GI SPECIAL 4E27:
THIS IS HOW
BUSH BRINGS THE TROOP HOME;
BRING THEM
ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE
Sgt. Major Chris Rodriguez
pays his final respects to Sgt. Jose Gomez May 10, 2006, in
New York. Gomez died in Baghdad April 28, 2006 when a
roadside bomb detonated near his Humvee. The soldier was
assigned to the 10th Cavalry, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry
Division, Fort Hood, Texas. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Support For
Iraq War Hits New Low:
“For The
First Time, Fewer Than 4-In-10 Americans Believe The War Was
Worth Fighting”
76 per
cent of respondents think there have been an
unacceptable number of U.S. military casualties in Iraq.
May 19, 2006 (Angus Reid
Global Scan)
More adults in the United
States are disappointed with their government’s decision to
go to war in Iraq, according to a poll by TNS released by
the Washington Post and ABC News. 62 per cent of respondents
think the conflict was not worth fighting, up five points
since March.
For the first time since the
conflict began, fewer than four-in-ten Americans believe the
war with Iraq was worth fighting.
The coalition effort against
Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least
2,454 American soldiers have died during the military
operation, and more than 17,900 troops have been wounded in
action.
76 per cent
of respondents think there have been an unacceptable number
of U.S. military casualties in Iraq.
Do you
have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this
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we’ll send it regularly.
Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is
extra important for your service friend, too often cut
off from access to encouraging news of growing
resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed
services.
Send requests to address up top.
IRAQ WAR
REPORTS
Athens
Native Killed By Explosive
May. 20, 2006 Associated Press
ATHENS, Ga. - Family members
of an Athens native killed in Iraq say they're proud of the
soldier's service.
Staff Sgt. Marion Flint Jr.,
29, was one of two soldiers killed Monday in Iraq by an
explosive, according to the Department of Defense.
Flint and Pfc. Grant A.
Dampier, 25, of Merrill, Wis., died when an improvised
explosive device detonated near their vehicle during combat
patrol operations in Baghdad, the Pentagon said in a news
release.
Both soldiers were assigned to
the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade
Combat Team, Fort Carson, Colo.
"We're all very proud of his
service," said Anita Fleming, sister of Flint's mother,
Matlene Christine Flint. "We think that what he did was a
real, real honor to us. We really appreciate it."
Flint moved to Baltimore as an
adult and was most recently stationed in Garner, N.C., where
he lived with his wife, LaShaviea Danielle Flint and their
two children, Dyamond, 11 and Malik, 3.
He graduated from Clarke
Central High School in Athens, where he played football and
basketball.
He was scheduled to complete
his tour in Iraq in November.
"He was real serious about
what he was doing in Iraq," said another aunt, Pat Ford.
Family members are waiting for
Flint's body to be returned to Athens. No funeral
arrangements had been set.
Spc.
Brandon Teeters Dies In Germany
5/16/2006 By: News 8 Austin
Staff
Fort Hood has released the
name of a soldier who died from injuries received in Iraq.
Spc. Brandon Teeters, 21, of
Lafayette, La., died May 12 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, from
injuries sustained April 20 in Baghdad after an explosive
device detonated near his Bradley fighting vehicle during
combat operations.
Teeters entered the Army in
June 2004 and was assigned to the 8th Squadron, 10th Cavalry
Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. In October 2004 as a
Calvary scout. He was deployed to Iraq in December 2005.
Teeters' decorations and
awards include; Army Service Ribbon, National Defense
Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal,
and Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.
The Noose
Tightens
26 May 2006 By Larry Johnson,
Truthout Perspective [Excerpt]
The United
States' ability to stay the course in Iraq is threatened by
a fragile re-supply line, which runs from Kuwait north to
Baghdad. This road runs through the heart of
Shia-controlled territory. Everything we need to keep our
Army fed and fueled comes up that road.
In The War
With Iraq, All That High Tech Gear Don’t Mean Shit:
The Iraqis
Troops Have Their Own Capability:
“They’re
More Effectively Networked Than We Are”
It’s at
this point, just beyond the edge of the American
network, where the guerrillas are best connected. Using
disposable cellphones, anonymous e-mail addresses at
public Internet cafés, and “lessons learned” Web sites
that rival Cavnet, disparate guerrilla groups coordinate
attacks, share tactics, hire bomb makers, and draw in
fresh recruits.
5.26.2006 Noah Shachtman, with
reporting in Iraq by David Axe, Popular Science [Excerpts]
The mission
changes for Charlie Company seconds after the soldiers roll
off the base. The dreary night patrol around Balad, a
shambling Shi’ite town in north-central Iraq, has just been
canceled.
It’s time
instead to hightail it west, to the Sunni neighborhood of Ad
Duluiyah. “Alpha Company is taking direct fire,” a voice
crackles over the radio in First Lt. Brian Feldmayer’s
Humvee. “I need you to expedite."
Feldmayer, a 24-year-old
Virginian with the smooth cheeks of a teenager, tries to
straighten out a smile of excitement and nervous
anticipation. He stares into the glowing touchscreen at his
left elbow. The Army calls this system Blue Force Tracker,
or BFT. It’s a militarized version of an automotive
navigation aid, enhanced to track—and communicate with—other
coalition vehicles.
Firmly
tapping the screen with his gloved fingers, Feldmayer calls
up the grid coordinate just radioed to him and marks it with
white crosshairs.
Zooming
out, he studies the roads leading there. He plots a course,
then radios the rest of his patrol—two tanks, three more
Humvees and an Iraqi Army Nissan truck—with orders to haul
ass.
It doesn’t
take long for Feldmayer to regret it.
Nobody on the patrol knows the
roads, and he’s wary of getting lost.
Ordinarily, on his terminal,
he should be able to track Charlie’s other BFT-equipped
vehicles and follow the route they’re taking. But the
satellite signal that feeds BFT is weak tonight.
And the
lieutenant doesn’t exactly trust the system’s maps: It can
take the Army’s cartographers up to a year to update them;
in Iraq, a lot can change by then.
Feldmayer
curses loudly. He calls his command post for help, but he
hears only static.
This wasn’t how the 75-man
Charlie Company was supposed to operate.
It’s part of the Army’s first
“digital division,” the Ft. Carson, Colorado; based Fourth
Infantry Division (4ID), outfitted with the military’s
latest gear: new tanks, firearms and armored vehicles, but
also flying reconnaissance drones, advanced sensors,
electronic jammers and battlefield data networks. All of
which should make the 4ID a model for the Pentagon’s vision
for the future of combat—“network-centric warfare.”
With the right technologies,
soldiers should be able to communicate better and have a
clearer picture of the battlefield. Their movements become
lightning-quick and lethally effective. Think of it as
combat on Internet time.
But now, more than three years
into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has
cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the
current state of network-centric warfare reveals that
frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear,
gear that hasn’t come yet.
“There is a connectivity gap,”
states a recent Army War College report. “Information is not
reaching the lowest levels.”
This is a
dangerous problem, because the insurgents are stitching
together their own communications network. Using cellphones
and e-mail accounts, these guerrillas rely on a loose web of
connections rather than a top-down command structure.
And they don’t fight in large
groups that can be easily tracked by high-tech command
posts. They have to be hunted down in dark neighborhoods,
amid thousands of civilians, and taken out one by one.
Even in the supposedly wired
4ID, it can take years for frontline soldiers to benefit
from the technologies that high-ranking officers quickly
take for granted.
The finicky, incompatible
equipment that’s given to the infantrymen and tank drivers
in Charlie Company, the guys who are spending this cold, wet
February night on the front, is primitive in comparison with
the gear at the sprawling military base outside of Balad,
where battalion-level commanders oversee the 300 troops in
Charlie and three other companies. There, things are
beginning to work like the network-centric theorists
predicted, with drone video feeds and sensor data and
situation reports flying in constantly.
But to the guys in Charlie
Company, this technological wizardry and the Pentagon’s
futuristic hypotheses seem awfully far away.
There is a simple, but
significant, reason why: Bringing frontline infantrymen into
the network isn’t as easy as wiring up a headquarters.
Battlefield gear has to be wireless, durable, secure, and
completely effortless to use in the chaos of combat.
The network
is slowly expanding to meet the grunts. But the Department
of Defense’s lumbering process for buying new equipment
still virtually ensures that ground-level soldiers won’t be
linked-in until early next decade.
“The fog, friction and
uncertainty of war are still there, same as always,” says
retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, considered one of the
leading authorities on counterinsurgency.
“This
net-centricity helps some, but it only goes as far as the
battalion. After that, these guys are on their own.”
Feldmayer radios the tank at
the rear of his patrol and orders it to the front of the
convoy. It’s the latest M1A2 Abrams, one of the most
advanced tanks in the world, equipped with new night-vision
sensors, thicker armor and BFT’s older (and,
counterintuitively) more feature-packed cousin: Force XXI
Battle Command Brigade-and-Below, or FBCB2.
First built in the early 1990s
for Cold War–style conflicts, where armies are tightly
bunched together, FBCB2 relies on a classified radio band to
communicate. BFT, designed later for more-dispersed,
unconventional warfare, uses more-open satellite
transmissions; troops can share information at greater
distances, but they can’t get the kind of secrecy that FBCB2
provides.
The Army is working on a
bridge between the two systems so that they will be able to
share some basic information, but for now they are mostly
incompatible.
Feldmayer won’t be able to see
where the tank is leading them, and he won’t be able to use
FBCB2’s Instant Messenger-like tool to quickly relay
commands. He won’t have access to any of the communications
links that increase what the Pentagon calls “situational
awareness” and that ultimately power network-centric
warfare. If the navigation systems were working, every
vehicle could split up or speed ahead if an attack came,
without getting lost.
But today
they will all have to follow the tank’s taillights in a neat
line, just as it was done in 1944.
Charlie Company takes off,
racing toward the fight at Ad Duluiyah. Careening around
traffic circles, blowing past checkpoints, the company is
primed for combat: weapons loaded, 120-millimeter cannon
shells rammed into breaches. Radio-frequency jammers form a
protective bubble around the convoy, keeping
remote-controlled roadside bombs from detonating. “They
better have that shit wrapped up by the time we get there,”
Feldmayer shouts, “or we’re going to blow some shit up!”
Then,
suddenly, the lead tank lurches to a halt. Through
roiling clouds of dust, illuminated by the tank’s
headlights, Feldmayer sees a pile of concrete and
earth. The lead tank’s fancy navigation system has just
led them into a roadblock, too tall for the vehicles to
climb. A dozen soldiers curse in unison.
By the time Charlie gets to Ad
Duluiyah, 45 minutes later, the shooting is over. A dozen
Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles line a muddy road
leading to a rickety pontoon bridge that’s nearly swamped by
a surging stream.
And all those soldiers’
chatter is creating cacophony over the Single Channel Ground
and Air Radio System, or Sincgars, the radio system
connecting the Army’s fleet of helicopters and ground
vehicles. It’s the buzzing, chirping sound of information
overload.
An officer from Alpha Company
walks over to explain what’s going on. Alpha was following
up on leads about a stolen Iraqi police truck when the
soldiers spotted a suspiciously large gathering of cars in
front of a single house. When Alpha got close, Iraqis
spilled out, sprinting for their cars and shooting off
tracer rounds. Alpha didn’t have enough men to pursue.
Now the idea is to start
searching houses, one at a time, for insurgents.
Charlie Company is assigned
the northwest side of the stream.
Feldmayer tells his tank
commanders to use their infrared sights to watch over the
foot patrols. Taking a last glance at his BFT, eyeballing
the digital representation of the dark, foreboding
neighborhood he’s about to penetrate, Feldmayer mutters,
“Don’t need this anymore,” and switches the system off.
Picking his
way through the crumbling houses of Ad Duluiyah, Feldmayer
is tied to the American grid by only the thinnest of
threads. There’s no way for him to get on any collaborative
Web site from here. Most of his men are out of reach,
scattered throughout the town. Many don’t have radios;
traditional Army fighting doesn’t call for individual
soldiers to be separated from their squad very often.
Feldmayer
follows the Iraqi soldiers he’s been teamed with across a
dark, muddy, pothole-riddled yard. A locked gate bars the
way to a group of houses. One of Feldmayer’s U.S. soldiers
blasts it open with a shotgun, and the men spill into the
yard in front of a large dwelling. Soldiers crowd the front
door, pounding with closed fists and yelling in Arabic.
Women and children dart around corners and disappear into
rooms. Tired men scurry outside, obviously spooked.
Feldmayer doesn’t like the
aggression. “Just take it easy,” he tells the Iraqi troops
through the patrol’s interpreter, to the civilians’ palpable
relief.
One of the men gathered in the
yard gestures to the lieutenant. Feldmayer grabs the
interpreter and shakes the Iraqi man’s hand. “Salaam,”
Feldmayer says. The three put their heads together,
muttering in English and Arabic.
Suddenly Feldmayer cuts off
the conversation and urges the man and the interpreter
around a corner. “He says he knows who the bad guys are
around here,” Feldmayer says.
The interpreter takes notes as
the informant rattles off names and addresses.
If the
Pentagon’s vision of networked forces were realized here, he
would be typing into a handheld computer, wirelessly
connected to a network. The names would immediately be
cross-checked with databases of known guerrillas and
disseminated to local commanders.
But for
now, the patrol’s interpreter writes down the Ad Duluiyah
suspects on paper, using a pencil.
It’s at
this point, just beyond the edge of the American network,
where the guerrillas are best connected. Using disposable
cellphones, anonymous e-mail addresses at public Internet
cafés, and “lessons learned” Web sites that rival Cavnet,
disparate guerrilla groups coordinate attacks, share
tactics, hire bomb makers, and draw in fresh recruits.
It’s an ad
hoc, constantly changing web of connections, so it’s hard
for U.S. spooks to know where to listen in next.
It also
lets the insurgents keep a loose command structure, without
much hierarchy—just like the network-centric theorists call
for.
Even if their communications
are compromised, only a small cell is exposed, not the
entire insurgency.
"They’re
more effectively networked than we are," says Hammes, the
guerrilla-war expert. “They have a worldwide, secure
communications network. And all it cost them was two
dinars.”
To compensate, some American
soldiers are buying their own gear: $50 Motorola
walkie-talkies, so they can talk to their squad mates; $160
Garmin GPS receivers to make up for FBCB2’s gaps.
It’s quicker than waiting for
the wheels of the Pentagon bureaucracy to turn.
Pencil and paper just won’t
do.
After hours
of barreling down highways, blasting open locked gates, and
pressing terrified Iraqis for information, Charlie and Alpha
companies trickle home from Ad Duluiyah.
Feldmayer’s
Humvee is the last to leave, towing the sniper section’s
broken-down truck. Feldmayer stares into the cold dark of
the early morning.
His
shoulders sag. In his pocket, he carries the insurgent list
he coaxed out of the Iraqi informant. His sergeant gripes
about missed firefights. But Feldmayer just nods, his arm
draped on the blank screen of the BFT.
REAL BAD
PLACE TO BE:
BRING THEM
ALL HOME NOW
U.S. soldiers from the 101st
Airborne Division at the scene of a car bomb which detonated
outside a police station in Sadr City, Baghdad, May 23,
2006. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
AFGHANISTAN
WAR REPORTS
Assorted
Resistance Action
5.26.06 Reuters & AP
Two policemen were killed in a
clash in southwestern Afghanistan on Friday, a provincial
official said.
The clash erupted after
guerrillas ambushed a convoy of police in Ghazni province,
southwest of the capital Kabul.
"The clash lasted for several
hours," said Abdul Wakil Kamiyab, a senior police official.
Meanwhile, fighting broke out
Friday between militants and Afghan security forces in
Ghazni province, Gov. Sher Alam said. He didn't know the
numbers of fighters involved or any casualty numbers.
TROOP NEWS
Sympathy
Flows At Soldier’s Funeral In Queens:
“Twenty-Five Hundred Of These Around The Country,” He Said;
“Can You
Imagine?”
Maria Gomez tried to find
comfort on an Army sergeant first class’ shoulder Wednesday
in a church in Corona, Queens, during the funeral for her
son. Sgt. Jose Gomez, 23, was killed on April 20 by a
roadside bomb in Iraq. Behind her was Sergeant Gomez’s
stepfather, Felix Jimenez, and Marie Canario, the soldier’s
fiancée.
May 11, 2006 By MICHELLE
O’DONNELL, The New York Times
At Our Lady of Sorrows Roman
Catholic Church in Corona, Queens, Mary, the mother of God,
weeps at the feet of her son in the mural over the altar.
Yesterday, Maria, the mother of Sgt. Jose Gomez of the
United States Army, wept from her seat in the first pew.
“You, more than anyone,
understand the pain of the mother of Christ,” the Rev.
Thomas Healy said in Spanish to Maria Gomez, whose slender
shoulders slumped into the Army officer seated to her right
as her husband, Felix Jimenez, wrapped an arm around her.
“We are all with you in your pain.”
But she was really alone and
she seemed to know it, weeping and staring blankly at her
son’s coffin in the center aisle. She had brought him to
the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was
3. Twenty years later, on April 20, he was killed by a
roadside bomb in Iraq, during a second tour of duty there.
His death came 31 months after
his fiancée, Analaura Esparza-Gutierrez, 21, an Army private
from Houston, was also killed by a roadside bombing in
Tikrit, Iraq. Three springs ago, Sergeant Gomez had
proposed to her. Now both were gone.
Yesterday, church and state
rose up, each in its ritualistic glory, to honor the brief
life and sudden death of Sergeant Gomez. Father Healy
tenderly anointed his coffin with incense, and gave the
young man his final blessings. The ladies of Corona — some
in veils — filled the pews. Army officers flanked the right
side of the church, and a two-star general presented Mrs.
Gomez with the purple heart and bronze star that President
Bush had authorized her son to receive.
Yet it all seemed to do little
to lessen the grief of Mrs. Gomez, who appeared to grow
smaller as those by her side supported her.
The loss of Sergeant Gomez hit
her especially hard because he had always strived to take
care of his mother. He was saving to buy her a house. He
had called home on April 19, the day before he died, to have
flowers sent to her for Mother’s Day.
And he had invented a tale
that he was working and studying in Texas to hide the fact
that he had been ordered to serve a second tour in Iraq,
where the danger had been driven home by Private
Esparza-Gutierrez’s death.
Father Healy told Sergeant
Gomez’s family to persevere. His new fiancée, Marie
Canario, dabbed her eyes with a sodden tissue.
“Remember Jesus’ words,”
Father Healy said in Spanish and English. “There is no
greater love than to give your life for your friends.”
Maj. Gen. Bill Grisoli spoke.
He called Sergeant Gomez a hero. He read a letter from an
officer who wrote how, on April 20, after another Army
vehicle was damaged by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Sergeant
Gomez and Staff Sgt. Bryant A. Herlem, 37, had moved their
vehicle forward.
“It was in the act of
protecting their friends that the second blast occurred,”
General Grisoli said.
Mrs. Gomez bore it all
quietly. All Jose had wanted, she said in an interview last
week, was to study mathematics and become an accountant.
Raised in Corona, amid a warren of brick and clapboard
delis, barbershops and bodegas, Jose quickly learned one
uncompromising sum: his family’s bank accounts could never
support his schooling.
“We’re poor,” Mrs. Gomez had
said. She works packaging air fresheners in a factory, and
her husband, Mr. Jimenez, is a truck driver. “And if you go
in the Army to get your degree, well that used to work out.”
For most of the funeral, Mrs.
Gomez kept her head bowed.
The funeral ended, and
Sergeant Gomez’s final trip through Queens began. His
hearse slipped past the El Nuevo Amanecer restaurant, the
Valdez Deli, the mural of the unfurled American flag painted
on the side of a building.
Then it was into East
Elmhurst, where children played at recess on a rooftop along
Astoria Boulevard, and a small jet wobbled its descent to La
Guardia Airport. At St. Michael’s Cemetery along the Grand
Central Parkway, a leader led mourners down the wrong path.
They scurried around the cemetery until they found Sergeant
Gomez’s coffin.
It lay on a small hill covered
with green burlap. Mrs. Gomez and Ms. Canario sat weeping as
a man in an orange shirt led a prayer. Mr. Jimenez wiped
his face. The twin wails of mother and fiancée rose above
the din of traffic in an inconsolable dirge.
Mrs. Gomez was supported to
the side of the coffin.
“Mi Jose! Mi Jose! Mi hijo!”
she wailed. “O Dios!”
She sobbed, and added, moaning
in Spanish, “Why did it have to be my son?”