Marine Corps Celebrates Birthday
Nov 9, 2008 World Events
Source: The Desert Sun
How the Corps began
On Nov. 10, 1775, the Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that “two battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces with the American fleet. This established the Continental Marines and marked the birth of the United States Marine Corps.
Serving on land and at sea, early Marines distinguished themselves in a number of important operations, including their first amphibious raid on foreign soil in the Bahamas in March 1776, under the command of the Corps’ first commandant, Capt. Samuel Nicholas.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and as the last of the Navy’s ships were sold, the Continental Navy and Marines disbanded.
Following the formal re-establishment of the Marine Corps on July 11, 1798, Marines fought in conflicts with France, landed in Santo Domingo and conducted operations against the Barbary pirates along the “Shores of Tripoli,” Lebanon.
Notable moments in history
War of 1812: Marines participated in numerous operations, including the defense of Washington at Bladensburg, Md. They also fought alongside Andrew Jackson in the defeat of the British at New Orleans.
Mexican-American War (1846-1848): While landing parties of Marines and sailors were seizing enemy ports on both the Gulf and Pacific coasts, a battalion of Marines joined Gen. Winfield Scott’s army at Pueblo and marched and fought all the way to the “Halls of Montezuma,” Mexico City.
Civil War (1861-1865): Although most Marine Corps service during the Civil War was with the Navy, a battalion fought at Bull Run, and other units saw action with blockading squadrons at Cape Hatteras, New Orleans, Charleston and Ft. Fisher.
Early 1900s: Following the Spanish-American War in 1898, Marines fought during the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion in China, in Nicaragua, Panama, The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico and Haiti.
World War I (1914-1918): Marines distinguished themselves on the battlefields of France, as the 4th Marine Brigade earned the title of “Devil Dogs” for actions at Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Michiel, Blanc Mont and the final Muesse-Argonne offensive. Marine aviation, which began in 1912, was used for the first time in a close-air support role during World War I. More than 309,000 Marines served in France and more than a third were killed or wounded.
World War II (U.S. involvement 1941-1945): Marines played an integral role in the U.S. war in the Pacific with Japan, including in the battles of Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tarawa, Tinian and Okinawa. During fierce combat on Iwo Jima, five Marines and one Navy corpsman’s raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi became an iconic image in U.S. history. Of the 27 U.S. military personnel awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions on Iwo Jima, 23 went to Marines.
Korean War (1950-1953): The 1st Marine Division led the first major United Nations strike in North Korean territory, with a surprise amphibious assault at Inchon. All told for the war, Marines suffered more than 30,000 casualties and more than 4,500 died in Korea. Forty-two Marines were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism above and beyond the call of duty in Korea; 27 of these awards were posthumous.
Vietnam (1959-1975): The landing of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Da Nang in 1965 marked the beginning of a large-scale Marine involvement in Vietnam. By the summer of 1968, after the enemy’s Tet Offensive, Marine Corps strength in Vietnam rose to about 85,000. The Marine withdrawal began in 1969 as the South Vietnamese began to assume a larger role in the fighting. The last ground forces left Vietnam by June 1971.
The Vietnam War, the longest in the history of the Marine Corps, led to more than 13,000 Marines killed and 88,000 wounded.
The Gulf War (1990-1991): The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led to the largest movement of Marine forces since World War II. From August 1990 to January 1991, 24 infantry battalions, 40 squadrons (more than 92,000 Marines) deployed to the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. The air campaign of Operation Desert Storm began Jan. 16, 1991, followed by the main overland attack Feb. 24 when the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions breached the Iraqi defense lines and stormed into occupied Kuwait. Meanwhile, the threat from the sea in the form of Marine Expeditionary Brigades held 50,000 Iraqis in check along the Kuwait coast. By the morning of Feb. 28, 100 hours after the ground war began, the Iraqi army was no longer a threat.
1992-1994: The Marine Corps played important roles in humanitarian missions to Somalia, enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina and evacuating U.S. citizens from war-torn Rwanda.
2003-present: Marines have served prominently in both the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. Marines’ capturing of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit ended the invasion phase of the Iraq war in 2003.
Sources: GlobalSecurity.org, Desert Sun research
Shadow Force Premieres November 7th on The History Channel
Nov 9, 2008 Video
About the Show
Shadow Force showcases the history of unconventional military operations through the eyes of an elite team operating in the modern day and offers one of the first real insights into the high-stakes world of private military operations. The Special Forces soldiers do what governments and aid agencies cannot—from combating piracy in Liberia, to stopping illegal forestation and saving rare mountain gorillas in the Congo, to setting up an alert system to help stop tribal wars in Kenya, to tracking illegal ivory into the black market.
Meet the Shadow Force Team
Bob Parr is the team leader. He’s a counter-terrorism consultant and former member of the United Kingdom Special Forces and the Royal Marines Commando.
sLiM is the team’s technical and tactical specialist. He’s a former member of the U.S. Special Forces, as well as an Army Ranger.
Cobus Claassens is a Marine and Naval specialist, and a former member of the South African Special Forces. He is an expert in the West Africa region with 20 years of experience. In fact, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the film Blood Diamond (2006) was inspired by Claassens.
Laura Engelbrecht is a diplomatic and Central African specialist. She is a former U.S. State Department operations specialist, specializing in intelligence and diplomacy.
Ralph is the team’s tracking and electronics expert.
Rhidian Bridge is a naval specialist who joins the team for specific missions.
Tags: Claassens, History Chanel, Shadow Force, Video
British troops ‘cannot bear brunt of Barack Obama’s Afghanistan surge’
Nov 9, 2008 Afghanistan, Iraq
By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent, www.Telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 7:44PM GMT 09 Nov 2008
Sir Jock Stirrup warns ministers not to transfer troops from Iraq
British troops must not be sent in support of US President-Elect Barack Obama’s planned “surge” in Afghanistan, the head of the armed forces has said.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, warned that the British military was already over-stretched, and suggested that troops from other Nato countries should be sent to fight.
Mr Obama has spoken of his desire to see a surge in troop numbers in Afghanistan, similar to that which appears to have had success against extremists in Iraq, to finally quell the Taliban insurgency.
But Sir Jock said that British troops were already struggling to cope with fighting in the two theatres of Iraq and Afghanistan, and could not take on more demands.
His words were echoed by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who agreed that other Nato countries should take responsibility for any fresh surge in Afghanistan.
Both men also ruled out sending British troops to the Congo to bolster the United Nations force in central Africa.
There are currently 8,100 military personnel serving Afghanistan, with another 4,100 in Iraq due to withdraw by the middle of next year.
Sir Jock said that they should not be redeployed to Afghanistan once their mission in Iraq ended, adding: “I am a little nervous when people use the word ’surge’ as if this were some sort of panacea.
“We welcome more military force being sent to Afghanistan. Everybody needs to do their share, we are very clear on that.
“In the context of what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are shouldering a burden which is more than we are able to shoulder in the long term, so we expect the others to take up their share of that burden.”
Appearing with Sir Jock on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Miliband was asked if Mr Obama’s proposed surge would require an increase in the size of Britain’s commitment there.
He said: “Not necessarily, no. As the second-largest contributor of troops in Afghanistan, the first thing we say is that we don’t want to bear an unfair share of the burden.”
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, also warned that Britain was already making a “disproportionate contribution” to the Nato effort in Afghanistan.
He told Sky News’ Sunday Live: “We do need the rest of Nato to play its part in Afghanistan and undoubtedly it seems that Barack Obama does intend to send larger US forces and that is part of what is necessary in Afghanistan.
“We would all take some persuading that there would have to be a much larger British contingent there - there’s already a very large British contingent.”
Meanwhile, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said that the Government should talk to Iranian and Taliban leaders in order to find lasting resolutions to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He added: “Negotiation with both the Taliban and Iran may be unpalatable, but it is the only route to success, and if it doesn’t happen now it will be too late.”
Tags: Afghanistan, Iraq, NATO
Blackwater May Face Criminal Charges, Hefty Fines Over Arms Shipments
Nov 9, 2008 Industry News
By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide may be slapped with millions of dollars in fines by the State Department for shipping weapons to law enforcement facilities in Iraq and Jordan without authorization, according to a report published in the magazine Government Executive.
“Officials in the Commerce Department, which has jurisdiction over some military exports, are conducting a related regulatory review of Blackwater shipments,” the magazine reported, citing unnamed sources. “And federal officials in North Carolina have convened a grand jury to consider criminal charges related to the arms shipments.”
In a separate development involving the controversial security contractor, a Washington, D.C. Grand jury will soon decide whether to indict several Blackwater security guards over a shooting in Baghdad last year that claimed the lives of 17 civilians, unnamed sources told Government Executive.
The unauthorized arms shipments are said to total about 900 weapons sent to police training facilities in Iraq and Jordan.
Blackwater “didn’t do the original paperwork, therefore they don’t know where the guns are,” one source familiar with the matter told Government Executive, adding that each weapon shipped overseas might result in a separate violation and result in hefty fines.
In a statement released by Blackwater Oct. 9, General Counsel Andrew Howell confirmed the company is under scrutiny.
“Ongoing reviews by the departments of Justice, State and Commerce have highlighted the need for a significant and systems-wide initiative,” Howell said. On the same day Blackwater announced the formation of a new export compliance committee to oversee it’s international dealings. The committee was formed immediately after Blackwater received a letter from the State Department’s Defense Trade Control Directorate alerting the security firm to potential violations, Government Executive quoted sources familiar with the matter.
Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., a former U.S. Attorney is a member of the committee.
In July, Blackwater said it would slowly exit the security business. The same month, the Inspector General of the Small Business Administration (SBA) released a report that said Blackwater misrepresented the size of its firm so it could receive more than $100 million in small business contracts from the federal government.
The report said the mercenary outfit obtained a total of 39 contracts intended for small businesses with annual revenues of $6.5 million between 2005 and 2007. But the report said Blackwater’s revenue surpassed $200 million for those years.
Blackwater “obtained a total of 33 contracts during Fiscal Years 2005 through 2007, totaling $2,188,620, which may have involved misrepresentations to obtain the contract.”
The report also found that “it is possible that misrepresentations took place” on the remaining six contracts, totaling $107,311,356.”
Of the 39 contracts reviewed, 38 were awarded by the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded one. The Inspector General’s report says the small business contracts “could have involved potential misrepresentations by Blackwater.
Moreover, the Department of Defense wrongfully awarded Blackwater aviation contracts worth $107 million. That contract was earmarked for companies with annual revenues of less than $25 million or less than 1,500 employees, the report said.
The Small Business Administration was singled out and criticized for not thoroughly investigating Blackwater’s finances prior to awarding contracts to the company.
The report was prepared at the request of Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who sent a letter in March to Steven Preseton, the administrator of the Small Business Administration.
“As part of the Oversight Committee’s investigation into the business practices of Blackwater Worldwide, the Committee has obtained evidence indicating that Blackwater may have applied for and received federal contracts by improperly claiming that it was eligible for small business preferences,” Waxman’s March 10 letter said. “It appears Blackwater sought these small business contracts by improperly designating its security guards as “independent contractors” rather than “employees.”
The Inspector General’s 27-page report released Monday said Blackwater appeared to have improperly classified its guards stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan as independent contracts as opposed to full-fledged employees in order to obtain government contracts.
According to a memo issued by Waxman to Oversight Committee members Monday, “The key issue… was whether personnel hired by Blackwater to provide security services for the Department of State (DOS) and other agencies were Blackwater employees . . . or independent contractors.”
“In claiming it was a small business, Blackwater argued that 1,000 security personnel it provided under the State Department’s $1.2 billion Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) contract were independent contractors,” Waxman’s memo says. “The [Small Business Administration Inspector General] reports that Blackwater claimed that it “had little or no knowledge of the activities of the security personnel performing the contract and exercised little or no supervision over these personnel once they were deployed.”
The report “concludes that these assertions were incorrect,” Waxman’s memo says.
The Inspector General’s report says “Our review of the WPPS Statement of Work indicates that it contained a number of provisions that appeared to be inconsistent with SBA’s conclusion that Blackwater did not have knowledge about the actions of the personnel once they were deployed.”
Tags: Blackwater
Blackwater to Lay Off Workers
Nov 9, 2008 Uncategorized
(Wall Street Journal) 4 November 2008
Blackwater Worldwide has laid off an undisclosed number of employees after it failed to win a government contract for its Grizzly armored vehicle to replace the Humvee.
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Monday that reductions were necessary because the company wasn’t selected to make the Army’s joint light tactical vehicle.
The Grizzly was one of the military contractor’s ideas to diversify away from an emphasis on providing security services that Blackwater had become known for during the war in Iraq.
Tags: Blackwater, Iraq
Offshore Banking and Wealth Management
Nov 9, 2008 Uncategorized
Tax planning is just smart business. Many Modern Merc community members are citizens of a western country, residents in another and perhaps working in a third country. There are distinct advantages ($$$ in your pocket) to developing a proper offshore banking and wealth management structure.
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Tags: banking, Offshore Banking, tax
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Nov 9, 2008 Fitness/PT
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U.N. Chief and African Leaders Seek Congo Peace
Nov 9, 2008 Africa
Refugees in eastern Congo fled new fighting while African leaders met Friday in Kenya, without a crucial rebel figure.
NAIROBI, Kenya — There was an obvious place setting missing Friday at the emergency summit meeting called to bring peace to war-ravaged eastern Congo.
The placards were neatly laid out for the presidents of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and the Congo Republic, as well as United Nations officials and Western diplomats. They huddled together in an oak-paneled conference room in a secluded Nairobi hotel, surrounded by a battalion of bodyguards.
But conspicuously absent was the man who started the crisis in the first place: Laurent Nkunda, the rebel general who has threatened to take over all of Congo and whose fighters recently brought central Africa to its most turbulent moment in years.
“Mr. Nkunda was not invited,” said Alan Doss, the chief of the United Nations mission to Congo.
When asked why not, Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania’s president and the current chairman of the African Union, said, “This was a meeting of the leaders.”
Mr. Nkunda’s forces have been battling Congolese government troops since August, in a region where violence has raged on and off for the past decade. The recent fighting climaxed last week, when Mr. Nkunda’s men (and boys, because he uses a lot of child soldiers) routed Congolese government troops and were poised to seize Goma, the strategic city in eastern Congo.
The fighting turned hundreds of thousands of people into refugees, many of them sick, wounded and starving. Mr. Nkunda then declared a cease-fire, which the United Nations is desperately trying to keep intact.
It was out of concern that the cease-fire was unraveling and that Congo’s problems were threatening to draw in neighboring armies — the kind of international conflict that has devastated the region before — that top United Nations and African officials called the emergency meeting in Kenya. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, flew in for the talks, and he opened the meeting saying, “This has been one of the worst human tragedies of our time.”
The African leaders then signed a multipronged agreement calling for an immediate end to the conflict, and they said that if United Nations peacekeepers could not protect civilians from senseless killing, African peacekeepers would be sent to the front lines.
“We’re happy with what we’ve accomplished,” Mr. Kikwete said at the end of the meeting.
He said the new agreement was better than previous ones because it had mechanisms, like a follow-up committee, to enforce it. But Mr. Ban seemed less enthusiastic. “I have come here with a very heavy heart,” he said. “There have been many, many meetings.”
And, he said, many, many agreements.
But, he concluded: “It’s not a matter of how many agreements. It’s a matter of implementation. It’s a matter of political will.”
Mr. Nkunda’s rebel group, however, dismissed the whole affair.
“That conference is not important,” said Bertrand Bisimwa, the chief rebel spokesman. “The only way for us to resolve this is to sit down and talk with the Congolese government.”
So far, the Congolese government has refused to meet with the rebels, blaming them for the violence and accusing them of trying to destabilize the country.
In the past decade, Congo’s wars have killed as many as five million people, mostly from hunger and disease. The instability — along with Congo’s glittering mineral riches — has attracted neighboring armies and turned the heart of Africa into a never-ending battle zone.
On Friday, there were unconfirmed reports that Angolan troops had returned to Congo to shore up the weak, corrupt and often predatory Congolese Army. Several United Nations officials dismissed such reports, though one official said it was possible that Angolan advisers from longstanding training programs were indeed working with some Congolese Army units. Angola came to Congo’s rescue in 1998, when Rwanda and Uganda invaded the country, and Angolan advisers have been working with the Congolese military since then.
The rebels may be getting outside help too. It is widely believed that Rwanda is supporting Mr. Nkunda, an allegation Rwanda denies. Joseph Kabila, Congo’s president, and Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, spoke to each other for a few minutes on Friday. United Nations officials said they hoped that the two would talk more.
As the summit meeting got under way, Congolese soldiers and rebel forces exchanged fire near Goma. United Nations officials described the gunfire as an “accident,” and by Friday night, it had stopped.
“The cease-fire is partially holding right now,” said Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, a United Nations spokesman. “The rebels are still holding some positions that they should not be holding. But they are also withdrawing from some positions.
“We’ve told them, ‘If you move forward we will shoot at you,’ ” he said.
So far, he said, the rebels seemed to be listening for the most part.
Colonel Dietrich said United Nations investigators had been sent to Kiwanja, a village north of Goma where villagers have accused armed men of summarily executing more than a dozen civilians. The village was recently captured by the rebels. Human rights groups have blamed Mr. Nkunda’s forces and indigenous militias loyal to the government for two rounds of killings.
Human rights groups have also criticized the United Nations, saying it has not done enough to protect civilians. In the case of Kiwanja, there was a peacekeeping base nearby, but the heavily armed peacekeepers did not intervene. There was similar criticism last week when, according to residents, Congolese government troops ransacked parts of Goma, raping women and killing children, and United Nations peacekeepers about a mile away did little to stop them.
The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo, its biggest peacekeeping mission in the world. But Mr. Ban said Friday that the peacekeepers were “stretched to the limit” and that more forces were needed as soon as possible.
