by Charles
I’ve written little (if anything) on Haditha since last June (here, and a 9,000+ word whopper here), but there are a few subsequent pieces worth bringing up. The first is a New York Times article which does its own job of piecing together what took place. The writers put themselves in the shoes of the investigators, interviewing Marines, their lawyers, Iraqi residents and the investigators themselves. They did a fair job at reconstructing events, and although it’s premature to come to any conclusions, there is a possibility that U.S. Marines committed crimes.
Open questions abound. There are inconsistencies in the stories about the Iraqi men killed in or near a taxi (and conflicting accounts about other events that day). There are questions about the Marines using the same tactics in Haditha (where civilians were intermingled with paramilitants) as were used in Fallujah (where civilians were warned to leave and most did). There are questions about the Marines not changing tactics after clearing the first house.
Last month, an article by the New York Times reported allegations of malfeasance higher up the chain of command:
The investigation found that an official company logbook of the unit involved had been tampered with and that an incriminating video taken by an aerial drone the day of the killings was not given to investigators until Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the second-ranking commander in Iraq, intervened, the officials said.
Those findings, contained in a long report that was completed last month but not made public, go beyond what has been previously reported about the case. It has been known that marines who carried out the killings made misleading statements to investigators and that senior officers were criticized for not being more aggressive in investigating the case, in which most or all of the Iraqis who were killed were civilians. But this is the first time details about possible concealment or destruction of evidence have been disclosed.
But the October 2006 Atlantic Monthly takes a different look at Haditha, with the author seeing it not from the perspective of an investigator, but an infantryman. The initial conclusion is apt…
How did the heroes of Fallujah come to kill civilians in Haditha? A Vietnam veteran who witnessed the battle of Fallujah says it’s too soon to judge the marines—but not the high command.
…but requires much more explanation than the simple paragraph would indicate. It is too soon to judge the Marines, but in terms of "high command", Bing West wasn’t talking about the alleged cover-up by superior officers. Rather, he is addressing the entire strategy employed by the coalition after major combat operations were completed. I’ve been meaning to re-subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly, and the Road to Haditha is as good a reason as any for a re-up. Below the fold are some excerpts worth mentioning.
Although it was the same battalion * that bravely fought in Fallujah, December 2004, the faces were different in Haditha. But first, a little history:
When Baghdad fell that April, the population was in awe of the Americans. When the American soldiers did nothing to stop the looting, that feeling of awe vanished.
The Iraqi army had melted away, but its soldiers were eager to regroup in order to gain pay and prestige. Indeed, the American commanders working with Iraqi officers reported that they could easily reconstitute several trained battalions. But in May, the American proconsul, L. Paul Bremer III, hastily disbanded the Iraqi army and outlawed former Baathists from government service. The Joint Chiefs of Staff did not object, and American soldiers moved alone into the Sunni cities west and north of Baghdad.
The insurgency began that summer, as gangs of Sunni youths and unemployed soldiers heeded the urgings of imams and former elements of Saddam Hussein’s regime to oppose the infidel occupiers, protectors of the Shiite apostates. The Sunni population sympathized with and was intimidated by the insurgents, who freely mingled in the marketplaces. The insurgents’ tactics were trial and error; attacks increased as respect for the Americans and their armor dissipated.
The Americans responded to the low-level attacks with vigorous sweeps and raids. This was the wrong approach, because mobile armored offensives could not hope to neutralize the insurgent manpower pool of a million disaffected Sunni youths. The American divisions lacked a commander who would curb their instinct for decisive battle and lay out a counterinsurgency plan. Instead, their inexperienced commander, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, expressed confidence that the tactic of offensive operations was succeeding.
In March 2004, the Marine Corps assumed responsibility for Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni insurgency. The Marine commander, Lieutenant General James Conway, quickly reported that the security condition was terrible, contradicting Sanchez’s optimism. Nine Marine battalions—some 9,000 men in all—were trying to control twelve cities stretching from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Syrian border, 200 miles to the west. When the marines moved into one city, the insurgents shifted to another. Elementary arithmetic showed there were not enough troops for the task. Yet the military chain of command never sent a formal request to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for additional troops.
Emphasis mine. Bremer was directly accountable to Rumsfeld but the U.S. envoy was also charged with adhering to UN Security Council Resolution 1483. Most would agree that coalition forces were too light after May 1st, 2003, allowing an insurgency to grow. The situation was exacerbated when the Iraqi army was disbanded. Also, we were too slow in recognizing the growing insurgency and too slow in adopting proper counterinsurgency tactics. However, in Haditha, U.S. Marines did adopt the right tactics, and the situation was under control. The problem is that the Marines got dicked around. Twice. By the time they came back the second time, Haditha had horribly regressed. Bing West:
The 3rd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment was sent to the city in March 2004. Battalion 3/4 had experienced heavy fights during the 2003 invasion and had hauled down Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square, an image seen around the world. The battle-tested battalion flooded Haditha with hundreds of four-man foot patrols. Insurgents who responded with their standard “shoot and scoot” tactics were chased down by squads of marines. Although the mayor had been assassinated the previous summer, the insurgents were not well organized. A platoon was ordered to combine forces with the local police; Lieutenant Matt Danner, the platoon commander, moved his men into the police station. Joint patrols became the norm.
The joint patrol, known as a Combined Action Platoon, or CAP, was a counterinsurgent tactic from Vietnam, where squads of fourteen marines lived for a year or more with local militias of about thirty farmers. In my CAP south of DaNang in 1966 we engaged in firefights every night for the first few months. Then the shooting petered out as the villagers, coming to trust us, betrayed local guerrillas and began to point out strangers. In Haditha, this pattern was repeated. When the first marines arrived, fights broke out every third night; six months later, they were down to twice a month. Danner had hit on an elementary axiom of guerrilla warfare: once the police in the CAP were accepted by the population as the strongest fighting force, information flowed to them. As the Iraqis in the police force became more self-confident, they became more aggressive and more effective.
Exactly 29 months ago, I wrote about the CAP program in Vietnam (one of the few successful operations in that incompetently fought war) and how this could be successfully applied to Iraq. Bing West lived it, seeing the CAP program firsthand. It also worked in Haditha. So what went wrong? In March 2004, Fallujah went wrong:
Rumsfeld ordered the Marines to attack the city, with the concurrence of Bremer and the military high command. The division commander, Major General James N. Mattis—“Mad Dog” to his admiring grunts—demurred. His strategy, he said, was to repeat the success of Haditha and move in “as soft as fog,” supporting and reinvigorating the demoralized local police.
Washington overrode General Mattis’s objections and the Marines went in. Simultaneously, Bremer decided that coalition forces should move against the dangerous Shiite demagogue Muqtada al-Sadr. American troops were thus engaged on two fronts—against Sunnis west of Baghdad, and against Shiites in Baghdad and to the south. Calls for jihad swept across Anbar province, and insurgents besieged Baghdad, reducing it to a few days of fuel and fresh food.
To finish the fight in Fallujah, Mattis called Battalion 3/4 down from Haditha. “Some of the jundis in my Combined Action Platoon were up for the fight,” Danner recalled, referring to the Iraqis who had joined forces with his platoon. “I told them they had to guard Haditha and that we’d be back for them. They wanted to come with us. We had lived together, fought together.” While the Iraqis in Danner’s CAP volunteered for Fallujah, other Iraqi soldiers around the country mutinied to avoid going there.
Televised images of the house-to-house fighting in Fallujah stirred anger across Iraq. After three weeks of fighting and confused negotiations, just as Mattis was squeezing the insurgents into a corner, Bremer, concerned about a degenerating political situation, persuaded the White House to pull the Marines out of Fallujah. When the order came through, Danner and his men were bewildered. “Fallujah and the Sunnis out west are a sideshow,” a senior Pentagon official told me at the time. “We have to get the Shiites to agree to an interim government in return for early elections.”
Within a month, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other jihadists had taken control of Fallujah. To the south, al-Sadr was cornered, but American officials in Baghdad decided not to arrest him. He slunk away, to emerge later as the leader of the most dangerous Shiite militia in Iraq.
Danner and his men returned to Haditha in early May and resumed living downtown with the police. “Most of the police we lived with were local Sunnis,” Danner said. “A few were tough enough to stand on their own, but 80 percent needed to know we Americans were there with them and would back them up.”
In late summer, Danner’s battalion rotated home, and Battalion 1/8 moved into the Haditha area. Fresh from the States and eager, the new marines continued the joint policing and patrolled vigorously. Word of how Americans had fought in Fallujah had spread, and the insurgents avoided the new marines, targeting instead the Iraqi soldiers.
We were not only under-manned going into Fallujah–redeploying troops away from a working but volatile situation–our April 2004 actions in Fallujah made overall conditions worse. Six months later, the Marine battalion in Haditha was dicked around again.
In October 2004, one month before the U.S. election, Battalion 1/8 was called away from Haditha to prepare for a second battle of Fallujah. The White House had made a terrible mistake in not letting the Marines finish in April. At the time, Mattis had cited a quote from Napoleon to his field marshal: “If you’re going to take Vienna, then by God, sir, take it!” Delay played to the advantage of the defenders, and Fallujah was now held by 2,000 die-hard jihadists. To take the city, American forces were stripped from other cities across the province. After most residents had left, ten battalions fought block to block in a ferocious urban slugfest. The deeper the marines penetrated into the city, the fewer civilians they encountered and the tougher the fighting became, with jihadists hiding among the 30,000 buildings, waiting to kill the first American to open the door. The 3rd Platoon’s bloody room-to-room fight in the House From Hell was typical of the savagery of Fallujah II.
Many of the jihadists, including leaders such as al-Zarqawi, fled Fallujah before the fight and regrouped in the cities the Americans had vacated. In Haditha, two weeks after Battalion 1/8’s departure, insurgents captured the police station and executed twenty-one policemen, including the police chief. With the police knocked out, the insurgents became the de facto government. The deputy police chief gathered his family and fled to Baghdad.
“He was a good man,” Danner said. “The November battle in Fallujah pulled the rug out from under the police. We left them on their own. Without moral support, they collapsed.”
General Casey didn’t issue a workable counterinsurgency plan until late 2004, well over year after the paramilitants took root. By the time the Marines came back to Haditha the second time, there were no Iraqis willing enough to work with them. The situation was too dangerous. Sunni paramilitants executed Haditha police, and killed other suspected "spies". Marines were also taking casualties. Finally, in fall 2005, the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Regiment entered the picture and, later on, 24 Iraqis were killed on November 19th after an IED killed one of their own. The media coverage of Haditha didn’t really get out until later.
Time magazine broke the Haditha story in March and presented a balanced report. Then, on May 17, Representative John P. Murtha held a press conference and declared that the troops “killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” As the leading advocate for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, Murtha advanced his own agenda by acting as judge and jury.
After Murtha’s incendiary remarks, Haditha captured worldwide attention. Many commentators leaped to conclusions. The European press gloatingly linked Haditha to the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, but My Lai was on a much larger scale, with implications that the high command looked the other way. If in the coming months the press does transpose the killings at Haditha into a metaphor for the war—as happened with My Lai—the consequences will be tremendous, and misleading.
West is right that "it remains for the military justice system to sort through the chaos of battle and reach a conclusion about individual guilt or innocence," and he adds this:
It is too soon to judge these men, but it is not too soon to judge the high command and the underlying policies governing the conduct of the war. As Americans, we have been fighting the war the wrong way. Haditha degenerated due to a lack of security manpower, both American and Iraqi. We didn’t have sufficient troops in Anbar province, and those we did have were shifted to fight a battle provoked by feckless senior leadership. The hardened veterans of Fallujah were sent into Haditha to operate in isolation from the Iraqis, rather than in combined units, as counterinsurgency doctrine demands. We left our squads to fight alone for too long on a treacherous battlefield.
West is in favor of Casey’s strategy, but he proposes more changes…
Given the persistence of Sunni versus Shiite mass murders, military logic calls for martial law and for placing the untrustworthy police under the control of the Iraqi army. But Iraqi politicians prefer to keep the police under local control, shared with Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, and President Bush has chosen to praise rather than to pressure Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
…and finishes with this:
In his defining new book, War Made New, the military historian Max Boot has written that “the most important military unit in the emergence of modern states was the humble infantryman.” For two decades, the Pentagon has neglected the infantry, believing that high technology would win wars. Today, American forces have more combat aircraft than infantry squads, and more combat pilots than squad leaders. Fully 75 percent of our Army and Marine infantry leave the military after their four-year tour. They receive no pension, a tiny educational stipend, and no immediately transferable skills.
Of all those who serve our country, the humble foot soldiers sacrifice the most for the rest of us. They don’t see it that way, of course. They have each other; they are their own tribe. General Casey told me that he has talked to dozens of grunts about Haditha. “Universally,” he said, “they tell me, ‘We hope our brothers get a fair shake.’”
Amen.
* Correction. It was Battalion 3/4 who began the clear-and-hold operation in Haditha, then they were was rotated home in summer 2004. They were replaced by Battalion 1/8, which was replaced by Battalion 3/25 in early 2005, which was replaced by Battalion 3/1 in fall 2005. All Marines, but different battalions and different levels of experience.
“Yet the military chain of command never sent a formal request to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for additional troops.”
What’s “formal” doing in there?
“there is a possibility that U.S. Marines committed crimes”
There is a possibility that I’ll win Nobel Prizes in Physics and Literature next year.
“Yet the military chain of command never sent a formal request to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for additional troops.”
Look where asking for more troops got Gen. Shinseki. Given that Rumsfeld made it clear early on that he would fire anyone that said more troops would be required for Phase 4 operations, I’m not surprised that someone in the chain opted not to make (or pass on) a formal request. Given that the “top priority” troops we have there can’t get the ammo and supplies they require:
Given an unwillingness to listen to practical requirements at the top, top brass more loyal to those above them than those below, and massive logistical and supply problems, I’m not at all surprised that the troops are starting to crack, which is true whatever the circumstances at Haditha might be. Read Blood Stripes for a better idea of what they had already gone through at Fallujah, since, IIRC, it’s about the same platoon implicated at Haditha.
There is a possibility that I’ll win Nobel Prizes in Physics and Literature next year.
While I’d happily vote for you, rf, I think you’ve got your epsilon the wrong way round…
Look. If people did bad things, it was their fault. This whole blaming of other people for the horrific things they (allegedly) did is unseemly.
TAKE. FRICKIN’. RESPONSIBILITY.
The buck has to stop somewhere and apparently no one in the entire right wing of American politics thinks they have anything to do with that – it’s always someone else’s problem. Someone else’s fault. It’s the liberals sucking our purity of essence. It’s the media who are sapping our will.
Stop your frickin’ whining.
I have been playing with numbers in my head as to what a million addition active duty infantrymen would mean. I would consider that to be the bare minimum, meeting Shinseki’s recommendation, allowing some additional forces in Afghanistan, doing decent rotations.
America has a population of 300 million, but how many available (with varying definitions of available) people between the ages of 20 and 40? Won’t look it up, but lets say a possible pool of 50 million. 2 million active infantry and Marines at all times. 75 per cent leave after four years. With a draft, that number could go up to 90 percent every 2-3 years.
The numbers are awesome, and I expect Congress and the Pentagon have, the payscales, outsourcing many functions, redefining the missions and training requirements, have made it completely impossible to upscale the infantry. If China were to start moving thru Alaska toward Seattle, we have to blow the world up. Everyone would have to die.
We really have no defense. Just a suicide button.
Eating Soup with a Knife …Brad Plumer discusses papers by Jeffrey Record of the Army War College and Andrew Bacevich. Basically the article says the military cannot and will not ever be able to effectively do counter-insurgency. Our enemies, real or potential, certainly will understand that and plan accordingly.
The concluding paragraph:
“Fortunately, as Bacevich rather sensibly points out, we don’t have to impose our will on these countries. They don’t pose existential threats. Iran, at the moment, is surrounded by American troops, rather than vice versa. Whatever problems are associated with its nuclear program can be handled by perfectly dovish means or, if worst comes to worst, deterrence. Ideally, the United States would just accept that it can no really longer use its military power to meddle in the Middle East. Regardless of whether we should or not, it’s just not feasible. Somehow, I think we’ll survive just fine.”
I don’t.
Bob mcmanus:
The CIA World Factbook suggests an answer to your questions about manpower.
Under “fit for military service, males age 18-49” the CIA says: 54,609,050.
Under “reaching military age annually,” the CIA says: 2,143,873.
My HTML skills are not top-flight. Here’s the CIA link:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html#Military
Huh, I thought this posted already. Apparently not. Forthwith…
To the post in question, I don’t have much time but I thought I’d address this:
“Universally,” he said, “they tell me, ‘We hope our brothers get a fair shake.’”
Since when have members of the US military, under allegations of war crimes, ever received less than a “fair shake”? In fact, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a few such people who were, under most objective measures of such things, given less than “far more of a shake than they ought to have” if not “shaken like a can of paint during an earthquake”. A “fair shake” doesn’t mean a sympathetic ear, it means that justice should be served; and in that venue, at least, we have an appalling poor track record.
Kudos to Charles for cross-posting this atRedstate — especially this one sentence: “there is a possibility that U.S. Marines committed crimes.” I’ve seen people get banned there for a lot less.
Some of the small number of prisoners who remained in the jail after the Americans left said they had pleaded to go with their departing captors, rather than be left in the hands of Iraqi guards.
“The Americans were better than the Iraqis. They treated us better,” said Khalid Alaani, who was held on suspicion of involvement in Sunni terrorism.
Hmm and Iraq takes military command. Can’t wait!
And TiO is open for business. Knock yerselves out.
The “fair shake” comment makes me wonder if the killing of civilians by Americans is a common occurrence. I mean collateral damage, not deliberate killing. The defense given by the accused Marines is that they went into this house shooting, only to find out that they had killed civilians. My impression is that if they can prove that to be the case, they’d be off the hook. If a large number of American troops have accidentally killed civilians then it would be natural for the troops to wonder if Haditha is just another example of this, with the prosecution for war crimes occurring to keep the Iraqis happy.
I assume that deliberate killings of civilians by American troops are fairly rare occurrences, but the collateral damage sort of thing you expect in a guerilla war (though the number can be reduced), and the chief responsibility for those deaths lies with the guy who sent the troops in for no good reason.
Ya know, when I ask even professional military men about scalability, and there are a lot I respect, I am told, before “We can’t” “We don’t need a big army. Wars aren’t like that anymore.”
Looking at Afghanistan and Iraq, I say “Right. Sure.”
During the cold war we had a dozen options before going nuclear. Deterrence requires a ladder of escalation. If your opponent knows it is all or nothing, he can use that against you.
Most would agree that coalition forces were too light after May 1st, 2003, allowing an insurgency to grow.
If this includes you, CB, when did you have your epiphany? Because like the rest of the right wing, you certainly did not have this opinion in 2003-2004 when it mattered to get this right. You were busy defending the incompetents.
Repeat after me. The Democrats and lefties were right….
Anarch: “I think you’ve got your epsilon the wrong way round…”
Well, that was on purpose. I complained the other day about someone I thought was sort of kidding on the square against CB; the sentence you’re reacting to was intended to do the opposite.
If this includes you, CB, when did you have your epiphany?
At the time, dm, I didn’t know what the right troop levels should have been. In retrospect, another 100,000 would’ve been good.
Thanks for the response CB, although you dodged the basic question of when.
Think about the significance of the deliberate 2003 decision to send too few troops — one anecdotal observation: Situation Called Dire in West Iraq:
Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says.
The 2003 force level was a deliberate decision of Rumsfeld and Bush, and it was a decision driven by political expediency. Planning for a larger troop commitment would have required actual sacrafice and endangered political support for the Iraq adventure. So do it on the cheap.
If an inadequate number of troops underlies the problems in Haditha, then connect the dots as to who is responsible. Moreover, we are talking about deliberately repeating the force level mistake for years after the invasion (Haditha occurs 30 months after the invasion), and for the same political reasons.
That is why the question of “when” is so significant. Even if you still cut slack for the slackers for opting to invade on the cheap, at some point even you seem to acknowledge that a greater force commitment was necessary. Surely you would hold leadership accountable for not also realizing it at least at the same time you did.
Conservatives love to blather about the lack of “will” to see the fight through. Well, the lack of “will” to do what was needed started in 2002-2003 by Bush et al., when they decided to do the war on the cheap, and continued thereafter when they decided to stick with that loser strategy purely for reasons of political expediency.
Is it too much to ask for conservatives to be accountable for loser ideas and supporting loser leadership?
It’s too soon to judge the troops for one reason and one reason only.
The military is stretching out it’s investigation like Ken Starr. Only I doubt with the same furor.
Six months into the investigation we still don’t know if the incident warrants judicial punishment.
I’m guessing it will take a convenient 9 months for them to “get to the bottom” of this one.
Thanks for the response CB, although you dodged the basic question of when.
No, I ignored your presumption that I had an “epiphany”. As for when I came to realize that we were under-manned, I really don’t recall.
At some point (some time in ’04), I came to the conclusion that, had we had 100,000 more troops right after May 1st, then it was likely that we would have had much lower manpower requirements down the road because the country would’ve been fairly secure and a Sunni paramilitancy wouldn’t have grown to what it became. But we also made mistakes along the way that precluded troop reductions, one being how we handled Fallujah after the contractors were murdered and, two, our mishandling of al-Sadr.
I take exception that we fought “on the cheap” in Iraq or that it was for “purely political reasons”, but you have your opinion and I have mine. The price tag alone speaks to your “on the cheap” comment. Rumsfeld’s philosophy of fewer and more maneuverable forces worked well for removing a dictator, but has proved costly (to put it mildly) for post-war operations. He hasn’t been maneuverable enough in seeing new problems and changing the strategy when changes were sorely needed.
CB: ‘The price tag alone speaks to your “on the cheap” comment.’
I think the claim is we were penny-wise and pound-foolish.
‘Rumsfeld’s philosophy of fewer and more maneuverable forces worked well for removing a dictator’
I can’t speak to this myself, but I’ve seen claims that the invasion was a much closer thing than popularly thought, in which case your statement is post hoc.
Charles:
“On the cheap” does not mean without significant expense — it means doing it with less than was truly necessary in order to do it right. You know that — why play this dodge?
The Bush administration was advised in detail before the war as to what it would take to do it right — “it” being the much more expensive task of securing the country post-invasion. For purely political reasons, they opted to reject that advice (even though no one said they could do it with the small force actually sent).
The “purely political reasons” were that they did not want to admit publicly how much it would really cost nor the sacrafices necessary to field a large enough army to do it right. After all, they had a war to sell — can’t let facts discourage people from opting for war! No one advocated that the post-war could be handled with the same small force used for the invasion. What is your explanantion, if not political, for undermanning the occupation?
Finally, think again about the seriousness of the decision from at least 2004 onward to continue to muddle along with inadequate force. Think of the thousands of Americans maimed or killed needlessly because the Republicans were unwilling to fight this war properly by fielding the proper force with proper equipment.
Today, American forces have more combat aircraft than infantry squads, and more combat pilots than squad leaders. Fully 75 percent of our Army and Marine infantry leave the military after their four-year tour.
This is frustratingly hard to confirm. Why doesn’t Wikipedia or someone just have a table of the number of combat aircraft in our armed forces? A squad is about 8 people, so if there are 120,000 troops in Iraq there need to be 15,000 planes and combat leaders. Does that make sense? Looks to me from links on this page like we have 500 combat aircraft in Iraq.
Noumenon,
A squad is eleven people by doctrine. But only a very few Army units are actually organized into squads; infantry and military police are the only ones I can think of offhand. Armor units only go down to the platoon level (four tanks per platoon, four men per tank, sometimes operating as two-tank sections). So that cite may be true, but it needs a great deal more context to make clear why it is true.
Ok I had all this typed out the other night and lost it, I am certain there are better sites but searching thru DoD is work:
Military Personnel …Wikipedia, as of 2004
I was looking for historical manpower levels(Order of Battle? …you can tell a real geek here) and found the CMH:
Center for Military History …a browse makes me wonder about all my Ospreys
Manpower Drawdowns …1950-80, roughly. Looks to me like the Army and Marines got seriously shafted during the 70s, and the Air Force is just way too big. For reference I think the WWII army peaked at roughly 4 million (Korea 1.5, Vietnam 1.5)
Basically, I was looking, and still am, for the percentage of population, and percentage of eligibles, that had served say 1940-75, so I could try to explain the feeling of growing up during the 50s and 60s. “Everybody served” is wrong, but that is how it felt.
The 54 million eligibles cited above, and a figure of currently 134 eligibles on a Wiki page is very probably wrong, cause I doubt they have checked who has only one leg or is blind.
I’d guess this was a reference to assets in all of armed service, not just in Iraq. But as Andrew says, it needs some ‘splainin’. For reference, we have roughly 5000 combat aircraft in inventory, last I checked.
As most who attended the rally know, I was there. After the dust had cleared created by some moonbat among the bootmurtha crowd who called in a fake police report that a fight had broken out, Larry Bailey came out to speak with me.
I complimented him from the bottom of my heart for the contributions he has made to our country’s national security while he was serving active duty in the US Navy.
He made it clear my request to speak would not happen. He then proceeded to suggest he has no memory of the email he wrote me on 8/20/2006 2:59:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time stating that our current Commander in Chief made stupid mistakes in Iraq.
Larry then proceeded to illustrate stupid mistakes made in passed wars. After he mentioned 3 or 4 examples I interjected that there is a difference between those wars and this one.
In the past it took weeks, months, sometimes years for mistakes to be discovered and reported. Today is the information age where mistakes are reported within hours of their occurrence. I reminded him this war was still going on. I also reminded him of the glaring mistakes he had acknowledged President Bush had made in Iraq, and our respective use of the Internet to support our respective views and that is where our conversation ended.
I waited outside the Arena with a Johnstown police officer who had stayed behind after the bootmurtha hysterics caused 3 squad cars and a sergeant to arrive with sirens blaring. I was debating Steeler football with him when a motorcycle officer stopped by, who had been inside. When I asked how many were inside he said, “not many at all” When I asked “500?”, he responded, “na … well maybe 500, at most.”
At the end of the event when Larry Bailey came out for a photo op next to the bootmurtha.com sign on the sidewalk outside the War Memorial Arena. I handed Larry the speech I had waited to deliver. He put it in his outside left coat pocket.
This is my speech Larry Bailey has in his coat pocket … the words he was not man enough to let me say:
“Please join me in Prayer.
Heavily father we pray today for you to continue to protect the men and women of the armed forces of the United States and other countries who are in harms way in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries throughout the world. We thank them and their families for their sacrifices.
We pray for the souls of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in all wars. We pray for strength and courage for the POWs and MIAs and those held hostage.
We pray for protection and safety of relief workers helping those in need.
We pray for the protection of children and innocent civilians. Lord we especially pray for our nation and our leaders.”
.
Below you will find the press release that went out on October 29th of this year.
.
———————————————————————-
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LARRY BAILEY (BOOTMURTHA.COM) OCTOBER 1ST RALLY IN JOHNSTOWN, PA.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Cliff Hancuff
September 29, 2006 (202) 247-1418
Journalismisflat@aol.com
“American troops could be home now, except for critical mistakes made by our current Commander in Chief,” charges Cliff Hancuff, Director of The World of Journalism Is Flat, Too.
“Media and right-wing bloggers are ignoring this fact. For weeks I have been challenging political activists and journalists to act with a minimum of ethical standards,” continued Hancuff.
“I became involved when the Sun-Sentinel in Florida reported that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) said the U.S. poses the top threat to world peace. I watched in dismay as the media and bloggers worldwide reported on this misquote.”
“My involvement continued when I discovered Diana Irey, John Murtha’s political opponent, had attacked Murtha using a fictional quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln.”
“Larry Bailey of bootmurtha.com is continuing his three year blind support of our current Commander in Chief’s incompetence in war. President Bush declared war in Iraq without the 4th Infantry, our most lethal, modern, and deployable heavy division in the world,” added Hancuff.
This mistake lead to the atrocity of Al Qaqaa. Iraqi insurgents stole hundreds of tons of high explosives to be used as weaponry.
“These are the explosives being used by Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda to perpetuate the war in Iraq.”
“I am distressed that the same issues ignored by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 are being ignored again in 2006,” said Hancuff adding, “Americans, American soldiers, and their families deserve better.”
“Without these critical mistakes made by our current Commander in Chief, our American troops would be home with their loved ones, with honor, right now.”
On October 1, 2006 Hancuff be at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena located in Johnstown Pennsylvania for Larry Bailey’s Swiftboating of John Murtha rally. It is there Hancuff will continue his wait for Mr. Bailey to recall the values of honor and integrity taught him by our US Navy.
There is a youtube.com video online at:
YouTube – Rovian Architecture Unplugged
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5jcyHokFyE
The World of Journalism Is Flat, Too
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