[Thanks to Mark Shapiro, who sent this in.]

That Old Vietnam Spirit Is Alive And Well:
Combat Vet Tells Col. “Are You Serious? I’m On My Two Weeks’ Leave From Afghanistan”
[Implicit Message: Fuck Off]

[These are excerpts from two letters to the Army Times 7.31.06. Looks like that old Vietnam spirit is coming back.]

Letters To The Editor
Army Times
7.31.06

While passing through the baggage claim area of O’Hare International Airport in Chicago recently, I encountered a soldier traveling in the Army Combat Uniform. More accurately, in partial ACUs, as he was wearing only his T-shirt, trousers and boots.

I approached him, identified myself and informed him that he needed to put on his ACU coat.

His immediate response was, “Are you serious? I’m on my two weeks’ leave from Afghanistan.”

When in public, every soldier in uniform is on display, particularly in major international airports where they are seen by citizens of practically every state and nation.

Soldiers on their two weeks’ leave from combat zones may regard not wearing their uniforms properly as a trivial matter, but it is not.

[He goes on and on and on mouthing more silly stupid bullshit like this. Deleted. T)

Col.

******************************************************

Whine Whine Whine:
“The Gross Uniform Violations That I And My Fellow Noncommissioned Officers Are Seeing Are More And More Noticeable”

[Smell the fear. Both of them know they’re losing control. An evil, hopeless, stupid, pointless, lost Imperial war will have that effect on troops, who are not stupid. A day will come, and it won’t be long, when both of these stick-up-the-ass drones will wish to God Almighty that poor uniform appearance were the worst problem they have with troops who have had enough of dying for Bush’s Imperial fantasies.]

Letters To The Editor
Army Times
7.31.06

While not new, the gross uniform violations that I and my fellow noncommissioned officers are seeing are more and more noticeable.

I see soldiers walking around the post displaying no pride whatsoever in their uniforms. Some soldiers are wearing uniforms so tight that the buttons will kill someone if they suddenly release and fly off. Others wear their patrol caps or berets cocked back on their heads like they are on daddy’s farm. Still others cannot even wear the beret without looking like they should be carrying a pizza for delivery.

Leaders in a great deal of the units are not doing their jobs. Army Regulation 670-1 applies to every Army component. AR 670-1 is not merely a guide on the suggested wear of the uniform. It is the way you will wear the uniform.

Gone are the days in which someone can say, “I’m in the reserves” or “I am in the Guard,” or “I only do this part time,” and use it as an excuse for poor appearance.

If someone makes a correction on your uniform, regardless of rank, you should say thanks and correct the problem.

Staff Sgt.

Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed services. Send requests to address up top.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Va. Medic Is Killed As He Tried To Aid His Fellow Soldiers

Cpl. Adam J. Fargo served in an engineer platoon. (AP)

July 26, 2006 By Martin Weil, Washington Post Staff Writer

Adam J. Fargo, who grew up in Virginia, was in an Army unit assigned to keeping other soldiers safe from one of the deadliest hazards of Iraq: roadside bombs.

As a medic in an engineer platoon, part of his job was to tend the wounds of the soldiers who were protecting the rest of the troops by clearing out explosive devices.

His father said last night from the family home in Ruckersville that his son felt that he was making a contribution.

“He was confident that he could help [other] soldiers if they got hurt,” Doug Fargo said.

On Saturday, Cpl. Adam Fargo, 22, who was in Iraq to help save lives, lost his own. The Pentagon said he died of wounds sustained when his convoy encountered enemy small-arms fire.

“He was just a very special young man,” his godmother, Debra Holder of Ashburn, said last night. “He was always giving,” she said. “He gave everything. He volunteered for missions that he didn’t have to.”

At first, his father said, men in his unit called him “Doc Fargo,” using the common way for soldiers to refer to a medic.

But, the father said, Fargo volunteered so often for missions to find and dispose of bombs that the unit began calling him “Sapper Fargo.” Combat engineers often call themselves sappers.

When killed, his father said, Adam Fargo was driving a big engineer vehicle assigned to protect a highway convoy.

Fargo was born in Germany, where his father was serving in the Army. Part of his boyhood was spent on the base at Fort Polk, La.

Fargo grew up northeast of Charlottesville and graduated from William Monroe High School in Greene County, where he was an outstanding soccer player, his godmother said. He left George Mason University shortly before the end of his first year and enlisted in the Army in 2004.

He “really latched on to it,” his father said, going quickly “from civilian to ‘I want to do everything.’ “ Training as a medic suited him, his father said. “He thought he was on his way to learning something and wanted to contribute.”

In addition to his father, survivors include his mother, Libby, a brother, Jason, and a sister, Sarah, according to his godmother.

Messages received from his officers and fellow soldiers have helped show the family “what a hero Adam was,” she said. “He has given his life for the freedom that I have today.”

Four More Marines Killed In Anbar

July 30, 2006 Reuters

Four marines were killed in action in Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Sunday. The marines, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7, died on Saturday.

REALLY BAD IDEA:
NO MISSION;
HOPELESS WAR:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

U.S. soldiers from 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team along the Tigris River near Mosul July 8, 2006. (Tech. Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock/Handout – IRAQ/Reuters)

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

“American Commanders Are Troubled By The Taliban’s Tactical Sophistication”

July 31, 2006 By Greg Grant, Army Times Staff writer [Excerpts]

In late March, about 200 Taliban fighters attacked a small group of American and Canadian special operations troops and Afghan soldiers at a new base in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province.

The Taliban came at the base in a coordinated, three-pronged assault with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, and broke off the attack only when American bombers arrived overhead.

In reality, the attack was the opening skirmish in a major Taliban offensive that has swept across southern Afghanistan in recent months with a ferocity that has caught the thinly spread American and NATO militaries off guard.

American commanders are troubled by the Taliban’s ability to operate in large numbers and by their display of a level of tactical sophistication not seen since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Moreover, commanders are worried about an apparent migration to the Afghan battlefield of weapons and tactics more commonly found in Iraq.

U.S. patrols now routinely deal with homemade, increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs in Afghanistan, where 41 suicide bombings have occurred in the past nine months, compared with five in the previous five years. The capital city of Kabul is often rocked by car bombs, rarely seen in Afghanistan until recently.

“We had IEDs in the Russian time, but not remote-control,” said Khalid Pashtoon, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament and deputy chairman of that body’s Internal Security Committee.

TROOP NEWS

2700 More National Guards Off To Bush’s Imperial Slaughterhouse

Army Times 7.31.06

The Army National Guard will deploy its first combat aviation brigade to Iraq with the departure of the 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, 36th Infantry Division, a Guard press release said.

The brigade’s 2,700 soldiers represent 44 states and are pilots and support personnel who work with Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.

An official deployment ceremony was set for July 30 in Killeen.

As of July 19, there were 87,347 Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, according to a Defense Department press release, bringing the total number of reservists mobilized in all services to 107,104.

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE

The casket of Marine Cpl. Julian A. Ramon during Cpl. Ramon’s funeral service at Long Island National cemetery, July 29, 2006 in Farmingdale, N.Y. Cpl Ramon died July 20, 2006 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

The Capt. Is Right:
Raise Hell;
The Political Rats In DC Are “Selling Out” The Troops;
2.2% Pay Raise An Insult

Letters To The Editor
Army Times
7.31.06

I was befuddled and then enraged that our elected leaders think the soldiers of this great Army, fighting and dying each day in far-flung locations around the globe, separated from friends and family for more than a year, do not merit an additional half-percent raise in our base pay above the paltry 2.2 percent we will be “blessed” to receive this January.

In a bill laden with, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, $14.9 billion dollars of pork projects, these guys couldn’t come up with another $300 million for our pay?

It is high time that all servicemen and women, and anyone who cares about our servicemen and women, let their elected officials know it is time to stop cutting our benefits short.

A nation at war should not be selling out the very troops who are already sacrificing so much.

Capt. Donald P. Smith
Fort Bliss, Texas

Court Victory For Families Of Soldiers Killed In Iraq;
“He Was In Iraq To Fight For His Country, But I Now Know He Should Never Have Been Sent There. He Died For Nothing”

[Thanks to Frank M. who sent this in.]

27 July 2006 By Robert Verkaik, The Independent UK

The families of four British soldiers killed in Iraq have won an important round in their legal battle to force the Government to hold an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war.

Three judges sitting in the Court of Appeal in London ruled that the families should be entitled to argue their case at a new hearing later this year.

Lawyers for the families, whose relatives died in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, called the ruling “a stunning victory.” “The Government now have to produce evidence to a full hearing in the Court of Appeal,” said Phil Shiner, the families’ solicitor. “That evidence needs to establish once and for all whether the decision to invade was lawful.”

The Court of Appeal ruled they were entitled to apply for a judicial review of the Government’s refusal to hold an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war. It reversed a ruling last year when a High Court judge said that the families did not have an arguable case.

In their ruling, the Court of Appeal judges, led by Sir Anthony Clarke, Master of the Rolls, said: “It is at least arguable that the question whether the invasion was lawful, or reasonably thought to have been lawful, as a matter of international law is worthy of investigation.”

After the ruling, Mr Shiner said: “In particular, the Government must finally explain how the 13-page, equivocal advice from the Attorney General of 7 March 2003 was changed within 10 days to a one-page, completely unequivocal advice that an invasion would be legal.”

Yesterday’s appeal was brought by Peter Brierley, the father of Shaun Brierley; Beverley Clarke, the mother of David Clarke; Rose Gentle, the mother of Gordon Gentle, and Susan Smith, the mother of Phillip Hewett.

Lance Corporal Shaun Brierley, 28, whose family are from Batley, West Yorkshire, was serving with 212 Signals Squadron when he was killed in a crash in Kuwait in March 2003.

Trooper David Clarke, 19, from Littleworth, Staffordshire, was one of two soldiers who died in March 2003 in a “friendly fire” incident west of Basra.

Fusilier Gordon Gentle, 19, from Glasgow, of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, died in June 2004 in an improvised explosive device attack on vehicles in Basra.

Private Phillip Hewett, 21, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, was one of three soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion Staffordshire Regiment, who died in a roadside bomb blast in the Risaala district of Amarah in July 2005.

Rose Gentle said: “My son died when a roadside bomb went off under the vehicle he was travelling in. He was in Iraq to fight for his country, but I now know he should never have been sent there. He died for nothing.”

She added: “I have done everything in my power to persuade Tony Blair to meet with me, but he refuses. Now I will finally get to see the Government have to justify their decision to invade Iraq, which most of the public believe was unlawful and counter-productive.”

Disgusting Recruiting Predators At It Again:
Autistic? Noooo Problem

Army Times 7.31.06

An Oregon congressman complains that the military keeps trying to recruit autistic people in his state.

“Not only has the Army lowered its standards, but recruiters have been pushed to violate the remaining standards in order to meet these recruiting targets,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.

He called it “outrageous” that two autistic men were recruited, in apparent violation of regulations. “One of these young men did not even know that there was a war going on in Iraq.”

“‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy Is Becoming ‘A Very Effective Weapon Of Vengeance In The Armed Forces’”

[Thanks to Mark Shapiro, who sent this in.]

7/28/2006 By Buzzle Staff and Agencies

A decorated Army sergeant has been honorably discharged from the Army due to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, although he never told anyone he was gay.

Bleu Copas, 30, told the Associated Press that although he is gay, he never told his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC, so he didn’t think anyone would ever know.

But Copas said he was “outed” by an anonymous person who sent e-mails to his superiors. “I knew the policy going in,” Copas said in an interview. “I knew it was going to be difficult.”

A spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is becoming “a very effective weapon of vengeance in the armed forces.”

The policy was established in 1993, and it prohibits the military from asking about the sex lives of service members, but the military is required to discharge any soldiers who openly acknowledge being gay. Since its inception, the policy has been challenged by several watchdog groups who have continually worked to have it repealed.

Last May Copas was appointed to the 82nd Airborne’s All-American Chorus, and shortly afterward, the first e-mail was sent to the chorus director. Copas told the AP that the director took everyone into the hallway and told them about the e-mail that had just been sent, and he asked, “Which one of you are gay?”

Copas complained to his platoon sergeant, saying that being questioned in that way violated the terms of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The chorus director and his sergeant said they would “watch it” in the future, and then they specifically asked him, “Well, you aren’t gay, are you?” Copas told them no.

A short time later, the e-mails began specifically naming Copas.

The Army investigated the allegations for eight months, at the end of which Copas was honorably discharged, without being able to serve out his full four years.

Copas had enlisted in the Army right after 9/11, he told the AP, because of a strong sense of duty to his country. He is proficient in Arabic, having graduated from the Defense Language Institute in California.

Col. James Zellmer, Copas’ commanding officer in the 313th military intelligence battalion, told the AP that although investigators were never able to determine who was accusing Copas, “the nature and the volume of the evidence and Sgt. Copas’s own sworn statement led me to discharge him.”

Military investigators, in their case files, wrote that Copas “engaged in at least three homosexual relationships, and is dealing with at least two jealous lovers, either of whom could be the anonymous source providing this information.” The anonymous accuser signed his e-mails “John Smith,” or “ftbraggman,” and told the recipients that the military must take action against Copas or “I will inform your entire battalion of the information that I gave you.” Copas believes the accuser is someone he mistakenly befriended and apparently offended in some way.

On December 2, military investigators formally interviewed Copas and asked him if he had any close friends who were gay, if he was involved in a community theater, and whether or not he understood the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Copas said yes to all their questions until they asked him, “Have you ever engaged in homosexual activity or conduct?” At that point he asked for a lawyer, and the interrogation ceased. Zellmer said that Copas was found to have violated the military’s policy on homosexuals because “the evidence clearly indicated that Sgt. Copas had engaged in homosexual acts.”

Copas told the AP that he accepted the honorable discharge simply to end the ordeal, to avoid lying about his sexuality and risking a perjury charge, and to keep his friends out of the spotlight.

He received honorary discharge papers that list his awards and citations so he will have documented proof of his military service for prospective employers. But the discharge papers also state the reason for his dismissal.

He plans to appeal to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

Troops Find $40 Million;
96 Soldiers Still Missing;
One A True Master Of Deception

Army Times 7.31.06

Members of an elite commando unit in Colombia are on trial in a case involving missing drug money. Fifty-one Colombian soldiers face court-martial, and charges are pending against 96 others over a stash of cash they found in the jungle in 2003.

The troops divided eight 55-gallon barrels stuffed with a combination of dollars and pesos worth about $40 million and didn’t tell anyone about the find when they returned to their base camp, according to The Scotsman newspaper. Investigators picked up the scent when some of the 51 soldiers now charged began spending conspicuously, raising questions about how poorly paid troops suddenly were able to buy luxury cars and spend big at nightclubs and brothels.

The 96 other soldiers have not been formally charged, mainly because they have vanished.

One of the deserters is believed to have paid for a sex-change operation with his share of the money, which would make that hunt a bit more complicated.

Semper Lie:
Fake Veteran Must Wear Sandwich Board

July 26, 2006 By CHERY SABOL, The Daily Inter Lake

A Whitefish man was sentenced Thursday to spend 50 hours wearing a sandwich board with the words, “I am a liar. I am not a Marine. I have never served my country.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula also sentenced William Horvath to four months of house arrest for making a false statement.

Horvath, 36, was convicted of making a false statement — a felony.

According to court documents, in 2001 he told a probation officer that he served time in the U.S. Marine Corps. The probation officer was gathering information on Horvath on a prior charge of being a fugitive in possession of firearms or ammunition.

When the officer attempted to verify Horvath’s military service, the Marine Corps stated there was no record of him having served.

Horvath then presented evidence to the probation officer, including photographs and decorations. Representatives of the Marine Corps said Horvath’s uniform was worn improperly, decorations were improperly displayed, and equipment and uniforms in the photos did not fit with the era or were inconsistent with other items in the photos.

A veteran himself, Molloy ordered Horvath to perform 50 hours of community service by marching in front of the U.S. courthouse in Missoula during regular business hours. He must wear a sandwich board with large letters that will read, “I am a liar. I am not a Marine,” on the front. On the back will be: “I have never served my country. I have dishonored veterans of all wars.”

He must also write a letter of apology to the commandant of the Marine Corps, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and American Legion in Kalispell. Similar letters will go to the Missoulian and Daily Inter Lake newspapers, Molloy ordered. Horvath must admit in the letters that he lied repeatedly about serving and being wounded.

Horvath will be on probation for four years. Molloy also fined Horvath $1,500.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Déjà Vu All Over Again:
[It Was “A Few Days” When Announced Last Week]

July 30, 2006 Reuters

Iraq’s oil pipeline to Turkey has been fixed and exports will be resumed to the port of Ceyhan at a rate of 600,000-700,000 barrels per day, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said.

A senior oil ministry official said pumping would start within a few days.

Assorted Resistance Action

July 30, 2006 By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press & Reuters & (KUNA)

A Sunni cleric from a tribe opposed to the insurgents in Iraq was shot and killed while driving in Samarra, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad

Three Iraqi policemen were wounded as result of an explosion of a car bomb targeting a police patrol Southeast of the Northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said on Sunday.

A source in the Iraqi police in Mosul told the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that suicide bomber detonated his vehicle in the neighborhood of Sumar Southeast of the city of Mosul wounding the three policemen and causing material damage to the patrol.

FALLUJA: A policeman was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, police said. Two suspects were arrested. Gunmen captured a truck driver and set his vehicle on fire.

Two policemen were seriously hurt by a roadside bomb near their patrol in northern Baghdad, police said.

A policeman was shot dead by insurgents in the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

God Bless The USA

Photo from the I-R-A-Q (I Remember Another Quagmire) portfolio of Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (For more of his outstanding work, contact at: (hastiemike@earthlink.net) T)

“IsraHell’s ‘Strategy’”

From: Muslim Bruneian
To: GI Special
Sent: July 30, 2006
Subject: IsraHell’s ‘strategy’

Israel’s airstrike ‘strategy’ that has been mentioned so many times, that is, the use of powerful guided missiles to strike at places where they *think* Hizbollah fired rockets from, is fundamentally illogical.

The moment those gunners have launched their rockets and saw where they were going to hit, they would’ve left whatever location they had used.

They’re not suicidal idiots who’d just wait for a missile to come blow their brains out (If they were, they wouldn’t even be hiding in buildings or caves in the first place).

So basically, all this time, Israel’s military has been wasting millions of dollars, and tons and tons worth of explosives, trying to attack a target that isn’t there anymore, and instead killing people who just happened to live there… or just happened to pass by.

This isn’t self-defense; this is just a wasteful, unnecessary and stupid massacre that’s only going to make the world hate Israel more.

The ‘strategy’ is, apparently, to give Hizbollah as much Lebanese (and perhaps worldwide) support as possible by showing the world how brutal and uncaring they are when it comes to civilian lives that aren’t Israeli.

Muslim Bruneian

[Thanks to Mark Shapiro, who sent this in.]

OCCUPATION REPORT

Dying In Vain:
“Some Towns Have Been Pacified Multiple Times”

July 30, 2006 By Tom Lasseter, McClatchy Newspapers, BAGHDAD, Iraq [Excerpts]

The Bush administration’s decision to move thousands of U.S. soldiers into Baghdad to quell sectarian warfare before it explodes into outright civil war underscores a problem that’s hindered the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq from the beginning: There aren’t enough troops to do the job.

Many U.S. officials in Baghdad and in Washington privately concede the point.

They say they’ve been forced to shuffle U.S. units from one part of the country to another for at least two years because there haven’t been enough soldiers and Marines to deal simultaneously with Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite militias; train Iraqi forces; and secure roads, power lines, border crossings and ammunition dumps.

But when U.S. forces have cracked down in one place, Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists have popped up in another.

Some towns have been pacified multiple times, only to return to chaos [translation: only to return to resistance control] as soon as the United States reduced troop numbers. In cities such as Baghdad, Kirkuk, Samarra and Ramadi, bloodshed ebbs and flows, but security is never a given.

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

As Troops Pulled Out Of Kirkuk To Protect Baiji Oil, Resistance Attacks Kirkuk

Jul 30, by Marwan Ibrahim, AFP

Insurgents have detonated a car bomb in a protected enclave housing the US and British consulates in Iraq’s oil city of Kirkuk in the latest in a string of deadly blasts.

The blast, which killed two and wounded six, came overnight beside a row of shops in the previously untouched Arafa Naftiya area, containing the headquarters of the Northern Oil Company and foreign consulates.

Meanwhile in Kirkuk forces are being withdrawn.

An Iraqi army unit had been redeployed to the oil-refining city of Baiji 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the southwest, creating a security vacuum.

Hakim added that they have not received enough funds from the interior ministry for the police forces.

“One of the reasons for the deterioration of the security situation in Kirkuk is the neglect of the central government,” he said.

Notes From A Lost War:
Disaster Disguised As Success:
The Occupation In Rawah

July 31, 2006 By Sean D. Naylor, Army Times Staff writer [Excerpts]

RAWAH, Iraq: Capt. Mohammed Abdalwahab is sitting at ground zero of the war in this part of Anbar province, but he doesn’t look the least bit perturbed.

From behind a broad wooden desk, the tall, lean, mustachioed officer in a well-fitting blue police uniform is interrogating a blindfolded insurgent suspect between nonchalant puffs on a cigarette.

Minutes earlier, the suspect had been defiant in the face of questioning by U.S. soldiers who had sneaked up on him at the fruit stand he operated in the town. But now, as Abdalwahab peppers him with questions, the 21-year-old suspect has become subdued and defensive. There’s no doubt as to who is in control.

“If you don’t give me enough information, I’ll hand you to the (Iraqi) army, and you know what they’ll do,” Abdalwahab tells the suspect. Behind him, a smiling police lieutenant grabs a length of wood and pretends to beat the soles of the suspect’s feet.

“If he’s going to crack, he’s going to crack with these guys, not with us,” said the Army humint team leader, a staff sergeant.

In this town of 20,000 on the north bank of the Euphrates River, the majority of the 99 percent Sunni population either supports the insurgency or has been cowed into silence by intimidation and threats from terrorist groups.

Abdalwahab is the Rawah chief of police, which makes him the most important man in the counterinsurgency fight here — and the insurgents’ top target. The very fact that Rawah has a police force at all makes it, and Abdalwahab, stand out.

[An endless amount of happy talk about the magnificent successes of the Rawah collaborator cops follows before reality finally emerges from the muck.]

Of 42 IPs recruited so far, 28 remain on the job.

One has been killed, several are missing, and the others decided that police work was not for them. The courage of those who remain has earned the respect of U.S. troops.

But the U.S. troops and police liaison officers are not yet prepared to let them conduct unilateral patrols. “I don’t think they’d last long,” said Capt. Ben Tiernan, a fire support officer for 4-14’s A Troop, said. U.S. officials here said the Rawah police enterprise is finely balanced.

“If the insurgents are successful in killing even one or two IPs, that has a bigger psychological effect on what we’re trying to do,” Saenz said.

U.S. forces therefore face a dilemma in how to use the police. Keeping them holed up in the police station sends a message that the insurgents still have the upper hand. But allowing the police to patrol exposes them to risks that the Americans believe could be fatal to their attempts to build up the IP force in Rawah.

U.S. forces have decided on a policy of “maximum exposure, minimum risk,” allowing the IPs to patrol on their own — but in areas that have been secured by nearby U.S. forces, Hart said.

U.S. officials agree that the one policeman they can’t afford to lose is Capt. Mohammed Abdalwahab.

He is, Saenz said, “the ace in the hole for this organization. He is an excellent leader. He’s a morale booster. He understands what his job is. He understands his own people. He has already dealt with one of the biggest blows that an insurgency can have on a police agency — to take out one of his officers. He was able to contain that, maintain the morale of his troops.”

Abdalwahab has so impressed the Americans that they are pushing to have him promoted to district police chief. Who would replace him has not been decided.

And that sums up one of the coalition’s major problems: Capt. Abdalwahabs are hard to find.

[Think about that. “U.S. officials” have just told you the entire future of the U.S. military occupation of Rawah depends on one man, who can neither stay, nor leave. Now, applying the most elementary basics of warfare, what, exactly, does that tell you about how things are going? Duh.]

OCCUPATION PALESTINE/LEBANON

Perfect Target Selection

Palestinians demonstrate against Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese in front of the European Union office in Gaza City, Sunday 30, 2006. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

“It Was A Withdrawal, Not A Victory. Hizbollah Fighters Still Hold Bint Jbeil”

General Udi Adam, head of Israel’s northern command, made a revealing slip of the tongue when he referred in a briefing to Hizbollah ‘soldiers’, quickly correcting himself to say ‘fighters’ instead.

‘This isn’t like the war we fight in the territories (the West Bank and Gaza),’ said another senior officer. ‘This is a real war.’

July 30, 2006 Mitchell Prothero in Beirut, The Observer [Excerpts]

It was five in the morning and the lead Golani Brigade squad was moving carefully through the outskirts of Bint Jbeil when a burst of automatic fire rang out. Hizbollah fighters engaged the Israeli patrol at close range with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades, from alleys, windows and rooftops.

Two men died in the first moments; six more were killed over the coming hours. It was, one survivor said later, an ‘ambush from hell’.

Sergeant Evyatar Dahan, shot through the shoulder, managed to kick away a live grenade seconds before it exploded but watched as his company commander was killed. ‘It was terrible: the shooting went on and on and there was screaming from all directions,’ the young infantryman recalled afterwards.

‘We were like sitting ducks,’ said another soldier.

After the initial shock, reinforcements arrived and air strikes were called in from across the border – just two kilometres south – to pin down the Lebanese Shia guerrillas. But it was seven hours before the wounded could be evacuated by helicopter, and only then under heavy fire. Hizbollah said its men could hear the Israelis screaming.

The men of C Company fortified a house and guarded their dead, to ensure they were not snatched as part of a macabre strategy of trading prisoners, alive, dead or dismembered.

They eventually dragged eight corpses down a steep hillside under cover of darkness.

Two weeks into the fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, Wednesday’s battle – ‘the longest day’, one newspaper called it – may have marked a bloody turning point.

Indeed last night Israel announced it was pulling its ground troops out of Bint Jbeil, saying it had accomplished its objectives there and dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, but admitting it had paid a heavy price with the lives of Israeli soldiers.

Heavy indeed, as it was a withdrawal, not a victory. Hizbollah fighters still hold Bint Jbeil.

General Udi Adam, head of Israel’s northern command, made a revealing slip of the tongue when he referred in a briefing to Hizbollah ‘soldiers’, quickly correcting himself to say ‘fighters’ instead.

‘This isn’t like the war we fight in the territories [the West Bank and Gaza],’ said another senior officer. ‘This is a real war.’

Four UN Troops Executed By
Israel

30 July 2006 July 26, 2006, The Independent [Excerpt from his diary]

Wednesday 26 July

Indian UN soldiers bring what is left of the four observers to the run-down hospital in Marjayoun.

All day they had been reporting Israeli shellfire creeping closer to their clearly marked position. An officer in the UN’s headquarters at Naqoura phoned the Israelis 10 times to warn them of their fall of shot, and 10 times he had been promised that no more shells would fall close to the Khiam post.

But the four soldiers did not run away – as the Israelis presumably hoped they would – and so yesterday evening an Israeli aircraft flew down and fired a missile directly into their UN position, tearing the four brave men to pieces and flattening their building.

“Judaism Rejects Zionism”
Get The Message?

Photos of New York City protest against Israeli State Sponsored Terrorism and in Support of the Lebanese/Palestinian People! [Majed, 7/28/06]

56 Lebanese Children Liquidated By Israeli Attack;
Zionist Leader Says Villages And People In Them Will Be “Totally Destroyed”

A blanket with the bodies of two children recovered from under the rubble of a demolished building that was attacked by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, July 30, 2006. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

[Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert told his Cabinet after the strike, according to a participant. “We will continue the activity and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation.”

7.30.06 By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer & By Tom Perry BEIRUT (Reuters)

At least 56 people, more than half children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that crushed a building, the deadliest attack of the campaign against Hezbollah.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided to return early to Washington with her diplomatic mission derailed after Lebanese leaders told her not to come.

Lebanon’s prime minister said his country would not talk to the Americans over anything but an unconditional cease-fire.

The missiles struck just after 1 a.m., leveling a three-story building in Qana where two extended families, the Shalhoubs and Hashims, had taken refuge in the basement from heavy Israeli bombardment in the area. Throughout the day, rescue workers dug through the rubble, lifting out bodies dressed in colorful clothes of women and children. At one point they found a single room with 18 bodies, police said.

“Why are they killing us? What have we done?” screamed Khalil Shalhoub, who was helping pull out the dead until he saw his brother’s body taken out on a stretcher. The dead included at least 34 children and 12 adult women, security officials said.

Israel said guerrillas had fired rockets from near the building into northern Israel.

On Thursday, the Israeli military’s Al-Mashriq radio that broadcasts into southern Lebanon warned residents that their villages would be “totally destroyed” if missiles are fired from them. Leaflets with similar messages were dropped in some areas Saturday.

A senior official in the Israeli air force said the village had been warned “several times” that it would be attacked because “hundreds of rockets have been fired from inside the village in the past two weeks, from the backyards, from the squares … from as close as 50 to 60 (yards) from this building.”

Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr disputed allegations that Hezbollah was firing missiles from Qana.

“What do you expect Israel to say? Will it say that it killed 40 children and women?” he told Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV.

In Beirut, some 5,000 protesters gathered in downtown Beirut, at one point attacking a U.N. building and burning American flags, shouting, “Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv” and chanting for Hezbollah’s ally Syria to hit Israel.

Lebanese protesters broke into the U.N. headquarters in Beirut on Sunday, smashing windows and ransacking offices, after an Israeli air strike killed 54 people in south Lebanon.

Several thousand people massed outside the building in downtown Beirut chanting “Death to Israel, death to America. We sacrifice our blood and souls for Lebanon”.

Demonstrators held aloft the flags of Lebanon, Hizbollah and the Amal party, whose leader, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, appealed for a halt to the attack on the building.

Demonstrators tore down a U.N. flag outside the building and ripped it to shreds and called on Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to launch rocket attacks on Tel Aviv.

“Oh Nasrallah, oh our cherished one, destroy, destroy Tel Aviv,” they chanted.

“They Had To Have Known There Were Children In That House”

[Thanks to JM, who sent this in.]

Family photos – one showing two young children – were scattered in the debris. Mohsen Hachem stared at the images.

“They had to have known there were children in that house,” he said. “The drones are always overhead, and those children – there were more than 30 – would play outside all day.”

July 31, 2006 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Jonathan Steele and Clancy Chassay in Qana; Rory McCarthy at the Israel-Lebanon border; Wendell Steavenson in Beirut and Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian.

It was an unremarkable three-storey building on the edge of town. But for two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, it was a last refuge. They could not afford the extortionate taxi fares to Tyre and hoped that if they all crouched together on the ground floor they would be safe.

They were wrong. At about one in the morning, as some of the men were making late night tea, an Israeli bomb smashed into the house. Witnesses describe two explosions a few minutes apart, with survivors desperately moving from one side of the building to the other before being hit by the second blast. By last night, more than 60 bodies had been pulled from the rubble, said Lebanese authorities, 34 of them children. There were eight known survivors.

As yet another body was removed from the wreckage yesterday morning, Naim Raqa, the head of the civil defence team searching the ruins, hung his head in grief: “When they found them, they were all huddled together at the back of the room … Poor things, they thought the walls would protect them.”

The bombing, the bloodiest incident in Israel’s 18-day campaign against Hizbullah, drew condemnation from around the world.

Late last night Israel announced a suspension of aerial activities in southern Lebanon for 48 hours and said it would coordinate with the UN to allow a 24-hour window for residents in southern Lebanon to leave the area if they wished.

Muhammad Qassim Shalhoub, a slim 38-year-old construction worker, emerged with a broken hand and minor injuries, but lost his wife, five children and 45 members of his extended family. “Around one o’clock we heard a big explosion,” he said. “I don’t remember anything after that, but when I opened my eyes I was lying on the floor and my head had hit the wall. There was silence. I didn’t hear anything for a while, but then heard screams.”

“I said: ‘Allahu Akbar. Don’t be scared. I will come.’ There was blood on my face. I wiped it and looked for my son but couldn’t find him. I took three children out – my four-year-old nephew, a girl and her sister. I went outside and screamed for help and three men came and went back inside. There was shelling everywhere. We heard the planes. I was so exhausted I could not go back inside again.”

Ibrahim Shalhoub described how he and his cousin had set out to get help after the bombs hit. “It was dark and there was so much smoke. Nobody could do anything till dawn,” he said, his eyes still darting around nervously. “I couldn’t stop crying, we couldn’t help them.”

Said Rabab Yousif had her son on her knee when the bomb fell. “I couldn’t see anything for 10 minutes and then I saw my son sitting in my lap and covered with rubble,” she recalled. “I removed the dirt and the stones I freed him and handed him to the people who were inside rescuing us.

“I then started freeing myself, my hands were free, and then went with two men to rescue my husband. We pulled him from the rubble. I tried to find Zainab, my little daughter, but it was too dark and she was covered deep in rubble I was too scared that they might bomb us again so I just left her and ran outside.” She was in hospital with her son and husband, who was paralysed and in a coma. There was no news of her daughter.

Rescue workers were pulling bodies from the rubble all morning. They came across the smallest corpses last, many intact but with lungs crushed by the blast wave of the bombing.

“God is great,” a policeman muttered as the body of a young boy no older than 10 was carried away on a stretcher. The boy lay on his side, as if asleep, but for the fine dust that coated his body and the blood around his nose and ears.

The house stood at the top of a hillside on the very edge of Qana and its disembowelled remains had spilled down the slope.

Bodies were lined up on the ground – a baby, two young girls and two women. The rigid corpse of a young man lay nearby, his arm rising vertically from beneath a blanket, his index finger pointing up to the sky.

“Where are the stretchers, where are the stretchers?” a rescue worker cried as Israeli warplanes roared overhead. Sami Yazbuk, the head of the Red Cross in Tyre said they got the call at 7am, but had to take a detour to Qana because of shelling on the road.

In a nearby ambulance the smallest victims were stacked one on top of the other to make space for the many to come. A boy and girl, both no more than four years old had been placed head to toe. They were still wearing pyjamas.

Family photos – one showing two young children – were scattered in the debris. Mohsen Hachem stared at the images. “They had to have known there were children in that house,” he said. “The drones are always overhead, and those children – there were more than 30 – would play outside all day.”

At the site of the latest tragedy, a man broke down as another small body was brought out, followed quickly by another. The civil defence workers cradled the corpses before placing them delicately on the bright orange stretchers.

“He was the son of Abu Hachem,” said a young man in the crowd outside the house. “They’re Ali and Mohammed – they’re brothers,” a neighbour shouted.

At Tyre hospital, Dr Salman Zaynadeen said the casualties were the worst thing he and colleagues had ever faced.

Twenty-two bodies were in a refrigerated lorry serving as the hospital’s morgue, 12 of them children. “At least 20 more are expected. They range in age up to 75. They were crushed,” he said.

Five dead boys lay in the yard outside. Army staff photographed them for identification purposes.

The youngest, Abbas Mahmoud Hashem, lay on his back with his head turned and his right leg drawn up. A dummy hung on a blue plastic chain round his neck; concrete dust covered his face and hair. He looked about 18 months old.

On a hospital bed, a 13-year-old survivor, Nour Hashem, lay fiddling with her bed sheet, her eyes welling with tears.

She had been in the house where so many of her family had been killed but had miraculously escaped with only slight injuries.

“We were all sleeping in the same room, my friend, my sister and my cousin,” she said, her voice still shuddering.

“I pulled the rubble off my mother and she took me to another house, then she went looking for my brothers and sisters. But my brothers and sisters didn’t come and my mother didn’t return.”

Mass Murderers At Work:
Adolf Eichmann Would Be Proud Of His Inheritors:
The Racist, Genocidal, Terrorist State Of Israel

Children killed by Israeli air attack on the southern Lebanese village of Qana. At least 51 people were killed, many of them children, when Israeli war planes blitzed a village in south Lebanon, the deadliest single strike since the Zionist state unleashed its war on Lebanon 19 days ago. (AFP/Nicolas Asfouri)

Mass Murderer At Work:
Reinhard Heydrich Would Be Proud Of His Inheritor:
The Racist, Genocidal, “High Ranking Officer” Of Israel;
He Will Kill Every Living Human He Finds, And Is Proud Of It

Jul. 30, 2006 By YAAKOV KATZ, Jerusalem Post STAFF AND AP

A high-ranking IAF officer said that the IDF had warned the residents of Qana to evacuate the village in anticipation of the airstrikes on Katyusha launchers.

“We warned the residents that we would be attacking there,” he said.

“We work under the assumption that the villages are empty and that whoever is there is affiliated with Hizbullah.”

What do you think? Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Send to contact@militaryproject.org. Name, I.D., withheld on request. Replies confidential.

Rage Throughout The World:
“We Are With The Resistance”
Bush And His Rabid Attack Dog Go Too Far:
“All Arab Rulers And Our Ruler Here Is An Oppressor And An Agent And A Conspirator!”

“We are with the resistance, all of the Egyptian people are with the resistance in Iraq, in Palestine, and in Lebanon!” she shouted. “All Arab rulers and our ruler here is an oppressor and an agent and a conspirator!”

July 30, 2006 By NEIL MacFARQUHAR, New York Times [Excerpts]

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 30

The images of the dead children in southern Lebanon played across the television screens on Sunday over and over again: small and caked in dirt and as lifeless as rag dolls as rescuers hauled them from the wreckage of several residential buildings pulverized hours earlier by the Israeli Air Force.

The images were broadcast on all of the Arab-language satellite channels, but it was the most popular station, Al Jazeera, that made the starkest point. For several hours after rescuers reached Qana, Lebanon, the station took its anchors off the air and just continuously played images of the little bodies there.

“This is the new Middle East,” one report from the shattered town began, making a sarcastic reference to a phrase Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice uttered last week when visiting Beirut, Lebanon, and rejecting calls for an immediate cease-fire.

The anger the deaths caused in Lebanon and elsewhere was palpable. Within hours, thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in downtown Beirut, smashing windows at the United Nations headquarters, one of the few foreign buildings readily accessible.

“American-made bombs, dropped by Israeli planes, with Arab cover,” said one sign in Arabic. The last phrase referred to the initial criticism of Hezbollah by the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan when the fighting erupted nearly three weeks ago. Already worried about the growing appeal of political Islam, those governments worried that Hezbollah’s success would only bolster the strength of Islamists.

Arab public opinion, already convinced that Americans do not really care about Arab lives given the dozens killed daily in Iraq, will undoubtedly sour even more on the United States.

“There is a feeling right now that this war is not really an Israeli war against Hezbollah, but an American war to get rid of Hezbollah,” said Hussein Amin, the chairman of the journalism department at the American University in Cairo. “I think most of the coverage, in showing the dead children repeatedly, is something that is going to provoke rage and anger throughout the Arab world.”

Protesters marched through downtown Cairo, too, chanting support for “the resistance,” as Arabs call the increasingly popular Hezbollah, and “to liquidate Zionists.”

One of the demonstrators, Faweya Ali, wearing a traditional head scarf, held up a yellow Hezbollah flag in one hand and a picture of the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

“We are with the resistance, all of the Egyptian people are with the resistance in Iraq, in Palestine, and in Lebanon!” she shouted. “All Arab rulers and our ruler here is an oppressor and an agent and a conspirator!”

[They sew the wind: the whirlwind will come soon.]

Emergency Protest of Qana Massacre

When: 5:00 P.M. – July 31, 2006

Where: Dag Hammarsjold Plaza at 46th and 1st, slightly north of the United Nations, New York, New York:

July 30, 2006 New York City Labor Against The War

Followed by a march to Ralph Bunche Park, directly across from the UN. From there, march on 42nd street, past Grand Central, to Times Square.

Why: On July 30, 2006 Israel bombed a building where 100 civilians had taken shelter, massacring at least 54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children in the city of Qana. Israeli missiles struck just after one in the middle of the night, leveling a three-story building where two extended families had taken refuge in the basement from heavy Israeli bombardment in the area.

France, Britain, Spain, the European Union, the United Nations and countries throughout the world condemned the Israeli attack on Qana. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the attack as a “war crime,” demanding an immediate ceasefire in a conflict that has now killed more than 750 Lebanese people, more than half of which were children, and has left a trail of destruction across the country. The attack was eerily reminiscent of the Israeli attack in April 1996 on a United Nations base in Qana that killed more than 100 civilians who were taking refuge in the base during Israel’s “Grapes of Wrath” bombing campaign.

This is not the first massacre Israel has carried out. This is not the first time Israel is condemned by the international community for its attacks against civilians. If we do not act now it will not be the last.

Come out to protest this vicious attack against the people of Lebanon. Demand that your tax-dollars stop being sent to kill people in Palestine and Lebanon. Support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Bring Palestinian and Lebanese flags and signs demanding an unconditional ceasefire, an end to U.S. Aid to Israel, and U.N. Sanctions on Israel.

Ad-Hoc Coalition for Justice in the Middle East –
protectpalestine@gmail.com; mailto:protectpalestine%40gmail.com.

Received:

War Criminals In Power Seek To Avoid Prosecution For Their Crimes

From: Joshua Karpoff
To: GI Special
Sent: July 28, 2006
Subject: War Criminals in Power seek to avoid prosecution for their crimes

The article I’ve included below proves just whose interest the state really serves.

There is a law on the books that says any US military personnel or “national” who is involved in the mistreatment of detainees in a conflict is subject to civilian criminal prosecution, with penalties as far reaching as the death penalty.

Everyone knows the Bush Administration sanctioned this abuse, and all that is necessary is for 1 US attorney to file charges against the administration to bring them before a court.

But that will never happen, because when it comes down to it, the prosecutors and the Bush administration are all on the same side.

Josh Karpoff
Campus Antiwar Network, Website Manager
Camp Democracy, Technology Consultant

Detainee Abuse Charges Feared
Shield Sought From ‘96 War Crimes Act

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer, July 28, 2006; A01

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

Telling the truth – about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington – is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance – whether it’s in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you’ve read, we hope that you’ll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers.  www.traveling-soldier.org/  And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! www.ivaw.net

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