Posted on 03/10/2008 7:40:58 AM PDT by neverdem
Mosul, Iraq
Men crept in darkness to plant a bomb. They moved in an area where last year I was helping to collect fallen American soldiers from the battlefield.
Terrorists. The ones who murder children in front of their parents. The ones who take drugs and rape women and boys. The ones who blow up schools. The ones who have been forcibly evicted from places like Anbar Province, Baghdad and Baqubah by American and Iraqi forces. Terrorists are here now in Mosul. They call themselves al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI cannot win without Baghdad, and cannot survive without Mosul. The Battle for Mosul is evolving into AQI’s last great stand.
And there were the men planting the bomb. It is unknown if the men with the explosives were al Qaeda, but they were planting a bomb and that was enough. Many terrorists murder only for money. Like hit men. They might have nothing against the victim. It’s just business. Although understanding enemy motivations is key to winning a war, out on the battlefield, such considerations can become secondary, as divining the motives of a would-be killer is less important than stopping him.
The bombers were being watched. Invisible to them, prowling far overhead, was a Predator.
The Predator is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) whose eye sees through the darkness. The night sky is the jungle where it hides. The Predator strikes with more suddenness and force than any tiger. I often watch the live feed streaming down into the Tactical Operations Centers (TOC) around Iraq, while crosshairs track the enemy, and the screen lists data such as altitude, azimuth, ground speed, and the precise grid coordinates of the target. The Predator carries a deadly Hellfire missile, but also has other weapons, like the crosshairs on its eye, which...
(Excerpt) Read more at michaelyon-online.com ...
BOOM! hehehehehe
I thank God for men like these - and I thank God that Micheal Yon was there to bear witness to their valor. Thanks to Micheal’s testimony, their stories will live forever...
Absolutely. Yon is a treasure because he accurately reports what is going on, unlike what most presstitutes do. The other thing is, you learn from what he writes how professional, how devastatingly professional, our military is. Please God, don’t let an Obama or a Clinton become Commander-in-Chief of these warriors.
British soldier awarded the Military Cross for fighting off 150 Taliban
Terrorists, Marxists, Leftists and the Democrats
GOP aims to force immigration debate
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Beautiful. Real descriptions of what it’s like. Just about the only reporter in recent times who has done the job right.
Curiously, I’ve been rereading some of David Weber’s military SF in a new edition. The Complete Hammer’s Slammers is now out in a three volume edition. Weber was in Vietnam, and knows what he is writing about.
I mention this, because the use of electronics to paint the enemy targets, and the direction of local forces by distant handlers, are two of the ideas Weber plays with, in novels that were written some time ago before current technology was available.
That he won’t is just a severe indictment of the mainstream media.
Like the others said, read his dispatches. And send him some bucks - he’s funded by our donations. I’ve sent money twice, I should send some more.
ping
You guys have GOT to read Yon’s story of Kiowa combat pilots. This one is a MUST READ!
Remember, the NYT got a Pulitzer for misreporting the forced famine in the Ukraine. Pulitzers are only given to anti-Americans.
We need to have a different award for the likes of Yon.
Yon never fails to write a great story!
Thanks for the ping!
That’s a hell of a report!
There are too many folks in this country who don’t deserve our warriors or their sacrifices....
A Big BTTT! Yon is the BEST!
Sure thing man! I’ll read it! I used to keep up with Mike Yon, but have fallen behind lately.
The Pulitzer is a piece of crap, doled out by a board comprised of pismire editorial board collectivists, some of whom can spell and some of whom can't.
A much more interesting award for those who write as well as Mr. Yon is the John X. Beidler Press Award, for which one can only be nominated by or voted upon by one who's previously won a Beidler. Begun as a regional award by Chicago newswriters, it evolved into a national award in the 1980s, and has even gone to two or three broadcast-industry newspukes over the years.
I nominated Yon for a Beidler last year.
No else over there even comes close to the caliber of his work.
Canadian Graeme Smith, who writes for the Canadian Globe and Mail, sometimes called *Canada's National Newspaper* and was previously their Moscow Bureau Chief, does a really decent job of explaining the war to a mostly-civilian Canadian audience, much as the late Ernie Pyle did for Scripps-Howard during WWII. And he also maintains a very *new-media-ish* blog, seen here, which'll give you some idea.
Yon's good, but he still has a way to go before he's of the stature of Charlie Black or Keyes Beech.
See my #37, above.
Roger that!
Roger that!
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