Oldest Living Medal Of Honor Recipient Dies

Nicholas Oresco

The following article tells the story of Nicholas Oresco who died this week at the age of 96.

Note the part of the article that says Oresco had no living relatives, so fellow veterans came to be with him during his last days.

You can read his Medal of Honor citation HERE.

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OLDEST LIVING MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT — A WORLD WAR II VET WHO SAID POIGNANT PRAYER BEFORE BATTLE OF THE BULGE HEROICS — HAS DIED

The Blaze

October 5, 2013

The oldest living Medal of Honor recipient has died.

Nicholas Oresko, 96, an Army master sergeant who was badly wounded as he single-handedly took out two enemy bunkers during the Battle of the Bulge in 1945, died Friday night at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, hospital officials announced Saturday.

READ MORE

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Men like Oresco are taking the Honor Flight every day to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. But the Obama administration has closed all war memorials due to the budget debate.

In all previous similar government shutdowns, these open memorials have never been shut down.

Then again, there has never been an administration as callous, partisan, and just plain dictator-like as the Obama "regime"....

Posted by:

Charles M. Grist

www.MyLastWar.com

A Criminal Learns A Fatal Lesson - Don’t Mess With An Armed Marine

You have to love these stories because they emphasize how important it is to protect our rights under the Second Amendment.

If Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein, and the rest of the liberal loonies had their way, this well-trained Marine would have been unarmed. He and his aunt would probably be dead or seriously injured.

Note that the article refers to him as a “former Marine.” Having known many of these brave Americans, I have learned that there is no such thing as a “former” Marine. They are Marines until the day they die:

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CAR THIEF’S HORRIBLE MISCALCULATION TURNS OUT TO BE DEADLY AFTER HE TARGETED ARMED FORMER MARINE – WHO WAS JUST AS HEROIC AS YOU’D EXPECT

The Blaze

September 24, 2013

A former Marine in Maple Valley, Wash., didn’t expect to encounter a car thief breaking into his truck as he prepared to walk his dog Tuesday morning. Then again, the thief didn’t expect to run into an armed former Marine either.

The thief, identified only as a 27-year-old male, and his girlfriend were reportedly driving a stolen Honda with stolen plates when they decided to break into a pickup truck. As the owner of the truck, the former Marine, came out to walk his dog, he saw the crime in progress and confronted the criminals.

In an instant, guns were drawn and bullets were flying through the air. The former Marine was deadly accurate, hitting the male suspect several times before he could hide behind the truck. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

READ MORE

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Posted by:

Charles M. Grist

www.MyLastWar.com

Stratfor: "Iraq Endgame is Near"

The article below is from Stratfor.com. (The above photo of an Iraqi soldier is from www.michaelyon-online.com):

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Iraq Endgame

by George Friedman
August 18, 2009

Though the Iraq war is certainly not over, it has reached a crossroads. During the course of the war, about 40 countries sent troops to fight in what was called “Multi-National Force-Iraq.” As of this summer, only one foreign country’s fighting forces remain in Iraq — those of the United States. A name change in January 2010 will reflect the new reality, when the term “Multi-National Force-Iraq” will be changed to “United States Forces-Iraq.” If there is an endgame in Iraq, we are now in it.

The plan that U.S. President Barack Obama inherited from former President George W. Bush called for coalition forces to help create a viable Iraqi national military and security force that would maintain the Baghdad government’s authority and Iraq’s territorial cohesion and integrity. In the meantime, the major factions in Iraq would devise a regime in which all factions would participate and be satisfied that their factional interests were protected. While this was going on, the United States would systematically reduce its presence in Iraq until around the summer of 2010, when the last U.S. forces would leave.

Two provisos qualified this plan. The first was that the plan depended on the reality on the ground for its timeline. The second was the possibility that some residual force would remain in Iraq to guarantee the agreements made between factions, until they matured and solidified into a self-sustaining regime. Aside from minor tinkering with the timeline, the Obama administration — guided by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom Bush appointed and Obama retained — has followed the Bush plan faithfully.

The moment of truth for the U.S. plan is now approaching. The United States still has substantial forces in Iraq. There is a coalition government in Baghdad dominated by Shia (a reasonable situation, since the Shia comprise the largest segment of the population of Iraq). Iraqi security forces are far from world-class, and will continue to struggle in asserting themselves in Iraq. As we move into the endgame, internal and external forces are re-examining power-sharing deals, with some trying to disrupt the entire process.

There are two foci for this disruption. The first concerns the Arab-Kurdish struggle over Kirkuk. The second concerns threats to Iran’s national security.

The Kurdish Question

Fighting continues in the Kirkuk region, where the Arabs and Kurds have a major issue to battle over: oil. The Kirkuk region is one of two major oil-producing regions in Iraq (the other is in the Shiite-dominated south). Whoever controls Kirkuk is in a position to extract a substantial amount of wealth from the surrounding region’s oil development. There are historical ethnic issues in play here, but the real issue is money. Iraqi central government laws on energy development remain unclear, precisely because there is no practical agreement on the degree to which the central government will control — and benefit — from oil development as opposed to the Kurdish Regional Government. Both Kurdish and Arab factions thus continue to jockey for control of the key city of Kirkuk.

Arab, particularly Sunni Arab, retention of control over Kirkuk opens the door for an expansion of Sunni Arab power into Iraqi Kurdistan. By contrast, Kurdish control of Kirkuk shuts down the Sunni threat to Iraqi Kurdish autonomy and cuts Sunni access to oil revenues from any route other than the Shiite-controlled central government. If the Sunnis get shut out of Kirkuk, they are on the road to marginalization by their bitter enemies — the Kurds and the Shia. Thus, from the Sunni point of view, the battle for Kirkuk is the battle for the Sunni place at the Iraqi table.

Turkey further complicates the situation in Iraq. Currently embedded in constitutional and political thinking in Iraq is the idea that the Kurds would not be independent, but could enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Couple autonomy with the financial benefits of heavy oil development, and the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq becomes a powerful entity. Add to that the peshmerga, the Kurdish independent military forces that have had U.S. patronage since the 1990s, and an autonomous Kurdistan becomes a substantial regional force. And this is not something Turkey wants to see.

The broader Kurdish region is divided among four countries, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Kurds have a substantial presence in southeastern Turkey, where Ankara is engaged in a low-intensity war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), members of which have taken refuge in northern Iraq. Turkey’s current government has adopted a much more nuanced approach in dealing with the Kurdish question. This has involved coupling the traditional military threats with guarantees of political and economic security to the Iraqi Kurds as long as the Iraqi Kurdish leadership abides by Turkish demands not to press the Kirkuk issue.

Still, whatever the constitutional and political arrangements between Iraqi Kurds and Iraq’s central government, or between Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish government, the Iraqi Kurds have a nationalist imperative. The Turkish expectation is that over the long haul, a wealthy and powerful Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region could slip out of Baghdad’s control and become a center of Kurdish nationalism. Put another way, no matter what the Iraqi Kurds say now about cooperating with Turkey regarding the PKK, over the long run, they still have an interest in underwriting a broader Kurdish nationalism that will strike directly at Turkish national interests.

The degree to which Sunni activity in northern Iraq is coordinated with Turkish intelligence is unknown to us. The Sunnis are quite capable of waging this battle on their own. But the Turks are not disinterested bystanders, and already support local Turkmen in the Kirkuk region to counter the Iraqi Kurds. The Turks want to see Kurdish economic power and military power limited, and as such they are inherently in favor of the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government. The stronger Baghdad is, the weaker the Kurds will be.

Baghdad understands something critical: While the Kurds may be a significant fighting force in Iraq, they can’t possibly stand up to the Turkish army. More broadly, Iraq as a whole can’t stand up to the Turkish army. We are entering a period in which a significant strategic threat to Turkey from Iraq could potentially mean Turkish countermeasures. Iraqi memories of Turkish domination during the Ottoman Empire are not pleasant. Therefore, Iraq will be very careful not to cross any redline with the Turks.

This places the United States in a difficult position. Washington has supported the Kurds in Iraq ever since Operation Desert Storm. Through the last decade of the Saddam regime, U.S. special operations forces helped create a de facto autonomous region in Kurdistan. Washington and the Kurds have a long and bumpy history, now complicated by substantial private U.S. investment in Iraqi Kurdistan for the development of oil resources. Iraqi Kurdish and U.S. interests are strongly intertwined, and Washington would rather not see Iraqi Kurdistan swallowed up by arrangements in Baghdad that undermine current U.S. interests and past U.S. promises.

On the other hand, the U.S. relationship with Turkey is one of Washington’s most important. Whether the question at hand is Iran, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Afghanistan, Russia or Iraq, the Turks have a role. Given the status of U.S. power in the region, alienating Turkey is not an option. And the United States must remember that for Turkey, Kurdish power in Iraq and Turkey’s desired role in developing Iraqi oil are issues of fundamental national importance.

Now left alone to play out this endgame, the United States must figure out a way to finesse the Kurdish issue. In one sense, it doesn’t matter. Turkey has the power ultimately to redefine whatever institutional relationships the United States leaves behind in Iraq. But for Turkey, the sooner Washington hands over this responsibility, the better. The longer the Turks wait, the stronger the Kurds might become and the more destabilizing their actions could be to Turkey. Best of all, if Turkey can assert its influence now, which it has already begun to do, it doesn’t have to be branded as the villain.

All Turkey needs to do is make sure that the United States doesn’t intervene decisively against the Iraqi Sunnis in the battle over Kirkuk in honor of Washington’s commitment to the Kurds.

In any case, the United States doesn’t want to intervene against Iraq’s Sunnis again. In protecting Sunni Arab interests, the Americans have already been sidestepping any measures to organize a census and follow through with a constitutional mandate to hold a referendum in Kirkuk. For the United States, a strong Sunni community is the necessary counterweight to the Iraqi Shia since, over the long haul, it is not clear how a Shiite-dominated government will relate to Iran.

The Shiite Question

The Shiite-dominated government led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is no puppet of Iran, but at the same time, it is not Iran’s enemy. As matters develop in Iraq, Iran remains the ultimate guarantor of Shiite interests. And Iranian support might not flow directly to the current Iraqi government, but to al-Maliki’s opponents within the Shiite community who have closer ties to Tehran. It is not clear whether Iranian militant networks in Iraq have been broken, or are simply lying low. But it is clear that Iran still has levers in place with which it could destabilize the Shiite community or rivals of the Iraqi Shia if it so desired.

Therefore, the United States has a vested interest in building up the Iraqi Sunni community before it leaves. And from an economic point of view, that means giving the Sunnis access to oil revenue as well as a guarantee of control over that revenue after the United States leaves.

With the tempo of attacks picking up as U.S. forces draw down, Iraq’s Sunni community is evidently not satisfied with the current security and political arrangements in Iraq. Attacks are on the upswing in the northern areas — where remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq continue to operate in Mosul — as well as in central Iraq in and around Baghdad. The foreign jihadists in Iraq hope such attacks will trigger a massive response from the Shiite community, thus plunging Iraq back into civil war. But the foreign jihadists would not be able to operate without some level of support from the local Sunni community. This broader community wants to make sure that the Shia and Americans don’t forget what the Sunnis are capable of should their political, economic and security interests fall by the wayside as the Americans withdraw.

Neither the Iraqi Sunnis nor the Kurds really want the Americans to leave. Neither trust that the intentions or guarantees of the Shiite-dominated government. Iraq lacks a tradition of respect for government institutions and agreements; a piece of paper is just that. Instead, the Sunnis and Kurds see the United States as the only force that can guarantee their interests. Ironically, the United States is now seen as the only real honest broker in Iraq.

But the United States is an honest broker with severe conflicts of interest. Satisfying both Sunni and Kurdish interests is possible only under three conditions. The first is that Washington exercise a substantial degree of control over the Shiite administration of the country — and particularly over energy laws — for a long period of time. The second is that the United States give significant guarantees to Turkey that the Kurds will not extend their nationalist campaign to Turkey, even if they are permitted to extend it to Iran in a bid to destabilize the Iranian regime. The third is that success in the first two conditions not force Iran into a position where it sees its own national security at risk, and so responds by destabilizing Baghdad — and with it, the entire foundation of the national settlement in Iraq negotiated by the United States.

The American strategy in this matter has been primarily tactical. Wanting to leave, it has promised everyone everything. That is not a bad strategy in the short run, but at a certain point, everyone adds up the promises and realizes that they can’t all be kept, either because they are contradictory or because there is no force to guarantee them. Boiled down, this leaves the United States with two strategic options.

First, the United States can leave a residual force of about 20,000 troops in Iraq to guarantee Sunni and Kurdish interests, to protect Turkish interests, etc. The price of pursuing this option is that it leaves Iran facing a nightmare scenario: e.g., the potential re-emergence of a powerful Iraq and the recurrence down the road of age-old conflict between Persia and Mesopotamia — with the added possibility of a division of American troops supporting their foes. This would pose an existential threat to Iran, forcing Tehran to use covert means to destabilize Iraq that would take advantage of a minimal, widely dispersed U.S. force vulnerable to local violence.

Second, the United States could withdraw and allow Iraq to become a cockpit for competition among neighboring countries: Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria — and ultimately major regional powers like Russia. While chaos in Iraq is not inherently inconsistent with U.S. interests, it is highly unpredictable, meaning the United States could be pulled back into Iraq at the least opportune time and place.

The first option is attractive, but its major weakness is the uncertainty created by Iran. With Iran in the picture, a residual force is as much a hostage as a guarantor of Sunni and Kurdish interests. With Iran out of the picture, the residual U.S. force could be smaller and would be more secure. Eliminate the Iran problem completely, and the picture for all players becomes safer and more secure. But eliminating Iran from the equation is not an option — Iran most assuredly gets a vote in this endgame.

Re-post this article with credit to www.Stratfor.com.

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Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Taliban Moves Closer to Pakistan's Nukes

Other than the ominous march of Iran toward nuclear weapons, the next greatest fear is that the Taliban - who were run out of Afghanistan in 2003 by the United States - will someday get hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Sadly, the Pakistani leadership still believes their greatest threat is India, when the disease within their borders is the bigger danger.

Here is a good article from David Ignatius:

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Moment of Truth in Pakistan

By David Ignatius
Sunday, May 3, 2009

President Obama convened a crisis meeting at the White House last Monday to hear a report from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had just returned from Pakistan. Mullen described the worrying situation there, with Taliban insurgents moving closer to the capital, Islamabad.

"It had gotten significantly worse than I expected as the Swat deal unraveled," Mullen explained in an interview. He was referring to a truce brokered in February in the Swat Valley, about 100 miles north of Islamabad. The Pakistani military had expected that the cease-fire would subdue Taliban fighters in Swat. Instead, the Muslim militants surged south into the district of Buner, on the doorstep of the capital.

Listening to Mullen's report at the White House were two senior officials -- Defense Secretary Bob Gates and special envoy Richard Holbrooke -- who were serving in government back in 1979, when a Muslim insurgency toppled the Iranian government, with harmful consequences that persist to this day. The two policy veterans "made the argument that it's worth studying the Iran model," recalls a senior official who took part in the White House meeting.

This was Pakistan week for the administration's foreign policy team, behind the self-congratulatory hubbub over the first 100 days. At a news conference Wednesday, Obama said that he was "gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan." He said his biggest worry was that "the civilian government there right now is very fragile."

The challenge in Pakistan is eerily similar to what the Carter administration faced with Iran: how to encourage the military to take decisive action against a Muslim insurgency without destroying the country's nascent democracy.

And there's a deeper psychological factor, too: how to exercise U.S. power effectively without triggering a backlash from a proud and prickly Muslim population that is scarred by what it sees as a history of American meddling.

"My experience is that knocking them [the Pakistani government and military] hard isn't going to work," said Mullen. "The harder we push, the further away they get." For the crackdown on the Taliban to be successful, he said, "it has to be their will, not ours."

What encourages U.S. officials is that recent events have been a wake-up call for a Pakistani elite in denial about the Taliban threat. One top civilian official said that he was less worried now than three weeks ago, because the military and civilian leaders in Islamabad have realized the danger they face. The Pakistani military has begun an effort to push back the Taliban, with mixed results. The Taliban responded fiercely to an assault Tuesday in Buner and seized three police stations, kidnapping dozens of police and paramilitary troops.

"My biggest concern is whether [the Pakistani government] will sustain it," Mullen said. He has told his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, that "we are prepared to assist whenever they want." During his recent visit, Mullen toured two Pakistani counterinsurgency training camps and came away impressed.

Mullen said that he hopes the Pakistanis will adopt a classic three-part counterinsurgency strategy -- clearing areas of Taliban control, holding those areas with enough troops so that the local population feels secure and then building through economic development, with U.S. help.

Politically, the United States is looking increasingly to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose Muslim League dominates the crucial Punjab region. Officials note that 60 percent of the Pakistani population lives in Punjab and that Sharif's popularity rating there is over 80 percent.

President Asif Ali Zardari is far weaker, politically, and that worries the administration. He'll visit Washington this week to discuss the crisis with Obama.

U.S. officials are exploring ways to reduce the political strain on Zardari caused by U.S. drone attacks on al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the tribal areas. Pakistanis protest these attacks as violations of sovereignty, even though they had been blessed in secret by Zardari's government. This tension could be eased by some public formula for dual control. Explains a senior Obama administration official: "We're looking at how we might find some common way ahead where utilization of the asset could benefit the Pakistanis."

The growing crisis mentality in Washington poses its own threat to a sound Pakistan policy. It could produce red-hot American rhetoric and a corresponding U.S. impatience -- and that, in turn, would only make the Pakistanis more uneasy. Success depends on Islamabad's recognition that it's their problem and that they must act decisively.

The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.

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As all these fundamentalist Muslims inch their way toward nuclear weapons, the world gets a little scarier every day.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Countdown to Withdrawal: Pentagon Revises Iraq Re-Deployment

The Pentagon is revising its current plans for withdrawal from Iraq. As we all suspected, President-elect Obama will surely bring the troops home even sooner than required by the new status of forces agreement with the Iraqis. That agreement mandates that our troops leave not later than January 1, 2012. Obama’s campaign timetable was sixteen months.

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New York Times
January 15, 2009

Military Planners, In Nod To Obama, Are Preparing For A Faster Iraq Withdrawal

By Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker

WASHINGTON — Military commanders are drawing up plans for a faster withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in anticipation that President-elect Barack Obama will reject current proposals as too slow, Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday.

The new plans would provide alternatives to a timetable drawn up by the top American commanders for Iraq to bring troops home more slowly than Mr. Obama promised during his presidential campaign. Those plans were described to Mr. Obama last month.

The officials said that Mr. Obama had not requested the new plans, but that they were being prepared in response to public statements from the president-elect and on the basis of conversations between military officials and members of Mr. Obama’s transition team.

Mr. Obama met last week in Washington with his national security team, including Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A drawdown in Iraq is seen as a prerequisite to any significant American military buildup in Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama is ready to add up to 30,000 troops over the next two years, a near doubling of the current American force there of about 31,000.

The broad outlines of the military plan for Iraq presented to Mr. Obama in December envisioned withdrawing two brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, over the next six months, officials said.

American military officials have declined to be more specific about other details in that plan, by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American commanders responsible for Iraq. But they have made clear that the plan does not set forth as fast a withdrawal as Mr. Obama pledged during the presidential campaign, when he repeatedly promised to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, or by May 2010.

Officials with Mr. Obama’s transition team say he remains committed to that goal, although he has also said he will listen to the recommendations of his commanders. In an interview on Wednesday, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the vice president-elect, said he was “not prepared to talk about” new troop-level options.

Brooke Anderson, the national security spokeswoman for the Obama transition team, said, “We have had briefings from the Bush administration, including Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, about current plans for Iraq and Afghanistan, and we appreciate the information that has been shared.” Ms. Anderson said that as president Mr. Obama would meet with his commanders “to make a determination to how we move forward to safely redeploy our combat brigades in 16 months.”

Senior military officers say they have anticipated that Mr. Obama will seek speedier options for Iraq troop withdrawals. But they have also expressed uneasiness about a quick withdrawal from Iraq and are unclear at this point about Mr. Obama’s overall strategy in Afghanistan.

“It is more than a question of how fast and how low; it includes calculating how much risk you are willing to take in Iraq,” one senior military officer said of the discussions over a withdrawal.

The official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of discussing war planning before the new commander in chief takes office, said the planning also required defining the future mission for American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and goals for where those missions should be in years to come.

“Various options are being drawn up to give the new president choices,” said another senior military officer involved in the process.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Mr. Gates intended to make sure that Mr. Obama, once he is commander in chief, gets to hear directly from all of the senior military officers with a stake in the Iraq and Afghanistan missions before making any decisions.

“The discussions the secretary and the chairman have had with the president-elect and his team have thus far been very broad,” Mr. Morrell said. “They will not begin the process of presenting the president-elect with specific options for a way ahead in Iraq until after the inauguration.”

The current military plan for Iraq was drawn up to meet the recent status-of-forces agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government that calls for both shorter and longer timetables than Mr. Obama’s campaign promise. Under that agreement, all United States combat troops are to be out of Iraqi cities by June and all American forces are to be out of Iraq entirely by the end of 2011. That agreement, however, can be renegotiated.

Even as Mr. Obama prepares for the drawdown in Iraq, some influential Democrats and national security experts have begun voicing concern about his willingness to send up to 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, where the United States has been at war for more than seven years. They say that Mr. Obama has yet to make clear his overall goals beyond calling for more forces, money and diplomacy in an increasingly violent, ungovernable country that the military says presents even more problems than Iraq.

Peter Baker contributed reporting.

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It no longer matters whether the Iraqis are ready to handle security or not. They want us gone, so it’s time to go.

It is their country, after all. I just hope they remember who gave them their freedom.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

America Continues to Settle the Score

“Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction.” President George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11th, 2001

The following article from Military.com shows that the efforts of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been successful. This war on terror may never end in the traditional sense, but the terrorists have learned that messing with America is a stupid thing to do:

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US Official Says al-Qaeda Near Defeat

January 07, 2009
Military.com
by Christian Lowe

The head of counterterrorism operations for the U.S. Department of State said the al-Qaeda network is largely broken and has lost the ability to conduct large-scale terrorist operations.

While the U.S. has still been unable to kill or capture the organization's top leaders, they have nevertheless been "beaten back into a hole" by relentless pressure from special operations, law enforcement and drone attacks.

"They are scratching their heads, realizing they took on a pretty savvy opponent who went after them kinetically very fast, pulled out the rug from underneath them, put them on the run, put them in a area where they didn't have the assets they had before," said former Army special operations commander, Amb. Dell Dailey, who now heads the State Department's counterterrorism office. "Bin Laden can't get an operational effort off the ground without it being detected ahead of time and being thwarted."

Dailey cited the foiled terror plot to bring down as many as 10 U.S.-bound commercial jets in 2006 as an example of al-Qaeda's diminished capability to launch dramatic attacks.

"Their ability to reach is non-existent," Dailey told military reporters during a Jan. 6 breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C.

But that doesn't mean the U.S. can sit back and relax, he added.

Though he's a political appointee who may not keep his job in an Obama administration, Dailey had high praise for the incoming team's counterterrorism strategy and for the people who've been tabbed to wage it.

Over the five meetings he's had with Obama officials since the election, Dailey sees a willingness to abandon presidential campaign promises to unilaterally move into Pakistan if there's solid intel on bin Laden's whereabouts and the local government cannot or will not act. The incoming administration's focus on strengthening multilateralism over unilateralism seems to mesh with the State Department's current counter-terror plan.

"It's not 'go out and kill people right now' to the detriment of our relationships with sovereign countries," Dailey said. "Their twist is going to be more aggressive engagement with our partner nations."

Transition officials have told Dailey's office they're in favor of efforts to assist other countries fight terror, including support for the Shared Security Partnership Plan -- a $5 billion, three-year program to bolster law enforcement and intelligence activities with allied nations to help them undermine terror networks.

Dailey also had high praise for the Obama team's pick for the Director of National Intelligence and new CIA chief.

Adm. Dennis Blair, who was nominated for DNI, is a "smart, smart guy" and a "very aggressive" warrior who will be sensitive to the interagency bureaucratic tangles that come with the job of heading the intelligence community.

While he hasn't worked personally with CIA chief nominee Leon Panetta, Dailey called him a "team builder" and prudent choice when it comes to "people skills and managerial skills."

But with al-Qaeda on the ropes and an aggressive and experienced team coming in to confront global terror threats, Dailey warned against resting on laurels.

"We've chopped off [al Qaeda's] arms, we've chopped off their communications and we've chopped off their funding. We've gone after their leadership and taken away their training sites," Dailey said. "That would be my message to [the Obama team] ... keep all that going and not to fall back into a false sense of security."

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Regardless of the comments in the above article, I believe the new administration has made a poor choice for head of the CIA. Choosing a politician like former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta over an intelligence expert probably means that critical intelligence activities will be curtailed by the liberal elements in the Democratic Party.

Such a foolish decision will only encourage the terrorists and place American citizens at risk of another deadly attack like 9-11.

President-elect Obama has made some good middle-of-the-road decisions, but this isn’t one of them.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Happy New Year for 2009

The sun rises on the first day of 2009 even as our nation faces some of the most challenging times in its history. We’ll have a new president in twenty days and, regardless of our political beliefs, we wish him well in the most difficult job in the world.

America’s financial upheaval grows and it doesn’t appear anyone really knows how to fix it. Many of our friends or family members have lost their jobs or businesses and others will likely follow them in the months to come.

Wars and rumors of wars plague the planet. Dictators rattle their swords and crazed Islamic fundamentalists still don’t get it. Our brave troops find that their mission in Iraq is evolving even before that mission ends in a couple of years. The war in Afghanistan goes on. Throughout the world, our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters are fighting for our freedom and this will surely continue beyond the next New Year’s Day.

Virtually all of us will live through some type of change in our lives this year. It’s comforting to remember that Americans have defeated tough days before. These lessons come from the generations that preceded us and we should be grateful to them for their strength of will. The United States of America is still the greatest nation on earth, founded by those who sought a better life, who demanded the freedom to worship God in their own way and who created their own opportunity for an unlimited future.

When my ancestors loaded their muskets and helped secure our freedom in the American Revolution, some of these patriots must have thought about the descendents who would follow them. I cannot dishonor their sacrifice by ever giving in to defeatism and I refuse to believe that my fellow Americans can give up either.

As always, we shall depend on each other, we will survive the trials and tribulations that confront us and we will move on to better days. We will never, ever quit.

So says the old Ranger.

Happy New Year.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Operation Iraqi Freedom is a Success - Now Its Up to The Iraqis

The following assessment of the current situation in Iraq is one of the best I’ve seen:

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A Framework for Success in Iraq

By Michael Gerson
Roger Hertog Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

Friday, November 21, 2008;
Op-ed, Washington Post, A23

A war that once seemed likely to end in a panic of helicopters fleeing the American Embassy now seems destined to conclude as the result of a parliamentary process. A landmark status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) -- requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by the end of June and from Iraq itself by the end of 2011 -- is headed for a final reading in the Iraqi parliament next week.

The approval of the SOFA would leave a chapter of history decorated with paradoxes. President Bush -- who once called withdrawal timelines "arbitrary" and "unacceptable" -- ends his term accepting them. President-elect Barack Obama will inherit a more peaceful Iraq because of policies he strongly opposed. And the Iraqi government -- so often criticized by Americans as weak and ineffectual -- is now asserting its sovereignty in a decisive manner, for good or ill.

The withdrawal deadlines contained in the SOFA seem like concessions from the Bush administration -- and they are. Officials are careful to point out that the June withdrawal from Iraqi cities merely codifies the current process of transferring provincial control to Iraqi forces -- and that both sides are free to renegotiate the agreement when it expires in three years. But the deadlines in the SOFA do limit the tactical flexibility of the next president in ways the current president would not have preferred.

Yet President Bush can take comfort from the fact that these deadlines are conceivable only because of the success of his surge strategy -- because al-Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated and the Sunni revolt has died down. Put another way: The more successful the surge has been, the less dangerous the deadlines for withdrawal have become. And this, after all, was the whole purpose of the surge -- it was intended to be a "bridge strategy" from the failures of 2005 and 2006 to a situation where an orderly withdrawal would be possible.

The SOFA also may seem to be a vindication of the Obama approach to Iraq, but it isn't. Candidate Obama proposed the withdrawal of all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008 -- a policy that would have left chaos and perhaps genocide in its wake. He stuck with a strategy of precipitate withdrawal even after the successes of the surge became evident. The new, more responsible timetables of the SOFA became possible not because of Obama's views but in spite of them.

Yet both leaders are likely to see benefit from the agreement. If a broadly based Iraqi government emerges as American troops withdraw, Bush's Iraq policy will demand and deserve a major historical reassessment. And the SOFA should allow President Obama to reinterpret his campaign pledges on Iraq in a more responsible manner – giving deference to the best military advice during the next three years and avoiding destabilizing actions.

The success of the surge has achieved some extraordinary things – not only the possibility of peace in Iraq but also a convergence in American politics. Bush's and Obama's modified positions on Iraq are quite close. Both leaders have accepted a responsible, gradual withdrawal and the possibility of leaving behind success instead of failure.

Much of that success, of course, will depend on the Iraqis themselves - particularly on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his leadership. If he acts the part of a benign nationalist, he could father a stable and unified nation. If he uses the military we have built, in the vacuum left by U.S. withdrawal, to attack his enemies and consolidate his personal power, he could provoke another civil war with the Sunnis.

Administration officials believe they have taken precautions that will encourage Iraqi nationalism over a destructive pan-Shiism. Iraqi security forces and police have been carefully integrated. Provincial elections in January will give greater influence to disenfranchised Sunnis (who foolishly boycotted the last elections). And national elections set for December of next year could act as a check on Maliki's ambitions and abuses.

Dealing with the new Iraq will not be easy. It has become a prickly nation, jealous of its sovereignty and determined to avoid even the appearance of American imperialism. But this also means it is becoming a "normal," self-governing country, in the midst of a national debate on its security just six years after the end of a vicious tyranny.

The cost of this success has been high for America, and some may argue that it has not been worth the price. But it is still a success.

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Our efforts to build this nation have been successful. The Iraqis want to be completely on their own and that is their right as a sovereign nation. However, they must continue the path of peace and cooperation between their various factions. To do otherwise will turn our joint victory into ashes.

Let us hope that their own history will record the sacrifices by the warriors of the United States and other Coalition countries that made their freedom a reality.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Learn From Our Mistakes But Don't Abandon the Iraqis

It’s hard to disagree with most of what the following USA Today editorial says. Mistakes were made with regard to the original reasons for invading Iraq. Unfortunately, any mistakes have been overcome by events.

The fact is that we invaded that country and removed the government, the police, the Army and the entire infrastructure. We must do everything in our power to fix the mess that we helped create. Morality and decency demand that we do so and our military forces are making friends as they make a difference in the new Iraq.

Regardless of what Obama and the Democrats say, we cannot just walk away from the Iraqi people.

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USA Today
Editorial
June 6, 2008

Iraq intelligence findings provide crucial lessons

It has long been apparent that the United States rushed to war in Iraq based on false premises. Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, didn't have ties to the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks and wasn't an imminent danger.

But one great unanswered question has festered in Washington: Did President Bush and his top officials knowingly lie when they repeatedly asserted that Saddam was reconstituting a nuclear program and had biological and chemical weapons? Or did they simply get it wrong, cherry-picking flawed intelligence to make their case for action?

Anyone hoping for the final answer from the long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report released Thursday will be disappointed — unless, of course, they cherry-pick it to support their preconceived opinions.

For the most part, the 171-page report contradicts the simplistic "Bush lied, people died" formulation found on bumper stickers. It concludes that the administration's prewar statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were mostly backed up by available (but flawed) U.S. intelligence, although the statements tended to gloss over internal debate among intelligence agencies about those findings.

The report does find, however, that assertions by Bush and Vice President Cheney that Saddam was prepared to arm terrorist groups to attack the United States contradicted available intelligence. In fact, that intelligence suggested Saddam was unlikely to do so because he feared an attack would strengthen the U.S. case for war.

This mixed verdict won't satisfy partisans on either side. But it doesn't mean the report — endorsed by the panel's eight Democrats and two of its seven Republicans — is an exercise in futility, as its GOP critics claimed. It is, in fact, a cautionary tale that provides important lessons, particularly as the nation decides what to do about Iran and its murky nuclear program.

For Congress, the lesson is that lawmakers need to double-check intelligence themselves, not simply rely on summaries or administration assurances. Pathetically few members of Congress read the complete 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which detailed misgivings of some intelligence agencies, before they cast fateful votes that authorized the Iraq war.

For this and future administrations, the lesson is that White House officials need to weigh and study all available intelligence, not seize on only what supports their preconceived notions. They mustn't present ambiguity as certainty. They mustn't launch pre-emptive attacks without bulletproof evidence. And never again should they treat war as a marketing campaign, like selling a new brand of toothpaste.

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Charles M. Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com