Special Ops, Violence of Action

Petraeous' Long History of Bribing Muslim Killers

2010-10-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

Petraeous Has Long History of Bribing Muslim Killers to Pretend Cooperation

Knee-Jerk Conservative Supporters of US Communist Generals Are Refusing to Admit the Truth. The Crimes of the New group of US Criminal Communist Generals That Afghanistan-Iraq Has spawned, Just Will Not Be Believed by Military Worshipping CONservatives!

For the past two decades, America’s incompetent and treasonous Pentagon Generals have used false media reports of “success” to cover up their stupid criminal behavior. They know that the US communist media can turn every defeat into victory and every lie into truth.

As of 2006-07, militarily incompetent but politically facile, U.S. Commanding Gen. David Petraeus was applying the "successful" Anbar bribery formula to other areas, including Shi'ite neighborhoods. "Anbar progress spreads to Diyala," blares a recent lead story in USA Today.
What's spreading, more accurately, is millions in dinars, and they're being used to buy the temporary loyalty of insurgents to give the appearance of "progress" in Iraq. Some 25 tribes in Diyala province now have men once branded "terrorists" on the U.S. payroll.
The neocons dismiss as apocryphal firsthand, on-the-ground reports of U.S. cash payments to tribal sheiks. They say Sunni sheiks switched sides because, as Bush clucked, "we're kicking ass." They also allegedly were "sick" of pushy al-Qaeda foreigners.
In fact, the reports of payments have been confirmed by Petraeus himself. He didn't acknowledge it in his own report to Congress. He let it slip out, ironically, in an "interview" with Fox News.
Only, Fox News anchor Brit Hume was too busy guiding Petraeus through his PowerPoint presentation of propaganda to notice. Let's go to the transcript:
PETRAEUS: The tribes and the sheiks decided to say no more to al-Qaeda. They were tired of the indiscriminate violence, tired of the Taliban-like ideology and other practices.
HUME: And they're Sunnis, right?
PETRAEUS: They are Sunni Arabs rising up against a largely Sunni Arab al-Qaeda Iraq. And, again, you can see just a plummeting [in violence]. From the height back in October, somewhere in there is where one of the key sheiks [now dead] stood up and said, "Would it be OK with you, would you support us, in fact, if we, instead of pointing our weapons at you, pointed them at al-Qaeda?" And we obviously supported that.
But then I will tell you: We have not armed tribes. Initially, the sheiks paid their men themselves. We eventually did help with that. But then we have tried to transition them to legitimate Iraqi security force institutions.
So, the general concedes that "we eventually did" bankroll the sheiks and their men, formerly known as "terrorists." A red-blooded journalist would have pounced on the news, but Hume didn't bother to follow up. Apparently he didn't want such messy details complicating the heroic Anbar success story he was helping sell.
Then in the same "exclusive" Fox interview, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who had accompanied Petraeus, revealed that the client government we set up in Baghdad has been paying millions in "compensation" to the tribal sheiks in Anbar.
"In the case of Anbar, just a few days ago, when I was out there," said ambassador Ryan Crocker, "central government representatives brought out a package to Ramadi, the capital city, an additional $70 million for their capital budget, a 70 percent increase, and $50 million for compensation for damages suffered in the struggle against al-Qaeda."
So there you have it. This is how Anbar became safe for presidential photo-ops. Dinar by dinar, greenback by greenback, the Bush administration has quietly been expanding the green zone.
Again, Hume didn't seize on the news from Crocker and moved right on to Iran and Syria, the next areas of propaganda.
Bush followed Petraeus with a press conference, in which he repeatedly praised "the success in Anbar" and the "blow" it delivered to al-Qaeda, which he made sure to mention no less than 12 times.
The local sheiks "pledged they would never let al-Qaeda return," the president said, and "they can count on the continued to support of the United States."
What he didn't say is that they'd signed contracts to cooperate with our operations in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars each, paid in bricks of dinars worth $40,000 each, so that they can eventually finance their own personal armies.
He also neglected to mention suspicions shared among U.S. commanders in Anbar that those who vowed never to let al-Qaeda return were aiding and abetting "al-Qaeda" all along. This explains the sudden drop in attacks more than anything. No wonder they were so confident of their pledges.
"They used to want to kill me," said Army Capt. Henry Moltz, who has passed out bricks of cash to Sunni tribal leaders. "Now they want to sign a contract with me."
"It's hard to get your head around," he added, "but it is working."
Sure, as long as we keep stuffing their pockets. But what happens when the protection money dries up?
How long before these Sunni fighters, who formerly resisted the American "crusaders," turn on us as a fifth column in the Iraqi police and army, where they'll be read in on intelligence concerning troop movements and gain access to secure areas?
This is the devil in the details of the success story we're being sold about the surge. The assertion that al-Qaeda is the main source of violence, the principal enemy, in Iraq is more sleight of hand.
According to former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman, so-called "al-Qaeda in Iraq" (as opposed to al-Qaeda central in Pakistan) was responsible for only 15 percent of this year's attacks there. He got the figure from a recent U.S. military background brief in Iraq. Even then, the military uses a loose definition.
But don't listen to me. Let Gen. Petraeus tell it in his own words. Here's another moment of unexpected candor from that Fox interview.
HUME: Is this, in an ultimate sense, turned out to be, more than anything else, a war with al-Qaeda?
PETRAEUS: Well, it is al-Qaeda and associated movements, I think, or affiliates, if you will.
In other words: No, Brit. The general went on to describe the larger battle with "insurgents" and "resistance fighters."
Where Petraeus was not candid was on the subject of Iranian interference in Iraq. Over and over, he suggested Tehran was fighting a proxy war in Iraq.
But if the general were really a straight shooter, as the Right claims (and not Bush's political poodle, as the Left charges), he also would have mentioned Saudi Arabia's support for the insurgency in Iraq. Every commander on the ground in Anbar province and other Sunni hotspots knows that most of the foreign fighters and suicide bombers attributed to al-Qaeda in Iraq are really young jihadists streaming across the border from Saudi Arabia. They also know that the bulk of money funding the insurgency is coming from the Kingdom, not Iran.
U.S. Central Command has just as much evidence, if not more, that our Saudi "allies" are fighting a proxy war in Iraq against us and the Shi'ites as it has on Iran.
Yet Petraeus failed to mention Saudis' role in either his interview with Fox or his report to Congress.
In fact, the U.S. military is currently in a bidding war over Sunni insurgents with the Saudis, who are raising millions at mosques and charities and sending it into Iraq by the bus and truck load. We're paying them to stop the jihad; the Saudis are paying them to wage it.
If there's any success in Iraq, we've bought it with good old-fashioned bribery. Add that to the $2 trillion tab annexing part of hell is expected to cost us in the final analysis.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, the real and proven terrorist threat, sits and laughs unpunished six years after ordering the murder of thousands of Americans.
Where's the surge to get him? Red-blooded journalists and true patriots want to know. Partisans like Hume, not so much.
In the middle of Petraeus' dog-and-pony show in Washington, America's Enemy No. 1 reared his ugly head again after three years of silence, issuing an ominous threat.
"We take revenge on the people of tyranny and aggression, and the blood of the Muslims will not be spilled with impunity," bin Laden threatened. "And the morrow is nigh for he who awaits."
Sounds like a go-ahead signal to sleeper cells for the next "blessed" attack. Yet all Hume or anyone in Washington could talk about was the phony surge in the false front of Iraq.

US Generals Traditionally Grovel Before Islamic Iman Thugs

2010-10-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

US Generals Traditionally Grovel Before Islamic Iman Thugs

A sick Example: U.S. General Apologizes for Desecration of Koran
Published: May 19, 2008
For the record, no Muslim has ever apologized for the thousands of annual desecrations of the Christian Bible or US Flag. However, pro-muslim, black supremacist, communist US generals are always apologizing to the enemy. They disgrace all who subscribe to their weakness. Groveling before the Muslims is only more proof of the weakness of their opposition. (I have desecrated numerous Korans. You got a problem with that? If so kiss my ass and bring it on!)
BAGHDAD — The commander of United States troops in Baghdad asked local leaders and tribal sheiks this weekend for their forgiveness after the discovery that a soldier had used a Koran for target practice at a shooting range.
Responding to an episode ripe with the potential to stoke unrest, the commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, held a meeting Saturday with Iraqi leaders.
“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness,” General Hammond said at the meeting, in remarks carried by CNN. “In the most humble manner, I look in your eyes today and I say, please forgive me and my soldiers.”
General Hammond also read a letter of apology from the soldier, who was not identified. “I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together,” the general read from the letter.
Another American officer kissed a Koran and gave it to the tribal leaders, according to news agency reports.
A statement Sunday from the American military called the desecration of the Koran, in Radwaniya, just west of Baghdad, “serious and deeply troubling” and said the soldier had been disciplined and sent out of Iraq. Iraqi police officers had found the Koran on May 11 perforated with bullet holes after American forces withdrew from the area.
Elsewhere in Iraq, the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, warned insurgents in the northern city of Mosul that they would become “targets” if they did not take advantage of an amnesty and weapons buyback offer made on Friday by the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
The Iraqi government is conducting an offensive against Sunni insurgents in Mosul.
The government also announced details of the weapons buyback offer.
It is offering $167 for a 60-millimeter mortar tube and $416 for a machine gun. In a reflection of the surfeit of guns in Iraq, payments for handguns and assault rifles were lower, ranging from $41 for a pistol to $120 for a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Iraqis are allowed to possess one assault rifle or pistol for self-defense.
In Baghdad, the Oil Ministry said that it had compiled a list of 35 foreign companies eligible for contracts to raise production at Iraqi oil fields, in a step toward meeting the government’s goal of pumping an additional 500,000 barrels per day by the end of the year.
After years of neglect, Iraq’s oil fields are decrepit and produce far less oil than they did at their peak, in 1979, when Saddam Hussein took power. The companies are bidding for contracts to make repairs and improve performance of existing fields.
Also on Sunday, Iraqi television, citing a government spokesman, reported that a court in Baghdad had sentenced to death the killer of the Chaldean Christian archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, 65, who was kidnapped Feb. 29 and found dead two weeks later.
Gunmen had sprayed his car with bullets, killed two guards and shoved him into the trunk of a car. Still, Archbishop Rahho managed to reach his cellphone and call church officials and implore them not to pay a ransom for his release, saying the money would only finance more violence.
The slaying elicited a statement of regret from the Vatican, condemning the senseless violence that has hit the Christian minority particularly hard. The Chaldeans are the largest Christian group in Iraq. The Chaldean Church is an Eastern Rite church that is part of the Roman Catholic Church but maintains its own customs and liturgy.

Confederate Snipers

2009-02-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

Confederate Snipers
One of the most ignored aspects of Civil war history is the complete story of Confederate Army Sniper (Sharpshooter) battalions. These units were one of the many creative combat innovations of the Confederacy which included armored ships, submarines, land mines, trench warfare, bushwhacking and a variety of long forgotten tactical innovations. Any who read the story of the Confederate defense of Petersburg will feel that it is very similar to World War I's horrific Battle of Verdun. The long distance raids of Confederate Cavalry leaders like General Nathan Bedford Forrest, were studied for decades by the Imperial Russian General Staff.Confederate Shapshooter Battalions were employed in new and innovative ways that were copied to a limited extent by Red Army and Waffen SS Sniper Companies in World War II. I have a translated Red Army manual which referred to all riflemen as snipers.Confederate Sharpshooter Battalions, made more lethal by the innovative tactics that they employed, piled up scores of Yankee corpses and certainly exceeded the kill-rate of various famous northern sharpshooter units. The war hobbyist, student of war, or professional soldier who lives for war in the same way that painted sports fans live for their favorite sports teams, will emerge in the near future as a group long overlooked by the world. In fact, there are students of war in every nation and not all of them are professional soldiers. Such people will find most interesting any research that they conduct regarding Confederate sharpshooters. No longer will history buffs be forced to read about long lines of infantry pouring bullets into each other. Now they can marvel at the shock and sturm tactics of America's own Confederate Sharpshooter battalions.

Canuckistan Discriminates Against Its Own Snipers

2009-02-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

Canuckistan Discriminates Against Its Own Snipers

Canada has become so Marxist politically correct that many experts now refer to it as Canuckistan, a sattelite of world Marxism. So it is and so be it.

An elite unit of snipers went from standouts to outcasts -- victims, many say, of a Canadian High Command witch hunt driven by jealousy, racism, classism and fearMICHAEL FRISCOLANTI May 15, 2006“Lying low beside the rifle, his stomach touching the ground, Cpl. Rob Furlong concentrated hard on his breathing. In, out. In, out. In, out. Deep, but not too deep. Slow, but not too slow. The tiniest twitch -- a heavy exhale, perhaps, or a breath held one second too long -- could jerk his weapon ever so slightly, turning a sure hit into a narrow miss. In the sniping world, where one shot should always equal one kill, steady breathing is just as crucial as steady aim.On that March afternoon in 2002, Cpl. Furlong squinted through the scope of his McMillan Tac-50, a sleek bolt-action rifle almost as long as he is. In his crosshairs were three men, each lugging weapons toward an al-Qaeda mortar nest high in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Master Cpl. Tim McMeekin, hunkered behind his fellow sniper, saw the same trio through the lens of his Vector, a binocular-like device that uses a laser to pinpoint targets thousands of metres away. Speaking quietly, both soldiers agreed on the obvious: take out the biggest threat first, in this case the man in the middle carrying the RPK machine gun. According to the Vector, he was exactly 2,430 m away -- nearly 2 1/2 kilometres. Continued BelowA Newfoundland boy with pale blue eyes and a chiselled frame, Furlong adjusted the elevation knob on his scope, the barrel of his gun pointing higher and higher with each turn. He knew the routine, had practised it a thousand times back at the base in Edmonton. The farther away the target, the higher the rifle should point. Wind blowing to the left? Aim slightly right. Most snipers will tell you it's not much different than a golfer and his caddie lining up a long putt. Calculation. Instinct. And a little bit of luck. "You can teach a certain amount of it," Furlong says. "But there is a large percentage that you must have naturally. A good shooter is born. You can't teach someone to be a good shot if they don't naturally have it."The 26-year-old stared through the scope, his left finger tickling the trigger. In, out. In, out. Behind him, McMeekin gazed through his Vector, reconfirming the precise distance one last time. "Stand by," Furlong said.The first shot missed. A second round missed too, but not by much. It pierced the man's backpack. "They had no fear," Furlong recalls of his target. "They didn't run. I guess they've just been engaged so many times." He immediately reloaded the chamber and lined up his rifle for a third try, checking to make sure his grip was flawless. Furlong knew exactly why that second shot missed; instead of following a perfectly straight line, he had squeezed the trigger a tiny smidgen to one side. Even a fraction of a millimetre can make a huge difference on the other end -- in this case, the difference between a man's knapsack and his heart."Stand by," Furlong said again. Another loud pop echoed through the valley, sending a .50-calibre shell -- rocket-shaped, almost as long as a beer bottle -- slicing through the Afghan sky. Four seconds later, it tore into the man's torso, ripping apart his insides.By that point, Rob Furlong, Tim McMeekin and three other Canadian sharpshooters -- Graham Ragsdale, Arron Perry and Dennis Eason -- had spent nearly a week in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan's Shahikot Valley, reaching out and touching the enemy from distances even they had never trained for. But that shot was something special. Rob Furlong had just killed another human being from 2,430 m, the rough equivalent of standing at Toronto's CN Tower and hitting a target near Bloor Street. It was -- and still is -- the longest-ever recorded kill by a sniper in combat, surpassing the mark of 2,250 m set by U.S. Marine Gunnery Sgt. Carlos Hathcock during the Vietnam War.It should have been a moment of pride for the Canadian army. Five of its most talented snipers -- men trained to kill without remorse, then turn around and kill again -- did exactly that. They destroyed al-Qaeda firing positions, saved American lives and tallied a body count unmatched by any Canadian soldier of their generation. U.S. commanders who served alongside the snipers nominated all five for the coveted Bronze Star medal. "Thank God the Canadians were there," is how one American soldier put it.Yet days later, their heroics on the mountain would be overshadowed by suspicion, including stunning allegations that one sniper, in a subsequent mission, sliced himself a souvenir from the battlefield: the finger of a dead Taliban fighter. Military police launched a criminal investigation, but uncovered nothing but denials. As the months wore on, there emerged so many conflicting accusations and supposed explanations that no charges were ever laid. Even Rob Furlong's record-breaking shot became lost in the confusion. In fact, until now, a different sniper has been widely -- and incorrectly -- credited with pulling the trigger on that long-distance kill.Today, more than four years later, three of the five decorated snipers who served in Afghanistan are no longer in the army, brushed aside by a military machine that seemed all too willing to watch them go. Persecuted instead of praised, they fell victim to what many still believe was a witch hunt driven by jealousy and political correctness. Arron Perry was pushed out the door. Furlong left on his own, so disillusioned that he could barely stomach the thought of putting on his uniform. Graham Ragsdale -- the leader of the unit -- suffered perhaps the worst fate. Stripped of his command and later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he has spent the ensuing years battling deep depression.How those snipers went from standouts to outcasts is now the focus of another investigation, this one by Yves Côté, the Canadian Forces' independent ombudsman. For more than 19 months, his staff has revisited the saga, trying to determine whether the army's chain of command deserves some of the blame for the demise of a few good men. An answer is expected in the coming weeks."It's sad to see what happened over there," Furlong says now, recalling how the accusations ripped apart his unit. "It took the shine off what really took place there, and I think in the long run destroyed people's lives."It was still dark on March 3, 2002, when hundreds of camouflaged troops piled into the Chinook helicopters humming on the runway at Bagram Airfield. Dressed in full battle rattle, their pockets and rucksacks stuffed with food and ammunition, the soldiers were minutes away from being dropped into the heart of America's boldest combat mission in more than a decade.Among those waiting to climb aboard the choppers was a small contingent of Canadians, including Master Cpl. Graham Ragsdale. "Rags," as the boys called him, was the leader of a small cell of snipers, part of the 3rd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. He was a popular boss, revered as much for his patience as for his talents with a rifle. "I only wished that I could have an ounce of his knowledge," one fellow soldier recalls. Those who knew Rags best considered him a shoo-in to one day reach the rank of "master sniper," a fraternity that includes barely two dozen sharpshooters in the entire Canadian army.Ragsdale's unit was a tight-knit bunch, a small group of Type A personalities who respected one another simply for having reached the rank of sniper. Completing the training course -- a gruelling combination of classroom work and on-the-job drills -- is so demanding that in a typical batch of a dozen recruits, maybe three or four will walk away with a passing grade. The few who make the cut share a special bond.That bond soon extended to Afghanistan, where 900 Canadian soldiers deployed as part of the U.S.-led retribution for Sept. 11. Like most of the troops, Ragsdale's sniper cell spent its first few weeks in theatre guarding the fenced perimeter of Kandahar Airfield. It was mind-numbing work. For days on end, they stood watch in the towers, their .50-calibre rifles ready to engage an enemy that never appeared. But as February blended into March, the brass ordered the snipers to pack. They were flying north to Bagram, hand-picked as Canada's lone contribution to Operation Anaconda.Simply put, the goal of Anaconda was to kill or capture al-Qaeda and Taliban warriors cloaked in the Shahikot Valley, an enemy hideout protected by towering snow-capped mountains and sympathetic locals. U.S. special forces, bolstered by a small army of Afghan fighters, were to do most of the fighting, while hundreds of other conventional troops would guard any possible escape routes. After weeks of precision air assaults, Anaconda would be the biggest ground offensive in the war on terror. The Canadian snipers were asked to come along, just in case. "It was incredible," recalls Master Cpl. Arron Perry, who was among the Canadians squished inside a Chinook that morning. "We were in the right place at the right time and lucky enough to do it."At 30, Perry was a massive man, a relentless weightlifter who moonlighted as a bouncer in downtown Edmonton. Born in Moncton, he joined the reserves at age 17, and by the time he landed in Afghanistan he had already served one tour in Croatia and two more in Bosnia. He had been a paratrooper, an instructor in unarmed combat and, most recently, a sniper. But he was also a recurring thorn in the side of his superiors, an outspoken soldier with an intimidating frame. Just weeks before deploying, his regimental sergeant major complained -- in writing -- that Perry had "an attitude problem" that "has gone unchecked for a long period of time."Nevertheless, Perry was in Afghanistan, about to be lowered into a combat zone for the first time in his career. Following standard protocol, he would be one of three snipers working in tandem around a single, high-powered rifle. Each member of the trio was more than qualified to pull the trigger, but for this mission, Perry would be the primary shooter. Ragsdale would be his spotter. And Cpl. Dennis Eason, another Newfoundlander, would stand guard behind them -- the eyes in the back of their heads.Down the runway, the other half of Ragsdale's cell -- a second trio of snipers -- hauled their gear toward a separate chopper waiting in the early morning darkness. Carrying his team's .50-calibre rifle was Furlong, a soft-spoken infantryman who seemed destined for sniping from an early age. At 10 years old, back home on the East Coast, he and his friends would spread rotten fish on a piece of wood, wait for the flies to show up, then try to shoot them out of the air with their pellet guns. Born a righty, Furlong even learned to fire left-handed. It reached the point where he actually preferred it that way. In fact, when he took his sniper course in 2001, he performed all his target practice left-handed.Furlong's spotter for Anaconda would be Master Cpl. Tim McMeekin, a Manitoba-based sniper who was seconded to the unit just before the tour. Though an outsider, McMeekin -- tall, with a rock-solid build -- fit in right away. Sgt. Zevon Durham, an American soldier, rounded out the trio.The Chinook carrying Perry, Ragsdale and Eason twisted its way onto the mountain just before dawn. Within minutes, enemy fighters opened up, feeding the new arrivals a steady stream of small-arms and mortar fire. Perry, hauling his rifle on his back, headed for higher ground. "Anyone who says they are not scared is crazy," he recalls. "But it was great." In that first hour, Perry fired at target after target, some as far away as 1,500 m. "His shots were incredible," says Sgt. Maj. Mark Nielsen, a veteran of America's 101st Airborne Division. "One shot, one kill. If I had to send him a sweatshirt, that's what it would say."McMeekin and Furlong were minutes behind their friends, but as their Chinook approached the landing zone, an unseen enemy opened fire. The pilots immediately veered right, turning the chopper all the way around. Furlong was furious. His friends were in the centre of a hornet's nest, and there he was, on his way back to Bagram.When the helicopter returned to the mountain a few hours later, dozens of troops spilled out the side doors and onto the valley floor, scanning the horizon as they sprinted through the dust kicked up by the rotor blades. The enemy was nowhere to be found, but that didn't mean the troops were alone. "We were nervous," Furlong admits. "You can feel it. You know when something is wrong."His instinct was right. As dusk approached, mortars and muzzle flashes lit up the sky, hammering the ground all around their position. Furlong planted his head in the dirt, shielding his face. "McMeekin had already started to grab the rifle and engage targets," he remembers. "The guy was an absolute machine." Amid the onslaught, the snipers pummelled at least one enemy hideout. Everyone else took cover.For the next nine days, the Canadian snipers disposed of rival fighters with diabolical precision. They became an all-star unit of sorts, shuttled from hill to hill as needed, sometimes by foot, sometimes by four-wheeler. Their bullets destroyed enemy lookouts, protected U.S. troops as they moved through the valley, and, in those moments when all hell broke loose, annihilated the source of fire. Along the way, they reset the bar of their elite profession, breaking -- then rebreaking -- the record for longest-ever combat kill.First it was Master Cpl. Perry, hitting an enemy forward observer from 2,310 m. Days later, Furlong took out the man with the RPK, eclipsing his friend's mark by a mere 120 m. "These guys -- regardless of what country they were from, what flag they fought under -- they were just excellent military professionals," says Capt. Justin Overbaugh, the commander of a U.S. scout platoon that worked alongside one of the sniper teams. "We didn't want to give them up. I would have brought them home with me if I could."By the time the snipers flew back to Bagram, their American commanders were already filling out nomination forms for Bronze Stars, a U.S. medal that recognizes heroism on the battlefield. All five names were submitted up the American chain of command: Perry, Ragsdale, Eason, Furlong and McMeekin.Lt.-Col. Pat Stogran, the Canadian commander in Afghanistan, was waiting to meet his snipers when they touched down in Bagram. He was like a proud father, boasting and patting them on the back for a job well done. All they wanted was a shower and a phone call home. They'd had neither since heading overseas more than a month earlier. Furlong was so filthy he tossed most of his clothes in the trash. "They had been on for so long they kind of stood up on their own," he laughs.The two sniper teams had not crossed paths during the nine-day mission. Reunited, they exchanged a few hugs and a few tales. They also made a vow, promising never to reveal -- outside the circle -- how many people they actually killed. That was for them to know. To this day, none has broken that pledge.Hours after their showers, the snipers and hundreds of their Canadian comrades departed for another mission: Operation Harpoon. Their destination was "The Whale," a mountain range where, according to intelligence reports, dozens of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had fled for cover during Anaconda. Canadian troops were assigned to find them, but after five days of sifting through caves and blowing up bunkers, they came up empty. The few enemy fighters they did encounter were long dead.As uneventful as the mission was, it would be that assignment -- not Operation Anaconda -- that would forever define the snipers' tour in Afghanistan. Everything they had accomplished just days earlier was about to be destroyed.As soon as the sniper cell returned to camp, an officer pulled them aside, warning them that one of their own -- Perry -- was under investigation for allegedly desecrating an enemy corpse. Among the gruesome accusations were that he cut off a dead man's finger, stuck a cigarette in the corpse's mouth and posted a sign on his lifeless chest. "Fuck Terrorism," the note read. Military police also suspected that Perry defecated on a second body.The allegations were devastating, not just for Perry, but for the entire team. "Five days earlier I got off the plane and was met by the colonel who said: 'You guys are outstanding,' " Furlong remembers. "And then five days later you're told you're under investigation, so everything that happens before goes to shit. You can build a hundred bridges and rob a bank, but you'll never be known as a bridge builder. You'll be known as a bank robber. It only takes one bad thing to erase every good thing you've ever done."Lt.-Col. Stogran called in the National Investigation Service(NIS), the major crimes unit of the military's internal police agency. Investigators dove in. On March 21, 2002 -- under heavily armed guard -- a team returned to the mountain to exhume one of the two corpses at the heart of the case. They took notes, snapped photos and collected a swab of DNA. They also found the "Fuck Terrorism" sign.As investigators searched for clues, senior officers stripped Graham Ragsdale of his command, giving control of the sniper cell to Tim McMeekin. Then the NIS showed up at Perry's tent with a search warrant, tearing apart his barracks box and seizing a knife. A Canadian chaplain later claimed that Perry swore at him in a threatening manner -- an allegation that landed the soldier under arrest for "conduct unbecoming."Three short weeks after taking lives and saving lives in the Shahikot Valley, Arron Perry was on a plane back to Canada. His tour was over, replaced by a looming court martial. "From day one, we're taught to trust," he says. "Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty. Then all of a sudden, you're abandoned and dropped."Two days after Perry left camp, an American general visited Kandahar Airfield to distribute Bronze Stars. Included in his box of medals were five ribbons reserved for the snipers. The awards, however, never left the package. It seemed that someone in the Canadian military refused to rubber-stamp the U.S. honour, certainly not with such a sensitive investigation going on.American troops were irate. Why aren't the snipers standing here with us? "They represented Canada's best," Sgt. Maj. Nielsen says. "It's a grave mistake to allow something like that to go unrecognized."Morale sunk even lower. Ragsdale, still stunned by his demotion, was crushed. As for the rest of the unit, they did little else but sit around and wait for assignments that never came. As one of them later put it: "We just breathed oxygen and collected pay."It made for an awkward few months. While the Canadian military tiptoed around its tainted snipers, U.S. soldiers regularly stopped by their tents to say hello. Many had served in Anaconda, and they wanted to personally thank the boys for saving their asses out there. As a token of appreciation, some left behind cans of tuna or bags of Mr. Noodles -- heaven compared to standard army rations.Allegations aside, the camp was also abuzz with whispers about Furlong's record-breaking kill. The young corporal even agreed to grant a few media interviews, but only on the condition that his name never be printed. He wanted anonymity, not recognition.Back home in Alberta, Perry chose a different approach, going public in late April 2002. His story sparked the inevitable outrage. A court martial for swearing at a chaplain? The fact that he was a celebrated sniper -- a member of a unit that now boasted a world-record kill -- only fuelled the media circus. In interview after interview, Perry denied that he swore at the padre, saying his cuss was a general rant aimed at nobody in particular. As for the finger investigation, he was adamant that he never mistreated a corpse or staged a so-called trophy photo. He even went so far as to say that although he was innocent, he still supported the words written on that sign. Fuck Terrorism? Who can disagree with that?When Rob Furlong returned home to Edmonton in July 2002, he and most of the other soldiers who served in Afghanistan were granted a leave of absence, a couple of months off to unwind and relax. But the NIS -- still consumed by what Perry might have done on that mountain -- repeatedly phoned Furlong at home, asking if he could drop by the base and answer just a few more questions. They were always the same. Did you see anyone cut off the corpse's finger? Who wrote the sign? Was it Perry? Like the questions, his answer never changed. I don't know what happened. Your guess is as good as mine.The men in the sniper cell did their best to stand behind Perry. He was, after all, one of their own. Around the battalion, fellow troops quietly complained that the entire investigation was a sham, a chance for senior officers to finally do what they had always wanted: get rid of Arron Perry. Few enlisted men had more run-ins with higher-ups than he did. His personal file read like a laundry list of insubordination. Maybe this was payback for years of bad behaviour?Perhaps, but Perry's fellow snipers took as much heat as he did -- if not more. Over and over, the NIS grilled the men behind closed doors, hoping to catch one of them in a lie. "It was a really, really hard emotional time," Furlong remembers. "We fell apart when we came back."Furlong tried to soldier on. After Afghanistan, he had set his sights on a new goal: qualifying for special forces, perhaps a spot in the military's ultra-secret Joint Task Force Two. Everything he did -- from his workout regimen to his reading habits -- coincided with that dream. And what did the army do in return? "Harassment," he says. "There were times I'd go home and I'd tell my wife: 'Look, I can't take this anymore.' I just didn't want to put a uniform back on."Graham Ragsdale had already reached that point. He showed up for work at the Edmonton garrison, but remained heartbroken over his demotion. "He just didn't want anything to do with anything," Furlong recalls. "His motivation to carry on was gone."As for Arron Perry, he enjoyed a small victory in the summer of 2002, when the military announced it was dropping the lone criminal charge laid in connection with his alleged threat against the chaplain. However, he would remain suspended with pay pending the outcome of the finger investigation. Barred from the base and under strict orders not to venture outside Edmonton, Perry passed most of his nights working the door at a local club. That Christmas, he spent the holidays alone, unable to leave the city and visit his family on the East Coast. "I was treated like a second-class citizen," he says.Two months later, on a Friday morning in early February 2003, the NIS made a sudden announcement: despite a gruelling 10-month probe, investigators failed to uncover enough evidence to lay criminal charges. They never figured out who printed the sign. They never found a finger. And most importantly, the DNA from that corpse did not match anything on Arron Perry's knife."At some point in any police investigation, you've got to draw a line that says, 'We believe there is adequate evidence and we're laying charges,' or, 'We don't,' " says Capt. Mark Giles, an NIS spokesman. "The evidence might be five millimetres shy or it might be miles shy." Only investigators know for sure just how shy the evidence was, but regardless, Perry was exonerated, free to put on his uniform and return to work. "It's great," he told one reporter. "I am in the clear."With the case now closed, the military bureaucracy decided it was probably time to finally give the snipers their due. All five were awarded a Mention in Dispatches, a pin that recognized their "impressive professionalism and dedication to duty." Headquarters also approved the U.S. Bronze Stars. On Dec. 8, 2003 -- 19 months after the snipers were nominated -- Paul Cellucci, then the American ambassador to Canada, flew to Edmonton for a ceremony that was long overdue."The whole thing took a while, and I don't know why it took so long," Cellucci, who stepped down as envoy in March 2005, recalled recently. "We were certainly proud to honour them, and I'll just leave it to others to comment about what the Canadian government should have done."All five members of the sniper unit stood at attention as Cellucci pinned on their medals. McMeekin. Ragsdale. Perry. Furlong. Eason. For someone who did not know better, it sure seemed like a happy ending.It was anything but. Not only were three of those five men on their way out of the army, but countless questions remained unanswered. Did someone really chop off a finger? Did the chain of command -- petrified it might have another Somalia on its hands -- jump to conclusions? Was it retribution? Envy? Or was it really Arron Perry's fault? Did his big mouth and hard head bring everyone down with him?Pat Ragsdale, Graham's father, wanted some answers. After the tour, he watched his son suffer through an unthinkable depression, and he wanted to know why. For months, he wrote letter after letter to government officials, from the Prime Minister to high-ranking generals. "I wasn't happy with the treatment they got in Afghanistan or the treatment they got subsequent to Afghanistan," he told one reporter.In September 2004, Pat Ragsdale finally received a response. Gen. Ray Henault, then the chief of the defence staff, personally asked the ombudsman to launch his own investigation. Unlike the NIS version, this one would focus not on fingers and signs, but on whether the military mistreated its snipers. In other words, did these men -- lauded as heroes by the Americans but treated as criminals in Canada -- deserve better?Amid news of the investigation, another strange development: on websites across the Internet, military buffs and bloggers began to identify Perry as the Canadian sniper who killed another man from 2,430 m. The origin of the error is unclear, although it seems that a few well-intentioned supporters simply made a wrong assumption. Others followed, bolstering his legend with each new chat room posting. "I hope the record stands forever," one American wrote.It was only a matter of time before some in the mainstream media started to repeat the mistake, crediting Arron Perry with the longest-ever combat kill. Because the real shooter -- Rob Furlong -- chose to remain anonymous, the error was never corrected.Rob Furlong still wears a uniform to work, but not the green army fatigues he slid on every morning for seven years. He is a police officer now, a beat cop with a side arm. He loves the new job, but not quite enough to make him forget about his time in the army. Some days, he even thinks about re-enlisting.He never does, though. Instead, Furlong -- Bronze Star winner and Canadian war hero -- lives a life of relative anonymity. Even when his world record somehow became Perry's property, he chose to keep his mouth shut. "It's quiet professionalism," he says, his Newfoundland accent still thick after a decade in Alberta. "That's what we've always been taught."Only now, more than four years after Anaconda, has Furlong finally agreed to show his face and tell his story. He did not go searching for the spotlight. Maclean's found him, not the other way around. "Me coming here today was not to seek credit for anything, and I want that to be known," he says, sitting in a small Edmonton hotel room. "Do I care? No, I really don't. Do I need to set the record straight by saying that I was the one who pulled the trigger when that shot was made? No, I don't."What he does say is typical Rob Furlong. The entire sniper cell -- not him -- should have been credited with the record. No names. No fame. "It's not going to make a difference if Ragsdale did it or Perry did it or I did it or McMeekin did it or Eason did it," he says. "It doesn't matter who did it. That guy was taken out and he didn't have an opportunity to kill anybody else, and that was it."If Furlong holds any grudge, it is against the NIS, not Arron Perry. For months, he watched his once-proud unit crumble to pieces -- all because of allegations that, in the end, were never proven. Along the way, one of his closest friends, Ragsdale, plummeted into such a state of despondency that the army no longer wanted him around."They kicked him to the curb," he says of his one-time pal. "The way the military is -- and I've seen it for the seven years I was there -- they don't care what you bring to the table or how much talent you have or whatever. They'll just get someone else to replace you."Arron Perry keeps his military files neatly organized in a light grey binder. Everything is in there. His Mention in Dispatches. Newspaper articles. Even the discipline reports, like the one outlining his "attitude problem" over the years. "I sometimes walked that line of insubordination," he admits, flipping through the pages. "I'm not perfect."Nobody is. But in the sniping universe, Perry is as close as it comes. He is a household name, the standard by which all sharpshooters are now measured. Punch his name into Google and you will still uncover dozens of hits praising "his" kill from 2,430 m. "I don't want to talk about all that stuff," Perry says now, nodding his head from side to side. "It got so mixed up, the less said about that the better."Looking at him, it is easy to think the worst, that he purposely lied in a desperate attempt to be something he isn't. Maybe he needed a silver lining, something positive to latch onto amid all the bad publicity. Or maybe he just liked the attention.None of that is true, Perry insists. He never tried to mislead anyone. He never tried to hog the credit. Somebody on the Internet simply got his facts mixed up, and a few others followed suit. "They totally got it wrong," he says. "Rob's the one that made this great shot, and I wish people would understand."Arron Perry is a fidgety man, a fast talker whose sentences spill out soArron Perry is a fidgety man, a fast talker whose sentences spill out so rapidly at times that he is difficult to understand. Yet he chooses his words carefully, convinced that the NIS is still after him. "They would love to see me do something bad," he says. "They would love to see me hang myself."After investigators stopped digging, Perry stayed in the military. But the scrutiny didn't stop. His chain of command launched an internal board of inquiry into his character. Behind closed doors, witness after witness took the stand to testify. Perry was called a bully. Disrespectful. Uncontrollable. "They put a drop of water on your forehead constantly until you snap," he says.He hit that breaking point in April 2005, opting, at 33, to retire from the service. Since then, he has started his own nightclub(it didn't last), looked for mercenary work overseas(nothing yet), and trained to be a pipefitter. That's what he is doing now, working shifts in Edmonton and pocketing decent money. Because he lasted 12 years in the army, he also collects a half-pension.But what happened to him in Afghanistan and in the years after continues to define his life. "There is no one I trust 100 per cent," he says. "I'm going to be very upset for the rest of my life, for sure. There is no other way around it. So if that's what they were looking for, then they won."Perry insists, as he always has, that he did nothing wrong on that mountain. The entire thing, he explains, was a case of battlefield humour gone horribly wrong. The way he remembers it, he tossed another soldier a Tootsie Roll sealed in a Ziploc baggie, joking that it was a severed finger from one of the bodies lying around. Another soldier who overheard the conversation misinterpreted the joke, Perry says. And the rest is history.As for the cigarette and the "Fuck Terrorism" sign, Perry says hundreds of people -- officers included -- walked by that corpse, but nobody felt the need to do anything about it. "I know for a fact that I didn't do it," he says of the sign. "And to the best of my knowledge, no one from the Canadian sniper detachment did it."By now, Perry has pleaded his case so many times to so many people that it's hard to picture him talking about anything else. When asked about the ombudsman's upcoming report, he says he is anxious to read the findings, but not overly anxious. It might bring vindication. It might not. Either way, it won't change what already happened. "I'm out of the military now," he says. "A little too late."Pat Ragsdale has waited 18 months for the ombudsman to finish his job. He has remained patient the entire time, well aware that answers are not always easy to find. He is so committed to the process, so careful not to jeopardize the results, that he would rather wait until it is all over before offering his opinion. "If I'm not satisfied with the outcome of their report, then who knows what might happen," he says. "But in all fairness, I've got to give them the opportunity to investigate it properly and come up with their results."In the meantime, he remains fiercely protective of his son, declining, on Graham's behalf, repeated requests for an interview. "The results of what happened to these guys has not been told to the Canadian public," is as much as he will say.(Tim McMeekin and Dennis Eason, both of whom still serve in the army, also declined to be interviewed in person for this article.)Whatever the ombudsman concludes, it is sure to spark a wave of unwanted negative publicity for a military that is focused on its current mission in Afghanistan -- not the one that happened four years ago. It is a safe bet that officials will try to counter any potential criticism by insisting that things have changed, that important lessons have been learned since those snipers boarded the choppers for Operation Anaconda.Indeed, much has changed. Four years later, the Canadian public has grown increasingly desensitized to flag-draped coffins and military funerals. With 2,300 troops now back in Kandahar, newspapers are filled with almost daily accounts of violent gun battles and enemy body counts. Not so in 2002. Of all the Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, the snipers were the only ones to actually kill rival fighters -- a reality that the military seemed anxious to sugar-coat. Speaking to the press, commanders praised the snipers for saving allied lives, not shooting people in the face.Perhaps Ragsdale and his men would have been better suited to today's deployment, where political correctness is not the overriding order of the day. Perhaps the ombudsman will say exactly that when he finally unveils his findings in the coming weeks. His report is nearly complete, but Gordon O'Connor, the defence minister, will have a chance to review the results before the public gets a glimpse.For his part, Mark Giles, the NIS spokesman, says he is confident that the military's police force acted professionally during its investigation. There was no "vendetta" against any particular soldier, he says, and no "predetermined agenda." Every interrogation was done in the name of discovering the truth, not harassment. "Police, whether they be military or civilian police, have a tough job," he says. "So where you draw that line between what is thorough and exhaustive in an investigation and what is over the top, it's obviously fairly subjective from different people's viewpoints."Among the American troops who served with the snipers, the viewpoint is unanimous. "These are the type of people that I would want to put up on a pedestal and say: 'This is the very best that we have to offer,' " Justin Overbaugh says. "I am not big on apologies, but if they are owed an apology, I hope that they get one. I am quite certain that is all they want."Staff Sgt. Corey Daniel, who marched through the mountains with Perry and Ragsdale, says they deserve much more than that. "A guy goes out and puts his life on the line, and then what happens? He comes home and he's not really recognized for what he did. That's a rough pill to swallow."

The CIA Promotes its Own Phoney Set of "Moscow Rules"

2009-02-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

The CIA Promotes its own Phoney Set of “Moscow Rules”
Several decades ago, certain defectors to the USA correctly identified the Soviet Union's Spy Tradecraft Rule Book as Rules of Konspiriata. Within a few years, British MI-6 began calling those rules, Moscow Rules. The USSR's formidable tradecraft lexicon has only surfaced in fragmentary spurts during the past 70 years. No coherent compilation of those tradecraft rules and guidance exists in North America, South America or Western Europe. The internet publisher www.quikmaneuvers.com, claims that a large fragment of Soviet Moscow Rules was published under another title and they sale that book as Moscow Rules, but they consider it only as a major fragment of the complete compilation.Cunning analysts within the CIA realized a few years ago that a vacuum still existed regarding Moscow Rules so the CIA decided to take advantage of that knowledge vacuum and proclaim that they, the bumblers and journalists at CIA, invented Moscow Rules.I have read what the CIA claims is Moscow Rules. In fact it is a list of 40 plus phrases taken from US motivational books, with a twist to scam them off as spy maxims. Many people refuted the CIA's fraud when it first emerged, but just as America did not bother to verify the real birth certificate of Hussein Obama, the fuss about the CIA lies died down,and the CIA began anew. Now it is "common knowledge" on the internet that the CIA invented Moscow Rules. Here is an example taken from one of a dozen forums which all say the same thing:"What are the 40 full "Moscow Rules"? An abridged version of the Moscow Rules has been posted several times. There were apparently 40 original Moscow Rules, a set of guidelines created by the CIA to benefit them in their operations in Russia. Where can I find the full 40 rules?"Thus another CIA propaganda campaign has worked. The only thing that will refute their outlandish fraud is the imminent emergence of the actual Moscow Rules as created in Moscow.

Wikpedia claims that: "CIA agent Tony Mendez wrote "Although no one had written them down, they were the precepts we all understood ... By the time they got to Moscow, everyone knew these rules. They were dead simple and full of common sense...".An abbreviated list of the probably-fictional Moscow Rules has circulated around the Internet and in fiction:Assume nothing. Murphy is right. Never go against your gut; it is your operational antenna. Don't look back; you are never completely alone. Everyone is potentially under opposition control. Go with the flow, blend in. Vary your pattern and stay within your cover. Any operation can be aborted. If it feels wrong, it is wrong. Maintain a natural pace. Lull them into a sense of complacency. Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. (borrowed from Muhammad Ali, aka Cassius Clay.) Don't harass the opposition. There is no limit to a human being's ability to rationalize the truth. Technology will always let you down. Pick the time and place for action. Keep your options open. Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action. (taken from Ian Fleming's novel Goldfinger) The CIA fraud was predated by the espionage expert and author John Lecarre. He correctly identified the typology and origin of Moscow Rules and he undoubtedly laughs about the CIA's false claim. "Referred to in the works of John le Carré e.g. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. In these works, the rules are not general precepts, but methods of tradecraft, such as using chalk marks and thumbtacks as signals, the use of dead drops, and the ways to signal the need for a (rare) face-to-face meeting. Moscow Rules are important at the beginning of Smiley's People, where the General invokes the rules to request a meeting with Smiley, but is killed by KGB assassins before it can happen."In the CIA's International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., the Moscow Rules are fraudulently pimped as:Assume nothing. Never go against your gut. Everyone is potentially under opposition control. Don't look back; you are never completely alone. Go with the flow, blend in. Vary your pattern and stay within your cover. Lull them into a sense of complacency. Don't harass the opposition. Pick the time and place for action. Keep your options openIt is all a total fraud and what the CIA lists is a sophmoric list of po culture bu**sh**.

Che Gueverra’s Bogus “Foco” Theory of Guerrilla War

2009-02-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

Che Gueverra’s Bogus “Foco” Theory of Guerrilla War

After their successes in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cuba, Castro and his Cuban revolutionaries encouraged emulation of their achievements in other Latin American countries. Che Guevara was pimped as the grand guru of that effort and communist Hollywood loves him.However, Che was not a military man. He had received only a week or so training in sketchy methods of light infantry combat. He got the rest of his “expertise” from reading literature written by his patron saint, Lenin of the USSR.Che had a lot of reworked, time-worn communist struggle theories, but his only experience was the slap-dash antics of his and Castro’s communistrevolutionaries in rural Cuba. Yet Che offered a sort of blueprint for success basedupon the three 'lessons' he had drawn from the Cuban revolutionary war. The first of these so-called lessons was that the forcesØ of the people could defeat the armed forces of the government, despite the fact that this had rarely happened in previous decades. The second lesson wasØ that the natural arena in which to conduct the armed struggle in an underdeveloped area like Latin America was the countryside. The thirdØ lesson was that the insurgents did not have to wait until all the conditions for revolution existed, because the insurgents themselves could create revolutionary conditions.Denying the need for a mass movement or vanguard party (and thus contradicting both Lenin and Mao Tse-tung), Guevara argued that a small, mobile and hard-hitting band of insurgents could act as the focus for the revolution, the 'foco insurrectional,' or 'foco', and go on to seize power. He proclaimed that if a rag tag band of armed communist desperados appeared in a targeted third world nation, the rural peasantry would soon flock to their standard, since communism was “the wave of the future.”In 1958, after taking the city of Sancti Spiritus, Guevara unsuccessfully tried to impose a kind of sharia, regulating relations between men and women, the use of alcohol, and informal gambling. Che enforced a Puritanism that did not exactly characterize his own way of life. (They say that every communist fanatic isreally a Jesuit with a bandoleero.) He also ordered his men to rob banks; a decision that he justified in a letter to Enrique Oltuski, a subordinate, in November of that year: "The struggling masses agree to robbing banks because none of them has a penny in them." This idea of revolution as a license to re-allocate property, as hesaw fit, led the Marxist Puritan to take over the mansion of an emigrant after the triumph of the revolution.The urge to dispossess others of their property and to claim ownership of others' territory was central to Guevara's politics of raw power. In his memoirs, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser records that Guevara asked him how many people had left his country because of land reform. When Nasser replied that no one had left, Che countered in anger that the way to measure the depth of change is by the number of people "who feel there is no place for them in the new society."This predatory instinct reached a pinnacle in 1965, when he started talking, Godlike, about the "New Man" that he and his revolution would create. The communist nomenklatura, like the Marxist-corporate-capitalists are just feudal bandit. The difference are, however, marked. In communism , terror and murder is used tocontrol the people. In corporate-capitalist states “legal” intimidation and relentless psychological warfare is used to control the masses. Only a leftist fool would therefore promote communism or socialism as superior.That Guevara should have drawn his guerrilla war conclusions from the Cuban experience is perhaps not surprising, given that the Cuban communist insurgents: had defeated aØ government army, had conducted their campaign in the countryside - from theØ SierraMaestra mountains the cities appeared to be the graveyard of the insurgent - and had achieved their victory without the help of mass movements orØ political parties. Even the Communist Party did not publicly admit an alliance with Castro until the closing stages of the conflict.Such a victory could have happened only in postwar Cuba; a land of great ignorance where the masses of the public responded only to armed terror. Castro’s insurgency was not the spontaneous uprising of an oppressed peasant mass. All that happened was about 70 armed men landed in Cuba and from the mountains beganattacking small government military patrols. At the same time they enlisted every psychopath, adventurer, brute and lazy person they could find. They promised them participation in ruling and controlling a communist Cuba that would be built on the corpse of Batista’s regime. It was a brutal thug’s dream. Each small victory ofCastro’s gang was parroted loudly, and new peasants, always respecting success, power and the gun, began to join up. The promised rewards were better than groveling in a dusty, starving disease-ridden barrio forever.Lucky for Castro, he was facing a weak-minded and weak-willed petty dictator whose army was just a uniformed bureaucratic police force. It was both ill disciplined and ideologically bereft. It was very similar to the way the American Army will be in a few years.Understandable or not, the conclusions arrived at by Che as “principles of guerilla warfare” were based upon a dangerously selective view of the Cuban experience, and careful plagarization of a number of authors. Foolish journalists, leftists, and vacuous military officers never bothered to do a content and origin analysis of Che’s plagiarized guerilla warfare advocacy.Guevara's contention that insurgents could easily defeat government forces made no allowance for the fact that the Cuban insurgents had triumphed against an exceptionally weak government; one that had an incompetent army and had lost the support of its main foreign backer at a crucial moment. The assumption that circumstances would be the same anywhere else was highly questionable.Since the 1950s, the US and other military services all over the world have trained secret police forces, intelligence agencies and combat battalions in every small country almost everywhere. Thus the large nations have stupidly prepared all those backward or third world countries, that can’t even build roads or houses,with the weapons and methods to wage merciless and savage wars. Sooner or later such stupidity always runs backward into the face of the very fools who “nation built” some savage backward people into a well armed and fanatic killing machine.Back in the day, about sixty years ago, the emphasis Guevara placed upon rural operations grossly underestimated the extent to which Castro's victory had actually depended upon the contribution made by urban groups. The latter not only supplied the Rebel Army with recruits and arms, but also prevented Batista from devoting his full resources to the campaign against the Sierra-Meastra based insurgents. The urban support structure was eager to get rid of Batista and thus provided a little succorance to Castro.Finally, Guevara overlooked the fact that conditions for insurgency or terrorist uprisings already existed in Cuba before the campaign started. The insurgents were not so much creating conditions for change, as exploiting them.In many ways, therefore, the 'lessons' projected by Guevara and Castro were a dangerously misleading and wrong-headed blueprint for insurgency or terrorist uprisings in the rest of Latin America. Che’s so-called persona or looks, seemed to be more important to would-be revolutionaries than his brain or heart. Guevara, a handsome Irish lad pretending to be a Latino, turned on a lot of Hispanic women who wanted more of such a macho hombre.The emotional and romantic strength of Guevara's doctrine, and in particular of the 'foco' concept, were soon highlighted by domestic leftists on the Latin American mainland, as insurgent movements influenced by events in Cuba took up arms in the late 1960s against the incumbent regimes. The Castro experience was so easy. Just think. If a person could round up 50-100 adventurers and arm them,they could take over and run any of several pothole “nations.” Welcome to the“revolution potty.”Soon, several countries experienced insurgency or terrorist uprisings,notably in Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia. They were ripe to fall too,and they would have if the USA had not helped them. (all it took was 50-100 desperados.)The weakness of the 'foco' theory soon showed through in all of the rundown countries where it was tried out. The Guevara-style revolutions never really got beyond the early stages. Yet, psychotic leftists and Marxists are such liars that they continued screaming out “Che- Che- Che” as a guerilla warfare genius. America’s current African-racist, Marxist candidate for President, Barrack Obama, who is not even a US citizen, loves Che Guevara. There is a picture of Che in all his campaign headquarters. The picture is proof that even fools andincompetents can take over countries if they are willing to use tactics from the dark side.Che Guevara himself was killed in Bolivia during October 1967, after a carefully orchestrated confrontation with the Bolivian Security Forces. He misread the local situation. There had been an agrarian reform years before; the government had respected many of the peasant communities' institutions; and the army was close to the United States despite its nationalism. "The peasant masses don't help us at all" was Guevara's melancholy conclusion in his Bolivian diary. Even worse, Mario Monje, the local communist leader, who had no stomach for guerrilla warfare after having been humiliated at the elections, led Guevara to a vulnerablelocation in the southeast of the country. The circumstances of Che's capture at Yuro Ravine, soon after meeting the French Marxist intellectual Régis Debray and the Argentine painter Ciro Bustos, both of whom were arrested as they left the camp, was, like most of the Bolivian expedition, an amateur's affair.

Che Gueverra, The Pretender

2009-02-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

Che Gueverra, The Pretender

Time Magazine also erred regarding Che's sense of humor, which was on par with Nurse Ratched's. As most Latin Americans of a certain age know, Che was a ringer for a Mexican Movie star of the fifties namedCantinflas. Shortly after Che entered Havana, one of Cuba's traditionally sassy newspapermen made sport of this resemblance. He did it exactly once. Those firing squads were working triple-shifts at the time. The reporter heeded Che's warning not to do it again.In Che's first decree when his guerrillas captured the town of Sancti Spiritus in central Cuba during the last days of the skirmishing against Batista's army, he outlawed alcohol, gambling and regulated relations between the sexes. Popular outcry and Fidel's good sense made him rescind the order."I have no home, no woman, no parents, no brothers and no friends," wrote Guevara. "My friends are friends only so long as they think as Ido politically."Che’s Concentration CampsIn 1960 at a town named Guanahacabibes in extreme Western Cuba,Che initiated Cuba's concentration camp system. "We send to Guanahacabibes people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals. . it is hard labor...the working conditions areharsh..."Among the many categories of criminals against revolutionary morals were "delinquents." Please take note Che T-shirt wearers: this "delinquency" involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music. Among the more hilarious manifestations of Che idolatry was the rock musician Carlos Santana's grand entrance to the 2005 Academy Awards ceremony where he stopped, swung open his jacket, and proudly displayed his Che T-shirtas the cameras clicked and idiots howled.By the late 60's among the tens of thousands of inmates at Guanahacabibes and the rest of the UMAP concentration camp system in Cuba were "roqueros," hapless Cuban youths who tried to listen to Yankee-Imperialist rock music. Carlos Santana, was grinning widely -- and oh so hiply -- while proudly sporting the symbol of a regime that made it a criminal offense to listen to Carlos Santana.*****************By late 1964 Minister of Industries' Che had so badly crippled Cuba's economy and infrastructure and so horribly impoverished and traumatized its work force that the Russians themselves were at wits end. They were subsidizing the mess, and it was getting expensive -- much too expensive for the paltry geopolitical return. "This is anunderdeveloped country?!" Anastas Mikoyan had laughed while looking around on his first visit to Cuba in 1960. The Soviets were frankly tickled to have a developed and civilized country to loot again, like the countries of Eastern Europe after WWII.Alas, the looting, at first, went in the opposite direction. Castro was no chump like Ulbricht or Gomulka. A French Socialist economist, Rene Dumont, tried advising Castro as the wreckage of Cuba's economy spiraled out of control. "The Cuban Revolution has gone farther in its first three years than the Chinese in its first ten," he observed. Hencethe mess. (That was before Marxist US President Bill Clinton bailed out Red China by giving them Billions of US taxpayer dollars.) As Cuba's Minister of Industries, Che wanted to refashion human nature. With hapless Cubans as his guinea pigs, he was intent on creating a "new socialist man," diligent, hard-working, obedient, free from all material incentives and always ready to go with the program -- in brief, lobotomized shirkers or smartalecks who offered lip wouldfind themselves behind the barbed wire, watchtowers and guard dogsof Guanahacabibes in short order.Interestingly, Jack Nicholson whose film character in One Flew OverThe Cuckoo's Nest continually ran afoul of Nurse Ratched is amongCommunist Cuba's most frequent visitors and Castro's most ferventfans. "Fidel Castro is a genius!" gushed Nicholson after a visit in 1998."We spoke about everything," the actor rhapsodized. "Castro is ahumanist like President Clinton. Cuba is simply a paradise!" This mayhave more to it than the usual Hollywood vacuity upstairs. "My job wasto bug Jack Nicholson's room at the hotel Melia Cohiba when hevisited Cuba," says high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector DelfinFernandez, from Madrid today, "with both cameras and listeningdevices. Most people have no idea they are being watched while theyare in Cuba. But their personal activities are filmed under orders fromCastro himself. Famous Americans are the priority objectives ofCastro's intelligence."Che the Soccer PawOne day Che decided that Cubans should learn to play and like soccer(futbal) like the citizens of his native Argentina. A Sugar plantationnamed Central Macareno near Cienfuegos had been recently stolenfrom its American owners (not that most Sugar plantations in Cubawere American-owned as leftist mythology holds. Barely one-thirdwere.) The plantation also included a huge orchard of Mango, Avocadoand Mamey trees that were just starting to give fruit. Che orderedthem all cut down and the ground razed in order to construct a soccerfield.A year later the field was weed grown, pot-holed and unusable. Thedecaying trunks of the formerly fruit-yielding trees were still piled uparound the edges of the field even as most Cubans scrambled for freshfruit on the new black market (under that arch-villain of leftist lore,Batista, Cubans had no need for a black market.) At any rate, itseemed that -- the threat of Guanahacabibes or not -- Che's Cubansubjects simply didn't take to Che's futbal.Che’s Socialist Industrialization SchemesChe's fetish to "industrialize" Cuba immediately and by decree, as hethought his role model Stalin had "industrialized" the Soviet Union,ended Cuba's status as a relatively developed and civilized country. Inone of his spasms of decrees, Che ordered a refrigerator factory builtin Cienfuegos, a pick and shovel factory built in Santa Clara, a pencilfactory built in Havana. Supply? Demand? Costs? Such bourgeoisdetails didn't interest Che. None of the factories ended up producing asingle product.Che railed against the chemists in the newly socialized Coca-Colaplant because the Coke they were producing tasted awful. Some of theflustered chemists responded that it was Che who had nationalizedthe plant and booted out the former owners and managers, who tookthe secret Coca-Cola formula with them to the United States. Thisimpertinence was answered with the threat of Guanahacabibes.During this time Che's ministry also bought a fleet of snow plows fromCzechoslovakia. Che had personally inspected them and wasconvinced they could easily be converted into sugar cane harvestingmachines, thus mechanizing the harvest and increasing Cuba's sugarproduction. The snowplows in fact squashed the sugar cane plants,cut them off at the wrong length and killed them. Four years into therevolution Cuba's 1963 sugar production was less than half of its pre-Revolutionary volume.The Soviets themselves finally put their foot down. Their Cuban larkwas getting expensive. In 1964 they told Castro that Che had to go.Castro knew who buttered his bread and had never much liked Cheanyway. Besides, the Revolution was well entrenched by then, and inany case there were many willing executioners now, so Che mighthave outlived his usefulness.Another Phony Hoax by Pro-Che American MarxistsHere we come to another hoary myth spun by Che's hagiographers: his"ideological" falling out with the Soviets. Che's pureness ofrevolutionary heart, we're told, led him to clash with the corrupt Sovietnomenklatura.In fact it was a purely practical conflict. The Russians were fed up andsimply refused to bankroll Che's harebrained economic fantasies anylonger. Che saw the writing on the wall. In December 1964, right afterhis visit to the U.N., he visited his friend Ben Bela in Algeria anddelivered his famous anti-Soviet speech, branding them "accomplicesof imperialist exploitation." [35]To many it looked like Che was setting the stage for a role as theTrotsky of his generation. Che probably saw it as a more seemly rolethan that of a hopeless economic bumbler.When he touched down in Havana after the speech, the regime's presswas absolutely mute regarding both his speech and his recent return.Soon he was invited to visit the Maximum Leader and Raul. In fact,Maximum Brother Raul had just returned from Mother Russia itself,where Che's Algeria speech had caused quite a stir. As soon as he gotwithin earshot, both Castros ripped into Guevara as undisciplined,ungrateful and plain stupid."Fidel!" Che shot back. "Dammit, show me some respect! I'm notCamilo!" Che's wife, Aleida (he'd ditched Hilda by then) was forced tojump in between the men, exclaiming, "I can't believe such a thing ishappening between longtime companeros."Che finally went home, where he found his telephone lines cut. Muchevidence points to Che being held in house arrest at this point. And itwas under that house arrest that a seriously chastened -- andapparently frightened, after all, who better knew the consequences ofupsetting the Maximum Leader? -- Che composed his famous "FarewellLetter to Fidel," in which his groveling and fawning was utterlyshameless."I deeply appreciate your lessons and your example … my only faultwas not to have had more faith in you since the first moments in theSierra, not having recognized more quickly your qualities as a leaderand a revolutionary. I will take to my new fields of battle the faith thatyou have inculcated." and on and on in relentless toadying.Che Tries To Start Guerrilla WarsChe's few public appearances between his return from Algeria and hisdeparture for the Congo always found him in the company of SovietKGB trained state security personnel. His Cuban welcome had wornout. By April 1965 he was in Tanzania with a few dozen black Cubanmilitary men. Code named "Tatu," Che and his force entered theeastern Congo, which was convulsed at the time (like now) by anincomprehensible series of civil (actually, mostly tribal) wars.Tatu's mission was to help the alternately Soviet and Chinese backed"Simbas" of the Congolese red leader, Laurent Kabila. These werefighting the forces of the western-backed Moise Tshombe. Tshombe'sforces consisted of Belgian foreign legionnaires, mercenaries underthe famous "Mad" Mike Hoare, Congolese who opposed Kabila, and ahandful of Cuban Bay of Pigs veterans sent by the CIA. The Cubanswere mostly pilots who provided close-in air support for "Mad" Mike.Here is Mike Hoare's opinion, after watching them in battle, of his CIAallies: "These Cuban CIA men were as tough, dedicated and impetuousa group of soldiers as I've ever had the honor of commanding. Theirleader [Rip Robertson] was the most extraordinary and dedicatedsoldier I've ever met."Together Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of Kabila's"Simbas," who were murdering, raping and munching (many werecannibals) their way through many of the defenseless Europeans stillleft in the recently abandoned Belgian colony."Tatu's" first military mission was plotting an attack on a garrisonguarding a hydroelectric plant in a place called Front Bendela on theKimbi River in Eastern Congo. Che's masterstroke was to be anelaborate ambush of the garrison. Tatu himself was stealthily leadinghis force into position when ambushers became the ambushed. Chelost half his men and barely escaped with his life.His African allies started frowning a little more closely at Tatu's c.v.and asking a few questions (but in Swahili, which he didn'tunderstand.) Tatu's next clash with the mad dogs of imperialism wasat a mountaintop town called Fizi Baraka. And another hideous routensued. Che admits as much in his Congo Diaries, but he blames it allon Congolese who were terrible soldiers. Yet, for some reason, theCongolese on Hoare's side seemed to fight rather well.One thing that did impress the Simbas about Tatu was that "he neverwent down to the river to wash." Che frequently attacked what hecalled his “dumb nigger” allies in his diary.*****************The Bolivia AdventureTatu's Congo mission was soon abandoned as hopeless and in ahumiliating retreat across Lake Tanganyika, Che and the CastroCubans barely escaped Africa with their lives. Che now set his sightson Bolivia for the next guerrilla adventure, for living his dream ofturning the Andes "into the Sierra Maestra of the Continent," forcreating "two, three many Vietnams."It would be difficult to imagine a more cockamamie plan for Boliviathan Che's. Under President Paz Estenssoro in 1952-53 Bolivia hadundergone a revolution of sorts, with an extensive land reform that --unlike Che's and Fidel's -- actually gave ownership of the land to thepeasants, the tillers of the soil themselves, much like DouglasMcArthur's land reform in post-war Japan. Even crazier, Che himself,during his famous motorcycle jaunt had visited Bolivia and witnessedthe positive results of the reform. Still, his amazing powers of selfdeceptionprevailed.Che convinced himself that in a section of Bolivia where thepopulation consisted -- not of landless peasants -- but of actualhomesteaders, he'd have the locals crowding into his recruitment tentto sign up with a bunch of foreign communists to overthrow thegovernment that had given them their land, a series of rural schoolsand left them completely unmolested to pursue their lives. These wereIndians highly suspicious of foreigners and especially of whiteforeigners, to boot. Che was undaunted by any of these facts. Hasta lavictoria siempre! as he liked to say. At this stage in his life Che wasprobably more deluded than Hitler in his Bunker.There is no evidence that Castro took the Bolivian mission seriously.His Soviet patrons were certainly not behind it. They knew better.They'd seen every guerrilla movement in Latin America wiped out. Theonly thing these half-baked adventures accomplished was to upset theAmericans, with whom they'd cut a splendid little deal during theMissile Crisis to safeguard Castro. Why blow this arrangement withanother of Che's harebrained adventures? Much better to work withinthe system in Latin America, reasoned the Soviets at this time, subtlysubverting the governments by using legitimate Communist parties. Afew years later Allende's electoral victory in Chile seemed to bear theSoviets out.In fact, the East German female guerrilla, Tamara Bunke or "Tania"who linked up with Che in Bolivia (they'd met as early as 1961 andwere reputedly lovers) was actually a KGB-STASI agent sent to keepan eye on Che. Alas, poor "Tania" ( remember Patty Hearst'sSymbianese Liberation Army moniker?) was mowed down by machinegun fire along with her entire "rearguard" group after a Bolivianpeasant relayed their position to the army and helped plan an ambush.The Bolivian Communist party itself stood aloof from Che's finalmission. Its head, Mario Monje, was a faithful follower of the Sovietparty-line. The only Bolivians Che managed to recruit were renegadeCommunists and Maoists. Che's guerrilla force averaged 40-45members and was pompously named the "National Liberation Army."Yet at no point during its 11 month venture did Bolivians make upmore than half of its members. And most of these came from the citiesand areas far distant from the guerrilla base. The rural populationshunned their "National Liberation Army" like a plague."We cannot develop any peasant support," Che admits in his diaries."But it looks like by employing planned terror (emphasis mine) we mayat least neutralize most of them. Their support will come later."It never did. It was the campesinos themselves who kept reporting theguerrilla's whereabouts to the army, with whom they were generally onexcellent terms. And for an excellent reason: it was composed mainlyof Bolivian campesinos, not bearded foreigners who stole theirlivestock.Among the unreported idiocies regarding Che's Bolivian debacle, washow he split his forces into a vanguard and a rearguard in April of1967, whereupon they got hopelessly lost and bumbled around , halfstarved,half-clothed and half-shod, without any contact for 6 months --though they were usually within a mile of each other. They didn't evenhave WWII vintage walkie-talkies to communicate. Che's masterfulGuerrilla War, gives no explanation for such a tactic.Dariel Alarcon, a Cuban who was one of the three guerrillas whomanaged to survive and escape Bolivia, reports in his book, Benigno;Memorias de un Soldado Cubano how in the very midst of thisblundering around, Che was obsessed with posing for photos. One wasChe atop a (presumably stolen) horse on a ridgeline where he wasstrategically silhouetted against the bare sky. Che handed Alarcon hisPentax and had him back off just the right distance to capture theentire scene. Che nodded then plucked out a machete and waved ithigh over his head, even adding a sound score to the scene, shouting:"I am the new Bolivar!" as Alarcon dutifully clicked away.While Che was posing for pictures neither he nor anyone in his grouphad any way to communicate with Cuba. Castro had sent an agentnamed Renan Montero to La Paz to keep in touch with Che, butMontero abruptly left Bolivia in July of 1967 and returned to Cuba.Significantly, just a week earlier, Alexie Kosygin had visited Cuba andmet with Castro, where he laid it on the line.Kosygin had just come from a meeting with Lyndon Johnson where theU.S. President had laid it on the line, complaining about Castroitesubversion in Latin America, and how this was a clear breach of thedeal the U.S. and Soviets had cut back in October 1962 that had keptCastro unmolested. Now this mischief in Bolivia might force the U.S.into an agonizing reappraisal of that deal.Well, Castro didn't have his heart in the Bolivian adventure anyway.And now he could finally rid himself of the Argentine popinjay. Monterocame home and Che was cast completely adrift.The Truth About Che’s SurrenderBarely two months later the "National Liberation Army" was wiped out.Che's capture merits some clarification. His hagiographers haveromanticized his last day alive. Che was defiant, they claim. Che wassurprised, caught off guard and was unable to properly defend himselfor to shoot himself with his last bullet as was his plan.Nothing in the actual record supports this fantasy. In fact everythingpoints to Che surrendering quite enthusiastically, right after heordered his men to fight to the last man and the last bullet.Most did, but Che was captured with a full clip in his pistol. Even moresuspiciously, though he was in the bottom of a ravine during the finalfirefight and could have escaped in the opposite direction like a few ofhis men, Che actually moved upwards and towards the Boliviansoldiers who had been firing. Yet he was doing no firing of his own inthe process. Then as soon as he saw some soldiers he yelled, "Don'tshoot! I'm Che!"Immediately after his capture his demeanor was even more interesting"What's your name, young man?" Che asked a soldier. "Why what agreat name for a Bolivian soldier!" he blurted after hearing it.The firefight was still raging after Che's surrender. His men, unliketheir comandante, were indeed fighting to the last bullet. Soon awounded Bolivian soldier was carried by."Shall I attend him?!" Che asked his captors."Why? Are you a doctor?" asked Bolivian army captain Gary Prado."No, (the truth at last!) but I have some knowledge of medicine,"answered Guevara, resuming his pathetic attempt to ingratiate himselfwith his captors.Another interesting factoid is that Che was captured wearing hisfamous black beret, and it sported a bullet hole. Yet those on theBolivian mission with him like Dariel Alarcon attest that Che neveronce wore that beret during the Bolivian campaign. Che had alwaysworn a military cap, all pictures of him in Bolivia back this up. Somespeculate that Che put on his famous black beret (and even shot ahole in it) to make a dramatic celebrity surrender and impress hiscaptors. He probably expected a few snapshots in the process.After a peaceful capture, Che seemed to have expected a trial whichwould become a worldwide media sensation, with pleas for hisfreedom pouring into Bolivia like a blizzard from leftists in every cornerof the globe. This would have been the case had the Bolivians beenfoolish enough to try him. The trial of Regis Debray a few monthsearlier had given them a taste.Debray was a French Communist journalist who had spent much timein Cuba and was a serious Castro/Che groupie. He had gone to Boliviaand met with Che and his band and seemed poised to do for Che inBolivia what Herbert Matthews had done for Castro in Cuba. ButDebray would also act in a more official capacity as a recruiter andmessenger for the guerrillas.Debray was captured by the Bolivian Army, worked over, and sang likea canary about Che's presence in Bolivia (not completely known inApril of 1967) and what he was up to. The U.S. was alerted and sentsome Green Berets to help train a Ranger Battalion of the BolivianArmy, along with some Cuban-American CIA men to help withintelligence work. One of these, Felix Rodriguez (currently President ofthe Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, and a friend of mine I'm very,very proud to say), convinced the Bolivian military to stop summarilyexecuting all the guerrilla prisoners. Questioned properly and treateddecently, they could provide valuable information and help close thenet on Che and his group.And so it happened with a prisoner named Jose Castillo Chavez.Rodriguez played good cop with him and deciphered Che'swhereabouts. He persuaded the Bolivian military to send their Rangerbattalion to the area post-haste."But their training isn't complete," replied the Bolivian commander."No matter!" answered Rodriguez. "I think we've got Che pin-pointed!Send them in!" Barely a week later Che was yelling his pitiful plea tothose Bolivian Rangers. "Don't Shoot! -- I'm Che, I'm worth more to youalive than dead!"The Bolivian high command didn't see it that way. Though he wascaptured alive, Che was executed the next day. Compared to thecourageous and defiant yells of his own firing squad victims -- "I kneelfor no man! Viva Cuba Libre! Viva Cristo Rey! Abajo Comunismo! Aimright HERE!" –Che Guevara proved on his last day alive that he was unworthy tocarry his victims' slop buckets. He whimpered like a motherless child.Bibliography not included to save space.

Che Gueverra Was An Irishman Named Ernest Lynch

2009-02-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

Che Gueverra Was Actually an Irishman Named Ernest Lynch
This profile, edited and adapted by Breaker McCoy (quikmaneuvers.com, 2008), utilized some excerpts from an article written by Humberto Fontova, entitled "Fidel's Executioner," published by FrontPageMagazine.com on October 14, 2005.There Was no Bloody Revolutionary War in Cuba
In effect, “General” Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar conceded victory to the Castro guerrillas in the beginning ... Castro had no more than a total of 1000 support troops and 270 fighters opposing Batista's army of 4000- 40000 men depending on the source.
The Batista war was an elaborate ruse and gaudy clown show falsely exaggerated by the American leftist media. After the “glorious victory”, Castro’s lot were content to run down and execute the few Batista men motivated enough to shoot back (most of these were of humble background), settle into the mansions stolen from Batistianos,and enjoy the rest of their booty.In December 1956, a party of 70 badly trained revolutionary rich boys led by Castro, landed from a yacht named Granma intending to start an armed resistance movement in the Sierra Maestra. They had landed at Los Colorados beach, on the southwestern coast of Oriente Province.Castro's forces were attacked by the Cuban military aircraft, but he and 20 men survived by escaping into the wooded mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Less than two years later 3 80man rebel columns and a thousand man unarmed logistics force defeated Batistas 4,000-40,000 man army navy and air force. Batista's army was not an army, but a corrupt bunch of thugs with no motivation and not much organizational discipline.As an American intelligence liaison reported: “I asked how the (Batista)army was doing in its operations against the guerrillas and was told that it was not fighting. Only rarely did it venture from its barracks and obviously was very reluctant to move into the hills to seek out the rebels.” Batista spread his weird army out all over Cuba insquad sized groups of 8-10 men stationed in hundreds of villages and towns. Inviting defeat in detailIn an act of desperation, Batista sent one of his most feared officers after Castro with a force of 500 men in 1968. But even this effort backfired. Many troops pulled up lame with self-inflicted injuries.Others sold the rebels their guns. Castro captured the army's communications trailer and opened a number of fronts that went unchallenged as his three small columns advanced into Havana.A Typical Cuban War BattleOn January 14, 1957, Castro’s entire 25 man army came to a halt by the Magdalena River, which separates La Plata and a ridge beginning in the Sierra Maestra and ending at the sea. Fidel gave orders for target practice as some sort of training for his troops — some of the men were using weapons for the first time in their lives. Therevolutionists bathed there as well — having ignored matters of hygiene for many days — and those who were able to do so changed into clean clothes. At that time Castro’s army had 23 working weapons: nine rifles equipped with telescopic sights, five semiautomatic rifles, four bolt-action rifles, two Thompson submachine guns, two submachine guns, and a 16-gauge shotgun.They were low on ammunition and prepared to attack the local Bastista Barracks manned by a 9-man squad.As Cheo later said: “We had 22 weapons ready for the attack. It was an important occasion, and we had very little ammunition. We had to take the army barracks at all costs, for failure meant wasting our ammunition, leaving us practically defenseless. The plan of attack was simplistic:-4 men armed with semi automatic weapons would attack the palm thatched barracks from the right-Castro and Che would attack fire at the center with four men-Raul Castro and the rest of the men attacked from the left“We approached within 40 meters of the barracks. By the light of a full moon, Fidel initiated the gun battle with two bursts of machine-gun fire and all available rifles followed. Immediately, we demanded the enemy's surrender, but with no results. The murderer and informer Chicho Osorio was executed as soon as shooting broke out.The attack had begun at 2:40 a.m., and the guards put up a much fiercer resistance than we had expected. A sergeant, armed with an M-1, responded with fire every time we demanded their surrender. We were given orders to use our old Brazilian-type hand grenades. Luis Crespo threw his, and I mine, but they did not detonate. Raúl Castrothrew a stick of dynamite and nothing happened. We then had no choice but to get close to the quarters and set them on fire, even at the risk of our own lives. The light from the blaze showed us it was simply a storeroom full of coconuts, but we had intimidated the soldiers and they gave up the fight.” We quickly took stock of our takings:9 men eight Springfields, one Thompson machine gun, and about 1,000 rounds; we had fired approximately 500 rounds. In addition, we now had cartridge belts, fuel, knives, clothing, and some food. Casualties: they had two dead, five wounded, and we had taken three prisoners. Some, along with the informer Honorio, had fled. On our side, not a scratch.We freed all the civilians and at 4:30 a.m. on January 17 started for Palma Mocha, arriving at dawn and searching out the most inaccessible zones of the Sierra Maestra.Ernesto Guevara De La Serna y LynchHad Ernesto Guevara De La Serna y Lynch (Aka Che Guevara) not linked up with Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico city that fateful summer of 1955 -- had he not linked up with a Cuban exile named Nico Lopez in Guatemala the year before who later introduced him to Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico city , Lynch the Irish-Argentinan would still be a rich kid turned hobo.Ernest Lynch (aka Che Guevara) would have continued his life of a traveling hobo, mooching off women, staying in flophouses and scribbling unreadable poetry. Che was a Revolutionary Ringo Starr. By pure chance, he fell in with the right bunch at just the right time and rode their coattails to fame. His very name "Che" was imparted by theCubans who hob-knobbed with him in Mexico. Argentines use the term "Che" much like Cubans use "Chico" or Michael Moore fans use "dude."The Cubans noticed Guevara using it so they pasted it to him. And it stuck. But today his famous photo by Alberto Korda ranks as the most reproduced print in the world. Last year Burlington Industries introduced a line of infant wear bearing his famous image. Even the Pope, on his visit to Cuba in 1998, spoke approvingly about Che's "ideals." Che owes all this hype and flummery to the century's top media swindler, Fidel Castro, who also dispatched the hero deliberately to his death. As those who know say, "Fidel only praises the dead."Other than his competence at murdering bound, gagged and blindfolded men, Che Guevara failed spectacularly at everything he attempted in his life. First he failed as an Argentine medical student. Though he's widely described as a medical doctor by hishagiographers (Castaneda, Anderson, Taibo, Kalfon) no record exists of Guevara's medical degree. When Cuban-American researcher Enrique Ros inquired of the Rector of the University of Buenos Aires and the head of its Office of Academic Affairs for copies or proof of said document, Ros was variously told that the records had beenmisplaced or perhaps stolen.Che Guevara Lynch was Never A Guerilla Fighter/LeaderChe Guevara's most famous book is titled Guerrilla Warfare. His famous photo is captioned "Heroic Guerrilla." On the other hand his most resounding failure came precisely as a guerrilla, while there is no record of him prevailing in any bona-fide guerrilla battle. In fact, there are precious few accounts that he actually fought in anything properly described as a battle. The one that describes his most famous military exploit is referred to as "The Battle of Santa Clara," which took place in December 1958. The loss of this "battle" by the Batista forces is alleged to have caused Batista to lose hope and flee Cuba. To commemorate this historic military engagement, Castro has built a Che Guevara museum in Santa Clara."One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting," proclaimed a New York Times headline on Jan 4, 1959 about the battle. "Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties" the articles continued. "Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men." (Some New York Times correspondent claimed that he did that with “3 sling shots and 2 pea shooters. Such Heros!”)"Those of us who were there can only laugh at this stuff," say participants on both sides who live in exile today. In fact, the Battle of Santa Clara -- despite what those early versions that propagandist Jayson Blair reported -- was a puerile skirmish. Che Guevara's own diary mentions that his column suffered exactly one casualty (a soldierknown as El Vaquerito) in this ferocious "battle." Other accounts put the grand total of rebel losses as from three to five men. Most of Batista's soldiers saw no reason to fight for a crooked, unpopular regime that was clearly doomed. So they didn't fire a shot, even those on the famous "armored train," that Guevara supposedly attacked andcaptured.Today that armored train is a major tourist attraction in Santa Clara. The train, loaded with 373 soldiers and $4M worth of munitions, was sent from Havana to Santa Clara in late December of 1958 by Batista's high command as a last ditch attempt to halt the rebels. Che's rebels in Santa Clara bulldozed the tracks and the train derailed just outside of town. Then a few rebels shot at it and a few soldiers fired back. No one was hurt. Soon some rebels approached brandishing a truce flag and one of the train's officers, Enrique Gomez, walked out to meet them. Gomez was brought to meet Comandante Guevara."What's going on here!' Che shouted. "This isn't what we agreed on!" Gomez was puzzled. "What agreement?" he asked. It turned out, unbeknownst to the troops inside, Guevara had used funds the revolutionaries had raised from anti-Batista Cubans to buy the train and all its armaments from its corrupt commander Colonel FlorentinoRossell, who had already fled to Miami. The price was either $350,000 or $1,000,000, depending on the source.Actually Che had every reason to be upset. Actual shots fired against his troops? Here's another eye-witness account regarding Che's famous "invasion" of las Villas Province shortly before the famous "battle" of Santa Clara. "Guevara's column shuffled right into the U.S. agricultural experimental station in Camaguey. Guevara asked manager Joe McGuire to have a man take a package to Batista's military commander in the city. The package contained $100,000 with a note. Guevara's men moved through the province almost within sight of uninterested Batista troops."Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo was a Rebel captain who had been in on many of these transactions but he defected mere months after the Rebel victory. In an El Diario de Nueva York article dated June 25th 1959 he claimed that Castro still had $4,500,000 left in that "fund" at the time of the Revolutionary victory. "I don't know what might have happened to that money." Rodriguez Tamayo adds.Yet immediately after the Santa Clara bribe and skirmish, Che ordered 27 Batista soldiers executed as "war criminals." Dr. Serafin Ruiz was a Castro operative in Santa Clara at the time, but apparently an essentially decent one. "But Comandante" he responded to Che's order. "Our revolution promises not to execute without trials, without proof. How can we just....?""Look Serafin" Che snorted back. "If your bourgeois prejudices won'tallow you to carry out my orders, fine. Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning -- but execute them NOW!" It was a Marxist version of the Red Queen's famous line to Alice in Wonderland:"Sentence first -- verdict afterwards!"Che Guevara's own diary puts the grand total of his forces' losses during the entire two-year long "civil war" in Cuba at 20, about equal to the average number dead during Rio de Janeiro's carnival every year. To put it briefly, Batista's army barely fought.Officials in Cuba's U.S. embassy at the time became a little skeptical about all the battlefield bloodshed and heroics reported in the New York Times and investigated. They ran down every reliable lead and eyewitness account of what the New York Times kept reporting as bloody civil war with thousands dead in single battles.They found that in the entire Cuban countryside, in those two years of "ferocious" battles between rebel forces and Batista troops, the total casualties on both sides actually amounted to 182. New Orleans has an annual murder rate double that.Typically, Che Guevara doesn't even merit credit for the perfectly sensible scheme of bribing rather than fighting Batista's army. The funds for these bribes derived mostly from Fidel's snookering of Batista's wealthy political opponents, convincing them that he was a "patriotic Cuban, a democrat," and that they should join, or at least help fund, his 26th of July Movement in order to bring democracy and prosperity to Cuba ChiefØ executioner for the Castro regime, responsible for the murder of thousandsØ Was appointed Cuba's Minister of Economics in 1960; within months the Cuban peso was practically worthless. Was appointed Cuba's Minister of Industries inØ 1961; within a year a previously prosperous nation was rationing food, closing factories, and losing hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens, who were happy to flee with only the clothes on their backs.US Leftist Media Promoted and Pimped Castro and Che Guevara (Lynch)A communist Jew and admitted bigot, Herbert Matthews, traveled with Castro and all his propaganda was reported in the US media as fact. From 1956 through 1960, the years when the US media was pretending that Castro was not a communist.Matthews of the NY Times should be grouped with fabricators like Stephen Glass of The New Republic or the latest Times reporter to shame the paper, Jayson Blair, whose deceptions were elaborate and deliberate. Matthews was trying to curry communist favor; even after hebroke with Castro, his pivotal role early in the revolution guaranteed him free access. He was prohibited from continuing to report about the revolution by his own editors.Matthews wrote sympathetically about Castro because journalism was not about truth, to him journalism was a propaganda tool, a crusade for Marxism, a weapon for righting wrongs and tipping power towards communismIn August of 1960, a year and a half after Che Guevara entered Havana ahead of his "column" of "guerrillas," Time magazine featured the revolutionary comandante on its cover and crowned him the "Brains of the Cuban Revolution." (Fidel Castro was "the heart" and Raul Castro "the fist.")"Wearing a smile of melancholy sweetness that many women find devastating," read the New York Time articles, "Che guides Cuba with icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence and a perceptive sense of humor.""This is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term," The New York Times had declared a year earlier. "Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist.""It would be a great mistake," Walter Lippmann wrote in the Washington Post that same month, "even to intimate that Castro's Cuba has any real prospect of becoming a Soviet satellite."A few months earlier the London Observer had observed: "Mr. Castro's bearded youthful figure has become a symbol of Latin America's rejection of brutality and lying. Every sign is that he will reject personal rule and violence."Time magazine was in perfect sync with her major-media peers --utterly wrong.Lynch the ExecutionerGuevara was no more the brains of the Cuban Revolution than Cheka head, Felix Drezhinsky had been the brains of the Bolshevik Revolution,or Gestapo chief Himmler the brains of the National Socialist Revolution, or KGB head Beria the brains behind Stalinism. In fact Che performed the same role for Fidel Castro as Drezhinsky performed for Lenin, and Beria for Stalin. Che Guevara was the Castro regime's chief executioner.Under Che, Havana's La Cabana fortress was converted into Cuba's Lubianka. He was a true Chekist: "Always interrogate your prisoners at night," Che commanded his prosecutorial goons, "a man is easier to cow at night, his mental resistance is always lower."A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book Yo Soy El Che! that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad.In his book Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first year of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track him down in Bolivia and was the last person to question him, says that Che during his final talk, admitted to "a couple thousand" executions. But he shrugged them off as all beingof "imperialist spies and CIA agents."Vengeance, much less justice, had little to do with the Castro/Che directed bloodbath in the first months of 1959. Che's murderous agenda in La Cabana fortress in 1959 was exactly Stalin's murderous agenda in the Katyn Forest in 1940. Like Stalin's massacre of the Polish officer corps, like Stalin's Great Terror against his own officer corps a few years earlier, Che's firing squad marathons were a perfectly rational and cold blooded exercise that served their purpose ideally. His bloodbath decapitated literally and figuratively the first ranks of Cuba's anti-Castro rebels.Lynch the Hobo in GuatemalaFive years before the beginning of the Castro Revolution, while still a Communist hobo in Guatemala, Che had seen the Guatemalan officer corps with CIA assistance rise against the Red regime of Jacobo Arbenz and send him and his Communist minions hightailing into exile. (For those leftists who still think that Arbenz was an innocent"nationalist" victimized by the fiendish United Fruit Company and their CIA proxies, please note: Arbenz sought exile not in France or Spain or even Mexico -- the traditional havens for deposed Latin-American politicians -- but in the Soviet satellite, Czechoslovakia. Also, the coup went into motion, not when Arbenz started nationalizing United Fruit property, but when a cargo of Soviet-bloc weapons arrived in Guatemala. "Arbenz didn't execute enough people," was how Guevara explained the Guatemalan coup's success.)Fidel and Che didn't want a repeat of the Guatemalan coup in Cuba. Equally important, the massacres cowed and terrorized. Most of them came after public trials. And the executions, right down to the final shattering of the skull with the coup de grace from a massive .45 slug fired at five paces, were public too. Guevara made it a policy for his men to parade the families and friends of the executed before the blood, bone and brain spattered firing squad.Che Lynch Rides a Yatch to CubaFidel had brought the recently monikered "Che" on the Granma invasion of Cuba as the rebel group's doctor, based on his bogus credentials. On the harrowing boat ride through turbulent seas from the Yucatan to Cuba's Oriente province in the decrepit old yacht, a rebel found Che lying comatose in the boat's cabin. He rushed to thecommander, "Fidel, looks like Che's dead!""Well, if he's dead," replied Castro. "Then throw him overboard." In fact Guevara was suffering the combined effects of sea sickness and an asthma attack. Evidently, Che was not regarded as an invaluable member of the expedition at the time.Che, Minister of EconomicsIn 1960 Castro appointed Che as Cuba's "Minister of Economics." Within months the Cuban peso, a currency historically equal to the U.S. dollar and fully backed by Cuba's gold reserves, was practically worthless. The following year Castro appointed Che as Cuba's "Minister of Industries." Within a year a nation that previously had higher per capita income than Austria and Japan, a huge influx of immigrants and the 3rd highest protein consumption in the hemisphere was rationing food, closing factories, and hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens from every sector of its society, all who were grateful to leave with only the clothes on their back.By 1961, Guevara was having to give embarrassing explanations to the workers at the office: "Our technical comrades at the companies have made a toothpaste ... which is as good as the previous one; it cleans just the same, though after a while it turns to stone."By 1963, all hopes of industrializing Cuba were abandoned, and the revolution accepted its role as a colonial provider of sugar to the Soviet bloc in exchange for oil to cover its needs and to re-sell to other countries. For the next three decades, Cuba would survive on a Soviet subsidy of somewhere between $65 billion and $100 billion a yearwhich the Soviets received sub rosa from the US government.In fact, by 1997, the thirtieth anniversary of his death, Cubans were dieting on a ration of five pounds of rice and one pound of beans per month; four ounces of meat twice a year; four ounces of soybean paste per week; and four eggs per month. Most observers attribute this to "Communist mismanagement." Che himself confessed to his multiple economic errors and failings. Actually, given the goal of Cuba's ruler since January of 1959 -- i.e., absolute power -- the Cuban economy has been expertly managed. Castro inherited a vibrant free market economy in 1959 (something unique among communist rulers). All the others -- from Lenin to Mao to Ho to Ulbricht to Tito to Kim Il Sung --took over primitive and/or chaotic, war-ravaged economies.A less megalomaniacal ruler would have considered that a golden goose had landed in his lap. But Castro wrung its neck. He deliberately and methodically wrecked Latin America's premier economy. A Cuban capitalist is a person that couldn't be controlled, Castro reasoned then, and continues to do so to this day. Despite a flood of tourism and foreign investment for over a decade, Cuba in 2005 is as essentially as poor (and Communist) as it was in 1965 or worse. The Castro brothers are vigilant in these matters.Che actually believed in the socialist fantasy. When he pronounced in May of 1961 that under his tutelage the Cuban economy would boast an annual growth rate of 10% he seemed to believe it.Castro didn't care. He simply knew as a result he'd be running Cuba like his personal plantation, with the Cuban people as his cattle. This is where libertarian/free-market ideologues get it wrong. They insist that with the lifting of the embargo, capitalism will sneak in and eventually blindside Castro. All the proof is to the contrary. Capitalism didn't sweep Castro away or even co-opt him. He blindsided it. He swept it away. He is not Deng or Gorbachev. In 1959 Castro could have easily left most of Cuba's economy in place, made it obedient to his whims, and been a Peron, a Stalin, a Tito - the idol of his youth.He could have grabbed half and been a Tito. He could have demanded a piece of the action from all involved and been a Marcos, a Trujillo, a Mobutu, a Suharto. But this wasn't enough for him. Castro lusted for the power of a Stalin or a Mao. And he got it.*****************Besides the communists were busy creating Marxist-Capitalists (i.e Armand Hammer and the Oil Cartel for example)and Marxist-Catholics in the USA. They already ideologically controlled the universities and divinity schools. All they had to do was be sure to graduate flocks of new commies annually.In late 1957 Castro signed an agreement called "The Miami Pact" with several anti-Batista Cuban politicians and ex-ministers in exile at the time. Most of these were quite wealthy. Indeed if the term, "rich, white Miami Cuban exiles," that liberals scornfully use against current Cuban-Americans ever fit -- it was for the mulatto Batista's liberal opponents, for Fidel Castro's early backers. Among these was formerpresident Carlos Prio who Batista had ousted in his (bloodless) coup in 1952, along with many of Prio's ministers and business cronies. In fact, Guevara went ballistic over the Miami Pact, when he first learned of it, over this shameful deal with "bourgeois" elements. "I refuse to lend my historic name to that crime!" he wrote. "We rebelshave proffered our asses in the most despicable act of buggery that Cuban history is likely to recall!" It was despicable buggery for sure. But Che had the buggerers and the buggerees reversed. Lenin coined the term "Useful Idiots," but to this day Castro remains history's virtuoso at snaring and employing them.Was There a Castro Guerrilla War in Cuba?That a "guerrilla war" with "peasant and worker backing" overthrew Batista is among the century's most widespread and persistent academic fables. No Cuban Castroites who participated actually believe this. The Associated Press dispatches about Castro and Che's "war" were actually concocted and written by Castro's own agent in New York, Mario Llerena, who admits as much in his book, The Unsuspected Revolution. Llerena was also the contact with Castro's most famous publicity agent, the New York Times, Herbert Matthews.National Review's famous 1960 cartoon showing a beaming Castro, "I got my job through the New York Times!" nailed it.In December of 1958 the only pitched battle of the war took place for control of the city of Santa Clara in central Cuba. Following the battle, Batista’s army retreated and disintegrated, and Batista’s regime collapsed. In the early morning hours of January 1, 1959, Batista fled the country.Che Guevara was Really Ernest LynchTo give them credit, most of Castro's comandantes knew their Batista war had been an elaborate ruse and gaudy clown show. After the glorious victory, they were content to run down and execute the few Batista men motivated enough to shoot back (most of these were of humble background), settle into the mansions stolen from Batistianos,and enjoy the rest of their booty.British historian Hugh Thomas, though a leftist Labor Party member who sympathized with Castro's revolution, studied mountains of records and simply could not evade the truth. His massive and authoritative historical volume Cuba sums it up very succinctly: "In all essentials Castro's battle for Cuba was a public relations campaign, fought in New York and Washington."Che Guevara, himself, possessed an immense capacity for self deception. On a state visit to Czechoslovakia in 1960 his Cuban companions pointed out the numerous prostitutes on the streets and in the very hotel where they stayed. Che nodded wearily. Back in Cuba when one of them winked and brought up the prostitutes Che flared indignantly. "I didn't see any prostitutes there!" (We don’t have yer damn prostitutes gringo.)The Cubans looked at each other shrugging but knew better than to press the issue. Che didn't want to remember the sight of prostitutes. He wanted to convince himself that such a thing was impossible in a glorious Socialist nation, a sister republic.That gift for self-deception probably led him to believe the guerrilla war fable. And while trying to duplicate it in Bolivia he paid for his obtuseness and wishful thinking with his life. In Cuba, Che couldn't find anyone to fight against him. Cuban ImperialismIn the Congo, scene of another of his guerrilla forays, he couldn't find anyone to fight with him. In Bolivia he finally started getting a tiny taste of both. In short order he was betrayed by the very peasants he set out to liberate (but who didn't see it quite that way), brought to ground and killed.Shortly after entering Havana with the revolutionary forces, Che was already advising, equipping and dispatching guerrilla forces in an attempt to duplicate the Cuban Revolution in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Every one of those guerrilla forces (which were Cuban Communist-led and staffed) was wiped out in short order, usually to the last man. Rafael Trujillo and Luis Somoza weren't about to follow Batista's example of pussyfooting against guerrillas.A few years later Che equipped, advised and sent more guerrillas to Argentina and Guatemala. Again they were stamped out almost to a man. These guerrilla expeditions cost the lives of two of Che's fatally credulous friends: the Argentine Jorge Masseti and the Guatemalan Julio Caceres.Leftist "scholars" complain about The Bay of Pigs invasion as "Yankee intervention" (though every single invader, including the commanders was Cuban) against an innocent nationalist revolution that wished only to be left alone. They might revisit the documentary evidence. In fact Castro and Che launched five of their own versions of the Bay of Pigs invasions before the U.S. had even started contingency planning fortheirs.Castro seemed to know these invasions to spark revolutions were futile. But for Castro they still had a handy rationale. "These foreigners are nothing but troublemakers," he told a Cuban rebel named Lazaro Ascencio right after the revolutionary triumph. "Know what I'm going to do with Che Guevara? I'm going to send him to Santo Domingo andsee if Trujillo kills him."How serious was Castro? We can only guess. But he found a way for Che to earn his keep and stay of trouble in Cuba by assigning him as commander of La Cabana, the fortress where political prisoners were held and killed.Che's role in "Imperialism's First Defeat!" as Castro refers to the Bay of Pigs invasion merits mention. The American invasion plan included a ruse in which a CIA squad dispatched three rowboats off the coast of western Cuba in Pinar Del Rio (350 miles from the true invasion site) loaded with time release Roman candles, bottle rockets, mirrors and a tape recording of battle.The wily Guerrilla Che immediately deciphered the imperialist scheme. That little feint 300 miles away at the Bay of Pigs was a transparent ruse, he determined. The real invasion was coming in Pinar Del Rio. Che stormed over to the site with several thousand troops, dug in, locked, loaded and waited for the "Yankee/mercenary" attack. They braced themselves as the sparklers, smoke bombs and mirrors did their stuff offshore.Three days later the (literal) smoke and mirror show expended itself and Che's men marched back to Havana. Somehow Che had managed to wound himself in the heated battle against the tape recorder. The bullet pierced Che's chin and exited above his temple, just missing his brain. The scar is visible in all post April '61 pictures of Che (the picture we see on posters and T shirts was taken a year earlier.)Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Fidelista at the time, speculates the wound may have come from a botched suicide attempt. Che hagiographers John Lee Anderson, Carlos Castaneda and Paco Taibo insist it was an accident, Che's own pistol going off just under his face.Jorge Castaneda in his Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara cannot resist giving Che some credit for "Imperialism's First Defeat."The Mexican author (and recent foreign minister) writes that Che'srole was "crucial," explaining that Cuba's 200,000 man militia played a"central role in the victory." The training of these militia had been inthe hands of Che since 1960. "Without Che" Castaneda gushes, "themilitias would not have been reliable."The Bay of Pigs BattleAfter Castro took over, the Soviets rapidly sent 20,000 soldiers andmuch equipment to Cuba. Against the Bay of Pigs landing Castro sent51,000 troops (including Soviet troops) and militia with limitless Sovietarms, including tanks and planes and batteries of heavy artillery and1400 mostly civilian exile freedom-fighters, most with less than amonth's training. These men carried only light arms and one day'sammunition. The Che-trained Cuban militia hit them, then immediatelyhalted and fled hysterically.They were ordered back, probed hesitantly again, got mauled againand retreated in headlong flight again. They marched back again,many at gun-point, and rolled in battery after battery of Soviet-manned122 mm Howitzers. They rained 2000 rounds of heavy artillery intolightly-armed men they outnumbered 50-1. ("Rommel's crack AfrikaCorps broke and ran under a similar bombardment," explains Bay ofPigs historian Haynes Johnson.) Then Castro's unopposed air forcestrafed the invaders repeatedly and at will.The invaders stood their ground to the last man and the militia wasforced to probe yet again -- and retreat again in headlong flight. Theyeventually stopped and brought in reinforcements. (50-1 was notenough.) They rained another Soviet artillery storm on the utterlyabandoned and hopelessly outnumbered freedom fighters and finallymoved in to overwhelm them -- after three days of effort in which theinvaders hadn't eaten, drank or slept, and had run out of ammunition.Castro's forces took 5200 casualties in the process. The freedomfighters suffered 114.Che did show up at the battle site, but the day the shooting ended. Hewalked into a building strewn with captured and wounded freedomfightersand looked around with his wry Argentine smile. "We're goingto execute every one of you," he barked. Then he turned on his heelsand walked out. As usual, Castro had a much shrewder plan for theprisoners. His regime reaped a propaganda windfall and 62 millionAmerican dollars when JFK ransomed them back.In fact, Castro was fuming at his Militia's performance. A week afterthe battle he visited some of the freedom-fighters in their Havanaprison cells. One had been an old acquaintance from college. "Hombre,if I had 20,000 men like you guys," Castro beamed to his old friend. "I'd have all of Latin America in my hands right now!"*****************The Real Cuban Guerrilla WarOne of the longest and bloodiest guerrilla wars on this continent wasfought not by Fidel and Che but against Fidel and Che -- and bylandless peasants. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary inCuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's kulaks had guns, a few at firstanyway, and put up a heroic resistance until the Kennedy-Khrushchevdeal during the "Cuban Missile Crisis" finally starved them of supplies.Cubans know this war as "The Escambray Rebellion."It's rarely reported, but Che Guevara had a very bloody hand in one ofthe major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. Seventy to 80percent of these rural anti-communist peasant guerrillas wereexecuted on the spot on capture. "We fought with the fury of corneredbeasts" was how one of the few lucky ones who escaped alivedescribed the guerrillas' desperate freedom-fight against thetotalitarian agendas of the Cuban regime. (In 1956, when Che linked upwith the Cuban exiles in Mexico city, one of them recalls Che railingagainst the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheeringtheir extermination by Soviet tanks.)In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines."Cuban militia units (whose training and morale Jorge Castanedainsists we credit to Che) commanded by Russian officers employedflame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambraycountryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding thecounterrevolutionaries and bandits."The Maoist line about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is thepeople, etc.," fit Cuba's anti-Communist rebellion perfectly. RaulCastro himself admitted that his government faced 179 bands of"counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits." at the time.So in a massive "relocation" campaign reminiscent of the one SpanishGeneral Valerinao "The Butcher" Weyler carried out against Cubansduring their war of independence at the turn of the century, Castro'sSoviet-trained armed forces ripped hundreds of thousands of ruralCubans from their ancestral homes at gunpoint and herded them intoconcentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba.According to evidence presented to the Organization of AmericanStates by Cuban-exile researcher Dr. Claudio Beneda, 4000 anti-Communist peasants were summarily executed during this ruralrebellion.Che Lynch the Psychopathic Mass MurdererTime magazine notwithstanding, Fidel Castro -- and Fidel Castro alone-- was the "brains" of the Cuban Revolution. And part of his acumenwas his proficiency at sizing up his revolutionary companeros, thendelegating jobs -- then eliminating them in various ways ascircumstances dictated. With Guevara he performed masterfully. Firsthe assigned him to be commander of Havana's La Cabana fortress,which Che promptly converted to a prison and killing field."Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemythat falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odorof gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare mybeing for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with abestial howl!"Che Guevara wrote these lines while in his early twenties, before hehad gotten his hands on any such enemy. The passage appears inChe's Motorcycle Diaries, recently made into a heartwarming film byRobert Redford -- the only film to get a whooping standing ovation atthe Sundance Film Festival. It seems that Redford omitted thisinconvenient portion of Che's diaries from his touching tribute.Two weeks after Che entered Havana and took his post at La Cabanafortress, Castro saw his instincts as a personnel manager fullyvindicated. The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reachedGuevara's nostrils from actual combat. It always came from the closerange murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men. "We must createthe pedagogy of the paredon (firing squad.)" Che instructed hisRevolutionary Tribunals: "We don't need proof to execute a man. Weonly need proof that it's necessary to execute him. A revolutionarymust become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."Actually, Che Guevara was anything but a "cold killing machine." Theterm implies a certain detachment or nonchalance towards murder. Infact Che gave ample evidence of enjoying it. Almost all Cubans whoknew him and are now in exile and able to talk freely (Jose Benitez,Mario Chanes de Armas Dariel Alarcon among others) recall CheGuevara as a classic psychopath.In January 1957, shortly after landing in Cuba aboard the yachtGranma with Fidel and Raul Castro, Che sent a letter to his discardedwife, Hilda Gadea. "Dear vieja (i.e, 'Ole Lady' -- on top of everythingelse, Che was also a notorious misogynist) I'm here in Cuba's hills,alive and thirsting for blood." His thirst would soon be slaked.In that very month, January 1957, Fidel Castro ordered the executionof a peasant guerrilla named Eutimio Guerra who he accused of beingan informer for Batista's forces. Castro assigned the killing to his ownbodyguard, Universo Sanchez. To everyone's surprise, Che Guevara -- alowly rebel soldier/medic at the time (not yet a comandante --volunteered to accompany Sanchez and another soldier to theexecution site. The Cuban rebels were glum as they walked slowlydown the trail in a torrential thunderstorm. Finally the little groupstopped in a clearing.Sanchez was hesitant, looking around, perhaps looking for an excuseto postpone or call off the execution. Dozens would follow, but thiswas the first execution of a Castro rebel by Castro's rebels. Suddenlywithout warning Che stepped up and fired his pistol into Guerra'stemple. "He went into convulsions for a while and was finally still. Nowhis belongings were mine." Che wrote in his Diaries.Shortly afterwards, Che's father in Buenos Aires received a letter fromhis prodigal son. "I'd like to confess, papa', at that moment Idiscovered that I really like killing."This attitude caught Castro's eye. More executions of assorted"deserters" informers" and "war criminals" quickly followed, all withChe's enthusiastic participation. One was of a captured Batistasoldier, a 17-year old boy totally green to the guerrilla "war," hence hiseasy capture. First Che interrogated him."I haven't killed anyone, comandante," the terrified boy answered Che."I just got out here! I'm an only son, my mother's a widow and I joinedthe army for the salary, to send it to her every month...don't kill me!"He blurted out when he heard Che's unmoved reply, "Don't kill me! --why?"The boy was trussed up, shoved in front of a recently dug pit andmurdered. Fidel was privy to these events. He thought executingBatista soldiers was incredibly stupid, compared to the propagandavalue of releasing them since most weren't fighting anyway. But herecognized the value of executions in intimidating other Cubans, andrecognized Che's value as someone who enjoyed the job. By thesummer of 1957 Che Guevara had been promoted to full-fledged Majoror "comandante," the Rebel army's highest rank. His fame wasspreading.But not all the revolutionaries were favorably impressed. In mid-1958one of the rebels was wounded and made his way to a Dr. HectorMeruelo in the nearby town of Cienfuegos. The good doctor patchedhim up and a few weeks later informed him that he was well enough toreturn to Che's column."No, doctor," the boy responded. Please be discreet with this becauseit could cost me my life, but I've learned that Che is nothing but amurderer. I'm a revolutionary but I'm also a Christian. I'll go and joinCamilo's column (Camilo Cienfuegos) -- but never Che's."As commander of the La Cabana prison, Che often insisted onshattering the skull of the condemned man by firing the coup de gracehimself. When other duties tore him away from his beloved executionyard, he consoled himself with watching the executions. Che's officein La Cabana had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his firingsquads at work.A Rumanian journalist named Stefan Bacie visited Cuba in early 1959and was fortunate enough to get an audience with the already famousleader, whom he had also met briefly in Mexico city. The meeting tookplace in Che's office in La Cabana. Upon entering, the Rumanian sawChe motioning him over to his office's newly constructed window.Stefan Bacie got there just in time to hear the command of fuego, hearthe blast from the firing squad and see a condemned prisoner mancrumple and convulse. The stricken journalist immediately left andcomposed a poem, titled, "I No Longer Sing of Che." ("I no longer singof Che any more than I would of Stalin," go the first lines.)A Cuban gentleman named Pierre San Martin was among those jailedby Che Guevara in the early months of the Cuban Revolution. In an ElNuevo Herald article from December 28, 1997 San Martin recalled thehorrors: "Thirteen of us were crammed into a cell. Sixteen of us wouldstand while the other sixteen tried to sleep on the cold filthy floor. Wetook shifts that way. Dozens were led from the cells to the firing squaddaily. The volleys kept us awake. We felt that any one of thoseminutes would be our last.One morning the horrible sound of that rusty steel door swinging openstartled us awake and Che's guards shoved a new prisoner into ourcell. He was a boy, maybe 14 years old. His face was bruised andsmeared with blood. "What did you do?" We asked horrified. "I tried todefend my papa," gasped the bloodied boy. "But they sent him to thefiring squad."Soon Che's guards returned. The rusty steel door opened and theyyanked the boy out of the cell. "We all rushed to the cell's window thatfaced the execution pit," recalls Mr. San Martin. "We simply couldn'tbelieve they'd murder him."Then we spotted him, strutting around the blood-drenched executionyard with his hands on his waist and barking orders -- Che Guevarahimself. 'Kneel down!' Che barked at the boy."Assassins!" we screamed from our window."I said: KNEEL DOWN!" Che barked again.The boy stared Che resolutely in the face. "If you're going to kill me,"he yelled, "you'll have to do it while I'm standing! Men die standing!""Murderers!" the men yelled desperately from their cells. "Then wesaw Che unholstering his pistol. He put the barrel to the back of theboys neck and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy."We erupted…'Murderers! -- Assassins!'" His murder finished, Chefinally looked up at us, pointed his pistol, and emptied his clip in ourdirection. Several of us were wounded by his shots."After a hard day at the office, Che repaired to his new domicile inTarara, 15 miles outside Havana on the pristine beachfront (todayreserved exclusively for tourists and Communist party members, bythe way). The "austere idealist," Che, hadn't done too badly for himselfin this real estate transaction, known in non-revolutionary societies astheft."The house was among the most luxurious in Cuba," writes Cubanjournalist Antonio Llano Montes. ''Until a few weeks prior, it hadbelonged to Cuba's most successful building contractor. The mansionhad a boat dock, a huge swimming pool, seven bathrooms, a sauna, amassage salon and several television sets. One TV had been speciallydesigned in the U.S. and had a screen ten feet wide and was operatedby remote control (remember, this was 1959.) This was thought to bethe only TV of its kind in Latin America. The mansion's garden had averitable jungle of imported plants, a pool with waterfall, ponds filledwith exotic tropical fish and several bird houses filled with parrots andother exotic birds. The habitation was something out of A Thousandand One Nights.Llano Montes wrote the above in exile. In January 1959 he didn't goquite into such detail in his article which appeared in the Cubanmagazine Carteles. He simply wrote that, "Comandante Che Guevarahas fixed his residence in one of the most luxurious houses on Tararabeach."Two days after his article ran, while lunching at Havana's El Carmelorestaurant, Llano Montes looked up from his plate to see three heavilyarmed Rebel army soldiers instructing him to accompany them. Shortlythe journalist found himself in Che Guevara's La Cabana office, seateda few feet in front of the Comandante's desk which was piled withpapers.It took half an hour but Che finally made his grand entrance, "reekinghorribly, as was his custom" recalls Llano Montes. "Without looking atme. He started grabbing papers on his desk and brusquely signingthem with 'Che.' His assistant came in and Che spoke to him over hisshoulder. "I'm signing these 26 executions so we can take care of thistonight.'"Then he got up and walked out. Half an hour later he walks back inand starts signing more papers. Finished signing, he picks up a bookand starts reading -- never once looking at me. Another half hour goesby and he finally puts the book down. 'So you're Llano Montes,' hefinally sneers, 'who says I appropriated a luxurious house.'"I simply wrote that you had moved into a luxurious house, which isthe truth," replied Llano Montes."I know your tactics!" Che shot back. "You press people are injectingvenom into your articles to damage the revolution. You're either withus or against us. We're not going to allow all the press foolishness thatBatista allowed. I can have you executed this very night. How aboutthat!""You'll need proof that I've broken some law" responded Montes."'We don't need proof. We manufacture the proof,' Che said whilestroking his shoulder length hair, a habit of his. One of his prosecutors,a man nicknamed 'Puddle-of-blood' then walked in and started talking.'Don't let the stupid jabbering of those defense lawyers delay theexecutions!' Che yelled at him. 'Threaten them with execution. Accusethem of being accomplices of the Batistianos.' Then Che jerked thehandful of papers from Mr. Puddle and started signing them."This type of thing went on from noon until 6:30 PM when Che finallyturned to his aides and said. 'Get this man out of here. I don't want himin my presence.'" [24]This was Che's manner of dealing with defenseless men. He acted thisway when he held the hammer. Against armed men on an equal footinghis behavior was markedly different. Two years earlier in the Sierra,Castro had ordered Che to take command over a guerrilla faction ledby a fellow 26th of July Movement rebel named Jorge Sotus, who hadbeen operating in an area north of the area where Fidel and Che wereand had actually been confronting and fighting Batista's army. Che anda few of his men hiked over to Sotus' command station and informedhim that Che was now in command."Like hell," responded Sotus."It's Fidel's order," responded Guevara. "We have more militaryexperience than you and your group.""More experience in running and hiding from Batista's army perhaps,"Sotus shot back. Che dithered and Sotus added. "Besides my men andI aren't about to take orders from a foreigner."Che backed off, hiked back and informed Fidel who didn't press theissue. But a few weeks after Batista's flight and Castro's triumph,Sotus was arrested without warning and shoved in the Isle of Pinesprison. The intrepid Sotus managed to escape, made his way to theU.S. and joined an exile paramilitary group, taking part in many armedraids against Cuba from south Florida until the Kennedy-Khrushchevdeal ended them.Guevara also had a run in with a rebel group named the Second Frontof the Escambray. These operated against Batista in the Escambraymountains of Las Villas province. When Che's column entered the areain late 1958, Che sought to bring these guerrillas under his commandand met much resistance, especially from a comandante named JesusCarreras who knew of Che's Communist pedigree. Again Guevaradidn't press the issue.A few weeks into the January 1959 triumph Carreras and a group ofthese Escambray commanders visited Che in La Cabana to address theissue of how they'd been frozen out of any leadership roles in the newregime. On the way in, Carreras ran into a rebel he'd known in the anti-Batista fight and stopped to chat while the rest of the group enteredChe's office. Once the group was inside, Che began to rip into Carreras(who was still not present) as a drunkard, a womanizer, a bandit and aperson he'd never appoint to any important position.Midway into Che's tirade, Carreras entered the office, havingoverheard much while outside. "Che went white," recall those present.An enraged Carreras jumped right in his face and Che backed off.Finally Carreras challenged Che to a duel, "right outside in thecourtyard," he pointed."How is it possible," Che quickly smiled, "that two revolutionarycompaneros get to such a point simply because of amisunderstanding?"The subject was dropped and they turned to other issues, but a yearlater Jesus Carreras found himself a prisoner in a La Cabana dungeon.A few months later he was defiantly facing a firing squad. Fuego! Thevolley shattered his body. And yes, Che was watching from hiswindow.*****************Even the New York Times admits that the first two months of theCuban Revolution saw 568 firing squad executions. A study by Cuban-American Scholar Armando Lago doubles that figure. One by Dr.Claudio Beneda triples it. The preceding "trials" shocked andnauseated all who witnessed them. They were shameless farces,sickening charades. Guevara clarified the matter. "Evidence is anarchaic bourgeois detail," he explained. "We execute fromrevolutionary conviction."Not that the slaughter ended after the first few months, as most"scholars" imply. In December 1964 Che addressed the U.N. GeneralAssembly. "Yes, we execute, " he declared to the claps and cheers ofthat august body. "And we will keep executing as long as it isnecessary. This is a war to the death against the Revolution'senemies."According to the Black Book of Communism those executions hadreached 14,000 by the end of the decade. (Cuba is a small country. InAmerican terms, this would amount to more than three millionexecutions.)On the eve of his trip to New York, Che gave a speech in SantiagoCuba where he declared: "We must learn the lesson of absoluteabhorrence of imperialism. Against that class of hyena there is noother medium than extermination!"Two years earlier, Guevara had gotten tantalizingly close to thatmedium. "If the missiles had remained we would have used themagainst the very heart of the United States, including New York," hetold the London Daily Worker in November of 1962. "We must neverestablish peaceful co-existence. We must walk the path of victoryeven if it costs millions of atomic victims.""Extermination," Che stressed. "Millions of atomic victims," he said forthe record. "Pure hate, as the motivating force," he repeatedlydeclared.

Special Forces Successful Tactics

2006-06-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Army Special Forces tactics have proved successful, and are now becoming even more popular in the war on terror. These techniques involve going in and making friends with as many people as possible, and then waiting for those people to reciprocate with information, or even actively joining your efforts to track down terrorists.

The army Civil Affairs battalions actually belong to the Special Forces, and specialize in working long term with locals to improve living and economic conditions. Something as simple as having a veterinarian tend to local herds, flying in equipment to drill wells, or passing out battery powered radios builds long term good will. The Special Forces know what goods and services will be most useful, and appreciated by the locals. Once the good will is established, the Special Forces then have an invaluable intelligence tool; the ability to go to villagers and just sit and talk…and ask questions that will be answered.

The first thing to do is make an assessment, and this is why Special Forces training includes learning the languages of the area they will specialize in. The five active duty Special Forces groups (brigades) each specialize in a different region of the world. Going around to villages or neighborhoods to make introductions goes over well. The Special Forces are exotic visitors who speak the language, know the customs and are very respectful. Two men in each twelve man Special Forces team are medical specialists, a huge asset to get “in the door”. Since they know the culture, the Special Forces operators know when it is polite to offer something, how to do it, and when to keep quiet. The people in these poor countries know of America as a rich, generous country, so it’s not difficult for the Special Forces to offer assistance. The Special Forces will usually say why they are there, to catch terrorists who threaten the United States. For that reason, the Special Forces will encourage friendships with locals who are not Islamic radicals; establishing relations, and maintaining them.

The Special Forces training also makes it easier for the operators to detect when they aren’t making progress. To detect when they are being lied to or patronized. This is important, because the Special Forces and Civil Affairs troops might be working an area for months, or years, before the locals decide that the foreigners are trustworthy, and spoken to freely and frankly.

The war on terror is being fought, and won, with thousands of good deeds. These are tools that are utilized before the bombs and bullets become necessary to eliminate the dangerous leaders of the enemy imperialists… as was the case recently when Special Forces achieved an important success by taking out the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

For more information on Special Forces Tactics, see the many publications at QuikManeuvers.com

Soviet Special Operations & Urban Assault

2006-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

A bit of history on Soviet Special Operations and City Fighting:

On June 14, 1995, Chechnyan Muslim terrorist leader Shamil Basaev entered Gronzy with about 200 terrorists. The muslims first tried, and failed, to seize a police station. They were more successful in capturing two bank buildings and the city administrative center. Basaev’s forces positioned machine guns on the roofs of the captured buildings and then seized the local hospital. There, they took hostages and booby trapped the area. The rebels promised that the hostages would be released if the Russians agreed to cease hostilities in Chechnya and withdraw their forces from the region. If the Russians refused or made any attempt to resolve the situation by force, the hostages would die.On June 17, as negotiations continued, Russian MVD and Spetsnaz forces attempted to recapture the hospital. Spetsnaz troops fired at the front windows of the hospital to create a diversion while elite Alpha group forces advanced unseen from another direction. While the Russians succeeded in temporarily capturing part of the first floor, freeing some hostages and eliminating some enemy snipers and machine gun crews, the rest of the hospital remained under Basaev’s control. Two hours later they tried again, with similar results. After this second failure, Russian negotiators stated that theRussian troops were acting independently of central government control. This ended efforts to recapture the hospital and negotiations concluded on June 19. Basaev’s forces may not have gotten what they initially demanded, but they were able to return to Chechnya unimpeded, leaving behind 150 dead civilians.

If you would like to read more about Soviet Tactics... check out Quikmaneuvers.com 's many titles on the subject.

Castrating Special Forces Political Plan

2006-05-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

The US Army is aware that its special forces troops are the best trained and most lethal warriors in the world. Currently, there are 5 active duty special forces groups in action, and 2 National Guard special forces groups. By the end of 2012, the Army plans to create 5 new special forces battalions. The 2 National Guard special forces groups will be increased by 2 additional special forces National Guard Battalions.

It is very important that the current, and enlarged Army special forces be used in combat tasks. Currently, more than half of the Army special forces wastes their time training soldiers and armies that will eventually become our enemies, as well as a long list of silly “peace keeping” tasks. The leftist influence among the politicized conventional generals within the Army is responsible for that wastage of trained warrior manpower. Leftists within the government and pentagon are advocating that the special forces be castrated by forcing them to attend the same type of sensitivity group sessions that have ruined the FBI (an agency that was not very good to begin with) and other military and police agencies within America.

Prediction:
If the Democrats take over at the next election, the public will be shocked to learn that the US Army Special Forces, US Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs are the target of leftist sabotage through pro-muslim sensitivity group training.
- Breaker McCoy

SOCOM Lacks Effective Leaders

2006-05-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

The US Special Operations Command includes 52,000 personnel. Ten thousand, almost one fifth, are in Army Special Forces Command. Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, the 160th Helicopter Regiment, and Air Force Special Units make up SOCOM.

SOCOM is the cutting edge, the spearhead, and the organization that does the most ass-kicking in Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout the world. However, they have a problem. They do not have enough generals with special warfare experience. It is very dangerous for the typical conventional American general to become involved in special operations. That is a recipe for disaster.

In fact, the shortfall in special forces trained generals may have been caused by sabotage by the conventional generals. Most of the special forces generals are not special forces personnel. They are generals who at one time or another, in their youth, spent a couple of months earning a Ranger tab. The current situation at SOCOM, and throughout the special forces branch, is extremely perilous. If some special forces trained generals are not moved in within the next few months, SOCOM will go to hell in a hand basket.

There is more disquieting news. The 31 bird colonels that the Army selected for promotion to Brigadier General last year included no special forces officers. What we have here is a failure to promote to generals, special forces officers who are admittedly the best in the US Army.

98% of the men who are 1, 2, and 3 star generals now were rewarded for being political ass-kissers and yes-men. They are lousy combat leaders. None of them are fit to lead special forces troops. This sabotage to insure that no special forces officers are promoted to general is yet another dirty trick of America’s politicized conventional generals, who are running things.

Ask yourself this. Who will correct this bad situation?

Value of Pursuit Commandos

2006-05-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

The American armies in Afghanistan and Iraq are now under the command of dumbed-down conventional anti special operations generals. These generals have reverted to methods used during the Vietnam War, which failed even then. All troops are kept hunkered down in fortified camps, from which they sally on occasional offensive forays. That is why the enemy now controls 70% of Iraq.

If Special Operations Generals were in charge, they would form fast-moving foot-mobile and, in some cases, APC-mobile light infantry pursuit companies. These companies would begin by using trackers to pick up the trail of enemy units. They would then pursue those units relentlessly until they killed them. Such pursuit commando companies composed of 120 men armed with 10 light machine guns, 10 RPGs, 3 light mortars, 6 snipers, with all heavy gear on pack mules or stored in vehicles, would take back Iraq from the enemy. At least 30 such pursuit commando companies should be prowling Iraq at any given time.

Good generals study history. If we had any professional conventional generals, they would have learned about how the French used Pursuit Commandos to defeat Muslim terrorists in Algeria in the late 1950s.

Below is an excerpt from the QuikManeuvers book, Pursuit Commandos.

French General "Challe formed special company-sized units called Commandoes De Chase (Pursuit Commandos) in 1959. Those companies were either totally French or, in most cases, mixed French/Muslim units. Many of the Muslims pursuit commandos were former FLN members.

The basic tactic for all the French operations was for the Commandoes De Chase to be assigned a guerilla gang and hunt for it non-stop. French Pursuit Commandos were to pursue the targeted enemy terrorists regardless of where it went. Once the Pursuit Commandos had tracked down the gang and pinned it, the General Reserve would be called in to finish off the kill. Once the gang had been destroyed, the Commando De Chase would be assigned a new gang in the area and the hunt would start all over again.

What separated the pursuit commando hunts from the former technique of the ratissage is that the French did not leave the area after destroying the gang. Quadrillage in the newly liberated area could then focus on training local self-defense forces and in destroying the FLN grass roots organizations in the village."

Why have America’s conventional generals in Iraq ignored such wisdom?

SS Werewolves; Waffen SS Guerilla Warfare Manual

2006-05-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

One of the newest books to be available at QuikManeuvers.com this week…

SS Werewolves
Waffen SS Guerilla Warfare Manual

Edited by Breaker McCoy

Towards the end of WW2, a movement began, which lasted through 1946. At night, the woods and concrete canyons of Germany echoed with the howl of wolves. The Waffen SS created a guerrilla warfare organization known as the Werewolves. The Werewolves combined Waffen SS élan with the latest guerrilla warfare methods from Russia. For over a year, Werewolves conducted guerrilla warfare of assassination, ambush and raid. Although the Werewolves were small in number, their guerrilla warfare success heaped new honor on the Waffen SS.

What follows is an excerpt of a Waffen SS manual for the German Werewolf guerilla movement. The entire book, as translated, is quite large and complete with detailed instructions regarding every aspect of guerilla warfare. The material selected for the following document covers some of the most important and or interesting aspects of the Werewolf guerilla operations. The material is directly translated from the German but efforts have been made to smooth out the English translation into a user-friendly exposition.

Chapters

Formation of the Werewolves
Passage of Enemy Lines
Selection of Targets for Destruction and Combat
The March, Moving in the Guerilla Area
Checkpoints for Planning
Interdiction Operations
Ambush
Werewolf Raids
Werewolf Disengagement
Security of the Rest Area
Protection Against Counter Measures

Look for the release of this book May 11, 2006

Special Ops Continual Mop-Up – Africa

2006-05-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Some of the most successful special operations missions were conducted by the SAS in Africa. See more in the book Secrets of the SAS.
Also, see Parade Grounds of the Dead, the story of the Rhodesian War.

Meanwhile, political turbulence and war are still a way of life in the former African colonies. But, the question is…

Why Has the American Media Suppressed The True Story?

As usual, the American public is being denied many facts that will affect their future.
However, once we have summoned the courage and force of will to report that which so many fear, to even speak of, our responsibility is not consummated. Once an evil is identified, it must be fought against with the passion of the righteous.

When America's leftist, biased media reports stories about Africa, the tale is structured with a much-repeated formula. With great sympathy and lots of pictures of starving, fly-blown African children, American media blames all of Africa's problems on white racism.

American leftist media always overlooks the fact that the depredations of thousands of drug crazed African murder gangs, the hundreds of daily ritual murders, widespread AIDs/HIV pandemics, inter-tribal slavery and a list of barbarity that would make a serial killer cringe, are the work of native Africans.

The reality of African barbarity is an ignored reality because the inhumanity displayed by many African people throughout the world, goes unreported and uncriticized. To allow such crimes against humanity to flourish without criticism is to share in its depravity. Where is the outrage?
Are there many Africans who are not guilty of the barbarity described here? If you are curious about that, why don't you dig out some facts for yourself? You won't find the truth in America's leftist media.

Although American leftist media refuses to tell the public what is really going on in Africa, there are sources available on the Internet. For example, Religionnewsblog.com always maintains an up to date archive of at least 35 international reports on African ritual murders. Following are examples of those reports:

Freetown - A Sierra Leonean court sentenced a 70-year-old man to death on Wednesday for the ritual murder of a seven-year-old boy whose heart and other organs were removed.
Ritual killings or human sacrifices to local deities are customary in parts of West Africa, where some people commission killings to obtain body parts for magic spells to gain political power and influence.

Barely one month after the conviction in the United Kingdom of a Nigerian, Kingsley Ojo for the brutal murder of a five-year-old boy named Adam, police in the Republic of Ireland are questioning two men arrested in Dublin in connection with the murder of the daughter of Malawi's chief justice.

A confidential report into the sacrifice and abuse of children at African churches describes how pastors are profiting from the trafficking of black boys into Britain.
Uncircumcised boys are being smuggled into the country for human sacrifice by fundamentalist sects whose members believe that their ritual killing will enhance spells.

America now has its own African murder gangs thanks to criminal immigration policies. You will be hearing from them in the near future.

And, the current African crisis (Darfur) of the moment is really no different. Why doesn’t George Clooney form a counter-genocide brigade made up exclusively of left-wing Hollywood celebrities? That is one outrageous war the public would enjoy watching on TV.
When the media dust settles on a politician’s desk, who will end up dealing with the genocidal nightmare du jour? A special ops group going in to save those who will be the next political tyrants?

A Strange Anti-Terror Operation

2006-05-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

In October 2004, a company-sized unit was set up in Afghanistan. It was composed of a SEAL squadron and a small Marine unit called the Marine Corps Detachment. That detachment was composed of four 6-man recon teams, a recon headquarters element, an intelligence element with capabilities in signals and human intelligence (HUMIT), a sophisticated communications suite, a headquarters component with artillery and naval gunfire liaison officers, forward air controllers, and radiomen. The medical support element was staffed with five senior Navy corpsmen. The unit was under the command of a Marine Corps Lt. Colonel, and was composed mostly of experienced NCOs. Most of them had at least 5 years’ experience in a Marine reconnaissance unit. The unit had been trained for 6 months at Camp Pendleton, before being sent to Afghanistan. The strange Marine detachment represented yet another attempt of the Marine Corps to form their own special forces group for anti-terror operations. So far, Marine Corps units have not fit into US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in either a special ops or anti-terror role. Although the Marines have a sorry record for combat performance, going back 45 years to Vietnam, they are arrogant, selfish, and hard to get along with.

The Marine Corps declined to become a supporting service component of SOCOM in 1986. They thought they could build their own special forces group within the Marine Corps. Every Marine attempt to form an elite unit has failed. All they can actually do is make amphibious landings and assaults. They do not have the temperament or flexibility of intellect to carry out special warfare operations.

The unit in question, which spent an entire year forming and training, was soon thereafter disbanded. They went on a couple of operations, with a SEAL detachment, that were not productive.

Today, America’s special operations forces stands at about 50,000 men. About 16,000 of them are shooters, men capable of ground special operations. For a limited time, about 5,000 of those can be deployed in the field at any one time. So, there are usually about 5,300 operators on deployment with perhaps 4,000 of those at the tip of the spear in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are 2,000 Navy SEALs on active duty, which includes training cadres, and command and staff units. Five hundred trained SEAL operators are deployed at any one time.

Special Operations now obtains only about $7 billion of the $400+ billion of the defense budget. Yet, Special Operations forces are the most effective and combat deployed units in the US Armed Forces. Their size should be doubled, and their funding, likewise. At least three battalions of commandos should be formed, along with two new Army Special Forces groups.

Have you ever wondered why US Army Special Forces troops are so effective?
In a business where experience counts, the average age of a special forces soldier is 32. The average age of SEAL and Delta Force troopers is somewhere in the 20s. Average age of Marine and other conventional forces is in the late teens and early 20s.

Learn about the skills needed in Special Operations by reading any of the QuikManeuvers books discussing and analyzing historical accounts of training and skill assessment. For example, one of the newest books is Death by Precision Fire, a great read about German WW2 Snipers.

Special Forces Warriors

2006-04-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Four Special Operations Forces Truths

Humans are more important than hardware.
Quality is more important than quantity.
Special op Forces cannot be massed produced.
Competent Sp Op Forces cannot be created after an emergency occurs.

_______________________________________

In November 2001, US Army Special Forces and the British SAS located Osama bin Laden’s hiding place in the mountains of Afghanistan, in a place called Tora Bora. By this time, US conventional generals had arrived, and were now in control of operations. They made many mistakes in the stereotypical tactics they used, while ignoring American and British Special Forces. The US conventional generals actually trusted some Afghan units that were friends of al-Qaeda. During the operation, those backstabbing Muslims assisted Osama bin Laden and his escape into Pakistan.

After the victories of the Special Forces in Afghanistan, the conventional US Army and Marines arrived. With them, they brought their narrow-minded incompetent generals and their stereotypical approach to war. In addition to a battalion or so of Marines, there were a few battalions of the US 10th Mountain Division (which has never received any training on how to fight in mountains), a few battalions of the 101st Air Mobile Division, and a few of the less formidable Delta Force.

In March 2002, it was rumored that Osama bin Laden was back in the Afghan mountains. Elements of conventional US Army forces along with token contingents from a variety of foreign armies (Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway) launched Operation Anaconda. It was then that the war began to turn against America and its anti-terror coalition. The conventional generals insisted on doing things their way. Their way was neither clever, nor efficient. Thus, one more attempt to capture Osama bin Laden failed because the Special Forces wasn’t running things.

More information about these events is in Secrets of the SAS.

A Story the Media Overlooked

2006-04-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Right after 9-11, President George Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld met with top military generals. They demanded revenge for the massacre of 3,000 American citizens, and Osama bin Laden’s head on a stake. All the armed forces said they weren’t ready, and couldn’t be ready for months.

Then the Green Berets stepped forward. They said, “Sir, we are ready to send 100 men into Afghanistan immediately”, and (we) will wipe out the 60,000 Muslim fanatics located there, including the Taliban, al Quaeda, and Arab psychopaths. At first, the conventional US generals began to quibble. They were overruled by Bush and Rumsfeld.

In Oct 2001, Task Force Dagger began to deploy to Afghanistan in 9 groups. They were going there to use the Northern Alliance Muslims against the Arabs, al Qaeda and Taliban Muslims.

Less than two months later those 100 Special Forces heroes were standing on the corpses of over 40,000 Muslim terrorists, and they seized every city in Afghanistan.

Their feat of arms was greater than any armed force in history, including the elite hard-fighting soldiers of the German Army in World War 2, and even the sacred bands of Alexander the Great.

The heroes of the Special Forces came to bring justice and revenge to the Muslim enemy. Task Force Dagger unleashed hell onto the Taliban and al Qaeda just 5 weeks after 9-11. They were hunting Osama bin Laden, and several times almost got his head, but conventional generals interfered and prevented it.
They weren’t there to hand out the millions of dollars the CIA usually gave out when they were trying to win the support of foreigners; they brought iron professionalism. Before they left Afghanistan, Task Force Dagger, along with members of the New York police and fire department, buried pieces of the World Trade Center in the perverse Afghani soil. Surrounding them on every far horizon was smoke rising from hundreds of burning fires of Muslim terrorist camps, cities and fortified positions. In the meantime, the US media virtually ignored what the Special Forces had done in Afghanistan.

There are many titles on QuikManeuvers.com that deal with aspects of Anti-Terrorism. There will be some books on this particular subject available soon at QuikManeuvers.com .

Which American Special Operations Troops Are Effective

2006-04-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

American Special Operations troops are not all equal, effective or even elite. Some units are not even Special Operations troops, but are commandos used for special missions.

Below is listed several categories of American combat troops, and in each category the troops will be rated with the most effective force listed in order. For example, the first listed is the best in that category.

Following are the categories of American Special Operations troops that frequently confuse people.

I. Conventional Forces –

(1) Rangers: US Army Rangers are composed of very young, reliable personnel, who can be depended upon to fight long and hard as commandos. Whether in the desant (fighting behind enemy lines) role, or in more direct combat role, US Army Rangers are America’s only conventional elite.

(2) The second most effective conventional force is US Army Paratroops. They are not very well trained, which is a huge deficit, and they are poorly organized. However, American paratroop units can be depended upon to fight longer and harder than most other conventional units.

(3) US Army Airmobile Units: These units are not well-trained, and they are not as reliable as Airborne (Paratroops) Units.

(4) US Army conventional units, including infantry, armor, and artillery. These conventional ground forces are the least effective in the US Army. They are led by many incompetent conventional minded generals, and are poorly trained. For example, the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division is not given even one day’s training in mountain warfare.

(5) The least effective American ground force is the USMC. Although tens of thousands of fine men serve in the Marine Corps, their officers are far below the competence of US Army Infantry and Tank Officers.

II. Special Operations Forces –

(1) US Army Special Forces are the best special troops and all-around warriors that the US Armed Forces deploys. Special Forces troops are older and more experienced. They are patriotic, reliable, and possess the requisite qualities it takes to be a true elite.

(2) US Army Delta Force is composed of mainly young, inexperienced personnel, who are trained too much in hostage rescue. They are not as effective as they should be in operational and strategic reconnaissance as well as direct action. Modeled after the British Army’s SAS, Delta Force has failed to measure up as it should. That failure can essentially be blamed on poor training and leadership.

(3) US Navy SEALs are the least effective of America’s Special Operations Forces. They are trained to be amphibious athletes, not elite warriors. The modern SEAL unit is nothing like the SEAL tTeam 6, led by the master anti-terrorist warrior Richard Marcinko. That team, specially hand-picked by Marcinko, had the best personnel and training possible. It was disbanded and Marcinko imprisoned because the conventional Navy is jealous of and despises special warfare elites far more than does US Army conventional generals,.
Modern SEALS are frequently sent on missions that they are not qualified for. They are sent far inland, where they are expected to carry out operational and strategic reconnaissance and direct action missions, for which they are neither trained nor motivated.
Although the SEALs, like the USMC, are supported by a very active public relations department, they constantly fall short of the mark in Special Warfare. It all begins in their initial BUDs training. They reach a high state of athleticism and those that are athletic enough go one to receive a smattering of special warfare training. Such men are frequently surprised when they are murdered by illiterate fanatics, with obsolete weapons, in some of the world’s hell-holes.

(4) The CIA’s Paramilitary Element is equal to, and sometimes better than the Navy SEALs. Their personnel are mostly drawn from experienced special operations veterans, including the SEALs. That is an advantage. The major disadvantage to the CIA’s paramilitary element, which causes it to go to the last place in the Special Operations category, is the fact that it is controlled by the CIA.

See QuikManeuvers E-Books on Special Warfare

Success of SpecOps Should Be Increased

2006-04-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Since the Muslim imperialists and their domestic leftist allies stabbed America in the back on 9-11, there has been a massive increase in US Military Special Operations Troops. That is a very wise thing to do, because as US Army Special Forces proved in Afghanistan in the fall and winter of 2001, a hundred US Army Special Forces troops can easily defeat a hundred thousand muslim fanatics. Yes, that’s what happened in Afghanistan.

Because of that amazing feat of arms by special operators and the fact that Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is the first competent Secretary of Defense we have had in decades, the Special Operations forces have been increasing geometrically.

Such expansion usually is felt by those special forces organizations that are the least competent. The US Navy SEALs, since they have been ethnically cleansed of Richard Marcinko and several other highly competent operators, are showing great weakness.

Special Warfare expert Richard Marcinko has explained the effect of the dramatic growth of Special Warfare on the SEALs: “…it has also meant more bureaucracy. More layers of management. More conventional thinking applied to unconventional warfare, .,,Worst of all, hordes of unqualified officers---admin pukes…intel weenies, and Academy-educated ticket punchers—are elbowing their way into Navt Specwar because of the rapid advancement potential, the increased visibility, and the larger budgets. The officers they displace are operators—the hunters who don’t give a damn about anything but getting the job done…SpecWar’s rapid growth has also led to paralysis---and worse. It has led to endemic butt-covering. Today, for example, there is such a convoluted chain of command that SpecWar units—which were designed as quick-reaction teams—cannot in fact react quickly. There are so many “May I?”’s that have to get asked, so many forms to be signed, so many rules of engagement that have to be explained, that the bad guys escape before the SEALs are wheels up.”

For an interesting description of how the left sabotaged special forces and SOG during the Vietnam War, read the books: American Vietnam War Traitors and Moles and Amateurs, available at QuikManeuvers.com

Special Ops, Violence of Action

2006-04-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

The modern US Army Special Forces is the best in the world.

The US Navy SEALs and the US Army Delta Force are both far less competent special operations organizations than Special Forces. These differences are amazing, considering the fact that left-wing interests with insidious subversion in mind have partially co-opted part of the Army’s special forces groups into silly “peace keeping” functions that could be performed by less well-trained and valuable troops.

Do not forget, however, that the left has involved a percentage of the Army’s Special Forces in training foreign armies, baby sitting foreign tyrants, “nation building”, and military diplomacy in order to simultaneously divert highly trained special forces troops into dead-end time wasters and sap America’s elite by bleeding it of its war fighting psychology by turning it into peace-keeping, butt-licking sheep. Doom to the fool who thinks there is anything defensive about Special Ops.

Other serious incursions by the left into America’s armed forces, with the same goals of nullifying the force, includes the idiotic imposition of exaggerated rules of engagement and embedded journalists who act as politically correct commissars spying on military commanders and conspiring to penalize them for any effective war-like tendencies.

This blog subscribes to the same special operations principles and outlook as the British Special Air Services (SAS), Richard Marcinko (former SEAL leader and best-selling author), and the US Army Special Forces Troops describes by Robin Moore in his best-selling book “The Hunt for Bin Laden”.

We are guided by those principles as our framework for understanding as we investigate and report on salient Special Forces activities of British and American Special Operations Forces from 1940 to present times.

We emphasize the human being and his brain as the most dangerous weapon on the battlefield. We have no real respect for high-tech weaponry and computerized micro-managed systems, or even screaming trainers who think that loud “hoo-hah” bellowing can substitute for lethal effectiveness. If any new invention is soldier friendly, and operable after being dug out from 3 feet of mud, and helps increase the tempo of effective violence of action, then we are for it! If it does not meet such tests, then we advocate its quick demise.

If you want to have some fun, join us in this explosive adventure. The explosions you hear will leave a taste of cordite in your soft palate, but your ears won’t be insulted by some screaming Neanderthal.