The Political Conundrum!

The Blog Talk Radio You Served online Radio show is breaking new ground and I hope you will join me for this awesome occasion. The show hosted by CJ Grisham and myself will be on a special night this week, Tuesday night (Veteran’s Day). It is also at a special time. The reason this is breaking new ground (and why the special time) is because CJ and I are teaming up with www.patriotwatch.com and KFBK radio on the west coast to sync together online new media radio with traditional over the air radio. KFBK is a 50,000 watt Clear Channel station that averages over 1 million listeners in eleven states plus their online listening audience.

Since they are on the west coast, CJ and I have to move the show a little later than usual. We have two full hours of guests lined up for the show and we have been working diligently with KFBK and PatriotWatch to get this coordinated.

The timeframe for the show is 9PM -11PM EST. I know it is late, but I really hope you can listen live. From 9PM-10PM EST you can listen to it at the normal place, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/youserved

Starting at around 10:05 PM EST, KFBK will come online and you can also listen to it at their site which is, http://www.kfbk.com/main.html. Radio host Bruce Maiman will join CJ and myself at 10:05 PM EST to serve as a 3rd co-host of the show. At 11PM EST, the online broadcast playing at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/youserved will end, however Bruce has another full hour, of which he may use to keep talking to CJ, myself and some of our guests.

Both websites will also have an archive of the show that can be downloaded later as a podcast.

The theme of the show will of course be Veteran’s Day and what it means to you. The guests we have represent multiple wars and experiences in our Nation’s history. We will have:

1. Afghanistan Veteran Mike Tumminelli (known as Mike T on this blog)
   • Michael Tumminelli works in Current Operations/Counter IED TF at Fort Myer. He is a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, having just returned from Afghanistan as an Embedded Training Team member as part of Task Force Phoenix. He has also been to both Iraq and Afghanistan as part of his DOD civilian job.
2. Vietnam Veteran and  Medal of Honor Winner Leo Thorsnes
   • A decorated United States Military veteran and retired colonel in the United States Air Force. Thorsness was awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in the Vietnam War, for an air engagement on April 19, 1967. He was shot down two weeks later and spent six years in captivity as a prisoner of war.
3. Desert Storm Veteran SGT Freedom
   • A Veteran of Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Determined Resolve, plus he is known as the voice of the patriot on his frequent You Tube videos that he publishes regularly.
4. WWII and Iwo Jima Veteran Major General Fred Haynes
   • He commanded two divisions and several regimental combat teams in three wars. He is the last living officer of Combat Team 28, the unit that raised the flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
5. Vietnam Veteran and Medal of Honor Winner Paul ‘Bud’ Bucha
   • Mr Bucha was a two time All-American swimmer. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army. In Phuoc Vinh, Vietnam, Captain Bucha of the 3rd battalion, 187th Infantry, 3rd Brigade 101st Airborne Division led a recon patrol that encountered strong resistance. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions between March 16-19, 1968.He later taught at West Point and became president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
6. Iraq Veteran Zach Johnson
   • A Soldier/Musician, Zach is an Army NCO who wrote songs that were inspired by his Iraq deployment.  Zach enlisted in the Army prior to the war starting, but after he witnessed the terrible events of 9/11. He put a promising career on hold in order to serve his country.
7. Veteran and embedded reporter Scott Kesterson live from Afghanistan with hopefully a couple of soldiers who will talk about what it is like to be serving on the Pakistan border on Veteran’s Day.
   • Scott Kesterson is an ex-soldier who is a freelance journalist and blogger. He was embedded with Task Force Phoenix from May 2006-May 2007 in Afghanistan and is about to release a cutting edge documentary titled AT WAR. You can see trailers and photos at www.atwarfilm.com. Scott is back in Afghanistan on another 3 month embed following up from his earlier tour assessing progress and the current situation from the border along Pakistan.

All of these guys plus co-hosts; Iraqi and 14 year Veteran 1SG, CJ Grisham and myself Desert Storm, Afghanistan and 21 year Veteran, 1SG Troy Steward.

Please tell your friends, tell your family. Start spamming them now if need be. What better way to celebrate Veteran’s Day than to listen to Veteran’s live, telling it in their own words.

You can also full description of the show right here, http://www.patriotwatch.com/V-Day2008.htm

Bouhammer.com is very pleased to be the first to announce that the much anticipated and sought-after documentary by Scott Kesterson and David Leeson is finished and complete. ATWAR is the product of Scott’s time as an embedded journalist and blogger from May 2006-May 2007 with the 41st Brigade from Oregon and the entire Task Force Phoenix in Afghanistan on the front lines of the Global War on Terror. You can read more about AT WAR at www.atwarfilm.com.

The film has went through several focus group screenings with high praise and positive feedback. Most recently it was screened this past weekend at the Dallas Video Festival where the audience response was also very positive.

The next screening will be unique and an invite only-showing. It will be shown next at FOB Lightning in Gardez, Afghanistan near the end of November. Sorry, only those deployed there will get the chance to see it and provide feedback. Since Scott is currently back in Afghanistan he will host that showing and gather feedback on the spot.

The process has begun to host screenings at select locations throughout the country. They have not all been confirmed yet, so stay tuned to this blog for updates as more information becomes available.

If you have never seen a trailer from AT WAR, or if you would like to see them again I have embedded all 6 in this blog for your viewing pleasure.

This is a documentary like no other. It will truly suck you into the moment and you will forget where you are. If there was ever a film that could transport you from your comfortable couch into the sights and sounds of a war zone, then this is it.

Every Nov. 10 for more than a decade, a simple sunrise ceremony has taken place at the unlikely site in Philadelphia where Samuel Nicholas is buried. The gravesite is so little publicized, even those who paid homage this morning were unsure where it was.

Japan lodged a protest with the United States after an American nuclear submarine made an unannounced visit in southern Japan, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.

The proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact removes language authorizing Iraq to ask U.S. Soldiers to stay beyond 2011 and bans cross-border attacks from Iraqi soil, according to a copy of the draft obtained Monday.

Barack Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Navy inspections of the wings of nearly 500 F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers have found only a handful with cracks to the hinge of a critical flight control surface, the service said Friday.

U.S. and international efforts to combat terrorist financing are a little understood—and often unappreciated—aspect of the global counterterrorism campaign. With this in mind, soon after rejoining The Washington Institute after serving in the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Mike Jacobson and I decided that it would be worthwhile to conduct a comprehensive study of this issue. The produce is our just released study, "The Money Trail: Finding, Following and Freezing Terrorist Finances."

We spent more than a year conducting the research and writing this Policy Focus. It is based on open source information, including media reports, reports by U.S. and foreign governments and international organizations, congressional testimony, and perhaps most important, our field research and interviews. During the course of our research, we interviewed some seventy-five people, ranging from U.S. and foreign government officials to officials in key international organizations such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and the Financial Action Task Force, as well as academics and financial experts in the private sector. While many of the interviews took place in Washington, D.C., and in New York, we also spent considerable time abroad, including multiple trips to Europe and the Middle East. During one extended research trip to the Persian Gulf, we met with government officials, bankers, and industry and academic experts.

We have strived to produce a report that not only explains the threat of terrorist financing and the efforts of governments and international organizations to address it, but also assesses the effectiveness of these efforts. We offer, in addition, our thoughts as to what steps the United States could take to improve international efforts in this area. We hope that this study helps inform the public debate on this important topic, which has not always received the attention it deserves. Better understanding both the threat and our response is critical to determining what role combating terrorist financing should play in our overall counterterrorism efforts and what changes should be made to our current approach.

Chapter 1, the introduction to the monograph, provides a broad overview of the subjects we cover, as well as some of our basic findings. In chapter 2, we explain the importance of the little understood efforts to combat terrorist financing, and why they are and should be an important part of the global counterterrorism campaign. Chapter 3 lays out how terrorist financing—like the terrorist threat itself—is rapidly evolving, frequently in response to international efforts to combat it. As we discuss in this chapter, the terrorist groups’ adaptation in how they raise, store and, move funds can often frustrate governmental efforts to detect and stop them. In chapter 4, we assess U.S. and international efforts to combat terrorist financing since the September 11 attacks—first laying out the many areas where steps forward have been taken, then exploring some of the remaining challenges. In chapter 5, we gauge how effective U.S. and international efforts have been, pointing to specific signs of success in an area in which progress is often difficult to measure. In chapter 6, we offer numerous recommendations for U.S. policymakers to bolster the international regime in this critically important area. Chapter 7 includes three case studies, providing “status checks” on the terrorist financing-related activities of three key terrorist groups—al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizballah.

The full study is available here as a free PDF download.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/01/aghanistan.brit.resign/index.html

This speaks volumes if this British SAS Major really resigned over the lack of equipment for his soldiers. I am not sure how valid this is as I have found over the last year that everything read must be taken in context. Could he be a disgruntled leader passed over for promotion? Did he have a falling out with superiors? Is this really over the lack of equipment and he feels that he has done all he can do?

I think any of those could be valid reasons, and none would be that unrealistic to believe. I do know that while I was in country, that the British forces were some of the least protected out of all of the non-US coalition that were really taking the fight to the enemy. At that time they were rolling around in non-armored jeeps (Land Rovers) and didn’t even have full-torso covering body armor. From what I was told by direct sources was that they has a small 5×5 inch or so armor plate over their heart on the front and back. Now I never saw these, but like I said this is what direct sources told me who were with them. I always felt sorry for those blokes, because they were in the worst area one could be (Helmand and Khandahar Provinces) and were left flapping.

In fact in my opinion, they were the tools of the media war by the Taliban. The war in Afghanistan had very little coverage in the US at that time, but had phenomenal coverage in the UK and it was not a really popular war there. Since the Brits has such little personal protection equipment (PPE), were in a volatile area, and had a country back home with an increasing voice against the war with a huge Muslim population, what better a target of opportunity was that for the enemy.

Did the British Army always do things the most technically and tactically smart way? Not sure, but I know I heard of several incidents where their butt had to be saved by US and Canadian forces so entire units were not wiped out. I now wonder if that may have been more attributable to the lack of equipment and lack of seriousness about the war by their own government and Ministry of Defense.

So who knows if the truth will ever be known about why this SAS Commander resigned, but I would surely like to know. If there is anyone who reads this from my global audience that has a way to contact Major Morley and can send this blog to him and ask him to contact me, I would really appreciate it. Either way it speaks volumes when a Special Operations Career Officer effectively throws it away over what he sees as a lack of support from his country. If this is what happened, then I would call him a hero and say he is yet another example of what we call “a soldier’s soldier”.

In the day-to-day discussions and actions to combat terrorism, particularly radical Islamist terrorism, we generally agree that it will be a long struggle that could last generations. I agree.

But it is useful to step back and realize there is a powerful weapon that we CAN use to great effect. Both presidential candidates agreed on it, and it is long overdue. That is to decrease our consumption of oil so that our money does not flow to those who want to destroy us.

The effects have already been dramatic, as this IHT article describes. Two regimes that pose direct threats to U.S, Latin American and Middle Eastern stability-Iran and Venezuela-are teetering on the edge of severe financial meltdowns because oil prices have dropped.

A third country that is growing increasingly willing to deal with rogue regimes-Russia-is also hard hit, although not to the degree of Iran and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia's ability to fund the propogation of Wahhabi extremism and intolerance will also be curtailed if the prices stay down.

Why? Because these regimes conservatively built their budgets, including the expansionary weapons purchases, on oil averaging $80 to $90 a barrel. When it falls below that, particularly to where it has been recently, they are forced to choose between their expansionist and militarist dreams, and feeding their own people.

Both Obama and McCain focused on the fact that we spend billions of dollars buying oil from regimes that hate us and have a radically different view of what the world should look like than most of its neighbors. Both viewed the issue of energy independence as a matter of national security. While differing on the margins over where to drill and the priority given nuclear energy, the campaigns, representing candidates supported by about 96 percent of the voting population, were in agreement. My full blog is here.