The Invisible Bomber

No, not the Stealth Bomber....I am referring to the guy who ran away when he crashed his Mercedes VBIED in central London early Friday Morning.

Apparently the authorities know who they are looking for....

Last night it was claimed that cops had “crystal clear” CCTV images of the driver of the Haymarket Merc.

US TV station ABC News said the man is a known associate of jailed Islamist militant Dhiren Barot, 34 — who is serving life for a plot to explode limousines with gas canisters.

But that is the only mention this suspect seems to get. But if there is a 'crystal clear image', and he is a 'known associate', where are his picture and his name? Shouldn't the press outlets be clamoring for this info?

One would think that if there is a nation-wide manhunt for a bomber, the police would release the image and the name in hopes that the public would aid in his capture, no? But why not here?

One reason might be the fact (and we all knew it was coming) that the bomber has Islamist ties, and the Brits are afraid to insult/incite the radical Muslim population of their country. Or is there some other more bureaucratic reason?

Powerline notes a possibly related incident and quotes the Scotsman as saying "Police say they are looking for an Iraqi who went on the run from a control order only 11 days before yesterday's failed bombing attempts. The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is part of a six-strong cell linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Can't be identified for legal reasons?!? What the hell? The man is a suspected terrorist and fugitive of the law, and you can't warn the public of the danger because you might violate some of the new Europe's precious multi-culti civil rights?

It makes me wonder if the same thing is the reason we haven't seen a picture of the London suspect yet. Scotland Yard has it hands tied behind its back by bureaucratic sensitivities.

Whether it is reason #1 or #2, it strikes me as very strange that despite the existence of the information, the public in Britain (and the rest of the world) has not been given notice of who the police are searching for.

It makes you wonder if the Brits really want to win, or whether capitulation will win out.....

UPDATE: Or there could be a simpler explanation..."Security officials and police denied a U.S. news report that they had a "crystal clear" picture of one suspect from CCTV footage."

Shame on me for forgetting one of the primary tenets of warfare....'The first reports are always wrong.'

Downrange Part II

I guess, like the summer movies, I am all about sequels this week.

Since I am an Air Force guy, I want to amend my previous statement about not being able to find many AF bloggers downrange. I suppose I wasn't looking hard enough. I still stand by my indictment of the oppressive AF IT arrangements. AS proof of that it would appear that none of these following blogs are from AF installations in the theater....

Mission Iraq - Round 2 (USAF, Iraq) Stoli and I are old acquaintances, as we both flew into Korea on the same plane as new 2LTs. On the ride from Kimpo Int'l down to Osan, I and another 2LT had to ride in the bed of the small pickup truck with the luggage, while Stoli got to ride in the cab with his sponsor. Of course to add to the misery, it was monsoon season..... Another story for another day.

AIR FORCE EWO IN IRAQ (USAF, Baghdad)

I am sure there are moe out there to find....

COIN Part III & Military History

Can one be too excited about an Army Manual?

Apparently MountainRunner can be and is....

Is it wrong to be excited that the US Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual came in the mail today? It probably is, but I am.

He also offers even more good reads on counterinsurgency from the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS).

In addition to all the great John Nagl links I posted yesterday, it appears as if he will be a speaker at the Pritzker Military Library in a couple of weeks.

The Pritzker Military Library Presents
STRATEGIC SATURDAY
John Nagl discusses / signs LEARNING TO EAT SOUP WITH A KNIFE
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CDST Program / Live Web Cast
Pritzker Military Library
610 N. Fairbanks Court
Chicago, Illinois 60611

Now if you are not in Chicago don't worry, as you may have noticed, it will be presented as a live webcast.

For those who have never seen their website, Pritzker is an indispensable military resource.

I discovered Pritzker purely by chance, as I was searching the iTunes Store for military related podcasts. They exist as a real brick and mortar library in Chicago, which offers a collection focused on "history of the military, military fiction, and the military's current practices as part of the belief that Citizen Soldiers are an essential element of a democratic society."

They also offer a tremendous number of live events on site featuring military authors and historians, as well as 'Front & Center' symposiums on varieties of military issues, and lastly their invaluable 'Medal of Honor' series presenting living history through the words of actual CMH winners. One of this year's events was 'Military Blogs: Independent Voices or Security Risk?', which featured Matt from Blackfive.

The best part is that all of these events are webcast, and all are archived viewing on the web. Check out the previous events for 2006 and 2007, as well as upcoming events.

Check them out. You will not be disappointed.

More COIN Collection

The indispensable blog, Small Wars Journal, that posted the David Kilkullen entry that I pointed to yesterday, now has a post by LTC John Nagle titled "The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency"

This entry offers a valuable history on how the U.S. Army found itself unprepared to fight an insurgency following the conventional land battles of 2003.

"...the sad fact is that when an insurgency began in Iraq in the late summer of 2003, the Army was unprepared to fight it. The American Army of 2003 was organized, designed, trained, and equipped to defeat another conventional army; indeed, it had no peer in that arena. It was, however, unprepared for an enemy who understood that it could not hope to defeat the U.S. Army on a conventional battlefield, and who therefore chose to wage war against America from the shadows.

The story of how the Army found itself less than ready to fight an insurgency goes back to the Army’s unwillingness to internalize and build upon the lessons of Vietnam."

Nagl, like Kilkullen knows his stuff and offers opinions on the current war that should be listened to, by both the Army, DoD, and politicians. Fortunately the military has listened, and given views like his credence, by placing Gen Petraeus in charge of Iraq, and allowing subject matter experts like Nagl to help write the new Counterinsurgency manual.

If you would like to see a more multimedia approach to Nagl's idea, check out the video of his 2006 presentation "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Iraq". A strange title until you understand that it came from a T.E. Lawrence quote "Making 'war upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.'" How apropos. This presentation also seems to be an update of his book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.

Nagl is also providing a forward for the Aug re-release by the Army of Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II. It is not clear if this document is the same one that Danger Room showed us two weeks ago.

All of it is worth reading....now if I could only find the time.

COIN Collection

In a recent post I discussed the general ignorance of many politicos on the status and tactics of the current war. His is extremely disappointing, given that there are lots og good resources out there to brush up with, like those from Blackfive that I covered in that recent post.

Today over at OPFOR, fellow AFROTC grad Noonan points to another good educational read by counterinsurgency savant David Kilcullen, Understanding Current Operations in Iraq, over at Small Wars Journal (one of the best COIN resources out there for all you Congresscritters reading....). Noonan also has his own good write up of the ignorance of the left from back in March at Townhall, They know so much that isn't so. To finish off the education catch Kilcullen in the great interview with Austin Bay that he mentions, in Bay's Blog Week in Review podcast from last week.

On a slightly different front, good bud and world famous Noah Shachtman has a couple of great posts at Danger Room about terrorist information operations and some interesting strengths and weaknesses in their approach using media and blogs.

Off-the-beaten-path milblogger MountainRunner wraps it all up with a nice bow in a post titled "The War of Images and Ideas: a reality in modern conflict", as he manages to connect the efforts of Shachtman and Kilkullen, and offers further cogent thoughts including this one...."We have the advantage of the truth and yet we don't use it."

How true and how sad.

Great Moments in Slanted Journalism

Here us a graph from an AP story about a young boy whom the Taliban had recruited to wear a suicide vest and kill American troops:

Boy: Taliban recruited me to bomb troops

Though the Taliban dismissed the story as propaganda, at a time when U.S. and NATO forces are under increasing criticism over civilian casualties, both Afghan tribal elders and U.S. military officers said they were convinced by his dramatic account.

Translation: "We accept Taliban dismissals without comment, but because U.S. military officers are convinced of the boy's story we at the esteemed AP therefore are not, since their words must be taken with a grain of salt due to increasing criticism over civilian casualties at their hand."

This ladies and gents is what is called 'Moral Equivalence'. I am sure that the AP would love to crticize the Taliban for this inhumane action, but they just can't find the gumption to do so because U.S. troops have killed innocents too.

But listen up everyone, there is absolutely no equivalence (zero, zip, nada) between the Taliban lying to a young boy to get him to strap a bomb to his body and blow himself up, and the U.S. military accidentally killing civilians. The fact that the AP writers can't differentiate between an intentional act and an accidental one does not speak very highly of their intelligence or their training. Of course, if we don't want to impugn the qualifications of the AP writers, the only other option to consider is that they might actually believe that the U.S. intentionally and indiscriminately kills innocent civilians, and therefore is the moral equivalent of the Taliban.

And if that is what AP writers believe, then they are already working for the enemy....they just aren't smart enough to realize it. Ooops, I guess I did impugn.....

Hat Tip: The Tank

Downrange

Over the last few years, there have been many good blogs written 'downrange' in both Iraq and Afghanistan. However, as time passes, people rotate and come back home. So perhaps it would be isntructive to look at a few of the good blogs who are currently in the field.

Most of the good bloggers tend to be Army or Marine. Maybe because they have the most interesting things to pass along. But also perhaps because the USAF IT folks won't let you come within spitting distance of blogging (Blogger, etc) or webmail websites. They are all locked out because they pose and 'inherent threat'. And here I thought we were the most technologically advanced service....oh never mind.

Below are some of the downrange bloggers that I currently find most interesting.

ACUTE POLITICS (Army, Fallujah)

BADGERS FORWARD (Army, Ramadi)

FIGHTIN' 6TH MARINES (USMC, Fallujah)

THE GUNNER'S WORLD (USMC, Fallujah)

JACK ARMY (Army, Iraq)

JAKE'S LIFE (USMC, Fallujah)

LICARI OF ARABIA (USMC, Fallujah)

MILBLOGGING.COM (Army, Iraq)

NORTHERN DISCLOSURE (Army Iraq)

PRO DEA ET PATRIA (Army Chaplain, Iraq)

Enjoy reading these folks as they certainly offer a perspective far different that you might hear if you get your news from Harry Reid.

And if all indications are correct, I will be following many of them as a downrange blogger in just a few months.

UPDATE: Here are a couple of more. One from an Air Force perspective, and one that strives to present the troops in their own words....

USAF GUY (USAF (duh!), Basrah)

MATT SANCHEZ (USMCR, in Iraq as a media embed/blogger)

Shortsightedness and the Long War

Those on the left who oppose this war seem to be grasping at anything they can to justify their position. This is somewhat puzzling, given that the war effort seems to be fairly unpopular with the polled (note I did not say general) public. You would think that they would have firmer ground to stand on, but apparently not.

Take Harry Reid, who has declared two of the military's leading Generals, including the one running the new counter-insurgency oriented 'Surge', as "incompetent", and declared the Surge as failed before it has even really started.

Now some of the lefty intelligentsia are declaring Operation Phantom Thunder failed as well. Why? Because the enemy is running away. Granted, we would like to kill those dirtbags in place, but in essence to declare that "AQI fleeing battle is the mark of US failure" and the battle lost is to willfully ignorant of the wider war at hand.

AQ leadership normally does flee the battle. This is just what happened in 2004 in Fallujah. However, breaking their strongholds is important precisely because of what it does to their overall strategy, which is to set themselves up as 'the strong horse' versus America. Because they flee, and their strongholds are destroyed, they lose face -- the one thing they cannot afford to lose.

Grim at Blackfive has been hitting this 50 meter target centermass for quite some time now. His latest is instructive on the myopia of the left, and also point to a couple of other great pieces of his from earlier days.

A Strategy for the Long War

COIN: The Gravity Well

This war is not a simple exercise in win/lose (or lose/lose) as the left would have us believe, even though that is all the American public is fed by the MSM. This is a complicated endeavor of strategy and death, where the enemy running away, while not the optimal outcome, can be a significant step forward.

It is too bad that the left can not recognize that. Or perhaps they just don't want to as that would ruin the meme that they have chosen to follow. If that is the case, it is plain to see that they might actually be willing us to lose this war.

Competence

So, if according to Harry Reid, Gens Petreaus and Pace are incompetent, what does that make Nancy Pelosi??

Here is Pelosi's commitment to the troops of our United States:



Notice how she promises that the house "will provide the largest increase in veteran's funding in history" (One question might be why she hasn't done it yet? It's been six months....).

I am sure that the troop in the picture will greatly appreciate that, or maybe she won't. Lets take a closer look:



Hmmm.... why does that look like an Army uniform with Navy rank? Or is that even Navy rank? Let go even closer.....


(Yes, it is not the exact rank, but that is not the point)

Hmmmm. Canada, eh? What is Nancy trying to say? Is it that she want to enact Canada's socialized medicine for the military. Nope, too late. The US military already has socialized medicine.

Perhaps a simpler explanation is at hand. It is much easier to see that no one who works for Pelosi has any idea what the uniforms of the United States military services actually look like. What are the odds? Pretty good I'm afraid.....

Good job. That will win back military votes.....

Hat Tip: QandO

Fred!

There is a lot to like about Fred Thompson, and it will be interesting to see where he goes with his maybe-candidacy. I have taken the road of not supporting any candidate at this point, as I want to hear what they have to say, and want to see who will 'self eliminate'.

For those who want to see waht Fred is all about you can always go to his website here or listen to his ABC Radio spots here or here.

But it might be better by seeing/hearing him address issues on the fly.

Here is a video interview with Peter Robinson:


Here is a good interview with Bill Bennett.

Enjoy....