Category Archives: War

Andersonville Journey, The Civil War’s Greatest Tragedy

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Any book on this subject is disturbing, and this one is no exception. Much of the book is about the commandant of the horrid prison where Union prisoners of war died by the thousands. Captain Henry Wirz was tried and executed after the war after a sham trial. The story of the prison is a disgrace as evidenced by the nearly 13,000 marble headstones nearly touching one another at the Andersonville National Historic Site. There were more than 33,000 prisoners of war crowded into the eighteen acre filthy log stockade with no shelter. The men made tents out of anything they could find. Some dug caves in the red clay. The only water for the first several months was an inadequate stream. The rations consisted mostly of corn ground with the cobs and shucks to give it bulk and rancid raw pork. The same food was issued to Confederate guards, since Confederate law required that prisoners and soldiers would be given the same rations.

Henry Wirz was born in Switzerland Heinrich Hartman Wirz. He “got in over his head” in some financial deals, was convicted of the crime of being in debt, and was exiled by the Swiss government. He immigrated to America, changed his name to Henry, and worked in a variety of jobs. He worked for a doctor for a time and learned enough about health care to move to Kentucky and opened a practice as a homeopathic physician. When the Civil War began he enlisted as a private in a Louisiana Confederate infantry unit. He was a sergeant by the time he fought at the Battle of Seven Pines and was wounded by minie balls in his right arm and shoulder. He was commissioned as a captain and was assigned to a variety of administrative duties. He was assigned to Andersonville in March 1864. Continue reading →

Drone Pilots

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I became interested in this story after writing a previous blog about Pakistan and that country’s nuclear weapons. A 60 Minutes show in 2009 reported the United States was using drones, which the Air Force calls “unmanned aerial vehicles,” to attack insurgents and military targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  George W. Bush stirred national and international debate and criticism when he authorized drone strikes in Pakistan.  A Times Online report dated January 29, 2009 reported that multiple “suspected drones” killed at least 15 people in Pakistan.  They were “…the first strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W. Bush has not changed.”

Pakistan watched U.S. drones operate successfully for years and finally asked for the some of their own.  The U.S. denied the request, and  Pakistan began developing the technology. They are now reported to be working closely with Italian, Chinese, and Turkish firms, all of which use Israeli technology “borrowed” from American technology, on upgrades.There is a YouTube video titled “Pakistan Starts Manufacturing Drones,” but unfortunately I neither read nor understand Pakistani.

The drones are controlled from Creech Air Force Base 45 miles north of Las Vegas.  The drones are constantly on the hunt, and they are controlled by a pilot and crew member supported by a team of intelligence analysts.  There is a video that has been going around that shows a drone pilot and crew member controlling a drone, being given a target, acquiring the target (a white pickup truck), and blowing it up.

Watching it made me remember an Army officer giving a lecture to my Infantry Officer Candidate class.  He made what seemed to be an off-hand comment that made me think then and that I recall more than forty years later.  “The more impersonal war becomes, the more dangerous it becomes.”

Which President Lied About Weapons of Mass Destruction

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President George W. Bush is quoted as saying in his January 2003 State of the Union Address that “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” CIA Director George Tenet said even though officials of his agency had concurred that the text was factually correct, those “16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President.” The controversy about whether “Bush lied” in exaggerating or inventing that Iraq had, or had planned to make, weapons of mass destruction consumed American politics and news reports for years.

Iraq did have a history of interest in development of nuclear weapons. A BBC report describes how an air attack by Israel destroyed a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad, “saying they believed it was designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.” The reactor “…was near completion but had not been stocked with nuclear fuel…” Iraq also had more than a theoretical interest in chemical weapons. A Department of Defense report details use of chemical agents numerous times against Iranian forces in the1980s and again in 1988 in attacks that killed thousands of Kurds in Hussein’s own country.

With that history it isn’t a surprise that President Bush and leaders of both political parties almost universally believed that Saddam Hussein probably had retained chemical agents and was willing to use them. But now we arrive at the really interesting part about who lied. There are numerous articles on the Internet about the interrogation of Saddam Hussein by George L. Piro, but I will focus on a “60 Minute” report.

It took five months of interrogation for Piro to gain the trust and respect of Hussein before he admitted why he had led the world to believe Iraq had chemical weapons while the United States was threatening invasion. Hussein admitted he miscalculated President Bush. He expected an air campaign that he could survive. He believed that Iraq’s major enemy was Iran, and that eventually there could be a security agreement with the United States that would prevent the Iranians from annexing southern Iraq. He also believed that he could not survive an inevitable attack from Iran “without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction.” He told his generals that he would order the use of chemical weapons if Iraq was attacked, and he did that to hold Iran at bay. Saddam Hussein lied, and Bush and his advisors believed the lie.