Orc Nest Vaporized

On Your Six, America.

Marine Lance Cpl. Shawn Mchilenny cleaning his MK-19 automatic 40mm grenade launcher. Only part of what it takes to keep Alpha One Five ready to rain poison arrows from the sky atop godless orcs. photo by Lance Cpl. Jeremy Harris

New Code of Conduct for the Taliban--Mullah Omar

A new code of conduct has been issued to all fighters of the infidel entitled "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for Mujahideen". Apparently, Mullah Omar mindful of the upcoming Afghanistan elections, wants to make sure rogue Taliban don't create additional problems for his command by inconsiderate suicide bombings or unwarranted executions. Loose cannons can be such a problem for any army and now Mullah Omar wants to rein in those elements who are incapable of teamwork.

Teamwork, as Al Capone will tell you, is everything. Mullah Omar is putting it all in writing, making everything legit, so you too can understand that being part of a team is no longer an option. Like in the old days. Now Mullah Omar is saying in his little pocket book Team work. 'I get no where unless the team wins'. You understand. Nowhere. So before Mullah Omar pulls out his baseball bat and starts whacking some orc heads here are the new rules.

Read them and weep.

No freelancing. This means just because you think you are the new muj Robin Hood with a few merry men don't give you the right to go into business for yourself and start a new battalion. You got to fight for your right to Party. "If unofficial groups or irregular battalions refuse to join the formal structure, they should be disbanded," Mullah Omar says. This type of action is a clear cut call to break out the baseball bats. Ok:

"We have in the past had a lot of different groups in Afghanistan operating under the umbrella of the Taliban," Bays said.

"But it says in these regulations that if you find an irregular battalion that is not obeying orders then what you have to do is find that battalion and then disarm them." Whack heads.

Suicide bombings. No more indiscriminate bombings. From now on, according to the little pocket book, "Suicide attacks should only be used on high and important targets. A brave son of Islam should not be used for lower and useless targets. The utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties."

Civilian population. No messing with the civilians. No bombings. No cutting heads. No shakedowns. From now on the Taliban will appeal to the hearts and minds of the civilian population. Mullah Omar does not want to hear any more BS tactics called: just grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow. OK. No more. Ok. You copy.

These are the new rules:

"The Mujahideen have to behave well and show proper treatment to the nation, in order to bring the hearts of civilian muslims closer to them. The mujahideen must avoid discrimination based on tribal roots, language or their geographic background."

ORCs on motorcycles with AK's

In Helmand Valley Orc Hunting

Lance Cpl. Eric Fisher, with the one five usmc photo by Staff Sgt. William Greeson

From Garrison Bench Warmers: To All Marines and Army: No Cigarettes For You!

Just give me a cigarette, Joe, I already got a Purple Heart


Are you ready for this--to save money--the cost conscious nannies at the Pentagon don't want you to smoke anymore: No cigarettes sales on base. No cigarettes while in uniform.

Thats affirmative Marine and Army combat vets, your formerly nicotine stained hands that defend America from bloodthisty evil orcs will henceforth be forever tobacco free according to Jack Smith, the Grand Poobah for the Pentagon office of clinical and program policy, who wants to tidy up his budget by cutting out cigarettes for military personnel.

"Any tobacco use while in uniform should be prohibited," concludes a study by the Institute of Medicine and Jack Smith concurs: "We'll certainly be taking that recommendation forward."

The study found that tobacco use increased after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started as combat troops worn out by repeated deployments relied on tobacco for stress relief. Tut, tut. Who would have thought! My god, Einstein himself could not have figured this out.

The Pentagon study found that the biggest offenders are Marines and Army soldiers, what a surprise, who have, what a coincidence, killing the lions share of orcs in Iraq and Afghanistan. What could explain this anomaly?

Elementary, my dear Smith, evidently, there is a connection between the high stress of killing orcs, reading them their rights and excessive cigarette smoking! At present, 37% of soldiers smoke while 36% Marines follow suit. Where is the Air Force is this study?

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Cigarette smoking is caused by an over abundance of garrison warriors!

The solution is quite simple, really, simple.

Effective immediately ship all garrison warriors to the front lines relieving the stress on combat troops worn out by repeated deployments. link

Marine orc hunters in the Helmand Valley

Marine Sgt. Ryan Pettit, left and Cpl. Matthew Miller, Two Eight, engage orcs with rifle fire during in the Helmand Valley.

Compare and Contrast Obama vs Reagan Response to Freedom Hating Orcs

On GITMO: POTUS Barack Hussein Obama The II Is All Hat and No Voters

On closing Gitmo, POTUS Barack Hussein Obama The Second, is sucking wind pretty hard as voters unambiguously say " no way ray" with a bitch slap rejection of his plans to close Gitmo down and move the Orcs to Super Max prisons in the U.S.

"By more than 2-1, those surveyed say Guantanamo shouldn't be closed. By more than 3-1, they oppose moving some of the accused terrorists housed there to prisons in their own states."USAToday/Gallup Poll

• By the numbers:65%-keep Gitmo Open
  
• 32 % shut it down
  
• 91% Republicans oppose closing
  
• 68% of independents oppose closing
  
• Democrats: 53 % shut it down - 42 % keep Gitmo open WashEX

This is an astonishing damage report on the good ship Obama and on the same week he sails on his mi culpa trip to the German city of Dresden where he will, doubtless, apologize, for the evils of American Victory, as he did in Strasbourg. oy vey, already.

Orc TTP and Ambush Lessons Learned in Afghanistan

Michael Yon post: the eagle went over the mountain power point on Ambush tactics against U.S.Marines needs to be read and reread and shared with all. This is the fundamentals of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) and it all has to be in muscle memory before you deploy. The Orc does not waste anything. Even the aggressive spirit of the Marine is used as sucker bait to entice your team into a dead end zone where murder awaits. Read.

Orcs To Launch Media War--Look to UTube and Surrender Media for Aid

“The real war is the media war,” Taliban Pakistan Orc Chief Baitullah Mehsud told Daily Times, recently in his best aw shucks we all just a bunch of no-account humble rednecks here. Don't know nothing 'bout that there new fangled world wide web internet thinge :

“It is our desire to learn also how one should fight the media war.” said the glint eyed master of ceremonies to his 30 assorted surrender journalists from various national and international media outlets to North and South Waziristan. This "news" should come as a major shock to DOD who only recently got it's gold thumb out of their tuckas and started a blog. The Orcs have had them for years.

“The Taliban have not been very advanced as far as the media war is concerned. But we are making efforts to catch up with the latest methods, and we will soon be available on YouTube,” a senior PIO of the Taliban’s media cell told Daily Times.

Orc Biggie Taliban Pakistan Chief Baitullah Mehsud initiated the big suck up with western media by inviting 30 surrender journalists from various national and international media outlets to North and South Waziristan for a major pow wow to sooth any hard feeling after the recent unpleasantness at Express TV.

Baituallah calmed timorous reporters by assuring them the recent murder of Express TV’s Bajaur, Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, correspondent was ‘unforgivable’. Baituallah told "journalists" that he , would personally “hang the killers” of Ibrahim if, (there is always an Orc IF), if they were identified beyond all reasonable doubt and the journalists nodded and concurred that if this was the case why they would stick around and listen to what else he had to offer or say.

Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, a senior TV journalist, was killed last week after interviewing Maulwi Omar, spokesman of the Pakistan Taliban Movement. Orc Media critics are very nasty, brutish and short tempered.

The Orc Taliban Media cell has big plans to begin releasing Orc family videos on YouTube .

The Orc family videos will feature the Orc kids firing point blank head shots into blindfolded men while other kids behead other "unbelievers". YouTube should have no problem with hosting these horrific family Orcs videos. After all isn't it all about family? Whatever it takes to advance the cause of Islam and keep the Orc family together.

You're either the Hunter or the Hunted--Marines Get Training to be ORC Hunters

original story Rick Rogers
read entire story here

UNION-TRIBUNE
(inside parenthesis's (JB))

Combat Hunter, a program created in response to (ORCS) wounding and killing more Marines with small-arms attacks, trains Marines to use their natural senses and other hunting skills to track down and eliminate (ORCS). Marines stalk and kill (ORCS) by using their senses and instincts. (Stalking the Orc) emphasizes keen observation of Marines' surroundings and meticulous knowledge of the (ORC) habits.


"The unorthodox program draws on the expertise of an eclectic mix of consultants. There are the tracking abilities of David Scott-Donelan, a former officer in the South African Special Forces and a veteran of civil wars in Africa. Then there's African guide Ivan Carter, as well as others who would rather not be identified by the Marine Corps.

Combat Hunter grew out of a concept by Gen. James Mattis, who has spearheaded the formation of various training programs for the Marine Corps. He saw the need for greater focus on hunting-related skills while overseeing combat forces at Camp Pendleton in 2006.

“One of the things that Gen. Mattis said is that he wanted a quick turnaround for this project. There was a sense of urgency,” said Maj. James Martin, the project officer for Combat Hunter.

Lethin recalled the reason for that urgency: Too many troops felt fear when they left their bases in Anbar province, the vast western region of Iraq where Marines hold the lead combat role for the U.S. military.

“Fear is a terrible thing. The Marines felt they were being hunted. They felt they were bait for the (ORCS)” Lethin said.

Marines usually train among its prefabricated buildings and in its dirt-lined streets. But for Combat Hunter, they perch in the green hills and watch what goes on in the mock village.

From a distance of eight or more football fields away, teams of Marines learned what to look for downhill. As they peered through binoculars, the Marines tried to catalog hundreds of details to form a baseline of knowledge. Then they looked for telltale signs of (ORC) behavior.

The scenario they watched yesterday involved a mock sniper shooting an Iraqi police officer. The Marines had to tease out clues to ascertain who did what and from where. The exercise was one of 15 scenes that they will scrutinize in the next two weeks.

One goal of the training is teaching troops to unleash deadly force only after they have determined that it's warranted.

“Just because someone is a jerk does not mean we can kill them, do you got me?” said Greg Williams, a former police officer and big-game hunter as he debriefed 55 Marines from the 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

“Rrrr,” the Marines replied in agreement.

“We never do trigger time unless we do brain time, do you got me?” Williams emphasized.

“Rrrr,” the Marines responded.

After a lunch break, the trainees started analyzing more complex attacks.

Some of them praised Combat Hunter for teaching them to more effectively spot insurgents – as well as roadside bombs and weapons caches – while giving them confidence to patrol day in and day out.

“I think it is absolutely critical training,” said Cpl. Andrew Moul, 25, from Hart, Mich., who will deploy to Iraq in the fall. “In Iraq right now, it is more of a security situation, and we need this skill set to keep civilians and Marines alive by making better decisions.”

Unconventional thinking about an unconventional war might make a lot of sense, said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer for the Lexington Institute, a pro-defense think tank in Arlington, Va.

“What we are learning in Iraq is that the demands of warfare in the new century are so widely different from anything for which we were planning. We have to look in unexpected places for the skills that will serve us best” Thompson said."

PostCards/SnailLetters & Emails Needed-Show of Support For the 173rd in Afghanistan

A recent article by Elizabeth Rubin in the NY Times wrote about a platoon of Sky Soldiers in the usual journalism unbalanced short hand--which is to say--accent the negative and omit the positive. The men are doing an excellent job under horrific conditions and under attack by Orcs nearly everyday. However, the story pretty much depicted their working conditions as hopeless and futile by failing to mention such minor details as the
"successes within the Brigade such as substantial humanitarian aid (tons of food and clothes) delivered to local villages, medical care for local children and adults, road projects, clean water projects, training of Afghan National Army personnel, distribution of school supplies, etc.Blackfive ".
Elizabeth has increased the stress load on the troops and their families, as a result.

You can help offset this stress by sending your positive comments of support to this address:

Please send an email of support to skysoldiers173rd@gmail.com

Or you can mail cards to:

Leta Carruth
P O Box 100
Cordova, TN 38088

"Due to security reasons in Afghanistan please do not put addresses or phone numbers on any correspondence. All emails will be printed out here in the US and mailed to Afghanistan as they do not have the resources to receive a large number of emails. All letters and emails will be vetted to make sure there are no negative comments. These are letters of support, so please keep them positive and uplifting." BlackFive

Network Trumps Hierarchical Orcs

The Network abhors gatekeepers of hierarchical sites. Perfect example is the latest push back by Iranians against the Orc Minders.

Ardeshir Arian:
The Iranian regime does its best to keep a tight rein on news outlets, but new media – cell phone video, YouTube, and the countless number of blogs and news forums in Farsi means that when large-scale protests against the regime occur in public they are impossible to completely conceal.

Sources have told PJM of a major public uprising over the weekend in Tehran – an account corroborated by other reports on the Web.

Arkan Khalaf Khudayyir-Female Suicide Bomb Facilitor-- Outside the Air Locker

Orc-hunter killer teams with Task Force 88 killed senior intell chief Arkan Khalaf Khudayyir aka Karrar in Khan Bani Sa’ad on 17th Feb. His last resume described him as a facilitator for female suicide bomb attacks. On Feb 1, two mentally retarded women were used to kill 73 and injure 167 Iraqi shopping at Baghdad markets.

"I am Abu Tariq, Emir of al-Layin and al-Mashadah Sector":Diary of an Orc In Hell Called Anbar

In November of last year, U.S. Army troops raided an Orc safehouse. The house was empty but in his haste to split Abu Tariq, the Emir of al-Layin and al-Mashadah Sector, dropped his dear diary. Only now, February, has the U.S. Army (busy trying to decided what century this is) finally managed to release the diary, a gold mine collection of 'woe is me' entries and a who was who and who is now dead names. All entries serious indications of DEAD END AHEAD for Orcs.

Apparently, the U.S. Army is now fully aware that the Orcs are smoking their tuckas in the information age and in a few shorts months released the diary to a...a... fellow dinosaur?! The WAPO. Of course, they released the diary first to the Washington Post, after all, are they not worthies of excellent fellowship and we'll-back-you-to-the-end-courage in this war against the evil Orcs. To their credit, this time, the WAPO accepted the scanned copy and in deepest appreciation only sniffed a little at their gift of a the copy released on Saturday:

"The Post could not independently verify the diary's authenticity."

OMG! Standards?! The dead brains media has standards!! Oh my socks and little feet. Oh joy! At any rate, if the U.S. Army is plowing ahead with all the speed of a snail-dinosaur you, at least, have to appreciate that it is moving and so doing and did, in fact, release a copy of the Orc Diary to a member of the dead trees media. The THE dead brains media!? Look Ma! We're getting our message out. (oh, aren't you a good boy).

Frankly, I can't believe our nation's technology provides the world with the cutting edge of innovation when the higher food chain in the Army gets a clue and finally hears the nickel drop... how many years after 9/11?

"It is important we get our story out," a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity. "I firmly believe the information part of this conflict is as very vital as the armed element of it. . . . We don't want to lose that to al-Qaeda."

Sweet heart. You lost "THAT" to the Orcs. Already. Now, you all are just playing ketchup. Must. Stay. Positive. Must. Stay. Positive.Must. Stay. Positive. Must. Stay. Positive. Must. Stay. Positive. Must. Stay. Positive.Must. Stay. Positive. Must. Stay. Positive.

Yes. The diary, released yesterday to a member of the we are not carrying water for Bush media, is an itemized list of a massive case of Whoopass. Abu Tariq, Emir of al-Layin and al-Mashadah Sector, started out with 200 men and now is down to 20.
Major Suck Wind.
He lists weapons still has in his arsenal-- 7.62mm machine guns, RPG-9 rocket-propelled grenades and C5 rockets, yada, yada, and also notes that a certain "Comrade" had "2000 C5 rockets and an RPG-9" in his possession but refused to hand them over." Major HeadsUP! Abu Tariq doesn't understand why the brother Orc would hold out on him so.

"We do not know what is his intention in that regard," Abu Tariq.

Heads up Abu. Here is a clue. Could it be that your brother Orc holds a Master's in Back-Stabbing, Cork-Screwing and Dirty-Dealing-Dealing!

Finally, Abu takes a pathetic roll call and places notes by the names of his gone but not forgotten Missing Orcs:

• "We have not seen him for more than 20 days so far"
  

• "Left three days ago."

• "And that is the number of fighters left in my sector."
  

Oy vey. So. Very. Sad.

An Orc Enlists in the U. S. Yankee Army

UnF!!ngbelieveable! According to Front Page Magazine an Orc enlisted in the Army and is stationed somewhere in Iraq. Today, the FPM put out an APB for info leading to the capture of one Orc now in U.S. Army uniform, in Iraq, call sign Deep Thought, currently commenting at a website infested with Orcs.

"A potential disaster should be averted. If anyone has any information regarding Deep Thought, a.k.a. Lawrence, a.k.a. Bilal, please contact the U.S. Army immediately. Or, if you wish, you can send an e-mail to info@americansagainsthate.org, and the information will be forwarded to the proper authorities."

On November 26, 2007, DT wrote, “Well, I have been in Iraq for 2 months now.. I have pretty much seen this entire country... I have takened some very nice pictures of Iraq which I will be posting on a later date.. I'll be sure to give a link to them when its complete.. Well, I hope all is well with EVERY member of this forum... I am sooo homesick and wish I was home now.... But, my life is here and now... In Iraq..... It feels good to finally have decent internet access.”

"There are a number of problems with the abovementioned: 1. While he is wearing a United States military uniform, and while he is supposed to be fighting against terrorists in Iraq, Lawrence is writing on a forum that has many outspoken members that support terrorist groups (himself included) and that was founded by an organization, ICNA, that has been implicated in the financing of Hamas and Al-Qaeda; 2. The pictures and information he posts to WI may very well contain sensitive material that could put U.S. troops in harms way; and 3. Past statements of his show that Lawrence has a vehement distaste and disloyalty to the war in Iraq, to begin with."

Orc Tuskas History in Iraq-Dead Tree Media Buries Great News--Rush

RUSH: I want to call for the attention of all military personnel, both in this country and around the world listening to this hour on the Armed Forces Radio Network. I have three stories. Two of them are big. The first one is just literally amazing. It is from page A-19 of the New York Times. May I share with you how giddy with awe and pride I am over the job our military personnel are doing in Iraq? Get this headline from the New York Times:

"Militant Group Is Out of Baghdad, US Says." Well, now, who could that be, ladies and gentlemen? Let me just share with you some of the details of the story. "American forces have routed Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the 'surge' to depart as planned. "Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of United States forces in Baghdad, also said that American troops had yet to clear some 13 percent of the city, including Sadr City and several other areas controlled by Shiite militias. But, he said, 'there's just no question' that violence had declined since a spike in June. 'The Iraqi people have just decided that they've had it up to here with violence,' he said, while noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified." We have beaten Al-Qaeda -- they call Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia -- we have beaten Al-Qaeda in Iraq in Baghdad. They are out. They have been routed. "Militant Group Is Out of Baghdad, US Says." Only thing left is the 13% of the city controlled by Mookie and his boys. This is huge news. I don't know if you go and declare full-fledged victory, but this is profound news, A-19 of the New York Times with a headline that's not going to inspire anybody to want to read the story. You tell me that there's not an agenda in the Drive-By Media. I have people still trying to tell me this. This is almost like, "Shhhh, don't tell anybody, don't tell anybody, whisper this, Al-Qaeda is gone from Baghdad, don't tell anybody. We have to report it but we'll try to confuse it as much as we can." That's probably what went on at the editorial meeting at the New York Times.

"Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led..." That is a quote from the story. The homegrown group, started by a Jordanian who was reporting to Bin Laden, operating in Iraq during Saddam's reign, the group to which all those Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, and other Arabs report after they pour in over the Syrian border. The group here is Al-Qaeda. Not Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, not Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The group is Al-Qaeda! And the US military has routed them from Baghdad. They can't put this on page one. No, no, no. Gotta save page one for the global warming stories and the coming recession, and the snarky comments about French President Sarkozy. Then, of course, this story from the UK Times online: "'First Sunni-Shia 'Fatwa Against Violence' to Be Signed in Iraq.' Senior religious leaders in Iraq are preparing to sign an unprecedented 'fatwa against violence' that will help reconcile the rival Sunni and Shia branches of Islam and herald new hopes for peace in the war-torn country." Violence is down, reconciliation is up. "'There is not a quick, easy solution,' he continued. 'This is long-term work. We have to engage with these people continually. The key thing is talking to them every day. Never before has there been a Sunni-Shia fatwa against violence. It has never been heard of in history. Will it make a difference? Not immediately. But I hope eventually it will.'" "Officials Cite Return Of Iraqis to Baghdad As Violence Declines." Forty-six thousand returned to Baghdad last month. Forty-six thousand and thirty of them, actually, returned last month from outside the country to their homes in the capital. So here basically are three terrific stories, this last one about the Iraqis coming back home to Baghdad is in the Washington Post today, and during all of these last -- especially these intense last two or three months, maybe you could go all the way back to March when the surge was first plotted, and Dingy Harry came out and said, "It won't work. We can't win. The war is lost," and that became the Democrats' political position. No wonder the Times has to put this on page A-19. You know where the Post put the story about the returning Iraqis to Baghdad? Page A-20. That's why I wanted to bring this news to the forefront of the program today in our first hour and give kudos and congratulations to every one of you in the United States military, whether you've been to Baghdad Iraq, Afghanistan, or not, whether you are there, you are a unit, a fraternity that so many of us in this country love, honor, and respect and hold in great awe. You have not been given the credit that you deserve throughout this whole thing. You have been used as pawns. Politicians have maligned you, have called you names, accused you of crimes that you haven't committed. I've never seen anything like it. I didn't see the outrage about these accusations in this treatment that I hoped to see around the country. But despite all that, these people in uniform persevered, kept their eyes and their hearts on the mission, and they rejected all of this talk and they didn't let it affect them. The surge obviously has worked. All they gotta do is the 13% of Baghdad still run by Mookie al-Sadr's boys. So once again, congratulations, and, as I say, I wanted to make this the first thing I talked about today because it's being buried throughout the rest of the United States media.

Dead Trees Media Refuses to Cover Joe Lieberman's address on “The Politics of National Security,” aka sick puppies who fear Dubya More than ORCS

The Democrats prefer to encourage Orcs at the expense of our defense regardless of consequences. Their policy? “It’s simple,” they said. “We don’t trust Bush. He’ll use this resolution as an excuse for war against Iran.”

Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) today addressed a Center for Politics and Foreign Relations/Financial Times breakfast at The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The subject of Senator Lieberman’s talk was in which he spoke about the future of the Democratic Party and its response to the threat of Iran.

In the address, Senator Lieberman stated, “Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

“Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.”

Senator Lieberman also indicated, “…there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.”

Below is the full text of his remarks, as prepared for delivery:

“Thank you so much, Bob, for that kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here this morning at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

SAIS bears the name of a great American statesman and strategist. Paul Nitze served in six presidential administrations, from the outbreak of World War II through the twilight of the Cold War. As the principal author of NSC-68, he quite literally wrote the road map that guided America to victory in our long struggle against the Soviet Union.

Nitze is a figure of particular resonance for me, and his career provides an ideal starting place for the subject of my talk today—the politics of national security.

As many of you know, Paul Nitze was a Democrat, but he worked for Republican presidents as well as Democratic ones. He did so because he understood that, whatever domestic political differences divide us, they must never blind us to the far more profound national security challenges we face together from abroad.

Throughout his long career, Nitze put country before party, policy before politics. Although he was a Democrat, he did not look to the Democratic Party to tell him how or what to think about foreign policy.

The foreign policy convictions that animated Nitze, it so happened, were also the convictions that animated the Democratic Party from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Confronted by the totalitarian threats first of fascism and then of communism, Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy forged a foreign policy that was simultaneously principled, internationalist, and tough-minded.

This was the Democratic Party I grew up in—a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders, to draw a clear line between what Nitze in NSC-68 called “the free world” of the West and the “slave society” behind the Iron Curtain. It was a party that grasped the inextricable link between the survival of freedom abroad and the survival of freedom at home—that recognized, as Nitze wrote, that “the idea of freedom is the most contagious idea in the world.” And it was also a party that understood that a progressive society must be ready and willing to use its military power in defense of its progressive ideals, in order to ensure that those progressive ideals survived.

This was the worldview captured by President Kennedy, when he pledged in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

That Democratic foreign policy tradition—the tradition of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy—collapsed just a few years later, in the trauma of Vietnam. And in its place, a very different worldview took root in the Democratic Party.

Reflexively skeptical about America’s authority to make moral judgments about the rest of the world, inclined to see the planet’s leading problems as more often the result of American involvement than American disengagement, and viscerally opposed to the use of military force, this rival worldview was in many respects the polar opposite of the self-confident and idealistic internationalism that had, just a few years earlier, animated the Democratic Party under President Kennedy.

Nitze was among those who courageously fought against this turn in the Democratic Party. He was a critic of the anti-war, isolationist candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 and later broke with Jimmy Carter over his arms control policy, which Nitze felt was weak and misguided. With Eugene Rostow, Nitze reestablished the Committee on the Present Danger, to keep alive the principled, internationalist, and muscular foreign policy tradition that had once lay at the heart of the Democratic Party.

Throughout this period, although Nitze remained a Democrat, he did not hesitate to challenge Democrats with whom he disagreed, or to work with Republicans with whom he agreed. One of the Republicans that Nitze came to support, in fact, was Ronald Reagan, himself a former Democrat, who welcomed Nitze to his foreign policy team after winning the presidency in 1980.

Reagan was the last president Nitze would serve, but in the proud legacy he has left, Nitze offers us important lessons for our own time about the politics of national security.

I arrived in Washington, D.C., as a first-term Senator in January 1989, just as Paul Nitze was departing government to return to his office here at SAIS. As I began to make foreign policy decisions in the Senate, I found myself drawn to the Democratic tradition of my youth—the morally self-confident, internationalist, and muscular tradition of Truman and Kennedy, whose inaugural address had inspired me to be a Democrat in the first place.

By the late 1980s, that tradition had been out of fashion in Democratic circles for twenty years. But then, Democrats had also been out of power for most of those twenty years—something that struck me and many others as more than coincidental. Simply put, the American people didn’t trust Democrats to keep them safe, and the McGovernite legacy was a big reason why.

By 1989, historic changes were taking place in the world that made the strong, self-confident foreign policy that linked Democrats like Truman and Kennedy to Republicans like Reagan look increasingly justified. Although too many Democrats had grown accustomed to criticizing Reagan’s approach to the Cold War as simplistic and dangerous, now the Soviet Union was imploding—economically and ideologically.

The collapse of communism emboldened those of us who felt that the McGovernite legacy had been a disastrous detour for the Democratic Party, and that it was time to reclaim our own lost tradition of strength abroad.

Then in 1991, America’s stunning victory in the first Gulf War presented anti-war Democrats with graphic proof of why their reflexive opposition to the use of military force was substantively wrong and probably politically wrong too.

It was not until the Clinton-Gore administration, however, that a tectonic shift really began inside the Democratic Party about foreign policy. In particular in the Balkans, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic—Democratic attitudes about the use of military power began to change.

Ironically, just as Democrats in the White House were growing more comfortable with the idea of an interventionist foreign policy, Republicans in Congress were moving in the opposite direction. In the absence of the Soviet Union, Republicans in the 1990s too often defined their own foreign policy vision as instinctive opposition to whatever President Clinton was doing in the world.

It is worth remembering, however, that some Republicans rose above this partisan reflex. Senator John McCain and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole courageously championed our intervention in the Balkans, without regard to domestic politics. But many others didn’t—and by the time of the 2000 presidential contest, it was the Democratic Party that was the more hawkish and internationalist, not the Republicans.

And in the 2000 campaign, it was Vice President Gore, who championed a values-based foreign policy, confident of America’s moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He promised $50 billion more in new defense spending than his Republican opponent—and, to the dismay of the party’s left, made sure that the Democratic Party’s platform that year endorsed a national missile defense.

Incidentally, he also chose a hawkish Democratic senator from Connecticut as his running mate.

Governor Bush, by contrast, campaigned for the presidency promising a “humble foreign policy,” criticizing the peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. He signaled his intention to appoint as his secretary of state a retired general, who had counseled against military intervention both in Iraq and in Bosnia. One of his top foreign policy advisers warned that “America’s armed forces are not a global police force”—a line that another prominent Republican noted was “closer to the spirit of George McGovern than Ronald Reagan.”

In the politics of national security, it seemed, Democrats and Republicans had traded places.

Certainly no one listening to George W. Bush in the fall of 2000 could have imagined that, scarcely four years later, this same man would stand on the west front of the Capitol building and pledge, in his second inaugural address, that “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.”

Indeed, as Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, it is easy to imagine these words being spoken by Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. But it was George W. Bush, who—in the aftermath of September 11—responded to the attacks with a national security strategy not of isolationism or realpolitik—but by drawing on the same morally self-confident, internationalist, and muscular foreign policy tradition he had once scorned.

In particular, President Bush defined the nature of this new conflict in quintessentially liberal terms—as a struggle for freedom against tyranny. Like the Cold War, he described the war on terror as ultimately “between two fundamentally different visions of humanity.” On the one side of this struggle are the Islamist extremists who “promise paradise, but deliver a life of public beheadings and repression of women and suicide bombings.” And on the other side, “are huge numbers of moderate men and women…” in the Muslim world, who believe that “every life has dignity and value that no power on Earth can take away.”

That is why, to defeat radical Islam, President Bush has repeatedly argued that we must simultaneously fight—and fight hard—to uproot their networks, while offering our own, more powerful vision of the future, based on the universal values of freedom and justice and opportunity.

In this regard, the Bush administration’s post-9/11 ideological conversion confronted Democrats with an awkward choice. Should we welcome the President’s foreign policy flip-flop? Or should Democrats match it with a flip-flop of our own?

Between 2002 and 2006, there was a battle within the Democratic Party over just how to answer this question—a battle I was part of.

I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework that the President articulated for the war on terror as our own—because it was our own. It was our legacy from Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton.

We could rightly criticize the Bush administration when it failed to live up to its own rhetoric, or when it bungled the execution of its policies. But I felt that we should not minimize the seriousness of the threat from Islamist extremism, or the fundamental rightness of the muscular, internationalist, and morally self-confident response that President Bush had chosen in response to it.

But that was not the choice most Democrats made. Instead, they flip-flopped.

It did not happen all at once. In the weeks and months after September 11, Democrats and Republicans put aside our partisan divisions and stood united as Americans. As late as October 2002, a Democratic-controlled Senate voted by a wide bipartisan margin to authorize President Bush to use military force against Saddam Hussein.

As the Iraq war became bogged down in a long and costly insurgency, however, and as President Bush’s approval ratings slipped, Democrats moved in a very different direction—first in the presidential campaign of 2004, where antiwar forces played a decisive role in the Democratic primaries. As you may recall, they also prevailed in Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary last year.

Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.

Part of the explanation for this, I think, comes back to ideology. For all of our efforts in the 1990s to rehabilitate a strong Democratic foreign policy tradition, anti-war sentiment remains the dominant galvanizing force among a significant segment of the Democratic base.

But another reason for the Democratic flip-flop on foreign policy over the past few years is less substantive. For many Democrats, the guiding conviction in foreign policy isn’t pacifism or isolationism—it is distrust and disdain of Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular.

In this regard, the Democratic foreign policy worldview has become defined by the same reflexive, blind opposition to the President that defined Republicans in the 1990s – even when it means repudiating the very principles and policies that Democrats as a party have stood for, at our best and strongest.

To illustrate my point, I want to talk about a controversy in the current Democratic presidential primaries, in which I have played an unintended part.

I offered an amendment earlier this fall, together with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and impose economic sanctions on them.

The reason for our amendment was clear. In September, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testified before Congress about the proxy war that Iran—and in particular, the IRGC and its Quds Force subsidiary—has been waging against our troops in Iraq. Specifically, General Petraeus told us that the IRGC Quds Force has been training, funding, equipping, arming, and in some cases directing Shiite extremists who are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers.

This charge had been corroborated by other sources, including the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the independent assessment of the Iraqi Security Forces led by General Jim Jones, as well as the on-the-ground reports of our division commanders in Iraq.

It was also consistent with nearly three decades of experience with the IRGC, which has been implicated in a range of terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies—long before the invasion of Iraq.

In light of this evidence, Senator Kyl and I thought that calling for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization was a no brainer. Rather than punishing Iranians indiscriminately, it would apply a set of targeted economic sanctions against the part of the Iranian regime that was responsible for the murder of our troops in Iraq.

One big reason Kyl and I thought that calling for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization would be politically uncontroversial was because a bipartisan group of 68 senators, including several of the Democratic presidential candidates, had already signed onto a piece of legislation introduced earlier in the year that asked for the IRGC’s designation along exactly the same lines as our amendment. Whatever the differences or disagreements on foreign policy or even on Iran, I assumed that tougher, targeted economic sanctions against the IRGC were something that we could all agree on.

I was wrong.

What happened instead is a case study in the distrust and partisan polarization that now poisons our body politic on even the most sensitive issues of national security.

First, several left-wing blogs seized upon the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, offering wild conspiracy theories about how it could be used to authorize the use of military force against Iran.

These were absurd arguments. The text of our amendment contained nothing—nothing—that could be construed as a green light for an attack on Iran. To claim that it did was an act of delusion or deception.

On the contrary, by calling for tougher sanctions on Iran, the intention of our amendment was to offer an alternative to war.

Nonetheless, the conspiracy theories started to spread. Although the Senate passed our amendment, 76-22, several Democrats, including some of the Democratic presidential candidates, soon began attacking it—and Senator Clinton, who voted for the amendment. In fact, some of the very same Democrats who had cosponsored the legislation in the spring, urging the designation of the IRGC, began denouncing our amendment for doing the exact same thing.

The problem with the Kyl-Lieberman amendment of course had little to do with its substance, and a lot to do with politics.

I asked some of my Senate colleagues who voted against our amendment: “Do you believe the evidence the military has given us about the IRGC sponsoring these attacks on our troops?” Yes, they invariably said.

“Don’t you support tougher economic sanctions against Iran?” I asked. Again, yes—no question.

So what’s the problem, I asked.

“It’s simple,” they said. “We don’t trust Bush. He’ll use this resolution as an excuse for war against Iran.”

I understand that President Bush is a divisive figure. I recognize the distrust that many Americans feel toward his administration. I recognize the anger and outrage that exists out there about the war in Iraq.

But there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.

For me, this episode reinforces how far the Democratic Party of 2007 has strayed from the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and the Clinton-Gore administration.

That is why I call myself an Independent Democrat today. It is because my foreign policy convictions are the convictions that have traditionally animated the Democratic Party—but they exist in me today independent of the current Democratic Party, which has largely repudiated them.

I hope that Democrats will one day again rediscover and re-embrace these principles, which were at the heart of our party as recently as 2000. But regardless of when or if that happens, those convictions will continue to be mine. And I will continue to fight to advance them along with like-minded Democrats and like-minded Republicans.

Some of you in this room are students at the beginning of what will be long and distinguished careers in public policy and public service. Chances are, you already have formed some strong convictions about American foreign policy, and for that reason, identify more with one party than the other.

But as you consider your future, I ask you to reflect for a moment on the past, and the dramatic shifts that I have described in the foreign policy orthodoxy of Democrats and Republicans alike over the past sixty years.

These shifts are almost certain to continue to occur. Just as the foreign policy convictions of the Democratic Party of 2008 are very different from those of the Democratic Party of 2000, so too will the Democratic Party of 2016 and 2028 look very different from the Democratic Party of today.

I ask that as future practitioners of foreign policy, you do not become so wedded to a party that you are unwilling to diverge from it, when your convictions diverge from it. Let your views about national security determine your politics, rather than the other way around.

If you choose to identify as a Democrat or a Republican, in other words, I encourage each of you to be independent Democrats and independent Republicans.

It may mean that you belong to a smaller and, at times, lonelier caucus. You may even find yourself on the losing end of an election or two. But far more important, you will not lose your convictions about what you believe is best for the security of our great country—and that, as Paul Nitze understood, is what matters most.

Thank you so much.”

- 30 -

Its Offical--Orcs Are On The Run In Iraq--Rear Admiral Smith Says So

Monday, 05 November 2007

Pvt. Randy Maldonado of 2nd Platoon, Company D, 1st Battalion,leads an Iraqi concerned citizen on a patrol through a small farm during Operation Tuwaitha Sunrise, an operation conducted with Iraqi national police and concerned citizens to clear al-Qaeda from Tuwaitha, Iraq, on Sept. 5. Photo taken by Army Sgt. Timothy Kingston.

WASHINGTON —

"We've taken out a significant part of their leadership. We've gone after their foreign fighter facilitation network. We've gone after their financial networks. And ... we also have gone after, very heavily, their propaganda network," said Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, spokesman for Multi-National Force - Iraq, via telephone to a group of military analysts.

As much as 80 percent of al-Qaida's media structure has been destroyed, greatly hampering the group's ability to spread propaganda, recruit and gain financing for its operations, Smith said.

Reports in the country have shown a downward trend in violence against coalition forces, civilians and the Iraqi security forces, Smith said. He added that he remains cautiously optimistic, but he also warned of the lethality that still exists within al-Qaida's network.

"Those are good trends, and we are seeing some very good numbers. But ... obviously we have a lot of work to do, as well," Smith said. "(Al-Qaida is) still very much a threat."

For example, Smith cited a suicide bomber on a motorcycle who killed 27 Iraqi policemen in Baqubah, north of Baghdad, Oct. 29, in one of the worst attacks on Iraq's security forces in months. "Al-Qaida still has a capacity to kill civilians and certainly go after infrastructure," he said.

Still, Iraqi citizens are continuing to mobilize their local village forces against al-Qaida and other extremist groups, Smith said. So far, nearly 70,000 concerned citizens have formed 120 groups across the country, he said.

"That is making a huge impact on our ability to really understand what's happening at the local level as our commanders in the field partner with these groups. ... We're discovering more and more of the deep-rooted activity in those areas," he said.

This has translated into local commanders finding remaining elements of al-Qaida operatives in communities, as well as record numbers of stockpiles of weapons. By next week, coalition forces in 2007 will have found double the number of weapons caches found in 2006, the admiral said.

"That's ... in large part due to the fact that civilians are becoming extremely more confident in working with local security forces and pointing out where things just aren't right," Smith said.

Most of the trust comes from the fact that surge forces are able to build confidence by working in the communities. In its fourth month, the surge of additional forces into Baghdad and other areas of Iraq has given commanders the numbers of troops needed to embed them in outposts in the communities, instead of having forces commute to the communities from large forward operating bases.

Coalition forces also are focusing on rogue militias who have splintered from the Jaysh al-Mahdi militia loyal to Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who ordered a cease-fire in August. Smith said the groups continue to operate much like al-Qaida, kidnapping and intimidating local citizens. He said the rogue groups operate under a criminal, mafia-like, gang structure.

"We're reminding really all Iraqis (to) think about what side they ought to be on. The side that Sadr's asked them to be on, which is a peaceful side, is the right side to be on right now. And if not, we're going to treat you like a criminal, and we're going to hunt you down, and we're going get you. We're doing that with increasing numbers, as well," Smith said. "I won't say there are two fronts out there, but there sure are two main efforts."

(Story written by Fred W. Baker III, American Forces Press Service)