The Cool Blue Blog

Colonel Thomas Cathey

For Army Colonel Thomas Cathey, April 10, 2007, started out like a typical day. Stationed in Baghdad, he was chief of a Military Transition Team, a group of U.S. soldiers serving as military advisors to an Iraqi Army Division. Together they had been running cordon and search missions in Baghdad, setting up perimeters around small areas of the city and then searching within that area.

“We had been conducting these missions since January. This was in April,” Cathey said. “I thought it was just going to be another typical day in that area.”

But by 7 a.m. everything had changed. The Iraqi Army soldiers running that morning’s mission had encountered enemy fire before the sun was up, Cathey said. And the situation escalated from there.

“We thought it was going to be a normal operation here,” he said. “It was the first time that we’d had this volume of resistance for sure.”

Before long an Iraqi Army squad had radioed for reinforcements, and had taken protective cover in an abandoned building.

“We are down to our last magazines. We are out of ammunition. We’ve got to have help now,” they told Cathey again via radio.

“There was no time. They were out of ammo. There was no one else who could get them. So I made the decision to go get them,” he said. The day’s mission changed from a cordon and search mission to an extraction mission, he said.

Cathey prepared a team of 14 soldiers in four vehicles. While the Iraqi Army soldiers weren’t far, Cathey knew getting to them was going to be difficult. They would have to take narrow alleyways to cross city blocks held by the enemy.

“We did know that as soon as we left …and started down this alley that we would be surrounded 360 degrees, and we would be significantly out-numbered.  But we also knew that we couldn’t sit and do nothing and take a chance on these soldiers being overrun by Al-Qaeda,” Cathey said.

“I knew it was going to be tough. But we’d been in the country. We were seasoned guys. We had a lot of confidence in each other,” Cathey said. “I don’t think we ever thought we couldn’t do what we needed to do to get those soldiers out.”

The convoy set out, their vehicles moving cautiously forward down a narrow alleyway. At each intersection they crossed they encountered adversaries. A grenade exploded just feet from the left from tire of Cathey’s vehicle, taking out the power steering. At a subsequent intersection, “as soon as our bumper touched the opening of the alleyway, it turned red with tracers,” Cathey said, describing the dust trails some bullets leave behind  to help the gunmen know where to aim. Seeing so many tracers was a signal to Cathey that there were even  more bullets on their way.

“I thought we couldn’t stop the mission, we couldn’t turn around. We knew that what behind us was worse,” he said. “We kept pushing forward to find these Iraqi soldiers.” 

But as the convoy moved down the alleyway towards safety, Cathey saw another Iraqi soldier waving to him from inside another building. It was a second Iraqi Army squad that had also been forced to take cover.

There was no way to fit the other squad into their vehicles, Cathey said, so they used the vehicles to shield the building from attack while they radioed for help, and then waited for a second convoy to reach them. 

But by that time the enemy had figured out their plan, Cathey said. The Iraqi Army Brigade deputy commander made one attempt to send vehicles to pick up the second squad, but they were forced back by the insurgents. Over the radio, Cathey convinced him to try again. But they were forced back again.   

Cathey finally had to make a decision. He chose to move the first squad to safety, but promised the second squad that he would come back for them. With his vehicle compromised, he led his convoy all the way through the insurgent-held area and on to safety.

The Iraqi deputy brigade commander was so inspired by what they had done, that he made a third attempt to get the men out, Cathey said. That third attempt was successful. 

“They all made it out safely, too,” Cathey said.
 
“For me personally it was just a very humbling, sobering day,” Cathey said. It was only later on when he’d had a chance to be by himself and clear his head that he realized that they “had been able to pull off a very dangerous mission with no injuries, no casualties at all,” he said.

“Several of my guys were awarded Army Commendation medals for that day,” he said.

The biggest thank you, however, was the next morning when Cathey met with Iraqi Army leadership in the Iraqi General’s office.
 
“Iraqi Colonel Munam stood there with tears in his eyes hugging and thanking me for getting his guys out,” Cathey said. “I didn’t need any thank-yous, but to me that was the greatest thank you I ever got.”

“It was just doing the right thing to do for those Iraqi soldiers,” Cathey said. “If someone hadn’t helped them, they couldn’t have got out.”
 
Cathey received a Bronze Star with Valor for his actions that day.

A record of appeasement

"When I think of America, I think of the idea -- concept of freedom, liberty, equality. I think these are real human values," the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying today

"I think American weapons, military forces, of course some people take seriously," he said

"But the real greatness of America is your ancestors' principles," he said. "In any case, you must preserve these principles."

Every President since 1991 has met with the Dalai Lama when he came to the US. Today, the Dalai Lama was in town to receive the the first-ever Lantos Human Rights Prize.

Mr. Obama's slight is the first time a sitting president will not meet with the Dalai Lama during a Washington visit since President George H.W. Bush met with him in 1991. No meeting was ever formally on the agenda for this week, but the exiled Tibetan's trip had been planned for years, and earlier this year he had expressed his hope to meet with the President. Last month, White House aide Valerie Jarrett and Maria Otero, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, traveled to Dharamsala to confer with the Dalai Lama. The next day, the Dalai Lama's office announced that he hoped to meet with Mr. Obama only after November, when Mr. Obama will visit Beijing.

No other President prior to Mr Obama owed their soul, and the price of their social agendas, to China as Obama does.

The Dalai Lama didn't mention the lack of a White House meeting as he received an award in memory of the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a longtime champion of human rights who died last year of cancer.

The Tibetan spiritual leader did, however, entertain the audience with stories of his past brushes with American presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt once sent him a letter, a signed photograph and a gold watch. He joked that he "developed an affection to America" because of that watch and brought it with him when he was given the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony with President Bush in 2007.

Clearly the President does not want to piss off China. But prior Presidents managed to maintain relations with China and meet with the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has met with the sitting U.S. President a dozen times, as well as with Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle (including a certain Senator Obama in 2005). Although Beijing complained about these meetings, there were no serious costs to the U.S.-China relationship. George W. Bush met with the Dalai Lama in May of 2001, in advance of his first trip to China, and thereafter made clear that meetings with him were nonnegotiable.

Wow! Walk AND chew gum.

But this is not the first time for President Obama. Canceling the Eastern European defense shield was clearly done for Russian, not American interests.

And talking to Iran is something the Iranian government wants. And speaking of Iran

Obama Cuts Off Funding for Iranian Human-Rights Documentation

For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers.

But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed - its federal funding request had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’

So whose interest is served by defunding these folks?

Let me recall to you the words the Dalai Lama said: "When I think of America, I think of the idea -- concept of freedom, liberty, equality. I think these are real human values."

Unfortunately, it appears, that we have a President who has a record of appeasing the enemies of these human values.

I hope I'm wrong.

The Afghanistan Shuffle

Here is the timeline for events in Afghanistan as I see it.

1. 2001: Taliban and al Qaida are driven from Afghanistan by Afghan forces with the support of the CIA, a few hundred Special Forces and a whole lot of US provided air power; they take up residence in Pakistan's Waziristan region.
2. 2003: US invades Iraq and al Qaida declares Iraq to be the front line of their global Jihad:“the most serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq.” - Osama bin Laden
   Iraq “is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.” - Ayman al-Zawahiri
3. 2007: After a stunning defeat in Iraq, al Qaeda retreats to Pakistan and begins to expand their influence and steps up attacks in Afghanistan
4. 2008: President Musharraf is ousted in Pakistan and after a while, Pakistan steps up to the plate and begins to seriously attack al Qaida and Taliban in Pakistan: violence increases in Afghanistan

It seems to me what has happened is clear: Al Qaida, after being pushed out of Afghanistan, decided to confront America directly in Iraq and started an insurgency there. America and its allies, after a while, began a counter-insurgency program which ultimate forced al Qaida back to their safe-haven in Pakistan. Pakistan, after a while, began seriously crimping al Qaida's style in Pakistan and now have no where left to go but back to Afghanistan.

And if we are not there to stop them, that's precisely what they will do: move back to Afghanistan.

Yet, the very fact that the US, now joined by Pakistan has degraded al Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan, forcing them to relocate is now grounds for not doing what it takes to deliver the coup de grace.

Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistani and U.S. officials.

So this is half right, because it is very clear from General McChrystal that

In the war assessment he delivered to the Pentagon, he struck a note of urgency, saying that if the troop increases he had recommended were not in place within 12 months, the allied effort risked failure.

If al Qaida and the Taliban are no longer welcome in Iraq, and are forced out of Pakistan, where will our military failure in Afghanistan leave them?

I mean, please, this isn't rocket science.

Right now, at this time we have the chance to catch al Qaida and the Taliban between the hammer of Pakistan and the anvil of of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

If we don't exploit this opportunity we will regret it as much as we now regret not having had the forces in place to eliminate OBL and his crew at Tora Bora in 2001.

Let's instead make the commitment to crush the enemy now when we have the opportunity.