Bill Hobbs has a listing of photo galleries from soldiers in Iraq.

A “Summer Pulse 04” update?

While it is certainly true that the Pentagon plans for a wide variety of scenarios on a routine basis, the confluence of so many of them based on a conflict with China — during a time when the nation is engaged in a global war against Islamic terrorists and spread very thin by major combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, is quite noteworthy.

Go read James Joyner’s Tech Central Station article “The Dragon Stirs
When and if the Taiwan – Chinese situation boils over into full fledged crisis, the critics in the media are going to accuse Bush-Rumsfeld of being asleep at the wheel. That, my friends, will be something called “projection”.
Update – speaking of under-reporting, Wretchard has been following the situation in the Phillipines.

The scene is now set for a possible resurgence of fighting. A glance at the map dramatically illustrates the bind that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the Philippine Government have worked themselves into. For the first time in a century, Muslim rebels have established themselves in force on the Mindanao mainland, away from their traditional strongholds of Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-tawi, island groups in the southwest corner of the archipelago. They are positioned on the west side of Mindanao’s breadbasket, the Cotabato valley. The MILF camps guard the the approaches to mountain massifs to the west which then give on the sea, their line of supply. They isolate the predominantly Christian Zamboanga peninsula from Northern Mindanao and essentially cut the huge island in two. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, despite a nominal strength of ten divisions, has very little combat power. A lack of logistical support and ammunition stockpiles means that (Belmont Club estimate) it can sustain offensive operations with only two battalions for a period of 12 weeks after which it simply runs out of everything. Thus, Manila has long lacked an offensive option against the MILF and has tried to compensate by “peace talks”, which are another name for appeasement.

Meanwhile, on CTV national news last night; Canadians were alerted to this breaking news in a report by Ellen Pinchuk, in Moscow.

12 years, four Sea King crashes and 10 deaths after Chretien cancelled the Mulroney government contract for 50 EH-101 military helicopters,

… the Martin government has announced they have approved the purchase of 27 twin engined S-92’s. By all accounts, this is a magnificent piece of aviation engineering.

For an air taxi.

Response has been enthusiastic. David Rudd, Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies – “glad to get anything.”

When the competent David Pratt was removed from his brief tenure as Defense Minister when he lost his seat, the pickings for a worthy replacement were slim. Really slim.
Jaeger on the UN-idolizing, Foreign Affairs embarrassment, Bill Graham;

So rather than restoring the Canadian Forces to something resembling a fighting force capable of defending the nation’s interests we will see the Liberal transformation accelerate. Soon we’ll have an army completely disarmed, staffed exclusively with women and homosexuals engaging in social outreach programs in third world countries, if they go abroad at all. I can’t think of a worse time to be a Canadian soldier.

Watch for the Canadian Armed Forces float entry in next year’s Toronto Gay Pride parade.

Thinking back to the Iran-Iraq war and the Worlds Worst Kept Policy Secret that the various cold war era backers were working hard to ensure a lose-lose stalemate…
Something suggests that one should probably not assume the next Iran-Iraq war would be fought on that premise.
hat tip – Drudge

The reason I sleep better at night knowing Bush-Rumsfeld are at the helm.

As a seafaring friend of mine once remarked, an aircraft carrier is not really listed on the books as a “ship,” but as a “strategic asset.” And when a country starts to move 7 out of 12 of these assets around on the global chessboard, it might betoken something more than just a summer ‘exercise.’
Indeed, if this were wartime (What? It is? Who knew?) moving this much killing power out onto the seas would be thought of as a fleet surge.
Truman, Enterprise, Stennis, Washington, Kennedy, Reagan, Kitty Hawk. It could all be, of course, just prudent planning and practice. On the other hand, given the various signals being sent by Homeland Security, the nearness of the Olympics, and the advent of the elections, it may be a case of “Fortune favors the forward deployed.”
Oh, did I mention that another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln is listed by the Navy as underway as well?
It’s also interesting that the same page: U.S. Navy – Status of the Navy tells us that 92% of our surface ships are currently underway or deployed, and that 91% of our submarine fleet is either underway or deployed.
This is a lot of activity.

hat tip- Stephen Green who has this too.
update – By way of contrast, this item courtesy Pol:Spy

The Canadian navy will sit out the war on terrorism for one year in an effort to give exhausted sailors a chance to recuperate. HMCS Toronto left the Arabian Sea and the American George Washington Carrier Strike Group July 4 with a broken Sea King helicopter on deck.
And the navy has quietly decided against dispatching a replacement ship until spring 2005 at the earliest.
The Sea King on HMCS Toronto has been grounded since June 25 after particles were discovered in its gearbox.
Naval Capt. Bruce Belliveau, Toronto’s commanding officer, said the Sea King was available to hail foreign ships during 80% of the six-month deployment. It broke down during the frigate’s preparations to leave.

Urgh.

hat tip – Canadian Comment

Over at Pol:Spy, Ray beholds the Ontario voter;

“Our soldiers,” said Heather, “go into situations to keep the peace, not to shoot people. They have all the equipment they need, they don’t need American-style weapons.”
“We’re not a warrior nation,” said St. Clair. “Canadians don’t want our military over-armed.”

Ray observes, “with that attitude we should just invade the East.”
I have a better idea. Let’s invite the minority of sane, free enterprise Ontario voters to move here, and let the rest starve themselves out.
An email from a friend whose family owns a small construction-related company south of Toronto;

“I had a fight (was on my soapbox today) about Harper vs. Martin. The one guy in our office voted because he didn’t like the gay parade in Toronto this past weekend. This guy voted Liberal – haaaaaaaa grrrrrrr….. unbelievable. Even [my husband] was speechless at [the] remark. If you looked at the politics behind the parties, he should have voted Harper not Martin. This guy has a brain, but must have gone brain-dead at the polls.
Believe it or not …. I think that Harper has to bring his next campaign to the common level of intelligence in Ontario – about a grade 6! No kidding.
I’m still spitting mad at the damn Liberals and the stupid people not only in Ontario but in any province who cast a red vote. Haven’t they learned their lesson. This election cost the taxpayer 250 Million dollars – for what? another idiot in Ottawa.
If I’m this mad, I can’t imagine how pissed off the west is. “

Lots of room for you out here, Sharon.

Wretchard explains why, “Despite the importation of fighters from all over the world and the use of weapons in numbers orders of magnitude greater than those directed at the Russian Maikiop brigade, the Jihadis have been unable to keep the inept Americans from creeping to within a hairsbreadth of installing a new government in the heart of Arabia.”
He reminds us of the tactics that led to the Chechnya massacre.

The first unit to penetrate to the city center was the 1st battalion of the 131st “Maikop” Brigade, the latter composed of some 1,000 soldiers (120 armored vehicles and 26 tanks) … Russian forces initially met no resistance when they entered the city at noon on 31 December. They drove their vehicles straight to the city center, dismounted, and took up positions inside the train station. Other elements remained parked along a side street as a reserve force.

Sixty hours later, the unit had been wiped out. “By 3 January 1995, the brigade had lost nearly 800 men, 20 of 26 tanks, and 102 of 120 armored vehicles.” It had been surrounded and despite urgent pleas for relief, been utterly destroyed.

[…]

What looked like a Shi’ite- Sunni deal to drive the US out of Iraq in April turned out to be a deal, all right, but not the kind the Al Qaeda had bargained for. An enraged Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s vowed to kill Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, murdered 100 Iraqis in a single day and probably engineered an attack on Shi’ite political party headquarters.� Allawi responded by announcing a plan for checkpoints, a curfew, a ban on demonstrations and even hinted at declaring martial law. The man who had pleaded with America to lift the siege on Fallujah was all smiles at the news of the latest American precision strike.
Zarqawi’s woes were compounded by Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani whose response to his offensive was pretty nearly blood-curdling.

Go read it all.

A Canadian soldier lets loose on Paul Martin’s military bashing campaign ads.

“I voluntarily became a soldier knowing that it might one day mean me losing my life for Canada. Can Martin say that? When did he ever serve? He’s a fat cat billionaire without a clue about what it means to be a soldier. What he said was an insult to every man and woman in this country in uniform. All of them better Canadians than him. But what’s he care? Our military size has been so shrunk he figures the Liberals don’t need their votes to win.”
The soldier was reacting to a front-page newspaper story he read on the weekend in which Martin, during an interview, attacked Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s plans for the Canadian military. Martin, according to the article, saying Harper would impose a warlike “ready aye ready” philosophy that is out of vogue in today’s Canadian society.

This is the same Paul Martin currently flogging the canard that Stephen Harper wants to buy aircraft carriers. Considering our media is listening with ears perked for any gaffe, real or imagined, to pounce on the Conservatives, you’d think they’d be all over this big, fat lie like white on rice…
You’d think wrong, of course.

That this leads to a full fledged confrontation with Iran. The timing may not be ideal, but with nukes coming online, better now than later.

Via Pol:Spy – General Lewis MacKenzie (RET) has some things to say;

Ottawa’s general ignorance regarding the state of our Armed Forces is reflected in the current election campaign.
Consider, for instance, the partisan hype surrounding the Conservatives’ announcement that a Stephen Harper-led government would purchase new “hybrid carriers” to transport Canadian troops and their equipment to overseas mission areas in the future. For the past year, a number of distinguished senior retired officers (most of them were my bosses at one time or the other) have been working on a proposal that would recommend just such a purchase. We don’t care which political party implements the purchase as long as it’s done as soon as practical, thereby enhancing Canada’s ability to project force abroad.
You can imagine our disappointment when the Prime Minister recently denounced the Conservative plan to purchase “aircraft carriers” — an erroneous charge suggesting a Cold War-type military spending spree that threatens support for social programs. A hybrid carrier is about as similar to an aircraft carrier as my Honda scooter is to a Kenmore 18-wheeler, and the cost relationship is also about the same.

And on the ingnorance behind a persistant Canadian mythology;

As we improve our military’s ability to project force abroad, we should dispense with the all-too Canadian conceit that what the world needs is “peacekeepers.” Peacekeeping in the classic, Pearsonian sense — whereby our troops occupy a piece of territory at the request of local belligerents — is no longer in much demand. What is needed now are peacemakers with the weapons and mandate necessary to kill belligerents who don’t want us there.

Go read it all. Read Ray’s comments too

I’ve lifted this in its entirety from the New Zealand blog, Silent Running.

Rumors circulating in London talk of an impending major operation. Britain, which has been transformed into an armed camp, has been eerily quiet, due in large part to the wide spread cancellation of leaves and passes for practically all military personnel. Speculation about an imminent assault on ‘Fortress Europe’ abound, often mentioning ‘the butcher of Sicily’, Gen George S. Patton. There are numerous unconfirmed reports however, of rubber airplanes and tanks in the areas believed to be garrisoning Patton’s men. These men, mere boys for the most part, would be going up against well prepared defenses, referred to by the German High Command as “The Atlantic Wall”. The available information on the preparations in the area of Calais appear to indicate that any such attempt would certainly be tantamount to suicide under the best circumstances, but with a phantom army? Some critics question if the proper equipment for the job is really on hand. Does SHAEF really have a plan? SHAEF spokespeople refuse to make a comment on the record, and are unusually tight-lipped on background, as well. They do claim, however, that their plan is more than to simply to send thousands of young men to certain death in a Hail Mary attempt to get through the insurmounable German defensive works. Critics wonder if the Americans aren’t being driven to do something against their better judgement, even that of the notoriously extreme British Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, who has to date exhibited absolutely no remorse concerning the massive casualties sustained so far. Prime Minister Churchill and the British High Command have reportedly argued against an invasion of Northern Europe directly for months – preferring the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’ via Italy. Soft underbelly, indeed! So far it has been a colossall quagmire mired in the Italian mud – a miscalculation bordering on incompetence which has already cost tens of thousands of Allied casualties in a bitter slog up the Italian boot. And that was against a dispirited mix of Italians and Germans. Casualty rates are sure to be astronomical if we go head to head with the German’s best, led by their most capable leader – Irwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, who is rumored to be in command of the nightmare tangle of concrete and steel that anyone foolish enough to attempt a direct landing anywhere from Bordeaux to Jutland would have to overcome. However, the Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, ostensibly with the backing of American Chief of Staff Marshall, and US President Roosevelt, have telegraphed for months that such an ill considered assault on the shores of the Continent is their goal. Who will be first to wake from this madness and implement a saner policy, one which puts the lives of our boys first?

Part of a continuing series of media blasts from the WWII past.

I was in North Dakota for Memorial Day weekend. The first thing that struck me upon pulling into the first good sized town (Jamestown) was the high percentage of vehicles sporting this “ribbon”.

I thought of picking one up for my own truck, to make a statement about my support for the war in Iraq. Then I caught myself – after all, there are Canadians in Afghanistan.
Where are our ribbons?

This is good.

Joining the parade is former head of CENTCOM under Bill Clinton, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni.

CBS 60 Minutes – Accusing top Pentagon officials of “dereliction of duty,” retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni says staying the course in Iraq isn’t a reasonable option.
“The course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it’s time to change course a little bit or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course,” he tells CBS News Correspondent Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, May 23, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen, says Zinni, because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all along.
“There has been poor strategic thinking in this…poor operational planning and execution on the ground,” says Zinni, who served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000.

Zinni blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the administration, known as neo-conservatives, who saw the invasion as a way to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people, who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. [emphasis mine]

This is the same Zinni who masterminded the Clinton reprisals to terrorist attacks on the WTC and targets overseas. Among his achievements:

the strategy that destroyed a drug factory in Sudan in reprisal for the 1998 bombings in Africa that killed over 80.

the single day missile attack on a nearly abandoned al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, killing 20 wanna-be terrorists. He himself has since called it a “million to one shot”, in contradiction to Clinton’s claim that they missed Bin Laden by hours.

Zinni, in 2001

“In weighing that out, without great intelligence, it’s a million-to- one shot,” he says. “Should you take it? Yes. You might get something, but in the absence of that, you can send [bin Laden] a message, maybe cause him to go off balance and set him back a little bit.”

Zinni is flogging a new book – “Chicken Soup For The Terrorist Soul – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Unbalance Bin Laden”.

Bayonet Brits kill 35 rebels

Sun: OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army�s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.
The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.
Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.
The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.
After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.
When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway – and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.
An Army spokesman said: “This was an intense engagement.”

Undoubtedly.
Hat tip – Backcountry Conservative

It’s refreshing to see this in USAToday. Too often these items don’t get any attention at all.

In May of last year, I was sitting with some fellow officers back in Diwaniyah, Iraq, the offensive successful and the country liberated from Saddam. I received a copy of a March 30 U.S. newspaper on Iraq in an old package that had finally made its way to the front. The stories: horror in Nasariyah, faltering supply lines and demonstrations in Cairo. The mood of the paper was impenetrably gloomy, and predictions of disaster abounded. The offensive was stalled; everyone was running out of supplies; we would be forced to withdraw.
The Arab world was about to ignite into a fireball of rage, and the Middle East was on the verge of collapse. If I had read those stories on March 30, I would have had a tough time either restraining my laughter or, conversely, falling into a funk. I was concerned about the bizarre kaleidoscope image of Iraq presented to the American people by writers viewing the world through a soda straw.
Returning to Iraq this past February, I knew that the Marines had a tremendous opportunity to follow through on our promises to the Iraqi people.
Believing in the mission, many Marines volunteered to return. I again found myself in the division headquarters.
Just weeks ago, I read that the supply lines were cut, ammunition and food were dwindling, the “Sunni Triangle” was exploding, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was leading a widespread Shiite revolt, and the country was nearing civil war.
As I write this, the supply lines are open, there’s plenty of ammunition and food, the Sunni Triangle is back to status quo, and Sadr is marginalized in Najaf. Once again, dire predictions of failure and disaster have been dismissed by American willpower and military professionalism.

hat tip – Dr. Joyner.

The End of the Beginning
Fascinating stuff. Wretchard pays attention to the strongly worded sanctions against Syria, in the context of the Rumsfeld visit to Iraq. It involves Defenselink
observations about the travel details – the use of the “National Airborne Command Center, a modified Boeing 747 jet designed to serve as a survivable mobile command center in a national emergency.

(Speculation alert) It may be that Rumsfeld and Myers were considering an important decision specifically relating to Iraq, one already put forward by Abizaid but requiring an independent assessment, one that required them to stay in touch with the President jointly through the E-4B. The political storm over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and, to a lesser extent the decapitation of Nick Berg, has effaced the really important story in the Iraqi campaign: the US has just beaten back a major counteroffensive by Syria and Iran. Regionally, anticoalition forces mounted major attacks on the Jordanian secret service (using gas) and against targets in Saudi Arabia (a car bomb attack against the Saudi security apparatus). Within Iraq, simultaneous attacks were launched in April from both the Sunni and Shi’ite lines of departure. While both inflicted some damage, neither stroke has come close to seriously hurting the US position. It would be natural and not in the least surprising, if Rumsfeld and Myers were not considering what the American riposte should be.

John Kerry, you just got bitchslapped.

Stephen Taylor has more.