‘America’s Defense Meltdown’

Check it out.   I am saving to read later when I have more time; you might want to take a look and read it - very up to the minute.

at CDI - Center for Defense Information; newly released to and for President-Elect Barack Obama’s consideration.

         "America's Defense Meltdown"?  (pdf)

What’s in "America's Defense Meltdown" is a new anthology that gives President-elect Obama and Congress direction and will guide the United States back onto the path of an effective defense at a cost a nation in recession can afford.
Author(s): Winslow Wheeler

I haven't watched this video yet either at GRIT TV with Laura Flanders website  - it is where I found the info.

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Nixed - best plan to kill Bin Laden recalls Delta Force Commander; 60 Minutes Oct 2008

Tora Bora - you've heard of it, right? No! Well I have heard it, remember it when the media was reporting on the war in Aghanistan to get the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, believed to be the orchestrater of the attacks on the the twin towers of The World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. I remember how it was more a 'blurb' in the media reporting and then media went onto report other things. I wanted to shout, wait, stop, back that up, what is that about our military being so near to capturing Bin Laden and being told not to proceed?

I would read articles, op-eds about Tora Bora in the years that followed (google Tora Bora). But it didn't quite ever come up again in the media as something in need of deeper investigation. Ah, but wasn't that true of so many things during that time period. A shaking, quaking media, either terrified or fooling themselves into believing the Bush Administration talking points they were fed was part of national security and oh - that whole 'patriotic'/not patriotic thing that went on in those early years.

'60 Minutes' segment, October 2008, titled 'Elite Officer Recalls Bin Laden Hunt, Delta Force Commander Says The Best Plan To Kill The Al Qaeda Leader Was Nixed'.

Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon ordered a top secret team of American commandos into Afghanistan with a single, simple order: kill Osama bin Laden. It was America's best chance to eliminate the leader of al Qaeda. The inside story of exactly what happened in that mission, and how close it came to its objective has never been told until now.

The man you are about to meet was the officer in command, leading a team from the U.S. Army's mysterious Delta Force - a unit so secret, it's often said Delta doesn't exist. But you are about to see Delta's operators in action.

Why would the mission commander break his silence after seven years? He told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that most everything he has read in the media about his mission is wrong and now he wants to set the record straight.

(hat tip for getting my attention to this story goes to jimstaro post at VetVoice)

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A few things - Iraq; the mission changes yet again; false counting of decrease violence in Iraq

From another blogger Minstrel Boy who seems to share the focus theme specific to Iraq war.


U.S. excludes bombs in touting drop in Iraq violence "WASHINGTON — U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians."

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Air Force Pinched by Iraq Ground War "WASHINGTON — The Air Force's top general expressed frustration on Tuesday with the reassignment of troops under his command to ground jobs for which they were not trained, ranging from guarding prisoners to driving trucks and typing."

Gen. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, said that over 20,000 airmen have been assigned worldwide into roles outside their specialties.



ePluribus Media Community This Is Your Brain On Iraq: "Paul Thurman was not supposed to be deployed. His brain had been damaged before he even left Ft. Bragg; a training accident in which a log was dropped on his head. Brain scans showed evidence of lesions. Yet, inexplicably, he was sent to Iraq.

There he sustained a second head trauma; another training accident. An IED simulator went off three feet from his head."

His company sent him to Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany, where the doctors, he said, told him he shouldn't have been deployed to Iraq. They forwarded him on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he said he spent "eight hours with the USO ladies eating cookies" before being packed off to Fort Carson. He said he was not examined while at Walter Reed.

Training Iraqi troops no longer driving force in U.S. policy: "WASHINGTON - Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces. "

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

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