Image courtesy of www.bigstockphoto.com

That was the saying I grew up with when one person or group accused another of something that the original party was known to be guilty of.

Afghan investigators accused the American military Saturday of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, bolstering calls by President Hamid Karzai for the U.S. to turn over control of the facility and complicating talks about America’s future role in Afghanistan.

The investigators also called for any detainee held without evidence to be freed, putting the U.S. and Afghan governments on a collision course in an issue that will decide the fate of hundreds of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operatives captured by American forces and held indefinitely.

I read this over the weekend and was floored. I could not believe that anyone in the Afghan Government could honestly make this kind of accusation with a straight face. This is a country that essentially has no military justice system so they lock up their soldiers for infractions in the same place that they lock up detainees, in a Conex container. A standard shipping container with no power, toilet, heat, etc. Yes when a commander wants to punish a soldier or group of soldiers they lock them up in there for hours to days at a time.

If they capture enemy on the battlefield and they can’t easily get them back for interrogation the Afghan Army (and I assume some of the police) lock them up in the same type of location.

Karzai took Washington by surprise Thursday when he ordered that the U.S. military turn over full control of the prison outside Bagram Air Base within one month, a seemingly impossible deadline given U.S. security concerns about the prisoners and the Afghan government’s weak administrative capacity. The countries had been working on phasing a transfer of responsibility of the prison, which hold 3,000 detainees, over two years.

Not only do they lock them up in conex container, among other places but they also abuse them worse then I have ever heard about in this country. This is abuse I have seen first-hand. 

Abuse like punching detainees with spiked gloves, kicking in the face, shooting,    or hitting them with an AK-47 like it was a baseball bat. We had one Afghan soldier we called Jose Conseco as a nickname because he would hit a detainee like he was knocking the ball out of the park. This type of behavior was considered standard operating procedure in the Afghan army.

I won’t even get into the details of the raping of detainees by Afghan soldiers, but it happened, and was considered as punishment for being an enemy. Yes that is the kind of stuff that happens. So who the hell does Karzai think he is?

Detainees would beg us to hold them and not turn them over to the Afghans. They feared for the lives, well-being and sanity if we turned them over and they should have. In fact that was the only good part of the abuse that the Afghans did to Afghans, it made the Americans the “good cop” because the Afghan Army and Police made themselves the “bad cop” by the way they acted. I would capitalize on this by going to a detainee and field questioning them after the Afghan security forces had finished abusing them and I would just treat them humane and justly. They knew I could influence the Afghan forces and I could take possession of them, so if they knew anything they would typically spill the beans.

As for them being guilty or not, I would say 80% of the time we PUCed (Person Under Confinement) someone, which is what we called it when we detained them they were innocent. For the few that did get handed over to the Afghan NDS (their version of FBI), many of them were released later as long as they signed a form promising they would never attack Afghan Security Forces or US Forces again. Yes you read that correctly, they just had to “promise” never to do it again.

You want to guess how many kept that promise?

Read the whole story at www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=1808431

UPDATE- I just got word from a very trustworthy source that said this is all a result of two things. First is it appears that it is actually the ANP committing the violations, and not the US forces.  Karzai is trying to take control so that they can cover it up.

The other issue seems to be that the HVTs (High-Value Targets) from SOF (Special Operations Forces) go there and Karzai is pissed we won’t share the targeting intel with him or his government.

This goes along with exactly what I suspected. I was there in Sept 2010 and I can tell you the area where the prison is now, it top-rate. State of the art court rooms, plenty of trained prison guards and MPs and even housing was being built at the time for the families of the prisoners. It was for the families to stay in while visiting their loved ones who are our enemies on the battlefield. Yeah, that doesn’t sound too rough to me.

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Two suicide bombers, one of them a woman, blew themselves up, claiming at least four lives while an Afghan soldier shot dead four people, including three NATO soldiers, in Afghanistan Saturday, officials said.

A woman suicide bomber blew herself up next to the department of National Directorate for Security in Kunar province capital Assadabad, killing one person and injuring five others, including three policemen, an official told Xinhua.

The second suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car around 11.30 a.m. near a NATO convoy in Darul Aman road in the western part of Kabul Saturday morning, police spokesman Hashmat Stanikezy told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, an Afghan soldier opened fire and killed four people, including three NATO soldiers, and their local interpreter in Uruzgan province, said General Abdul Hamid Wardak, Afghan army commander in the southern region.

Reports are now coming out saying the VBIED (car-bomb) in Kabul killed 13 American service-members. When I first heard that I wondered “why 13?”, as it seemed like a weird number. You really can’t cram 13 in a HUMVEE or MRAP and since it was a convoy I doubt they could blow up three MRAPs from one VBIED. However I am now hearing it was an attack on a bus.

It was one of the Armored buses called a RHINO.

In Kabul, the suicide bomber targeted an armored bus that was part of a convoy of mine-resistant armored military vehicles traveling on a road in the southwest end of the city. NATO said there were “several” causalities among its forces and Afghan civilians, but did not provide details.

The Afghan Ministry of Interior said three Afghan civilians and one policeman died in the Kabul attack. Eight other Afghans — two members of the Afghan security forces and six civilians, including two children — were wounded, said Kabir Amiri, head of Kabul hospitals.

The attack occurred near the ladmark Darulaman Palace, the bombed-out seat of former Afghan kings.

I always knew those would be a prime target for the Taliban. Even though they are armored, enough explosives will still kill some of those inside. Bigger Armor just means bigger bomb. I am glad that at least they wised up in Afghanistan to go with armored buses. I will never forget my wide from Bagram to Kabul in 2006 after we first got in country. After spending months preparing for entering the war-zone, they packed us all (probably 40-50 soldiers) on a Civilian bus with no armor for the 1 hour plus ride. None of us could believe it and I remember several on my team, to include me thinking we were gonna die on that bus and never make it any farther.

The level of complacency and optimism back then was sickening, scary and unnecessarily put soldiers at risk. I don’t know how this convoy was operating, but I do know that starting in 2007 the leadership in Afghanistan started ordering soldiers to “drive friendly” and to allow civilian cars between vehicles in a convoy if they wanted to (we used to not allow them and would shoot vehicles if they tried to get into a convoy). Many on my team still refused to allow that to happen. We were a little more concerned about staying alive than upsetting an Afghan who usually never had a driver’s license anyway.

It would not surprise me to find out that a civilian vehicle was allows near the bus because of this attitude in country.

My prayers are going out for many warfighters this morning, their families, friends and comrades. May they rest in peace….

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Army Capt. Will Swenson has been recommended by the top U.S. general in Afghanistan for the Medal of Honor after widespread speculation about why his heroism had gone unrecognized, according to a published report.

Swenson braved enemy fire on Sept. 8, 2009, with Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, who will receive the nation’s top valor award Thursday at the White House. Meyer, now a sergeant in the Individual Ready Reserve, told Marine Corps Times recently that it was “ridiculous” Swenson already hadn’t received some form of valor award.

“I’ll put it this way,” the outspoken Meyer said in an interview. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be alive today.”

Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, took a personal interest in the fierce firefight in Ganjgal, Afghanistan, that led to Meyer’s award, according to a report published on The Wall Street Journal’s website Wednesday night. The record of the battle was reopened last month, and “given the four-star general’s personal interest, sworn statements attesting to Capt. Swenson’s valor were quickly found.”

“Gen. Allen has since forwarded a Medal of Honor recommendation, saying it was the right thing to do despite a lapse of two years,” the report said.

As the story says (www.navytimes.com/news/2011/09/military-medal-of-honor-william-swenson-report-ganjgal-hero-recommended-091411w/) this has taken too long to make happen and I along with many others are highly suspicious why it took so long for this recommendation to go forward.

This delayed recommendation has several scandalous facets to it. First and foremost is that even thought Dakota Meyer was nominated for and received the Medal of Honor, CPT Swenson was not even put in for an Army Commendation Medal, much less anything near MoH or the MoH itself. As documented in multiple sworn statements, CPT Swenson was side by side, performing the same heroic actions as Dakota Meyer. 

The other part of this story that makes one raise an eyebrow in skepticism is that Will Swenson openly criticized the command above him and other officers for denying him and the others with him the vital and life-saving support they needed.

“When I’m being second-guessed by higher or somebody that’s sitting in an air-conditioned TOC, why [the] hell am I even out there in the first place?” Swenson told investigators. “Let’s sit back and play Nintendo. I am the ground commander I want that f—er, and I am willing to accept the consequences of that f—er.”

Swenson added that he had been second-guessed on previous occasions, and was frustrated by a complicated process to clear fires, even under duress.

“I always get these crazy messages saying that, ‘Hey, brigade is saying that you can’t see the target,’” Swenson told investigators. “Brigade, you’re in Jalalabad. F— you, you know? I am staring at the target. … I just get the craziest things on the radio sometimes. Just people second guessing. If I am willing to put my initials on it, I understand the importance of making sure the rounds hit where they are supposed to hit. I understand the consequences of civilian casualties.”

I can totally understand why Swenson was so upset and I feel he was more than justified in saying what he said. There have been other detailed accounts of medical and weapon support denied to those on the tip of the spear. You can go read several books by James F. Christ like; The Boneyard, Landigal or Kamdesh and you too will be so pissed that you will start calling people F__ and other colorful words.

I can’t count the number of times that I personally was denied support in combat operations. It ranged from denied close air support to a US Company Commander who refused to allow his mortar section to fire illumination rounds over the heads of enemy soldiers attacking our FOB because he thought “the falling canisters could fall on someone’s head”. That was the only time I ever cussed out a Captain over a radio for all to hear. It was not professional of me, but I was pissed. I am a qualified Mortarmen and had spent most of my career doing that job. I know how to call for a fire mission and adjust rounds. Who is he to question what I see when I have the muzzle flashes coming at me.

Anyway, my points is that I get it. I get why CPT Swanson was so upset. He had every right to be, and apparently others felt the same way because a couple of officers were later reprimanded for denying the support.

At least two officers — with Task Force Chosin, a unit comprising soldiers from 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum, N.Y. — were later cited following the investigation for “negligent” leadership leading “directly to the loss of life” on the battlefield.

So it appears that by openly criticizing fellow officers, CPT Will Swenson’s MoH or whatever award he was recommended for kept getting lost or maybe was never submitted at all. If he ends up receiving the Medal of Honor himself, then if I was him I would make sure the White House invites all of those officers who denied his support (reprimanded or not) to the award ceremony so they would have to look him in the face.

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Villagers in Afghanistan say they were forced to walk ahead of Afghan and U.S. Soldiers along roads in areas believed to be mined by the Taliban.

National Public Radio reports villagers said the Afghan and U.S. troops pulled them from their homes one evening in early September and forced them to walk in front of the troops for more than a mile in the Panjwai district, southwest of Kandahar city.

No one was injured, but if the incident happened, it would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of civilians, NPR said.

Sure that may initially sound bad to the casual and ignorant observer, but the reality is that most of these people (especially those in places like Panjwaj district) are harboring and allowing Taliban and enemy fighters to operate there.

Regardless if it was Afghan soldiers or US soldiers who came up with this idea and executed it, the reality is that for a area to be a Taliban stronghold means the local populace supports them, which in turn makes them the enemy for the time-being.

The Panjwai district had been a Taliban stronghold until the U.S. troop surge in 2010 started to displace insurgents, NPR said. The Taliban now use roadside bombs and suicide bombers to fight there, said Faizal Mahmud, the deputy head of Panjwai’s council of elders.

Now I am sure those who are ultra-PC or live with their heads in the clouds that think like the President (where apologizing and being nice will make our enemies change their ways) won’t agree with my opinions here, but frankly I don’t care. Until you are over there and watching some of these people essentially support and condone the actions of our enemies then you probably won’t get it.

As President Bush said, “You are either with us or against us”. I believe it is that black and white myself. I am sure if our forces did this more often than either the local populace won’t allow the enemy to plant IEDs, or they will do a better job of warning us about them. War is an ugly thing, which means sometimes ugly actions must take place in order to succeed.

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There is no doubt our military is strained and tired, but boy they have experience in their craft like no other time in our country’s history. There is without a doubt our military is the best trained and experienced they have ever been. However that experience has come with quite a price, and I am not talking about money either.

Ten years and of living and fighting there and we are still ignorant of the people and their culture.

Former U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said, on the eve of today’s tenth anniversary of the invasion, that the forces had a ‘frighteningly simplistic’ understanding of the country back in 2001.
And he said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations, reflecting on his period in charge of the coalition forces in 2009-10, that even after a decade they still lacked the knowledge required to bring the conflict to a successful end.

He said: ‘We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough. Most of us – me included – had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.’
He said troops did not know the country’s languages and did not make ‘an effective effort’ to learn them when they arrived.
And he added that vital military resources were diverted to Iraq which could have been put to good use in the conflict.
Of the remaining tasks to be accomplished, he said the most difficult may be creating a legitimate government that ordinary Afghans can believe in.

Read more HERE

I have to agree with GEN McChrystal, because I know when I was heading there I had no idea what I was heading into. It was not until the end of my one year there do I feel like I even began to understand the people and the country. That is a big reason why I blogged there and kept it going here. I have had more military members that I can begin to remember tell me how much this blog helped them out in trying to get ready to deploy there.

I know many people are questioning if we should still be there or if we should pull out now. I think the best answer to this question was given last night on the Colbert Report when LTC Jason Amerine. Jason was the Special Forces Team Commander of ODA-574 which is the team that brought Hamid Karzai into southern Afghanistan and helped topple the last Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. When Steven Colbert asked Jason if we should leave now, Jason replied that was an option. “..when the Soviets were defeated, they retreated from the country we left Afghanistan right away and the country fell into a terrible civil war, that’s where the Taliban came from”.

You can see the question from Steve Colbert and Jason’s answer at 19:46 in the clip below.

www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-october-6-2011-jason-amerine

The perfect answer is that we do need to leave when the Afghans can step up and truly take control of their own country, which means providing security and infrastructure. However to figure out what it takes to motivate the Afghans to do that is the $64,000 question.

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One of the books I just finished qualifies as “can’t put it down AWESOME”. It is called the Lions of Kandahar and is written by Special Forces Major Rusty Bradley and Kevin Maurer.

I have received a few books that talk about some awesome battle that nobody has heard about or what a tide-turner in the war on terror. Usually when they say that, my eyebrow raises with skepticism. The subtitle on this book does not say that, it just states “The Story of a Fight Against all Odds”. However once you get into the book reading about this one significant battle then it comes clear that the battle of Sperwan Ghar in Kandahar Province Afghanistan was truly a battle that shaped the war there not only that year but for years to come.

I am a big fan of James F. Christ’s books about huge but unknown battles in Afghanistan in his series that he has written about Embedded Training Teams (ETT). I am a fan, not only because I was an ETT, but several of them are written about battles that happened when I was there and many include people I know. Rusty’s book stuck with me for some of the same reasons. Even though he has multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq this book is written about one specific battle that happened in 2006, the same time I was there. In fact this battle was part of a larger operation called Operation Medusa. At the same time that Medusa was happening I was involved with Operation Mountain Fury which was a shaping operation for Meduda. So this book did strike a chord with me for that reason also. 

As with James’s books, the Lions of Kandahar is not written about an entire tour or life in general as a Special Forces ODA team leader. It is written about one specific and instrumental battle and the overly-brave men that against all odds, with some luck and probably blessing by God himself were able to defeat an enemy that could have and should have wiped them out.

The book starts out with Rusty and his team returning to the same place in Afghanistan they had been the previous year. This allowed them to gain an instant perspective of how much worse the situation had turned since they left. It also allowed them to hit the ground running as they knew the Afghan forces they would be working with, the influential people in the villages they would deal with and the enemy they would fight.

Right from the start the reader gets a sense that the world Rusty and his team stepped back into has drastically gotten worse and that they are going to be in a hell of a fight for territory they had once owned. Besides a reinvigorated enemy they are now dealing with new dynamics on the friendly side of the fence. ISAF had recently taken over in Southern Afghanistan from the Americans so a whole new mindset, doctrine and capability (or lack thereof) was in place too.

There are many actions in the book that are just awe-inspiring and any one of them would be a major undertaking on their own, but for three ODA teams of Special Forces to have gone through all they did and accomplish their mission with so few wounded is beyond amazing. These three teams, their support personnel, the terps and the Afghan forces they fought with ran the gauntlet. They somehow danced between the raindrops of bullets and RPG rounds to engage and destroy hundreds of enemy soldiers and probably wounded thousands. Throughout the pages you can truly get a sense of the odds they faced, the professionalism then maintained and the fear they had through it all. There is more than one occasion where brave and battle-tested Special Forces warriors truly felt they could not win, that they would be overrun or where they felt they would fight to the death down to the last bullet.

However the reader also gets insight into the humor, some of it dark and twisted, that the guys had and how they used that to deal with pants-wetting situations. They truly took the worst of moments and used humor and good-natured ribbing to keep their sanity. I think some of my favorite parts were reading how Rusty dealt with a hard-headed and not really great interrupter (terp) that he was assigned. Since I dealt with many terps during my time there I could easily relate to the challenges he had with ‘Victor’.

The book is well written with all military acronyms spelled out and not lost on the reader who may not be familiar with them. There are no assumptions that the reader will know what the terminology or tactics mean as it explains them well. It also does not go into every minute detail of the mission, but takes the reader from significant moment to moment that Rusty felt were major contributors to explaining the gravity of the fight and the story.

When I asked Rusty the other night on You Served Radio why he wrote this, he answered the way I thought he would. “To tell the story of bravery his men showed in a battle that almost nobody knows about”. There is no doubt there were actions in this book that are worthy of the Medal of Honor, and in fact he highlights at least one of the men was submitted for that recognition.

If you want to have even an idea of what life was truly like in Afghanistan in 2006 at the pointy-est end of the tip of the spear, then head over to Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble or anywhere else you can find it and get a copy of Lions of Kandahar. You will not be disappointed.

Lastly let me say I was very encouraged to find out that Rusty is good friends with one of my best friends, Scott Kesterson. Scott and Rusty have been side by side a few times in Afghanistan. Since my interview with Rusty I have talked to both men about the connection and of course they have nothing but utmost respect and kind words about each other. Makes me feel good to run in the circles that I do.

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With that in mind, we also don’t normally try to offend the people of a country like Afghanistan by searching their turbans, or women or other sacred or protected areas or things. However when the enemy uses those areas to attack us, they bring it on themselves and their people if we start to “violate” these protected areas. 

A suicide bomber hiding explosives in his turban assassinated former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed a government peace council trying to cultivate contacts with Taliban insurgents. Four of Rabbani’s bodyguards also died and a key presidential adviser was wounded in the attack at Rabbani’s Kabul home Tuesday.

Read whole story at www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/20/turban-bomber-kills-ex-afghan-president-rabbani/

We play by the rules, in order to respect their religious and cultural traditions but our enemies don’t. When they don’t and they repeatedly violate our trust and kindness there comes a time for us to not limit ourselves to these cultural ”no-no areas”. When I was in Afghanistan, we would have our Afghan forces conducting vehicle checkpoint operations and more times than I can count they would not search women. They would just wave them through. I was always getting on them to do some type of search of the females or at least have the women talk so they could verify it was a woman. 

While we were there we had guys from my team spread all over southeastern Afghanistan. One of the places we had a long time presence at was a FOB (now called Bostick) in Bermel, Afghanistan. In early 2007 they had a person in a burka approach the front gate of the FOB wanting to get into the base. The Afghan guards were talking to the “lady’ trying to find out why she wanted in and why there was no man with her. During their questions they noticed the “lady” was wearing boots. As they brought up the barrels of their weapons the guy in the burka detonated a suicide vest. 

It was the first time our Afghan soldiers had seen anything like this. Since that time it has happened many more times. Either targets of raids trying to sneak out looking like a woman in a burka or suicide bombers using a burka to hide them and their intentions. 

I think it is about time for burkas to get lifted, turbans to be taken off of the heads up men and other “areas” of cultural sensitivity to be searched and examined. Our enemies are ruthless and even though we try to do the right thing an respect their traditions, they don’t. They will capitalize on our kindness and make it a weakness. 

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Stars and Stripes has a grotesque but funny story about soldiers getting the “crud” in Afghanistan today. 

A virus is moving through the men of this unit, a Security Force Assistance Team assigned to mentor members of the Afghan National Civil Order Police. The blitz bug puts them down for a day or two. It is short, violent, and — to the still-healthy — pretty funny.

“Trantham!” someone yells, laughing. “Is it bile, or Gatorade, or what?”

“Drink Gatorade, dude. Sip it, don’t chug it.”

Read the whole story at www.stripes.com/news/contagion-and-a-sense-of-humor-1.156269

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www.bouhammer.com/2010/02/book-review-the-only-thing-worth-dying-for/

Thanks to Eric’s book and things like this series of videos from the NRA can America even know the story about the brave team of ODA 574 and what they did and sacrificed to help topple the last of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. Please take time to watch these videos, but do yourself a favor and also read the book. It has a lot of more detail and will be a hard book to put down as I talked about in my review.
 
THE CALLING
 

 
THE COURAGEOUS
 

 
THE SACRIFICE
 

 
I wrote about these guys again after visiting Gabriel Field myself. That blog posting is at:

www.bouhammer.com/2011/06/walking-hollowed-ground/

 
THE REVERED
 

 
Please bookmark this posting, share with your friends, put on your Facebook wall, tweet it, whatever. Taking the time to watch these four videos is the least you can do as Americans to at least become a little smarter into the sacrifices that just a few of our bravest warriors have went through.

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