WarrenPeese

The UN acts on Darfur?!?

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–by Sebastian According to this Guardian story, the UN may finally be acting on the Darfur genocide: The UN vote will dispatch a hybrid force of 19,555 UN and African Union (AU) soldiers and more than 6,000 police from around the world. They are due to take over from a largely ineffectual 7,000-strong AU force … Read more

Taxes and Prohibition

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–Sebastian I’m a sucker for explanations that go against conventional wisdom.  I know they aren’t all true, but I like the way they make you look at things you’ve never thought deeply about.  Here is a fascinating one I just ran across: Speakeasies and gangster violence did become familiar during the 1920s. And Americans did … Read more

Support with Support

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—Sebastian I’ve had my disagreements with D-squared (and that is the polite way of saying it), but he has it right on here.  Iraqi interpreters used by the British Army and CPA South have already been hunted down by death squads. The British forces in and around Basra are no longer really sufficient to protect … Read more

Alzheimer’s Drug

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Apparently there is a new delivery system for the recently introduced Alzheimer’s drug.  For quite a while I was following Alzheimer’s developments as one grandparent on each side had it.  But when they died, I apparently stopped paying attention because I wasn’t even aware that an Alzheimer’s drug had come out last year.  The patch … Read more

American Inventor

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I’ve just watched a couple of episodes of "American Inventor".  It doesn’t seem calculated to get a really good invention, but rather to make fun of people who (for the most part erroneously) believe that they have invented something good.  It seems to me that there is a trend of recent shows which claim to … Read more

Tough month

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by Charles

There is no getting around the facts.  In the month of May, civilian casualties went up, extra-judicial killings (EJKs) went up, and U.S. military casualties went up.  The number of suicide bombings went down. 

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The troubling part is the EJKs, which could mean several things.  It could indicate that Sunni and Shiite militias have ramped up, but the numbers may also include the results of skirmishes between Sunni tribes and al Qaeda.  It’s hard to know without examining every single incident.  But the statistics aren’t unexpected, as General Petraeus made clear in his DC news conference over a month ago.

The surge strategy is in process but won’t be at full manpower until later this month.  At best, there will be three full months from the time of full troop mobilization to General Petraeus’ September briefing on the status of Iraq.  It is no coincidence that the next round of funding requests will also occur at that time.  For me, I’m giving the surge strategy ’til the end of the year, so I’m reserving judgment on how it is working.  There are small signs of progress, such as the salvation councils popping up in the provinces surrounding Baghdad.  But there are plenty of signs of little-to-no progress, the most prominent being the lack of political breakthroughs on the national stage.

Read on…

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What’s worse than shutting down a TV network?

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by Charles

Threatening another TV network that dares to confront a socialist dictator, which is exactly what Hugo Chavez has done.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday called opposition news channel Globovision an enemy of the state and said he would do what was needed to stop it from inciting violence, only days after he shut another opposition broadcaster.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in Caracas in a fourth consecutive day of protests over Chavez’s closure of the RCTV network – a move which has sparked international criticism that the leftist leader’s reforms are undermining democracy.

State television showed hundreds of government supporters marching in downtown Caracas celebrating Chavez’s decision.

"Enemies of the homeland, particularly those behind the scenes, I will give you a name: Globovision. Greetings gentlemen of Globovision, you should watch where you are going," Chavez said in a broadcast all channels had to show.

"I recommend you take a tranquilizer and get into gear, because if not, I am going to do what is necessary."

More below the fold.

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Al Qaeda in Iraq, Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Other Stuff

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by Charles

I was listening to one of NPR’s hourly news updates last Wednesday, and they were talking about the bombing that killed nine of our soldiers from the 82th Airborne. They covered the who, what, when and where, but not the why and not all of the who. Because of this, their report was misleading. They stated that a "car bomb" struck the soldiers, but failed to mention that it was a suicide bombing and failed to mention that an al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility. By excluding the likely perpetrators, NPR is telling us only part of the story. The part they aren’t telling us is the increasing involvement of al Qaeda in these attention-getting attacks.

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Message to Petraeus, Part II: Information Ops Overhaul Overdue

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by Charles

In my earlier post, I touched on the importance of information operations (IO) in Iraq, noting that it is one of the five main pillars of a successful counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. In that light, I mentioned the travails of Michael Yon, who is doing important work in reporting what is happening on the ground, yet is being shut down by a petulant general. In the cross-posted thread, Bob Owens from Newsbusters.org showed up and named names:

The General who wants to silence Yon is Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks. In 2005, Brooks was the the lead Public Affairs Officer (PAO) for the United States Army. The stories that got Yon in trouble with Brooks were Proximity Delays and Gates of Fire. Proximity Delays got Yon in trouble, and in Gates of Fire, Yon picked up a rifle and joined combat to help LTC Erik Kurilla, who had been shot three times by an insurgent while CSM Robert Prosser was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with another insurgent. For inserting himself into battle (which violated embed rules) to help fallen American soldiers, and then having the gall to write about it, Brooks tried to kick Yon our [out] of Iraq.

Brooks is back in Iraq, this time as deputy commanding general – support for Multinational Division-Baghdad, and he still obviously carries his grudge against Yon. I confirmed last night with Michael Yon that it is this same General Vincent K. Brooks that sent Yon the email threatening to kick him out of Iraq.

Following his RUBS post, Yon writes a lengthy entry that merits a full read (Warning: Graphic images).

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