Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 http://www.thegreenside.com/story.asp?ContentID=11151 The Green Side Sunday, November 21, 2004 Email from Dave - Nov 19, 04 Dear Dad - Just came out of the city and I honestly do not know where to start. I am afraid that whatever I send you will not do sufficient honor to the men who fought and took Fallujah. Shortly before the attack, Task Force Fallujah was built. It consisted of Regimental Combat Team 1 built around 1st Marine Regiment and Regimental Combat Team 7 built around 7th Marine Regiment. Each Regiment consisted of two Marine Rifle Battalions reinforced and one Army mechanized infantry battalion. Regimental Combat Team 1 (RCT-1) consisted of 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (3rd LAR), 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5); 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines (3/1)and 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry (2/7). RCT-7 was slightly less weighted but still a formidable force. Cutting a swath around the city was an Army Brigade known as Blackjack. The Marine RCT's were to assault the city while Blackjack kept the enemy off of the backs of the assault force. The night prior to the actual invasion, we all moved out into the desert just north of the city. It was something to see. You could just feel the intensity in the Marines and Soldiers. It was all business. As the day cleared, the Task Force began striking targets and moving into final attack positions. As the invasion force commenced its movement into attack positions, 3rd LAR led off RCT-1's offensive with an attack up a peninsula formed by the Euphrates River on the west side of the city. Their mission was to secure the Fallujah Hospital and the two bridges leading out of the city. They executed their tasks like clockwork and smashed the enemy resistance holding the bridges. Simultaneous to all of this, Blackjack sealed the escape routes to the south of the city. As invasion day dawned, the net was around the city and the Marines and Soldiers knew that the enemy that failed to escape was now sealed. 3/5 began the actual attack on the city by taking an apartment complex on the northwest corner of the city. It was key terrain as the elevated positions allowed the command to look down into the attack lanes. The Marines took the apartments quickly and moved to the rooftops and began engaging enemy that were trying to move into their fighting positions. The scene on the rooftop was surreal. Machine gun teams were running boxes of ammo up 8 flights of stairs in full body armor and carrying up machine guns while snipers engaged enemy shooters. The whole time the enemy was firing mortars and rockets at the apartments. Honest to God, I don't think I saw a single Marine even distracted by the enemy fire. Their squad leaders, and platoon commanders had them prepared and they were executing their assigned tasks. As mentioned, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry joined the Regiment just prior to the fight. In fact, they started showing up for planning a couple of weeks in advance. There is always a professional rivalry between the Army and the Marine Corps but it was obvious from the outset that these guys were the real deal. They had fought in Najaf and were eager to fight with the Regiment in Fallujah. They are exceptionally well led and supremely confident. 2/7 became our wedge. In short, they worked with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. We were limited in the amount of prep fires that we were allowed to fire on the city prior to the invasion. This was a point of some consternation to the forces actually taking the city. Our compensation was to turn to 2/7 and ask them to slash into the city and create as much turbulence as possible for 3/1 to follow. Because of the political reality, the Marine Corps was also under pressure to get it done quickly. For this reason, 2/7 and 3/1 became the penetration force into the city. Immediately following 3/5's attack on the apartment buildings, 3/1 took the train station on the north end of the city. While the engineers blew a breach through the train trestle, the Cavalry soldiers poured through with their tanks and Bradley's and chewed an opening in the enemy defense. 3/1 followed them through until they reached a phase[line deep into the northern half of the city. The Marine infantry along with a few tanks then turned to the right and attacked the heart of the enemy defense. The fighting was tough as the enemy had the area dialed in with mortars. 3/5 then attacked into the northwest corner of the city. This fight continued as both Marine rifle battalions clawed their way into the city on different axis. There is an image burned into my brain that I hope I never forget. We came up behind 3/5 one day as the lead squads were working down the Byzantine streets of the Jolan area. An assault team of two Marines ran out from behind cover and put a rocket into a wall of an enemy strongpoint. Before the smoke cleared the squad behind
Re: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test
... they can't really test how effective the system is ... Effective at what? Preventing people from traveling? The whole exercise ignores the question of whether the Executive Branch has the power to make a list of citizens (or lawfully admitted non-citizens) and refuse those people their constitutional right to travel in the United States. Doesn't matter whether there's 1, 19, 20,000, or 100,000 people on the list. The problem is the same: No court has judged these people. They have not been convicted of any crime. They have not been arrested. There is no warrant out for them. They all have civil rights. When they walk into an airport, there is nothing in how they look that gives reason to suspect them. They have every right to travel throughout this country. They have every right to refuse a government demand that they identify themselves. So why are armed goons keeping them off airplanes, trains, buses, and ships? Because the US constitution is like the USSR constitution -- nicely written, but unenforced? Because the public is too afraid of the government, or the terrorists, or Emmanuel Goldstein, or the boogie-man, to assert the rights their ancestors died to protect? John (under regional arrest) Gilmore PS: Oral argument in Gilmore v. Ashcroft will be coming up in the Ninth Circuit this winter. http://papersplease.org/gilmore
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 8:26 PM -0800 11/21/04, John Young wrote: Jesus, Bob, this and the Schwartz hosannah for Free Fallujah are about as bad a puke as anything you've posted. and... BTW, Bob, what's your draft status? Born in 1959. One of two years in most of the last century that were draft-exempt. :-) By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? Or was it that Bush Lied and People Died??? Or maybe, it was that John Kerry Was In Viet Nam??? One man's puke is another man's original thought, apparently. Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaFN2MPxH8jf3ohaEQKAkACfX125eCH0tKyejTciP+hCk0tCNq8AnjEh i7Mmc/ovoC/038TBcXvzozCs =DL6t -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Jesus, Bob, this and the Schwartz hosannah for Free Fallujah are about as bad a puke as anything you've posted. These vomitoria are upchucked by the hundreds by professional writers usually under contract, or angling for one, or in the case of the eye-witness in the propaganda unit of the Corps. Go over to DoD's and the mil departments' and warmongering foreign policy web sites and you'll see a lot of this juvenalia posted urging dads and sons to get hot about serving the nation. Formulaic dreck to generate fodder for the grinding machine. DoD puts on these shows several times a week, and all spokespersons speak the same lingo -- Stepford wiving. On Friday DoD rolled out two vile initiatives claiming to support the troops. Remember that when a military action like Fallujah is completely unnecessary except to display power by hamburgering youngsters and civilians, the glorious war stories come fast and furious to counter the uptick of funerals and VA hospital lifetime inductees. BTW, Bob, what's your draft status? Ready to die or lose your limbs for a mil spin doctors' salary boost? The NY Times today describes a Marine sniper getting his head exploded by an insurgent sniper, a day or so after the Marine predicted it would happen, whistling dixie, narcotized by the Green Cunt.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
On Sun, 21 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: At 8:26 PM -0800 11/21/04, John Young wrote: % SNIP % By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? Troll -1 Or was it that Bush Lied and People Died??? True +1 Or maybe, it was that John Kerry Was In Viet Nam??? Irrelevant... One man's puke is another man's original thought, apparently. Looks like you came out even there b^HBob ;) -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. - FDR
Re: Your source code, for sale
Hal Finney wrote: Ben Laurie writes: How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party? Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and the seller. This way the payment is already gone from the POV of the buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less incentive to cheat him. In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid to get it signed) is already gone. He can prove to the seller that he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) be able to deposit. Cute. You could adapt Lucre to do this. Cheers, Ben. -- http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.thebunker.net/ There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit. - Robert Woodruff
Latest Tasteful Video Game
Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ that there's a new video game JFK Reloaded http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ that lets you explore the Kennedy assassination from Lee Harvey Oswald's perspective. Neither the article nor the website indicates whether you can also take shots from the Grassy Knoll or other locations, or whether you get +3 Magic Bullets as opposed to regular bullets. The authors claim that they're trying to let people see that the Lone Gunman theory is plausible by letting them try it out. Ted Kennedy's staff put out a highly negative statement, but didn't call for censorship. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A Tale of Two Maps
R.A. Hettinga posted: http://www.techcentralstation.com/111704A.html Tech Central Station A Tale of Two Maps By Patrick Cox http://www.techcentralstation.com/images/111704AAA.gif Here is a map showing U.S. population density in 1990: http://www.techcentralstation.com/images/111704A.gif Comparisons of these two maps make startlingly obvious the extent to which population density predicts voter behavior. Maybe the causality runs the other way. People who are more left-wing (whatever that exaclty might mean) are more likely to enjoy living in cities. Over here in Britain that certainly seems to have happened. There's a churn in city populations as young adults move in to study or get jobs, then move out to suburbs or small towns later. Some stay, and they tend to be the ones who are less politically conservative. Sometimes I think that political conservatives just don't *like* people as much. I mean that quite literally - my most right-wing friends are less greagarious than my left-wing friends. They keep themselves to themselves more. They stay in doors more and when they are out they are more likely to stick to their own cars. They don't like travelling in public transport, or going to noisy pubs. They seem to actively dislike social situations where they rub up against large numbers of strangers. And the Anarchists have the best parties. By which I mean Euro-style left-wing Sovcialist Anarchists of course, not grumpy American survivalist Libertarians. Get off my land! is a characteristic right-wing stereotype. Whose round is it anyway? is not. Like the old song says As soon as this pub closes, the Revolution starts! The standard, rather unexamined, assumption is that rural America has more traditional cultural values that are associated with the Republican Party. These include religious, family and pro-military values. Urban population centers and surrounding environs, on the other hand, are associated with more progressive values associated with Democratic Party. These values are assumed to be more secular, progressive and anti-military. In Britain, things may be different in your country, inner-city life is in many ways more old-fashioned than country life or suburban life. Us city dwellers are more likely to walk to work or school, less likley to drive. We're more likely to use public transport. When we buy things we go to small corner shops and the shop-keepers might even know us. They might not know our names, or even speak our language, but they probably recognise our faces. For some time now (in England, things may be different elsewhere) city-dwellers and inner-suburbanites have been more likely to go to church than people in the country or outer suburbs. London is the only part of Britain where churchgoing has gone up in the last ten years (though its everywhere lower than anywhere in the USA - consistently less than ten percent) Now teh last census tells us that one-parent families are rarer in London than in the country or in smaller towns. (See last week's Economist magazine http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3405966 - full text available only to subscribers) Also the proportion of people employed by government is smaller in London than the national average, and the proportion of self-employed or small businesses is greater. [...] Another fascinating and easily verifiable correlation may be tied only indirectly to the characteristics of population density. The red states, that voted for Bush in both of the last elections, it seems, are net receivers of federal tax revenues. Another thing US has in common with UK - large cities are net contributors to tax reevenues.
Re: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test
The whole exercise ignores the question of whether the Executive Branch has the power to make a list of citizens (or lawfully admitted non-citizens) and refuse those people their constitutional right to travel in the United States. So why are armed goons keeping them off airplanes, trains, buses, and ships?Because the US constitution is like the USSR constitution -- nicely written, but unenforced?Because the public is too afraid of the government, or the terrorists, or Emmanuel Goldstein, or the boogie-man, to assert the rights their ancestors died to protect? Tsk. Don't you know that you're with us or you're with the terrorists? If you're not careful the Justice Department will decide that you are a "person of interest" and whisk you off to an undisclosed location until the war on terror is over with a stopover in Saudi or Egypt for torture. A lifetime ago Franklin Roosevelt said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Today the government is peddling fear itself.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. That war was won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) by the inherent failures of communism itself, not because the US Government was some kind of champion of freedom. As I've gone to pains to point out, I think a good (though not unassailable case) can be made showing that the US probably slowed down free market development in certain places. Hell--East Asian communism might rightfully be blamed on the outcome of World War I and the need to create some kind of anti-western hegemony. A libertarian might possibly look at the US Government and it's legions of Conservatives as being a sort of tag-along (at best) or leech, grabbing a ride on the back of certain industries and (of course) championing them against other technologies (eg, defense, oil, autos...). Of course, neocons will turn red at the notion that they promote a very strong form of government intervention into private industry... As for... Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for communal ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Don't count it. Capitalism, like communism, will likely take on it's own particularly Chinese flavor when hitting the high Refractive Index of that culture. China's population will near 1.5 Billion before it starts to shrink again, so don't look for real estate to be a perpetual contract for a century or two, if ever. Private Property in general (outside of real estate) has of course existed in China for decades now. -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 21, 2004 9:23 PM To: John Young [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report .. By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? I know this is currently known to be false by all informed opinion, but I don't think it's crazy to worry about it. If we want to fight high-tech wars like the invasion of Iraq, lots of conscript troops aren't that useful. If we want to occupy places like Iraq, we need people to do the occupying, and it's clear that there's some strain on our forces now. Conscript troops might very well be useful for that kind of work. Suppose we invade and occupy Iran next. Where will the soldiers needed to hold down occupied territory come from? Suppose we follow up with Syria, which is surely about as repressive and nasty a place as Saddam's Iraq. Three things are very clear about the current situation: a. A lot of people are finding out that their military obligations are going to be longer and much less pleasant than they expected. This is going to have a big impact on recruiting in the future. b. If we just want to hold down what we've got, we have enough troops to do it, but if we want to really go on a democratizing bender in the Middle East, we'll need more troops. c. It's not at all clear we won't be taking some action against Iran in the next year. Hopefully, that won't involve invading them, but it could. Cheers, RAH --John
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
The Selective Service website unctuously declares there is no draft foreseen at the moment and lists defeat of recent congressional efforts to institute the draft. However, it emphasizes that the agency is required by law to remain at the ready to immediately institute a draft upon notice. As part of this responsibility It polls educational instutitions every 18 months requesting updated information on draft-age youngsters who are receiving federal funding, the most recent of these polls here: http://cryptome.org/sss110404.txt A single harsh attack on US interests could precipitate a draft, and override public opposition in a flash. The military has nearly exhausted it National Guard and Reserve options, and will not give up the long-standing strategic policy of being able to fight two major wars at once. Thus most military resources are tied up not in the Middle East but in pre-positioned locations determined by the 2-wars policy. Whether the US military should forego its 2-war policy and use its forces in ways more appropriate to current threats will be determined by those interest groups who benefit from the horrifically expensive and magnificently wasteful 2-war boondoggle. Two generations of military personnel have been trained for the 2-war threat, and almost none have faced actual combat. This inexperience shows in unconventional warfare. again and again. Big war planners throw big war resources are small targets, take the applause for the phony war show, as in Fallujah, and discount lives lost because the do not show up on big war statistical-casualties diagrams. Big wars expect big losses, far more than volunteers can provide. Indeed, volunteer military personnel -- officers and enlisted -- are careful to throw conscripts into the breech as if they are expendable ammunition, the more thrown the higher the credit obtained in charts of capacity, not charts of smarts. Recall Kennedy embraced the counter-insurgent tool with support for Special Forces, but these forces remain a marginal part of the military, not least because they do not require much material and political resouces to do their duty. Big defense, and never forget, big intelligence to feed the need for big defense, are far superior ar generating contracts, jobs, careers and campaign contributions. The US is totally addicted to profligate, wasteful ineffective big war policy, primarily because there is little risk in parading might, bragging about it, threatening with it, compared to using it. Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. STF up and pay your taxes, asshole, encourage your sons and daughters to sacrifice for the nation -- well, not really just tell the poor fuckers the military is a good safe job. Don't get drafted, that's for losers. Any road, killing the big war planners at home where they feel safe, is sure to come for their mighty military does not how to fight that war so busy is it parading forces against imaginary wargame-type evil empires of the day.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 11:21 AM -0800 11/22/04, John Young wrote: Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. Korea. Yes. Korea. Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for communal ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Just because, like some ancient techtonic seafloor, your political compass ossified in the general direction of Moscow, ca 1965, doesn't mean that the magnetic pole's there anymore, John. Heck, that pole's actually flipped polarity, last time I looked. The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I. It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property rights and personal freedom. As for the the article that started this thread, I'm merely pointing out that we're entering a period of *Republican* triumphalism. That it has gotten completely up your nose is no surprise, of course. Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/cMPxH8jf3ohaEQIWSACdFGd11vOhNiHxP95Cg/Aulmqjk7sAoJhT gr46RwVQgpaBsW3ILgZ3jjOy =s5VA -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 10:38 AM -0500 11/22/04, John Kelsey wrote: we need people to do the occupying, I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 troop estimate. No. Seriously. :-). Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/dMPxH8jf3ohaEQJ5LgCg+nsmLf5Kb2RNVxkE9RswdxKydq0AoL1z TF3QBcMshgCaqfzRPyzXgyNj =rPJH -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say
Russell Nelson writes: Yes, this is true. John Gilmore is a pain in the ass for standing on his rights (some government types might say *fucking* pain in the ass), but he is correct. ALL of the effort spent to secure open relays was basically wasted effort, because spammers just moved on to insecure client machines. The proper route to control spam is to involve users in prioritizing their email, so that their friend's email comes first, followed by anybody they've sent mail to, followed by people they've gotten email from before, followed by mailing list mail, followed by email from strangers (which is where all the spam is). All of that relies on email authentication to work. Spammers will start hijacking authenticated servers. The solution is to automatically classify messages according to user preference. Good software to do this is already in mainstream MUAs, and even better software to do it is open source (google for weka machine learning as an example). Someday (hopefully soon), MUAs will be able to automatically classify messages into more than two categories. There is already phenomenal software (reeltwo.com; commercial but based on Weka) to do this very quickly and accurately. -- Chris Palmer Staff Technologist, Electronic Frontier Foundation 415 436 9333 x124 (desk), 415 305 5842 (cell) 81C0 E11D CE73 4390 B6C7 3415 B286 CD8F 68E4 09CD pgpP7izGedOJX.pgp Description: PGP signature
