This is the kind of story that might be expected to draw a journalist’s attention, for it has the kind of elements that should outrage the average reader: a commander playing politics with the military, troops called upon to execute a mission they had neither expected nor been trained for, and subsequent accusations that heavy casualties might have been avoided, but for politically-motivated shell games.

The commander in question is the commander-in-chief, who has made it the policy of his administration to reduce troop deployments in the “bad war” (Iraq) while increasing the number of boots on the ground to fight the “good war” in Afghanistan. While the President has followed through on the latter, the former has yet to happen in any substantive way and our troops have paid the price for this political sleight of hand.

On February 17, 2009, the Defense Department announced, to great fanfare, that it was deploying an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, including the 5^th Stryker Brigade, 2^nd Infantry Division. The problem with that, which would soon become evident when the 5^th Stryker entered combat, is that the Brigade was trained to fight one kind of war and then, apparently for the sake of political expediency, deployed to fight quite another.

One of the 5^th Stryker’s units, the 1^st Battalion, 17^th Infantry Regiment (1-17) has been particularly hard hit since arriving in Afghanistan last fall, suffering twenty-one combat deaths in one battle in the Arghandab district alone. One of the battalion’s company commanders, Capt. Joel Kassulke was replaced after that action, a move that angered some of the Captain’s troops, according to this Army Times article. The problem, some soldiers said, was not their commander, but mismatched training: (more…)

In case you’ve ever wondered why you never got the straight story on Islam directly after Sept. 11, and still haven’t, and why the media seems in the tank for jihad, here’s a clue.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) issued this directive a couple of weeks after 9/11; for sheer propaganda, their “Diversity Guidelines” are hard to beat.  In fact, the enemy who attacked our country in an attempt to bring it down may just as well have been writing the narrative.

The “guidelines,” adopted at the Society’s national convention on October 6, 2001, urges journalists to “take steps against racial profiling in their coverage of the war on terrorism and to reaffirm their commitment to use language that is informative and not inflammatory.”

How?  Among other things: (more…)

Fourth of a series.  Find parts one, two and three here.  And don’t miss this report, either.

Martha Coakley declares that terrorists are “gone from Afghanistan” and has no idea the Taliban are either terrorists or our sworn enemies.

No one ever accused Martha Coakley of having any foreign-policy experience.  After all, as a career lawyer, prosecutor, state attorney general and lifelong Democrat party hack, the “Massachusette” can’t rationally be expected to be as up on the nuances of the “war on terror” as, say, Joe Biden.

Still, her remarks during her one debate with Scott Brown on January 11 should trouble anyone who hopes that a potential successor to the warm body currently occupying the deceased Lion of the Senate’s seat would have, shall we say, a greater grasp of the geo-political situation.

First, in her own words, her foreign-policy credentials:

I have a sister who lives overseas and she’s been in England and now lives in the Middle East.  I’ve spent a lot of time on my own traveling, ‘cause I’m interested in it.  Less so as attorney general, and my responsibilities don’t take me overseas.

Unbelievable?  See for yourself:

(more…)