Iraq

What goes on in the mind of a sniper?

Chris Kyle is a sniper, the best in the world. He describes his job:

As US forces surged into Iraq in 2003, Chris Kyle was handed a sniper rifle and told to watch as a marine battalion entered an Iraqi town.

A crowd had come out to greet them. Through the scope he saw a woman, with a child close by, approaching his troops. She had a grenade ready to detonate in her hand.

“This was the first time I was going to have to kill someone. I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to do it, man, woman or whatever,” he says.

“You’re running everything through your mind. This is a woman, first of all. Second of all, am I clear to do this, is this right, is it justified? And after I do this, am I going to be fried back home? Are the lawyers going to come after me saying, ‘You killed a woman, you’re going to prison’?”

But he didn’t have much time to debate these questions.

“She made the decision for me, it was either my fellow Americans die or I take her out.”

He pulled the trigger.

Kyle remained in Iraq until 2009. According to official Pentagon figures, he killed 160 people, the most career sniper kills in the history of the US military. His own estimate is much higher, at 255 kills.

According to army intelligence, he was christened “The Devil” by Iraqi insurgents, who put a $20,000 (£13,000) bounty on his head.

Married with two children, he has now retired from the military and has published a book in which he claims to have no regrets, referring to the people he killed as “savages”.

Israeli researchers have found something a little different:

But a study into snipers in Israel has shown that snipers are much less likely than other soldiers to dehumanise their enemy in this way.

Chris Kyle killed an estimated 40 people during the second battle of Fallujah in 2004

Part of the reason for this may be that snipers can see their targets with great clarity and sometimes must observe them for hours or even days.

“It’s killing that is very distant but also very personal,” says anthropologist Neta Bar. “I would even say intimate.”

She studied attitudes to killing among 30 Israeli snipers who served in the Palestinian territories from 2000 to 2003, to examine whether killing is unnatural or traumatic for human beings.

She chose snipers in particular because, unlike pilots or tank drivers who shoot at big targets like buildings, the sniper picks off individual people.

What she found was that while many Israeli soldiers would refer to Palestinian militants as “terrorists”, snipers generally referred to them as human beings.

There were about 20 gunmen escorting a convoy and one of them was unlucky enough to get in the sight of my scope. The distance was about 300m, almost nothing for a sniper.

A few seconds later I saw him lying motionless.

In the heat of the moment my only thought was to shoot more and more. I saw the figures rushing in panic and trying to hide.

We killed all of them, except three or four who were wounded and captured. Afterwards I blamed myself for not being cool-headed enough. I thought that if I had been calmer, I would have killed more enemies.

We were proud of ourselves, but now I am ashamed.

If I was asked today, I would say it’s very hard to kill, but more than 20 years ago I was too young.

“The Hebrew word for human being is Son of Adam and this was the word they used by far more than any other when they talked about the people that they killed,” she says.

Snipers almost never referred to the men they killed as targets, or used animal or machine metaphors. Some interviewees even said that their victims were legitimate warriors.

“Here is someone whose friends love him and I am sure he is a good person because he does this out of ideology,” said one sniper who watched through his scope as a family mourned the man he had just shot. “But we from our side have prevented the killing of innocents, so we are not sorry about it.”

A new book is about to be released about Al Shatan (The Devil) to Iraqi insurgents, The Legend to fellow SEAL Team members:

The book is an autobiography of SEAL Chief Chris Kyle, who is the record-holding sniper in U.S. military history. Kyle has more than 150 officially confirmed kills (the previous American record was 109), though his remarkable career total has not been made public by the Pentagon. In his ten years (1999-2009) with the United States Navy SEAL Teams, Chris was deployed four times to Iraq and was awarded the two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with Valor. Chris was shot on two separate occasions and was in numerous IED explosions. Despite numerous wounds and an injury to his knee that eventually required surgery, Chris remained with his unit during combat. While in Ramadi it was learned that Chris had a bounty put on his head by local insurgents.  His nickname, given to him by the terrorists, was Al Shatan–the Devil. His fellow SEALs had begun referring to him by a different name: The Legend.

Iran is getting stroppy:

 Iran says it has successfully test fired a long-range missile during its naval exercise in the Gulf, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“We have test fired a long-range shore-to-sea missile called Qader (capable), which managed to successfully destroy predetermined targets in the Gulf,” the agency quoted deputy navy Commander Mahmoud Mousavi as saying.

The move follows Iran’s threat to halt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Today we will test-fire Qader and Nour long range missiles during the drill,” Mousavi told state TV earlier today.

Iran has been holding the 10-day naval exercise at a time of increased tension with Western powers over its nuclear programme, and Mousavi said on Sunday it had successfully test-fired a medium range surface-to-air missile.

Tehran threatened last week to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz if it became the target of an oil embargo over its nuclear ambitions. The European Union has said it is considering a ban – already in place in the United States – on imports of Iranian crude.

The US Fifth Fleet said it will not allow any disruption of traffic in the vital oil shipping route.

They must be blessed with a whole heap of stupid. The US has wound down its Iraq deployment, Afghanistan is winding down too…they have plenty of battle hardened veterans, heaps of munitions and a stroppy anti-West country that wants nukes flexing it’s muscles.

Iran says they will close the Straits of Hormuz, I say a flight of B-52s, some B2s, a couple of carrier groups and the US Marines will make sure that won’t be happening.

There is a fascinating account of what it takes to open a bar in Baghdad in the middle of the Green Zone over at the Atlantic:

To keep the bar adequately stocked, the BCC’s owner James — a British ex-paratrooper turned security contractor who asked that I use his first name only, due to concerns that his past ventures in Iraq might affect his current work there (the Baghdad Country Club was a place where many people liked to recreate, but few later desired to admit they had) — and his fixer Ajax had to venture out there regularly. To cross hostile roads in vehicles laden with liquor, James would trade his suit for overalls and body armor, his Glock tucked into his ops vest, an M-4 in the passenger seat, a bag of cash stashed in the back. Fatalism came easy in a place with so many fatalities — if today’s your day, it’s your day, James thought whenever he eased behind the wheel.

Phil Goff has been attacking John Key saying that it is “unprecedented”. I blogged about it yesterday, and the two occurrences when Helen Clark stomped out.

Phil Goff then went on Radio Live and repeated his claims that it was “unprecedented” to a caller and even went so far as tell the caller that Clark would never have walked out on a press conference with another world leader. Have a listen:

Goff has a memory problem by whaleoil

Since Phil Goff has such a poor memory I will re-iterate for his benefit.

Helen Clark walked from press conference in a fit of rage:

The consensus among the Australians yesterday was that Helen Clark was still smarting about the ABC interview by David Hardaker, also during the campaign, which she terminated by walking out.

Not once but twice:

Prime Minister John Howard’s final news conference during his trip to Wellington has ended abruptly with his New Zealand counterpart Helen Clark walking out.

Sections of the New Zealand press corp zeroed in on the gulf between John Howard and Helen Clark over Iraq, asking whether Ms Clark thought things were better or worse in Iraq as a result of the 2003 invasion.

“Well, I don’t really want to go down that track today,” she said.

When questioning persisted, Ms Clark called an abrupt halt to the press conference.

“I’m sorry, you endeavour to heckle from the back row of every news conference I give and you are not going to do it to this one,” she said.

Good advice from US Marines on road block duty.

The Sunday Star-Times has a profile on one of the candidates in the National Party Rodney selection battle, Mark Mitchell. I have blogged extensively on the skulduggery going on up there with delegate stacking at local and regional level in order to favour two candidates, and I also blogged about the dirty tricks and rumour-mongering that was going on.

The SST article covers all of those aspects and sheds some light on the background of Mark Mitchell that shows just how scurrilous those rumours were. I have met Mark Mitchell only once, ironically at the Botany victory party, where some of the rumour-mongers were also in attendance but wouldn’t speak with me. Hell even Peter Goodfellow talked with me that night.

Anyway this bloke seems to have the goods. Decorated hero, tough on crime, self-made man, tough under pressure and handles adversity well. The selection battle just got interesting.

Former cop Mark Mitchell’s exploits in the Middle East sound like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster – but has he got what it takes to make it as a politician?

HE’S HAD violent confrontations with gangs and criminals during 14 years in the New Zealand police force. He’s spent eight years as a top international hostage negotiator, at one point fighting for his life in a five-day siege in Iraq, a story which is set to feature in a movie made by Brad Pitt. He’s built a multimillion-dollar business from scratch.

He’s engaged to Peggy Bourne, the widow of Kiwi rally ace Possum Bourne.

Now Mark Mitchell is chasing a political career, and hopes to succeed Lockwood Smith in the safe National seat of Rodney.

That’s one thing John Key hasn’t done! Getting a movie made of his exploits by Brad Pitt.

Wouldn’t the 42-year-old find parliament a bit, um, dull?

MAYBE NOT, if things continue as they’ve started. Mitchell was one of five people contesting the National Party candidacy for Rodney when the selection process was abruptly postponed earlier this month amid allegations of delegate stacking.

That dirty laundry was aired, but there’s been little publicity about a smear campaign against Mitchell. Documents were circulated questioning his work in the Middle East, appearing to suggest he was involved in a Muslim-funded Somalian private army. Things were getting nasty: cue the false start.

What the hell was going on in Rodney? The would-be-politician is already practised in the art of diplomacy.

“I’m not going to comment on that. All I’ll say is that any behaviour that can be seen to try to control an outcome, well, we shouldn’t accept that.”

Those rumours were particularly nasty and at the time very hard to counter because of the ban on speaking to the media. The ones spreading the rumours are well versed at these sorts of tactics, having employed then successfully over 30 years in politics.

It hasn’t deterred him. When nominations close for the second time tomorrow, Mitchell will be back on the candidate list.

Good to see he is tough and able to man-up.

“I was lost for a bit. I enjoyed the physical work, but my grandfather and family had instilled in me a strong sense of duty and I decided to join the police.”

Mitchell’s 14-year career was served in Auckland, Rotorua, Gisborne and Taupo, and he quickly became used to the physical danger. He and his police dog Czar were stabbed by a samurai sword-wielding criminal in Rotorua; both recovered to be awarded a police bravery commendation.

A decorated hero! Now that is quite a bit different from the rumours. I bet about now there is a few face-slaps going on with some people who should ahve known better.

In Gisborne, there were many violent confrontations with Mongrel Mobsters. In one incident, he and another officer were surrounded by 30 gang members. They talked themselves out of certain trouble, an early sign of Mitchell’s negotiation skills.

Mitchell left the force in 2003. He was carrying several injuries and decided to pursue new interests. He intended training polo ponies; he ended up an international security contractor.

Sounds like he could handle the inept machinations of longtime party hacks easily. He could even probably handle the Labour caucus meetings right now as well.

British kidnap and ransom risk-management firm Control Risks had been contracted by the British government to set up the security programme for the interim coalition government in Iraq. Someone he knew worked there and wanted Mitchell on board. His job would be to protect the diplomats and officials working for the interim government.

“It seemed like an interesting opportunity, and there was this sense of history in the making. What was happening in the Middle East was having a pretty profound effect on the rest of the world.”

Mitchell faced daily threats at the Coalition Provisional Authority Government base in An Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq.

The work involved transporting government officials to meetings around the country and protecting the sites where they lived. He was shot at, and his vehicles were blown up in roadside bomb attacks, but he was proud that no-one was hurt or killed on his watch.

In 2004 he did a stint training Iraqi security forces, including the National Guard and police, in crisis management, before deciding to go home for good.

Hmmm…that is really different from the rumours. He’s supposed to be a mercenary, but it turns out he was working for the British Government and the Iraqi Provisional Authority. More face-slapping from the gossippers.

BUT THE draw of the Middle East and the work pulled him back. The next call was from the Kuwait global logistics firm supplying food to the military forces in Iraq.

Agility Logistics was being targeted by Al Qaeda and the militia, and many staff were killed. They wanted Mitchell to improve security.

“Security was being subcontracted and I discovered fairly early on that when the heat was on, our people weren’t a priority. One week, we lost 32 staff.”

So the company set up subsidiary Threat Management Group to take security in-house. As CEO and shareholder, Mitchell grew the company from eight staff to about 500 in the first year.

The quality of their work soon won them top-level contracts, including protecting crucial infrastructures like ports, and keeping supply chains open.

Mitchell also became adept at kidnap and ransom negotiations, dealing with more than 100 hostage negotiations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Darfur.

One of the more haunting jobs was working alongside The Hague scientists charged with gathering evidence for Saddam Hussein’s war crimes trial.

Mitchell’s job was to protect the scientists, setting up a safe camp “in the middle of nowhere” next to mass graves, open them to allow the scientists access to evidence, and close them again.

“That was a very emotional job. We were confronted with the badly decomposed bodies of children clinging to their mothers. They’d just been bulldozed into the graves. Awful.”

And working for the UN on war crimes trials….really not a mercenary now. If I was one of the gossippers I would be really worried about a law suit about now. They were so far wrong it isn’t really funny anymore.

The closest Mitchell and his men came to being killed was in 2004, during a five-day siege of the An Nasiriyah compound, home to diplomats, officials, coalition forces and security staff.

The uprising Shi’a militia, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, was putting coalition forces under pressure across the country. The Italian-controlled compound was surrounded and under sustained attack. Mitchell was charged with defending it.

“They’d hit us during the day with mortar fire, and at night mount a physical attack. My team’s responsibility was the roof. We were very exposed. It was hot, dusty. We didn’t get much sleep and we had to ration our food. I saw every human emotion over those days.”

Armed with AK47s and two 50-calibre machine guns, they kept the militia at bay until coalition forces regained control. Their efforts would later be rewarded with a commendation from the Italian government.

The compound was evacuated and within 48 hours, Mitchell was having a barbecue and talking to his neighbours in Taupo. “That was surreal. I couldn’t really talk to people about it, as it was hard to comprehend.”

Did he kill anyone? “We were fighting for our lives, and the lives of the diplomats. There were casualties on both sides.” That’s all he’ll say on the matter.

During the siege, Mitchell worked closely with British Governor Rory Stewart, who headed the compound’s diplomat contingent. Stewart has made the leap into politics, and is a Conservative MP for Penrith, England. Stewart wrote a book on his time in Iraq, and Brad Pitt’s production company has bought the rights to his story.

Not only a commendation award for the Police but now one from the Italian Government. Everyone who was handed printouts by un-named party officials will now be wondering just what their game was. Clearly it wasn’t about telling the truth, or even about making sure the best candidate got selected. They now appear more interested in feather-bedding their mates than the best interests of the party.

He is proud of his achievements, and believes he has the skills to help New Zealand prosper. “I’ve run a successful international business, and have worked closely with foreign governments and officials. I have a strong global network and have built up excellent working knowledge of how different emerging markets work.

“I’m aware of the trade channels and where the opportunities are. A big part of our continued growth and prosperity relies on exports, and opening up those trade channels.”Some of those global contacts come from his volunteer work as security adviser to a World Economic Forum initiative which sees emergency logistics teams deployed into humanitarian disaster areas to ensure critical supplies get through.

Last year he oversaw missions to Haiti after the earthquake and Pakistan after the floods, and helped evacuate refugees from Lebanon.

Right, so decorated police hero in NZ and awarded for bravery by the Italian Government, and now he also has helped in humanitarian disaster zones and evacuating refugees for free. Unlike Helen Clark who is a disaster tourist for the UNDP, Mark Mitchell rolls up his sleeves and actually helps those in need.

Sounds like a bloody good guy, I’ll be watching very carefully what happens in the Rodney selection now. The National party can’t afford to put low level or even high level party hacks into parliament and leave far better qualified, capable candidates on the sidelines. I await the new delegates list and the results of pre-selection with interest.

I was reading a review of a new book about two British Snipers called Dead Men Risen: The snipers’ story

Operating from a remote patrol base in Helmand, two British snipers were responsible for killing 75 Taliban fighters in just 40 days. In one remarkable feat of marksmanship, two insurgents were dispatched with a single bullet.

The arrival at the newly-established Patrol Base Shamal Storrai (Pashto for “North Star”) in late August 2009 of Serjeant Tom Potter and Rifleman Mark Osmond marked the start of an astonishing episode in the history of British Army sniping.

Within 40 days, the two marksmen from 4 Rifles, part of the Welsh Guards Battle group, had achieved 75 confirmed kills with 31 attributed to Potter and 44 to Osmond. Each kill was chalked up as a little stick man on the beam above the firing position in their camouflaged sangar beside the base gate – a stick man with no head denoting a target eliminated with a shot to the skull.

Osmond, 25, was an engaging, fast-talking enthusiast, eager to display his encyclopedic knowledge of every specification and capability of his equipment. He had stubbornly remained a rifleman because he feared that being promoted might lead to his being taken away from sniping, a job he loved and lived for. Potter, 30, was more laid back, projecting a calm professionalism and quiet confidence in the value of what he did.

from The Brigade – Operation Phantom Fury (33 Photos)

This shot is from Operation Phantom Fury.

The Second Battle of Fallujah — code-names Operation Al-Fajr (Arabic, “the dawn”) and Operation Phantom Fury — was a joint U.S.-Iraqi -Britishoffensive in November and December 2004, considered the highest point of conflict in Fallujah during the Iraq War. It was led by the U.S. Marine Corps against the Iraqi insurgency stronghold in the city of Fallujah and was authorized by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Interim Government. The U.S. military called it “some of the heaviest urban combat U.S. Marines have been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968.”

This operation was the second major operation in Fallujah. Earlier, in April 2004, Coalition Forces fought the First Battle of Fallujah in order to capture or kill insurgent elements considered responsible for the deaths of a Blackwater Security team. When Coalition Forces (majority being U.S. Marines) fought into the center of the city, the Iraqi government requested that the city’s control be transferred to an Iraqi-run local security force, which then began stockpiling weapons and building complex defenses across the city in mid-2004. This was the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War to date, and is notable for being the first major engagement of the Iraq War fought solely against insurgents rather than the forces of the former Baathist Iraqi government.

The revelation that Labour sent troops to Iraq to protect Fonterra’s valuable milk contracts to the UN has been out there for a few days. There had, until Helen Clark squawked, not a word from anyone in labour. The moment she squealed and took umbrage we hear from Phil Goff.

Mr Goff yesterday said the allegation was ridiculous.

“No such trade-off was ever suggested and if it ever had been, it would have been rejected out-of-hand. We do not trade putting the lives of our military personnel at risk for commercial deals. It is a completely false claim.”

Hmmm is this the same Phil Goff who is quoted in other leaked cables as expressing a closeness to the US Army? (page 263)

5. c. Defense Minister Phil Goff discussed many of the same issues with the General. Goff mentioned to the General (as he does with virtually all U.S. officials) that he had two nephews that were West Point graduates and felt a closeness to the U.S. Army. Goff told the General that he could expect a positive outcome on redeploying the PRT past Sept 2006 and was reasonably assured the SAS (Special Forces) would deploy again after regeneration.
Is that the same closeness to the US Army as when he flew the Viet Cong flag from the cenotaph in Auckland in 1975 at the fall of Saigon?

But back to Phil Goff and his comments about when and where we send troops. It is abundantly clear from the Wikileaks cables that Phil Goff is a warrior in private to US Generals and a mouse in public, much like his former leader. Just do a search on SAS and have a look at the number of commitments Phil Goff made to send troops. Now again, don’t get me wrong, I beleive that our troops should be in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I am simply pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of Labour pretending domestically to be against such things and privately to US Generals and diplomats telling a completely different story. Phil Goff was even suggesting that NZ send troops as a PRT into Iraq off of the back of the success in Afghanistan of the NZ deployment to Bamiyan (page 226)

c. Defense Minister Phil Goff kicked off thepolitical-level meetings, welcoming the Admiral, stressing the importance of the bilateral defense relationship and pointing to New Zealand’s contributions to the War on Terror,including NZDF deployments to Afghanistan and support for theProliferation Security Inititiative (PSI). Admiral Fallon expressed U.S. appreciation for those contributions, noting that the NZDF’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan provided a good general model for future PRTs and its SAS contingent had worked extremely well with U.S. counterparts. Goff said the Cabinet would decide by the end of February whether to extend the PRT beyond September 2006; he did not comment on further SAS deployments. Goff noted Senator McCain’s comment that New Zealand should think about replicating its success in Bamiyan by heading a PRT in Iraq.The Minister said he told McCain that New Zealand was not averse to doing so once the security situation had stabilized.

Of course it failed to escape the US that NZ is physically incapable of deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously, but that didn’t stop Goff suggesting we weren’t averse to doing it.