A "Good" Day In Afghanistan

What can one expect from any general of any nation?

As far the number of Taliban casualties are concerned the general is welcome to tell them to the Marines.

To get that number the Taliban must have been standing up in line to be shot. I have seen Soviet mass attacks where more bodies, drunk, singing, reeling in the dawn mist, were coming than we had machinegun bullets, but I don't think the Taliban would be that stupid, or have the numbers to attack with. They've had almost 30 years of guerilla experience and that means sniping from cover and not mass attacks.

It was most likely a firefight with both sides taking shots and lobbing mortar shells at each other from behind fortifications and rocks. Volunteers in the army should expect to be killed. I was one and never thought I'd survive and it was a miracle that I did. But the experience made me confirmed anti militarist.

The general and the media can get away with that kind of propaganda baloney, because people don't know any different and want to believe their chosen "betters".

Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

Damn, I love you Ed. Tell it straight.

&#8220;&#8221;The general and the media can get away with that kind of propaganda baloney, because people don't know any different and want to believe their chosen "betters".&#8221;&#8221;<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks Ed ! <br />
<br />
<br />
&#8220;So this dick head wants us to support a terrorist org?&#8221; from soldier guy<br />
When one uses &#8220;terrorist org&#8221; they might want to keep in mind the women terrorised by their &#8220;comrades&#8221;<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
U.S. Military Hides Cause of American Women Soldiers' Deaths<br />
<a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013006J.shtml">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013006J.shtml</a><br />
<br />
By Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Report, Monday 30 January 2006<br />
<br />
In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison<br />
testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military<br />
commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some<br />
female American soldiers<br />
<br />
serving in Iraq.<br />
<br />
Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission<br />
of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush<br />
Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration<br />
because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid<br />
of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the<br />
women's latrine after dark.<br />
<br />
The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near<br />
their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the<br />
bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women<br />
were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told<br />
retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview. It<br />
was there that male soldiers assaulted and<br />
<br />
raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands.<br />
They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate<br />
at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the<br />
desert heat, Karpinski said.<br />
<br />
Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force<br />
said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of<br />
darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking<br />
liquids after 3 or 4 in<br />
<br />
the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no<br />
air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from<br />
dehydration in their sleep."<br />
<br />
"And rather than make everybody aware of that - because that's shocking,<br />
and as a leader if that's not shocking to you then you're not much of a<br />
leader - what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those details<br />
anymore. And don't say specifically that they're women. You can provide<br />
that in a written report but don't brief it in the open anymore."<br />
<br />
For example, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez's top deputy in Iraq,<br />
saw<br />
<br />
"dehydration" listed as the cause of death on the death certificate of a<br />
female master sergeant in September 2003. Under orders from Sanchez, he<br />
directed that the cause of death no longer be listed, Karpinski stated.<br />
The official explanation for this was to protect the women's privacy<br />
rights.<br />
<br />
Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them<br />
take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying.<br />
Karpinski told me<br />
<br />
that Sanchez, who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political<br />
ramifications of everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the<br />
information about the cause of these women's deaths was passed to the<br />
Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released.<br />
"That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.<br />
<br />
"It was out of control," Karpinski told a group of students at Thomas<br />
Jefferson School of Law last October. There was an 800 number women<br />
could use to report sexual assaults. But no one had a phone, she added.<br />
And no one answered that<br />
<br />
number, which was based in the United States. Any woman who successfully<br />
connected to it would get a recording. Even after more than 83 incidents<br />
were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour<br />
rape hot line was still answered by a machine that told callers to leave<br />
a message.<br />
<br />
"There were countless such situations all over the theater of operations<br />
- Iraq and Kuwait - because female soldiers didn't have a voice,<br />
individually or collectively," Karpinski told Hackworth. "Even as a<br />
general I didn't have a voice with Sanchez, so I know what the soldiers<br />
were facing. Sanchez did not<br />
<br />
want to hear about female soldier requirements and/or issues."<br />
<br />
Karpinski was the highest officer reprimanded for the Abu Ghraib torture<br />
scandal, although the details of interrogations were carefully hidden<br />
from her. Demoted from Brigadier General to Colonel, Karpinski feels she<br />
was chosen as a scapegoat because she was a female.<br />
<br />
Sexual assault in the US military has become a hot topic in the last few<br />
years, "not just because of the high number of rapes and other assaults,<br />
but also because of the tendency to cover up assaults and to harass or<br />
retaliate against women who report assaults," according to Kathy<br />
Gilberd, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild's Military Law Task<br />
Force.<br />
<br />
This problem has become so acute that the Army has set up its own sexual<br />
assault web site.<br />
<br />
In February 2004, Rumsfeld directed the Under Secretary of Defense for<br />
Personnel and Readiness to undertake a 90-day review of sexual assault<br />
policies. "Sexual assault will not be tolerated in the Department of<br />
Defense," Rumsfeld declared.<br />
<br />
The 99-page report was issued in April 2004. It affirmed, "The chain of<br />
command is responsible for ensuring that policies and practices<br />
regarding crime prevention and security are in place for the safety of<br />
service members." The<br />
<br />
rates of reported alleged sexual assault were 69.1 and 70.0 per 100,000<br />
uniformed service members in 2002 and 2003. Yet those rates were not<br />
directly comparable to rates reported by the Department of Justice, due<br />
to substantial differences in the definition of sexual assault.<br />
<br />
Notably, the report found that low sociocultural power (i.e., age,<br />
education, race/ethnicity, marital status) and low organizational power<br />
(i.e., pay grade and years of active duty service) were associated with<br />
an increased likelihood of both sexual assault and sexual harassment.<br />
<br />
The Department of Defense announced a new policy on sexual assault<br />
prevention and response on January 3, 2005. It was a reaction to media<br />
reports and public outrage about sexual assaults against women in the US<br />
military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ongoing sexual assaults and<br />
cover-ups at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, Gilberd said. As a<br />
result, Congress demanded that the military review the problem, and the<br />
Defense Authorization Act of 2005 required a new<br />
<br />
policy be put in place by January 1.<br />
<br />
The policy is a series of very brief "directive-type memoranda" for the<br />
Secretaries of the military services from the Under Secretary of Defense<br />
for<br />
<br />
Personnel and Readiness. "Overall, the policy emphasizes that sexual<br />
assault<br />
<br />
harms military readiness, that education about sexual assault policy<br />
needs to be increased and repeated, and that improvements in response to<br />
sexual assaults are necessary to make victims more willing to report<br />
assaults," Gilberd notes. "Unfortunately," she added "analysis of the<br />
issues is shallow, and the plans<br />
<br />
for addressing them are limited."<br />
<br />
Commands can reject the complaints if they decide they aren't credible,<br />
and there is limited protection against retaliation against the women<br />
who come forward, according to Gilberd. "People who report assaults<br />
still face command disbelief, illegal efforts to protect the assaulters,<br />
informal harassment from assaulters, their friends or the command<br />
itself," she said.<br />
<br />
But most shameful is Sanchez's cover-up of the dehydration deaths of<br />
women that occurred in Iraq. Sanchez is no stranger to outrageous<br />
military orders. He was heavily involved in the torture scandal that<br />
surfaced at Abu Ghraib. Sanchez<br />
<br />
approved the use of unmuzzled dogs and the insertion of prisoners<br />
head-first<br />
<br />
into sleeping bags after which they are tied with an electrical cord and<br />
their are mouths covered. At least one person died as the result of the<br />
sleeping bag technique. Karpinski charges that Sanchez attempted to hide<br />
the torture after the hideous photographs became public.<br />
<br />
Sanchez reportedly plans to retire soon, according to an article in the<br />
International Herald Tribune earlier this month. But Rumsfeld recently<br />
considered elevating the 3-star general to a 4-star. The Tribune also<br />
reported that Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the Army's chief spokesman,<br />
said in an email<br />
<br />
message, "The Army leaders do have confidence in LTG Sanchez."<br />
<br />
----------<br />
<br />
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law,<br />
President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative<br />
to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She<br />
writes a weekly column<br />
<br />
for t r u t h o u t <a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013006J.shtml">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013006J.shtml</a><br />
<p>---<br>Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. <br />
Ezra Pound<br />
The only good is knowledge...

Nasty, but hardly surprising when force is the celebrated means to an end , as it is in war. If an army can't even protect it's own female soldiers from being raped by their comrades in a area under their control, you have to wonder about how realistic it is to assume they can "liberate",and bring peace and democracy to an entire country of people, not under their immediate control.

That's the US Army. not ours. As for you Ed, what's your beef? My father was in from 42-73. Fought in Italy and NW Europe then Korea. He always supported the military and what we did. What turned you? A SSM giving you shit?

---
27 in the military, 9 tours.