18 January 2009

Our people in the fighting tell their stories better than anyone.  This photo-essay just came to me from Afghanistan.  Our soldiers are not professional writers, nor photographers, but they are very good at what they do.  The rawness and simplicity of this powerful essay rings truer than any of us writers/photographers seem to be able to capture.  It also reminds me of why I am so happy to be in the United States, away from the fighting, and how much I distress about not covering our people when they are in need.

Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.

BAGHDAD (AP) - The U.S. formally transferred control of the Green Zone to Iraqi authorities Thursday in a pair of ceremonies that also handed back Saddam Hussein's former palace. Iraq's prime minister said he will propose making Jan. 1 a holiday marking the restoration of sovereignty. Under the new security agreement between Washington and Baghdad to replace a U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, the Iraqi government also now has control of American troops' actions and of the country's airspace.

MCT COLUMN 275
(12/23/2004)

By Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers

Even in hard times, this is the holiday season and a time when thoughts turn to home and family and dinner tables covered with food and gaily wrapped presents and bright lights.

Save a moment amid the celebrations to give thought to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform in far-flung parts of this world who won't be sitting down to dinner with their families.

Published: 04 December 2008

McClatchy Newspapers

This week, I'm writing in defense of an old friend, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who was dragged through the mud this week in a 5,000-word article by David Barstow in The New York Times.

Several months ago, Barstow wrote a story on a Pentagon program undertaken on orders of then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that offered hand-feeding and special treatment to a motley crew of television's military talking heads.

By Tim Lynch

Printed with permission from:  http://blog.freerangeinternational.com/

Afghanistan

We had to make a run to Kabul last Friday to take some clients to the airport and to pick up new ones.  The Jalalabad to Kabul road is considered very dangerous by the military and US State Department, of medium risk by the UN, and very little risk by me and the hundreds of internationals who travel the route daily.  The Taliban or other Armed Opposition Group (AOG) have never ambushed internationals on this route with the sole exception of taking some pot shots at a UN convoy last week.  The reason this route remains open is that it is too important to all the players in Afghanistan to risk its closure – almost 80% of the Afghan GDP flows along it so the Taliban would have a real PR problem if they cut it causing a large scale humanitarian crisis.  The criminal gangs and drug lords who cooperate with the Taliban would also become very agitated if the road were closed and probably turn on any real Taliban groups foolish enough to be within their reach if that happened.   We don’t take this run lightly but we often choose to make it without body armor or long guns because we are afraid of being ambushed by the other villains – members of the Afghan security forces.  On Friday our long string of luck ran out and we became the latest victim of the Afghan security company game.  It cost us two sets of body armor which we cannot replace because you cannot import body armor into Afghanistan and we were lucky to get away with the weapons (which are also irreplaceable.)

“Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals.” – George F. Kennan, United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union

“You must draw a white-hot iron over this Georgian land!…You will have to break the wings of this Georgia! Let the blood of the petit bourgeois flow until they give up all their resistance! Impale them! Tear them apart!” – Vladimir Lenin