YOU MUST SEE THIS

Remember my e-friend Mike...the one with the films that we are praying for?

You must go see his brand new website here.

The unit he spent time with in Baghdad is 2/3 Field Artillery, also known as The Gunners, hence the name Gunner Palace.

At the site you can even watch some clips from his movie.

Enjoy...and keep praying.

THE MIDDLE EAST - WHERE VIOLENTLY MURDERING A NEW MOTHER SOMEHOW BRINGS HONOR TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY

Sheesh.

A Jordanian man has reportedly shot his unmarried cousin dead as she recovered in hospital after delivering a baby.

The 35-year-old who has not been named then surrendered to police, saying he acted to "cleanse his family's honour".

Stunned medical staff were present as the suspect and his two brothers ran into the woman's room and opened fire.

The 25-year-old mother was hit by six gunshots, the Jordan Times reported, quoting official sources. The day-old baby lying next to her was unharmed...

Jordan Times says this is the third case of so-called "honour" killing in the country this week. It also quotes official figures which say that nine women have died in such killings this year. No explanation is given for the apparent rise in deaths.

Campaigners say Jordanian courts often hand down very lenient sentences for male relatives who commit honour crimes.

Last year, the Jordan Times reported that a man received a four-month prison sentence for murdering his younger pregnant sister "in a fit of rage".

SHAMEFUL REPORTING

One wonders if Audi Murphy would ever have been heard of if today's media had covered WWII.

The media have the power to decide what stories from Iraq are reported, and how the stories are treated. If it weren't for smaller news outlets and the Internet, few of us would even realize that we are being deliberately and systematically robbed of Iraq war heroes. Few of us would realize how many people of how many nations are with us in this war, and how well they are doing in our common fight against terrorism.
The New York Times will probably never report the story of Corporal Samuel Toloza, one of 380 soldiers from El Salvador, which was carried in the Washington Times. Corporal Toloza, out of ammunition, bravely defended fallen members of his unit from Iraqi insurgents. He charged the enemy, armed only with a knife. ''One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded, and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Salvadoran Cpl. Samuel Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his knife, and charged the Iraqi gunmen." The Iraqis broke, and more Coalition troops arrived before they could regroup. Phil Kosnett, who heads the CPA in Najaf, has nominated six El Salvadorans for the Bronze Star. ''These guys are punching way above their weight,'' Kosnett said. ''They're probably the bravest and most professional troops I've every worked with.'' Yet their story is almost completely buried by the mainstream media's endless liturgy of doom, gloom, and quagmire.

You will probably never see the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders mentioned on ABC, CBS or NBC. When attacked by over 100 of Moqtada al-Sadr's so-called militia (in reality a gang of thugs with a religious motif), the 20 or so soldiers fixed bayonets and mounted a 19-century style charge. Taking only three casualties, the Scots captured or killed 35 of the enemy. No American media outlet saw fit to even mention this action, except those who carry Mark Steyn's opinion column. Not one seems to have thought of the Highlanders' action as newsworthy.

".IQ"

What Iraq will look like on the Internet. Still more signs of progress.

Iraq is making its first claim for an internationally recognized presence on the Internet.

Iraq's media commission and the U.S.-led administration in Iraq want to set up Web addresses using the domain code ".IQ" as the final tag. That would mean addresses for Web pages would be distinctively identified on the Internet with Iraq's own country code.

"HISTORY TELLS US MOST CONFLICTS END IN CHAOS"

I've recently begun reading Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by John Keegan, noted English military historian, author and former Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst (Great Britain's "West Point".) The man is brilliant.

Here he calmly reminds us to ignore the media hysteria because things are progressing as they nearly always have in history.

The media's message is clear: Iraq is a mess that should never have been allowed to happen. Yet media people are precisely the sort who know perfectly well that wars usually end in a mess.

Many of them, by training, are history boys or history girls. Moreover, they have been trained to perceive reasons why some wars end neatly and others do not...

The aftermath of the First World War was worse. On Armistice night, Lloyd George, leaving the House of Commons with Winston Churchill, remarked: "The war of the giants is over. The war of the pygmies is about to begin." The pygmies, in civil wars in Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and above all Russia, went on fighting for years, killing or starving to death millions. A full-blown war of conquest by Greece against Turkey ended in a Greek humiliation but also 300,000 deaths...

History boys can explain easily - and convincingly - why some wars, as that against Germany in 1945, end in unopposed occupation of enemy territory and why others, as in Iraq in 1920 and 2004, do not. In the first case, the defeated nation has exhausted itself in the struggle and is dependent on the victor both for necessities and for protection against further disaster - social revolution or aggression by another enemy. In the second case, the war has not done much harm but has broken the power of the state and encouraged the dispossessed and the irresponsible to grab what they can before order is fully restored.

What monopolises the headlines and prime time television at the moment is news from Iraq on the activity of small, localised minorities struggling to entrench themselves before full peace is imposed and an effective state structure is restored. The news is, in fact, very repetitive: disorder in Najaf and Fallujah, misbehaviour by a tiny handful of US Army reservists - not properly trained regular soldiers - in one prison. There is nothing from Iraq's other 8,000 towns and villages, nothing from Kurdistan, where complete peace prevails, very little from Basra, where British forces are on good terms with the residents.

Charles Krauthammer picked up on this article by Keegan, and continues it:

The fact that transition from the coalition conquest to whatever new Iraq emerges will be difficult and bloody and contentious is the historical norm, argues Keegan, and yet it has been used by critics to discredit the war and Bush and Blair for having undertaken it.

The panicmongers have been telling us that the June 30 date for the handover of power was approaching with nothing but violence and no one to hand the reins to. But we have an interim government, remarkably balanced in terms of ethnicity, region and tribe. Such encouraging developments, however, are apparently not to be permitted to puncture the current defeatism.

A moderate Shiite is appointed prime minister, and the headlines prominently mention that he was supported by the CIA, thus implicitly encouraging the notion that the man is illegitimate. But where was an Iraqi exile, hunted by Saddam Hussein, to get help, if not from the CIA and MI6?...

Then it is said that this new government consists of just the old, discredited interim Iraqi Governing Council reappointing itself. In fact, of the 36 new ministers, just four are from the Governing Council.

Then comes my favorite: The new government has no legitimacy because it is composed of so many exiles. What kind of leadership does one expect in a country that endured three decades of tyranny in which any expression of opposition met with torture and death? Who better than these exiles - some rather heroic, many of whom created and sustained organized political opposition for decades - to run a transitional government?

Yes, Iraq is a mess. Postwar settlements almost invariably are. Particularly in a country where the removal of a totalitarian dictator leaves a total political vacuum. Of course there are difficulties and dangers ahead, and no guarantee of success. But the transition to Iraqi rule is under way. The first critical step has just been taken.

A MOST UNUSUAL WEDDING

The bride and groom were dressed for the occasion, but most of the other trappings of a wedding ceremony were missing when Jacob Schwartz and Aimee Thornton were married by the bride's father — a chaplain stationed in Iraq.

The midday heat blanketed the Middle Eastern desert, but the sun had barely made an appearance in Birmingham at 5:30 a.m. Thursday as the ceremony took place.

Mark Thornton, the bride's father and an Army National Guard chaplain stationed in Mozul, Iraq, conducted the ceremony via telephone. It was broadcast on the Russ and Dee in the Morning show Thursday on WYDE-FM...

The couple sat across from each other in swivel chairs, wearing headphones and holding hands, as Mark Thornton spoke. "Real love will make your burdens lighter because you carry them together," the preacher said.

"We always thought Mark would marry us. We always thought it would be at a church," said Schwartz, a junior meteorology major at the University of Alabama. "We never imagined it would be conducted from Iraq."

IT WOULD CERTAINLY HELP

The Iraqis have enough to concern them without having to continue to pay for Saddam's sins. Seems to me those countries who didn't spend a dime sending troops to help calm the aftermath ought to be the first to step up and forgive the debt.

Iraqi's new finance minister Thursday said the country expected up to 90 percent of its estimated $120 billion debt to be forgiven.

"We expect up to 90 percent of the debt to be forgiven, but because negotiations are ongoing it is too early to give figures and ratios," Adel Abdul-Mahdi told Reuters.

"We really want Iraq to be forgiven of (all) debt if that is possible, but we believe the larger part must be gotten rid off," said Abdul-Mahdi, part of a new interim government that will formally take over sovereignty from the United States June 30.

THE SIGNS OF PROGRESS KEEP ON COMING

Iraq named a team on Friday to organize its first free elections in January, the next step in establishing its independence from U.S. military occupation.

The formal selection of the electoral commission came three days after the appointment of an interim government in a process overseen by Washington with U.N. participation.

The new government told the United Nations it wanted the right to decide on the future presence of U.S.-led forces and other security issues but in general sided with Washington.

The United States is trying to persuade other major powers, including France and Russia, to support a U.N. mandate to keep U.S.-led troops in Iraq until the country has a fully legitimate, constitutionally elected government -- scheduled for about 18 months time in the current U.S. transition plan.

(Emphasis added)

How sadly political it will be if the UN Security Council does not immediately honor this request by Iraq.

SIGNS OF PROGRESS

Iraq’s new government won a precious vote of confidence today from the country’s top Shia cleric, who urged it to erase the marks of occupation and secure full sovereign powers from the UN.

TEACHING THEM HOW

There is a lot of history to overcome...but it will happen.

Gruizenga, who earned a master's degree in public administration from Western Michigan University in December 2002, has worked closely with three of the women in the new government: Pascale Warda, minister of immigration and refugees; Nesreen Berwari, minister of municipalities; and Mishkat el-Moumin, minister of the environment.

"We help (Iraqi women) write grants, facilitate training programs for political party development, and train them to be good political candidates," she said. "We give general instructions on how to work with the media, how to promote themselves in the political environment."

Gruizenga emphasized she was speaking for herself and not for the State Department. But she said she, her colleagues and the Iraqis they are helping are frustrated by "the fear of the Iraqi people to rise up against a handful of insurgents" and by the news media's focus on the violent opposition to the U.S.-led occupation.

"Ninety-nine percent of Iraqis love us and want democracy to work," she said. "One percent are causing all the trouble.

ANOTHER OF OUR OWN

On a raid last fall in Iraq, U.S. Army Capt. Stacey Corn's squad came under intense attack while preparing to invade a house believed to be the headquarters of enemy combatants.

Corn was shot -- and likely would have been killed, he said, if it weren't for the quick response and counter-fire provided by one of his fellow servicemen, Lt. Ken Ballard.

"He was there for me and my boys," Corn said. "He was the first to be there for anything or anyone."

Corn had to tell his squad Monday that Ballard had been killed in action.

Ballard, a Mountain View man whose grandparents live in Newark, became the latest Bay Area soldier killed in combat when he was shot in a small-arms gunfight at 11:59 p.m. Sunday in the An-Najaf area of Iraq.

"A lot of my soldiers said the same thing to me," said Corn, now stationed in Louisiana. "They said, 'We should have been there for him, because he was there for us.'"

Ballard's father, who lives in Hayward, also received the news Monday, which was Memorial Day -- already special in the Ballard family because of its long history of military service. Four generations of Ballards have served since World War I.

"I always had respect for (Memorial Day) and how it should be observed," Tom Ballard said. "The day will carry an even deeper meaning for me now."

ANOTHER OF OUR OWN

Army Pfc. Nicholaus E. Zimmer, 20, of Columbus, Ohio, died Sunday in Kufa, Iraq, when his vehicle came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Friedburg, Germany.

PRAYER UPDATE

Recently I asked you to join me in praying that Mike would find a distributor for his balanced approach films showing our soldiers in Iraq.

We are not out of the woods yet...but he did write with this to say:

On the good news front, prayer must work.

I have had nothing but praise from people who have screened the the latest cut and I think we will have no problem getting a broadcast outlet in the States. This is been a long road. I went from having high levels of interest in the Fall to being totally ignored to now being praised. Go figure.

Go figure? Not exactly. Go pray! The interest is growing but he doesn't have a broadcaster yet.

ONE OF OUR OWN

2LT Leonard Cowherd was a Platoon Leader in C Company, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment based in Friedberg.

By no means is this the first MilBlog to feature what follows. And it isn't particularly timely on my part. But it is about one of our own and I wish to add it to the record. I also hope that readers who have not read this previously will take the opportunity to do so.

You will need ten minutes, a quiet space, and a box of kleenex. Please don't even start to read this if you don't have all of those.

2LT Cowhert's father-in-law updates their circle of concerned via email after learning of the Lieutenant's death by firefight in Karbala. An extract:

Is there anything you can do? Sarah, Charles and I have discussed this. We need nothing. We appreciate everything. However, if you want to 'do'something we have two requests. First - somewhere in your 6-degree circle of friends and family find a deployed soldier, sailor, airman, or marine. Talk to them. Send them an e-mail, a letter, or package. Tell them you're there. Tell them you care. It doesn't have to be Iraq or Afghanistan. We have folks around the world that are doing our business. Just reach out to one of them. One of Leonard's biggest concerns was the soldiers in his platoon who received no mail or support from folks outside the company. Our warriors shouldn't have this problem.

Second - stand a little stiller, stand a little straighter the next time you hear the National Anthem. There are generations of warriors that have made that possible.

What happened? Leonard caught a sniper's round in the chest. He did not suffer. As far as we know at this time, his platoon and company had been engaged in relatively heavy combat all day long in Karbala. Leonard died at around 1720 Iraq time on Sunday. We do not know if he was off his tank or if it happened while he was mounted. During the same period two other soldiers were wounded although they do not appear to have been with Leonard's platoon. Again, as far as we've been able to determine, the unit returned fire and carried the field. Some reports indicate they killed the sniper.

Read the entire series of notes here.

(My sincere thanks to Bobby Sr., father of two deployed soldiers. May God bless you and yours, Bobby, and grant them safe return.)

FRIDAY, JUNE 4th.

The 390th day of CPT Patti's deployment. One year, three weeks, three days.

Generally, it has been a cool spring here in Germany. To such an extent that it is only today that the roses outside my office are at full bloom. This is late by my standards. Growing up in South Carolina I could count on Dad cutting rosebuds from the bush for each of us to wear on our lapels on Easter Sunday.

So...the roses are late, but they are beautiful. And I'm wishing CPT Patti could see them. She hasn't seen roses in bloom since 2002.

OUTTA GAS

OK...I've taken care of a lot of that stuff I needed to do today. But I find I just don't have it in me today to review hundreds of depressing headlines so I can pick out the nuggets today.

Forgive me...I'll try to tank up and be better on Friday.

Meanwhile, Sarah is on top of her game today with some good stuff about liars...and she saves you the effort to find the gems in the President's Address at the AFA. Go pay a visit.

OUCH!

Apparently well deserved criticism directed at the Army.

While the Marine Corps makes certain that its Marines receive the credit and admiration they've justly earned, I found that the Army effectively camouflages its combat heroes.

As a career Army wife (and mother and daughter) I have a first loyalty, and a longstanding crush on the Marines. I intended to highlight exemplary members of both services. Had it been up to the Army, "The Soldiers You Never Hear About" would have been a mistakenly titled account of courageous Marines in action. I recognize that the Army is a really big organization, but there's no excuse for the lack of interest I encountered when I attempted to bring some attention to those in its ranks who so richly deserve it.

Colonel George Rynedance, in the Pentagon's office of public affairs, initially talked to me about identifying some of the services' decorated heroes. He explained that each service had to be contacted separately. In three phone calls, I had the medal citations I was looking for from the Marines on my fax machine. I talked to a Marine captain at Quantico and a Lieutenant at Camp Pendleton. They both followed up to make sure I had everything I needed. The performance of these young officers is not merely the result of a smooth, disciplined public-affairs operation. It seems to me that their interest and responsiveness reflects the Corps's ethos of Marines taking care of fellow Marines.

When I called the Department of Army, I was referred to its "awards branch." There I was told that no information about soldiers' medal exploits was available. The "awards" office had no information on the first Distinguished Services Crosses awarded since the Vietnam War. It was recommended that I call the individual duty stations of individual decorated soldiers. At Fort Bragg, I was told that I would have to be able to identify a decorated soldier by name before a citation detailing his actions could be tracked down. The public-affairs office appeared unaware of any recent award ceremonies for service in Iraq. My updates to Col. Rynedance on the dead-ends I was encountering were met with a detached response.

Perhaps a team of researchers from 60 Minutes could have found Army officers as determined as those Marines to see that their soldiers receive the credit they deserve. But, 60 Minutes isn't interested in telling stories of heroism and self-sacrifice in Iraq, and as far as I can tell neither is the Army. I was unable to find anyone in the Army much interested in my modest project.

Soldiers obviously deserve better than the current disjointed system that inhibits widespread public recognition of their bravery. Couldn't the Army War College be a repository for the official citations, stories, and press releases about the soldiers who have earned the service's highest awards?

Next time the Pentagon complains that good stories aren't being told, it might be because the military isn't telling them.

MEDIA CRITIQUE

Before the war, the news media failed to reveal the extent of Saddam Hussein's brutality. Too many journalists cut a shameful deal with the dictator: To keep their Baghdad bureaus open and unmolested, they refrained from serious attempts to report Saddam's crimes.

Since the liberation of Iraq the broadcast media have ...well, they've made no great effort to correct the record...

There are videotapes of many of Saddam's vile misdeeds. He ordered them either for personal amusement or as a management tool _ to make sure the work was getting done. These tapes show Saddam's thugs hacking fingers off those suspected of disloyalty, pulling out the tongues of those who dissented, cutting off the heads of those who offended the dictator. The blood splatters, the victims scream, Saddam's killers sing Saddam's praises.

It's puzzling that the same media outlets that air -- over and over _ tapes of Americans abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib do not broadcast these earlier tapes. One possible explanation: Tapes of American abusers are prurient -- the women's underwear, the dog leashes, the nudes-on-nudes. By contrast, the Saddam tapes are gruesome in a banal way.

But such reasoning is insufficient when you watch veteran film-maker Don North's restrained documentary entitled, "Remembering Saddam," the story of nine innocent businessmen who had their right hands amputated at Abu Ghraib on Saddam's orders. North's film has been written about by the Wall Street Journal, and North has been interviewed on C-SPAN, but not one network -- not CBS, NBC, ABC or PBS -- has yet aired his truthful, revealing tale of real people who suffered under a brutal dictator, who suffer still, and who are grateful to Americans for freeing them from Saddam's clutches.

(Emphasis added)

Oh...written by a former NY Times correspondent.

TIMETABLE

Fatigue and fraternity. Grief and grit. Above all, frustration. Sit down for a minute with soldiers of the Alabama National Guard's 1165th MP Company, and you see it in their faces, hear it in their voices, no matter the rank, no matter the platoon.

They are beyond ready for home and hearth.

The good news is, it looks like they'll be back in Fairhope and Brewton for welcome-home ceremonies soon. This week, for the second time, they begin packing. Latest word from 1st Armored Division headquarters is that the 1165th will convoy south in early July, reaching the safe haven of Kuwait in about two days. That should put them back in the States before the end of that month.

In spite of my previous insistence it won't happen, the timetable for this 1AD unit is very close to the absurdly widespread rumor regarding our 1AD units as well.

BUSY DAY

Postings will be late, and perhaps light today. Other fish are frying.