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.

Now, more than ever – Never Forget

He was loading detonators into hand grenades on a moonlight night somewhere in Belgium about half a kilometre from the front line, when the bullet sheared through the “meat” of both his legs, just above the ankle. “I thought somebody had lashed me,” he recalls. He spent three weeks in a field hospital and re-turned to the trenches.
Before he was injured a second time – his jaw shredded by flying shrapnel – he had survived the onslaught at the Battle of Vimy Ridge and seen the carnage of Hill 60, when his battalion went in with 1,100 men and came out with 127.
He was just a teenager, like so many, talked into a signing up by a soldier his sister was dating, inspired by his buddies who were doing the same. He had barely turned 16 when he first donned the uniform in 1914, but the recruiters had fudged his enlistments by making him a bugle boy. “I never blew a bugle,” he says. He landed instead in the thick of the war, following the fiercest fighting from Belgium to France.

Clifford Holliday died yesterday, at the age of 105. Of the 650,000 Canadians who served, he was one of only 8 surviving WWI veterans, and the last who had seen combat.
hat tip – Pol:Spy
More in the extended entry.

Continue reading →

Predictably, the calls for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation over the prison abuses in Iraq are beginning. Not everyone agrees.
It reminds me of an earlier incident in which prisoners were humiliated, abused, tortured and murdered. It occured in Somalia, and was committed by Belgians and Canadians, under the auspices of a UN Peacekeeping mission.
Kofi Annan was the Head of Peacekeeping for the UN. (1993 – 1997).
Can anyone recall if he was forced to resign? Oh, wait, no. He still had the Rwandan genocide to unattend to.
Well, we know how that quashed his career and all.

Baptized in battle.
hat tip – Debbye, an American in TO

This week marks the anniversary of an WWII tragedy that remained secret for nearly 50 years.

On April 28 1944 a total of 749 US soldiers and sailors died after three ships involved in a training exercise were ambushed by German torpedo boats just off Slapton Sands near Stokenham on the Devon coast.
The full scale of the tragedy remained hidden for almost 50 years because of a secrecy order issued by General Dwight D Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied expeditionary force, who feared news of the disaster could destroy morale or tip off the Germans.

A full-scale rehearsal with all 23,000 US soldiers, in preparation for D-Day, the operation was named “Exercise Tiger”.

Shortly before 2am on April 28, disaster struck when the convoy was discovered by nine German E-boats. One of them fired off two torpedoes which hit the landing ship LST 507. As it started to sink, the 447 soldiers and sailors on board struggled to survive in the cold channel waters.
Fifteen minutes later LST 531 was hit, leaving injured men screaming for help after they were thrown into the burning oil floating on the water.
At 2.30am LST 289 was hit in the stern, but the crew managed to keep it afloat.
The commander responsible for the six surviving ships ordered them back to port, but the skipper of Mr McCann’s ship refused to abandon the 1,000 survivors in the freezing waters, and the 15-year-old coxswain was ordered to mount a rescue.
With orders to pick up only the living, he set off into the darkness, moving through a sea of bodies and wreckage.
“There were just so many bodies in the water,” he told the Guardian this week from his home in Washington state. “Everything was happening so fast, but it was quite a while before any other boats were put into the water to look for survivors. When I found out we had picked up 45 men I was astounded.”
But there was nothing Mr McCann and his crew could do for the other men, a number of whom drowned because they had not been given proper instructions on how to wear their lifejackets. Most were found with their heads in the water and their feet in the air, top heavy from not putting the belts around their chests before inflating the jackets.
When reports of the attack reached the Eisenhower’s headquarters an order – never rescinded – was sent out that it should remain secret. Doctors were told to ask no questions as a stream of burnt and injured soldiers arrived at military hospitals, while the men who survived the exercise were held in sealed camps until D-day six weeks later.

The 60th anniversary of D-Day will be commemorated later this year. The full story continues to emerge piecemeal, as many documents have only been released recently.

The Belmont Club is one of my regular reads. This analysis illustrates why so many people are turning their backs in disgust at the “mainstream media”. The two NYT reporters mentioned didn’t seem to know they were being used. That’s forgivable under the circumstances.
The bigger question – when reporters on the ground become an integral part of the enemy’s strategy, are the editors who approve the reports aware of what is being done? If they aren’t, are they incompetent – and if they are, is it complicity? Too storng a charge? I don’t think so.
Judging by the frequency that the media outlets places negative headlines over content that is tilted towards the positive for the Bush administration – my suspicion is that the more likely answer is the second.

In hindsight, it was possible that CENTCOM arranged for its troop “rotations” in Iraq with the end in view of increasing the available forces under the cover of regular replacement. When the Blackwater contractors were murdered in Fallujah, an operation some speculated was organized by Syrian Special Operations, US commanders probably saw it for the signal that it was. They had arranged media coverage of the outrage for a reason. It was followed by Shi’ite attacks on coalition bases, one attack per ally and a wave of kidnappings. Then Moqtada al-Sadr conveniently seized one of the holiest sites in Shi’ite Islam, the Golden Mosque and proclaimed he was going to die there. Two New York Times staffers were kidnapped and conveniently held in the Golden Mosque, an incident described in Belmont Club’s The Time Traveller. There, they were allowed to glimpse preparations for the final stand. The script written for CENTCOM to follow was probably this (what follows is speculation). Small Marine units would rush into Fallujah to recover the Blackwater corpses and trapped themselves. The Marines would mount a desperate rescue which would create heavy civilian damage. In the meanwhile, Sadr would attack the coalition partner’s bases and flee to the Golden Mosque, where his presence would be confirmed by newsmen who just happend to be to imprisoned there and later released to tell the tale. CENTCOM would destroy the mosque from which he had ‘just left’ or perhaps only occupied by a double. Catastrophe would follow on catastrophe, necessitating the postponement of the June 30 transfer of power.
But CENTCOM refused to sing from the sheet. Sanchez lagged the Fallujah operation and then when the traps had staled, attacked on his own terms. With a keen awareness in the operational limitations of Sadr’s men, he let them strike their impotent blows, then picked them up piecemeal. Within 72 hours, CENTCOM had essentially deflected the Syrian/Iranian offensive and regained the initiative. In the coming days, it will be important to see whether Sadr and the Hizbullah lackeys can maintain their tempo. If they cannot, then the next moves are CENTCOM’s. It seems that Sadr rapidly went to Plan B, leaving the Golden Mosque for Najaf� without finding any takers at CENTCOM. He must be looking at Plan C. President Bush has been on the telephone with key coalition heads of state, bringing them up to speed on the current situation. Syria and Iran have dished out their best shot and landed it on CENTCOM’s arm. Now it’s our turn.

and further down the page:

The pitiful accounts of the battle of Fallujah should put paid to the silly press suggestions that the US military is “overwhelmed”. The problem is that the terrifying combat efficiency of the Marines may in fact lead to the literal extermination of enemy forces. US authorities, with a longer term end game in mind, are balancing the political outcomes of letting the Marines continue, even in their restrained mode, and taking more US casualties from holding back. When the media learns the full extent of enemy casualties in Fallujah, Kut, Ramadi, Saddam city and elsewhere, the image of the US military will be switched from “hapless” to “bullying” in a millisecond.

Hapless to bullying? Try “Tet” to “Guernica”.

Eh… don’t bother with Drudge or the local airwaves if you want any insight into what’s really going on in Fallujah.

The Marines are currently trying to evacuate the town, using leaflets, loudspeakers and taking over the airwaves. Expect a fairly extended period in which no apparent progress will be made. The progress will be positional but the stresses will built up progressively within the enemy position which will be continuously undermined. From here on in, the ability to maneuver based on information dominance will be everything. The strategic goal of the enemy will be to inflict as many casualties on Americans as possible, behind a barricade of women and children.
They will succeed to some extent. The basic goal of American forces will probably be to annihilate and capture the cadre of gangs which infest Fallujah, a town which is a byword in terror even to the Iraqis.

Check out the rest at the Belmont Club.

Sadr blinks!
…
This is interesting because Sadr must have been convinced in his heart that the Americans would not stick at putting a JDAM through the roof. The decimation of his men may have convinced him that the US was playing for keeps. No wonder the Arab League won’t even meet. It’s getting hard to sit on a fence in the Middle East.

Fallujah – the anti-Mogadishu – “the strung up bodies were bait”.

The Marines have long studied Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT). They will put snipers in dominant overwatch; use the road network to divide up the town into zones by posting the intersections; they will build EPW cages outside the town; they will put persistent aerial surveillance aloft; there will be a blanket of electronic surveillance and electronic jamming over the town; they will map out the operation to a room-by-room detail. Then they will lop off bits of Fallujah one slice at a time.
The biggest danger, as Kimmitt knows, is that the Anti-coalition Forces will use civilians, particularly children, as human shields by sheltering and firing from houses. Unfortunately for the enemy, the cordon ensures that Kimmitt will be in no particular hurry. The enemy can shoot it out with Marine snipers who have plenty of match grade ammunition. The presence of Iraqi policemen will allow Kimmitt to direct civilians into processing areas. Then the evacuated houses will be searched individually until the entire leadership structure is taken apart.
The deliberate, even cold-blooded approach by the Marines makes this incident the anti-Mogadishu. The tactics employed against the Rangers in the Blackhawk Down incident relied on the belief that Americans could be reflexively trapped into defending unfavorable positions in attempts to recover bodies. The Anti-Coalition Forces probably felt sure that taunting Americans over the media would produce the desired impulsiveness. As the minutes lengthened into hours and the Marines responded with icy professionalism, the enemy may have come the unpleasant realization that this was not the former administration and that other still more unwelcome surprises were in store for them.

An international showdown is brewing. This time, it’s Canada staring down Denmark in a dispute over ownership of Hans Island.

Canada may be pulling back from overseas military commitments, but is planning to “flex its muscles” with an exercise on home soil by sending a warship, a squadron of helicopters and 200 troops to the high Arctic this summer.

Hans Island is like the Falklands…

The operation, code-mamed Narwhal, is the first time the military will have a joint naval, air and land force operating so far north.

without the sheep…

Colonel Norris Pettis, commander of the Canadian Forces northern area, told The National Post that the operation is about “sending a message that this land is important to us…that we can put troops, and aircraft and ships, on the ground to respond to whatever we might be called upon to deal with.”

or the people…

Both countries claim ownership of the barren and uninhabited island.

it’s about the size of a Home Depot parking lot.

A Danish warship sailed past Hans Island in 2002 and a group of soldiers disembarked and reportedly hoisted the Danish flag, an act Canada claimed was a violation of its sovereignty.

The bastards!

Canada has launched a five-year plan to increase its military presence throughout the Arctic, including satellite surveillance and far-reaching patrols of soldiers on snowmobiles.

A sleeping giant awakes.

A friend who was serving on the USS Nimitz last year related a story today. Before being allowed on shore in Singapore, they were convened and advised of the consequences of poor behavior – Singapore’s intolerance of even minor crimes (singing in public, for example) is legendary.
With this caution in mind, sailors in a hotel bar noticed someone they thought was a tech support guy from the ship, completely enebriated and close to causing trouble. To save him from himself, they tried to escort him quietly back to the ship, but he resisted, and the situation deteriorated. A broken beer bottle and bloodied scalp later, military police arrived on the scene, and the drunk was handcuffed, thrown on a stretcher, and carried back on board.
The drunk continued to be disruptive, and was giving medical personel a difficult time, when someone thought to check his identity.
They’d kidnapped an American tourist.

Our allies in the WOT are going to be rocked back on their heels by the military spending increases in today’s 2004 budget.

An additional $250 million over two years for peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism.

$50 million for the peacekeeping force in Haiti.

That’ll have them sucking in their breath.

Exemption from tax of the income earned by Canadian Forces personnel and police while serving on high-risk international missions.

Woo-hoo! and all this time they were thinking helicoptors! new ships! eh… bullets?

“An additional $605 million over five years for the security contingency reserve.”

“Reserve” means that it doesn’t get spent unless the Peace Tower comes crashing down.

Building on the 8-per-cent increase for 2004-05, an additional $248 million for international assistance, or an 8-per-cent increase, for 2005-06.

Something tells me this doesn’t mean rounding up the 36,000 missing deportees in the country.
update – others are noticing.
added to the Snark Hunt

New Listing Prime location southwest of Kabul, within marching walking distance of downtown attractions. Beautiful mountain vistas.
Distinctive character home, ideal for the “fixer upper”. Outbuildings in good repair, suitable for moving, plenty of parking. Many upgrades, including an open air gymnasium and running track. Nightly fireworks. more

Subdivision potential. Owner has over $90 million invested, open to offers.

.

They volunteered to serve their country. They had no idea what their country had in mind.
Winnipeg Sun

Friesen, who’s now 77 and lives in Winkler, was pulled from training at Camp Shilo in 1945. He was among more than 2,500 young recruits who took an oath of secrecy to participate in a top secret mission — most at a military base in Alberta, others at the National Research Council in Ottawa.
They didn’t know their mission would entail being exposed to poisonous gases, and that they’d be denied medical care for days so scientists could study the horrifying effects.
The soldiers were marched into a field at what is now CFB Suffield near Medicine Hat where they were exposed to mustard gas vapours. Fifteen minutes later they were taken back to the base where they were put in a cold chamber for three hours, Friesen recalls.
“We were still wearing our contaminated clothing sitting in there.”
But that wasn’t the end of it. They were then taken to a hot chamber.
“We were made to perspire which opened our pores. That’s when the fireworks started,” Friesen said. “The vapours trapped in our clothing got into our skin and we got huge blisters all over, including the most tender parts of our bodies.”
…
“We didn’t know what we were going into,” said Tanner, now 77 and living in Kelowna, B.C. “They didn’t tell us what we’d be doing — they said it was top secret. It sounded like something from James Bond.”
After being gassed, the soldiers were taken to the base hospital where they assumed they’d be treated but that didn’t happen despite their cries for care.
“They didn’t give us anything for the pain and they didn’t treat our blisters,” Friesen said. “They just kept us under observation so they could see how our bodies reacted to the gas exposure.”
Many of the men who were gassed in Suffield have not been able to have children, others have been plagued by lung ailments, and other have battled cancer. It’s unknown how many are still alive.

They were paid an additional dollar a day as compensation. Ottawa refused to acknowledge the testing even took place until 1988. Today, defense minister David Pratt announced a $50 million tax-free payout to the estimated 2000 soldiers who were affected.
About damned time.