Misfire, misfire, misfire!

Operation Homecoming

2007-02-11T14:27:00.000-05:00

Operation Homecoming is a film that blends together a collection of writings from Iraq War veterans, set to pictures of the war or semi-animated shorts, with interviews of the writers as well as veteran/writers of other wars, including Tobias Wolff, Paul Fussell, and Tim O'Brien. It sprang from a NEA project that sought to use writing as a sort of therapy for returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I found it a pretty mixed bag. Three of the shorts were excellent. Colby Buzzell's Men in Black, a remix of his famous blog post about a firefight in Mosul, makes you feel the terror and adrenaline, followed by the letdown, of combat. Road Work by Army Staff Sergeant Jack Lewis is a crushing story of the death of an innocent Iraqi are a road checkpoint, where the Iraqi's father's grief is counterpointed by Lewis' own memory of the accidental death of his own child (an expanded version of what is in the film can be read here, and is definitely worth your time). Taking Chance by USMC LtCol Mike Strobl was a superb story of a Marine officer accompanying the body of LCpl Chance Phelps, killed in Iraq in 2005, home for burial. This story can be read here, and frankly it made me proud to be American. Dubois did their boy good.

The film emphasizes the pure savagery of war and its negative effects on both soldiers and civilians. There's not much positive to be found here. If you're a war supporter, you're going to dislike this film, and if you're against it you won't find much that you haven't likely read already. My feelings tend more towards the latter, but there's plenty of good stuff of this type you can already find online. It's not worth the trek to Film Forum to see.

You can listen to some of the stories that are condensed in the film here.

Battle for Baghdad

2007-02-09T05:22:00.000-05:00

Anne Garrels is one of the best journalists working in Iraq today. Her most recent stories about the beginning troop surge in Iraq have been terrific --- engrossing frontline dispatches about sectarian violence and American troops caught in the middle. Make sure to actually listen to them, rather than just reading the summaries.

Joint U.S. Iraqi Security Outposts Set Up in Baghdad

Routine Traffic Stop in Iraq Frees Kidnapped Man

Neighbors Wait for a Chance to Co-Exist in Baghdad

A few things that Garrels makes clear: Sunni Baghdad is under assault from Shia militias in a huge way, law and order in Baghdad has broken down almost completely, and American soldiers are pretty much the only hope that your average Sunni Iraqi civilian has nowadays. Which, given the small numbers even after the planned "surge", is not much hope at all.

So maybe not Cowboys-Bills ...

2007-02-06T03:47:00.000-05:00

But close enough for government work. I couldn't watch the entire game because I had to get up for work, but the Colts had the situation well in hand by the third quarter. Just like against the Ravens (a similar team to the Bears but far superior on both sides of the ball), the Colts used the threat of Peyton Manning and the deep pass to set up a consistent stretch running game that strangled the Bears with the slow inevitability of a python. Sexy Rexy just accelerated the process with his fourth-quarter meltdown.

By the way, why was Prince singing a Foo Fighters song? Gotta say, though, he tore it up. Best Super Bowl halftime show I've ever actually watched. Not bad for a guy pushing 50.

Peyton may be a Republican ...

2007-02-02T10:54:00.000-05:00

But he's still (probably) going to win the Super Bowl. Sorry, Mike Tomasky.

Unfortunately I think the Colts are going to take this one by a huge margin. Hell, I'm talking a Cowboys-Bills margin. Tomasky slams Manning for being nothing more than Dave Krieg behind a great line, but I have to disagree with him in a big way. Manning would be superb behind almost any NFL line. I don't think he even has much "pocket mobility" --- witness the Steelers/Colts game in last year's playoffs to see what happens when a fast, active defense gets through and confuses Manning in coverage. But he does have an amazingly quick release, receivers like Harrison, Dallas Clark, and Reggie Wayne, and a fast back in Joseph Addai combined with an offensive coordinator's mind and good decision-making skills in the pocket. All these combine to make him the least sacked QB of the last five years or so, and probably the best.

Also see: Football Outsiders on the Colts O-line. Their verdict --- other than Tarik Glenn, nothing much there. I have to agree, after watching Saturday get stood up repeatedly in the last game.

Recent Purchases

2007-02-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

No wonder the bonus disappeared so fast ...

Alta tactical knee pads. Get your mind out of the gutter, you.

Bates 50501 lightweight jungles, to replace a pair destroyed earlier. Not as comfortable as Bates ICBs, but a lot better to run in.

Specter Gear SOP 3-point sling. Tough and durable, though I haven't actually put it on a weapon yet. We'll see how the forward latch works --- a bit different from what I'm used to.

Agreed

2007-01-30T20:31:00.000-05:00

Government Center in Ramadi, Anbar Province, Iraq - 30 January, 2007

CHAMPIONS

2006-02-08T19:15:00.000-05:00

Plenty to blog about ...

2006-01-30T18:16:00.000-05:00

But no time to do it. Work has been overwhelming of late, though that may be falling off in the near future --- we just got word today that a large part of a closely-related section's job has just officially been outsourced to India.

Ever since the Steelers' dominating win over the Broncos, the NFL Network's OnDemand service has released a free highlights package of every Steelers game this year. This has pretty much eaten up all 15 minutes of my TV time of late. I've drifted through the past week in a sort of Steelers-derived glow that my looming possible unemployment and a near-fatal car accident (no one was hurt, but my crappy 1996 Nissan Maxima may have bit the dust) cannot dent. I don't what'll happen if the Steelers actually win one for the thumb --- I'll probably be the happiest scumbag wannabe recruit down at PI come June.

My admitted halfass, biased analysis: the Steelers' passing game takes it to the Seahawks DBs and rookie linebacking corps. Heath Miller has a big game, Ben wins MVP, and the Steelers take it 31-24 in a close one.

On a more serious note, even I wasn't expecting Hamas to crush Fatah so thoroughly. This one was almost as big an upset as Steelers-Indy.

Let me revise what I said before. Fatah will see some infighting, but with words like this about the Palestinian security forces, I'd say the odds on a real Fatah/Hamas shooting war just went up to 1-4.

Hamas swept the election with a pledge to uproot corruption, and it has said that some of the worst abuses were in the security services.

"The leaders of these services became multimillionaires," said Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader. "We are going to reform these services. This is our mission."

But Jibril Rajoub, a prominent Fatah leader and a security adviser to Abbas, sounded a very different tone.

"Hamas has no power to meddle with the security forces," Rajoub said.

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!!

2006-01-15T17:21:00.000-05:00

A bit of background: I've been a huge Steelers fan ever since I was a kid in Allegheny County, PA back in the days when Miami Vice was a cheesy TV show and not a cheesy upcoming movie. Needless to say, it wasn't the easiest time to be a Steelers fan. The Cowher era, comparatively, has been an occasionally-interrupted string of good seasons capped by a few brief, glorious stretches of greatness --- greatness that usually vanished in yet another postseason failure.

Steelers fans, I think, have wondered to an extent just how good the current Steelers are. In 2003 the Steelers didn't even make the playoffs at 6-10. Frankly things weren't looking too great for 2004, when of course Ben Roethlisberger took over and led the glorious 15-1 campaign that would eventually crash and burn in New England. This year the Steelers got a bit lost in the AFC, with the press more caught up in the hype of Indy's run to 13-0. With Big Ben out with injuries, the Steelers lost two in a row and were then shellacked by Indy on Monday night upon Ben's return. At that point, most everyone pretty much wrote off the Steelers as not ready for prime time.

Well now I think that notion's been put to bed. The Steelers belong with the NFL elite. So what's the major difference between the '04-'05 Steelers and the 6-10 mess in '03? I think now the answer is obvious: Ben Roethlisberger.

I'm not a big QB worshiper. I think line play and defense is at least as important as what the QB does, especially in today's NFL --- the '01 Ravens showed that you could even make a Super Bowl winner out of Trent Dilfer. But the QB position is still the difference-maker on the field. Great line play, great defense, and competent QB play can take you very far, while great line play and Tommy Maddox at QB take you to 6-10. But I think this game showed that good line play, great defense, and a very good QB can take a No. 6 seed to the AFC championship game for the first time in NFL history.

Big Ben was impressive throughout the game. He was under a heavy rush from the Indy line all day--- Dwight Freeney rushing the passer is every bit as impressive as they made him out to be. The Pittsburgh running game never really got on track, with Colt defenders in the backfield on a regular basis. But Ben kept throwing darts. And can I say how impressed I was with Heath Miller? Where the heck did his plays go in the second half, especially with the Colts crowding the line to stop our 115th consecutive running play?

Rating mention along with Ben is the defense, which came up huge. Dick LeBeau brought the mustard and it obviously shook Peyton Manning, who got hit early and often. The game should have been over with Polamalu's obvious interception that was overruled in the worst piece of NFL officiating since Phil Luckett couldn't tell heads from tails in the coin toss of a Steelers/Lions game in 2001. Manning after the game spoke of "protection problems" --- that's as much frustration as you'll ever get out of that guy in a press conference. LeBeau, Cowher, and the defense deserve a big standing O for that performance.

Now on to Denver, where the Steelers will have to deal with the Mile High air, the Broncos' running game, and a lot of media hype about the only No. 6 seed to progress so far (and probably be favored) in the playoffs. This game and its associated weirdness will be chewed over long and hard over the next week, but the Steelers can hopefully keep focus now that their place in the NFL elite is assured.

Iraq: Back to Business

2005-12-28T19:44:00.000-05:00

So the election's over, back to the same old grind: assassinations, car bombings, regular airplane bombings, attempted overruns of Iraqi army and police posts. Tom Lasseter has the must-read articles of the day, though, as he interviews Iraqi Army units in northern Iraq and finds out (surprise!) they're pretty much just rebadged peshmerga militia fighters who owe their primary loyalty to Kurdistan as opposed to Iraq:

Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

...

The Iraqi army's 2nd Division, which oversees the Irbil-Mosul area, has some 12,000 soldiers, and at least 90 percent of them are Kurds, according to the division's executive officer.

Of the 3,000 Iraqi soldiers in Irbil, some 2,500 were together in a Peshmerga unit previously based in the city. An entire brigade in Mosul, about 3,000 soldiers, is composed of three battalions that were transferred almost intact from former Peshmerga units, with many of the same soldiers and officers in the same positions.

Lasseter and Knight-Ridder have documented pretty much the same situation with Iraqi Army units in the south, which are dominated by Shia militias loyal to the Hawza religious establishment in Najaf. Meanwhile Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army extends its control throughout the Iraqi police, including the special commando units, while SCIRI's Badr Brigades run the Interior Ministry.

Given the current situation, can someone please explain to me why supposedly smart people think that the Iraqi elections would convince the Sunnis to lay down their guns? Why would you do that when all the other players are loading for bear?

Christmas Loot

2005-12-27T16:14:00.000-05:00

Assorted goodies gotten:

Two trade paperbacks of one of the best manga out there: Blade of the Immortal. These two feature one of my favorite characters, Makie, the ex-lover of the series' antagonist and the deadliest fighter in Blade's universe. Since this is manga, she is naturally a beautiful, 90-lb., excessively submissive former prostitute. The latter two parts are annoying, but her story arc is pretty compelling, and again Samura Hiroaki proves that no one does action on the comic page like him.

Call of Duty 2, the sequel to one of the more popular WWII-themed first person shooter games out there. This is more in the nature of a graphics upgrade expansion pack than an actual sequel, unfortunately. The single-player campaign is (thusfar) also nowhere near as compelling or cinematic as the first Call of Duty, which stole liberally from Band of Brothers and Enemy at the Gates. If you're in the market for a good FPS, pick F.E.A.R. or Day of Defeat: Source.

Iraq: Not like Vietnam, but it should be!

2005-12-20T19:57:00.000-05:00

Former Nixon Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has gotten some attention with his recent Foreign Affairs article recommending a repeat of Vietnamization in Iraq. Essentially Laird endorses Bush's "Iraqis stand up, Americans stand down" course in Iraq, with the focus on training Iraqi security forces to take the place of American forces. Laird considers the American Army's exit from South Vietnam in 1972 as a model to be followed to achieve decisive success in Iraq, which might seem odd given that South Vietnam doesn't exist any longer. Not to Laird, however:

The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own.
...
Documents released from North Vietnamese historical files in recent years have proved that the Soviets violated the treaty from the moment the ink was dry, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi. The United States barely stuck to the allowed amount of military aid for two years, and that was a mere fraction of the Soviet contribution.
Yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun.
...
I believed then and still believe today that given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe Iraq can do the same now. From the Tet offensive in 1968 up to the fall of Saigon in 1975, South Vietnam never lost a major battle. The Tet offensive itself was a victory for South Vietnam and devastated the North Vietnamese army, which lost 289,000 men in 1968 alone.

Apparently some folks in the blogosphere think that the man who was responsible for implementing a program is the most objective observer regarding its success. Unfortunately, Laird is engaged in some rather egregious revisionism of his own here.

U.S. funding of South Vietnam, first of all, continued at a high rate through 1975. From 1973-74, the U.S. provided South Vietnam with $3.3 billion in aid --- three times the amount of Soviet aid listed by Laird. In 1975, this was cut not to nothing, but to $700 million. Lewis Sorley and other revisionist historians like to talk about ARVN troops running out of ammunition, but this was largely due to massive and endemic corruption throughout the South Vietnamese high command, not lack of American aid. And as Melvin L. Pribbenow relates in Parameters, the North Vietnamese too had ammunition supply problems that were a major factor in their strategic planning for 1975.

By 1974, PAVN's entire stock of heavy artillery and tank ammunition, including all ammunition held by combat units at forward warehouses, and in North Vietnam's strategic reserves, totaled just 100,000 rounds. The ammunition problem was so serious that the PAVN artillery command had to replace the larger weapons in a number of units with obsolete 76.2mm and 57mm artillery pieces drawn out of storage for which there still was adequate ammunition.

Indeed, Pribbenow goes on to relate that much of the artillery fired in support of the North's offensive in 1975 was captured from overrun ARVN units, which were lavishly stocked in comparison.

During their initial attacks Tra's troops overran the small ARVN outposts at Bu Dang and Bu Na on Route 14. COSVN Military Command reported to Hanoi on 20 December that within the ruins of these two outposts PAVN forces had captured intact four 105mm howitzers and 7,000 rounds of artillery ammunition. This unexpected treasure trove stunned the leadership in Hanoi. Seven thousand rounds were more than half the number the General Staff had planned to expend nationwide during the entire 1975 campaign. Tra now argued that he could use this bonanza for his planned attack on the Phuoc Long province capital without even touching his current ammunition holdings. In fact, PAVN could expect to capture even more ammunition at the larger bases. It was an argument the leadership could not resist. Tra was authorized to proceed with his original plans. On 6 January the PAVN 3d and 7th Divisions completed the conquest of Phuoc Long province by taking the province capital and capturing another 10,000 rounds of artillery ammunition.

Laird also skedaddles over much of the ARVN's history. The ARVN suffered several major defeats post-1968. Operation Lam Son 1971, the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos, ended with ARVN airborne LZs overrun and panicked troops pushing their own wounded off evac helicopters to escape. The 1972 Easter Offensive, generally regarded in the U.S. as a crushing defeat for the North Vietnamese, would likely have destroyed South Vietnam without the presence of American advisors, who provided most of the combat leadership in the most crucial battles, and even more importantly massive and overwhelming B-52 "Arclight" strikes on NVA troop concentrations. Even given the massive losses incurred on the North Vietnamese and their failure to hold any population center, they still took control of most of the Central Highlands region. As Eric Bergerud notes:

Dubbed the 'Third Vietnam" by journalists, the huge expanses of mountain and jungles controlled by the Party's forces served as the ultimate liberated zone. Thieu continued to garrison the area's cities, putting a sizable portion of the ARVN in an untenable postion once PAVN was resupplied. Hue was likewise nearly under siege. All this had been gained by Hanoi despite a withering U.S. air and artillery offensive and brilliant tactical leadership by the American military advisors who, in fact, commanded ARVN ...

Starting with the 1973-74 dry season, Hanoi did not miss a step. Most of the PAVN continued to reequip, and much effort was spent creating a series of all-weather roads down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and deep into South Vietnam ... PAVN and what was left of Front forces struck hard in a series of 'strategic raids' around Saigon, Hue, and Danang. Many GVN outposts were overrun, and old strategic safe zones near Saigon lost after Tet 1968 were reclaimed by the Party's forces. In the Mekong Delta ... the Front launched a furious assault on the pacification program and, in many areas, destroyed four years of 'progress' in a few weeks ...

When the North Vietnamese went on the offensive in 1975, the ARVN collapsed. Generals abandoned their troops; soldiers fled their posts. Fifty-five days later, South Vietnam had ceased to exist.

Does any of this sound like success to you?

By the way, training for our new Iraqi Army was recently boosted --- to 24 days (hat tip Daily Kos). Most soldiers in the Iraqi Army have 14 days of training, which is slightly more than security guards in New York state are required to get. I wonder how long ARVN basic training lasted.

Democracy on the march

2005-12-17T10:37:00.000-05:00

No, really.

"The Islamic militant group Hamas won sweeping victories in local Palestinian elections held Thursday in some of the West Bank's largest cities, according to preliminary results released Friday.

The voting, six weeks ahead of crucial parliamentary elections, was a considerable blow to the Fatah faction that has dominated the Palestinian Authority but has fractured in the year since the death of Yasir Arafat. The West Bank has generally been considered Fatah's base, with Hamas more popular in the conservative, smaller and isolated Gaza Strip.

...

Hamas swept the large northern city of Nablus, a former Fatah stronghold, seizing 13 of the 15 seats, took control in the town of Jenin by one seat and won decisively in the smaller El Bireh, next to Ramallah."

Everyone has already posted on the Iraqi elections, but the upcoming Palestininan elections could be just as crucial to the eventual future of the Middle East. The Head Heeb, as always, has outstanding commentary.

The potentially destabilizing factor is that the "Young Guard" of Fatah are hardly a united front. Each commands militias of their own, and are united really only by their desire to displace the old men of Arafat's generation. Yet none of them provide a true national rallying figure as Arafat did. If and when the Young Guard does take over, there may not be much of a Palestinian Authority or even national movement to run. The real danger of Palestinian civil war comes not from a split between Fatah and Hamas, but rather the different Young Guard factions between each other.

Hello dere!

2005-12-17T06:44:00.000-05:00

Well, let's get this thing started.

I started this blog to have a place to record my daily thoughts about the different stuff that interests me. This includes U.S. and world politics, books, movies, video games, fitness --- all the typical crap people blog about.

Facts for those interested:

28 years old
Work in the New York financial industry
Just got married to the most wonderful woman in the entire world
Recently enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve delayed entry program as an aspiring 0300, with a ship date to Parris Island of June 2006.
Graduate of New York University class of 2000, B.A. in economics and sociology

That'll do for now. Be back when I think of something actually interesting to say.