{"id":7799,"date":"2010-09-11T22:39:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T07:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=7799"},"modified":"2010-09-11T22:39:38","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T07:09:38","slug":"stryker-advise-and-assist-brigade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=7799","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Stryker Advise and Assist Brigade&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;\">\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.thenewstribune.com\/military\/2010\/09\/11\/advise-and-assist-stryker-brigades-operation-new-dawn\/\">Tacoma News Tribune<\/a> the Hawai&#8217;i-based 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division is now called the Stryker Advise and Assist Brigade:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">the Defense Department is using  kinder, gentler terminology to describe its deployed units in Iraq, now  that President Obama has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-11147300\">pulled out all &#8220;combat&#8221; troops.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">For example, according to a casualty press release we read, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalsecurity.org\/military\/agency\/army\/25id-2bde.htm\">2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division<\/a> out of Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, is now called a &#8220;Stryker Advise and  Assist Brigade&#8221; rather than the traditional &#8220;Stryker Brigade Combat  Team&#8221; \u2013 even though the soldiers are presumably still driving the same  20-ton vehicles equipped with the same .50-caliber guns, grenade  launchers, etc. And even though they are still dying in combat  engagements with enemy fighters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">That brigade, by the way, is taking part in &#8220;Operation New Dawn,&#8221;  according to the same press release. The name has a slightly different  flavor than the longstanding &#8220;Operation Iraqi Freedom.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><br \/>\n<a style=\"color: #003399;\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.thenewstribune.com\/military\/2010\/09\/11\/advise-and-assist-stryker-brigades-operation-new-dawn\/#ixzz0zIQzg4ig\"><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>But apparently the Iraqis don&#8217;t like the advice and assistance they are getting. Michael O&#8217;Brien writes in antiwar.com that <a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/obrien\/2010\/09\/10\/first-us-soldiers-in-iraq-non-war-killed\/\">&#8216;First US Soldiers in Iraq \u2018Non-War\u2019 Killed&#8217;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The first two US soldiers to die in Iraq since Barack Hussein  Obama told the country (and the world) that we were no longer at war  there were killed on Tuesday, September 7, 2010. To those with a shred  of logic and common sense, this poses a problem: if we\u2019re not at war,  how do we classify their deaths? If we\u2019re not at war, as Obama and Biden  tell us, I guess that makes the deaths of these two soldiers the  equivalent of a training accident, or maybe the equivalent of a bar  fight gone wrong. If we\u2019re not at war they aren\u2019t combat casualties.  Obama and Biden have made it so. The insurgent who killed these soldiers  must not have gotten the word when Joe Biden was over there a week ago.  Someone needs to tell him the war is over and to go home. Maybe Joe  will go back and do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the Tacoma News Tribune the Hawai&#8217;i-based 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division is now called the Stryker Advise and Assist Brigade: the Defense Department is using kinder, gentler terminology to describe its deployed units in Iraq, now that President Obama has pulled out all &#8220;combat&#8221; troops. For example, according to a casualty press release &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=7799\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;Stryker Advise and Assist Brigade&#8221;?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2409],"class_list":["post-7799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kauai","tag-movements-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7799"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7801,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799\/revisions\/7801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}