Author: COB6

Gunfighter 6 Gulf War 1 friendly fire incident

{DON’T WATCH THE MOVIE YET}

A lot of ugly things happen in war; this is among the ugliest.

Cleared for publication: Three IDF soldiers were killed and 24 others were injured, one critically and three seriously on Monday evening, in a friendly fire incident in northern Gaza.

Among the fatalities were two officers and a soldier. Colonel Avi Peled, commander of the Golani Brigade sustained minor injuries in the incident.

According to the IDF Spokesman’s Unit, the grave incident occurred when a tank, deployed as part of Operation Cast Lead, accidentally fired a live round at an abandoned building in Jabalya, in which Golani forces, who were operating in the area, took cover.

Friendly fire is of course not new but it is a horrible thing and based on personal experiences, it leaves a soldier feeling as helpless as anything else.

Anytime a fellow soldier is killed it is a gut-wrenching experience but I always found comfort in what enevitably came to bear on the perpetartors. Being personally involved in that act of justice made it even sweeter.

Therein lies the biggest problem with responding to friendly fire; you can’t. Other than screaming cease fire into a radio and ducking, there is zero you can do.

As anyone who has been in combat knows, the fog of war is hell. Decisions are made in split seconds and people die as a result of those decisions. One always hopes that it is the bad guys who die but in the chaos that is war, sometimes people make mistakes.

But what if it happened in a totally controlled environment where no split second decision was needed. The only driving force seemed to be one commander’s need to kill something.

Almost 20 years ago, Jonn and I experienced just such a case. It wasn’t pretty.

{WATCH THE MOVIE NOW}

Some clarifications:
a. The Norfolk Line was about 20 miles wide. That’s approximately half a kilometer between combat vehicles. With generation one thermals, I could see the vehicle on my left but little more.

b. LTC Hillman did not “anchor” his line with a Bradley and a M113. The line was anchored by my Bradley and my wingman. The Bradley and M113 that was engaged belonged to the Task Force Scout Platoon. The Scout Platoon SGT, SFC Richard Miller’s Bradley experienced a total failure of his Integrated Sight Unit. The M113 housed a Ground Surveillence Radar section whose radar was also inoperative. They were pulled off the screen line which was running at a right angle and rear of the battle line. They pulled in a couple of hundred yards east of my position and were planning to wait until daylight for maintenance.

c. At the 3:42 mark, the Apache gun jams. I saw two tracers fly over my head and immediately started a series of radio calls to find out what they were shooting at.

d. At the 5:05 mark, the Apaches turn to black hot. SFC Miller’s driver can be seen beside the Bradley.

e. At the 5:58 mark, the two hot spots running from the explosion were in fact two men from the GSR section.

f. At the 6:31 mark, our Battalion S3 is flashing the net with a cease fire warning from me. He called me back on my internal and asked if there were any survivors. I said I didn’t know but that we were moving in to get them out. He ordered me to stay put until he could confirm a cease fire. I disobeyed his order.

SFC Miller’s gunner CPL Middleton and Observer PVT Talley were killed on impact; we got the rest out; all wounded. We recovered Talley and most of Middleton.

The gentleman in the center of the above photo is Nizar Rayan, a Palestinian community organizer. As most of you are aware, he has been in the news the past couple of days. Notice in the photo that his head is attached to his rancid body. That is no longer the case.

THE day before a powerful blast sent his headless body flying out of his Gaza home, senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayan predicted that the Islamist movement would defeat Israel. “God willing, Hamas will win,” Rayan said in a vitriol-laden speech that the movement’s television broadcast just after he, his four wives and two of his daughters were killed in the Israeli blitz of the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

Rayan, who was 51, is the most senior Hamas leader killed since Israel unleashed its massive bombardment on Saturday in response to persistent rocket fire from the enclave.

Israeli F-16 jets fired two missiles at Rayan’s five-storey house in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The powerful explosion hurled his decapitated body out into the street, according to witnesses.

Apparently the IDF has read and decided to apply the “COB Counter-Terrorism Doctrine”.

It’s a fairly simple three-step approach in practical application.

Step One: Kill their leaders as violently as possible and publize broadly.
Step Two: Immediately kill anyone who steps up to assume their position.
Step Three: Destroy every building associated with terror including schools, hospitals, mosques etc.

I realize that this a fairly violent approach but it is beyond clear that violence is the only language these people understand.

Is my appraoch too savagely violent? Suppose an Israeli pilot had been shot down and landed in the very same neighborhood. Would his carcass not be being dragged through the streets of Gaza with throngs of supporters lining the streets in celebration?

We all know that would be the case. To say otherwise is to be a frigging retard.

Don’t be a retard, that’s who needs killing.

This feel-good story in today’s Dallas Morning News is a very telling indictment of the state of our modern culture.

Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital didn’t have to wait long to welcome the first baby of 2009 — a baby boy named Justin Daniel Ramirez arrived at 12:16 a.m.

Justin’s mom, a 15-year-old Dallas eighth-grader named Fernanda Rios, couldn’t stop smiling as she cradled her new son in her arms Thursday morning. “I was nervous at first about what my mom would say, but I told her I would try my best and she said okay,” Fernanda said.

Being 15 years old and half way through the eighth grade is not of indicator of over achievement but getting yourself knocked up in the eighth grade is clearly idiotic on a grand scale.

But it gets better.

Fernanda said she lives with her boyfriend, a 20-year-old construction worker, at her mom’s place.
That’s right folks, a 15 year old is pregnant by a 20 year old and this is celebrated in Dallas.

Just for the record, here is the law in Texas, statute 22.011:

Sexual assault for anyone to intentionally or knowingly penetrate a person under age 17, other than his spouse. The actor has an affirmative defense if he is not more than three years older than the victim, who is at least age 14

The penalty is 2-20 years in prison.

Leo Adler has put together a great list of 6 facts to keep in mind before you start whining about the Israeli strikes into Gaza.

Go read it, but here’s the COB6 condensed version.

1. Hamas puts its rocket launchers in close proximity to civilians on purpose. The “innocent” civilians know they are there. Bad move, dumb asses.

2. Gaza has not been “occupied” since 2005 when every Israeli soldier and civilian left it to the savages to govern for themselves. Bad move, dumb asses.

3. The “innocents” of Gaza freely elected a party that offered nothing but perpetual war and bloodshed against a superior armed force. Bad move, dumb asses.

4. The majority of the people of Gaza elected a party that calls for in its own constitution the destruction of the state of Israel and apparently buys totally into the 72 virgin idiocy. Bad move, dumb asses.

5. Hamas spends millions of dollars (much of which comes from the United States) importing weapons and indoctrinating the youth in hate. This policy has led to abject poverty and misery for the people. Bad move, dumb asses.

6. Gaza’s boundary with Israel is along the pre-1967 line. They are not occupied; they are savage terrorists. The people of Gaza chose these fanatics to lead their own children to poverty and death. Bad move, dumba sses.

Here’s the bottomline: There is a disproportionate response; it is far too leniate.

The Palestinians are not victims, they have chosen a path that could only lead to death and destruction. They are getting exactly what they have asked for (although not nearly enough in my opinion).

When a whole population elects a terror organization and aids them in launching thousands of rockets against a neighboring civilian populace; they have no business crying about what was inevitable.

Every Palestinian that has died and will die is getting no less than what they have openly begged for.

I almost named this post “Sorry Harry, No Reach Around”.

Today the embattled Illinois governor announced that he is appointing Roland Burris to take President elect Obama’s senate seat.

Even before his press conference, Harry Reid went on record saying that he would block any appointment made by Blagojevich.

Blagojevich responded by punking Harry Reid like the bitch that he is. He is going to force Reid to block an African American who would become the only African American in the US senate.

Blagojevich is a criminal but he is probably closer to the democrat norm than most realize but he is far more politically suavvy than even I realized. Blago is majorly pissed at the entire Democrat leadership who through him under the bus and he has apparently decided that he will humiliate as many as possible before going to prison.

To really put Reid (and possibly Obama himself) in his place he called a press conference and after announcing Burris to fill Obama’s seat, he rolled out a ringer; one Congressman Bobby Rush.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago said today during Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s press conference that one of the reasons former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris should be appointed to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s U. S. Senate seat is because Burris is black.

“Let me just remind you that there presently is no African-American in the Senate…this is just not a state of Illinois matter,” he said. “I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer. Roland Burris is worthy.”

“Hang or lynch”? Seems to be fairly racially charged rhetoric doesn’t it? Well, it should. Bobby Rush is a racist and bigot who has made a career of being a racist and bigot in a congressional district apparently full of racists and bigots.

What’s that, you never heard of Bobby Rush?

Mr. Rush has quite a storied past; perhaps I should say Rev. Rush since he did in fact graduate from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. But long before that he was in the US Army before going AWOL in 1968 where he immediately became co-founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers.
In 1969 Bobby increased his street cred by spending six months being somebody’s prison bitch on an illegal weapons conviction.

Even though he has been endorsed by hard core communists, he is still vbery popular in his district primarily because he is a huge advocate of reparations for African Americans.

To really drive the point though, Blago rolled out Bobby as the guy who defeated Barack Obama in the president elect’s first run for congress.

This ain’t going away folks. As a former Obama mentor would say, the chickens have come home to roost.

First, let me say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. Especially to all that sent me emails wondering if I had fallen off the earth. I didn’t, but I did spend a week in Washington DC with family and things were so crazy that even Jonn and I didn’t get a chance to link up. It was a great holiday but I found myself totally consumed with family.

Please forgive me, I know that you guys are family too.

So let’s just jump right in, shall we?

Isreal has decided to kill Palestinian terrorists; not nearly enough but it’s a start.

Investors Business Daily has a good take on the latest news from these Palestinian swine. (Yeah, I use the word swine intentionally).

After three years of ceaseless rocket and mortar barrages, Israel has decided to exercise its right to self-defense in what the likes of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon call a “disproportionate response.” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said: “For us to be asked to have (another) cease-fire with Hamas is like asking (America) to have a cease-fire with al-Qaida.”

To accept the anti Semite cries of “disproportionate response” and villify Israel for defending its citizens requires a whole new level of lefty-induced mental retardation.

This position is wonderfully illustrated by the statement today of the biggest idiot in the US House of Representatives, Dennis Kucinich:

Referring to Israel’s air assault on Hamas targets in Gaza, the Ohio legislator issued a statement saying: “All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law. Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable.”

Hamas is a terrorist organization and always has been. A majority of the savage retards in Gaza voted them into power, thus, a majority of the “innocents” are no more than terror enablers and should be killed.

Has Israel finally realized that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist?

It is almost sad to watch this pathetic charlatan desperately try to regain a shred of relevance.

From the Telegraph today:

In a rousing speech to hundreds of delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, the former US Presidential candidate echoed President-elect Barack Obama in calling for change.

“It is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of the planet and ruin the prospects of every future generation. That realisation must carry us forward. Our children have a right to hold us to a high standard when the future of all human kind is hanging in the balance.”

The star of the Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth called for global targets to cut carbon emissions to be toughened to take account of new scientific evidence that claims the world is warming faster than expected. He called for world leaders to meet regularly over the next year until they achieve a binding agreement on climate change.

Mr Gore said the celebrity-obsessed world had lost its way.

“The political systems of the developed world have become sclerotic. We have to overcome the paralysis that has prevented us from acting and focus clearly and unblinkingly on this crisis rather than spending so much time on OJ Simpson, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith.”

Let me see if I can help you out Al. You are correct that people do care more about these celebrities than they do global warming. I’ll try to explain this phenomenon briefly.

OJ Simpson = Murderous convict
Paris Hilton = Living whore
Anna Nichole Smith = Dead whore
Global Warming = Absolute myth

While certainly not a vocation that we would wish for our children, it is an unassailable fact that murderers and whores are real. Most people do care more about reality than myth. Something tangible and provable will always be more appealing to the human psyche than something that cannot be proven and is often disputed by opposing beliefs.

The primary exception to this rule of course is religion. Religious beliefs require a spiritual faith and for devout religious people no amount of evidence contrary to their beliefs will alter their position. In fact the devout will not even try to defend their belief they will simply label the questioner as Godless, morally retarded, Infidel, etc…

Do you see the link Al?

Global Warming is a cult. It is a hack religion being relentlessly promoted by corrupt and greedy snake oil salesmen like yourself, enemies of western culture that want to destroy our economy and Communists in academia that want nothing more than to cause the downfall of the greatest country in the history of the world.
Hope that helps Al.