Civilian Military Intelligence Group

John Murtha, Democratic Congressman

U.S. Representative John P. Murtha has dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. He had a long and distinguished 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990.

He has been serving the people of Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District since 1974. Currently serving his 19th term, Congressman Murtha is the eighth most senior member of the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives. Of the nearly 10,600 men and women who have served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1789, only 79 have served longer than he has.

Source: Official Website

Ship Camophlaged To Blend In With Island

“HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen was stationed in the Dutch East Indies when WW II began. After the destruction of the Allied Fleet by the Japanese during the Battle of the Java Sea in February 1942, Crijnssen’s captain was ordered to escape with his ship to Australia. Covered with tree branches, the minesweeper crossed the Japanese naval lines camouflaged as a tropical island.”

Source: Boingboing

Iranian Missile Test

“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plans to increase his country’s uranium enrichment to near weapons grade could be a wakeup call for President Obama. Michael Adler on what the Iranian president’s mixed signals mean for Obama’s diplomatic hopes.

Upping the ante once again in Iran’s nuclear showdown with the United States, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given orders to have uranium enriched to almost 20 percent—much closer to weapons level. If Iran goes ahead with Ahmadinejad’s plans, President Obama’s rhetoric about engagement would get a reality check.

To increase enrichment, Iran would have to rearrange the centrifuge arrays that refine uranium at the closely watched Natanz site, a focus of concern that the Islamic Republic is seeking nuclear weapons. And the country would be crossing another so-called red line, taking enrichment over the 5 percent level needed for fuel for nuclear power reactors. Given the geometric curve that is enrichment, going to nearly 20 percent is all but the last step needed to jump to the more than 90 percent required for weapons.”

Source: Daily Beast

Of course few people ever say this, but Iran IS a sovereign nation, and probably feels like we all would if another nation that was building and testing nukes just came out and told us we couldn’t do the same.

This is a fair question. It also opens up another avenue of questioning: if this turns out to be true, then how is it that terrorists should be combated? Take a look at the terrorism that plagued Egypt and Algeria at the end of the 20^th century. Jihadists tried desperately to bank on the win they had in driving the French government out of Algeria in the 1960s. They wanted a second prize, a caliphate established in lieu of the western style democracy that the Algerian government sought. It was not that hard to drive the French out of Algeria to begin with. The French drove themselves out. They tortured dissidents. They clamped down on religiosity. They were so unpopular, that a bomb in the street that killed innocent Algerians was tolerated if it at least killed French invaders with them. The extremists who assassinated Sadat one fateful day during a military parade could not take down the Mubarak government. They were furious that Sadat had signed a peace treaty with their mortal enemy Israel that has worked to this day.

The difference between those Arab countries and the ones we are occupying are plain to see. The jihadists succeed best when they and the mainstream public share a similar enemy. When the US was supplying arms and support to Israel during the wars with Egypt, the terrorist and the mainstream Egyptian street merchant had a common goal and a common enemy: US/Israel. When the US Army marched into Iraq after accusing them of harboring WMDs, WMDs which never materialized even after three hand picked inspection teams, then the jihadists and the mainstream Arabs had a common enemy. Sure innocent Iraqis die when bombs go off in the streets of Baghdad. But during the early stages of the occupation, this was considered a price to pay for killing invaders as well (that would be us).

In fact, every overt military action taken by the US created more terrorists, spread more hatred, inflamed more anti-US feelings. Every air strike that landed on a wedding party to kill and few bad guys made the Arab street hate us even more.

But what happens when western armies downsize? What happens when a new American president promises to close Gitmo, our biggest sin, our worst black eye, our most shameful history. What happens when terrorists slaughter innocent Arabs whose only crimes are following the wrong sect? Or deciding to live as normal a life as possible? This large excerpt from Peter Beinart of Salon tracks the favorability numbers of Osama Bin Laden in recent years, and correlates these numbers to the small, insignificant operations they have been putting together recently. The conclusion one draws is plain to see: it is better to treat terrorism as a crime and oppose it using police forces than a military operation and oppose it using GI Joes. Republicans might prefer the latter, but Obama appears to be getting better results using courts than Jack Bauer.

“Which brings us to Barack Obama’s “war on terror.” Conservatives keep saying that Obama doesn’t really believe we’re at war; that he sees terrorists as mere criminals, not the epic evil-doers that they really are. But here’s the irony: It’s precisely because he doesn’t see the terrorist threat as quite so epic that al Qaeda is falling apart.

To understand why, it helps to understand that al Qaeda is one of the weakest enemies America has ever faced. In their day, the Nazis and communists each ran a great power. (In the case of the communists, two). What’s more, during the Depression, vast numbers of people across the globe—including some of the most famous intellectuals in the United States and Europe—believed the fascists and communists could build societies that were more prosperous and dynamic than their democratic competitors. Barely anyone has ever believed that about al Qaeda. Not only have the jihadists never controlled a powerful country, but no one really believes that if they did it would be anything other than a basket case. To millions of people, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia once offered compelling visions of modernity; Taliban Afghanistan never did.

At the end of the day, all jihadist terrorists can really do is kill. But the more they kill, the more they alienate their fellow Muslims. As the French scholar Gilles Kepel has pointed out, the reason jihadists turned their attention to the United States in the first place was because they utterly failed in the 1990s to overthrow the governments of Algeria and Egypt. They failed because the more people they killed, the more hated they became. And when they lost popular support, they were easily crushed.

In recent years, the dynamic has been playing itself out again. In countries like Pakistan and Jordan, where al Qaeda keeps slaughtering innocent Muslims, its public support has fallen off a cliff. During the Bush years, the only thing that kept al Qaeda from complete ideological collapse was Muslim hatred of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our unblinking support for Muslim dictatorships and for Israel, and our use of torture at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay.

Now Obama, by pledging to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and close Gitmo, and by eschewing torture—in other words, by not overreacting to the terrorist threat—is cutting al Qaeda’s throat. Although the U.S. government is still not exactly loved in Muslim nations, it is hated less. Between 2008 and 2009, according to Gallup, approval of U.S. policies rose 23 points in Tunisia, 22 points in Algeria, 19 points in Egypt, 17 points in Saudi Arabia and 13 points in Kuwait. In Indonesia, according to the Pew Research Center, approval of the U.S. rose 26 points. And not coincidentally, al Qaeda’s slide seems to be accelerating. Between 2003 and 2009, according to Pew, support for Osama bin Laden has dropped 34 points in Indonesia, 28 points in Pakistan, 28 points in Jordan, 20 points in the Palestinian territories, 16 points in Lebanon and 13 points in Turkey. In Indonesia and Pakistan, much of the decline has occurred in the last year alone. Bin Laden is having so much trouble demonizing the United States that his last audio tape focused on climate change.

Even the Christmas bombing attack testifies to al Qaeda’s decline. On 9/11, al Qaeda deployed 19 highly trained terrorists in a successful bid to kill thousands of Americans. On 12/25, it deployed one poorly trained terrorist in an unsuccessful bid to kill hundreds. Once upon a time, al Qaeda’s modus operandi was multiple, simultaneous attacks so at least one of them would succeed. Now the organization seems unable to achieve that. As Rand’s Brian Jenkins has put it—echoing many other terrorism experts—-“Al Qaeda is no longer capable of carrying out a big attack. Its capability appears to have been degraded.”

None of this is to say there won’t be future strikes, or that the U.S. government shouldn’t be working diligently to ferret them out. But the key is to ferret them out without committing the kinds of abuses that remind Muslims why they hate the U.S., and which distract them from their hatred of al Qaeda.

The dirty little secret of the “war on terror” is that America is winning. We began winning during George W. Bush’s second term, when al Qaeda’s violence began corroding its support among Muslims, and we’re doing even better under Barack Obama, because the U.S. now presents a less menacing face. The best chance al Qaeda has is another American overreaction of the kind the GOP demands: reckless military attacks by the United States or Israel, mass profiling of Muslims, a return to torture. Perhaps Obama’s Republican critics do take the terrorist threat more seriously than he does. I’d rather take it less seriously, and win.”

Democratic Repubic Of The Congo

I have taken this entire article from the Sunday New York Times and pasted it here because it is too important to miss. Actually, it is not an article. It is an opinion piece as important as anything the so called US “media” reports on. This is bigger than balloon boy or Tiger Woods or John Edwards sex tape. Of course you won’t find it on CNN or on Fox or on anything else for that matter. Because we don’t have a working press anymore. We have an infotainment industry that uses weapons of mass distraction to keep Americans equally uninformed and titillated.

I would be surprised if the NYT asked me to excerpt this piece or take it down since we do not take in revenue on this blog at all. It wouldn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that people know there is a holocaust happening right now.

If I were the President, I would take troops out of Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires, and place them in Africa, where the murdered and the tortured apparently make no sound when they scream. This is a heartbreaking and aggravating situation. But the more we know about it, the better chance that something or someone can come along and fix it.

The World Capital of Killing

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

BUKAVU, Congo

It’s easy to wonder how world leaders, journalists, religious figures and ordinary citizens looked the other way while six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And it’s even easier to assume that we’d do better.

But so far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.

What those numbers don’t capture is the way Congo has become the world capital of rape, torture and mutilation, in ways that sear survivors like Jeanne Mukuninwa, a beautiful, cheerful young woman of 19 who somehow musters the courage to giggle. Her parents disappeared in the fighting when she had just turned 14 — perhaps they were massacred, but their bodies never turned up — so she moved in with her uncle.

A few months later, the extremist Hutu militia invaded the home. She remembers that it was the day of her very first menstrual period — the only one she has ever had.

“First, they tied up my uncle,” Jeanne said. “They cut off his hands, gouged out his eyes, cut off his feet, cut off his sex organs, and left him like that. He was still alive.

“His wife and his son were also there. Then they took all of us into the forest.” That militia is known for kidnapping people and enslaving them for months, even years. Men are turned into porters, and girls into sex slaves.

Jeanne and other girls were regularly tied spread-eagle and gang-raped, and she soon became pregnant. The rapes continued, sometimes with sticks that tore apart her insides and left her dribbling wastes constantly. Somehow the fetus survived, but her pelvis was too immature to deliver the baby.

One of the people the militia had kidnapped was a doctor who was forced to treat the soldiers. The doctor, seeing that Jeanne was close to dying in obstructed childbirth, cut her open with an old knife, without anesthetic, and removed the stillborn baby. Jeanne was delirious and almost dead, so the militia dumped her beside a road.

“She was completely destroyed inside,” said another doctor, Denis Mukwege, who saved her life after she was brought here to Bukavu. Dr. Mukwege, 54, presides over the 400-bed Panzi Hospital, supported by the European Union and private groups like the Fistula Foundation. He is sometimes mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for his heroic efforts to fight the war and heal its victims.

Dr. Mukwege operated on Jeanne nine times over three years to repair the fistulas that were causing her to leak wastes. Finally he succeeded, and she returned to her village to live with her grandmother.

“He told me to stay away from men for three months,” Jeanne remembers, to give her body time to heal. But three days after she returned to the village, the militia came again and raped again. The fistula reopened.

Jeanne, kept naked in the forest and stinking because her internal injuries had reopened, finally managed to escape and eventually found her way back to Panzi Hospital. Dr. Mukwege has already started a second round of surgeries on her, but there is so little tissue left that it is not clear she can ever be continent again.

About 12 percent of the raped women he treats have contracted syphilis, and 6 percent have H.I.V. He does what he can to repair their injuries and help them heal — until the next time.

“Sometimes I don’t know what I am doing here,” Dr. Mukwege said despairingly. “There is no medical solution.” The paramount need, he says, is not for more humanitarian aid for Congo, but for a much more vigorous international effort to end the war itself.

That means putting pressure on neighboring Rwanda, a country so widely admired for its good governance at home that it tends to get a pass for its possible role in war crimes next door. We also need pressure on the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, to arrest Gen. Jean Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. And, as recommended by an advocacy organization called the Enough Project, we need a U.S.-brokered effort to monitor the minerals trade from Congo so that warlords can no longer buy guns by exporting gold, tin or coltan.

Unless we see some leadership here, the fighting in Congo — fueled by profits from mineral exports — will continue indefinitely. So if we don’t act now, when will we? When the toll reaches 10 million deaths? When Jeanne is kidnapped and raped for a third time?

How did North and South Korea become two countries? From 1905 until 1946, the entire peninsula was under the rule of Japan. On August 15^th, 1945, Japanese officially surrendered to US forces, and afterwards the United Nations unilaterally divided the country at the 38^th parallel even though Roosevelt and Churchill publicly stated that they believed the country should be free and independent. The Soviet Union occupied the North and the United States occupied the South. Neither Korean side was particularly happy about the division of the country, and the division caused much unrest. Not unlike gremany after the war, those who ran the country, the Japanese,, were the best qualified to run the country after the Second World War. Ultimately, it was this decision that led to the war between the North and South. During the occupation, the United States Military Government in Korea lost civil control and uprisings occurred. General Hodge put Japanese civil authorities back into control of key positions, and not long afterwards reports flew in that the Russians had moved forces south of the 38^th parallel. Now there was another fire to put out. This resulted in negotiations that officially divided the country. The Russians installed Communist authority in the North and the US and the UN put Syngman Rhee in power in the South. Syngman Rhee was an extreme right wing nationalist who argued vociferously against foreign rule after over three decades of foreign rule. Though he did not want the US or the Japanese to rule over South Korea, he was officially arguing against the occupation of the North by the Soviets.

When combat began, the combat strategies of the North and South differed simply by their strengths. The South, bolstered by a fledgling South Korean Army, blooded British and Americans, and forces from 22 other nations would rely on artillery, tanks and air strikes. It was Stalin who said “Quantity has a quality all its own”. Mao and Kim Il Sung ( Yes, Kim Jong Il’s father)  didn’t have heavy tanks, and little artillery. They had infantry. Lots and lots of infantry.

On June 25^th, 1950, without a warning, 130,000 North Koreans rushed over the 38^th parallel, mostly concentrated above Seoul. Within 48 hours, Seoul was in the hands of the North. The South Korean Army was completely unprepared for a surprise attack and fell back in great disarray. When the UN voted to declare war on North Korea, the Soviet Union wasn’t at the table.  This was the first time in history that the United Nations declared war. The US had countered with an invasion of Pusan. However the South Korean Army had completely collapsed and within weeks, American forces were surrounded in a perimeter about 50 miles by 50 miles. The situation was desperate.

Harry Truman placed General Douglas MacArthur who had succeeded against a tough Japanese opponent with amphibious invasions in charge. MacArthur did what he thought what would work, and took a desperate and calculated gamble with anothe ramphibious invasion. On September 15, 1950, he brought 70,000 US soldiers, mostly Marines, into Inchon on the Western edge of South Korea South of Seoul. His idea was simple.  He would close the North Korean forces in the center of South Korea between two forces, the invasion force moving south from Inchon and the forces holed up at Pusan. MacArthur was more than an effective General; he was a glory hog and a great speaker. MacArthur inspired soldiers and made enemies quake with fear. When he addressed Congress he received standing ovations. He was larger than life and probably no one else could have achieved what he did in this desperate situation.

The first targets were three beaches, Red Beach, Green Beach and Blue Beach. Launched from landing craft off of troop ships, Marines had to move through a waterway called Flying Fish Channel. It had tides that exposed muddy flats on the ebb tide. Twelve hours later the tides filled up again and did so rapidly. So timing them had to be perfect. There were fortified sea walls in an island salient called Wo Mi Do. It wasn’t as if the Koreans had no idea what was happening either. Two days before the invasion of Inchon, the Canadian Navy pounded the beachheads. The Marines who first took Green Beach were surprised at the lack of resistance. The beach itself was marked with bomb craters and burnt out structures, evidence of the furious bombardment from Canadian Naval forces. The HMCS Cayuga, HMCS Athbaskan and HMCS Sioux put tons of ordinance on the defensive positions. The North Korean defenders weren’t as highly motivated as German or Japanese soldiers would have been only five years earlier. That worked in the UN’s favor. Twelve hours after the Marines secured Green beach, 25 waves of Marines invaded Blue beach. It went badly. Poor timing and waves on top of tides drowned some of the invaders. Resistance was tougher and casualties mounted.

Then again, these were US Marines. They took the beaches and secured the invasion portal. Within a few days, the Marines marched on Seoul and encountered the vicious house-to-house fighting that they expected at the beach fortifications. After a few weeks of bloody urban combat, North Korean troops were forced out of Seoul. By September 22^nd, the Marines had recreated Seoul beaches and ports into a staging center and unloaded over 6600 armored vehicles, and 53, 000 US Army troops, and over 25,000 tons of supplies. There, the US 8^th Army began moving North.

Now a new battle emerged, and this one was a battle of wills and egos. MacArthur had political aspirations and had become a fervent anti-communist. But there can only be one driver during a war. And Truman had done a reasonable enough job of bringing WWII to a satisfactory end after Roosevelt had died. He had presided over the only use to date of nuclear weapons, and had no stomach for another escalating world war. MacArthur felt he had the momentum and pushed the President and Congress to give him permission to cross the 38^th parallel and invade the North all the way to the Yalu River, the official boundary between Chinese Manchuria and North Korea.

He received permission from a reluctant Truman and on October the 7^th, 1950 he led forces into Pyongyang and again pushed North Koreans out.

Further north, Mao Tse Tung was watching. Mao was a ruthless politician, willing to do anything to win and consolidate power. Only a year before, he had led Communist forces to a victory over Chang Kai Check’s Nationalist forces. From his point of view, the crossing of the 38^th parallel was nothing more than imperialist ambitions to expand the ideas of the West into East Asia. The forces he commanded were blooded warriors who were tough, experienced in close quarters infantry combat in the exact same terrain that the beleaguered North Korean forces were retreating into. The Communist troops were also highly motivated, politicized forces. While many were conscripted, the political wills of the Communists were still rock hard under party leadership, indoctrination and a recent victory over the Nationalist forces.

Of course, most of the UN forces that had pushed north believed that once the Yalu was secured, they would be headed home. They had seen nothing yet. At the end of September 1950, Mao Sent upwards of  500,000 infantry across the Yalu River. This became the “Yellow Horde” of legend. Motivated thousands who an forward despite the casualties around them.. Even artillery bombardments and continued air strikes could not stop them. UN and US forces were exhausted. This was for many of them another difficult struggle after years of fighting in the Second World War. The anti-Communist fire had not been fanned until the late 1950s. So the cause and motivations for the war became political properties of General MacArthur and did not burn a brightly in the hearts of the UN forces.

In January 1951, Seoul was back in the hands of the Communists. There were brave moments during this forgotten war as well. On an odd note, only advertising agencies claim to build the brands of military forces. But J Walter Thompson did not build the Marine brand. The Marines built the Marine brand. When the Marines were surrounded at Chosin, when they were almost out of ammunition, they still broke out.

Chinese Communist Troops In Korea

MacArthur had miscalculated and now his own troops were on the run. Worse, the bitter Korean winter was setting in. With that came the same problems that the Germans faced at Stalingrad. Uniforms were too thin. Frostbite and hypothermia began taking its toll on both sides. Some Communist prisoners even admitted that there were moments when the entire affair seemed worthless. The Chinese had pushed too far and their own supply lines were attenuated, stalling the infantry counter attack.

MacArthur was becoming more public as well. He began talking to the press and indicated his displeasure with the “half measures” taken by the Commander In Chief. Truman went to Congress and to his advisors and decided to replace MacArthur with General Matthew Ridgeway.

Harry Truman spoke these words in front of cameras:

“I believe that we must limit the war to Korea for these vital reasons; that the precious lives of our fighting men are not wasted; to see that the security of the country and the free world is not needlessly jeopardized, and to prevent a third world war. I have therefore considered it essential to relieve

General MacArthur of his command. General MacArthur is one of our greatest heroes, but the cause of world peace is more important than any one individual.”

Both sides at this point were close to where they had started, at the 38^th parallel locked in a stalemate made even more difficult by rough, hilly terrain. However the Chinese had another trick up their sleeve as well, and they were not ready to stop fighting. They were planning a massive spring offensive that they triggered on April 22^nd, 1951. They attacked from coast to coast. The South Korean forces collapsed. But the US and the British held their positions and a back and forth struggle ensued while the Chinese made peace overtures to the UN. Thousands died while politicians negotiated.

On July 27^th, 1953, a ceasefire was signed. Not a peace treaty. To this day, the Koreas are officially still at war.

This was the first war where jet powered fighters engaged each other in dogfights. Our primary jet fighters were the F-84 Thunderjet, F9F Panthers and Cougars, and the F-86 Sabers. The Chinese flew the Mig-15, and the Yak 9. Heavy and medium bombers were used, particularly the B-29 Superfortress. The helicopter came into its own as a troop mover and a medevac platform, in particular, the Sikorsky H-19 Chickasaw made famous by MASH. This was a bad start for prisoners of war in the Cold War as well. The Chinese executed a lot of POWs and innocents thought to be pro America or simply anti- Communist. It was a war where news footage was more present and coverage more complete. But when it ended, a war weary America had no parades for the veterans. It has been named The Forgotten War for a reason. Today the DMZ stretches across Korea west to east, 4 kilometers wide, utterly and totally militarized.

A total 1,207,000 UN forces faced 1,212,000 Communist forces. The US lost 37,000 KIA and 92,000 wounded. 2.5 million civilians on both sides perished. Total civilian dead about 1.5 million.

Edwards, Paul M. The A to Z of the Korean War. The Scarecrow Press, 2005

Millett, Allan R. The War for Korea, 1945–1950: A House Burning Volume 1.

History Channel

Danish Naval Special Forces

“Danish special forces stormed a ship captured by armed Somali pirates Friday and freed the 25 crew on board, an EU naval spokesman said, marking the first time a warship has intervened during a hijacking.

After the vessel Ariella sent out a distress signal early Friday, the Danish warship Absalon sent a helicopter to confirm the presence of pirates, and communicated with the crew to ensure they were in a safe location, said Cmdr. John Harbour, spokesman for the European Union Naval Force.

Then Danish special forces aboard the Absalon approached the Ariella in inflatable dinghies. The forces scaled the side of the ship and freed the 25 crew, who had locked themselves in a secure room, Harbour said. The forces continued to search the vessel for the pirates.

Harbour praised the NATO forces for their fast reaction and coordination with other forces in the area.

“There’s been many instances where there’s been excellent cooperation and three, four or even five nations have helped deter a pirate attack,” he said. But, he added: “This is the first where a warship has been able to send forces to stop a hijacking while it was in progress.”

Warships typically do not intervene in hijackings because of the danger that crews may be hit by crossfire. Forces were able to intervene in this case because the ship had registered with naval authorities, was traveling along a recommended transit corridor and was part of a group transit, ensuring the ships had a helicopter within 30 minutes’ reaction time, Harbour said.

Denmark rarely releases information on operations carried out by its elite forces, but the storming of the ship may have been carried out by the country’s elite Frogman Corps, which were part of a NATO deployment.

“There is an operation going on down there and we’re involved. It is still going on right now,” Pernielle Kroer, spokeswoman for the Danish Navy told The Associated Press.

The Antigua and Barbuda-flagged Ariella sent out a distress signal early Friday that was picked up by the Indian warship Tbar in the Gulf of Aden. The Indians relayed the signal to a French plane overhead, which spotted a group of armed pirates on the deck. Then the Danish troops were notified.

Other EU and American forces have intervened in pirate hostage situations, but not during the hijacking itself.

French commandos stormed a yacht last April with five hostages on board but one, skipper Florent Lemacon, was killed during the operation. American snipers also shot dead three pirates in April 2009 holding an American captain hostage on board a lifeboat after the crew of the Maersk Alabama had persuaded the pirates to leave the main ship.

Details on the nationalities of the crew on board the Arielle and its cargo were not immediately released.

Somali pirates have seized three ships this year and hold a total of nine vessels and more than 180 crew.

Piracy is one of the few ways to make money in Somalia, an arid, impoverished land torn apart by civil war. The government does not hold its own capital and can’t send forces to counter the flourishing pirate bases that dot its 1,900-mile (3,100-kilometer)-long coastline.”

Source: Salon

Haitian Refugees

“Two Americans died when their helicopter, which was participating in aid and recovery operations in earthquake-hit Haiti, crashed in the Dominican Republic, aviation authorities said.

The US-registered helicopter hit a mountain and burst into flames at Restauracion, close to the Haitian border, some 280 kilometres north-east of Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s National Institute of Civil Aviation said in a statement.

The institute identified the dead Americans as James Jaloe and John Ward, but gave no more details of their mission or cargo.

It said the helicopter was heading to Santo Domingo from the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and that it had been helping with aid operations for survivors of the quake.

The US government and US aid and charity groups have been spearheading a huge international relief operation to help hundreds of thousands of injured and homeless survivors of the Haitian quake that struck on January 12.”

Source: ABC News