22 March 2008

Iraq News (22 March)

The Good: From Voices of Iraq, operations targeting Al-Qaeda propaganda wings are having a huge impact on their ability to churn out their vile tripe onto the internets. Internet messages declined from 143 to 17 per month in a 6-month period, which must have an effect on recruiting suicide bombers amongst disgruntled Muslim youth in Saudi Arabia and North Africa.

The Bad: One soldier was killed in a rocket attack as rogue Sadrist elements continue to cause problems in southern Iraq and Baghdad. Clerics continued to reiterate the ceasefire during Friday's prayers, so the militants conducting attacks have clearly broken away from the Sadr movement. American media is trying to portray this as some new trend, but this has been a problem since the ceasefire was initiated in late August. A country that start with an "I" and ends with an "N" probably has a hand in this.

The Ugly: The proposal to the Bush Administration from the Pentagon is looking like it will involve 12-month tours, but no further reductions of ground forces until late summer (when there will be about 140,000 US troops in country). Not sure what Bush is going to say about this... And just for giggles, behold, I give you the doucheyness of the Air Force, who is fighting tooth and nail with the Secretary of Defense to not provide support for unmanned flight operations. I guess those tours in Nevada are really taxing, since there's a deficiency of golf courses. Haha, I made fun of my Air Force boss all yesterday about this whining, sorry sir.

The Hard-Workin' Air Force at 1400 on a Tuesday (just kidding AF, I still love you)

5 comments:

Kat said...

Iran's Hand

Nixon said...

Great article. Thanks Kat. Yeah Iran's up to no good...still!

Mike said...

In the USAF's defense, it's not all about being lazy. The extreme plan had the Air Force shutting down the training pipeline in order to surge a maximum number of airframes and crews. I think we can agree that shutting down training pipelines is, in general, a bad idea.

Nixon said...

Mike,

haha, I just like busting the Air Force's chops. Yeah shutting down training pipelines is bad, and it's a sign of trying to get too much for too little resources.

Mike said...

Heh, nothing wrong with that. Being the little brother of the services we're used to getting picked on. And God knows we deserve it most of the time.