Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: "Tre giare vuote" di Michael Yon

http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/2005/07/empty-jars.html
Kashmir: then
Extensive travels across central Asia have taken me up the plateaus of 
Tibet, across the meandering middle of China, around the mountains of 
Nepal, and along India's littered river banks. Although each has had the 
power to captivate, India, without a doubt, is the most beguiling land I 
have ever seen. From India I journeyed North, into Kashmir-- a land of 
wealth and beauty, shredded by the claws of covetous neighbors.
A Kashmiri Mohammedan said to me, "God keeps men in three jars. Do you 
understand?"
"Yes," I answered, "you say God keeps men in three jars."
"In the first jar," the man looked at me, "God keeps the Americans. God 
keeps that lid very, very tight, for the Americans try their level-best 
(he used Indian phrases) to escape and rule the world."
I nodded, hinting a smile, saying, "God is right."
The Mohammedan smiled back, holding up a hand to quiet me, and 
continued, "In the second jar, God keeps the Europeans. But God does not 
keep that lid so tight," still holding up his hand, as if expecting 
interruption, "You see, God knows the Europeans also want to rule the 
world, but Europeans do not try hard."
"Is true, is true," I chuckled.
But, like a preacher, the man held his hand even higher, and continued 
on with a louder voice, "God keeps Kashmiris in the third jar, but God 
does not keep a lid on our jar. We also want to rule the world but every 
time one of us tries to escape, the rest pull him back down!" and he 
clenched his fist!
"Sir," my smiled faded, "It would be difficult to convey more truth with 
fewer words."
Mosul: Now
In post-Saddam Iraq, another lid is off. But with so many people 
grabbing at the ankles of who ever makes a leap for the top, freedom to 
communicate has not changed the situation dramatically. On mobile 
phones, in internet cafes, in marketplaces and mosques, journalists and 
citizens alike know that what they say can kill them. A blood-spattered 
witness to Mosul's call to prayer (arms?) might argue that who controls 
words, controls man.
The enemy in Iraq does not appear to be weakening; if anything, they are 
becoming smarter, more complicated and deadlier. But this does not mean 
they are winning; to imply that getting smarter and deadlier equates to 
winning, is fallacious. Most accounts of the situation in Iraq focus on 
enemy "successes" (if success is re-defined as annihiliation of 
civility), while redacting the increasing viability and strength of the 
Iraqi government, which clearly is outpacing the insurgency.
The Mosul police are now strong enough to launch successful undercover 
operations, and have been fanning out across Mosul and surrounding 
villages, snooping and listening for snippets. On July 15th, police 
working undercover in a village Northwest of Mosul heard a group of 
villagers talking about a weapons cache, but the location was not 
mentioned. Iraqi forces locked down the village, searched and found a 
weapons depot from Syria into Mosul. Iraqi police also found and rescued 
the 28 year-old woman I mentioned briefly in the last dispatch. She was 
the wife of a Mosul journalist, and had been kidnapped and held for 
ransom by members of a beheading cell. After the village search, police 
hauled four men to a Mosul station for interrogation, and alerted the 
Americans.
Soldiers from A Company, 1-24th Infantry Regiment, headed to the police 
station to find out what the cops were learning, and I asked LT David 
Beaudoin, who was leading the patrol, if I could tag along. I had first 
met Beaudoin some months ago after a car bombing that claimed some of 
our people. Since that time, I had come to know Beaudoin as quiet, 
always polite, and well-liked by the soldiers. It was Beaudoin's 
mannered countenance that everyone saw as we arrived and sat down in a 
police colonel's office. The colonel was engaged in conversation with 
the Iraqi journalist, the husband of the 28 year-old woman who had been 
released.
As details of the kidnapping emerged, the surface of the big picture 
rippled with a winding current of revision. The kidnappers had 
threatened to cut off his wife's head, the journalist explained, kill 
him, and the rest of his family. But they would take $45,000 in exchange 
for "civility."
Evidently, the journalist had not been targeted for exercizing the power 
of the press; it was the promise of precedent that attended this 
abduction. Only months earlier, four men kidnapped the journalist's 
brother-in-law and demanded ransom of $50,000. The family negotiated the 
fee down to $5,000. A deal was struck, the money paid, and the 
"civility" delivered. Now, apparently, the same four kidnappers were 
back for the balance: $45,000. But the Iraqi undercover police, 
listening to people talking in a marketplace, picked up the trail that 
led to the rescue, and their eavesdropping also unleashed a cascade of 
avalanching proportions.
While the four kidnappers were being interrogated somewhere on the 
grounds, the bespectacled journalist--genuinely thankful for the release 
of his wife--was appealing to the colonel to hold the men. He said that 
other terrorists were still threatening to kill both he and his wife, 
and that if the men were released, his family would be killed. Without 
saying as much, the journalist indicated that he wanted bad things to 
happen to bad men.
I had seen recent information about plans to assassinate a 
journalist--Deuce Four leaders thought I might be the target. But now, 
hearing this journalist talk, I thought he must have been the target. LT 
Beaudoin's face yielded no hint of his reaction to the news from the 
journalist. I pulled a notepad from my pocket, scratched a note and 
handed it to Lt Beaudoin. He read the scribble-- There was a SIGACT that 
AIF plans to assassinate a journalist with an IED-- glanced at me with 
affirmation, then continued asking questions of the journalist through 
the Army interpreter.
But hell, I thought, looking at the journalist, You paid five-thousand 
bucks for your brother-in-law. Of course the kidnappers are coming back. 
The kidnappers know him as a client. Next to his name on their list, 
someone must have written "Has money, will pay." And pay. And pay. His 
jar is open.
Perhaps fueling his distress was the well-known but little mentioned 
tendency--some might say emerging trend--for some Iraqi police to 
release prisoners for bribes. This catch and release program has the 
same negative consequences as the Coalition tendency of detaining and 
then releasing suspected insurgents following a brief incarceration at 
Abu Ghraib. I have heard American military officers and senior enlisted 
men around Iraq complaining that terrorists are being released back on 
the streets, where their own soldiers and Marines must face them yet 
again in combat.
Every combat soldier knows the risks of capturing dangerous men far 
exceed those associated with just killing them. Capturing a terrorist is 
no longer a signal of the end of his ability to disrupt forward 
progress. That's not a minor shift in emphasis. Among people weary of 
watching friends and comrades fall and bleed to death, any adjustments 
in the goal posts give rise to discussions of more expedient and durable 
ways of dealing with infestations of combatants who scurry in and out of 
hiding places. Not tightening the lids on these insect jars does more 
than just lead some cantankerous officers and police to consider more 
definitive measures of dealing with combatants. It also places our young 
soldiers and Marines in precarious waters, where one can only hope they 
are physically and morally conditioned to resist the current.
Some of those same currents had started swirling around the colonel's 
office, as LT Beaudoin asked increasingly specific questions that were 
deflected and re-directed if not evaded outright. Young LT Beaudoin dove 
for the diplomatic throat, raised his voice a notch and said firmly to 
the police colonel, "Listen! You need to be straight with us. We are 
your allies. We will capture or kill these guys."
Before the interpreter could translate Beaudoin's words, it was clear 
their meaning had been communicated. The Iraqi journalist and the police 
colonel both were in my field of view. They sat upright and paid full 
attention to Beaudoin, promising to provide the information requested. 
But LT Beaudoin was not satisfied, and said, "I want to interview the 
police lieutenant who captured these guys," which everyone knew 
translated to, "Get the lieutenant who captured them in here, now."
The colonel spoke and waved his hand, and soon a policeman came into the 
room. He flattened a laminated map on a tea table, and the journalist 
and the police chief started pointing possible targets to LT Beaudoin. 
The momentum of the meeting had shifted from friendly and informative, 
to specific and deadly.
Cascades
There is a pattern of cascades in counterguerrilla combat operations. In 
this kind of warfare, information drives maneuvers, and a single capture 
of a key person frequently cascades into a shower of raids and captures, 
each pregnant with the next storm.
That night, Iraqi police took the 4 captured men out to identify 
targets. On route, one "tried to escape" and was killed, intensifying 
the pressure on the remaining three. The cascade had begun with the 
snippet of information, but now was fanning open, as police, operating 
alone, uncovered the original cache in the village northwest of Mosul. 
While this catch was merely a depot to Mosul, it led to the giant cache 
we raided ["The Devil's Foyer," 21 July 05], and from there to yet 
another large cache uncovered on the same day on the east side of the 
Tigris River in Mosul. The cascade fizzled to the end of its run at a 
fourth cache that rendered only empty munitions containers.
Of greater interest was the prisoners' admission that the munitions were 
being readied for the next elections.
Many of the "fighters" here emerged and filled the vacuum following the 
fall of Saddam. In Tombstone, they'd be guns for hire; in Bogota, they'd 
be kidnappers without a cause. Here, they do not equate so much to 
organized resistance as to organized crime.
They get lumped in with the "resistance," but this is not entirely 
accurate. They do business with it, and they exploit it for personal 
gains like money, possessions and power. Today, the terrorists and their 
more populous criminal cousins in Iraq have a great deal in common, 
including the goal of forcing the new government to fail in its mission 
to secure the borders and restore and maintain order.
The terrorists have been trying to--with good success--cripple the 
macro-economy by destroying pipelines and infrastructure, and these 
attacks help the criminals. Attacks on gas stations, for instance, 
disaffect the citizenry from the government, while giving 
black-marketers transient fuel monopolies.
There's good money to be made in chaos. Last week, Deuce Four soldiers 
visited gas stations that had been vandalized, including one station 
which came under sniper attack just before we arrived. When we walked 
into that station, a cop came forward, eager to brag about how he had 
just killed the sniper. Other police officers gathered around, smiling 
and sticking close to the day's hero, sharing his status as 
flavor-of-the-day.
All the while, a seemingly endless line of Iraqi cars idled in the hot 
sun. Gasoline shortages in this oil-rich nation force tens of thousands 
of Iraqis to sqaunder whole days of their lives, waiting to fill their 
tanks. The many taxis in line all have their trunk lids removed, to show 
they are not carrying large car bombs.
Still, of all the clawing hands weighting the legs of the new Iraq, the 
foreign "jihadists" get the least respect and are mostly despised. Local 
terrorists, even those who trade in newly-minted matyrs, seem to view 
jihadists as the lowest of the low-- as if the volunteers-come-hither 
are merely fungible foreign idiots, worth less than the wads of floppy 
third-world currencies crumpled in their pockets. The foreign fighters 
are a sort of toxic waste drifting and floating on the surface of this 
civil war. Their touch is stain.
And so it was for one foreign fighter some days ago. Mosul police were 
driving downtown when a fusilade of machine gun fire penetrated their 
truck. The guns began to cool, having shot seven policemen dead. Nearby, 
a Deuce Four combat patrol came upon three suspicious cars driving 
erratically. The first car sped away, but the second car--a taxi--was 
not so lucky, because the driver of the third car apparently panicked 
and smashed headlong into the rear of taxi. The taxi driver bolted from 
his car. There were three passengers in the third car, now accordianed 
into the back end of the taxi. The front seat passenger tested the 
mathematics describing physics, stopping his inertia by smashing his 
head into the windshield, leaving a complete impression of his Tunisian 
face.
As the Americans stopped and dropped ramps, all three passengers bolted. 
They ran to the right, leaving a trail of tossed weapons on the road 
that included two AKs, a grenade and a pistol, and two RPGs and four RPG 
rounds in their car. The Americans, SSG Freed, Tuzza, and Specialists 
Hood, Reynolds, Holden, Chacon and others, all led by LT Dave Webb, got 
after the terrorists.
SSG Freed followed the trail of glistening blood-drops from the crash 
scene for three blocks into a house until he came face to lacerated face 
with the Tunisian, tackling him as he climbed the back wall of a house. 
Meanwhile, the taxi driver had taken refuge in a store behind a counter, 
and when an American soldier came 'round, the owner subtly signaled with 
his eyes that a terrorist was hiding behind his counter. Busted.
The soldiers came under small arms fire, perhaps from the car that 
escaped, but held tight and rounded up four fighters. The Tunisian got 
busy telling everything he knew. Such is the burden of foreign fighters 
on the Iraqi terror networks. When caught, they normally tell everything 
as fast as they can, unleashing cascading rapids of details about 
insurgent plans, people and resources.
Next day, I was sitting in the TOC when intelligence arrived that a top 
Mosul terrorist was in a certain location nearby. It so happened that LT 
Orande Roy Sr, along with his Deuce Four Stryker platoon, was also 
nearby. Minutes later, LT Roy rolled up on a dozen Iraqi men. The 
soldiers began to detain and separate the men when they spied one man 
slowly reaching into his pocket and wrestled him down. Specialists 
Joseph Vanvranken and Darrell Blanchard searched him and found a hand 
grenade and pistol in his pocket. As the weapons were revealed, the 
other Iraqis, as if on cue, started pointing to the man with the grenade 
and the pistol saying he was a bad guy, or perhaps the bad guy.
In the excitement, a baby boy began crying. The man holding the boy was 
having little success in comforting him, so another man looked concerned 
for the child and asked to hold him. Of all the men there, LT Roy said, 
the man who reached for the child seemed the calmest, safest and 
friendliest.
About that time, one of the younger American soldiers walked out to LT 
Roy holding at arm's length a vest filled with explosives--luckily, his 
handling had not detonated the device. LT Roy decided to detain 
everyone, and as one soldier reached for the child, the friendly man 
started to shudder, his calm facade faltering. Adding to the mix, the 
interpreter noticed that one of the men had a foreign accent. He was Libyan.
The Libyan, like so many "jihadists" who come to Iraq itching for action 
in the holy war, found himself treated as exspendable bomb casing. He 
started confessing everything. In fact, he had no sooner sat down at the 
table in the detention facility here on base than he had filled three 
pages with detailed handwritten confessions. The Libyan had crossed the 
border from Syria into Iraq on foot, intent on fighting a holy war, as 
an infantryman engaged in direct combat with American soldiers. He did 
not want to be a martyr, merely a jihadist. He did not want to die in 
Iraq. His Iraqis "hosts" had threatened to kill him if he refused to 
wear and detonate the explosive vest while mingling into a crowd of 
Iraqi police. But the Libyan did not like that plan and was angry at the 
Iraqis who were trying to force a holy jihadist to become an unwilling 
bomb, and he was telling everything. Another cascade.
And the calm man, who appeared so clever and confident while standing 
there comforting a crying infant? How the picture changed when a young 
American solider stepped into the frame, reached for and gently took the 
child. Without his prop, the actor faltered, his illusion cracked and 
shattered as he shuddered before the soldier. This man who cowered 
behind a crying child was one of the top terrorist leaders in Mosul.
I remember the Kashmiri Mohammedan and his three jars. While terrorists 
on earth do their best to keep us down, men and women boarded a space 
ship in Florida today, and flew into space.

Che due coglioni! Figurati se mi leggo tutto...
-- 
You_fuck_with_the_bull-You_gonna_get_the_horns

Allora in iraq il nemico sta diventando più forte, usa tattiche più
intelligenti, ma non significa che stia vincendo (seguono 12 pagine circa
di tortuosissimo filo logico per lo più basato su congetture)
In questo consiste il tuo articolo... Come dire interessante il pensiero
conservatore...

Mirco Romanato wrote:
jafari chiede un veloce ritiro delle truppe usa
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4720083.stm
Romacazzo vedi: fatti non congetture
-- 
You_fuck_with_the_bull-You_gonna_get_the_horns

 Romacazzo vedi: fatti non congetture
e come dimostra questo grafico (aggiornato a maggio) l'attività terroristica
non sta affatto retrocedendo
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/images/oif-sigacts-040500.gif

Baroon wrote:

pardon questa è aggiornata a febbraio 2005 quella di prima ad aprile 2004
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/images/sigacts-050200.jpg



Sarebbe da vedere come vengono calcolati gli attacchi, come vanno anche 
negli ultimi mesi, come sono divisi per tipologia, per zona geografica, etc.
Un grafico del genere, per quanto interessante, da poche indicazioni.
Mirco



A proposito di al-Jafari:
questo articolo, dallo stesso sito che ci ti tu:
DefenseLINK News: Troop Withdrawals Could Begin Next Year, Casey Says
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2005/07/mil-050727-afps02.htm
"...
At a later joint news conference with Rumsfeld, Iraqi Prime Minister 
Ibrahim Jaafari said the departure of U.S. forces from his country 
depends on how soon Iraq can train, equip and field its own soldiers and 
police to take over security duties. "We do not want to be surprised," 
Jaafari said, if U.S. troops leave before the Iraqis are prepared to 
assume security.
..."
al-Jafari Si augura che le forze USA vengano ritirate il prima 
possibile, ma solo DOPO che le forze irachene sono pronte a prendere in 
mano la situazione senza rischi.
Un po' differente dal dire che le vuole fuori "subito, senza SE e senza MA".
Mirco


DefenseLINK News: Troop Withdrawals Could Begin Next Year, Casey Says
"Troop Withdrawals Could Begin Next Year, Casey Says
"...
Casey commented on the potential for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq 
during a joint news conference with Rumsfeld and new U.S. Ambassador to 
Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad. The general said the insurgency in Iraq hasn't 
substantially increased within the past year.
"The insurgents need to progress to survive, and this insurgency is not 
progressing," Casey said.
Instead of gaining strength, insurgents in Iraq have changed tactics, he 
explained, to employ "more violent, more visible" attacks on softer 
civilian targets. That is "a no-win strategy for the insurgents," Casey 
said. The general noted that U.S. military members continue to train and 
team up with Iraqi units in conducting sweeps and other security missions.
..."
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2005/20050727_2246.html
"
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2005/07/mil-050727-afps02.htm

 
nooo non è una strategia di vittoria serve semplicemente a mantenere l'Iraq
nella condizione di failed-state indefinitamente e un failed-state è
l'ideale habitat per il terrorismo di quella matrice. Cosa era ed è 
l'afghanistan? Cosa il Sudan? Cosa la Somalia? Cosa lo yemen? Sono tutti
centri nevralgici del terrorismo e paesi in cui la vita non vale un cazzo
esattamente come l'Iraq di oggi.
-- 
You_fuck_with_the_bull-You_gonna_get_the_horns