Military Archives

My Wkly Std tribute to Medal of Honor winner SEAL Mike Monsoor

By Michael Fumento

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor (right) during a fight in the Mulaab, Ramadi

In fact, he was protecting me as well as his teammates. SEALs don't wear identification -- even on dress uniforms -- and I would never have learned his name if, six months later, he hadn't sacrificed all to save those same teammates.

Last week I looked on as President Bush, tears glistening on his face, presented the parents of Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class (Sea, Air, and Land) Michael Monsoor our nation's highest award -- the Medal of Honor. "Mr. and Mrs. Monsoor: America owes you a debt that can never be repaid," he said. "This nation will always cherish the memory of your son."

Read the rest (including photos and video of SEALs in action), by the only reporter to write about the ceremony who was in combat with Monsoor.

Navy SEAL Mike Monsoor to Receive Medal of Honor

By Michael Fumento

I first wrote about being in combat with Monsoor's unit in Ramadi, Iraq in April of 2006 in my Weekly Standard "New Band of Brothers" article, though he wasn't mentioned by name. He was killed just as I was returning to Ramadi later in the year, and one of the photos I took of him during that first fight graced the cover of the issue containing my subsequent article. I plan to attend and to write about the Medal of Honor Ceremony.

Should literacy be required for bloggers?

By Michael Fumento

I can't speak for the blogosphere generally; it's rather large for that. I can say there are some excellent, careful, thoughtful bloggers. But all too often I see something like this at "No More Mister Nice Blog," slugged: "I GUESS THE ARMY IS NOW PART OF THE LIE-BERAL MEDIA."

"In November, a study by CBS News found a high rate of suicides among veterans," wrote blogger Steve M. "In response, Michael Fumento of the New York Post promptly rose to shoot the messenger" he wrote, linking to my article. It went on that, "Fumento cited a lot of statistics that, he claimed, proved CBS's "nefariousness." But two months later, we now have some new statistics: "Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post."

Never mind that I'm not "of" the Post; I just occasionally contribute. Instead, let's count. "Veteran" comprises seven letters, whereas "active-duty soldiers" comprises 18 letters plus a hyphen. It thus appears Steve M. not only cannot read, he cannot do the simplest math. Since that would also preclude writing, it appears he has prevailed upon mommy to do his typing.

Finally, he knows nothing of logic. Even were we comparing apples to apples or oranges to oranges, an Army study showing an increase would not necessarily support a CBS study showing an increase. If the CBS said flu deaths doubled last year and the CDC said they went up 10 percent, would the CDC have established the CBS figures and methodology as correct?

Don't ask No More Mister Nice Blog - or at least not in writing!

Erratum, albeit obvious, in blog on Wkly Std piece on Lancet Iraq studies

By Michael Fumento

In my original blog, regarding my "The Casualties of War" Weekly Standard article, I wrote that the number of Iraqi dead Lancet 2006 attributed to car bombs per day was "111 times higher" than those of the antiwar group Iraqbodycount. That would be extreme, even for The Lancet. Or maybe not. As it happens, Iraqbodycount found "111 more," not 111 times more.

Yes, Lancet lied about Iraq war deaths (My Wkly Std article)

By Michael Fumento

When The Lancet came out with its 2004 "pre-election surprise" study claiming a massive number of war-related Iraqi deaths since the invasion, I and others immediately poked so many holes in it that it resembled a spaghetti strainer. Undaunted, two years later the same journal published another pre-election surprise study alleging a drastically-higher 655,000 excess deaths over a longer period, with 600,000 directly from violence.

Naturally, the media cheered until hoarse, featuring Lancet's numbers on 25 news shows and in 188 articles within a single week. Likewise for the leftist blogosphere like Daily Kos and Tim Lambert at Deltoid - who began a vendetta against me over it.

But now, as I discuss in my current Weekly Standard article, "The Casualties of War," complete with a plethora of hyperlinks, a new study co-conducted by the World Health Organization (hardly an Iraq war booster) and appearing in America's most prestigious medical journal, directly compares itself with Lancet 2006. It also uses as comparison numbers kept by the antiwar group IraqBodyCount. The comparisons show the real carnage is whatever was left of the Lancet's reputation and that of its editor, who screeches about "Anglo-American imperialism" at anti-war rallies.

Perhaps most importantly, for the latest comparable reporting period, the new study found Lancet's numbers to be SEVEN TIMES its own.

The WHO's Iraq Family Health Study (IFHS) "found an estimated 151,000 excess violent deaths from the U.S-led invasion in March 2003 through June 2006, when compared to violent deaths in the prewar period," I note. "This is roughly one-fourth the war-related deaths found by Lancet in 2006."

Specifically, for the last comparable year, "the IFHS daily figure was 2.3 times higher than that of IraqBodyCount, (while) the Lancet 2006 daily figure was a stunning 7.3 times higher than that of the IFHS and 17 times higher than that of IraqBodyCount."

Nonetheless, the research leader for both the Lancet studies insists the IFHS findings are consistent with Lancet 2006! He's said the same of the only "study" to find a higher number than The Lancet, a British poll last year concluding over 1.2 million Iraqis had been "murdered." Die-never defenders like Lambert likewise assert that all three studies are consistent. In short, no study can possibly find so few or so many deaths that somehow it doesn't somehow support The Lancet.

Yet one hardly need to look at outside studies to find Lancet 2006 is B.S. Consider just this.

Lancet 2006 attributed an amazing 166 deaths on average per day to car bombings alone from June 2005-June 2006. These bombings are fastidiously reported in the U.S. media and Wikipedia keeps a list of the major ones. Yet the highest single-day car bomb total Wikipedia records (114) is 42 short of Lancet's alleged average. Lancet's daily car bomb victim average is also 111 more than Iraq Body Count figure for war-related deaths from all causes. How could IraqBodyCount miss all those bodies?

Are the MSM now admitting to having been duped - assuming "dupe" is the proper word?

Get real. "WHO Says Iraq Civilian Death Toll Higher Than Cited" screamed the title of The New York Times article.

ERRATUM: In the original blog, I wrote that the number of Iraqi dead Lancet 2006 attributed to car bomb victims per day was "111 times higher" than Iraqbodycount. That would be extreme, even for The Lancet. Or maybe not. As it happens, it's "111 more," not 111 times more.

More exploitation of vets - homelessness now

By Michael Fumento

A self-styled "homeless advocacy" group is the latest to exploit vets to achieve ends that would do nothing to help former service personnel. The National Alliance to End Homelessness released a "study" prompting great media fanfare making two points, both false. 1) Vets are greatly overrepresented among the homeless in shelters, and 2) the root cause of homelessness is inability to afford a home.

In fact, as I write in the New York Post, vets are only overrepresented because of sheer demographics. Shelter denizens are overwhelmingly male and males comprise 93 percent of all vets. As to housing, it bears noting that despite the efforts of myriad "advocacy" groups to present vets as losers, they have more education, higher rates of employment, and higher salaries than comparable non-vets. The data on why people are in shelters confirms what anybody (including me) who lives near a shelter already knows. These people aren't just like you and me but without a home; their rates of alcohol and drug abuse and mental illness are astronomical.

Claims such as these, and all the journalists who simply repeat them, do the homeless - vets or otherwise - a tremendous disservice in taking attention away from the real causes of their problems. Yeah, it's wicked. What's new?

CBS lies again on veteran suicide data

By Michael Fumento

"Contrary to Fumento's statement, the data, as well as the methodology used to collect and analyze it, have been available online for anyone to access." So writes Armen Keteyian, CBS's Chief Investigative Correspondent and the man behind the story that vets are killing themselves at twice the rate of non-vets.

Said Keteyian in his New York Post letter about my article, not my "statement." "Our investigative unit collected official suicide data for veterans from all branches of the military from 45 states" and had it independently analyzed by a University of Georgia biostatistics expert. Very basic data were online and I said so and my website links to it.

But "45 states sent us numbers" is not a proper explanation of methodology. It's also not changed by their having an outside bio-statistician look at their final numbers, insofar as he had no way of knowing what went into making those numbers - something CBS completely glossed over for obvious reasons.

Further, the methodology from each state would vary. What did CBS do to make this a proper meta-analysis?

Insofar as they used amateurs, even if they tried to be honest they couldn't be. And rarely does anybody ever accuse CBS of trying to be honest. Epidemiology is horribly complex. I've said it many times: After 20 years of writing about epidemiology, I can poke a hole in a bad epi study in five minutes. I can also detect that a ship is sinking in five minutes. But never would I deign to either design or build a ship. CBS took that step and was undeterred by the reality that nobody else out there came who has studied this issue got results indicating any increased suicide risk for veterans anywhere.

CBS's final word: "After the reports aired, Congressional [sic] hearings were requested," wrote Keteyian. Yes, because only Congress still believes anything aired on CBS. But gee, what if those hearings had been called by a Wisconsin Senator named Joe McCarthy . . .

CBS's Bogus Vet Suicide Epidemic Claim

By Michael Fumento

As you know, there are two federal holidays in November. Thanksgiving is one, "Exploit the Veterans Day" is the other. Say again? Never mind that we vets excel in measurable ways such as education, employment, and pay. Activist groups and the media always have fresh reports ready in November showing how wretched our lives are.

This year the goons were CBS News and a homeless activist group. I'll deal with homeless group in a later piece; but in the New York Post I take on CBS's claim that a study they conducted all by their lonesomes (Big red flag there.) shows an "epidemic" of veterans ending their poor miserable lives. (And if you don't believe that, CBS has some documents on President Bush's National Guard service they'd like to sell you. )

The CBS suicide claim goes against lots of detailed published reports regarding both active duty service personnel and veterans. For example, the suicide rate among Vietnam vets and Gulf War vets is no higher than among comparable civilians. Why would there be such a high suicide rate among vets in general then, most of whom served during peacetime? And while naturally CBS wants to blame its "findings" on PTSD, I also discuss studies showing that vets with PTSD are less likely to kill themselves. All CBS's "study" showed us was a crass way of raising ratings.

"Band of Bloggers," including Fumento footage, premiers on History Channel Friday

By Michael Fumento

Explore the impact of blogging as a new medium for immediate and raw information. In the midst of modern day combat examine the unfiltered and raw evolution of military blogs and bloggers. Listen as soldiers who during their recent Iraq deployments reflect on the important connection they had with their blogging and how the band of military bloggers has revolutionized the way we understand combat. Experience firsthand, unfiltered accounts of the pain, the hardship, and even the simple beauty found in Iraq; stories that often go unseen in the media's coverage of the war.

That's the History Channel's plug for its show, "The Band of Bloggers," which first airs Fri. Nov. 9 at 8pm. I'm told it will contain 56 seconds of my footage from Ramadi, including a near rooftop sniping of a soldier in 1/506, 101st Airborne Division and the subsequent ambush we endured. It may also include some of my firefight footage with Seal Team 3, including both Mike Monsoor and Marc Allen Lee, both later killed in action.

Subsequent air times are here.

If my 56 seconds aren't there, don't sue me.

Hollywood's War on War on Terror, my piece in the NYSun

By Michael Fumento

Critics have labeled the new movie "Rendition" a "political thriller." Thriller? Maybe. "Political?" Absolutely.

As I write in the NYSun, it's merely the latest in an unbroken series of major films about the war on terror that range from those seeking to assure us that Islamist terrorism isn't the threat we might think, to those depicting the terrorists as no worse than those who fight them.

Consider:

Tom Clancy's "The Sum of all Fears," when made into a film, converted Islamist terrorists into an Austrian neo-Nazi. How's that for realism? The reason for the change was an explicit kowtow to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a supporter of Islamist terror activities.

In "Babel," the accidental shooting of an American tourist is treated as a terrorist act; but in the end the only "terrorist" killed is a cute little boy.

"Live Free or Die Hard" makes you think at first that Islamist terrorists are the threats. Turns out it's an evil cyber-villain with a beautiful Kung Fu sidekick who once worked for . . . the DHS!

In "The Kingdom," we find out in the final seconds of the film that FBI agents sent to Saudi Arabia to track down the killer of 200 American civilians are on the same moral footing as the terrorists they tracked.

In "Rendition," a clearly innocent American "family man" born is Egypt is snatched from U.S. soil and shipped to a country where torture is allowed. And torture they do!

The predictable excuses don't wash.

1. "Hollywood just wants to make money. If we want to send a message, we use Western Union." Right. "Babel" lost money and so will "The Kingdom." "Rendition" is already a flop.

2. "Islamic terrorists are unsellable villains." Right. They routinely explode bombs in markets and launch chlorine gas attacks. They build torture chambers and make and display videos of beheadings in which the victim screams in agony as his head is sawed off with a dull knife. Even their foiled plots are often bizarre, such as Richard Reid's "shoe bomber" attempt. These guys are a scriptwriter's dream. Quentin Tarantino couldn't think this stuff up.

3. "We don't want to stereotype Muslims or Arabs." Right. Nobody suffers more from Islamic terror than Muslims themselves. Islamist terrorists everyday kill and maim Iraqis and Afghans. Now they've blown up at least 136 Pakistanis greeting former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. All were Muslims.

Truly, Hollywood has declared war on the War on Terror.

Some of Michael Fumento's combat footage from Iraq can be viewed on the History Channel over the Veterans' Day weekend.

Agent Orange and New Zealanders who fought in 'Nam

By Michael Fumento

In an e-mail from New Zealand with the subject line: "At last," Rex Barron wrote:

It's nice to see and hear commonsense at last. I'm referring to your AO [Agent Orange] articles, of course. I'm a New Zealand soldier (infantry) who served in Vietnam 68-69. It may interest you to know that the NZ soldiers and families are a close knit family and therefore we know exactly how many went and how many have died since. I have been banging my head against a brick wall trying to convince my fellow veterans that they are not about to keel over with some dreaded lurgy brought on by TCDD. [TCDD is the trace dioxin that's present in AO as part of the manufacturing process. "Lurgy" or "lurgi" is British English slang for an unspecified or mythical disease.]

By using the population mortality graphs I have proved, successfully, that of the 3300 who went the 575 dead of various causes is quite normal.

At first glance it seems high but the percentage of Maori [The tribe native to New Zealand] soldiers serving was 20% higher than than the general population and tragically Maori die two and a half times faster than Caucasian. So unlike the scaremongers I used both population tables. Both Australia and the US used conscription and consequently have found it hard to come up with measurable numbers. In our case we were all volunteers and coming from a small country everybody is accounted for.

We were attached to the Australians so where they went we went.

There are too many fingers in the pie dish now with all the money that has been thrown around. It was your Mark Twain who said, "A man will not understand if his salary depends on him not understanding."

Cordially yours,
Rex Barron

Dear Rex,

Thanks for the info and thanks for having fought alongside our troops in a nasty war.

BTW, in future writings to people you suspect get a lot of e-mail you need to have a more detailed subject line. Something like "at last" sounds like it's for "At last, there's a penile enlargement pill that really works!"

All the best,
Mike

Huffington Post ups Iraqi deaths past 1 million

By Michael Fumento

As of August 14th, 1,019,627 Iraqis "have been killed due to the U.S. invasion" according to Robert Naiman in a blog at the Huffington Post. His methodology, however, as you might guess, is a bit wanting.

He starts with a 2006 Lancet study that he says calculates 600,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war as of July, 2006. (Actually, the study said 655,000 but then you can't expect Naiman to read actual studies or even their abstracts or conclusions.) He then updates that figure to the present by taking the estimated death figure at the website of an anti-war group called Iraqi Body Count at that time, the estimated figure now, and applying the percentage increase to 600,000. Comments on his blog express disbelief that the mainstream media has ignored this ingenious work and the horrifying conclusion - but there just may be a reason:

1. The methodology in the Lancet work has been shredded, most recently by yours truly just a week ago. It was sheer propaganda, as not just the study made clear but also separate comments from the lead author and the journal's editor.

2. While Naiman is happy to use the percentage increase in Iraq Body Count's data, he rejects their actual figures. Wonder why? As of August 24, the group's website provided a range of Iraqi civilian deaths due to the invasion of "70,359 to 76,873." You probably needn't go running for your calculator to see that's just a bit below the Lancet figure from last year and somewhat more below Naiman's estimate.

3. About 420 days had elapsed since the Lancet's cut-off and the publication of Naiman's estimate. Divide those 455,000 additional alleged deaths by 420 and you get over 1,083 deaths a day! How are these multitudes being killed and who's hiding the bodies?

4. Naiman claims he's using the Lancet research for his baseline, but the original Lancet paper, published in 2004, came up with a (still ridiculous) 180 deaths a day.

5. Therefore, while the only two datasets Naiman claims to rely on are from Iraq Body Count and The Lancet, his estimate is grotesquely higher than both of theirs. In sum, Mr. Naiman has merely illustrated the power of wishful thinking.

Burying the Lancet's "100,000 civilians killed" nonsense

By Michael Fumento

It was an October surprise courtesy of the Lancet medical journal. A report, rushed to the public via online publication five days before the 2004 election, claimed the American-led coalition had directly or indirectly killed about 100,000 Iraqi civilians since the invasion - most from air strikes. The media, with no great love for Bush and already turning against the war, went wild.

Tim Lambert: Lancet defender and infamous troll

There were critics, including yours truly. But now there's even more ammunition in the form of a statistical analysis by David Kane presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Salt Lake City. Naturally Kane's assessment is under vicious attack not by proponents of good epidemiology but rather opponents of the war, primarily a troll at the website Deltoid, Tim Lambert. Read my full article here.

One cheer for Obama's call for attacking Pakistan

By Michael Fumento

Barack Obama is taking heat from the right over his comments that if elected president he wouldn't hesitate to attack al Qaeda in Pakistan to disrupt its safe havens.

But give Obama this, he is the first candidate (that I know of) who has called the Pakistanis to task for allowing al Qaeda and other international Islamist terror groups to operate there with impunity. Western Pakistan today is what Afghanistan was on September 10th. Terrorists currently operate in Afghanistan but there's little evidence they operate out of it. SOMEBODY in some way needs to clear out the Pakistani rat's nest and if Obama stirs debate as to how, all power to him.

I'm also tired of the black-white fallacy of "Musharraf or an Islamist" as Pakistani president. Musharraf overthrew a democratically-elected prime minister who has shown no inclination that I know of towards Islamism. There's no reason to believe Islamists would win in a free election. What's clear is we need somebody with the balls (or ovaries, perhaps) to clear out western Pakistan and Musharraf does not.

So much for the Lancet's "massive Iraqi civilian death" study

By Michael Fumento

Remember the Lancet study in 2004 claiming that "about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," and that "Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths?"

I wrote on this as soon as it appeared, observing that several indicators showed it was a piece of crock. But others did much more in-depth analyses, including Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz. He has now found out via Michelle Malkin and Instapundit that a forthcoming study by David Kane, Institute Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, shows just how wrong the original study was. Love notes among other things that that "if the Falluja cluster is included in the statistical calculations, the confidence interval dips below zero" meaning that it loses statistical significance. Without statistical significance, the findings mean nothing,

I claimed at the time the "100,000 death study" was pure politics (It came out right before the presidential election) and intentional deception on the part of the authors and the Lancet editor himself and there's no reason to think otherwise now.

Incidentally, as I was putting this blog together I accidentally posted it, making Love's words look like my own. Mea culpa.

"Tough Americans": My article on military amputees in the Weekly Standard

By Michael Fumento

In the film "Home of the Brave," a soldier who lost her hand in Iraq is asked if she underwent physical rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Yeah, Walter Reed," she says. "Talk about tough Americans." Tough Americans, indeed.

When I visited that same ward the first soldier I met was Sgt. Luke Shirley, who had stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED) blowing off his right side appendages and spraying him with shrapnel. "It kinda sucks not having an arm or leg," he told me, "but it hasn't bothered me like you'd think it would." Just offhand, I would think it would have devastated him. I was dumbstruck. What kind of person is this?

That's why I visited Walter Reed's Orthopedic Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Ward in Washington, D.C, along with the surgical inpatient ward at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. (At Bethesda the men and women aren't yet ready to be sent on to Walter Reed or elsewhere for rehabilitation.) I wanted to meet these tough Americans and tell some of their stories.

Read the entire article. I admit it's rather sensitive and compassionate for a Mike Fumento piece, but you've got to let your guard down sometime. For these guys and gals, anytime.

Dictator Musharraf can no longer dictate to us

By Michael Fumento

Back in May, Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf, as one paper put it, "insisted that Pakistan was the only country that had a military, political, developmental and administrative strategy to defeat extremism."

"I would tell everyone: Come and learn from us," he said. "We are sitting here knowing exactly what is happening on ground," he said. "You sitting in the West don't know anything. So, don't teach me, come and learn from us. Come and understand the environment. And then decide on what has to be done and what doesn’t have to be done. We are doing more than any other country in the world."

My! How things have changed! First there was that nasty incident concerning the Taliban Red Mosque right in the capital of Islamabad. Now Musharraf's deal with the Taliban and other militants in western Pakistan has fallen completely apart, with the tribesmen saying they were declaring war on Pakistan. Mind you, for the most part the Taliban simply ignored the deal anyway. Musharraf promised to leave them alone so long as they didn't use the territory as an entry point into Afghanistan and so long as they were peaceful towards the Pakistanis as well. Naturally, the deal didn't stop a single Taliban from going to Afghanistan. Some people just might call that a deal breaker, but not Musharraf. But now they're attacking the Pakistanis as well.

Meanwhile a new National Intelligence Estimate report and another report from the National Counterterrorism Center states that al Queda has practically rebuilt itself in northwest Pakistan because we're stupid enough to honor a border Musharraf can't control.

Musharraf is a malevolent buffoon. He helped build up and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan (though he now denies it) but cannot now control them in any way. The only lessons we have to learn from him are negative ones. As to western Pakistan, we have to be quite clear that since he cannot control the area, that it's basically not part of his country, it's happy hunting grounds for us. We will enter it whenever it suits our purpose and we will kill and capture any enemy of the United States. If Musharraf doesn't like it, he can vent by selling more nuclear technology to rogue states.

Hollywood goes to war against anti-terrorism

By Michael Fumento

In 1942, Hollywood went to war. It began pumping out countless movies designed to be both entertaining and instructive as to the nature of our enemies. A lot of them were done on the cheap and others were pretty hokey, but they kept drilling home the message that we must persevere no matter the costs or how long it would take. Fast forward that reel to the post-9/11 era. Just how many movies can you count in which Islamist terrorists are the bad guys and that do not specifically concern the Sept. 11 attacks? Meanwhile - and this may be considered a spoiler, so if you haven't seen the movie look out - the just-released fourth installment of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard, teaches us that just because there are some bad guys out to destroy America doesn't mean they have to be bin Laden's buddies.

In fact, it was the Department of Homeland Security that turns out to have been more or less responsible for the attack in the first place. Meanwhile one of the few good guys in the movie, the head of the FBI team that aids our hero John McClane, looks decidedly Arabic. Indeed, he played an Arab in an earlier movie.

One of last year's most critically-acclaimed films was the severely disjointed Babel in which what is treated as a terrorist shooting of an American woman in Morocco turns out to have been an accident. Heck, it wasn't even an AK-47 involved but rather a Japanese hunter's rifle.

If I'm mistaken and there have been movies in which Islamists where the bad guys, please let me know. (If so, I'll bet they went straight to video.) Likewise for more movies in which Islamists are exonerated.

In any event, where once Hollywood shored up a resolute but war-weary public (Everyone knew somebody who had been killed or maimed and they thought the war would last well into 1946 or beyond), Hollywood now feels its job is to assure us that with terrorism we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Even while traveling in countries with strong Islamist movements. Never mind that the week the new Die Hard came out there were two aborted terrorist attacks in Great Britain perpetrated by middle class Islamist physicians living as normal Britons - a truly scary scenario that's right out of a movie like The Manchurian Candidate.

One of the ironies is that you don't even need to create fictitious Islamist villains; the real ones are so classically evil. They order massive car bombings that kill hundreds of people; they launch chlorine gas attacks; they build torture chambers; they make videos of beheadings in which the victim screams in agony as his head is sawed off with a dull knife. These guys are a scriptwriters' dream. Quentin Tarantino couldn't think this stuff up.

Look, you can't live on the edge of your seat all the time in a war that could last a generation or far longer. If we think we see a bomb in every backpack, the terrorists are winning. But there's got to be a happy medium. Hollywood doesn't see it that way. A lot of people have suggested that, pathetically, it's going to take another terrorist attack to wake us from our slumber. Wouldn't it be fitting if it were in a movie theater?

My Afghanistan videos are posted

By Michael Fumento

Okay, it took me awhile considering my embed in Afghanistan's Zabul Province, documented in my article "The Other War" in The Weekly Standard, was in April.

Ever wonder what a massive 120 millimeter mortar looks like in action? I've been on the wrong side of these bad boys on occasion; it was nice to be on the shooting side, courtesy of the men of 1/4 Infantry at FOB Mizan. It looks pretty neat at night, too. My ears rang for hours because I forgot my earplugs.

So you like pyrotechnics, huh? Here's one Romanian livefire exercise, including an RPG. Forgot my earplugs on that one, too. And here's another, from a different angle. That's a Romanian armored personnel carrier at the beginning. I fired both the main gun, with massive 14.5 mm rounds, and the secondary 7.62 gun.

I got some excellent helo footage on this trip, because in Iraq they virtually all fly at night. In Afghanistan, all my flights were during the day allowing me to get this footage and this that includes a Russian-made Mi-28 Hip. You don't see those too often.

If you're into flowers or narcotics, this footage of a poppy field I stumbled onto is for you.

Most instructive, perhaps, is this film of my visit to an Afghan National Police station. It's pretty pathetic, with virtually no defenses from the Taliban or al Qaeda attackers. We need to shore up our allies or they may not stay our allies forever.

Hey, and I know this is the video age and all that but I think my still photos are actually a lot neater. Check them out here.

Update on FOB Mizan - it's heated up since I left

By Michael Fumento

From 1st Lt. Kevin Stofan, commander, FOB Mizan, Zabul Province, Afghanistan

I have not been able to contact you since I have been away. I was up at FOB Baylough with some of my platoon to help reinforce our brothers up there. It is real rough up there. Daily rocket, mortar, recoilless rifle, and small arms attacks. We did some great missions up there and really took a toll on the Taliban up there. Cpt. Edwards the B Co company commander has definitely been presented with a serious challenge up there given the lack of forces needed to properly do the job, but he is doing a great job with what he has. I had to come back to Mizan prematurely however due to the fact that we started to get attacked (twice while I was away). It looks like the Spring offensive is actually the summer offensive here in Zabul. Most likely due to the ending of the poppy season and availability of funds for weapons and fighters.

Meanwhile, Jonas Dovydenas met Pfc. Aaron Murray (below right) and Spc.Marcel Green at Landstuhl Medical Center receiving out-patient treatment. You'll recall from the "Firefight in Mizan" sidebar to my "The Other War" piece in The Weekly Standard that both were injured by RPGs in combat against the Taliban.

Finally, below are a couple of my video clips from the 120 mm blasting away at FOB Mizan, one during the day and the other at night.

I'll be posting my entire set from the trip soon.

Europe's big wimps protest too much

By Michael Fumento

I just came across a letter to the National Post from the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Germany protesting an article of mine from March 22, 2007, but it repeats a theme I've re-emphasized quite recently. With the sole exception of the UK none of the major NATO nations will fight in Afghanistan.

Among the more interesting droppings:

"Following the NATO Riga Summit, France, Germany and Spain decided to make additional means available (including aircraft and helicopters). They have not turned a blind eye to NATO's call for help in Afghanistan."

What part of "refuse to fight" doesn't translate into your languages?

"The European Union is one of the biggest contributors to reconstruction efforts ($1.5-billion Canadian earmarked for 2002-2006)."

They easily could have said what portion of that came from their three countries. They did not. There's a reason.

"Also, about 50% of all International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops deployed in Afghanistan come from European NATO members."

See previous response. France has a grand total of 1,000 members there whom it is now threatening to withdraw. Good riddance. They're just a mass surrender waiting to happen.

To quote my recent Weekly Standard piece:

"[NATO nations refuse to pull their weight] – in total personnel contributed, combat soldiers, or defense expenditures. Only six members spend as much as 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Last year the then-supreme NATO commander said of the alliance's efforts in Afghanistan, "We have about 102 national restrictions [the "caveats"], 50 of which I judge to be operationally significant." Even as they refer to America as a bellicose "cowboy" nation, they sit back and let us and a handful of other countries expend the money and blood.

"The Other War," my cover article in The Weekly Standard

By Michael Fumento

As I relate in my piece "The Other War" in the new issue of The Weekly Standard, wherever I was in Afghanistan I heard the same refrain: "This war is winnable." Implicit is that it's also losable; but what they really mean is winnable in comparison to Iraq. It's strange but true that Afghanistan -- with four major ethnic groups, two official languages, and almost countless lesser languages -- is far more of a proud, united nation than Iraq. Despite increasing calls for negotiating with the Taliban, who cannot be negotiated with, we've actually done an admirable job of killing them and keeping them from taking hold of any part of Afghanistan. But as I saw and as statistics bear out, progress is threatened by our fighting the war on a shoestring in terms of both men and material. We're especially making a grave mistake in not ensuring that the Afghan army and police - who really fight and who really are loyal to the government - are paid. Part of this is Washington's fault, but much of the fault goes to NATO where few countries pull their weight economically and merely six of 37 member nations actually allow their men to fight. I'm proud to have spent much of my time with personnel from one of those exceptions, Romania.

While the article contains 15 of my photos, my entire Afghan photoset is also now posted.

Negotiating with the Taliban Is Nuts (My NY Post Commentary)

By Michael Fumento

Is it time to negotiate with the Taliban? Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf cut a deal with the Afghan extremists last fall, allowing them to flourish safely in his nation's Waziristan province. Then-Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist said in October that we must "assimilate" them into the Afghan government. Now, in apparent reaction to civilian deaths caused by the Taliban strategy of hiding among regular Afghanis, Afghanistan's upper house of legislature has voted for an immediate cease-fire and talks followed by withdrawal of NATO forces.

But as I write in my NY Post commentary, the futility of talks is obvious from Taliban beliefs and history, with the latest example being Musharraf's deal. They got action from him; he got a broken promise from them. To put it bluntly, anybody who calls for such negotiations is an idiot - or is named Mullah Omar.

Awesome tattoo tribute to deceased SEAL Mike Monsoor

By Michael Fumento

As a rule I find tattoos and body-piercing (ears on women aside) to be ugly. But this is pretty darned impressive.

Click image for larger view.

This had nothing to do with the incident that took Monsoor's life and made him a candidate for the Medal of Honor, when he threw himself on a grenade to save three more lives.

Exhausted but Home

By Michael Fumento

My route back was tortuous to say the least. I grabbed a helo from FOB Mizan to FOB Lagman, whereupon a few hours later the same helo comes back and takes me south to Kandahar Air Force Base. For some reason it seems you can fly into Kandahar from Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base but you can't go in the reverse direction.

Heading home! Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

The C-130 flew a few hours then as it was landing banked as hard as I've ever felt a C-130 do so, first right then left. Then it sort of just plopped down like a flipped egg on a grill, in the hardest landing I've ever had. The other passengers, all military, expressed surprise.

This is the kind of landing wimp reporters like Time Magazine Bureau Chief Aparisim Ghosh complain they undergo at Baghdad International but don't. We all piled off, along with the cargo of two Toyota flatbeds. It was pitch dark so naturally I didn't recognize anything. Only when I got to a building where I could call my Bagram PAO contacts did I find out they couldn't pick me up for the night because -- surprise! -- I was far away at FOB Salarno, which hugs the Pakistani border.

I'll never know if the plane really continued on to Bagram, but if so I would have been the only passenger. As to Salarno, it regularly takes rocket fire and hence the pilot's combat landing.

The door gunner. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

So I spend the night in the transient tent listening to one gunship after another zipping just overhead, get up at 0500, and actually manage to catch the second of the three mosquito planes to Bagram. There I got a jet C-17 to Ali Al Salem, spend the night there, grab the hour-long shuttle to the commercial airport, and fly out at 0130 the next morning.

Tough, but I'm homeward bound now right? Wrong.

The five-hour flight into Frankfurt is uneventful and I left myself plenty of time for the incredible shaking down you get at security when you take a flight from that airport to the U.S. But the flight leaves on time and I'm only eight hours from home -- or so I think. Three and a half hours out, somewhere over the Atlantic, they announce they're turning the plane around "for safety reasons."

There's a problem with the hydraulic system. But if it had been for safety reasons, they would have been required to land at the nearest airport and many were nearer than Frankfurt. We land uneventfully and it turns out the "safety" problem is merely that after landing the wheels won't allow proper steering into the gate and we have to be towed in. In other words, we could readily have gone onto to Washington Dulles except that Lufthansa's repair facility is at Frankfurt and didn't want to pay somebody else to fix their planes elsewhere no matter how much it inconveniences their passengers and how much fuel they needlessly burn. Gotta love Big Airline.

"Take that, Lufthansa!" Click image for larger view.

I've said it before; transportation is the worst part of any embed for a citizen embed. If you're with the MSM, they pay for you to just fly in and out of Kabul via Bahrain or Delhi. But I had to rely on my chief PAO for Afghanistan, Capt. Peter Katzfey, the one who wrongly told me my embed was in Kandahar when I later discovered on my own it was in Zabul. He also wrongly told me I needed an Afghan visa that cost $70 and two trips to the embassy.

In the final insult, he told me he would plot my route out of the country when my embed was complete. Although I e-mailed him twice while I was in-country about doing so, he did not.

The more I get to know Army PAOs, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, the less respect I have for them. They always seem to have something better to do than their jobs. I'm told the Marines take this business much more seriously and in fact the best PAO I had was Marine Maj. Megan McClung. But she's dead.

I strongly suspect (actually I know), that if I worked for the MSM -- the folks the soldiers are always complaining about to me, including on this trip -- I wouldn't receive such shabby treatment. But you have to have priorities. If you're dealing with a reporter whose organization makes a point of portraying the troops as a bunch of thugs and the Iraq war as hopeless, you give him first class treatment. Thank goodness the government of Iraq banned Al Jazeera, else the Army's PAO staff would be absorbed in kissing their feet.

If you're dealing with somebody paying out of his own pocket because of his conviction that the American people deserve the truth and aren't getting it and that the soldiers deserve an even break and aren't getting it -- you dump on him. You give him crummy assignments, such as when Lt. Col. Garver and his Combined Press Information Center tried to foist 12 days of ho-hum Tikrit on me, and then when he needs to go home you make plot his own way out of a country he's never been in that's on the wrong side of the planet.

One of many men I photographed, along with his wife. Click image for larger view.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

More on FOB Mizan

By Michael Fumento

Looking inside this compound is like looking at stop action photography -- you know, like when they make the flower appear to bloom right before your eyes. In the few days I've been here I've seen both sides of the "safe house" (the soldiers' quarters) reinforced extending the roof on both sides and building two new walls of sandbags. The dining facility (DFAC) has been sandbagged about half way up but only because they keep running out of filled bags.

An Apache gunship flies above FOB Mizan's "sandbag palace."Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

I jokingly told the commander that he must be an engineer. Turns out he is. But like me, he was trained mostly in blowing things up and is in fact a graduate of the sapper school at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. That's where I had my basic and advanced training. Yet Stofan insisted the credit for most of the building goes to his platoon sergeant and "A lot of the structures have been built by the carpenters, guys who've had odd jobs and such. There's no real architect; they wing it."

Firing the M-120 120 mm mortar at night. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Stofan, an Officer Candidate School graduate, is rather on the old side for a 1st Lt. at 28. But he only joined the Army in March of 2005. The reason? "I got tired of sitting on the sidelines."
Says the Miami Springs, Florida native whose wife is back in Germany, "Pretty much the reason I joined was to go to war. I was happy to deploy to Afghanistan."

B Co., 1-4 Infantry arrived at FOB Mizan from its base in Hohenfels, Germany (near Nuremburg) on January 15, inheriting the site from the 10th Mountain Division, which in turn took over from the 173rd Airborne Brigade. As discussed in an earlier blog the Mizan district, with a population of about 25,000, is a way station for enemy fighters heading for Helmund and Kandahar Provinces. FOB Mizan was plopped down here not to keep the Taliban entirely out, which is utterly beyond its ability, but to inhibit the movement of the Taliban and improve security in Mizan district.

Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

But patrols are the main tool for keeping the Taliban on the run. "With the random patrols their movement is completely inhibited because they never know when we’ll be there," says Stofan, "and they do not want to fight us. They don't have the numbers, they don't have the discipline and skill (much of their training is religious), and they don't have the weapons. "Their most feared weapon is the RPG," says Stofan. "They may also have 82 millimeter mortars but no base plates so they can't really aim them."

Unfortunately, patrols are not the answer to restoring security in the villages. "You have to be there on a permanent basis," says Stofan, and given current resources in manpower that's a pipe dream for now.

"You could take a picture of one of these villages and it would look like something out of a nativity scene." Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

"The last school in the Mizan district closed two years ago," he says, "yet about 50-60 percent of population is under 14 years old. There's a rapidly growing younger generation not getting educated. There is some Koran teaching going on and I asked the instructor if he'd expand teachings to grammar and math if we provided the books. He said he would, but the process of getting these things is long."

Except, perhaps, for additions to the FOB, everything moves slowly out here and the people are quite used to it. Sometimes "slowly" is not at all -- or at least not in 2,000 years. "You could take a picture of one of these villages and it would look like something out of a nativity scene," says Stofan. I have, and it does.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

February Firefight at Mizan

By Michael Fumento

February 7, 2006. Approximately 40 Taliban are detected during daylight about 10 kilometers northwest of FOB Mizan. A jet could be called in on their position, dropping bombs and firing missiles and almost certainly killing some of them. But some of them isn't good enough out here. When you get the chance to kill or capture some, you try to kill or capture every last one of them. No airstrike can promise that on a group of men spread out precisely to avoid heavy casualties from the air or artillery. You have to go in and get them.

Practice on the Mizan FOB's 120 mm mortar, the largest mortar in the U.S. inventory. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Approaching from three directions, the idea is to catch them in a pincer so that the only Taliban options will be death or surrender. B Co.'s contribution, headed up by unit commander 1st Lt. Kevin Stofan, is to stealthily set up a blocking position with five Humvees carrying a variety of weaponry inside the trucks and in the truck turrets.

"I pinpointed them in a saddle [a depression, literally shaped like a horse saddle]," said Stofan later. But the enemy quickly realizes their position is detected "and acted like the desperate men they were." If Stofan saw them first, they see him first among the Americans.

In quick succession they fire 5 RPG rounds at his vehicle. These are the most feared Taliban weapons on the battlefield. Humvee armor can stop machine gun fire from anything the Taliban can carry, but an RPG will rip right through it.

"Hang!" Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

"He knew that an RPG round was coming and he just kept firing," said Stofan. The explosion ripped away three of his fingers. "An RPG round knocked me unconscious and I was pretty banged up," said Stofan. The medic in the vehicle, Pfc. Aaron Murray, suffered a concussion and shrapnel wounds to his hand.

Humvees are darned heavy (the Afghans call them "tanks") but the force of one of the RPG rounds causes this one to roll down a crest, separating those inside from an unconscious Zaehringer. The only unhurt and conscious man in the truck is Pvt. Stephen Wright, who just joined the unit two months earlier. He runs back up the hill, firing suppressive rounds from his M-4 carbine before grabbing Zaehringer -- who for all he knows is dead -- by the handle on his body armor and pulling him back to the Humvee.

"Wright was practically fresh out of basic training," Stofan said with a bit of awe in his voice, "and he did everything automatically."

. . . and . . . Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

"We put a bad hurt on the Taliban," said Stofan. "Probably upwards of 30 were killed, although they were able to drag away most of the bodies."

After an agonizing wait, a Blackhawk drops out of the sky and evacuates the worst of the wounded. Later a jet destroys the Humvee, which is far beyond salvage.

"Fire!" Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Wright is still with the unit, but doesn't like to talk about the night's events. Murray is also with the unit.

Pfc. Stephen Wright Click image for larger view.

Green is still recovering at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany while Zaehringer was treated at Walter Reed Army Hospital before being transferred to another hospital in Michigan. He's now recovering at his family's home in a small town just outside Chicago.

It's already an almost forgotten episode in America's forgotten war.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

A Blog on Warblogging

By Michael Fumento

When you make a decision to go to a war zone and leave behind the comforts of home, you do just that. There are true pleasures to being out there with guys defending our country and there are true deprivations. Of course, there are war zones and there are war zones. In Iraq's International Zone (Green Zone) or in Baghdad hotels or even a major base like Camp Fallujah and Camp Ramadi, you have a real degree of comfort and ease in going about your work. Likewise for Bagram Air Base or Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan. But join the troops at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) and comfort and ease of work plummets. Those are the places I go to and I only have two real concerns when I get there.

UN grain donation (note the light blue bags). Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Second, since while I do write articles when I get back but blog while here I need a degree of internet access. And a degree is all you to get. Connections are almost always mind-numbingly slow. You can wait literally 10 minutes or more just for a website to come up. Some will never come up because they're too loaded with graphics.

As a general rule, you're limited to only 30 minutes online and unfortunately there are no rules on what you can do in that time. For example, at Camp Corregidor in Ramadi I saw a guy using his time to play solitaire which, so I'm told, can be played on an unconnected laptop. In fact, and again I'm just going by what I was told, it can even be played with no computer at all using something called "a deck of cards."

Donkey cart in Qalat. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

I'm a bit perplexed at complaints I've heard from citizen embeds about their computer connections being so slow that they don't even have time for proper spelling or -- far more importantly -- uploading photos. That's because there's no way you would ever write a blog or format a photo on their computers; you do it on your own laptop. First you write your blog and save it as a file. As for the photos, they must be resized or they won't just be a pig in a python; rather your connection will time out and the photos won't be sent at all. In my case I shoot at 5 megapixels, which is enough for a magazine cover, but I use free software to reduce them to 640,000 pixels. On a computer screen, anything more than that many pixels is wasted.

At this point, your actions are dictated by whether the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) center has either computers or just a hookup for your laptop. (Even if you hook up your own, the 30-minute rule still generally applies.) If you can't hook up your own computer (and here at FOB Mizan it's the only way), then you use theirs. If you use theirs, before you get on and start burning your 30 minutes you'll have transferred everything to a USB drive.

Your intrepid reporter firing a laser-sited M-4 carbine (I killed 31 Taliban with a 30-round magazine). Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Easier yet, you can simply send your photos and blog file with photo captions to a third party, in my case my wife, and have him or her do the posting to your blog.

Alternatively, the Big Boys with the MSM completely avoid the Internet by using an R-BGAN, a satellite hookup direct from the laptop to a box placed outside facing the right direction. They aren't cheap and I don't feel I can afford one myself, but you can also rent them -- although I don't feel I can afford that either! If I could I'd invest the money in other areas such as improving my body armor.

But I know Bill Roggio has an R-BGAN and Mike Yon had one at one time. I'm sure some other citizen embeds have them as well. Then you actually have time to check the sports scores, see if your stock portfolio has plummeted, or even -- gasp -- send an e-mail to your wife and cat.

I hope we can give them a free country in which to grow up. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

A Stick in the Mud

By Michael Fumento

Today we were supposed to go out on a mechanized patrol of the area, including the riverbed. And then, I thought, we were to go into town to meet with officials. The patrols go out four days out of five to check for Taliban and possibly draw a fight (In fact, a patrol was ambushed recently where we went today), but there's just not the manpower here to get really aggressive with them.

Thatched roof over a mud hut. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

The Afghan police were all neatly in uniform, seemed to have relatively new weaponry, were neither particularly old nor particularly young, and just gave the air of being more professional than the ones I saw along Highway One. When one barked out an order they piled into the back of a shiny green pickup truck, which looked fairly new.

Afghan National Police, loading up. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

By the time we realized we were going to get stuck in just a few more feet, well, we got stuck right there. We called upon another Humvee to try to pull us out with winch but nothing doing. All four wheels just got stuck deeper. The soldiers tried putting rocks under the wheels, but to no avail.

Our Humvee, stuck in the mud. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Poppy eradication is a very tough political issue. No other crop can begin to bring in the type of revenue these flowers do. The only other crop I saw that day was boring old leaf cabbage, although Zabul province is one of the richest agricultural areas of the country. If you're going to destroy a farmer's poppies without compensating him, you threaten to make him a Taliban sympathizer. But if there's no money for bullets, there's no money for such compensation.

Spc. Jonathan Lackovic protects the stricken convoy from killer donkeys. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Eventually a third Humvee from our patrol came along with a reinforced bumper made for pushing. So we did a push-me-pull-you. With one pulling from the front and the other pushing from the back, out we popped. We headed very carefully back to the FOB, with the Lt. often getting out to check for mud.

Two hours later we "headed into town" to see the district chief. Actually, his headquarters are about 100 meters from where I sleep. The town is fairly safe, apparently, but not so much that it isn't smarter for him to live in a building with us. It was interesting seeing how our guys do business with the locals. The first order of business was compensation for a man whose house we accidentally dropped a bomb on. Eight people were wounded, but none killed.

He was to receive about $4,000 and Lt. Stefan's main concern was that this was an old man who would be walking from town and $4,000 was a heck of an incentive for a mugging. The district chief agreed, but seemed more interested in money to support his operations. You can't really blame him, I guess. His police haven't been paid in apparently five months. "We can fight better if we are paid," he insisted while fingering his prayer beads. Makes a certain amount of sense. But he also said he believed the money, which would be coming not straight from Kabul but rather via the administrator in Qalat, would be arriving in 20 days or so. The Lt. promised he would ask "my boss," meaning the C Co. commander, to intercede and that past such efforts appear to have met with some success.

Pretty but deadly poppies. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Apparently Military Intelligence was of the belief that a mortar round had recently flown over the camp and that the tube was in town somewhere, because Lt. Stefan asked the chief about that too. "Who can we pay to tell us?" he asked. But the boss man said he wanted to discuss that privately. Perhaps he didn't trust his own men. I don't know. The district chief also informed us without being asked that the townspeople liked us very much and that when American or Afghan soldiers disrupted their lives with raids "They blame on Taliban" for prompting them. Is it true, or did he say it to make us feel good? Who knows?

Mizan district chief (right) next to police commander with bird’s nest hair. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Today, or really tonight as it were, is the first time this trip I really felt homesick. I looked up at the mountain range that surrounds the FOB and it just made me feel all the more isolated. There's one world in here and another world, the one I know and love, past those peaks. I miss my wife and cat terribly, and if I had kids I'd miss them too. Still, I'll be home soon enough. Not so for the men.

There still seems to be some confusion over whether tours here have been extended from 12 to 15 months as they have in Iraq, but I was uploading a blog the other day and couldn't help but hear a heart-wrenching conversation between a GI and his wife. Clearly the extensions are going to hurt morale, and I must say that both in Iraq and here morale has been quite good where I've been stationed. Strange to think that when those Twin Towers fell in 2001 not a single one of us imagined we'd be here at any point in time, much less all these years later. And, dare I say it, all these years from now.

My cat Aspen, hiding from the camera. Even she knows freedom isn't free. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

Welcome to Mizan!

By Michael Fumento

FOB Lagman administers four other, smaller FOBs. Mizan is one of them. I wanted to come to this one because so far this year it's the only one that's gotten in a fight with the Taliban -- although that will change as more of the bad guys start coming over the mountain passes. It's about a 20-minute helo ride from Lagman; isolated in a sense but not really.

NATO-operated Russian Mi-8 transport helo over. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

It's true that for a month they had no internet connection because lightning fried an antenna, but a techie came on the same helo I did and got it back up. Now he's my roommate until he can catch a flight out.

They have showers from water pumped in from a well dug two months ago, although it may dry up in a few months as the dry season continues and the water table drops. And -- woohoo! -- the water is heated. Foodwise, I was expecting little more than MREs but they usually have hot chow. It was pretty bad tonight, but I'm told that's by no means always the case.

My quarters are somewhat lacking in that they're a room that's really part of a hallway. So men tromp through constantly during the day and evening but when it's time for beddy bye they've pretty much stopped. Bathroom facilities are crude, as would be expected, but no big deal. You urinate into tubes dug into the ground and you do Number Two in an outhouse. The feces is then burned daily by some Afghans that were recently brought in.

Zabul mountains viewed from back of a Chinook helo. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

That's the mistake the French made when fighting the Viet Minh. They built Dien Bien Phu in a valley, thinking the enemy couldn't bring artillery tubes up the sides of the mountain. Wrong! War over.

But the Taliban have nothing heavier than small mortars and RPGs that theoretically might reach the camp but are far beyond aiming range and in any case this place is well protected against incoming fire. I'm told the camp, which was begun by the 173rd Airborne, is far better than just a few months ago and I believe it. They're building here all day long.

View of mountain range surround FOB Mizan with Blackhawk in background. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

I spent some time with the Afghans here, beginning when I was watching them burn the feces. That's always a great way to meet people. They invited me to their very nice quarters for some Chai tea. One spoke English passably well but another was an interpreter who came here from his home in California. He was, however, born in Afghanistan. They taught me some words in Pashtun and we discussed the war.

This RPG at Mizan exploded on firing, killing the operator. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Pakistan will almost certainly continue to provide safe haven for the foreign Taliban. (By the way, one Taliban is a "Talib;" "Taliban" is the plural form.)

But to the extent the economy provides good-paying jobs to the locals they will be able to resist being paid to fight the coalition forces. The Taliban will probably always be able to offer tempting payments to fire at Coalition forces, but not necessarily enough to make it worth a Pashtun's life.

Chinook over Mizan. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

This is a truncated blog and I'll have more to write about Mizan; but I've got a computer ace now and am going to take advantage of it.

Later today I go into town and meet the locals. Should get some good stuff and pics.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

"Carpathian's Hawks," the Romanian 182nd Infantry Battalion

By Michael Fumento

There are an amazing 37 nations taking part in the war in Afghanistan. Want to hear something even more amazing? Out of all those countries, a grand total of six are willing to send their troops into combat: The United States, Britain, Canada, Estonia (which is smaller than several American cities), the Netherlands and Romania. Italy keeps its troops far from combat, yet their very presence here almost toppled the Italian government. Turkish soldiers have an excellent reputation for fighting and it would help that they are Muslim. But no go.

Surrounded by Romanians. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Here at Lagman FOB we have soldiers from the U.S., a few from the Afghan National Army, four technicians from the Netherlands about to be replaced by Brits, and there's an Arab nation that has a medical team here but their government is very sensitive about their presence and I've been asked not to identify them. And finally, we have the guys who run the show here: the 500-member Romanian 182nd Infantry Battalion, labeled "Carpathian's Hawks." The reference is to the mountain range, which virtually encircles the country.

Commanding the 812th is Maj. Ovidiu Liviu Uifaleanu. His troops launch more than 50 missions a week, most supporting the Afghan National Police who protect the vital route of Highway 1, which didn't use to be so important until it was converted from secondary road to a fine piece of asphalt highway. It goes directly from Qalat to Kandahar but also tremendously cuts the time needed to get to Kabul.

An array of Romanian small arms, with a Dragunov 7.62 sniper rifle in foreground. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

The Romanians travel in new American Humvees (they just took possession of six more) or in Russian-style but Romanian-made armored personnel carriers (APCs). (All of their weapons are also made in Romania, including the interestingly-named antitank guided missile system, the FAGOT.) During a live fire exercise they allowed me to fire both the mounted guns on the APCs, the 14.5 millimeter, which is similar to our M-2 .50 caliber and a 7.62 machine gun which is similar to the M-240s we sometimes mount on our Humvees.

The Romanians believe far more in comfort than do the Americans. They either wear rolled-up sleeves on their uniform jackets or simply a t-shirt that has the same camouflage pattern as the uniform. They also often wear shorts. Americans wear their sleeves down at all times and the only shorts they have are boxers and briefs. During their live-fire exercise, the Romanians didn't wear body armor. During the American live-fire exercise I went on the next day we did wear body armor because that's what you're going to be wearing in combat.

APCs and a Humvee. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

(Other Romanian units have served in southern Iraq, including at a base camp called "Dracula." While Dracula or Vlad Tepes is seen as a figurative or literal monster in much of the West, he's a hero in Romania because the rather unorthodox methods of Vlad the Impaler did keep the advancing Turkish empire at bay. Say what you will about old Dracula, but without him Romania would probably be Muslim today instead of being overwhelming Christian Orthodox.)

When I asked the Major (and that's what I call him, for fear of the 100 percent probability of mispronouncing his name) why Romania is fighting here when nations with vastly larger militaries refuse to fire a shot in anger, he gives a soldier's answer. "At higher echelons they make those decisions," he says. But "We are keeping our promise as a member of NATO." Aha! But Romania didn't join NATO until 2004. "Then," he explains, "we were keeping our promise as a membership of the Partnership for Peace." That organization, he says, is (and these are my words), sort of a prep school for NATO.

On the firing range (the closest soldier has an empty RPG). Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

In any case, God bless the Romanians. I'm going on patrol with them tomorrow and will blog on it.

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

Forgotten War, Shoestring War

By Michael Fumento

First an update on kinetics, to use the euphemism for violence. Just before I left the States, a unit of the Afghan National Army (ANA) got zapped in what may be the opening of the Taliban spring offensive. Seventeen casualties were evacuated here to FOB Lagman. The aid station was overwhelmed and regular soldiers pitched in. "I was stuffing gauze into bullet holes," 1st. Lt. and Company Executive Officer Keith Wei told me, wincing as he said it. Although one was dead on arrival, the remainder survived. Here, as in Iraq, if you make it to a medic you're chances of survival are excellent.

Romanian convoy back from vital mission (bringing me to Lagman). Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

Also, apparently they have cobras here -- by which I do not mean Marine gunship helicopters but the kind that slither, hiss, and if you're unfortunate bite. It's not exactly kinetics, but it's something most Americans would find unsettling, especially since the doctor across the way from me, Capt. Slusher, assures me we have no anti-venom. In any case, it's good incentive to keep the place clean because trash brings rodents and rodents bring snakes. They also have the ugliest beetles here I've ever seen. The little monsters fly and they bite. I think they work for al Qaeda.

An Al Qaeda beetle. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

These little FOBs are about the size of combat operation posts (COPs) I wrote about in Ramadi and that are a major part of Gen. David Petraeus's plan to pacify Baghdad, but one of the most important aspects of COPs is that they are close enough to each other or the mother FOB that they can quickly receive support. These are way too far apart to for that. If they're attacked in force -- and it wouldn't be all that hard for the Taliban and al Qaeda to hit them with superior numbers -- by the time reinforcement could arrive it would be much too late. Close air support is all they can rely on.

The only one of these FOBs that's seen combat since the unit deployed is FOB Mizan; so I asked to be sent there. Unfortunately, the helo that was to bring me out there was supposed to be carrying a general in here. The general decided not to come so there went my ride. I'll get to another outlying FOB, but not for at least two more days.

This hearkens to a subject I teased at in the first blog. I commented in my previous blog about what a nasty FOB Lagman is. In Iraq, if you ask for a helo you get one. Actually, you get two since they usually fly in pairs for safety reasons. Here, theoretically, getting a helo should be easier because they're allowed to fly during the day. There just aren't that many birds in the Afghan theater. So why so few helos and why is this place so crummy?

An Army Apache gunship over Lagman's LZ. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

FOB Lagman HQ, flying the Romanian, Afghan, and American flags. Photo by Michael Fumento. Click image for larger view.

"You can see victory on the horizon but we don't have the means to get there."

He says the ANA can fight but they're demoralized because "Some haven't been paid in months." A report from the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that I wrote about states that even when they are paid, "Income for those in the lower ranks remains insufficient to meet more than the most basic needs. ANA soldiers now receive $100 month as a new recruit for a three-year commitment, up from $70 month." However, "In some reported cases, the Taliban are paying up to $12 a day, three times as much as the ANA field soldiers, and there is evidence of defection from the national security forces to the Taliban ranks."

The Taliban and al Qaeda know the value of money and they have plenty of it. They didn't conquer most of Afghanistan through fighting ability, but rather through wheeling and dealing with various warlords, backstabbing of others, and throwing around copious amounts of bribe money.

A lack of money is also strapping the hearts and minds aspect of the war. "It takes four weeks here just to get cement," Wei says. "We need to help build and to provide security, but we just don't have the funds. Everybody here understands what needs to be done but their hands are tied by a lack of resources in both funds and people. We could pacify Zabul in probably a year if they pumped money into here like they do Iraq."

Aye and there's the rub. Even before 9/11 military strategists warned that we no longer had the ability to fight two wars at once, that at best we could fight one and keep the other in a holding pattern. That's what it appears we're doing here. But what if the holding pattern doesn't hold?

Michael Fumento has paid for this trip entirely out of pocket, including roundtrip airfare to Kuwait, war insurance, and virtually all his gear. Please support him via PayPal Donate or Amazon Honor System via the logos below.

Forward Operating Base Lagman, Afghanistan

By Michael Fumento

After three embeds in Al Anbar, what was once the forgotten part of Iraq, it was time to visit the "Forgotten War." Afghanistan. A commercial flight brings me to Kuwa