Monday, June 30, 2014

U.S. sends more troops to Iraq

from cnn

By Steve Almasy, Barbara Starr and Chelsea J. Carter, CNN
updated 8:36 PM EDT, Mon June 30, 2014



STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Death toll in Iraq for June nearly twice that of May
  • U.S. official tells CNN that potential threat from ISIS prompted troop escalation
  • Pentagon sending 300 more troops to Baghdad as protection forces
  • Mortar rounds strike gate of holy site in Samarra
Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- The United States has increased its military presence in Iraq, ordering 300 more troops to the violence-ravaged nation, the Pentagon announced Monday.
ISIS militants have "continued to pose a legitimate threat to Baghdad and its environs," a U.S. official told CNN. "We have seen them reinforce themselves around Baghdad enough to convince us more troops was the prudent thing to do."
The new troops, 200 of whom arrived Sunday and Monday, will provide security for the U.S. Embassy, the Baghdad airport and other facilities in Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
The deployment includes "a detachment of helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, which will bolster airfield and travel route security," Kirby said in a written statement.
The airport is in western Baghdad about 12 miles (20 kilometers) by helicopter from the embassy in the capital's fortified Green Zone.
The 300 troops are in addition to 300 U.S. advisers who will help train Iraq's security forces. They will bring the total of American forces in Iraq to about 800 troops.
Revered Shiite shrine attacked
On Monday, Three mortar rounds hit the outer gate of a Shiite holy site in Samarra, killing one person and wounding 14, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said.
Al-Iraqiya, a state-run television network, reported that the Iraqi air force demolished the site where the mortars were fired.
The Al-Askariya mosque was heavily damaged by militants in February 2006. That attack triggered retaliatory attacks against Sunnis, and touched off the sectarian fighting that nearly tore the country apart.
The mosque houses the Imam Ali al-Hadi and Imam Hassan al-Askari shrine, one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims.
Samarra is about 80 miles (129 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
The death was one of 1,873 in June due to violence, according to the Interior Ministry, a figure that includes 355 Iraqi soldiers and 130 police officers.
That is a dramatic increase from the May death toll of 994 given by the United Nations and health officials in restive Anbar province. The U.N. said 144 of the people killed in May were civilian police officers.
ISIS declares caliphate
Emboldened by a weakened Iraqi government that is struggling to stop their murderous advance, extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria declared over the weekend that they have set up a caliphate spanning large areas of the two countries.
In a newly released audio message and written statement, purportedly from the official spokesman of ISIS, the group called on Muslims to swear allegiance to the caliphate, which means Islamic state.
The group said in the message Sunday, which CNN couldn't independently confirm, that its flag now flies from Aleppo province in northwestern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq. It announced that it was changing its name to just the "Islamic State."
The ISIS statement was just one of the many developments in the fast-moving situation in Iraq over the weekend.
Who controls Tikrit?
Iraq's government touted its military offensive to recapture Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit from extremists, with some officials taking to state-run television over the weekend to declare that the army had defeated ISIS.
But residents in the city nestled along the Tigris River, about 140 kilometers (about 87 miles) northwest of Baghdad, gave a different account Sunday.
Photos: Iraq under siegePhotos: Iraq under siege
Mass graves and executions shock Iraq
Feinstein: Iraqi state is in danger
Expert: This looks like mission creep
Iraq executions,atrocities on both sides
"There are no Iraqi troops here," one woman told CNN by telephone from Tikrit. The only presence, at least in her neighborhood, is the "Islamic state," she said, referring to ISIS.
The woman, who asked not to be identified over concerns for her safety, said she could hear the sounds of a fierce battle, in the form of shelling, being carried out by both sides.
Heavy shelling
A video posted on YouTube appears to support her assertion. A man gives a tour of the city to show, he says, that there were no Iraqi security forces on the streets on Saturday, the day Iraqi forces said they launched the offensive.
In the video, the man can be heard repeatedly saying "June 28, 2014," presumably to offer evidence of the date. He says "Thank God, Tikrit is safe and still in the hand of tribesmen and not troops of 'al-Haliki,' " a derogatory reference to al-Maliki that refers to his death.
Witnesses inside and outside Tikrit said Iraqi forces were heavily shelling the city. Two days ago, the air force dropped leaflets from helicopters, demanding that residents leave the city "for their safety."
A large number of people have fled Tikrit for smaller villages to the north, according to witnesses, who say Iraqi forces are battling ISIS on the southern edge of the city.
State-run Iraqi TV showed video footage of large plumes of black smoke billowing from the city. Another video, released by the Ministry of Defense, showed Iraqi troops and convoys loaded with heavy weapons driving through the desert. The video was titled "cleansing the road between Samarra and Tikrit."
CNN couldn't independently confirm the different claims.
Russian jets arrive
Five Russian Sukhoi fighter jets have arrived in Iraq, the first of 25 warplanes expected to be delivered under a contract between Moscow and Baghdad, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
A video the ministry released Monday showed the jets, with wings unattached, being pulled toward hangars.
"These jet fighters will contribute to increase the combat capability of the air force and the rest of the armed forces in eliminating terrorism," the ministry said.
The Su-25 has been in service for more than three decades and was part of the Iraqi air force under Saddam Hussein's regime.
The announcement follows a comment by al-Maliki that recent militant advances might have been avoided if Iraq had proper air power in the form of fighter jets that Iraq has been trying to get from the United States.
"I'll be frank and say that we were deluded when we signed the contract" with the United States, al-Maliki told the BBC in the interview last week, which was released Friday.
Iraq has now turned to Russia and Belarus to buy fighter jets, he said. "God willing, within one week, this force will be effective and will destroy the terrorists' dens," he said.
U.S. officials were quick to reject al-Maliki's complaints.
U.S. fighter jets have not been slow in coming, Kirby said. The first two promised F-16s "weren't expected to be delivered until the fall, which is still months away," Kirby said. "And we were in the process of working towards that delivery."
The advance of the al Qaeda splinter group "couldn't have been stemmed through the use of two particular fighter planes," he said.
Al-Maliki's statements about the need for air support came as American and Arab diplomats told CNN that the United States is unlikely to undertake any military strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and its allied fighters before a new government is formed in Iraq.
Mass graves reported
Human Rights Watch has reported the discovery in Tikrit of two mass graves believed to contain the bodies of Iraqi soldiers, police and civilians killed by ISIS and its militant allies.
In addition to the alleged executions in Tikrit, reports continue to emerge of atrocities committed by both sides.
Human Rights Watch, citing displaced residents and local activists and journalists, said Saturday that ISIS fighters kidnapped at least 40 Shiite Turkmens, dynamited four Shiite places of worship and ransacked homes and farms in two villages just outside Mosul.
The few Sunni villagers who remained in Guba and Shireekhan told those who fled that at least some of the kidnapped Turkmens had been killed, the rights group said. However, they had not seen bodies and could not give more information.
ISIS destroyed seven Shiite places of worship in the predominantly Shiite Turkmen city of Tal Afar, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Mosul, earlier in the week, Human Rights Watch added, citing local sources.
But the allegations of atrocities are not just limited to ISIS. Amnesty International has said it has gathered evidence pointing to a pattern of "extrajudicial executions" of Sunni detainees by government forces and Shiite militias in Tal Afar, Mosul and Baquba.

CNN's Chelsea J. Carter reported from Baghdad and Steve Almasy wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq, Barbara Starr, Jethro Mullen, Hamdi Alkhshali, Arwa Damon, Nima Elbaghir, Raja Razek and Yousuf Basil contributed to this report.

4 Lessons in Manliness from Louis Zamperini

from artofmanliness




zamp
Sometimes stories are so slender that to become movies, Hollywood has to generously pad and exaggerate the scanty details.
In the case of the current effort to bring the life of Louis Zamperini to the silver screen, the challenge for filmmakers is quite the opposite — managing to fit all the unbelievable details into only 3 hours of running time.
As a boy, Zamperini was a troublemaker who seemed destined to become a bum or a criminal.
At age 15, he found running and turned his life around. He set high school cross-country records, won a scholarship to run track for USC, became a two-time NCAA champion miler, and represented the United States in the 5,000 meters at the 1936 Olympics.
When WWII broke out, Zamperini joined the Army Air Forces, and was deployed to the Pacific as a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator bomber. While flying a rescue mission in search of a downed plane, his bomber crashed into the ocean. 8 of the 11 men aboard were killed.
Louie and two of his crewmates (pilot Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips and Francis “Mac” McNamara) were stranded on a pair of small life rafts. Constantly circled by sharks, with no food and minimal supplies, the men survived for 47 days and drifted 2,000 miles before being rescued/captured by the Japanese.
Being picked up hardly brought an end to Louie’s journey of survival. Having been declared dead stateside, he spent the next two years imprisoned in a series of interrogation and POW camps, where he was starved, diseased, and beaten almost daily by a sadistic guard nicknamed the Bird.
At the end of the war, Louie struggled with alcoholism, anger, and nightmares before finding faith and forgiveness.
Just as it will be impossible for filmmakers to capture the entirety of Louis Zamperini’s amazing life story, I cannot hope to summarize all the incredible lessons that can be learned from it. But here are just a few that will make you a better man.

1. Energy Needs an Outlet

louieboy
Louis Zamperini was born in Olean, New York, on January 26, 1917. The second of four children, it was clear from the get-go that he would be the hardest for his parents to handle. Even as a toddler he was a bundle of energy that was impossible to corral or constrain.
Young Louie liked action and he liked attention, but the kind he got as a boy wasn’t the variety he hoped for. When the Zamperini family moved to Torrance, California, Louie’s peers mocked his Italian accent, and hit, kicked, and threw stones at him in an effort to get him to curse in his parents’ native language — an outburst which would double them over with laughter. He informed his father of his troubles, who then made Louie a set of weights from lead-filled cans welded to a pipe, set up a punching bag, and taught Louie how to box and fight back. After six months of training, Louis set out to even the score. He pummeled his schoolyard bullies, and won a formidable reputation that deterred future attacks.
Louie’s success emboldened him, and shrunk the already short fuse of his temper. He hit a teacher, threw tomatoes at a police officer, and accosted anyone who crossed him the wrong way. He formed a gang of fellow toughs that engaged in hijinks both comical and criminal; they rung church bells in the middle of the night, grabbed pies from a bakery, and pinched liquor from bootleggers (Louie said they made the best victims, since they couldn’t incriminate themselves by reporting the theft!). Louis loved seeing his escapades written up in the papers.
As a young teenager, Louie only became more surly and wild. He isolated himself from his family and his classmates. But despite his tough façade, inside he felt miserable. He wanted to be better and not cause his parents so many headaches and heartaches, but he continued to feel like “the proverbial square peg who couldn’t fit into the round hole…or appreciate what he had.”
Luckily, Louie’s older brother Pete had a plan. Pete had seen how quickly Louie could run away from the scenes of his crimes, and figured that speed could be put to better use. He understood that Louie craved recognition, and decided to help him get it in a more constructive way. To that end, he pushed his brother into joining the high school track team. At first Louie balked, and his first race was a disaster; he came in dead last. But Pete incessantly dogged him to enter another meet, and this time the results improved; Louie placed third, and more importantly, experienced a taste of the thrill of competition and the sweet sound of his name being shouted by a crowd of spectators.
At first Louie still fought against wholly giving himself over to becoming an athlete. His training regimen was spotty and he continued to drink and smoke. But after a short and unromantic stint as a train-hopping hobo, and the realization that he didn’t want to spend his adult life as a bum, he was ready to tell Pete: “You win. I’m going all out to be a runner.” As Louie later recalled, “It was the first wise decision of my life.”
As the fledging runner trained, improved, and started to win, his neighbors and classmates started to treat him much differently. He began to catch “a whiff of respect: Louis Zamperini, the wop hoodlum from nowhere, had made a success of himself.”
Louie would always have a temper, and a penchant for rebellion, but here began his training in how to harness it for worthy ends. He kept his fire and fight, but made them his servant instead of his master. It was a power that would serve him well in the many challenges to come.

2. Toughness Is the Ultimate Preparation for Any Exigency

The transformation from local hellraiser to dedicated athlete wasn’t easy. As Louie later recalled, “I still wanted to do almost everything my way.” On his training runs, Pete would follow behind his whining brother on a bike, hitting him with a stick to prod him along. Louie gradually began “to accept the physical pain of training” and Pete had to employ the switch less and less often. He gave up smoking and drinking and even ice cream sundaes, and he did it because he didn’t want to let his brother down. But Pete understood that Louie needed to want it for himself. “You’ve got to develop self-discipline,” Pete told his brother. “I can’t always be around.” Louie took the advice to heart and worked to develop his own commitment to running:
“I knew however much I struggled against it, that running was the right course to follow. To stay on the straight and narrow I made a secret pact with myself to train every day for a year, no matter what the weather. If I missed working out at school, or the track was muddy, I’d put on my running shoes at night and trot around my block five or six times, about a mile and a half. That winter we had two sandstorms and I had to tie a wet handkerchief across my face and mouth just to go out. I also kept boxing, to develop my chest muscles. In the end I was probably even more disciplined than Pete wanted me to be.”
As part of Louie’s self-created training regimen, he started to literally run everywhere. Instead of hitchhiking to the beach as he once had, he would run the four miles there, run 2 more miles along the beach, and then run the 4 miles back home. When his mother asked him to run to the store to pick up something for her, that’s exactly what he did. On weekends, he’d “head for the mountains and run around lakes, chase deer, jump over rattlesnakes and fallen trees and streams.”
Zamperini_2
Louie also strengthened his lungs by practicing how long he could hold his breath at the bottom of the local pool. He’d sit holding on to the drain grate until his friends feared he would drown and would jump in to save him. And he researched the workouts of his fellow runners, and then doubled them for himself. “When I started to beat them,” Louie later remembered, “I knew the simple secret: hard work.”
Louie continued to challenge his body and strengthen his willpower when he became a collegiate runner. His coach at USC forbid his athletes from running uphill, including stairs, believing it was bad for the heart. But Louie had spent plenty of time scaling hills on his solo runs, and knew how good it was for his body and his ability to embrace pain. So he did his ownstair workouts outside official practice:
“Every evening I’d climb the Coliseum fence and do the ‘agony run.’ At the top my legs seared with fire, then I’d walk across a row, go down again, and up another staircase. I did that after each normal workout. Here’s why. People say all anyone needs is a positive attitude. It’s nice to have, but a positive attitude has nothing to do with winning. I often had a defeatist attitude before a race. What matters is what you do to your body. Self-esteem can’t win you a race if you’re not in shape.”
Louie’s studied cultivation of toughness put him in good stead for his mile-long races. He was famous for his ability to dig deep and dial up a ferocious kick on the last lap. At the start of his running career, he had often complained to Pete about the pain and exhaustion inherent in that final, minute-long push to the finish line. His brother had then given him a piece of advice that always stuck with Louie: “Isn’t one minute of pain worth a lifetime of glory?”
That was the question running through Louie’s mind during the final for the 5,000 meters at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He fell behind the lead runners and stayed there for most of the race. But as he moved into the last lap, he remembered Pete’s advice: “When I felt done-in was the time to exert myself.” Louie kicked it into high gear, and turned in a scorching lap time of 56 seconds, enough for 8th place and to become the first American to hit the tape. His last lap was so memorable, even the Führer himself asked to meet with him after the race to shake Louie’s hand.
Louie demonstrated his toughness in a different way during a NCAA meet in 1938. A group of runners had conspired to sabotage him by roughing him up mid-race. As the competitors raced around the track and jostled for position, the runners blocked Louie in, and the one directly in front of him reached back with his foot and raked his shoes’ razor-sharp spikes across Louie’s shin, creating three gashes a quarter-inch deep and an inch and a half long. When the aggressor did it a second time, the wounds widened and blood began to run down Louie’s leg. He tried to escape the box, but the runner on his flanks threw an elbow into his ribs, causing a hairline fracture. Even with the wind knocked out of him, and his socks filling with blood, Louie remained undaunted. He finally managed to sprint free and cross the finish line ahead of the pack. His would-be saboteurs’ plans had been foiled; not only had Louie won, but he had broken the national collegiate record.
Zamperini_1
All of these episodes of toughness trained and toughness won might have been just a footnote in yet another athlete’s story, except for how they singularly prepared him for a much more trying contest to come: Louie vs. Death.
When Zamperini emerged from the wreckage of his bomber and pulled himself into a life raft in the middle of the ocean, it was his confidence in his body, his self-discipline, and his ability to withstand pain in the pursuit of a goal that enabled him to maintain his composure. He remembers his initial thoughts as he assessed the dire situation:
“Look, no one wants to crash, but we had. I knew the way to handle it was to take a deep breath, relax, and keep a cool head. Survival was a challenge, and the way to meet it was to be prepared. I’d trained myself to make it. I was in top physical condition.”
The response of Mac, one of Louie’s two raft mates, could not have been more different; he started wailing about how they were all going to die. While a slap across the face from Louie snapped him out of it, Mac’s panic continued to grow within. When Louie woke up the first morning after the crash, he found all the chocolate bars – the men’s only form of subsistence – had been gobbled up by Mac while he and Phil had been sleeping. The unthinkingly selfish act was a harbinger of what was to come – Louie and Phil would remain calm, hopeful, and mentally strong, while Mac would slip into an anxious, paralyzing malaise.
What accounts for the difference in the men’s responses to the same crisis? In Unbrokenthe bestselling account of Louie’s life, author Laura Hillenbrand calls it a “mystery” and muses that perhaps genetics played a factor. Some people are surely born more optimistic than others, but Louie had his own, more frank theory on the matter:
“Mac never took proper care of himself. On the base he skipped our physical-fitness program. He chain-smoked. Drank. Spent his nights in Honolulu doing who knew what. He also missed meals. We had pretty good food in the dining room, but he’d come in, eat whatever was sweet, and leave. You couldn’t make him listen. Several cups of coffee and three pieces of pie? No problem. Mac had developed a sweet tooth long before he met our chocolate. I should have known I couldn’t trust him…
Everybody in the service gets the same combat training. We go to the front line with the same equipment. When the chips are down, some will panic and run and get court-martialed. Why? Because we’re not all brought up the same. I was raised to face any challenge. If a guy’s raised with short pants and pampering, sure, he goes through the same training, but in combat he can’t face it. He hasn’t been hardened to life.
It’s important to be hardened to life.
Today kids cut their teeth on video games. I’d rather play real games. This generation may be ready to handle robotic equipment and fly planes with computers, but are they ready to withstand the inevitable counterattack? Are they emotionally stable? Are they callous enough to accept hardship? Can they face defeat without falling apart?”
In the initial aftermath of the crash as Louie bandaged Phil’s head wound, he said softly, “Boy, Zamp, I’m glad it was you.” When the chips are down, isn’t that something every man would like to hear?

3. Always Have a Purpose and a Vision for the Future

Another big difference between how Louie and Mac approached their dilemma was that Zamperini focused on the future, and on keeping himself busy with tasks, even small ones, that helped get him closer to it. Though he himself experienced a moment of anxiety as he surveyed how few supplies they had at their disposal, “rather than give in, I made myself a promise: no matter what lay ahead, I’d never think about dying, only about living… I adapted myself to my fate instead of resisting it. Rescue would be nice, but survival was most important.” If in his youth, Louie’s fight and resourcefulness had gotten him into trouble, now they were his ace in the hole for beating back death and coming out of the crucible alive.
Louie inventoried what they’d need to survive: “food, water, and a sharp mind.” As to the first two requirements, he set to work testing out various fishing methods with their limited equipment, catching birds that landed on the raft, and turning canvas cases into rain catching devices. He was a shipwrecked MacGyver and his persistent ingenuity was so inspiring, we’ve dedicated a separate post to detailing it. The small successes he had with his experiments fueled his confidence; it became a positive cycle, in which the more he and Phil tried to survive, the more hopeful they became about their chances, and the more strength they developed to stick it out. In contrast, Mac remained passive, and this became a cycle as well; the more he withdrew, the more listless and dejected he became.
Beyond the procurement of food and water, Louie made mental exercise a top priority. He had read the story of what had happened to another pilot and his men who were adrift at sea for 34 days. After several weeks, many of those castaways had gone to pieces, seeing hallucinations and babbling to themselves. As Hillenbrand writes, this knowledge made Louie “determined that no matter what happened to their bodies, their minds would stay under their control.”
Louie thought back to a college class he had taken in which the professor compared the mind to a muscle that would atrophy through disuse. So he decided that he and his fellow castaways would give their brains daily workouts. The raft became a “nonstop quiz show” with Louie and Phil constantly trading questions back and forth. They talked about their families, the dates they’d been on, their college days, and what they wanted to do when (never if) they got home. Each response would bring a follow-up question from the other (no conversational narcissism here!). Louie would describe his mother’s delicious Italian dishes in detail, and the phantom meals would temporarily fill the men’s bellies. As Hillenbrand writes, “For Louie and Phil, the conversations were healing, pulling them out of their suffering and setting the future before them as a concrete thing. As they imagined themselves back in the world again, they willed a happy ending onto their ordeal and made it their expectation. With these talks, they created something to live for.”
Mac, on the other hand, rarely participated in the discussions, and slipped further away. As Louie put it, he “lost his vision of the future.” On the 33rd day of their odyssey, though he had gotten as much food and water as his raftmates, Mac passed away.
Louie carried his field-tested conviction in the importance of active purpose throughout the rest of his brutal journey towards home. When the Japanese rescued/captured Louie from his raft, they first placed him in a tiny, sweltering, maggot-filled cell on the island of Kwajalein. Here guards regularly kicked and punched him for fun, and poked sticks through the bars of his cage, treating him like zoo animal. To take his mind off his de-humanizing circumstances, Louie spent his time memorizing the names of the 9 Marines that had been inscribed on the wall of his pen — men who had once shared his cell before being executed. If he was freed, he wanted to be able to pass along the list to Allied intelligence. “It was my small way of keeping hope alive,” Louie said.
When he was later transferred to a series of interrogation and POW camps, Louie put his energy into fueling an information network between the prisoners. He kept a tiny diary made of rice paste, even though he knew its discovery would bring a severe beating, and he daringly stole newspapers from guards when they weren’t looking. News of Allied progress was crucial in buoying the spirits of the men. He also took part in the camp’s well-organized ring of thievery – stealing food, supplies, and tobacco to distribute to the prisoners.
Even in darkest moments of camp life, when he was beaten daily and lay sick in his bunk with dysentery and scorching fevers, Louie held to the prospect of being rescued and refused to give up. In his mind he envisioned embracing his family again, competing in another Olympics, living his life.
When his camp was finally liberated, and he found himself aboard a train on the first leg of his long journey home, some of the men around him “grumbled about years of miserable treatment or complained that we should have been liberated from Camp 4-B sooner.” But Louie didn’t join in and continued to uphold the philosophy that had gotten him through those brutal, de-humanizing years: “I’d made up my mind to stay focused on the future, not the past.”

4. A Man Keeps His Promises

Louis Zamperini,  Fred Garrett
When Louie was captured by the Japanese, and imprisoned on Kwajalein, he wondered why he wasn’t executed like the other Marines who had once shared his cell. As his internment progressed, he found out.
One day, he was taken from his prison camp to a radio station that broadcast Japanese propaganda programs. His hosts treated him kindly and showed him around the premises. There was a cafeteria with hot, heaping portions of American-style food, and clean hotel-style beds with sheets and pillows. Louie could stay here, the men told him, and never have to return to camp, never have to see the Bird again, if he would simply do a little broadcast for them. The message they wanted him to read wasn’t overtly traitorous, it just expressed his astonishment that the US government had declared him dead, and hurt his family with the news, when he really was alive and well. But as Hillenbrand explains, Louie knew its purpose was to “embarrass America and undermine American soldiers’ faith in the government.” He realized he had been kept alive because his prominence as an Olympic runner would make him a more effective propaganda tool. And he understood that once he read one message for them, they’d ask him to read increasingly critical ones, and there would be no way out. Though refusal meant returning to a wooden slab infested with bed bugs, starvation rations, and the endless beatings of a mad man, Louie declined the offer. The Japanese broadcasters pressed, warned he’d be punished, and still he refused. Acceptance was not even an option for Louie: “I’d taken an oath as an officer.”
Living up to another promise would prove more difficult. While floating on their life raft, Louie and his crewmates once went 6 days without water. The men felt on the doorstep of death, and Louie prayed fervently to God, pledging that he would dedicate his life to him if only it would rain. The next day brought a downpour. Two more times they prayed, and two more times the rains came. Throughout his later captivity, Louie would repeat his promise, praying, “Lord, bring me back safely from the war and I’ll seek you and serve you.”
When Louie was finally freed from his torments and sent back home, his vow was forgotten amongst numerous homecoming parties and let-it-all-hang-out celebrations. “Ignoring the future and the past,” he would later remember, “I drank and danced and gorged myself, and forgot to thank anyone, including God, for my being alive…I completely dismissed my promises because no one could remind me of them except myself.”
While the revelry took his mind off his harrowing experiences for a time, inside the scars and trauma of war festered. Louie’s fun-loving drinking turned into alcoholism, he struggled to find steady employment, and he was terrorized in his dreams by the Bird. His post-war marriage disintegrated, and his wife wanted a divorce. Bereft of the kind of active purpose that had once carried him through his most trying of challenges, he centered all his energy on a fantasy of revenge – on finding the Bird and killing him.
In a last ditch effort to save their marriage, his wife begged Louie to come with her to a Billy Graham revival meeting. Louie balked; he had no need for religion in his life. She persisted, and Louie reluctantly tagged along. Graham’s preaching made him feel condemned, angry, and defensive; he bolted home halfway through.
His wife managed to convince him to attend another meeting, and though he again felt like running away, this time the memory he had tried so long to forget burst upon his mind: he saw himself in the life raft, parched, desperate, dying, the heavens opening, and the cool rain drops falling on his skin. Louie fell to his knees and asked God “to forgive me for not having kept the promises I’d made during the war, and for my sinful life. I made no excuses.” After the meeting, Louie felt filled with forgiveness not only for himself, but for his former captors and tormentors. He poured all of his alcohol into the sink, and experienced a joyful, “enveloping calm.” The Bird never again came to him in his dreams. And he spent the rest of his life doing exactly what he had promised – offering inspiration to those adrift in their own ocean of struggles.
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Sources:
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand 

Sunday, June 29, 2014

ISIS declares new Islamic caliphate

from fox


The Al Qaeda breakaway group that has seized much of northern Syria and huge tracks of neighboring Iraq formally declared the creation of an Islamic state on Sunday in the territory under its control.
The spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, made the announcement in an audio statement posted online. Islamic extremists have long dreamed of recreating the Islamic state, or caliphate, that ruled over the Middle East in various forms for hundreds of years.
Abu Mohammed al-Adnani declared the group's chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the new leader, or caliph, of the Islamic state, and called on those living in areas under the organization's control to swear allegiance to al-Baghdadi and support him.
"The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organizations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph's authority and the arrival of its troops to their areas," al-Adnani said. He added that with the creation of the caliphate, the group was changing its name to just the Islamic State, dropping the mention of Iraq and the Levant.
Al-Adnani loosely defined the caliphate's territory as running from northern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala — a vast stretch of land straddling the border that is already largely under the Islamic State's control.
It was unclear what immediate practical impact the declaration would have on the ground in Syria and Iraq, but analysts expected it to have a dramatic effect on the wider jihadi community.
Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, said it will likely have a global impact as Al Qaeda affiliates and "independent jihadist groups must now definitively choose to support and join the Islamic State or to oppose it."
"The Islamic State's announcement made it clear that it would perceive any group that failed to pledge allegiance an enemy of Islam," he said. "Already, this new Islamic State has received statements of support and opposition from jihadist factions in Syria. This period of judgment is extremely important and will likely continue for some time to come."
But the greatest impact, Lister said, may be on Al Qaeda, the organization that for years has carried the torch of international jihad.
"This announcement poses a huge threat to Al Qaeda and its long-time position of leadership of the international jihadist cause," he said in emailed comments. "Taken globally, the younger generation of the jihadist community is becoming more and more supportive of (the Islamic State), largely out of fealty to its slick and proven capacity for attaining rapid results through brutality."
Al-Baghdadi has long been at odds with Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, a spat that became public after al-Baghdadi ignored al-Zawahri's demands that the Islamic State leave Syria. Al-Zawahri formally disavowed the Islamic State earlier this year.