After World War II, the Communists officially seized power in Czechoslovakia in 1948. For five years, things in the country went from bad to worse.

No one dared to publicly challenge the Party or its armed enforcers, the SNB, the StB, the factory militias, and the auxiliary militias. People did not even dare to talk about those the Party took away. If you asked about the people who disappeared, their relatives wouldn’t answer, and you would know what had happened to them.

In this atmosphere of fear and terror, the United States was a beacon of hope. Everybody believed that the Americans were coming. The United States had saved the Czechs two times before. It was only a question of time until the invasion began.

This book is by the sister of two men who, in their early twenties, led three others from their homes in Czechoslovakia into East Germany in an attempt to defect and join the US Special Forces. Led to believe that war between East and West was imminent by the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe and Voice Of America, Ctirad (”Radek”) and Josef (”Pepa”) Mašín were determined to lead the American army in to liberate their subjugated nation. The two were already battle-hardened, having bravely fought as members of the Czech underground resistance during the Nazi occupation.

Outside Jachymov, Pepa, Zbynek, Milan, and their friends watched in horrified fascination as the Communists’ class war spiraled out of control. Newspapers and newsreels announced that Western agents and saboteurs had infiltrated even the highest ranks of the Party. The security
services rounded up dozens of loyal founding members of the Communist Party, the so-called Slansky group, on charges of treason, and accused them of being part of a massive underground organization directed by the U.S. intelligence service.

These men were responsible for the anti-democratic coup of 1948 and the subsequent liquidation of democratic elements in society. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, they found themselves at the receiving end of their own methods: the very same brutal interrogations and torture that they considered eminently acceptable when applied to political opponents.

Upon discovering that their new masters were no better than their previous masters, they started up a new resistance movement to combat the Communists, eventually deciding that the best course of action was a dash for freedom in the West to help the Americans free their Czech homeland.

Their quest would lead them on a brutal 31-day flight across frozen East German swamps, forests, and fields with thousands of police, militia, and soldiers in pursuit.
(more…)

Seems that this fact might be important, but the headline is Monthly U.S. toll in Iraq at 2-year high in the LA Times.

The Marine deaths reported Friday brought the number of U.S. military fatalities in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,996, icasualties.org said, with 816 of them occurring this year. Last year, 846 American service members died; in 2004, the figure was 848.

The number of U.S. wounded is also down this year — 5,676 compared with 5,947 in 2005 and 8,001 in 2004.

For what it’s worth, the number has risen to 818 since the article was published. Why do I get the feeling that some folks are keeping their fingers crossed for a big helicopter crash within the next twenty-four hours or so? Pitiful.

Anyway, for the “Iraq is just like Vietnam” crowd, we didn’t have two straight years of declining deaths until 1969 and 1970. So does that mean that Iraq in 2007 is going to be about where Vietnam was in 1971? Actually, there are a few parallels to be found there, but I think it would pretty silly to make too much of them.

Also, those two years of declining deaths in Vietnam totalled 17,940 dead, and these two years of declining deaths in Iraq will total about 1,664. Or, as you can see, less than 10% of the Vietnam total.

At the rate of US military deaths in Iraq so far, we’ll be matching the Vietnam total in July or August of 2077. Now, to be fair, that’s a lot closer than the May 2523 date that casualties will match those in World War II, but it’s still so silly as to be not worth worrying about.

I mention this not to minimize those who have died, but to point out how clueless those making Vietnam comparisons are and how pointless it would be to dwell on the casualty count as a measure of our success or lack of success in Iraq.

Well, and to point out that the media knows that casualties are down year-over-year but they have decided to tell a different story.

More at Mudville Gazette.

Saddam Hussein executed before dawn

The Daisy V/L caseless .22
In the 1960s, the popular BB gun maker sold 25,000 of these things, but discontinued after it was ruled a firearm. What made them think it wouldn’t be considered a firearm?

Cold War haunts Arctic outpost
The curious story of the island of Spitsbergen, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.

Model maker solves mystery of USS Arizona
Modeler’s research reveals that ship was painted blue, not gray, and the tops of thee of her four turrets were painted red for identification from the air.

Pain Beam Not Easily Foiled
Tinfoil will not protect you from the Active Denial System’s rays of pain. And if you try to deflect the beams from a Marine-protected convoy? The Marines will kill you. Tinfoil does not deflect 5.56, either.

France’s Future SSNs: The Barracuda Class
France will build six nuclear-powered Barracuda-class attack submarines between 2016-2027.

Noah’s 50 Favorite Posts of 2006
A load of top-notch Defense Tech goodness. Click away.

Middle School Girls Gone Wild
“This was an official function at a public school, a milieu that in another time or universe might have seen children singing folk ballads, say, or reciting the Gettysburg Address.”

The Case Against Soda
New Year’s resolution to lose some weight? How about a resolution to stop drinking crap all the time?

Well, the pendulum seems to have swung, and instead of hearing about how Ford guided us through tough times and how he was a model ex-President and how his loss will be felt everywhere, we’re hearing about how he was against the war in Iraq and how his friendship with Richard Nixon influenced his decision to pardon him.

Maybe, if we’re lucky, the media’s frenzy to make political points will die down in time for the funeral. Doesn’t seem likely, though.

Anyway, here are a couple of interesting stories:

How Lieutenant Ford Saved His Ship: More information about Ford’s close call during the typhoon of December 1944 while serving aboard the USS Monterey.

Gerald R. Ford Played Basketball With My Uncle Bill: Jim Dunnigan of Strategy Page writes how his uncle played hoops against Ford in the elevator well of the Monterey. Maybe he’s in the picture I posted on Wednesday?

And some additonal Ford pictures, including a couple from during his Navy career.

The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein

The New York Times:

A carefully conducted, scrupulously fair trial could have helped undo some of the damage inflicted by his rule. It could have set a precedent for the rule of law in a country scarred by decades of arbitrary vindictiveness. It could have fostered a new national unity in an Iraq long manipulated through its religious and ethnic divisions.

It could have, but it didn’t. After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.

What might have been a watershed now seems another lost opportunity.

Now, to be fair, there was a lost opportunity for a watershed. But this opportunity wasn’t lost in this three-year “rush” to hang Saddam. It was lost on March 19th, 2003, when the ‘decapitation attack’ just missed Saddam and his sons. That was a missed opportunity. What real difference it would have made, who can say? But we wouldn’t have been subjected to all this nonsense in the meantime.

As far as Murdoc is concerned, the more enemy soldiers and leaders you can kill on the battlefield, the better. Things get so much more complicated when you take them into custody.

Remember, all we heard about for weeks and months before the invasion was the “rush to war” despite the years of moves, counter-moves, and counter-counter-moves by both sides. Now, nearly four years later, we’re hearing about the “rush to hang Saddam”.

The NYT writes:

What really mattered was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future.

And the Captain responds:

So let’s get this straight. What is really important isn’t the hundreds of thousands of people that Saddam had killed on his whim. It isn’t lengthy public record of his “vile atrocities”. It isn’t the long string of living victims that had to bear witness under difficult circumstances to those who could not appear in court. What really matters, the Times insists, is that the process did not “nurture hope”.

Just more of the general silliness we’ve come to expect from critics of the campaign and the Bush administration.

And this closing bit in the NYT is delicious:

Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either.

This sort of point is, well, pointless. Yes, they are correct that “toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq” and they are also correct to say that “executing him won’t either”.

But who said that toppling Saddam Hussein would automatically create a new and better Iraq? No one that I know of. And no one, to my knowledge, has said that executing him would, either. So what, exactly, are they getting at?

UPDATE: In the comments, Nicholas nails it:

“Not toppling Saddam Hussein would have automatically prevented the creation of a new and better Iraq. Not executing him might also.”

According to MSNBC.com:

According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins at sundown Saturday, NBC News reported Thursday.

The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.

Though opinions are mixed, it’s probably just as well to do it sooner rather than later. The execution will likely set off a firestorm of violence in some areas, but that will be the case whenever it happens. It’s a necessary step, so get it over with.

It will ring in the new year with a bang, that’s for sure. Lots of them, in all likelihood.

UPDATE: An update to the story indicates that Saddam has been turned over to Iraqi authorities and will be executed tomorrow at the latest.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen today yet (though the time difference means that Friday is nearly over in Baghdad), as I wasn’t expecting the hand-over to occur until just before the noose goes around his neck.

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

I mean, did he even wait for the guy’s body to get cold before filing this?

The shame. The shame.

Meanwhile, Frank Warner comments on Woodward’s piece and Ford’s statements: Gerald Ford: Don’t free people if liberation doesn’t serve U.S. interests

And Dean Esmay plays a bit of “what if?”:

But let us pretend, for the sake of the argument, that he had not pardoned Nixon for his Watergate malfeasance.

Go read.

Cindy Sheehan Is Even More Out of Touch with Reality than Originally Thought

Ford lied and people died:

Usually, burying a 93 year old loved one is sorrowful but, I believe his pardon of Richard Nixon is one of the factors that have led to the untimely deaths of over 3000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East. Just this month alone, 91 of our young people have met early, avoidable, unnecessary and tragic deaths in Bloody George’s horrific war…since Nixon got away with his blatant crimes and every President since Nixon has skated away from office after having committed overt and covert crimes, we have on our hands, here, a situation that I am forced now to call: “Bloody George.”

Murdoc doesn’t even know what to say about this one, folks.

A hot topic of late is the terrible condition of Iran’s oil infrastructure and the risk of plummeting exports:

Persian Empire
c. 500 BC

Iran’s oil exports are plummeting at 10pc a year on lack of investment and could be exhausted within a decade, depriving the world economy of its second-biggest source of crude supplies.

A report by the US National Academy of Sciences said rickety infrastructure dating back to the era of the Shah had crippled output, while local fuel use was rising at 6pc a year.

“Their domestic demand is growing at the highest rate of any country in the world,” said Prof Roger Stern, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

“They need to invest $2.5bn (