Mortar Defense System Going To Iraq

The U.S. military is fast-tracking a weapons system to reduce the threat of mortar attacks, one of the leading killers of troops in Iraq. It’s called C-RAM, short for counter rocket artillery mortar system.

According to The Defense Manpower Data Center, which collects and maintains an archive for the Defense Department, of the 1,136 hostile active-duty deaths reported as of March 5, 39 of them were due to mortar attacks.

A mortar launcher is relatively easy to activate and may take little more than a minute from set-up to detonation. Skilled enemies can therefore escape before encountering return fire. Also, mortars don’t emit heat and they’re relatively small in size, so unlike missiles, the military has never had a real defense to knock them out of the air.

C-RAM is like a huge Gatling gun, which utilizes fire-finding radar to track mortar launches.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter is urging Congress to provide $75 million in funding to get C-RAM to the front lines.

C-RAM will shoot spent uranium shells very quickly and will be able to take a mortar, a fairly slow-moving projectile, out of the air.

Current tests show that C-RAM has a 60 to 70 percent shoot-down capability.

According to FOX News the military is expected to sign with a defense contractor by the summer to start manufacturing a line of C-RAM. Prototypes are already en route to Iraq.

“The Army is fast-tracking a lot of technology to send it into Iraq because we are suffering casualties there,” Halley said. “Normally, these things would be tested for one, two, three or four years before they were put into the field. So, we are going to be putting many of these new systems into the field in Iraq without complete testing, and some of them are going to work and some of them are probably not going to work very well, but I think it is worth our trouble â⦠any American life saved is worth the effort.”

Military Dad’s Need Help

While he was deployed in Afghanistan, a U.S. Navy Seal wrote a lullaby for his son Sean, whom he calls “SS.”

Sean may never hear that lullaby again, not because his father Gary died but because Seanâââs mother relocated him to Israel. She visited family there during one of Garyâââs re-deployments and simply stayed, seeking a divorce from abroad.

Gary has unsuccessfully battled the family court system in California, which has jurisdiction over the divorce, for almost two years in order to gain some access to SS. After all, that same court demands he pay hefty child support. “I am paying $2,100 a month not to see my son,” Gary told Fox News in 2003. This is the new face of fatherâââs rights, a face menâââs rights activists are determined you will see in coming months: the military man who is ââËprocessedâââ by the family courts during his tour of duty or upon his return. A father who returns ââËhomeâââ to children he cannot see and, often, to support payments he cannot make.

“Sometimes I wonder what I risked my life for [in Afghanistan],” Gary told fathers’ rights activist Glenn Sacks. I went to fight for freedom but what freedom and what rights mean anything if a man doesn’t have the right to be a father to his own child?”

On March 13, the menâââs rights syndicated radio show “His Side” featured Gary in a program entitled “Two Years into Iraq War, Little Has Been Done to Protect the Rights of Military Fathers.” Gary is not alone.

Do uncaring and unfit fathers exist? Absolutely. But others fathers resemble Gary âââ a Navy veteran with a perfect military and civilian record. It is his image that fatherâââs rights activists want you to see.

Why? Because to a large extent, it is the stereotype of the loser or abusive dad that permits family courts, government agencies and the general public to turn a deaf ear to the three main complaints of fatherâââs rights activists. These complaints are:

Responsible fathers are commonly denied custody or access to their children, often through the motherâââs relocation

Paternity fraud goes unpunished or even rewarded by judges who assess child support nevertheless

Child support standards are unreasonable

By contrast, the family court system cannot ignore the complaints of alienated military fathers with the same impunity. For one thing, public opinion will not permit them to do so.

An indication of how strong the public backlash might be came in the early ââË90s with the Bobby Sherrill case. Sherrill wasnââât a member of the military proper; he was a Lockheed employee and divorced father working in Kuwait when Iraq invaded.

Sherrill was held captive by the Iraqis for five months. Upon his return to North Carolina, he was arrested for non-payment of $1,425 in child support that accrued while he was a hostage. The public backlash passed, partly because people assumed Sherrill was an aberration, a bizarre exception under an otherwise ââËgoodâââ law. But Sherrill was imprisoned because of the same unreasonable legislation that returning military fathers and every other alienated dad in America must face.

Phyllis Schlafly who publicly endorses the ACFC ad spotlighting military fathers âââ blasts one particular piece of legislation in her Feb. 18 column at TownHall, entitled “Reservists deserve protection from family-court mischief.”

She writes:

The Bradley Amendmentââ¦takes us back to the cruel days of debtors’ prisons. It requires that a child-support debt cannot be retroactively reduced or forgiven, and states enforce this law no matter what the change in a father’s income, no matter if he is sent to warââ¦and no matter if he is ever allowed to see his children.”

Consider one example of how the Bradley Amendment impacts military fathers. Reservists typically assume a sizeable pay cut when they transfer into military life. But child support is based on their civilian salaries and the Bradley Amendment effectively blocks readjustment of that debt.

Thousands of miles away and out of communication, such fathers are vulnerable to defaults that can lead to financial ruin, as well as the forfeiture of passports, driverâââs and professional licenses. In some states, a default of over $5,000 is a felony that includes imprisonment.

Advocates of the Bradley Amendment maintain that taking a rock-hard line is necessary to ensure that deadbeat dads do not use loopholes to avoid their obligations. But these advocates are now arguing against a very different image of divorced fatherhood: The military dad. He voices a message on behalf of every alienated father. Repeal the zero tolerance laws that have removed compassion and circumstance from family law. Repeal the Bradley Amendment; remove the bureaucracy that automatically separates father and child.

PFC Jeremy Church Awarded Silver Star

FORT McCOY, Wis. (Army News Service, Feb. 28, 2005) — As the 724th Transportation Company was welcomed home from Iraq Feb. 25, the first Army Reserve Soldier in the Global War on Terrorism received a Silver Star.

Pfc. Jeremy Church of the 724th was pinned during a homecoming ceremony at Fort McCoy, Wis., with the Silver Star, the Armyâââs third-highest medal for valor.

Church earned the medal when his convoy was attacked April 9 by more than 150 insurgents in an ambush during which Spc. Keith ââÅMattââ? Maupin was captured.

Church was the convoy commanderâââs driver in the lead vehicle. The convoy was taking fuel to Baghdad International Airport when the Madr Militia struck. Churchâââs actions are attributed with saving the lives of at least five Soldiers and four civilians.

Church drove aggressively through the ââÅkill zoneââ? to dodge explosions, obstacles and small arms fire, according to his citation. When the convoy commander was shot, Church grabbed his first aid pouch, ripped it open, and instructed the platoon leader to apply a bandage. Church fired his M-16 at the enemy as he continued to drive around barriers.

When an improvised explosive devised blew out a tire, Church continued driving for four miles on only three tires, all the while firing his M-16 out the window with his left hand. He finally led the convoy into a security perimeter established by a cavalry company from 2-12 Cav. He then carried his platoon leader out of the vehicle to a casualty collection point for treatment.

Then Church rallied the troopers to launch an immediate recovery mission and escorted them back into the kill zone.

ââÅPfc. Church identified the assistant commanderâââs vehicle amidst heavy black smoke and flaming wreckage of burning fuel tankers to find two more wounded Soldiers and four civilian truck drivers,ââ? his citation reads, adding that after a hasty triage and treating a sucking chest wound, he ââÅcarried the Soldier over to one of the recovery vehicles while exposing himself to continuous enemy fire from both sides of the road.ââ?

When all the wounded were loaded in the truck, there was no room and Church volunteered to remain behind. He climbed into a disabled Humvee for cover, according to his citation, and continued firing at and killing insurgents until the recovery team returned. He then loaded up several more wounded before sweeping the area for sensitive items and evacuating.

Army Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly presented Church with the Silver Star. Helmly also spoke with the parents of Maupin, who was captured in the ambush.

Even though Maupinâââs Army Reserve unit has returned to its home station of Bartonville, Ill., Army officials said other Soldiers in Iraq will never stop the search for Maupin.

I think I can speak for all of us; we are very proud of PFC church!

Some Places Opted Out of Social Security

From an article appearing in ABC News:

When county employees in Galveston learned 25 years ago that Social Security could be in trouble, they took a gamble on their retirement and opted out of the federal system.

The three Texas counties are among a small number of state and local governments around the country that opted out of Social Security for government employees or never joined up at all, like Massachusetts and Ohio.

The Galveston plan operates something like a 401(k): County employees in Galveston contribute 6.2 percent of their salary to the plan, with the county matching that amount plus as much as one additional percentage point. A private firm manages the employees’ accounts and picks the annuities and bonds, which generally are not as risky as stocks. The plan also provides disability and life insurance.

Richard Gornto, president of First Financial Benefits Inc., which administers and designed the Galveston plan, estimates his plan offers an employee who works 37 years at an average of $25,596 a year a monthly benefit of $1,250, versus $669 from Social Security. An employee who worked the same amount of time, but earned $75,000, would get $3,663 a month, compared with $1,301 on Social Security, he said.

Eric Kingson, a professor of social work at Syracuse University who has studied the Galveston plan, said he sees some problems. He said it is possible for retired workers to outlive their benefits, and the plan does not cover children who would qualify for Social Security benefits.

“We have essentially a privatization experiment and it doesn’t work very well, not if you think Social Security should provide basic protections to all American workers,” he said.

Gornto said the Galveston plan gives workers more control over their retirement than Social Security. He said there is a direct correlation between what a person invests in the plan and what they receive upon retirement.

Greg White, who has worked for the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department for 23 years, said he plans to retire in 2009 in his late 40s. He said he is pleased with the alternative plan and thinks it offers a safe alternative to Social Security.

“I know my money is there. I know I am going to be better off,” he said. “I don’t worry about it.”

This sounds pretty darn good to me.

Al-Sadr’s Influence

Taken from an article that appears in Yahoo news:

Al-Sadr’s influence

Iraqi Prospect Organization’s Shames said al-Sadr’s group has made strong inroads at university campuses when mainstream political movements are all but invisible there. “The most organized groups inside the university are people loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr,” he said. “They are definitely not playing a positive role in improving the understanding of democracy.”

By comparison, he added, more mainstream parties have not made “a good effort to educate university students what democracy is.”

The Iraqi Prospect Organization’s interviews with university students, half in Baghdad and the rest distributed evenly in the north and south, showed that university students’ enthusiasm for democracy is accompanied by a weak grasp of what democracy means.” For instance, 91% of the polled students said living without fear of arrest is essential to democracy. A third said majority rule is not essential. Almost half said the right to belong to one’s political party of choice is not an essential component of democracy.

Many young adults here have lived through three wars – a decade-long conflict with Iran (news – web sites) and two clashes with the United States and its allies – and United Nations (news – web sites)-sponsored sanctions. Shames said they are fearful that the country’s new democracy is too fragile to withstand fractious party politicking and vigorous debate.

“People see criticizing the government as (equivalent to) being opposed to the new government, as being opposed to the new Iraq,” Shames said. “It shows how much needs to be done to improve the understanding of democracy.”

Other attitudes on government

In other findings:

44% agree the president should be able to exercise absolute power during crises.

45% agree the judiciary should defer to the executive branch on key decisions.

55% agree the army should be allowed to intervene and govern when necessary.

Defense Ministry spokesman Majid al-Sari condemned last week’s attack on the students in Basra.

“No group can take the government’s role, especially when dealing with students, the future leaders of society,” al-Sari said.

At the University of Baghdad, several students agreed.

Maysa’a Atta Meersa, 20, a chemistry major who is a follower of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite leader who has sought to moderate religious intervention in political life, feared the situation could get worse. “I am thinking very seriously with my family about this matter,” Meersa said. “We might leave Iraq if these things (get worse).”

I hope they get this situation under control soon. It brings up the question of what kind of government will Iraq enact? Will Sharia, Islamic religious law, be the law of the land? We will all have to just wait and see.