The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Monday, June 6, 2011

War News for Monday, June 06, 2011

The British MoD is reporting the death of a British ISAF soldier from small arms fire in the Nahr-e Saraj (South) district of Helmand province, Afghanistan on Sunday June 5th. Here's the ISAF release.

The British MoD is reporting the death of another British ISAF soldier from an IED attack in the Haji Kareen area of the Nahr-e Saraj (South) district, Helmand province, Afghanistan on Sunday June 5th.

CNN is reporting the deaths of five U.S. soldiers in an attack in an undisclosed location in central Iraq on Monday, June 6th. Reports say they died from an indirect weapons/rocket attack in a base in southeastern Baghdad. Five additional soldiers were wounded in the attack.

NATO is reporting the deaths of two ISAF soldiers when a helicopter crashed in an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, June 5th. Nato reports that the chopper crashed in the Sabari District of Khost Province.


Steeper Pullout Is Raised as Option for Afghanistan


Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1-2: Iraqi security officials said four people died after gunmen in speeding vehicles opened fire on two security checkpoints in Baghdad. The incidents happened early Monday morning in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, said a military and a medical official. At one checkpoint, an Iraqi army soldier was killed when gunmen using weapons affixed with silencers opened fire. At about the same time, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint manned by members of an anti-al-Qaida militia. Three militia members were killed in that incident, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

#3: At least 8 persons, including 4 policemen, have been injured, in a booby-trapped car blast on the main road passing through northern Baghdad’s Kasra district on Monday, a Baghdad security source said. “A booby-trapped car, parked on the roadside in northern Baghdad’s Kasra district, had blown off early on Monday, wounding 8 persons, among them 4 policemen and causing damage to a number of police and civilian cars,” the security source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#4: At least 9 civilians have been injured in a booby-trapped car explosion on the roadside east of Baghdad on Monday, a security source reported. “A booby-trapped car, parked on the roadside in east Baghdad’s Palestine Street, has blown off, wounding 9 civilians,” the security source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, adding that the injured persons were driven to a nearby hospital for treatment.

#5: Rockets were fired at dawn against a joint Iraqi-U.S. military base in Baladiyat District, eastern Baghdad, an interior ministry source said. Two suspected militants were later found dead, apparently killed by the premature explosion of one of their own rockets, in the modified truck they were using as a launch platform, the source said.

#6: A roadside bomb exploded as a convoy guarded by private security contractors passed in central Baghdad, wounding four civilians, police said.


Nassiriya:
#1: The U.S.military airbase Taleel was the target for rocket attacks, the U.S.
Army announced today. The media spokesman of the U.S. forces, Lieutenant Harold Havel, told Aswat al-Iraq that three Katyusha rockets fell on Taleel airbase, 18 km south of Nassiriya, on Saturday night. No casualties were reported.


Tikrit:
#1: Up to 11 security members were killed and 19 people wounded Monday in a suicide car bomb attack in central the city of Tikrit, the capital of Salahudin province, a provincial police source said. "Our latest reports said that nine soldiers and two policemen were killed by the attack and 19 people wounded, most of them security members," the source from Salahudin's Operations Command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The attack took place in the morning when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into the checkpoint at the entrance of the presidential compound of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussien, and blew it up, the source said. Colonel Nuri al-Mashhadani, Commander of the 1st Brigade of the Iraqi Army's 4th Division, stationed in Tikrit, was among the killed.


Mosul:
#1: An explosive charge, planted against the house of Ninewa's Criminal Court’s Judge, has been dismantled by a special team on Monday, a Ninewa security source reported.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: A local politician and three members of his family were killed when a bomb planted inside their house exploded in the northern outskirts of Ramadi, 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, local police said.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: The United States fired missiles at three suspected militant targets near the Afghan border Monday, killing 16 people. The identities of the dead in the unusually intense volley of drone-fired strikes in the South Waziristan tribal region were not known.

#2: Insurgents attacked an Afghan checkpoint overnight, killing two police officers and abducting five others in the southwest of the country. The attack happened in Nimroz province late Sunday and appears to be linked to rogue police officers involved with the Taliban, officials said. "Armed insurgents attacked a police post in Khash Rod district at 11pm killing two policemen, wounding one, and kidnapping five others," said provincial police chief General Abdul Jabar Purdeli.

#3-4: Two tankers carrying supplies for the Nato forces stationed in Afghanistan were torched in two separate incidents in Bolan and Khuzdar districts of Balochistan on Sunday. According to reports reaching here, a Nato tanker carrying fuel was passing from Dhadar Qambari Bridge in Bolan district when unidentified people opened indiscriminate fire on it. As a result, the vehicle caught fire and thousands of liters of fuel was destroyed. In a similar incident, unidentified people attacked a Nato tanker at Wadh area of Khuzdar, 360km from Quetta.


MoD: Corporal Michael John Pike

DoD: Sgt. Jeffrey C. S. Sherer

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