The UCP is Dead - Long Live the UCP!

How bad was the UCP?  Despite knowing it was crap. the Army spent $5 billion to replace the old BDU, and is now spending billions more to roll out Multi-cam to replace it.

Less than a decade after the so-called Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP, was introduced the Army is back to the drawing board, set to announce a new camouflage pattern and standard uniform to be worn by the more than million members of the active duty and reserve forces.

Evidence of the UCPs inadequacy as a combat uniform is easy to find—just look at pictures of soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan, they’re not wearing the UCP, which was deemed unsuitable for operations there, but a different uniform known as the MultiCam. In 2009, Congress responded to soldiers’ “concerns about the current combat uniform which they indicated provides ineffective camouflage given the environment in Afghanistan,” by passing a bill in the appropriations act requiring that the DOD “take immediate action to provide combat uniforms to personnel deployed to Afghanistan with a camouflage pattern that is suited to the environment of Afghanistan.” The result was the MultiCam. But that uniform, while it is currently worn in Afghanistan, was not a replacement but an interim substitution for the UCP, which is still the Army’s official uniform and the one worn by all soldiers not overseas.

Only 5 years after it was introduced the UCP’s failures had already become glaring enough to compel congressional intervention but despite the moratorium on its use in Afghanistan, it will have taken another 5 years for the Army to field its replacement.

Eventually, after mounting criticism and reports of the uniforms problems, the Army started looking for something better. This time, instead of hoping for a universal, one-size-fits-all design, an Army source who wished to remain unnamed explained that the Army solicited designs from companies for patterns with three variations, one for the desert, another for woodlands and jungles and a third, traditional semi-wooded pattern similar to the one currently used by soldiers in Afghanistan. After several rounds of testing, four patterns with three variations for each, from companies in New York, Virginia and Alaska were submitted to the Army to choose a winner.

Critics say this has been a huge waste of money.

But hey, it was great in one particular urban setting

By: Brant

A Clear Mis-allocation of Available Resources?

Hmmmm... a Gulf II war story from over on CSW

I had my own run-in with the "keep it under the table" forces of darkness... I was assigned as liaison for the amphibious forces at 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain in the lead-up to the invasion. About a week before the attack there was a huge kerflufle about wanting to get humanitarian relief supplies into southern Iraq as soon as possible after the border was crossed, but in such a way that the MSRs going north out of Kuwait wouldn't be impacted. The obvious solution was to bring them in by sea, but there was concern about the Shatt-al-Arab being mined and the facilities at the port of Basra being damaged (both by Iraqi sabotage and Coalition bombing). A rushed scheme to clear the water way was concocted, but Brown&Root were adamant that it would take them a minimum of four months to restore the port to operational condition. At this point, after consulting with the various commands I was representing, I proposed that we send a large SeaBee detachment from Kuwait (where their mission to offload the USMC pre-positioning ships and construct an elevated causeway to facilitate resupply cargo discharge was complete, so they were basically sitting idle) up to Basra to repair the port. The SeaBees had the expertise, the necessary construction gear and materials, had vehicles to transport themselves to the site, and had the weapons and training to provide their own security -- more importantly, the 0-6 in charge of the battalion was absolutely confident he could have the port open for business within two weeks and fully functional within a month. It sounded like a real win/win scenario to us. But after I floated the idea up the chain, and 5th Fleet gave a provisional green light to the plan, word came back from SecDef (not CENTCOM, not JCS -- SecDef) that the proposal was rejected and we were not to bring it up again. At my Admiral's request I sent an e-mail to the contact back at the five-sided-funny-farm asking what part of our concept they had issue with so we could submit a revised plan. That evening I took a secure phone call from some O-6 staffer with the SecDef's office telling me very coldly and clearly that I was to NEVER bring up the topic again and that if I did I'd be relieved and sent home (with the veiled implication that disiplinary action wouldn't be out of the question). We dutifully dropped the subject.

There's no independent verification of this, so take it for what it's worth, but it's an interesting indictment of how the occupation was run. By: Brant

Petraeus, Allen, and the Rest

We've been resisting saying much of anything about the Petraeus scandal, as it's moving faster than we can really keep up with. But CNN has described it as a "dizzying saga", and that's about accurate.

The complicated web entangling an ex-CIA director, his mistress, a top military leader and a woman he allegedly flirted with got no less confusing Wednesday, though the U.S. defense secretary insisted facts will emerge.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta defended his request to withhold Marine Gen. John Allen's nomination to become NATO's supreme allied commander, pending an investigation into Allen's communications with a Florida woman.

The move was "a prudent measure until we can determine what the facts are, and we will," Panetta told reporters Wednesday. "No one should leap to any conclusions."

He added that the general "certainly has my continued confidence to lead our forces."

According to the Defense Department, Allen is under investigation for what one defense official referred to as "flirtatious" e-mail messages with Jill Kelley -- the woman whose complaints about anonymous, harassing e-mails led to the discovery of CIA Director David Petraeus' affair with a woman later identified as his biographer. Petraeus resigned Friday after acknowledging the affair.

Allen will retain his post as the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, pending Senate confirmation of a successor, according to the Defense Department. That vote is due Thursday, Senate officials said.

Allen has denied wrongdoing, a senior defense official said.

There's a whoooooole lot more at the link.

By: Brant

Anti-Bush Hyperbole Just Won't Subside

Now Bishop Tutu is piling on, calling for Bush & Blair to be tried at The Hague.

Tutu, the retired Anglican Church's archbishop of South Africa, wrote in an op-ed piece for The Observer newspaper that the ex-leaders of Britain and the United States should be made to "answer for their actions."
The Iraq war "has destabilized and polarized the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history," wrote Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984.

Hmmmm... somehow I suspect WWII destabilized and polarized the world to a slightly greater extent than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Probably followed closely by WWI, the Seven Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, and the 1948 Israeli War of Independence (which *still* has the world polarized).
Hyperbole in the pursuit of personal grudges is pretty silly.

By: Brant

Every Service Has At Least One Bat-Shit Crazy Senior Officer

And apparently the Navy's guy wanted to pick a fight with Iran.

According to Todd and another witness, Cosgriff’s idea, presented in a series of staff meetings, was to sail three “big decks,” as aircraft carriers are known, through the Strait of Hormuz — to put a virtual armada, unannounced, on Iran’s doorstep. No advance notice, even to Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies. Not only that, they said, Cosgriff ordered his staff to keep the State Department in the dark, too.

To Todd, it was like something straight out of “Seven Days in May,” the 1964 political thriller about a right-wing U.S. military coup. A retired senior naval officer familiar with Cosgriff’s thinking said the deployment plan was not intended to be provocative.

But Todd, in an account backed by another Navy official, said the admiral “was very, very clear that we were to tell him if there was any sign that Washington was aware of it and asking questions.”

For the past year, the air had been electric with reports of impending U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran. If this maneuver were carried out, Todd and others feared, the Iranians would freak out. At the least, they’d cancel a critical diplomatic meeting coming up with U.S. officials. Todd suspected that was Cosgriff’s aim. She and others also speculated that Cosgriff wouldn’t propose such a brazen plan without Fallon’s support.

Retired Adm. David C. Nichols, deputy Centcom commander in 2007, recalled in an interview last year that Fallon “wanted to do a freedom-of-navigation exercise in what Iran calls its territorial waters that we hadn’t done in a long time.” Nothing wrong with that, per se, but the problem was that “we don’t understand Iran’s perception of what we’re doing, and we haven’t understood what they’re doing and why,” Nichols said. “It makes miscalculations possible.”

By: Brant

US Loading Up For Pre-Emptive Attack on Norks?

No, it's not The Onion or The Daily Show. This is from KCNA, the official propaganda "news" agency of Naughty North Korea.

US Hit for Attempting Preemptive Attack on DPRK
Pyongyang, August 7 (KCNA) -- Some days ago, the U.S. opened to the public its deployment of Bunker-buster targeting the DPRK and Iran. It let the secretary of the Air Force make a spate of balderdash about the blowing power of the new bomb and the maximum distance which it can penetrate to destroy underground nuclear facilities.
Minju Joson Tuesday says in a bylined commentary in this regard:
This is another grave military provocation against the DPRK and an undisguised declaration of confrontation with it.
The U.S. developed and deployed this bomb with an aim to carry out its scenario for mounting a preemptive attack on the DPRK.
It is seeking to mount a preemptive strike at major military objects of the DPRK which are of strategic significance and thus neutralize the DPRK's military muscle for self-defence and realize its strategy for stifling the DPRK by force of arms. This proves that the strategy for world hegemony by force of arms still remains a major mode of the U.S. for realizing its foreign policy and it is its persistent intention to apply this to the Korean Peninsula.
Now that the dignity and security of the DPRK have been seriously threatened by the U.S. evermore intensified hostile policy toward it, there is no other choice but to bolster up its military muscle for self-defence.
The military and technological advantages are not a monopoly of the U.S. and will not work on the DPRK today.
The further the U.S. steps up pressure on the DPRK by force of arms, the further the DPRK will strengthen countermeasures.
The U.S. should stop at once the anachronistic military rackets, pondering over the consequences to be entailed by its moves for confrontation with the DPRK.

By: Brant

Another Facepalm-in-Hindsight from 5/2 SBCT

We've chronicled the insanity coming out of 5/2 SBCT several times before.

Now there's a book coming out, and Slate's got some excerpts. This particular anecdote makes your blood boil, if you know anything about COIN ops.

On the second week of the operation, I met with Lt. Col. Patrick Gaydon, an artillery officer who had been put in charge of the Stryker brigade’s special troops battalion, which was responsible for governance, reconstruction, and development. After he spent an hour telling me about the universities at which his fellow officers had taken classes before deploying and the sophisticated computer network that allowed soldiers to send and receive vast quantities of data while in the field, I mentioned that I would be heading to Arghandab in two days to attend a shura, a meeting of local elders. Gaydon asked how I was getting there. I told him the general who was Tunnell’s boss had arranged a flight. Gaydon was delighted; it meant he’d have a chance to get there as well. Gaydon’s unit had been in Afghanistan for a month, but it had not yet received any vehicles suitable for travel beyond the Kandahar Airfield. Because his team’s mission was not to kill bad guys, it was at the end of the list for supplies.

I was astounded. Given his focus on government and reconstruction, Gaydon seemed like the officer who really needed to attend the shura. Over in the Marine areas, then-Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson had insisted that his battalion commanders hold districtwide shuras within 48 hours of their arrival in Nawa and other parts of the central Helmand River Valley. But Tunnell did not regard community meetings as a priority for his operation. The brigade’s State Department political adviser, Todd Greentree, had to meet with Tunnell three times to persuade him to authorize the shura. His ability to flout COIN, despite McChrystal’s unambiguous embrace of it, revealed the lack of control the supposedly disciplined U.S. military had over officers who were spread across a vast country and sometimes reported to non-American generals. Tunnell was fighting the war he wanted to fight, and nobody stood in his way.

Gaydon spent the day after our meeting drafting a speech he would deliver to the crowd of turbaned elders. “I want you to know that we are undertaking this military operation so that we can create an environment where we can work shoulder-to-shoulder with district leaders, elders, and the people of Arghandab over the long term,” he wrote. But the morning we were supposed to leave, we learned our flight had been canceled. A delegation of visiting members of Congress wanted to fly around the south, and our helicopter had been reassigned as an airborne tour bus. We settled for an early breakfast in the chow hall with Greentree, who fumed over an omelet and hash browns that the brigade was missing an opportunity to win over residents and steel them against Taliban intimidation. “This is really, really bad,” he said.

He couldn’t understand why a few vehicles could not have been diverted to transport them to the meeting. “Is this the most important thing we could have done in the operation today? Absolutely.”

Gaydon tried to put the best spin on it. The shura would go on, he said. He planned to have an officer in Arghandab read the speech he had written. At least Tunnell will be there, I said consolingly. He’s the one who matters. The Afghans always want to talk to the man in charge.
“Tunnell won’t be attending,” Greentree said. “He said he’ll be too busy directing the combat operations.”

The next day, I asked Greentree how it had gone. Fine, he said, for the first 30 minutes. Then two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters strafed a nearby building, and the attendees fled.

So there's been a recent intense discussion over on the MilGames mailing list for wargaming professionals about exactly these sorts of issues with subordinates. Basically - how do you accurately model subordinate behaviors. Not modeling what we all say our unit should do - because, I mean, really, how could my unit ever behave in such a fashion after the perfect training and mentorship I've given them. The thing is that these things do happen, and the fact that they can happen at the O-6 level tells you that there's absolutely the possibility / likelihood / certainty (take your pick) that they're happening at the O-3 level or the E-6 level, or any other level of command.

So how do you wargame this?

By: Brant

A "Reward" For Turning In President Obama?

Boy, you know Stewart & Colbert are going to have a field day with this one... the twits in Somalia have offered "rewards" for knocking off President Obama and Secretary Clinton.

The al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has mocked the new $33 million bounty on its top leaders heads by offering its own bounty for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – 10 camels for Obama and 20 chickens for Clinton.
"Anyone who helps the Mujahideen find the whereabouts of Obama and Hillary Clinton will be rewarded with 10 Camels to the information leading to Obama and 10 hens and 10 cocks for Hillary," said senior Shabaab commander Fuad Mohamed Khalaf in a statement reported on numerous websites.
Earlier this week, the U.S. offered a total of $33 million through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the capture of seven different Shabaab leaders, including Khalaf.
The U.S. offered $7 million for founder and commander Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, AKA Godane or Mukhtar Abu Zubeir, five million for Khalaf and three other men, and $3 million apiece for two other leaders.
The announcement of the U.S. bounties came as Somali and other African military forces have begun to squeeze Shabaab into a smaller and smaller section of Somalia. In a statement, the Somali government said the rewards would help crush the al Qaeda affiliate.

By: Brant

Shhhhh... Saudi Arabia "bans" English language

So someone tell me - if the Saudis really did ban the English language, how are they supposed to use the -10s and -20s for the M1 tanks and F15 / F16 aircraft we sold them?

The government in Saudi Arabia has decreed that the English language is to be banned by all government and private agencies. They must now use only Arabic, the language of the Quran.
The Gulf News reported that the use of the English language, widely used in business, has been banned, as has the use of the Gregorian calendar. The Islamic Hijri calendar will replace all use of Gregorian dates which are being used unnecessarily, according to a statement issued by a Saudi Ministry.

How do you break down the quarterly services schedule into the Hijri calendar, anyway?

By: Brant

HRW Calling for Investigation of NATO; Call for Libya Coming? You Know Better

Look HRW, if you want to grab headlines, fine, keep calling for NATO to investigate civilian deaths in Libya. But if you want to be a truly effective and neutral broker of rights investigations, you better damn well call for an investigation of the civilian deaths caused by the now-deposed Libyan gov't, too.

A leading human rights organisation has urged Nato to investigate fully the deaths of civilians in air strikes in Libya last year.

Human Rights Watch believes Nato air strikes killed at least 72 civilians and says the organisation needs to bear responsibility where appropriate.

"We're calling for prompt, credible and thorough investigations," HRW's Fred Abrahams told BBC News.

Nato insists it took unprecedented care to minimise civilian casualties.

It argues that it cannot take responsibility because it has had no presence on the ground to confirm the deaths.

Aircraft from the US, the UK and France conducted most of the 9,658 strike sorties last year, targeting forces loyal to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

By: Brant

Nork Missiles Just Fakes?

Apparently suffering from missile envy, the Norks are parading around the military equivalent of stuffing a sock in your spandex.

the weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same make. They don't even fit the launchers they were carried on.
"There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups," Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany's Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies. "It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work."
The missiles, called KN-08s, were loaded onto the largest mobile launch vehicles North Korea has ever unveiled. Pyongyang gave them special prominence by presenting them at the end of the parade, which capped weeks of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the country's founding father, Kim Il Sung.

Ah yes, but it's not just the missiles. Check out the trucks...

Much attention, meanwhile, has been given to the 16-wheel mobile launchers that carried the missiles during the parade, which experts believe may have included a chassis built in China. That raises questions of whether China has violated U.N. sanctions against selling missile-related technology to Pyongyang.
Some missile experts say the launchers were designed to carry a larger missile than the 18-meter-long KN-08, and argue that North Korea would not have spent millions of dollars on them unless it has, or intends to have, a big missile to put on them.
But Wright said the launchers, like the missiles they carried, could also have been more for show than anything else.
"Given the international attention it has gotten from parading these missiles you could argue that the cost of buying the large trucks — which add a lot of credibility to the images of the missiles — was money well spent in terms of projecting an image of power," he said.

By: Brant

Norks Claim Capability to Strike US

They can't get a rocket over the beach, but they have 'mobile weapons' capable of striking the US

A senior North Korean army official says his country is armed with "powerful mobile weapons" capable of striking America.
Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho emphasized the importance of defending the North against the U.S. and South Korea as Pyongyang marked the 80th anniversary of the nation's army Wednesday.
He told officials at the April 25 House of Culture that the weapons could defeat the U.S. "at a single blow."
North Korea made another unusual claim Monday, promising "special actions" that would reduce Seoul's government to ashes.

By: Brant

Aborted Coup? Or Lost in the Fog?

It appears some India army units got lost in the fog and scared the crap out of the government, even if there were official denials.

Two Indian army units that moved towards New Delhi on a January night without notifying the government raised alarm in the capital, the Indian Express newspaper reported on Wednesday, but the Defense Ministry and army quickly denied the report.
The infantry unit of the 33rd Armored Division based 150 km (90 miles) from Delhi and a unit of the airborne 50 Para brigade based in Agra to the south reached the outskirts of Delhi before being ordered back, the newspaper said.
The army and Defense Ministry said the units were engaged in routine exercises to test mobility in fog and did not need to warn the government in advance. Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar told Reuters it was not true the maneuvers had caused alarm.

By: Brant

Syrian TV Says Soccer Team is Acting Out Smuggling Routes to Inform Rebels

And not just any soccer team, but Barcelona, one of the best teams on the planet.

Syria’s state-run television channel has made the astonishing claim that the Barcelona soccer team is assisting a group of rebel fighters by delivering coded messages via its tactical formations.

The Middle Eastern country continues to be stricken with internal strife, as forces backing President Bashar al-Assad combat several rebel groups hoping to overthrow the government. Yet the long struggle seems to have caused widespread paranoia, even on the officially sanctioned news networks.

Al-Dunya TV aired a bizarre feature Sunday outlining how Barcelona transmitted details of effective smuggling routes that could be used to distribute arms to dissident fighters. The program repeated charges originally made in December. According to the TV reporter, the Barca side’s positioning on the field allegedly was deliberately set up to recreate a giant map, with players representing smugglers and the ball depicting a cache of arms.

A run from Andres Iniesta is said to portray the first part of the route, while the end of the move, where superstar World Footballer of the Year Lionel Messi passes the ball, indicates the successful handover of the shipment, according to Al-Dunya.

The station used a segment on its nightly news bulletin to launch into a detailed description of how Barca had decided to add covert operations and international espionage to its dazzling array of talents.

Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Sergio Busquets are supposedly all in on the plot, which would surely have needed the approval – if not the masterminding genius – of coach Pep Guardiola.

It is estimated that more than 9,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of an uprising against President al-Assad last year, as part of the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East.

Even in the unthinkable eventuality that it was receiving assistance from the reigning European club champion, Syria’s biggest rebel group – the Free Syrian Army – is still hopelessly outgunned by the government forces.

The European Union imposed an arms embargo on Syria last year, but the widely acclaimed Stockholm International Peace Research Institute revealed foreign arms supplies to the country had increased fivefold in the past five years, with the majority of them provided by Russia.

By: Brant

There's Soooo Much Wrong Here

Really... You're going to try to prop up a government and a people who run dogfighting rings, call the losers "Americans", and want to kill the people trying to drag you into the 19th century?

Protests over the burning of Korans at a NATO base may have faded but some Afghans are still venting their rage over the incident -- at a bloody Kabul dogfighting ring.
If emotions here are any indication, desecration of copies of the Muslim holy book did lasting damage to the image of the United States, which is struggling to pacify the country before NATO combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
"We call the dogs who lose Americans. We are furious about the Korans," said Mirwais Haji, 28, as a defeated canine limped off the snow-covered dirt ring on the edge of the capital.
"We want the Afghan government to bring the people who did this to us. We will kill them ourselves."

By: Brant

Sigh... Some People

Apparently there's a Fox News pundit who thinks that sexual assault in the military is pre-ordained and that Congress is making the problem worse.

Trotta was reacting to news that the military will allow women to work closer to the front lines. Speaking to Fox News host Eric Shawn, she alleged that feminists wanted "to be warriors and victims at the same time."

She cited a recent Pentagon report that sex crimes committed by army personnel have increased by 64% over the past six years. Then she made a startling statement:

"I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women. And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it's strictly been a question of pressure from the feminists."

Trotta also alleged that "feminists" have demanded too much money to fund programs for sexual abuse victims. "You have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much," she said

By: Brant

10yo Suicide Bombers?

Really, this is what the Taliban have stooped to? And how bad must the Afghan government be if there are still people willing to support the Taliban even with this record?

Two children have been rearrested in southern Afghanistan for being prospective suicide bombers, the International Security Assistance Force said.

Note: rearrested

The two "young male" would-be bombers were detained in the past week, the ISAF said in a written statement.

The two kids, both ten years old, were arrested along with three adults, according to the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security (NDS).

Last summer, Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned a group of would-be child suicide attackers ranging in age from 8 to 17. Some of the 20 youngsters told Karzai they had been recruited by the Taliban, strapped with vests and ordered to detonate them near foreigners, the president's office said in a statement last August. Militants told the youngsters that the blasts would spare them but kill the foreigners, it said.

The two arrested in Kandahar recently were from that group of pardoned children, according to the NDS statement, and had gone to Quetta, Pakistan to get more training before being sent back to Afghanistan for suicide attacks.

One of the children, from southeastern Afghanistan, said he was told by Mullahs at a madrasa in Pakistan that he would survice the suicide attack and it would not harm him, the NDS statement said. The other child, originally from Pakistan, said he was cheated by armed men and he asked to be pardoned again.

By: Brant

Saudi Journalist About to Get a Headectomy

You know what's most disturbing about the news coverage of Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari's deportation back to Saudi Arabia for "blasphemous" tweets? No news organization will republish them. If someone is being deported to a country that's most like going to kill him for what he said - not did, but said - then shouldn't we know the text of what he said so we can judge for ourselves?

Malaysian authorities have deported a Saudi journalist accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a tweet.

Police confirmed to the BBC that Hamza Kashgari was sent back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday despite protests from human rights groups.

Mr Kashgari's controversial tweet last week sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats.

Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Kashgari, 23, fled Saudi Arabia last week and was detained upon his arrival in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

He had tweeted his doubts about Muhammad on the prophet's birthday last week. Saudi clerics condemned his remarks as blasphemous.

You know where to find the text of the tweets? Wikipedia. The news won't tell you. Wikipedia will.

On the occasion of Mawlid on February 4, 2012, Kashgari published three tweets about an imagined meeting with Muhammad:
On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

By: Brant

Pakistan Undercutting Themselves on OBL

The BBC has an interesting report on a Pakistani doctor who provided intel in the OBL raid.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is "very concerned" about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year.

Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed. A Pakistan panel says he should be tried for treason.

Mr Panetta told the CBS TV network the arrest had been "a real mistake".

Dr Afridi provided "very helpful" information for the raid, he added.

He was arrested shortly after the operation, carried out by US special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on 2 May last year.

Pakistan was deeply embarrassed by the raid, and condemned it as a violation of sovereignty.

Tried for treason, eh? "Treason" is usually reserved for those who take up arms against the state, or are directly involved in actively damaging the state. If Pakistan is saying that giving up info in OBL is treason, then are they saying he was somehow a representative of the state of Pakistan? And if that's their argument, why aren't we bombing the shit out of them?

By: Brant

Mission Accomplished! Oh, wait...

Apparently, the Taliban has declared victory.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed leader, seems to have taken a page from George W. Bush’s playbook.

Just as the former president declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq years before the war there ended, the Taliban made their own victory declaration this weekend, even though roughly 130,000 coalition troops were still fighting in Afghanistan — and keeping the Afghan government firmly in power.

No matter, suggested the Taliban, which calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, in a statement bluntly titled: “Formal Proclamation of Islamic Emirate’s Victory.” The American push to open talks is proof that the insurgents are winning, the Taliban reasoned.

“It is but sheer determination, religious and ideological adherence and unequalled sacrifices displayed by true Afghan Mujahid nation for the last decade that today regional and world powers are after to reach mutual understanding about the country,” the statement said in the Taliban’s typically fractured English.

Maybe we should start shooting more of them to test their "sheer determination", eh?

By: Brant