Military Daily News

Gates Visits Afghan Army Training Center

stuchebub — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

For the last stop in his visit to Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates opted to take a first-hand look at an Afghan National Army training center.

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Gates Visits Afghan Army Training Center

Retired O-5 on defense after leaving U.S. House

Frepritte — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:54:44 +0000

WASHINGTON — Former Rep. Eric Massa, a retired Navy commander who resigned from Congress amid sexual harassment allegations, acknowledged Tuesday groping a staffer but denied it was sexual. “It doesn’t make any difference what my intentions were, it’s how it’s perceived by the individual who receives that action,” Massa, D-N.Y., said on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s Fox News Channel show. “I’m telling you I was wrong. I was wrong. … My behavior was wrong. I should have never allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was.” The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported Tuesday that the House ethics panel has been investigating allegations Massa groped multiple male staffers in his office. Massa has previously claimed his misconduct was limited to using inappropriate language with staffers. Asked directly on Beck’s program whether he sexually groped anyone, Massa replied: “No, no, no.” Massa, however, recalled tickling a staffer at a birthday party. “Now they’re saying I groped a male staffer,” Massa said. “Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday and it was kill the old guy.” Massa said his actions may have been misinterpreted. “If somebody on my staff was offended, uncomfortable, thought I was inappropriate, I own that,” Massa said. “It’s why I resigned.” Massa has given different reasons over the past week for quitting his seat before completing his first term, including health worries, a House ethics probe and charges fellow Democrats pushed him out because he opposed their health care bill. Democrats deny the charge. He took a slightly different tack Tuesday. “I wasn’t forced out,” he said. “I forced myself out.” Massa added he did not live up to his own personal code of conduct. Massa, 50, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1996, defeated Republican Rep. Randy Kuhl in 2008 in a district long dominated by Republicans. He said his cancer returned in December. Massa, who is married, is a 24-year retired commander who served during the 1991 U.S.-Iraq war and later was special assistant to Gen. Wesley Clark during the conflict in Bosnia. His cancer diagnosis forced him and his family back to the U.S. for treatment. He spent his last year in the Navy as a cancer outreach advocate and later took a professional staff job with the House Armed Services Committee.

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Retired O-5 on defense after leaving U.S. House

Gates visits Afghan town cleared by Marines

moshegirl — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:08:10 +0000

NOW ZAD, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Robert Gates, aiming to show progress in the expanded war against insurgents in south Afghanistan, took a brief, heavily guarded walk Tuesday down a rutted street in this scruffy market town where the Taliban lobbed mortars at U.S. forces only weeks ago. Now Zad was the scene of first significant military push after President Barack Obama’s announcement in early December that he would add 30,000 troops atop 17,000 reinforcements he had already sent into the flagging war. With the additional firepower, Marines moved into Now Zad last December and quickly pushed out Taliban fighters who had seized the town four years ago and forced every civilian to flee. Families that had lived in Now Zad for generations fled their houses with laundry still on the lines, said the top U.S. officer in the district, Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson. The current campaign in nearby Marjah and the coming fight in much larger Kandahar are patterned on Now Zad, including the effort to recruit support from tribal elders before the fighting starts. As in Marjah, the United States is helping to install rudimentary local government in Now Zad, and U.S. forces are trying to train Afghan security forces to shoulder the load. Now Zad actually tells a more significant story, Nicholson said. “I am thrilled about Marjah, but I am more thrilled about Now Zad,” Nicholson said. “This is the rebirth of a city that has been dead for four years.” On his brief tour of Now Zad with Nicholson, Gates stopped to speak to shopkeepers who are among about 2,500 people who have returned to the city, once Helmand province’s second-largest, with some 30,000 residents. “A few months ago this place was a ghost town, a no-go zone,” Gates told Marines at their small, heavily fortified outpost at the edge of town. “Now, as I saw for myself, stores are opening, people are returning.” Gates’ walk, with armed guards in front of and behind him and soldiers dressed for battle posted all along his short route, also showed the limitations of the U.S. and NATO military campaign. Gates acknowledged that the Taliban insurgency is entrenched in southern Afghanistan — where the movement was born and bred — and is unlikely to recede completely under military pressure. “In many respects, the Taliban are now part of the political fabric of Afghanistan,” he said. The street was nearly deserted as Gates walked. Only a handful of men stood or squatted outside the doors of the few shops along the main drag that appeared to be open. As is the custom in socially conservative districts of Afghanistan, no women showed themselves to the visitors. Nicholson said the place is usually busier, with 52 shops and a school now open, but that a “security bubble” was in place for Gates’ visit. Ironically, to demonstrate that the town is safe enough for Gates to visit, U.S. forces held at bay the very Afghan townspeople Marines fought to bring back. Gates paused before sagging tables holding tomatoes and oranges. At his feet was a large shallow bowl of eggs, their shells specked with mud. The shopkeeper told Gates he’d like to see more Marines in town. “Because of the Marines we can walk anywhere,” the man told Gates. “More Marines, then more Afghan troops,” Gates replied.

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Army seeks answers for Afghan civilian deaths

Jill_Fred — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:33:00 +0000

A helicopter attack that killed at least 15 civilians in Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province was called in by a Special Forces A-team that did not have “eyes on” their target and resulted in a 48-hour standdown for U.S. special operations forces, said an Army officer familiar with the incident. In the wake of the incident, the commander of coalition and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and then to the Afghan people in a Feb. 23 television address . “I have instituted a thorough investigation to prevent this from happening again,” McChrystal said. The Army officer familiar with the incident described a confusing situation involving multiple special operations task forces and aerial platforms that descended into tragedy in part due to “a miscommunication, unfortunately a fatal one.” The events that led to the attack began early in the morning of Feb. 21 while, together with Afghan security forces, the A-team was clearing a bazaar in the town of Khod. “They found Taliban IED-making materials and stuff like that,” the Army officer said. The A-team involved in the incident was Operational Detachment Alpha 3124, a team that specializes in high-altitude, low-opening parachute operations, and which is based at Firebase Tinsley in Oruzgan. (Firebase Tinsley was known as Firebase Cobra until recently, when it was renamed in honor of Capt. John Tinsley of 7th Special Forces Group, who was killed near there Aug. 12.) The team leader received word that a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle flying overhead had spotted a convoy of vehicles that appeared to be heading toward the team. The A-team did not have a Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver, or ROVER, which would have enabled the team leader, a captain, to view the Predator footage in real time. “There’s maybe one per base, and if it goes down you’re out of luck,” the Army officer said. Instead, the team leader relied on the word of the Predator pilot, flying the aircraft remotely. “The bottom line is he didn’t have access to the footage in the field, and so at that point then he’s kind of taking the Predator on his word,” the officer said. The Predator pilot said he had positively identified weapons in the convoy, the Army officer added. However, while the A-team leader had no real-time access to the Predator feed, the three levels of command above him did, the Army officer said. The next higher level of command was the company, or B-team — in this case B Company, 3rd Special Forces Group — based at the large coalition headquarters in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan. But while the B-team has a Predator feed, it lacks the staff to monitor it full time. “That is not their responsibility,” the Army officer said. Responsibility for commanding and controlling the A-team’s actions, and monitoring the Predator feed, rested at the battalion, or special operations task force, level and at the group, or combined joint special operations task force, level, he said. “It begins at the SOTF and then the CJSOTF,” he said. “My understanding is that both those levels were watching it.” Col. Tim Nye, a spokesman for Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, which commands all U.S. special operations forces in country except those working for the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command, declined to answer any questions about the incident. But the Army officer said the battalion-level command was SOTF 12, formed around 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, and based at Kandahar Airfield. The CJSOTF is led by 3rd Special Forces Group commander Col. Gus Benton, who is on a 60-day deployment before Col. Don Bolduc takes command in April. When a “scout-weapons team” of two OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters arrived to monitor and possibly attack the convoy, there was a misunderstanding between the pilots and the team leader, the Army officer said. “In the communication and the radio traffic, the team leader came under the impression that they had [also] seen weapons,” he said. “In the after-action [review] of the whole thing, apparently they were communicating that they either understood that the Predator had seen weapons or they were basically relaying that information back, and so there was a miscommunication, unfortunately a fatal one.” It is unclear what orders, if any, Benton or Lt. Col. Brian Petit, the SOTF 12 commander, gave in relation to the convoy as it was tracked by the Predator. But after a lengthy delay, the A-team leader eventually decided to call an airstrike on the convoy from the Kiowa Warriors, the Army officer said. At about 9 a.m., the helicopters attacked. The Kiowa Warrior can carry Hellfire missiles, 2.75-inch Hydra rockets and a .50-caliber machine gun. It is not clear which weapons were used in the attack. The first sign that something might be amiss came when the pilots wheeled around to attack again and noticed “a flash of color” in the clothing of those in the vehicles. Because Pashtun men rarely wear anything but earth-toned garments, “this kind of turned them on to the fact that there might be women on the convoy, and so they checked fire,” the Army officer said. After getting the word from the pilots, the team leader, who had prior enlisted service as a Special Forces sergeant, relayed the information to the SOTF tactical operations center using an Iridium satellite phone. Further confusing the situation, a Joint Special Operations Command element combining ground troops and helicopters launched from Kandahar Airfield landed at Tarin Kowt, with the apparent intention of attacking the same convoy, the Army officer said. “They were en route and then the strike occurred, so they stopped the operation,” he said. It is unclear why two U.S. forces were launching to attack the same target. After the attack, commanders debated which coalition element to send to the site of the attack. Eventually they decided to send ODA 3124 — the team that had called in the strike. It was four hours after the attack by the time the team arrived at the scene, the Army officer said. “There apparently was quite a bit of pondering of what to do after this strike,” he said. “The team leader apparently called up fast. … The call went up and then it did not get transmitted above the SOTF in a timely manner. That’s one of the things that’s being investigated now.” Also complicating the investigation, he said, was the fact that “supposedly for some reason they don’t have any Predator footage after the actual engagement,” even though it’s not unusual in Afghanistan for a Predator to stay on station after a strike to conduct battle damage assessment and to track anyone returning to or arriving at the target site. When the A-team got there, the soldiers found that “two of the vehicles were completely shot up.” News accounts have said as many as 27 civilians were killed in the attack, but the Army officer said that those numbers may be exaggerated. “My understanding is that it was 15 guys that they confirmed on the ground had been killed [and] there was a wounded woman and a wounded child. … They lived,” the officer said. “It seems that these guys were legitimate civilians,” the officer said. They were members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority “coming out of Daikundi [province] and were … going to go down through Helmand and then into Iran.” (However, a March 3 McClatchy Newspapers account based on telephone interviews with survivors of the attack said the convoy included “more than three dozen relatives heading to Kandahar for supplies and Kabul for medical treatment.”) In the wake of the incident, all CFSOCC-A forces were ordered to stand down for 48 hours beginning Feb. 22, said International Security Assistance Force spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis. “They literally pulled everybody off the battlefield and told them that they had to reread all of the tactical directives and the ROE [rules of engagement] and everything,” the Army officer said. The standdown meant “pulling teams that were literally in the middle of operations. They had to leave what they were doing and go back to base,” the Army officer said. “It is not unusual for forces to review their existing guidance and procedures after a major event of this nature — regardless of whether or not anything went wrong, which only the investigation will tell us,” Sholtis said. That investigation is being led by Army Maj. Gen. Timothy McHale, the deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. “The investigation led by Maj. Gen. McHale is ongoing,” Sholtis said March 5. “Because of that, it’s inappropriate for us to provide or confirm details on the incident at this time or provide a timeline for its completion and review.”

Excerpt from: Army seeks answers for Afghan civilian deaths

Cruiser CO fired for ‘cruelty’ assigned to Dahlgren

Jim Davis — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:04:08 +0000

The former cruiser commanding officer who was fired in January after a years-long pattern of “cruelty and maltreatment” toward her crew is to report to a new job at Navy Air and Missile Defense Command in Dahlgren, Va., Navy Times has learned. Capt. Holly Graf, relieved of command of the cruiser Cowpens on Jan. 13 in Yokosuka, Japan, is “in the process of executing those orders,” said Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a spokesman for 7th Fleet in Japan. When Graf was relieved in January, officials at the time said she would continue on to a previously arranged job in the Navy Staff in the Pentagon. However, she was given a different assignment after a standard administrative review that followed her admiral’s mast with Rear Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander of Carrier Strike Group 5, who found her guilty of “cruelty” and “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Admiral’s mast is a nonjudicial proceeding. A report by the Naval Surface Forces Inspector General substantiated allegations that Graf had belittled, harangued and even assaulted her subordinates on Cowpens and in her previous command, the destroyer Winston S. Churchill. The full details of that report are in this week’s Navy Times. Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole said Tuesday that Graf has not yet been assigned a specific billet at the air and missile defense command, which was created last year under 3rd Fleet. Officials did not have information about why she is no longer being reassigned to the Navy Staff in the Pentagon. Commanders’ initial willingness to permit Graf to transition to her planned reassignment in the Navy office of information, plans and strategy — known as “N3/N5” around the Pentagon — was unusual for a skipper who has been relieved. One explanation could be that Graf was already close to a scheduled change of command on Cowpens; her successor, Capt. Robert Marin, was already aboard the ship when Graf was relieved. Even as Graf reports for duty at her new job in Dahlgren, she faces another administrative step in continuing her career. When officers are found guilty in a nonjudicial proceeding, their commanders must submit information about the incident to Navy Personnel Command. NPC then decides whether to empanel a board that requires officers to “show cause” why they should continue in the Navy. Having considered the case, the board makes a recommendation to the secretary of the Navy about whether an officer should be kept or separated. Graf is in the middle of that process, Cole said; NPC officials now are deciding whether to appoint a “show cause” board. Whatever her ultimate fate, the Navy is confident about its process for screening and selecting officers, Cole said. “Captain Graf had one of 1,500 officer billets coded for commanding officer positions in the Navy. In the last five years, 56 of them have been relieved of command, so we would point to the 99 percent of commanding officers who are successfully completing their tours,” Cole said. “When they don’t succeed, we evaluate those circumstances and we hold our commanding officers to a very high standard.”

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Cruiser CO fired for ‘cruelty’ assigned to Dahlgren

Comfort returning home from Haiti mission

Edmund — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:01:15 +0000

The hospital ship Comfort has been released from duty off the coast of Haiti and will begin its journey home to Baltimore this week, the Navy announced Tuesday. The Comfort discharged its last patient Feb. 27, but at the height of the humanitarian relief effort the ship was taking aboard critically injured people as often as every six minutes. The ship’s master, Capt. Bob Holley, said helicopters brought Comfort its first patients before the hospital ship had even sighted land. Statistics from different sources have varied, but an announcement Tuesday from 4th Fleet put the total number of people treated by Comfort at 871. The ship performed 843 surgeries over the course of its Haiti mission, according to the latest numbers, and nine babies were born on the ship, including one set of twins, Holley said. Holley told Navy Times last week he was “in awe” of the work of the Navy and civilian medical staff that pitched in to help in the aftermath of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Not only did the surgeons, doctors and nurses have to deal with some of the worst trauma injuries they’d ever seen, they saw may patients who had never been inoculated against diseases like tetanus, Holley said, which meant dealing with ailments like lockjaw. Now that Hatian doctors and hospitals ashore have had time to recover from the earthquake, they can handle treatment from here on in, according to the 4th Fleet announcement. That means Comfort can go home. “We are immensely proud of the contributions made by everyone who helped treat critically-injured survivors aboard Comfort,” said Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of Southern Command. “Their efforts saved the lives of many patients and helped everyone treated begin the important process of recovery. Their rapid response and contribution to the international relief efforts in Haiti helped the country overcome an urgent medical crisis at a time when access to surgical care on the ground was very limited.” Comfort is expected back in Baltimore around March 14, where, as a Military Sealift Command ship, it will go back into a “reduced operating status.” By law MSC and the Navy are required to be able to activate the Comfort within five days.

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Latest issue of Airman magazine available

coecauckTwese — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:24:00 +0000

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Latest issue of Airman magazine available

Navy assessment team arrives in Chile

ssbssval — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:10:41 +0000

A Navy assessment team arrived Monday in Santiago, Chile, to provide technical expertise following the 8.8-magnitude earthquake and tsunami Feb. 27, according to a press release from U.S. Southern Command. The Chilean Navy flew the team to Concepcion. The team, headed by Capt. Joe Newbury of Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, came from Mayport, Fla., in response to a request for assistance by the Chilean government. The team is composed of 12 service members and civilians from various commands, including Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Facilities Engineering Command and NECC. The team will assist the Chilean Navy with a damage assessment of Naval Base Talcahuano near Concepcion to determine what will be needed to repair the base and shipyard, according to the press release. They are scheduled to conduct bay and aerial surveys with the Chilean Navy and additional surveys and assessments. The team members have backgrounds in diving and salvage, medicine, engineering, communications and surveying. They will report directly to the U.S. Military Group at the U.S. Embassy in Chile. U.S. Southern Command is leading the efforts for any U.S. military support requested.

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Navy assessment team arrives in Chile

Homestead ARB provides relief

davidtaylor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:51:15 +0000

Video: Homestead ARB provides relief

Drawdown

ssbssval — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:45:41 +0000

Video: Drawdown