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Catherine Moy
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About 4,000 Marines are taking on Taliban in Afghanistan. Soldiers will soon join the fight. Hoo-ah!!

Here’s the story from the Washington Post:

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2—Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade’s commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

“We’re doing this very differently,” Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. “We’re going to be with the people. We’re not going to drive to work. We’re going to walk to work.”

Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world’s supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.

The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation’s southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.

Traveling though swirling dust clouds under the light of a half-moon, the first Marine units departed from this remote desert base shortly after midnight on dual-rotor CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters backed by AH-64 Apache gunships and NATO fighter jets. Additional forces were slated to pour into the valley during the pre-dawn hours on more helicopters and in heavy transport vehicles designed to withstand the makeshift but lethal bombs that Taliban fighters have planted along the roads.

It was not immediately clear whether the initial Marine units faced resistance as they converged on their destinations. Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces likely would increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Field commanders have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.

Officers here said the mission, which required months of planning, is the Marines’ largest operation since the 2004 invasion of Fallujah, in Iraq. In the minutes after midnight, well-armed Marines trudged across the tarmac at this sprawling outpost to board the Chinooks, which lumbered aloft with a burst of searing dust. A few hours later, another contingent of Marines was scheduled to board a row of CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters packed onto a relatively small landing pad at a staging base in the desert south of here. As the choppers clattered through the night sky, dozens of armored vehicles rolled toward towns along the river valley.

The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.

In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces. Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras—meetings of elders in the community—in the next week.

“Our focus is not the Taliban,” Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet.”

But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO’s Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.

“A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we’re going to be staying here to help them—that we’re not driving in and driving out,” said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade’s operations officer.

With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.

The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan army soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems “a critical vulnerability.”

“They see things intuitively that we don’t see,” he said. “It’s their country and they know it better than we do.”

Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.

To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade—about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.

Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.

In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on “reining in the pit bulls.”

“We’re not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint,” he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. “You’re going to drink lots of tea. You’re going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That’s the reason why we’re here.”

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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Iraqis celebrated with fireworks as American troops marched away from Iraq’s cities, handing control of the country back to Iraqis. That means Iraqis will have to protect themselves from the terrorists who will no doubt work to destroy the country. Violence has increased already, but that was expected. What a gift the United States gave to the people of Iraq: chance for freedom and self-government and escape from a bloody dictator.

ABC Reports:

Fireworks lit up the night sky over Baghdad tonight as Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from the country’s cities, the first milestone in a U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that calls for the departure of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011.

After giving power to Iraqis, Lt. Col. Tim Karcher loses legs in explosion.Under the agreement, Iraqi forces were to assume formal control of security in Baghdad and Iraq’s major cities as U.S. combat troops withdrew to areas outside the cities by June 30.

The date has long been anticipated by Iraqis and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki declared Tuesday a public holiday: National Sovereignty Day.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, told “Fox News Sunday” this weekend that the United States had already completed the withdrawal before the deadline.

America keeps her word. But patriots always knew this.

“We have already moved out of the cities,” Odierno said. “We’ve been slowly doing it over the last eight months. And the final units have moved out of the cities over the last several weeks.

“It is time for them to take responsibility inside the cities,” Odierno continued. “It’s time for this partnership to have an Iraqi lead, it’s time for this partnership to have the Iraqis out in front.”

Under the agreement, some U.S. troops will remain in Iraq’s cities continuing to serve on as embedded trainers with Iraqi army and police units, and additional forces will continue to provide logistical assistance to Iraq’s troops in the cities.

However, the bulk of U.S. troops will continue to operate in Iraq’s rural areas and the belts surrounding urban areas in joint patrols with Iraqi security forces, much as they have since the security framework was put in place early this year.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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The United States test fired an intercontinental ballistic missile from California today.

The AP Reports:

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) - The Air Force has successfully launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile from the California coast to an area in the Pacific Ocean some 4,200 miles away.

Lt. Raymond Geoffroy says the ICBM was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 3:01 a.m. Monday and carried three unarmed re-entry vehicles to their targets near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The missile, configured with a National Nuclear Security Administration Test Assembly, was launched under the direction of the 576th Flight Test Squadron.

The Air Force says the launch was an operational test to check the weapon system’s reliability and accuracy, and the data will be used by United States Strategic Command planners and Department of Energy laboratories.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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It’s “T” Day. Troopathon. I am so stoked about today. We’re at the Reagan Presidential Library and will have patriots from all around in the studio audience. The stars are coming out for American troops today, as are the military families and troops themselves, the heroes of today and every day.

Tune in to see all kinds of talent, from Hollywood stars to radio titans. We’ve got it all. Our mission: to have YOU sponsor care packages and ship the largest amount in history to our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

Do NOT miss this. Tune in to Ustream.tv or come to the Reagan Presidential Library and watch in person. We’ll be live at 1 p.m. Pacific Time.
God Bless America.

Tune in here throughout the day and I’ll give updates on what’s happening behind the scenes!

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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The U.S. Military is set to intercept a Korean ship that may have nuclear materials aboard.

FOX News has the story:

The USS John McCain, a navy destroyer, will intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the vicinity off the coast of China, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The order to inderdict has not been given yet, but the ship is getting into position.

The ship left a port in North Korea Wednesday and appears to be heading toward Singapore, according to a senior U.S. military source. The vessel, which the military has been tracking since its departure, could be carrying weaponry, missile parts or nuclear materials, a violation of U.N. Resolution 1874, which put sanctions in place against Pyongyang.

The N. Koreans have become more and more provacative, testing the West and especially the United States.

The USS McCain was involved in an incident with a Chinese sub last Friday - near Subic Bay off the Philippines.

The Chinese sub was shadowing the destroyer when it hit the underwater sonar array that the USS McCain was towing behind it.

That same navy destroyer that was being shadowed by the Chinese is now positioning itself for a possible interdiction of the North Korean vessel.

This is the first suspected “proliferator” that the U.S. and its allies have tracked from North Korea since the United Nations authorized the world’s navies to enforce compliance with a variety of U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing North Korea for its recent nuclear test.

The ship is currently along the coast of China and being monitored around-the-clock by air.

The apparent violation raises the question of how the United States and its allies will respond, particularly since the U.N. resolution does not have a lot of teeth to it.

The resolution would not allow the United States to board the ship forcibly. Rather, U.S. military would have to request permission to board—a request North Korea is unlikely to grant.

North Korea has said that any attempt to board its ships would be viewed as an act of war and promised “100- or 1,000-fold” retaliation if provoked.

The U.S. military may also request that the host country not provide fuel to the ship when it enters its port. North Korean merchant ships usually need fuel as they approach Singapore and the ports of eastern India. When tipped off, Indian port authorities are stringent enforcers of UN sanctions against ships carrying contraband.

The U.S. Navy does not need to enforce the sanctions. Instead, it could “poison the host,” a move that entails working behind the scenes with Indian Ocean port authorities to inspect and confiscate illegal cargos.