Category: War on Terror

Majors now running Defence Policy

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Well it’s all settled then. We have the Shadow minister for defence saying defence policy should be dictated by a Major. I guess smaller incursions than Iraq, say Fiji, could be stage managed by the Sergeant’s Mess on that basis. Peter Tinley has been reported in Saturday’s press as saying Iraq is a moral blunder and to lend more weight to his opinion the article identifies him as a ex SAS Major and war hero – both sound qualifications for a considered opinion however I just can’t get it out of my mind that there is some political overture involved. Peter has retired from the Military and has set up a sandstone business in Fremantle, Australis Pavestone and Blue Gum Leadership, a .leadership Consultancy He is moving into the corporate world and lectures and submits articles to various institutions in West Australia including the Curtin Business School and the Fire and Emergency Services Authority. Nothing wrong with any of that and front page Weekend Australia isnt going to hurt his aspirations. Good or bad, publicity is publicity. I may be old fashioned but I’m of the opinion that ex officers should not go public about finer points of intelligence planning and if they critisize the government of the day they should do so quoting their political aspirations rather than their military qualifications. I might add that a Major doesn’t really have much sway in war zones and I’ve generally found they are too close to the action to have objective opinions about the war overall albeit very in-tune with their immediate responsibility. But that’s just the opinion of an ex major and would hardly rate against opinions of editors with a mission to increase circulation. Peter’s not quiet so angry in this Army News article that announces his being made a Member of the Order of Australia for his role in the planning and coordination of the Op Falconer. Happy to accept awards from the same people who he now says ‘cynically used the ADF and duped the public’ – maybe he has a double standard issue.
“It was a cynical use of the Australian Defence Force by the Government,” the ex-SAS operations officer told The Weekend Australian yesterday. “This war duped the Australian Defence Force and the Australian people in terms of thinking it was in some way legitimate.
Old friend and retired Army Officer, Karl Hartman nails the issue with his letter in todays Australian.
I BELIEVE it is worthwhile asking the chief of the defence force how many SAS majors he has on his staff giving him strategic advice. The answer would be “not many”. You would think that after 25 years, Tinley would have learnt to keep his mouth shut.
Oh, and the term ‘Hero’, at least within miltary circles, is not normally used when discussing recipients of the Order of Australia. These awards are made for exemplorary service and hard and dilgent work in planning or management; not actions in the face of the enemy. Maybe the journalist based the use of Hero on this paragraph
Part of his command was 1 SAS Squadron, which was awarded a US Meritorious Unit citation for its “sustained gallantry”, contributing to a comprehensive success for coalition forces in Iraq.
‘Part of his command was 1 SAS Sqn‘ says he wasn’t the OC of 1 Sqn and as Majors only command at Squadron level, and considering what else was reported, then he was a part of the Special Forces planning staff and had no command function as such. I have not pursued any insider information and thus don’t know exactly waht Peter’s appointment was in Iraq but in reading the article the terms ‘Hero‘ and ‘Part of his command was 1 SAS Sqn’ are misleading. Still, half the front page of the Weekend Australian is good publicity.
Defence, War on Terror

Civil war?

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From my military days I recall this definition of civil war;
civil war: A war between factions of the same country; there are five criteria for international recognition of this status: the contestants must control territory, have a functioning government, enjoy some foreign recognition, have identifiable regular armed forces, and engage in major military operations.
However that would hardly suit the New York Times thus they quote a ‘common scholarly definition‘ has having two main criteria;
The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.
There now, that’s a lot easier isn’t it? The real definition of civil war al la media is this; One media outlet uses the words civil war in an Iraq war article and a million other editors follow suit. It is now the term du jour for the anti-war brigade. This New York Times article is the first I’ve noticed where they at least attempt the define the term and I would suggest it has been tailored to suit the current kill rate in Iraq. Using that definition I would imagine the American Civil Rights Movement and the settlement of Australia could both be defined as Civil Wars when clearly they were not. The Iraq war may be lots of things but it is not a civil war.
War on Terror

Change course, Bush urged from all sides

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US President George W.Bush left Washington yesterday bound for the Asian economic summit in Vietnam with advice from left, right and centre ringing in his ears to change course, not only in Iraq but on foreign policy in general. Good Idea. Start with securing the borders of Iraq and then attacking the terrorists lines of supply and if that means destroying the factories from whence they obtain their explosives for IEDs then so be it. In whatever country they are located. The anti-war terrorist appeasement brigade have achieved one of their aims. They can now draw parrallels between Vietnam and Iraq with some degree of truth after the mid-term US elections. In ’72 and ’74 when the South Vietnamese needed support the then Democrat majority denied them hope allowing the Communist North to re-arm courtesy of the USSR and subsequently invade South Vietnam. The assassinations, reducation camps and communists policies resulting in poverty and terror for the remaining millions who couldn’t flee is now history. I would just hope we don’t repeat history just because we have forgotten the past or never understood it in the first place.
Politics, War on Terror

Sheik Al-Halil still in the news II

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The mufti’s attitudes towards women are a Muslim problem, right? Think again says Michel Costello No, I won’t, says Kev. Michael allocates some of his column space to the fact that there are plenty of examples of white guys raping, beating and generally treating woman poorly and he’s right but that’s not the issue here. He points out that 30 years ago the situation of rape victims in Australia was bad. Society, he says, treated them as sluts. Well, I was very much around 30 years ago and I always thought of rape victims as just that, victims, and I have always been main-stream. The most common examples of these woman being treated poorly was from the legal profession as they tried to get the predatory males off the hook by suggesting that “she was a slut’ as they grilled her about her sex life. However, I don’t recall any political or religious leader saying woman deserved rape if they dressed inapproriately. Nor do I recall any such person sympathising with rapists as they were convicted and sentenced to years out of circulation. Until now. If our society isn’t blameless in this matter then that was thirty years ago and as Kim Beasley says, we have moved on. When I, as a Protestant fell in love with a Catholic 30 years ago I had to undergo ‘training’ to marry her but that was all – I can’t recall the local priest suggesting I should be killed because I wasn’t a believer. The Mufti supports those who would do this and they are doing it today. Can we please remember that. (Coincidentally all of my training was conducted by Army Padres with ammo boxes as alters but I got sufficient ‘ticks in boxes’ to front the alter) Mufti Taj Din al-Hilali hasn’t moved on, if anything he has regressed and he is a religious leader of some 300,000 Australians. What is worse is too many of those 300,000 have supported him by applause and too few have condemned him publically. Michael Costello doesn’t excuse the Mufti but he does throw in the “we’re not perfect either” line and I think that blurs the focus. Others are quick to point to the Crusades for the same reason and the counter “Yeah, but that was centuries ago, we have moved on and the radical Muslims haven’t” is so obvious I wonder why people even raise it.
War on Terror

Sheik Al-Halil still in the news

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Sheik ‘Catmeat’ al-Hilali has done a wonderful job. Todays Australian has him above and below the fold and I particularly note Paul Keating’s part in the saga. I trust we can arrange to have this entire episode recycled the week before the next election to remind voters of the risks involved with the ALP. Let him talk, quote everything he says. It will only help to reinforce in peoples mind the danger of the mind set of extreme Muftis like Al-Halil. One caveat – send him back from whence he come and report him from there so we can keep all the poison in one barrel. If he can’t be expelled because the law doen’t allow it then could I suggest it is time we looked to amending the law. Clearly the ALP should not have given this guy citizenship and I’m of the opinion that the country is entitled to have the last say as to who stays or goes and to rectify any decision that was wrong in it’s initial application. As in “well, yes, we did give you permanent residence but we now believe you represent a danger to our citizens. The individual can appeal ad nauseum then so should the government be allow to adjust obvious mistakes. A letter in todays Australian indicates there are people who still don’t get it.
WE see that, by shooting off his mouth, the poor old mufti has got himself into trouble with the Australian thought police. Let’s get real. The man may be a self-righteous dill but let’s remember that a basic Aussie right is our right to be offensive, as distinct from harmful, in the things we say and do. Dr Doug Ogilvie
Surprising that a Doctor, educated and all, should miss the point of freedom of speech. It does not include the right to preach sedition, to encourage young Jihadis to murder civilians nor to openly support those who do, such as Osam Bin Laden. The ‘poor old Mufti‘ is a dangerous poor old mufti. He encourages those who would rape or kill our woman and children. Be done with him.
War on Terror

Bias against Islam

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Media to blame for Islam bias says AFP Commissioner Kelty. That beggars belief. If the media report Sheik “Piece of Meat’s” words and the public think poorly of him then I would think that the message causes Islam bias not the messenger. During WW2 I doubt whether a senior policemen ever suggested that media bias caused Australians to think poorly of the Japanese as newspapers and radio stations reported how they plundered, murdered, raped and tortured their way through the Pacific region.
In a speech delivered in Adelaide, Mr Keelty played down Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali’s inflammatory comments on women, asserting that “many in the community also say offensive things and many of them are white Caucasian Australians”.
True, and the white Cauacasion Australian’s stupid comments are also reported by the media but as a rule they are not the voice of some 300,000 Australians as the Sheik is to the Muslim communty. About now Sheik ‘Piece of Meat’ may be thinking his words were ill advised and that they are not acceptable to Australians. Maybe he will learn something and maybe not, but either way extreme muslims are to blame for any bias against Islam, not the media. I want and expect the media to report such rantings and when some of the extreme muslims plot to kill innocent Australian civilians I want the media to tell me. I also expect them to tell me about any extreme right wing nutcases who might be considered a danger to our way of life. I particulalrly find this paragraph offensive
“When it comes to adultery, it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.“
It is this mindset that encourages young males to consider woman as chattels and then to claim they asked for it when facing court for multiple rapes. Simply not acceptable.
War on Terror

Scientists and magic numbers

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Tim Lambert is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales and a standout example of why we don’t let academics with math majors run real life situations. He has invested a considerable amount of time defending the latest Lancet Democrat Party campaign advert that points to 650,000 deaths in Iraq.

Using such cutting post titles as Flypaper for the ennumerates and Stupid beyond belief he attacks all and sundry with mathmatical wizardry pointing out the methodolgy is well proven. What he doesn’t do is prove that the figures are anywhere near believable.

As there are too many lawyers fighting battles in court to save the souls of terrorist with clever legal procedures against a backdrop of slaughtered civilian victims then likewise there are now too many scientist quoting theory that has little to do with real life.

When I went to war, as different than when I read about it or studied the mathmatical formulae pertaining to same; my battalion lost 30 killed and 220 wounded giving a 7.33:1 ratio of deaths to wounded. Our sister battalion lost 50 to 281 resulting in a ratio of 5.6:1. Current stats from Iraq are running at 8:1, slightly higher, but all this low level maths suggests the Iraq hospitals have had 5.2 million wounded to deal with. The 650,000 also suggests that there has been 500 killed per day for every day of the war.

Sorry, I just don’t believe it. As Lambert argues, the methodology is proven but the extrapolation says what might be and it clearly isn’t.

It is worth reading the comments at Deltoid. It may help the casual reader to understand the politics behind the anti Bush theorists. Theories abound in a common sense vacuum.

Politics, War on Terror

North Korea

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A sampling of comments from the Australian article on North Korea’s nuclear test Paul Duffy of Sydney
It is of concern that North Korea has nuclear weapons however there is still only one country that has been stupid enough to actually use nuclear weapons. It is greater concern to me that this country still has them. I look forward to a day when no country has nuclear weapons.
john gilroy of Hurstville
If America can have Stealth Bombers and other WMD, why can’t other countries?
Marilyn
What hypocrites the west are. Let us never forget that great chunks of our country are permanently not fit for human habitation thanks to nuclear tests by the Brits in the 1950’s and ‘60s. The US used the weapons in 1945 on civilians and most of the wretched world cheered them on so much so that they got nuclear bombs themselves. …Now let’s all stop our snivelling shall we. The dictator of Korea surely is no crazier than Bush.
Natasha of Brisbane
If everyone would just leave Kim Jong Il alone then he would have no reason to use his nuke on them. America has already tried to wipe his government off the planet and Japan controlled them before WW2 so if any country needs to protect itself it is NK.
LittleFaith
Expect nothing to happen, trade embargos will be broken with the help of Iran & Venezuela, North Korea’s new friends.
This is just another step towards the end of Western Empire after it’s demise from it, bungling in Iraq & Afghanistan. A special thanks to Mr Bush, a golden opportunity squandered. Just watch the West slowly but surely sink into the graveyard of history’s empires.
And these people are enfranchised…they get to vote in adult elections. It’s true the US is the only country to use nuclear weapons and the world breathed a sigh of relief when they did. My mother cried with relief as she could then expect her husband and brother to return home to start life again. It is not true that “great chunks of our country are permanently not fit for human habitation”. I have stood at ground zero at the Monte Bellow Island test site and the ecology is booming but Marylin never let a fact slow down her ranting. The problem is, of course, that there is potentially a very short time line between rogue states like Iran and North Korea having nuclear capability and terrorists having access to same. A very bright light over Tel Aviv, Washington, Canberra and London is not to be considered. The weird faction of the left must be aware that the US won’t deploy nukes unless it’s very existance is threatened and that is unlikely; whereas the rogue states, particularly Iran, look at the capability as a means to destroy the western civilization starting with Israel. They are in bed with the terrorists and they will use the capability if they can. They suffer no restraints. None of this is news yet the extreme left so hate the US that they support anyone or anything that threatens her, not recognizing that the sames threats also can affect us.
War on Terror

NIE beat-up

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PRIME Minister John Howard has welcomed the declassifying of a United States intelligence report that says Iraq has become a gathering point for global Islamic extremists. The Banshees have welcomed the report as well, as buried within, there are paragraphs that can be spun as anti Bush/Howard etc and can be used to poor scorn on the entire idea of the war in Iraq. And one wonders at the motivation for leaking the selective pages and why weren’t other pages leaked. In fact, why wasn’t the entire report leaked? It couldn’t be because the rest of the report wasn’t as negative…could it?….no way. In my time, when serving under The Official Secrets Act it was worth seven years in goal to do what these guys have done. I presume the US have something similar and they are being pursued with the full force of the law and will eventually face dismissal and goal time…hope so anyway. In Australia, ‘Tricky’ Rudd says;
……the report showed the Howard government’s arguments for taking Australia to war in Iraq were flawed. “The release of this document fundamentally torpedoes John Howard’s credibility and the argument he gave Australia for going to war in Iraq,” Mr Rudd told reporters.
It does? How? The bottom line is that it is an extract from an intelligence summary and during the course of a war all such documents have both negative and positive aspects otherwise they’re not true summaries of the situation. Of course the Terrorists are more active since we attacked them. That’s what happens and they will try and maintain their momentum as we do ours. During WW2 these type of assessments would have been negative as well. Just think North Africa before Rommel lost it, or the Pacific for three years from 1942 to ’45. A beat-up. UPDATE:  From this morning’s Opinion Journal; The New York Sun has some good news:
On a day when much of the capital’s attention was focused on leaked excerpts of an intelligence estimate report that suggested the Iraq war was creating more jihadists, the military quietly released an intercepted letter from Al Qaeda complaining that the terrorist organization was losing ground in Iraq. The letter, found in the headquarters of Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, after he was killed on June 7, was sent to Zarqawi by a senior Al Qaeda leader who signs his name simply “Atiyah.” He complains that Al Qaeda is weak both in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and in Iraq. . . . “Know that we, like all the Mujahidin, are still weak,” he wrote in the letter dated December 11, 2005. “We are in the stage of weakness and a state of paucity. We have not yet reached a level of stability. We have no alternative but to not squander any element of the foundations of strength, or any helper or supporter.”
In fact, the NIE summary begins by noting that “United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations.” They conclude;
No one said this was going to be easy, and like any important and challenging undertaking, it requires patience and forbearance.
I’ll give George Bush the last word on the subject;
[He]…was clearly unhappy that findings from the National Intelligence Estimate had made their way into news reports. Noting that evidence-gathering for the assessment had been concluded in February, and that the report itself had been finished two months later, Mr. Bush said: “Here we are, coming down the homestretch of an election campaign and it’s on the front page of your newspapers. Isn’t that interesting?”
War on Terror

Taliban has only 500 artillery rounds for coming battle

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MORE than 500 Taliban suicide bombers are trained and ready to strike NATO-led coalition forces, which include about 400 Australian troops, in Afghanistan. To get that in perspective 500 suicide bombers really means 500 artillery rounds which isn’t all that much logistically as artillery regiments will carry that amount of ammo with them with more in reserve. How quick can the Taliban resupply suicide bombers? The Taliban boast also guarantees 500 less Taliban after the battle out of claimed force of some 12,000 terrorists. To counter this, NATO and US forces numbers about 40,000; so the deciding factor in any battle won’t be troop numbers nor suicide bombers. It’ll be NATO determination to win along with troop morale and that’s where the media come in. Maybe we could have some headlines about NATO and Australian successes in the battle zone rather petty tattle-tale type “Sir, sir…Aussie diggers have made a nasty video!’ articles as carried by the Australian of late. UPDATE: While writing this post I was looking for reference to Artillery in Afghanistan. I should’ve read Set Condition 1 before posting as he links to an account of recent fighting on Operation Medussa (apt name!) where artillery gets many a mention. He points to a Times piece about Canadians in the thick of things
“We are not doing f***ing peacekeeping operations here, we are doing combat operations,” Lieutenant-Colonel Omer H. Lavoie, 40, the commanding officer of the Canadian forces, told The Times, the only British paper to visit the frontline during the fiercest battle since the Taleban was overthrown five years a
This plain spoken Lieutenant-Colonial commands Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) and the article goes on to quote Major Mike Wright, a company commander in the battalion.
“I don’t think a lot of my guys thought they would be in an operation of this scale,”
Readers may not be aware but a battalion of this Canadian regiment has soldiered with Australian forces previously. They were with 3RAR at the Battle of Kapyong and conducted themselves with such distinction as to be awarded the Presidential Unit Citation along with our own guys. On that occassion, whilst stopping a Chinese division in their tracks, they were well aware of being in an operation of some scale. After you read the Afghanistan report you might like to read some history about the Battle of Kapyong, both from the Canadian and Australian perspective
Defence, War on Terror
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