This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Doc Bailey

  • Just because I’m curious.

    With all the news about the horror of the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare being a complete dud, I’d like to hear from you.  How many of you have actually signed up?  If so what state, and how was the experience?  Right now we can only get anecdotal information so I want to hear actual numbers.  If you’re not going to sign up, why?  Do you think it’s going to fall apart?  If so what will be the result for the country?

     

    I ask, you answer.

  • Ranger Up Presents: Suicide Awareness Week.

    RU Suicide

     

    September is Suicide Awareness Month and to that end the folks at the Rhino Den, and Ranger Up are devoting a whole week, with two articles a day to bringing awareness to the issue of suicides.  There will be active duty and Veterans attacking the issue from all angles and I hope you all tune in, and pass them around.  It’s an important issue and we need to, as a community, start paying attention and taking action.

     

    You can see some of the previous attempts to address the issue Here, Here, Here, and Here.  As Joe Biden might say it’s a big f**king deal, and I encourage you to read and share any of the articles that come up that have an impact on you.

  • You’re wrong and you should know better

    There is nothing I hate more than anyone disrespecting flag of the United States of America, or the uniform of it’s armed services.  From the hipster that wears the OD fatigues with patches as an “ironic” way of showing their disdain for the military to the idiots that act the fool while in uniform nothing makes my blood boil faster.  I can accept open disagreements with how the military should be employed, I can even accept ignorance of what the military actually does, but I simply can not accept any disrespect.  I can not accept any politician using the troops as a prop for political gain, nor can I accept any troops using their uniform, rank or position to affect the political climate with anything not directly affecting the business of their service.

    We’ve seen it happen before.  Maybe it started with Jon Kerry tossing his medals, then going before congress and lying about the “testimony” he got from “veterans” during the Winter soldier fiasco.  Maybe it was exacerbated by Danny Choi, who constantly uses his uniform to play dress up and get attention.  Maybe that douchebag Marine Sergeant that kept posting anti-Obama stuff all over Facebook (despite lawful and direct orders not to) has a hand in the continuing climate too.  I know for a fact that the narcissistic valor thieves can’t wait to get their slice of the action.

    So with all that said I think it’s pretty clear I loathe such people.  Imagine how I felt when I came across this little gem.

    navychiefpoliticalstatement
    Not to be outdone some other joker posing in Marine dress blues had to out do him.

    Marinepoliticalstatement
    Before I get into the fact that both an E-5 and an E-8 should KNOW better, or the possibility that these are valor thieves, let’s stop a second and point out that these men are cowards.  They put on the uniform with all their attendant medals, and make a political statement about what they didn’t join the military to do, but hide their face.  If you do something like that at least have the courage to show your face.  More than that don’t wear the uniform while saying it.  If you’re on your own time and feel butt hurt that you might be deployed to Syria, by all means you can talk about it in private.  You can shout and scream about it for hours to anyone you please, but when the time comes you put on your uniform and go where they tell you because that’s your duty.

    You think someone who joined the Air Force in say 1959, wanted to end up in Vietnam?  How about they guys that joined in the late 90’s and ended up in Iraq.  It sucks, and you can never tell where you’ll end up.  That’s part of the job.  You probably didn’t join for “area beautification” or getting stuck on a Sergeant Major’s detail when your LT sends your platoon into an ambush in the field.  I didn’t join to put tubes in men’s urethra’s.  There’s a whole lot of fine print when you join.  One thing that should be abundantly clear is that you swore to “Obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over me according to the uniform code of military justice.”  Until the President gives an illegal order (say “I want you to kill all first born sons”) you are legally, orally and ethically bound to FOLLOW THOSE ORDERS. Regardless of how we feel about the missions we’re handed down, we’ve got to suck it up and do them.  When you raise your right hand you lose your “rights” as an American Citizen and fall under a whole new set of rights and privileges.  One of those regulations states very clearly that you may not use that uniform for any political speech.

    The troops are not and can not be a part of the political process.  The military has untold power at its fingertips.  and if unchecked could run rampant.  If a General were to get the idea that he could be a Caesar, and that the Mississippi was the Rubicon, what’s to stop him?  Only the solemn knowledge that his troops would never follow his orders, and most would actually put him in the brig if he tried to march on Washington (Rome).  There is a very fine, and dangerous line that separates us from every two bit banana republic, or half assed Junta.  The fact that our military is completely subservient to the Will of the People through their duly elected Representatives is really the ONLY check against some crackpot general from just kicking in the doors of the White House and “fixing” Washington.  The populace might actually cheer such a thing, but it would be totally wrong in every way imaginable.

    I think Iraq was a mistake.  A costly one.  But when I got the call I did my damnedest to ensure that my small piece of that mission was successful. I think Syria is a mistake.  I think we shouldn’t get involved, but if we do the Soldiers Sailors Airmen and Marines had better be Johnny on the spot or they’re going to get their buddies killed.  These two clowns are beneath my contempt.  It doesn’t matter if I happen to agree with what they’re saying they are absolutely wrong, and they should be found busted down in rank and perhaps even drummed out.  But then, I take disrespecting the uniform more seriously than some people do.

    UPDATE:

    I wasn’t even finished writing this post when this ass clown popped up on my facebook feed.

    Soldierpoliticalstatement
    I swear these idiots are coming out of the woodwork.  Maybe Obama’s forthcoming purge of the military might actually be a good thing. . .
    [Editor’s note: Doc was joking, of course he doesn’t want the military purged, I’m guessing]

    Update 2: I hadn’t even finished that update when this clown shows up.

    Sailorpoliticalstatement
    I give up.  I’m sure at least one of these clowns is a valor thief but I’m willing to bet not all are.  Good thing I’m not still in.  I would most certainly like to bring back wall-to-wall counseling with these idiots.

     

    Update 3: Sooo. . . apparently some on the OTHER side of this issue have gotten in on the act.

     

    Marinecounterstatement

     

    Can’t see the rank on this guy, but judging from the tats and the KIA bracelet as well as the wording of the sign I would say this guy is legit (as opposed to the somewhat questionable clowns above).  So. . . this is probably about to go full retard PDQ.

  • Bombs away

    In WWII, several new theories of war were developed, most of which are still in practice today.  From the Blitzkrieg, essentially an armored thrust designed to penetrate deep into the heart of the enemy lines and create chaos in the rear area, to the idea of Strategic Bombing, the idea of bombing civil infrastructure to reduce overall military power, we still employ most of the ideas honed in the conflagration that engulfed the world.  The major problem is that we are no longer fighting WWII.  We have seen the severe weakness of the standard playbook in recent years, and unfortunately have failed to recognize and adapt to the changing realities the battlefield presents.

     

    Take the Blitz for instance.  One could aptly call it a spear thrust, because that’s almost exactly what it is.  The support, and the actual fighting formations all move on the same roads at the same pace in the same direction.  When facing down a numerically superior force in a defensive posture, the Blitz works quite well.  However as we saw in Iraq, sweeping aside a numerically superior force was almost laughably easy but securing the areas we had gained was next to impossible with the forces we had available.  Many of the weapons and soldiers that would ignite the insurgency were able to slip into the populace because the US formations were not able to sweep and clear the towns like Nassaryiah or Najaaf that they just swept through.  When the insurgency was finally upon the troops they had to go back and sweep and clear a lot of the same towns that they’d fought through in the initial push.  Whole stockpiles of military munitions were left unguarded, and the failure to provide order and prevent looting showed how totally inequitably the generals had prepared for the Iraq War.  One wonders how many lives on both sides might have been saved if the ground commanders had had both adequate forces, and the wherewithal to say that getting to Baghdad in 30 days was less important than securing Iraq for the long haul.

     

    Then there’s Strategic Bombing.  Perhaps we should have learned in the Korean War, when B-29 formations ran out of significant targets within the first week, that Strategic Bombing doesn’t work if the enemy has no infrastructure.  Advocates of Strategic Bombing often point to WWII, in both Germany and Europe, and also to Bosnia and Kosovo as proof positive that it can work.  But there were other factors that make it clear that it was more a supporting factor than an actual causal one.  For instance during one night when Tokyo was hit with a massive incendiary strike over 100,000 people died, which is more than the combined total of deaths from both atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  But Tokyo wasn’t the only target hit.  Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe. . . really every major Japanese city was almost leveled, as was nearly every German city.  Even the London Blitz in 1940 should make it clear that such bombing it not entirely effective.  It is true that such attacks did affect industry, and thus have a supporting role in ending the war, but the Germans had to be almost completely smashed from both sides, and the Japanese had to have super-weapons dropped on them before they gave up.

     

    Even the example of Kosovo is fundamentally flawed.  True the bombing campaign did have an effect, but not as great as we often try to make it sound like it did.  Did Milosevic step aside because American bombers were blowing up his infrastructure with impunity, or was it because the US was starting to mobilize ground forces?  We may never know exactly, but it raises enough of a question that we should not be so readily relying on air strikes as the one stop shop for winning wars.

     

    Perhaps most of all the drone program should prove the inherent fallacy of Strategic Bombing.  Since there is no infrastructure of note for the Taliban and al Qaeda who seem perfectly happy to “rough it” in what is essentially early steel age conditions what targets are there left for the roving war planes?  People.  There’s just one slight problem here.  In simplest language we don’t know who we’re killing.  We don’t know what we’re hitting, and once the missile is launched there’s really no recalling it.  True there are a ton of terrorists that have been killed, but who else have we killed?  Doctors?  Engineers?  Perhaps even the very people that we might be able to use as assets against the propaganda of the terrorists.  Relying on Strategic Bombing in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Libya have lead to the situation spinning out of control, and the view from the top becoming even more confusing than ever.  We simply don’t know whose doing what with whom and for what purpose anymore.

     

    Now with armed intervention in Syria looking ever more likely it seems almost a foregone conclusion that it will take the exact same route as the intervention in Libya.  We have no idea who the rebels are, and no way of gaining even a semblance of control, but we will most likely use a series of low risk air strikes to “help” the rebels.  This will work *eventually* to weaken the Assad forces and potentially even weaken Iranian influence in the region, or it might backfire and create a chaotic churning mass of old rivalries and hatreds that continue to churn for the next decade or more.  The fault lines in the Middle East are not solely along the borders of Israel, but everywhere where there is more than one race, and Syria is perhaps one of the most diverse ME nation.  Arabs will kill Assyrians, Kurds will kill Arabs.  This is to say nothing of the Persians or the half dozen other ethnic groups in the country that will only make it worse.  That is to say nothing of the rift between Sunni and Shi’a.  Worse still, as we have seen in Afghanistan, and Iraq, internal conflicts have a way of spilling over into neighboring nations.  The violence in Syria seems to be corresponding with an uptick in the violence in Iraq.

     

    Libya was at least a stable state before the Qaddafi was targeted.  Now the Libyans don’t even really have a semblance of order, it is controlled by roving militias which might as well be the same as firing the police forces of Chicago and turning it over to the Gangs.  This is to say nothing of the serious military hardware that was just left behind by the Qaddafi regime.  Surface to Air Missiles, (SAMs), anti-aircraft artillery pieces, artillery shells, long range rockets, mortars. . . in the hands of an army such things would be trivial and out dated even, but in the hands of terrorists who neither recognize nor fight for any state, unparallelled chaos could be wrought across the globe.  This is what is in store for us if we intervene in Syria as we did in Libya.

     

    We can no longer afford to kid ourselves that we can win a few wars inexpensively but dropping a few “surgical” bombs in key places.  Air Power will always play a role in warfare for as long as we are able to fly, but we can not pretend anymore that it is the be all end all.   If we are to intervene in Syria it will take an Army and Marine Corps that we simply don’t have anymore.  If we intervene we will need ground forces to secure the weapons left behind, and provide order during the transition.  With the looming draw downs due so sequestration, and the cost of over a decade at war, sending any appreciable ground force into Syria would strain the ground combat services nearly to the breaking point.  Worse still the Navy and Air Force would be unable to support those troops as they too are looking at drastic cuts to their manpower and capabilities.

     

    In all honesty I can not see what anyone hopes to gain by involvement in Syria.  The same people who cited how Iraq was an “Illegal War” seem to be pushing us towards Syria for might the same reasons we got involved in Iraq.  With Us influence on the wane in the last five years, it would be doubtful how many allies we could entice to such a venture.  We could always “go it alone” but as I said before we simply don’t have the forces, or perhaps even more important the political and popular will to do so.  Unfortunately our President has backed himself into a corner by talking about “red lines,” and issuing dire threats to the Assad regime.  Now that it appears that chemical weapons have in fact been used the US must intervene or lose even more face and political clout internationally.  The Drone President can not simply whip out a few strikes from UAVs hold up some dead terrorists and claim victory this time.  As the Bard said; “Let us talk of Graves, of worms, and Epitaphs. . . Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been depose; some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts of those they deposed.”

  • Oh, my bad, it’s CHELSEA Manning now. . . how could I have been so silly?

    You heard it folks, according to CNN, Manning released a statement to the Today show which basically says “I’m a woman, the world is cruel” or some such garbage.  He wishes to be called Chelsea and will be undergoing hormone therapy to bring himself more inline with his new identity.  Or something like that.  So let’s just recap.  Manning was sentenced to 35 years, which if he serves the whole sentence will mean he gets out when he’s roughly 60 years old.  Keep in mind that this is the biggest espionage/leak cases since the Walkers, and the information he released caused the deaths of several informants, terps, and even people that hadn’t acted like total dicks to the Americans.   But no this is what’s important.

     

    No doubt there will be rallies a plenty to talk about how much of a hero he is.  How it’s totes unfair that he is locked up.  Hashtag free sex change.  You and I will foot the bill for him to rediscover himself and no doubt there will be all sorts of civil suites trying to get the DoD to pay for his sex change to recognize him as a woman, and I have no doubt before long he’ll somehow turn into a rally cry for every transgendered person that has anything to do with the military.  I have no doubt that while all this is going on, he’ll send out “statements” which will reaffirm he’s the victim in all of this, and the evil nasty militatry won’t allow him to be self actualized.  Oh. . . the Horror.  The horror.

     

    Here’s the real deal.  Manning, regardless of what sex he wants to be or what he calls himself was a selfish insensitive prick.  It doesn’t really matter that he joined the army because he wanted money for college.  There’s no sin there, hell, that’s why I joined.  But the serious line of departure is when he somehow found it all to hyper masculine, and decided to act out.  The fact that he, a male, hit his female supervisor with a plastic table shows that he has absolutely no respect for women in the first place, and thus no class.  That said supervisor then knocked his ass to the ground and restrained him shows what a wimp he was.  That he used LADY GAGA of all CDs to copy classified info shows he has no taste.  That he released the info willy nilly, with no care or concern for the damage it could cause, or the lives it would end shows he has no honor.  That he released this statement shows he has no remorse.  So, I really have to ask when can we acknowledge him as the pointless waste of space and genetics he really is?

     

    I am sick and tired of people calling these self centered egotistical jack wagons “heroes.”  There’s nothing heroic about what he did.  He didn’t let us know about any “war crimes.”  He didn’t tell us anything we needed to know about a war that for the most part was already over.  Most of all, he was not a victim, either of circumstances, nor of the bag bad Army.  He made his own choices in life, and is still refusing to take responsibility for them.  At least with Nasser Abdo, and Nidal Hassan they’re all about the jihad and fully admit what they did.  This little piss ant can’t even muster up the decency to do that.  I say, no hormone therapy.  I say no “treatments.”  I say no sex change.  Not on our dime, and not while he’s being punished for one of the largest leaks in the history of America.  He needs to go to a deep dark hole, and not reappear until it is time for him to be discharged.  That’s it.  End of story.  We’ve already wasted enough on this idiot, time to move on.

  • Newer is not always better

    I’ve seen a lot of interesting things being posted about the F-35, the DoD’s newest wiz-bang be-all kill-all fighter, designed to replace the AV-8B Harrier, A-10 Warthog, F-16 Falcon, and the F-18 Hornet.  Most of the articles I’ve seen suggest that the F-35 is more Dud, than High speed death machine.  It seems that if anyone dies because of the F-35 it might well be our own pilots.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, now we have a senator saying the A-10’s will be gone inside of a year.  Scared yet?  It seems that everyone is convinced that Drones, and high flying stealthy machines are the winning ticket.  I have yet to see any literature or opinions that say that the F-35 is anything more than a disaster waiting to happen.

     

    Now let’s look at the A-10 alone, and it becomes painfully clear that this move is not only boneheaded but highly dangerous.  Take this article, which says that the F-35 could not possibly fly as many sorties as the A-10.  Even the B model which is supposed to be a V/STOL variant, couldn’t keep up.  I’m not an aircraft expert but I can bet that even if they did manage that kind of turn around, there’s no way that the F-35 could carry the awesome array of bombs, or air to ground missiles.  One of the other selling points of the A-10 is how it uses relatively less fuel when compared to most jet aircraft which gives it both range and loiter ability that the supersonic F-35 never could match.

     

    But this article, is perhaps one of the most damming of all.  It tells the tale of US troops in contact, in Afghanistan, in danger of being overrun.  The A-10’s managed to keep the enemy at bay, and used up a lot of ammo in the process.  Ammo that the F-35 could never ever match.  The reason is pretty simple.  The A-10 doesn’t need to be stealthy.  It doesn’t need to fight Migs or go supersonic.  In fact going low and slow is exactly what it’s designed to do.  The A-10 is really the only airframe in our arsenal that is designed solely for close air support.  It is designed to kill tanks and ground troops in prodigious numbers.  If anyone recalls Desert Storm, the A-10 earned the nickname “Whistling Death” as they tore up whole battalions of enemy troops and tanks at a time.

     

    In my own personal experience, when I first arrived at FOB Warrior (Kirkuk Air Base) there was an A-10 squadron stationed there.  They would run regular patrols all over Northern Iraq.  I only heard of one instance when the A-10’s were actually called in, but one of the things I liked most about them was that they were quiet.  You really wouldn’t hear them unless they’re almost on top of you, and I actually got sleep being at the end of the runway.  A few months in the A-10’s were replaced by the “sexier” F-16’s.  You could tell the difference immediately.  As cool as it is when you see an F-16 do a max power take off the first time, I got almost no sleep because those suckers are loud.  More than that, you could tell when they were overhead.  You could hear them and point out their general direction when they were miles away.  Generally speaking, this is not a good thing in a ground attack fighter.  You don’t want the enemy to know they’re about to get corn cobbed until it’s too late.  That’s actually one of the few good things about a predator drone, you simply don’t know its there until it’s too late.

     

    Another point where the F-35 fails, is ruggedness.  I don’t care how cool the new stealth fighters are, they can’t hold a candle to the A-10.  There are several really great pictures of A-10’s that made it back to base with their tail practically shot off.  They’re even designed so that if an engine explodes it won’t damage the avionics.  I would seriously doubt that any officer in command of an  F-35 unit would allow any of his or her pilots to descend low enough to actually pick up anti air fire, let alone strafe targets on the ground.  If they did, in some hypothetical situation, how much damage could the highly sophisticated craft really take.  Even the mainstay fighters like the F-15 and F-16 don’t take well to AA fire.  Clearly someone has forgotten in order to preform the CAS mission you have to go low enough to hit the enemy, but when you’re that low, the enemy can hit you too.

     

    So why the emphasis?  Why the urgency?  Well Sequester has some of the blame, but in truth the AF has an institutional bad habit of favoring the shiniest new toys designed to fight in a futuristic world, the strangely never seems to happen.  The F-104 Starfighter is a great example.  It’s a good thing that it was never actually used to fight a war, because it had a nasty habit of killing pilots just trying to land the damn thing.  The F-4 Phantom, originally a Navy project, was supposed to prove that a gun was no longer needed for areal combat.  Instead, the F-4 proved conclusively that a gun was needed on fighter aircraft.  The Stealth technology of the F-117, and B-2 is also another great example it’s supposed to be the ultimate, but we’ve seen examples of both airframes with extreme vulnerability.  As awesome as the nighthawks were, they were also extremely vulnerable, one even getting shot down in Kosovo.  As far as the B-2 Spirit, each one costs roughly the same as a Ticonderoga class cruiser, and while we’ve certainly gotten our money’s worth out of them, a few years ago one of the bombers (we only had 21) crashed because of water droplets on one of the sensors.

     

    The Air Force, is full of egg heads, that love to have the coolest toys.  While no one can argue that’s a pretty human trait, where the Air Force goes wrong is that they forget their sole purpose is to win wars, not look cool doing it.  We could have arguments as to the risk aversion in CAS missions, and to be fair risk aversion is a problem every service is having right now, but the plain truth is that we still need the A-10.  Despite all the warm fuzzies that the services and Lockeed have been putting out about the F-35, every time I hear about it I get a cold chill go down my spine.  I think the rush to get the latest toy, that can do every mission asked of it (many of those missions with wildly different mission requirements) will leave us vulnerable, and quite possibly get a lot of good people killed.  Of course by the time we figure that out it will be far too late.

  • Back in the Saddle

    Howdy folks.  If some of you were wondering where I was, well that’s a long story that involves crappy apartment complexes, living in a college town and a gold fish named steve.  The good news is that I’m back, and you guys can expect over the weekend that I’ll tell you all about it.

     

    I want to give a special note of thanks to Jonn.  Even though I didn’t take him up on the offer, the idea of a bed and a shower were much appreciated.  For the rest of you, hold on to your seats, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

     

    On one more thing. . . Now that College football is starting up I thought I’d throw this out there for ya.

    IMG_1506[1]

     

    let the games begin.

  • Wipe Like a Man

    Thanks to Michael Shlitz for bringing this awesomeness to my attention.  I think you’ll all agree this is the most many S**t paper commercial ever.  One Wipe Charlies.

    Now that you’ve seen the video let me put out a few thoughts.  First, and foremost, there is nothing more terrible than having a Baghdad Blowout when your on over-watch and your ass wipe is in the OP 300 meters away.  I’ve had to attempt to use Arab “toilets” more than once and it is the worst feeling in the world to unconsciously reach over to where the TP should be and find nothing there.  That is a shitty day my friends, and I will not talk about my improvised solution.  Not cool is all I’ll say.

    Second, anyone whose ever had Mermite every other meal with MRE’s making up the difference will tell you, it is the most horrible feeling in the world to have a rock hard log with a massive tsunami waiting to break behind it.  Giving birth, then pissing out your ass (POMA) only to realize that all you have are those little Kleenex packets that come in the MRE to wipe away the foulness makes you realize the devil must somehow been involved.  You also tend to realize that more than POGie bait, more than extra batteries, more that something shiny to keep the LT occupied, the one thing that you want with you is asswipe.  Not just any ass wipe though.  The strongest most rock hard SOB of an infantryman will tell you, when diarrhea eventually sets in (it always does) you want your ass feeling like it was wiped with silk.

    Third, I’m not endorsing the product here at all, I just thought that the video was funny as hell.  Having said that, I’ve used “Hoah wipes” and “anti-monkey butt” and all sorts of products like that.  I think it’s important for soldiers to test out various products and figure out what works and what doesn’t.  I also think it’s great that there are companies that realize the realities of the field and try to make products to accommodate those needs.  Field sanitation and comfort don’t always have to be mutually exclusive.  There’s all sorts of things that I learned (like wearing hoes on a long ruck march) that any good NCO will pass on to his or her troops.  The job requires that we go to miserable s**tty places and live in conditions that are worse than the “cruel and unusual punishment” that gets inmates released out of California prisons.  Even the slightest bit of comfort can make or break a deployment/Field op.  So I say good on to anyone that attempts to come up with something that can be used for said purpose.

    Lastly, I’m so glad to see manly commercials making a comeback.  Seeing commercials of men so stupid that they walk into sliding doors or set themselves on fire while barbequing are getting pretty F**king old.  It’s bad enough I’m expected by society to willingly sign a hand receipt for my testicles whenever there’s a change of command in Girlfriend Command (GIRFRICOM), I don’t need to be bombarded with clips making me out to be the biggest retard that ever lived just because I happen to be a dude.  I’m sick of pastel colors, calming yoga poses, and commercials about how a certain type of yogurt will make Jamie Lee Curtis have a better defecation experience.  Every once in a while I want to see a guy shaving with a chain saw for no apparent reason.  Why?  WHO CARES?!?!  We’re men, we do stuff like that (well maybe not THAT).  It’s nice for add agencies to remember that hey, there’s this whole other group of people that buy stuff, and they don’t happen to be soccer moms.  Or women.

     

    Hope y’all have a good week.  Go forth and do Awesome.