Army Recruiter Stuff

Accomplished? On May 1, President Bush triumphantly
proclaimed the end of combat operations, and he did it with
a theatrical flourish. Attired in a Navy flight suit, the
former Air National Guard trainee (Bush had actually cut
short his flight training to participate in a political
campaign) landed ceremoniously on the deck of the aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln off San Diego. Bush emerged from
the plane under a banner stretched across the carrier's
super structure. "Mission Accomplished" the banner exulted.
"We have difficult work to do in Iraq," the president said.
"Parts of that country remain dangerous...The War on Terror
continues." But, he went on, "In the battle of Iraq, the
United States and our allies have prevailed."

But a growing opposition thought otherwise. Rumsfeld had
assured Bush that the war could be fought on the cheap.
Once the productive Iraqi oil fields were up and running,
they would more defray the costs of the war and the
occupation. (As of spring 2008, Iraqi oil production was
still below prewar output.) A streamlined military force
brandishing high-tech equipment would be all that was
needed. American forces could be reduced and hand off the
job to Iraqis.

When Lieutenant General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of
staff, told Congress that "something in the order of several
hundred thousand" military personnel would be needed,
Rumsfeld was outraged. The Army's top officer was hounded
into retirement. The Pentagon leadership pointedly refused
to attend the customary retirement ceremony.

And Americans were dying. Bremer and the CPA, mostly made
up of young and inexperienced recent college graduates but
with impeccable political credentials, holed up in the
heavily fortified and protected area of Baghdad, the Green
Zone.

Beyond, chaos and danger reigned. Snipers picked off
individual soldiers. Roads were sown with mines and
improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which were designed to
blow up and destroy the unprotected undercarriage of
military vehicles when they passed over. Personnel carriers
were only lightly armored, another money-saving policy.
Besides, heavy armor was unnecessary, it was thought, with
Iraq conquered and the population friendly. Troops took to
fashioning their own armor from scrap metal or persuaded
families back home to provide it to them.

The Bombing of a Shrine. When Baghdad fell, Saddam Hussein
was nowhere to be found. As the coalition rounded up other
former government leaders on their "Most Wanted" list, the
supreme leader's whereabouts remained a mystery. Then,
seven months after his statue fell in December 2003, a
disheveled and filthy Hussein was discovered cowering in a
tiny subterranean dugout -- a "spider hole," his captors
called it -- near his birthplace of Tikrit. The
all-powerful dictator who once had thirty-seven palaces was
living in a few cubic feet underneath a mud hut. Bush
immediately went on television to trumpet his capture, "I
say to the Iraqi people, 'You will not have to live in fear
of Saddam ever again.'" But elsewhere, there was little to
crow about.

Even the commander of U.S. ground forces acknowledged that a
"low-key, guerrilla-type war" was underway. Suicide bombers
blew themselves up in marketplaces, city squares, offices,
buses, and crowded streets, often taking as many as 100
fellow Iraqis with them. In one horrifying instance, 140
Shiites enjoying a Shia festival were blown up. Terrorist
explosives reduced to rubble one of the most treasured
shrines of Shia Islam, the Golden Mosque of Samarra with its
gleaming dome, setting off a countrywide wave of violence
between Sunnis and Shiites. Trying to quell the rising
insurgency that was morphing into a civil war. U.S. troops
fought pitched battles with Shiite militia in the teeming
Sadr City district of Baghdad. A month later, they were
fighting Sunni insurgents for the city of Falluja.

Misled by the Iraq National Congress's belief that Iraqis
were united by their hatred of Hussein, American leaders had
vastly underestimated the long standing enmity between the
rival Muslim factions. Meanwhile Bremer had undertaken to
exterminate root and branch all vestiges of Hussein rule.
He outlawed Hussein's Baath party and barred all members
from the government payroll, even low-level clerks and
drivers who had joined the party simply to protect their
jobs. "DeBaathification" eliminated much of the trained
bureaucracy and brought normal government function to a
standstill so that even mailing a letter became difficult.

Another Bremer edict disbanded the Iraqi army. Four hundred
thousand angry trained soldiers were suddenly turned onto
the streets with no jobs or income, to demonstrate or
bitterly join the insurgency-where, at least, they would be
fed.

The army was the only organization that could bring any kind
of order to the country and perhaps stop the widespread
looting, Bremer's predecessor, an appalled General Garner
noted. "You can get rid of an army in a day, Jerry," he
told Bremer. "It takes years to build one." (Bremer was to
claim afterward that he didn't disband the army; it had
simply "dissolved." And he said he took his action only
after consulting the Pentagon.)

Despite these setbacks and growing antiwar sentiment, Bush
was elected for a second term in 2004 and promised to
prosecute the war until "victory." After the election,
Powell went to the White House and submitted his
resignation. He had, he insisted, always intended to serve
only one term. Bush made no effort to keep him.

"We had a good and fulsome discussion," Powell said in a
press briefing afterward. "We came to the mutual agreement
that it would be appropriate for me to leave at this time."
Washington interpreted that as diplomatic double speak for
"We aired our disagreements in loud and angry voices."

Where are those WMDs? The bits of broken crockery that the
"Pottery Barn Rule" had predicted continued to accumulate.
David Kay, named to head a diligent search to find those
hidden weapons of mass destruction, failed to turn up a
single specimen after two years of looking. Nor could he
uncover any evidence of any advanced plans to develop them.
The best he could document were a few vials of anthrax
powder kept in scientists' home refrigerators as souvenirs
after the first Gulf War.

The aluminum tubes said to be designed for enriching and
weaponizing uranium were actually for use in unforbidden
short-range missiles. The deal to buy yellow-cake uranium
from the African nation of Niger, mentioned by Bush in his
State of the Union address, was a hoax. No evidence could
be found of supposed meetings in Prague between Al Qaeda
operatives and Iraqi diplomats.

Then came the revelation -- with graphic, almost
stomach-turning photos -- that American soldiers had
mistreated and tortured prisoners in the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison. The Congressional cry to take the troops out
grew to a roar. Democratic candidates swept the House and
Senate in the 2006 elections. With Bush's popularity
sinking to the low 20s in the polls, other Republicans
stumbled over each other in haste to distance themselves
from the president. Rumsfeld was finally fired, and the
Iraq Study Group, an elite panel of Washington wisemen
co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker,
normally a Bush acolyte, deemed the Iraq situation "grave
and deteriorating."

Instead of withdrawing troops, however, a defiant Bush
increased them. The "surge" of 30,000 reinforcements
announced in 2007 was supposedly to allow the shaky,
Shiite-controlled Iraqi government time and cover to solve
contentious issues--such as sharing oil revenue and regional
autonomy--and to train a viable army.

"As they stand up, we will stand down," Bush repeated,
almost like a mantra. In the new army's first test of
standing up, Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki ordered an
attack on Shiite militias in the port city of Basra. More
than 1,000 recruits deserted or fled the battlefield and had
to be rescued by U.S. troops and airpower, with a ceasefire
brokered by Iran.

Meanwhile, the country that Bush still insisted was the
front fine in the "war on terror" lay in shambles, along
with the lives of twenty-five million citizens. Except for
the Kurdish-held north and the "Green Zone" headquarters of
the coalition, no part of the embattled nation could be
considered secure. (Later, in the spring of 2008, incessant
rocket attacks shattered the supposed safety of the Green
Zone.) Cities cleared of resistance by coalition offensives
frequently fen back into chaos when the troops moved on.
Historic Baghdad, the fabled city of flying carpets and
Arabian Nights, was a nightmare of suicide bombing, IEDS,
and ruins, with one million impoverished residents in 'Sadr
City,' a Shiite enclave and a law unto itself.

More than one and a half million Iraqis, by official
estimate, had fled, most of them huddled in squalid quarters
in the unwelcoming cities of neighboring Jordan and Syria.
Another estimated two million were displaced within the
country, fleeing wrecked homes to crowd in with relatives or
live in makeshift tent villages. Much of the educated
population of what had once been the most developed country
in the Middle East had decamped, including 12,000 of the
country's 34,000 physicians. Living conditions for those
remaining were abysmal. Whole neighborhoods were without
adequate sewage or water.

In July 2007, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Congress
that most Iraqi cities had electricity only one to two hours
a day. On the fifth anniversary of the war, the nation's
electric grid was still producing less than 5,000 daily
megawatts of power, less than when the war started. Iraqis
faced a scorching summer when 11,000 megawatts would be the
daily minimum. In oil-rich Iraq, oil to power generating
plants was in short supply. The bulk of it was being
shipped abroad, the Iraqi government's only source of
revenue. And an estimated 35 percent of the population was
unemployed.

The repeatedly fought-over city of Falluja, west of Baghdad,
was a classic example of the war's devastation. Once a
thriving city of 450,000, its surviving population was
estimated in 2007 at fewer than 50,000. Eighty percent of
the buildings had been damaged in the fighting; half of them
were completely destroyed. Half of the homes were gone.
Those that remained were largely without water, electricity,
or sewage. There were no operating schools. Buildings had
been stripped by looters, including floor tiles and window
frames. Once Falluja had been known as "the city of
mosques," with more than 200 glittering temples of worship.
Only 60 remained intact.

The estimates of "collateral damage"-the Pentagon euphemism
for civilian and noncombatant casualties-varied wildly. In
2007, the Iraqi Ministry of Health gave a low figure of
151,000 Iraqis killed from war-related causes between
February 2003 and June 2006. A survey published in the
British medical journal Lancet estimated 600,000 "excess"
deaths-those above the normal attrition of population-for
the period 2003-2006. An Opinion Research Bureau report
estimated the war had caused 946,000 to 1,033,000 violent
deaths. In one survey, researchers asked individual Iraqis
if they had a civilian relative or friend who had been a war
casualty. Eighty percent of those interviewed said yes.

One unlamented casualty was Hussein. After a tumultuous
trial marked by raucous shouting at the judges of the
special tribunal, the onetime strong man was unceremoniously
hanged for 'crimes against humanity' on December 30, 2006.
Reactions predictably ranged from cheering to anger. And
yet the fighting went on. And on.

In December 2005, Bush at last admitted that some
intelligence on which the war had been fought was "wrong."
But so what? Bush insisted that the war was worthwhile and
the decision to bring down Hussein was "the right thing to
do." He would have made the same decision even if he had
known more. Powell, the obedient soldier, kept silent while
writing his memoirs and giving motivational speeches. But
in 2007, he finally apologized for the United Nations
speech. "The intelligence I was given turned out to be
inaccurate," he told Barbara Walters. "That will always
remain a blot on my record."

The Historic Record. In 1971, Henry Kissinger asked Chinese
foreign minister Zhou En-lai the historical impact of the
French Revolution of 1789. "Too soon to tell," En-lai
responded.

In the lame duck months of Bush's presidency, in the midst
of an election campaign, and with his popularity ratings
cratering, by En-lai's reckoning, it is at least 200 years
too soon to assess Bush's impact on history, and especially
the Iraq invasion.

But writers, historians, politicians, office-seekers, and
the world are trying already to size up the eight Bush
years. Some contend that Bush is simply "an amiable dunce"
(as Clark Clifford dubbed Ronald Reagan), readily
manipulated by Vice President Cheney, former Secretary
Rumsfeld, and his political Svengali Karl Rove. They say
Bush is a president out of the loop, whose priorities were
cutting brush on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and getting a
good night's sleep. Many Europeans share that view and
believe Bush has destroyed the world's trust in the United
States--trust that will take decades to rebuild. Others
regard the Bush administration as visionary-the first to
recognize an impending "clash of civilizations," and begin
to prepare America for it. And meanwhile, to fight a
preemptive war before the terrorist enemy got stronger.

How will the decision to invade Iraq be judged 50, 100, 200
years from now? How will Bush's record be written in the
twenty-third century? Where is Zhou En-lai when we need
him?

The above is an excerpt from the book Failures Of The
Presidents: From The Whiskey Rebellion And War Of 1812 To
The Bay Of Pigs And War In Iraq

by Thomas J. Craughwell with M. William Phelps

Published by Publisher; September 2008;$19.95US/$21.95CAN;
978-1-59233-299-1

Copyright ? 2008 Author

Author Bio

Thomas J. Craughwell is the author of several books, most
recently How the Barbarian Invasions Shaped the Modern World
(Fair Winds Press, 2008) and Stealing Lincoln's Body
(Harvard University Press, 2007). He has written articles on
history, religion, politics, and popular culture for the
Wall Street Journal, American Spectator, and U.S. News &
World Report. He lives in Bethel, Connecticut.

Journalist, lecturer, and historian M. William Phelps is
the author of eleven books, including his most recent,
Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America?s First Spy
(Thomas Dunne Books, 2008). He lives in Vernon, Connecticut.

Please visit
http://writtenvoices.com/titlepage.asp?ISBN=1592332994 for
more information about Failures of the Presidents.

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The German tsunami relief convoy reached the Paranthan
junction, which is the last northern point in the mainland
of Indian Ocean's war-torn island, where people lived in the
midst of the civil war in 1996.

I had been there for a brief period of time when I was
working with CARE International. The Elephant Pass strategic
military camp of Sri Lanka Army was stationed there. The
camp was a major coveted target for LTTE since their failed
attempt in 1991 along with heavy losses of cadres.

When I was staying in that vicinity in 1995, the
vulnerability of that area was an every day presence. The
artillery shells were pouring at times like thunderstorm.
Some of the shells had fallen near my house and in one
incident I narrowly escaped. But a known girl nearby died,
of shock caused by the heavy explosion of an artillery
shell. I was able to recall how her two sisters were crying
when her body was being taken for cremation along the same
high way on which I was traveling with the German Praktikum
(Internship) students in the relief mission.

After that incident and continuous artillery shelling, the
Area Director of CARE International in Kilinochchi asked me
to get away from that area a number of times. But I was
reluctant to leave as I was used to the artillery shelling
and aerial bombings since my childhood in the war-torn
northern Jaffna Peninsula. But for the Area Director, her
upbringing in the New York City in a calm and quiet
atmosphere made it hard for her to accept my explanation.

Finally I left that area for a while. But memories still
came alive when I was looking at the demolished buildings
and the surroundings on the way. Our five-vehicle convoy was
now speedily hurrying through a one-time No-Man Zone.

Rajkumar Kanagasingam is the author of the fascinating book
- German Memories in Asia.....A collection of memories by
the author on Asian & European historical events especially
the German since the Roman Empire era.

More about the book @

http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~41609.aspx

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I have started playing Warhammer with 40K, and after a
couple of games I joined a Mordheim campaign. Since then
Warhammer Fantasy came always first than Warhammer 40K. I
have been playing Warhammer Fantasy since the end of 2005
and I see myself as a newbie in Warhammer.

Enterprise. I just want to give some information to the
beginners.

1. Rank and File

An average Empire Soldier is just WS3/4 and T3 which means
most races will hit us easier and kill us easier. After a
close combat it is more probably the opponents will cause
more wounds on our unit than we do. As you should know each
rank of 5 models you have at the start of combat phase will
give you a rank bonus. (Maximum 3) Which means if you have
20 soldiers in a rank and file unit you will have 3 victory
points with ease. And then you will add 1 victory point for
the standard bearer so do not forget to take standard
bearer. But if the enemy is also a rank and file unit ? Here
is the answer;

2. Detachment System

A states troop unit can have 2 detachments, I always take 1
unit of 9 (3x3) halberdiers and 10 handgunners. If the enemy
charges you your shooty detachment can support fire (and
does not take the -1 to hit as he is not the one being
charged at.) and may panic the enemy unit. If the enemy does
not panic and reaches you, your close combat detachment
-here my halberdiers- can counter charge and may take the
rank bonus from the enemy. Which means in a 20 men unit you
may have +3 for rank bonus +1 for charging in flank (if your
halberdiers are 5 men strong at the end of combat phase) the
wounds you may have given to the opponent. If you charge
the enemy the shooty unit will not support you, but your
close combat detachment will support charge.

3. Black Powder

The Empire has most of the best warmachines in Warhammer
Fantasy. We have great cannon for tough targets, mortar
against close packed infantry groups of low toughness
targets (like goblins, skaven, elves...), hellblaster ( I
usually take 2 in 2000 points) which makes the enemy think
once more before advancing, hellstrom rocket battery for
close packet high toughness targets (like orcs..),
handgunner with 24" range and armour piercing rounds,
pistoliers for moving and shooting (shooting hard) and
outriders for mobile handgunner unit. You can outshoot most
of the opponents, and eliminate them before coming to you.

4. Knightly Orders

Empire Knightly Orders are the only cavalry unit in the
whole Warhammer Fantasy world with the full plate armor
which give 1+ save with barded warhorse. (Chaos Chosen
Knights also have 1+ save) Which makes knightly orders a
reliable unit. The only thing you should aware of if you
charge an outnumbering rank and file unit if your knights
do not cause enough wounds (generally 3-4) they will lose
the combat. For this reason; - Have 10 model knight units
(Unit strength 20 and 1 rank bonus)

- Always give musician (If they break you can rally them
easier.)

- Try to charge the enemy in flank (+1 flank charge bonus
plus the enemy will lose his rank bonus)

5. Leadership

As average troops' leadership value is low, support your
troops with a high leadership general placing it in the
middle of your lines.

For a starting force you should have 2 troop choices and a
general. I would recommend a state troop unit with a shooty
detachment and a close combat detachment as the first troop
choice. For your second troop choice you can field a small
knight unit. Take a great cannon or mortar depending on the
opponent and take a Captain as general. (He is a cheap high
leadership provider.)

After some games you will want to enlarge your army, select
your reinforcements depending on the gaming style you liked.
If you are unsure ask your opponent for proxy gaming and try
your army lists before you buy. Last but not the least; Do
not forget : You are playing for the fun !

Murat KILICOGLU is an IBM iSeries Specialist in Istanbul,
Turkey. He spends his free times - if he has any- with
modelling and wargaming. He has a personal website about
wargaming and modelling : Unimog's Agora

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Fedor Emelianenko is one of the most popular fighters that
is involved in Mixed Martial Arts, better known as MMA. He
comes from a family of fighters, and he has a background
that has trained him to be one of the best MMA athletes of
his time. He trains hard, works hard, and fights harder.

Fedor Emelianenko was born in Luhansk, Ukraine, of the
former USSR. Fedors father was a worker in the steel mills,
and his mother was an elementary school teacher. Fedor
Emelianenko has one older sister, and he has two brothers
who also are fighters in Mixed Martial Arts. When Fedor
Emelianenko was still very young, he started getting
involved in the world of fighting. He started out training
in Sambo and judo.

By the time he was 10 years old, Fedor Emelianenko was
working his way steadily up to becoming a master of both of
those sports, even though apparently he had been very small
as a child. Now standing at 6 feet tall, at 235 pounds, when
he was a child he had not been overly tall, husky, or
overweight. Fedor Emelianenko has been hailed as one of the
greatest MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) athletes that has ever
been. He is currently the World Alliance of Mixed Martial
Arts Heavyweight Champion. Born on September 28, 1976, he
is known as The Last Emperor and has worked his way to
becoming a legend in the sport.

Fedor Emelianenko graduated from his high school in 1991 and
enrolled in a professional trade school, where he was an
honors student and an honors graduate in 1994. From 1995
to 1997, Fedor Emelianenko was a soldier in the Russian
Army, where he held his position as a military firefighter.
While he was in the army, he continued his training with
Sambo, his only workout area being a makeshift gym that he
had put together.

Two years after he left the Russian Army, Fedor Emelianenko
married his girlfriend, Oksana. A few months after they were
married, their first child, a daughter named Masha, was
born. In 2006, his marriage to his wife ended and he began
a family with his girlfriend, Marina, and another daughter
was born.

In 1997, Fedor Emelianenko was honored when he had earned
the official certification of a Master of Sports in Judo and
Sambo. The following year, Fedor Emelianenko earned the
bronze medal n the Russian Judo Championship. In the year
2000, Fedor Emelianenko started competing on a professional
level in mixed martial arts and combat Sambo.

To know more about Fedor Emelianenko please visit our
website.

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