Iraq Archives

Talking this morning with Air Force Maj. Jonathan Kusy, who works with the U.S. military advisory mission in Iraq, I had one of those moments that makes one pause and reflect.

I asked Kusy about his background, which includes three previous tours in Iraq, and he replied that as the son of a first generation American, military service was imbued in him from childhood. Kusy said his father, Joseph, is a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in a concentration camp as a child and after the war in a displaced persons camp.

Joseph moved to Michigan, and when he came of age, joined the Navy, a path Jonathan followed when he enlisted in the Air Force.

Kusy, who serves in the Air Force Security Forces, describes himself as "just a cop," but his career shows he is much more multidimensional than that. As an enlisted man, he spent just more than five years in an Air Force Tactical Aircraft Control Party, which meant he was an Air Force grunt, with three years in the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C., and another two years with the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea. Kusy said these tours provided him a keen appreciation for NCOs he now works with.

Kusy did one tour in Iraq working on force protection issues, and the other two tours on detainee operations. Before deploying once again to Iraq, Kusy served at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan, where, among other things, he commanded the 374th Security Forces Squadron.

Today, Kusy said, he is working to help Iraqi police and security forces get the gear they need to police their country and secure their borders. He said this includes a $2.7 million project to install scanners at four Iraqi airports, much like those used by the Transportation Security Administration, and another $25 million project to install cargo container scanners at Iraq border entry points and its deep water port at Basra.

Kusy said he relishes this tour because it provides him the opportunity to get the "big picture, national strategic level view" of what is going on in Iraq, as well as a chance to see what has changed since his first tour in 2005.

So far Iraq seems to be far safer than in 2005, with a civilian society much like ours, where political debate is carried out in the pages of newspapers, instead of setting off bombs.

I'm glad to know we have troops like Kusy in Iraq, who can bring generations of experience to their tasks.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the bad guys in Afghanistan and Iraq have cleverly figured out how to use a $29.95 software package called SkyGrabber to intercept video feeds from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The SkyGrabber software was developed by a Russian company to pirate commercial satellite TV and Internet feeds, and the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan has evidently figured out how to use it to tap into UAV air-to-ground links.

The Journal story catapulted SkyGrabber into the fifth most popular search term on Google for most of today, and as a result the SkyGrabber Web site was unreachable due to overwhelming traffic.

But if you want to learn more about SkyGrabber, Philip Coyle III, senior advisor at the Center for Defense Information, told me he had found this nifty YouTube video that provides a basic tutorial on how to install the software.

Softpedia provides some excellent screen shots from the SkyGrabber software package, including this one, which shows a toggle into the C-band frequency, which is used by Predator UAVs for an air to ground downlink.

Be warned: Bad actors already have capitalized on the interest in SkyGrabber to distribute malware. I went to one site and immediately encountered one of those phony "Your computer is infected with a virus" messages and quickly backed out. Softpedia, a reliable site, is a safer place to download the software.

Want a positive sign that security in Iraq is improving?

Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt finished up a three-day business trip to Iraq on Tuesday, where, among other things, he kicked off a Google project to digitize and electronically catalog 14,000 artifacts in the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.

Agence France Presse, the French newswire service, reported that the undisclosed cost of the digitization project will be split between Google and the State Department. Asked of Google planned more projects in Iraq, Schmidt said, "I'm sure we'll add more."

Schmidt had high praise for the troops in Iraq. He told the Pentagon Channel that "the overwhelming impression that I have of Iraq is the courage of the soldiers and the people who assist the soldiers. . . . These are people to be celebrated."

That figure -- 419,000 vets form the Afghanistan and Iraq wars -- staggers the mind, especially when you consider that this is 61 percent above the number the Veterans Affairs Department treated in its 153 hospitals and more than 1,110 outpatient clinics in 2008, according to the report on the Senate version of the VA fiscal 2010 appropriations bill passed on Tuesday.

The Senate appropriated $2.1 billion in the current fiscal year to VA for veterans health care and emphasized that this funding includes treatment for invisible wounds such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

To manage this huge increase in patient load, the Senate adopted a floor amendment to the VA bill directing the department to conduct a study on how to improve its information technology infrastructure to deliver services to veterans using telehealth systems.

The House, in its version of the bill, directed VA to set up a 24/7 call center staffed by combat veterans to help provide PTSD treatment.

Sometimes, as I have learned, combat stress problems can be handled by one vet talking to another.

Three virtual reality companies have started to develop an online world for amputees with funding from the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.

The Amputee Virtual Environment Support Space (AVESS) project will research the needs of soldiers who suffered wounds that resulted in amputation and establish protocols and prototypes for addressing those needs in a virtual environment.

Since 2001, more than a thousand troops have lost a limb in combat operations in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the new virtual environment will give them a place to practice skills that will help with their rehabilitation.

Unlike the open world of Second Life, which anyone can access, the amputee virtual world will be a closed community. But it will use virtual world technology developed by Second Life operator Linden Labs. ADL Co., which develops virtual worlds for health care providers, and Virtual Ability Inc., which helps disabled people use Second Life, also are AVESS partners.

Image: BusinessWire

In many cases, the new GI bill, called the 2008 Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, offers a better deal than its predecessor, the Montgomery GI bill.

But not always.

Post 9/11 vets attending school full time who need tuition and housing assistance will probably reap richer benefits under the new bill, especially if the school they attend provides extra financial assistance under the Veterans Affairs Department's Yellow Ribbon program.

But post 9/11 vets still on active duty attending school at night or taking correspondence courses at non-Yellow Ribbon program schools could make out better under the Montgomery bill.

That's what an Iraq war vet buddy of mine still on active duty discovered to his horror this week. He signed up for the post 9/11 bill, only to learn later that he would receive about half of the $1,300-a-month payment he would have received under the Montgomery bill.

This vet tried to change his benefits to the Montgomery bill but found that VA had processed his application for benefits in just two weeks - proving that in this case, the new and improved GI bill benefits processing system is indeed working at the advertised pace.

At the moment, it seems my pal has little hope, because VA told him he had made an "irrevocable" election of benefits, even though he won't receive a check until August.

But if VA wants to make benefits irrevocable, I think it needs to do a better job of explaining the differences in benefits under the two bills. Yes, VA does have a GI bill Web site, which, I guess, if one clicks enough links, a veteran can eventually determine which bill offers the best package of benefits, depending on individual circumstances.

I suggest VA develop and quickly post a chart on the site that offers a side-by-side comparison of the benefits available under both bills.

Until then, my buddy suggests veterans consult Military.com which offers a nifty online guide for the two bills.

The $106 billion 2009 war supplemental appropriations bill passed by the Senate yesterday sure looks like a piggybank for a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with supporting troops operating in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For example there's $8 million to cover the salaries and expenses of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis that hit the country last year. Since one word -- greed -- sums up the cause of the crisis, I don't know why this commission needs $8 million from the Defense Department budget.

The Securities and Exchange Commission grabbed $10 million from the war supplemental to investigate securities fraud, and we all know one word -- greed -- is the cause of securities fraud.

Then there's the "cash for clunkers" program, $1 billion tacked on to the war supplemental bill at the last minute to allow folks to trade in gas guzzlers for new fuel-efficient cars. This will be run through an electronic voucher program managed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The program will reimburse gas guzzler owners up to $4,500 if they buy a new fuel-efficient car.

This electronic voucher program will, in turn, enrich whatever contractor is hired to develop the system. And perhaps someday it will have a use in Afghanistan or Iraq - like if we try to eliminate gas guzzlers in those countries under a pax Americana frugalitas project.

Congress did have enough spare change after tossing all these bucks around to come up with $169.5 million in funding for a new National Security Agency data center located not at the agency HQ in Ft. Meade, Md., but at Camp Williams, Utah, a 28,000-acre base operated by the Utah National Guard located 26 mile south of Salt Lake City.

It may be real difficult to find Old Bay Seasoning in the vicinity of Camp Williams, let alone the blue crabs to use it on.