Top U.S. Military Leaders Mark Official End Of Iraq War By Stating The Mission Was Worth The Cost

By Cheryl Pellerin, American Forces Press Service

BAGHDAD, Dec. 15, 2011 - Top U.S. military leaders observed the official end of U.S. Forces Iraq's mission here today after nearly nine years of conflict that claimed the lives of nearly 4,500 U.S. troops, and created a sovereign nation from the destruction of a brutal dictatorship.

On a stage in a smoky courtyard on the military side of Baghdad International Airport, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commanding general of U.S. Forces Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James F. Jeffrey addressed U.S. and Iraqi officials and more than 150 troops and media from around the world.

Also on the stage was Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command.

Panetta welcomed distinguished members of the Iraqi government and military.

"Thank you for your courage, for your leadership, for your friendship over these many years," the secretary said. "More importantly, thank you for your loyalty to the future of Iraq. Your dream of an independent and sovereign Iraq is now a reality."

"This is not the end," he added. "This is truly the beginning."

As U.S. Forces Iraq's mission ends, Jeffrey said, it's fitting to "look back at the sacrifices made by so many Americans and so many Iraqis."

It's also a time, he added, to "look forward to an Iraq that is sovereign, secure and self-reliant, an Iraq with whom the United States government will continue to work in every way possible, building on the successes of our colleagues in USFI led by Gen. Austin."

The USFI commander welcomed the beginning of a new chapter in the U.S. strategy with Iraq, adding that he found the ceremony to be poignant.

"Eight years, eight months and 26 days ago, as the assistant division commander for maneuver for the 3rd Infantry Division, I gave the order for the lead elements of the division to cross the border," Austin said.

"As fate would have it," he added, "I now give the order to case the colors today."

Casing the colors means packing the U.S. Forces Iraq flag and sending it home to the United States where it will be retired.

The home of U.S. Forces Iraq hosted 45,000 to 49,000 troops for the vast majority of Operation New Dawn and at the peak of the war housed 170,000 troops. Today only about 4,000 troops remain and every day hundreds more leave for staging and out-processing facilities in Kuwait.

The rest of the troops will depart Iraq over the next two weeks, , well in advance of the Dec. 31 deadline set by President Barack Obama, said Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the official spokesman for U.S. Forces Iraq.

For more than 20 years, Dempsey said, "Iraq has been a defining part of our professional and personal lives ... Everywhere, at every level, we learned the power of relationships rooted in trust and respect with ourselves and with our Iraqi brothers."

The chairman recalled when he deployed to Iraq in 1991 as part of Operation Desert Storm to end Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Kuwaiti people.

More than a decade later, Dempsey deployed to Iraq again.

"I remember leaving my family again to end Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Iraqi people," the chairman said. "And now today I stand here with the very heart of my family, my wife, Deanie, to bear witness to what our sons and daughters -- to what your sons and daughters -- have achieved."

Dempsey said he's proud that the United States with its coalition partners and the Iraqi people teamed up to "set a course that befits the promise and spirit of Iraq's children.

"I look forward to an enduring partnership between our countries," the chairman added.

The Defense Department values the relationship with Iraq, Dempsey said.

"We will stand with you against terrorists and others that threaten to undo what we have accomplished together," he said. "We will work with you to secure our common interests in a more peaceful and prosperous region."

Everyone who served in Iraq will carry an image of that time, the chairman said.

"Today my image is of Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Cooke ... of the First Brigade, First Armored Division, who on Christmas Eve 2003 was killed by an IED ... in northern Baghdad. Probably the finest noncommissioned officer I'd ever met," Dempsey said.

"We've paid a great price here," the chairman added, "and it has been a price worth paying."

Examining The Newspaper Column As Literature

Errol Lewis, a former columnist for the New York Daily News and one of the editors of Deadline Artist: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns, wrote an interesting piece for the Huffington Post that suggests that newspapers columns should and will one day be recognized as literature.

It's only a matter of time before the newspaper column takes its rightful place as a recognized and respected form of literature, every bit as vital as its more celebrated cousins, the short story and the novel.

The recognition should have happened a long time ago. An impressive list of literary masters honed their craft writing newspaper columns, including Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, O. Henry, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon. Generations of students have pored over Hughes's poetry, Twain's novels and O. Henry's short stories, unaware that the authors also tackled the issues of the day - death, war, sports, crime, politics - in thoughtful, delightful columns that often hold up remarkably well decades later.

Here is the start of "Chicago Gang War," that a young columnist named Ernest Hemingway penned for the Toronto Star in 1921:

"Anthony d'Andrea, pale and spectacled, defeated candidate for alderman of the 19th ward, Chicago, stepped out of the closed car in front of his residence and, holding an automatic pistol in his hand, backed gingerly up the steps. Reaching back with his left hand to press the door bell, he was blinded by two red jets of flame from the window of the next apartment, heard a terrific roar and felt himself clouted sickeningly in the body with the shock of the slugs from the sawed-off shotgun.
It was the end of the trail that had started with a white-faced boy studying for the priesthood in a little Sicilian town. It was the end of a trail that had wound from the sunlit hills of Sicily across the sea and into the homes of Chicago's nouveau riche. A trail that has led through the penitentiary and out into the deadliest political fight Chicago has ever known."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/errol-louis/post_2740_b_1148645.html

I've not yet read Deadline Artists, but I'm interested in doing so as I wrote a column for Philadelphia weekly newspapers for 13 years before I took my column online. I was influenced by the many newspaper columnists featured in the book.

You can read a previous post on the best newspaper column of all time via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/06/whats-best-newspaper-column-of-all-time.html

Tinker, Tailor, Chinese Spy: China's Spies Are Catching Up

David Wise, the author of Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China, writes about the threat from Chinese espionage in the New York Times.

During the cold war, dozens of counterintelligence agents in the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. pursued Soviet and then Russian spies. The K.G.B. was seen as the enemy; China took a back seat. Only a handful of F.B.I. agents specialized in Chinese spy cases, and their work was not regarded as career-enhancing. Washington’s ongoing failure to make Chinese espionage a priority has allowed China to score a number of successes in its espionage efforts against the United States.

China’s foreign intelligence service and its military intelligence agency actively spy on the American defense industry, our nuclear weapons labs, Silicon Valley, our intelligence agencies and other sensitive targets.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/chinas-spies-are-catching-up.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=David%20Wise&st=cse

I interviewed David Wise about Chinese espionage and his book Tiger Trap for Counterterrorism magazine.

You can read the interview via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/08/q-with-david-wise-author-of-tiger-trap.html

Organized Crime Goes Green, As In Cash

George Anastasia, the Philadelphia Inquirer's veteran organized crime reporter, writes that the mob is still knee deep, so to speak, in the garbage business.

Not for nothing was Tony Soprano a solid-waste management consultant.

The writers of the HBO series made New Jersey's most famous, albeit fictitious, wiseguy a player in an industry that for decades has been targeted for exploitation by organized crime.

In that respect, Soprano was a "garbage mobster," a term used by the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation in a report made public last week that warned of the mob's continued presence in the multimillion-dollar waste-disposal business.

You can read the rest of the newspaper story via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/insights/135484288.html

Actor Corey Stoll Reads Hemingway's Letters At JFK Library In Boston

The entertainment web site HitFix.com reports that actor Corey Stoll, seen in the above photo as the legendary writer Ernest Hemingway as a young man in Midnight in Paris, read some of Hemingway's letters at the JFK Library in Boston.

Hemingway was, of course, recently portrayed with great effect by actor Corey Stoll in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” Stoll made an appearance at the Library last night with Spanier and novelist Ward Just for the most recent Kennedy Library Forum to discuss Hemingway and read several of his letters. The well-attended event showed there is much interest in the legend of Hemingway, but little knowledge about the man – apart from when the two line up.   

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/in-contention/posts/corey-stoll-on-ernest-hemingways-complicity-in-his-own-myth

From Russia With Love: Notorious British Spy And Traitor Kim Philby Praised In New Book Written With Help From Russian Spy Agency

Will Stewart at the British newspaper the Daily Mail reports that the British spy and traitor Kim Philby is getting the hero treatment in a new book being published in Russia.

Kim Philby has been praised as "one of the greatest Soviet spies" by Russia's secret service. 

The man whose treachery led to the deaths of many British agents is being eulogised in a book and in a TV documentary in a push to make him a hero to a new generation of Russians. 

Philby was part of a ring of Cambridge-educated British agents which also included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt who passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and at least into the early 1950s.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073234/British-traitor-Kim-Philby-praised-new-book-1-greatest-Soviet-spies.html

My On Crime & Security Column: 'Flash Robs' Pose A Threat To Small Retailers

The national business web site AllBusiness.com published my latest On Crime & Security column today.

The column covered "flash robs," those mass assaults on businesses organized by social media like Facebook and Twitter.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.allbusiness.com/operations/16748626-1.html