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Political Correctness Causing US Generals to Ignore Islam as Cause of Increased Afghan Casualties?

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The U.S. Army command recently announced that only 25% of the lethal “green on blue” Afghan military insider attacks against U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops were attributable to the Taliban. Mere “personal grievances,” we are told, account for the other 75% of attacks committed by our Afghan allies.

How could it be that so many Muslims in the Afghan National Army (A.N.A.) have become murderously enraged over personal disagreements and accidental insults? What has caused this upsurge in murders that has killed at least 40 U.S. troops since January 2012?

The answer is buried deep in a May 12, 2011 unclassified report by a U.S. Army “Red Team.” This report, titled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,” contains a litany of bureaucratic puffery that tries to explain away these acts of murder committed against the U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops by their A.N.A. “allies.”

During a recent press conference, General John R. Allen, Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, claimed that Ramadan fasting, combined with operational tempo during the summer heat, were causing the current spate of killings of his own troops by Muslim A.N.A. soldiers.

That doesn’t seem right. The U.S. Army has been in Afghanistan for 11 years, and the number of attacks has climbed enormously in the last year.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP plank hammers Obama’s ‘social experimentation’ in military

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Mitt Romney does not bring up President Obama’s social revolution inside the armed forces, but the Republican Party platform, by calling an end to “social experimentation” in the ranks, does.

The platform also backs the current ban on women serving in direct ground combat units, as the Obama administration is moving toward a decision to remove the prohibition before the November election.

The Republican National Committee on Resolutions, meeting last week in Tampa, Fla., approved a plank that states: “We support the advancement of women in the military, which has not only opened doors of opportunity for individuals but has made possible the devoted, and often heroic, services of additional members of every branch of the Armed Forces.”

Elaine Donnelly, who directs the Center for Military Readiness and attended the platform markup, said the language sends a strong signal to those who would sacrifice military preparedness to advance social policies.

“We reject the use of the military as a platform for social experimentation and will not accept attempts to undermine military priorities and mission readiness,” the platform states.

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Alaskan Navy Seal who wrote book on bin Laden killing identified, faces likely probe

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On Wednesday this week, Reuters reported that a Navy Seal had written a book about the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The book, entitled “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden,” was written by a former Seal Team Six member under the pseudonym of “Mark Owen” along with co-author Kevin Maurer. The publisher states that it will be released on 9/11.

According to Reuters:

The U.S. government was surprised by the news that a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan has written a book about the operation in which the al Qaeda leader was killed, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. . . It was not vetted by government agencies to ensure that no secrets were revealed.

The agencies not consulted included the Pentagon and the CIA. The publisher, Dutton of the U.S. Penguin Group, responded:

The book was vetted by a former special operations attorney. He vetted it for tactical, technical, and procedural information as well as information that could be considered classified by compilation and found it to be without risk to national security.

After a bit of sleuthing, Fox News discovered that the author was part of the elite team that killed three Somalian pirates who had taken control of an American vessel in the Indian Ocean in 2009, and that

“Mark Owen,” the pseudonym under which the book was written, is actually 35 year-old Matt Bissonnette of Wrangell, Alaska. Bissonnette held the rank of chief in the elite Navy SEAL Team 6 prior to retiring. He was one of the first men in the room where bin Laden died, witnessing the occurrence first-hand.

Some have called Fox’s decision to publicize Bissonnette’s name and location “astonishing” as it most certainly puts the former Navy Seal at risk of reprisal by Islamic fanatics.  Fox disagreed, noting that anyone who publishes such a book loses any reasonable expectation of privacy.  The network also contended that Bissonnette’s goal is to publicly confront Obama for “taking credit” for the raid, since he had cited the need to “set the record straight.”

It now appears that Obama may be attempting to preempt this confrontation. According to Reuters, Bissonnette is likely to face a Department of Defense probe over his failure to have the book “cleared” prior to publication:

Colonel Tim Nye, spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which directs operations by Navy SEALs and other special operations forces, said on Thursday that SOCOM did not review the book before publication, nor had the SEALs.

Nye said that because the book had not been subjected to appropriate pre-publication review, it could become a target of “potential investigation” by government authorities.

Unfortunately for Obama, “any such inquiry was unlikely to be launched until after the book’s publication, scheduled for the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.”

 

Afghanistan: America’s forgotten war

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It was once President Barack Obama’s “war of necessity.” Now, it’s America’s forgotten war.

The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It’s not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress – even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day.

Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land. They’re more tuned in to the political ad war playing out on television than the deadly fight still raging against the Taliban. Earlier this month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair chanted “Stop the war!” They were referring to one purportedly being waged against the middle class.

By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to choose between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will be in its 12th year. For most Americans, that’s long enough.

Public opinion remains largely negative toward the war, with 66 percent opposed to it and just 27 percent in favor in a May AP-GfK poll. More recently, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. should no longer be involved in Afghanistan. Just 31 percent said the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting there now.

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Army suicides hit grim milestone: most self-inflicted deaths in a single month

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Army suicides hit a new single-month record in July, when 38 active-duty and reserve soldiers took their own lives, according to official figures released Thursday.

The toll, up from 24 in June, prompted a wave of renewed anger and frustration among Pentagon leaders and veterans advocates.

“I was pretty shocked when I saw the number,” said Tom Tarantino, legislative director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “This has been a continuous problem. This really stems from the military, and the [Department of Veterans Affairs], for that matter, basically the entire military and veteran community, really coming to this issue several years late.”

“It really wasn’t until 2007-2008, really 2009, that they started thinking about it at the level they need to be thinking about it,” he said.

Despite efforts from high-profile military leaders — including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and former Army Vice Chief Gen. Peter Chiarelli — the wider Army is losing this battle, critics say.

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New Research Finally Provides Answers to Soaring Suicide Rates in U.S. Military

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When researchers asked 72 soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., why they tried to kill themselves, out of the 33 reasons they had to choose from, all of the soldiers included one in particular — a desire to end intense emotional distress.

“This really is the first study that provides scientific data saying that the top reason … these guys are trying to kill themselves is because they have this intense psychological suffering and pain,” said Craig Bryan, co-author of the study by the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah that will be published in the coming months.

Suicide within the military has soared since 2005 as the military has waged two wars at once, and this year may set a record with troops committing suicide at the rate of one per day, according to Pentagon figures.

But military scientists say that finally, after years of congressional funding and the launch of randomized studies of a subject rarely researched, a few validated results are beginning to surface.

The findings by the Pentagon-funded study offer perhaps some guidance on how to attack the problem, said Army Col. Carl Castro, who is coordinating $50 million in research into suicide prevention and treatment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Joe Miller, All Rights Reserved

DoD’s Drone Program: tracking civilian vehicles in US, awarding medals for valor to armchair pilots

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Holloman Air Force Base, at the eastern edge of New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, 200 miles south of Albuquerque, was once famous for the daredevil maneuvers of those who trained there. In 1954, Col. John Paul Stapp rode a rocket-propelled sled across the desert, reaching 632 miles per hour, in an attempt to figure out the maximum speed at which jet pilots could safely eject. He slammed on the brakes and was thrust forward with such force that he had to be hauled away on a stretcher, his eyes bleeding from burst capillaries. Six years later, Capt. Joseph Kittinger Jr., testing the height at which pilots could safely bail out, rode a helium-powered balloon up to 102,800 feet. He muttered, “Lord, take care of me now,” dropped for 13 minutes 45 seconds and broke the record for the highest parachute jump.

Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.

Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.

“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.

Though the Pentagon is increasing its fleet of drones by 30 percent and military leaders estimate that, within a year or so, the number of Air Force pilots flying unmanned planes could be higher than the number who actually leave the ground, much about how and where the U.S. government operates drones remains a secret. Even the pilots we interviewed wore black tape over their nametags. The Air Force, citing concerns for the pilots’ safety, forbids them to reveal their last names.

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Photo credit: AN HONORABLE GERMAN