NEVER FORGET

America is Not at War

America is not at war. America has gone to the mall. America is at the football game. When the evenings news broadcasts switch to coverage of the day's events in Iraq, Americans switch to MTV. I am laying 8-to-3 odds that if I walked out on the street right now and asked the first passerby how many troops the U.S. had in Iraq, that person could not answer correctly. I'd lay even longer odds that if I showed the next passerby a map of the middle east, they would have a hard time identifying Iraq.

America, frankly, is bored with the Global War on Terror. They do not know that there are U.S. special forces working in the Horn of Africa and the Phillipines, because they do not care. The war is boring to Americans because the war does not affect them. It annoys them to have to pay attention to it. They do not care about the war because so few of them understand the stakes.

This week, General David Petraeus, Commanding General, Multinational Forces - Iraq, provides both open and closed door testimony to Congress. His civilian counterpart is Ryan Crocker, Ambassador to Iraq. He will also testify before Congress. Petraeus will provide information on the progress of new counterinsurgency tactics and operations made possible by the surge in troop levels. Crocker will provide his opinions on the political reconciliation process that the surge was supposed to provide time and space for. Some Americans know who Petraeus is. Precious few know who Crocker is. Despite the fact that their time on Capitol Hill this week will be both historic and crucial to the national decision on whether the U.S. maintains combat effectiveness in Iraq, few Americans will even bother to watch.

Anti-war factions on the left are fond of pointing out the cost of conducting military operations in Iraq. They point to the $880,000 million and tsk-tsk. What most Americans don't realize is that the U.S. economy produced nearly $14,000,000,000,000. That is not a typo. That is Fourteen TRILLION dollars. This economy leaks more in a month than the war in Iraq costs in a year. Anti-war factions are also fond of waving the bloody shirts of the nearly 4,000 troops lost in Iraq (not all of which are combat-related). The full time, active duty Armed Forces of the United States has abour 1.4 million men and women. There are roughly another million or so in reserve capacity, for a total of well over two million. While every death is a tragic loss of a brave soldier, the fact remains that casualty rates are extremely low in this conflict. These figures represent the lowest casualty rates ever in a prolonged armed conflict. The average monthly loss of about 70 represents a casualty rate of 0.04% to 0.06% (depending on how you calculate the average troop strength). Express that properly, please: About five one-hundredths of a percent.

That the war costs us so little in the blood and treasure of America, and that it is being conducted in another hemisphere, is part of the reason why America is bored with the war. Why should they care? Of the 300 million people living in this country, only 170,000 are serving. That's only 170,000 brave families who pray for the safe return of their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. Why should they care? The "war tax," which represents the cost of the war vis-a-vis the economic output of America, stands at a infinitesimally small 0.0014%. That's not a typo, either. One-point-four one-thousandths of one percent. Or, for every $100,000 produced by Americans, they fork over $1.40. Ouch, huh?

Another part of the reason for their boredom is that Americans are safe. Since President Bush began combat operations in the wake of 9/11, not one American has died from a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. In the days following that tragic event, Americans were convinced that other attacks were a matter of when and where, not if. Not any more. They're safe because we are fighting those who attacked us on their soil, not ours. Instead of Americans dying by the thousands, terrorists are dying by the tens of thousands. In the six years since 9/11 the daily routine of dozens of terrorists being killed or captured has become so droll to Americans that it goes virtually unnoticed.

America is not at war. America is at the beach. At the lake. At the mall. At the football game. God forbid that we falter and fail to fully prosecute this war. In Vietnam, when we left the enemy stayed put. If we leave Iraq before our job is done, we can be certain that the Islamic radicals--who had been attacking us relentlessly since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993--will not stay in the Middle East. They will follow us. A lot of them are already here, legally. A lot more will come. And then, America will wake up and realize that we have been at war for a long time.

Religion of Peace Reigns in Gaza

FOXNews.com:

JEBALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip — Hamas security forces armed with rifles and clubs beat Fatah supporters trying to hold street prayers to protest the Islamic group's rule in Gaza, witnesses said. Hamas men also assaulted at least seven Palestinian journalists and detained five.

An explosive device thrown into the middle of one protest rally in southern Gaza injured four people.

The prayer protest was the latest episode in friction between the groups since Hamas' bloody seizure of power in Gaza in June. This week Hamas banned all public prayers after Fatah supporters began holding worship sessions that quickly escalated into raucous protests against Hamas rule.

In the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jebaliya, dozens of Hamas security men in uniform and civilian clothes were stationed in the streets to head off any attempt by Fatah supporters to gather. They fired in the air to keep Fatah supporters away, beat several people and detained one man, witnesses said.

Rescue workers said two people were brought to the hospital, one wounded by gunfire and another who had been beaten.

Across Gaza, seven journalists covering the clashes were beaten and two of them were later detained, witnesses and reporters said. Two Associated Press staffers and another news photographer were also briefly detained by Hamas men.


In Jebaliya, a security officer told reporters, "If a single shot is on TV, you know what will happen." He then drew his finger across his throat. At one point a Hamas security man tried to take a photographer's camera.

"I identified myself as a journalist and showed him my card, my journalist card, I told him, 'If you want the tape take the tape, I don't care,' but they kept on beating me and took the camera," Muhammad Abu Sido, a cameraman for a Palestinian news service, told AP Television News.

Similar incidents of harassment against journalists took place during previous weeks' Fatah protests.

Taher Nunu, a Hamas government spokesman in charge of coordinating media coverage, said the reports of harassment of journalists "were individual cases and won't be repeated," and that he was working to free the detained reporters.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appealed for calm from the West Bank, where he and his Western-backed government have ruled since Hamas took over Gaza.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, about 750 Fatah supporters gathered with Abbas for prayers to demonstrate solidarity with Fatah in Gaza. Thousand of Palestinians gathered at similar prayer rallies elsewhere in the West Bank.

Former Ambassador Spins HLF

Counterterrorism Blog and IPT's Coverage continues.

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DALLAS--A former U.S. diplomat spoke in glowing terms Tuesday about the Palestinian charities supported by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Edward Abington, a former counsel general at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, was the first defense witness in the terror-support trial of the Richardson Tex.-based foundation and five of its former officers.

Prosecutors spent the past six weeks detailing links between the Palestinian charities, known as zakat committees, and HAMAS, a designated foreign terrorist organization. While much of the money went to humanitarian relief, anything that went to benefit HAMAS violated U.S. law, the government contends.

Jurors heard a much different account from Abington...

For full blog click here to visit the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

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If the name Edward Abington rings a bell, it's because he was Yasser Arafat's mouthpiece in Washington, DC. Ed Abington was a paid lobbyist for the PLO.

Additional coverage from NY Sun here.

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UPDATE:  Prosecution moves in opposition to the amicus brief filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Website Hosted in Minnesota: How to Join Al Qaeda

MEMRI:

Although the site appears to be inactive, one still has to wonder exactly how many US Webhosting companies are allowing this shit to go on. These people have sworn themselves to be our blood enemies and will not stop their global campaign against civilization.

The following are excerpts from the site:

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"You feel that you want to carry a weapon, fight, and kill the occupiers, and that it is our duty to call for jihad as much as to call for prayer... All that is required is a firm personal decision to fulfill this obligation, and participation in jihad and the resistance...

"Do you really have to meet Osama bin Laden in person in order to become a jihad fighter? Do you have to be recognized by Al-Qaeda as one of its members to become a jihad fighter? If Al-Qaeda commanders should be killed, would the jihad be eliminated? What would you do if Al-Qaeda did not exist today? How is Osama bin Laden different from you? - [yet] he managed to establish the world jihad organization. Who provided training to Osama bin Laden and Abdallah 'Azzam when they went to Afghanistan to become the first Arab jihad fighters?

"The answers to these questions are the following: I don't have to meet Osama bin Laden to become a jihad fighter. Moreover, there is no need to meet even one jihad fighter to become one. Neither do I need recognition from Al-Qaeda...

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Pirate Attacks Increase Worldwide. Arrr.

The Tank on National Review Online:

Spike in Pirate Attacks Worldwide

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At least five seaborne pirate attacks — one off Guinea, one off Somalia, three off Indonesia — have been reported to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) over the past two weeks. Last month, IMB reported a spike in piracy worldwide. Weekly Piracy Report here. Piracy Map here.

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The links in the post above are a valuable resource. The live IMB map is particularly cool.

Before you yawn and utter a "so what," consider that on the live IMB Piracy Map, the density of the attacks in the Indian and west Pacific coincide with the areas of the globe that have seen the most intense Al Qaeda activity.

Several intelligence reports identify piracy and seaborne terrorism as a serious threat to global political and economic security. Tremendous amounts of the global oil supply are transported through key straits in the region, the disruption of which would send shockwaves across the globe.

Remember how easy it was for Al Qaeda to nearly sink the USS Cole? While US Navy vessels are presumably much more difficult to approach now, the same can not be said about the massive fleet of tankers, lighters, freighters and other key parts of the merchant fleet.

Weapons, Weapons, our Brothers

Counterterrorism Blog's continuing coverage of the Holy Land Foundation's trial in Dallas, Texas.

One document, seized from the home of unindicted co-conspirator Ismail Elbarrase was dated August 1992 and handwritten in Arabic. The missive came from the Islamic Relief Committee, a recipient of HLF funds and described by the U.S. government as “part of the HAMAS social infrastructure in Israel and the Palestinian territories.” The document discussed, among other things, meetings that took place in June and July of that year; the suggestion of a consultative committee and “Activities of the Intifada:”

You do not know how happy people become when they watch those Mujahideen and how proud they feel when they parade in their uniforms and weapons and the extent of their honor when they carry out their Jihadist operations against the Jews and their tentacles. It is a feeling that no taste or enjoy its flavor except the ones who live it. Jihad in Palestine is different from any Jihad; the meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any Jihad on earth. This is the meaning that I came out with from there…about your brothers over there in our beloved Strip. They live now in permanent alert and cry out to you with their loudest voice: ‘Be with us and live with us. Do not rest, and do not twinkle until you care about us and provide us with what helps us of funds and weapons. Weapons, weapons, our brothers.’

Muslims resent FBI's release of ferry passenger photos

Jihad Watch:

Seattle Muslims in a Full Court Victimization Press: "We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were." The FBI agents shouldn't apologize for doing their jobs and trying to protect people. Gomez is right: "people in those communities have to get over this sensitivity toward feeling victimized." And instead of resenting anti-terror efforts, some cooperation with them would be most welcome.

Amen. I would also add that the FBI does not work for the Muslim community. Its mission is to serve the entire United States of America, and protect the greater good even if a small minority is made uncomfortable because someone shines a light on people who may look like them. I frankly don't care how they feel, and neither should you.

If it upsets them so much, maybe they should drop a dime on the ferry spies.

By the way, if you've seen these two men, please contact your local FBI office.

From the WTF File: Missing Uranium?!?

From FOXNews.com comes this item. Should I be surprised?

BEIJING — Authorities said that 17 pounds of weapons-grade uranium disappeared and that a verdict in the trial of four men accused of trying to sell the radioactive material will be delayed until it is found, state media reported Friday.

The report was the first public word that uranium was missing.

The defendants said they did not know where the uranium was because it had been moved around so much between potential buyers, the China Daily newspaper reported.

The uranium was typesU-235 and U-238, both of which can be used to make nuclear weapons. Prolonged exposure to the radioactive material can cause cancer.

Defendant Zhang Sangang said he met a uranium mine owner in April 2005 and offered to be a middleman. The owner said he wanted $26,400 per kilogram, and that Zhang could keep the difference if he found someone willing to pay a higher price, the report said.

The three other defendants joined Zhang in his plan, and one of them met a businessman in the city of Guangzhou who said he knew someone willing to pay $210,000 for a kilogram of the uranium, the newspaper said, citing testimony in Guangzhou's Tianhe District Court.

Uranium is about 1.7 times the density of lead. We are talking about an amount of fissile material small enough to fit in a suitcase. Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, contained roughly eight times the amount lost in China. However, Little Boy used the "gun method" of intitiating the chain reaction, a very inefficient conversion of mass to energy.

Seventeen pounds, or about eight Kg, is enough to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Fearing the Law They Face

Counterterrorism Blog's continuing coverage of the Holy Land Foundation's federal trial in Texas. HLF and several of its top officials are on trial for giving material support to Hamas.

The Council of American Islamic Relations has been named as one of the legions of "unindicted co-conspirators" by the Dept. of Justice.

CTB has been providing regular coverage of the landmark trial.

Fitzgerald: Work to educate Infidels

Jihad Watch: Fitzgerald: Work to educate Infidels

"I believe the only way is to expose the Muslims to different cultures, different thoughts, different belief systems," said Dr Sultan, who is completing her first book, The Escaped Prisoner: When Allah is a Monster. -- from this article

Here is one of those details: those who are in a position to do so must work first to educate Infidels, so that a sufficient number of them in positions of power clearly understand the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam. They must also be brought to understand why it is that efforts at appeasement and "integration" of Muslims into societies whose basic principles are flatly contradicted by Islam will fail.

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I could not agree more. The west lives in a state of complete ignorance of Islam. In many cases, the ignorance is rivaled only by it stubbornness. It is up to western civilization to defend itself, and a successful defense against religious barbarism can only be mounted if we know who and what we are up against.

One thing the JihadWatch post does not touch on (but should have, IMO) is that ordinary Muslims are victims of zealotry and hatred. All of the Infidel suffering at the hands of Islamic violence notwithstanding, it must be accepted that Muslims have suffered even more. Most Muslims live in a state of abject poverty, and it's because of Islamic fundamentalism. Most Muslims live under repressive, Islamist regimes. Most Muslims live in fear of their Imams and governments because in Islam, religion and government are one and the same.

Everyone owes to to themselves to at least understand that every Muslim is called to Jihad. Every single one of them.

Michael J. Totten: How to Spy in Iraq

Michael J. Totten: How to Spy in Iraq

This was typical of the Arab world, but also a bit odd. They think he’s a spy? What did they think we were doing there in their house? This was an intelligence gathering operation. It was, more or less, spying. The only difference is that the soldiers were up front about it, even though (and this is not contradictory) no one said anything about intelligence gathering yet. Nobody had to. Everyone knew what was up. The United States military has better things to do in Iraq than socialize just for the sake of socializing.

Read the full post here.

UPDATE: Foxnews.com has picked up Totten's story in its Iraq Journal. That segment has also featured Michael Yon. Give some props to Foxnews, y'all. They claim an "exclusive," and for MSM, their claim is accurate. You don't think you'd see this on the Dhimmi News Network, do ya?

Counterterrorism Blog: An Unexpected Guest

Counterterrorism Blog: An Unexpected Guest

An Unexpected Guest
By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

A visitor stopped by the Gaza office of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) in December 1999. It was Dallas Morning News reporter Steve McGonigle, who was reporting about alleged links between the Richardson, Tex.-based charity and Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government four years earlier.

McGonigle testified about that trip on Monday in the material support trial of the HLF and five of its officials. HLF officials did not know he was coming to Gaza, McGonigle said, and telephone calls between HLF officials in Gaza and Texas that prosecutors played seem to confirm that. McGonigle didn’t realize it, but his unannounced visit created a bit of a stir.

McGonigle wanted to meet families helped by HLF charities. The men on the phone calls, including HLF Chief Executive Shukri Abu Bakr, agreed not to take him to families of prisoners or martyrs.

McGonigle had already interviewed two Hamas founders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Mahmud al-Zahar, who told McGonigle they knew nothing about HLF. “I was skeptical of what [Yassin] was telling me,” he testified.

Earlier, an outburst from defendant Ghassan Elashi triggered a warning from U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish. Elashi began yelling loudly just after the court recessed for a morning break.

Read the full post here.

Pay close attention to this trial.

MNF-Iraq - Coalition forces kill three, detain others in raids on al-Qaeda in Iraq

Multi-National Force - Iraq - Coalition forces kill three, detain others in raids on al-Qaeda in Iraq


BAGHDAD — Coalition forces here over the past two days killed three terrorists and detained 28 suspects while putting pressure on terrorists facilitating the movement of al-Qaeda senior leaders.

South of Bayji, local Iraqis alerted ground forces to several suspected terrorists tied to the individual targeted in a Coalition operation. The ground forces captured the targeted individual and detained five more suspects believed to work for a local al-Qaeda leader. Coalition forces also found a cache of weapons and military-style assault vests with the suspects.

"We're on the offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq and the foreign terrorists that help them," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman. "We will continue to hunt down terrorist leaders and those who take part in the planning and execution of their vicious attacks against innocent Iraqis."

In a pre-dawn raid north of Baghdad, Coalition forces captured a weapons distributor and “special groups” leader responsible for the storage and distribution of Iranian weapons. The suspected weapons facilitator has traveled to and from Iran numerous times and is responsible for smuggling and distributing explosively-formed penetrators to groups operating throughout the Baghdad area, U.S. officials said. He is also believed to have had ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

"Coalition troops continue to kill and capture terrorists who bring Iranian weapons, especially EFPs, into Iraq," said Garver. "We will continue to pursue these networks that provide these weapons to those who intend to kill Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces and innocent Iraqis."

OneWorld: IVAW to Promote Mutiny

OneWorld: IVAW to Promote Mutiny

One of the great luxuries we have in the United States is the liberty to disagree with our government and speak openly about our grievances.   Promoting mutiny is not within the moral or ethical boundaries of that liberty, regardless of how strongly you feel about a particular policy or government activity with which you disagree.

If we are to survive as a free society, we must adhere to the rule of law. Mutiny is the complete rejection of the rule of law and the defiance of lawful authority.

I am thankful for the service of the members of IVAW. I am ashamed that former servicemen and women would encourage such behavior.

This is moonbattiness at its ugliest.

Warning to West on 'evil of Islam' | The Australian

Warning to West on 'evil of Islam' | The Australian

THE West was still underestimating the evil of Islam, an influential Muslim thinker has warned, insisting that Australia and the US have been duped into believing there is a difference between the religion's moderate and radical interpretations.

On a two-week "under the radar" visit to Australia, Syrian-born Wafa Sultan secretly met both sides of federal politics and Jewish community leaders, warning them that all Muslims needed to be closely monitored in the West.

In an interview with The Australian, Dr Sultan -- who shot to recognition last year following an interview on al-Jazeera television in which she attacked Islam and the prophet Mohammed -- said Muslims were "brainwashed" from an early age to believe Western values were evil and that the world would one day come under the control of Sharia law.

The US-based psychiatrist -- who has two fatwas (religious rulings) issued against her to be killed -- warned that Muslims would continue to exploit freedom of speech in the West to spread their "hate" and attack their adopted countries, until the Western mind grasped the magnitude of the Islamic threat.

"You're fighting someone who is willing to die," Dr Sultan told The Australian in an Arabic and English interview. "So you have to understand this mentality and find ways to face it. (As a Muslim) your mission on this earth is to fight for Islam and to kill or to be killed. You're here for only a short life and once you kill a kafir, or a non-believer, soon you're going to be united with your God."

Dr Sultan, who was brought to Australia by a group called Multi-Net comprised of Jews and Christians, met senior politicians, including Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Labor deputy leader Julia Gillard.

Private security was hired for Dr Sultan, who left Australia yesterday, and state police authorities were also made aware of her movements in the country.

The organisers of her visit asked the media to not publish anything about her stay until she had left the country because of security-related concerns. Dr Sultan said Islam was a "political ideology" that was wrongly perceived to have a moderate and hardline following.

"That's why the West has to monitor the majority of Muslims because you don't know when they're ready to be activated. Because they share the same basic belief, that's the problem," said the 50-year-old, who was last year featured in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Dr Sultan, who was raised on Alawite Islamic beliefs before she renounced her religion, began to question Islam after she witnessed her university teacher get gunned down by Muslim hardliners in Syria in 1979.

The mother of three, who migrated to the US in 1989, said the West needed to hold Muslims and their leaders more accountable for the atrocities performed in the name of Islam if they wanted to win the war on terror.

But while she considered the prophet Mohammed "evil" and said the Koran needed to be destroyed because it advocated violence against non-believers, Dr Sultan struggled to articulate her vision for Muslims, whom she said she was trying to liberate from the shackles of their beliefs.

"I believe the only way is to expose the Muslims to different cultures, different thoughts, different belief systems," said Dr Sultan, who is completing her first book, The Escaped Prisoner: When Allah is a Monster.

"Muslims have been hostages of their own belief systems for 1400 years. There is no way we can keep the Koran."

Pakistan frees Alleged Al-Qaeda Computer Expert

International Herald Tribune

Five gets you eight he holds a press conference and accuses the CIA of torturing him.

Naeem Noor Khan provided intel that led authorities to a Tanzanian who was believed to be one of the conspirators involved in the 1998 African Embassy Bombings. Khan was accused of providing computer and technical support to Al Qaeda, sending encoded emails to operatives believed to be planning attacks in the United States, Britain and Africa.

Twelve days after his arrest, Pakistani authorities pounced in the city of Gujrat on Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted for a alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

PEJ Study: Media Coverage of Iraq Drops Off

Another major change in the period from April through June of 2007 was that press coverage of the war in Iraq declined markedly. Together the three major storylines of the war—the policy debate, events on the ground, and the impact on the U.S. homefront—filled 15% of the total newshole in the quarter, a drop of roughly a third from the first three months of the year, when it filled 22%.

That decrease resulted largely from a decline in coverage of the Washington-based policy debate, which fell 42% from the first to second quarter, once the Democrats failed to impose timetables in legislation funding of the war.

Campaign for President Takes Center Stage in Coverage: Quarterly Report on the News | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)

Well, isn't that something. Since we didn't win the debate, we are taking our ball and going home. The Global War on Terror is the defining foreign policy event of our time. The 2008 Presidential Election is more than 14 months away, and our guys are in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Phillipines and the Horn of Africa, combatting terrorism. But since liberals lost the debate over Iraq policy, the media has decided to shift its focus to the Presidential Election, which is what the whole debate over Iraq was all about, anyway--getting a Democrat in the White House.

Do the mass media even know how they are being used by both the Jihadists and their allies in Washington? No one is that dense on purpose, are they?

The War as We Saw It - New York Times Op/Ed

The War as We Saw It - New York Times Op/Ed

By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Published: August 19, 2007

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

Read the full item.

Blackfive's GRIM takes on the task of addressing the main thrust of the soldiers' views, and does it like a brother is supposed to: Reasonable gentlemen can disagree.

My view is that rightly see that political reform cannot come before peace, but seem to miss how new Army Doctrine (Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency) is being applied in Iraq. While I hold these gentlemen in the highest regard for their service, I get a very strong sense that they either have not fully digested General Petraeus' approach to this conflict, or that they disagree with it.

It is worth noting that not everyone in the Army thinks it should be engaged in conducting a major COIN. At least not with combat brigades lacking the extensive training necessary to conduct the operation as described in Army doctrine.

I would contrast the viewpoints of these soldiers with that of LTC Fred Johnson, who Michael Yon has interviewed during his embed in Iraq. Johnson seems to embody the type of soldier Petraeus had in mind as FM 3-24 took shape. The gentlemen writing in the New York Times don't seem to be.

FOXNews.com: Hijacker Received Al Qaeda Training

FOXNews.com: Hijacker Received Al Qaeda Training

ANKARA, Turkey — One of the hijackers of a Turkish plane received training at an Al Qaeda camp and wanted to be flown to Iran so he could eventually join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported Monday, citing police.

Authorities didn't say at which Al Qaeda camp 33-year-old hijacker Mommen Abdul Aziz Talikh, an Egyptian of Palestinian origin, received training.

Police said Talikh, along with Mehmet Resat Ozlu of Turkey, wielded a fake bomb and claimed Al Qaeda ties when hijacking the plane early Saturday after it took off from northern Cyprus. The pair held passengers and crew hostage for more than four hours before surrendering peacefully at the Turkish Mediterranean resort Antalya, where the plane had been diverted after taking off.

Dozens of Turks have joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq, police have said. Suicide bombers linked to Al Qaea hit Istanbul in 2003, killing 58 people in attacks that targeted two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank. In February, a court sentenced seven people to life in prison for the bombings.

The two hijackers had met in northern Cyprus a year ago and were living together at the same house for a month, police said. Ozlu was registered at the literature department of a university in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in northern Cyprus, Anatolia said.