Veterans and their families need to watch this.

Thank you to the numerous vets who sent the link.

I just sent a thanks to David Martin at 60 Minutes.

Mr. Arnold Fisher deserves a standing ovation and eternal gratitude for his efforts and inspiration.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146231n

Many people contacted me in regard to a documentary movie about an American Green Beret, missing some 44 years.  They wanted to know if this story is true.

Unfortunately, this is another fraud, shamelessly pulling on the heartstrings of the many good people who want it to be true.

Conspiracy theorists of course will blame this on the government.  Our government deserves blame for many things, but frankly, it strains even my imagination that any recent US administration would attempt to cover up this case.  President Clinton would have had every reason to run it up the flag pole, as would have Bush and now Obama.

In any case, it would be easier to put a man on the moon than to cover up this case. It is too simple to check.  The fraudsters are dependent on a naive audience.

As evidence, this official report from the Department of Defense Prisoners of War/Missing Personnel Office is dated 19 Feb 2009.  Fingerprints taken by the FBI show him not to be Robertson.

Crystal clear

A good friend—who is a young former Marine Captain and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan—was taking a break from grad school when he headed to Jamaica. I emailed asking how his vacation went.  His answer…is a trip.  My friend's letter has been edited so that it would make sense and provide context for a general readership.

(Side note: it is possible that a major war will soon break out on the Korean Peninsula. If major combat begins, I will head over.  Seoul is a five-hour direct flight from Chiang Mai.  I am checking my gear today.  If it stays to a low rumble, I will watch from the bleachers in Chiang Mai.)

We begin:

Mike,

Jamaica was something.  I have lived overseas in challenging countries for over 20 years.  I am American, but was raised overseas, including in such exotic locations as Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

When I became a Marine officer, they sent me to Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, and elsewhere, where I served up to rank of Captain before heading to graduate school.  Before and between all this, I have backpacked or traveled to dozens of countries and locations such as Sri Lanka’s cultural triangle, northern Laos, eastern Costa Rica, Borneo, and Penang, trying to soak it all in.

I have seen good scams, including in Sri Lanka, such as having random people walk up to you and try to coax you into an impromptu tour, immediately joined by random taxis and whatnot at just the right time.

Some of the other scams include bribes, various bar scams, overcharging, or innocuous ones such as taxis refusing to use their meters.

Bribe-fishing includes getting pulled over by cops for the most random “violations” that can be made to “go away” with a small on-the-spot “fine.” Bar-scams include random drinks added to your tab, especially if you’ve been drinking.  Or simply not listing prices.

I’ve even been told of drugged drinks in relatively safer tourist-friendly destinations such as Thailand.  A friend fell victim—waking up in an alley with his money and credit cards gone.

Members of my family and friends have had purses snatched or have been pickpocketed.    Travelers can reduce risks by hiring a trusted guide or by staying in respected hotels, but of course that costs money—and authenticity, as you are safely shuttled from destination to destination.

Jamaica is famous for all-inclusive resorts, and the entire island is dotted with them.  They include everything from tiered brand-name resorts such as Sandals or Beaches that advertise constantly in the states, to smaller resorts.  Prices range from about $100 to thousands per day.

Jamaica averages about 4 – 5 cruise ships a week.  Tourists pour in for a full day on the island, especially in places like Montego Bay, where they crowd well-known spots such as Hip strip or Margaritaville.

I wanted to experience a more authentic Jamaica.  So I rented a car.

Blue Mountains—coffee country—from the excellent Mount Edge guesthouse

I remembered your Indian stories, experienced my own South Asian ones, and think I can safely add Jamaica to the list of places to watch out for.  Jamaica is known as a relatively dangerous destination, and so even a seasoned traveler like myself got burned.

I was driving with two experienced backpackers for parts of the adventure.  During the journey, we faced the normal issues—nearly getting run off the road, a couple minor dents, and pulled over twice by bribe-fishing cops.

On the flip side, that car got us to some of the more remote beaches, cheap guesthouses, and prevented us from having to viciously haggle down the throngs of taxis waiting to take you to their choice of destination so they could get their cut.

We decided to attend the J’ouvert festival at the end of our trip. The party we attended was located just outside the town of Ocho Rios.

The festival’s location is the red arrow above.  The capital, Kingston, is almost directly south on the southern end of the island.  About two hours west of us by car is the famous Montego Bay, and on the west tip, the 7-mile beach of Negril.  Further east from us is the fairly secluded Port Antonio / Blue Lagoon area, which was a trip highlight, and highly recommended for future Jamaica visitors looking to get off the beaten path. (The Tom Cruise movie Cocktail was filmed there.)

On what was so far a great trip, we arrived at one of the famous beach parties on our last day in Jamaica.  The annual festival called J'ouvert coincides with Carnival, and is a time of wildness on many Caribbean islands.

J'ouvert celebrates, in part, the emancipation from slavery.  During the celebration people are covered in paint, similar to Holi in India and Nepal.

For this leg of the trip, there were four of us sharing the car.  We parked in a guarded lot—everyone parked in or by this lot.  I placed my wallet inside a cargo pocket, and as a security measure, fastened a safety pin to reinforce my Velcro cargo pocket.

Within the hour I got pickpocketed.  The thief grabbed about $70 and tossed the wallet.  I was amazed that the thief managed to defeat what I’d thought was a decent deterrent.  I was pickpocketed in the center of the party grounds, discovered it within moments, and notified the police within minutes.

The wallet had already been “found” about 20 yards away.  The police smugly asked if I had simply lost the wallet—highly unlikely, given that the pocket was safety-pinned shut.  Hats off to the thief though—he pulled off a tricky feat.

Takeaway: secure the wallet better.  An experienced thief can circumvent the thwarts, but the harder it gets, the more he moves on to easy targets.

Recently, my mother’s purse was snatched in Vietnam, and I have heard of people simply getting pockets or purses slashed.   As it happens, even if I had left my wallet secured in the car, it would not have helped. . . .

One of the many coves that dot the Blue Lagoon area, eastern Jamaica.

While we were at the festival, the rental car was robbed.  Our luggage and valuables were locked in the trunk, to discourage would-be thieves from peering in the windows.  This reeked of an elaborate scam—of the type you told me about in India.    As mentioned, earlier we were pulled over on two occasions by cops fishing for bribes.  Our paperwork was in order.  During the first incident, one of us, who was driving at the time, did well playing ignorant, a textbook performance of the type of training you get at SERE, or the experience you mentioned with your brush with the Immigration at SEATAC airport.  The police had summoned him out of the car, and moved back to the police vehicle parked behind us, and well out of earshot.

The police wanted about $50 US.  After about five minutes of back and forth, the frustrated police officers surprisingly gave up, and told us to just “move along.”  I guess they didn’t really have much to charge us on—the charge had been speeding—but then again, everyone was going about 10mph over the limit.  (This could have been a legitimate attempt to ticket—who knows—but the manner in which they went about it screamed bribe.)

Google maps of the beach festival. We were just east of the famous town of Ocho Rios. The festival largely takes place in a huge lot, about three football fields in area, filled with stalls and a huge stage. There were thousands of people, packed like a giant mosh pit. The orange line and circle mark the parking areas to support the thousands on the beach. The orange arrow is approximately where we parked.

At the J'ouvert festival's conclusion, we returned to find cops around our car.  The sun was up and we were covered in paint.  Only one of us, the would-be driver, was sober.    The cops had apparently “caught the guys in the act” of breaking into the rental car, and requested that we follow them to the police station.

And so we spent our last night in Jamaica at a rural police station—I’d like to say in the town of Galina, but I can’t be sure—sobering up, covered head-to-toe in red and blue paint, sitting next to the guy who supposedly tried to steal the car but only ended up robbing it, and who, funnily enough, was also covered in paint.

Try giving statements when you are drunk and look like a bucket of paint just got poured all over you—the cops were having a good time!  Also there was our “parking attendant” who the cops pulled in for questioning.  He kept apologizing profusely, but no one was buying his tale.

My shirt. This was a cheap throwaway bought at a souvenir shop—I threw away two sets of clothing from the festival—one I wore, and another that I used to try to tidy up in the police station bathroom.

The last-minute “drug deal” we made, helped along by the cops, was for us not to press charges, and in return, we would get back our possessions.

Otherwise, we’d have to try our hand at the Jamaican legal system.  The second choice would probably involve us missing our flight, contacting the embassy, and so on; no one wanted to do that.  We would have spent more in airfare, hotels, and whatever other charges than we would have to replace the few hundred dollars’ worth of electronics the thieves got away with.

One of the backpackers, “Jack,” had a bit of a temper—he was stressing—so I worked to make sure that only a couple of us were speaking with the cops.  All those hours wasted at random military outposts in random places, and the hurry-up-and-wait mentality of the military, made me close to immune to getting hot-tempered or stressed out with the situation.    Jack was moving toward heated arguments with the cops and had to be coaxed into waiting on the side.  One from our group had gotten into a minor argument with the parking attendant.  The cops wisely pulled us aside and advised us to not antagonize these guys further, because that would make it harder to get our stuff back.

It was true—an argument wasn’t going to help—we were trying to negotiate our belongings back with perhaps a not-too-disciplined police force—and we were trapped and at their mercy—with a serious time constraint, and no time to contact our embassy and await any assistance.

My guess at the police station location, in relation to us, a few kilometers east, in a mostly rural area; the police station in red, the festival location in orange. Google maps does not zoom in enough for me to be certain.

The situation reminded me of local politics in Iraq and Afghanistan—everyone’s in cahoots with everyone else—the cop you work with daily has a brother who has a friend who is the bomb-maker, and so nabbing that guy becomes a complex proposition—it’s all about relationships and status if you hope to get anything done, or in this case, returned to you.

A mediator-friend of the gang had returned the goods at around 6:30 in the morning, and was greeted by the cops with hugs and jokes.  They all obviously knew each other, and even the arrested suspect was on friendly terms with the police.  This was just like any other Saturday night for him, it seemed.  The guy’s family, wife and kids and all were even outside the police station hanging around.

The negotiation lasted about eight hours, a couple dozen phone calls (the goods had been distributed among the six-person gang, and each had to be reassured that no charges would be pressed), but we got our belongings, minus some pocket money.

I returned the car on an empty tank as we were rushing to make the flight—the first one at 9 AM.  Were we not in such a rush, I would have stayed around for breakfast and probably taken some photos with the cops and thieves.  I wasn’t upset at this point, but quite sober and amused, and thankful that we had our possessions and no one was hurt.

As for the car, the steering wheel had dramatically misaligned due to hitting numerous potholes from the previous week—two new dents (every car in Jamaica has several, including luxury cars), a very visibly dented front-left wheel rim, a broken left turn light, and the inside looked like a paint-filled balloon had exploded.  None of us had showered or changed clothes.  The rental agency representative burst out laughing when he saw the car—both the outside and inside had healthy splotches of red paint to top it all off.   I wish I had taken more photos to share!

Luckily the car was insured (definitely insure in a place like Jamaica), and I only paid about $150, for deductible.  It helped that the representative was sympathetic to our tale and did not charge us as much as he could have.

For perspective, an average cab fare from Montego to Kingston Bay can run about $300, and bus ride on one of the charter or luxury buses will easily cost $25 a head.  There are cheaper, slower, and more rudimentary alternatives, of course.

So I cleaned up as best I could, and still ended up looking like a lobster on the flights back—the red paint simply spread around my skin. The sunburn didn’t help.

Verdict:  Jamaica is beautiful.  Good beaches, fun people, great festivals, but if you just want a vacation, stay at the all-inclusive resorts that dot the island.

Now I need a vacation to relax from this one. . . .

I posed a question on Facebook about ammunition availability across the United States.  About 150 answers have come in so far:

My Facebook Page

To see all comments:  My Facebook Page

US Army Master Sergeant CJ Grisham: This Soldier has a Top Secret clearance.

Over the past couple of years, I repeatedly warned the US Army that Master Sergeant Christopher “CJ” Grisham is a lethal threat.  These warnings were ignored.

Grisham has harassed a long list of people, and has stalked me.  Ignoring him did not work.  Grisham contacted units with which I was embedded, and he impeded my wartime work.  I continued to warn the Army that if they did not get this Soldier under control, there would be consequences.  After some time, the inevitable occurred.

I never met Grisham.  Never saw him in person.  Never spoke with him.  Initially, his motivations for stalking me were mysterious, apparently stemming from my failure to answer an email during a period when I was receiving thousands.  Despite my efforts, nearly 8,000 emails remain unopened, though I continue to work through the backlog.  Grisham seemed to be upset that I did not reply.  I do not recall his message.

Over time, Grisham’s intentions became clear.  He craves attention, and I had a large footprint at the time, due to public interest in the wars.

Grisham joined the angry chorus of stay-at-home, radically rightwing milbloggers who were apoplectic when I declared from Afghanistan that Brigadier General Daniel Menard should be fired.  When I subsequently added General Stanley McChrystal to the list and called for him to be relieved, the criticism reached a crescendo.

Months later, Menard was relieved of command, charged with transgressions of military justice, based on a few comments that I published on Facebook.

President Obama then fired General McChrystal due to his own indiscretions.  I returned to Afghanistan at the personal invitation of General Petraeus.

Grisham can be persuasive.  He wasted no time contacting Soldiers attached to the combat unit that I embedded with, filling their heads with stories, some of which were believed by those who were dull enough.

Although I was giving positive ink to 4-4Cav, problems percolated from Civil Affairs (of all places) Soldiers that I had not yet met, and my subsequent total face time with them does not exceed five minutes.  Grisham had contacted members of the Civil Affairs unit attached to 4-4Cav, to rally them against my work.  Members of 4-4Cav and their families appreciated the dispatches and made me feel welcome, but the Civil Affairs tainted by Grisham became a problem.

Meanwhile, Grisham was a poster boy for Soldiers’ Angels, a charity organization that was later exposed funneling donations to a company partially owned by the son of the founder. Nepotism.

Grisham raised money for Soldiers’ Angels, and he persuaded them to join him in creating problems for me.  Collectively, they leaked over social media, and their activities gradually came into focus.

SA shared the same modus operandi with Grisham: when anyone posed an innocent question about their activities, the questions were not met with polite answers but were dismissed with aggressive public ridicule and ad hominem attacks.  Valid questions were never answered.

Donors were afraid to ask about the lavish parties thrown by SA, and the habit of a board member to misuse donations to fly his girlfriend to assignations.  The curious were beaten down and ridiculed.

The leadership of Soldiers’ Angels implemented a culture of fear.  Members were afraid to question their leadership, and to criticize it was to invite a tidal wave of ill.  Some members were afraid to leave the organization to join another.

There is nuance: SA is a vast organization, and members out on the tendrils who were doing important work may not have realized that at the core, SA was rotting.

Many folks will defend SA with their hearts, not realizing the charades and politics back at HQ.  Adding to confusion, unrelated organizations lifted the name “Soldiers’ Angels,” though are not related to the original group.

These details lead to misunderstandings.  When criticizing Soldiers’ Angels leadership, many people may believe offense is directed at them, when in reality the ridicule is limited to this group at HQ.

Initially the leadership of SA had its way, but when I left the war, there was time to research the charity and the subsequent revelations were devastating.  The organization today is collapsing.

In retrospect, they realize it would have been better to leave me alone in the war.

In 2011, while we both were in Afghanistan, Grisham made a not-so-veiled threat in writing that he would like to kill me.  I was accompanying combat missions in Zhari, while Grisham never left Kandahar Airfield (KAF) about twenty miles away.  KAF was the hub that I often passed through and sometimes lived on.

So now I needed to be watchful for IEDs, suicide bombers, enemy gunfire, green on blue attacks and US Soldiers in the rear, in the form of Grisham and his pals.  I had to worry about my back, so it was over.

The US Army should never leave senior NCOs in war zones carrying automatic weapons when they display signs of instability, and for the most part, this policy is observed.  Sometimes troops are disarmed, or the bolts are removed from their weapons, but many blue on blue murders in Iraq and Afghanistan still occurred.

Grisham complained on his blog and on Twitter of fear, stress, and mental issues while he was in Afghanistan, and the Army subsequently did the right thing and sent him home about halfway through his tour.

Grisham saw no combat in Afghanistan.  He publicly insists that he completed his tour there.  This is a lie.

Given my vulnerability to a defamation lawsuit, I would not dare write these words if they were untrue.  If any of my statements were unsupportable, Grisham and Soldiers’ Angels could crush me in a court of law.

It will never happen. Truth remains an affirmative defense, and they are all sufficiently public figures.  I lawyered up in advance of publishing the most perilous pieces.  We reviewed every word in detail, figuring that a lawsuit was inevitable.

Grisham boasts that he received a Bronze Star with V (valor) award for wiping out an Iraqi squad with only a grenade and a pistol.  In three years of embedding with units in combat, I have never seen such a feat, nor heard about anything comparable.

Why is this important?  Soldiers’ Angels siphons millions of dollars that could go someplace worthy, like Fisher House, and Grisham, despite his behavior, remains influential through his writings and podcasts.

He uses the Bronze Star medal and “PTSD” as credentials, and simultaneously wields both the medal and “PTSD” to shut down anyone who dares challenge his views.  He sometimes interacts with national media.

Grisham refuses to publish the narrative for his Bronze Star medal to support his claims.

Repeated FOIA requests return no evidence that Grisham ever engaged an Iraqi squad.  No one who served with Grisham has come forward to support his statements.  Where is his commander who submitted the story of wiping out an Iraqi squad?  Give us names, a date, a place.  If this occurred, he was out there with a unit and there would be plenty of witnesses.

Eventually, as so often happens, Grisham’s Bronze Star citation materialized:

Unlike most Bronze Stars with V, which are appropriately granted for specific acts of valor under fire, Grisham’s does not cite a particular incident.

A typical Bronze Star with V cites a specific event, such as this: http://www.armywriter.com/bronze-star-medal-v-device.htm

Grisham’s is a strange citation for someone alleging that they single-handedly wiped out an Iraqi squad. The omission reeks of a scam.

Grisham’s medal is an attaboy, a “Thank you for coming to the war” award, issued for the period 20 March to 30 April.  The Army issues these like confetti during a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Yet Grisham unleashed an advertising blitz. In 2009 the Army Times interviewed Grisham and published:

“…during the invasion of Iraq, Grisham took down a squad of Iraqis when his counterintelligence detachment got pinned down in an ambush. He earned the Bronze Star with ‘V’ after rushing through the gunfire by himself with just a 9mm pistol and a hand grenade.”

If true, Grisham should have received a Silver Star, and knowing Army Public Affairs, they would have run this up the flagpole.

Nowhere in Grisham’s records that have been released through FOIA is there any mention of this alleged action. No eyewitnesses have stepped forward to confirm his claims.

It appears that Grisham duped Army Times staff writer Jon R. Andersen, who despite my repeated efforts to seek clarification, also refuses to provide evidence for the claim, thus jeopardizing the credibility of Army Times.

Andersen and Army Times appear to be carrying Grisham’s water in what amounts to a case of Stolen Valor.

Gannett, which owns Army Times, can clear this up by publishing the documentation that allowed Army Times to print that account of Grisham’s actions.

One might believe that Soldiers who have been to war have no reason to engage in Stolen Valor, yet even otherwise admirable soldiers often embellish their pedigrees.

A Command Sergeant Major of FORSCOM engaged in Stolen Valor when he lied about being a POW. Those who are interested can Google the perplexing case of CSM Richard Cayton.

Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda was Chief of Naval Operations when he was called out for wearing an unauthorized “V” device for valor.  He committed suicide.  Shot himself in the chest.

By many accounts Admiral Boorda was a great officer.  I have seen people talking about him in private circles, people who knew him well, who said he deserved the “V”, but it was not authorized.

Such cases erupt so often that the Ford Motor Company could learn something from the Stolen Valor assembly line.

Army General pins Jessica with award known to be fraudulent.

Jessica Lynch was awarded a Bronze Star with V, while assigned to the same Division during the same timeframe as Grisham.

Jessica was described as bravely fighting back the enemy during an ambush, but she later stated that she never fired her weapon and that she was unconscious during the engagement.

Jessica honorably asserted that she did not deserve the award.

This was during the beginning of the Iraq campaign when the number of medals being handed out practically threatened a bronze shortage.

Such cases illustrate the difference between Stolen Valor and Counterfeit Valor.

When Ranger Pat Tillman was killed by fratricide by other US Rangers, it was distressing, and embarrassing.

Pat Tillman turned down a multi-million-dollar NFL contract to serve his country.  In return, our own men shot him, and then his command manufactured a coverup.  There was no enemy around.  The shooting was done by Tillman’s own unit:

From Pat’s Silver Star narrative:

“Caught between the crossfire of an enemy near ambush, Corporal Tillman put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire as he maneuvered his fire team to a covered position from which they could effectively employ their weapons on known enemy positions. His audacious leadership and courageous example under fire inspired his men to fight at great risk to their own personal safety, resulting in the enemy’s withdrawal, his platoon’s safe passage from the ambush kill zone, and his mortal wound. Corporal Tillman’s personal courage, tactical expertise, and professional competence directly contributed to his platoon’s overall success and survival. In making the ultimate sacrifice for his team and platoon, Corporal Patrick D. Tillman reflected great credit upon himself, the Joint Task Force, and the United States Army.”

This palliative, keep-your-mouth-shut medal, though completely counterfeit, was endorsed by General Stanley McChrystal himself, who later warned President Bush that it was fake: the truth was leaking, muddying the water of lies.

Later, the three-star General McChrystal received a fourth star. When I encountered his bullshit in Afghanistan, I bucked the prevailing winds and I asserted that he should be fired.  This was severly damaging to me, but that is fine.

Jessica and Pat were both cases of Counterfeit Valor, where their imaginary actions were manufactured for public relations.  The awards were administratively real.

These were not cases of Stolen Valor.  The recipients did not carry the bucket of public relations lies.  Jessica debunked them.  Pat was dead.  The Rangers in his platoon spoke for him.

Had Jessica fallen in line and kept her mouth shut, we might never have known.  How many times has this happened?

Counterfeit Valor cases can be difficult to prove because they are often included in official records.  Witting officials already have lied about them.

It is no secret that some commanders submit medals to cover their own poor performance, or to disguise embarrassment, or as favor.

Most saddening is that I have been with numerous battalions where nearly everyone in the battalion deserved at least a Bronze Star with V.

Deuce Four in Iraq is a fine example.  Even most of the TOC-jocks went on hairy combat missions.  This battalion, and others, such as 4-4Cav, 2-7Cav, 1-6FA, 1-4INF, and most of the 1st and 5th Styrker Brigades, Pedro, Dustoff, all those excellent British infantrymen, deserved nearly blanket Bronze Stars with V, or equivalent.  The British Soldiers deserved it just for showing up to work in Basra and Sangin.

In many of the units I wrote about, the hard part would not be in figuring out who deserved the award, but who did not.  My friends from all of these units do not brag about all the war they waded through.

Stolen Valor cases are often exposed when the perpetrator is immodest. As the tales unfold, the perpetrator displays typical behaviors:

1)    Attention is garnered because he (sometimes she) is boastful, or because perpetrators exploit credentials for gain or fame. Such decorations are abused to support VA claims for PTSD, for example.

2)    When confronted, Stolen Valor perpetrators typically refuse to provide documentation, saying they are above it.  A corollary to this behavior is the claim that “records are classified.”

In practice, this is rarely true. When the “classified records” card is played, assume that the claim is fraudulent until proven true.

In the perhaps 1% of cases where the statement is factual, there are mechanisms that the VA can employ to verify them.

3)    The person under scrutiny is uncooperative, makes counteraccusations and unleashes ad hominem attacks, claiming that investigators are on a witch hunt.  (Sometimes they are.)  This deflection is common. In all cases, releasing pertinent documentation could make the dispute vanish and exonerate the accused.  But since the accused is guilty, he digs in.

4)    FOIA requests to the National Personnel Records Center return no supporting documents, upon which the accused indicts the military for poor record-keeping (which is sometimes shoddy), while still refusing to provide documentation themselves.

5)    They threaten lawsuits, and they sometimes actually file suit, but they lose.  I watched a recent case closely.

A lawyer named John Giduck claimed special operations expertise in his background biographies for speaking engagements and in his books, and he made big money presenting seminars to law enforcement agencies around the country.  After the speaking tour begins, it becomes its own credential and often nobody checks the original man.

Giduck made outlandish claims and was exposed as a fraud, yet he sued real special operations veterans for telling the truth.

Sadly, a few credentialed members of the special operations community vouched for Giduck, and a famous and influential author sent me a long email in support of John Giduck.

People such as Giduck can be difficult to expose even when the glove fits.  When they have strong social support from credentialed people, and when the house of cards is discovered, sometimes the supporters dig in with the accused because they are embarrassed, or because they have personal interest in ensuring that his credentials not be shattered.  This creates a fog of confusion.  Using counteraccusations, even a guilty party can come out on top.

This dynamic in the Giduck case caused a rift within the special operations community.  A small number of corrupt diehards defended Giduck, though most of his allies fell silent.

The majority called out Giduck, and then Giduck sued nearly 50 people.  Giduck lost his case, and was ordered by the judge to pay the attorney fees of those he had sued.

Giduck so far has refused to pay, so the defendants have placed liens on his real property. Other defendants have filed a countersuit. The case continues.  I continue to watch with interest as motions fly.

6)   Some, when cornered, finally confess to fraud, while others carry the stink to the grave, even when everyone sees through.  Giduck is still dug in like a tick on a hounddog.

Both the Special Operations Association and the Special Forces Association repudiated him, but Giduck insists that he is the victim of a “global criminal conspiracy to destroy his business.”  He still has defenders.

7)    Some appear to truly believe that they performed the actions that they claim, even when their claims are definitively disproven.  They seem prone to self-delusion.

Powerful contrary evidence can include proof that they were not in-country, for example, or that they were assigned to a different unit, or that they never served in the military.

These cases unfold frequently.  Some people probably believe they are Jesus, but others latch onto the military.  Perhaps they are not lying in the moral sense because they seem to believe it, just as some people believe they are sorcerers or vampires.

Given Grisham’s refusal to provide supporting documents, the repeated FOIAs that returned no evidence, his frequent boasting about the medal, his constant ad hominem counterattacks along with perpetual threats of lawsuits, and the vanishing possibility that he is Rambo enough to wipe out an Iraqi squad with a grenade and 9mm pistol, a reasonable man can conclude that it is probable that Grisham is lying.

Grisham does not owe explanation to me, but he owes it to you, and to the public at large, and he owes it to those whom he asks for money.

He owes explanation to the Gannett Corporation and to Army Times staff writer Jon R. Andersen, whose credibility is jeopardized.

Gannett and the Army Times have an obligation to subscribers, to readers, and to advertisers to come clean.

If Grisham duped the Army Times, fine.  It happens to the best of us.  Come clean.  We will get over it quickly.

But if Gannett and the Army Times aids and abets Stolen Valor or disrespects readers by failing to confirm that it has legitimate evidence, it undermines its own credibility and legitimacy.

The Afghanistan War

While Grisham was deployed to Afghanistan, enemy bombs and bullets were literally killing Soldiers with whom I was embedded.

Rather than trying to figure out who was killing Soldiers in his area of responsibility, Grisham was laboring over his blog while stationed in the air-conditioned rear at Kandahar Airfield.

It has been reported that US citizens pay about one million dollars per Soldier per year to deploy to Afghanistan.  While they are deployed, troops should work, and most do.

But while we were getting blown up and shot, Grisham was blogging thousands of words, including:

“Today, I listened to the advice of more than a few people and finally went to the TMC and Combat Stress hospital. My right hand hasn’t stopped twitching after nearly a month and it’s beyond irritating. I’m not sleeping, not eating, and highly irritable. I’ve been under a lot of stress and feel like many of those above me are just making things worse. So, for three hours today, I sat and got to revisit many issues related to my PTSD, depression, and anxiety as well as some new ones.”

We sent this guy to beat the Taliban.  The Taliban monitor sites by deployed troops.  They must have been laughing their turbans off.

Why would a counterintelligence senior NCO flood the Internet with photos of himself, his wife, and his children, all while talking about his mental and money problems?  That is borderline solicitation to sell state secrets.

To an enemy intelligence professional, his words sound like, “I am crazy, weak, I do not like my leadership, and need some money.  I have a Top Secret clearance and a computer that flies on the highway of secrets.”  “Boris – send this Grisham the honey trap, not that he needs a trap!”

Instead of figuring who was shooting at us, Grisham was spending massive time harassing me on Facebook, haunting my website, and continuing to cause problems within the unit that I was covering.

His flaccid command group cost the 4-4Cav a possible book.  A documentary film company was lining up to come over.  As a result, the courageous efforts of 4-4Cav will never be properly documented.

One wonders if any of our KIA would still be alive if Grisham’s commander had exerted appropriate authority over his Intelligence unit, and focused them on the battlefield instead of on Facebook, blogs, and mischief that so clearly exposes us to espionage and exploitation.

Grisham was all about attracting attention, latching like a remora onto anything related to PTSD, constantly trying to associate with famous people, or to get his picture taken with celebrities, which he would publish.  An enemy spy could tap into that vanity.

People with Top Secret clearances should not blog about every facet of their lives, while advertising they have TS clearance, as Grisham so often does.  At minimum, this creates a personality profile that a professional can use to fashion a key to unlock a brain with access to state secrets.

When I did not give Grisham quality time, he stalked.  Anything for attention.  I was giving great press to 4-4Cav, but never mind that.  If Grisham could not get ink, neither should they.

So now our fictitious enemy spy knows that Grisham will sell out fellow Soldiers, does not like his leadership, has money problems, purrs for attention, wants to be a hero, and is weak.  Anyone could cut a key to open that door.

When MEDEVAC failures mounted and I exposed them, Grisham latched on.  Grisham knows nothing about MEDEVAC or real combat, yet that did not stop him from contacting the press and Congressman Todd Akin and others who were taking up the cause.

Our efforts and the team that we created led to MEDEVAC changes that must have already saved lives.

According to Army Dustoff and Air Force Pedro pilots, our efforts worked, yet Grisham in his quest for glory publicly opposed the MEDEVAC issue, again selling out comrades in exchange for attention, while waving his Bronze Star.

If Grisham is not a traitor in the legal sense, he is a moral traitor.  He frequently sells out fellow Soldiers for a minute of press or gratification.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, on trial for rape

In Afghanistan, command refused to order him to stop troublemaking.  I asked the key people to intervene and finally began arguing with PAO officers, one of which, a lieutenant colonel at RC-South, I hung up on.

It was becoming tiresome to get shot at with bullets while pulling knives from my back.  Life is too short.  It is said that I had already embedded more with combat units than anyone in US history.  If they wanted good ink, they had to cooperate.  No negotiation on that.  Nobody needs embeds, and nobody will beg to give good ink to the Army while risking getting their legs blown off.   I was only there at invitation of Petraeus, but he was back in America, and I would not reach that high for this.

But should this have been a surprise?  In Afghanistan, Grisham fell under the command known as RC-South.

During Grisham’s tour at Kandahar, Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair was relieved from RC-South and sent home, and today is on trial for rape, among other crimes.

There is no dispute that Sinclair engaged in adultery, a violation of military discipline.  Sinclair does not deny it, but is contesting the allegations of rape and other charges.

Sinclair is another pedigreed soldier loaded with ribbons and medals and accolades, above reproach from we mere mortals.  It was difficult to get relief in that command climate which must have sanctioned his attacks, despite the positive dispatches I was publishing.

Grisham Quits

Finally, in 2011 in Afghanistan, Grisham gave up.  His character was shattered.  He could no longer handle the stress of working in the rear on dusty Kandahar Airfield.

The incoming rockets were loud and caused buildings and Grisham to tremble.  During one attack, Grisham wanted to run for a bunker, but a female Major ordered him to remain at work in the office.  Grisham tweeted that the rockets frightened him.

While the base pizza makers, the ice cream sellers, journalists, and thousands of civilian contractors endured the rocket strikes for years, US Army Master Sergeant Christopher “CJ” Grisham was spent.  He asked to leave Afghanistan and to go home.

The self-described hero, who claimed that he rushed through a hail of bullets with only a grenade and a pistol, wiping out a squad of Iraqis, tweeted:

“I’m no longer in theater. I requested to come home early to deal with some issues.”

Publicly emasculated, the tweet backfired. Grisham deleted it, changing his story much later, saying that he was ordered home for skin cancer.

After losing his piece of the war in Afghanistan, Grisham went home to Temple, Texas, and posted this image, while his unit remained in-country.  Young Soldiers stayed behind to do their duty, and Grisham bragged online about going to a Godsmack concert.  Again, the very definition of a moral traitor.

Earlier, he had complained about money problems and his inability to pay his bills, and then he admitted that he purchases ammunition with every paycheck.

Grisham may have never engaged an enemy combatant, but he published this image of a mouse, boasting that he killed it.

After Grisham fled the war to play, he had even more time to needle people online.

Today Grisham lives in Temple, Texas.

On 16 March 2013, he was charged with resisting arrest.  He was carrying a pistol and an AR-15 rifle in public.

From the local paper in Temple:

“The officer said Grisham was angry and irate, yelling at him that he wouldn’t give up his gun, yet he reached to take it from Grisham. … Grisham tried to pull it away…officer reportedly drew his weapon and pointed it at Grisham.”

“…officer finally gained control of…Grisham and held him against…patrol car until help arrived….passively resisted their attempts to handcuff him….additional weapon under his shirt at his waist.”

According to the article, he was arrested at the 7000 Block of Prairie View road. The top red line points to his home. The report says that he was first spotted in the area of Airport Road and Old Howard Road. (Bottom red line.)

Just the day before he was arrested, a story appeared online about his previous dealings with the city:

“When Temple resident C.J. Grisham, a U.S. Army master sergeant, presented the Temple City Council with a gun rights resolution, the city became one of a series of Texas cities and counties being called on to articulate commitment to Texas residents’ Second Amendment rights. Per the Temple Daily Telegram, Grisham asked the council to ‘declare that citizens’ rights to keep and bear arms will not be infringed upon.’”

Grisham then sparked a public letter writing contest with Temple Mayor Bill Jones.  The “Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran” baited Mayor Jones into being an actor on his stage.  The press was already running stories.  2nd Amendment defenders were getting riled up, having no idea they were just props in Grisham’s play.  Perfect.

The props were in place for a confrontation with police, similar to what he had done in Alabama with a school board, described in this 2009 article:

“Did complaint get him demoted?”

Grisham acknowledged standing up on his seat and slamming his fist at the parent meeting, but said his behavior was not alarming. Others apparently disagreed.

Superintendent Ann Roy Moore said she received e-mails from parents who claimed to be uncomfortable with Grisham's behavior at the parent meeting. She said the school's principal, Avis Williams, contacted a Redstone liaison officer about the situation but not Grisham's commanding officer.

Grisham, who did not attend the Thursday meeting, said the complaint led to his demotion from first sergeant to master sergeant. "My standing has been put into question" with his superiors, he said before the meeting.

As per normal, in 2009, he alerted the press: “Grisham’s supporters, led by WVNN talk show host Dale Jackson, helped fill the board meeting room.”

In 2009, major bloggers came out to support him.  Though his conduct scared a room full of civilians, and they reported his behavior to the local military, Grisham resorted to typical threats to sue them.  He set up a legal fund, and stayed engaged in the press battle.  No legal case was brought, and the money that he raised disappeared.

2nd Amendment Icon

Today in 2013, Grisham is trying to reincarnate himself as a war hero and 2nd Amendment icon.  Many true champions and martyrs are arrested and jailed, so the frauds need to follow the same script in this play.

On 16 March, the day after the Examiner article above was published, Grisham grabbed a long gun and a pistol, and corralled his son, who Grisham claims is working on the requisites to be an Eagle Scout, and he set out to attract some publicity.

Lights, Camera, Action

Using his 15-year-old son as a prop, Grisham walked down a four-lane highway with the assault rifle, like he was walking patrol in Baghdad.   He crossed another four-lane road and kept going.  The rifle was loaded with a magazine and a round in the chamber.

Given the climate in America, is there any wonder that a civilian might call 911 and report a strange man walking along the freeway with an AR-15?  Is there any wonder that police responded to the call, sending a squad car to check it out?  Grisham knew how to make all the actors assemble and read his script.  His son was instructed to videotape the events.

Grisham is quoted in the local paper:

“This past weekend while on a 10-mile hike with my 15-year-old son to complete requirements for his Eagle Scout rank, I was illegally detained, stripped of my weapons, and arrested when I refused to voluntarily surrender them.”

The Eagle Scout twist was a nice touch.

Only a sick man would use his son as a stage-prop and cameraman in an armed confrontation with law enforcement.  Grisham has privately shared this video in an effort to gain support, but as happened during the Alabama drama, Grisham is known for creative editing.

It is notable that no major group such as the NRA has lifted a finger in support.  If the NRA would get involved, that would be a coup.

Meanwhile, Grisham began another fundraiser for $11,000 on Indiegogo, claiming that his arrest is a 2nd Amendment issue that should concern us all.  He claims that a tyrannical government illegally seized his guns, adding that he could lose his Top Secret clearance and pension.

Grisham is the last person that any of us need to defend our 2nd Amendment rights.  He is a perfect poster boy for radical opposition and disarming veterans.  He publicly complains about hearing voices in his head, and published about curling up in the fetal position on his bed, unable to function.  If any Soldier’s right to own privately owned weapons should be reviewed, Grisham is that soldier.  We cannot accept this person as a 2nd Amendment advocate.

How does someone who complains that they hear voices, someone who is deceptive by nature, who is beset with anger issues and self-proclaimed money problems, hold a Top Secret clearance?  This is a recipe for disaster.  Bradley Manning comes to mind.

Manning had sufficient free time while on duty to laboriously gather gigabytes of State Department cables, and to send them to WikiLeaks. To say that Manning represents a failure of supervision is an understatement.

Manning, like Grisham, was in an Intelligence position.  Special scrutiny and oversight over such troops should be a given, for obvious reasons.

Grisham published this image of his personally owned weapons. He would not need to solicit for funding if he liquidated this arsenal. Buyers would snap up these weapons at a high price.

Grisham’s current fundraiser is fraudulent.  He sells it as a 2nd Amendment issue, when clearly the 2nd Amendment, Eagle Scouts, police, journalists, Mayor Bill Jones, a “war hero” and his son the cameraman, are all stage props to raise money and attention.

I alerted the Army Inspector General and I received a reply, though if experience is any clue, it is doubtful that Grisham’s chain of command will do much.  The Army has become undisciplined.

To put this in perspective, during my eight years with combat troops (nearly five years on active duty, and three as a writer), I have said that only two soldiers represented lethal threats.

The first soldier is dead.  He shot himself in Afghanistan after an investigation was launched into claims that he sexually harassed another officer.  A FOIA request returned the investigation, which I read in amazement.  He was sick.

Yet he was a West Point grad (top of his class), a Ranger Regiment veteran of two wars, from a pedigreed family, much decorated and a true war hero.  Another “untouchable.”

No civilian could criticize this man and survive with reputation intact.  In combat, I saw him in action.   He was the real deal, but personally, he was an arrogant, self-centered monster to nearly everyone, including his men.

He confronted me one day in Iraq literally snarling with anger.  It was a dog snarl.  A corner of his upper lip was twitching wildly like a fishhook was pulling it.  I have never seen a person’s lip do that.  His adrenaline had dumped.  He was screaming.  I was mesmerized by his crazy lip.  He was a breath away from attacking.

We had just been in a serious firefight.  Three men had been hit that morning in two separate events (one enemy, two U.S.), and there had been hand-to-hand combat.  One of his men told me later in concern that he nearly had taken the firefight as a chance to shoot me, and in an unguarded moment, actually said so to his men.  He could not even control what came out of his mouth.  He hated and despised anything that smacked of media.

He did not scream at me at the firefight.  It was maybe an hour later, back on base, that his lip was twitching, and he was screaming one foot from my face, I yelled back in his face, “fuck off!”

No Sigmund Freud was needed to see that he was homicidally loony, with boiling anger issues.  He was an emotional wreck, but he was an untouchable.

I warned several times that he would kill somebody, or that one of his men might kill him.  Though I expected his premature death, his suicide was a surprise.

His crimes were revealed by the investigation.  He put a female officer through hell because she refused sex, and despite being so smart, he would email her explicit traffic.  He was newly married with a young child.  He was physically courageous but a moral coward.  He proved both with his rifle.

The second lethal threat I warned about is Christopher Grisham.

I have a few theories about why the Army has not discharged Grisham.  1) His command wants him around because he serves some purpose other than work.  2) He has the goods on some high-ranking people in his chain of command.  3) The Army is simply broken.

If forced to choose one these probabilities, I go with number three.

The Army is broken, and it has failed to properly supervise Grisham, and he repeatedly engages in contentious behavior that frightens and angers civilians, in the most public venues possible.

Weak leadership that allows this to continue brings bad light on the Army, a ton of ill-will, and questions about the Army’s ability to defend the United States.

In closing, Gannett, Army Times, and staff writer Jon R. Andersen should come clean with proof of Grisham’s claims, or apologize for being duped into telling readers that he wiped out a squad of Iraqi soldiers with a pistol and a grenade.

Written proof of Grisham’s alleged heroics can suffice for purposes of due diligence. But it will not address the fact that the Army is well known for Counterfeit Valor.

I invite anyone who can validate Grisham’s version of events to come forward with evidence.  Without that narrative, and credible eyewitnesses to back it up, this duck is cooked.

Historical links:

Grisham and instability during his Afghanistan tour.

Grisham and guns.

Burma neighbors Thailand on the west.  For 65 years, a war against and between ethnic groups in Burma has been on.  The conflicts created many internally displaced refugees, while others have crossed into Thailand.  Thailand has allowed this incursion for humanitarian reasons.

One of the ethnic groups are called Karenni.  I visited some of the Karen (not Karenni but closely related) villages in Burma and Thailand.  The Karen I have met have all been Christian, and their churches are little more than bamboo huts similar to those on Gilligan’s Island.  Some people sleep on mats on the bamboo floors, while others use hammocks.

Their homes are made from bamboo, planks, and thatch.

The Karen are educating their children in foreign languages, mathematics, and the normal topics.  I visited a school while it was in session.  The children were attentive, and again, like something from Gilligan’s island with no air conditioning, no desks, just benches, with pigs and dogs wondering into the classes.  They were getting the job done.  Teachers have no real teaching tools other than a blackboard and some books.  Yet when talking with the kids, it does not seem that their education is lacking.

These people live hard, but they seem to have a collective happy heart.

Last week, tragedy struck a Karenni refugee village.  A cooking accident burned down the entire village, killing dozens and injuring perhaps one hundred.  The figures are unclear as they were taken to many hospitals, and on the scale of Asia this is little more than a minor footnote that involves people who mostly are ignored.

The Thai Army, police, fire, and humanitarian groups came to assist.  A truck filled rescuers also had a terrible accident resulting in at least one death and many injuries.

The tragedy made a flash in the news and emergency help poured in, but now the refugees, with twice-shattered lives will again fade into oblivion.

A group of mostly American aid workers has worked with the Karenni and other groups for years.  They are based here in Chiang Mai, but spend much time inside of Burma.  The Christian group is called “Free Burma Rangers,” and is headed by a former Green Beret officer.

If you wish to help, please go here, making a note that this is for the Mae Suring refugee camp: http://www.freeburmarangers.org/contact/support/

Many pictures follow, without comment.  The images were sent to me by Free Burma Rangers.  The images speak for themselves.  Some are highly graphic.

04 February 2013

News of Chris Kyle’s shooting has reached around the world.  Many people are asking for my thoughts, and so this morning I write these words in response.

Chris was credited with killing about 160 enemy combatants in Iraq. He is called the most deadly sniper in US history.  Obviously this will not sit well with many people, while others will see it differently.

It is unseemly to politicize this today, and I will drop it there.

Chris was known for helping folks suffering from PTSD.  I have enjoyed hearing Chris talk at times (not to me personally but interviews) and I am sure that he would frown on people blaming such acts on PTSD.

Reckless speculation hurts our veterans.

It is also unseemly to immediately speculate that PTSD was the cause of the shootings. This reflexive labeling unfolds every time vets are involved.

Just an hour after it was learned that a US Soldier was the likely murderer of 17 people in Panjwai, Afghanistan, many people were clamoring that he had PTSD.  His name had not yet been revealed.  We knew almost nothing about him.

His experiences were not yet public, yet he was already labeled with PTSD, despite that experts know that PTSD does not lead to mass murder.

The American public in general is so ignorant about PTSD that reading popular commentary is like consulting people living under bridges for financial advice.

In Panjwai, since Afghans were killed and not Americans, many people thought that this still nameless Soldier (Robert Bales) was innocent due to PTSD. “Poor guy just snapped and killed the savages.  He deserves our sympathy.”

Just as PTSD is not a cause of mass murder, it is not an excuse for criminality.

Until recently in Korea, drunkenness was a bona fide defense in rape cases, and people used it.  Any excuse we leave on the table will be misused by some.  That is human.

Where PTSD honestly can be a defense is in rare cases such as, say, police slam down the wrong door, and rush into a home and get flat-blasted by someone who did not realize they are cops.  No PTSD would be needed for that response.  Many people would do that out of fear and self-preservation.

Conversely, if Robert Bales (the accused Panjwai murderer) had killed Americans in Boston, many would have said he is guilty because he has PTSD, despite that practically none of these self-appointed experts have any idea what PTSD really is.

If he killed Americans, we would say, “That worthless, cowardly, bastard.  He deserves the rope.” 

When an Afghan soldier who saw years of fighting commits an insider attack, we say, “That cowardly, worthless filth is not even human.  We should feed him to the dogs.”  We usually call them cowards, despite that they may have fought for years.

When Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people in Norway, it was not because of military service.  The man is various species of sick.  His mental conditions might lead to the causes, but not to excuses.  He is still a murderer.

In popular commentary, PTSD can make someone innocent or guilty, depending on whether we like the victims or the perpetrator more.

The enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan were never labeled with PTSD because we could not care less that they are human, too.  They are just savages.  If the savage is afraid after seeing years of combat, he is coward, while if our folks exhibit the same symptoms, they are considered wounded heroes or ticking bombs, depending on whether or not we like vets.

Iraq and Afghanistan are awash with people suffering from PTSD.  This will damage some of their families for generations.  But if they shoot our people, we will not afford the dignity of saying they suffer, or are fighting to be their version of free.  Their label is Muslim.

I knew a Green Beret who murdered his wife and committed suicide.  He told me long in advance that he would kill her if he ever caught her fooling around.  He caught her and shot her.  These days, we would say he had PTSD, when the fact was that he had anger issues.  Everyone who knew him could see it.

He had not been to war.  He was simmering.  I got along great with him.  He was very smart, with a PhD in entomology.  He was fun to talk with, but you could sense something was off.  Turns out, he was a murderer.

PTSD surely is real.  The price for even a small war reverberates through generations.  An absent or diminished parent creates conditions for children with fewer prospects, which vibrate up the family tree.

The results of war literally echo through generations.

There is no doubt that some children born fifty years from now will suffer from the echoes of our wars.  They might not understand that the reason their parents did not attend university was because their grandfather suffered severe PTSD from war, and uprooted the tree.  We can never calculate for that damage.

When we send our young people to war, we send many of their great-great grandchildren along for the ride.  The entire society suffers for decades from every war.

PTSD often leads to family destruction, but seldom to violence. Yet this speculation is like seeing a shooting in the news and blaming it on polio. "Yep, another shooting. Must be that polio again.  Is he a vet?  Yes?  That means it’s polio."

Many employers will not hire vets if they think they are apt to "snap.”

Most of the mass-killers never were in the military.  Columbine was an example. The murderers were high school students.

More likely, the killings derived from simple anger or uncontrolled rage, or crime of some sort.

Prescribed drugs are becoming suspect, but this idea cannot be taken too far because mass killings happen around the globe, and many occurred long before modern pharmaceuticals were widespread. Something is there, but it cannot be the whole story.

We look for something to blame.  Guns.  Drugs.  PTSD.  Video games. Culture. Sociopaths. Hollywood.  Media.  Vets.  Religion.

When we blame religion, we blame the other religion, while atheists blame all religions.

Murder in the name of religion happens many times per day, without end.  But if someone from our religion commits a despicable act, we call him a nutter and change the topic.

Some people are just bad.  They are perfectly sane and will kill us for a wristwatch, for sport, or because they wanted some excitement. 

Culture plays a crucial roll.  Many Afghans will torture dogs for entertainment, which I would not doubt has led to some “accidental” killings of Afghans by our folks. 

If one of our young Soldiers shot an Afghan who was torturing a dog, the Afghans surely would label him a murderer and want revenge.  Many dog lovers and Americans in general would give a standing ovation, and say, “Ah, he has PTSD.  Just let this one slide.  Savage dog killers.”

But that would likely not be the case.  The trooper killed him because he was torturing a dog.  This is simple.  Nobody needs a PhD to see it.  He was not insane, just enraged.

Our troops become enraged when they see dogs tortured, and if an American trooper tortured a dog, he would be labeled a sociopath and tossed into jail, after pulling some boots out of his backside.

If one of our Soldiers were to have sex with an Afghan woman, many Afghans would kill her, and try to kill him.  We would call that murder.  For them it is house cleaning.  They are not crazy.  That is their world.

That Chris is “credited” with killing about 160 humans using a rifle, one by one, is seen by many people as mass murder of historical proportion.

Others applaud it, saying that he saved lives, which is countered by people saying the war was unjust and illegal.

Some of this derives from culture clash.  In Thailand, the idea of Americans widely applauding killing 160 people is shocking.  Chris was a minor-celebrity in America.  Many British are livid.

Other Americans say Chris’s death is karma.  The enemies in Iraq put a bounty on him just as we put bounties on some of them.

A salient point is that cultures and worldviews vary dramatically, and some people will commit acts that we consider barbaric, which in their culture is normal.

The United States is a cultural kaleidoscope.  This makes it even more difficult to divine the actions of others.

Take a subset of people who live in Charleston, South Carolina, and compare them to a similar subset in Boston, and another in San Francisco, and another in Berlin, who share the same race, religion, education, and social status, and you will find that they have remarkably different cultures and worldviews.

Combat units have their own subcultures.  Special operations units have strong subcultures that are invisible to the outside world.

Some people grow up on the streets or with gangs and have fundamentally different views that were not solidified into what we call “civilized.”

Some personalities are shaky and horribly imperfect.  A few of these people end up in uniform, and we send them off to war.  Some return and commit terrible acts.

The accused vet will embrace and play up PTSD as alibi, while knitting a holy cross from the strings in his socks that he can wear around his neck when he stands before the judge.  The realty is that he was ticking before he joined, and he is simply a bad man and should be in prison.

We like cubbyholes.  The uncomfortable truth is that none of these cubbyholes work in a broad sense.

We similarly label Muslims, as if every crime committed by a Muslim is in the name of religion and jihad.  (Few Americans understand the meaning of jihad, despite these many years.)  This is silly, and using this label reveals purveyors to be untraveled, or perhaps just simpleminded.

There are robbers and murderers who happen to be Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists.  Name it.  It is there.

In many cases a cubbyhole might work, and there will be some basis in truth, but at some point, in a broad sense, under scrutiny, the models all break down.

Even if someone with severe PTSD kills intentionally, it does not automatically follow that PTSD was the culprit or even partly to blame.  Could be anything. Lovers' spat. Revenge.  Alcohol.  Meth.  Prescription drugs.  Clash of cultures.  Craziness of some sort.  Anything.  It could be a mixture of many things.

Importantly, most people who go to wars do not suffer PTSD. The chief cause of PTSD in the United States is traffic accidents.

Is there a pattern of murder based on car crashes?  If someone commits a violent crime, should we ask if he has been in a car crash?  Should we, in every media report, feel obligated to mention, “The accused was involved in a fatal car accident in 1983”?

Take this real title of a news report: “Former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle' Killing Puts Spotlight on PTSD”. 

We do not know enough about PTSD.   We must redouble and work to get a handle on this.  It is damaging our country, and many others.

In any case, I am taking a chance that Chris would have said something like this, and so I tried to say it for him. If his close friends or family disagree, I apologize in advance for being presumptuous.

We lost a good man.  That something good should come from this tragedy is important.  PTSD clearly was important for Chris and so in his honor, it is worthwhile to say some heartfelt words about the topic that Chris took head-on.

And another man was lost whom few people are talking about, Chad Littlefield. Many thoughts for their families.

Rest in Peace Chad Littlefield.

Rest in Peace Chris Kyle.  Mission Complete.

Team AFMC,

The budgetary uncertainties currently facing the Department of Defense combined with a projected $1.8 billion shortfall in Air Force funding for overseas contingency operations, require us to take prudent steps to mitigate budget execution risks.

Based on guidance received last week from Headquarters Air Force, my intent is for Air Force Materiel Command to take immediate actions to reduce spending across all appropriations, Working Capital Funds and other reimbursable programs within AFMC's governance authority.  In line with the Air Force direction, our actions will -- to the maximum extent possible -- be reversible or recoverable and minimize impacts to core readiness programs.

These actions are necessary in order to support our DOD and our nation. However, we still have a requirement to continue the critical missions that we execute on behalf of the Air Force.  Therefore, mission critical exceptions to these actions can be approved with discretion.

Some of the key near-term actions AFMC will take to handle the uncertain budget environment ahead are outlined below.  The command will:

• Implement a temporary civilian hiring freeze for permanent, temporary, and term vacancies with exceptions for mission-critical activities and release current temporary and term employees with exceptions for mission-critical activities; there are no current near-term plans to furlough civilians
  
• Review overseas contingency operations requirements and identify potential reductions which will not impair wartime operations, such as delaying asset reconstitution and incrementally funding OCO contracts
  
• Cancel all temporary duty travel that is not mission critical, such as attendance at or hosting of conferences and symposia, staff assistance visits, and training seminars

o   Within the scope of mission-critical travel, the command will evaluate whether alternative means can be used to complete the mission (such as video teleconference, email, etc.) and will scrub requirements to reduce the number of personnel traveling, vehicles, and lodging expenses

o   If a TDY is considered mission critical, the AFMC Vice Commander or Center Commander is the final approval authority

o   Inspections such as Nuclear Surety Inspections, Nuclear Surety Staff Assistance Visits, Special Security Office management, and Inspector General intelligence deficiency inspections are mission critical and will continue

o   Mission-critical training must meet at least one of the following criteria:

-       Required by federal or state law, regulation, Executive Order, or DOD Directive

-       Meets occupational certification and/or licensing requirements as a condition of continued employment

-       Maintains critical functional or occupational competencies identified by career field managers and/or Air Force policy and instructions

• Curtail flying not directly related to readiness, such as air shows, flyovers, and familiarization rides
  
• Curtail or cancel ongoing and scheduled studies that are not Congressionally-directed or mission critical
  
• Limit supply purchases to essential fiscal 2013 consumption and stop minor purchases that are not mission critical, such as furniture, information technology refresh, and unit equipment
  
• Defer non-emergency Facility Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization projects
  
• Where practical, de-obligate or incrementally fund severable service contracts that cross the fiscal year only to Oct. 31, 2013, and defer the remainder of the contract

We don't expect these near-term reductions to solve the entire fiscal challenge facing us in the event sequestration is triggered or we receive significant topline reductions.  These near-term actions are only small steps towards absorbing the impact.  Planning is underway for the possibility of larger reductions, and further guidance will be disseminated if that occurs.

Thank you for all you do for AFMC, our Air Force, and our nation.  For this effort, as in all others, I am depending on you to stay focused on your role in executing the mission of our Command as we navigate through these uncertain times.

General Wolfenbarger

(Photo Credit dvids)

17 January 2013
[Authored by a Marine Field Grade Officer]

Over the weekend, I received an order from Higher Headquarters to ask for volunteers for 2013 and 2014 deployments to Afghanistan.  Their mission: train and fight with Afghan National Security Forces during the same time that America is leaving Afghanistan.

This is not the first time we have asked for volunteers to deploy.  In the reserve community, we have done this since at least 1995 when I volunteered to deploy during humanitarian operations to deal with the Haitian and Cuban refugee crisis.  During the Global War on Terrorism, we routinely asked reservists to volunteer for deployment.  When I returned to the reserve community after active duty in 2006, I witnessed this practice first hand, this time for combat deployments.

When directed, our job is to augment the active duty force.   But many of our servicemen and women are not actually deploying because they have been recalled to active duty; they have elected to stay at a unit and have volunteered to deploy.  These Marines are usually called “non-obs” or “non obligated” and can, at their convenience, drop to the inactive ready reserve or transfer to another unit.  Once a unit is slated for deployment, there is usually a decision point for these individuals; they must leave the unit or deploy.

It has been my experience that the vast majority of Marines will volunteer to deploy if their unit is activated.  Their professionalism, dedication and patriotism compel them to go into harm’s way with the Marine on their right and left.

When I decided not to deploy to Iraq with my unit because of a serious family illness, I felt like I was abandoning my brothers.  It was my company commander who sat me down and provided sage counsel:  your family is your priority. Our Marines will be OK without you. 

His leadership helped me understand that it was perfectly acceptable to decide not to go.  I was grateful for his honesty.

This past weekend one of my Marines, a young father with a new baby, sought my counsel.  He is a Marine with several combat deployments and he and I had served together in Afghanistan. He had always wanted to deploy with a mentor/training team and was interested in volunteering.   I told him unequivocally that he should not volunteer.

At virtually the same time we were collecting the numerous names of Marines who had volunteered, the following exchange occurred between George Stephanopoulos and the Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass on the Sunday ABC news show “This Week”:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Richard Haass, the president also addressed our overall success in Afghanistan on Friday…Is he right about that and is it sustainable after 2014?

HAASS: The short answer is no. What we started in Afghanistan after 9/11 was a warranted war of necessity. We expanded it over the years, particularly under President Obama in 2009, when we tripled our forces, we decided to go after the Taliban, essentially join Afghanistan's civil war and nation build.

The idea that we're going to be able to leave behind a self-sustaining, capable Afghanistan able to -- or a government that's able to keep control of its territory, we are not going to be able to do it. It was a mistake to try. We are not going to achieve that result. Essentially what we're going to fall back to I would think is what we could have fallen back to years ago, a limited counterterrorism mission with trainers and advisers on the ground. And when we have to, we'll send in special forces or drones to deal with if there are, for example, remnants of al Qaeda to ever come back into the country.

So in other words, Afghanistan is lost.

The ethics of asking for volunteers to wade into the problem that is Afghanistan is simple: asking Marines to volunteer prays on their loyalty and dedication in order to satisfy requirements from HHQ.

It is an abdication of responsibility and leadership to commit to a flawed [course of action] that has no hope of success.  Our leaders are transferring the burden of mission accomplishment to a group of volunteers; dedicated men and women who haven’t been read in on the current friendly situation and have no idea of the enemy’s most probable course of action.  They don’t even have the tools to do a simple METT-T in order to assist them in making an informed decision.

Its one thing if a unit is assigned the mission and Marines are ordered to go, but these volunteers are making a decision to go to combat with people they don’t know at a time when political imperatives overwhelm tactical considerations and our Afghan “friends” are ambushing American Soldiers and Marines.

In the end – those who volunteer will go because they feel that it is their duty as Marines to share the burden of combat.

I have a responsibility to provide my Marines with a frank and honest assessment of the situation; if they want to volunteer, they need to know what they are getting into.

I am not confident that other leaders are doing the same and that is an absolute travesty.

Semper Fidelis.

LTC Erik Kurilla (L) and SFC Rob Bowman after terrible car bomb in Mosul, Iraq (April 2005)

15 January 2013

The United States has lost a great Soldier and fine man to cancer.  Rob struggled with the disease for about 20 months before passing yesterday.  It is with great sorrow that I write these words.

In combat, Rob was courageous and tactically expert.  I got to know him in the Deuce Four battalion in Iraq, where Rob was recon platoon sergeant.

Few battalions in Iraq or Afghanistan saw as much combat as the Deuce Four.   Recon platoon was the leading edge.  I was lucky enough to do many missions with recon, and we were close neighbors for five months during some of the heaviest fighting of the war.  Later I came back and had dinner with Rob and his wife Coleen at Fort Lewis and we kept in touch.

During the combat time, Rob brought courage and steadiness to his platoon, and kindly offered much time to help make my dispatches accurate.

Staff Sergeant Adam Lingo of Deuce Four wrote to me yesterday,  “He told me something that stuck with me and made me understand why he was a great leader he said "don't ever forget what it was like to be a private. You take care of your Joes and they'll take care of you!"

After Iraq, Rob Bowman helped with my book, Inside the Inferno.   In 2011, when I learned he had cancer, I called from Afghanistan and we enjoyed a long conversation via satellite phone.  It was an honor to call Rob a friend.

SFC Bowman shades his commander's eyes after he was shot in Iraq.

During our call, Rob was his normal self, exuding confidence in the face of a lethal enemy.  He remained inspirational.  Even on the day that he died, I had gone for a walk and wondered how he was doing.  Rob is one of those men in war whom you never forget, and always remember.

Numerous people in the Deuce Four contacted me with the news.  All of these veterans are terribly saddened.

Goodbye Rob Bowman.  You are missed and remembered by many people.  Rest in Peace.

15 January 2013

These images came from Burma today.  There have been reports about peace breaking out in Burma, but reports to me from insiders indicate this is false.

The message with these images says they were made in Laiza, seconds after a mortar attack by the Burma Army.  The man reportedly died 50 minutes later.  The second image is of the man dying while the doctor tries to save him.

A note appeared on a private message board.  This private group includes many current and former generals, and just about anyone you see on television or in books as a national security specialist, ranging from CIA to all the top war correspondents, special operations types galore, and high-level policy makers.  There is significant education value in just reading their traffic.

A few days back, retired Marine and 3-star General Mick Trainor left this note.  I asked LTG (ret.) Trainor for permission to publish on my website, and he agreed.

Now for the show:

It’s Who You Know That Counts
By Mick Trainor

The TSA agent walked down the line of Christmas travelers awaiting screening at Dulles airport. He ran a swab over the palm of randomly selected individuals. I was one of them. As I hoisted my luggage onto the surveillance conveyor another agent asked me to step aside while a third agent abruptly commandeered my travel suitcase.

“Did you use hand cream this morning?”

“Yes,” I replied, “Why do you ask?”

“Because there is a trace of nitrate on your hands. That is not uncommon with some hand lotions. Nitrate is an element of explosives.”

“OK,”.I thought. “I have soft hands, but not a bomb.” Notwithstanding such logic, I was informed that I would have to have a full body search. With that two agents escorted me to a private room while other agents began to tear apart my luggage.

“Is this really necessary?” I enquired. “I’m an eighty four year old, native born American citizen who spent forty years in the Marines and fought in two wars and retired as a general.”

“Oh, you were a Marine.” said one agent. “My father-in-law is a retired Marine colonel of about your vintage. His name is Webster. Did you know him?”

“I knew a Charlie Webster, who went as ‘Chuck.’ We went through Quantico together as new lieutenants.”

“That’s him.” replied my interrogator ….. as he proceeded with the full body search.

06 January 2013

A defense expert commenting on my dispatch “Stuck in the Mud” recommended the book Mud:  A Military History. 

I completed reading the book.  The recommendation was solid.

The subject became more interesting in Iraq.  Goo would sometimes rain from the skies.  Later in Afghanistan, where mud also rains, my interest was sealed.

I saw mud effects on the war in Nepal, in terrain where Americans could hardly fight under our current paradigms, other than by airstrikes and distant fires.  US ground forces with our heavy gear would be hopeless in Nepalese-type terrain.

Filipino commanders on Mindanao told me in detail about the great adversity that mud causes the troops we support.  In Thailand, I visit jungles that our gear could not navigate after light rain, or even in the dry season.

A stark reality of my observations in more than 65 countries is that there is more terrain where our current gear will not work than terrain where it will, and this is true even in flat Florida (other than that we have great roads in the Sunshine State).

Roads provide the illusion of greater mobility than we possess.

In the wars, my curiosity about mud is not solely the result of how much we bog down—though often we do—but the myriad battlefield effects, and our willingness to forego mere reality and abundant historical experience while fielding new weapons and vehicles.

Mud was seldom if ever mentioned in news reports of recent wars, despite serious effects.  A patrol leader might take a route to avoid mud and BOOM!  The story title is not “Four GIs killed due to mud,” but “Four Soldiers killed by IED,” despite that the mud was the canalizing influence to the trap.

American troops drowned in mud in Iraq when vehicles too heavy for the environment rolled over.  The mud suction can require our best recovery vehicles, while it sucks the lives out of our trapped people.  When under fire, recovery may take longer and cost more lives.

Few people know more about mud than farmers. Their ploughed fields make the porosity and permeability perfect for mud.

There is no clear definition of mud.  It takes infinite forms. One attempt describes a mixture of water and soil, but then I have seen mud from oil that was leaking from the ground.

Mud can make good camouflage, good insulation, and good bug protection, and some use mud as a beauty product.  Soldiers often have used mud to cover the red crosses on medical vehicles.

Hooves, men, and machines can create soup and stew where none existed. This American MRAP in Kandahar, Afghanistan is stuck in goo that military vehicles should dance across.

When the mud was heavy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rockets and the mortars were incoming, many troops were less willing to hit the deck.  This is even true of seasoned combat soldiers.  Reluctance to dive into heavy mud has been described in many wars.  The mud could be so terrible that troops would risk being shot. 

From the outside, this might seem silly.  In context, it can make sense for men who do not wish to die.  Especially so in frigid conditions where an icy slosh could itself spell doom by hypothermia.

A mud bath for a rifle can render it useless.

Weapons can be impossible to clean in conditions where it is impossible to scrape mud from your hands.  AK-series rifles can operate despite much mud, but the finely-tuned M-16 can be more like a finicky cat.  People will argue, “You must keep your weapon clean!”  No kidding.  But a pristine weapon can become a goo-ball in seconds.

Bags have been used to protect weapons.  It is bad to have your rifle bagged when shooting starts.  No doubt a light bag could be designed that works.  At nighttime the earth and the stars may be invisible.  Taking weapons apart under those conditions is dangerous.

When water is short, urine can substitute as a cleaner, but one man does not produce enough urine to clean one rifle, and there is no chance of cleaning a machine gun with the urine of a two-man crew.  Maybe a local horse can be enlisted.

Hand grenades still work but mud can muffle their power.

Jalalabad, Afghanistan: a dive into a mud bath can lead to hypothermia.

On larger bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, hypothermia would not be a problem, but the relatively small chance of getting hit by incoming fire can cause a trooper not to dive to the ground.  The mud conditions were not so bad for most Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Shovel giveaway in Farah Province, Afghanistan.

Shovels are crucial to farmers and to soldiers, both of whom must understand mud.  Mankind can easily live without phones and cars, but only with great difficulty without shovels and other digging tools.

After his rifle, a shovel can be the most important piece of kit to an infantryman, though in Iraq and Afghanistan few men had to dig foxholes.  Some mud is easy to dig into, and some is impossible.  Foxholes sometimes collapse and suffocate troops.

Many Afghans make homes from mud.

Afghan peanut butter turns treads into sleds.

Some mud is self-cleaning, while other types adhere to the tread of man and machine.  Characteristics are constantly changing due to factors such as water content.

Our massive vehicles and our weighted-down troops are restricted by mud. It was common to see up-armored Humvees get stuck, even in big cities like Baghdad.  The MRAPs are worse.

CSM (ret.) Jeff Mellinger used to say in Iraq that there is nothing new about war, just lessons that you have not learned.  Study history.

Let’s take a short tour into lessons that we should know from our grandparents.

Dead Confederate Soldier in US Civil War. Rifle in foreground. Petersburg.

Artillerymen had a rough time.   During the era before recoil systems were built, when the cannons fired, they were prone to bury themselves deeply into the mud.  Accuracy was impaired and rate of fire reduced.

Cannons are difficult to drag through mud, and firing platforms had to be built, slowing maneuver.

Commanders often set the guns to skip shots off the earth. Balls will skip, skip, skip, leaving a trail of destruction for the unfortunate.  Cannonballs do not skip well off of mud, making them like giant rifles.

Likewise, infantrymen could not keep weapons clean, and morale suffered in mud.

Death in the mud. Confederate Soldier. US Civil War.

“The Battle of Mud,” at Passchendaele, Belgium. World War I.

Animals can often pull cargo where even the best vehicles fail.  In the above image, the high horse is standing on a corduroy road while the other is off road.  The image characterizes our mobility today.  We are mobile on predictable veins of travel that are readily disrupted.

Endless miles of boardwalks at Passchendaele.

Troops who fought early in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars dealt more with mud on bases than more recent veterans.  For instance, today, there is a “The Boardwalk” in the middle of Kandahar Airfield, which leads to the pizza and coffee shops. The base has paved roads.  Gravel is abundant.  Toilets and hot water showers are available by the thousands, and so the realities of mud in Afghanistan are less obvious on the big bases of Bastion and Bagram.

Nevertheless, the annual floods still bog parts of some bases, if only briefly.  The famous “poo pond” at Kandahar Airfield has overflowed, along with countless Porta-Potties during rains, mixing excrement into the base mud.

Off-base is a different world, and there, mud and terrain are matters of mortality.

Tramlines—small railroads—often are constructed to navigate mud. (Passchendaele. World War I.)

Our helicopters and the small scale of the war in Afghanistan may sweep the idea of mud out of consciousness, but then we are fighting an enemy with nearly zero air defense capacity, and our lines of logistics are short (after inside of Afghanistan) and reasonably accessible.

Artillery and bombs churn the soil and can create tremendous mud.

Even today, a shot from a muddy position can bury the mortar tube, rendering it useless without painstaking extraction.

Commanders sometimes bombard battlefields or roads to create mud to slow the advance or retreat of the enemy.

With our current precision munitions, commanders can easily destroy sections of road in minutes.  There is no need to create muddy miles of road.  Small, carefully selected sections can slow or halt a convoy, creating a static target for the commander’s guns or aircraft.  In Afghanistan, our aircraft sometimes take out sections of trail to hinder enemy retreat.

Mud dampens artillery explosives and can create ponds. (Passchendaele, Belgium.)

Men are captured like ants in the sap.  Soldiers literally disappear in mud and are never seen again.

Passchendaele

In modern times, Huey MEDEVAC helicopters risked skids becoming stuck in the mud and sometimes had to throttle hard to break free.  Blackhawks have tires.

The Lost Generation, at Passchendaele.

Today, a paradox of armor is that it makes us need more armor.

Armor consigns us to routes at times when they are passable.  Horses and feet can destroy routes, while heavy vehicles can obliterate even solid roads, causing convoys to stretch.  Fuel trucks cannot move forward.

A logistics snake cannot escape its tail.  While the head might advance with haste, it destroys the route.  The snake begins to stretch.  The middle slows while the tail becomes stuck.

In some wars, this is an invitation for an enemy commander to roll up his artillery, and to conduct air strikes on the snake, whose own heavy guns can have difficulty firing from mud.

Forests are cut to make corduroy roads, with every tree giving its life for the cause of a few feet of advancement.  In the Burma campaign, Indian brick-makers set up shop at intervals along routes to create brick roads.

The United States researched the creation of mud by altering the weather.  Protests made climate warfare politically unfashionable.  Our enemies would not hesitate to seed clouds or use other low-tech means to bog us down.  They know we go with maximum armor.  As a defense, the enemy can flood routes to create mud, then pile pre-registered rocket fire onto our trapped formations.  We are lucky that Saddam apparently did not think of this.  He had opportunities to flood our routes.

Millions of streams, lakes and reservoirs exist around the world, many of which can easily be diverted to make routes impassable through flood and mud.  As you walk through deserts, forests and jungles, watch the streams and set your imagination free.  You will see how guerrillas and commanders sometimes create bogs with little effort.

Our heavy vehicles often get stuck in nothing but moon dust.  While driving through puddles of moon dust, it splashes across the windshield like water.  It blacks out the windshield for half a second, and then vanishes.

By appearance, the dust splashes from tires and boots like a fluid.  In particular, like water.  Though it splashes like water (not mud), it is not adhesive or have the surface tension of water.  It does not stick to your windshield or form drops.  The windshield and dust seem to repel each other.

The dust puddles as predictably as water.  It would come as no surprise to see moon dust shoot from a hose.  There is something odd about that dust, as if the particles repel each other, creating a fluid from solid.

Brownian motion creates issues for some gear, especially during summer heat.  Dust storms sometimes trap our helicopters during missions.  They must land to let it pass.

I sometimes wondered if any of our wounded troops drowned face down in the dust.  If you inhale enough, likely it would create mud in the nose, especially if there is blood, and in the lungs.  I never saw this.  It must have occurred.

The good news is that moon dust, like water, has little suction to trap our vehicles.  The bad news is that moon dust is dehydrated hell.  If you are travelling through moon dust when the rains begin, your problems have just begun.

We cannot expect to maneuver with our cumbersome armor against any but the most unsophisticated and unimaginative enemies.  A battalion of civil engineers armed only with shovels could wage decisive disruption.  Throw in dynamite, and the sky is the limit.

Mud will pull those boots off of his feet. (Kabul, Afghanistan.)

On the personal level, footwear can be sucked from feet and lost.

Troops in Afghanistan call it peanut butter, though in reality it is more like goo and poo.  The closer you are to large population centers, the more poo and bacteria there likely is, waiting for any scratch to invade.

Our Afghanistan veterans have a love-hate relationship with the peanut butter.  Our fittest men are worn down quickly.  A man might be able to run a marathon, but be unable to run five steps in goo.

Peanut butter disrupts IEDs, often rendering bombs inert.  When they do explode, peanut butter muffles the blast.

The goo swallows bullets and reduces enemy ricochets.  When you get shot, mud flies into the body with the bacteria.  In some parts of the world, the bacteria types can be worse than others.

When our Apache helicopters fire their cannons using high-explosive rounds, mud absorbs the detonation of the shells.  Dry mud used in Afghan homes stops our 30mm cannon shots, while wet mud in the fields absorbs them with a splat.

Rains came this Afghan day that would have thwarted a military logistics convoy.  A few Americans and I were with Afghan police.

Urozgan Province, Afghanistan

The Germans invaded Russia during World War II, got bogged down in the muddy season, and were trapped by winter.  The Russians call the season it rasputiza (time without roads), yet the Germans did not respect rasputiza until it was too late.

Our 4-wheel-drive vehicles on this Afghan day were far more mobile than military armored vehicles, but they were still consigned to restricted terrain.  This Afghan’s camels can go nearly anywhere.

The best footwear for warm weather mud might be the US Army jungle boot.

This is Urozgan Province, not far from where I photographed the “Dead Taliban of Chora” this same week. The dead man wore similar footwear. Men cannot fight in serious mud with these shoes, and will quickly be barefooted. Many Afghans can operate with no shoes. Some troops remove footwear to negotiate mud. There is less suction on feet than on boots, and shoes will be lost, anyway, and so they will tie the shoes and carry them around the neck.

In Iraq, the enemy typically would not fight in the mud, which stole their shoes.  In larger wars, generals sometimes must deal with thousands of troops who lose footwear.

In some types of mud, if it reaches your thighs, the suction is so intense that you will never escape without assistance. There you will die, possibly while fighting back the ants during the day and the mosquitoes at night.

The book Mud mentions the folly of sleeping under a tank.  The rains fall, the tank sinks. Men are trapped.  Driving the tank out can only make it worse.

In regard to combat tracking, mud is a switch hitter.  It can preserve a footprint literally for years, even decades, or erase it in seconds.  An anti-tracking technique is to walk in mud where herds of animals regularly travel, or to request or force farmers to move flocks behind you.  Of course if you force a farmer to do this, he will probably be happy to point out your direction of travel to pursuers.

An American with RPG plays with Afghan friends. Despite this dangerous play, Afghans are normally warm people. On this muddy day, we were on high ground, and we were driving so we were not forced to wallow.

In Kandahar, is the Tarnak River Bridge.  The span is a crucial kneecap between our main base at Kandahar Airfield and the large battle space that it supports.   The enemy blew up part of the bridge in March, 2010, killing a US soldier named Ian Gelig.

The bridge closed, yet light vehicles easily forded the river.  Our monster MRAP trucks could not cross.  A single car bomb reduced many of our operations to a standstill.

When not embedded with Coalition forces, I crossed that same spot many times by avoiding the bridge and by fording the river.  We sought to avoid being blown up or caught in a firefight on the Tarnak River Bridge.

When the bridge was hit, I was embedded with the 5/2 Stryker Brigade Combat team, whose HQ was at Kandahar Airfield.  The rains came one day and flooded out the HQ, and many of the living quarters.

The wheeled Strykers of 5/2 were less armored, but they were far more agile than MRAPs.  Casualties still occurred, but Strykers were freer to pursue the enemy.

While writing this dispatch, I asked an experienced 5/2 officer about the mud issue, and his opinion on Strykers vs. MRAPs.  He replied:

“Yes, [MRAP], better armor than a Stryker but an MRAP would be limited to 2 routes and a Stryker would have 20 because of cross country ability.  That combined with our terrain analysis/Intel using digital systems meant that we could avoid likely enemy IED attack areas and come up on a village from any direction—once we understood this we quit getting blown up.  This did not prevent all successful IED attacks of course but pretty damn close.”

After the Tarnak Bridge bomb strike, missions using MRAPs were cancelled due to vehicles bogging in the riverbed.  That particular 5/2 platoon had MRAPs, not Strykers.  Strykers could ford the river.  Cars were making it, and Strykers are far better than any car or 4-wheel drive.  If a Stryker is stuck in the mud, the mud is truly bad.

A single car bomb—and the mud—halted missions for days, though any Taliban who wanted to cross the Tarnak River could roll through using motorbikes, normal pickup trucks, small cars, ponies, camels, or on foot.

So what is better protection?  Massive armor knowing you eventually will be hit, or light armor, which allows you to avoid being hit?  The massive armor prevents chasing down the enemy to kill him.  Light or no armor promotes the hunt.  Dead enemy do not plant bombs.

Protection is agility, aggression, and initiative.  Serious veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan know that the best way to die is to huddle, armor up, and wait.  It is coming.

For centuries Afghan farmers have been masters at water diversion and are famous for their water sharing systems.

One night, near Sangin, Afghanistan, I was with British forces and farmers came out suspiciously.  We were watching them through thermals and night vision, and their activity with shovels looked suspicious enough for the Soldiers to shoot.  I was watching and would not have faulted them, but they stuck with the rules of engagement.  We saw no indisputable weapons.

They were not cleared to shoot unless they saw a weapon, though we know that the shovel-man comes out first before the IED-man.  Shovels are ambiguous weapons in the IED wars.

The Brits had good situational awareness, and one said that during this month at this moon phase, the farmers would work late because watering works better at night, and this moon phase provided the nightlight.  They were warned that farmers would be working tonight, and that enemy might take advantage of the human noise.

A US Marine infantry captain with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan read this dispatch in advance, and said that the same thing happened in Iraq.  The Marines were watching and some Marines wanted to light them up, but then they realized that the farmers were just watering. Not planting IEDs.

Nevertheless, using a shovel or a bomb, the farmer can flood mud-prone roads to channelize, divert, or trap us for ambush.

Our giant vehicles continue to roll off the assembly lines despite these inconvenient realities.

Urozgan, 2011.

The thickest mud is between our ears.

Afghan Police pickup in Urozgan, 2011.

The amber of war.

A Russian tank is trapped beside a river in Urozgan, on the muddy road from Shah Wali Kot to Tarin Kot.

The Afghan police, along with a couple of American civilians, stopped at the tank, and walked around the slippery slope.

The Afghans with us did not know the story behind the tank.

One can imagine the ghosts of the crew still sitting atop the hulk.  The ghosts are young and abandoned.  Far from home.  Day-by-day they stare at the river flowing by.  The river that delivered the silt and water of their sticky trap.

Standing by the tank, I wondered if the final words of the crew were, “Boris!  Free the machine before we are hit!”

The skeleton of their machine remains a hopeless beetle trapped in the amber of war.

Engine gone

Tank parts

Mud: if you do not get mud, mud will get you.

The amber of war is heartless, cruel, indifferent, and it never takes sides.

Hole from the messenger. The journey is over.

Please see:

Mud: A Military History

Stuck in the Mud

An account of mud at the Battle of Agincourt begins at the 33 minute mark in this video.  The mud is similar to Afghan peanut butter.

The day draws closer when a General will be in the Pentagon, 8,000 miles away from battle, and he will signal a sniper to kill or not to kill.  Taking it a step more, nothing will prevent the trigger-puller from being separated from the rifleman.  The General in the Pentagon could control whether or not the rifle is active to fire.

Press Release:

“We are pleased to announce the release of the official trailer video for TrackingPoint's Precision Guided Firearms.  This trailer includes footage shot during our field testing in the snow at altitude hunting western game, on safari hunting plains game, and hunting hogs from helicopters right in our back yard in Texas.”

With Former Prime Minister Abhisit.

29 December 2012

On Christmas Eve, ThaiPBS television interviewed me in Bangkok.  The interview is scheduled to air on 31 December at 9:40PM Thailand time.  Our interview will be online here.

Ms. Nattha Komolvadhin of ThaiPBS requested this interview after I made a statement on Facebook saying that murder charges against former Prime Minister Abhisit are factually baseless and morally wrong.

ThaiPBS is a publicly funded media organization, widely respected for addressing social issues that sometimes discomfit the government, regardless of which political party may be in power at the time.

The Thai government uses tax money to support ThaiPBS, which in turn sometimes slams the government.  Thailand has a moral compass.

My statements that the Royal Thai Army (RTA) and Mr. Abhisit did not commit murder are supportable, though they are contentious among some Thai, and among some journalists.

Destroyed in Afghanistan during fighting (2011)

In 2010, I left Afghanistan and flew to Thailand, where I witnessed serious fighting.  Nearly 2,000 people were injured, and approximately 90 were killed.

I did not see all of the fighting.  Nobody did.  The troubles were spread too thinly over time and distance for any single person to witness all events.

Collectively, hundreds of journalists covered the fight.  In crowded downtown Bangkok, with its many skyscrapers, windows, and cameras, nothing happening on the streets could be kept secret.

This was not a remote Afghan battlefield, but a thunder dome, saturated with spectators with phones and cameras snapping and flashing by the thousands.

The Twitterverse was aflame. Citizen observers on Twitter posted some of the best and most immediate reporting.

Red Shirt protestors set up an immense armed camp in Bangkok’s central business district.  I often walked through the camp with my camera.  The police, Army, and protestors allowed complete access.  This was risky.  Firefights erupted without warning.

The RTA was initially ordered to contain Red Shirt mobs that caused many of the deaths and injuries.

After several months of violent protest and government patience, the RTA was ordered to break up the protest and to free downtown Bangkok so that people could get back to work.

The Thai work hard. The Red Shirts occupying the central business district was very disruptive.

It is unpopular in some circles to say that the Red Shirts committed murders, but it is a fact.  Never fear truth.

Many Red Shirts became angry that other Red Shirts resorted to violence.  Red Shirts denounced other Red Shirts who committed murder and arson.

There are many good and moral people among the Red Shirts who do not support crime of any sort.  They are my friends.

Iraq, 2005

Some Red Shirts brought children into their camp even though bullets were flying.  It was dishonorable to bring children into a combat zone.  Images of children killed in war are branded into my memory.

Red Shirt leadership should have ordered that children be taken home.  Press members should not issue a free pass to leaders who allow kids to be brought to combat.  Any journalist who did not report on the children is professionally flawed.

This level of sustained and violent occupation would never have been permitted in the United States.   The first time that a protestor fired an M79 grenade launcher in downtown New York City, popular opinion would have demanded that the police or the Army put them down.

Occupy Wall Street is annoying, for example, but we can live with it.  If members of Occupy Wall Street fired grenades or an RPG, a final response would have been demanded.

Waging insurrection is not a constitutionally protected activity in any country. Peaceful protesting is protected in some countries, including the United States and Thailand.

Launching grenades is over the line.  Dozens of bombings, grenade attacks, and shootings were perpetrated in Bangkok during the Red Shirt protest, including a small car bomb. In addition to the protests, a steady insurrectional campaign targeting symbolic targets was waged.

Red Shirt protestors used automatic weapons, 40mm grenade launchers, bombs, firebombs, and firework rockets, not to mention slingshots and ball bearings.

Many Red Shirts were courageous and unafraid of combat.  I greatly respect Red Shirts for their courage under fire.  Much was caught on video.  I respect them though I believe that they should not have engaged in violence.

Red Shirt instigation upset many Red Shirt sympathizers who have an honest set of problems that must be addressed by the Thai government.  The current government was elected with crucial support from the Red Shirts. Apparently the government has not yet addressed all Red Shirt complaints.

Many journalists stayed at the Dusit Thani hotel.

Before I stepped into the protest area, I asked US Special Forces veterans, and others who lived in the Kingdom for many years, where I should go to witness events from the front lines.

My advisers opined that the best position was at the famous Dusit Thani hotel.  Five stars.  The Dusit Thani was at ground zero.

They also advised not to go.  This advice came from Vietnam-era Green Beret combat veterans, and from veterans of Grenada, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Man in Black with firebombs. Shortly after I took this photo, a man was shot dead.

Despite their warnings, I went and enjoyed the hotel’s amenities in between visits to the protest site. Because I stayed at the Dusit Thani, detractors later derided my stay as a vacation.

While I was talking on the phone in my room, an RPG struck and detonated three floors above.  This was no vacation.

The Dusit Thani was perfect.  You could eat, shower, sleep, and access the Internet.  That it happened to be a five-star hotel was ironic, and bizarrely nice compared to years of living in tents, trailers, and dirt.

I have been incredibly lucky in combat.  People regularly die around me.   I have so far escaped without a scratch.

The only time that I have been shot was in front of the Dusit Thani, just as another man was shot and killed a short distance down the street.  Luckily the bullet that hit me was a ricochet, and it caused me no bleeding.  The other man was dead.

But that is not the point, which is that I was not on vacation in the middle of a battlefield where thousands of bullets were flying, and where guests kept the curtains closed because of sniper fire.

Scene of fighting a short walk from the Dusit Thani. Red Shirt battlements in the background.

That the Dusit Thani stayed open was preposterous.  In America, it is inconceivable that the police would allow hotel proprietors and customers to make their own mortal decisions.  Surely the hotel would have been closed.

The RPG shot was the final blow.  The Dusit Thani did not want a reputation as a venue where RPGs killed journalists.  The hotel closed.

I had to move, and so I took my gear to another hotel, which overlooked part of the battle area.

Staying at the Dusit Thani was the most comfortable danger that I ever experienced. I still recommend the hotel to friends.

Many correspondents go to war, but war correspondents who spend years in combat are rare. War writers like Joe Galloway are exceptional. (Photo during 2011 combat in Afghanistan.)

Most of the reporters who covered the 2010 fighting in Bangkok had never seen combat.

For those who are not familiar with military operations, and with ground fighting in particular, Soldiers look like men in green carrying guns, and when they shoot, it is loud.

Amateur observers will miss much detail, even if they have video to replay.

Artillery firing in support of combat operations, Afghanistan 2010.

There were many courageous and smart journalists at the protest site.  When the shooting picked up, most of them stuck to it.  Some moved in closer.

Photographers and videographers require the most courage.  They must be close to the action.  Writers and print journalists can see everything they need from twenty yards away in more safety.

A US Soldier is mortally wounded from combat. Afghanistan 2011.

When the Bangkok fighting was intense, I was conservative and put on my writing hat, and prayed that the photographers would not get hit.  Some did.

Combat is too familiar for me to treat every firefight as if it were the last train running.  In my world, firefights are a continuously looping train.  Sometimes I sit and watch the bloody train go round-and-round.

Photographing just after lethal bomb blast in Afghanistan, 2011

This year, 2012, is the first year since December 2004 that I have not been in a serious war.  I witnessed sustained and serious combat in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.  If fortune graces me for 48 hours, 2012 will be the first year that I did not witness war since December 2004.

American rockets strike in Afghanistan, 2011.

By 2010, having already spent much time in Thailand, I was in a good position to understand the fighting.

I do not comprehensively understand the politics behind the fighting—only Thai or specialized analysts can make that claim—but I can analyze the fighting itself.

Many of the amateurs said that my words were false.   They said that the RTA, under orders from then-Prime Minister Abhisit, committed murder.  They produced no proof to support these sensational murder allegations.

Thailand enjoys freedom of the press.   Few topics are off limits.  Pornography is off limits.

An insult to the Royal institution can get you imprisoned.  If you disparage the Royalty on Facebook while in Kansas, and months later fly to Thailand, you may be arrested and jailed.

Soldiers sizing up the battlefield in front of the Dusit Thani.

A task force in Bangkok combs the Internet for acts of lèse majesté.  I took a drive recently with one of the officers who works on that task force.  He said that offenders residing in the United States commit most violations.

If you are an American and you commit lèse majesté, the King may pardon you after some time in prison.  If you are fortunate you may be sent back to America and blacklisted.  You will not be tortured or beaten.

You will endure the same penal conditions as any other convict, which in Thailand, as anywhere, can be unpleasant.  You will be declared persona non grata, and you will not be welcome to return to the Kingdom.

His Majesty King Bhumibol of Thailand is an excellent man of peace, and he is revered as a grandfatherly figure here.  I could easily leave Thailand and write otherwise, but this is true.

The King is highly respected by American military and government officials.  I was invited to a private clubhouse for American military veterans, and they had a portrait of His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen on the wall.

Behind closed doors, amongst themselves, the veterans of our military hold King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the highest esteem.  The King earned respect through hard work for his people.  He is beloved.

The King spent much time in the United States in his youth.  He is always welcome in America.  The King will never go thirsty when I have water.

The RTA allowed complete access to the combat zone.

Criticizing the King of Thailand is not like disparaging the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of Thailand.

It is permissible to criticize the Prime Minister of Thailand.  The Thai often do it, no matter who he or she may be.  Thai people criticize their leadership with passion and imagination.

The current Prime Minister of Thailand is a woman.  The United States has never had a female president, while Poland, Germany, the UK, and Pakistan all have had female leaders.  South Korea just elected a woman.

While the gender of the chief executive may not be a critical matter, it is clear that America does not have a patent on “democracy,” and in some ways, compared to other countries, Americans are not as free as we like to believe and advertise.

But insulting His Majesty the King is like insulting the beloved grandfather of millions of proud Thai people.  I doubt that the King himself cares about such comments, but millions of his subjects do, and passionately.

My Thai friends will defend the King with their lives.  The same way that we would protect our grandparents.  These many words are meant to underline a matter of utmost seriousness.

A woman rescues a photograph of the beloved King and Queen of Thailand. Stores had been looted and burned. Among so many valuables, she rescued the image of the King and Queen.

Aside from issues of lèse majesté, press freedoms are more liberal in Thailand than most other countries that I have seen.

People are free to write words in the Kingdom that would get them thrown in jail in Singapore, or that might start religious riots in India, or that might get them stoned to death in Pakistan, or a fatwa put on their head.

Cartoons that would cause riots in other countries are ignored or laughed at here.

Journalists are required to obtain special visas in countries such as India, Myanmar, Israel, China, and the United States.  Not Thailand.

Thailand does not fear ink.

You are free to write until your pen runs dry.

Foreign journalists without an office in the United States must apply for a special visa or risk deportation at the border.

I went to Israel without a visa and inadvertently caused a kerfuffle, but to their credit, the Israelis were good about it.

I was asked to speak at a conference in India. Hassles getting a visa led me to cancel.

India is freer than the United States in many respects, but a misplaced word can launch riots.  Indians deal with complexities that are unfamiliar to most Americans and Thai.

Yet a western journalist can read this, then drive to an airport, buy the next available ticket, and fly to Thailand.  No visa required.  No charge for Americans.

If you are in California, and you get the notion that “I will fly to Bangkok this afternoon,” you can.  No need to pack a bag.  Buy everything here.

You can land in Bangkok with nothing but your passport and a return ticket.  Airlines are required to stipulate that you have a return ticket, unless you have a long-stay visa, but in my experience Thai authorities never ask to see the ticket.  I almost never have one.

Thai authorities do not require that you declare that you are a journalist (in my case a writer), carrying the most dangerous weapon on the planet (a camera) and the second most dangerous weapon (a pen).

Not that it matters if you bring a camera.  You can purchase the latest hardware at the airport, or downtown.

You can show up with ten cameras in bags, and another camera over your shoulder, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned, “I am a journalist.   I will make Thailand look bad,” wearing a hat that says, “I hate Thailand.  I am a journalist.”

I do not recommend this action, but you can, and you would probably be admitted to the Kingdom along with all other visitors, with no hassle.

Do not try that in China, Singapore, Israel, India, or in the United States.

In Thailand, the immigration officer will stamp your passport and wave you through.

If you are smuggling drugs, you risk execution.

If not, you are free to travel anywhere, anytime, with few restrictions of any kind.

Correspondents on the battlefield in the central business district of Bangkok.

You are free to file stories night and day, describing how much you hate Thailand, and how terrible it is, and how terrible the government is.

You can focus on drug abuse, prostitution, corruption, on people who drive motorbikes without helmets or lights while talking on a cell phone, and ignore the innumerable virtues of this delightful Kingdom.

Most Thai will smile and shrug.  They have other matters of concern.

Years of work and combat are required to develop the necessary skills to become a serious war correspondent. (Afghanistan, 2011.)

Many people may not like you, but you will be free to criticize Thailand and its government until your visa expires.  Then they will renew your visa and you can continue.

If you go to the United States and are observed photographing government buildings or infrastructure, you might be arrested, even if the law permits such activity.

I was arrested in America for not telling immigration officials how much money I make.  I was handcuffed.  I never answered.  I was willing to go to jail.

They came to their senses and they released me, and I endured a painful vacation in the land of the free, and later returned to Afghanistan, where American Soldiers were trying to free the Afghan people whether they liked it or not.  Americans like to set people free so that we can ignore that we are shackled.

In Thailand, you can travel into every tiny village and photograph and video until your cameras fall apart.

Journalist hit in Bangkok. (Source of image unknown.)

In the United States, when there is an incident, law enforcement cordons off a large area.  No press members are allowed to enter.

During the protests in Thailand, the press, and tourists, were free to roam the battlefields during the middle of the fighting.  Many did.

Hundreds of journalists were there, stacked up with the Royal Thai Army during the fighting.  Bullets were flying everywhere.

The RTA ignored journalists like they were gnats.  Soldiers often smiled and shared their water.

Before I got there, a courageous Japanese journalist was shot and killed.  Many blamed the government.  But again, how?  Who did it?  It could have been anyone.

Every time someone was shot . . . which happened many times . . . some blamed the government, though I saw nothing but discipline from the RTA.

There were zero restrictions on photography, on video, or access.  Any journalist who says otherwise was either not there, or is lying.

Royal Thai Army Soldiers on standby.

If you wanted to cross between the lines you were free.  I did so many times.  That is a freedom that many Americans say that they want, but we seem eager to surrender.

In India, if you want to swim with crocodiles, the Indian Police might say, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” but then they will watch you go.  Later that day, Indian police will dutifully alert the US Embassy that you were eaten.  Indians do not protect you from yourself.  Thailand is similar.  I love it.

Personal responsibility is real here.  You are free.  All consequences are on you.

You are free to wade into a firefight or to pet crocodiles.  Do not whine when you get bitten or shot.

We say that we want freedom, but Americans do not live in freedom.  We Americans seem to spend every waking hour plotting how to shackle ourselves.  Freedom is becoming an empty word in America.

America does not want fewer laws.  Many Americans want more laws.  You could never cover fighting so freely in America.

Minimal cover. Take it where you can get it.

Hundreds of journalists covered the months of fighting.  When it came to the showdown, all of the big players were here.  CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, AP, AFP, New York Times.

Reporters flew in from Korea to Japan, from South America to Canada.  I saw them every day.  Some were killed.

Their work was honorable, but some of us have no patience with those who blame others after getting shot in a firefight that they volunteered to attend.

The general theme of some reporting was that Mr. Abhisit and the Royal Thai Army were on a rampage.  This was false.

The allegation does not pass a sniff test.

The RTA earned its honor.

It must be embarrassing for the hundreds of journalists, with thousands of cameras in the hands of civilians, that not a single one captured a photograph of the RTA committing an atrocity.  Yes, tense videos depicting bullets flying have been published.  That is combat.

Sometimes the press seemed to outnumber the RTA.

Hundreds of second-rank journalists were there—great journalists but with no gold medal—and they had every interest in snapping that award-winning photograph.

Bangkok was hot and humid. Bad time to be in body armor. The RTA was honorable and polite.

Dangerous work.

Both sides were shooting.  Red Shirts and Men in Black among them were videotaped firing automatic weapons.

I photographed Men in Black using firebombs.

The Men in Black were serious.  The Men in Black were not angry college boys.  They were commandos.  Confident.  Ready.  Not to be trifled with.

It is my suspicion that that the Men in Black were RTA veterans or veterans of other government agencies.  They were too good to be home-grown amateurs.  Some people claim that MiB they were former Border Patrol personnel who were personally loyal to their commander. I do not know.

One General switched sides and went to the Red Shirt camp.  I wanted to talk with him but before that chance came, he was shot in the head and killed by a sniper.  I asked Prime Minister Abhisit if he knew who did this.  He said no.

No journalists were afraid of the RTA. Soldiers were not committing atrocities. The RTA had nothing to hide. The Soldiers seemed to think that journalists were insane for walking around the battlefield like it was a park.

Some journalists were afraid of the Red Shirts, but not afraid of government personnel under Abhisit, because they knew that while Red Shirts might kill them, Abhisit would not.

The RTA would not shoot me, but I wondered about the Red Shirts.  The Men in Black surely would kill anyone that they perceived as a threat.  They were not as disciplined or as discriminating as the RTA.

The press was on the job observing the RTA, but they often gave a pass to the Red Shirts. This is not to imply that the journalist in this image did so. I do not know him.

Journalists captured video of rioters using grenade launchers.

In one fight, someone put a laser on a RTA officer and someone else used it to kill him.

I saw Red Shirts with lasers.   I told journalists that if you see a laser illuminate you or the Soldiers around you, to run, as a 40mm grenade might be inbound.

A 40mm grenade will take perhaps five seconds to get to you (depending on how quickly the shooter can aim, and the range), and the kill radius of a 40mm grenade is small.  A few seconds of running can save you.  I carried an M79 Grenade Launcher when I was in the Army and I know it well.

Journalists who ignored Red Shirt looting should be ashamed. Most Red Shirts were not looters and were embarrassed by it. But it happened. It should not be deliberately forgotten.

Most eyewitnesses to the incident say that the Men in Black did the killing.  Best friends make worst enemies.  They must be veterans.  That is my suspicion.  They were too good with their techniques and tactics to be untrained young men.

The arson was grievous and shameful.

Bangkok fighting

I did not see the Thai Army with grenade launchers.  Grenades came from the Red Shirts.  They fired them on civilians and the RTA.  This is a fact.

But to speak this fact aloud is sacrilegious.  It is a professional affront to hundreds of journalists who did not get the award-winning imagery of the RTA committing atrocities.

How can journalists, who accuse Mr. Abhisit and the RTA of murder, reconcile that hundreds of camera-toting journalists, and thousands of civilians, were completely free in the battle zone, yet nobody witnessed RTA atrocities?

World-class photographers were combing the field and nobody caught the fish.  Why?  Because it did not happen.

It was dangerous to huddle with the RTA. Red Shirts fired at them.

Prime Minister Abhisit lost reelection, so he is now the leader of the opposition in Parliament.  Recently he was charged with murder.

This is wrong.

I said and wrote that this is wrong.   Today, critics accuse me of being buddies with Mr. Abhisit.

Photos of former Prime Minister Abhisit and me talking on an airplane from Bangkok to Hat Yai have appeared on the Internet.  That was the only day that I communicated with Mr. Abhisit.

We do not email each other.  I do not know his email address.  I have never been to his home.  We have never shared a coffee together.  We never talk on the phone.  We do not communicate directly or indirectly.  Mr. Abhisit and I are not friends.  I would be honored to know him, but the fact is that we are not buddies.

Molotov cocktails in the Red Shirt camp. Think about the implications of this photograph. Who made them? For what purpose? How were they used? Those who were at the protest site know. We witnessed it.

I did not even write a dispatch about this trip.  Few people knew that I took it.  This upset some of my friends who thought that I should have written something, but Mr. Abhisit’s staff never said a foul word for the great access they afforded that day and on others, and they never criticized me for failing to write about my interview with the Prime Minister.

I did the same with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on a couple of trips, many American and British generals, and other officials at the highest levels of the government of the United States.

Down in the dirt, I went on countless combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan with units that I never mentioned.  No slight was meant.

I thank everyone who entertained me at their expense for the education that has helped inform my views.  I cannot write the truth if I do not smell it.

It upsets some folks that I enjoy access and I do not exploit it and write a major dispatch every time that I have a coffee with a General, but for me it is often background.  I intend no arrogance with that statement.  In my line of work, I talk to many people.

And so, regarding the fighting in 2010, this circles back to criticism from detractors who claim that they belong to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand.

I contacted the Club for clarification after this criticism but I was not graced with a response.

I was invited to the Club.  I was very busy, and regretted that I could not attend.  Then the criticism began.

No slight or insult was intended.  But any member of the Club who did not write about the children in the Red Shirt camp, or the firebombs, does not have a professional stature. Cherry-picking facts is dishonest.  Ignoring that children were brought to the camp is complicity.

As for Mr. Abhisit, I have no interest in defending a murderer.  I do not believe that Mr. Abhisit is a murderer.  Based on my observations, my estimate of Mr. Abhisit is that he is a man of rules.

If I thought that there was truth to the allegations of murder, I would remain silent, unless I had evidence, in which case I would speak and lay out any evidence in my possession.

Bangkok burns. Arson was dishonorable. Red Shirts did this.

Ironically, Mr. Abhisit was criticized for showing too much restraint.  His personal courage was widely demonstrated in his openness to the public.  The day that I accompanied Mr. Abhisit, he allowed normal citizens to walk up to him.  I asked his staff if this was normal.  They said yes, and that it worried them.  Mr. Abhisit is physically and morally courageous.

I have no evidence of RTA atrocities.

The Royal Thai Army conducted itself with honor during the Red Shirt protests.  Thai people should be proud to field such an Army.

The larger dispute between Red Shirts, Yellow Shirts, and Multicolor Shirts is complex, and it includes big players.

Mr. Thaksin the Billionaire is the major player, and I suspect that someone close to him is behind the accusations that Mr. Abhisit is a murderer.

I have no proof of this suspicion, just as there is no proof that a man’s hand is actually in the glove at the end of his arm.

Mr. Thaksin is more powerful than I am.   He could order me killed with a gesture.  Would he do it?  Maybe.  But at least he is not a torturing Mexican drug dealer.  It would be a simple bullet.

Would Mr. Abhisit have me killed?  Never.

And so I am defending someone who is now powerless, facing murder charges, and even if Mr. Abhisit were still in charge of the Thai government, he would not have me killed.  He would ignore me.

Royal Thai Army soldiers near the protest site. They are good soldiers.

I have nothing to gain from defending Mr. Abhisit.  He has no power.  He may wrongfully go to prison for murder.

There is nothing for me to gain but pain, and the peace of conscience that I did not passively watch an innocent man go to prison, while the RTA is accused of atrocity, when I know that silence is wrong, and speaking truth is right.

Some of the most courageous reporters were women.

I have been warned that the current Thai government will punish me for writing these dangerous words.

Mr. Thaksin’s sister is the current Prime Minister.  The elementary school that she attended is just down the road from my home.  My friends went to school with her.  This is her country.  Red Shirts love her.

Mr. Thaksin’s government has not lifted a finger against me.  They have been honorable despite my words.  This is Thailand, not Iran.

Thailand can be dangerous, but mostly it is dangerous for those who bring their demons with them, or for those who do not know how to behave as guests.

Red Shirts burned this woman’s small dress shop. Why?

I live on a street where a hundred Chiang Mai police officers live.  The apartment buildings near my home are loaded with police.  They all know me.  They often say hello.  They have been kind.  Many are Red Shirts.

My home is just a short walk from the Red Shirt headquarters.  They know me.  They know where I live.  Sometimes I go to their functions.  I walk by their offices.  The Red Shirts have made no threats against me.

The Thai government has not hampered me in any way.  They renewed my visa with a smile even though I am writing and making statements that they do not like.

Amazing Thailand. There is much to learn here.

Life is short.   We should stand up for what is right.  Mr. Abhisit and the RTA did not commit murder.

The Kingdom of Thailand is a great and free country.  Thai people, including those who hate Mr. Abhisit, should not allow perversions of their judicial system.  This is wrong for such a great country as Thailand.

Charges against Mr. Abhisit should be dropped.

Long Live the King.

18 December 2012

All tracking begins with a start point.  Start points can be found in many ways.

The Israelis create track traps in soft soil that are impossible to cross without leaving spoor.  Israeli forces make heavy use of trackers.

Zoologists create similar track traps when trying to locate elusive animals.  They follow the spoor.  Spoor has various definitions.  For use here, spoor is any and all sign made by animal, man, or machine.

These crocodiles regularly jerk people off the shore and from boats. Every creature and every thing creates spoor, 24 hours per day. (Sundarbans, Bangladesh, 2012)

Many nocturnal animals are rarely if ever seen.  Scientists will find a suitable water hole, and they might use a rake to prep the soil.  At sunrise they check for spoor.

As a passive security measure, track traps may be used around homes or businesses.  US Border patrol uses track traps.  Singaporeans use tracking daily.

Every base defense force in Afghanistan should know where their natural traps are.  When possible, they should create traps for daily patrol.  Quick sweeps by helicopter or ground forces can be done as a sidebar to other missions.

Helicopters can reset the track traps using rotor wash.  They must be careful for emplacement of Chinese cannons, which are made by digging a hole, emplacing a charge, and putting rocks on top.

Chinese cannons can shoot down helicopters or jets even high in the sky.  Areas dotted with Chinese cannons can make formidable air defense for little investment in time and other resources.  Trackers should be able to spot many emplacements of Chinese cannons.

Using Chinese cannons, the enemy can put tons of rocks high in the sky for minutes on end and over a wide area.  We have no defenses other than tactics and courage against this sky-IED.

If there are no natural track traps, we can haul sand and make them.  A retired Green Beret and Delta Force man who read this in advance said they used a kind of popcorn-like material that contained a chemical that emitted an infrared signature.  When someone cracked the popcorn at night, they tracked an IR signature.

Memorial for Soldiers in Afghanistan. Tracking is not a lost art or science. People track daily worldwide.

Start points occur at all crime scenes.  In combat, when an attack unfolds, such as an ambush or raid, the areas are furnished with massive spoor.  Shell casings.  Gear.  Blood.  Disturbance. It reeks of flame and man.  Sometimes it is still smoking. A tracker can read it by Braille.

When our Harrier squadron was mostly wiped out in Helmand a few months ago, and the attackers were killed (one captured), our people had their shoes and smoking craters as start points.

On a moonless night, the enemy breached perimeter defenses and destroyed our jets.  This was a made-for-Hollywood beginning to what could have been a vicious trackback and destruction or capture of facilitators.

We have the gear to track at night.  A Wolfpack could have backtracked miles in an hour.

I know the area. It was impossible for the enemy to hide spoor.  The Camp Bastion area is wide open for miles around.

Backtracking (passive) can be as important as active (forward) tracking.  Bets are on that other enemy support personnel were still at the layup.  A leader of the attack was hit long after, in a village that was on a predictable route.

Norwegian Army is going back to basics. The tracking instructor in civvies is a retired UK Special Forces sergeant major. Nobody wants him and a Wolfpack tracking them up.

Some trackers cast for spoor on foot, ATV, horseback, and often by helicopter.  Motorbikes are great because they are fast, and slightly harder to hit with IEDs.  Using IR headlights, bikes are good for night, but that takes practice.

One problem with IEDs is merely speed.  When you are on foot, the enemy has more time to predict your route and to get the IEDs ahead.  Afghans are good at encirclement with IEDs and ambushes.

Sometimes they try to pin the unit with a diversion ambush so they have time for IEDs.  These will be fresh and hasty, and should be easily spotted.  The IEDs that they put in months in advance are our tough luck.  They are less likely to work, but hard to see.

In Rhodesia, enemies often attacked farms.  The reaction forces were fast, so they could use the helicopters to get to the start point.  Trackers would cast and fix a cone of travel, allowing the commanders to use tactical prediction to box the enemy.  They killed thousands, often by using CT (combat trackers, or tracking).

Constant practice of basic skills and drills are essential for this type of combat.  CTs frequently make hasty ambushes and get into close contact. This makes the basics especially important.

The US often fights farmers.  Farmers are keenly tuned into their environments, and their fields make natural track traps, and they go to the fields every day.  Many farmers make boobytraps.  They use shotguns with tripwires to ward off pigs and predators, making some farms natural danger areas in war and peace.

Their wealth is often in their livestock.  Cattle naturally wander off and so the kids track and bring them back. They naturally cast for spoor every day.

A sniper without tracking is half a sniper.

Tracking provides intelligence.

Snipers—the rare real ones—will tell you that most of their work has nothing to do with shooting people.  Snipers are always on reconnaissance.

The end result is that snipers can kill more enemy with their eyes and radio than with the rifle.  Tracking is parallel.  Any sniper who has not taken serious tracking training is at best a half-trained sniper.

Given the danger that sniper teams themselves can be tracked up and taken down, it is gross negligence to deploy snipers who are not skilled combat trackers.

Good men who unsuccessfully tried to save a comrade after he was shot during a firefight.

After attacks, spoor is massive.  Other than scheduling attacks during storms, there is little anyone can do to cover their trail when they are quickly leaving.

As an anti-tracking technique, we learned in the Army to take advantage of storms to move or to attack an enemy base.

In addition to hiding your tracks, the storm covers your sound and scent.  The enemy tends to duck out of the rain.  In Afghanistan, when the storms came, I kept my boots on even while at big bases.

Combat often occurs at night.

The enemy, or you and me, cannot completely hide spoor even during bright daylight with a gratuity of time.  They often move at night, making it impossible to hide spoor, other than by selecting routes or conditions that mitigate creation or discovery.

During a break in a firefight, a couple of A-10s laid cannons onto the enemy positions. The clouds are smoke from previous runs. Since we had no tracking capacity, all of the many firefights over the next couple of days were enemy-initiated. (To my knowledge.) And so we were reacting to him. No villagers told us where the enemy was. Enemy spoor was everywhere.

The US military is set to become the world’s foremost tracking organization, by blending basic skills with high tech and enormous mobility.

In Afghanistan, our optics on drones such as Predators often follow known targets.  Often we do not fire.

The crosshairs give coordinate readouts, and so picking up the track is a matter of going there and doing it.  Toggle the crosshairs on the enemy’s head.  Click the button to save the coordinates.  The Wolfpack has a start point and known cone of travel.

Every command-detonated IED strike leaves fresh spoor.  Every attack on a base leaves fresh spoor.  Even if the attack was done by rockets on a timer, there is fresh spoor.  The enemy does not set the timer for three days.  They set it for long enough to get away.  This might be ten minutes or an hour.   An hour is not long enough to escape a Wolfpack.

The Wolfpack can cast out to numerous missions without sinking their teeth into the enemy.  They create an intelligence picture.  They figure out how the enemy ingresses, dwells, and egresses.  Hunting includes coming back empty-handed sometimes, but they always pick up intelligence for future hunts.

They can pick up intelligence by finding spoor, or not finding spoor.  Both pieces are equally valuable.

In Iraq, our people would sometimes check the coordinates that were picked up after the enemy shot mortars.  Our counterbattery radar is fast and precise.  We can see where the rounds came from before they land.  So we would go look for base plate marks, which we would find, but nobody knew how to track from there.

Our radars also will pick up bullets.  We can see a firefight on radar when bullets fly high.  A helicopter can fly low to draw fire, and we can spot those bullets, and swoop in 30 seconds later with a Wolfpack that was on orbit over the ridge.

Ruses like this were common among the best commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We push out sniper teams, and then do a mission to somewhere, which the enemy is watching.

If they use phones or radios, we get it live.

We simulate a casualty and MEDEVAC (which using a red cross would violate Geneva Conventions; another reason to remove the red cross).

The snipers who got there the night before watch as the enemy starts putting out ambushes, and the snipers whack them.

Down in Somalia there is massive pirating.  The pirates often take hostages to shore, which we have on radar or by other means.  They then move the hostages inland by foot or vehicle.  SEAL trackers could be dispatched to ascertain direction, with backup teams on ship ready to hit.

CH 47 creating Kopp-Etchells Effect during combat resupply. The rotor wash was blowing me away, making a good photograph difficult. This beast made a start point.

When the enemy is leaving an attack, he tends to stay in about a 45-degree cone.

Routes are predictable by looking at the terrain.  At this point, a Wolfpack commander might not need the trackers because he can put ambushes in all the likely routes, and push the enemy into ambushes, as per normal tactics.

In Vietnam, our people used sensors, and sometimes would fire artillery or mortars when the sensors tripped.  They would fire at predesignated spots where they thought the enemy would be when the projectiles arrived.

Under many ROE (Rules of Engagement), our people will not be permitted to fire when a sensor trips.  The sensor is a start for hot track.

Photos, finger prints, and eye scans. Many Afghans do not have fingerprints due to farm work. But they all have footprints, except for one story I heard. As I recall, there was an Afghan with no legs, who rode on the back of an Afghan with no arms. The man on the back provided the arms in exchange for use of the other man’s legs.

Sometimes we track enemy by drones and do not fire because the platform is unarmed, but we have coordinates and video to the fresh tracks.

Many times I have watched unarmed drone feeds, and frustrated Soldiers who could not attack a known enemy simply because they had no missile on the bird.  Or they were watching from a powerful camera, miles away on base.  This is common.

We do not own the night. When the weather is good and birds are up, and the enemy does not have shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, we dominate at night. But when the skies are cloudy or the weather is bad, it remains man vs. man. Desert is often man vs. man, while jungle is always man vs. man.

During an instance last year, two known bombers (they’d just planted a bomb) disappeared into light vegetation and trees.  Under the ROE, continuous observation was required to engage.  Even if they’d reemerged from the other side, our people no longer could fire because the drone had lost sight.

During this mission, we came in by helicopters, so the enemy had a good start point. We moved through their fields.

The copse of trees represented an island to fix the enemy.  They could not leave without crossing open farmland.  Granted, it was a large area under the trees, but it was an island.  A Wolfpack could narrow it quickly.

US Soldier using body bag for sleeping bag. Our boots and large formations are easy to follow.

This was a perfect case for “vertical envelopment.”  Helicopters were parked just a few hundred meters from the HQ.  Those Blackhawks, Apaches, and Kiowas were about ten minutes’ flight from the tree stand.

It takes about six minutes to launch a Blackhawk, so our Wolfpack could be there in less than twenty minutes.

Jets were in the area.

The commander could have directed that F-18s dive low and loud in a “show of force,” with intention on pushing the enemy to stay hidden in the copse.

This is a common CT tactic.  Wolfpacks want the enemy to hide, or to run.  Either way works.  Running can be safer because we can get them from air or ambush, but hiding is fine.

Combat operations in Kandahar, 2011.

Kiowa pilots often spot tracks. (Photo credit US Army, Afghanistan.)

Three Blackhawks can carry about sixty combat-loaded men.  Twenty minutes after the enemy disappeared into the copse, the Wolfpack commander could have emplaced blocking elements, or blocked with the airborne helicopters.  The men are unlikely to leave the copse with Kiowas and Apaches buzzing around.

An old hunting technique involves a large group of villagers who form a large circle.  They make noise and close the circle until all the animals are forced into the center, where the villagers dispatch them with arrows.

Crossing farmers' fields during combat mission.

At the copse, a Wolfpack should be able to make a match on shoes in the farmer’s field.

The bomb-detecting gear and dogs are of limited use. The Soldier who gets blown up often is far back down the line. He might be man number twenty. Soldiers carry ladders because they are constantly climbing walls.

At least one Afghan came out of the copse.  He pulled himself onto a tractor and drove away.

Our people frequently use helicopters to stop vehicles. They blast rotor wash until you are blown off the motorbike, or cannot see out of the windshield from the dust and dings.  The pilots can do this with surprise.

The bad guys are driving along suddenly they are dusted out.  They can no longer see the road, and a minigun is pointed at the windshield.  Unless they have suicide vests, they tend to stop.  The suicide vests were a dangerous technique in Iraq.

It would be easy to follow the tractor, stop it with a helicopter, and confirm or deny if the tracks in the field led to the man on the tractor, while the other Wolves entered the copse.

This small helicopter package, along with a couple of Kiowas for scouting, would be hell in the hands of a Wolfpack commander.

Bets are on that there was a cache in the copse.  The Rhodesians could pull off such attacks in an hour or two, and be back for lunch.

A fragless artillery round could be designed to frighten enemy into hiding after an attack. We often take fire on the bases, but the fire comes from populated areas. Wolfpack guns could fire noisemakers while Wolfpack boards the helicopters. After an IED, fragless rounds could be fired within minutes into the area, to pin down or drive the enemy while the Wolfpack assembles.

The Rhodesians and Namibians sometimes tracked cattle because the enemy stole cattle for food or money.  Guerrilla armies often steal flocks and herds.

The medic on the right was a good man. He saw much combat. Greater tracking skills would reduce his workload.

Some Rhodesian pilots became especially good at picking up sign from the helicopters, which normally is best done in early morning or late afternoon.

Most Afghans have few electronics, which can be good and bad for SIGINT tracking. They often have small radios.

Strong tracking skill forces the enemy to use track discipline, which wastes his time, and also forces him into areas that he may not want to go, which helps with sensor placement.

The Rhodesians used electronic tricks, such as the “road runner” commercial transistor radios.  They distributed the road runners by various means in likely areas.  When the enemy heard helicopters, they would turn off the radios, which turned on the hidden transponder.

The excellent Air Force JTACs wore different boots than the Army Soldiers. This is a common clue for trackers that they are specialized forces or attachments.

The Rhodesians had a handful of worn-out aircraft, and “Faced with an insurgency in sparsely inhabited African bush in a country the size of the State of Montana, limited their ability to field more than 1,500 fighting men on any one day in the years 1966–1980… ” (Counter-Strike from the Sky: The Rhodesian All-Arms Fireforce in the War in the Bush, by J.R.T. Wood)

CT was a force multiplier.

During a firefight, an enemy tracer ricocheted into the compound we were in, and set this man’s hay ablaze. The farmers worked to extinguish the blaze.

After the fire started, this Soldier saved this child. The boy had hidden in a building from the fire or the firefight, and likely would have died from smoke inhalation. This Soldier saw the problem and took action.

That night, the fire rekindled and destroyed all the hay. We were surrounded by spoor, and followed none.

With what the British Army combat tracking school taught me in only three weeks, it was frustrating that we were not tracking down and killing these Taliban.  We did get at least one kill the day the hay burned, courtesy of the Air Force.

A Predator was covering us and spotted an enemy.  I heard the Hellfire shot but did not see it until back on base, where I saw the video.

The Taliban target heard the Hellfire launch.  He bolted like a deer.  He was jumping the string.

Normally, after you see them bolt, they have seven or eight seconds to live.   The Hellfire launch is loud. The missile climbs, arcs, and dives to the target, so the sound gets there long before the missile.

The Air Force keeps the laser on him.  The man was running and then took a direct Hellfire shot.

To avoid being killed in Hellfire strikes, the enemy uses the same method that is used in anti-tracking.  They “bombshell.”  They did this often in Iraq, and so our people found ways around it.  This has been a normal enemy combat drill in Afghanistan for at least three years when I first saw it there.

The Hellfire is not powerful.  It is like a gigantic hand grenade, laser guided.  So the enemy bombshells and everyone runs in different directions.

Dropping flat is great during small-arms contacts, but in a Hellfire strike you must RUN.  Laying flat means a Hellfire in the back.

The missile can follow one target.  The Predator people are watching before firing.  They try to determine the leader, so that when the enemy bombshells, the Air Force (or CIA) can keep the laser on him.

The sad part is that those Predators have perfect coordinates to the tracks of any survivors, and a Wolfpack could finish the job, but we never do.

Mission in Afghanistan. Every step is a word in a story.

Photo credit US Army.

When I was in Special Forces, we trained that only two Soldiers would go to fetch water for the team of twelve men.  More people down at the creek left more sign where the enemy is likely to cast for spoor, or to catch it by chance.

So the water crew would go around and fetch everyone’s canteens, which you tied to parachute cord and filled.  Every time they walked to the water, they took a slightly different route to avoid tramping down an obvious path.  Trackers cast along water.

Kiowas could find many start points. Kiowa Wolfpacks could finish many of them without need of ground Wolves.

Last year, in Nimroz Province, Afghanistan, there was an ambush which might have been meant for our small group.  I was not with the military.  We are unsure who the ambush was for, but it was suspicious with place and timing.

Area of the Nimroz Ambush.

When the ambush kicked off, I was not there.  The Afghans tracked and chased the enemy for about fifty miles, as memory serves, before killing most of them.

One was bleeding and got away.  The Afghans said he went the direction of the desert, away from the water, and so he would surely die.

I visited the ambush site because it was on the way to a water project I was researching.  We are preparing the Afghans to cut off water to a part of Iran, which could lead to a water war.  That is a story that I never told.  It deserves a major piece.  As for combat, it was a perfect situation for a Wolfpack response.

The enemy cone of travel was known.  They headed south, in the opposite direction of the ambush.

To their right (east) was the Iranian border.   They could not cross there.  To their south and west was desert.  It was an easy track and pursuit.  Afghan forces finally pushed the enemy into a firefight.

That was a great track that I sadly missed, and only got to see the evidence, photographs, and hear the accounts.  Unfortunately, the Police chief who was in charge was killed last week (December 2012) in another ambush.

The Afghans Wolfpacked them with Toyota pickups instead of helicopters or jets.

Trackers can often determine some of the gear that is being carried. Natives often do not make good combat trackers. For example, even a great native tracker will not know what weapon made the marks on the ground. CTs should be combat troops.

Some of the most interesting contacts unfold when skilled trackers are hunting other skilled trackers.  When CTs are hunting men who know nothing about tracking, the stories are less interesting.  It is more like following cattle.

Ammo resupply after a deadly firefight last year.

Tracker against tracker can read more like Tom Clancy submarine warfare.  Every trick has a counter, and a counter-counter, and often the roles reverse and the hunter becomes the hunted.

It does not matter how stealthy the hunter/quarry.  Both still leave sign, and when they go “active,” such as firing or launching a torpedo, action speeds up.

Shot in the ribs and saved by body armor. Another Soldier was killed in this firefight. The enemy was close but we had no way to track them.

The US military can remain in denial about the criticality of combat tracking.  For many of our enemies, is as common sense as marksmanship.

Stay tuned for Wolfpack 106

Butterflies on suspected elephant dung: many signs are obvious.

10 December 2012

The British learned that employing local trackers can be disastrous.  Indigenous folks can be immensely talented at local tracking because they are tuned intimately to their biowebs.  Problems start from there.

“Jungle Man” might be able to trail a butterfly—especially so if he can sell it—but he cannot read a map.  He does not get lost because he knows his home range and how to navigate there.

Hilltribe jungle boys in Thailand.

Biowebs and tracking can change dramatically from one terrain to another, in the space not measured in miles, but feet.  In Brunei, jungle gave way within just a few steps to desert-like terrain that resembled Afghanistan. When the trees were cut the soil washed away, leaving a Martian landscape similar to parts on the Big Island of Hawaii.

In fact, the Big Island has most of the ecosystems found worldwide, ranging from alpine tundra to forests, jungles, prairies, and desert-like areas, down to tropical beaches and coconuts.

Jungle Man could track around his village, but when loaded onto a helicopter and flown onto a cold, dry and treeless mountain only minutes away, he might fail.  On the Big Island, alpine tundra is a nine-minute Blackhawk flight to tropical beaches.  Similar dramatic changes are common globally.

The British learned that even superb local trackers cannot make up for absent military expertise.  They cannot be transported to work reliably in other conditions.

Hilltribe village in northern Thailand. The villagers keep three elephants.

According to Dean Williams, a retired British Royal Marine and combat tracker instructor, “The key factor is the ability to make logical deductions and assumptions via an understanding of military tactics and SOP's…”  Local trackers typically cannot do this.

Numerous combat trackers read this draft.  Two cautioned that local trackers are at times hired to potent use.  One veteran officer mentioned the Koevoet unit in Namibia.

The book Shadows in the Sand reveals a series of combat tracking stories, as told by a native tracker enlisted in the Koevoet.

The local trackers were not just village boys plucked away from lives of finding wayward cattle.  They received combat training, and then piled tracking atop their new combat skills.

Strapping the enemy to the mud guards. I highly recommend the book Shadows in the Sand

The Koevoet had a reputation for hard tracking, hard killing, and hard drinking, often returning to camp with mangled enemies strapped around the vehicles. They stacked the bodies high.  They also were paid for kills, a practice that some Americans might not support, and which was controversial locally.

There were complaints about strapping the bodies to vehicles, but the insides of the vehicles were cramped, and nobody wanted gore on the floor. They began covering the bodies.

The Koevoet faced threats that we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mines, roadside bombs, RPGs and small arms. Koevoet used armored vehicles and helicopters to track, push, and cut ahead of enemy.

Many of those tracked down were expert trackers themselves, and would use anti-tracking techniques which often worked.

If our folks in Afghanistan could track like the Koevoet, the Taliban would be an endangered species.

Judging by descriptions in Shadows in the Sand, our men are far better fighters than the Koevoet.  But the Namibians were good fighters, courageous, and could track.  It matters less that you are a great fighter when the enemy can find you easier than you can find him.  This is part of combat.

Despite Koevoet unit and other successes, it remains inadvisable to hire trackers from villages thinking their skills are universally applicable.

The Rhodesians melded tracking more to our way of combat and were extremely successful.

Is tracking an Art, or a Science?

Hubble Space Telescope image: science, art, or both?

Some people call tracking an art.  Others call it a science.  This is a case where the opinion actually matters.

Many professions have these discussions.  Military Science or Martial Arts, is the art of war.  Last week, I was privy to a conversation that included about a dozen serious military thinkers, when a retired veteran Colonel posed the question, “What is war?”

They arrived with many thoughts.  I remained quiet because I do not know a suitable definition that withstands simple challenges.  Despite all of my time with art and war, I cannot define art, war, or the art of war.

Practically none of our billions of dollars worth of counter-IED gear will work in this environment. Approximately 80% of IEDs found in Afghanistan are found by the human eye. (Image from Northern Thailand.)

The American military does not like art. It likes science.  It likes to reduce matters to algorithms and computer simulations to predict battles.

The Pentagon wants to factor people out, not in, with a clear line of march toward the kriegs-utopia of a predictable war, where we fight gadget vs. gadget, or gadget vs. man, but not man against man.

A reality of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is that it often remained man vs. man.

Moose track at Norwegian Army tracking training. In Norway, the sun hangs low in summertime, and so every hour is a golden hour. Notice the direction of the shadows. (STY.)

Back down on Earth, the morning sun is often perfect for shadows.  In most cases, the tracker keeps the sign between his eyes and the sun.  He sometimes is looking ahead, or even back over his shoulder to keep a good angle.  The rule is STY: Sun. Track. You.

The angle is crucial.  Sign that is nearly invisible up close might be obvious a hundred meters distant, or the inverse.

You can experiment by making a footprint, and walking a spiral around it from various distances.  At some angles the print can be obvious.  As the Sun-Track-You angle changes, even from the same distance, the sign can disappear.

But if you are on the equator at noon, the sun is straight overhead.   The shadow cast by a pole twenty feet tall might be measured in inches.

A telephone pole at noon on the equator casts almost no shadow.  If you are not on the equator, you will never see a shadowless fencepost on a sunny day.  A person who does not believe this may go insane trying to disprove it.

The closer you are to the equator, the worse the light becomes as it heads toward noon.  There will be little shadow in a footprint, and it will be tough to see unless the sign is large, such as in mud.  This does not make tracking impossible, but can slow it considerably, and the tracker will miss evidence.

Cornelius Nash, Operations Director at the renowned Scott Donelan Tracking School, points out that the tracker should always be aware of the sun’s location, and to maintain STY at all possible times, and not to accept “good enough” simply because you can see the track.

STY is a golden rule for spotting evidence.  Terrain and other realities often defy obedience.  Combat has its own golden rules that might clash.  The veteran must use judgment on which golden rules shine the brightest at the moment.

As a photographer, it has become apparent that sunlight hours best for artistic photography tend to be best for tracking.  All times are possible, but some times are golden.

Wearing my photographer hat, I have noticed that the farther away from the equator, the more golden hours there are per day. Unless of course it is winter and the days are shorter.  Opposite for southern hemisphere.  (As a writer, distance from the equator makes no difference.)

Places that are challenging for artistic photography, such as splotchy light on jungle floor, are more challenging for tracking.  The glaring sun, midday on the equator, is harsh for artistic photography, and tracking.  The summer in Norway brings great sun angles all day unless there is diffusion from the clouds.

Experiment: Crumple paper and change light-paper-eye angle. This image was made yesterday using afternoon daylight.

Ground sign tends to be naturally camouflaged.  White on white.  Orange on orange.  Black on black.  We need contrast, making shadows a tracker’s friend.

If you are in a city and cannot experiment easily with tracks, just crumple a sheet paper.  Now flatten the sheet with your hands.  Invest 30 seconds and make it as smooth as you can.

Take it outside in the sun, or use a light indoors, and change the angle of the paper to the light.

The flashlight on my desk makes a nice sun-simulator.  By shining the flashlight from a low “morning” angle, the crumples are obvious.  As the flashlight moves in an arc to “noon,” directly over the paper, many creases disappear.

The flashlight then arcs off the other side for “sunset,” making dramatic changes in the shadows.

Same paper, same sun. This image was taken about one minute after the first, but the angle is altered.

Nothing is mystical here.  This is physics meeting eyeball.  A first-grader can learn this reality of tracking in the time it takes to peel and eat an orange.

Farther from the equator, time of day matters less.

At noon this December day in Chiang Mai, Thailand (only N18º), I walked outside my office to check the shadows.   Just now the shadows are about as long as the objects are tall.

Today at 1300hrs local, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Here, at noon on easy tracking ground, footprints pop out.  Even a passing glance is enough to get on track.  Afghanistan is far more north, making it easier still.  This will vary with season due to inclination

To my mind, I see no real difference between art and science. Yet it is doubtful that art theories will be admissible as courtroom evidence.

Cornelius Nash will call tracking a science.  He insists that anyone with good vision, an open mind, and willingness to learn, can be taught effective tracking for law enforcement or combat.

Cornelius makes the point that natives often take tracking into the realm of art, but they lack the scientific thought processes -- or at least in a language that we understand – to convey what they are seeing and doing.

Some people can learn to ride a bike in one day.  They do not need a professional school.  After a couple of weeks, they can ride on smooth ground with little difficulty.  They are not ready for a mountain bike race, but they are travelling under their own power.  A kid can read a dozen books about bike riding, but unless she is a two-wheeled savant, truly riding involves truly falling, and many hours on the saddle.

Tracking is similar.  Professional teachers accelerate learning. After one week of training by professionals, nearly everyone will say, “I am already tracking.  I can do this.”

As with martial arts, there are many styles of tracking.  Books and courses will use vastly different techniques.  Which is best?  This is a fair question, like asking, “Which is the best type of dog?”  The answer can only be “that depends.”

In closing, local trackers can be helpful.  Yet nothing can replace well-trained law enforcement who must reduce evidence to scientific explanation that will withstand courtroom scrutiny.

Likewise, nobody can replace globally deployable combat trackers, who can survive in wildly different climates and ecosystems, and who can bring tracking into the realm of military science, and art.

Stay tuned for more on Wolfpacks.

For more on combat tracking, see Pencari 

US Navy image with GPS data embedded

Military photographers sometimes forget to turn off the camera GPS.  The Navy caption for this electric image is found on Flickr:

Lightning flashes near USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

U.S. 5TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (Nov. 19, 2012) Flashes of lighting are seen over the horizon as the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) operates in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. Dwight D. Eisenhower is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility conducting maritime security operations, theater security cooperation efforts and support missions for Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Greg Linderman/Released) 121119-N-DO751-004

Flickr LINK to this image

The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is the lower red pin.

The Navy uploaded the image to Flickr using a Mac.

Using my iPad, I tapped the photo on Flickr to download the image.  Tap “Places” (under Photo button), and the map displays.

It took five taps and about ten seconds to find the location of the aircraft carrier.  This is convenient for the Iranians, providing them with snippets, including a partial inventory of the aircraft on deck.

The military posted this image on Flickr.

Five taps on my iPad, and the GPS shows that the jets are the upper red pin.  Lower pin is the Eisenhower.

That is all.

This video apparently was made by a helmet cam.   It shows normal combat in Afghanistan.  Similar scenes have unfolded thousands of times during the war.  This underlines why so many people are serious about removing the red crosses from Dustoff MEDEVAC helicopters, and adding machine guns.  At minimum, the red crosses which alert the enemy that helicopters are unarmed, should be removed.

Note: My website has been coming under frequent attack.  This has been occurring since running afoul of certain milbloggers.  We have no evidence that the milbloggers are involved.  The coincidences are large.  They have demonstrably and irrefutably attacked in other ways.  We are aware of the matter and working the issue.

Please watch the videos:

REMEMBER THIS PRINT. The terrain in Afghanistan is great for tracking: prints are often sharp and clear, and quarry is frequently channelized. During a mission with British forces, this print pinged my senses so I made the photograph in the morning light. Soldiers found many bombs nearby, and we were ambushed by machine gun. A smartphone app could compare this image to others in a database. Moments like this offer an opportunity to track down the wearer of this shoe. STUDY THIS PRINT and REMEMBER.

03 December 2012

There are countless types of footwear around the world.  If you sit down with a coffee and watch the passersby, it will be difficult to spot two people wearing the same shoes.

If you see many people wearing the same footwear, you are at a military base, a police station, a football game, or a prison.  Or kids are wearing a uniform.

When you go to a house party with special operations folks, you will see the same shoes and watches. If you are downtown, their shoes are a giveaway.  Noting the watches and the shoes that people wear is one of the oldest discovery methods. This is true of many wars.

Four souls come with eight soles, and all twelve are unique. Tire treads are unique. (Kandahar Province, 2011)

It is true in Afghanistan.  When you go to meetings, Afghans remove their footwear at the door. I often photographed footwear while looking for matching pairs or sports shoes. I reviewed the photos back in my tent.

There are thousands of islands and small shoe factories in the Philippines. Imelda Marcos used this cottage industry to explain why she had thousands of shoes in her closet.  Factories sent her free samples, hoping that she would wear them in public.

Footwear is often made locally, though full-time guerrillas often wear better shoes that are distinctive, and made elsewhere.

Original image is from “The Illustrated History of the US Army Special Forces”, Citadel Press, 1987

During the Vietnam War, Special Forces in enemy territory could not hide their prints.  Locals did not wear jungle boots.  Many were barefoot.  An experimental boot with a footprint sole was tested.  For trackers, this is like slipping boots onto a team of Clydesdales pulling a beer wagon, attempting to disguise the wagon.

Soldiers in a mountainous jungle during monsoon season would never want to venture through the clinging mud, over slick rocks, or to teeter on slick moss-covered logs over fast streams while wearing these impractical soles.  The team would be casualties of their boots.

According to Special Forces lore, we flooded areas with American footwear in hopes that locals would wear the boots.

In Afghan villages, many people wear ill-fitting shoes, such as this fellow. He is not dressed for fighting. (Kandahar Province, 2011)

With thousands of tiny factories, and many big ones, no single mind can catalogue all of the footwear that exists. The variety of footwear helps tracking, but if you plan to maintain a footwear database—which numerous organizations do—you will need a staff, a budget, and a strategy.

Footwear is not as unique as snowflakes and fingerprints, but it is different enough for combat work.  An entire law enforcement industry revolves around the forensic study and the statistical incidence of sole and tread.

In combat, forensics are simple.  The enemy commits an attack.  Troops find the prints at the site, and track them down.  No more evidence is required.

For combat tracking, the hunter does not need to know who made the shoe.  He does not need to be ready to discuss the nuances of Bayes’ Theorem.  He needs to draw, to measure, and to remember the pattern.  He needs to be able to communicate it to other teams.  He needs to know how to track it.  He needs to have the heart and the martial skill to kill the guerrilla wearing that sole.

Shoes come in different sizes, they wear out differently, and nobody walks the same.  Combining all of these variables brings the prints closer to snowflake status: no two are alike, and they are sufficiently different to tell each of them apart.

The fact that humans can easily distinguish many voices, baby cries, and dog barks should dispel the idea that tracking is voodoo.  We can hear a voice and say, "That is a woman, and I think that she is French.  She sounds happy."

Likewise, a skilled tracker can glance at tracks and say, "My quarry looks tired.  He is carrying a heavy load.  He rested here.  He has an AKM with at least one magazine.  He is about six feet tall, so he is not a local.  He is wearing American jungle boots.  He put on his gear and walked to here.  He looked over his right shoulder, then ran three steps here and hid for a short time.  Maybe this was when the helicopter came ten minutes ago.  It is all fresh.  He started running.  He did not dump his gear, so he thinks we still do not see him.  I bet that he is hiding in the swamp 100 meters ahead, and in fact I see where something pushed through the grass 100 meters ahead.  Fresh.  We are in danger standing here.  I recommend that you box him against the river."

On the tech side, footwear and tread databases have long been used.  A next-generation interface to a footwear database could include a smartphone application that uses the camera and the GPS to photograph shoes and prints, and to tag locations.  Trackers often use a camera, but experienced trackers prefer pencil and paper. The act of drawing tracks helps them to notice detail, and to remember.

Trackers can communicate sign information over the radio without pictures.  When an enemy or a lost child is the quarry, trackers describe prints to other teams with simple descriptions like, “I got a flat [shoe].  Heel has a dime-sized Z.  Waffle around the Z.  Toe has four concentric racetracks and waffle edges.”  Trackers who work together know each other, and need few words to describe tracks.

The other trackers draw the print, and one might call back saying that he found the sign three kilometers ahead.  They have closed the gap, and they will keep doing this until they box the quarry.  Sometimes the quarry is a lost child.  Similar techniques are used to box terrorists.  Leap ahead, box in.

Law enforcement will want to follow every step, but searchers and combat forces just want to find the lost person or the target.

The Rhodesians and others in southern African countries like Namibia were masters at boxing and killing, often using helicopters to leapfrog.  The Rhodesians made it an art.  The British and our own Army used to be masters at this, but now we can hardly tie our tracking boots.

The Rhodesians would get on track, often simply by flying in helicopters and looking for it in grass or other opportune traps, especially during morning or evening patrols.  You simply cannot move through many sorts of grass without making a color change.

You can try to hide track from air observation, and it can help, but that wastes time in the open.  If numerous men go single file, there is no way to hide it.  If they spread out, they leave more trails.  Real accounts of combat tracking against good anti-trackers sound like a Tom Clancy submarine story.  The submarines cannot see each other, but they can sense each other through various means.  Even the stealthiest submarine creates disturbance.

After track is confirmed, the commander will have options.  He can use a helicopter to put a dog down.  The dog goes alone.  The handler stays in the helicopter and controls her by the radio on her back.  Rhodesians tried this and it worked.

They just put the dogs down on known track, and the helicopter lifted off to follow the dog.  Many dogs love to ride in helicopters just like they love to ride in cars.  If she gets tired of tracking, she might look up and bark at the helicopter.  No matter where it lands, there she comes.

A Rhodesian account in the book Winds of Destruction mentions a dog inserted by helicopter.  During training, the dog could track an eight-hour-old trail, more than nine miles, in 40 minutes.  The dog would start off slow, where the scent was weaker, and speed up as he closed.

Dogs can be trained to hide and to lay down when they acquire a target, and to make a small yelp into the microphone.  This is not hocus pocus.  It has been done.

The Rhodesians would use forces inserted by air to box the enemy, and then crush the quarry with speed and efficiency.  They might find track that was seven days old, and within two hours track it to where it was an hour old, which was close enough for boxing and hammer and anvil.

The Rhodesians took few casualties, and their tracking and martial skills forced the enemy into reaction mode.

Tracking Taliban in Afghanistan would not be more difficult than tracking Neil Armstrong on the moon.  We do not like to pursue the Taliban because they often lure us into IED traps, but we could use our helicopters and leap ahead.

We can do better than the Rhodesians.  First we steal their lessons, which they are happy to teach.  Then we meld them with our expertise, with our gadgets, and with our natural aggression.

In dusty, muddy war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, troops can whip out a smartphone, take a photo, or use a stylus to make a drawing of a track, and send the image back to the database via encryption.

A minute later, the database can confirm a match, and return a message, “SUSPECTED ENEMY:  Similar shoe found in connection with IED in Urozgan Province.  CLICK FOR MORE.”

In wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, tracks that are observable at the scene of the attack can be linked to tracks at other sites.  Every day, troops encounter random prints during missions.  The prints are often as clear as Buzz Aldrin’s bootprints on the moon.

So let us put technology into real-world use.

We begin with a short story.  I met some Dutch Marines at the British combat tracking school in Brunei, on the island of Borneo.  That school opened my eyes to the lethality of combat tracking.  The students, as I recall, were all combat veterans, and the lights came on for all of them.  That we send ground troops to combat without this training is criminal.  Even our Tier 1 "go kill bin Laden" elements cannot track as a team.

After the tracking school, the Dutch returned to combat in Urozgan Province, Afghanistan. They found an IED.  They tracked prints several kilometers straight to a farmer’s compound.

The Marines sat the suspect against a wall for a photo.  The US Border Patrol also uses this pose to photograph the soles of the feet and the face in a single image.

This pose is useful for intelligence, for prosecution, or for personnel recovery.  A photograph of the soles of your children’s shoes could be invaluable if they go missing.

When a Dutch Marine read a draft of this dispatch, he saw my photograph from the Sangin area of Helmand Province.  He remembered the Afghan’s strange waffle and Z sole.

But how did he remember that shoe?  Because he did what trackers do, which is to draw the print.  Drawing does two things:  It helps pick up details that photos can miss, and it stamps the image into your memory.

In that area, the Dutch Marines picked up a great print about every 50 to 100 meters.  Between those spots, they were going on sign, such as flattening, color change, and other tracking features that anyone can learn.

In some places, like a beach, you get great prints every step.  During one track in Borneo, we got one good print after eight hours, and miles in the jungle.

The Dutch Marine who drew the sole saw my photo and made the connection. He sent me the photograph of the enemy that his unit tracked down.

Imagine if this Dutch Marine had a smartphone with a footwear database app.  After transmission, the database could kick back the reply: “SUSPECTED ENEMY:  Similar shoe found in connection with ambush in Sangin District, Helmand Province, 2009.  CLICK FOR MORE.”

The Marine clicks, and this image comes up on his screen:

When I made this image in Helmand on the same day that we were ambushed, we could see Afghans using signal mirrors. We saw the flashes, not the people. Afghans often keep small signal mirrors inside their snuff cans.

A smartphone application could connect the photograph that I made near Sangin (lower left), with the shoe sole near Tarin Kot (upper right). The airplane icon close to the red line denotes an airfield near the Provincial Reconstruction team in Tarin Kot. Chora is the location of another dead Taliban that I photographed wearing his shoes: DEAD TALIBAN of Chora.

These prints match the shoe type.  I am not leaping to premature conclusions, or claiming that these Afghans hang out in the same training base in Pakistan and wear the same shoes at their bomb school. But some fact-patterns can be revealed in seconds by melding old-school tracking with new-school gadgets.

In Afghanistan, the incidence of these prints can be melded with other patterns, such as tribal distributions, or similarities in IED types.  Sole impressions can be linked to fingerprints, to retina images, and to countless other bits of information.  The experts know their business and can fill in the blanks.  The crucial tactical tracking piece is still missing.

Tracks are the single most pervasive form of evidence.

In this case, it took years and luck when I sent this dispatch to the Dutch Marine.  Where else is this shoe pattern showing up?

It would be worthwhile to compare these sole prints against the shoes of suicide attackers, and to the Taliban who destroyed our Marine Harrier squadron at Camp Bastion earlier this year.  It would be prudent, as a matter of force protection, to build a database of prints that appear around our bases.

Please stay tuned for Wolfpack 104

For more on combat tracking courses.

This sensor was hidden in the middle of an Afghan village on 31 July 2011. It was positioned to spy over a dirt road intersection about 10-20 meters away. US casualties were occurring in this village. Six hours before this photograph was taken, perhaps a couple of hundred meters away, Brice Scott was shot and killed in a firefight. Weeks after this sensor was emplaced, on 11 September 2011, we were back in the village when an IED strike occurred no more than 20 meters away from the sensor location.

28 November 2012

War revolves around sensing.  But despite our technology, nothing replaces human senses, experience, and intuition.

The U.S. military historically fights enemies on their home field.  Many of our enemies are subsistence farmers.  The greatest optic that they possess will be scratched-up non-prescription eyeglasses that are sold beside shoes in the market.  Most will have no windows in their homes.  These farmers are rugged and tuned-in to their environments.

Movement that is slow for us is fast to them.  Villagers make terrible drivers. They do not have the time-versus-distance thing worked out, making them dangerous in cities.

Afghan police accident, Panjwai, 2011

We buy vehicles for Afghan security forces, which they constantly wreck.  It is a bloodbath.

Afghan villagers are primitive, but they are clever.  On the macro-level, they cannot build a road or a bridge.  Yet within their thimbles of existence, they are not to be trifled with, unless we decide to bring full war, in which case they would be craters.  We hobble ourselves, waging limited war, creating the conditions that permit them to beat us, like mosquitoes tracking, tormenting, and overwhelming a blundering and clumsy beast.

On the scale of the mosquito, where we choose to meet our enemies, feud and conflict is woven into their many cultures.  Like mosquitoes, they do not need cars or electricity or hospitals to survive.  Afghans depend on their bio-webs.

Note: When I coined the term “bio-web,” a check revealed vague usage relating to biological entities integrated with computer networks. The term bio-web in these dispatches refers specifically to the interaction of organisms in their natural state, including men and their environment.

Thermal sensor, rangefinder, camera and more. Despite all of our gadgets, the enemy enjoys bio-web dominance in Afghanistan.

When it comes to detecting human movements, electronics can be lifesaving and decisive, yet an amazing volume of biological communication occurs in the bio-web.  Researchers have learned that trees conduct sophisticated exchanges with one another.  Mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers have more tracking complexity stuffed into their bodies than do F-22s.  A biology teacher once taught me that all living things eat, breathe, and give off waste.  They also do one more thing: they sense.

Organisms have been tried as sensors for electronic devices.  During the Vietnam War, there was great difficulty sensing beneath the jungle canopy, where Americans employed ground sensors to detect the enemy on trails.  Some devices were airdropped, but early models could not discriminate between man and beast.

Mexican bedbugs specialize in human meals.  They go wild from afar when they sense humans.  One effort to overcome the sensing problem saw engineers attaching bedbugs to phonograph needles.  The program was not a success, but it was nevertheless a clever attempt to tap directly into the bio-web.

Similarly, there is a poorly charted field of research using what engineers call biosensors.  These include electro-antennogram research to employ insect antennas to sense everything from explosives to man.  This has nothing to do with the biosensors, bio-web, or tracking topics discussed here.

There were many firefights in this village. Brice Scott was shot and killed just a few hundred meters away from this family compound. Besides the bombs and the firefights, and the MEDEVAC flying past, there is a major clue in this photograph that we are in enemy territory. Can you spot it?

In Afghan villages, noises that are soft to us are loud for farmers.  Smells that we will not notice – such as laundry soap – are a punch in the nose for villagers.  Some of our guys call Afghans “stinkies,” and Afghans say similar things about us.

Their smell is feral.  Ours is a corporate fireworks of soaps, skin products, insect repellants, weapon lubricants, and the foods that we eat.  Our smell is strong.  Hunters wash their clothes several times without soap, and sun-dry them to avoid odors.  Some of our Special Forces did this during the Vietnam war, but today nobody seems to pay attention to the powerful odor trails that we leave.

That boot should tingle the survival antenna. The only Afghans in Zhari district that wear boots or athletic shoes are the enemy. All of the firefights, with no reports of foreigners, indicate that the smiling locals are shooting at us, and this compound had a worn out boot.

In Afghanistan, military laundry is done corporately on the bases.  The troops hand in their laundry bags to workers from the Philippines, from Nepal or from Africa, and they wash it and dry it, including dryer sheets.  These workers all smell different.  In Thailand, the Thai say that many foreigners stink, and they can actually smell us.  (The Thai usually only tell you this if you are a good friend, and if the subject comes up.)

After you have been away from soldiers, and “normal” smells (for us), the collective odor of soldiers is striking.  It is important to keep in mind that you will often not be tracking just one quarry, but many, and the same applies for the enemy.  The smallest elements that we use will consist of two soldiers, but normally it will be at least a dozen.  So if you can track one soldier, imagine how easy it can be to track ten or twenty men. Their collective smell can be significant, and in some environments it will linger.  I can often smell an Arab, for example. Many of them use sandalwood, which is easy to smell.

Soldiers who dip snuff tobacco leave scent trails and spit trails, while smokers are an olfactory signal flare.  Smokers might as well walk and toss stink bombs.  Only one soldier needs to be detected to compromise a unit.  (Speaking of which, our confounded press machine no longer allows embedded writers to wear camouflage when out with combat units. During my last embed, I ignored this rule.  Who thinks up stuff like this?  Nobody with combat experience would come up with that nonsense.)

Deep inside, we are all hunters and trackers.  It is no exaggeration that a unit can be smelled from hundreds of meters away, even when you can see or hear no other trace.  People who live in the bush say that they can smell others from miles away, depending on variables such as weather and terrain.  Your nose will work better on a dark night.  I am not a psychologist, so will not venture to speculate why.  From the standpoint of physics, scents settle on a cool night.

One time in India, I was walking in the jungle searching for cannibals and I smelled elephants.  I thought that they were close, but I was near a stream, so it is possible that their scent was flowing down the stream.  Smells can flow like water, and so cool parts of the jungle can be good places to pick up scent trails.

Dog handlers learn these things, so they are great resources. Handlers do not like to work their dogs on hot days when smells float upwards, and the puppy gets tired and goes to sleep.  I was on a mission during a hot day in Afghanistan and a dog walked right by a bomb.  An EOD specialist spotted it after the dog missed it.  This happens a lot.  If there is a choice between ten trained dogs or one EOD specialist, I would take the EOD sergeant.  Dogs are fantastic at times, but only a nut would choose a dog over a trained EOD expert for spotting bombs.

(Note: One way to lose a dog team is to physically wear out the handler and the dog.  Go fast and far and they get worn out and stop. Or ambush the team and shoot the handler. Do not waste ammo on the dog. Without the handler, the dog is useless.  After one British handler was killed in Afghanistan for example, his dog died, apparently of a broken heart.  It is not you against the dog, but you against the handler.  The dog is his sensor pod.)

When I have been away from women for extended periods, the first whiff of a female crackles the senses.  It hits like a wave.  It is more than a smell.  You smell a stinky man, but you sense a woman.  Her presence ripples through the skin. You look around, and there she is.

Not to digress, but this creates issues downrange where men can go months without seeing a woman, and a lot of these men are in their twenties and they see females forms when looking at trees.  There is no doubt that if I have not seen a woman in a couple of months, I can sense her presence in a jungle.  But on a day-to-day basis, where you might encounter hundreds of women, this sense is dulled.

In some areas of the world, villagers can smell snakes, or detect their presence by the cries of birds.   One of my Collie dogs in Florida was a snake detector.  She had a special bark for “Snake! Snake! Snake!”  My grandfather grew up as a swamp boy in southern Georgia.  He could smell rattlers, and he was a terrible driver.

Floridians often know when a cat or a serpent is slipping by, from the sound made by a squawking Blue Jay.  When my Collie heard the Blue Jay’s warning, she would run to see.  When there was a snake, she would bark for me to come.  So the Blue Jay (who may have been tipped by some other creature) would scream a warning, then my dog would run to confirm, and she only barked for me when there really was a snake.  All of this happened in ten seconds.  Bio-web.

Some birds, such as Honeyguides, make a living by guiding people to honey.  The bio-webs are thick with interwoven triggers. This is all part of tracking.

Who has the sensor advantage in Afghanistan?  Circumstance is key, but on the whole, for mature wars such as Afghanistan, the sensor advantage belongs to local villagers and their bio-web, which includes clusters of villages.

We use watches to tell time.  They use calendars.  They have watched us for more than ten years.  We send young soldiers to Afghanistan who have hardly traveled beyond their home county just a year before.  Some of our young soldiers might have six months of training. The enemy has a dozen years of war experience.  The enemy knows our habits, our smells, and our sounds, and we use statistics to try to predict theirs.

We call these statistics “tracking,” and to be sure, this is a form of new-school tracking that can be melded with the old-school, making a meta-school that is far deadlier than either.  Our statistics apparatus only works in mature wars that have taken on the tone of police work, where we fight over the same area for a long period and thus have time to collect data.  When you step into a new battle space, such statistics do not exist.

Statistics are often derived postmortem.  In the case of quick wars, or wars on the march, the sorts of statistics that we use to predict enemy actions in Afghanistan are useless.

(Stay tuned for Wolf Pack 103)

27 November 2012

Helicopters are crucial in modern combat. It is not necessary to be a pilot to assert that helicopters are game changers.  Their value is obvious.

NCOs and officers who have developed infantry skills over an apprenticeship of years, particularly in infantry combat, similarly testify to the value of combat tracking: the first time that they see it, they are sold and they want it for their men.  When combat veterans see trackers at work, their infantry imaginations spawn ideas that can increase unit lethality. 

When commanders fuse old-school tracking with technology, for instance by integrating helicopters that can bound ahead of prey, increased lethality results.

Infantry veterans see helicopters differently than most of us.  Their combat imaginations dream up ideas that would not occur to most laymen.  Providing infantrymen with helicopters creates a synergy that transcends mere airframes.

Tracking is not a wild idea but a proven method.  Combined with technology, it enhances lethality and force protection.  Tracking with helicopters enables commanders to exploit terrain and box adversaries in until they can be fixed and finished.

From my observations of American and British combat commanders, I would hate to have a battalion of their trackers on my trail.  It would be foolhardy to attack Americans and to think that you could evade a battalion commander with 500 skilled combat-tracker infantrymen. Fortunately, tracking expertise can be affordably developed.

Lamentably, the US Army has forgotten about old-school tracking, and tends to view it as hocus-pocus art, reserved only for specialists.  Any soldier who can graduate from infantry school can learn to track with little investment other than time.

Infantry combat is unmercifully Darwinian, so our NCOs and officers tend to be smart.  They will have no difficulty exploiting combat tracking with fatal results for our enemies.

This is an introduction to dispatches on combat tracking and ground sign awareness.  I claim no great expertise in either, though I attended two courses for a total of five weeks in Norway and Borneo. I spent four years and eleven months in the peacetime US Army, with approximately two years of training, then 32 months on A-teams.  Enough to get my feet wet. After the military, I spent nearly four more years in wars, witnessing about three years of combat.

In total, that is a little less than nine years of exposure to the military and to wars. Those years did not make me a pilot, yet I can assert that helicopters are crucial today, and it did not take years to develop that conviction.

Likewise, I can say that combat tracking would save many lives from IED strikes, and we would kill more enemy if all of our troops had just one month of training.  If US forces had a tracking instructor course, we could train our own tracker cadre, who could then teach at the unit level.  Everyone already knows a great deal of sign, but nobody has helped them put it together.  Everybody reading this can read sign.

It is not enough to train handfuls of trackers and to spread them around piecemeal, which is like training only a small number of soldiers to read.  It is vital that every combat soldier be a combat hunter.

Few in the US military, including among our special operations forces, have tracking expertise.  Some of our special operations soldiers have attended civilian tracking courses, or military courses in Malaysia and Brunei, but their numbers are small.  Some commanders deride the skill.  When those who have been exposed to combat tracking see a commander dismiss it, the commander diminishes his own stature. He might as well dismiss helicopters.  The comparison is valid, obvious, and powerful.

Some commanders view tracking as outmoded, as though the skill belongs to an era of hatchets and loading flintlocks.  It is similar to the map and the compass fading as a soldierly skill.  Our enemies do not need to use the map and compass because we fight them on their home terrain. Meanwhile, for our soldiers, navigating in thick forest during a heavy rain on a black night is not something that many of them can still do, though it was a common skill just twenty years ago.

As the art and science of warfare evolves, it is a matter of time before commanders dismiss the compass and paper charts entirely.  But there is a difference: compasses and maps are supplanted by GPS. When GPS works, it works swell.  But GPS often does not work in jungles, and batteries die, and increasingly, GPS can be spoofed.

Celestial navigation is another lost art. Even with my basic stargazing ability, on a clear night I can glance at the stars and tell true north as fast as I can read a watch, and faster than I can read a compass.

Identifying true north can be learned in five minutes, but most soldiers cannot do it these days, and critics say, “Why should I spend time learning the stars when I can use a GPS that works day and night?”  It takes five minutes to learn enough celestial navigation to instantly find true north, and once you have north, you know south, east and west. If you need a compass for when the sun rises and the stars disappear, you can draw a compass in the dirt based on the stars.

You can learn how to find north in broad daylight by sun tracking in twenty minutes. There must be thousands of ways to navigate without map or compass. I read books about this when I was in the Army, and I often practiced. Our old Vietnam veterans hammered home this field craft.

If you can see the stars at night, and if you can see your shadow in daylight, and read the hands on a watch, then you can learn these techniques in one day and an evening. If you can learn improvised navigation, you can learn basic tracking.

The compass replaced the stars, and GPS is replacing the compass.  Tracking on the other hand just disappeared and nothing replaced it.

Soldiers with Vietnam combat experience knew the value of tracking, and many of our old Special Forces sergeants could do it.  It was commonsense, basic soldiering for them.  Anybody with good vision can learn to track, just like anyone can learn to read or to tell time.  Some will have a natural knack for it, but everyone can learn the basics.  There is nothing voodoo about it.

You just need a good teacher, and practice.  Like reading.  Reading is what you are doing with tracking, but you are reading different signs and someone has to teach you the alphabet.  Any of us can walk up to ten parked cars and say, “Nine of the cars have been parked here all day, and one got here five minutes ago.  Find the car that got here five minutes ago.”  There might be dozens of ways to identify the new car, but for starters you can touch their hoods until you find the hottest one.  Nothing hocus pocus, just common sense, and you can learn that sign in ten seconds.  To a guy who has never seen a car, you just did magic.

Learning to read these written words takes far more effort and investment than learning basic tracking. You could probably read most of these words and follow most of this thought trail by your tenth birthday.

We do not send combat troops to battle without teaching them how to accurately fire their rifles.  Even the worst marksman in the US infantry compares favorably to most Taliban. Some Taliban are good shots, but most are not.  The Taliban can be good tacticians, but they are bad marksmen. Partly this is because they use inaccurate AK47’s and AKM’s, they invest little time in marksmanship, and because few who need glasses have them.

Many of us have been in ambushes where “spray and pray” bullets came close but hit nobody.  Had American or British soldiers executed those ambushes, I would be dead many times over.  We track like the Taliban shoots.  Most of our soldiers cannot track anything short of a blood trail.  Conversely, many Taliban can track, and they have killed our soldiers after tracking them down.

It does not take decades to learn how to fly a helicopter, or to shoot a rifle, nor to learn basic tracking.  Just a month can make a dramatic difference.  My five weeks of training left me confident that I could track the enemy nearly anywhere in southern Afghanistan.  Good trackers can stay on the track of a single man, but often you are tracking ten or twenty, which for anyone with even basic tracking skills can be like tracking a herd of elephants.

Tracking ten Taliban in Southern Afghanistan should be child’s play for our soldiers, but after more than a decade of war, many still cannot do it.  Every time that the Taliban ambush us, they leave fresh sign during their getaway.  They might as well be dropping breadcrumbs. They are often close.  Trackers can determine their cone of travel and bound ahead with helicopters.  The Taliban try to bait pursuers into IED traps and lure them into area ambushes, but by bounding ahead, hunters can jump beyond the traps.  After identifying a cone of travel, a commander reads the enemy and the terrain.  Good commanders can identify problem areas and likely routes.  Trackers used to do this on horseback.

Imagine an entire battalion -- with 500 skilled infantry -- all with at least that much training.  Evading them would be like evading a pride of lions on foot.

The US Marines, the Dutch Marines and some other forces are forging combat hunting capability.  The US Army remains stone blind, even though the Army previously considered tracking a basic skill, and Robert Rogers' Third Rule for Rangers specifically addresses counter-tracking.

The misconception that professional militaries monopolize martial prowess is dashed by the brutalities that unfold in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless other conflict zones. Amateur talent that sticks to basics often thwarts coalitions of professional forces, which ironically enjoy relatively limitless national assets.

This tracking series has nothing to do with digging wells and handing out lollipops.  It is about hunting down and killing the enemy, and how to avoid being hunted down and killed by the enemy.

Several experienced combat trackers and others with combat experience have reviewed these dispatches.

One reviewer is a retired British Royal Marine Commando, Major Dean Williams, who owns the Pencari tracking company.  Pencari trains various militaries.

Stay tuned for Wolf Pack 2, “Sensing”

26 November 2012

About a month ago, I came home and found mysterious blood trails around my home. I mapped them out, studied them, and kept trying to recreate the scene.  The scene confounded me.  I did not assume that it was blood.  There was no physical evidence of painting or use of chemicals.  After a long look, blood was the only thing that made sense.  Whatever it was, a human or humans put it there.  A child did not do it. Some finger marks were far too high for my 4-year-old neighbor who runs out to greet me, and she is the only child who is ever here.

Shoe marks were too large for the girl. A palm mark on the ground was man-sized.  I checked that she was okay, and her father helped me search.  It was clear that someone had sat in the blood to rest, just feet from my door. In context, none of this made a lick of sense.

There was no sign of blood near the doors or the windows, but there were some tiny splatters on the second floor, as if a giraffe had done it, or someone had swung a blade. If there was a machete fight, my neighbors would have seen it, and there should be some flesh or clothes lying around.  It was confusing.

The neighbors said that they saw nothing, and they were equally confounded. I cast about for hours trying to pick up the trail in the general area.  You cannot just turn off blood like that. I could sense that whomever did it lingered, which made no sense.  Then they apparently vanished in a vehicle, which also made no sense.  Nobody could come in without being seen.  Over and over I walked the tracks and I just could not figure it out.

I thought that maybe someone working on the banana trees hurt themselves, but this was a lot of blood for one person to spill, and the patterns did not make sense. Why would they bleed so heavily and hang around without telling anyone? Was it a criminal? The mystery remained.

Blood drops on the picnic table bench. There was also a drop on the opposite bench but none on the table.

So I came home an hour ago (Sunday), and there were new blood trails. Many of them. I cast about my home every day, so I knew that they were not there yesterday. I did not see them this morning. Again, I started photographing and mapping the blood spatter, and this time I was going to call the police.

Before I did that, I did what you should always do at a time like this, which is to find the oldest person that you can find, and ask them. So I asked an elderly woman, she looked at the blood trails, and she laughed.

She walked back to her home, and she came out with a big knife. She said, “It is banana blood!” None of my other neighbors knew it. They are all city slickers, not farmers.

She cut a banana tree and she showed me the clear blood, and then she rubbed some onto the concrete, saying it will disappear now, but you will see it look like blood tomorrow. Sure enough, it disappeared.  By the next morning, it began to appear brown.  (Tonight it is brown, about 30 hours later.)

This explains why I did not see it in the morning. She told me that our neighbors were cutting banana leaves for the Loi Krathong festival.

She laughed hard at me and asked me if I felt better.

I will buy her a small gift, because she taught me something about tracking.

Recently the Taliban accidentally made public its entire (apparently) distro list during an email accident:

From ABC:

In a Dilbert-esque faux pax, a Taliban spokesperson sent out a routine email last week with one notable difference. He publicly CC'd the names of everyone on his mailing list.

The names were disclosed in an email by Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official Taliban spokesperson, on Saturday. The email was a press release he received from the account of Zabihullah Mujahid, another Taliban spokesperson. Ahmedi then forwarded Mujahid's email to the full Taliban mailing list, but rather than using the BCC function, or blind carbon copy which keeps email addresses private, Ahmedi made the addresses public.
"Taliban have included all 4 of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list," tweeted journalist Mustafa Kazemi, a prolific Kabul-based tweeter with more than 9,500 followers. "Quite reassuring to my safety."

The list, made up of more than 400 recipients, consists mostly of journalists, but also includes an address appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, several academics and activists, an l Afghan consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord whose outlawed group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.

I happened to get hold of the list.  Please see:

"A.Manan Arghand" <manan.arghand@gmail.com>, "B." <online1826@gmail.com>, "Dost W." <dost.wardak@gmail.com>, "Dr. Dauod Miraki" <mdmiraki@ameritech.net>, "Dr.Farooq Azam" <farouqazam@hotmail.com>, "Dr.Salahuddin Sayedi" <drsalahuddinsayedi@yahoo.com>, "khabaryal .com" <khabaryal.net@gmail.com>, "M.sadiq Rishtinai" <m.rishtinai@gmail.com>, "Mobasherat, Mitra" <Mitra.Mobasherat@turner.com>, "news@larawbar.com" <news@larawbar.com>, "Shah, Amir" <AShah@ap.org>, "Solberg, Kristin" <kristin.solberg@aftenposten.no>, "sophia m.omar" <sophiamomar@yahoo.com>, "www.baheer.com" <afbaheer@gmail.com>, "Zalmai Ahadi (zahadi@INTERNEWS.ORG)" <zahadi@internews.org>, "zowakman@yahoo.com" <zowakman@yahoo.com>, 1 kadir mohmand <afghannj@gmail.com>, AAN Kabul <aankabul@gmail.com>, Ab.qadeem@yahoo.com, Abdul basir Sahaak <sahaak2000@gmail.com> Abdul Hassib Rahimi <arahimi@icrc.org>, Abdul Khalil Afghani <a_khalil2007@yahoo.com>, Abdul Qawi Haroni <Haroni786@gmail.com>, Abdul Wasi Qani <drqani@gmail.com>, Abdulhaq Omeri <abdulhaqomeri@aol.com>, Abdullah Abuhilaleh <abood2004a@hotmail.com>, Abdullah Ehsan <larawbar.com@gmail.com>, Abdullah Ehsan <larawbar.com@gmail.com>, abdullah elham <aalhamj@gmail.com>, abdullah stanikzai <abdullahstanikzai89@gmail.com>, abdulqahaar بلخي <abdulqaharbalkhi@yahoo.com>, abdulrahimzay amiri <abdulrahimzay.amiri@gmail.com>, adalachakzai@yahoo.com, Adil_khost@yahoo.com, Afghan news <afghantvnews@gmail.com>, afghan.sadiq83@gmail.com, afghan.sadiq83@yahoo.com, afghan@rferl.org, afghan@rferl.org, afghanistan@bnonews.com, afghanjerga@gmail.com, Ahadizarmat@gmail.com, ahlebait_pakhto@yahoo.com, Ahmad Ahmadi <qya_ahmadi@yahoo.com>, ahmad jawid Sdiqi <jaweed.sdiqi@gmail.com>, Ahmad Rashid <ahmadrashid99@yahoo.com>, Ahmad sroosh <sroosh.afghan@gmail.com>, ahmad.sapand@nbcuni.com, AhmadiZ@rferl.org, AIP <aipnews@yahoo.com>, Ajmal Angar <ajmal_angar@yahoo.com>, ajmal1972@hotmail.de, ajmalaand@hotmail.com, ajmalrohi2@hotmail.de, Akbar Shinwari <shinwari.akbar@googlemail.com>, AKHTAR Khan <rose143_4u2003@yahoo.com>, akshirin@yahoo.co.uk, alahwaz@hotmail.com, alalam@alalam.ma, albatalali@gmail.com, albayaty_abdul@hotmail.com, Aleem.Agha@abc.com, alhali@egypt.com, alhashimi_iraq@yahoo.com, ali_astabrak@yahoo.com, AnAbdul Maroof <abdul.maroof@yahoo.ca>, ani@gmail.com, Anwar Shakir <shakirwazir@gmail.com>, anzor68@hotmail.com, apkabul@ap.org, apkabul@ap.org, aq_karim@yahoo.com, arada.daily@yahoo.com, arshad raghand <arshad.raghand@gmail.com>, arshadershad@yahoo.com, articles@tolafghan.com, asaeedi48@yahoo.com, asefkhavati@hotmail.com, Ashish Sen <ashish.sen@gmail.com>, asifnang@yahoo.com, asmatullah azaam <azaam12@gmail.com>, asmatullah25@yahoo.com, Assad Zraswand <assadzraswand26@gmail.com>, atalkhan@freenet.de, atia.abawi@hotmail.com, atia.abawi@nbcuni.com, atn news <news_atn@yahoo.com>, atn news <news_atn@yahoo.com>, Awghan j <afghanistan5050@gmail.com>, AyaziA@rferl.org, azadiweb@rferl.org, AZIM ABROMAND <azim.abromand@gmail.com>, Aziz Fard <azizfard2009@gmail.com>, Babak Azim <azimbabak@yahoo.com>, Bakhtiar Talash <bakhtiar.talash@yahoo.com>, Barnett Rubin <BarnettRRubin@gmail.com>, bashardost@bashardost.org, bashiransari@gmai.com, Baz_moh1@hotmail.com, Ben Arnoldy <arnoldyb@csps.com>, bethany matta <bethany1matta@gmail.com>, Bismil farhad <Bismil.Farhad@gmail.com>, Bismillah Arman <arman.khost@gmail.com>, Bost.news1@yahoo.com, cereyokh@gmail.com, Changez Khan <changez_kh70@yahoo.com>, cheragh_daily@yahoo.com, cnnkabul@cnn.com, conor.m.powell@gmail.com, courtneybody@gmail.com, D Talib Mujahid <alemarah1@gmail.com>, Daily Weesa <daily_weesa@yahoo.com>, daily.erada@yahoo.com, dailywahdat@gmail.com, Danish Karokhel <danish_karokhel@yahoo.com>, Daoud Abedi <daoudabedi@gmail.com>, dari@voanews.com, dawatnet@start.no, Dawood Tapan <dawoodtapan@gmail.com>, dilawar45@yahoo.com, dnejaat@yahoo.com, dr_b_shinwari@yahoo.com, EBAD RAHMAN Reshtin <hrreshtin@gmail.com>, editorial@asharqalawsat.com, editors@bostnews.com, elizabeth.r@livemint.com, Eltaf Najafizada <eltaf.najafizada1@gmail.com>, Emal Khan <emal.npr51@yahoo.com>, emroozradiotv@yahoo.com, Epa Kunduz <epakunduz@gmail.com>, eqtedaremelli@yahoo.com, eshinwari@yahoo.com, eshinwari@yahoo.com, Ezatullah zalaand <ezatullahzalaand@gmail.com>, fahimkohdamani@yahoo.com, faiz Tanweer <f_tanweer@yahoo.com>, faraidoon khwazoon <khwazoon2010@gmail.com>, Farhad Peikar <peikar.farhad@gmail.com>, farhadpeikar@yahoo.com, Fawadpeikar2@yahoo.com, Fazel RESHAD <wordak@gmail.com>, fazlghanimogaddedi@yahoo.com, fbamizai@yahoo.com, fida jan <nunn.asia@gmail.com>, fida khan <kitabtoon@gmail.com>, freshtajalalzai@ymail.com, Gazz Adjah <gazzadjah@yahoo.com>, ghafar_naz@yahoo.com, gharibafghan@yahoo.com, globekabul@yahoo.com, habib jan <habibzahori@gmail.com>, Habib Khan Totakhil <habib.totakhil@gmail.com>, Habib mirkhel <mirkhel.habib@gmail.com>, Habib qooyash <habib_qooyash@yahoo.com>, Habibullah Ghamkhor <ghamkhor@hotmail.com>, Hadi Dawlatzai <abhadi@hotmail.co.uk>, hafiz ahmad <hafizwebs@gmail.com>, Hafiz Rahsepar <hafiz_rahsepar@yahoo.com>, hafizkarzai@gmail.com, hajji_mokhtar12@yahoo.com, hakim_basharat basharat <Hakim_basharat@yahoo.com>, Hamayon Habibi <hamayonhabibi@yahoo.com>, Hameed Farzad <hameedfarzad@yahoo.com>, Hameed Mohmand <mohmandha@rferl.org>, Hamid Ali <computermufti@gmail.com>, Hamid zhwak <hamidzhwak09@gmail.com>, Hares Ahmad Kakar <hareskakar@yahoo.com>, HaroonI@rferl.org, Harun Najafizada <harun.najafizada@gmail.com>, Hassan Serdash <hassanserdash@yahoo.com>, Hazrat Bahar <hazrat.bahar1@gmail.com>, Hedayatullah Hamim <hamimkhattat@gmail.com>, hemat safi <Hematsafi58@gmail.com>, Herat Nezar Shora <nazarmutmaeen@gmail.com>, hewadpal@tkg.af, hewadtv@gmail.com, hujatullah mujadidi <hujatullah.mujadidi@gmail.com>, i.malakzai@yahoo.com, iavidaljehad@yahoo.com, Imdad Hussain <imd_04@yahoo.com>, info@rahenejatdaily.com, info@smustafa.net, Islah.daily@yahoo.com, ismael larawai <i.larawai@gmail.com>, ismael.saadat@bbc.co.uk, jabhanews@gmail.com, Jame Ghor <jameghor@gmail.com>, jan M habiby <jhabiby@gmail.com>, Javed Samsoor <samsoorjaved@gmail.com>, Javedhmdard71@gmail.com, jawidan@jawidan.com, jehadbelqalam@maktoob.com, jolder.web1@gmail.com, Kabul Radio <Kabul.killid@gmail.com>, Kabul@aljazeera.net, Kabul@aljazeera.net, Kabulnews1@gmail.com, Kadir Mohmand <kadirmohmand@gmail.com>, Kamal Sarbakhod <kamal_sarbakhod@yahoo.com>, kar_2j6@yahoo.com, karim300_sharifi@yahoo.com, Kawoon Khamoosh <btn.tv.news@gmail.com>, kawoon_mk@yahoo.com, kazemi.mustafa.extern@dpa.com, khalid hadi <khalid_hadi@hotmail.com>, Khan haq nawaz <nawazkh@gmail.com>, Khanwali Salarzi <Khanwali30@yahoo.com>, Khost Governor <khost.governor@gmail.com>, khost.killid@gmail.com, khudainoor nasar <khudainoor.nasar@gmail.com>, Kristina Wong <kwong@washingtontimes.com>, kyodo.pakistan@kyodonews.jp, lemar niazi <lemar.niazi@googlemail.com>, Mahbob Shah Mahbob <mahbobshahmahbob@yahoo.com>, Maher Yassine <maher_yassine@yahoo.com>, mahfouz zubaide <mahfouz.zubaide@gmail.com>, Mamiri@blackberry.etisalat.af, Mamoon Durrani <mamoon.durrani@hotmail.com>, mandy.stokes@bbc.co.uk, Marzo Capel <capelm@facebook.com>, mashal sadiq <mashaksadiq@gmail.com>, Masoud Popalzai <masoud.popalzai@turner.com>, masoud rahimi <masoud_rahimi10@live.com>, Massuod Nikzad <massuod.nikzad@yahoo.com>, mayar nza <wardak.mayar@gmail.com>, mbayanzay@yahoo.com, Meenahabib25@gmil.com, Michael van Poppel <mpoppel@bnonews.com>, Michelle.Nichols@thomsonreuters.com, mir.afghan@yahoo.com, Mirwais Rahmani <mirwais.rahmani11@gmail.com>, Mirwais Sahil <mirwais.sahil@gmail.com>, mirwais sahil <mirwais.sahil11@gmail.com>, mirwais.harooni@thomsonreuters.com, Mj Iram <mjiram@gmail.com>, mohammad.ehsas@gmail.com, mohammastahir2002@gmail.com, Mohd hameedullah <hameedullahm@aljazeera.net>, MohmandH@rferl.org, mojiib2011@yahoo.com, mokhlis.afghan@gmail.com, Mokhtar Wafayi <wafayi_70@yahoo.com>, mrs.ednaetters@yahoo.com.hk, MSadeq@ap.org, mshafiqwarduk89@gmail.com, mubeen.tajmohmmad@yahoo.com, Muhammad Rasool Adil <Adil.khost@gmail.com>, Muhammad.Lila@abc.com, muhibullah allahyaar <m.afghanistantoday@gmail.com>, Mujahid Kakar <mujahid.kakar@tolo.tv>, Mujahid Kakar <mujahid.kakar@tolo.tv>, Mujahid Taleb <taleb_contact1@yahoo.com>, Mujiburahman Safi <intezar.safi@gmail.com>, Mushtaq Yusufzai <myusufzai76@yahoo.co.uk>, Mustafa.salik@bbc.co.uk, mutmain_09@yahoo.com, N_razmal@yahoo.com, Naiem_kabullodge@yahoo.com, najeeb1263@yahoo.com, najib_sharifi@yahoo.com, Nasir Khalid <nasirkhalidvoa@yahoo.ca>, Naveed Hussain <naveed.hussain76@gmail.com>, NazarZ@rferl.org, news@afghanpaper.com, news@arianatelevision.com, news@arman.fm, news@geo.tv, news@tamadon.tv, news@tolo.tv, news@tolo.tv, niaz ullah aseel <na.zazai@gmail.com>, Nik Weyal <mdweyal@gmail.com>, Nizami Sadaat <nizami.aljazeera@yahoo.com>, Noori taimoor <noori.taimoor@gmail.com>, nooruddin bakhshi <nooruddinft@gmail.com>, nooruddin_ft@hotmail.com, Obaid Mohammadi <obaidullahmhmmd@gmail.com>, ommatewasat@yahoo.com, oo_pouya@yahoo.com, paiwaston zagh <p.news.r@gmail.com>, Pajhwok Afghan News <news@pajhwok.com>, Pajhwok Afghan News <pajhwok@gmail.com>, Pajhwok Afghan News <pajhwok@gmail.com>, paktia ghag <paktiaghag.afghanistan03@gmail.com>, palwasha.zarmalwall@gmail.com, Parwiz.Shamal@tolonews.com, pashto@voanews.com, pashtoo@voanews.com, pashtu99@yahoo.com, pashtu99@yahoo.com, Paul.Tait@thomsonreuters.com, payamemujahid@yahoo.com, Peiwand.paktya@gmail.com, postmaster@mobycapital.com, qyaahmadi313@gmail.com, Rabi Zirakyar <zirakyar1234@yahoo.com>, Rahim Gul Nayel <rahim.nayel@gmail.com>, Rahimullah Samim <samim.rahimullah@gmail.com>, rahimyusufzai@yahoo.com, rahmat ghazni <rahmat.ghazni@gmail.com>, rahmatullah ziarmal <r.ziarmal@gmail.com>, RASHEED TAHA <rasheedtaha91@gmail.com>, Raz Raz <raz.raz44@yahoo.com>, reutersinkabul@hotmail.com, rob.taylor@thomsonreuters.com, roohullahanwari@yahoo.com, Rostar Taraki <keliwal@hotmail.com>, Roz news <rozdailynews@gmail.com>, Roz news <rozdailynews@gmail.com>, Ruhullah Khapalwak <Ruhullahkhapalwak@gmail.com>, ruhullahkhapawak@gmail.com, sabaoon shinwari <sabaoonshinwari0@gmail.com>, Saber Fahim <saber.fahim@nai.org.af>, sadae_bamdad@yahoo.com, sadatashraf@hotmail.com, sadatsami@yahoo.com, sadiq torabzai <Torabzai@gmail.com>, Sadullah_sahil@yahoo.com, saeedachakzai@gmail.com, safiamilad@roznews.com, sahil.sabit@yahoo.com, salar kakar <Salar.kakar@gmail.com>, saleemafghan60@yahoo.com, Salih Mohd Salih <salih@inbox.com>, samandarr@rferl.com, samander2003@yahoo.com, sami.ahmadi@salamwatandar.com, samira sadat <samira.sadatt@gmail.com>, Sangar Rahimi <sangarrahemi@gmail.com>, sanjarsohail@yahoo.com, Sayed Salahuddin <salahuddinreuters@hotmail.com>, Sayed Salahuddin <sayed786salahuddin@gmail.com>, sayed.slahuddin@reuters.com, sayed.slahuddin@reuters.com, Sayeed Najemi <sayeed.najemi@bostnews.com>, scprd@scprd.com, sediqi4u@yahoo.com, sekander.saleh@tolo.tv, shagnan1@yahoo.de, shahab khan barak barak zai sk <sirkahk@yahoo.com>, shahbaz.iraj@bbc.co.uk, shaheed_ghayoor@yahoo.com, Shakilak@aol.com, shamshadtv_news@yahoo.com, shamshadtv_news@yahoo.com, sharaf stankzai <sharafstankzai@gmail.com>, Sharifullah Sahak <Sharifullah.Sahak@gmail.com>, Sharifullah.Sahak@yahoo.com, Sheraqa Bayanzay <hbayanzay@gmail.com>, shinwarie@att.net, shoaib safi <safivoa@yahoo.com>, Shogufa.Anwari@bbc.co.uk, Shoib Najafizada <shoib.najafizada@gmail.com>, strategicstudies@yahoo.com, Subel Bhandari <subelrai@gmail.com>, Sultan Haidari <sultanhaidari@yahoo.com>, Syed Abdul Rahim <syedarahim2002@yahoo.com>, Syed Rahim <syedarahim2002@gmail.com>, Syed Shah Saqeem <ssaqim@gmail.com>, syedanwer@gmail.com, syedanwer@gmail.com, sysbukhari@hotmail.com, tahir khan <mohammadtahir2002@gmail.com>, tahirreporter <tahirreporter@homail.com>, taj mohmmad mubeen <mubeen.tajmohmmad@gmail.com>, tajmmangal mangal <tajmmangal2@gmail.com>, takalahmad@yahoo.com, textmuk@gmail.com, Torabora Torabora <toorabora@yahoo.com>, turi555@hotmail.com, Umar Usama <almalhama@gmail.com>, Usman SHARIFI <usman.sharifi@afp.com>, waheed paykan <wpaykan@yahoo.com>, waheed.paikan@bbc.co.uk, Wakht News <newswakht@gmail.com>, Wakht News <newswakht@gmail.com>, Walid Fazly <ahmadwalidfazly@yahoo.com>, wardakw@bradford.nhs.uk, wpaykan@gmail.com, wsjkabul@gmail.com, yasir sharify <Sharify2009@gmail.com>, Zabihullah Mujahid zabihullahmujahid@gmail.com Zabihullah Raheemzai <zabihullahraheemzai@yahoo.com>, zainullah abide <siad786khan@yahoo.com>, zarghoonshinwari@yahoo.com, Zeeshan Haider <zeesh.haider14@gmail.com>, ZEKRIA NASIRE <zekria.nasire2009@gmail.com>, Zenat Bebe <bebezenat@yahoo.com>, zerak.zaheen@yahoo.com, Zia Kunaray <ziakunaray@yahoo.com>, zia_bumia@yahoo.com, zirak.afghan@yahoo.com, zrtvnews zhwandoon <zrtvnews@gmail.com>, zubair_momand@yahoo.com, خبریال ویب پاڼه <editor@khabaryal.com>, علي عباس خفيف <ali_draii@yahoo.com>, Abaseen Radio <abaseen.radio@yahoo.com>, Abdul Rauf <abdul.rauf88@yahoo.com>, abdul.g.wardak@gmail.com, afghanstream@bbc.co.uk, afghanstream@bbc.co.uk, Doctor Ali <doctor.ali10@yahoo.com>, Ezzatullah Shamszai <shamszai2005@hotmail.com>, jihadtimes@gmail.com, Luddintahir@hotmail.com, mh_shirzad@yahoo.com, omed.rahimi@gmail.com,

Petraeus and the Woman Broadwell to be Stoned on the White House Lawn
Uproar over Stone Auction: first Stone bid reaches $1 million

(A Humorless, gonzo parody.)

The Nine Wise Elders convened for tea to discuss the fates of the woman Paula Broadwell and General (ret.) David Petraeus.  In accordance with Old Law, both parties to adultery have been sentenced to Death by Stoning.

Mercy was granted to the man, who shall be Stoned first, using the Quick Stoning provision.  The evil woman shall be condemned to a Special Stoning, unless she is determined to be a Witch or a Temptress.

The verdict by the Nine Wise Elders (NWE) was unanimous.  Since only the NWE are permitted to see the evidence and to read the laws, sentencing guidelines remain mysterious but are trusted by the populace.

The man normally receives a Quick Stoning, while the woman (if neither Witch nor Temptress) receives a Special Stoning in nearly all cases other than rape.

The merciful NWE sometimes mete out Quick Stonings to women in cases of rape, or in cases of adultery when the woman is under the age of seven.  Rape in all cases is tantamount to adultery for married women.  Unmarried women under the age of ten may avoid Stoning by marrying the man, if he chooses to marry her.

In cases where the man can provide evidence that the woman is a Temptress or a Witch, he may avoid Stoning, but his tainted body will be hanged or banished.

Acceptance of full responsibility by Petraeus caused fainting and delirium.

Upon accusation, General Petraeus refused to accuse the woman Broadwell of Bewitching or Tempting him. This is inexplicable. He may lawfully hang guilt upon the woman.  Few men accept unconditional responsibility for their actions.  Fewer still when the sentence is death, and none when a woman is clearly at fault.

The NWE suspect that Petraeus is under a spell of Witchcraft, though Petraeus denies that Broadwell is a Witch.  This hallucination defies reason for it is universally known that only a woman’s Sorcery or Temptation can defile a pure man.  It would seem that Petraeus is admitting to impurity.

The Quick Stoning of Petraeus is to begin at sunrise on the White House lawn.  The event will begin the moment that the first rays of direct sunlight can be seen from the torch of the Statue of Liberty in New York.

A team of Court Spotters has been dispatched to the torch, and when they see the first rays of direct sunlight, they will use a signal mirror to reflect those rays to a Navy ship below, manned by a trusted and obedient Captain, who will radio the Elders inside the White House.

Normal Sunday Morning Political Crucifixions have been pushed back one week

The Stoning shall begin thusly, still in darkness in Washington.  Local darkness was chosen in deference to the General's four decades of service to God and to country.  This also provides his soul an entire day to flee before the woman’s soul, if she has one, is released to find him and to haunt him in the lonely forest of screams.

The sun’s rays are likely to hit the Torch of Liberty at about 0626 EST.  Stonings sometimes are delayed by hours or even by days due to fog or clouds blocking direct purifying sunlight.  The recent Devil’s work of Hurricane Sandy—aptly given a woman’s name—delayed several Stonings and Crucifixions, leading to a backlog that took one week to clear.

Executions will take the people’s minds off of the empty bellies of their hungry children. (1936 photo by Dorothea Lange, showing Florence Owens Thomspon)

Petraeus shall not be bound with ropes for the event.  He has requested to take his Stoning standing up, and without a blindfold. Such a request has never fallen upon the ears of the Nine Wise Elders.

It is rumored among the mob that George Washington is the only American to have spent more years than Petraeus as a combatant General. The number of Generals who have served as Supreme Commanders in two wars would fit inside a normal two-horse buggy. His presence in Washington DC has become disruptive.

In deference to the sentiments of the people, the Elders have granted Petraeus’s wish to remain unbound for execution.  Likewise, his wish to dispense with the blindfold is granted with stipulation: Petraeus has agreed to remain still at attention for the Stoning, and to refrain from engaging in counterattack, no matter the mockery or depth of sting to his person.

His sort is disposed to fight unto death.  And so despite Petraeus’s assurances that he will not fight, it is not without misgivings or dissent that the NWE grant his request.  This decision was taken 5 to 4.

It is not certain that Petraeus can resist his natural inclination to combat, and despite his seniority, Petraeus remains a fit and dangerous man who attracted a young woman.  If he injures one of the Stoners, the people may riot and stampede about the Mall, as is their nature.  The only things that the mobs love more than Petraeus are a good execution followed by rioting and debauchery.  We should have to crush Stone Mountain to create enough medicine to set this land onto the path of righteousness.

Generals who venture into politics are crossing the river.

Bill Clinton shall be the first tosser, and he shall toss the first Stone.  Clinton shall toss only once, though he is an accomplished and experienced tosser.  As a young Stoner, Clinton later presided over many events.  After tossing, Clinton shall act as referee.  No women shall be tossers, nor shall they be present during the tossing, nor shall they handle the Stones to be tossed.

One thousand Stones shall be licensed by auction.  The license is for a single toss. Men under the age of ten may use a slingshot and clear marbles (not cat-eyes which are reserved for women).  Men ten years old and younger must use the slingshots provided, and none other. Men over eighty may use slingshots.

A Stone may be tossed once, and shall rest where it falls.  No refunds or discounts shall be issued for misses.  Only US Citizens are permitted to toss.

Petraeus and the Woman shall be pilloried for three consecutive days before the event. They shall be watered but not fed. FBI Inquisitor Fredrick Humphries shall be carried by able men and tossed from the 14th Street Bridge into the River Potomac. If he can swim, he is free to escape to the far side into permanent banishment.

The Farmer’s Almanac indicates that the weather should be clear, and Nostradamus predicted that the Stoning will be punctual.  The official Witchdoctor from Kenya rolled chicken bones, and predicted a timely execution. Punxsutawney Phil said that it will be a day like any other.

FBI Inquisitor Fredrick Humphries sent a shirtless photograph of himself to the married woman Jill Kelley, who complained about the adulteress Broadwell, which led the Inquisitors back to Petraeus.

The maximum time for the Petraeus Quick Stoning is 10 minutes.  If the sentence is not completed within 10 minutes, the 5-ton Wrecking Ball of Mercy shall be released to complete the sentence in accordance with decency and compassion.

After the event, the used Stones shall again be auctioned for full and perpetual ownership, along with an official certificate of authenticity.  No body parts or fluids shall be auctioned, though bloodied Stones shall be auctioned at a premium.

Criminals shall be pilloried in celebration for seven days in the top 100 cities

The woman Broadwell shall remain pilloried and present during the Quick Stoning.  Selected criminals shall be pilloried around Washington, and by the courthouses of the top 100 cities of the Republic, to strike terror into the hearts of evildoers.  A fine of $10 shall be levied against anyone striking or tossing a Stone at the pilloried criminals.  (This is expected to raise significant revenue.)

After General Petraeus’s Quick Stoning, it must be determined if the woman Broadwell is a Temptress, or a Witch, and this shall be performed in the normal manner, in the River Potomac, from the 14th Street Bridge.

Distraction hanging

Before the woman is tested, the Federal Bureau of Inquisition (FBI) shall perform a distraction using a criminal, who shall be hanged from the bridge, as is customary.  The rope shall be cut, and as the current carries the body away, the Devil will be distracted as he steals the soul, allowing several minutes for Witch testing.

Without distraction, the presence of the Devil may render a false reading by lifting the body of a woman to the surface, who may be a Temptress, or just a Wretch or Wench, as are all women in their evil cores.  There is good in every man, but only God knows which women contain rare traces worthy of redemption.

During a recent Witch trial, a Federal Inquisitor was stricken dead by curse.

If the woman Broadwell floats, she will of course be judged to be a Witch.  To minimize risk of transport and escape, the Witch shall be burned upon the same bridge, using a fuel of collected driftwood and seized pornography, with her ashes poured into the River Potomac under the cover of darkness.

At least 12 hours shall transpire between her execution and that of General Petraeus, to allow the man’s soul plenty of head start.  Otherwise the ghost of Broadwell shall with its evil determinations and emulations seek and find him, damning his soul to perpetual torment.  The woman Broadwell is a very fit runner, and so the soul of Petraeus will need advantage if it is to rest in peace.

Newspapers shall run stories of justice rendered.

If the woman Broadwell drowns and is thus discovered not to be a Witch, she shall be revived and dragged behind a black gelding to the Supreme Courthouse of the Elders.  A stallion may not be used, lest a Temptress use her powers to persuade the stallion to aid her in escape.  It displeases the people when they must Stone a horse.

The woman Broadwell is a dangerous beast and must remain shackled. Inquisitors shall carry pistols loaded with silver bullets.

The woman Broadwell’s body shall be examined for piercings, tattoos, enhancements of the lips or of the curved regions, or other permanent defilements to the human body such as straightening of the teeth.  If ruinations are found, she shall be judged guilty of despoiling a Temple of God.

If the woman Broadwell is found to use impermanent pollutions such as perfumes, or paints for finger or toenails, or colored contact lenses, which are known to perturb the hearts of good men, she shall be judged a Temptress who practiced seduction, but not special magic.

If she employed premeditated Temptations, the man shall be considered innocent and a prayer shall be said for his accosted soul and for his natural goodness, so that the man shall not be damned for eternity, and so he may rest in peace if he can escape the ghost of the woman Broadwell.

To strike a blow against Temptation, the unholy Muslims use acids to dissolve the lures of a Temptress, along with cutting off her nose, lips or ears.  Such actions are permissible and not considered defilements of God’s work.

Mirrors and a woman’s beauty are the work of Satan.  Mirrors are Satan’s windows, and women who talk to mirrors whisper directly into his ear.  “Who is the fairest of them all?”  The Devil is quick to answer, “You are the fairest my dear.  Now go fetch a man’s soul for my appetites!”  Satan invested especial effort creating the woman Broadwell, for he needed many powerful baits in collusion to entice the man Petraeus to taste the poison honey.

The events will take the minds of the masses off of the endless war in Afghanistan, the debacle in Benghazi, the crime and unemployment at home, and the irony that Baltimore is more dangerous than Kabul.

Counter-beautification measures are known to defeat the spell cast by beauty, and shall be considered despite their association with Muslims.  If the woman is deemed to be a Temptress, she shall face the blade, then the acid, before the Stoning, so that final public memories of her disfigurement shall be burned into every eye cast upon her.

Her punishment shall be broadcast live on all television stations.  (The Stoning of the man shall not be broadcast.)

Two men shall be hanged in each of the top 100 cities

During the natural intermission caused by the final testing for Witch-ness, and the trial for Temptation, eighty military officers of no special name or circumstance shall be nominated by the Federal Inquisitors for lynching.  The Inquisitors shall nominate the selectees by randomly reading postal letters.

The Inquisitors possess the authority to read personal letters after good Americans decided that it was wise to surrender their unholy freedoms back to the Trusted Elders, and to the Nine Wise Men, who can more properly hold trials in secret, which lifts a heavy burden from the public, and ensures security and perfect justice in all cases.

The Inquisitors are today randomly inspecting bags of mail to and from the Pentagon and military bases worldwide, in order to nominate the lynching candidates.  The General John Allen is suspected, but he is a man of consequence and he shall be saved for another day.  There is also the practical matter that he is deployed to war and must be fetched for punishment if he is convicted of any wrongdoing.

The Great Hanging of military officers shall take place in Washington on the same day. Audience participation is encouraged.

This lynching is not an attempt by the Trusted Elders, or by the Nine Wise Elders, to distract attention from other matters, or by the Inquisitors of the FBI to draw attention from its bewitched agent Humphries, who was Tempted by a married woman, who appears to be a Witch, or at minimum a Temptress, causing the agent of the Holy FBI to become smitten even while he investigated her dirtiness.  She claimed diplomatic immunity, and Ambassadorship, and so at minimum was using the implements of disguise.  She shall be dealt with in due course.

Citizens who attempt to disrupt the events shall be admonished en masse.

The intermission lynching is for the enjoyment of the mob, and to keep them entertained while the woman Broadwell is tested for Witchcraft and examined for Temptations.  Any speculation that the lynchings are for any other purpose invites mail reading and public pillory, or other forms of discipline.

To assure the safety of the mob, no Stones shall be tossed during the live entertainment.  The event shall begin with customary ostracization (profanity is punishable by fine), followed by a normal gauntlet.  For safety, bullwhips are not permitted (they are by any means impractical in the gauntlet).

Horse crops, pinching, slapping and punching are permitted.  Gawkers should refrain from the gauntlet to allow room for participants.  Cameras are permitted during all events, assuming that common courtesy is observed.  Official photographers will be present. Photographs will be distributed to all newspapers.  Journalists are encouraged to swarm upon the story and with piranha-like fervor.

No torture shall be allowed during the lynching, which will end in a merciful hanging.  Commemorative postcards will be printed on site, and will be available for immediate sale.

In case of the Special Stoning of the woman Broadwell, one ton of projectiles shall be provided without charge.  The projectiles shall be small cat-eye playing marbles, and pieces of jagged coral and oyster shells, taken from dead ocean reefs.

Double throws will be permitted.  Slingshots will be strictly prohibited.  The Wrecking Ball of Mercy shall not be employed.  Special Stonings of Women typically last for 10 to 12 hours.

The woman Broadwell shall be properly buried before Stoning

Personal projectiles are forbidden.  Used projectiles may be taken as keepsakes, free of charge.  Proper attire is expected.  No shorts, no sandals.

Upon completion, the body of the Woman shall be set upon a bonfire, followed by fireworks and libations.

Please see this video of a recent stoning.

(Photo courtesy of CIA)

General (ret.) David Petraeus is a peerless asset to the United States.  His contributions to the war and to the nation have been incalculable.  No one can estimate the number of lives among Americans, the Coalition and Iraqi civilians that his wise leadership saved during that horrible war.  His short leadership in Afghanistan rekindled my confidence that that war also might be brought to heel.  Unfortunately, he was sent back to lead the CIA, which was a great loss for the military.
Director Petraeus's accomplishments can never be erased.  He will undoubtedly be demonized for his affair.  It is not easy to ameliorate the stain that it leaves, as the potential final word summing up an impeccable career.

All Alphas have enemies.  Petraeus is no exception.  The finest leaders usually have more enemies than the company men whose mantra is, "Don't bail the sinking boat. The boss said the boat is not sinking." Unfortunately we have a surfeit of company men and only one Dave Petraeus.

Petraeus’s paramour is Paula Broadwell.  I know Paula, but not as well as I know Dave Petraeus.  I spent much time talking with Paula in Afghanistan.  Her beauty and her confidence are apparent in seconds.  It takes another five minutes to realize that she is very bright, and five minutes more to realize that Paula, too, is an Alpha.  She believes that women should be Rangers, and infantry officers, and are capable of standing beside men in combat. Ironically, her role in this spectacle serves as a counter to her own argument.

David Petraeus spent years downrange in the wars.  Some of his own staff members bailed from the stress, yet General Petraeus kept going.  In the middle of all this, he battled cancer and survived.  During a 2010 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, he passed out at the table.  Yet he kept going and he never publicly complained.  And then Paula came along.  You might as well starve the man and then cook barbeque outside his cave.

During 2007, at the peak of the Iraq war, an infantry lieutenant colonel told me about the time that Colonel Petraeus was shot during training.  A Soldier accidentally put a bullet straight through Petraeus’s chest.  Blood and lungs were coming from his mouth.  Petraeus nearly died.

Normally a mistake like this might end the career of the Soldier who fired the shot, and it might adversely affect the career of his commanding officer.  Instead, Colonel Petraeus survived and he sent the young Soldier to Ranger school. It was the young commander, now older, who told me the story in Iraq. His man fired the shot that almost killed Petraeus.   If Petraeus had kicked the young officer out of the Army, it would have been our loss. Instead, Petraeus took a bullet to the chest and he turned it into a teachable moment.  That is David Petraeus.

Today journalists and others whinge that they were duped into the cult of Petraeus.  Untrue.  He really is that man, but he is also just a man.

Petraeus has a long reputation as a mentor.  Any insinuation that he used mentorship to prey on Paula Broadwell falls flat.  You can hardly talk to the man without him leaving you with a reading assignment.  "Michael, make sure to read Foreign Affairs."  With this one remarkable exception, the man leads by example.

Paula's intentions are the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation. It is unwise to hypothesize without facts, and Paula deserves the benefit of proper investigation. She is somebody’s daughter, a wife and a mother, and an American citizen.

David Petraeus has enemies.  Many wish to see him fall.  For example, years ago, a CIA officer confided an abiding hatred for General Petraeus to me. After the CIA officer explained the circumstances, I respected Petraeus more.  The officer had a sack of hurt feelings after a combat disaster in Iraq, to which Petraeus, instead of offering a shoulder to cry on, said buck up, there is work to do.

In Afghanistan, I would see Paula at the morning briefings where Petraeus presided. She is connected within powerful circles, including within the special operations community.  Access begets access, and once you reach a certain level, you no longer care about doors slamming in your face: every time a door slams, the concussion opens five more.  Access is a two-way street. Washington has a million doors down thousands of hallways, and nobody, no matter how powerful, controls more than a single hallway.  After you reach a certain level of access, nobody can shut you out.  Paula reached that level, and Paula enjoyed playing with high-tension wires where a single misstep can pop a career like a bug zapper, slamming thousands of doors at once.  Where this leaves Paula remains to be seen.

Conspiracy theories are crackling the airwaves.  The timing of the DCI’s resignation obviously raises questions, but the atomic structure of the event at least is clear.  Dave and Paula had an affair.  Dave preferred to resign rather than be fired.  What was okay for President Clinton is not okay for other government servants, and we all need to keep a handle on that.

No man is without fault.  This fiasco does not diminish David Petraeus's contributions to the United States, nor his positive impact on the many people that he inspired and mentored.  Dave stumbled. He is fallible. Nonetheless, he remains a remarkable man with rare insights and much earned wisdom.  After a decade of persistent sacrifice, he deserves a rest.  When General (ret.) Petraeus is ready to resume, no doubt there will be a long line of people requesting his able services.

Some parts of this video are inaccurate.  For instance, saying that the British MERT system for medical evacuation is widely seen as the best model, is false.  Often you see in Afghanistan – and I have seen with myself – that MERT is far slower because they take longer to launch their CH-47 helicopter.  They might take 30 minutes to launch, when Dustoff or Pedro can launch in six minutes.

Many of the wounds occur very close to the trauma hospitals.  There are times when USAF Pedro, or Army Dustoff, can scoop the casualties and have the patients back to the hospital before MERT even launches.  This is a fact.

Another fact is that there is no “best” system.  This is like saying there is a “best” treatment, when you do not even know the wound.  If the patient is close to the hospital, and the helicopter has to fight its way into the LZ, Air Force Pedro will by far be the best.  If the patient is very far away, and there is no need to go in guns blazing, MERT probably will be best.  There simply is no “best.”

At least they are working the issue:

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except North Dakota, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

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1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

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2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.'

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3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

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4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

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5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

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6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

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7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

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8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

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9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

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10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialect in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

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11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

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12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

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13.. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

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14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

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15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

A message from Michael Yon: The author(s) of this hilarious message is unknown.  It has been attributed to John Cleese.  If Snopes is to be believed, this is untrue.  The message appears to have evolved from numerous authors over time.  It went viral on my Facebook with about 1 million viewers so far.  Please join my Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage

Dave Dilegge: Photo from TBO article (JAY CONNER/STAFF)

07 November 2012

Back in 2006, I toyed with heresy by asserting that milblogs were not the best sources for war news.  To my surprise, the better sources remained professional journalists, and again to my surprise, many were much better than we give them credit for.

While professionals like Kimberly Dozier, Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall combed the battlefields, most milbloggers never set foot in either Iraq or Afghanistan, though many claimed expertise based on service in the military.

In reality, veterans can attest, many active service members in the wars had little knowledge about what was happening on a day-to-day basis.  If they were in Mosul in 2005, they were in battles every day.  It was combat.  Car bombs.  Firefights.  Suicide attacks.  The troops in those fights would be the last ones to claim that they understood the big picture.

They were in a cage match.  When two boxers are slugging it out in Madison Square Garden, they are in no position to tell you what is going on in Manhattan, much less Upstate.  And so there was the cage match in Mosul, the one in Ramadi, another in Fallujah, a big one in Baghdad, a nasty one in Baqubah, and another in Basra.  I was in all of these places, and a long list of others.  There were at least dozens of other serious battle spaces.  There were a few soldiers, like Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger, who gained intimate knowledge of the far corners of the war, but he was rare in his deep understanding of the war’s complexity.

When you toured the war, you saw that everyone was in a unique fight, and there was no way to know what was broadly happening by looking only at one battle space.  If you grab a cobra’s tail at night, you should not presume to know where his head is.

The fight in one part of Baghdad could change dramatically just by crossing a highway into a different part of town.  In the space of a few hundred meters, the weapons, habits, and tactics of the enemy changed, and they also changed month by month.

The fight in April 2005 in Mosul, was remarkably different than the battle in the same town just a couple of months later.  Further, if you were in Mosul in 2005, then again in 2006, and in 2007, as I was, you would know that the veterans who fought there in 2005 experienced significantly different wars than those in 2006, or 2007.

A veteran who fought three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan did not fight in two wars.  Those four tours were four different wars in two different countries.  The vets may not be able to fully explain it, even if they wanted to.  There is too much.  They could explain it to another veteran, but not to the broader world.

If you want to hear war stories, it is fine to talk with veterans, or with civilians who were there.  There is nothing magical about wearing a uniform when bullets start flying.  The ten year-old kids who were there are also veterans, but without the medals, the parades, or a holiday.

If you want the most valuable opinions, you must talk with people who have the experience to develop context.  The soldier who fought in Mosul and in Kandahar starts to develop valuable opinions that surpass mere catalogued techniques of fighting.  Building context all within one brain is crucial and brings transcendent value – seeds of wisdom – where the sum is greater than the parts. Nobody needs to go to war to develop broad life context, but war is so fundamental to life among humans that to not experience it, is to miss a fundamental human experience.  Not that I recommend it.

Real combat veterans sometimes remind me of people who have fought a terminal illness.  They take time to meditate.  Raw truth becomes more important than raw politics.

Even the most skilled writer would never be able to lay it all out on paper.  At some point, you just have to say, “This is my opinion about the state of this war.”  Ultimately, you will be judged on how often that you were right versus wrong, and you can tell some war stories along the way, but the war stories are only screen shots in a very long movie in which the audience sometimes gets shot.

This is why the most valuable opinions on war will come from veterans with multiple tours, and from astute civilians who spend long periods in multiple conflict zones.  Despite what some milbloggers would have us believe, military status alone does not convey a monopoly on insight, or even combat abilities, as the Viet Cong and the Taliban have shown.

Some of my friends are pilots who have flown hundreds of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet they have never stepped foot in a village in either country.  They have courageously done their duty, but their courage and their honor does not mean that they have useful opinions about the mood of the people.  The pilots know this, and they do not advertise otherwise.

The fall of the milblogs suggests that many of the bloggers have not taken the opportunity to meditate.  They see things through their own eyes, as we all do, and seldom through the eyes of others, as if their keyboard is the center of the universe, and their uniforms in their closets are diplomas of received wisdom.  Enemies in war are in the habit of smashing the idea that any man or inspiration is central to the universe, or that any man is closer than any other to grave or to God.

Texas, Afghanistan, and Iraq, all have roughly similar sized populations.  Iraq is by far the smallest in area.  Texas is a little larger than Afghanistan.  All have roughly 25-30 million people.

Have you been to Texas?  The place is huge.  It is complex.  Imagine that a Chinese-led Coalition of 40 nations comes to Texas and wages war in counties all around, trying to force those well-armed and highly motivated Texans that the Chinese way is their way.  There are Chinese air strikes night and day, and Chinese helicopters roaring around shooting Texans who are emplacing IEDs.  Some Texans join the Chinese-led Army of Texas just to spy on or to shoot Chinese trainers.    Mexico is the new Pakistan, with a drug war more serious and brutal than the one in Afghanistan.  The Mexicans are making money off of the Chinese, whom they hate, and so the Mexicans do not want the war to end because big bucks are injected into their economy.  Mexicans allow Texans to re-arm and train in Mexico, and spend their winters on Mexican beaches, plotting their spring campaigns.

A Syrian Army soldier -- part of the Chinese Coalition -- flies from Damascus into Houston Airport.   His only experience is in the Army, and his travel abroad has all been within the Army bubble.  He lands in Houston, and he never leaves the airport, because his office is at the airport.  He never even goes into the metropolis of Houston.  But now that he is downrange, suddenly he is an “expert,” and he actually believes it.

Many of the milbloggers never even go to “Houston,” much less to “Texas,” and when you cry foul, they say, “What!  I have the medals and I was in the Super Unit of Ultra Forces!  You know nothing!  You are only a writer!”  And then they resume writing their milblogs from the cozy front lines of a coffee shop.

Meanwhile, journalists like Maya Alleruzzo and Alex Perry, spend years living in more places than anyone can remember, developing rare context that makes their opinions invaluable.  Milbloggers flocked to deride Joe Galloway, the author of We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, because some believe that he holds heretical opinions. But Joe earned those opinions the hard way.  Every journalist mentioned in this article is lucky to be alive.

The Generals and the information warfare folks recognize the value of veteran military bloggers, and they realize that in exchange for warm milk and ego petting, many of them will purr like kittens. In this way, the Generals can do an end-run around writers like Tom Ricks and Yochi Dreazen, who are more experienced, and not so easily bribed.

These milblog shenanigans became apparent to me back in 2006, and I began to call them out, which caused frictions, which did not become broadly apparent until 2010, after I said that two generals should be fired.  Both were fired.  The fact is, some of these milbloggers will carry gasoline to fires for politicians and sufficiently high-ranking officers.

But don’t take my word for it: This report from the Tampa Tribune is indicative.  It provides crucial insight into the information games that we play.

I have been reading a book about Dust Off MEDEVAC service in Vietnam.  The book is called Dead Men Flying.  I am only halfway through.  Excellent so far.

The book is about Major General (ret.) Patrick Brady, who received the Medal of Honor for actions as a Dust Off pilot.  Patrick Brady is legendary in the Dust Off world.

Many people have seen the campaign we have run over the last year to change failed MEDEVAC procedures.  Many people, including most milblogs, reflexively said this was wrong.  And therefore, as it turns out, those same milblogs are saying that Major General (ret.) Patrick Brady, Medal of Honor recipient, legendary Dust Off pilot, is wrong.

Read it and weep:

U.S. general: Obama paralyzed by fear
Gen. Patrick Brady explains why president abandoned Americans in Benghazi

Written By: Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, U.S. Army (ret.)

Now I understand! For years, many veterans and active military have been alarmed about the idiocy of the changes in battlefield aeromedical evacuation known as Dust Off. For reasons having nothing to do with patient care, Dust Off has been removed from the control of the professionals, the medics, and put under the control of amateurs, aviation staff officers, or ASOs. This is the first such change since the Civil War.

I document the unparalleled excellence of Dust Off, and the effects of the changes, in my book, “Dead Men Flying.” Needless to say, it was the most outstanding battlefield operating system of that war – some one million souls saved and unprecedented survival rates. No warrior of Vietnam is more revered than the Dust Off crews.

In the words of Gen. Creighton Abrams, former U.S. Army chief of staff and former supreme commander in Vietnam: “A special word about the Dust Offs … Courage above and beyond the call of duty was sort of routine to them. It was a daily thing, part of the way they lived. That’s the great part, and it meant so much to every last man who served there. Whether he ever got hurt or not, he knew Dust Off was there. It was a great thing for our people.”

Fast forward to current battlefields. We hear horror stories about patients waiting and dying because Dust Off didn’t launch or came too late. The launch standard in my unit in Vietnam was two minutes; today it is 15 minutes! Can anyone imagine a fire truck taking 15 minutes to get under way? I could go on and on, but one has to ask, why? Why the changes to an excellent, proven system?

The answer is the Obama-Panetta Doctrine. In response to the horrible abandonment of dying Americans in Benghazi, Defense Secretary Panetta said: “(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.”

On its face, that is a remarkable, indeed incomprehensible, change from America’s doctrine in past wars. By that standard, there would have been no Normandy or Inchon. In fact, I can’t think of a war we fought in which we didn’t go into harm’s way without real-time information or to save lives – something the president refused to do in Benghazi. Dust Off would never launch in Vietnam under that doctrine.

Medal of Honor recipient Gen. Patrick Brady tells the inspiring, miraculous story of his days as a Dust Off air ambulance pilot in Vietnam. Get his newly reissued book, autographed: “Dead Men Flying: Victory in Viet Nam.”

To fully understand the doctrinal change, one has to understand President Obama. He has a dearth of understanding of our military and military matters. We hear he is uncomfortable in the presence of ranking military and seldom meets with them. He is not a person who can make decisions, and he takes an extraordinary amount of time to do so, leading to such unseemly labels for a commander in chief as “ditherer in chief.”

President Obama may have set records for voting “present” on important issues. He cowers from crisis decisions. He is a politician who thinks only in terms of votes and his image. Although I was a psychology major back in the day (I’d love to hear a professional analyze risk and Obama), I won’t try to define his insides, but I believe he is risk-averse – fearful of risk – and that is the basis of the Obama-Panetta doctrine.

This aversion for risk dominates Dust Off rescue operations where, in addition to an unconscionable reaction time, risk assessment is the primary consideration for mission launch – not patient care. In two years flying Dust Off in Vietnam, I never heard that term, nor did any Dust pilot I know. The ASOs, remote from the battle, have developed time-consuming algorithms to analyze risk while the patient bleeds, something that’s impossible to do by anyone other than the pilot and the ground forces at the scene.

And Obama’s terror of risk contributed to the massacre of Americans by terrorists in Benghazi. We hear that the president did not even convene the Counterterrorism Security Group while the Benghazi terrorist massacre was visually and verbally available in real time. That is like ignoring FEMA during Hurricane Sandy. But once you bring in a group labeled anti-terrorist, you have to acknowledge terror exists, something the president is loath to do.

My veteran friends are horrified by the Obama-Panetta doctrine. At least 359 retired flag officers support Mitt Romney – only five that I know of support Obama. Some 150 former prisoners of war also support Romney; I know of none who support Obama.

America needs to listen to these veterans. They understand leadership. They know how to deal with risk in war. They would not want this man with them in combat or crisis. They never left a needy comrade behind. Obama did.

Get the full account of Gen. Brady’s Vietnam rescue operations in his book, “Dead Men Flying,” a riveting tale from America’s most decorated living soldier – autographed!

The Associated Press writer in this dispatch, Talal, was later kidnapped.  He was reported to have been tortured, and then he completely disappeared.

IR Laser from aircraft on landing zone in Afghanistan

(This is a quick dispatch on the fly.  No time for editing, so please take it as is.)

02 November 2012

The Benghazi attack leaves many open questions.  It has been established that high-level failures occurred.  The fact that our Ambassador is dead is evidence, and there is much more.

A subject that continues to garner attention is that one of the former SEALs was “painting” or lasing a target.  Some people have opined that he would not have painted the mortar position unless there was an armed aircraft overhead.  As much as I do not want Obama in the White House, we should still stick with facts and not supposition.  The facts are bad enough.

It is untrue that people paint only when there are armed aircraft overhead.  In fact, I have seen soldiers paint from the ground or from the air on many occasions, simply to covertly identify an object using an IR laser pointer. Troops often use lasers on their rifles, or the excellent Air Force JTACs will sparkle something with no intention of putting a bomb on it.

The two green images in this dispatch were taken the same night.  We were waiting on some helicopters to come pick us up, and I was wearing a PVS-14 night vision monocular. I had the same device on my camera. Suddenly, an aircraft that we did not even know was there started painting our LZ (landing zone).  Importantly, using night mode, the camera would have detected the laser even without the PVS-14.

Presumably the pilot was painting so that the helicopters could find us.  Not that the helicopters needed it, but for whatever reason, the pilot began sparkling.  Normally I only see aircraft sparkle when they are relaying information like, “There are about ten men in the tree line to your northwest.  Watch my laser.”  Or they are about to drop a bomb, or they are spotting for a missile shot.

It is possible that any painting that occurred in Benghazi was to identify the mortar position to other ground forces, or maybe for someone overhead.  But again, the idea that there had to be an AC-130 gunship on station (or whatever) before someone would paint, is false.

Aircraft painting helicopter LZ in Kandahar Province, 2011. Anybody with a normal video camera could see this from great distance.

The SEAL might have been painting for the Predator, or for the benefit of other guys up on a high floor, or maybe to help others maneuver into a position to kill the mortar crew.  I have zero idea.  Painting a target can also help snipers.  The SEAL could have been painting for someone else who was using a machinegun, a grenade launcher, or some other weapons system.

What can be said is that to crank up an IR laser in a relatively advanced country like Libya risks identifying the lasing source even more than the target.  The Libyans may use normal camera gear, or have cheap night vision gear that can be bought all over the world.  They might just use smart phone cameras.

The enemy is known to do this in Pakistan.  They watch for our lasers to know when missiles or bombs might be on the way.  They use normal cameras to detect people who are emplacing IR beacons for air strikes.  Nothing that I am saying is classified.  I learned these things from paying attention to our enemies.

If US Soldiers do not also know these things, it is a training failure.  The enemy surely knows it.  Al Qaeda figured out how to drop the towers in New York.  They long ago figured out IR sources.  They are savages, but they are smart, and IR lasers and strobes are simple.

Air Force IR laser during mission in 2010, Kandahar Province. Modified Canon Mark II 5d camera, but no night vision.

If I were an enemy commander, I would put personnel in key positions in advance with night vision or video cameras specifically to watch for IR sources, with instructions to call me if they see any.  Since I would be attacking Americans who use IR, I would make sure to get this gear and practice with it.

If a laser is coming from the sky, it is time to scatter, or time to get very close to the Americans.  If the IR source is coming from a building, I would prepare forces on the ground with cameras or night vision devices pre-designated to attack all IR sources that they can identify.

The investment required to see our lasers is at most a couple of hundred dollars for a used camera. The moment that the laser operator begins to sparkle the target, his position is burned.

People will be painting tonight in Afghanistan.  It is common practice.  Afghans have been caught with normal video cameras that feature a night mode strapped to their weapons.

Streaks in the background are blacked helicopters. Canon Mark II 5d camera is modified to see IR, but no night vision.

We had a helicopter shot down this year in Afghanistan during a pitch-black night while conducting a MEDEVAC.  A suicide bomb detonated and the helicopter launched to rescue casualties.  It is possible that the suicide attack was actually a helicopter ambush.  One pilot told me it was the darkest night that he had ever seen.  The chances are very low of hitting a blacked-out helicopter on a pitch-black night using an RPG.  It is possible that the RPG gunner aimed at the IR strobes using a camera, or he may have used an actual surface-to-air missile.  Anyway that you look at it, it was a lucky shot, but it takes a lot less luck if you can see the IR strobes, and if you are in a position where you know that the helicopter will be low and slow.

Recently in Norway, Norwegian Soldiers told me that in Afghanistan they were ambushed one night by accurate machinegun fire.  When they switched off their IR strobes, the enemy firing stopped.  When they switched their strobes back on, the firing resumed.  They switched them off, and the firing stopped.

We still own the night, but not for long.  It is contested.

Southern Afghanistan, 2011

31 October 2012
By Michael Yon

President Obama ascended to power through audacity, oration, and artful manipulation.  In the United States and numerous Asian countries, I saw people’s eyes glaze with unconditional trust in a man who is unfit for office.

After the last election, I happened to be home from the wars, and in Washington DC for meetings.  President-elect Obama’s inauguration was nearby, and so I attended on that freezing morning.  Some of my detractors said, “Look at that, Yon’s joined forces with Obama.”  In fact, I had campaigned against him after his many clueless statements on Iraq and Afghanistan.  Yet the inauguration was an historical event worth seeing. The new president would, after all, be the decider in the wars to which I would soon return.

Many inauguration spectators appeared to be in a trance.  Some hated President George Bush. Others talked about revenge for historical injustices.  For some it was about money for nothing, while for others it was about a sincere desire for hope and change from a vaguely defined status quo.  All were searching for something better.

Patriotism was noticeably thin at the inauguration.  Yes, there were thousands of American flags, though team spirit would be more evident at a college football game. The flags were waving in a breeze laced with the stench of entitlement.  It was not a God Bless America day. It was a God Bless Me day.

And there he was.  Our new President. I was determined to support him until he proved unworthy.  Almost four years later, many people have snapped out of the trance, and that includes many non-Americans here in Asia.  Obama’s magic wand has been broken over the knee of reality.

I cannot speak about the economy, education or healthcare, but I can speak about Afghanistan.  Obama cannot be faulted that Afghanistan is stone-aged, or that our military strategy was wrecked when he took office.  It was.  The bus was in a ditch. Obama showed up with a wrecker, promising to yank it out.  Today the wrecker is in the ditch atop the bus.

President Obama did fire General McChrystal and send General Petraeus to Afghanistan, which was smart.  But now Director Petraeus is at the CIA, and not where we most need him, which is in the military.  President Obama’s mishandling of the war has left many of us disillusioned.

Our leaders have repeatedly seen national news outlets indict the inadequacy of our MEDEVAC systems in Afghanistan.  It can be said, “Yes, but it was done this way during the last administration.”  True.  And this administration promised hope and change.

Despite sustained national coverage of the MEDEVAC issue and direct appeals to the White House and Obama’s chosen Secretary of Defense, our helicopters still fly over Islamic Afghanistan wearing Red Crosses, which signals that the helicopters are unarmed.  This has caused unforgivable delays removing wounded troops from the battlefield.

Afghanistan: In October 2001, we destroyed Mullah Omar’s mosque in Sangesar Village, down in Kandahar Province.  His second of three wives, Guljana, was from this village.  His family lived there.  This tiny mosque literally was the birthplace of the Taliban.

Under President Obama, ten years later in 2011, US troops renovated Mullah Omar’s mosque in Sangesar.  First we bombed it in 2001.  Then we fixed it in 2011.  This remains one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.

Perhaps we forgot that Mullah Omar gave Osama bin Laden sanctuary, and then bin Laden attacked America.

The symbolic appeasement represented by refurbishing the mosque is enormous. The village is in the middle of fields of poppy.  Renovating this mosque in Sangesar is like building a dual monument to al Qaeda and drug cartels.

Mullah Omar: If President Obama is to take credit for getting bin Laden, he must accept blame for failing to get Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar, and for refurbishing Mullah Omar’s mosque.

We are not in this together.  Sangesar is an enemy village.  Our troops still die there.

In 2012, Mullah Omar praised the murders of Coalition forces.  General John Allen, the US commander at the time, called it “an unmistakable message of death.”  Mullah Omar was so busy directing the faithful to murder our troops that he forgot to express gratitude for the revenue stream from opium, and for the renovated mosque demonstrating his potency.

This year, the casualties continue.   In March, at Sangesar, three Afghan insiders turned their guns on Americans, killing Staff Sergeant Jordan Bear from Denver, and Specialist Payton Jones from Marble Falls, Texas.  Another Soldier was wounded.  That is the payment that we can expect for appeasing Islamic-narco-terrorists.

I was in the general area last year, and in previous years, and it was mostly about combat.  Our young troops are something to be proud of, and if you saw them in action you would be amazed at their courage and professionalism.  The mess that we shoved them into is a national shame. We provided about half the troops required for the stated strategy, then began pulling them out against a domestic political deadline that has nothing to do with the war.  The surge has been a wasted effort.

America saw both President Obama and Governor Romney endorse our Afghanistan strategy during their last debate, where ISAF forces train the Afghan Army and Police as a prelude to our disengagement in 2014. This is a broken strategy, with Afghans murdering so many of their trainers.

At least 30% of Afghan trainees must be replaced annually due to desertions and endemic corruption. Training Afghans to replace Coalition forces is not working. As we draw down, the enemy will be able to focus on fewer troops. Hollow Afghan units will collapse, and corrupt Afghan politicians will finally abscond to Dubai.  We should cut our losses and remove the bulk of our force.

Although Obama needs to go home, this is no guarantee that Romney will do better. If Romney is elected, he will need a bigger wrecker.  He is guaranteed the same honest chance that Obama received.  Nothing less, nothing more.

Zhari District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, with 4-4Cav and Afghan counterparts, shortly before minor IED strike. (11 September 2011)

Please click on image to view full screen.

or... Click here to view it in panorama mode.

Mullah Omar

Google has a function called “Alerts.” This function allows users to program keywords and receive daily updates from the web.  Using alerts is like having your own investigative wing scouring for information on topics of interest.   Two of the keywords that I use are MEDEVAC and MEDIVAC.

After a group of concerned citizens and I started raising MEDEVAC issues last year, the net alerts suggested that an extraordinary number of MEDEVAC units were sent to Afghanistan.  Later, word came from Afghanistan that our efforts caused a great increase in available MEDEVAC assets.

On a side note, it appears that communities across the United States are buying MEDEVAC helicopters for civilian use.

Army MEDEVAC uses the call sign “Dustoff” (or Dust Off).  The call sign derives from the Vietnam era.  The most renowned Dustoff pilot is probably Major General (ret.) Patrick Brady.  MG Brady received the Medal of Honor for flying Dustoff in Vietnam.  I am currently reading his excellent book called Dead Men Flying.

Interestingly, many opposed our MEDEVAC awareness work, which stemmed in part from a MEDEVAC that failed to launch from FOB Pasab in time to save an American Soldier:  RED AIR 

And so when our group noticed that MG (ret.) Brady held similar views, we were not surprised.  Many Dustoff pilots share General Brady’s views.  This October 2012 article outlines how MG Patrick Brady believes that the military is failing to reach the highest standards in its Dustoff mission.

Google Alerts brought this story today from FOB Pasab, the same base in southern Afghanistan that launched the tardy Dustoff on the 2011 morning when Chazray Clark was killed by a bomb strike:

Medevac central: A glimpse at one of the busiest medevac locations in Afghanistan

The most recent story from FOB Pasab contains many clues.  Importantly, a Captain wrote this article, and the Army published it.

The Army story indicates that there are now two Dustoff helicopters at Pasab.  The story does not explicitly say this, but it mentions two crews who sometimes are flying simultaneously.  While I was there last year, there was only one Dustoff, along with a chase helicopter.  The military seems to have at least doubled MEDEVAC assets at Pasab.  Did the dispatches about MEDEVAC make a difference?  For Pasab, we do not know for sure, but where the bigger picture is concerned, we know that they did.

Now to a broader part of the Army story linked above.  Casualties last year already were high around Pasab.  A Dustoff from Pasab typically picks up casualties on battlefields that are very close.  Sometimes the casualties happen on base due to rockets or other incoming fire.  Other times, you can hear a large bomb explode off base, and about ten minutes later the Dustoff launches.  That is your sign that the Internet is about to “black out,” so that troops cannot speculate online about what happened.

For American casualties, a Dustoff from Pasab typically flies to the trauma hospital at Kandahar Airfield.  If the wounded Soldiers survive, they will be stabilized and are often sent to Germany.  If they die, normally they will be sent home immediately after respects are paid at a “ramp ceremony.”

The craters on the moon cause me to wonder how many bombs exploded in Afghanistan

Last year, the area around Pasab was as dangerous as Sangin was during the period when the British had the lead.  Both Pasab and Sangin reminded me at times of heavy fighting in Iraq.  The area around Pasab is a trauma zone, and the Army has beefed up evacuation assets after our MEDEVAC advocacy efforts.

The war effort seemed to evince some regional progress in that area last year, but the proof eventually will be in the numbers.  The area is not large.  Either the place is becoming more secure, or it is not.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the area is not becoming more secure.  Messages come from our troops that the place is still a bomb and shoot-out gallery.

This battle space is not deep in the Hindu Kush or a Congolese jungle.  The terrain is wide open, readily accessible by foot, or even on a bicycle.  The terrain around Orlando, Florida is tougher.  The micro-terrain can be challenging, but in reality what makes the micro-terrain tough is that the enemy forces you off of the easy places to walk, and causes you to climb walls and grape rows like a monkey.  If the people were not waging war, even the micro-terrain would be easy because you would walk through the grape rows, not over them, and you could walk through doors instead of climbing walls.

Just go to Google Earth, type in “Panjwai,” and have a look.  Simple terrain.  Unless people are trying to blow you up.

From a large military perspective, considering the needs of American technology, the terrain could hardly be more American-friendly.  You could, without exaggerating, fly straight to Kandahar, hop on a motorbike and be in the middle of the battle space an hour later. But too many of the people do not want us to be there.

It may interest Americans to know that in 2011, American time, effort and resources were spent (not invested) refurbishing Mullah Omar’s Mosque in this same battle space that is covered by the Dustoff helicopters at Pasab.

The mosque is in a village called Sangsar.  Sangsar Village is the very bellybutton of the Taliban.  Ground Zero.  This is it.  The birthplace of the latest Mad Mullah war.  And we refurbished Mullah Omar’s mosque there in 2011.  This would be like building a memorial for Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad.

Some folks may have forgotten who Mullah Omar is.  After all, the war is into its 12th year with no end visible.  Mullah Omar is the top Taliban leader, who welcomed Osama bin Laden into Afghanistan.  By refurbishing his mosque, we pretend that we have a role to play in Mullah Omar’s home village, and that we are winning friends and influencing people.

According to the Army MEDEVAC story:

“Pasab averages 30 percent of all Category Alpha medevac   missions in RC-South. The medevac crews at Pasab also see the worst injuries as they only respond to urgent medical calls, known as CAT-A missions. These are calls with injuries, such as a multiple amputee patients, that require a response from mission start to medical facility delivery of less than one hour - known as the golden hour.”

This is what we get in return for refurbishing Mullah Omar’s mosque.  We cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel in Afghanistan.  There is a reason. We are not in a tunnel.  We are digging a hole.  This hole is nothing but a grave for our youths who trust that we know more than we do.

At what point do we start calling this murder?

Master Sergeant CJ Grisham claims that he received a Bronze Star with V for combat in Iraq.  His valorous conduct allegedly occurred in 2003.  The following official record, which covers a timeframe extending into 2004, depicts no Bronze Star with V.  Grisham refuses to clear up the contradiction by publishing his hypothetical citation.

Grisham recently stated in Glamour Magazine that he completed a combat tour in Afghanistan.  This claim is false.  He saw no combat in Afghanistan, and Grisham was sent home early after publicly claiming to suffer from mental problems.  Grisham did not complete his tour.  He abandoned his troops.

Grisham later deleted his internet writings about mental problems, and changed his story, claiming that he was involuntarily sent home for skin cancer. Cached versions of his original statements tell the true tale.

Grisham was subjected to several investigations both in Afghanistan, and previous to his deployment. Somehow, he retains his Top Secret clearance. Somehow, he retains his eligibility for promotion to higher rank.

The subject of the Glamour Magazine article was “dating frauds.” Grisham claims to have expertise in catching frauds.

Grisham's record:

The following email came from Mark Safranski subsequent his reading this letter from Colonel (ret.) Harry Tunnell.  The letter.

===Email from Mr. Safranski:===

Interesting, this part in particular:

""A gross lack of concern for subordinates," Tunnell wrote, "manifests itself in guidance that 'zero' civilian casualties are acceptable and coalition soldiers may have to be killed rather than defend themselves against a potential threat and risk being wrong and possibly resulting in injury or death of a civilian."
....Tunnell's memo exhibits particular disdain for British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, commander of NATO forces in Regional Command South, which includes the Arghandab District where Sitton was killed.

It was Carter, Tunnell wrote, whose verbal order led commanders to risk their own troops rather than Afghan civilians – something Sitton complained about two years later in an email to his wife."

Very helpful. I finally get it now.

I was always curious, reading threads [on private listserv] here on Afghanistan, how Colonel Tunnell was able to openly pursue counter-guerrilla operations in Afghanistan when pop-centric COIN was the heavy-handed, top-down and rigidly enforced tactical paradigm; Harry, IMHO, could do this because the *verbal* orders being issued went far beyond FM 3-24 theory into an unauthorized and unofficial but *politically desired* British policing model used in Northern Ireland. A kind of tactical guidance that could not be put in writing and enforced through the UCMJ because the American people would have found that guidance to be politically intolerable and morally outrageous - and rightly so.

Unlike Catholics in Ulster who are subjects of the Crown, Afghans are not American citizens and American soldiers and Marines are not cops in a bad neighborhood. Nor is the Taliban the IRA. Minimizing civilian casualties is a good and worthy goal; valuing political atmospherics over American lives is a sign of gross incompetence, at best.

Hence the anonymous leaks and smears about Harry to politically connected  Beltway scribes instead. Tunnell's superiors were afraid to air their real dispute.

Colonel Tunnell expressed strong opinions here on the Loop [a private Listserv] from time to time and I did not always agree with him or how he was characterizing problems under discussion. As a civilian, I'm not qualified to assess his tactical operations in Afghanistan. What I can say is that Colonel Tunnell has displayed far more character and intellectual honesty than his critics and that he his placed value of the lives of his men above political gamesmanship and careerism.

Best,
Mark
===END email from Mr. Safranski===

The Letter.

A veteran friend made these images yesterday with his iPhone4s.  They were flying off the coast by San Diego training with the U.S. Navy.

If you are young, smart, very fit and want a very tough job, this might be for you.  Probably not, though; they do not take many people.  The work comes with long hours, little pay, it is dangerous, and people constantly ask the pilots if they wanted to fly fighters.  Which is funny to me; that question never crossed my mind, because my many experiences with Pedro were all in combat, either on the ground watching them come in, or flying with them.

If you want to go where the action is, this is it.  There are few jobs that will take you into more hotspots so frequently, and if you make a mistake it is game over.  Even if you do everything right…well…it is combat.  There are few jobs where so much will be expected from you, and if you can’t hang, it is back on the street or off to another job more suitable.

To choose this path is to chose a life filled with incredible experiences.  Good, bad, and ugly.  (The Air Force did not pay me to say this; it is simply true.)

For more.

15 October 2012

Rumor Control is practically an industry within the military.  Some rumors are bad for morale and completely untrue, while others are bad for morale and are completely true.  (Why do most rumors seem to be bad for morale?)

Here is the latest rumor to hit my inbox, from a military email address in Afghanistan.  I have no idea if it is true.

The White House or Pentagon is welcome to confirm or deny:

Hi Michael,

I love reading your work. I also try to encourage as many soldiers and citizens to do the same every chance I get. It’s disappointing that even my fellow soldiers and airmen here at Bastion suffer from Afghanistan news burn-out or news apathy in general. I guess everyone is tired of fighting the longest war in U.S. history.

I’ve been in country since May, 2012. This won’t sound like a long tour for most but this was scheduled to be a quick in-out mission. The bottom line is I’m ready to go back stateside. We were scheduled to leave at the end of September but still have no travel date due to there being a lack of Strat airlift available. This is often the case but I got it on good word today that it’s not the world political climate, hostility all over the region especially Africa that’s holding up the show. It is the presidential election.

Apparently a huge percentage of our C17’s are being pulled for ‘Presidential Duty’ meaning instead of working to airlift troops and equipment in and out of Afghanistan and cover the other global logistics they are hauling the POTUS gear around on the campaign trail. If this is true I’d love someone to bring it to light. I lack the connections to check it out myself especially from here. I hope do hope this is pure rumor. It couldn’t possibly be legal even for the POTUS.  Fraud Waste & Abuse hotline anyone?

I’d think with the Obama campaign raising a record 181M in September they could afford to charter their own cargo planes and leave the military to do what it’s supposed to be doing.

Thanks in advance, love reading your work, especially the one about the recent attack at Bastion Air Base.

XXXX
Bastion AFG

10 October 2012

This is the most stunning and forceful letter I have read from the Afghanistan war.  It was written in 2010 from Afghanistan by Colonel Harry Tunnell, the Brigade Commander of 5/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

After this letter, Colonel Tunnell was investigated and the normal smear campaign unfolded.  Having been embedded with his Brigade in 2010, it became obvious that they were put into a no-win situation, with troops spread over several provinces in Afghanistan.

http://www.alphaphiomega.org/latestnews2_paratrooper.htm

As an example of the higher level lunacy at the time, on the morning of 01 March 2010, a powerful explosion rumbled over Kandahar Airfield.  The Tarnak River Bridge was hit by a vehicle bomb, which blew an MRAP armored vehicle off the bridge.  U.S. Soldier Ian Gelig was killed.

Tarnak River Bridge was closed to operations due to a giant hole when Ian was blown up.

In addition to Ian being dead, that bridge was extremely important and closed.  How did we let that get blown up?  Through the cover-up, I tried to discover how that happened.  The ultimate culprit was Canadian Brigadier General Daniel Menard who later was relieved of command and sent home for having sex with a corporal, after having nearly shot one of our helicopters with his rifle (for which he was fined).  During the night before he let the bridge get blown up, he admitted to having been watching Olympic Hockey about three miles away from the bridge, on Kandahar Airfield, where the HQ was for all the major players on the letter published below.

Who was responsible for security on this key bridge?  Americans had route security up to the bridge from both sides.  Under the bridge was the responsibility of the British RAF.  Canadian General Daniel Menard was responsible for the actual bridge, because he was in command of an American Military Police unit who was mentoring Afghans who were securing the bridge.  And so a British General was in charge of the entire area, and the Canadian general was in charge of a small American unit who was in charge of mentoring Afghans who were in charge of securing this bridge, so important to our operations. You can’t make up nonsense like that.  And that is only the beginning.

Colonel Harry Tunnell does not even bother to mention this incident and command mess in his letter to SecArmy, because on the scale of the insanity, believe it or not, this was peanuts.

Without further narration, please read Colonel Tunnell’s stunning letter.  As far as I can tell, during those times when he mentions things I am familiar with, Colonel Tunnell is completely accurate.

To download and read the entire letter please click the download link below:

Terrain is the single most important factor in combat.

During the early days of the wars, back when everyone seemed to know we had won in Afghanistan, testimonials streamed from the battle zones about how badly the deserts treated our super-gear.

Batman could only dream about the techno-wonders we complained about.  But we pleaded that the high temperatures, moon dust, and that terrible Brownian Motion could be the undoing of our high tech.  (Send more money.)

Yet, no Einstein was required to see that the commotion over climate and dust avoided a few important realities; Iraqis and Afghans have lived there beyond the frayed edges of history, and today their televisions, motorbikes, and cars work, despite the sand and heat.  Their helicopters still fly.  Their AK-47s still burp flames and hot metal.  (Yes, the Taliban really did have high-performance aircraft working.)

Eventually we stopped crying about the gear.  Many of our own training centers are in U.S. deserts, and we have many times fought in deserts, yet somehow we still fielded gear that we said has difficulty in deserts.  (Send more money.)

The truth is that desert terrain and weather have provided the finest moments for gadget warfare.  Any major defense contractor purveying the modern high-tech would want to exhibit them on the perfect stage of Afghanistan, or against the Iraqi Army, so easily detected in wide open spaces, and hit with precision weapons.  Our ships did not face major threats from high-tech missiles, or even basic sea mines, which still in 2012 remain serious threats.

In Afghanistan, what looks so wonderful against a low-tech enemy in made-for-Hollywood terrain will not shine brightly in triple-canopy jungles, or even in the dense forests of the Appalachians, or in the thick Florida swamps.   Deserts are the last place to complain about our gear.

This dispatch is not an attempt to perturb military policy.  Shelves of books already have been written by more qualified others, spanning many wars and generations.  If performance is any measure, they did little good.

Yet it is vital to put some of these recent observations on paper while the memories remain fresh.  These notes will not help the current military, any more than reading glasses and books will help an illiterate Afghan farmer who for seventy years has been set in his ways.  But they may be of some use to rare historians, and the curious, who years later, wonder why we fumbled so in Afghanistan.  These notes might be of value to some as-yet unborn commander, and provide insight to our political and military failure against enemies who easily should have been defeated.

This dispatch is not comprehensive.   It represents a weekend of effort.  A small donation for posterity.

With some exceptions, the Afghanistan battlefields are mostly treeless, even bald.  Advanced optics of many sorts can see for miles.  Today, some optics are outfitted with software to highlight potential targets.  So, there you are, using a thermal imager, when a little box appears.   It draws your attention away from the warm haystack, to something manlike under sparse trees.  Not only does the imager enhance the eyes; it also tells us where to look, and the precise coordinates of the object of attention.

Ghor Province, Afghanistan

At night, low humidity, crystal-clear skies, and practically zero light pollution allows operators to easily identify targets.

The logistics to Afghanistan are hard, expensive, and fraught with international politics.  But after the supplies land in Afghanistan—especially in the south where most fighting occurs—logistics become easy (if still wildly expensive due to aircraft and fuel costs).  Much of the supplies are parachuted to minor bases, or delivered by helicopter, or by trucks, which often are destroyed.  The major bases have large runways.  All of our ammunition and sensitive items are flown into Afghanistan.  I once flew from Kuwait to Bagram on a C-17 (costing about $200m per) with a full load of 155mm ammunition.

We have created a virtual (if small) country within Afghanistan.  Our virtual country is completely electrified except at tiny outposts.  Most of the troops and contractors have running hot water, sewerage systems, and on some bases, pizza delivery and laundry service.  There is WiFi, cell phone service, excellent gyms and many if not most troops who deploy to Afghanistan actually gain weight.  (This is untrue for combat troops, who often skinny up.)  There is FedEx and DHL at the major bases.  Helicopters or trucks deliver mail to minor bases.

Most Afghans have no electricity.  Their villages are dark.  Our bases stand out like spaceships in the night.  The Afghans have asked for years why we are able to quickly electrify our bases, but cannot electrify a village just outside the wire.  They only expect these things because they were promised.

For years, we said we had to guard Kajaki Dam because the Taliban would destroy it.  Which makes no sense.  The Taliban controlled the dam for years and never destroyed it; their opium farms depend on it, and they hope to have electricity from it.  The Taliban had eliminated opium before we came.  They outlawed the dancing boys, and executed people for raping boys and girls.  Yes, they were savage.  Afghanistan is savage no matter who is in charge.  President Karzai supported a law that allows a man to starve his wife if she refuses sex.  Afghanistan still forces girls to marry men who rape them.

We also said the Taliban will destroy the electrical posts and lines, but this also is untrue.  This brief combat video was shot by me, miles down from Kajaki, in the area of Sangin, in Helmand Province.

I had just walked under and photographed this power line in enemy-controlled terrain when we came under machine-gun fire. We say that the Taliban destroy the power lines, but it is a lie: we generate the electricity, and they charge people for it, and the Taliban like electricity. The Taliban are the power company executives; we work for them. If we really wanted to damage the Taliban, we would blow up Kajaki Dam. Instead, we guard and maintain it, and slave for the Taliban who uses the water to grown their opium.

There were plenty of power lines in the area that were completely controlled by the Taliban.  There are only glimpses of power lines in the video, but it is a fact that the Taliban were not destroying them.  The video was a composite from different firefights; during the ambush in the open, the two Javelin missiles were used in panic.  One shot hit the dirt, which at first I thought must be a hidden position.  But video would prove that it was just dirt in the wide open.  The second hit the generator.  We had no air support because there was a bigger fight going on nearby, and we could hear and see that they needed the Apaches and the rest more than we did.

After shattering some small rocks with the first Javelin (he had two missiles), the Soldier used the Javelin thermal (CLU) and locked his gates onto the heat source from a generator.  He and the Soldiers in this image were covering the half I was with, while we ran out of the giant kill zone.  The Javelin man launched a top-down attack, making an impressive fireball.  Nobody knew what caused the fireball until the villagers (from the place where the gunfire was coming) came to base demanding payment for the generator.

The Taliban seem to think we are their retarded little toys; they shoot us, and blow us up, and then demand we pay for their stuff, which we do.  Sometimes the Taliban seem to pity us.  Rich, ignorant suckers.  The power lines in this dispatch are safely under complete [Taliban] control.

During fighting, combat air support is seldom more than a few minutes away, and helicopter resupply is so certain in Kandahar and Helmand that even a brief contact from the enemy can result in massive return fire.  In this brief firefight, we saw approximately a quarter of a million dollars’ worth (depending on which price you cite) of Javelin used to destroy some rocks and a generator.  This cost does not include operator training, transport to Afghanistan, and then the helicopter flight to the outpost.  More return fire could have been accomplished with RPGs for maybe a hundred bucks.

U.S. and British troops on foot missions sometimes unleash just to lighten the load.  Americans are far worse at this than British.  Courageous helicopter pilots—at risk of being shot down—will deliver “speedball” resupply on call, and the troops on the ground are easy to find.  The pilots can put the speedball at your feet.  American troops in Vietnam were notorious for doing the same.

This ain’t the jungle, and the Taliban are not bristling with surface-to-air missiles, and so the airspace is relatively safe, above small-arms range.  Occasionally, the enemy uses surface-to-air missiles with success, and they have learned to reasonably match our night vision gear by using cheap cameras set to night mode.  We use all sorts of IR beacons that the enemy can see with simple cameras.

For us, targets are easy to identify and mark by air or ground.  We even have pricey GPS-guided mortars and artillery that can hit a parked car from miles away on the first strike.  Using such gear would be far more difficult in a Louisiana bayou.  If we were in a jungle or swamp, the apparent thousands of Javelin missiles that we and allies have fired in Afghanistan would often be impossible to bring to bear.  The Javelins are great missiles, when they work, but we use them as fly swatters.

The taxpayers are generous and we waste that generosity self-righteously, with a massive sense of entitlement, which mostly is kept hidden with good PR, and willful blindness from those who foot the bills.

To dare spare any and all expense on the troops is seen as tantamount treason.  Some years ago, there was a groundswell to supply troops with inferior body armor called Dragon Skin.  The rally cry was that Dragon Skin was more expensive and therefore must be better, and that the military refused to buy it because it was more expensive.

The reality was that Dragon Skin was far more expensive, and far inferior to competitors.  After trying Dragon Skin, which some people were buying for loved ones deployed, I refused to wear it in combat, and sold mine.  To the Pentagon’s credit, the procurement system worked and the military did not cave to demands to buy the inferior Dragon Skin.  The system is not totally broken.  There really is some fine gear in use, but the failures are maddening, and this tendency to spare no expense is often used in commission of wanton waste.

In September 2011, I made video of a nearby U.S. strike using 12 GMLRS rockets.  The Soldiers had to wait for well over a day—in a very dangerous area where two friendly fatalities (1 U.S., 1 ANA) occurred over two days.  Finally came the rockets.  About $2 million worth.  Their actual cost would be far more if counting air transportation to Afghanistan, and other enormous associated costs, such as maintenance and specialized crews.  While approval for the strike was on hold in Kabul, about 120 men waited as sitting ducks.  (Many were Afghan Soldiers.)

The target: probably a few hundred dollars’ worth of ammonium nitrate. There were no enemy personnel on target.  There were no civilians anywhere around.  The target could have been hit within half an hour with a single bomb that already was under someone’s wing.  Sometimes you get the impression that the choice of weapons—which was made in Kabul, hundreds of miles away—has nothing to do with the tactical realities.

On that particular mission – there was nothing special about it other than that it will be memorialized here – given that we came in and went out by helicopters, and took a U.S. fatality and one ANA killed, and the extreme costs of wasting Soldiers’ time in Afghanistan, it is not unrealistic to guess that that strike cost at least ten million dollars, or likely far more.  There is no way to account for it, but we know that we were burning money at the bonfire of insanity, including a risky nighttime resupply halfway through by CH-47.

It has been estimated that it costs about $1 million to keep a U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan for one year. Let’s make a jagged stab at accounting for that mission, including some of the support, planning, and execution that went into it.  Let’s argue that 400 people spent 10 days on it, or 4,000 man days.  There was pre-mission planning that lasted weeks for some.  Execution.  And reset.  So 10 days is safe.  (Not including the many aircraft that supported us.)  Most of the Soldiers involved with the mission did not actually go on it; they were support.  That’s about $11 million, plus the $2 million for missiles, not to mention the aircraft, and the peanuts paid as death gratuity for the killed Soldier.

For what?  A few hundred pounds of fertilizer. For every dollar we cost the enemy, we probably waste thousands.

It must cost at least a billion dollars to deploy an infantry battalion to Afghanistan for a year.  It is hard to imagine it costing less.  And this can never account for the casualties on both sides, the worn out and destroyed gear, and the suicide bomber and opium warehouse that has grown under our perceived wisdom.  The Afghans, including in most of the worst places, have continuously demonstrated that they will welcome people and protect those who are helping, and they will resist those that they see as invaders.  We would do the same.

Earlier in 2011, members of 4-4 Cav were making the normal war porn video of an impending airstrike of an enemy position.  The F-18 was amazingly on target.  The bomb can be heard roaring in, and then it exploded in the middle of the small base, just behind our Soldiers.  It’s all on video.  Amazingly, none of our guys were killed, but as I recall from comments (I was not there), two or three Afghan Soldiers completely disappeared.  Even more amazing was that the bomb was right on (the wrong) target, and nearly everyone survived to fight another day.  This little instance is representative of the war on whole.  We are bombing ourselves.

In Afghanistan, low population density of man and beast—along with predictable life patterns—creates minimal bio-distractions.  Few Afghans cruise around at all hours.  At night, they mostly stay home, or during certain moon phases they work their fields.

As mentioned, few villages have lights.  This reduction of randomness allows our sensors to spend more quality time on easily seeable potential targets, while wasting little on chasing battlefield noise.  In every way, the signal-to-noise ratio in Afghanistan strongly favors the signal.  But even with that low ratio, during broad daylight in perfect conditions, we saw the Javelin fired into the dirt, and minutes later, another Javelin fired into the generator.  The broad daylight strike by an F-18 on our own base, which never hit the news.  Every time I asked about the F-18 strike, I heard “Investigation is not over yet.”  

How did we put a bomb into the middle of a known and established base?  Given the importance of using F-18s in Afghanistan, the investigation should not waste months of time.  I never did find out what happened, other than that a giant moon crater was put into the middle of a firebase, and that months later they still were wasting time with the report.

The only high noise ratio is coming from our military and civilian leadership.

A-10 Warthogs, Apaches, Predators, and others regularly patrol and fight right here, yet the enemy attacks continue: imagine this as jungle. See this image in high resolution.

In Afghanistan, few fights occur in urban areas.  In rural areas, our radar and other sensors can positively detect the enemy from so many miles away that the enemy has no idea we are watching.  This allows us to hit illiterate teenagers with wildly expensive missiles.

A couple years ago, I went on a mission.  The day before, we’d had a sniper team watching our route to the village.  Some teenagers started digging near the road and were killed.  Turned out they were digging roots of some sort.  The village was so remote that our side believed there was no OPSEC violation.  In other words, the villagers did not know we were coming.  It was said that Americans had never visited the village before.  On our first house call, we accidentally shot some teenagers.  Sorry about the kids.  If that village was not enemy before, it became so after that.

We have outfitted ourselves and our training around fighting in wide-open spaces that completely favor us.   In the jungle, the moon is seldom in favor of gadget warfare; the sun’s reflection hardly touches the ground.  Even with the greatest sensors, the jungles can be black holes at night.  Afghanistan deserts exaggerate our night advantages while jungles can erase them, while exaggerating enemy advantages that depend on man, not machine.

Over the past many decades, we often have fought third-world farmers.  In Afghanistan, it is safe to posit that we mostly are fighting small farmers.  Many of them have no idea that 9/11 ever happened.  They were not our enemies before we came.

During one mission, we took over a farmer’s compound.  He was farming grapes, and his harvest was out drying as raisins in the sun.  Much ammunition had been fired in firefights, and we needed food and water and ammo, and when the CH-47 came that night it blew away much of his raisins.  If the farmer was not the enemy before, he became so the next morning.

During another mission in the same area, there was a firefight and an enemy tracer (maybe from his brother for all we know) ricocheted into the compound into the farmer’s hay.  Before it was over, the hay was destroyed.  Our guys did not set the hay on fire, but it only happened because we were there.  If he was not an enemy before, he became so after that.

Farmers the world around are conservative in every sense. Politically and in action.  A wild-eyed farmer with a tendency to roll the dice would soon starve.  Third-world farmers stick with what works.

Afghan grape farmers do not have the University of Florida showing them better ways to grow fruit.  They do what their granddaddy did.  They fight the same way, because it works, and even today, Afghans use the same ambush spots that have been used for generations.  And if a bomb killed an American in one spot eight years ago, you can bet that that spot likely has a bomb today, and it probably killed a Russian there decades ago.  A statistical analysis of bomb strikes might reveal that in some cases, the same spot killed a half dozen Americans over the years.

They use the same old tricks.  A retired Marine EOD specialist recently told me that every year we lose roughly a half dozen troops to the flag trick.  The Taliban plant a flag.  Troops see it, they want it for a trophy, and they die.

Farmers are tuned in to the land and sky, and they don’t need ephemeris to know what the light will be like that night.  In Afghanistan, our less technologically endowed enemies often mitigate our night advantages by conducting major ground attacks during advantageous lunar phases, such as around the new moon, or after the moon sets and before the sunrise.

The famous Battle of Wanat in 2008 is an example.  The moon had been bright, but had set at about 1 A.M., giving the attackers time to get into position under blackness.  They launched at about 0420, roughly an hour before sunrise.  Common sense tactics that predate gunpowder.

Other examples of well-planned ground attacks include the 2012 strike at the Spozhmai Hotel in Afghanistan, or the horrific Mumbai attacks of 2008, over in India.  These and many other major ground attacks often unfold around a new moon, or after moonset, unless there is a specific target of opportunity, or special date or anniversary.  The point is that the simple enemy uses the moon for night vision, and for cover.  The only wild card with the moon is the weather, but then that also affects our sensors.

We are especially in favor of anything that is mind-bogglingly expensive.  Take this example of the billions of dollars wasted developing simple uniforms:

“Between 2003 and 2010, the Army spent more than $4 billion developing and producing a new camouflage uniform, the Army Combat Uniform (ACU). It decided on the camouflage pattern before testing was completed. And it began providing the uniform to troops before its Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center finished its evaluation and recommended a different pattern, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Friday.

“In 2009, an Army study found the ACU ‘offered less effective concealment than the patterns chosen by the Marine Corps and some foreign military services, such as Syria and China,’ according to the GAO report.”

NASA sends probes to other planets for less, and NASA is not exactly known for miserly spending.  In 2011, the fancy uniforms were falling apart:

Why after a solid decade of war can’t the Pentagon field britches? 

This would be like putting the Curiosity down safely on Mars, only to watch a wheel fall off because someone used the wrong sized bolts, and nobody noticed.  We can’t be serious about these uniforms.

People have worn clothes for thousands of years, and yet the Army sends pants to war that fall apart.  This substandard uniform rips open even in favorable, dry conditions when there are perfect laundry facilities on the bases.  What are we going to do in jungles with no laundry?

There was a time when the Army’s seal of approval on boots probably meant you had a great pair of boots.  These days, I would ignore Army gear and head for the North Face catalogue.  Outdoorsmen no longer care what the Army thinks about gear.  Soldiers, when they are allowed, use civilian boots, magazines, and countless other items that are substandard in the military inventory.

Please excuse my tone.  This is for posterity, which historians can read long after we all are gone.

MRAP fell off the tracks in Zabul Province. We were in a perfect ambush spot. Luckily, the enemy was not on its game this day. They must have been having tea. Also, our recovery men were quick and on their job, so they righted the truck and we got out before getting pelted with RPGs from the hills. This thing rolled over in broad daylight with no enemy in sight. Happens all the time.

Even if the camouflage uniforms were invisibility cloaks, we cannot hide.  We spent tens of billions of dollars on our giant MRAP trucks, which stand as tall as African elephants.  African elephants are the heaviest land animals on earth.  The MRAP weighs more than three times an average adult.

Unlike agile elephants, MRAPs are like gigantic turtles that can hardly leave the roads.  Sometimes they leave the roads by just falling off of them, something I have never seen happen with a car.  You are just driving down the road and suddenly the MRAP rolls off because it collapses the surface.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did a great job of bashing the system on the head and getting the MRAPs fielded in record time, but then we took it too far and used them for missions for which they were not designed, and they have replaced most other battlefield land transport for combat units.

Overloaded "jingle trucks" (so called because they jingle when driving) are more agile than MRAPs.

The Pentagon loves to tout MRAP’s bomb resistance.  They better be resistant!  Predicting MRAP routes is little more difficult than predicting trains.  Paradoxically, by making them more bomb-resistant, we make them more bomb-prone.

Surely, it takes more explosives and effort to destroy an MRAP with a bomb, but it takes little to blow out the tires, or block it and destroy it with recoilless rifles or fire.  The Pentagon only advertises the part about it withstanding the bomb, while avoiding how easily the enemy stops the MRAP, and then hits the dismounts with other bombs.  That we know their tactics does not mean they stop working.  The enemy knows we use airstrikes, but they still work.

Heck, nobody needs enemy to stop an MRAP.  Too frequently they stop spontaneously with mechanical problems, or they get stuck in mud puddles.  They are so tall that occupants sometimes get electrocuted by power lines.  They are so top-heavy that they roll frequently, and so heavy that they often crumble rural roads, or flop over into irrigation ditches, where the occupants drown.

In 2010, I heard a distant explosion and turned to see the mushroom cloud.  A car bomb had just hit an MRAP on a bridge, blowing the MRAP off the bridge, killing a U.S. Soldier and wounding others.  Luckily they landed in a dry spot.

Bomb-resistant does not mean attack-resistant, and they are not really bomb-resistant; Iraqis could take them out with the small EFPs, but luckily the Afghans seldom use them.  The 82mm recoilless rifle, common in Afghanistan, will take it out instantly.

It is as if we have invented a shotgun-resistant pigeon, and we force the pigeons to walk down the roads.  The pigeons can now take a shotgun blast, but they no longer can fly, so the hunter just shoots them twice and kicks them into a ditch.

British Soldier with Ghurka in jungle in Brunei

Despite that deserts favor wizardry, we somehow are managing toss out our advantages.  Thick jungles, on the other hand, favor man, not machine.  As one retired SAS soldier likes to say, “The jungle is the great equalizer.”

In jungles, much of our gear will not work, or only with low efficacy.  So forget the gear.  But our troops spend huge amounts of time training with techno-gear, and not enough time on basics.  Ask ten combat troops to find north using the stars on a clear night, and most of them cannot find it.  An Afghan farmer can find it in five seconds.

You will have no problem finding thousands of U.S. troops who spent weeks in expensive parachute training, at great costs, when parachuting is not part of their jobs.  In our badge-hunting culture, this waste is sold around confidence building (which can as readily be done in other ways that actually increase core proficiencies).  You will find no problems listening to special operations people who complain about spending so much time parachuting, when they practically never parachute into combat, wasting time on high-flying stuff instead of simple tactics.  The Taliban never parachute.  This is a good thing; they might buy old airplanes and parachute suicide attacks into our bases.

A jungle warfare instructor in Brunei recounted how one of our most elite commando units, from Fort Bragg, got lost in the Borneo jungle during combat tracking training.  Their GPS systems did not work under the triple canopy.  They reverted to the analog compass and map—something that they should be expert at—and got lost.

Jungles absorb or mask all usable electromagnetic wavelengths. How will we navigate after a cyber or other attack on our GPS system?

In Afghanistan, much of the fighting occurs in tree cover no denser than pomegranate groves, which for a point of reference, is about as thick as untrimmed orange grove or apple orchard.  The MRAPs cannot go in there, and so our guys wear spine-crushing gear in sauna-like conditions.  The humidity in the Afghan deserts is normally low, but under those trees the humidity and heat will knock a fit man down.  Many of the jungles are like this day and night.  While the enemy is less armored, he is more agile and mobile, so he has more stamina and hit-and-run power.

In Afghanistan, we sent troops into rough mountains, against men who are half mountain goat, while wearing heavy body armor.  Later we abandoned outposts that earlier we had touted as crucial.  After we retreated, we said they were not that important, and the Taliban staked their flags and made the videos.

Great navigation, control and situational awareness gear: But we cannot rely on this after a cyber 9/11, or electromagnetic attack, or even in a jungle.

As for the smaller whiz-bang stuff, in jungles, night vision gear (NVG) will often become worthless.  Vegetation often is so close that anything that you might spot is already close enough to smell or even spit on.

Even in good conditions, thermals work only so-so in the jungle, and not all of the time, and then often only at close range.  The Javelin missiles we love in Afghanistan will be outclassed by simple RPGs in the jungle.  Again, by the time that something is close enough to see, you are standing on it.  Or it is standing on you.

Six Harriers destroyed, two badly damaged, two Marines killed, after enemy made it by all of our sensors and onto the flight line. (This image from neighboring Kandahar Airfield; the attack was in Helmand.)

In heavy vegetation, IED jammers are not useful because the enemy cannot see far enough to use command-detonated IEDs.  As in Vietnam, IEDs will mostly be victim-operated, and in many places, nearly impossible to search for with anything other than your eyes and tactical experience.

High-hot conditions are a problem for UAVs and other aircraft in Afghanistan. These things can survive only in uncontested airspace, and will be of little help in jungle.

UAVs are useless in many circumstances with thick vegetation, and whereas we are blessed with mostly clear skies over Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, jungles are often covered with clouds.  Not that the clouds matter; the optics cannot see through vegetation.

As for helicopters, Kiowa Warriors and Apache gunships that provide so much cover in southern Afghanistan will be largely negated in jungles.  In the mountainous regions, they have little stamina.  They will not see the jungle floor under triple canopy or thick forests.  Our Vietnam veterans can fill in the blanks on this.  They already have in many of the books I have read.

In Afghanistan, we have worn out our less than 100 HH-60G helicopters used by Air Force “Pedro,” which at more than $40m per aircraft are strategic assets.  We wore them out while they took up slack from Army Dustoff MEDEVAC, aircraft that cost about 1/4th the cost of an HH-60G.  I have flown on missions with Pedro that amounted to little more than milk runs for patients who were in no danger, at bases that were secure.  This would be like the Post Office delivering mail using Ferraris.  The closer you look, the less sense it makes.

If the Post Office determined that it wants to raise stamp prices to $10 per letter, we would become suspicious of their spending wisdom because we know it can be done for less.  But when the military does it, we cow down to their omniscience and right to our last drop of gold, and we write the check.

We send the Dustoff helicopters on MEDEVAC missions, often requiring Apache escort, simply because we refuse to remove the Red Crosses and put machine guns on the Dustoff birds.  This causes MEDEVAC delays, and requires more fuel and helicopter support when we are perpetually short of helicopters in Afghanistan.  Fuel can cost literally hundreds of dollars per gallon.  At that price, how much does it cost to even start an Apache?

Our Army lies, claiming that it must wear the Red Crosses in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, when anyone who is tracking on the facts knows this is untrue, and in fact that we perpetually violate the GC in our method of use of the Red Cross.  We are as guilty as the enemy for using ambulances to deliver military resupply.  Don’t let anyone kid you on that.  We go nuts when the enemy uses ground ambulances to deliver supplies during combat, yet we do the same with helicopters.  If we simply remove the Red Crosses and add guns, all tactical, legal, and moral obligations would be met, and we would save lives and money.

UAV at Kandahar Airfield

Under jungle canopy, the satellites are not entirely useless: they can help predict the weather, and help with communications.  But you still need a line-of-sight gap in jungle canopy, and it must align with a satellite or relay aircraft.

In jungles, tactical communications will be impaired.  Even during broad daylight, a company commander can have a hard time controlling his platoons, and platoon leaders struggle to control their squads.  The jungle can be so thick that just a short distance away, friendly forces will be invisible even in daylight.

Jungles abhor American gadget warfare, and strongly favor people who live there.

UAVs cannot spot or laser-designate targets that are under jungle canopy

In the open spaces of Afghanistan, highly trained snipers with whiz-bang stuff can kill enemy a mile away.  Deep in the jungles, a far shot might be fifty meters.

Personal weapons: the lasers and gadgets stuck to rifle rails are deadweight with batteries.  They get caught in endless wait-a-minute vines.  It can be better to strip off the gadgetry, and to use iron sights, but many of our troops these days are no longer comfortable with iron sights.

In the jungle, many tactical firefights will be at close range, as they were in urban combat of Iraq, and as they were in Vietnam jungles.  It will often be hard to see targets even in broad daylight.  Gun gadgets offer serious advantages in Afghanistan, as they did in Iraq, but in jungle, surgical accuracy can be less important than reliability and power.

Stryker in Kandahar Province, 2010.

Who has the real advantage?  The guys riding elephants, or the guys riding horses?

Most IEDs in Afghanistan are made using these ubiquitous yellow jugs.

Despite all our new gadgetry, Americans should be under no illusions about America’s ability to fight in the jungles and swamps of Africa, Asia or anywhere.  If anything, we are less capable now than ever before.

While our young people are playing video games, their young counterparts in jungles and deserts around the globe can navigate using the stars, the sun, or the flight of birds.  They can go for months without comfort and never notice, because they are comfortable.  They look poor, and they may seem uneducated, but these people are part of the terrain.  To underestimate them is to die.

We have heard the lies that we never lost a tactical engagement in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.  This goes against all common sense, and simple experience for those who truly fought there.  We lost tactical engagements every week—and in fact probably every day—when IEDs destroy elephant trucks and wound and kill troops and the enemy gets away cold.

We lost nearly an entire Marine squadron of Harriers, just weeks ago.  The idea that we do not lose tactical engagements in Afghanistan is fantasy island.  How did we lose an entire war, as in Vietnam, without losing a single battle?  It’s all a lie.

But Americans in denial will say of Vietnam, “That was just a policing action.”  Vietnam was a war that left about 60,000 Americans dead, along with perhaps a million others, and demonstrated fully that America could be defeated on the battlefield, which contributed to our current war in Afghanistan.

For our part, instead of using our gear to accentuate the use of basic tactics, we use it as a crutch to replace basics, and it is obviously not working.

After thousands of years, terrain remains the single most important factor in combat.  We drifted away from the basics, bought into the wow factor, and are being beaten by farmers using tactics as old as war.

From Chiang Mai

In the Leftwing corner, wearing black, weighing very little, hailing from Africa, or Indonesia, or maybe Hawaii, nobody really knows, the undisputed Champion, Beeeetllle Obammmma!

In the Rightwing corner, wearing reddish-brown, weighing more that Beetle Obama, the challenger, a Mormon and white guy, Buug Romnnneyyy!

Romney is the favorite because he’s not Obama, and he is bigger and more powerful.  These matches often are settled by the victor severing the head of the opponent, and literally eviscerating him on stage. This is a Siam beetle death match.  There are no real rules.  Winner take all.

ROUND 1:

Ding ding
Fight’s on!

The smaller, more aggressive Obama, is quicker and more agile.  Obama wastes no time.  He rushes over to the larger Romney, and captures Romney in a dangerous side-horn-hold, pinning Romney’s first and second right legs.  With two out of six legs pinned, Romney is vulnerable to a lift and slam. Obama leverages his six smaller legs against the four legs that Romney keeps on the log.

And lift!  Within 30 seconds of the first round, the smaller Obama has executed a beetle lift!  The crowd is going crazy for the champion.

Obama can be heard saying something into Romney’s beetle ear, and Romney is plainly heard screaming, “PUT ME DOWN You Nanny state ninny!”  The referee warns Romney against name-calling, and signals the judges to take a point for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Obama screams, “I’ll put you down you rich pig!”  And slams Romney to the log.  The crowd is going crazy!  Inexplicably, the referee does not penalize Obama for using the same language for which he penalized Romney.

The crowd is going wild!

Ding ding

The bell rings ending round 1.

And now we have a camera issue, and the bell rings for round 2!  And so this round is like old black and white radio broadcasts.

Again, the quicker Obama rushes out and tries to pin Romney, but this time Romney deflects the attack and whacks Obama with his beetle horn.  Obama is stunned, as Romney methodically pushes Obama backwards around the log.  Obama’s beetle legs are tiring, and he turns and makes a run for it, but reaches the end of the log and finds no place to go.

He turns to face Romney who is carefully moving forward.  Romney seems wary that the quicker Obama can outflank him and execute another lift and slam.  Romney keeps his horn lined up on Obama’s, while Obama feints with sudden rushes and retreats, trying to draw Romney into a lunge which would allow Obama to flank him.

With no escape possible, Obama attacks, but Romney, using his overwhelming strength, pins Obama and goes for Obama’s head.  He is about to pinch off Obama’s head!

Ding ding!

The coach in Obama’s corner rings the bell early.  Unprecedented!  Both coaches grab their beetles by the horns and lift them in the air.

Obama’s handler examines him for wounds, while Romney’s manager does the same.  Both corners say their beetles are wounded.  Both signal they are ready to fight round 3.

Ding ding.  Round 3

Obama and Romney lock horns, and Romney quickly gains the advantage and goes for a head pinch and Obama’s corner throws in the towel!

The fight is over.

Both sides, inexplicably, call it a draw.  The Obama side kindly complains that Romney is bigger, and the Romney side apologizes for being bigger.  (They really did.)

A rematch is scheduled for next Tuesday.

Face of our Broken Army, and the Taliban's Best Friend

Grisham contacted a lawyer today, who contacted me.  This must be hitting home.  So let’s keep exposing what has gone wrong with our Army.

General (ret.) Barry McCaffrey warned us many times over the years that we are breaking the Army.  Today, it appears that we have passed that point.  Our signal-to-noise ratio now favors the noise.

The Taliban hardly needs to dress up like American Soldiers to hit our jets when enough real Soldiers do worse, all on official business.  The Army pretends to have the luxury of sending liabilities to Afghanistan who have little better to do than post on Facebook, play at being journalists, and then claim to be under combat stress.  Meanwhile, real combat troops go toe-to-toe with the Taliban 24/7.

One day, in 2011, Master Sergeant Grisham arrived at his safe desk on the giant base of Kandahar Airfield.  Someone had tied a balloon with a smiley face in front of his computer.  Maybe they were trying to rescue him from the doldrums of the nearby boardwalk, with its coffee shops, pizza joints, TGI-Friday’s, and the French Bakery on the corner.  (It’s all there.)

This video shows Master Sergeant C.J. Grisham during his “combat” tour playing with his happy ball:

Direct Download link.

The guy never left base.  Grisham saw zero combat.

In another video, Grisham bullies a Senior Citizen who appears to be about three times his age.  It would have been a sight to see a young combat Marine happen upon Grisham bullying an older gentleman.

After bullying this gentlemen, who must be at least 90 years, as seen here, Grisham received numerous bad responses.  Note: Grisham has many times stated that he believes that “faggots” and women are unfit for combat:

isaacdandn

this faggot doesnt have the resume to stand to this ww2 vet hahah he should relise afghanastan and iraq are nothing compared to what they faced in the ww2

chcknhawk [GRISHAM]

Well, I'll just turn your own words on you. this isaacdandn faggot doesn't have the resume to stand to this Iraq and Afghanistan vet. hahah. You should realize that your living room is nothing compared to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Grisham fails to mention that he was shipped home months early from his cushy office and happy balloon on Kandahar Airfield, after complaining of pressure from superiors.  (Is this balloon indicative of the office stress he was referring to?)

The Army permits their guy to wear a uniform and publish such things.  This makes Grisham an Army spokesman, though this is not his official job.  Army spokesman Grisham is wont to fill my inbox with emails such as this:

“First of all, I have to say ‘fuck off!’  Actually, that's ALL I have to say for myself.  What do you have to say for being a complete douche bag tool?  Are you insinuating something or just trying to get me to fellate you?...”

Why do guys who so harp on “faggots” so often make homoerotic statements?  Grisham’s friend, Uncle Jimbo, from Blackfive, once emailed, “Do you really want to bump dicks with me?”

These weird, homoerotic emails introducing thoughts of man-sex are…weird. It is sickening that these mibloggers keep proposing sex.   They seem to think about man-sex constantly, something that crosses my mind about as often as turtle-sex.  And so when these guys keep mentioning man-sex, it blasts off the page.  Why are you always bringing up turtle sex!?  I don’t want to be part of Grisham’s or Jimbo’s fantasies, but it might be good if they exchange email addresses and get to know one another better.

Whatever the case, if Grisham made a come-on like that to a female Soldier, saying “Are you insinuating something or just trying to get me to fellate you?” he might come up on charges.  She would only have to FORWARD that to her commander. But I am just a writer so never mind.

How can we expect guys like Grisham to intimidate the Chinese or the Iranians?  They’ll laugh harder than the Taliban are laughing, while our real and capable troops are used as political pawns, and fundraising props for the likes Soldiers’ Angels.

While I was trying to highlight the serious combat troops on the Afghan battlefields in 2010 and 2011, Grisham and his cronies would contact units I was writing about.  Soldiers’ Angels trustee Matt Burden used his website to undermine coverage for combat troops.  It is a fact that Soldiers’ Angels funneled money to at least one family member, and incurred thousands of dollars in bank overdraft fees.  With all those millions of dollars flying around, and the jetsetting Angels, it is a wonder they have time for me.  Money is the wind beneath their wings.

Grisham was a favorite of Soldiers’ Angels.  They used his mouth and uniform to raise money, and therefore had a vested interest in bolstering his reputation.  He was the guy with the bell and the bucket.

In 2011, Grisham’s subterfuge led to a physical altercation.  A captain in Grisham’s club barged into my tent in Zhari—I had never met the captain before (or Grisham), and did not know the captain’s name or that he existed until that moment.  This guy was from a Civil Affairs unit.  Again, bad recruiting.

Grisham and the Captain -- a reservist who is a cop at home -- were Facebook buddies, and despite that I was pouring good press on 4-4Cav, they would stop at nothing to stop it.  That’s right.  These U.S. soldiers sabotaged good press that a combat unit was getting.  I was forced to leave, and instead of writing about combat troops, I was dealing with the likes of Grisham, and their man-sex fantasies.

Physical threats and contact from the Army raises matters to a different level.  A physical altercation in the U.S. is serious business.  In a combat zone, physical altercations are grave moments.  Misunderstandings can end poorly.  This is not kindergarten.  Armed men should not pretend that they are unarmed and that this is a sandbox or normal interaction.

That captain -- Grisham’s Facebook buddy -- was Civil Affairs.  We expect CA to make the Pashtuns fall in love with us, or at least tolerate us without planting bombs.  An idea behind CA is to create conditions that allow intelligence networks to germinate.  Specifically not part of the CA job is to spontaneously pick fights with writers they never met, who one year later are still writing about it.  We should not recruit people who are that dull and emotionally unstable, and certainly not officers.

When they treat an American writer like this – one who exercises recourse -- imagine what happens to Afghans when the cameras are off.  My recourse is ink.  Pashtun recourse is snipers and bombs.  For every letter and punctuation mark in this dispatch, there were more than two bomb events in Afghanistan last year.  That does not included firefights, rockets, Green on Blue attacks, other insider attacks, jets destroyed, and helicopters shot down.

Our Army is recruiting and retaining too much crud, while too many of the best troops leave, even during this hard economy.

Too many of our criminal-acting guys are turning friends into opponents, and neutral Afghans into blood-enemies.  These people should be removed from uniform.

The asinine actions of people like Grisham and that captain translate into death and destruction for people who actually go to combat.  They translate into little or no media coverage, which translates into our government being able to misuse and abuse troops.

There were about 16,000 Afghanistan bomb events in 2011.  Yet we had zero – ZERO – HUMINT sources in Zhari in 2011.  Grisham the HUMINT guy and his unit, were too busy with balloons and Facebook to get anything done or develop sources.  The coward never left base.

Please let that soak in.  Zhari was one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, yet we had zero HUMINT sources.  Grisham and buddies were too busy writing man-sex fantasy, and complaining about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, while insulting civilians and demanding respect for their military service.

Meanwhile, Army guy Grisham has become a burden even to Soldiers’ Angels.  That is tough to do.  He had been raising money for Soldiers’ Angels, yet recently they seemed to have scrubbed their website of his name, and he stopped raising money for SA.  They have become mutual liabilities.

The stench is horrible.  The road kill that Grisham has become stinks so horribly that the vultures at Soldiers’ Angels will no longer touch him.

SA founder, Patti Patton Bader, emailed this to me in August after getting caught funneling $75,000 in start-up money to a t-shirt company partially owned by her son Brandon:

“You are lying you fake, Brandon did not get the money for himself, it was for tshirts, Brandon was not the only one in company and it was fully disclosed YOU LIED AS YOU ALWAYS DO, by twisting and turning and the worst of it is, you think you are doing good, in a way you are donations are UP because of you so Thank you again. You lose Michael because we do what we say we do, if it is even close to something the public should know we disclose it. You are nothing but a coward.”

Such venom.  Who would have known that vultures have fangs?

General McCaffrey was right.  The Army is broken.  It is dying.  It is attracting flies.  It is time that we end this war, cleanse ourselves from the vultures, annotate our lessons, and rebuild our Army before we face a truly serious enemy.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair recently was sent home from Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.  Sinclair was charged by our own military with forcible sodomy (rape), inappropriate sexual relations with several female subordinates, multiple counts of adultery, stealing government money, and the list goes on.

While it is almost true in America that a man is considered innocent—in the eyes of the law—until proven guilty, the extraordinary charges made by our own military is already a death sentence for Sinclair’s current and future career.

The circumstance is demonstrative of the malignant leadership that is bringing shame to the military, while spilling blood unnecessarily on the battlefields.  Either Sinclair really did these things, or he did not do these things and is wrongly accused.  Either way, the military is covered with slime.

Slime likes to surround itself with slime so that it looks normal.  And slime oozes downhill.

Consider this video showing an active duty Master Sergeant harassing an elder who must be pushing 90 years.

The two stars of this video are an unnamed senior citizen and active duty Army Master Sergeant C.J. Grisham, wearing sunglasses, holding a voice recorder.  Grisham is a journalist who gets a paycheck as a soldier.

The video was forwarded by a concerned citizen:

Direct Download link.

Long after this video was made, Grisham was sent home early from Afghanistan after complaining about stress from his superiors, and occasional rocket fire.

In 2011, I publicly warned numerous times that Grisham was unstable and should not be sent to Afghanistan, including, “C.J. has no business deploying or holding a weapon.”  He was deployed to Afghanistan.

Months later, on the cushy base called Kandahar Airfield, Grisham started cracking shortly after his arrival.  His tour was cut short.  Grisham was shipped home from Afghanistan in 2012 after complaining about stress, claiming that he could not sleep and that his hand was shaking uncontrollably.   He also published a desire to kill me, all while raising money for Soldiers’ Angels, an organization whose finances are in question.

Grisham cracked under pressure despite that he never left base. He saw no combat.

His credentials from Iraq are suspect but he uses those to boost credentials as a journalist.  The Army allows their employee to identify his employer in his writing and podcasts.  And so he can accurately be called an official Army spokesman, though that is not his official job.

In Iraq, the Army employee received an award for questionable actions on the same date that Jessica Lynch received the same award.  Jessica’s medal later was acknowledged as fraudulent.  The Pentagon made it all up.  Grisham seldom misses a chance to brag about his medal, yet he refuses to publish the unredacted citation.

Grisham the journalist was recently terminated from the YouServed podcast program that he co-hosted.  Comments that he made were astounding, such as encouraging the commission of potential criminal activity.

Grisham broadcasted about something that he has been accused of in the past: faking PTSD, and using it as an excuse.  During the PTSD podcast, the subject was conveniently forgetting things you do not wish to be confronted with.

From transcript:

Grisham: That’s right. For the rest of our lives, as combat veterans, we can pretty much get away with anything. You just blame it on PTSD, [TBI] or your combat experience. All the explosions and memory losses, it’s perfect. [laughs]

Grisham: I’ve been avoiding the hospital; I have some documented PTSD but not memory issues, yet.

There are big bucks involved in getting PTSD.  Money for life.  In another podcast, Grisham encourages someone to carry a weapon in a way that can be a felony.  A listener says he was denied a permit to carry a concealed weapon because he was receiving psychological treatments.  Grisham’s advice:

Grisham: Here’s the thing. I’ve got some advice for Tim. This is from C.J., here. You don’t need a stupid piece of paper from your government to tell you that you can hold a gun. Let me just bring that out right now. It’s sad that he can’t get this thing, but here’s my philosophy here.

I’m not giving out any legal advice and I’m not encouraging anyone to break the law. If you’re a law abiding citizen and you need a weapon for personal protection which I think these days all of us do, especially with all these economic problems – people are trying to make up their losses somewhere – then you need to carry a gun.

If they’re not going to issue it to you “legally” then by golly just put the dang gun on anyway. Who’s going to know unless you do something wrong? Now, if you’re defending yourself, the Second Amendment is there. It says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

By setting qualifications on who can and can not hold a gun, they are infringing on a right to keep and bear arms. Therefore, he’s perfectly legal to do it. So Tim I tell you to go out there. Don’t even worry about your permit. Although you probably can’t buy a gun legally.

Does the sponsor, VA Mortgage Center, know how their racehorse is making them look?  Who would do business with a company that sponsors this sort of advice and behavior?

Grisham at a stress clinic on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, 2012. He abandoned his subordinates.

The guy seldom misses a chance to say that “faggots” are unfit for combat, yet Grisham himself is as delicate as rose petals.  While this guy was deployed to Afghanistan, he spent his time blogging, journalizing, and whining of fears, while causing problems for people who were focused on the war.

This fragile guy is in the intelligence field, with a Top Secret clearance, yet the Army allows him to encourage people to commit potential felonies that could land them in prison.

Is it any wonder that our own government does not trust military intelligence, and why the title “General” (we have about a thousand officers of that rank) has started to sound like the title “Regional Manager”?   After watching the Grisham debacle for more than two years, the term “Master Sergeant, Military Intelligence” rings with no more authority than “Foreman, Lemonade Stand Operator.”  This is not only an indictment of Grisham and clan, but of the Army itself.

That Grisham is a senior sergeant is evidence of failed leadership under the likes of people like Sinclair (in a different command), and that Brigadier General Sinclair was promoted to the stars indicates that others above him are either equally poor judges of character, or share similar characteristics, or are wrongfully charging him.

We cannot expect to prevail in wars when we are deploying weak, morally questionable rose petals, who sabotage our most able troops.

Grisham published this image on the Internet, saying that he killed this mouse.

Sinclair was part of the same command that ended my last embed, after I repeatedly voiced safety concerns not about the Taliban, but about Grisham and his cohorts, one of whom physically accosted me in my tent.  This is high-stakes misconduct in a combat zone.

Grisham fell under the same command as Sinclair.  (RC-South.)  This dangerous, undisciplined climate has made it impossible to embed with the U.S. Army for concern of catching a bullet in the back.

The cases of Sinclair and Grisham are accounting dust on the real balance sheet of sticky and oozy.  Take 4-star General Kip Ward, recently busted for stealing government money, or the bizarre case of a General’s son named Colonel James Johnson.

Johnson, who graduated from West Point, had an affair with an Iraqi woman.  The specifics around this affair were a major ethics violation and OPSEC risk.  He stole government money, and spent tens of thousands of dollars on what amounted to his prostitute, ethics violation, and OPSEC risk.  Meanwhile, he filed for divorce from his wife.  This is the simple, watered down version.  Johnson got off with a hand slap, as did 4-star General Kip Ward, who was busted to the position of a mere 2-star General.

And then there was the case of the married submarine captain who faked his death to end an affair.  Every case in this dispatch comes from 2012.  There are enough more to write a book.

Why do these senior ranking officers get off so easily?  Is it because they know so much about each other that nobody wants to raise too much stink?

Many people ask why Grisham gets away with so much.  On the scale of leadership slime, Grisham is a minor player.  They probably do not notice minor inconveniences such as his encouraging people to break firearms laws, and to use PTSD as an excuse.

The Army has signed itself up for endless bad press by promoting scoundrels who make it difficult and unfulfilling to write about the good guys.  Many of our best Soldiers continue to abandon the uniform.  They want nothing more to do with the endless Sinclair, Ward, Johnson, and Grisham soap operas.  Nobody wants someone like this to be in a position to stain their career, their reputation, and future, on some psychotic personal whim.  Likewise, few writers will gamble their arms, legs, and lives only to have to deal with perpetual mental cases, whose criminality gets little more than a scolding, but which wastes the time of busy people who can write about many other topics without the danger and psycho-dramas.

It is no secret that many of our best troops have stampeded for the exits over the past few years, leaving behind a distilled incompetence as potent and flammable as grain alcohol.

We cannot face down worthy enemies by stuffing unworthy guys like this into uniforms, promoting them, and pretending that rotten rose petals are keeping us safe. 

===

For more on our fraying Army:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/sergeant-godsmack-vs.-nazar.htm

Video link of Grisham harassing Senior Citizen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTUCg6Vc5Bk

http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/

Transcripts:

YOU SERVED Transcript #25   2/12/09:

http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/blog/you-served-transcript-podcast-episode-25/

http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/blog/you-served-transcript-podcast-episode-28/#ixzz287pVSca5

[This came to my inbox as is; none of these images or text is mine.]

Incredible photos from last Friday's accident in Canada ( Lethbridge ). Check out the sequence of the canopy leaving the scene, the pilot in his rocket-powered seat coming out, the parachute opening sequence, and the separated seat falling away. Modern technology at its best. All of this happened in about two seconds from canopy off to the fireball.

Check out all the smoke from the canopy rocket motors.

There he goes! So that's what the striped handle does!

The left engine has the nozzle fully open, showing that #1 engine was developing no power.

The white thing is the seat-stabilizing drogue chute. Notice the pilot’s head pinned to his chest from the severe “g” forces produced by the solid rocket motors in the ACES II seat. They burn for about 2/10ths of a second . . enough time to propel him at least 60 feet clear of the aircraft. Hellova ride.

One millisecond from eternity for a beautiful FA-18.

Check out the now-unoccupied ejection seat following the aircraft to glory.

The moment-of-impact photo shows flame shooting out of the left engine . . its “last gasp”.

There goes the seat above the fireball.
The pilot will be downing his first of several shots within the hour, soon as his hands stop shaking.

And the pilot lived happily ever after . . .

(Source unknown)