Vets give PA Congressmen "A," McCain a dismal "D."

Many Pennsylvania congressional lawmakers received an "A" from an Iraq and Afghanistan veterans group recently for casting votes in support of the military.

By contrast, the presidential candidates scored lower, according to The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the group that issued the 2008 Congressional Report Card.

Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama received a "B" grade from the group; Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain a "D."

Scores were based on how often legislators voted to support IAVA's Legislative Agenda. IAVA Action, the group's advocacy arm, selected 22 key votes on veterans' issues in the 110th Congress. This included nine votes in the Senate; 13 in the House.

Congressional votes used as criteria covered a broad range of issues facing "new veterans," including veterans' health care, the new GI Bill, mental health issues and support for homeless veterans, according to IAVA's Web site, www.iava.org.

Lawmakers voting in line with IAVA Action received one point. Those voting against IAVA Action's position, or those who failed to cast a vote, received no points.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter and Democratic Sen. Robert Casey both earned an "A+" from the group.

In the U.S. House, Reps. Joe Sestak, D-7th Dist., Allyson Schwartz, D-13th, and Patrick Murphy, D-8th Dist., all received an "A+" and Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-6th Dist., earned an "A."

The IAVA group was a strong advocate of the new GI Bill that Congress approved last summer. Any legislator cosponsoring the Post-9/11 GI Bill (Senate Bill 22 or House Bill 5740) received two extra points.

Sestak votes coincided with IAVA Action 13 out of 13 times, and he received two additional points for being a co-sponsor of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, according to IAVA's report card.

Gerlach's votes were in line with IAVA Action 11 out of 13 times, and he also received two points for co-sponsoring Post-9/11 GI Bill.

Sen. Obama voted 5 out of 9 times with IAVA Action and also cosponsored the new GI Bill, while Sen. McCain cast only 3 out of 9 votes on IAVA Action's issues and was not a cosponsor of the GI Bill.

Founded in June 2004, IAVA is the nation's first and largest group dedicated to military troops and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and their civilian supporters.

Surge strategy was a hard sell

Violence in Iraq got even worse after the bombing of the golden mosque of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006.

By late 2006, military, leaders, and most Democrats and Republicans in Congress wanted out of Iraq.

Arizona Sen. John McCain was the "loudest voice" for a changed strategy in Iraq, and he reportedly "badgered" President Bush and national security adviser Stephen Hadley with phone calls urging that more troops be sent to Iraq, according to a Feb. 4, 2008 article in The Weekly Standard, "How Bush Decided on the Surge."

The fact that Bush was able to persuade the Joint Chiefs of Staff to give the counterinsurgency plan the green light set the stage for a turnaround in the Iraq conflict.

When the president proposed the "surge" strategy to the Joint Chiefs in December 2006, the country's top military brass were "unethusiastic," the article said.

It's no surprise that nearly everyone in the political community, the media and foreign policy establishment was opposed to the counterinsurgency strategy that called for sending more troops.

Only Bush, the vice president and a handful of National Security staffers were backing the plan in fall 2006, according to the article. Among the surge supporters was Robert Gates.

Gates, who had served as CIA director under the president's father, was president of Texas A&M University in 2006. He had also served on the Baker-Hamilton Commission.

The day after the November 2006 elections, embattled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was out, and Gates was named as his replacement.

According to The Weekly Standard, Rumsfeld had rejected the surge when retired Gen. Jack Keane proposed the plan in September 2006.

Keane was in contact with other retired and active Army officers, included Gen. David Petraeus, who believed the war could be won by implementing a counterinsurgency strategy that would put U.S. and Iraq troops together in local communities to protect Iraqi citizens against insurgents and al-Qaeda, the articles said.

Other troops would go on the offense to drive out and kill extremists.

Eventually, McCain, Keane Petraeus, a network of Army officers and former West Point professor Frederick Kagan (a contributing editor The Weekly Standard), provided support for the unpopular plan.

The surge plan was bolstered by the realization in October 2006 that tribal leaders in Anbar province had allied with U.S. Special Forces against al-Qaeda.

On Jan. 10, 2007, Bush announced strategy publicly. Democrats "condemned" the surge, according to The Weekly Standard, and Republicans "were mostly silent."

On CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday (Sept. 7), author Bob Woodward detailed the Joint Chiefs' resistance to the surge plan. He discusses the strategy in his new book, "The War Within."

A secret study by the Joint Chiefs in 2006 concluded that the U.S. was losing the war, Woodward said.

But a "secret and lethal" Special Operations program was launched, and it has been highly effective in killing insurgents. Because the program is classified, Woodward would not reveal the military's latest secret weapon.

When asked what Bush's advice would be on Iraq to the next U.S. president, Woodward said, "Don't let it fail."

Character, judgement and Iraq

Showing the character Americans have come to expect of him, Sen. John McCain gambled his political fortunes by supporting the unpopular counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in 2007.

His remark that he'd rather lose an election than lose a war spoke volumes about his character, and put him in stark contrast to liberal Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama, who were prepared to sell out U.S. troops and withdraw from Iraq prematurely.

The news that the counterinsurgency and "surge" strategy was succeeding robbed Pelosi and Reid's mob of the one issue that got them elected in 2006.

Putting their political fortunes before the good of the country and our troops could be a costly lesson for those defeatists in Congress come Election Day.

One can only hope American voters will do the right thing and vote them out.

Obama’s stunning shunning of surge

By KEITH PHUCAS
Times Herald Staff

NORRISTOWN — Given that liberal Democrats bet their political fortunes on the U.S. going down to defeat in Iraq, it comes as no surprise that their chosen presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, said he would not have supported the "surge" strategy even if he knew it would succeed.

Army Gen. David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy, of which the troop surge is only a part, was greeted in 2006 with understandable skepticism when announced. But a significant reduction in violence in cities across the war-torn country is directly attributable to this brilliantly executed plan.

Obama, and so many other Democrats, counted on our military defeat as their springboard to recapture the White House and Congress. So, the Illinois senator and his supporters must be terribly disappointed with these positive developments.

The senator’s stunning denial of the wisdom of the surge strategy came this week in interviews on ABC’s "Nightline" with Terry Moran, and with CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who grilled Obama repeatedly to explain his puzzling position.
Not having been to Iraq since 2006, Couric asked what had surprised him upon returning there.

"Well, there’s no doubt the scary situation’s improved. And it was very encouraging to see that markets are reopening; that in places like Anbar Province you have seen a complete reversal in terms of the attitude of Sunni tribesmen towards American forces there," he told Couric, according to cbsnews.com. "That I think is a terrific momentum builder. And we’ve gotta keep on making sure that we’re making progress on those fronts."

While admitting the successes in one breath, he shunned the military plan in the next breath.
Growing more defensive with each Couric question about the surge, Obama complained that the Iraq war costs too much money and was holding us back from sending more troops into the Democrat’s preferred war – Afghanistan. He has called Afghanistan the central front on terrorism.

Arguably, the U.S. has won both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but has fallen far short in winning the peace. Those are difficult and dangerous works in progress.

It is imperative that we succeed in both wars, because both are legitimate battlefronts against our enemies. And no aspiring commander in chief should discount the strides American troops have helped achieve.

Obama’s unwavering lack of support should offend anyone in the U.S. military who has or is currently serving in Iraq.

For the past few years, Democrats could always be counted on to badmouth Iraq that they saw rightly as Bush and the Republicans’ Achilles Heel.

In April 2007, just weeks before the troop surge officially got underway, Democratic Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid proclaimed publicly "that this war is lost". I don’t understand how this kind of treasonous talk is tolerated.

Though the security situation in Iraq began to change for the better last year, those same critics still cling to their anti-Iraq orthodoxy, denials and double talk.

My guess is that Obama, Reid and the other liberal Democrats would be hard pressed to explain the specifics of the counterinsurgency that turned the war around. Let me help.

During the 2006 "Awakening in Anbar," in al-Anbar Province, Iraqis began turning against the al-Qaeda barbarians who had "raped too many women and boys, cut off too many heads, brought drug into too many neighborhoods," according to war correspondent Michael Yon.

Yon’s book, "Moment of Truth in Iraq" should be required reading for Obama and anyone else truly interested in what’s gone on in Iraq in the past few years.

Another must-read is "How They Did It," an article in the Nov. 19, 2007 issue of The Weekly Standard.

In 2007, Gens. Petraeus and Raymond Odierno conducted three large-scale military operations – the Baghdad Security Plan, Operation Phantom Thunder and Operation Phantom Strike.

In Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi troops shared the same quarters in the city’s neighborhoods, building rapport and trust of Iraqi citizens. By protecting the population execution-style killings fell.

Phantom Strike aggressively targeted the Karkh-Rusafa car bombing network operating in Baghdad significantly reducing deadly car bomb attacks, according to The Weekly Standard.

In many others towns and villages in Iraq, troops attacked numerous al-Qaeda strongholds and sanctuaries. The terrorists were routed.

According to Yon, Al-Qaeda was out to humiliate Americans by provoking a civil war between Sunni and Shia.

Eventually, in a "A Spartacus Moment" tribal sheiks in Anbar allied themselves with U.S. Special Forces with the intent of killing al-Qaeda.

Obama’s recent comments shunning the counterinsurgency seem politically shallow and opportunistic at best. At worst, his sentiments do a disservice to those who’ve fought and died in Iraq.

Coming Soon: Obama reneges on Iraq timetable

This week, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama got a hint of the difficulty of making campaign promises about Iraq. Especially anything that lays out a specific timetable for withdrawing troops.

If elected, the fledgling Illinois senator vows to "immediately" begin to remove troops from Iraq, pulling out "one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months," according to Obama's campaign web site.

He says he'd keep "some troops in Iraq" to protect the U.S. embassy and diplomats.

But watch for Obama to change his tune on the 16-month pledge after he returns from a visit to Iraq this summer -- especially if his poll numbers dip.

After 4,000 U.S. troops have died and at least 20,000 more injured in the fight to free the Iraqis from a murderous dictator, why would Obama risk throwing away our troops' hard won gains that finally began to emerge in early 2007?

Mark my words, he won't risk losing the presidency over this issue.

The whole world's watching.

Fulfilling the Iraq Mission

I interviewed former Marine E.J. Catagnus in a January 2007 Times Herald article just prior to the Iraq "surge". The Jan. 21, 2007 article follows:

Local marine wants to change military

By KEITH PHUCAS
Times Herald Staff

NORRISTOWN – In order to win in Iraq, former marine Earl Catagnus Jr. says U.S. troops must be there for the long haul, with helmets off to help Iraqis rebuild their war-torn country. The classic hearts and minds approach. Kinder and gentler.

“If you build a school and stay there, eventually you’ll see children graduate from the school,” he said.

Troops must get out of the Green Zone and mingle with Iraqis in their neighborhoods. Actually, sit down and eat meals with them.

“If you’re forced to sit down and break bread with someone, it’s harder to hate them,” he said.

To succeed in such a counterinsurgency effort, Catagnus said, coalition forces must clear neighborhoods of the enemy, hold the territory and build the economy. It won’t be easy, but ultimately this approach could win the day.

But the 28-year-old Norristown native questions whether the America public is truly committed to succeeding in Iraq.

“America has to have the stomach for the long term,” he said. “If we leave now, they’ll always hate us. But, if we stay, there’s a chance to actually win.”

And victory would mean having a United States ally in the Middle East.

Two years ago, Catagnus was walking house to house in the Iraq city of Fallujah with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines ferreting out insurgents. Sometimes his squad had only four men.

He had injured his knee even before getting to the Middle East, but he kept his injury a secret.

“I fell all the time,” he said. “It was like a running joke.”

Thousands of Iraqis evacuated the city before the Second Battle of Fallujah began in November 2004. Those who remained were considered hostile. Though the marines came across Iraqis in private residences, many combatants were Jordanians, Saudis, Chechens or natives of African countries.

“The majority of the fighters we encountered were foreign,” he said.

In 2004, then Sgt. Catagnus was in charge of a sniper section, a mortar team and a group of Navy SEALS. He was later promoted to staff sergeant.

Often, his unit found houses contained a surprising assortment of weapons – AK-47s, grenades, 15-foot rockets, mortar shells and launching tubes. Explosives were tucked into sacks of flour or sugar.

“You name it,” he said. “Every house had a weapon in it.”

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, hidden in the dirt, under trash piles or buried in the road were especially dangerous.

“We found an IED factory that could produce 30 (explosives) a day,” he said.

Catagnus and nine other marine were injured in an explosion during a house-clearing operation in Fallujah. Fortunately, the men’s wounds were not serious. He was peppered in the face with shrapnel.

“I saw the fireball, and I remember hearing a pop,” he said. “I almost lost my eye.”

Other marines weren’t so lucky. His best friend, Ssgt. Eric McIntosh was killed in combat in Ramadi. Another friend lost both legs.

Catagnus first served in the Marine Corps from 1998 to 2002 as a scout sniper. He had two tours in Okinawa. The marine sergeant volunteered to be recalled to active duty in 2004 before deploying to Iraq.

In 2005, he got out of the marines and returned to Penn State University in Abington. When he graduated earlier this month with degrees in history and life sciences, the military presented him with the prestigious Purple Heart at the commencement ceremony.

Last week, he applied for a doctoral program at Temple University.

The former marine is articulate and could talk for hours about past wars, and how the military should learn from history and change.

He faults marine officers for neglecting the enlisted men, who should be taught critical thinking skills and undergo extensive cultural sensitivity training to aid their mission in Iraq.

“The smartest people I’ve ever met were the young marines (I served with), who were able to improvise, overcome obstacles and adapt,” he said. “A lot of the officer corps underestimates the capacity of the individual infantryman.”

Catagnus wrote a 37-page training manual for Iraqi Special Forces. In 2005, he co-authored, “Infantry Squad Tactics,” with three other marines in 2005. The article appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette.

The Bush administration recently proposed sending a “surge” of 17,500 more troops to Iraq, including 4,000 additional marines to Al-Anbar Province that includes Fallujah.

Catagnus is critical of Army Gen. George Casey Jr., the top military commander in Iraq, who told the Associated Press Friday that troops making up the surge in Iraq could be ready to return home by late summer.

“I think it’s absurd that he’s saying that,” Catagnus said.

With lots of speculation about routing insurgent militia groups in the coming weeks, the Norristown native believes the historical moment demands more than combat.

“I don’t agree that it’s a purely military solution,” he said. “You engage the population, and the insurgency dies.”

Catagnus scoffs at setting timetables for the Iraq mission, believing success there is what’s most important.

“We’re going to take casualties, but in the long run it’s worth it,” he said.

Currently, Catagnus lives in Norristown with his wife, Rebecca.

The High Cost of Oil Dependency

If the high price of oil and distrust of foreign suppliers is indeed a national security concern, Americans must be wondering why Congress and past and present U.S. presidents, have been so negligent about protecting its citizens by failing to break our dependency on foreign oil.

How would the U.S. deal with waging war if Iran and Venezuela decided to hike the per-barrel price of oil even higher that it is today -- or cut us off entirely?

In 1973, OPEC initiated an embargo in response to the Yom Kippur War and stopped oil shipments to the U.S. and countries that supported Israel.

As of June 20, 2008, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has at total of 705.9 million barrels, according the Department of Energy. The nation's daily fuel consumption is 20.6 million barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration.

If the U.S. was hit with exorbitant price spikes or a protracted embargo, and was only able to use its strategic reserve, how long would the oil last ? According to my calculation, 34 days.

Even if OPEC members cut off oil shipments, the U.S. also imports petroleum from Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Russia, UK and others, and wouldn't go without.

Earlier this month, Israeli jets were reportedly rehearsing for a possible attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to CBS News. Was this a ruse meant to pressure Iran to shelve its nuclear program, or does Israel really mean to launch an attack?

Given Israel's record for decisive military action against nuclear threats, it's probably not a bluff. Last September, the Middle Eastern nation attacked a suspected nuclear facility in Syria and in 1981 destroyed a nuclear site in Iraq.

If the Israelis strike Iran, how will the action affect oil prices? Any ideas about cause and effect?

-Keith