Quotulatiousness

June 1, 2010

The flotilla incident

Filed under: Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:25

I’ve seen lots of posts about yesterday’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara from both pro- and anti-Israeli viewpoints. Adrian McNair has one of the most even-handed summaries:

When I first got wind of the news that Israeli Defense Forces had attacked a Turkish flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean Sea, it was accompanied by the words “massacre”, describing the death of 10 pro-Palestinian demonstrators aboard one of the ships. But as Jonathan Kay wrote about the incident in the National Post, if Israel truly had wanted to “massacre” the Hamas sympathizers aboard the flotilla, they could have simply sunk them to the bottom of the Sea with torpedos.

The “massacres” and “genocide” on Gaza continues to go very poorly indeed, given the available firepower of the Israeli military. In fact, like all international incidents involving the IDF, once the fury dies down and the seas calm a little bit, we usually learn the true story of what really happened.

As a humanitarian effort, the flotilla was a waste of resources. As a propaganda tool, however, the flotilla was quite successful: most media reports will concentrate on the casualties and ignore the fact that Israeli forces clearly tried to avoid causing those casualties.

Several different videos seem to corroborate statements by the IDF that troops came under attack by the passengers, who were clearly enraged at having been boarded by the Israelis. To further avoid violence, the soldiers had been armed with paintball guns. If that sounds like something a military command would order with the intent to “massacre” civilians, it could not have been less effective.

After coming under attack, the commandos requested permission for the deployment of lethal force, which they were granted. Up to 10 activists are believed to have been killed in the ensuing melee, with some reports stating that the activists had got a hold of weapons from the soldiers and were firing at them.

Update: Kathy Shaidle advises the “this is terrible PR for Israel” conservatives to back off:

The raw anti-Semitism making the rounds yesterday certainly disturbed me.

However, more sinister (all the more so because it was well intentioned) was the tsking and moaning about how the flotilla incident was “bad PR” for Israel — five minutes after the news broke, no less.

“Who cares about the facts?! Think of how this looks!“

You sound like the leftists on the boat.

So-called pro-Israel “conservatives” who’ve read a couple of books and articles — and certainly have never been commandos, or even been on a boat that wasn’t shaped like a swan — really have no business debating the finer points of hand to hand combat at sea.

And they simply polluted the conversation yesterday with their tiresome, showoffy “tsk tsk” tweets and posts about “PR” and “optics.”

May 17, 2010

“Of course . . . we care about winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan . . .”

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 18:00

Radley Balko contrasts the ease with which Police SWAT teams can operate compared to the rather more restrictive terms under which army units in Afghanistan have to operate:

A reader who asks his name not be used writes about the drug raid video from Columbia, Missouri:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they’re after is present at the location, and that it’s too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I’m a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)

[. . .]

I’ve heard similar accounts from other members of the military. A couple of years ago after I’d given a speech on this issue, a retired military officer and former instructor at West Point specifically asked me to stop using the term “militarization,” because he thought comparing SWAT teams to the military reflected poorly on the military.

H/T to Tom Kelly, who sent the Instapundit link from which I got the title for this post.

April 19, 2010

Sometimes simple ideas are best

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

A case where super-sizing is a good thing:

The product was inspired by a marine who, while serving in Somalia in 1993, thought it an obvious thing to have large size wipes. But there was no such product on the market. So the ex-marine took the idea to a friend who ran a gym, who then developed the product and found someone to manufacture it. All that took fifteen years, from the time the sweaty marine in Somalia got the idea.

Klenz Showers is a towel sized (2×4 feet/61x122cm) baby wipe. It was designed so that the package containing it fit into the pockets of field uniforms. The Klenz Showers wipe was large enough to clean yourself up, and feel refreshed. There was no scent, but there was aloe, so that the wipe helped heal the usual scrapes troops accumulated out in the bush. To keep the Klenz Showers light, you have to add four ounces (120ml) of water before using.

In the last two years, the Klenz Showers have become a major boost to morale, and cleanliness, for troops in Afghanistan, where many of them are out in the hills for weeks at a time. After ammo, water, batteries and food, the troops want their Klenz Showers packets.

Once you get past the initial “Dude, it’s a baby wipe” reaction, this is actually a really good idea.

March 23, 2010

Post-traumatic stress in soldiers

Filed under: Health, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

Strategy Page looks at the rising rate of reported Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the forces engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq:

As expected the U.S. Army is beginning to see more widespread effects from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). There are two main indicators. The suicide rate, which has gone from 9 per 100,000 troops in 2001, to 23 last year, gets most of the media attention. The less noticed indicator, which impacts a lot more people, is the use of anti-stress medications. These have gone up 76 percent since 2001. About 17 percent of all troops now take these drugs, including six percent of those in combat zones. In 2001, the troops used these drugs to about the same degree as the civilian population (ten percent.) The impact of these drugs, especially in combination, can be unpredictable. The army is still waiting to see how this increased use of anti-stress medications will play out. This is all unknown territory.

[. . .]

Nearly a century of energetic effort to diagnose and treat PTSD (including much recent attention to civilian victims, via accidents or criminal assault), had made it clear that most troops eventually got PTSD if they were in combat long enough. During World War II, it was found that, on average, 200 days of combat would bring on a case of PTSD for American troops. After World War II, methods were found to delay the onset of PTSD (more breaks from combat, better living conditions in the combat zone, prompt treatment when PTSD was detected). That’s why combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan often sleep in air conditioned quarters, have Internet access, lots of amenities, and a two week vacation (anywhere) in the middle of their combat tour. This has extended their useful time in combat, before PTSD sets in. No one is yet sure what the new combat days average is, and new screening methods are an attempt to find out. But more troops appear to be hitting, or approaching, the limits.

March 16, 2010

Prepare for fireworks

Filed under: Books, Europe, Germany, Middle East, Religion — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:01

. . . or actual fire, as Qur’an researchers prepare what is carefully referred to as a “critical edition”:

A team of researchers at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences is preparing to bring out the first installment of Corpus Coranicum — which purports to be nothing less than the first critically evaluated text of the Qur’an ever to be produced.

What this means is that the research team is in the process of analysing and transcribing some 12,000 slides of Qur’an mansucripts from the first six centuries of the text’s existence. Once that is complete, the way is open to producing a text that annotates and, presumably, provides some sort of exegesis on the differences found in the early manuscripts.

The impact of such a project can hardly be underestimated.

Delicately put.

Update: It is an inherently dangerous act to discuss certain works, never mind to apply academic analysis tools and provide readers with context and interpretation. This project is intended to be complete by 2025 (they’re concentrating on small sections to start with). The debate — of which I suspect I really should say the uproar — will likely consume a lot of bandwidth. If the Berlin scholars are unlucky, it may consume significant chunks of their city.

On this news, Ghost of a Flea finds an interesting parallel.

News from a parallel universe

Filed under: Middle East, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:29

The US Air Force is doing something to reverse the tide of mechanization and automation: they’ve introduced a “manned UAV”:

The MC-12 will provide the same service as a UAV (full motion video) in addition to electronic monitoring (radio, cell phone, etc.). The air force is converting some existing King Air 350s, as well as buying new ones, to obtain up to fifty MC-12s for duty as, in effect, a Predator UAV replacement. About three dozen will be in service by the end of the year. This will be a big help, because UAVs cannot be manufactured fast enough to supply battlefield needs, so the manned MC-12s helps fill the gap. The MC-12 is a militarized version of the Beech King Air. The army began using the Beech aircraft as the RC-12 in the 1970s, and has been seeking a replacement for the last few years. But it was realized that the RC-12 was suitable for use as a Predator substitute.

The King Air 350 is a 5.6 ton, twin engine aircraft that, as a UAV replacement, carries a crew of four.

A cynic might point out that it now takes four humans to replace one robot . . .

March 12, 2010

Striking at the enemy’s head

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:44

Strategy Page looks at the relative success of both intelligence and implementation in attacks directed at Taliban leaders:

The American campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan continues, mainly because it works. Since this “decapitation” (of key terrorists) program began in 2008, about 120 attacks have been made, killing about a thousand people. Some 30 percent of the dead were civilians, as the terrorists try to surround themselves with women and children. They believe that the American ROE (Rules of Engagement) will not permit missiles to be fired at them when there are obviously civilians nearby. But most of the missiles hit buildings at night. The Taliban and al Qaeda don’t like to discuss these attacks, even to score some media points by complaining of civilian casualties. But the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services do monitor radio and email in the area, and believe that about 700 terrorists, including two dozen senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and nearly a hundred mid-level ones, have died from the UAV missile attacks. Civilian deaths are minimized by trying to catch the terrorists while travelling, or otherwise away from civilians.

[. . .]

While the terrorist groups are concerned about the losses, especially among the leadership, what alarms them the most is how frequently the American UAVs are finding their key people. The real problem the terrorists have is that someone is ratting them out. Someone, or something, is helping the Americans find the terrorist leaders. That would be Pakistani intelligence (ISI), which promptly began feeling some heat when the civilians were back in power in 2008. After the purge of many Islamic radical (or pro-radical) officers, the information from the Pakistani informant network began to reach the Americans.

This Hellfire campaign is hitting al Qaeda at the very top, although only a quarter of the attacks so far have taken out any of the most senior leaders. But that means over half the senior leadership have been killed or badly wounded in the last two years. Perhaps even greater damage has been done to the terrorist middle management. These are old and experienced lieutenants, as well as young up-and-comers. They are the glue that holds al Qaeda and the Taliban together. Their loss is one reason why it’s easier to get more information on where leaders are, and why rank-and-file al Qaeda and Taliban are less effective of late.

March 3, 2010

Horses for courses: weapons and targets

Filed under: Middle East, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

Strategy Page reports on changing conditions in Afghanistan forcing troops to adapt, especially in the personal weapons category:

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has learned that the safest way to attack foreign troops, is at long distance (at least 300 meters away). That’s because most foreign troops are armed with 5.56mm assault rifles. These are very accurate, and deadly, at under 200 meters. But beyond that, the 5.56mm bullet rapidly loses accuracy and hitting power. So the Taliban will set up a long range ambush using one or more 7.62mm machine-guns, 7.62mm rifles (preferred by snipers and sharpshooters everywhere, but in Afghanistan this often means a decades old bolt action weapon) and RPGs(rocket propelled grenades.)

[. . .]

The foreign troops have learned to adapt. For example, British infantry squads in Afghanistan have learned to adjust their armament to the mission. For example, when the troops will not be travelling long distances, over rough terrain, and expect to encounter armed resistance, they will carry more firepower, including more long range weapons. Thus an eight man squad will go out with two men armed with L85 5.56mm assault rifles (one equipped with a 40mm grenade launcher), two with 5.56mm LSW automatic rifles (an L85 with a longer and heavier barrel), two with 5.56mm FN Minimi machine-guns and two with FN-MAG 7.62mm machine-guns. The latter are particularly useful if the squad is fired on by an enemy several hundred meters away. These “heavy” squads are also receiving the new 7.62mm L129A1 semi-automatic sharpshooter rifles, and one of those will often be carried along as well. Most squads already have one man armed with the existing FN-FAL 7.62mm sharpshooter rifle. Thus the heavy squad would go out with only one standard L85 assault rifle, and that one carrying a 40mm grenade launcher attachment under the barrel. The 40mm grenades are officially accurate out to 400 meters. But an experienced grenadier can put rounds on targets at twice that range.

Under normal conditions, the squad is armed with four L85s, two LSWs and two FN Minimis. One L85 has the 40mm grenade launcher and, especially in Afghanistan (where longer shots are more common), one L85 is often replaced with a 7.62mm sharpshooter rifle. In some cases, one or both of the LSWs are replaced by a 7.62mm or .338 sniper rifle.

This informal upgrading of squad firepower is nothing new, and was quite common during World War II, where even captured enemy weapons (particularly automatics) were carried instead of the standard infantry rifle.

During peacetime, there’s the official, standard TO&E. When the shooting starts, the troops on the ground quickly adapt. That’s SOP.

February 24, 2010

Sex and the single warlord

Filed under: Media, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Strategy Page discusses one of the less-well-publicized aspects of life in Afghanistan:

[. . .] in the Islamic world, sex is, well classified. Especially illicit sex. Thus some enterprising reporters have latched onto the ancient practice (in the entire region, from North Africa to India) of using young (well, teenage down to about ten) boys for sex and other entertainments (dancing, cross dressing, camel jockeys). This has been a thing with the rich and powerful in the area, for thousands of years. In some places it is sort of legal, but generally it is tolerated, even if officially forbidden. That’s because this sort of thing is most popular among the wealthy and powerful. Getting this story for Western audiences is dangerous, as those who indulge would rather make Western reporters disappear, than stop. These guys don’t consider themselves pederasts, just the custodians of ancient cultural traditions. Or something like that.

When the Taliban came to power in the mid 1990s, they outlawed the practice, but it continued anyway, just more discreetly. The Taliban tried to crack down on homosexuality in general, especially in the south, around Kandahar (the “capital” of the pro-Taliban Pushtun tribes.) Didn’t work. Casual homosexuality has long been the custom down there, and Afghans from other parts of the country (especially non-Pushtuns) have a large repertoire of humor and insults about the proclivities of those Kandaharis (one of the more printable ones is about how birds flying over Kandahar have to do so with one wing, as the other one must be used to cover the avian backside.)

Was there anyone in Dubai who wasn’t involved in the killing?

Filed under: Middle East — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

Dubai’s investigators announce another 15 suspects in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a military leader with Hamas:

Dubai has identified 15 new suspects in the assassination of a Hamas official at a Dubai luxury hotel, bringing the total number of people believed involved in the death to 26, the government said on Wednesday.

Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed last month in his hotel room in what Dubai police have said they are near certain was an Israeli hit. They said the killers travelled to the Gulf Arab emirate on European passports.

Of the new suspects, six carried British passports, three held Irish documents, three Australian, and three French, the Dubai government’s media office said in an emailed statement.

At this rate, they’ll be trying to arrest hundreds of people in connection to the assassination. Israel, of course, has not admitted any involvement (and you have to admit that previous Mossad activity didn’t appear to require a cast of this size).

February 23, 2010

Step aside, Stonehenge

Filed under: History, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:33

Turkey is apparently the place to be for cutting-edge archaeological work:

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago — a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture — the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember — the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe — the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill” — lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge — the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high — the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

February 18, 2010

The rush to assign blame to Israel

Filed under: Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:39

Tom Gross looks at the unseemly rush to blame Israel for the killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh earlier this month:

Yesterday, without any actual evidence, the media in some European countries — notably Britain — went much further than even the media in Dubai, and blamed Israel unreservedly for Mabhouh’s death.

Headlines included:

* Britons had passport details stolen by ‘Mossad death squad’ (Times of London)
* Terror of innocent Britons named as assassins: Why choose us, ask Britons whose identities were stolen by Mossad hit squad (Daily Mail, page 1). Another story on page 4 of the Daily Mail was headlined: “Dragged into a Mossad murder plot” and photo captions in the paper described those involved as “Mossad agents” and “Mossad killers”.
* And today the lead editorial in The Guardian is titled “Israeli assassinations: passports to kill”.
* And BBC Radio 4’s PM show yesterday broadcast the following at 17:35 minutes: 1 million Jews on hand to assist local Mossad executions.

Other papers mixed fact with pure nonsense about the supposed past exploits and misdeeds of Israeli intelligence.

Prominent international TV stations have also paid enormous attention to this story, blaming Israel without any concrete evidence. For example, the first four stories on the 8 am World News broadcast on CNN International yesterday concerned Mabhouh’s death (even though it occurred four weeks earlier). Only after those items did CNN report on the capture of the most senior Taliban commander since 2001, which many would argue is a far more important news story, both strategically in terms of international politics and specifically for the United States.

It’s quite possible that Israel’s secret service (Mossad) was behind the killing, but it’s also possible that this was the result of inter-factional disputes among Palestinian groups. The evidence of Israeli involvement so far is circumstantial, but the British media have often been willing to believe the worst of Israel.

There’s also this: “It would be uncharacteristically stupid of Mossad operatives if they had in fact so easily allowed themselves to be filmed, and Mossad operatives are not stupid.” That’s not to say that an operation couldn’t be an exception to the general rule, and reputations are lost even faster than they are built in the espionage/counter-espionage world.

Update: Interestingly, Fatah and Hamas are now accusing one another of complicity in the killing.

February 1, 2010

Modern etiquette

Filed under: Japan, Middle East, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:06

I guess I missed the class on American etiquette, because I had this odd notion that Americans weren’t supposed to bow to royalty. There must have been more to than that, however, as apparently you’re supposed to bow to Mayors, too:

So let me get this straight . . . Americans should not bow to Queen Elizabeth (who is head of state of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.), but should bow to the Emperor of Japan, the King of Saudi Arabia, and the Mayor of Tampa? Is that the full list? How about deputy mayors?

January 22, 2010

British law enforcement moves on bomb detector scam

Filed under: Britain, Law, Middle East — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:03

Well, it’s nice to see that sometimes the British government can move quickly on something. As reported on the BBC program Newsnight, a bogus bomb detector has been selling briskly in Iraq (link here). The lead scammer has been arrested today:

The managing director of a British company that has been selling bomb-detecting equipment to security forces in Iraq was arrested on suspicion of fraud today.

At the same time, the British government announced that it was imposing a ban on the export of the ADE-651 detectors because it was concerned they could put the lives of British forces or other friendly forces at risk.

The government promised to help investigate the multimillion-pound deal between the company, ATSC, and the security forces in Iraq.

Iraq has invested more than £50m in buying the devices and training people to use them. Police and military personnel have used them to search vehicles and pedestrians for explosives. But concerns over their effectiveness — and fears they could put lives at risk — have been raised.

Avon and Somerset police officers arrested Jim McCormick, 53, on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation. A spokesman said: “We are conducting a criminal investigation and, as part of that, a 53-year-old man has been arrested.

There should be a special hell for this scam artist

Filed under: Britain, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:36

A report from the BBC on a “bomb detection device” widely sold in the Middle East, which does nothing at all:

A BBC Newsnight investigation has found that a so-called “bomb detector”, thousands of which have been sold to Iraq, cannot possibly work.

Leading explosives expert Sidney Alford told Newsnight the sale of the ADE-651 was “absolutely immoral”.

“This type of equipment does not work,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind betting that lives have been lost as a consequence.”

Questions have been raised over the ADE-651, following three recent co-ordinated waves of bombings in Baghdad.

It sounds like the ADE-651 is a combination of tech-look crap and new age marketing crap:

Iraq has bought thousands of the detectors for a total of $85m (£52m).

The device is sold by Jim McCormick, based at offices in rural Somerset, UK.

The ADE-651 detector has never been shown to work in a scientific test.

There are no batteries and it consists of a swivelling aerial mounted to a hinge on a hand-grip. Critics have likened it to a glorified dowsing rod.

And if that’s not enough whiff of flim-flam for you, how about this claim?

The training manual for the device says it can even, with the right card, detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills.

Update: The Guardian reports that the managing director of the firm has been arrested today.

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