Stuk in Irak.
Jan 6, 2007 – Update and correction.

Troop pay;

As you know, I am at Addis Ababa with TFAA, supporting the African Union in Sudan. This month, someone in Ottawa has decided that our mission should have the Risk Level down graded from Level 2 to Level 1 and have our danger pay reduced. In addition, with Risk level reduced, the tax exemption was gone. This is retroactive to June 2006. Well, the pay system took all the taxes owed in one shot and for my Dec pay, I owed the Feds $11000.00. This is just bloody insane. I have lost 25 lbs in the last four months and got intestinal amoebic infection twice and is constanly on Anti-biotic which leaves this metallic taste in your mouth. At any given time, 60 to 70% percent of the TFAA members are down with something. In october, all members had dystentery, amoeba infection, and one repatriated member had malaria. A replacement MCPL for the clerk who was away on HLTA got Amoeba in the three weekd she was there. Now, that is not including the other aspects of hazzards and isolation typical of a tour. If that is not risk, I don’t know what is…

Reading the comments, my guess is that the relevant MP’s have already been notified. If anyone has more info or an update on this, be sure to let me know.

Online poll on the question – Should Canada be continuing to contribute troops to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan?

Blackfive has a quote from the UK Spectator;

It is illogical, but true, that when soldiers take part in campaigns which are politically unpopular at home, their courage and dedication are less appreciated. I am told by the father of a British soldier just returned from six months in Iraq (and soon off to Afghanistan) that our troops in Basra receive very few letters of support from people at home, whereas their American counterparts have many letters, cards and parcels from complete strangers. He says that such messages cheer the soldiers up tremendously.

If you’d like to send your support to British soldiers in Iraq;
British Soldier
c/o G1 Branch
HQ MultiNational Div (SE)
Basra, BFPO 641
In Afghanistan:
British Soldier
c/o G1 Branch
HQ Helmand Province Task Force
Camp Bastion, BFPO 792.t
Via Jules Crittenden, who also has links for the US and Australian military.

From the comments;

‘Just to let people know that Canada Post is sending parcels to soldiers in Af’stan for free. I’ve adopted a soldier through www.canadianangels.org–Wendy Sullivan put this organization together; check out the site. Canada Post is allowing parcels to be sent free until the middle of January.
Check with the Armed Forces or Wendy first, before putting a package together, because you may need a specific name and rank in order to send things. But it’s probably not too late to put Merry back in Christmas for a lonely soldier.

Great idea.
Update – This CF News Release has more.

Bill Roggio is embedded with the Iraqi Army;

The Military Transition Team for 3 Company, as well as the rest of 3rd Battalion, have truly moved into an advisory role. “They advise, assist and mentor the Iraqi Army, and what they do with this is up to them,” said Major David McCombs, the executive officer of MTT for 3rd Battalion. The other two MTTs for 1 and 2 Companies have the same role as 3 Company’s MTT.
The Iraqi soldiers, or jundi, in southwestern Fallujah run multiple patrols on their own; the Marines do not accompany the jundi every time they leave the wire. They provide for their own food, ammunition, “3 Company gathers their intelligence, plan and execute their own operations,” said Lt. Cortez, the lead adviser at The ROC.
These soldiers are volunteers, and are highly motivated to kill “Ali Baba” – the name they give the insurgents. There are major shortcomings with the Iraqi Army in Fallujah: logistics, pay and the lack of heavy weapons hold the jundi back from being fully independent (this will be covered in more depth along with the police in future posts on the MTTs/PTTs). But a fighting spirit is not one of these shortcomings.

Bill is self-financed. (There’s a Paypal button at the bottom of his post) . It makes you wonder why the major media organizations choose to rely on Iraqi stringers of dubious allegiance for their “outside the wire” reporting. Or non-reporting

.

An update on injured interpreter Niaz Mohammed Hussaini, first brought to our attention by The Black Rod. He’s back at work!

Pak Tribune;

The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach must be killed.
[…]
The 30 Taliban rules also spell out opposition to development projects from aid organizations, including clinics, roads and schools.
If a school fails a warning to close, it must be burned. But all religious books must be secured beforehand,” rule No. 26 says.

Surprisingly, there is no rule allowing for an NDP brokered negotiation of the rules.
And bookmark Media Right – dedicated to collecting mainstream news and opinion on the Afghanistan campaign. Plus, “Canuck Combat Video!
Overthrowing the Taliban: poll results.

… it seems that the average Afghan doesn’t see the situation outside his own front door as unfavourably as the average Torontonian sees it from over 10,000 kms away.

Well, that’s what happens when you can’t get the CBC!
Add your own Afghanistan related links or commentary below.

I have a round-up of good pieces by milbloggers to share this morning, touching on a variety of related topics.
Smash is there to say goodbye to Rummy;

Donald Rumsfeld is not universally loved in the Pentagon. I’m told that he can be a tough, stubborn, and demanding boss. Rumsfeld is infamous for firing off short memos — known colloquially as “snowflakes” — asking next-to-impossible-to-answer questions or demanding revolutionary changes. He came to the building in 2001, promising to transform the Department of Defense from a Cold War force to a more flexible, agile military, better prepared to face the challenges of the Twenty-first Century. Almost six years later, that transformation is well underway, but not yet complete. Along the way, Rumsfeld has stepped on many toes, and slaughtered many sacred cows. Inevitably, he made some enemies, especially among the senior officers and long-serving bureaucrats who were heavily invested in the “old way” of doing things.
But the troops, and a solid majority of the officers, love him. This is abundantly clear from the warm reception Rumsfeld receives as he walks up to the podium.

Josh Manchester from Adventures of Chester advises that for media, the times may be a-changing;

The Standard Narrative goes something like this: There is a massive deployment of US forces to the far side of the world. This action is more or less just and warranted. The troops charge into battle, sometimes many battles. All the while, there’s an understanding everywhere of an end-state – a point at which the war’s goals will have been accomplished and then, most importantly, everyone can come home.

Bill Roggio reports on the Information War, Eastern Front;

The information front in the Long War is perhaps the war’s most vital. And it is one front where the West is perceived as losing. While Coalition forces and Middle Eastern allies face shadowy transnational terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, the battle for hearts and minds is being fought on the Internet, print, cable and satellite television, and other forms of media. In Iraq, the al-Zawraa satellite television network is broadcasting insurgent propaganda 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Small victories and new allies in Iraq;

It all began almost a month ago. A local sheik came to the Army unit in charge of the sector he lived in, announced his desire to fight the insurgents, and asked for help in doing so.

You’re invited to share other milblogger links I’ve missed in the comments.

And good riddence!

The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you’ve been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards — and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
You’ve just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq — even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.
[…]
The [microwave] beam produces what experimenters call the “Goodbye effect,” or “prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.” In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
“It will repel you,” one test subject said. “If hit by the beam, you will move out of it — reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.”

The Torch has caught the attention of the Aldergrove Star ;

The Torch notes that “it’s easy to forget that the picture Canucks get from our media is of CF operations in Kandahar, not all of Afghanistan. Six provinces in the south — of which Kandahar is the most dangerous — form a part of the overall picture, but not all of it. Afghanistan as a whole is doing much better than one would think from watching news reports focused on the Canadian area of operations.
“Within that narrow view, the scope of reporting tightens even more with what the press chooses to report. Journalists are willing to cover what the military calls ‘kinetic ops’ — what the rest of us call combat — because it makes for exciting stories. And they’re willing to cover the deaths of Canadian soldiers because death is always considered a newsworthy topic – ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’
“What impression does that provide to the Canadian public? That Afghanistan is a much more dangerous place than it really is, and that Canadian soldiers spend their time either killing insurgents or being killed by them. No wonder (Canadian) support for the mission goes up and down like a toilet seat,” observes The Torch.
A blunt assessment to be sure, but it rings true, does it not? Perhaps our Christmas wish lists should include a demand that our major media assign their reporters to venture out of relatively safe military compounds and into the field with the KPRT teams?

And don’t forget Mediaright for other under-reported news from Afghanistan.

An American blogger tips his hat to our troops in Afghanistan.

But it doesn’t seem to faze the Canucks. They continue to soldier on, taking the hard jobs that others eschew. It is safe to say that without the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, the mission there would be in greater danger of failing, given that the US and British troops are already stretched to the limit. Their willingness to take on more than their fair share of the burden of this war should be recognized and applauded by every single American.

And aid agencies be aid agencies. There’s a compelling argument here;

ACF International believes that by concentrating on “construction”, that NATO is confusing the Afghan people and actually putting in jeopardy the whole mission. ACF argues that security is the main impediment to offering assistance to Afghans, and that soldiers need to be used to protect the people and bring law and order, not build roads. Road building, feeding, and constructing are jobs of the aid agencies, argues ACF, and not the military.
Most interesting of ACF arguments is that by getting involved in aid work, the military has made all aid agencies targets of the Taliban. The Taliban, and those Afghans sympathetic to them, now see little difference between “Feed the Children” and the “Royal Canadian Regiment”. It used to be that unarmed civilians did aid work … now it’s often men and women in body armour and backed by guns that do it… and that means juicy targets for the Taliban . The day the first soldier built the first school was the day the Taliban saw little difference between the RCR Road Crew and the NGO Blanket Crew.

That old “law of unintended consquences” rears its head again. A thought provoking post at Cjunk.

At The Torch;

“Check your sources, Dave.”

The fun is in the comments.

Lots of good reading at the Torch lately, especially on Afghanistan. Instead of picking out a post, I suggest you just start at the top and scroll down.

(click on image for story – it may take some time to load)
*.

Let me start by saying I’m still in shock that we’re here as a tank squadron. I owe the Squadron Clerk, Pte Evan Arsenault, money because he said that the Squadron was going and I disagreed. I’ve been on tanks for 11 years and the Leopards have not gone anywhere, except to Kosovo in 1999 (which my ‘surly’ Troop WO keeps reminding me). It is a great time to be an armoured crewman.

Stings like a AT-2 Swatter;

Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.
The flying robot, nicknamed the “bionic hornet”, would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.
It is one of several weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants, it said. Others include super gloves that would give the user the strength of a “bionic man” and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers.

Saturday morning surfing? Newsbusters’ Mark Finkelman is currently embedded with the US Marines in Fallujah. Check it out.

Chris Taylor attended a breakfast meeting at the Albany Club. Featured speaker : Minister of National Defense Gordon O’Connor.

The bulk of the speech covered CF funding restoration and progress in Afghanistan. No specific figures for CF funding were elaborated, unfortunately, except the usual business of the CF being under-budgeted since the Mulroney era and requiring multiple years of consistent restorative funding. No argument there. He did unload some interest factlets about Afghanistan, such as the increase in female representatives within provincial and federal legislatures (from zero to one-quarter, I believe), and the dramatic increase in postgraduate students (from 400-500,000 males to 3 million persons, a quarter of which are women). Minister O’Connor also took pains to note that the CF has seen so much recent fighting because they are defending all reconstruction teams in a heavily Taliban-influenced Pashtun area. Not just the CF’s own PRTs, but reconstruction teams from the UN, NATO, and other countries.

More at the link.
Another member at The Torch, Damian Brooks advises – “the kerfuffle in the House of Commons and on CTV the other day about the super-pricey Excalibur artillery round? Not as big a deal as Dawn Black and the journos thought it was.”

Glenn Reynolds;

SO WE HAD THESE HEARINGS ON IRAQ, and generals Abizaid and Zinni are arguing against timetables for withdrawal, which has been the Democrats’ main policy proposal.
Did the Democrats know beforehand that this is what the generals thought? If so, were they dishonest in not taking it into account? Maybe they were relying on this sort of thing to keep from having to do what the MoveOn crowd wants, but what they know is wrong?
Or did they not know, making them clueless? Neither one’s impressive. But since the big criticism of Rumsfeld, which led to his defenestration, was that he “didn’t listen to the generals,” what are the Democrats to do now that the generals have spoken?

Indeed. More at the link.