Captured Alive

From Bill Roggio:

Al Qaeda in Iraq and their network of suicide and car bomb cells have been the greatest threat to security in Baghdad, particularly since the implementation of the Baghdad Security Plan. Suicide attacks are aimed at Shia neighborhoods and markets in an attempt to reignite the sectarian murders, as well as at security forces in an attempt to break the will of the Iraqi police and soldiers. Over the past five days, Iraqi and U.S. forces have put a big dent in the leadership of a suicide and car bomb cell in Adhamiyah, as well as an al Qaeda leader in Abu Ghraib.

It always fascinates me that the leaders of the "insurgents" would allow themselves to be captured alive rather than going out with a "bang" like the suicide/martyr attacks they've ordered of others.

Journey from the Fall

I saw this trailer this morning. From the movie's web page:

"The Americans have broken their promise. They have left us."
(Long Nguyen, South Vietnamese resistance fighter)

Inspired by the true stories of Vietnamese refugees who fled their land after the fall of Saigon—and those who were forced to stay behind, Journey From The Fall follows one family’s struggle for freedom.

April 30, 1975 marked the end of Vietnam's two-decade-old civil war and the start of the exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Despite his allegiance to the toppled South Vietnamese government, Long Nguyen (as Long Nguyen) decides to remain in Vietnam. Imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp, he urges his family to make the escape by boat without him. His wife Mai (Diem Lien), son Lai (Nguyen Thai Nguyen) and mother Ba Noi (Kieu Chinh) then embark on the arduous ocean voyage in the hope of reaching the U.S. and freedom.

Back in Vietnam, Long suffers years of solitary confinement and hard labor, and finally despairs that his family has perished. But news of their successful resettlement in America inspires him to make one last desperate attempt to join them.

As the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq are so common now a day, and that history seems to be repeating itself with the Democrats trying to force a withdrawal of US Troops by both legislative means and funding cuts, this seems particularly pertinent as no one has really talked much about what happens once the US leaves.

Cut and Run

. . . as the Khmer Rouge closed in on the capital city of Phnom Penh in early April 1975, the United States offered a number of Cambodian officials a chance to escape. The reply addressed to the U.S. ambassador by Sirik Matak, a former Cambodian prime minister, and reprinted by Kissinger in full, is one of the more important documents of the entire Vietnam-war era.

Dear Excellency and Friend:
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.

You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we are all born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].

Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

Immediately after the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, writes Kissinger, Sirik Matak was shot in the stomach and left to die over the course of three days from his untreated wounds.

From Powerline