced. But did we have the right solution? More important, did we understand the real problem? It was hard for anyone in our force to truly articulate how their actions, effective as they were, tied to the larger effort across the battlefield to debilitate Al Qaeda’s insurgency. At best, I sensed, we were winning in small pockets—capturing enemy leaders and weapons—and hoping that this somehow supported an overarching strategy. At worst, we were risking, losing, and taking lives without knowing that those sacrifices were getting us any closer to ending the war.

At that point, on that night, I had more questions than answers. But I’d begun to understand what needed to be done. As the leader of this organization, I knew the first step would be significant, and it was one that only I could take. We needed to fundamentally change our organization, and that change would need to start with me. I knew, too, that I was entering what would be one of the most challenging periods of my career. I did so with a message that I and I alone could deliver to the Task Force. It went something like this:
You are the finest force the world has ever known, and I’m proud of everything you’re doing. You go out, night after night, into harm’s way—and do incredible things. As individual units, you're winning every time. I recognize and appreciate that. But I’m here to tell you we are losing this war. I know each of you is doing everything you can, and doing it better than history has ever seen. I also know that your families at home make sacrifices every day to support you, our mission, and our nation. I recognize and appreciate that.

So we need to make a choice. We can continue on this road, and all go home with medals and war stories, but those stories will all end with the fact that we, collectively, lost the war. Or, we can change how we operate. If we don’t, we will lose—of that I have no doubt. Changing will be a painful process, but the road we're on is destined for failure. So we start now. I will be here with you, every step of the way.

Thus began our journey

Find'em Catch'em Kill'em - "US Special Ops Have Become Much, Much Scarier Since 9/11"

I have written about " Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs".  The people in our country are the sheep and the Terrorists are the wolves who will mercilessly slaughter the sheep.  The only thing standing between them and the Wolves are " The Sheepdogs "

 



Many don't want to think about it but we live in a very, very, very dangerous world.  It would be nice if we could think otherwise but anyone who thinks there are not people plotting to kill us 24/7/365 is living in a fantasy world.

To deal with the " Wolves ", we have men who's sole job is to hunt the "Wolves" down.

Period.  They are the Joint Special Operations Command or (JSOC).

We have and operate many military agencies but the men who spend their days "taking out the trash" are the quiet professionals who keep us safe.  They are the tip of the spear.  They don't focus on "hearts & minds", only taking out the most dangerous enemies.

God Bless them.  I will not apologize to anyone about this as I support them as much as I supported what we did to Europe & Japan in WW2.  We leveled cities and burned them to the ground.  It was what was required.

War is a terrible thing but there are much worse things such as the loss of Freedom and our nation.

Rock on Boys.  Take the bad guys out.  You have my support.

US Special Ops Have Become Much, Much Scarier Since 9/11

Michael Kelley | May 10, 2013, Business Insider      

 

After Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration began waging a global war on terrorism both openly and on the "dark side."

The full scale of the shadow war is just coming out now, as detailed in "Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield" by investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Scahill.

Directed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the White House expanded the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) into a global capturing and killing machine.

JSOC, which includes troops from a variety of America's best units, grew from fewer than 2,000 troops before 9/11 to as many as 25,000 today.

While most of their missions remain classified, JSOC operators have been used far more aggressively in the past decade than ever before.

"Their real days of glory ... really only started after 9/11," Colonel Walter Patrick Lang, who spent much of his career in covert operations, told Scahill. "They didn't do a lot of fighting before that."
Known within the covert ops community as ninjas or "snake eaters," JSOC operators train to track a target, fix his position, and then finish him off without being detected.

"They're the ace in the hole," General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton, told Scahill. "If you need someone that can sky dive from thirty miles away, go down the chimney of a castle, and blow it up from the inside — those are the guys you want to call on."

The command was "created in secrecy to perform operations that were kept hidden to virtually all other entities of military and governments," Scahill writes, and the White House took full advantage of that.

From "Dirty Wars":

It was the beginning of what would be a multiyear project by Rumsfeld and Cheney to separate this small, elite, surgical unit from the broader chain of command and transform it into a global killing machine.

What they developed looked like a paramilitary CIA, according to Scahill's reporting.
 By late 2002 JSOC operators were discreetly based in Qatar and Kenya for potential missions in Yemen and Somalia. It developed an in-house signals intelligence unit, known as the Activity, and Rumsfeld created a JSOC human intelligence collection operation, called the Strategic Support Branch, that mirrored the capabilities of the CIA.

The addition of the intelligence aspect "effectively meant that JSOC was free to act as a spy agency and kill/capture force rolled into one," Scahill writes.

JSOC even ran an interrogation program, parallel to the CIA's black sites, that would provide the administration with even more flexibility and less oversight (See: Camp Nama).

Rumsfeld worked to make sure that the unit was "unrestrained and unaccountable to anyone except him, Cheney, and the president" while Cheney began going to JSOC headquarters at Fort Bragg in North Carolina to give direct action orders.

"It grew and went out of control under the vice president. It kinda went wild," Vincent Cannistraro, a career CIA counterterrorism officer, told Scahill. "There were a couple of places where, because they weren't coordinated, they weren't informed, they killed people that were not real targets. They were wrong. It happened, frequently."

In September 2003 JSOC, led by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was running the show in Iraq, including training Iraqi Special Ops units that became unaccountable death squads.
It was also making its presence known in Afghanistan.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (Ret.), a career military intelligence officer who wrote the book "Operation Dark Heart," wrote that JSOC's force in Afghanistan "had the best technology, the best weapons, the best people — and plenty of money to burn."

From "Dirty Wars":

Unlike the Green Berets, JSOC was not in the country to win any hearts and minds. Once JSOC took charge, the mission would no longer resemble anthropology. It was to be a manhunt, at times an assassination machine.

In early 2004 Rumsfeld signed a secret order, known as the Al Qaeda Network Execute Order, that "streamlined JSOC's ability to conduct operations and hit targets outside of the stated battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan."
By mid-2004 JSOC operations in Iraq had accelerated dramatically to the point where they were effectively "running the covert war buried within the larger war and controlling the intelligence," Scahill writes.

In 2005 and 2006 JSOC had its hands full with the Iraqi insurgency. It recruited 12 "tactical action operatives" from the private military company Blackwater from a secret raid (code-named Operation Fury) targeting an al Qaeda facility inside Pakistan.

Scahill notes that by 2007 the budget for U.S. special operations had grown to more than $8 billion annually, up 60 percent from 2003.

In January 2007, Scahill writes, JSOC began "a concentrated campaign of targeted assassinations and snatch operations" in Somalia while a CIA-backed Ethiopian force began an ill-fated invasion of the country.

In June 2008 Vice Admiral William McRaven took charge of JSOC, and the next month President Bush approved a secret order authorizing Special Ops Forces (as opposed to their Blackwater contractors) to conduct strikes in Pakistan without the country's permission.

Special Operations Forces were now being used to "go in and capture or kill people who were supposedly linked to extremist organizations around the world, in some cases allied countries," a source dubbed "Hunter," an operator who worked with JSOC on acknowledged and unacknowledged battlefields, told Scahill.

From "Dirty Wars":

The mindset, [Hunter] said, was, "The world is a battlefield and we are at war. Therefore the military can go wherever they please and do whatever it is that they want to do, in order to achieve the national security objectives of whichever administration happens to be in power."

 

Shortly after Barack Obama took office in January 2009, Scahill writes, he gave "carte blanche to JSOC and the CIA to wage a global manhunt. Capture was option two."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-jsoc-in-dirty-wars-2013-4#ixzz2T5BUuLSP

Maria Goodavage pens a tribute to our K9 Warriors - "Soldier Dogs"

Here's a book that should be on the reading list of all who value the special relationship we share with man's best friends, our K9 companions.

WAR DOGS - an amazing tribute to man's best friends in peace and in war. Bravo Zulu to our troops and their 4 legged shipmates.

An excerpt from Maria Goodavage's book "Soldier Dogs"

By Morning Joe Staff

-

Fri Mar 16, 2012 8:26 AM EDT

7 a. m., just north of the town of Safar, Afghanistan, and Fenji M675 is already panting. Her thick, black German shepherd coat glistens in the hot August sun. Fenji is out in front of ten marines, leashed to a D-ring that’s attached to the body armor of her handler, Corporal Max Donahue. He’s six feet behind her and holds his rifle ready.

Fenji leads the marines down the flat dirt road, past the trees and lush vegetation in this oasis amid the deserts of southern Afghanistan. She ignores the usual temptations; a pile of dung, a wrapper from a candy bar. Her mission doesn’t include these perks. Her nose is what may keep them all alive today, and she can’t distract it with the trivial: Coalition forces have been sweeping Safar of insurgents and their bombs, allowing the Safar Bazaar marketplace to reopen and locals to start living normally again. The Taliban had to go somewhere else. So they headed north. And they planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) like seedlings, among the poppy fields and grape fields and off to the sides of roads, under thick weeds.

Around here, any step you take could be your last.

---

And that’s why Fenji is in the lead, walking point. IEDs are the top killer in Afghanistan— even with the highest technology, the best mine- sweeping devices, the most sophisticated bomb- jamming equipment, and the study of “pattern of life” activities being observed from remote piloted aircraft. But there is one response that the Taliban has no answer for: the soldier dog, with his most basic sense— smell— and his deepest desire— some praise, and a toy to chew.

“Seek!” Donahue tells Fenji, and they continue down the road, leading the men from the 3/ 1, (Third Battalion First Marines). She walks with a bounce to her step, tail up and bobbing gently as she half trots down the road. Every so often she stops and sniffs a spot of interest and, when she doesn’t find what she’s seeking, moves on. She almost looks like a dog out on a morning stroll in a park. Donahue, in full combat gear— some eighty pounds of it, including water for his dog— keeps up with her.

Fenji stops at a spot just a foot off the side of the road. She’s found something of great interest. Without taking her eyes off the spot, she sniffs around it swiftly and her tail starts to wag. Suddenly she goes from standing up to lying down, staring the entire time at the spot. The men have stopped walking and are watching her. Her wagging tail kicks up some dust. Everything is silent now. No more sniffing, no crunching of boots.

Suddenly a hushed, enthusiastic voice cuts through the dead quiet. “Fenjiii! That’s my girl!” In training exercises, Donahue is a lot more effusive, but out of the respect for the bomb, he makes his initial praise short and quick, calls her back, and they “un-ass” from the area. It could be the kind of IED someone sets off from a distance, not the type that goes off when you step on it. One of the marines marks it with a chartreuse glow stick, and they move on.

Within the next hour, Fenji alerts to three more roadside bombs. Donahue lavishes her with quiet praise every time. Twice after her finds, shortly after they get away from the bombs, he tosses a black Kong toy to his dog and she easily catches it. She stands there chewing it, reveling in the sound of Donahue’s praise and the feel of the hard rubber between her teeth and the gloved hand of her best pal stroking her head. Life doesn’t get much better than this for a military working dog. These are the moments they live for, when all the years of training, all the hard work, come together.

“I’m proud of you!” Donahue tells her, and he means it, and she wags hard. She knows she’s done well. She’s been with him for seven months now, and she has a great fondness for Donahue, her first handler, and he dotes on “my sweet girl.” She liked him from the moment they met at Camp Pendleton back in February. Nearly everyone who meets Donahue reacts the same way. There’s something about his big personality, his love of life, his dry humor, the way he looks after you. Fenji fell right in with him, and he immediately took to her. She was young, bright, eager to learn from him, and he swears she has a sense of humor. He once said that she gets his jokes before his friends do.

That’s probably because she tends to wag in his presence regardless of jokes. She’s just happy to be near him. She’s three, he’s twenty- three, and together they’re a formidable bomb- finding force.
Their bond might contribute to their success on missions. She sleeps at the foot of Donahue’s cot every night out here; she joins him for card games with the other marines; she eats next to him at the patrol base where they’ve been stationed during this mission.

He lets her have some of his food “because my girl deserves it.”

The explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) technicians usually accompany the squad but had been called to another spot this morning. They’re on their way back to investigate the IEDs and defuse them. Donahue and the other marines go into action to protect the EOD techs in case of an ambush. They take positions to secure the area.

Donahue finds a great spot for his sector of fire, at a Y in the road. Its wide open here, and he can see a few hundred meters around him. He fills Fenji’s portable bowl with water from his CamelBak. As she laps it up, he lies belly down, propped up on his elbows, and positions his rifle. He’s facing away from the field where some of the other marines are. He’s got a tiny village about two hundred meters away in his sights. If there’s trouble, that’s where it could start. A quenched Fenji lies down beside him a few feet away, and they wait.

The EOD techs arrive and get to work, carefully digging up the first IED, about one hundred meters from Donahue. One wrong move and they’re done for, and the Taliban adds another tally mark to its scorecard. One of the techs extracts the bomb from its hiding place and bends over it to take a look. Down the road, Donahue adjusts himself slightly to get more comfortable.

Three klicks south, in Safar, Corporal Andrei Idriceanu hears a terrible explosion as he and his dog sweep a building for explosives. “That could not be good,” he thinks, but he tries not to think about it too much.

Excerpt from SOLDIER DOGS © by Maria Goodavage. Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LCDR Michael Scott Speicher, USN - lost on this day 17 JAN 1991 over Iraq

I wanted to make sure that today did not pass without a mention of LCDR Michael Scott Speicher, USN who was lost on this day 17 JAN 1991 over Iraq.  He was the first US Casulalty of the Gulf War.

I wear his name on a POW/KIA Braclet and will do so as long as I live as he was missing for 18 years, and it is my mission to make sure he is not forgotten.  He was a dedicated warrior, father, husband and shipmate to many. Bravo Zulu LCDR - Fair Winds and Following Seas.

Twists, turns snagged search for Speicher

Defense Intelligence Agency official says a number of factors led to 18-year vacuum between pilot’s disappearance, discovery of his grave

 

By Pamela Hess - The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time. The United States just didn’t believe him.

So it took the most powerful military in the world 18 years to find the remains of the only U.S. Navy pilot shot down in an aerial battle in the 1991 Gulf War.

Michael Scott Speicher’s bones lay 18 inches deep in Iraqi sand, more or less right where a group of Iraqis had led an American search team in 1995.

The search for Speicher was frustrated by two wars, mysteriously switched remains, Iraqi duplicity and a final tip from a young nomad in Anbar province.

U.S. officials often were blinded by the same myopia that tainted prewar intelligence — the American conviction that Hussein’s government lied about everything. As it turned out, the Iraqis lied, but sometimes they told the truth.

For more than a decade, speculation swirled that the 33-year-old Speicher, a lieutenant commander when he went missing, had been captured alive. That was disproved by the team that found and confirmed his remains.

“He wasn’t captured or tortured,” said Thomas Brown, chief of the Intelligence Community POW/MIA analytic cell at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Brown, who worked on Speicher’s case for 15 years, described to The Associated Press in an exclusive interview how the threads leading to the pilot got so tangled.

Speicher was shot down by an Iraqi MiG 100 miles west of Baghdad on Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of the war to drive Saddam’s invading forces from Kuwait. Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced the pilot’s death as the first casualty of the war, but no search and rescue effort was launched.

When the war ended that March, the U.S. demanded the return of Speicher’s remains. But because of a data glitch, the U.S. erroneously pinpointed his crash site south of Baghdad.
The Iraqis were puzzled. They knew an F-18 had been shot down west of the capital. But they followed the botched U.S. coordinates and searched for Speicher’s plane in the south, finding nothing.

The search was soon complicated by the Iraqi discovery of a different crash site — of a downed Air Force A-10 fighter. The Iraqis brought the unidentified American A-10 pilot’s remains to a Basrah hospital for safekeeping, labeling them “Mickel” for a clumsy translation of what might have been the pilot’s belt buckle manufactured by McDonnell Douglas.

Just before those remains were to be handed over to the U.S., Shiites rebelling against Saddam seized the hospital, forcing Iraqi officials to make a hasty gamble.

If they didn’t turn over the pilot’s remains, they would be in violation of the U.N. resolution ending the war, and the war would not be officially over. So the Iraqis instead handed over to American authorities a 4-pound piece of another cadaver and said it belonged to “Mickel.”

U.S. officials already had accounted for the dead A-10 pilot, so the unidentified remains stumped them. Were they Speicher’s? By May 1991, DNA tests ruled that out. Iraq was being duplicitous, but the U.S. couldn’t figure out what was behind the switch.

Rumors from Hussein’s inner circle about the “Mickel” remains began to morph into whispering that the Iraqis held a live American pilot. The rumors were picked up by U.S. intelligence.

Two years later, in 1993, Speicher’s crash site was found by a party of Qatari falcon hunters. Brown believes the Iraqis already had identified the crash site but failed to come forward out of fear they would be accused of covering it up. So instead, the Iraqis led the Qatari hunters to the site, Brown said, so they would “stumble” on the wreckage.

The hunters gave the U.S. Embassy in Qatar a piece of a plane containing a serial number that matched Speicher’s F-18.

U.S. military officials began planning an operation to retrieve Speicher’s remains. The plan was dropped in 1995 when the Red Cross secured permission from Iraq for a humanitarian search team to excavate the crash site.

Shepherded by Iraqi officials, the search team was led by a local Bedouin boy to Speicher’s half-buried flight suit. Nearby were expended flares, part of an ejection seat and pieces of a life raft. But the searchers found no remains. They left suspicious, convinced that they had been set up even though Brown now says Saddam’s government was telling the truth about the site.

In January 2001, President Bill Clinton changed Speicher’s status from killed in action to missing, echoing U.S. belief he could be alive. An intelligence assessment said Speicher probably had survived the crash and Iraq was either holding him prisoner or hiding his remains.

In the summer of 2002, as the Bush administration prepared to invade Iraq, new intelligence intercepts suggested Speicher was being moved between dozens of secret sites inside Iraq.
Before the 2003 invasion, “we were positive we were getting him back,” said Buddy Harris, a Speicher friend who later married the pilot’s widow. “We were getting ready to go over and meet with him. We had the whole family prepped, with psychologists ready to help.”

At least three different times, based on U.S. government information, Speicher’s relatives thought they were getting him back, Harris said.

Brown believes the Iraqi government was trying to convince President George W. Bush that Speicher was still alive to protect Saddam from being targeted when the invasion came.
If that was the motivation, it backfired. Bush used Speicher’s case as more evidence that Saddam had to be ousted. After Bush cited Speicher in his September 2002 speech at the United Nations, the rumors of Speicher’s movements abruptly stopped, Brown said.

After the U.S. invasion, intelligence analysts searching for Speicher entered the Hakmiya jail in central Baghdad and dug up the grounds. They found remains, but none that matched Speicher’s DNA.

They did find a jail cell wall that appeared to be marked with the initials “M.S.S.” — and wondered if they had been scratched by the missing pilot.

The Army dismantled the wall section and sent it back to the U.S. for testing. That same summer a soldier discovered similar initials and what appeared to be a date— 9-15-94 — scratched into an I-beam in a parking garage in Tikrit. The FBI cut down the beam and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution for testing.

But the markings turned out to be more false leads. The museum determined the Tikrit initials were made with a special ink reserved for Iraqi religious groups — and an American prisoner would not likely have had access to such sacred ink. While other “M.S.S.” markings were found all over Iraq, the analysts were never able to tie them to Speicher.

The searchers continued to press every lead. For six years, soldiers and Marines deployed in Anbar were told to ask people there if they had heard anything about the missing American pilot.

The instructions finally paid off in July. A sheik told Marines of a Bedouin who remembered a burial 20 years earlier. The sheik couldn’t recall the exact location, but it was enough for the Marines. They returned to the old site that had frustrated the Red Cross searchers and with 100 men, bulldozers and back hoes, they turned over four football fields worth of desert, 4 feet deep.

The earth yielded another piece of a pilot’s flight suit and a jaw bone. The teeth matched the missing pilot’s dental records. Michael Scott Speicher, who reached the rank of captain because he kept receiving promotions while his status was unknown, had been there all along, Brown said.

The U.S. now says the case is closed, but Speicher’s family, from outside Jacksonville, Fla., is still unconvinced that he died in the crash.

Buddy Harris says the ending is too neat, meant to whitewash the Pentagon’s failure to launch a search and rescue mission in 1991.

“Too many people want to tie it into a nice little bow here,” Harris says. “Their motive wasn’t Scott Speicher, it was to get this thing done

The Leadership of USMC General James Mattis, known to most as " The Warrior Monk"

Many who are not from a military background don't understand why Warriors hold different beliefs than they do.  Those who have paid for the freedom our country enjoys know things that the protected will never understand.

 

USMC General James Mattis, known to most as " The Warrior Monk" is the kinid of leader our country needs if we will survive in the dangerous world that exists outside the USA.

 

“I don’t give a damn about the officers. If they don’t like what they’re doing, they can get on a plane and leave the Corps — go back where they came from. But I do care deeply about those 18- and 19-year-old Lance Corporals out on the frontlines.”

Amen Sir. 

 

Read a bit about him and understand better why he is beloved by all in iniform who fight for our country.

 

Breaking the Warrior Code

By John R. Guardiano

 

What the media, both left and right, don't understand about General Mattis and the Marine Corps.

To his liberal blogger critics, he is a dangerous, cold-blooded“psychopath” who derives pleasure from sterile acts of killing. As such, he should be fired or demoted and stripped of his command. To the conservative talk radio crowd, he is the reincarnation of the late, great Gen. George S. Patton Jr., a ruthless “fighting machine” determined to wreak havoc and destruction on that thorn in our side called Iraq. As such, the United States should put him in charge and finally end this war once and for all.

But both the left and the right are wrong about Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis. He is neither the Jack Nicholson caricature of a Marine depicted in the 1992 movie A Few Good Men nor the callous and mad eccentric depicted by George C. Scott in the 1970 movie Patton.

Instead, Gen. Mattis is a remarkably learned and thoughtful man who adheres to the old-fashioned Christian, chivalric warrior code. As such, he confounds modern-day screamers on both the left and the right for whom the warrior code is unintelligible. I know because I had the privilege of serving under Gen. Mattis as a Marine in Iraq.

Moreover, while we were both in-country the General graciously took the time to engage me in an exclusive half-hour conversation. At the time, I was trying to secure a commission as an officer. The General learned that my relatively advanced age (then 35) was posing a problem and offered to help. That a three-star general with a war on his hands would take the time to assist a lowly Lance Corporal speaks volumes about the heart and character of Gen. Mattis.

I SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN surprised. I had spent the spring and summer of 2003 with the First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, at an abandoned pistol factory in Al Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Gen. Mattis regularly showed up to speak with us. He would tell us colorful stories, offer tough-minded advice and counsel, and eagerly solicit our thoughts and questions. We loved him because we knew he loved us.

And Gen. Mattis didn’t just talk the talk; he walked the walk. He led from the front. Indeed, on at least one occasion that I know of, the General was bloodied from a firefight or improvised explosive device while out on patrol with junior, enlisted Marines one-third his age. That’s what makes Gen. Mattis such a great warrior: He truly respects and cares for his Marines.

“Guardiano,” he told me, “I don’t give a damn about the officers. If they don’t like what they’re doing, they can get on a plane and leave the Corps — go back where they came from. But I do care deeply about those 18- and 19-year-old Lance Corporals out on the frontlines.” The General was telling me that, as an officer, I better be concerned with helping younger, junior Marines, not advancing my own career.

That’s why all the liberal talk about Mattis being some sort of“psychopathic killer” is so ludicrous. Nor is he, as the conservative talk-show set would have it, an inhumane “fighting machine.” Psychopathic killers don’t care for their men; and machines don’t exhibit compassion for a liberated but frightened people.

Yet, I am absolutely convinced that whenever a Marine died or bled, a part of Gen. Mattis died and bled, too. And whenever an innocent Iraqi was intimidated, beaten or shot, Gen. Mattis was incensed and outraged. But because of our modern-day cultural depravity, we lack the basic vocabulary necessary to identify and understand, let alone appreciate and celebrate, warriors like Gen. Mattis.

HOW, THEN, TO EXPLAIN the General’s comment that it is “fun to shoot some people”? Is not such a sentiment “indicative of an apparent indifference to the value of human life,” as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) argues?

Unfortunately for the council and other professional grievance lobbies, context is everything, especially when it come to war and killing. Gen. Mattis clearly did not say he likes killing for killing’s sake. Instead, like most Marines, he enjoys fighting for a righteous cause. He enjoys a good “brawl,” especially when it involve shooting vermin who subjugate, beat, and abuse women.
Moreover, if the critics bothered actually to listen to Gen. Mattis’s remarks — which you can do online at NBC’s San Diego affiliate website — they would realize that he was calling for an investment in so-called soft-power resources that would help to avert combat. He was saying, in effect: “Look, I love a good fight and would enjoy shooting and killing these bastards; but we need to do the things that will make that unnecessary.”

The General was speaking at a professional conference on military transformation; and he was urging the Pentagon to invest in efforts that would “diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies.”

None of the widely touted new technologies and weapons systems, he noted, “would have helped me in the last three years [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I could have used cultural training [and] language training. I could have used more products from American universities [who] understood the world does not revolve around America and [who] embrace coalitions and allies for all of the strengths that they bring us.”

That sure doesn’t sound like the fanatical Col. Kurtz of Apocalypse Now.

GEN. MATTIS ALSO IMPLICITLY took exception to conservative defense analysts like Weekly Standard contributor Thomas Donnelly, who seem to think that increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps will solve most of our military challenges. But a larger —and thus more bureaucratic — force structure may be exactly what is not needed to win the war against Islamic fascism.

As the General explained, “We’re seeing a re-criminalization of war. And that means we need to get small units, not big armies…Small units so capable that, as we close with the enemy, they’re transformed into something that is as capable as our air units and sea units have been in shutting down the threats to this country over the last 30 years.”

Some critics have alleged that Gen. Mattis’s’ comments reflect a dangerous military mindset that gave rise to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. However, for any of the Marines who served under him, it is impossible to imagine a scandal like Abu Ghraib happening on the General’s watch.

That’s because Gen. Mattis always made it his business to know what was happening in his command; and he did not tolerate stupidity and abuse by his Marines. We all understood this because he communicated well and often his expectations. Those expectations included his demand to “keep your honor clean” and to treat the Iraqis “as you would your own family, with dignity and respect.”
Let’s hope this reality is included in the movie, destined to come, about Gen. Mattis, the Marine Corps, and Iraq. This would be a refreshing change from Hollywood’s recent depictions of the U.S. military. And it would rightly honor a man and a warrior who is truly an American hero.

John R. Guardiano blogs at www.ResCon1.com, and you can follow him on Twitter: @ResCon1.

 

  

 

Christmas Eve in Kandahar / HOW THE GRINCH STOLE THE SEABEES GRAVEL

Christmas Eve in Kandahar, Afghanistan - When I took on this gig, I had planned that I would be here for the holidays.

It may still be December 23rd back home, but here, it is already December 24th.

I posted this a while back and it bears posting again. It was the first time I was away from home on Christmas.  Enjoy and Merry Christmas Eve !!

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE THE SEABEES GRAVEL...A Seabee Christmas story from Iraq in 2004

 8 years ago, I was in Iraq with the Seabees - It was Christmas and we were doing the job we were assigned -
Helping rebuild Iraq.

One of the things we needed more than anything else was GRAVEL - It was needed to firm up the muddy areas and allow construction to occur -

No Gravel - No ability to build - A big problem -

On Christmas Eve, I sent this to all my fellow Seabees -

It was my way of getting them to see that Christmas was a time for us to be thankful for all we have and to allow the season to make our hearts light...Being away from home and staioned in Iraq was a tough assignment, but we could make sure that Christmas was still the day that we celebrate the birth of our Savior...

I share this with you in that same spirit - I have much to be thankful for -

I have my wife, who is the best part of my life. I have good family, good friends and a faith that we have been blessed by the LORD.

I hope that all of you enjoy Christmas, Hanukkah and the Holidays and take stock of what we have been given.....We have all been blessed.

Middleboro Jones

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE THE SEABEES GRAVEL
by Dr Seuss (with help from Middleboro Jones)
Every Seabee
Down in Seabee-ville
Liked Gravel a lot...

But the Grinch,
Who lived just North of Seabee-ville,
Did NOT!

The Grinch hated Gravel!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.

But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

But,
Whatever the reason,
His heart or his shoes,
He stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the Seabees,

Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown
At the warm lighted windows below in their town.
For he knew every Seabee down in Seabee-ville beneath
Was busy now, working on their CESE.

"And they're waiting on a convoy!" he snarled with a sneer.
"Tomorrow they’ll expect more gravel ! It's practically here!"

Then he growled, with his grinch fingers nervously drumming,
"I MUST find a way to keep Gravel from coming!"

For, tomorrow, he knew...

...All the Seabees
Would wake up bright and early.
And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That's one thing he hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!

Then the Seabeess, young and old, would sit down to a feast.
And they'd feast! And they'd feast!
And they'd FEAST! FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!
They would start on Seabee-pudding, and rare Seabee-roast-beast
Which was something the Grinch couldn't stand in the least!

And the more the Grinch thought of the Seabee gravel coming
The more the Grinch thought, "I must stop this whole thing!
"Why for many years I've put up with it now!
I MUST stop Gravel from coming!
...But HOW?"

Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
THE GRINCH
GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

"I know just what to do!" The Grinch Laughed in his throat.
And he made a quick Santy Claus hat and a coat.
And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great Grinchy trick!
"With this coat and this hat, I'll look just like Saint Nick!"

"All I need is a reindeer..."
The Grinch looked around.
But since reindeer are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Grinch...?
No! The Grinch simply said,
"If I can't find a reindeer, I'll make one instead!"

So he called his dog Max. Then he took some red thread
And he tied a big horn on top of his head.

THEN
He loaded some bags
And some old empty sacks
On a ramshakle sleigh
And he hitched up old Max.

Then the Grinch said, "Giddyap!"

And the sleigh started down
Toward the hooches where the Seabees
Lay a-snooze in their hooches.

All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air.
All the Seabees were all dreaming sweet gravel dreams without care

When he came to the first house in the square.
"This is stop number one," The old Grinchy Claus hissed

Then he slunk to the icebox. He took the Seabeess' feast!
He took the Seabee-pudding! He took the roast beast!
He cleaned out that icebox as quick as a flash.
Why, that Grinch even took their last can of Seabee-hash!

Then he stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee.
"And NOW!" grinned the Grinch, "I will make sure no gravel arrives…

And the Grinch grabbed the DSN line, and started to call

When he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.
He turned around fast, and he saw a small Seabee!
Little Seabee Burke, who was not more than 22.

The Grinch had been caught by this little Seabee daughter
Who'd got out of bed for a cup of cold water.
She stared at the Grinch and said, "Santy Claus, why,
"Why are you taking our Gravel? WHY?"

But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!

"Why, my sweet little Seabee," the fake Santy Claus lied,
"There's a stone in this gravel, that’s sharp on one side.
"So I'm taking it home to my workshop, my dear.
"I'll fix it up there. Then I'll bring gravel back here."

And his fib fooled the Seabee. Then he patted her head
And he got her a drink and he sent her to bed.
And when Seabee Burke went to bed with her cup,
He went to DSN line and called the gravel convoy off!

Then the last thing he took
Was the log for their fire.
Then he went up the chimney himself, the old liar.
On their walls he left nothing but hooks, and some wire.

And the one speck of food
That he left in the house
Was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.

Then
He did the same thing
To the other Seabees

Leaving crumbs
Much too small
For the other Seabees' mouses!

It was quarter past dawn...
All the Seabees, still a-bed
All the Seabees, still a-snooze
When he packed up his sled,
Packed it up with their gravel!

"Pooh-pooh to the Seabees!" he was grinch-ish-ly humming.
"They're finding out now that no gravel coming!
"They're just waking up! I know just what they'll do!
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
"The all the Seabeess down in Seabee-ville will all cry BOO-HOO!"

"That's a noise," grinned the Grinch,
"That I simply must hear!"
So he paused. And the Grinch put a hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow...

But the sound wasn't sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!

He stared down at Seabee-ville!
The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Seabee down in Seabee-ville, the tall and the small,
Was working! Without any gravel at all!
He HADN'T stopped gravel from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came from the country of Jordan, not local at all,

Those damn Seabees didn’t have to go that far after all!

And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe gravel," he thought, "doesn't come from a Marshalling area.
"Maybe gravel...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

And what happened then...?
Well...in Seabee-ville they say
That the Grinch's small heart
Grew three sizes that day!

And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light
And he brought back the gravel! And the food for the feast!
And he...

...HE HIMSELF...!
The Grinch carved the roast beast!

K-9 Warriors suffer from PTSD too

Our 4-legged warriors need our love and support when they return from war.

They are an invaluable part of our military and the soldiers see them as brothers (and sisters) in arms. Without our Dogs of War, the soldiers would lose valuable support in finding and detecting IEDS.

No tech solution has been as effective in findings IEDs as a dog's nose.  They are our extra advantage in protecting our troops on the battlefield.

Military's dogs of war also suffer post-traumatic stress disorder

Canine PTSD is now recognized by military dog specialists as a combat affliction, and they're learning to treat it

Cora, working with Marine Cpl. Drew Daniel Adams, was once an ace at sniffing out buried bombs in Iraq. She was put out of action by what military dog handlers say is canine post-traumatic stress disorder. (Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times / August 3, 2012)

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

November 26, 2012

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas — Not long after a Belgian Malinois named Cora went off to war, she earned a reputation for sniffing out the buried bombs that were the enemy's weapon of choice to kill or maim U.S. troops.

 

Cora could roam a hundred yards or more off her leash, detect an explosive and then lie down gently to signal danger. All she asked in return was a kind word or a biscuit, maybe a play session with a chew toy once the squad made it back to base.

"Cora always thought everything was a big game," said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Garry Laub, who trained Cora before she deployed. "She knew her job. She was a very squared-away dog."

 

But after months in Iraq and dozens of combat patrols, Cora changed. The transformation was not the result of one traumatic moment, but possibly the accumulation of stress and uncertainty brought on by the sharp sounds, high emotion and ever-present death in a war zone.

 

Cora — deemed a "push-button" dog, one without much need for supervision — became reluctant to leave her handler's side. Loud noises startled her. The once amiable Cora growled frequently and picked fights with other military working dogs.

When Cora returned to the U.S. two years ago, there was not a term for the condition that had undercut her combat effectiveness and shattered her nerves. Now there is: canine post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

"Dogs experience combat just like humans," said Marine Staff Sgt. Thomas Gehring, a dog handler assigned to the canine training facility at Lackland Air Force Base, who works with Cora daily.

Veterinarians and senior dog handlers at Lackland have concluded that dogs, like humans, can require treatment for PTSD, including conditioning, retraining and possibly medication such as the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. Some dogs, like 5-year-old Cora, just need to be treated as honored combat veterans and allowed to lead less-stressful lives.

 

Walter Burghardt Jr., chief of behavioral medicine and military working-dog studies at Lackland, estimates that at least 10% of the hundreds of dogs sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to protect U.S. troops have developed canine PTSD.

 

Cora appears to have a mild case. Other dogs come home traumatized.

"They're essentially broken and can't work," Burghardt said.

There are no official statistics, but Burghardt estimates that half of the dogs that return with PTSD or other behavioral hitches can be retrained for "useful employment" with the military or law enforcement, such as police departments, the Border Patrol or the Homeland Security Department.
The others dogs are retired and made eligible for adoption as family pets.

The decision to officially label the dogs' condition as PTSD was made by a working group of dog trainers and other specialists at Lackland. In most cases, such labeling of animal behavior would be subjected to peer review and scrutiny in veterinary medical journals.

But Burghardt and others in the group decided that they could not wait for that kind of lengthy professional vetting — that a delay could endanger those who depend on the dogs.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the military has added hundreds of canines and now has about 2,500 — Dutch and German shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Labrador retrievers — trained in bomb detection, guard duty or "controlled aggression" for patrolling.

Lackland trains dogs and dog handlers for all branches of the military. The huge base, located in San Antonio, has a $15-million veterinary hospital devoted to treating dogs working for the military or law enforcement, like a Border Patrol dog who lost a leg during a firefight between agents and a suspected drug smuggler.

"He's doing fine, much better," the handler yelled out when asked about the dog's condition.
Cora received her initial training here and then additional training with Laub at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. Before they could deploy, however, Laub was transferred to Arkansas, and Cora shipped off to Iraq with a different handler, much to Laub's regret.

"I'll always remember her as the girl who got away," Laub said. "She and I had clicked so well."

The bond between handlers and military working dogs is legendary. Army 1st Sgt. Casey Stevens has a catch in his voice when he mentions Alf, the German shepherd with whom he deployed to Iraq. Alf survived the war and died in the U.S. of natural causes.

"He saved my life several times; he had my back," Stevens said. "Some guys talk to their dogs more than they do to their fellow soldiers. They're definitely not equipment."

"Equipment" is a kind of dirty word among dog handlers. In the Vietnam War, the military left behind hundreds of working dogs, determining that they were excess equipment. That will never occur again, military officials promise.

 

But when some of the current generation of war dogs returned to the U.S., their handlers noticed the lingering effects of battle.

Stevens has seen once-confident dogs freeze up when going through an easy training exercise. "They would just shut down," he said. "I think they were going through memories."

Just why Cora's behavior changed is unknown. One possibility is that she sensed the apprehension of her handler or other troops around her — that classic battlefield concern that after months of survival, your luck is running out. A working dog has been trained to understand and even anticipate the handler's needs and moods.

"There's a saying in canine handling: Your emotion goes 'down the leash,'" Laub said. "The handler's stress goes right to the dog."

Calling Cora's condition canine PTSD drives home a point that Burghardt feels is key: "This is something that does not get better without intervention."

Two factors slowed down the decision to label canine PTSD. For one, Burghardt and others did not want to suggest disrespect for the military personnel who have been diagnosed with the disorder.

Second is the problem faced by any veterinarian. "You can't ask them questions," Burghardt said.

The goal is to "rebuild and recondition" an afflicted dog, said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Charles Rudy, instructor supervisor at the dog training school.

"It's really counter-conditioning," Rudy said. "You find out what the dog doesn't enjoy and then find what will overpower that."

If the dog is afraid of the dark, exercises involve a decreasing amount of light, with the dog given treats and positive reinforcement each time it successfully enters a dimly lighted space. The same approach is used if the problem involves places that are noisy or crowded with people.

At a compact 60 or so pounds, Cora is fit and bright-eyed, her coat is shiny and she can still outrun most other dogs. Thanks to retraining and shielding her from battle, she has calmed down somewhat.
She no longer snarls at other dogs. But neither does she anticipate her handler's orders or quiver with excitement at the idea of sniffing out hidden explosives. Like many a human veteran, Cora is marked forever by having gone to war.

One recent day, Cora appeared to work well with Cpl. Drew Daniel Adams, a trainee from the Marine base in Yuma, Ariz. Cora stayed close by Adams but gave off a vibe to other humans of "don't get too close to me."

Sometimes Cora will appear to respond to a command and then decide that, no, she would rather sit down and rest.

"Sometimes she just doesn't do what she's asked," Rudy said. But her occasional moodiness makes her an excellent trainer of trainers. "It's beneficial because [the trainees] get to see not just when things are working right, but when things aren't working. That increases their skills."

Trainees admire Cora as a combat veteran. But admiration and affection may be two different things.
Asked about whether the trainees like Cora, Rudy laughed. "I can't say specifically, but I'm willing to bet they don't appreciate her quirks at first."

If Adams cannot control Cora, he might not pass the course. Better that Adams or any trainee wash out now rather than be unable to work with a balky dog in Afghanistan.

"Cora has proven a challenge for him and that's good," Gehring said. "Cora is still working for us."

Another thing about Cora hasn't changed. She still loves a pat on the head or a biscuit, reminders of a younger dog who seemed to see everything as a game.

tony.perry@latimes.com