B36 News - 30 August 2006

Over 2100 hits and only a couple serious attempts at the challenge. I particularly appreciated Daniel's comments as he did a great job of laying out his position in a logical, sensible manner.

I sincerely hope that I'm not going to win this challenge by default. There has got to be someone out there with some insight into our defeat that extends beyond assumptions and rhetoric.

Double Dose of SECDEF
In seperate articles posted on the DefenseLink website, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld issued strong support of what we milbloggers are doing. Mind you, the words "Bandit is a cool guy," didn't come out of his mouth, but this did:

“Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and our country,” Rumsfeld said while addressing the American Legion National Convention. “The struggle we are in –- the consequences are too severe, the struggle too important, to have the luxury of returning to the old mentality of ‘Blame America first.’”
(read the whole story)

He then went on to reinforce the assessment that as long as Americans at least tolerate the mission, we will succeed:

"History has shown time and again that if Americans have the patience and perseverance to see an effort through -- that we prevail," he said. "And the result of that perseverance is a safer and more secure world."
(read the whole story)

If you don't quit, we will win.

Kidnapped Sunni, Shia Freed
Thanks to Operation Together Forward, two men were freed shortly after their kidnapping. The friends, one a Sunni and the other a Shiite, had been riding their motorcycles when they were abducted.

This is how it works; bad guys do bad things, good guys (us and the ISF) hunt them down and capture or them, we leave good guys (ISF) in place to make sure that bad guys don't come back. This particular group of good guys, 1st Squadron, 67th Cav Regiment, have found and freed 10 kidnapping victims in the last two weeks.

Iraqi Commo
For those who don't know, my job in the Army is in communications. As such, I found this story about the Iraqi Defense Network of particular interest. It's great to hear about things like this in the news. In the commo world, it's a good day if no one's yelling at you because they only yell when it doesn't work.

The Iraqi Defense Network is a command and control and data communications network exclusive to the Iraqi military. IDN allows the military to send secure data without going through a commercial internet provider, according to U.S. Air Force Capt. Karen Zoebisch, the IDN program manager for Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq.

“This capability will give them their own private network,” Zoebisch said. “The network is the Iraqi equivalent to the Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network, or NIPRNet, on the U.S. military side. For the Iraqi military, this will be their first command and control data communication network.”