 DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME-Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour. Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April in the United States and 1 a.m. (Greenwich Mean Time) on the last Sunday in March in Europe. It ends at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October.
 AVOIDING THE QUAGMIRE IN IRAQ
by Jake Collier
I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking of jumping into the cold black Uhaurrie Forest in North Carolina with an M60 machine gun and then being lost for three nights. It was toward the end of training to be in Special Forces, popularly called Green Berets.
I'm a big fan of Special Forces. As part of Special Operations, they literally won the Afghanistan part of the war we're now calling the war on terror. Navy Seals, and Air Force Special tactics soldiers, as I understand it, make up the rest of Special Ops.
And, in too often typical military fashion, the Pentagon planners have their heads up their fourth point of contact (paratrooper slang for posterior and more often said somewhat crudely) in Iraq. We need to be there with the same sorts of operation we had in Afghanistan as opposed to conventional forces and 40% National Guard and Reserves. Talk about a formula for failing in almost any situation but trying to fight an urban guerrilla warfare--amazing! I can hardly believe it!
If we want to carry the fight to al Qaeda and the crazies in Iraq, Special ops is the only way to do it. We need to be ripping their asses anew in terms of making them pay. It is going to be interesting to see how the Marines handle this latest atrocity in Fallujah with the killers hanging the bodies after burning them.
The Marines might could handle it. They are great at disguising what they do. But, what a good A Team of Special Forces could do is make a "cell" pay and pay dearly for what they did: kind of "I will kill you and all your family." A couple of these and it gets attention. But, unfortunately, we are in a situation where we have to make sure the news media is on the "know" before we are operational.
What most don't realize about the Special Ops folks is that they love what they're doing. Most are a little older and somewhat crazy. They are trained killers, honed to a fineness which makes them tough as nails and as fearless as some movie character where it is all make believe.
WAR AIN'T NO DAY AT THE BEACH. The general public doesn't have any idea overall and politics is so discouraging to the process. In Iraq, we either have to get a handle on it, quickly or get the hell out and give it over to whoever is the strongest.
Special Ops is an offensive approach as opposed to what we are doing now as defensive. As long as we sit back and let our asses get kicked and our young soldiers die, picked off literally, nothing is going to be changed. When you are dealing with crazies, you have to have crazies to counter them. We have a "force" in the Special Ops.
I'm reading stuff that looks like we might be getting the message but not sure as long as continue to operate as we are in Iraq. The terrorist network is probably pretty happy. They really don't have to worry about us going after them. We're in a global fight and Spain and other targets surely reinforce this. We have got to get out of Iraq or quickly shift our focus, or quagmire is the only game in town.
I've been advocating this Special Forces approach since Vietnam. We could have handled the Vietnam missteps and probably not be where we are today had we left the Special Forces in place and not introduced conventional soldiers. As soon as we brought in conventional units, it all went to hell in a sense because the VC and NVA and mostly HO knew that they could outlast us.
With the Special Forces crazies who loved it, they would have stayed in Vietnam forever. And, Ho would have realized we were not going home and would have sincerely sued for peace. Just my belief. But I am a midget in the system. Who listens to me?
The History of The Green Beret
Aaron Bank started out as a former lifeguard and would travel around the world to do as much lifeguarding as possible, and ended up learning fluent French and German.
Seeing war coming, he returned to the U.S. and joined the army, and in 1943 stepped forward when the call went out for foreign-language-speaking volunteers for "special assignments". Among other missions, he parachuted into France in advance of the Normandy invasion to organize French Resistance forces to slow down German reinforcements.
Bank so excelled in his Office of Strategic Services role that after the war he was asked to put together a new military unit for special operations.
In 1952, he recruited 2,300 men for the first Special Forces unit. "I wanted none but the best," Bank said later. He asked that his new unit get to wear a special beret to set them apart--purple, wine-red or green, but military regulations wouldn't allow it until President John Kennedy issued a special order. Kennedy wanted green because he was an Irishman."
Taken from the JFK Green Beret Museum at Fort Bragg, NC
|
|
|
IN MEMORY
Chaplain Gary Perkins:
With deep grief we write to let you know that he passed away peacefully in the early morning of April 2. 2004, in the arms of his wife and in the
company of his children.
IRAQ LOOKING MORE LIKE MOGADISHU (Somalia)
Iraq is looking worse and then more worse. I see nothing coming from it. The cruelty of the zealots, meaning the radical Muslims, is unbelievable. To kill the people, drag their bodies through the streets and then to burn them: what can we say. We can't hunt them down as the people themselves are culpable who themselves are fanatics. I really don't think the Americans who care will put up for it indefinitely.
We are making unbelievable mistakes. The Special Ops troops who won the war in Afghanistan are completely marginalized in Iraq. We are fighting a guerilla war with the least experienced troops imaginable; 40% National Guard and Reserves. It is as though we have McNamara making decisions again--we only have nine years to go to equal Vietnam. So sad.
|
|
|
|
