Phillip Carter’s Intel Dump has been picked up by the Washington Post, where he posted commentary on yesterday’s Congressional testimony from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

Phillip Carter is a Veteran of OIF who supports Barack Obama and serves in a quasi-official capacity as an advisor to Obama’s Campaign. He’s also been a longtime and consistent critic of our efforts in Iraq, albeit an honorable and principled one, who makes his arguments on the basis of logic and personal experience, largely without rancor or insulting rhetoric towards those with whom he disagrees.

I’d rather have someone like him blogging for the Washington Post than many other potential candidates, but still, I think Carter is the one overplaying his hand, here.

Carter’s take-aways up front:

They overstated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in an effort to justify the mission -- a mindset that has generated a deeply flawed strategy. They also overplayed the surge's success -- downplaying or discounting factors that likely did more to create today's improved security conditions. While their "Anaconda" strategy looks cool on a PowerPoint slide, it confuses the issues of control and influence, putting too much stock in America's ability to engineer success in Iraq. And, perhaps most tellingly, the two men made the case for perseverance without placing Iraq in the context of vital U.S. national interests, offering only apocalyptic predictions of what would happen if we don't stay the course.

Origins of Violence

Carter asserts that Al Qaeda cannot rightly be held accountable for the lion’s share of violence in Iraq:

The vast majority of Iraqi violence over the past five years has been caused a) by ethno-sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites; b) intra-sectarian fighting amongst Sunnis and Shiites; c) fighting over scarce resources (oil, fuel, water, food, control over ministries with responsibility for the same); and d) fighting by Iraq's homegrown Sunni insurgency and homegrown Shiite militias. AQI has played an important role as catalyst and spoiler -- stoking the fires of sectarian violence (as with the 2006 mosque bombing in Samarra), and keeping them going whenever peace threatened to emerge. But that is a supporting role, and it is a mistake to cast AQI in the lead role and to characterize U.S. efforts in Iraq as a counterinsurgency against AQI.

Clausewitz once wrote that the most important challenge for a commander was to visualize the battlefield -- because all plans and actions flow from his understanding of the situation. Our skewed visualization of Iraq -- and overemphasis of the AQI threat -- has pushed us to adopt an extremely risky strategy of standing up Iraqi security forces and local partisans that will, if we ever withdraw or downsize our forces, create the conditions for a massive civil war.

Carter summarizes the violence in a way that confirms that for Carter, Iraq has been a Civil War in the making from the start, and will devolve into sectarian violence under any scenario, resulting from any action we took to date, or will take – except of course, for the vague policy direction suggested by his preferred Presidential Candidate, Sen. Obama.

I would argue that Carter’s invocation of Clausewitz more accurately explains his (and Obama’s) “skewed visualization of Iraq.”

Al Qaeda aggressively sought to portray their terrorist plots and factions, as well as the resulting violence, as indigenous and homegrown. They created Iraqi puppets for what were otherwise foreign terrorist operations, all of which has been repeatedly revealed as designed propaganda in captured Al Qaeda documents. Yet, Carter acknowledges AQI as “catalyst and spoiler,” but relegates AQI to a minor, “supporting role.”

Yet even the example Carter cites, that of the 2006 Samarra Mosque bombing, undercuts his argument. That seminal event, engineered to create the impression of sectarian conflict, is widely regarded as having provoked much of the resulting violence, and that was just the most obvious example of years of steady provocation. That’s pretty central to the instability and violence of what happened, yet Carter fairly implies that it had no material impact, against intractable (and pre-existing) ethnic strife. No doubt Al Qaeda spinmeisters are pleased that analysts like Carter – and policy makers like Obama – have so thoroughly bought into their deceits.

Nor does Carter make any mention of Iranian war-and violence-making, or the degree to which Iran has supported multiple factions (Shi and Sunni alike), as well as Al Qaeda itself. By adopting the view that the great majority of the violence is internal and domestic, Carter in effect aligns himself with those stubborn analytic reactionaries (including many at the CIA and State Department), who stubbornly refuse to accept the possibility that Shia Iran could ever find common cause with Sunni Al Qaeda. This repeats the same analytic conceit that refused to acknowledge that an irreligious secularist like Saddam Hussein could ever support or sponsor or find common cause with radical Islamic terrorists. (In the face of much evidence to the contrary.)

Other Causes

Carter also adopts another Democratic Party talking point, in claiming that other factors have led to the greatly improved security situation in Iraq:

What about the massive flows of displaced people? And what to make of the relative importance of the political deals with Sunni and Shiite political leaders that have kept their partisans out of the fight? These have all had a massive impact on the security situation -- probably more of one than that exerted by U.S. military forces.

These are odd factors to juxtapose. In the first, Carter joins those who claim that a largely completed ethnic cleansing has moved warring ethnic groups far enough apart that they no longer are in (as much) conflict. Again, that is based on a premise that Sunnis and Shia, in their natural state, unmolested, will always be at war.

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience in Iraq, as well as trusted sources more knowledgeable about Iraqi anthropology, most Iraqi families reveal a great deal of Shia and Sunni intermarriage. All of the Iraqis I met had Shia and Sunni relatives, and even some Kurds besides. The Iraqi (Kurdish) General who spoke to us at length described the same kind of intermixing. Pre-war Iraq was never particularly religious, other than in (some) Shia enclaves, and the Iraqi Shia (Arab) had been distinctly less religious than their Iranian (Persian) counterparts. That’s one of the points of friction between Iran and Iraq Shia communities, with a fair amount of racism and ethnic stereotyping thrown in for good measure. I find it highly credible that, without external agitation and provocation, Iraq can and will evidence reconciliation from the Baathist years of Sunni domination and Hussein’s acts of genocide, and the signs of such reconciliation are increasing.

I find it also highly likely that the “political deals” that Carter dismisses could not have been possible within the degrading security situation that prevailed prior to the Surge of US Military forces.

What’s Victory?

Carter passes on another Democratic Party talking point:

Seeking a Strategy. So what is our strategy in Iraq? And for that matter, what is "victory?" How does a "victory" in Iraq relate to America's larger national security interests? Petraeus and Crocker effectively punted on these grand questions, as they did last September, offering only that we needed to persevere and succeed to avoid vague Somalia-like predictions of what might happen if we don't.

I can directly attest to this line of rhetoric as a Democratic talking point, as it was echoed all day long yesterday by Democratic Congressional aides as a rebuttal to the personal testimonies of Vets for Freedom members. If what Petraeus and Crocker have been presenting to Congress this past year doesn’t constitute a Strategy, and underscore what the Bush Administration and its critics alike assert would be victory – Iraq taking on the role as self-preserver of their own freedoms and nascent democracy – then no plan or conditions for victory can never be sufficiently articulated.

Competing Democratic Party Presidential nominees have been issuing these kinds of criticisms since our invasion of Iraq. The criticisms evolve, the claims change, each change of policy seemingly in response to criticism, becomes yet another set of mistakes to deride and denounce. They’ve never met a single operation or version of the war plan that ever commends itself. It’s been failure one way or another, from 2003 until today.

Carter concludes, “We owe something more to our men and women serving in Iraq, and to the Iraqis.”

I couldn’t agree more. The Nation and our elected officials owe much to Veterans who have served the country in combat in Iraq, and to Iraqis. I’m hard pressed, and not convinced at all by Carter, how abandoning our mission in Iraq helps pay that debt.

(Via Memeorandum)

Presidential candidate and Commander in Chief aspirant Sen. Barack Obama apparently stood in a debate last week with competitor Sen. Hillary Clinton. During the debate, Obama used an anecdote provide him by an Army Captain, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2003, and wanted to share some criticisms of his deployment with Obama.

Here’s what Obama actually said:

“You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," he said. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”

As anyone knowledgeable about the military might surmise, that set off a firestorm of criticism.

Many wondered in the Captain actually exists, or served in Afghanistan as a Platoon Leader.

Yes, he exists, and yes, he served as a Platoon Leader back when he was a Lieutenant, and yes, he and his platoon deployed with 24 out of a possible 39 soldiers. So thus far Obama’s purported source passes the same level of “existence” checks as Scott Beauchamp of TNR Diary fame.

Stephen Spruiell, writing at The Corner, did a good job capturing the other immediate, critical reaction several factual “features” of Obama’s little story. Their objections and calls of BS center on three features of Obama’s tale.

First, Captains don’t lead Rifle platoons. Lieutenants do, and usually 2^nd LTs at that. Second, Platoons themselves don’t get split up for different theater assignments Companies are the smallest organizational chunk that ever gets farmed out, and even that’s extremely rare, and rarely in theater level assignments, unless they’re a rare combat service or service support company.

Third, critics savaged the notion that equipment and ammo shortages forced the CPT and his unit to scrounge, salvage or capture enemy equipment to make up the shortfall. Knowledgeable MILBLOGGERS and their readership have been vehement, and unanimous, that this hasn’t not happened in Afghanistan.

For good reason, it turns out. ABC’s Jack Tapper scored an interview, courtesy of the Obama Campaign, with the Army Captain at the source of Obama’s anecdote.

Tapper rather blissfully states that “Obama’s anecdote checks out,” he must be using the same kind of fact checking methodology as TNR in their War Diarist debacle.

To return briefly to what Obama actually said, Obama stated that his Army Captain deployed to Iraq with 24 of the 39 he was authorized, and that as a consequence, “they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees.” He further alleged that those shortfalls necessitated their capture of enemy weapons to make up for their shortfalls, as it was easier to capture what they needed than to get (properly) supplied “by our current commander in chief.”

Here’s what Tapper reports about the “ammo shortages:”

At Fort Drum, in training, "we didn't have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed." What ammunition? 40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun ("50 cal.")

As First Sergeant of a National Guard unit which mobilized in 2004 and deployed to Iraq in 2005, I am not surprised that ammo for these two weapons systems might have been in short supply in 2003, given the OPTEMPO. We ourselves had no training shortages, but we didn’t get much more than qualification fire time, either. Though qualifying did take some time, going from a minimum number of qualified soldiers to a very healthy maximum number of those likely to be assigned.

Then, there’s the outrageous notion that soldiers needed to capture what they needed. When interviewed by Tapper, the Army Captain contradicted Obama, rather than “backed him up:”

"The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons," he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or "Dishka") on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.

The underlying story behind Obama’s politicized anecdote, minus a few important details and with factual rearrangement, may be thought be some to “check out.” The unit was deployed without soldiers who had been transferred, there were ammo shortages, during training at Fort Drum, and the unit may have had vehicle shortages, as many units did in 2003, when this story takes place.

Obama, however, greatly elaborated on his storyline by: avoiding mention of when this took place and implying a currently existing state of affairs; falsely attributing causality between the shortage of soldiers to a shortage of ammo and equipment; and falsely depicting any relationship between any perceived weapons or equipment shortages and capturing weapons from the Taliban.

To a military reader, that falls far short of “checking out,” hence all the calls of BS and fabrication. But again, note that it was Obama, not the Army Captain whose fair criticisms he badly mischaracterizes, who has created the false fabric upon which the factual details are stitched.

Yes, the CPT's unit was short of ammo -- but only for range fire at Fort Drum in the US during mobilization training. That's a far cry from the intimation that troops were lacking ammo in combat, and thus had to salvage from the Taliban.

Yes, some of the soldiers pulled from the Rifle Platoon were reassigned to units that then were sent to Iraq -- some but not all. Glossing it all over as if the Army robbed Peter to pay Paul is misleading at best. Did the soldiers fill vacancies in units leaving immediately, whereas the Afghan bound Platoon left 6 months later?

Then, the belated acknowledgement that the CPT did his Afghan tour in 2003. With two big deployments just underway, it took 1-2 more years before vehicle shortages caught up. Yet, Obama's anecdote certainly conveyed the impression of negligent under-equipping of our soldiers. Ask any of us whether we had too little, or too much equipment.

And read closely this account of WHY the CPT's soldiers captured or confiscated enemy weapons. He states clearly the reason WAS NOT that they didn't have enough of their own.

Obama's use of this anecdote was rhetorical flourish, to be sure, and such always contains more gas than solid. But in this case, he exaggerates an anecdote from 5 years ago, twists it to fit his political purposes, and conveys all manner of impression not supported by facts.

(Tapper interview via The Corner.)

The New York Times on Sunday commenced a reporting series called “War Torn,” described as “A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.”

The Times starts War Torn with "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," written by Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez, consisting of atypical anecdotes, seemingly contradicting data, and an absolute lack of statistical context.

One can only speculate on what the Times plans for future installments.

Several statistically informed and militarily knowledgeable bloggers have already criticized the Times for faulty reporting and even faultier data analysis techniques.

Phillip Carter of Intel Dump, no slacker as a critic of our efforts in Iraq, reached a one word conclusion about the Times piece: “bullsh*t.”

That’s at the end of a somewhat more elaborate criticism:

So, basically, the reporters went trolling on Lexis-Nexis and other databases to find "murder" within the same paragraph as "veteran" or "soldier," and built a front-page story around that research. They compared the pre-war numbers to the post-war numbers and found that, voila!, there's a difference. And then it looks like they cherry-picked the best anecdotes out of that research (including the ones where they could get interviews and photos) to craft a narrative which fit the data.
The article makes no attempt to produce a statistically valid comparison of homicide rates among vets to rates among the general population. Nor does it rely at all on Pentagon data about post-deployment incidents of violence among veterans. It basically just generalizes from this small sample (121 out of 1.7 million Iraq and Afghanistan vets, not including civilians and contractors) to conclude that today's generation of veterans are coming home full of rage and ready to kill.

Marc Danziger of Winds of Change documents how the lack of statistical context in the Times report evades some rather simple mathematical comparisons, and helpfully provides the email address of the Times Public Editor:

That means that the NY Times 121 murders represent about a 7.08/100,000 rate.

Now the numbers on deployed troops are probably high - fewer troops from 2001 - 2003; I'd love a better number if someone has it.

But for initial purposes, let's call the rate 10/100,000, about 40% higher than the calculated one.

Now, how does that compare with the population as a whole?

Turning to the DoJ statistics, we see that the US offender rate for homicide in the 18 - 24 yo range is 26.5/100,000.For 25 - 34, it's 13.5/100,000.

See the problem?

Damn, is it that hard for reporters and their editors to provide a little bit of context so we can make sense of the anecdotes? It's not in Part 1 of the article. And I'll bet it won't be in the future articles, either.

Because it's not part of the narrative of how our soldiers are either depraved or damaged.

The NY Times Public Editor can be reached at public@nytimes.com.

Danziger sparks a rather one-sided debate at Winds. There, Times apologists suggest that Danziger, Carter and other critics misrepresent what is intended as mere “anecdotal” reporting, and that the Times report is actually very sympathetic to soldiers experiencing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other combat effects.

No doubt, in the same way the Times and others of their media ilk show sympathy for all other murders and malcontents who society has abused or neglected. Apparently, no one is responsible for their own bad behavior anywhere in Times World – unless you happen to be a member of the GOP that is.

But to address the notion that the Times report doesn’t make an argument that the Iraq War (uniquely) causes these soldiers to act out violently, consider the following.

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

“Town by town,” adding up to 121 cases nation wide? That’s town by town if you only count every 1,000^th town or so, isn’t it? “Patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon?” Aside from the triteness of either of the mixed metaphors, some patchwork where 1000 patches show no pattern whatever, but that 1,000 and first one, oh boy. Quiet, you could correctly call it. Darn near silent. “Cross-country trail of death and heartbreak?” That’s a vanishingly small number of trail markers on that trail, dwarfed by any mid-sized or larger town or city in America.

Note to the careful evasion in that third paragraph, about how “combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage” for the tragedies that the Times bemoans. So which is it, combat or substance or family or none of the above, which factor is most responsible? A combination? And do they “set the stage,” or only “appear to”? What kind of journalism is this? I thought the model was to describe facts, let the readers make value judgments.

And in that last paragraph, over 20% of the Times 121 cases are manslaughter or other charges stemming from fatal car crashes, “resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.” Talk about padding the numbers. How many of those cases involve alcohol or substance impaired driving – even if someone might consider such driving suicidal as well? How is this any different from the prevalence of such behavior among anyone in the age range of most of the soldiers involved? Doesn’t sound exclusive to military veterans, by a long shot.

And what about those “121 cases,” because that number won’t square up with numbers reported later in the article:

The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

By my calculation, 75% of 349 would come to 262, not 121. Go figure, the Times doesn’t do math very well.

Admittedly much of the Times report is unscientific, statistically distorted based on research methods, and entirely based on the collection of anecdotal evidence. This can be a valid means of reporting, at least on background. As the blunt objects wielded by the Times in this piece, however, it distorts whatever reality it presents.

When reporting by anecdote or personal account, some effort to make sure the selected anecdotes are “representative” would kind of help the reporting avoid bias, one-sided advocacy, or distortion to the point of falsehood. Yet, the editors at the Times exhibit no such caution when it comes to formulating the narrative they seek to advance, and each anecdote is presented as object lesson that military service in Iraq causes the mental imbalances that lead to violence.

This, despite numerous clues in several of the selected stores that suggest the violence has little to do with any combat effects, and would as likely have happened even absent the suggest “causation” of combat service.

The first story, chronicling how a 20 year old soldier responded to imminent threat from a couple of gangbangers in a war zone section of Las Vegas, killing one, wounding another, and seeming to “flashback” to his combat experiences.

As written by the Times, there can be no question of what the reporters want to convey: that of a walking time bomb. Of course, he’s also uneducated, underemployed, suffering from substance abuse. Allowed to join the Military at 16 by his parents. He resists the military’s programs to treat his addictions, and feels he can’t “admit” PTSD. He quits the military. Obviously tracked or in trouble with somebody, the young man sees an alcohol counselor, although the Times doesn’t mention where the soldier gets that help from. The counselor advises the man to go see the VA, but he’s too busy.

Not until he gets arrested does it come out that he suffers from memories about a “bad kill.” Charges were eventually dropped in exchange for “successful completion of treatment for substance abuse and PTSD.” Pretty good outcome, for him. Unremarked in the Times piece is how many ways the military, fellow Vets, or others rallied around the young soldier.

Up to 15 or more of these killings sound a lot more like suicides, paired with the killing of another, or suicide by cop. Not to diminish these events, but suicide is a different kind of behavior than killing somebody else. Who knows which motivated which.

Another Times example suggests even more questionable assumptions about causation. A Marine Gunnery Sergeant killed his mistress when she threatened to kill his family during his next deployment. His wife blames his prior deployment, and his Marine lawyer blames PTSD.

I don’t know the record, but I’m thinking that the fact that he was having an affair with a mentally unbalanced mistress might have contributed as to cause, with his decision to off the girlfriend and claim PTSD as his defense. Helpfully, his wife backs up his claim. Who knows? If he’d offed his wife, maybe the mistress would have done him the same favor.

Time selects as another poster soldier for PTSD murderers the case of a Vet sentenced to prison for killing, who dismissed post-deployment screening surveys, has shown no remorse nor offered apology to his victim’s family, and who the sentencing judge privy to the evidence described as a bully. This guy discounts his own PTSD diagnosis, offered by a defense-paid psychologist:

After his arrest, a psychologist hired by his family diagnosed combat trauma in Mr. Strasburg, writing in an evaluation that post-traumatic stress disorder, exacerbated by alcohol, served as a “major factor” in the shooting.

Yeah, no doubt. Is there a lawyer out there who wouldn’t offer this defense for a combat vet charged with murder? Seriously, it’s a no brainer, isn’t it?

And then there’s this quote from the vet:

Mr. Strasburg also voiced reluctance to being publicly identified as a PTSD sufferer, worried that his former military colleagues would see him as a weakling. “Nobody wants to be that guy who says, ‘I got counseling this afternoon, Sergeant,’ ” he said, mimicking a whining voice.

So we want to think that the Army is more responsible for a jerk that no doubt entered service as a jerk, and stayed that way.

The last poster boy the Times presents was an ether addict, who ended up juiced up on ether when he killed and injured driving the wrong way on a highway. Admittedly, the military is being sued for victims for negligence, perhaps more so on the basis that the military authorities released into his possession his impounded car with Marine ether canisters left in the car, rather than negligence in trying to treat his addiction.

The Times latest foray into anti-military propaganda is nothing new. Per their own links, here’s some of their “past (related) coverage:”

Surge in Number of Homeless Veterans Is Anticipated (November 8, 2007)

Not a Game: Simulation To Lessen War Trauma (August 28, 2007)

Bush Panel Seeks To Upgrade Care Of Wounded G.I.'s (July 26, 2007)

Fighting the Terror Of Battles That Rage In Soldiers' Heads (May 13, 2007)

Several prominent bloggers have also picked up on story, including Glenn Reynolds here and here, and Powerline.        

I have the distinct pleasure of watching as one of A Special Group of Soldiers I got to know on our way to Iraq, tries out his hand at milblogging.

Over at Cheese’s Milblog, one fine soldier and prospective NCO remembers a couple of leadership role models under whom he served:

In the face of my upcoming deployment, I spent a good deal of time wondering aloud if I was to be promoted. Some of this could fall under the category of "bitching," given that I have spent much of my military career as a junior leader and have probably lead more training events than any Specialist in Army history. However, as I attended more and more predeployment training exercises, I was reminded why I love being a Specialist...or Specialist Major, as my fellow Romeos were fond of calling me. I am forced to prove myself to those around me and that challenge makes me a better soldier. Also, I am often given leadership duties, but I have the cushion of being "just a Specialist" in case anything goes wrong.
Recently I was told by my immediate leadership that I may be promoted to Sergeant before my unit leaves for Afghanistan. While I am excited for the challenge and the opportunity, I am not relieved. I am nervous about being officially in charge of other soldiers...especially since those soldiers are not Romeos. This is not to say that I don't trust my new unit or that they are not as trained, disciplined or motivated as my old squad(because they are), but when I deployed with the Romeos I had known them for my entire military existence...they were the reason why I enlisted! We had the rhythm down. Most of all, I know that I have large Danner Arcadias to fill.
I have been fortunate enough in my military career to have had the best small-unit leadership one can imagine. As a "Romeo," I had a phenomenal NCOIC, and a great group of team leaders. I have taken much of my leadership style from my old NCOIC. His strengths were his tactical and technical proficiency and his demeanor. He was one of those guys that was impossible to categorize because you knew his actions were genuine, not part of some manufactured act that he'd learned at PLDC...or WLC for you "warriors" out there. This made it easy for everyone at every level to trust him and follow his advice and direction.
The person who I most look up to as a leadership model, however, is my old team leader. I'll refer to him as "Doc."

Now go read about Doc from a new MILBLOGGER, who will no doubt have lots more interesting stories to tell!

Coincident with a theme I touched on in my debate yesterday with Scott Ritter, Austin Bay at Real Clear Politics posts an analysis reflecting on Al-Qaida's Emerging Defeat.

Bay highlights this week’s announcement of a joint, long-term Iraqi and US government security arrangement in the context of another long term initiative, that of Al Qaida trying to achieve strategic objectives in Iraq:

The January 2005 Iraqi election succeeded, giving terrorists and tyrants a disturbing "purple finger" -- the very public ink stains marking the fingers of Iraqi voters.

That election was an incremental success, but one of many. This week's publicized call for a more "normalized" U.S.-Iraq relationship is another indication that the incremental successes are accumulating. Every increment can become a decrement, but war is a dynamic process -- and from a historical perspective the dynamic direction in Iraq has favored the United States -- in other words, the big trend suggests an emerging success.

I know, that runs counter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's April 2007 declaration that the United States "lost" in Iraq, but it was Reid's choice to make himself a sad historical footnote.

This emerging success required lots of money and unfortunately involved lots of blood. I had another document on my Baghdad desk, Musab al-Zarqawi's February 2004 letter to al-Qaida's leaders, in which he lamented al-Qaida's looming defeat.

He also described his counter-strategy: a Shia-Sunni sectarian war. That's war's hideous dynamic, effort met by effort -- with death, pain and suffering in each terrible collision. Zarqawi's murderers did their best to incite a sectarian debacle. Oh, they got headlines, they enlisted a motley array of criminal allies, they set Iraq's democratic timetable back 12 to 24 months -- but they failed.

In concluding his analysis, Bay commends an October 15^th article by Tom Ricks in The Washington Post, discussing “al-Qaida's information warfare defeat.”

(Via Instapundit)

Greyhawk posts another of his thoughtful and evocative ruminations at

Mudville Gazette. Read the whole thing for several reasons, but I was immediately struck by his description of walking on gravel:

In the Gardens of Stone

So I'm walking to the gym. Under my feet: four inches of gravel pave the way. When the rains come that will be better than mucking through the sort of muddy paste that the sands of Iraq become when mixed with the slightest bit of water, but in the dry season (and it hasn't really rained here since May) it's just another feature. You want to experience some aspect of life in the camps in Iraq? Find an area with four inches of gravel on the ground (shallower gravel doesn't count - you don't get the full effect) and walk around in it for a half hour or so. Repeat several times a day, sometimes carrying something heavy. Do it every day for a year, then do it for three more months...

But I digress. So I'm walking to the gym. Under my feet: four inches of gravel pave the way. Concrete t-wall sections form unbroken fortress walls on either side of my path. They are a relatively new feature; at least, we didn't have them in any significant number on my last trip here. Then we lived in tents, with sandbags stacked knee-high around them. Hypothetically these would afford us some protection from shrapnel should the odd mortar or rocket detonate nearby - or close enough to send the shrapnel flying but far enough to spare us death in the initial blast. Back then politicians in the States were screaming hysterically about armor and how we didn't have enough, but their utter ignorance of conditions in the real Iraq meant they missed an even greater vulnerability. Perhaps they were blinded by the flash of cameras. Or perhaps the fact that large concrete walls can't easily be manufactured in the home district by voters working hard for donors and then shipped overseas led them to establish other priorities. Anyhow, too late now. Even though things weren't perfectly exactly right upon our arrival in Iraq we rather quietly made those particular improvements without congressional histrionics to spur us on. The walls are up and our camps are thoroughly sub-divided into blast-containment areas and we can all sleep a little more soundly at night - or day, or whenever we get the chance to sleep. And home front ignorance of the real Iraq has certainly caused more significant problems then that one...

And oh by the way, Greyhawk reminds us that

We've won the war.

Folks thought I was a bit bold (other adjectives may apply) for saying that on October 6. After all, the BBC wouldn't acknowledge the possibility until last week...

Greyhawk gets lots of credit in my book for being the first to call it won, now that even the Associated Press and the NYT can’t ignore the signs of victory.

All good. But he’s got me stuck somewhere back in time, just 2 years ago, when I was walking on all those stones and sharing the same experience:

Back in the Garden of Stones

But I digress. So I'm walking to the gym. Under my feet: four inches of gravel pave the way. Concrete t-wall sections form unbroken fortress walls on either side of my path. It's early in the morning, so the shadow of the wall on my left is shading that half of the road. A breeze is blowing, and in the shade in the moments just after dawn that breeze hits me in my shorts and t-shirt and chills me just enough that I take a few steps sideways and into the sun.

And then it hit me - I'd been walking in the shade because that's what I - and everyone else here - had done throughout the 120 degree summer and on into the merely 90 degree days of early fall. And while the change has been gradual, it was only today that I noticed it, as I broke a time-worn habit and passed from the too-cool shadows into the glowing warmth of the morning desert sun.

I remember walking on gravel more clearly than anything else.

It is an attempt at firmness, controlling the uncontrollable. Every step shifts, there is more effort in every stride, and it wearies you the longer you walk on it.

But it does allow forward motion, however aggravating and tiring. It beats the alternative of Iraqi clay that can become muck at those rare times of rain. I suppose.

We who walked upon it will remember it always. I was happier to walk on honest asphalt than any other physical experience, back home.

A fitting symbol of our service, our sacrifice, and yes, our victory in Iraq.

That change of season, I remember, too. I wrote about it here, reprinted here.

A faint stirring of excitement, perhaps unnoticed at the time.

A moment of awakening, to be sure. An eye-blinking, sudden consciousness, after a too long season of numbness, walking slumber, a kind of deadening. Breeze brings hope. Like a mirror of what takes place throughout the barren landscape: the oppressive heat lifts, then cooler nights, and eventually a chill, cold rain, but just now only a harbinger of mission end. You wait so long for any change in season, that any change must mark a milestone.

As a First Sergeant, I know that the kinds of behavior confessed by PVT Beauchamp in his “diaries” for TNR, and described as routine for others in his unit, if true, would represent gross dereliction of duty on the part of his NCOs. Such behavior and practices would certainly reflect very poorly on Beauchamp’s Sergeants, first and foremost, his First Sergeant, known as “Top.”

Retired SFC McElroy blogs at http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/. Outraged at what she rightly perceived as Beauchamp’s slander against his fellow soldiers, SFC McElroy took the time to email PVT Beauchamp’s First Sergeant in Iraq via his Army Knowledge Online (AKO) email address. No mention of how she sleuthed his identity, but I note that Beauchamp’s unit has a website, so I’m sure it didn’t prove very difficult. (Certainly well within the means of editors or fact checkers at TNR, presuming they bother to learn things about the military, like all soldiers have First Sergeants and AKO addresses.)

SFC McElroy received the following in reply from Top:

SFC McElroy,

I’m not in the habit of answering these email’s. It would be far too many. I appreciate all the support from home and I can assure you that not a single word of this was true. We’ve been fighting this fight for quite some time. Numerous soldiers within my unit have served on several deployments and this is my third year as a First Sergeant in this unit. My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable. This soldier has other underlining issues which I’m sure will come out in the course of the investigation. No one at any of the post we live at or frequent, remotely fit the descriptions of any of the persons depicted in this young man’s fairy tale. I can’t and won’t divulge any information regarding this soldier, but I do sincerely appreciate all the support from the people back home. Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here. I’m currently serving with the best America has to offer. I have worked and fought closely with every soldier within my company and they are consummate professionals in an area most people can’t fathom. I’m proud of my soldiers and would gladly give my life for any one of them. Please continue to keep them with you in your prayers and thank God that we have these courageous men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, Americans, and the people of this struggling nation.

Sincerely,

1SG Hatley

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that no First Sergeant is going to admit that his unit is chock full of the kind of caricatures a fabulist like Beauchamp portrays, even if it was. Even if the 1SG shirked his responsibilities, avoided all accountability, there’s one thing that would be true no matter what. No soldier can tolerate their unit, mission or character to be tarnished with the kind of slanders reflected in TNR.

Someone covering up abuses or bad behavior would make all manner of excuses. They might point fingers, blame others, rally supporters, and gather up of lots of irrelevant evidence to “disprove.” Being dishonest and dishonorable, the last thing they would think of is to praise and honor their unit and fellow soldiers. Note the email above, and how much Beauchamp’s 1SG says about the soldiers in his unit, and how little he actually says about Beauchamp or his stories. He suggests Beauchamp has “underlying issues” and a “vivid imagination.”

I think I can guess what sort of “underlying issues” Beauchamp has likely exhibited under 1SG Hatley’s command.

We had a soldier with a drinking problem, for example, who got nailed multiple times for drunken and disorderly behavior –at the Mobilization site, at an MOS-producing school he was booted out of, and several times in Iraq. He was an alcoholic, and not surprisingly, exhibited all manner of other behavior and discipline problems as well. He had two article 15s, the last of which busted him all the way back down to E1.

Unfortunately, the powers that be felt that he was trying to get himself out of deployment (via earlier discipline incidents), and that he needed to stay with us as we deployed. Worse, he was assigned to the only section of ours that underwent combat missions in actual combat conditions. They tried to work with him, grow him, train him, change him. In the end, all they could do was baby-sit him to keep him from hurting himself or others, or jeopardize their missions.

Ultimately, he was on-hand during an IED/ambush. Though not targeted nor injured, nor likely in close nor first hand proximity to those who were, he retold his version of events with wild and extreme disparity from accounts of other participants. He had “seen the carnage,” he had been “under fire,” he was “warped and twisted.” (This explained why he smuggled alcohol into theater, got drunk, and pissed all over his fellow soldiers gear. Not the first time he did that sort of thing, he had some kind of fascination with pissing on things not his own.)

He sought treatment for PTSD post deployment. What he needs treatment for is alcoholism, and likely other mental health disorders, all of which he had before he deployed. But his story is illustrative of a small but significant number of soldiers who went into combat with discipline, mental health, and behavioral problems, and these conditions were aggravated or resurfaced during and post deployment. No small wonder the Army sometimes wants to claim soldiers deployed with “pre-existing conditions,” though I think the wiser course is for the Army to “grandfather” coverage for these kinds of issues.

It’s easy to see how anti-war groups and others with agendas however want to “score twice” on these individuals: war crippled these soldiers, and now the Army wants to abandon them.

Beauchamp admits in his writings that he joined the Army despite an anti-war disposition so that he would earn “credibility” for later criticism of Government defense policies (and presumably, the war). He admits to wanting to turn himself into an accomplished writer. He clearly practiced fictional accounts of combat, based on his training, before he was deployed. Objectively, it’s clear that the kind of “war is hell,” apocalypse now kind of Iraqi war stories are infinitely more salable than less violent, more honorable narratives. Match prior intent, with motive, opportunity, and willing accomplices, why is it so difficult for media types to entertain skepticism in the face of this kind of war reporting? They exhibit tremendously greater skepticism about Multinational Force press releases.

It’s too bad that media types with partisan agendas let their own prejudices blind them to the possibilities (and probabilities) of falsehood and manufactured “truth.” (Isn’t it almost unbelievable, the extent to which Leftists, progressives, anti-war types are guilty of precisely those faults and failing they accuse Conservatives, pro-victory, military supporters? I mean, in supreme degree?)

Critics who insanely view themselves as “moderate” and “independent” – these same view Hillary Clinton as near traitorous, Joe Lieberman as the epitome of evil, and mainstream media as leaning right rather than left – tsk tsk at those of us who criticize the “pro-war” and “moderate” TNR. We eat our own, by their discernment

Peter Beinert was ostensibly pro-Iraq war, but anyone privy to the change in editorial direction Franklin Foer endeavored to accomplish, knows TNR is far from “pro-war” now, and surely not as reflected in the “war has turned us into Storm Troopers” fantasies concocted by Beauchamp and others of his ilk.)

Anti-war screed-makers on the Left decry Michael Goldfarb, Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive, Ace at Ace of Spades, virtually anyone on the pro-victory right as the ultimate in hypocrites for challenging the identity of TNR’s “Scott Thomas,” but more importantly, the accuracy of his “first person” accounts (in any of his three pieces for TNR). We support the troops, but only when they agree with us about the war.

No, we just don’t tolerate people who fabricate stories, misrepresent their “combat” experience, malign and slander their fellow soldiers with partisan intent, or otherwise attempt to portray US military (as a class of persons) as cruel, evil, deranged, stupid, homicidal, etc. Don’t try to do to any of us today what you so successfully did to veterans of Vietnam – denigrated and disgraced their services with outright lies and disgusting caricatures that became the public face of the Vietnam Vet for a generation.

Those who support Beauchamp do so for convenience, for today; I am sure if he proves too controversial a figure (read, a discredited fabulist with significant personal and behavioral problems), they’ll excise him from the anti-war, darlings of the Left inner circle. But that won’t stop these same critics from ignoring the likely phoniness of this private’s “war stories,” and enshrining what should be a discredited “Larger Truthiness” that this war in Iraq makes monsters out of men.

Already, they claim that Beauchamp’s accusers – who focused extensively on the falsehood of Beauchamp’s “combat diary” accounts and less on his possible imposter status – are shifting attack from his status to him personally.

“He’s genuine! They said he was a phony! See, they’re wrong! The wingnuts have to destroy him now!”

And yet, all this was ever about, all it will ever be about with anti-war, anti-military agitators, is setting the record straight. Get real veterans, honest men and women of integrity. Ask them. Check out some agenda-free reporting, from independents and real embeds. Discount those oppositional voices with stark partisan objectives, or who have deeply invested their reputations on “Iraq is a quagmire,” “we’ve lost already,” “our army is broken” kinds of agenda-reporting (New York Times, AP, et al).

By mutual consent, acknowledge that there are always bad or dishonest or criminally violent among our soldiers, as there are among the rest of society. But see that they are recognizable by the fact that they are rare exceptions, not the norm.

If we ever reach a day when there cease to exist active partisans out to discredit our military and its efforts, to find evil and misdeed where there is none, then military, veterans, families and friends will not need to step forward publicly and call BS on those peddling slander.

(Via a veteran of Beauchamp's unit, via Michael Goldfarb)

John Barnes speculates about the true identity and motivations of The New Republic’s fabulist Scott Thomas at the Amazon Blog using a rather unusual tool: semiotic analysis. Barnes also offers valuable insight into the likely vulnerability of Franklin Foer, editor of TNR, to fabulist tales and other propaganda with which he may sympathize.

I am among those MILBLOGGERS who took up Michael Goldfarb’s challenge to consider the likely accuracy of Thomas’s slanders against the military. Military veterans see the small inaccuracies and great incongruities of Thomas’s unlikely accounts compared to our experiences in Iraq, and with our fellow soldiers. Thomas’s accounts just don’t pass the smell test. Barnes’s explanation of semiotic analysis and the results of his analysis give analytic basis to what many of us already believe: Thomas is a phony.

Here’s an extended excerpt from Barnes’s analysis:

Anyway, the particular variant I do, which has considerable commercial application in advertising and marketing and so forth, is statistical semiotics.  I get paid to use various semiotic methods to encode enormous databases of texts (e.g. samples of hundreds or thousands of blog entries) into a processable form, and then use various kinds of math to find patterns and regularities in the way that all those messages make meaning, use signs, alter significance, and so forth.  (The difference between a statistical semiotician and a regular semiotician is roughly the difference between an epidemologist or social psychologist and a doctor or counselor; there are also FrancoGerman types who call themselves semiologists, who are more like Freudian shrinkoanalysts or Tarot card readers, who helped to make sure semiotic studies would be isolated within the academy, irrelevant to life as lived, and unknown to the lay public except for occasional jokes, and I fart in their general direction).
So to sum up the angle from which I am coming at this problem: I have seen immense heaps of writing by writers at the beginnings of their careers as writers, and I have spent much of my working life staring into vast incoherent swarms of signs and learning to see the patterns in them.
Based on all that, here's how I read the text that is so far the only direct evidence most of us have about "Scott Thomas":
The text has the following characteristics –
1) Writing focused on a parade of cruelty and suffering.
2)   A rigorously flat affect that refuses any sort of emotional engagement – stone-faced reportage of the sort that bad thrillers and suspense movies have taught us to associate with the mental process of sociopaths.
3) Enormous sensitivity to physical detail; a great concern with writing down what things look and sound like, to some extent the things that are apt to upset some readers' stomachs, but also in general.  (As an agency reader I have seen writing of this kind in which literally more than 500 words are expended on describing drinking coffee).
4) Physical detail is mildly slanted toward the refined senses (sight and sound) rather than the vulgar senses (smell, taste, touch, and kinesthesia); the refined-sense details tend to be more specific, and the vulgar-sense details tend to be alluded to more than specifically named.  (I think this is caused by a lack of actual experience; in actual experience the vulgar senses are the strong ones, but in library research the refined senses are the ones easier to paraphrase to avoid being caught in plagiarism).
5) Disinterest and senselessness with regard to any emotional connection between people.
6) Lack of signs indicating what the intended point of any anecdote or individual story may be ("effacement of the author.")
7) Heavy use of brief, choppy, transition-less SVOs (subject-verb-object, the most basic kind of English declarative sentences), without much variation either for rhythm or for nuance, as in bad Hemingway parody or Raymond Carver or Chuck Palahniuk's fiction when either of them is badly off his game.
8) Raymond Chandler-style macabre wisecracks as the crescendo of a run of physical detail.
9) A peculiar cop-out in reported encounters with people who might be offended by the viewpoint character: the viewpoint character (who is of course the reported version of "Scott Thomas," as reported by "Scott Thomas," who reports himself to be the same soldier) is only rarely confronted with any reaction to his callousness.  In the type of writing I am talking about here, mostly other characters in the narrative are struck dumb by the narrator's callousness and stare off into space.  Occasionally (not in Thomas's text, except for the burn-victim woman) they may show small signs of emotional distress.  The narrator thus gets a free pass on sociopathic behavior, and the narrative proceeds without empathy and hence with only the viewpoint character feeling psychologically credible.  The narrator is always left with what is called, by semioticians, the "presence of an absence" in his reported feelings – after the victim or witnesses are out of the field of view there is an absolute emotional stillness in which a cold chuckle or an ostentatious yawn is implied but unstated.
I see manuscripts with all nine of these symptoms – you might think of it as one syndrome with nine common symptoms – about a half dozen times per year, generally from agents rather than as offers to book-doctor them since the creators usually have no money and the books have only limited commercial potential.  And they all come from pretty much the same sort of person:
He (it is always a he) is an MFA candidate or recent graduate at one of the big-name creative writing programs in the USA, sometimes in poetry, usually in fiction, and increasingly in "creative non-fiction" (the litsy byline that "feature writing" took on when it moved uptown, became significant, and stopped having lunch with its old buds at the newspapers).  Usually he is in his mid-twenties and is probably among the bright stars in the tiny constellation (and complicated pecking order) that MFA programs create.  His particular niche in that social ecology will be the Big Talent With Big Balls, a role that requires some claim to a "dangerous" or "edgy" past, meaning some connection to interpersonal violence and to having seen some gruesome sights.  (Being recently back from combat duty in Iraq, particularly if the young man is a reservist who will be going back for another hitch there, would certainly fit the bill nicely – at various times I have known such characters to claim to be motorcycle gang members, to have smuggled cocaine into the US in small boats, and to have competed as Ultimate Fighting professionals).
He will have a fetish for macho props and activities like guns and motorcycles or hunting and motor racing.  Generally he'll have a drinking problem, or at least give a very good exhibionistic performance of having a drinking problem.  (One teacher once said to me, "Some of these guys seem to think that if they can't write like F. Scott Fitzgerald, at least they can drink like him.")  They swagger through their programs in a haze of raw manliness, sometimes hang around for a year or two afterward in the same town, and then vanish into the "I could've been a great writer" pose somewhere.
I can't say that all of them are fakes and pretenders in their macho credentials; I haven't met all of them and I don't want to.  I can say that every single time I have been in a position to find out, the "used to be a cop," "I was a Green Beret," "I was a roof man for the Cleveland Fire Department," etc. etc. etc. has turned out to be a fake.  Not that there are not guys with adventurous and romantic backgrounds around writing programs or in professional writing – I've known, among others, highly talented writers who were one-time paramedics, professional boxers, police, private eyes, back-country prospectors, and so forth.  
But none of those guys wrote like "Scott Thomas". (For that matter they don't write much like each other, either).

I find Barnes’s analysis convincing, his introduction to semiotic analysis compelling, and his writing very entertaining. He may well have his target spot on, and I think he’ll be proven right.

I wonder what my writing would reveal in semiotic analysis. As readers here know, I am a 1SG who went on a dozen convoys (not many, none resulting in IED or other combat), experienced the rather mundane random mortar or rocket on the FOB (only two incidents caused injuries in 10 months), and otherwise served in a distinctly non-combat role. Given my leadership position, concern for OPSEC, and desire to contribute something authentic, I stuck to profiles of the men and women around me (non-combat).

I can see the temptation to gain audience or capture attention. I've seen it in some of the MILBLOGS, and over the least couple of years had my doubts about a couple.

In the same way that a young ideologue like Foer can blind himself to possible fakes, I think many in the MILBLOG or military communities overlook potential warning signs when military writers support the consensus view (pro-victory, pro-US, pro-military). We often fall for what we want to believe, don't we?

That said, most of the MILBLOGGERS write for ourselves, to capture our experiences, and maybe in a small way help write the first draft of whatever history will survive the politics. And phony creative writing pieces that slander the military in this particular way -- Vietnam era stereotypes -- are particularly offensive.

Since the story against the stories broke, many MILBLOGGERS have criticized TNR for running the clearly unsubstantiated stories from Thomas, as well as a related anti-war hit piece authored by The Nation.

I can’t dismiss the anti-war voices in The Nation piece, but I can quickly surmise that many of the soldiers interviewed are anti-war careerists, who have attached themselves to groups like Code Pink or Iraqi Veterans Against the War (IVAW). I can also state with absolute conviction that among those who make the most damning assertions about US military conduct have no first hand basis for their assertions.

Sergeant Geoffrey Millard is one such soldier who makes claims beyond his experience in The Nation piece. Millard was assigned to the Rear Operations Center (ROC), 42^nd Infantry Division at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Speicher in Tikrit. I also served with the 42^nd, I am familiar with the ROC at Speicher, and know two officers who served in the ROC during the same period as Millard, one of whom I would say I have a casual acquaintance (and great respect). I served as his First Sergeant for a brief period when he was the HHC Commander.

After redeployment, I had a chance to get reacquainted with spent some time explaining to me what his section did, how they interacted with the Division HQ and the other 42^nd ID Commands. Among other duties, the ROC tracked the convoys that exited and/or entered the FOB. Their mission included the tracking of IEDs and VBIEDs in the Area of Operations, supervising the proper submission and quality control of convoy paperwork – there’s always paperwork for everything -- and keeping command and staff informed of recent trends, updated threat assessments, and so forth. SGT Millard served as a staff NCO in an administrative section in the rear – what combat soldiers would correctly (if harshly) ridicule as a “Fobbit.” (I was a Fobbit too, though I complete about a dozen convoys off the FOB.)

In The Nation piece, Millard even reinforces the obvious distance from which he offers criticism of our military, as the “clicker” for a Command Powerpoint presentation on an unfortunate checkpoint shooting of a family. His beef in that instance? That a Colonel, briefing staff officers and commanders at what sounds to be like a weekly Commander’s brief, made the comment that “If these fucking hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.”

If that passes for scandal to anti-war types, we’ve come quite a ways from My Li.

Based on what I know of the 42^nd in Tikrit and our Command structure, the Colonel Millard uses as example for US military callousness is likely a Brigade Commander, most probably from Artillery or one of the Infantry Brigades. These were some no sh**, can the nicety type commanders. But discipline is discipline, they knew the public relations and “hearts and minds” importance of their missions, and took extraordinary effort to prevent the kinds of unfortunately incident briefed in Millard’s powerpoint slides. The fact itself that they briefed the incident in detail speaks volumes about how important the command viewed these setbacks, as setbacks, to be avoided however possible.

What Millard didn’t add to this little anecdote was what happened next, based on this incident and others like it in theater: revised Rules of Engagement, follow-up training and briefings by Commanders and NCOs, and changes in procedures for Convoy drivers, truck commanders (TCs), and gunners. I know, because our guys bitched like hell every time some incident or another caused yet another command directive: Wave them off (or for a while, throw small stones at windshields), point the barrel of the M2 at them, and lastly, fire a warning shot on the pavement in front of the vehicle.

Sometimes that meant the round glanced back into the engine block, disabling the vehicle entirely – not good, now you have a broken down vehicle in your way – or even into the vehicle and causing injuries to driver or passengers.

Iraqi drivers obey a coda of traffic laws known only unto themselves, if at all, in peacetime. Adding the stresses and threats of insurgents, VBIEDS, US and Coalition Military, Iraqi Army, and Iraqi Police into the mix, they only get worse. So yes, for local commanders, if the locals would exercise a little more care and prudence, Commanders at all levels wouldn’t have any such incidents for which soldier correction would be required.

Just as at our FOB (Danger) down the road about 20 kilometers, FOB Speicher received its share of mortar and rocket attacks, the overwhelming majority of which were completely ineffective without causing any injuries. Yet SGT Millard, endearing himself to his anti-war audiences, makes it out like some Vietnam redux, only worse, with “pops of machine gun fire and the bangs of mortar rounds exploding all hours of the day and night.”

Our FOB was tiny in comparison to the square mileage of Speicher, so the net effect of any rounds impacting this great big patch of desert with great amounts of open space had to be even less intimidating.

Look, we had soldiers who were spooked by what little we experienced at Danger. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting poor Millard can’t be suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) -- if not from close physical contact with Cindy Sheehan, then from whatever he witnessed at Speicher (or was told about, or heard about in FOB gossip). But I would bet a month’s wages that, pressed top back up his claims, Millard like most of the other voices The Nation selected, they “heard about this kind of sh** from lots of guys.” (Especially after making themselves celebrities in the anti-war industry.)

No doubt, there are many stories my colleague (the officer, not Millard) can share about what he saw in the ROC, about the difficulties he had in getting command to recognize IED trends and initiate effective interdiction, or about the infractions and violations of regulation or policies that are a part of every military throughout history. But in no way would he tolerate, nor would he be silent about, the kinds of abuses exaggerated in the Nation report.

The Nation can at least be credited with quoting actual military Veterans sharing their honest assessments of the war, albeit with a Nation-generated 9 to 1 anti-war weighting in viewpoints. TNR appears to have swallowed some rather outlandish tales full gulp, without so much as putting their Scott Thomas war stories in front of credible military experts for a sniff or two.

Also commenting:

Mackubin Thomas Owens at NRO:

In Iraq, we have seen evidence of the press’s predisposition to believe the worst about American soldiers in its coverage of Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, and most recently Hadithah. It is now on display, not only in the TNR story, but also in “The Other War: Iraq Veterans Bear Witness“ in the July 30th issue of The Nation, which bills the Iraq war as “a dark and even depraved enterprise.” The article is based on interviews with some 50 Iraq war veterans and purportedly describes “disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq.” According to the piece, the war has “led many troops to declare an open war on all Iraqis.”
I have news for the editors of The Nation: War, especially the sort of war we are waging in Iraq — a war in which a man or boy who waves at American troops during the day may plant an IED at night — can desensitize even the most decent individual. History proves that in the absence of leadership and enforced rules of engagement, war can lead one to the depths of moral depravity. But no military in history has attempted to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage to the extent that the U.S. military has. The Nation lays civilian casualties in Iraq at the feet of the US military. But this is nonsense. The very fact that Sunni sheiks in al Anbar province and elsewhere are turning against al Qaeda indicates that they know who kills indiscriminately, even if The Nation doesn’t.

John Podhoretz at The Corner:

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that if what's in there is in any way true, TNR would know it by now. Or maybe TNR is just too busy getting the New York Times to change its copy around multiple times on the question of the epistemological certainty of Editor Franklin Foer's knowledge of whether Scott Thomas is actually a soldier.

Laughing Wolf at Blackfive:

Given the stonewalling and such going on with TNR (and supporters), I am not ready to call check fire on this one. Frankly, I think we need to arclight TNR and Scott Thomas.

Dean Barnett at Townhall:

I’M NOT SAYING THAT SOMEONE who has only written for a living can’t produce important and brilliant work. But a professional writer who thinks he knows everything? That’s as useless a creature that has ever wandered the earth.

There are reasons that guys like Andy Ferguson and Malcolm Gladwell are writers that other writers look up to. Ferguson and Gladwell learn about their subjects inside and out. They look at things critically and skeptically. Each one of their projects looks like they’ve jammed 10 pounds of reporting into a 5 pound bag. They don’t go into a project assuming they know everything there is to know, and that their job is to merely “explicate” the obvious to the less mentally acute.

On the other hand, you have guys like Franklin Foer. To take one example of his ignorance, Foer clearly doesn’t understand military terminology or military equipment. There’s no great sin in that. Since I’ve been writing, I’ve learned obvious things like the words “former” and “Marine” should never be juxtaposed. Why, just in the past week, I’ve learned the difference between a Dining Facility (DFAC) and a “Chow hall.”

Foer’s problem is, since he thinks he knows everything, his job is merely to “explicate ideas” to less knowledgeable and insightful people. If he admitted to himself that he doesn’t know jack about military matters, he would have run Scott Thomas’ pieces by someone who did.

Alas, that brings us back to where we started. The reason Foer suspended the skeptical nature he probably deploys when reading a Defense Department press release is that the collected works of Scott Thomas did a wonderful job of “explicating ideas” that Franklin Foer found hospitable. Whether said explication was accurate or trustworthy were clearly matters beneath Franklin Foer’s pay grade.

Links via Memeorandum and Instapundit.