Echo Company loses most men in violent Anbar province

[Rose Siding]

Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004

RAMADI, Iraq - More than 129 U.S. servicemen have died in Anbar province since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.

The Marine force in Ramadi, the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marines, nicknamed "The Magnificent Bastards," has had the highest casualties of any U.S. battalion since the war in Iraq began: at least 29 killed and 175 wounded, roughly 20 percent of the battalion's 1,000-man strength. Echo Company has lost 23 of its 185 men, more than any other Marine or Army company. It's had more than 40 wounded.

U.S. soldiers and Marines have stopped patrolling large swaths of Anbar. After losing dozens of men to a "voiceless, faceless mass of people" with no clear leadership or political aim other than killing Americans, the U.S. military had to re-evaluate the situation in and around Ramadi, said Maj. Thomas Neemeyer, the head intelligence officer for the 1st Brigade of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, the main military force in the area.

"They cannot militarily overwhelm us, but we cannot deliver a knockout blow, either," he said.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/world/9404740.htm

Knight Ridder has done some Pulitzer worthy interactive work here that spans the loss in Echo Company. Interactive, it's also posted in the Editorial forum:

Ambush In Ramidi

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/echo_company/

[aquart]

1. So our reason for staying is they can't kill all of us at once?

[IndianaGreen]

2. This is a bloody stalemate

We need political leaders with the courage to admit defeat and bring the troops home and end the slaughter.

We lost this war because we never asked the people of Iraq what they wanted!

[AmandaRuth]

3. here here indiianagreen

when i express my wish for Iraq that no mater what happens, the important thing is that it is what the Iraqis want for themselves, and what is ultimately good for the Iraq people, i get alot of but don't you support the troops? like these two ideas are not connected.

It seems like the question of what the Iraqis want is never asked or even considered.

[nolabels]

4. It's mostly never asked or accepted by many people

A lot of people assume or ignore, then some just take (bush). Lets just state this one more time, a WAR FOR OIL and that's all it was.

When you are able to admit that, you can break the lock they have on your perception. (I call them thieves, but that's just me)

Gimme your password!
Security and Psychology

While being in Russia I read an article in a local newspaper about a band of gypsies going through nearby villages and stealing stuff using mind manipulation techniques. As described in the article it goes like this: they stop at your house asking for a glass of water and the next day you realize that all the cash and the jewelry in the house are gone and you don’t remember what happened.

This is not specific to Eastern Europe ; street thieves around the world are using suggestive hypnosis to make people “voluntarily” part with their valuables. It may come as a surprise to some of you, but with the right skills it is pretty easy to manipulate people and make them do what you want them to (although there are boundaries), and it works on the vast majority of people. So, yes, it is possible to hypnotize people and program them to do things without even putting them into a trance; this area of psychology is relatively well developed and one of its modern branches is named Ericksonian Hypnosis after late Dr. Milton H. Erickson, a great psychologist.

It is time to make a point, isn’t it? Well, I think most of you have already guessed it – human is the weakest link of any security system. And systems based just on password protection are a joke for any serious and determined organization willing to gain access. Furthermore, the more people with access there are, the more susceptible the system is, even to simple social engineering. Check this out – Office workers give away passwords for a cheap pen!
(snip)
http://www.dotnetthis.com/Articles/GimmeYourPassword.htm

Covert Persuasion Techniques

Two topics that have attracted a lot of interest ever since I brought the Keys To Power online more than a year ago are hypnotism and covert persuasion techniques. The Keys To Power system itself uses hypnosis for personal conditioning, but doesn't really get into using hypnosis to influence others. With the Keys To Power, we generally influence the outcome of various situations (including the behavior of others) by directing Power to create the experiences we want. However, this doesn't stop us from looking into other systems that may make our lives easier, and being able to persuade other people to our way of thinking definitely makes life easier.

I've been reading a lot lately about some of the deeper, more obscure aspects of hypnosis. This has been mostly to increase the effectiveness of the Keys To Power techniques and the hypnotic recordings I've been creating for our members here. However, the course of this study has put me square in the middle of the covert hypnosis topic, and I must say, it's extremely fascinating.

I've learned that my definition for hypnosis has been profoundly altered. Hypnosis is not always about putting someone into a trance state, but simply a process of communicating with the inner mind. This communication can be performed while the listener is in a completely normal, waking state of consciousness.

In fact, one of the most celebrated leaders in the hypnotic field (Milton Erickson - a name I recognized from earlier studies) used to practice psychological counseling using a radically different form of hypnosis in which the subject never knew they were being hypnotized. Erickson, and his radically different form of hypnosis, became one of the sources for what is now known as NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
(snip)
http://www.keystopower.com/CovertPersuasion.php

[daleo]

5. This political aim seems pretty clear to me

"After losing dozens of men to a "voiceless, faceless mass of people" with no clear leadership or political aim other than killing Americans..."

It is called getting the invaders to leave. It is the oldest political aim in history.