"Baiting Sniper" Found Not Guilty of Murder

Via a MNF-I press release:

A military panel found Sgt. Jorge Sandoval from Laredo, Texas, not guilty of murder Sept. 28.

Sandoval was found not guilty of murdering an unknown male April
27. He was also found not guilty of murdering an unknown male May 11;
placing an AK-47 rifle on the body and failing to ensure humane
treatment of the victim while he was being detained.

Sandoval was found guilty of placing command wire on the body of
the male victim on April 27.

The military panel will reconvene Sept. 29 for Sandoval's
sentencing. He can face between six months to five years in prison.

Some background here.

Getting It Wrong

Let's give credit Where credit is due: Gavin M. at lefty satire blog Sadly, No! has been on a bit of a tear in the past week, having found two instances where right-leaning sites have used fictional images to back calls for protests.

The first caught the Gathering of Eagles using a photo illustration--a photoshopped image, in this instance--that showed Code Pink supporters carrying a banner that proclaimed, "We support the murder of American troops."

The problem is, Code Pink didn't make this particular banner... these guys did, or at least they created the image.

To be fair, the Gathering of Eagles were not the first nor the last to be taken in by this "fake, but accurate" image that does capture what many conservative feel are the real sentiments of some radical left wing groups, and the sign isn't that far off the mark from very real signs that have been carried by "progressive" protesters in the past.

Yesterday, Sadly, No! once again caught a fake photo being used to support a protest, this time, capturing FrontPageMag using an image from an obscure 30-minute Dutch indie film in promoting Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

This is a little more difficult to blame on the magazine (dubious as their credibility often is), as reputable news organizations and human rights groups have used the exact same image in the past, building up credibility for it as a legitimate photo, when in actuality it was not.

All the snark at Sadly No! aside, in an age where image sources can sometimes be questionable and even relying on other media outlets can leave a blogger, magazine, newspaper, etc posting an image that is either staged, altered, misappropriated or mis-captioned, what is the best way to address the issue of correcting such misinformation?

How it Should Be Done (One Blogger's Opinion)
It seems that in many instances where a publisher gets taken in by bogus or mis-captioned images such as these, that the immediate reaction is defensiveness, which is human nature. We, as humans, hate to be wrong, and it makes things worse when the credibility of the image/caption in question is typically brought about by a less-than-polite critic.

That said, it is wrong to ignore the issue and act as if the image is unquestionably accurate when it's credibility has been credibly challenged, and also wrong to simply remove it and act as if it was never there.

On July, 13, 2007, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty ran the exact same image stoning image from the Dutch film, with the caption, "An Iranian woman is buried up to her chest before being stoned to death, though to have taken place some 20 years ago (file photo) (public domain)"

Ideally, in an instance such as this, the inaccurate caption could be corrected by something like this:

A dramatic depiction of a stoning from the 1994 Dutch film, De Steen. The photo was previously incorrectly identified as a photo from an actual stoning in Iran roughly 20 years ago.

Corrections don't have to be that hard.

In this particular instance, however, the problem is compounded for this news organization, because the same photo had been used by RFE/RL in other stories as well.

In situations where a photo has become stock, and used multiple times, it is probably worth correcting both the captions, and creating a separate article explaining how the error occurred, and what steps will be taken to make sure such things do not occur in the future.

I have some sympathy for the various news outlets who were using this photo as the actual depiction of a real event. The actual source of the photo (filmmaker Mahnaz Tamizi) is probably unaware of the picture's by news outlets, and once a photo is used by one or more credible news outlets or organizations, it can readily become part of the "conventional wisdom."

That said, there are right ways and wrong ways to address corrections, and tossing the photo and caption "down the memory hole" and acting as if they never existed as FrontPageMag has done, is an entirely unacceptable rewriting of history.

Uncle Jay Explains the Blogosphere

Via one of those neocon warmongers at Hot Air. Get more Uncle Jay Explains, here.

Rocky Mountain High Fabulist?

Remember that addled Colorado State University student editor who responded to a Florida student getting tasered by police at a John Kerry event with a four-word editorial ending in "F--k Bush"?

Somehow his story is starting to sound strangely familiar:

Early on, McSwane did a piece about cocaine dealing in Fort Collins, based on anonymous sources, Lowrey said. Lowrey said he decided to kill the article when McSwane declined to reveal the sources to him.

Also troubling to other students was McSwane's story of growing up in a foster home.

"So he has this heartbreaking story," Lowrey said. But students learned that the foster mother in the home was Hansen, McSwane's natural mother.

"I raised him, and yes, I'm a foster mother," Hansen said. "He was never, ever a foster child."

McSwane's editor, Brandon Lowrey, attempted to fact-check McSwane's cocaine story, and refused to run it when McSwane didn't provide evidence to support the claims.

What a shocking concept.

Surrender

Based upon their statements in last night's Democratic Presidential debate, the leading candidates have surrendered the thought of a near-term military pullout from Iraq.

From the Associated Press:

The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013. "I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state.

"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Senator Christopher Dodd and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said that they would pull out American military forces if elected president, but with Richardson currently polling at only 3% and Dodd not even on the radar at 1%, what they feel, frankly, matters little.

As Bryan notes at Hot Air, "The netroots ain't gonna like this."

He's quite right, but at this point, they seem not to matter.

"Captain Ed" Morrissey gives General David Petraeus credit for shifting the debate over the war:

How far has General David Petraeus moved the debate on Iraq? His testimony on the surge, and the effects of the surge itself, has made it much more difficult for Democrats to argue for withdrawal and defeat...

[snip]

...Americans don't like to lose wars, and given the successes that Petraeus has generated, more Americans see an opportunity to persevere in Iraq. Leading Democrats realize now that running as the party of defeat when we continue to gain ground may sound good in the primaries, but will be disastrous in the general election.

What we may--and I caution, may--be witnessing here is a bursting of the progressive blogosphere's image of its influence over the rest of the Democratic Party.

I'm not stating by any stretch of the imagination that the entire online progressive community has been neutered as the result of a presidential primary debate that few American watched, but it should be sobering nonetheless for groups such as A.N.S.W.E.R., Code Pink, and others who have made their primary political issue the full, near-term withdrawal of American forces from Iraqi soil.

The three front-running Democratic candidates have said, in no uncertain terms, that they will not commit to a pull-out during the next presidency. The very vocal supporters of these groups have been told, in no uncertain terms, that the Democratic frontrunners do not think that their arguments are viable.

General Petraeus' Congressional testimony changed few minds on Iraq, but the testimony of men and women on the ground as to the effects of the "surge" seem to have created a groundswell of what may not be support for the war, but is certainly at least tolerance among the American people to give our military and the Iraqi people the chance to continue the campaign.

It was this tolerance and trust of our soldiers and the Iraqi people that anti-war types have tried since 2003 to undermine.

They've constantly played the refrain over and over again of Abu Ghraib and other atrocities large and small, inevitable failure, nefarious schemes and schemas, and unnecessary deaths that would only end, and could only end, if American forces turned tail and fled Iraq, to let it become a failed state. Worse, they often protrayed Iraqis themselves as a blood-lusting "other," that longs only for war and martyrdom, instead of stability, opportunity, and hope for their children.

But Iraqis love their children.

With the help of American sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines, Iraq's villagers and tribesmen have joined in their own grassroots efforts towards stabilizing Iraq, with both provincial Sunnis and Shias fighting back against terrorists, extremists, and criminals responsible for so much of the nation's violence. They do so by forming their own federally-recognized militias, the police and the Army, and joining a political process they once shunned. The small towns and villages are leading, and larger towns and national politicians seem to be slowly following their lead, even as outsiders from al Qaeda and Iran find Iraqi lands to be less hospitable and far more lethal than they once were.

When a terrorist car bomb decimates a tribal militia checkpoint guarding a village, and the townspeople rebuild and re-man the checkpoint even as the dead are being laid to rest, that makes a statement. When terrorists blow up a police recruiting center and potential recruits step into the footprints of those who have fallen before them, it makes a statement.

This is a budding grassroots effort that Americans watching the conflict are willing to get behind.

Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have grasped this truth.

The netroots, it seems, will take a while longer.

Absolute Moral Authority: Ahmadinejad Edition

The Hill reports that Cindy Sheehan is counting on celebrity endorsements to shore up her long-shot bid against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

According to the Hill's Karissa Marcum:

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is making celebrity endorsements a key facet of her long-shot bid to defeat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) next year.

In a recent interview with The Hill, Sheehan said she has been endorsed by actress Roseanne Barr, country crooner Willie Nelson and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

Sheehan added that White House hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) are also backing her.

"Celebrities bring a certain kind of — good or bad, it seems like our lives are centered around TV and movies — I think it does bring credibility," Sheehan said.

Nelson is a friend of Sheehan's and has offered to help her raise money for her campaign. "[Nelson and his wife] just have the exact correct politics and the exact compassion for the earth and humanity that I think attracts us as friends," she said.

"I support Cindy Sheehan in everything she does," Nelson wrote in an e-mail, "whether it's running for Congress, or the president of the U.S. She's a great American, not afraid to stand up for what she believes in."

I wonder if Barr, Nelson, etc. support these comments penned by Sheehan yesterday:

I heard that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University because Columbia's president wanted to foster a "free exchange of ideas." Even though I am not an Ahmadinejad supporter, I know he was elected in Iran in a knee-jerk and understandable response to the USA's bloody unnecessary invasion of Iraq, as many reactionary governments have been elected in that region and all over the world in response to the spreading U.S. corporate and military empire.

Citing such human rights' violations in the form of imprisonment and executions, Columbia University's president very boorishly said that Ahmadinejad appeared to be a "petty and cruel dictator." First of all, how does one invite someone to your place for a "free exchange of ideas" and be such a rude American? Did he only invite Ahmadinejad so he could publicly scold him or to become the darling of Fox News?

[snip]

Another boorish American, Scott Pelley (of 60 Minutes) hammered Ahmadinejad about sending weapons into Iraq without even once acknowledging the immoral tons of weapons that we rained on the citizens of Iraq during "shocking and awful"; the cluster bombs that look like toys that litter the killing fields of that country and have killed and maimed so many children; the mercenary killers that outnumber our troops and use the people of Iraq for target practice; the thousands of tons of weapons that the U.S. let out of such weapons dumps as al-Qaqaa that were left unguarded while the oil ministry was heavily fortified.

[snip]

The fascist, near dictatorship of the Bush regime (a la Nazi Germany) has even intimidated universities to align with their hypocritical murderous rhetoric. Universities should feel free to invite anyone to speak to open much needed dialogue in our country and in the world. And if a person is invited, they should be treated by the person who invited them with a slight modicum of courtesy and then let the rocking and rolling begin with the "Q & A"... which would truly be a free exchange of ideas. I am surprised President Bollinger didn't have President Ahmadinejad tased.

Peace is going to take all the nations working in cooperation to limit naked aggression and human rights' violations, not just the ones that the U.S. declare as evil. How many nukes do we have? How many does Pakistan have? How many does India, Israel, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union have? Should the rhetoric be about destroying all weapons of mass destruction and not just prohibiting Iran from obtaining one?

Many countries are committing human rights' violations and sending arms and troops into many parts of the world. America's biggest export is violence and we would do well to call for an end to all occupations and violence by beginning to end our own.

Let's clean our own filthy house before we criticize someone else for theirs.

Sheehan is offended that Bollinger was impolite to a man that belongs to a regime that murders it's citizens for the capital offense of being gay.

Sheehan is outraged that the mouthpiece for a regime that kills young women for defending themselves against rapists, wasn't given the proper respect.

This, from a woman who lost a son to the same Shia militias that this petty tyrant's regime still arms to kill other American mother's sons.

Update: Related.

"Iraqi Civil War Averted?" Page A15 It Is

I suppose that Karen DeYoung's story could have been buried deeper in the Washington Post, but it would take some effort:

Civil war has been averted in Iraq and Iranian intervention there has "ceased to exist," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday.

"I can't say there is a picture of roses and flowers in Iraq," Maliki told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "However, I can say that the greatest victory, of which I am proud . . . is stopping the explosion of a sectarian war." That possibility, he said, "is now far away."

While political reconciliation is not yet complete, he said, progress is being made. "Reconciliation is not a decision that can be made, but a process that takes continuous efforts and also needs strategic patience," Maliki said.

He said cabinet ministers who have left his government in protest will be replaced, and he expressed confidence that the Iraqi parliament will pass legislation that he, the Bush administration and Congress have demanded.

Maliki, who will speak to the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, deftly dodged questions about last week's incident in which employees of Blackwater, a private U.S. security firm, allegedly killed 11 Iraqi civilians. While "initial signs" are that "there was some wrongdoing from Blackwater," he said, he will await the results of a U.S.-Iraqi investigation. He dismissed a statement by the interior minister in Baghdad that Blackwater will be banned from Iraq, saying the positions of the ministry and his office are "the same."

Iraqi security forces, Maliki said, are increasingly capable of operating without U.S. support. But he agreed with the Bush administration that an early U.S. withdrawal would be unwise.

Iraq's political leadership, he said through an interpreter, "wants the process of withdrawing troops to happen [simultaneously with] the process of rebuilding Iraqi Security Forces so that they can take responsibility." No one, he said, "wants to risk losing all the achievements" they have made.

Whether or not you agree with al-Maliki's assessment (and there is plenty of room to doubt his pronouncements from both the right and the left), you would think that the Iraqi Prime Minister's statements that the threat of a full-on sectarian war " had ceased to exist" along with Iran's involvement in meddling in Iraq, would be page A1 material.

After all, American politics, foreign and domestic, are being driven by the actions and reactions of Democratic and Republican politicians to news in Iraq.

You might think that a strong claim of positive news--and there is no way to say this is anything other than that sort of claim--would be wildly trumpeted by the Post, if for no other reason than to generate ad revenue and hits that would come from such a controversial claim.

The current WashingtonPost.com home page instead features what leading stories?

Sanctions against a country the newspaper had to rename because most readers would not know what it was otherwise, the announcement that the Supreme Court would examine a death penalty case, and that the UAW hopes for a quick resolution to the strike they called for.

Claiming that the sectarian war in Iraq has "ceased to exist?"

Page A15.

Another "Beauchamp-related" Vacancy at The New Republic

The first known departure related to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp scandal was assistant to the publisher Robert McGhee, who was let go by the New Republic when he leaked TNR's dirty laundry.

A screen capture posted on mediabistro.com's FishbowlDC seems to indicate that TNR fact-checker and Beauchamp's wife Elspeth Reeve is also no longer with the beleaguered magazine.

Update: Patrick Gavin, who posted the Facebook entry noting that Reeve was no longer at The New Republic, has followed up on his original post, noting that Reeve has indeed left the magazine, but:

...not for any sinister reasons. Her year-long internship had expired and she is currently working as a research assistant for Mike Grunwald.

Reeve's first published story for TNR, "Patriot Act," was published May 3, 2006. Reeve was still on the Masthead in July of 2007, and according to Robert McGee, she was still employed at The New Republic when he was fired July 26 for revealing her marriage to Beauchamp, more than 14 months later.

The New Republic is apparently no better at keeping time than they are checking facts.

Illegitimate Sniping

Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Iraqi returning from a fellow tribesman's home in the afternoon heat. To gain some shade, you step off the main road and decide to take a shortcut down a path through a grove of trees. Before you, on the path, is a spool of wire often used by insurgents in building IEDs. Seeing no one around, you pick it up with the intention of giving it you your brother, a soldier in the Iraqi Army...

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a member of the Islamic State of Iraq. You wear no uniform, no insignia that identifies you as anything other than a civilian. Late to a meeting with cell members at a nearby safehouse, you step off the main road to take a shortcut down a path through a grove of trees. Before you, on the path, is a spool of wire often used by your fellow insurgents in building IEDs. Seeing no one around, and wondering if one of your fellow cell members may have use for it, you warily pick it up with the intention of giving it to you cell's bomb builder...

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a U.S. Army sniper in a concealed position a hundred meters away, watching these scenarios play out. Can you cipher their intentions and determine which man is the insurgent, and which is the civilian, based merely upon the decision to pick up the spool of wire?

If a Washington Post story this morning is correct, that is precisely the determination that an elite sniper platoon was asked to make as part of a classified baiting program hoping to identify and eliminate insurgents in one area of Iraq.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.

In a country where every household is expected to have small arms for protection, using bait such as small arms, magazines, or ammunition for these small arms would be entirely and unquestioningly unacceptable. It would be far too tempting for civilians to pick up such found implements that they could legally own, use, or sell.

On the other hand, if the unit was using bait items that could only be use by insurgents and terrorists--say, artillery rounds or plastic explosives--then the baiting becomes more targeted and less likely to ensnare innocent civilians. But when the penalty for picking up such objects and attempting to carry them away is a marksman’s bullet, is it acceptable to take that gamble?

The story reported by Josh White and Joshua Partlow, unfortunately, immediately begins to purposefully conflate unlike things almost immediately after raising very legitimate questions about the baiting program.

Citing two soldiers who only revealed the program in revenge for pending disciplinary actions is problematic, as is conflating murder charges pending against soldiers for planting evidence after a shooting took place with the program of leaving bait to hopefully identify insurgents worth shooting.

It is one thing to shoot someone because they are holding a hand grenade as the approach your position, but quite another to shoot someone coming down the same path and then plant the grenade on their body after the fact. White and Partlow spend the majority of their article blurring the distinctions between the two, while admitting begrudgingly in one sentence on the second page of the article:

Though it does not appear that the three alleged shootings were specifically part of the classified program, defense attorneys argue that the program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone.

The reporters present the defense team arguments of murder suspects as their "evidence" of a failed program, but it is nothing of the sort.

The men they speak with are on trial for planting weapons on men they've killed, after the fact, to justify a killing that they felt was questionable under their rules of engagement. The baiting program, while a legitimate topic for vigorous debate and legal review in it’s own right, has nothing to do with planting evidence at all.

The "throwaway" gun is a staple of television shows and films going back decades based upon the dishonorable practice of a very few real-life law enforcement officers who planted guns on the bodies of criminals to justify a "bad" or questionable shooting. That this practice also occurs in war zones is unsurprising, if regrettable.

That White and Partlow would be so gullible as to immediately and uncritically swallow defense team arguments that the program is to blame for the alleged criminal acts of their clients planting evidence to justify a shooting is an unconscionable act of criminal advocacy to advance apparent personal biases against a program only tangentially related, if newsworthy in its own right. Put another way, they don’t like the program, and are willing to use the club provided for them by the defense team, without any critical eye towards the merits of the defense, which are few.

The illegitimate sniping in this case clearly doesn't stop with the soldiers, and we deserve better from our professional journalists than this.

Times Admits Pricing Miscue on "Betray Us" Ad

I'm encouraged that the New York Times has decided to explain what happened regarding the below-market pricing they gave MoveOn.Org for the "General Betray Us" advertisement uncovered here.

It is perhaps ironic that I never got fired up as much about this story as have some others (I only touched on it again here to note my surprise, and here to note the Times first explanation).

Reading Hoyt's explanation, my primary thought is relief that this was an apparent mistake (and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here considering their eventual transparency on this issue), and hope that they'll be forgiving of the Times advertising person that sold the ad below market rate.

I can't quite bring myself to be as forgiving of Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, or of the self-serving argument of publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger, that "If we’re going to err, it’s better to err on the side of more political dialogue. ... Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to people."

Somehow, that argument seems quite hollow coming from a man who in a previous war, hoped that American soldiers would get shot because "It's the other guy's country." (h/t Ed Driscoll)

The saying goes that "a fish rots from the head," so if anyone gets taken to task over this at the Times, I hope that the senior leadership at the times looks squarely in the mirror.

The cost would not have been a factor if the executives of the Times had followed their own polices, and declined to run the ad in the first place.

Blackwatered Down

The New York Times has a very informative article up this morning by Sabrina Tavernise and James Glanz about the Blackwater/Nisour Sqaure shooting. The article focuses on the Iraqi government claim that Blackwater security contractors opened fire unprovoked on Iraqi civilians.

Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected.

In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.

The document concludes that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped.

Four days after the shooting, American officials said they were still preparing their own forensic analysis of what happened in Nisour Square. They have repeatedly declined to give any details before their work is finished.

Privately, those officials have warned against drawing conclusions before American investigators have finished interviewing the Blackwater guards. In the Interior Ministry account — made available to The New York Times on Thursday — Iraqi investigators interviewed many witnesses but relied on the testimony of the people they considered to be the four most credible.

The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policeman’s call to stop.

“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.

The version of events told by Blackwater employees, some Iraqi eyewitnesses, and even the early Interior Ministry accounts, relays an entirely different story:

The ministry said the incident began around midday, when a convoy of sport utility vehicles came under fire from unidentified gunmen in the square. The men in the SUVs, described by witnesses as Westerners, returned fire, the ministry said.

Blackwater's employees were protecting a U.S. official when they were hit by "a large explosive device, then repeated small-arms fire -- and to the point where it disabled one of the vehicles, and the vehicle had to be towed out of the firefight," said Marty Strong, vice president of Blackwater USA.

A senior industry source said Blackwater guards had escorted a State Department group to a meeting with U.S. Agency for International Development officials in Mansour before the shootings.

A car bomb went off about 80 feet (25 meters) from the meeting site and the contractors started evacuating the State Department officials, he said. A State Department report on the attack said the convoy came under fire from an estimated eight to 10 people, some in Iraqi police uniforms.

The guards called for backup, at one point finding their escape route blocked by an Iraqi quick-reaction force that pointed heavy machine guns at one vehicle in the convoy. A U.S. Army force, backed by air cover, arrived about half an hour later to escort the convoy back to the Green Zone, the report states.

A team from another security company passed through the area shortly after the street battle.

"Our people saw a couple of cars destroyed," Carter Andress, CEO of American-Iraqi Solutions Groups, told CNN on Monday. "Dead bodies, wounded people being evacuated. The U.S. military had moved in and secured the area. It was not a good scene."

You'll note that the Interior Ministry's current claim has quietly dropped all mention of the convoy coming under fire, and of Blackwater employees returning fire instead of instigating it.

Nor does the version of events carried in the Times account for the more than one dozen other people killed or wounded in the square, and focuses on one family, in one car. A week into this story, we are no closer to any real answers about how the events transpired, who should shoulder the blame, or if the blame for civilian deaths should be shared between security contractors, insurgents, police and innocent mistakes by Iraqi civilians.

What we can comment on is the opportunism being displayed by many in this tragedy and the political rush to judgment by both government officials and pundits.

As the Jones Commission Report has made clear, the forensic capabilities of Iraqi police investigators are dubious, at best. As a result of their lack of training and equipment for forensic evidence gathering, processing, and analysis, "CSI Baghdad" is forced to rely heavily on eyewitnesses statements and personal observations of the investigators, which of course are prone to interpretation, biases, cognitive processing errors, etc. As we have radically different interpretations from the Iraqi government, Blackwater's spokespersons, and vastly different versions of events told by various eyewitnesses, it may very well be that we never precisely find out what happened shortly after noon this past Sunday in Nisour Square.

It may not matter.

Experts intimately familiar with the political terrain in Iraq have already stated that Blackwater's guilt was a foregone conclusion, as it is a valuable political tool for a battered Iraqi government.

Likewise, political pundits outside of Iraq, primarily opponents of the Iraq War, have used this latest incident to attack Blackwater in specific and security contractors in general for past offenses, and take for granted Blackwater's "obvious" guilt in this instance as well for political reasons of their own.

Why shouldn't they?

Public perception and political self-reinforcement have far exceeded any rational discussion of culpability in this case. Who is actually to blame for instigating the shootout and deaths at Nisour Square has become sadly irrelevant. Whether or not excessive force was used does not matter. Nor does it matter that despite the factually ignorant and frankly hysterical criticisms of some, security firms operating in Iraq are indeed susceptible to Iraqi law.

The truth of this matter has become a casualty to convenience.

Not that anyone cares.

All in the Framing

Nebraska state Senator Ernie Chambers has sued God, (who has since responded?). The file AP photo (and there appears to be only one) has a rather interesting composition, don't it?

I guess I should be glad that he's an icon to somebody, but to me, the imagery blows cold.

A Journalistic Farce

Today is the two-month anniversary of Franklin Foer claiming that he and The New Republic would run an honest investigation into the claims made in a story written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp:

Several conservative blogs have raised questions about the Diarist "Shock Troops," written by a soldier in Iraq using the pseudonym Scott Thomas. Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we're in the process of investigating them. I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.

--Franklin Foer

Editor Foer has also argued on July 26 that the article "was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published."

Since that time, a few things have happened:

• It has been conclusively proven that The New Republic did not fact-check a claim made in a previous "Scott Thomas" story, even though that claim was an allegation of murder. A simple Google Search would have proven the basis for the claim categorically false on the first two pages of results. It was 30 seconds they didn't take.
• The first claim made in "Shock Troops," was that "Thomas" and a fellow soldier verbally abused a burn victim at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon because combat left them desensitized to basic human decency and dignity. After it was noted that no such woman has ever been at FOB Falcon, the story was changed to another base, in another country, at a time before the unit saw combat. This of course, completely undermines the premise of the claim, and Foer’s claim that the article had been "rigorously edited and fact-checked." As it turns out, both military personnel and civilian contractors at the Kuwaiti base also dispute the story having occurred there, either. They state on the record that no soldier or civilian contractor matching this description has ever been at this base, and that the story is an urban legend or myth. This was told to TNR editor Jason Zengerle. Zengerle never relayed that to the readers of The New Republic. No such woman has ever been found, and yet TNR has yet to have the decency to retract this claim.
• A second claim made in "Shock Troops" by Thomas was that while his unit excavated ground for the creation of a new combat outpost, that the remains of children were uncovered, and one soldier in his unit wore part of a rotting child's skull on his head for amusement. Neither Foer nor any other editor at TNR have been able to substantiate this claim. An official U.S Army investigation that was launched primarily because of this specific claim found no credible evidence for this or the other claims made by "Thomas." Two months later, TNR has not issued a retraction for this claim.
• A third claim made by "Thomas" in "Shock Troops" was that a Bradley armored vehicle driver used the 25-ton tracked vehicle to crush "curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs." Since this time, every Bradley IFV commander and driver in Alpha Company has refuted this story as part of the military investigation, and Bradley IFV experts, including active duty and retired drivers and commanders, and even the company's spokesman, have stated that the vehicle could not perform the actions described in the story. Once again, Franklin Foer and The New Republic has had two months to substantiate this claim. They have failed, and yet still lack the decency to print a retraction.

The honorable thing to do when a publication cannot substantiate the claims made by one of their writers is to retract the claims made in the disputed article, and all previous articles by the same author where questionable facts cannot be corroborated. There is a simple reason for this: credibility is a publication's only real currency, and if they tarnish their credibility, then the unreliable publication becomes worthless as a news source.

The New York Times realized this when Jayson Blair was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of many of his stories. Blair, executive editor Howell Raines, and managing editor Gerald M. Boyd eventually resigned as a result of the fallout of scandal. When Jack Kelly was caught fabricating stories at USA Today, publisher Craig Moon ran an investigation and issued a front-page apology. Editor Karen Jurgensen and News section managing editor Hal Ritter resigned as a result.

But what is occurring at The New Republic seems to far exceed the actions of a single rogue journalist, and instead seem to point to an editorial staff as corrupted as the fabulist they seek to protect.

Unlike the Blair and Kelly scandals, editors from The New Republic seem to be involved in deliberately covering up, shutting down, and stonewalling possible avenues of approach, and are clearly more interested in stifling an investigation that conducting one.

On August 2, The New Republic released "A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp" (Beauchamp had "outed" himself on July 26).

In that statement, the editors of The New Republic had claimed to have interviewed a number of experts that corroborated the claims made in "Shock Troops."

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

Tellingly, The New Republic would not divulge the names of the experts they vaguely claimed supported the claims made in "Shock Troops."

One of them was credited by TNR thusly:

TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described.

One week later, that unnamed spokesman was found. After being identified, Doug Coffey of BAE systems revealed that as it related to him, TNR's investigation was a whitewash:

To answer your last question first, yes, I did talk to a young researcher with TNR who only asked general questions about "whether a Bradley could drive through a wall" and "if it was possible for a dog to get caught in the tracks" and general questions about vehicle specifications.

The New Republic had not asked Coffey about the claims made by Beauchamp at all.

Once provided with the claims made in "Shock Troops," Coffey found the claims relating to his company’s vehicle very hard to believe.

By August 11, unable to corroborate any element of a story they claimed to have "rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published," the editors of The New Republic went on the offensive, claiming:

...we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."

Like the August 2 story using hidden experts, this claim by the editors of The New Republic was also deceptive.

The Army has a legal obligation not to release the investigation's findings, with confidentiality being Beauchamp's right. Further, it was Beauchamp himself that declined to be interviewed by The New Republic. The Army did not reject TNR, Private Beauchamp rejected The New Republic... and obviously still does today.

By being deceptive and argumentative since the beginning (a tragic flaw of hubris that the magazine also had preceding the Stephen Glass scandal almost a decade prior) of their investigation, The New Republic editorial staff have destroyed their credibility.

They attempted to cover up the fact that they did not fact check Beuchamp’s articles prior to publication, and even attempted to cover up the fact that the author was married to a TNR fact-checker. Faced with legitimate questions about the veracity of claims made by their author, the editors instead attacked those raising these questions, while at the same time running a whitewash of an investigation designed to give them rhetorical cover instead of uncovering the facts.

Ultimately, it seems that even the author won't support the articles, and The New Republic is left twisting in the wind, hoping that noone will notice just how naked, exposed, and yes, corrupt they have been over the course of this sordid story.

The editorial staff of The New Republic, led for the last time by Franklin Foer, should retract all three stories penned by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, apologize profusely to the readership of The New Republic for deceiving them for over two months, and resign.

It remains to be seen if they retain that much integrity.

Shelf-Life: How Long Can a WMD-Armed SCUD Remain Fueled?

According to Janes Defence Weekly and carried in the Jerusalem Post, a Syrian SCUD-C missile exploded while being armed with a chemical warhead in late July, spreading a lethal mix of nearby WMDs. Dozens were killed:

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in Jane's Defence Weekly, which reported that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas.

As you may imagine, other bloggers are tracking this story, and Ynet news adds detail, including that the specific warhead in question was loaded with mustard gas, and that the explosion started due to a fire in the Scud-C's engine.

Chemically and historically, most weaponized mustard gas weapons retain their lethality for decades, but I'd still like to know the answer to some questions about the missile's fuel system to gauge how much of a direct threat this was or wasn't to Israel and to American forces in Iraq.

SCUD-C missiles are single-stage liquid-fueled missiles. Obviously, an empty missile does not catch fire and explode with enough force to detonate surrounding materials. Therefore, this SCUD-C was obviously fueled. This leads to the following questions:

• How are these missiles typically stored in peace-time Syria, full of liquid propellant, or empty?
• Is there any sort of practical shelf-life to the liquid fuels used to power Syrian SCUD-C missiles?
• Are they capable of being stored full of fuel for extended periods of time, or are they only fueled shortly before launch?

The mere act of mounting a mustard gas warhead on a missile does not necessarily mean that an attack is imminent, but if we knew more about how long a loaded Syrian SCUD-C can remain fueled, we might have a better idea just how serious of a threat this may have been.

Wife of Downed Pilot Blasts Media/Terrorist Propaganda

As Rusty notes, the media largely ignores her.

Several of the local Arizona media outlets (AZ Family (NBC), KPNX, AZ Central) carried the story, but several other local media outlets including the local Fox News, CBS, and ABC affiliates did not.

No national media outlets have carried the story at all.

Her absolute moral authority apparently doesn't matter as much as that of some.

Iraqi Insider: Blackwater Firestorm All About Internal Politics

I sent the following last night to a source intimately familiar with the Iraqi Interior Ministry:

...could the sudden [Iraqi government political] attack on Blackwater possibly be in retaliation for the "Jones Commission" report that panned the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and advocated disbanding the national police?

...I would not be surprised if the backlash over Sunday's shooting was planned, and waiting for an event to pin it on.

I wanted to know if the situation with Blackwater "smelled."

His response:

Bob,

Blackwater doesn't smell: It's all about internal politics.

Bolani walks a thin line: he is a Shia without strong party
affiliations. He was the least objectionable Shia to a Sunni minority
who knew they'd never get one of their own into that Ministry.

Bolani is beholden to MNSTC-I/CPATT for supplies, training and money
-- but he also needs support in Parliament and among tribal leaders to
get things done (recruiting, intelligence and minimizing attacks on his
police officers as they try to establish peace).

By attacking Blackwater and standing up to the US over this, he gains
internal support for projects that the US can't help him with. He'll
eventually back down because he can't stay where he is without US
support, but he can't advance internal security without assistance
from other groups as well.

I predict this will end in a compromise: a few people will be fired,
Blackwater will ratchet down their posture a bit and the mission will
continue.

Related thoughts here.

Update: Bryan has an excellent roundup on this subject at Hot Air, and there is more about contractor licensing at the Washington Times

Fabulist, Junior?

According to his web page, Scott Thomas Beauchamp and his wife, The New Republic fact checker Elspeth Reeve, are apparently expecting a child.

The TNR fabulist/Army private has the following posted on his MySpace page:

""SCOTT BEAUCHAMP CLAIMS TO DESIRE THE BABIES OF ELSPETH, HIS SUPPOSED WIFE!""

He includes as his interests "raptors having babies." His wife, TNR fact-checker Elspeth Reeve uses a raptor (a kind of dinosaur) as the avatar for her MySpace page.

Beauchamp first came to light when a story he wrote entitled "Shock Troops," alleging the barbarity of his fellow soldiers, was challenged on July 18 by The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb.

Since that time, the U.S Army has denounced the claims made in "Shock Troops" as fiction, and Franklin Foer, the editor of The New Republic, has failed to release the findings of the magazine's internal investigation into the veracity of the stories.

Two Months In: Franklin Foer, Will You Honor Your Word?

Two months ago today, Michael Goldfarb challenged the Scott Thomas story "Shock Troops" posted in the New Republic, igniting a firestorm of criticism by military personnel and bloggers who found the published claims to be less than credible.

In response to growing doubts from critics and his own readers, Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, stated on July 20:

I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation."

Now, almost two months after making that promise and precisely two months after the story was first questioned, Foer has yet to announce the findings of that investigation.

We know that Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the author of the three stories Foer ran in The New Republic, had a chance to speak with The New Republic 12 days ago. We also know that Beauchamp has refused to discuss his original claims with any other media organization, and gave a blanket statement to the PAO to relay to media organizations that he will not discuss the incidents in his stories, period. It appears that Beauchamp will not speak to Franklin Foer any more about these articles, and that he may have frozen him out, perhaps upon the direction of a lawyer.

Foer now knows, or should know, whether or not Beauchamp will stand by his earlier claims.

If he can provide further support for Shock Troops and the two previous articles, Foer needs to produce it. If he cannot, Franklin Foer owes it to his readers to retract all three of Scott Beauchamp's stories, which a military investigation revealed to be completely uncorroborated, and portions of which one of the magazine's own experts found "highly unlikely."

To date, Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the rest of The New Republic have been unable to provide so much as a single named expert, a single named witness, or a single concrete fact to support the claims made in "Shock Troops."

I call upon Franklin Foer to honor his word: present the findings of TNR's investigation.

If you will not, resign.

Update: Lessons unlearned:

The High and Mighty Just after Baghdad fell in early 2003, CNN ran an astonishing confession on the New York Times’s op-ed page admitting that it had known, but kept secret, some “awful things” about the regime of Saddam Hussein over the years. “Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard—awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff,” wrote Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive. “I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed.” The piece went into some gruesome detail of atrocities CNN “could not report,” for fear of reprisal from the dictator. “I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me,” he confessed.

Then why didn’t CNN leave Iraq and alert the rest of the world about these “gut-wrenching tales” and atrocities?

For a couple of weeks, other mainstream media reported moral outrage. The New Republic's Franklin Foer shot back that this couldn't even be called a belated outbreak of honesty. "If it were, Mr. Jordan would be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry—and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships." CNN was, Foer stated, the network of record. "It makes rich reading to return to transcripts and compare the CNN version of Iraq with the reality that has emerged."

The lesson never quite sank in.

Obviously.

It's a Trap!

I've avoided commenting on the Blackwater story until this point because there simply wasn't enough detail on this specific incident.

It just got more interesting:

The ministry said the incident began around midday, when a convoy of sport utility vehicles came under fire from unidentified gunmen in the square. The men in the SUVs, described by witnesses as Westerners, returned fire, the ministry said.

Blackwater's employees were protecting a U.S. official when they were hit by "a large explosive device, then repeated small-arms fire -- and to the point where it disabled one of the vehicles, and the vehicle had to be towed out of the firefight," said Marty Strong, vice president of Blackwater USA.

A senior industry source said Blackwater guards had escorted a State Department group to a meeting with U.S. Agency for International Development officials in Mansour before the shootings.

A car bomb went off about 80 feet (25 meters) from the meeting site and the contractors started evacuating the State Department officials, he said. A State Department report on the attack said the convoy came under fire from an estimated eight to 10 people, some in Iraqi police uniforms.

The guards called for backup, at one point finding their escape route blocked by an Iraqi quick-reaction force that pointed heavy machine guns at one vehicle in the convoy. A U.S. Army force, backed by air cover, arrived about half an hour later to escort the convoy back to the Green Zone, the report states.

A team from another security company passed through the area shortly after the street battle.

"Our people saw a couple of cars destroyed," Carter Andress, CEO of American-Iraqi Solutions Groups, told CNN on Monday. "Dead bodies, wounded people being evacuated. The U.S. military had moved in and secured the area. It was not a good scene."

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said, "We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."

According to the new details in this CNN story, the Blackwater contractors were evacuating State Department personnel after a car bomb explosion when they came under small arms fire from 8-10, including personnel in Iraqi police uniforms.

It is far, far too early to think that Blackwater's security detail in this incident are anything close to being cleared, but as at least some of the wounded are admittedly not civilians as mentioned in various accounts, and multiple witnesses describe an explosive device or devices starting the ambush, followed by small arms fire, which is a typical ambush tactic. It appears that this may not be an open-and-shut case of "contractors gone wild" as some have hastily opined.

It is worth noting that the Iraqi government response could be in retaliation for the "Jones Commission" report released just weeks ago, that panned the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior for corruption and advocated disbanding the national police. I confirmed with an Iraq War analyst last night that it was possible that the backlash over Sunday's shooting (not the shooting itself) was planned in advance in retaliation for the report.

He was not stating that the attack itself was orchestrated to get Blackwater compromised, just that MOI and al-Maliki's government may have had a contingency plan set up to take advantage of such a situation when it arose to wrangle concessions from the State Department, while possibly create some political breathing room for al-Maliki's embattled government coalition.

This very well may have been a political ambush designed to take advantage of the already foundering reputations of contractors in Iraq, and Blackwater may have been pre-targeted to take advantage of the fact that they are essential to State's security.

Update: Via email this morning from Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal:

1. State uses Blackwater extensively, so this incident gives the Government of Iraq some leverage. I expect State to negotiate to get Blackwater back online, and it will happen.
2. Maliki needs political cover, much like he did attacking the US for raids in Sadr City last year. In the end the raids didn't stop. And in the end I think BW will be in operation in Iraq after some wrangling.

Miami PD Up-Gunning, But At What Cost?

The City of Miami is giving Miami police patrol officers the option of carrying assault rifles:

Patrol officers will have the option of carrying assault rifles as police try to combat the rise in the use of similar weapons by criminals, Miami's police chief said Sunday.

[snip]

Officers interested in the guns will have to undergo two days of training and be certified to use the weapons. The police department doesn't yet have money to purchase the guns, and if officers want to use them now, they will have to pay for them, Timoney said.

[snip]

The Miami Police Department said 15 of its 79 homicides last year involved assault weapons. This year, 12 of the 60 homicides have involved the high-power guns.

On Thursday, a gunman opened fire on four Miami-Dade County police officers with an assault rifle during a traffic stop, killing one and injuring the other three. Police killed the suspect hours later.

Officers using the weapons in Miami will shoot "frangible" bullets, which shatter after they've hit something to avoid striking bystanders or other unintended targets.

Not all officers may choose to carry the new weapon. But, said Timoney: "If I was a police officer out there in a tough neighborhood, I would want to have that in the car."

Video game makers should be thrilled now that the stage has been set for Medal of Honor: South Beach, but if I was a resident of Miami, I'd be far less than thrilled with the continuing arms race between the police and criminal elements in their city.

I sympathize entirely with the police officers that sometimes feel outgunned by criminals, but feel compelled to state that by escalating to intermediate caliber weapons, and without adequate training, the Miami Police Department is setting the stage for a much greater risk of collateral damage and potential civilian casualties, and that the casualties that are sustained have the potential of being far more lethal becuase of the ammunition being used.

Two days of training to carry an assault rifle in an urban environment is, in my opinion, unforgivably short.

By way of comparison, Gunsite offers a five-day course for urban rifle training. Frontsight offers a four-day advanced course the focuses on the urban environment, and it requires either a 2-day or 4-day prerequisite skill-builder course focusing on marksmanship. Other dedicated professional shooting schools offer similar courses of similar length. What makes the Miami PD think that two days training is adequate for their officers to carry carbines in a crowded urban environment, when courses designed for already more-qualified special operations soldiers and SWAT teams takes more than twice as long?

The fact that the Miami Police are not (apparently) receiving adequate training will only compound another problem, that of collateral damage to property and civilians when shootouts occur. Despite what Cheif Timoney says, the laws of physics dictate that bullets will go precisely where they are fired; the have no ability to "avoid" striking anyone, and the weapons he has authorized both extend the range at which innocent bystanders can be hit, and potentially increase the severity of the wounds.

It is a well-documented fact that in the overwhelming majority of officer-involved shootouts, the police miss most of the time, even at near-contact ranges. Amadou Diallo was hit 19 times from 41 shots at close range by NYPD officers armed with Glock pistols firing from just yards away. Simple math tells us that 22 shots completely missed Diallo, and of the 19 shots that hit and killed the unfortunate young man, many of those passed through his body completely and kept going before being stopped by the buildings behind him.

Now keep in mind that the pistols used in the Diallo shooting used relatively short range (typically fired at just 7 yards or less) 9mm pistol ammunition. Miami is going to allow their police officers to carry weapons shooting much longer-ranged (300+ meters) 5.56x45 NATO-caliber weapons with a far greater ability to penetrate the body of the suspect and materials. They hope to mitigate the inherent over-penetration risk by requiring officers to fire frangible ammunition.

Frangible ammunition is great in theory: if it hits the suspect or a hard surface, the bullet is designed to fragment into small pieces. But the theory can become something else in practice, when under-trained officers may empty firearms with magazines containing roughly twice the amount of ammunition they typically carry in their handguns, with more than triple the practical range. It is a proven fact that officers miss more than they hit at short range; is there any reason to suspect that this tendency will decrease even as the potential range increases?

And what of those innocents hit with frangible ammunition? There is another aspect of frangibles that the Miami Police will not likely mention in press releases: frangible bullets are by far the most deadly kind of bullet to those struck by them directly.

Purposefully constructed with thin or weakened brass jackets, frangibles blow apart into many small fragments once they hit a target. In a human being, the effect is to make many small wound channels that shred muscle, bone and organs, similar to a contact-range shotgun blast instead of the larger single hole created by typical bullets.

This is great news if the cop firing the weapon hits the armed suspect, as it will almost guarantee the immediate end of the gunfight if he hits the suspect in the head, torso, or the major part of an extremity, such as the upper arm or thigh. The downside of this is that if the officer misses the target and hits a civilian hundreds of yards away, the odds of the civilian surviving the wound are much less.

So is a change in ammunition enough to rectify this potential problem? By no means. Frangible assault rifle ammunition, for all its lethality on soft targets, is still far safer to shoot in an urban environment than hollowpoint or FMJ rounds with will more readily penetrate structures and vehicles. Frangibles will blow apart; FMJ and even hollowpoint loadings can and will blow through multiple buildings, depending on their construction.

So what is the solution?

The "simple" solution is to recognize that American police forces, no matter how bad the neighborhood, are not soldiers engaged in urban combat. Assault rifles chambered for 5.56 and 7.62 rifles are a horrible choice of weapons from the perspective of the great majority of law-abiding civilians that are not engaged in shootouts with police.

If Miami and other police forces would like to provide their patrol officers with a longer-range firearm than their duty pistols, the community at large would be far safer if these officers were armed with patrol carbines, small rifles that greatly extend the officers effective range while still using the exact same ammunition and typically the same magazines as their service pistols. Major manufacturers of police-issue sidearms such as Beretta and Ruger already offer such carbines, which provide police officers more range and potential accuracy than they have with their pistols, but with a significant reduction in the risks associated with firing much more powerful rifle rounds in an urban environment.

The City of Miami fails to mention how the militarization of the Miami police is going to make their officers and citizens safer, and does not seem to address the problems that are inherent to their stated plan of giving their officers higher-velocity, longer-ranged weapons with minimal training.

The police are contributing to the prospect of turning Miami into an urban battlefield, which I somehow suspect was not their original intent.

Violating Her Sybil Rights?

The words "honesty" and "Hollywood" don't belong in the same sentence for a very good reason. Sally Field, bungling her Emmy acceptance speech and being played off-stage as she went over her allotted time, had her closing comment cut off when she utter "g-d d-mn" on tape-delayed "live" television.

Normally, this would be hardly worth mentioning, as profanity is routinely edited out on these kinds of shows (as it was on at least two other occasions last night) and babbling stars are often played off the stage (as also occurred last night) as they prattle on past their allotted time.

Field, professional that she is, timed a mild anti-war comment to come out prefaced by profanity as she was being played off the stage. According to a quite dishonest L.A. Times Tom O'Neil:

Producers of Sunday's Emmy telecast bleeped best drama actress winner Sally Field in the midst of a controversial acceptance speech attacking U.S. involvement in Iraq.

"If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any god -" she said when the sound went dead and the camera suddenly turned away from the stage so viewers would be distracted. Chopped off were the words "god-damned wars in the first place."

Filed was not "in the midst" as O'Neil reported, but already over her allotted time as the music came up and she was being played off the stage. Likewise, as Don Surber notes, she was far from being the only celebrity to have their profanity edited out of the show.

Predictably, blogs in the community-based reality such as Think Progress and the aptly-named Crooks and Liars are quick to make the unsupported accusation that this was the result of "censorship" by Fox , and left out the pertinent details that Field was using profanity and already over time when she made her rote comment.

Obviously, these troubling facts aren't relevant to the story they would prefer to tell.

Weather Woes

Well, thanks to this I might continue my fund-raising efforts for a few more days.

I haven't been outside to check the damage to any great degree yet, but know that the straight-line winds in my area were strong enough to damage homes under construction within view of my house, down trees, and lift my rather substantial grill into the air and toss it into my neighbor's yard. I'll retrieve it tomorrow, but my guess is that it's toast.

If anyone hasn't donated yet and could, I'd appreciate it.

I really liked that grill.

Update: Picture added above. For us, that's all we lost, and for that I'm very thankful.

Talking to folks in the area and surveying the damage, it appears out area took a hit from a very minor tornado (there were a total of six in the area, all blessedly weak). Not a lot of damage in my neighborhood, but there was in the older neighborhood nearby where there were far more mature trees, a lot of which lost branches, and several large oaks that were totally ripped apart.

Nobody got seriously injured or killed, and that is what really matters.

The "Liberal Braintrust" Update: It seems that several lefty bloggers have seized upon this post as proof of great hypocrisy on my part, as I've stated publicly on several occasions that New Orleans should not be rebuilt in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The reasoning behind not rebuilding New Orleans is scientifically-driven and practical in nature. The Mississippi delta silt upon which the city was built is rapidly compacting, and hence the city itself is literally and inevitably sinking. This is combined with the fact that the marshlands protecting the city are eroding at a rate of 25-35 square miles/year, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with noted scientists from coastal and marine studies programs including LSU, have stated the geological inevitability of the city merging with the Gulf of Mexico prior to 2100, and quite possibly by 2050 or sooner with the landfall of any major hurricanes (which Katrina was not when it hit; New Orleans suffered category 1-2 winds), or a sudden rise in sea level, which could occur if global warming is as dramatic as some expect.

Simply put, New Orleans is a sinking hole in a swamp surrounded on three sides by hungry waters: rebuilding the city with an anemic patchwork of small levee improvements is a colossal exercise in stupidity, when relocating the population is a much more intelligent and more viable long-term option. It may also ultimately lead to a far greater loss of life the next time the city is inundated.

Liberal Logic: New Orleans = Bobs' Grill.

Somehow, this bit of scientifically-supported common sense means I'm a hypocrite because I extended my already running week-long yearly fundraising effort, mentioning specifically late Friday that that I'm going to need to replace my storm-tossed grill.

Said grill was up-ended and tossed into my neighbor's yard by what appears to be a very small tornado that spun out of a line of thunderstorms that developed quickly as a line of storms passed through Friday evening. The line of storms was the leftovers of what was Humberto, the storm that hit minimal hurricane status before it made landfall on Texas last week and quickly dissipated.

According to these esteemed liberal thinkers, asking my readership to continue a voluntary fundraiser is the exact same thing, somehow, as demanding billions of taxpayer dollars from the federal government to replace a city doomed by geology, oceanography, and hydrology.

Perhaps if I lobbied taxpayers for the funds that argument would have some merit, but I'm not applying for a grant, or demanding that taxpayers fund anything. I didn’t do that. I extended a pre-existing weeklong fundraiser where I asked for voluntary donations from my readers. My "crime" was continuing a voluntary fundraiser for a specific reason?

Heaven forbid. How do I live with myself.

Setting the Agenda for a Non-Scandal

Advertising Age dissects how my observation earlier this week helped shape this week's news:

MoveOn told ABC's Jake Tapper that the group paid $65,000 for a Sept. 10 ad accusing General David Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House" in his status reports on Iraq. The Times rate card implies that weekday, full-page, black-and-white cause, appeal or political ads cost $181,692.

A post on the blog Confederate Yankee soon noted the disparity. "While I'm fairly certain that nobody pays 'sticker' prices, 61% off seems a rather sweet deal," his post said. The New York Post picked up the story yesterday, running a piece headlined "Times Gives Lefties a Hefty Discount for 'Betray Us' Ad" and followed up with another article and an editorial today. "Citing the shared liberal bias of the group and the Times," the Post wrote, "one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the 'family discount.'"

Mr. Giuliani, speaking in Atlanta yesterday, demanded that the Times apologize and offer him the same price.

Standby basis
But MoveOn bought its ad on a "standby" basis, under which it can ask for a day and placement in the paper but doesn't get any guarantees. Standby pricing doesn't appear on the Times rate card -- but that kind of ad at a standby rate turns out to run about $65,000.

In other words, all the attention came as a result of the New York Times not putting their standby pricing on their rate cards, and the majority of the angry pixels expended in this incident were more than likely "much ado about nothing."

An interesting take on the eventual non-event from Dan Riehl:

I won't pretend that Print isn't significant when it comes to the news game today, that would be foolish. But I would add an additional point, or two. Being the topic of the news agenda is a far different thing than setting said agenda. And if it weren't for New Media, particularly blogs in this case, this particular agenda item would likely have never even been set. Duh!

TNR Writer: Dishonest journalists "should be named, shamed, and driven out of the profession altogether, never to write again."

The New Republic has a writer named James Kirchick who got righteously indignant when a HuffPo writer plagiarized his original work.

Says Kirchick:

There is no worse offense in the journalistic profession than stealing someone else's work and those who do should be named, shamed, and driven out of the profession altogether, never to write again.

Oh James... I think we can come up with just a few journalistic offenses more damning than mere plagiarism.

Here's a few for starters.

Unquestioningly run fake stories of American atrocities, where you can't even correctly pin down even the country in which one of them takes place.

Allow a police force to be accused of murder based upon a claim that was disproven with a simple Google search.

Blatantly lie to your readers and your fellow journalists about fact-checking said stories beforehand.

Hide the marital relationship between the dishonest author and your staff fact-checker for as long as possible, and then fire the person who discloses it.

When you try to justify the fact you didn't do basic fact-checking before you ran these stories by citing experts in your "re-reporting", keep them anonymous and in the dark, asking them only vague, almost meaninglessly general questions. That way, they don't know how they are being used, and they can't be given the whole story (because if they knew all the facts, they'd tell a quite different story).

Refuse to acknowledge or print the testimony of authorities and witnesses that directly contradict your claims, and refuse to answer any of the substantive criticism leveled against you, while alleging that others aren't allowing the truth the come out, so that you can avoid resigning in disgrace for another day.

These things might be just a bit worse than putting your name on someone's else's story, but I think we all agree with your preferred punishment.

Media Runs with MoveOn.org/NY Times Ad Rate Story

I'm tickled that Charles Hurt of the New York Post picked up and ran with the ball on this story, which now seems to have generated a surprising (to me) degree of interest. In addition to Hurt's article, Brent Bozell got to talk about it on Fox News Live, and I caught the tail-end of it being discussed on Rush Limbaugh's radio show briefly yesterday.

ABC's Jake Tapper, who first reported what Moveon.org paid for their ad, is on the story again today and reveals that a conservative organization who ran a full page ad the next day paid "significantly more."

Oops.

It appears that the NY Times may take a much bigger hit to their the credibilty and the bottom line than they ever anticipated as a result.

I doubt stockholders will be pleased.

(h/t Allah at Hot Air, who kindly remembers where this conflagration over the deep discount started.)

Update: Thanks.

Update: This is growing far more than I could have ever expected. Fred! and Rudy pile on. and Hot Air has the audio and video. Uncle Jimbo has filed a complaint with the FEC, and though I won't pretend to have the first clue on whether or not this has any "bite," a commenter over at Ace's place discovers something that looks like where they could have potentially run afoul of the law.

U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Unload On Petraeus Testimony

Did I say "unload on?" I meant echoed:

At this wind-swept base near the Iranian border, the main points of Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress were met with widespread agreement among soldiers: The American troop buildup is working, but the military needs more time.

Most of the soldiers at FOB Delta, some 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, were out on patrol or sleeping when Petraeus' comments were broadcast late Monday and Tuesday in Iraq.

But some heard it and others have read about it, and say they agree with their commander's assessment.

Staff Sgt. Matthew Nicholls of the 71st Medical Detachment, visiting FOB Delta from his post in southern Iraq to do an assessment, said the military still needs time to clean up mistakes made after the 2003 invasion, including the need to build an Iraqi army from scratch and to secure the borders.

"I think our initial assessment was too rosy," he said after reading about the hearings while sitting in the library at the recreation center. "It takes time to build an army and I think we should've secured the borders right away."

The 36-year-old from Mobile, Ala., also said American politicians need to be more understanding.

"They can be critical because they are politicians and their main goal is to be re-elected, but they see a much more limited piece than the troops on the ground," he said.

[snip]

Sgt. Nathaniel Killip, 24, of Indianapolis, caught part of the general's presentation on TV and said he agreed that withdrawing all U.S. troops or setting a date to do so before Iraqi security forces have proven themselves ready to take over would open the doors for insurgents to attack.

"They're just going to lay back and wait until it's a softer target," he said.

No doubt ad writers for MoveOn.org are desperately clawing through thesauri and dictionaries attempting to find synonyms for betrayal that rhyme with "Killip" and "Nicholls."

Off-Topic Update:Support citizen journalism. (hey, I only ask for donations one week a year... the other 51 weeks are free!)

What Else Remains

At this point in the Scott Beauchamp/The New Republic scandal, only two questions really matter:

1. Have the editors of The New Republic spoken with Scott Beauchamp since his July 26 statement outing himself?
   
   
2. If so, does Beauchamp still stand by his stories as he then claimed?

There are several reasons to ask this question now, starting with the fact that we know Scott Beauchamp has very recently been available for interviews.

It was quite easy to verify this: I sent in a request for an interview with Private Beauchamp several weeks ago. When he turned it down this past week, it verified that he had returned from COP Ellis to FOB Falcon. His log-in to his MySpace page on September 6 also corroborates his return.

Under intense pressure to provide support for the stories that have tarnished the magazine's image, Franklin Foer was no doubt first in line to try to speak with Private Beauchamp once he returned to FOB Falcon. It would also be reasonable to assume that because of their previous relationship, Beauchamp would choose to speak to Foer or other editors of The New Republic if he chose to speak with anyone at all. Could we interpret the magazine's continuing silence to mean that Beauchamp himself has backed away from his previous claims?

If Franklin Foer cannot get Scott Beauchamp to provide supporting evidence for the claims he posted, then Foer has an obligation and a duty to retract all three of Beauchamp's stories.

The problem with doing so, however, is that the retractions would also show that "the Editors" previous claim that "the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published" to also be a dishonest fabrication, and that deception would demand editorial resignations at TNR as well.

Update: I made a few minor tweaks o the text above, but nothing substantial.

At What Price?

Is there any way for us to know just how much The New York Times charged MoveOn.org for their full page "General Betray Us" advertisement today? Did they pay full price, or did they get a special, reduced rate?

I'd like to know if advertising rates of the New York Times are determined by the political message taking up the ad space, and whether or not a discrepancy in such rates, if one exists, is something that they owe it to their readers to disclose.

Update: According to Jake Tapper at ABCNews, the ad cost MoveOn.org approximately $65,000, running in the "A" section of the paper.

And while I don't claim to understand the intricacies of New York Times advertising sales, their own rate card (PDF) seems rather specific that Advocacy ads, which the MoveOn.org ad most clearly was, are sold at $167,157 for a full-page, full-price nationwide ad.

If Tapper's numbers are correct, MoveOn.org paid just 38.89% of a full-cost, nationwide ad, or a 61.11% discount off of a full-rate ad. While I'm fairly certain that nobody pays "sticker" prices, 61% off seems a rather sweet deal.

Note: For those who can, I'd appreciate it.

That Time of the Year

Last summer or early last fall (I'm too lazy to look which at the moment), I had a week-long fundraising effort here at Confederate Yankee, where readers were kind enough to provide me with enough funds to buy a laptop to replace my aging and dying Dell 733R from which I'd been researching and writing. I was humbled and awed at your outpouring of support.

This year, I'll not be needing any new equipment, and I do't have any particular dire needs that the Lord won't take care of for me. He's granted me everything I need and most of what I want, including something else my wife and I have been wanting for a long time:

As I said, the important things are taken care of.

That said, I'd still like to ask my readers for a couple of bucks, if they can spare it.

I promise I'll put it to good use. Thanks.

High Noon for TNR

I'll ask all of my readers to please check out Pajamas Media after noon (Eastern U.S.) today [update: it's up now], and see what you think of my exclusive interview which should be coming online right about then.

In the meantime, Michelle Malkin and her team at Hot Air released a crushing "Vent" today, interviewing Michael Goldfarb, the writer for The Weekly Standard that broke the story with his post, "Fact or Fiction?" on July 18, and also paying a surprise visit to the offices of The New Republic to try to get in to see Franklin Foer.

Watch the whole thing.

All in all, this is going to be a very bad day for Franklin Foer and The New Republic, who by now, just wish this story would go away. What they don't seem to grasp is that at this point, they are the story.

We know that the events Beauchamp wrote about in "Shock Troops" were fabrications, and that has become something of a non-story at this point.

Now, what has become a far more important story is the devious means by which the editorial staff of The New Republic has sought to cover-up their own inadequacies. If they had simply admitted in the beginning that they did not adequately check Beauchamp's stories because they never thought that the husband of a staffer would so boldly and blatantly lie to them, then this would have blown over weeks ago, with minor consequences.

Instead, The New Republic launched an investigation "re-reporting" the story, and tried to justify the unjustifiable with a combination of willful deception and obfuscation. They've attempted to deceive or hide information their readers, fellow journalists, at least one of the experts they claimed supported the veracity of the story, the blogosphere, and the United States Army, in a pathetic attempt to justify a minor incompetence, and in the process, created a significant scandal.

In the end, if TNR owners CanWest Mediaworks hopes to retain any corporate credibility at all, a purge of the defective detectives that make up the editorial staff The New Republic is certainly warranted.

They've run out of second chances.

Update: Read all of my Beauchamp/TNR related coverage here. For those of you who have the means, please consider supporting citizen-journalism (specifically, mine).

Thanks.

Name That Goon

Who...

• ...claims that Democrats in Congress have failed to listen to the will of the American people to stop the Iraq War by surrendering?
• ...claims that we're sacrificing the blood of American soldiers for the greed of corporations?
• ...considers Noam Chomsky one of the West's greatest thinkers?
• ...thinks that the news media are right-wing tools, loyal to an empire-hungry dictator?
• ... still uses the worn-out "no blood for oil" argument?
• ...blames America for global warming?
• ...loathes capitalism, and thinks we are just pawns to a creeping globalism?

Select from:

1. Keith Olbermann
2. Osama bin Laden
3. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
4. all of the above

The correct answer is...

...that it's a shame you instinctly thought "D" without any hesitation at all.

Update: Socialist icon?

Not the Least Bit Misleading

According to several news organizations, The Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, perhaps better known as the Jones Commission Report, states that Iraq's national police force is so broken that they should be disbanded and began over again from scratch.

So says the U.K's Times Online:

The Iraqi national police force is riddled with militia and corruption and should be disbanded, a panel of retired US military officers has told Congress.

The 20-member panel also said today that the Iraqi Army was incapable of acting independently from US forces for at least another 18 months, and "cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven".

[snip]

The commission members, who spent three weeks in Iraq this summer and conducted 150 interviews, were most damning about the Iraqi national police. They said that its parent body, the Interior Ministry, was a ministry "in name only" and rife with sectarianism and corruption. The entire 26,000-member police force should be scrapped and rebuilt anew, they said.

Ann Scott Tyson and Glenn Kesler of WaPo echo a similar account:

Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq rejected an independent commission's recommendation yesterday to disband the 25,000-strong Iraqi national police force, saying that despite sectarian influences the force is improving and that removing it would create dangerous security vacuums in key regions of the country.

Looking at these and other contemporary articles on the subject, a casual reader skimming the headlines would likely come away with the impression that we've got to fire all of Iraq's policemen and start over from scratch.

But what you would probably gather from these accounts is not a full and accurate representation of what the commission says [the report actually says far more, and covers the Iraqi military as well, but we're focusing on this one aspect for the moment]. I know, because I have a copy of the 152-page report in front of me right now.

The Jones Commission does advocate the disbanding of the 25,000-man Iraqi National Police, but what neither article mentioned is that the NP is the smallest element of the various police forces under the Ministry of the Interior.

The Commission states something quite different regarding the much larger and widespread Iraqi Police Service in their conclusion on page 108 of the report:

Conclusion: The Iraqi Police Service is incapable today of providing security at a level sufficient to protect Iraqi neighborhoods from insurgents and sectarian violence. The police are central to the long-term establishment of security in Iraq. Tbe be effective in combatting the threats that officers face, including sectarian violence, the Iraqi Police must be better trained and equipped. The Commission believes that the Iraqi Police Service can improve rapidly should the Ministry of the Interior become a more functional institution.

There are more than 200,000 civilian personnel in the Iraqi security services, and the commission indicates that the biggest problem for the bulk of those police officers in the Iraqi Police Service is that they undertrained and under-equipped. Tehy also state that if they received the training and material support they need, they are expected to improve rapidly.

Funny how the media reports forget to mention that on page 102, the Commission notes that in 2004, the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team requested funding for 6,000 police advisors to train a force of 135,000, and that Congress only approved funds for 1,000 advisors. Today, the Iraqi police have over 230,000 officers, and only 900 international police advisors and roughly 3,500 military personnel filling these necessary advisory roles.

Harry Reid and the Democrats keep shrieking that it is time for a "change of course" in Iraq.

Perhaps they could start by providing the police with the funding for the advisors they need, which by the way, is another Commission recommendation that you won't hear too many Democrats repeating.

About That Report

A Hill reporter relayed to Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO's The Corner just how desperate the Democratic leadership is becoming:

The Democratic leaders are laying it on thick. I was at a press conference this afternoon with Reid, Schumer, Durbin and Murray. They referred to the Petraeus Report as the “Bush Report” about a half-dozen times. Reid even went so far as to correct a reporter when she called it the Petraeus Report. “You mean the Bush Report don’t you?” he said.

They must really want the report to come across in the press as administration hackwork rather than an honest assessment of the situation in Iraq.

The fact of the matter, however, is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Charles Shumer, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have a vested interest in deceiving the American public. They have invested far too much time, energy and credibility in a U.S. defeat.

These so-called leaders are not being honest with you.

In accordance with Public Law 110-28 (PDF) asked for by this same Democrat-led Congress:

The President, having consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and the Commander of U.S. Central Command, will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress.

This is the "Bush Report," written by the Administration. There is no other report being delivered by General Petraeus for the White House to influence.

Quite to the contrary, it is the professional assessment of officers in the United States Army in Iraq that will largely shape the President's report.

Further, the Congress dictated in Public Law 110-28, that:

Prior to the submission of the President's second report on September 15, 2007, and at a time to be agreed upon by the leadership of the Congress and the Administration, the United States Ambassador to Iraq and the Commander, Multi-National Forces Iraq will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of the Congress.

There is no "Petraeus Report" for the White House to manipulate.

What there is is verbal testimony of General Petraeus to Congress as they requested. Where does the General get the raw data and refined intelligence that he is basing his recommendations upon?

I asked that question of Colonel Steven Boylan, U.S. Army Public Affairs Officer to the Commanding General of Multi-National Force Iraq, David Patraeus.

Col. Boylan states:

I can assure you that the words and information that are being used by General Petraeus are from MNF-I...

As with any organization, the staff assists the head of the organization with the preparation and development of the materials used, by gathering the data, preparing slides, collating information, etc. This is and has been done by MNF-I, not any other organization.

The words that everyone will hear on Monday, September 10th and Tuesday, September 11th are his words and his assessment as part of the joint assessment between Ambassador Crocker and himself.

There is no "Petraeus Report," for the Administration to influence.

The material that General Petraeus will use in his testimony was developed from information provided by American soldiers, and no other organization. As General Petraeus told me via email on Sept 3rd:

The Ambassador and I are going to give it to them straight and then allow the folks at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue make what clearly is a national decision.

Democratic leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives are desperate to discredit the straightforward information General Patraeus will provide, and the integrity of the General himself.

Perhaps you should start wondering what they don't want you to hear.

Update: Additional thoughts from JeffG at Protein Wisdom.

... and here come the confused. How hard is it to read the law or do basic research?

Democrats Support the Troops

Until they are about to talk.

Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can't be trusted.

"The Bush report?" Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said when asked about the upcoming report from Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq.

"We know what is going to be in it. It's clear. I think the president's trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious," the Illinois Democrat said. "I expect the Bush report to say, 'The surge is working. Let's have more of the same.' "

The top Democrats — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — also referred to the general's briefing as the "Bush report."

Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Shumer and Democratic Senators/Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were among those Senators who voted to confirm General Petraeus to his position as commander of American forces in Iraq without a single objecting vote, 81-0, on January 26, 2007.

They did not question the capability of the 1974 West Point graduate and Princeton PhD when they had their chance to reject him. Nor did they denounce or even raise serious doubts about allegiences or partisanship then, when they easily could have stated their disgreement with a simple "no" vote.

What a difference 223 days and the fear of success makes.

New Major Offensive in Northern Iraq Underway: Media Caught Flat-Footed?

They're calling it, "Lightning Hammer II," and it seeks to build on the gains made in pushing al Qaeda out of Baquba and surrounding areas in Diyala Province.

About 14,000 Iraqi security forces stationed throughout Nineveh province and 12,000 U.S. soldiers are conducting the operation, which started Wednesday evening.

The military said the operation "follows Lightning Hammer I ... to deny al Qaeda safe haven in the provinces" of Salaheddin, Nineveh, Diyala, and Kirkuk.

The military said the original Operation Lightning Hammer -- August 13 to September 1 -- ousted militants from the Diyala River valley, northeast of Baquba, the capital of Diyala province.

"Al Qaeda cells were driven from Baquba in Diyala due to Operation Arrowhead Ripper in June and July and then pursued in the Diyala River valley during Operation Lighting Hammer in August," Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning and Multinational Division-North.

I'd tell you more, but right now, there doesn't seem to be a lot more to tell. As of this particular moment, CNN seems to have the only account of this 26,000-man offensive in northern Iraq, and I'm unable to find any story related to a new Iraqi offensive on Google News.

Now, it could very well be that there are reporters and photographers embedded with those units taking part in the offensive that simply haven't had time or opportunity to file reports, but it is a matter of record that the wire service and larger individual news organizations largely missed out on the start of Lightning Hammer I in Diyala Province, and once the operation was underway, they only entered the battlespace very briefly--some literally staying just hours--before helicoptering back to Baghdad.

If America wonders why we get so little good news coming out of Iraq, they might want to consider that at least part of that reason is because news organizations aren't where the news is occuring.

Update: CNN seems to be merely reporting highlights of the military press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE RELEASE No. 20070906-05 September 6, 2007

Operation Lightning Hammer II expands pursuit of al-Qaeda Multi-National
Division - North PAO

TIKRIT, Iraq - Iraqi Security Forces and Coalition Forces continued
their relentless pursuit of al-Qaeda in northern Iraq by launching
Operation Lightning Hammer II, Wednesday evening.

The operation, involving approximately 14,000 ISF, partnered
with more than 12,000 CF, is spearheaded by Soldiers from the 4th
Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, partnered with members of the
2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Divisions, and Iraqi Police forces stationed
throughout Ninewa province.

In addition to the thousands of Soldiers and their ISF
counterparts participating in Lightning Hammer II, attack helicopters,
close-air support, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Stryker Vehicles and tanks
compliment the combined effort. This operation follows Lightning Hammer
I in the series of offensives to deny al-Qaeda safe haven in the
provinces of Salah ad Din, Ninewa, Diyala and Kirkuk. Operation
Lightning Hammer I, from Aug. 13 to Sept. 1, succeeded in driving enemy
elements out of the Diyala River Valley, northeast of Baqouba.

"Al-Qaeda cells were driven from Baqouba in Diyala due to
Operation Arrowhead Ripper in June and July and then pursued in the
Diyala River Valley during Operation Lighting Hammer in August," said
Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning and
Multinational Division-North. "Our main goal with Lightning Hammer II is
to continue to pursue and apply constant pressure to the terrorist cells
operating in MND-N, and destroy them where they attempt to hide."

"Our combined forces' commitment to hunt al Qaeda and its
operatives remains as strong as ever," said Mixon. "We will not rest
until al Qaeda in Iraq is driven from northern Iraq, and Iraqi citizens
have a safe and secure homeland."

I'll see if I can make contact with PAO covering this operation and provide more information as it becomes available.

Update: I checked in with the Task Force Lightning PAO, and he told me that there are a total of 11 embedded journalists in Northern Iraq. A grand total of one is from a major wire service, and five of them are in Diyala. The remaining northern provinces of Ninewa, Salah Ad Din, and Kirkuk have a total of two embedded journalists each.

How many of them are actually covering operations related to Operation Lightning Hammer II is unknown.

AQ Bomb Plot Against American Targets in Germany Foiled

On CNN:

Three terror suspects held in Germany planned to carry out "imminent" and "massive" bombs attacks on a U.S. air base and Frankfurt's international airport, according to prosecutors.

The suspects, two Germans aged 22 and 29 and a 29-year-old Turk, received terrorist training in Pakistan and had close ties to al Qaeda, according to Jorg Ziercke, president of Germany's Federal Criminal Investigation Office.

Ziercke said the group was united by a "hatred against American citizens" as it planned attacks against Frankfurt airport, a popular international travel hub, and Ramstein air base, a major transit point for the U.S. military into the Middle East and Central Asia.

The group had amassed 680 kg (1,500 pounds) of hydrogen peroxide to make bombs, German federal prosecutor Monika Harms told reporters on Wednesday.

Harms said the three suspects also planned to attack bars and restaurants popular with Americans.

She said the planned attacks would have been among the biggest yet on German soil. Possible scenarios would have been car bombings used in simultaneous attacks.

Officials said the hydrogen peroxide could have produced a bomb with the explosive power of 540 kg of TNT.

The article goes on to speculate that the attacks could have been planned to have occurred on September 11.

The bombers were clearly attempting to build triacetone triperoxide (TATP) bombs, a favorite of terrorists that nevertheless often fails because of its instability. Occasionally it explodes during the production/bomb preparation steps, and other times, an improper mix leads to a bomb that either burns instead of detonating, or fails to ignite at all.

Frankly, until we know more about them and learn about their amassed equipment and technical know-how, I'm going to be quite skeptical that they could have manufactured high-grade TATP in quantities sufficient to build successful bombs of the size this report suggests. I may very well be wrong, but after the failures of the second London bombers, and the Glasgow bombers, I have very little faith in the competence of the surviving al Qaeda bomb builders remaining in Pakistan and Afghanistan who train terrorists such as these.

Update: I just contacted Yassin Musharbash, one of the two Spiegel reporters who have written the definitive post on this terrorist event thus far (h/t: Hot Air, which has an excellent round-up, as always).

He has confirmed my earlier hunch that triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, was the specfic peroxide-based explosive that these suspected terrorists were planning to use. This was the same kind of explosive used successfully in the 7/7 London tube bombings, and then fizzled in similar attacks just two weeks later on 7/21.

Pajamas Media is following the story as well.

There They Go Again

Over at Hot Air, Bryan has a nice catch this morning about UPI-alleged attack on a power-generating plant in southern Baghdad.

Bryan has a contact that works at the plant, and states it was not attacked when UPI ran the article, that they were not damaged nearly as bad as UPI states, and was only attacked two days later.

Per Bryan's request, I contacted the Army PAO in that sector, and found out that there was indeed an attack that day, on a power substation in that sector:

The attack on the substation definitely happened, as did the attack on the fire truck. I just saw photos of the burned out building and fire engine.

But, it is a small facility, and the article exaggerates the impact of the attack. Did people lose power as a result? Probably- those serviced in that immediate neighborhood. But, power is intermittent throughout Doura, so to insinuate that the loss of this station is the cause of a city-wide loss of electricity isn't exactly accurate either. It sounds like another example of one smaller event happening, but then being made into more than it actually was.

The main Doura power plant is still operating per normal output.

There is a huge difference, of course, between substations, which are small relay stations commonly found distributing power to adjoining residential and commercial districts here in the United States as elsewhere in the world, and power stations, where coal, other fuels, or nuclear power is used to generate energy in a much, much larger facility.

Details, details.

Choose Your Preferred Narrative, but Quit Attacking the Troops

If you are a supporter of the on-going counter-insurgency plan in Iraq, you can find all sorts of news to support why we should stay in Iraq.

You could start with President Bush's al Asad photo-op yesterday, where the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Ambassador Crocker, and Commanding General Petraeus met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Presidnet Talabani, and Vice Presidents Medhi and al Hashemi. Critics point out that the meeting was a merely a six-hour stop and photo-op for the President, and as such, was a public relations stunt. That the brief visit was designed as a public relations tool is beyond doubt. The undeniable fact remains that al Anbar, a province deemed all but lost according to classified Marine Corps Intelligence reports leaked to the press just a year ago, has now become so quiet that our leaders and the leaders of Iraq knew that the base was safe enough for a public meeting, without any apparent fear of a rocket or mortar attack by insurgents, or of suicide attacks by terrorists, or of anti-aircraft missiles being fired at the two large jets bringing in the American delegation, or the helicopters that (I presume) brought in the Iraqi senior leadership.

In addition to this public meeting of leaders in an area once deemed lost just a short time ago, U.S. casualties in Iraq have dropped in half at a time they were expected to actually rise, al Qaeda-aligned terrorists and insurgent groups have either turned, or become hounded and hunted in al Anbar, Diyala, and elsewhere. Some supporters are suggesting that what future history may regard as the turning point towards victory is either occurring, or may have already occurred.

For war detractors in our political classes, in the media and on the activist left, the war was lost long ago, and every day merely means another American mother will lose her soldier-child in a lost cause. To them, the war possibility of a turn-around in Iraq is unthinkable, any apparent progress is an illusion, or merely a matter of temporary gains before an inevitable fall.

Both sides are looking to make what they can of the much-anticipated "Petraeus Report" (which, as Sheppard Sheffield points out, is actually something of a myth).

Those on the right will take the local and regional gains made in al Anbar and Diyala and other areas of the country as signs of success, and corners possibility turned. Those on the left will note what is essentially a British surrender to Shia militias in Basra, the decidedly mixed security results in Baghdad itself, the continuing meddling of Iran, and what is largely a failure of the central Iraqi government to make significant progress towards reconciliation as signs of inevitable failure. As in any on-going conflict, both sides have plenty of ammunition to continue supporting their pre-conceived opinions, and they have a right to share those opinions.

What I would prefer not to see, however, is the continuation of a disturbing trend by some in the media and blogosphere towards unfairly mischaracterizing and in some cases blatantly attacking the credibility of our military, in most cases without just cause.

The techniques used to attack the credibility of the military vary widely.

Some come from minor, conspiracy-minded fringe players and are easily brushed aside with a laugh, but others, provided with a more legitimizing platform in a national news outlet, are more troubling.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald is one example, as he blatantly lied back in June as he accused of military public affairs system of deception when he stated:

All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

A simple look at the actual press releases from the PAO system immediately and conclusively debunked Greenwald's claim, but it has not stopped him, nor other critics, from attacking the credibility of the military, even as they studiously avoid almost every sympathetic media misstep.

The New Republic ran a series of brutal fantasies concocted by a U.S. Army private as real without any attempt to fact check them, instigated a cover-up that purposefully concealed the identity of sources that they said supported the story, arguably deceived these same sources, and hid countering testimony collected from other experts, only to blame the military for stone-walling their investigation. In fact, the author of this fiction has the ability to answer media requests, and instead has thus far chosen not to take them.

But minor media and bloggers aren't the only ones attacking our troops.

Hollywood directors are releasing the first of a seriesanti-war films, and the vangard of this effort, Redacted, redacts reality to push an anti-soldier, anti-war political agenda.

The leader of the United States Senate declared that the "surge" was lost before it even began, and declared in April that he would not believe any future news provided by General Petraeus that contradicted that, essentially assaulting General Petraeus' integrity. Later, John Murtha lied while claiming that the White House was using General Petraeus as a political prop, and criticized Petraeus for not meeting with Congress. Not only had General Petraeus met with Congress, he actually took time out of his schedule to brief Murtha and Pelosi privately.

Both sides, right and left, have their own political agendas. Sympathizers in the blogosphere and in media organizations large and small bring their own biases to the table as they discuss war policy. That is understood, expected, and perfectly understandable.

What is not understandable is why critics feel it is necessary to attack the troops as they attack the mission. They claim to be able to support the troops while critcizing the mission, but in practice, that is often not the case.

When General Petreaus comes back to the United States to brief the President and Congress, he will not do so as a partisan. He promises that, “The Ambassador and I are going to give it to them straight and then allow the folks at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue make what clearly is a national decision.“

He will speak for the American military, as the Commanding General of our forces in Iraq. He will not speak as a Republican General, or a Democratic General, but as a General of the Army of the United States of America. He will provide the facts, and let us discuss, decipher, and no doubt, spin what he reports.

Fine. Let us spin the data and the findings to support our political viewpoints.

But please, let's do so without attacking the integrity of those who serve, which is a tactic becoming more common, and repulsive, as time goes by.

Update:: corrected Matthew Sheffield's name in the text above.

The Truther Behind the Traitor

Former Hollywood agent, Pat Dollard gets to the bottom line.

I Love the Smell of Daily Kos in the Morning

It smells like... well, you know what it smells like if you've ever been on a cattle ranch:

I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth.

I asked her why she is telling me this.

Her answer was really amazing.

By all means, please go over and read Maccabee's post. When you do, see if you can spot what appears to be wrong with the story, and then check your answers against mine. Who knows? You might just catch a few things I've missed.

Let me share with you what I found that has that post-digestive bovine aroma.

• Maccabee's buddy claims:

  She started in the Marines and after 8 years her term was up. She had served on a smaller Marine carrier, and found out through a friend knew there was an opening for a junior grade LSO in a training position on a supercarrier. She used the reference and the information and applied for a transfer to the United States Navy. Since she had experience landing F-18Cs and Cobra Gunships, and an unblemished combat record, she was ratcheted into the job, successfully changing from the Marines to the Navy.

  That's a damn interesting trick, as the only non-supercarrier "smaller carriers" I'm aware of are the Tarawa-class and Wasp-class amphibious assault ships. Funny thing about the LHA and LHD classes of ships... they have very small flight decks, and are completely unsuitable for any aircraft that require arresting gear to land. As a matter of fact, they don't have arresting gear at all, and cannot land F/A-18Cs or any other fighters other than AV-B Harrier VSTOLs as a result. F/A18Cs only operate from land or U.S. Navy supercarriers. Somebody's making things up.
• But it gets even better. The LSO also claims:

  I asked her about the attack, how limited and so forth.

  "I don’t think it’s limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets.

  Now, can someone please tell me how a junior LSO--by definition, a junior grade officer on an aircraft carrier assigned to landing aircraft as her specialty--would know anything at all about how other ships are being armed? Supercarriers, to the best of my knowledge do not carry Tomahawks, which are cruise missiles fired directly from other Navy ships, and niehter stored nor fired from carriers. Such a junior officer, so far removed from munitions work, would simply not be in a position to have this knowledge.

I'm sure Navy veterans can probably pick out more improbabilities in this "LSO Beauchamp" story, but that is what I've found so far.

Macranger states that the conversation Maccabee related from the LSO would be treason if true. Luckily for Maccabee, I don't think that they have yet found a way to give imaginary friends the life sentences or death sentences that real treason requires.

Update: Kind of a "duh," moment, but as Yardbird notes in the comments, that these ships can't launch F/A-18s either, because they aren't equipped with catapults.

Real Navy fighter pilot Lex finishes off this liar here, noting that you can't become an LSO without first being a pilot.

Update: Breaking nunaim's heart, Kos calls his fellow lefties to task.

Update: Fabulist to the end, Maccabee blames her imaginary friend when caught, and then deletes the entry.