:Reasonable Force

This report shames and sickens me. Drudge has several links detailing the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of some members of an Army military police unit. If all is as it’s purported to be, these poor excuses for soldiers have given our critics plenty of ammunition and made our job in the Middle East that much more difficult.

Here’s a sample from the BBC.

The prisoner with the word written on him was also part of a “human pyramid” that naked prisoners were forced to form for the amusement of their captors.

I note with particular disgust the excuse attributed to Sergeant Chip Frederick, that he and his fellows hadn’t been given any training in Geneva Convention rules concerning treatment of prisoners. Apparently, Sergeant Frederick needed the Army to train him in how to be a human being as well.

As one who served, I echo the words attributed to Brigadier General Mark Kimmett:

We live by our values. Some of our soldiers every day die by our values and these acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals but by God it doesn’t reflect my army.

One small positive to this story is that it was brought to light because another soldier was sent some of the pictures and reported it to his commanders. It’s good to see that they followed up and investigated rather than attempting to bury it.

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I’ve managed to install WordPress and am going to start using it for all my blogging henceforth.

Not that Blogger did anything wrong, mind you… I just wanted to go through the process of delving into MySQL and PHP tools on my website and this is the first step. Expect a series of design changes as I play with the template again.

Also, I’m very seriously considering adding another post author or two.

At any rate, so far I’m very pleased by this tool. It’s very customizeable and has more features than I know what to do with at the moment.

More later!

UPDATE: I managed to import all my posts from the Blogger account. The formatting on some of them is a bit screwy and I accidentally deleted my eulogy to Pat Tillman, but it was still relatively painless. Looking forward to shaping up this template!

Bedtime for now, though.

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This from Mohammed at IRAQ THE MODEL. These brothers continue to give me hope that peace and democracy in Iraq is possible… but only if we resolutely stamp out the virus!

How can you not hope for good things for someone who writes this:

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A sample of Victor Davis Hanson’s latest article, this one praising the nobility and valor of the American soldier despite the stomach-turning vacillating and political posturing here at home.

It really is that clear cut. This is not about Iraq and, in another front of the same war, it’s not not about whether the Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the land occupied by Israel. Historians and sociologists can try to analyze and explain it, but the soldier is faced with the present day reality of a barbaric enemy that cannot be reasoned with or persuaded, but only destroyed. The nature of that enemy, in fact, faces us all with that reality for in their mind we are more legitimate targets than our military forces. Greater horror is inflicted on a society when civilians are murdered.

The irony is that they use the death of civilians against us on both ends in paradoxical ways. On the one hand they target our civilians (I’m including Israelis in my use of the term “our.” If you don’t understand that you’ve been watching too much CNN or reading too much Reuters news) in order to horrify us. Then when we retaliate or seek to root them out they throw their women and children at our guns and look around for the nearest news camera to record their “grief” in order to horrify us again and to heap shame after it. Or, they just tell out-and-out lies to the journalists about U.S. snipers firing into the backs of children’s heads, massacring “thousands” of civilians and burying them in soccer fields. I’m not the first one to make this comparison, but it’s the same exact propaganda strategy used by Palestinians in Jenin.

It’s been said before and it bears repeating: if we don’t fight them over there we will ultimately have to fight them here. May God grant us victory.

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This Iraqi blogger has posted a few quotes from Iraqis at the Arabic BBC site that he claims are representative of roughly 95% of the Iraqis that are commenting. If that’s true it paints a completely different picture (surprise!) from our news media who make a point of showing us and telling us how unwanted and resented we are there.

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Tired… just finished taxes (!)… going to bed… but I wanted to express how great I thought the President’s statement was… and how much I wish he could channel Donald Rumsfeld for the Q&A period. Nearly all of those propagandists posing as reporters needed a Rummy-shoe planted squarely in their nether quarters.

(sigh)

It’s regrettable that President Bush isn’t better on his feet in that environment. I guess I’ll just have to settle for his moral clarity, recognition of who and what the enemy is, and determination to see the fight through to the end. Not a bad trade, in my estimation. Unfortunately, those qualities may not win the day in November. All the public is treated to when it comes to Iraq is American casualty counts, determination of Iraqi terrorists (never named as such, mind you) and the fact that some relative of a Soldier, Marine, Sailor or Airman doesn’t think they ought to be there. Oh, and “Vietnam!” “Quagmire!” Throw in “911 commission” and “Richard Clarke” and it’s a wonder I don’t yak with regularity.

Good night/morning!

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I am developing a tremendous admiration for Victor Davis Hanson. He minces no words when describing exactly what it is we face in Iraq and around the world, and what the proper response is. It’s good stuff, as attested by this sample:

If we are going to win this war, we should begin right now to notify Syria and Iran that their incessant support to terrorists in Iraq will soon be met with a systematic air campaign whose intensity will be predicated on their own behavior. We need not necessarily invade either country, but simply ever so incrementally begin to attrite their conventional military assets, the pulse of the bombing carefully calibrated to the flow of jihadists and material into Iraq from their soil. We need to publicly show the world the tangible proof – captured soldiers, supplies, IDs from slain warriors, communications intercepts – of Syrian and Iranian activity, and then begin to take out their instillations. Again, each time we struck back resolutely and unexpectedly in Afghanistan and Iraq we were successful; and each time we wavered, promised to be sober and restrained, our enemies simply harvested more Americans.

That’s from the April 11, 2004 entry, Finish It or Forget It.

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Just happen to be listening to Jars of Clay while reading an article by Victor Davis Hanson. Ironically, the article’s subject is the nature of the Arab Middle East and the song is called “Crazy Times.”

Sounds about right.

I haven’t listened to this album, Much Afraid, in a while, but now that it’s surfaced I think it may be my favorite by this band. I’ll go ahead and admit that most of their lyrics have been just beyond understanding to me. What I can grasp, however, resonates.

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