Most recent blog entries

Leavenworth Ten: Are These Soldiers Really "Murderers"?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:16:00 GMT

This week's syndicated column:

Here I am again in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C., the highest appeals court for the U.S. military. Last month, I was here to cover Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna's final appeal. Now I am waiting for Army Sgt. Evan Vela's final appeal to begin. I glance over at Evan's father, Curtis Carnahan, and Evan's wife, Alyssa, sitting together in the otherwise empty first row, and I can't believe it's been more than four years since Curtis first emailed me:

"I am Sgt. Evan Vela's father. I do not know if you have followed my son's case, but some people have drawn similarities between the Luttrell situation and Evan's."

Curtis was referring to Marcus Luttrell, whose 2007 best-seller "Lone Survivor" tells of four Navy SEALs, Luttrell among them, whose 2005 mission in Afghanistan was compromised when two unarmed Afghan goatherds discovered the SEALs hiding deep in Taliban territory. I had written a column discussing the excruciating fact that the thought of being brought up on legal charges in a military court back home weighed so heavily on these young Americans' minds that they decided not to save their own lives and their mission by killing the two Afghans, but rather to take their chances against the veritable Taliban army the pair would summon against them.

"It was the stupidest, most Southern-fried, lame-brain decision I ever made in my life," Luttrell later wrote of his decisive vote to let the two Afghans go. As a result of the decision the SEALs made on an Afghan mountaintop far from any courthouse, 19 Americans -- Luttrell's three SEAL teammates and 16 more special forces -- would be killed that same day.

But no one went to court.

In Evan's case, the leader of his elite sniper squad chose the other path. It was May 2007, in insurgent-controlled Iskandariyah, Iraq. When an unarmed Iraqi man compromised the team's "hide" and refused to cooperate quietly, the team leader chose not to risk drawing local insurgents to their position, but instead ordered Evan to kill the man. As a result of this decision, all of our soldiers came home that day.

But then they went to court. Long saga short, Evan Vela became the only soldier convicted of the killing. He was sentenced to 10 years at Fort Leavenworth military prison -- the shortest sentence of the so-called Leavenworth 10, as Curtis reminded me this week, using the nickname for a group of veterans who are incarcerated for a variety of desperate, blurry, fog-of-war shootings.

Listening to the procedural review of Evan's case, I am struck again by the ghastly surrealism of their plight -- the penalties the U.S. government has forced on its most dutiful sons for not committing, in effect, suicide as the Navy SEALs did in choosing to escape prison rather than death.

Meanwhile, literally thousands of incarcerated terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have been granted clemency or otherwise found their freedom. Recently, Ali Musa Daqduq, a Hezbollah mastermind who confessed to kidnapping, torturing and killing five American soldiers in 2007, walked free in Iraq. In December 2011, President Obama turned over Daqduq to an Iraqi court, which released him this month. According to the most basic moral calculus, this is neither fair nor right. As Republican Rep. Allen West of Florida recently wrote to President Obama, it's an "utter betrayal."

I steal another glance at the Carnahans, now focused on the court proceedings. Like the other Leavenworth families, they have been counting off the years by trials, appeals, clemency boards and pleas for congressional support. Back in early 2009, there were flutters in the news about a possible pardon for Evan from outgoing President Bush. Then nothing. No pardon. Which was, to my mind, unpardonable. George W. Bush should have pardoned Evan and the other soldiers, now prisoners, whom he ordered into a confusing, rules-restricted war against an army without uniforms on a battlefield without lines.

And so, the Leavenworth 10 sit in prison: Michael Behenna, Corey Clagett, John Hatley, William Hunsaker, Larry Hutchins, Michael Leahy, Joseph Mayo, Michael Williams, Evan Vela. Newcomer Derrick Miller has joined them. Miller last year drew a life sentence after unsuccessfully claiming self-defense in the killing of a suspected Afghan insurgent who had penetrated his defensive perimeter.

Memorial Day -- the day we mourn our war dead -- is coming. President Obama, give these men another chance at life. Pardon them.

"Born in Kenya": The Media Doth Protest Too Much, Pt. 2

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:05:00 GMT

Again -- as in the case of yesterday's breaking news from Breitbart News that Obama's literary agency bio described him as "born in Kenya" -- the equally fascinating story is the media relationship with this new piece of evidence.

To be sure, the appearance of the "born in Kenya" bio raises more questions than it answers. Who provided the original information? Was it all a "simple mistake," as the agency's booklet editor Miriam Goderich now claims? Was it even a mistake?

We have no idea -- yet. With Breitbart following the story today, however, we now know from a fellow client of the agency, Steve Boman, that he was asked to provide his own bio; we also now know through Internet archives that this Obama "born in Kenya" bio stood in the agency website and client list for 16 years -- until two months after Obama declared himself a candidate for president in in 2007. Suddenly, "born in Kenya" changed to "born in Hawaii."

Again, these reports leave multiple questions unanswered -- questions the media have long proven themselves unwilling to ask or even entertain. Since Barack Obama himself has failed to be forthcoming in any way with bona fide paper documents attesting to his basic identity -- sorry, the manipulated computer imagery he has posted at the White House website is evidence only of fraud -- what is required is a Congressional committee with the necessary subpoena power to prove the President's origins and eligibility once and for all.

Brietbart News, meanwhile, needs to allow its better news judgment, which drove it to publish the report in the first place, to steady itself. Breitbart has released a report on a piece of evidence -- a report on a physical 1991 document which came into their hands -- that only bolsters the claims that this president's eligibility is in doubt. Breitbart is simply not responsible for protecting this president's eligibility; News organizations are responsible only to pursue the facts. This should be obvious; but our media, Left and Right, have for so long become captive to ideology that they no longer see their overriding professional responsibility.

Which is why Breitbart editors are still attaching disclaimers to their own news reports, rather than simply presenting the story only and simply so far as it is supported by the facts.

The real mystery is not where Obama was born--which has long been settled--but why Goddard failed to ask her agent a single relevant follow-up question about how the 'fact checking error' occurred in the first place.

Settled by what? Unelected websites? By whom? A selected reporter who tweeted that she ran her finger over the seal? Frankly, we still may not even know what the "real mystery" is. I think it's safe to say, however, there remains a "real mystery." It doesn't behoove any journalist to cling to the Narrative of Authority even as facts emerge which seem to undermine it.

Meanwhile, there seems to be some dire human need for a happy outcome, for a good alibi, for a perfectly rational explanation, otherwise we wouldn't see such exertions to make the few facts we know fit all best or at least better case scenarios. We seem to want more than anything else that this president be no more than a Barnum-esque exaggerator, an image manipulator, a liar, even -- but not, please-oh-Lord, ineligible. Across the pond at the Telegraph Blogs, the mindset is expressed by Tim Stanley, who is described as a "historian of the United States." Taking on the "born in Kenya" bio, Stanley writes:

Today, the President has satisfied all right-minded folk that he was in fact born in Hawaii.

For support, he actually links to the "right-minded folk" at CNN! He continues:

Breitbart.com itself has always rejected the absurd cult of birtherism.

Pat on head for Breitbart. Now, pivot:

In fact, this story is really the opposite of birtherism – Breitbart infers that in the past Obama encouraged people to think that he was born abroad in order to establish an identity as an authentic, exotic voice in the debate on racial politics.

Given that the "born in Kenya" bio raises more questions than it answers, given that it substantiates the distress of those of us who are not satisfied by dodgy computer imagery to establish the i.d. of the POTUS (especially when it is so ridiculously easy for him to produce the physical documents for verification and be done with it) Breitbart isn't just "inferring" (and with Stanley's approval), Breitbart is choosing. It is choosing a narrative into which to plug this new fact. This isn't journalism. It's politics.

And what of "Birtherism"? It is a purposefully nasty-sounding term that functions, as "McCarthyism" does, to shut down not just debate but thought itself. I think we should open our eyes and realize "Birtherism" describes curiosity, undergirded by a genuine concern for rule of law, for the Constitution, for the republic itself. As a society, we have permitted such curiosity and concern to be caricatured and, in effect, taken from us by the use of a bad, bad word.

Not a good sign for liberty's future.

Great "Get" -- But Breitbart Doth Protest Too Much

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:54:00 GMT

Don't get me wrong -- kudos to Breitbart for publishing its report on a 1991 promotional booklet from a literary agency that describes client Barack Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii," emphasis on "born in Kenya."

But what a strange apologetic the Breitbart team has produced in presenting this hot story.

The story, now the lead report at Drudge, opens with an explanatory note, kind of an how-to-read-this-story guide which is almost as notable as the story itself.

Thus:

Note from Senior Management:

Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.

Why is this necessary? What is "Birtherism" anyway? It seems clear that Breitbart News believes it is about to commit heresy by reporting a new set of facts that contradicts the agreed-upon narrative. They are about to say something they believe they shouldn't. They are about to report a fact about a document that has emerged which directly contradicts the president's, the media's, the elite's, narrative, and they are offering a pre-emptive mea culpa for their sin against the mainstream. This is indicative of the struggle within -- the Breitbart people want to be journalists, but they have so dutifully observed the restrictions of that Narrative of Authority and for so long that it hurts to color outside the lines.

Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama's ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.

It is for that reason that we launched "The Vetting," an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)--not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences.

It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below--one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review.

In other words, there we were, just doing our job, minding our own ideologically-related beat, when, bam, this document dropped on our heads. What could we do, folks? Well, they could have ignored it, so, again, kudos to the Breitbart organization.

This next comment isn't worthy of them, however.

It is evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.

Slippery talk. The document is what it is. It might be evidence of the President's foreign origin, or it might be evidence of a PR person's idea of selling his client, or it might be evidence of Obama's youthful fantasy, or it might be evidence of a mistaken reading of his CV. It is what it is. But we don't know what it is not.

Now the story proper begins:

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."

It goes from there, describing the booklet. Then:

According to the booklet itself, the text was edited by Miriam Goderich, who has since become Dystel's partner at Dystel & Goderich, an agency founded in 1994. Breitbart News attempted to reach Goderich by telephone several times over several days. Her calls are screened by an automated service that requires callers to state their name and company, which we did. She never answered. ...

More story. Then:

The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate.

Errant? I suppose they mean earrant "errant" as in deviating, not roving (as to Kenya). But what do they mean "does not contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate"? Do they mean that a PR handout apparently created in 1991 is less authentic than the online computer imagery we know and love? How do they know that? We would have to compare the documents side by side to determine that.

Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.

What contemporaneous accounts? Tthe contemporaneous newspaper announcements of Obama's birth? Arpaio posse lead investigator Mike Zullo reveals that these are meaningless as markers because the posse discovered that these same newspapers printed Hawaiian "birth" announcements of adopted toddlers and even foreign babies.

The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama--or the people representing and supporting him--manipulate his public persona.

"Manipulate his publlic persona" -- a fancy phrase. The crux of this story is much, much simpler. It may not be conclusive, but this 1991 agency ad copy Breitbart has presented us with appears to be another piece of evidence that Obama a fraud who must be investigated -- by Congress, by a special prosecutor -- to determine whether he is eligible to run for re-election this November. If he is, fine. If he is not, he is a fraud who should be prosecuted, along with those who participated in the cover-up.

Omar Bakri GIves Us a Choice: Temporary Peace (Hudna), Servitude (Dhimma Pact) , or Perpetual War (Jihad)

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:43:00 GMT

Omar Bakri, for decades a fomenter of jihad in Britain from inside Hizb ut Tahrir and al-Mahajiroun until he was banned from the country following the 7/7/05 Underground attacks, is, like President Bush and assorted neocons, an enthusiast of "Arab Spring." He is also a clear proponent of sharia. In fact, in this video, Bakri makes the job of the incomparable Wafa Sultan all the easier by his straightfoward description of our "choices" under Islam, all accoring to its most authoritative and accepted texts.

Allen West: President Owes Us an Explanation for Release of Hezbollah Killer

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:18:00 GMT

Ali Musa Daqduq, Hezbollah terrorist killer of five American servicemen in Iraq, is free today, thanks to President Obama's decision to turn him over to an Iraqi court, which has just released him.

Michael Behenna, Evan Vela, John Hatley, Corey Clagett and the rest of the Leavenworth Ten, not to mention Lawrence Hutchins and now Derrick Miller and I'm sure others remain in US military prisons, most of them having served four, five, six years already for "fog of battle" killings that were prosecuted as murder in the military justice system, all too often, it seems to me, with an eye toward appeasement of our Iraqi "allies." Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan terrorists with innocent blood on their hands have been given clemency by the US government and our Iraqi and Afghan "allies."

This is a US government travesty of epic proportions.

With Daqduq walking free, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) has now called out the President on this gross stain on America's honor.

West wrote:

"It is with great disappointment and concern that I write to President Barack Obama today with regard to Ali Musa Daqduq and the decision by the Administration to release this madman to an Iraqi court, who in turn set this known terrorist free.

Ali Musa Daqduq led a well-planned and coordinated attack in Karbala, Iraq in 2007 in which one American soldier, Captain Brian Freeman, was killed and four other service members were abducted and later murdered.

The Administration mistakenly used the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which required Iraqi citizens to be handed over to Iraq before December of 2011, as a reasoning for Daqduq's release to an Iraqi court. However, since Ali Musa Daqduq was born in Lebanon, and was in fact a Lebanese citizen at the time of his capture, SOFA should not have applied to him.

As someone who served 22 years in the United States Army and served in both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, I can tell you that true leadership means making responsible decisions, not necessarily popular ones. The President had options when dealing with this terrorist. Daqduq could have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay where he could have been tried in front of a military commission.

The fact that our President makes these kinds of decisions, while American soldiers like Michael Behenna, William Hunsaker, and Joseph Mayo remain imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth for incidents that occurred during the heat of battle, is pure hypocricy.

I find the release of Ali Musa Daqduq to be an utter betrayal, not only to those who perished at the hands of this terrorist, but to all men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I ask President Obama for a prompt and personal response to this decision. As the Commander-in-Chief, he owes the American people nothing less."

Kudos to West. Here's hoping his is the first voice of many.

Uncle $ucker $trike$ a Deal

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:09:00 GMT

Pakistan agrees to re-open supply roads to NATO forces in Afghanistan. But there's a price.

Christian Science Monitor reports:

The accord, which the Pakistani government announced late Tuesday, would revive the transport of vital supplies of food and equipment from Pakistani ports overland to land-locked Afghanistan.

In return, the US-led coalition will pay Pakistan a still-to-be-fixed fee of $1,500 to $1,800 for each truck carrying supplies, a tab that officials familiar with negotiations estimated would run nearly $1 million a day. ...

Pakistan closed the land route to supplies headed to the coalition after American aircraft mistakenly attacked two Pakistani border outposts Nov. 26, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. Since then, supplies for coalition forces in Afghanistan have passed through one of two routes that stretch from Afghanistan through central Asia and Siberia to Georgia on the Black Sea. One of the routes is nearly 6,000 miles long. The Pakistan route is less than 500 miles.

Officials in Washington said they didn’t know how much of the new cost the United States would bear. As the United States contributes more than two-thirds of the 130,000-strong international force, which operates under the command of NATO, it’s expected that Washington will pay most of the new fee.

Ya think? Speaking of paying most of new fees...

Headline from The Guardian:

"Afghanistan hopeful of extra US cash to fund security"

"Officials believe Washington will pay more on top of lion's share of expected $4.1bn annual budget after foreign troops leave"

Stupid lion.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan, which ranks 180/183 among all nations in corruption (according to Transparency International), is pushing to control the money.

Who's more corrupt? Only Myanmar (181), North Korea (182), and Somalia (183).

Dying Inside the Closed Circle

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:47:00 GMT

At the end of a detailed account in today's NYT about an assault by three Afghan Army members against American troops inside the wire on March 1 which left two Americans killed and one hit (in body armor and unwounded), the report says:

Why had three men attacked American soldiers they barely knew? Was it a personal grudge against Americans? Or had they turned to the Taliban?

The detainee has since presumably been asked those questions. But in a reflection of the official reticence to discuss green-on-blue attacks, his answers remain shrouded in secrecy. It is not even clear whose custody he is in.

The reporter has posed a series of questions that politely, fearfully and inadequately skirts the central question for investigators, strategists, military leaders, elected officials and citizens: Does Islamic ideology, particularly the core Islamic tenet of aggression (jihad) against those who do not believe in Allah -- the kufar, the infidel, the dhimmi, the slave -- have anything to do with this heinous pattern of attacks on armies hailing from what used to be known as Christendom? (Hint: yes.)

This Times' reporter may have travelled to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, but it's clear he remains locked in an Occidental mindset. To him, only a personal grudge, politics, could explain the Afghans' attacks on American troops. Grudges based on Islam, politics based on Islam -- such things do not occur to him, or, if they do, he dare not write them down.

In The Death of the Grown-Up (p. 203) I quoted Indian medievalist K.S. Lal, who came up with a vivid metaphor for the fixity of Koran and its teachings:

Muhammed could not change the revelation; he could only expain and interpret it. So do the Muslims today. There are liberal Muslims and conservative Muslims, there are Muslims learned in theology and Muslims devoid of teaching. They discuss, they interpret, they rationalize, but all going round within the closed circle of Islam; there is no provision of introducing any innovation.

We, too, go round within a similarly closed circle. Our circle constricts free inquiry into and discussion of Islam. Inside our circle we are permitted only vetted opinions that fit the accepted narrative: Islam is peace; Islam is a great religion, just like our own; there is nothing outside "normal" about it. Thus, we discuss, interpret, rationalize, and go round inside our own circle, attempting to explain all manner of Islamic phenomena without access to the facts that lie outside the circle into which we as a society have retreated.

The damage this is doing to reason will be (or has been) our undoing.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl: Prisoner of COIN

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:06:00 GMT

From today's New York Times, a story about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the lone American POW in Afghanistan. We still don't know the circumstances under which he was captured in 2009, but we do know something about his outlook on the counterinsurgency (COIN) disaster as conceived and executed by Gens. Petraues and McChrystal under Presidents Bush and Obama.

From the story:

Sergeant Bergdahl was assigned to the First Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska. He deployed as a machine gunner in early May 2009 to a small combat outpost in Paktika Province, at a time when American forces were extremely sparse in the area.

At first his e-mails home were effusive. “He was happy as a clam,” Mr. Bergdahl said. He wrote of “how beautiful it was, how wonderful the people were.”

But the tone of his son’s e-mails soon darkened, Mr. Bergdahl said, although he declined to say specifically what set off the change.

Mr. Bergdahl would say only that he himself had become disillusioned by the military’s doctrine of counterinsurgency, aimed at winning over the Afghan population by building roads, schools and good governance while protecting them from insurgents. As part of the strategy, American troops often travel on roads planted with homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices, to meet with villagers during the day to collect information about their needs — and to ask the whereabouts of insurgents so they can target them in night raids.

Direct consequences of this COIN strategy here. This "strategy" is a scandal the House and Senate Armed Services Committee should/must investigate. There are many questions our commanders and strategists should be required to answer, beginning with how and why they call themselves professionals when they formulated war plans in the Islamic world without taking Islam into account?

“The doctrine is fallacious,” Mr. Bergdahl said. “It doesn’t achieve what they say it’s going to achieve. It’s a biometric data-gathering device — send the rabbits out there to get I.E.D.-ed so you can figure out who to kill at night. How ethical.” His son, Mr. Bergdahl contended, was frustrated by what he saw.

Once upon a time, I would have advised against a Taliban/Gitmo prisoner swap for Bowe as a doctrinal compromise that undermined our position of "not negotiating with terrorists," and, more tangibly, also endangered the lives of other US and other NATO troops. There are no principles in operation in the Afghanistan fiasco; we negotiate with (and release) terrorists all the time. Nor are the lives of our troops anything but COIN fodder in the eyes of our generals desperately seeking vindication for their bankrupt strategy while our elected officials turn away from the terrible sight. In other words, soldiers such as Bowe Bergdahl are already in jeopardy from their own leaders, whether from being ordered to live and sleep alongside pre-murderous Afghan troops, or from being sent out like "rabbits" every day along the IED-seeded roads.

Bring Bowe home now -- and every one of his fellow soldiers in arms.

Happy Mother's Day

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Sun, 13 May 2012 13:45:00 GMT

"Operation Hot Mic"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:26:00 GMT

This is making the rounds, as it should: