Via Command Post;

Experts might debate exactly how much water there is in the Iraqi glass, but there is little doubt that – yet again – while the cameras and microphones were pointing towards the carnage, violence and corruption, Iraq has continued its slow and steady march out of its three-decades long nightmare into a much more normal tomorrow. Below are some of the positive developments and good news stories of the past fortnight that for most part received very little media attention. It’s a pity because the story of “Iraq, the phoenix rising from the ashes” is in many ways a lot more interesting, not to say consequential, than the usual steady media diet of “Iraq, the Wild East.”

Read the rest of Arthur Chernkoff’s Opinionjournal.com piece for the “rest of the story” on Iraq.

Checking my entry pages a while ago (traffic is up with the swift boat vet contraversy) I noticed that this post on the blog “My War” was recieving a lot of hits.
So I checked over there. His blog has been wiped clean and only a cryptic quote remains as a clue as to what’s going on.

“Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?” -last words Johnny Rotten spit onstage at the Sex Pistols last gig in 1978.

I hope the condition is temporary. And beaurocratic.
I’ve saved a copy of the blog’s content from the Google cache, for my own use. Perhaps I’ll mirror it somewhere, but I think I’ll wait to see if there’s more to the story before I do.
update – An explanation.
I won’t mirror the content, in light of the reasons he pulled it. And hopefully, others will respect his privacy more than these idiots at NPR.

In followup to comments on this post on UN Flight 51, shot down by Syria in 1974, I recieved this link to a DHC-5 Buffalo restoration underway at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. The current status;

Reconstruction of the nose is essentially complete thanks to the donation of a radome by Aero Support Canada Inc. A shipping container with unairworthy parts is on its way from DAC’s African operations and is expected on the project site within two months. When we acquite main gear, we will be able to begin assembly of major parts (wings, tail, etc.) to the fuselage.

Check out the photos and the Flightlines article.

Countries around the globe are assisting Russia in dismantling their leaky and dangerous Soviet-era submarines. Canada has signed up to decommission 12.

“Spent nuclear fuel in Russian submarine reactors presents an international security risk and an environmental threat to the Arctic and Barents Sea,” said Mr. Pettigrew. “Funding this initiative is a key element of our international security agenda and a high priority for Canada under the G8 Global Partnership announced at Kananaskis.” Russia currently has 56 retired nuclear submarines in the Barents Sea region awaiting disposal. Canada’s contribution will be to assist with the dismantlement of three Victor class nuclear submarines. Canada will be concluding at least three more similar annual agreements to support the dismantlement of 12 submarines at a total cost of approximately $116 million .

In response, Russian officials announced that in the spirit of co-operation, a reciprocal pledge;

“Canada’s Sea King helicopters have been a danger to their crews and an unacceptable drain on Canada’s attempts to restore their military capabilities.
Today, we announce funding for the retirement of 10 of these ancient helicopters at a total cost of $1256 (Cdn funds). This investment will purchase the fuel required to launch the sputtering death traps into the air long enough to crash safely into deep ocean waters off the coast of New Brunswick.

Soldiers of the Great War – still returning home;

ROME – The bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War One have been found frozen and almost perfectly preserved in an Italian Alpine glacier.
Mountain rescue worker Maurizio Vicenzi discovered the mummified bodies on Friday, encased upside down in ice at 11,940 feet altitude on San Matteo mountain near the Swiss and Austrian borders.

Let’s hope they just identify them, take them home, and bury them honourably, without a detour to someone’s lab.

Canadian Military Exercises: not just an old oxymoron joke.
According to CBC television news this evening, the largest ever navy, air force and army exercise to “boost Canadian sovereignty” in the Canadian north has three tasks on the order paper:
a) Locate a fictional crashed satellite
b) Find and escort 4 unauthorized scientists (also looking for the satellite) from the area.
c) Rescue a stranded cruise ship
Well, and wait for parts to come in to repair the Sea King. (“Not an exercise. I repeat, this is not an exercise”)

On his recent visit to the northern territories, Prime Minister Paul Martin said exercises like Narwhal are important “to make sure that the rest of the world understands that this is Canadian territory.”

Unauthorized debris and unarmed civilians take note.

Damian Brooks reminds us that today is the anniversary of the ill-fated raid on Dieppe.

On August 19, 1942, 6,100 men landed on the beaches of Dieppe, France for a raid against German positions. 5,000 of these troops were Canadians, the remainder being British Commandos and 50 American Rangers. The raid was supported by eight Allied destroyers and 74 Allied air squadrons (eight belonging to the RCAF).
The raid was not an unqualified success.

The rest is here.

CBFTW:

I was on page 92, the part where Orwell was frantically chasing down a fascist with a bayonet fixed to the end of his rifle. Read for a bit, then when we got to the area where we thought was the point of orgin for those fired mortars, I stopped reading and bookmarked my place in the book, and we dismounted in this really third world area of Mosul that had this really bad stench of rotten milk lingering in the air. Tons of trash littered all over the place, and a bunch of cows and stray chickens roaming around freely. Lots of little kids also came out of nowhere to stare at us. We talked to some of the locals to see if they saw or seen anything. Then something happened, and well all raced back onto our vehicle and burned rubber outta there. And we were now in hot pursuit of these mad mortar men the same way a cop races to an armed robber call in his police car. I opened up my book and continued to read. That fascist, that Orwell was chasing down with a bayonet fixed rifle, got away from him, and I was now at the part where Orwell injured some guys with a grenade of sorts, and was ready to kick some serious ass, when all the sudden we stopped suddenly, and I had to close the book back up because the back ramp dropped and we were told to dismount.

The rest here.

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