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November 2001
“The Monthly Diamondhead”
November 2001
Editor-Reporter-Chief Cook-Web Slave-
Ron Leonard
304-728-7012 rollayo@earthlink.net
Company Stuff:
This month brought several new people to the fold of long lost 25th Aviation Personnel. The newly found personnel for the month are for HHC Bob Carlson, Don Helmeich. For the Diamondheads are Chuck Moore, Sam shute, Robert Rath, Robert “Hayne” Moore, William Osthagan, Terry Neal, Steve hartzler, David Horton, Larry Little, Matt Mclynn, Robert Michaels, John Riley, George Stephens were added. For the Little Bears we have added Harold Baber, Ken Creiger, The contact information for these additions can be found on the proper roster on the web page. I have many more phone numbers to call for additional new personnel, their contact information will be added as I contact them and their desires to be added are received.
The web page was recently overhauled and upgraded this past month. We now have an additional 50 meg of storage, so that should solve the problems again for a few months. This means I can now get back to adding more pictures and other memory intensive applications.
This month the Bradtrans virus also hammered me, and it totally wiped out all my exe files. I had most things backed up so little was lost, although my accumulated news items got trashed, so this will be a briefer than usual newsletter. If any of you have been affected I apologize. It just sends itself through my e-mail and I never once had a warning from my virus protection Macafee which was updated the day prior. A fix for anyone affected is located at www.macafee.com , and at the Norton site www.symantec.com . This thing is sneaky so beware of attachments.
Reunion Stuff: 121 Days and counting down
For the benefit of the new guys I am going to repost the reunion Informational Letter. It will save answering many questions again, and remind the rest of you who have not responded by now. If you are planning on attending, we need to know so enough rooms can be reserved.
There has been a reunion countdown counter added to the front page to keep posted on the time left. The response is increasing weekly. If you are planning on attending please let me know if a Diamondhead. I need to know 1: If you plan on attending even tentatively, 2: How many people, and 3:If staying at the Holiday Inn
To all Little Bear Reunion Attendees;
The Little Bear Association Reunion will be held on April 12, 13, 14, 2002 in beautiful, historic Charleston, SC. The reunion hotel is the Holiday Inn Mt. Pleasant, 250 Johnnie Dodds Blvd, Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464. The Holiday Inn, Mt. Pleasant is conveniently located three miles from the famed Historic District just across the Cooper River from downtown Charleston and near most of the tourist sites and only five miles from the sun and sand of the Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island. They also offer more in-hotel facilities for the value spent. A tour representative will be present at registration so attendees can sign up for tours as desired.
A special room rate of $99.00 plus 11% tax has been negotiated for those attending the reunion. This room rate includes Continental Breakfast, newspaper and late checkout for those who join the "Priority Club". There is no cost to join the Priority Club, just ask about it and signup when you register. This rate will also be available for those of you who may want to stay longer in the Charleston area. Many other hotels are available in and around Charleston, however most are $125 to $350 per night, plus tax. The Holiday Inn, Mt. Pleasant is currently undergoing a complete remodeling and will be almost brand new for us in April 2002. All rooms have been remodeled and the common use areas will be completed by November 2001.
Reunion costs (banquet, hospitality rooms, and gratuities) will be covered by registration fees and Little Bear Association funds. Therefore, all Little Bears attendees are expected to be a member of the Association. If you are not a member, please send your membership dues ($25) to our Treasurer:
Terry Mix
4610-176 Avenue S.E.
Bellevue, WA 98006
Registration for the Little Bear Reunion is as follows:
Little Bears (members and guests) - $45 per person
Other Battalion personnel <Diamondhead, HHC etc>and guests - $55 per person
Each attendee will be responsible for their transportation, lodging and other associated costs.
Holiday Inn-Mt. Pleasant reservations can be made from now until March 2002. However, you should make them early to assure your room is available.
Contact: Susie York, Reservations Manager:
Phone 1-800-290-4004 ext. 122
Tell them you will be attending the Little Bear Reunion. The code for our blocked rooms is "COA".You can view the hotel at http://www.holidayinn-mtpleasant.com
A parade and ceremonies is being held at the Citadel at 3:45 PM on Friday April 12, 2002. Reunion attendees are invited to attend as "Honored Guests”. If you would like to attend the Citadel parade and ceremonies, plan accordingly
Below is a list of Diamondheads that are tentatively planning on attending as of today. This list grows constantly, and we are still finding people weekly, so it will grow much more. If you are not on the list and plan on attending let me know ASAP so we have enough rooms blocked and reserved. At this point 95 rooms have been reserved.
Attendee.............number.............Staying at Holiday Inn
Ron and Carol Leonard-Holiday Inn
Don Cannata-?
Dianne and George Pendleton-?
Danny Driscoll-?
Steve Thorp-?
Bert Rice and wife-Holiday Inn
Ed Schenk-?
Nolan Little and Robyn- Holiday Inn
Ray and Michelle Huntington-?
Bob Seger-Holiday Inn
Art Gravatt-?
Sam Boswell-?
David Stock-?
Charlie Burnett-Wife -Holiday Inn?
Ron White-?-?
George Heneveld- Wife- Holiday Inn
Robert Michaels-?-?
|
Attendee.............number.............Staying at Holiday Inn
Neil Weems-?
Gary Tompkins-?
Ed Schenk-?
Ralph Little and Robyn-Holiday Inn
Rob Amiot-?-Holiday Inn
Charlie Edwards-wife-Holiday Inn
Sal Ambrosia-GF-Holiday Inn
Ron Skamanish-Wife-Holiday
Gonzalo Salazar-wife-Holiday Inn
Al Lewis- Holiday
George Smith-Wife-Holiday Inn
Jack Mosely-Wife-?
Troy Thomas and Paula-Holiday Inn
Fred Panhorst-Wife Holiday Inn
William Connell-Wife Holiday Inn
Richard Eichler-?-?
Don Helmeich?-?
|
For any of you guys who are eligible for a reserve retirement at age 60, I recommend this web site. It will answer many of your questions.
Medical Issues
This month the issue is PTSD.
Help for trauma survivors, war veterans, family members, friends and therapists.
The normal effects of trauma (post-traumatic reactions) explained as survivor skills (they kept you alive), which over time may become big problems. See issue #1 of the Post-Traumatic Gazette
How post-traumatic stress disorder affects family members, including me. See issue #2
How to get better. A wide variety of resources, because different people need different things.
The perspective that it is normal to be affected by trauma, and it takes time to heal, and we heal in community. You can start alone (no reason not to) but finding support is a part of healing. This site is meant to be part of your support system.
Hope. You did not deserve whatever you endured. You didn't cause it even if other people blame you for it. It is normal to be affected by trauma, and you deserve to recover.
Free for downloading: Sample issues of the Post-Traumatic Gazette, pamphlets and articles. Plus excerpts and samples of many of the books we sell at...Patience's online bookstore where you can buy everything I've written (book, pamphlets, all the back issues of the Post-Traumatic Gazette, and subscriptions to it) as well as other books I find helpful.
Information about me and Patience Press.
Also Included in the Patience Press bookstore is the novel “Chicken Hawk”, A sample chapter is there. You pilot types will love it.
Please Sign Petition to Provide Disabled Veterans a Fair Shake
The following message asks you to sign a petition to overturn an old, unfair law. For years, Retired Disabled Veterans have been the ONLY U.S. Government employees who have been required to fund their own Disability Payments! For every dollar they get in Veteran's Disability Payments, one dollar is
deducted from their Retired Pay. That is simply NOT FAIR.... especially since Congress voted itself yet
another pay raise. The House has approved the bill, but the Senate's version contains a clause that the President must find the money to fund the effort. That is pure Political Cowardice.... the politicians will simply say we voted for it, but the mean old president didn't fund it. Please sound off and let Congress know that it's time to right this wrong. Signing the petition below will help. Calling or faxing your Congressman's local office will also help.
Veterans' Disability Compensation Injustice - Support HR 303 - Signatures
A Little Humor
Aircraft Maintenance Problems and Solutions
Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humor. Here QUANTAS pilots submit some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems, known as “squawks,” and the solution recorded by maintenance engineers. By the way Quantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.
P = The problem logged by the pilot.
S = The solution and action taken by the engineers.
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
P: Test flight OK, except autoland very rough.
S: Autoland not installed on this aircraft.
P: No. 2 propeller seeping prop fluid.
S: No. 2 propeller seepage normal. Nos. 1, 3 and 4 propellers lack normal seepage.
P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on backorder.
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-fpm descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're there for!
P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
P: Suspected crack in windscreen.
S: Suspect you're right.
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with words.
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
The Cross Country Trip
To: Inspector Carl N. Frank
Flight Standards District Office
Oklahoma City, OK
Dear Mr. Frank:
Here is the letter, which you asked me to send you - about my flight, back in December.
First of all, I would like to thank that very nice, older fellow you had with you yesterday; you know, the one who took my student pilot's license and told me I wouldn't need it any more.
I guess that means that he is giving me my full-fledged pilot's license. After all, that happened yesterday, I have earned it. You should watch that fellow though. After I told him about the flight, he seemed quite nervous, and his hands were shaking. He said he had never heard anything like it before. Anyhow, here is what happened:
The weather has been so bad, here in Bristol, since I soloed last week, that I had not been able to go flying. But yesterday, I wasn't about to let low ceilings and visibility, and a little freezing drizzle stop me from flying to Oklahoma City and back.
I was pretty proud of having soloed in only 6 hours, so I invited John Winters, my next door neighbor, to go with me. We planned to fly to Oklahoma City's Will Rogers Airport, which, as you know, is less than 1100 miles from Bristol. There is this excellent restaurant on Meridian, just north of I-40, that
serves absolutely wonderful char-broiled steaks and the greatest mixed drinks.
Well, on the way to the airport, the road was icy, and our car slid into the ditch. I can see why they say that, "The most dangerous part of a trip is the drive to the airport."
My neighbor was a little concerned about the weather, but when I reminded him once again about those steaks and the booze that we would soon be enjoying, he seemed much happier.
When we arrived at the airport, there were still a few snow showers around, but the freezing drizzle had almost stopped. I checked the weather and was assured that it was solid "IFR," all the way.
I was delighted the weather was so good! When I talked to the man who runs the airport, I found out that the airplane I had been flying was covered with ice. You can imagine my disappointment. Just then, a friendly young line boy suggested that I take one of the airplanes that were in the hanger.
I told him to pull one out. I saw immediately that it was very much like the Cessna 150, I have been flying. I think he called it a 337. He told me it was also made by Cessna.
I noticed right away that it had two tails, but I didn't say anything because, well, I was in a hurry. Oh yes, it had a spare engine too.
I unlocked the door and we climbed in. I began looking for the place to put the key. Now I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but it shouldn't be necessary to get out the airplane manual and follow the checklist, just to fly an airplane. That's ridiculous.
I never saw so many dials and needles and knobs and handles and switches. As we both know, they have simplified this a lot in the 150. I forgot to mention that I did file a flight plan with the guy in the tower. He said I would need to, because of the weather. When I told him I was flying a pressurized Skymaster (that's what it said on the control wheel), he said it was all right to go up "Victor-163," all the way.
I don't know why he called it a victor; I guess that's just his pet name for an Interstate highway. And besides, it is 'I-35' - not `163,' but those fellows try to do a good job. They told me a lot of other stuff too, but you know how much red tape there is when you deal with the government.
The takeoff was one of my best, and as I carefully left the pattern - just the way the book says it should be done - I noticed that the Skymaster doesn't climb as good as the 150. The tower told me to contact Fort Worth Center. I dialed in the frequency that he gave me, but it seemed kind of silly to call them, since I wasn't going to Fort Worth.
Just then, there must have been some kind of emergency, because a lot of airline pilots began yelling stuff at the same time, and they made such a racket that I turned my radio off. You'd think that those "professionals" would be better trained.
'I-35' was right under me, and since (from that) I knew that I was on course, I went right on up into the clouds. After all, it was snowing so hard by now that it was a waste of time to look outside; you could only see about a quarter of a mile.
Going into the clouds was a bad thing to do, I realized, since my neighbor undoubtedly wanted to see the scenery, especially the snow cover on the Arbuckle Mountains, ahead of us. But everyone has to be disappointed some time, and we pilots have to make the best of it, don't we?
It was pretty much smooth flying, and with the ice and snow that seemed to be forming all over the windshield, there wasn't much to see. I will say that I handled the controls quite easily, for a pilot of only six hours.
My computer and pencils fell out of my shirt pocket once, but sometimes these things happen, I am told. I don't expect you to believe this, but at one time my pocket watch was standing straight up on its chain!
That was pretty funny, and I asked my neighbor to look, but he just kept staring straight ahead, with sort of a glassy look in his eyes. I figured that he was afraid of height, like all non-pilots are. By the way,
something was wrong with the altimeter. It kept winding and unwinding all the time.
Finally, I decided we had flown about long enough to be in Oklahoma City. I had it all worked out on my E6B computer. I am a whiz at that computer, but something must have gone wrong with it, since when I came down to look for the airport, there wasn't anything there except a lot of houses.
Those weather people had sure been wrong, too. The conditions were really marginal, with a ceiling of about 100 feet. You just can't trust anybody in this business except yourself, right?
Why, there were even thunderstorms going on, with an occasional bolt of lightning. I decided that my neighbor should see how beautiful it was, and the way the lightning seemed to turn that snow on the roof tops all yellow; and the roof tops were so close, that it looked like you could just reach out and touch them. But I guess he was asleep, having gotten over his fear of height, and I didn't want to wake him up.
Anyway, just then I had an emergency; the front engine ran out of gas. It really didn't worry me, since I had read the book and knew right where the other ignition switch was. I just fired up the spare engine on the back, and we kept on going. This business of having two engines, one in front and one in back,
is really a safety factor. If one quits, the other is right back there, ready to go. Maybe all airplanes should have two engines. You might suggest this and get an award (we could split the cash).
As pilot in command, I take my responsibilities very seriously. It was apparent that I would have to go down lower and keep a sharp eye in such bad weather. I was glad that my neighbor was asleep, because it was pretty dark under the cloud, and if it hadn't been for the lightning flashes, it would have been hard to read the road signs through the ice on the windshield.
The landing lights were not very bright either. You would think they would have melted the ice that covered them, but they didn't. Several cars ran off the road when we passed, and you can sure see what they mean about flying being a lot safer than driving.
To make a long story short, I finally spotted Tinker Air Force base, and since we were already late for cocktails and dinner, I decided to land there. It being an Air Force base, I knew it had plenty of runway, and I could already see a red colored light in the control tower, so I knew they were still celebrating Christmas, and we would be welcome.
Somebody told me that you can always talk to these military people on the International Emergency Frequency, so I tried it, but you wouldn't believe the language I heard. Those people ought to be straightened out by somebody, and I would like to complain as a taxpayer.
Evidently, they were expecting somebody to come in and land, because they kept talking about clearing the airspace, for "some damn stupid, incompetent SOB, up in the clouds." I wanted to be helpful, so I landed on the taxiway - to be out of the way, in case that other fellow needed the runway.
A lot of people came running out, waving at us. It was pretty evident that they had never seen a Skymaster land on a taxiway before.
That General with the nasty temper was real mad about something. I tried to explain to him, in a reasonable manner, that I didn't think the tower operator should be swearing at that guy up there, but his face was so red that I think he must have a drinking problem.
Well, that's about all. After you two FAA inspectors left, the weather got really bad, so I got one of the Air Force guys to drive me to where I could rent a car to drive back home.
I never did get my steak and drinks. My neighbor stayed there at the hospital in Oklahoma City. He can't write you a letter just yet, because he's still not awake. Poor fellow, he must have the flu, or something.
Let me know it you need anything else, and by the way, send my new pilot's license airmail special delivery.
War Stories
During '10 Minutes Of Hell' In Vietnam Jungle, Mexican-Born Medic Became A Hero To His Comrades
By Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Military.com Columnist
In 1993, Alfred Rascon talked to an old platoon mate from Vietnam for the first time in years. Former Sgt. Ray Compton asked Rascon how it felt to be nominated for the Medal of Honor. "I don't know," Rascon replied. Compton, who knew firsthand of his friend's heroism on March 16, 1966, immediately
took steps to spread the story of what happened that day in Vietnam. And in February 2000, President Clinton presented former Army Spc. 4 Alfred Rascon with the United States' highest military honor for the actions he had taken 34 years earlier.
The long gap between Rascon's actions and his Medal of Honor has been blamed on red tape and bureaucratic neglect. For Rascon, born in Chihuahua, Mexico, there was no cause for resentment at not receiving the honor earlier. "It was just a matter of me doing what I had to do that day, like any other day," he said. "It just so happens [that day] was a bad day."
Rascon was a medic with the reconnaissance platoon of Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate). While the men of his platoon moved through deep jungle to reinforce the 2nd Battalion, they came under heavy fire. "We later found
out [the 2nd Battalion was] engaged with two reinforced battalions of the regular NVA," Rascon told Vietnam magazine. "They were being hit from all sides."
Rascon, known as "Doc" to his platoon mates, heard cries for a medic from up front. Ignoring directions to keep sheltered, Rascon repeatedly made attempts to reach Pfc. William Thompson, a wounded point gunner lying on an open enemy trail. Once he reached the soldier, Rascon placed his own body between Thompson and the enemy fire, sustaining serious injuries in the process.
But Rascon's work wasn't finished. After dragging the wounded gunner off-trail, he heard another gunner, Pfc. Larry Gibson, yell that he was low on ammunition. Rascon brought two bandoliers from Thompson's chest to Gibson. He began searching for more wounded soldiers when two grenades
exploded in front of him, the second ripping through his face. Instead of giving up, Rascon said, he thought "you've got to take care of your people." Rascon threw himself on top of Pvt. Neil Haffey, also shielding Compton from the blast of the next grenade.
Rascon was not even a naturalized citizen during that "10 minutes of hell" in 1966. Yet he had voluntarily joined the Army in order to "give something back to my country ... I was always an American in my heart," he said during his Medal of Honor ceremony.
The humble Rascon says, "I'm not a hero," but the men he saved that day in 1966 disagree.
"Neither [Haffey nor I] would be here today if it hadn't been for Al," Compton told reporters. "Maybe not in his own eyes, but in our eyes, he's a hero. No doubt about it."
Newsy Items
CIA Has Special Paramilitary Force, by John J. Lumpkin Associated
Press Writer
(EXCERPT) WASHINGTON -- Somewhere between America's spies and commandos is a small group of men and women like Johnny "Mike" Spann, the CIA paramilitary officer killed by rioting prisoners in Afghanistan.
Part intelligence operative, part combat trooper, these officers were among the first Americans to cross the border into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 - even before military commandos began reconnaissance missions.
"This is America's secret warfare," said Loch Johnson, a CIA expert at the University of Georgia, of the agency's paramilitary force.
U.S. officials will not say how many are in Afghanistan and the surrounding countries, except that the contingent is much smaller than the hundreds of U.S. military special operations forces.
They are believed to be supplying weapons, training and intelligence to rebels fighting the Taliban. They are gathering information on their own, interrogating prisoners and defectors. Some are working alongside the Army's Green Berets and other special operations forces, while others are on their own.
They come from within the CIA's Directorate of Operations, whose primary mission is to conduct clandestine intelligence-gathering. This includes traditional case officers, who work out of U.S. embassies, trying to make sources out of foreign government officials.
One branch, the Special Activities Division, is home to the CIA's offensive punch. Officers in this division are called upon when the president wants covertly to advance U.S. foreign policy, influencing a foreign government without any signs of U.S. action.
Inside the division are intelligence officers who can create economic and political disruptions in foreign countries.
U.S. and friendly nation laws prohibit fully reproducing copyrighted material. In abidance with our laws this report cannot be provided in its entirety. However, you can read it in full today, 02 Dec 2001, at the following URL. (COMBINE the following lines into your web browser.) The
subject/content of this report is not necessarily the viewpoint of the distributing Library. This report is provided for your information and discussion.
Iraq Accepts U.N. Resolution
By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq said Saturday it would implement the six-month extension of an U.N. oil-for-food program but warned it would reject any new restrictions on its trade, setting the stage for a showdown over sanctions next spring.
At the same time, a newspaper owned by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s son accused the United States of supporting the extension, approved by the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, to gain time to prepare for an attack on Iraq.
The resolution, adopted after the United States and Russia reached a compromise, extended the oil-for-food program for six months but called for an overhaul of the sanctions on Iraq after it expires.
Russia agreed to approve by May 30 a new list of goods that would need U.N. review before shipment to Iraq, a key feature of an earlier U.S.-British proposal aimed to ease the effects of the sanctions on Iraqi civilians while making it tougher for Saddam to obtain or develop weapons.
Iraq ``will continue to implement the oil-for-food program in its 11th phase,'' Foreign Minster Naji Sabri told reporters. However, he said, ``Iraq rejects totally any new or future restrictions on its trade dealings and on its right to develop in the scientific and economic fields.''
The oil-for-food program was set up in 1996 to ease the suffering of 22 million Iraqis living under sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It allows Iraq to sell oil on condition that the proceeds are used to buy humanitarian goods and pay war reparations.
The U.N. sanctions can be abolished only after U.N. inspectors report that Iraq has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction. Baghdad claims it has done so, but has not let inspectors into the country since 1998, saying sanctions must be lifted first.
An editorial in Babil, a newspaper owned by Hussein's son Odai Hussein, said the United States voted for the extension of the oil-for-food program because of its preoccupation with the war in Afghanistan (news - websites).
``The United States pushed the Security Council to approve a six-month extension of the oil-for-food program in order to have enough time to finish its work in Afghanistan and also to fabricate pretexts acceptable to the allies to attack Iraq,'' it said.
The editorial also praised Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and other unidentified Arab officials for discouraging the United States from attacking Iraq, and said, ``Any attack on Iraq will fail and our country will be a graveyard for American troops.''
Iraq is a potential target of the United States in the anti-terror war President Bush (news - web sites) declared following the Sept. 11 attacks, and Bush recently warned that it must allow U.N. arms inspectors to return or face the consequences.
December 1, 2001
U.S. REJECTS MAD MULLAH'S SECRET PLEA
By NILES LATHEM
NYPost
WASHINGTON - A desperate Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar last night was trying to cut a deal with advancing Afghan opposition forces - but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave him the big thumbs down. News of secret talks between Omar - brother-in-law to terror master Osama bin
Laden - and Pashtun tribal elders in Afghanistan prompted Rumsfeld to issue a blunt warning: "I can assure you that the U.S. would vigorously oppose providing him amnesty or safe passage of any type." As the last Taliban refuge in the city of Kandahar seemed on the verge of falling, Omar was desperately trying to save his skin.
Pentagon officials told The Post they've received reports that Omar - despite daily appeals to his shattered forces to fight to the death - is increasingly isolated and being threatened by close Taliban loyalists who are turning on him and cutting their own deals.
U.S. warplanes continued to pound away at the Taliban's final bastion of power yesterday as rebel forces from southern Pashtun tribes closed in from the south and Northern Alliance forces moved toward the city from the northeast.
"There has not yet been a major ground-offensive battle," said Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
"But there are, we know, negotiations going on between the opposition forces and the Taliban leadership for surrender."
Taliban officials told reporters that Omar was still trying to rally his troops, telling them in a radio message that fighting was "the best opportunity to achieve martyrdom."
But Pentagon officials said the situation inside the city is increasingly chaotic, as many Taliban fighters and commanders were cutting deals with the opposition - while other Taliban and non-Afghan al Qaeda forces are digging in for a battle to the death.
Sources said Omar is now cut off from many of his military commanders, as well as from bin Laden, who is believed to be holed up in an underground fortress in the Tora Bora region south of Jalalabad.
Officials said Omar is talking to Pashtun elders through "family intermediaries" about getting safe passage out of Kandahar and retreating to the Afghan mountains - where he would try to rebuild his forces and "live to fight for another day," according to a Pentagon official.
The Pentagon has already launched three operations designed to kill Omar. One of his home compounds was attacked by U.S. bombers and Predator drone aircraft in the opening week of the war. Taliban officials said Omar escaped the airstrike by 15 minutes, although an uncle and one of Omar's sons were
killed in the attack. U.S. Special Forces teams raided a second home outside Kandahar in a
high-profile operation in October in hopes of killing or capturing Omar, sources said.
And this past Tuesday, B-1 bombers and F-14 jets bombed a compound used by a Saudi humanitarian-aid organization after getting information that Omar might be there. He was believed to have been nearby when the bombs struck, but again escaped unharmed.
Most of yesterday's fighting appeared to be taking place around the Kandahar airport, where anti-Taliban rebels claimed to have captured 80 Taliban troops, five tanks, four pickup trucks, an anti-aircraft gun and a grenade launcher.
Pashtun leaders have warned Northern Alliance forces - comprised mainly of ethnic Uzbek and Tajik fighters - not to advance on Kandahar.
Asked whether the U.S. is concerned that a civil war between anti-Taliban forces could erupt after Omar is defeated, Rumsfeld replied, "It's an untidy situation, but I'm not staying up at night worrying about it."
Turkey braces for war, fortifies border with Iraq
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, November 30, 2001
ANKARA - Turkey has bolstered its border with Iraq to prepare for any U.S.-led effort to topple the regime of President Saddam Hussein. The government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has become increasingly convinced that the United States will attack Baghdad. Turkish officials said they
believe Washington will seek Ankara's support in any such campaign.
Turkish sources said military troops have replaced gendarmerie units deployed in the border region with Iraq. The troops are meant to protect the border and stop any influx of refugees from Iraq, Middle East Newsline reported.
The buildup comes amid plans by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to visit Ankara next week. Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said he does not rule out reconsidering Ankara's opposition to any U.S.-led attack on Saddam.
"We repeated several times that Turkey doesn't want an operation in Iraq," ''Cakmakoglu said. "However, new conditions might call for new assessments."
[On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council voted to extend sanctions on Iraq for another six months.]
Already, the Incirlik air force base in southern Turkey has become a major center for Britain and the United States. The base serves British and U.S. combat jets that patrol northern Iraq and could be the launching point for any attack on the Saddam regime.
Turkey has also ordered surface-to-air batteries to protect vital targets around the country. The military has also increased readiness over the last two months.
The Ankara-based Turkish Daily News reported that Iraq has been alerted to the Turkish military preparations. The newspaper said the Iraqi army has reinforced deployment in the oil-rich Kirkuk region as well as in Mosul and Dohuk.
Western diplomatic sources said Turkey might seek to seize Mosul as part of any U.S.-led offensive against Iraq. Turkey has already joined the war in Afghanistan and officials said Ankara is considering sending a force of up to 5,000 soldiers.
The Ankara-based Milliyet daily quoted one senior official as saying a Turkish brigade, which could be supported by artillery and tanks, would protect Kabul's airport.
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XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX FRI NOV 30 2001 10:30:08 ET XXXXX
MAG: SUDAN TRIED TO GIVE CLINTON ADMIN FILES ON BIN LADEN
NEW YORK --VANITY FAIR HAS OBTAINED LETTERS and memorandums that document approaches made by Sudanese intelligence officials and other emissaries to members of the Clinton administration to share information about many of the 22 terrorists on the government's most-wanted list, including: Osama bin Laden.
VANITY FAIR is set to unleash the story in January 2002 editions, publishing sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
MORE
THE MUKHABARAT, A SUDANESE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, spent the early to mid-1990s amassing copious amounts of information on bin Laden and his cohorts at a time when they were relatively unknown and their activities limited, author David Rose reports.
From the fall of 1996 until weeks before the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the Mukhabarat made repeated efforts to share its files on terrorists with the U.S. On more than one occasion senior F.B.I. officials wanted to accept the offers, but were apparently overruled by the State
Department.
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT and her assistant secretary for
Africa, Susan Rice, declined to comment for this story.
ACCORDING TO TIM CARNEY, THE LAST U.S. AMBASSADOR to Sudan, whose posting
ended in 1997, "The fact is, they were opening the doors, and we weren't taking them up on it.
The U.S. failed to reciprocate Sudan's willingness to engage us on some serious questions of terrorism. We can speculate that this failure had serious implications-at least for what happened at the U.S. Embassies in 1998. In any case, the U.S. lost access to a mine of material on bin Laden and his
organization." He tells Rose, "It was worse than a crime. It was a f---up."
HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED CARNEY CONTENDS that U.S. intelligence failed because it became "politicized": the message from Sudan did not fit conventional wisdom at the State Department and the C.I.A., and so it was disregarded, again and again.
Rose writes that the simple answer is that the Clinton administration had accused Sudan of sponsoring terrorism, and refused to believe that anything it did to prove its bona fides could be genuine. At the same time, perceptions in Washington were influenced by C.I.A. reports that were wildly inaccurate, some the result of deliberatedisinformation.
ROSE REPORTS THAT, HAD U.S. AGENCIES EXAMINED the Mukhabarat files in 1996
when they first had the chance the prospects of preventing subsequent al-Qaeda attacks would have been much greater. Gutbi al-Mahdi, the Mukhabarat's director general between 1997 and 2000, claims that if the F.B.I. had taken his offer in February 1998, the embassy bombings could have been prevented:
"They had very little information at that time: they were shooting in the dark. Had they engaged with Sudan, they could have stopped a lot of things."
Rose writes that as late as the end of 1995, bin laden was not judged important enough by the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. for anyone to mention him to U.S. Ambassador Don Petterson when Petterson talked to the Sudanese about terrorism, an indication that the U.S. knew very little about bin Laden's
organization or lethal capacity. "My recollection is that when I made representations about terrorist
organizations Osama bin Laden did not figure," Petterson says. "We in Khartoum were not really concerned about him."
SOME OF THE MUKHABARAT'S FILES IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALS who played central roles
in the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998; others chart the backgrounds and movements of al-Qaeda operatives who are said to be linked directly to the atrocities of September 11. Among those profiled:
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, another of those named on the F.B.I.'s most-wanted list, who set the plot for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings rolling during two trips he made to Nairobi in the spring of 1998 from Khartoum, where he was apparently working for al-Qaeda.
Rose writes that had the F.B.I. accepted al-Mahdi's February offer, it might have foiled Mohammed's plans by stepping in when he rented a villa in Kenya, gathered the bombers at the Hilltop Hotel in Nairobi, or helped stuff a pickup truck with TNT.
Two men carrying Pakistani passports and using the names Sayyid Iskandar Suliman and Sayyid Nazir Abbass, who arrived in Khartoum from Kenya a few days after the 1998 embassy bombings and rented an apartment overlooking the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. They appeared to be reconnoitering for a possible future attack and are believed to be members of al-Qaeda.
They also stayed at the Hilltop Hotel in Nairobi-the base used by other members of the embassy-bombing conspiracy. Sudan arrested the two men and offered to extradite them for trial, but the U.S. did not respond, instead opting to bomb the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, which was found to have no connection to bin Laden but made vaccines and medicine and had contracts with the U.N.
Wadih al-Hage, bin Laden's former private secretary, now serving life without parole after his conviction in New York for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings, who was logged and photographed in Sudan. He is said to have moved among bin Laden'scells and across four continents-information that surely would have been helpful in cramping al-Qaeda's style had it been grasped in 1996.
Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, a Sudanese born to Iraqi parents and an Afghan-war veteran who worked for two bin Laden companies until 1995. Salim provides a link to the New York suicide hijackers. From 1995 to 1998, he made frequent visits to Germany, where a Syrian trader, Mamoun Darkazanli, had signing powers over his bank account. Darkazanli has allegedly procured electronic equipment for
al-Qaeda.
Both men attended the same Hamburg mosque as Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who flew the two planes into the World Trade Center.
ACCORDING TO AL-MAHDI, THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE kept tabs on the entire bin Laden "clique": "We had a lot of information: who they are, who are their families, what is their education. We knew what they were doing in the country, what is their relationship with Osama bin Laden. And [had]
photographs of them all."
A senior official from Egyptian intelligence, who has worked closely with the ukhabarat, substantiates the account: "They knew all about them: who they were, where they came from. They had copies of their passports, their tickets; they knew where they went. Of course that information could have helped
enormously. It is the history of those people."
THE MUKHABARAT ALSO UNCOVERED A WEALTH OF information about bin Laden's
connection to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, including the fact that he hosted its founder, al-Zawahiri, in 1992.
The group has since effectively merged with al-Qaeda. Yahia Hussien Baviker, the
Mukhabarat's deputy chief since 1998, says, "These files on the Egyptians could have been of great value to U.S. intelligence. If we'd had communication with the U.S., we could have been on the same wavelength. We could have exchanged notes." A C.I.A. source tells Rose, "If anyone in the world understands the Egyptian side of this network, it's Sudan."
IT WAS NOT UNTIL MAY 2000 THAT THE U.S. SENT A JOINT F.B.I.-C.I.A. team to Sudan to investigate whether it was harboring terrorists; the country was given a clean bill of health in the summer of 2001. Just a few weeks prior to the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration requested Sudan's information on al-Qaeda.
THE JANUARY ISSUE OF VANITY FAIR HITS NEWSSTANDS in New York on December 5
and nationally on December 11.
NEXT STOP, IRAQ Remarks of the Hon. Richard Perle
November 30, 2001
On November 14, Richard Perle keynoted the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Annual Dinner honoring John M. Templeton, Jr., President of The Templeton Foundation and Trustee of FPRI. Over 400 guests attended the program. The text that follows is a condensed version of Mr. Perle's address; the full version will be posted on our website (www.fpri.org) shortly, along with other information about the Annual Dinner.
NEXT STOP, IRAQ
Remarks of the Hon. Richard Perle
It was inevitable that an event like September 11 would eventually materialize. A history had developed, particularly over the last decade, of failing to respond to acts of terrorism. In 1993 Iraqi
intelligence plotted the assassination of former president George H.W. Bush. That plot was foiled when we uncovered it and the response was a handful of cruise missiles aimed at an intelligence
headquarters in Baghdad.
The dust hadn't settled from that attack when various administration officials at pains to announce that the timing of the attack, midnight, had been selected so as to minimize any casualties. It's worth observing that the casualties, had any occurred, would have been to one of the most vicious secret police organizations operating today.
That was followed not long thereafter by the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center, in 1993. The intention of the individuals who carried it out and their state sponsors was to collapse one of the towers against the other by placing explosives in the underground garage of one of the two towers. They misplaced the explosive by a few feet. The crater that was created by that explosion was six
stories deep, and it is a miracle they didn't succeed. Had they done so, the losses would have been even greater, far greater, than on September 11 -- because there would have been no opportunity to escape. There was no response to that except the eventual apprehension of the individuals
responsible, and no serious effort to trace the activity back to the source.
This was followed by the Khobar Towers attack, an attack on an American barracks in Saudi Arabia. There was no response at all to this attack, and we never really got to the bottom of it, or at least we never got much support from the Saudis on whose territory it took place in attempting to investigate it.
That was followed by attacks on two American embassies in West Africa. The response there was a small, ineffective cruise missile attack that destroyed a pharmaceutical plant. It was an intelligence failure and we destroyed the wrong target. But even if it had been the right target, it was a single symbolic gesture.
Then there was the attack on the USS Cole and there was no response at all to that.
After each of these attacks I think it is reasonable to assume that the terrorists who planned and carried them out celebrated their success, and the governments that sponsored them, that provided them with the intelligence, the logistics, the money, the access to diplomatic purse, movement of contraband, the false documentation, the logistic support -- those governments understood that no significant cost attached to working with and supporting networks of terror. So September 11 or something like it was inevitable. We were training terrorists and their state sponsors to believe that what they were doing was free of risk to themselves, except for the terrorist themselves who in many cases were prepared to die in the course of committing their acts of terrorism.
After September 11 the first words of President Bush included the statement that "we will not distinguish between terrorists and the states that harbor them." In enunciating that American policy he reversed a decade of not responding against states that sponsor terrorism. He took what I believe is the only effective step to the control of terrorist attacks against the country. There are too many
terrorists and they are too easy to recruit. When some die, others will be found. We cannot deal with terrorists one and two and 19 at a time, We must deal effectively with the states that permit them to plan, to organize and to carry out acts of terror on the scale that we saw on September 11. We can't stop acts of terrorism, but we can reduce it to the occasional violent act of an individual or two if we can
separate the terrorists from the state sponsorship that provides them with the essential means of carrying out their evil acts.
High on the list of essential means could be as something as simple as sanctuary, a place where terrorists can plan in peace, where they can communicate with one another and organize. If you can imagine -- and I hope this will soon be true in Afghanistan -- if you imagine al-Qaeda hunted down, on the run, hiding out in caves, unable to communicate, unable to dispatch
individuals and money and intelligence and the other instruments of terror, you can see the difference between what we are subjected to now and what we could do if we are serious about taking the war to the terrorists themselves. So I think President Bush from the beginning established the right headline policy of the US going forward. But it is a big change.
In January 1997 I debated this very topic -- should we take war to the terrorists, should we use military means against the states sponsoring terrorism -- with the former director of the CIA, Stansfield Turner. The topic was whether the United States should use military force in the war against terrorism, and the former head of the CIA took the negative position. This wasn't an Oxford
debate where you could take either side, he took it out of conviction, and he reflected a long-standing policy orientation, and much of what he said on that occasion remained policy until the immediate aftermath of September 11.
So now we are taking the war to the first state on the list of active supporters of terrorism, Afghanistan. We got off to a slow start. I say slow start, but there's still smoke rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center and probably will be for days to come. We got off to a slow start because we had poor intelligence to begin with. We simply didn't know very much about the disposition of the Talibanforces, and we certainly didn't know where Osama bin Laded was hiding. And we didn't have enough of an intelligence presence in Afghanistan to begin to organize the effective integration of American military power with the Northern Alliance, which was soon to become our ally, at least for now. We lost some time because some of our colleagues in the diplomatic service thought that we should start to organize a post-Taliban government for Afghanistan before we started the war. It's a lot easier to get allies and build coalitions when you're taking territory. The idea that we could start to put a government together before we had takenan inch of territory never made much sense to me, and ultimately it didn't make much sense to the president and others, and so we abandoned that approach after about ten days of fruitless political maneuvering with exiles in and around Afghanistan.
Having gotten that out of the way, we were then confronted with the problem of bringing essential support to the Northern Alliance and integrating our air power with their force on the ground. This was an
extraordinarily difficult thing to do. We were reluctant for understandable reasons to send American units into territory whose control could not be clearly ascertained. We didn't want to send a group of
Americans in only to have them slaughtered on the ground.
The Northern Alliance in the beginning was weak. They lacked ammunition, they lacked other resources, they didn't have any money. We wanted to give them money. You may not believe this, but in order to give the Northern Alliance money under the existing laws and regulations, it was necessary for them to make a grant proposal -- I kid you not. A group of people -- dedicated civil servants in the U.S. Department of State -- worked through the night to create a grant proposal, which was then signed by the Northern Alliance leaders and acted upon by the Department of State and ultimately we were able to get them a modest amount of money.
I'm sorry to say I could spend the rest of the time we have together telling stories like that. But suffice it to say that eventually we got our act together, and you see the result: a very rapid, aggressive, successful
campaign to remove the Taliban from many of the places where it has been in power, and I have little doubt that eventually we will get the rest of them.
The whole experience can be summed up in Churchill's great comment that the Americans eventually get it right but not until they've exhausted all possible alternatives. And so we're getting it right, we're getting the war against the Taliban right. They've turned out to be much weaker than many people
expected. The concerns about a quagmire have proved to be unfounded. In expressing those concerns we were fighting not the last war, but the one before that - the lingering memories of Vietnam, with which Afghanistan has nothing in common. And quite unlike the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, we are not there as invaders we are really there as liberators, as you have seen on the evening news. Keep that in mind, because when we get to the other supporters of terrorism in the region, the potential there too is for the US to act not as a conqueror, not as an invading force that will earn the enmity of the Arab world, but as a liberator that will earn the approbation of the people who are liberated and in due course of much the rest of the world as well.
In approaching the war against terror we've been building a coalition. I have some reservations about that. In 1991 in order to expel the armed forces of Iraq from Kuwait we sent 500,000 men to the region, we deployed a fleet of 1600 aircraft and for a military operation on that scale and of that nature it was essential to secure a large number of bases from which we could operate. We needed logistic support, we needed runways and warehouses and stevedores and all the rest. We could not have done Desert Storm as it was done without an alliance. But there was another reason for an alliance in 1991, and that was the deep division in this country about whether to go to war against Saddam. I was much involved in that as co-chair, with the former head of the Democratic National
Committee, of the group innocently called the Committee for Peace in the Middle East. They all
had titles like that, and it was really the Committee to Launch the War Against Saddam. We had a tough time encouraging the minimum number of votes we needed to have a real mandate. The country -- the legislature -- was deeply divided. So an alliance then was essential.
An alliance today is really not essential, in my opinion. We don't need the bases, or at least we don't need much in the way of bases. And those bases that we do need are in places where individual arrangements can be made -- with Uzbeks,
who are interested in what we can do for Uzbekistan and there's a lot we can do and it isn't really very expensive. The term "alliance" confuses the phenomenon that's taking place there. It's good to have the Europeans supporting us to the degree they do, and the British have certainly been
enthusiastic in our support, but the enthusiasm drops off substantially when you cross the channel and the price you end up paying for an alliance is collective judgment, collective decision-making. That was a disaster in Kosovo. We had lengthy negotiations over which targets could be struck -- the French had one view, the Germans had another -- the military authorities and the civilians often disagreed, targets were struck from the lists, and you all remember the spectacle of President Chirac proudly proclaiming after Kosovo was over that he had personally spared any number of targets in Serbia. We don't need that in the war against terrorism. I think it is time for us to say to the
world if necessary that we have been attacked, a war was initiated against us, and we are going to defend ourselves, and we're not going to let the decisions to do that, the manner in which we do
it, the targets we select to be decided by a show of hands by countries whose interests cannot be identical to our own and who haven't suffered what we have suffered.
One of the sources of enthusiasm for the coalition I suspect is a strong desire on the part of those who are promoting the coalition to see the United States restrained -- to submit judgments about what we should do to a larger collective. I think we should reject that. I guess my bottom line on
coalitions paraphrases Robert Frost, that coalitions are wonderful salves, but they're something that ought to be done by halves.
There's going to be a Phase 2. If there is no Phase 2, there can be no victory in the war against terrorism. The war against terrorism is not the war against al-Qaeda or the Taliban, worthy though they may be. They're only one of the sources of terror in the United States. You cannot end this war and lay any claim to victory if the other sources of terror are left intact.
So there must be a Phase 2, and there will be lots of debate and room for disagreement over exactly how to go about Phase 2. I have my own ideas about that and have not been hesitant to express them. At the top of the list for Phase 2 is Iraq, and there are several reasons for that. I'm going to offer a
couple of them.
One is that we know that Saddam hates the United States. He says so on every occasion. In that particular Middle Eastern way, there's even something of a blood feud between Saddam Hussein and the Bush family. We know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction: we know he has anthrax, we know he has nerve agents, we believe he has other biological weapons. And he has used chemical weapons/nerve agents against civilians, and killed many tens of thousands including 5,000 in a single village in a single village in his own country. So he has motive and he has means, and the question is whether he will he have an opportunity to do grievous damage to this country. Those who believe he will not have contented themselves until now with the view that he would not be
so foolish as to attack the United States directly with instruments of mass destruction because we would retaliate with such ferocity that he would be deterred. And you even hear the story told of how former Secretary of State Baker warned Tariq Aziz that if the Iraqis used chemical weapons
in Desert Storm, we would respond with nuclear weapons. I don't know if that story is
true, but the general idea was that Saddam would be deterred by the threat of retaliation. But we now know as we observe anthrax arriving in the letter box that it is possible to deliver weapons of mass destruction, even though in this case not on a mass scale, anonymously. And if you can deliver an
envelope with anthrax spores anonymously, you can deliver a larger quantity of anthrax spores anonymously. Without wishing to alarm anyone, I think it is reasonably well known that a five-pound bag of anthrax spores release over an urban area would potentially kill many thousands of people. So the question in my mind is do we wait for Saddam and hope for the best, do we wait and hope
he doesn't do what we know he is capable of, which is distributing weapons of mass destruction to anonymous terrorists, or do we take some preemptive action. In 1981 the Israelis faced a similar question. The Iraqis were about to complete the construction of a French nuclear reactor at Osirak and they decided that the risk of waiting was just too great and so they destroyed that reactor in a breathtaking effective bombing run. I was working for Ronald Reagan at the time and it's just a footnote to history but the State Department of course got out the obligatory condemnation of
Israel's unilateral action; the president thought it was a terrific piece of bombing.
By the way, for those who are not sufficiently concerned about the possibility of the anonymous delivery of biological weapons from Saddam's arsenal of those weapons, he is busily at work on a nuclear weapon.
One of the people who ran the nuclear weapons program for Saddam defected to the US in 1996, a man named Khidhir Hamza,. He has written a book that I recommend called "Saddam's Bombmaker." I met with him in Washington.Until I started taking him around, the senior-most person Hamza had met with was a GS15 at the State Department. We've now gotten him in to see some pretty senior officials.
Hamza described the reaction to the bombing of the Osirak reactor as follows: We knew then that
we should never again put so much of our program in a single location where it would be vulnerable, so we began to build uranium enrichment facilities, many facilities, and we built 400 of them and they're all over the country.Some of them look like farmhouses, some of them look like classrooms, some of them look like warehouses. You'll never find them. They don't turn out much but every day they turn out a little bit of nuclear materials. So it's simply a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons.
Those who think Iraq should not be next may want to think about Syria or Iran or Sudan or Yemen or Somalia or North Korea or Lebanon or the Palestinian Authority. These are all institutions, governments for the most part, that permit acts of terror to take place, that sponsor terrorists, that give them refuge, give them sanctuary, and very often much more help than that. When I recite this list, people typically say "Well, are we going to go to war against a dozen countries?" And I think the answer to that is that, if we do it right with respect to one or two, we've got a reasonable chance of persuading the others that they should get out of the business of supporting terrorism. If we destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan, and I'm confident we will, and we then go on to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein, and we certainly could if we chose to do so, I think we would have an impressive case to make to the Syrians, the Somalis and others. We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: "You're next. You're next unless you stop the practice of supporting terrorism." Given the fact that until now there has been no cost attached to supporting terror, I think there's a reasonable prospect that looking at the costs on the one side -- that is, that those regimes will be brought to an end -- and the benefits on the other -- they will decide to get out of the terrorist business. It seems to me a reasonable gamble in any event.
Let me just say before concluding this that when you propose Iraq as the next phase in the war against terrorism many people have in mind the enormousness of the effort it took to remove Saddam from Kuwait. They think, can we do that again? I think it would be an entirely different proposition this time. Saddam is despised in his own country, as anyone who rules the way he has would be. He is hated in the north by the Kurds, in the south by the Shi'a, in the west even by many Sunnis -- and organizing a resistance to Saddam would not be difficult. Now a lot of people look at the Iraqi opposition today, some of it in exile, some of it in the north and the south, and they say it's
weak, it's divided, it's fragmented, and that's certainly true, although it's not nearly as fragmented as is sometimes said. But what is essential here is not to look at the opposition to Saddam as it is today, without any external support, without any realistic hope of removing that awful regime, but to look at what could be created, what could be organized, what could be made cohesive with the power and authority of the United States, especially the power and authority of the United States fresh from a
successful campaign to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. So my plea to my colleagues in government is to start the planning now for the removal of Saddam Hussein, work with the opposition now so we won't be in the situation we were in when we went into Afghanistan where we had no
one on the ground, because we could put Iraqi opposition on the ground tomorrow in Iraq.
No more apologies
David Limbaugh
AS more time has passed since the Sept. 11 attacks we're starting to see a more subtle variety of dissent from the multi-pronged strategy outlined by President Bush in our long-term war against terrorism.
I'm not talking about those who altogether oppose the military option, but those who believe that we ought to augment our military, diplomatic, intelligence and financial effort with a war on words (and psychology). Their position is best articulated by U.S. News editor David Gergen in his column "Telling America's Story."
After paying lip service to the possibility of military action beyond Afghanistan, Gergen abruptly shifts his focus to "the psychological war." "How," he asks, "do we build new bridges of trust so that Muslim lands do not remain a breeding ground for new waves of terrorists?" After all, "in the past 20 years, America has done a lousy job of telling its story in Arab lands." "We should ... be much more imaginative in getting out some basic facts."
To what facts might Gergen be referring? Well, Former Republican Gergen points us to the words his former boss, former President Clinton, delivered to his fawning audience at Harvard last week. According to Clinton, most Arabs don't seem to know about the enormous respect Americans have for the Muslim faith or that Muslims were among the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Oh? I happen to have read about one 26-year-old Muslim who didn't seem too concerned about who the victims or near-victims were. He wasn't outraged that his mother nearly died in the attacks. Shortly after Sept. 11, he left for Afghanistan to join up with the Taliban. It's not just the radicals, either. Plenty of other Muslims know there were Muslim victims, yet have uttered not a single word in condemnation of their "extremist" brethren.
Sorry, but too many Muslims seem unimpressed by words about our military actions to liberate their Muslim brothers in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. They are unmoved by President Bush's numerous verbal overtures to Muslims here and abroad. They cynically scoff at word of our humanitarian food drops in Afghanistan.
Conciliatory words will not remove the many reasons for their hatred. We prop up the rulers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that stand in their way to gaining power in their own backyard; we align ourselves (most of the time) with Israel; we are free, strong and prosperous; and much to their consternation, we live in the twenty first century.
The terrorists and their clones-in-the-making in the hate-incubation schools in Pakistan are unfazed by our overtures of goodwill, but they and their ilk understand our actions -- big time. As Middle East scholar and JWR columnist Daniel Pipes observed, Afghans are beginning to look at militant Islam as a losing proposition. As our military assault on the Taliban has grown more effective, anti-American demonstrations have decreased commensurately, both in Afghanistan and other Arab-speaking countries.
But Gergen has even worse ideas. Echoing Clinton again, he tells us that America should admit its failures. What? Where has he been? For far too long America has been intoxicated by its so-called failures. Following the Reagan-Bush era (and pre-Bush 43) it reverted to the Jimmy Carter model of self-flagellation. It continues to do so in the hallowed halls of academia and the elite media.
We are not going to win any converts in the Islamic world by beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves for their failures. Part of the problem is that they don't accept responsibility for their own miserable plight -- much of which is caused by their oppressive, closed and thuggish societies.
National Review's David Pryce-Jones argues compellingly that Europeans were only able to conquer the Muslim world because local peoples began to doubt the strength and validity of their own culture and society. The re-ascendance of Islam may be partially due to Westerners losing confidence in their own culture and society.
Not that we want to re-institute Western colonialism in the Muslim world, but why not put our best foot forward and show the rest of the world the benefits of open, free and democratic societies?
Isn't it time we started rediscovering our unique American culture and promoting our ideas and extraordinary achievements across the board, from freedom to human rights to unprecedented prosperity and progress? They are witnessing firsthand the superiority of our military; how about giving them a taste of other items on the American menu?
Let's dispense with the apologies, hold our heads high and invite others by our example to partake of the fruits of the tree of liberty.
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,
For he today that sheds his blood with me, Shall be my brother."
-Wm Shakespeare-
Well guys Until next month..keep a smile on your face and your skids out of the TreesJ--Ron