Love To The Kurds

You've gotta love the Kurds:

Erbil, Kurdistan (VOI) -Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's son Qubad Talabani said having U.S. forces in Iraq would "spare the Kurdish people any forms of injustice," stressing that setting up a U.S. base in Iraq's Kurdistan region "is in favor of both the United States Kurdistan."
"We have to explain to our American friends that their interests with the Kurds are not just political. They are also economic and military," Qubad Talabani, the representative of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region's government in the United States, said in a press conference in Erbil, capital of Kurdistan, on Friday.

Several Kurdish officials had expressed readiness to accept a U.S. military base in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region, in the northern part of the country, which is nearly independent from the Iraqi state since the end of the 2nd Gulf War in 1991.

On the reasons for the Kurds' fears about their future in Iraq despite the presence of a constitution and a government where the Kurds are active, Talabani said "history has left its imprint in our memories. We have to have fears about the emergence of a dictator, whether in Iraq or in a neighboring country."

Transcript of The Times interview General Petraeus

What about other military operations?

"This is not just about Diyala province. There are operations going on all around Baghdad (in the south, west, north and east). This is part of an offensive all around Baghdad and some areas inside Baghdad. It is what we call the Baghdad belt. This is using the five brigades and a combat aviation brigade and Marine Expeditionary Unit. This is a combined effort."

Will this be enough to restore security?

“You are never going to eliminate sensational attacks in Baghdad. That cannot be your metric of success. What we have to do is reduce their number and their impact. We had done quite well until the attack yesterday that killed a number of innocent civilians.”

Is it not too late to halt the violence?

“There is a period of omnipotence. There was a period in the beginning when there was a ‘golden hour’. Inevitably, it does not matter how much you were viewed as a liberator, over time you will be seen as an occupier. The interesting dynamic here is that we have been here long enough to become liberators again for certain sectors of the population, those that are affected by extremism.”

Read the whole interview.

“If anyone can pick up the baton and run with it, it is David Petraeus,” said retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff.

Godspeed

Thoughts flow on the eve of a great battle. By the time these words are released, we will be in combat. Few ears have heard even rumors of this battle, and fewer still are the eyes that will see its full scope. Even now—the battle has already begun for some—practically no news about it is flowing home. I’ve known of the secret plans for about a month, but have remained silent.

Click<~

Happy Father's Day

Surge and Training Update

One of Ramadi's leading sheikhs told me: "A rifle pointed at an American soldier is a rifle pointed at an Iraqi."

-Joe Lieberman

The Least of These

The following was,in part, eloquently written on a message board by Voice of Reason.

Despite the efforts of lots of people (mostly on the "pro-choice" side) to
complicated it, abortion is a very, very simple issue. The only thing that
matters is whether the fetus is a person -- whether it has a right to life. If
it does, it doesn't matter whether the mother wants to make a "choice"; you
don't get to choose to kill another person. It doesn't matter that carrying a
pregnancy to term is inconvenient and expensive; you don't get to kill your
children because they're inconvenient and expensive. The sole exception might be
when a significant risk is posed to the mother's life, but this is so rare it
can safely be ignored for now.

The "pro-choicers" try to moderate their position in an effort to appear
more reasonable. They describe abortion as an agonizing, gut-wrenching decision,
not to be entered into lightly. They say that abortion should be "safe, legal,
and rare." They think this makes them look more reasonable. It does not. It
makes them look less logical, less rational. Because the only reason abortion
should be legal is if the fetus is not a person and doesn't have a right to
life. There's no halfway: a given entity either has a right to life or it
doesn't. Abortion is either the moral equivalent of murder... or the moral
equivalent of a haircut, of the pruning of cells which do not have any rights to
claim as their own. The pro-choicers deny that abortion is the moral equivalent
of murder, so the only alternative (for them) is the latter. Nobody talks about
the decision to get a haircut as agonizing and gut-wrenching, nobody says
haircuts should be rare. By claiming that abortion is not like a haircut, the
pro-choicers concede that the fetus does have a right to life.

But if it doesn't, there's no reason not to laugh about an abortion any
more than there's a reason not to laugh about a haircut.

Me personally, I do not believe we have enough information to decide
whether the fetus is, in fact, a person. We don't know enough about personhood,
how it arises, when it begins, to say for sure. But given that the infringement
of the right to live is such a terrible, horrible infraction (murder remains the
most heinous of crimes), I believe that we owe it to the fetus and to ourselves
to err on the side of caution and give the benefit of the doubt. I believe
abortion should not be permitted until and unless it can be proven, certainly by
clear and convincing evidence and perhaps beyond a resonable doubt, that the
fetus is not a person.

Well put.

GO HARPER!

Stephen Harper is a man after my own heart.

"I've got to say that meeting celebrities isn't kind of my shtick, that was the shtick of the previous guy," said Harper in a dig at his Liberal predecessor Paul Martin, who met Bono regularly.

"I hope we do it at some point but my principle focus in public policies is not kind of to meet celebrities," added the prime minister, a Conservative.

Activists say Canada is trying to block a deal to ensure that western nations live up to promises to boost aid to Africa.

For the record, though, Harper said he liked the music of Bono's band U2.

I like U2's music too, but Bono has become known as somewhat a beggar of late. Maybe if he'd quit being such a hypocrite, hiding his money from the taxman?

Operation: Call Home

Love him or hate him, Bill O'Reilly has a promotion going on right now that you can participate in.

Take The O'Quiz and for each person who does, Bill will send an AT&T pre-paid calling card to the troops in Iraq through Operation Shoebox.

Lt. Col. Ahmed Abdullah

I'm sure the MSM was going to get around to reporting this:

Friday, 01 June 2007
By Sgt. Mike Pryor
Multi-National Division – Baghdad Public Affairs


BAGHDAD — Capt. James Peay was starting to feel like a third wheel.

Peay, a battery commander with the 82nd Airborne Division from Nashville, Tenn., was accompanying the Iraqi police chief, Lt. Col. Ahmed Abdullah, on a combined engagement patrol through the east Baghdad neighborhood of Suleikh.

Whenever they stopped to speak with people on the street, Ahmed did most of the talking. Peay stood off to the side, listening as his interpreter translated. His comments were mostly limited to hellos, goodbyes, and thank yous.

This was Ahmed’s show, and Peay was more than happy to give him the spotlight. It’s not that he is shy, Peay said later, it’s that, ultimately, stability in Iraq depends on the Iraqi security forces – and people like Lt. Col. Ahmed – taking the lead.

Successfully negotiating that difficult transition has become one of the major focuses of the entire war effort, especially since the kick-off of the new security plan for Baghdad, which has placed thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad communities, often living together in the same compounds.

Peay commands one of those new shared bases – the Al Suleikh Joint Security Station (JSS). For more than three months, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division have been living and working side-by-side with the Iraqi police and Iraqi army at the JSS to coordinate security efforts in Suleikh.

The paratroopers from Battery A, 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, man the JSS 24 hours a day. They have a cramped section of the building to themselves, stacked high with boxes of canned food, water and other supplies. The police stay on the other side of the same building, and the Iraqi soldiers stay in another part of the complex. At least once a day, liaisons from the three units meet in the conference room to discuss operations.

When the JSS was first established, the area was so dangerous that the police rarely left the station. Some days, they went out only to pick up one of the dead bodies regularly dumped in the neighborhood.

Three months later, things have changed. The U.S. presence helped bring the level of violence down significantly. At the same time, it emboldened the ISF to raise their profile in the area – particularly the police.

“They know we’re here to support them, but at the same time, they’re getting to a point where they know security as a whole is in their hands,” said 2nd Lt. Jesse Bowman, an alpha battery platoon leader from Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

The difficult part, now, will be to maintain the security while the U.S. forces step back and the ISF step up. Peay’s patrol with Ahmed, May 18, his first as the new battery commander, gave an encouraging glimpse of the future.

Before the patrol started, platoon sergeant Sgt. 1st Class Michael Nichols, of Lewisburg, W.Va., went over tactics and procedures with the Iraqis. When he was satisfied everyone was on the same page, the patrol moved out.

With a phalanx of police and paratroopers around them, Peay and Ahmed spent several hours walking a loop of the neighborhood around the JSS. They talked to people in their houses, outside washing their cars, on their way to work or anywhere else they found them. Almost everyone complained about sewage or electricity, which, in the big scheme of things, Peay found promising.

“If they’re complaining about the power, security must be pretty good,” he said.

Sometimes people came right out of their gates to talk with Ahmed in the middle of the street, an act that newly-arrived platoon leader 1st Lt. Larry Rubal, from Old Forge, Pa., found incredible. At his old unit, people were afraid to be seen talking to U.S. or Iraqi security forces.

“I was very surprised by how willing people here were to come out and talk to us in the middle of the road,” he said. “They were just very open.”

Peay rarely had to ask a question. Ahmed was running the show. At one point Rubal asked his interpreter to make sure a man they were talking to received a pamphlet with the number of a crime tip hot line. The man produced one from his pocket. Ahmed had already given it to him.

“You’re too quick,” Rubal said to Ahmed, laughing. Ahmed shrugged.

“He really took the lead and got out there,” Peay said afterward.

Peay said he’d like to build on the day’s success by conducting more joint patrols and joint operations. And whenever possible, he’ll continue to keep the United States in the background.

How 'bout that. An area of Baghdad where something is working.. Who knew?

Louis Freeh Endorses Rudy

Former Clinton FBI Director Louis Freeh endorses Rudy Giuliani for president. Mayor Giuliani discusses the revolutionary CompStat program.



It's about 28 minutes.

Another Project Complete

It's really a shame that pretty much the only things happening in Iraq are death and destruction, which is the impression you get if you only watch the evening news or don't bother to look online a bit. For example:

MOSUL — The US Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region North district is turning
water faucets on in Mosul homes with the recent completion of five water pump
station projects in that city.

Mosul is one of Iraq’s largest cities with more than1.5 million residents.
Water pump stations are an important part of any city’s infrastructure – they
are what keep water moving between a water source, water treatment facilities
and consumers.

Beyond alleviating water shortages, the newly refurbished pump stations will
combat illnesses associated with drinking unclean water – a danger to the very
young and very old.

“It’s a joy to see the effects on the community and the security situation in
an area when the people realize that their lives will be positively impacted as
a result of one of our infrastructure reconstruction projects,” said Maj.
Jennifer Munro, Gulf Region North’s Deputy Mosul Area Engineer.

A welcome secondary effect of infrastructure reconstruction such as this is
the blow it delivers to the insurgency. Clean water makes life easier for the
Iraqis who are connected to the refurbished water pump stations in Mosul – and
when life is easier joining the insurgency is less enticing.

“In nearly every community supported by a water sector reconstruction project
the security situation has improved upon completion of the project,” said
Munro.

The US Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region North district was tasked with
1,500 projects in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, at a cost of nearly 2.6
billion dollars. GRN has completed more than 1,100 those projects.

Not only do we have brave men on patrol, providing security and hunting down scumbags in Iraq, we also have brave men and women providing life changing services. How cool is that.