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

Author: Sporkmaster

  • This is a TAH public service announcement.

    With the new promotion system going into affect combined with the reduced time for up or out is good idea to bring up the new online classes and what all Soldiers should know.

    First of the old system ATIA is dead. Any courses taken after January 1st will not count. Considering that most of the classes were taken off ATIA leaving less then thirty classes. But any hours earned before the new year can be grandfathered in. Make sure that you keep a printed or electronic copy for S1. At this time the S1 cannot manually update them to your ERB and to present them prior to your board. At this time the only way that seems to work in added these hours to your ATTRS transcript is to contact the Army Training Help Desk that can be found My Training section. You can sent them screen shots of your old ATIA course list as well as what is current on you ATTRS. You can tell the classes that came from the old ATIA system because they will be taged with a ATSC – LMS identifier. Oh and that Army Warrior University Enrollments will not show any new classes that have been taken not using ATIA

    The current system Army Learning Management System (ALMS) has been going through some changes. The time limit and number of chances you are given to pass your the test for the courses has been removed if registered through Army Training Requirements and Resources System (ATRRS). Instead you are given the option of downloading the class material in a PDF format that can be used when taken the test. Some computers have issues with displaying the course material and test at the same time. For this issue you have to download the PDF before you can be allowed to take the test.

    Also this is a important part. If you want credit for your classes to show in your ATRRS transcripts and ERB, you must register in ATRRS. Signing up for classes in ALMS will not show up after you complete it at this time. This is important because the number of hours listed on your ERB sent directly from your ATRRS transcripts. Also any new classes will automatically be updated to ERB without having to go to your local S1 with the 20 point increase min.

    There are some current issues with ALMS. When you complete a test make sure that you exit out correctly. Because if you do not do this, your exam will be recorded as incomplete. Even if you scored a 100. Some of the classes will have issues and I think I found one. I have taken and passed the exam at least ten times and no dice. I waiting on a reply from the ALMS and ATTRS support staff about this.

    Hopes this helps, I wanted to do this since I spent the good part of January as a acting squad leader and getting my second Soldier of the Month board win. (Don’t get too excited, I was the only one competing this time. ). I am been working on the new ACCP system since that is one of my weak areas. This April will be five years in the Army and I want to become a NCO before my sixth year. Also people have been asking me questions about the new ACCP system so I figured that it would be a good subject to talk about.

  • Fort Hood shooter ruled ‘sane’

    Sometimes I love being several hours behind the East coast time zone that way I can have the fun of getting to pass along news that it less then a hour old.

    KILLEEN, Texas — The US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting spree on a Texas army base has been ruled sane and thus fit for trial, a source familiar with the case said.

    The ruling by a group of medical experts, called a sanity board, opens the door for a court martial that could end in the execution of Major Nidal Hasan, who was paralyzed from the neck down during the November 5, 2009 massacre.

    Neither prosecutors nor retired Army Colonel John Galligan, a veteran military lawyer representing Hasan, 40, would confirm the board’s decision.

    But Galligan suggested it went against his client, who worked at Fort Hood until the shooting.

    “I’m not going to say what they ruled,” he told AFP. “I would just say this: I don’t think the report will be anything that will be an impediment to the charges from the government’s perspective.”

    So that should throw the insanity plea, but it is being said that the trial could be as long as a year out from now.

  • Really? You don’t say.

    Yea, totally did not see this coming.

    BRENDAN TREMBATH: A New York-based Human Rights watchdog says the United Nations and European Union aren’t putting enough pressure on repressive countries. Human Rights Watch’s newly released annual report says the international community has failed to defend people and organizations struggling for human rights. Its local representative says human rights have deteriorated in Asia.

    Really you honestly expect that people actually do something on your behalf.

    Speaking of groups there is this nice little gem.

    “The sad truth behind the leak is that al-Jazeera tried to weaken the peace supporters by presenting the (Palestinian) Authority as if it had surrendered and capitulated to the Israeli side.

    Also seems there is some crazy things going on in Egypt right now.

  • Why do I do this to myself.

    Recently I have been on two different conversations that have me banging my head against the wall.

    The first one was a re-post on Facebook article by a guy by the name Scott Bonn. The standard claims, the UN did not approve, violated international law, we needed the UN’s approval for it to be legal, and accusations of war crimes.

    So I posted on the person’s post and she said that she was friends with the guy and that I would get a reply from him. I was thinking that I might get a decent reply: mistake one. He responded when I posted about the UN’s resolutions that supported us being in Iraq all the way until 2008. Which he replied.

    The resolution was to “inspect” not to bomb and kill tens of thousands of its citizens! An invasion requires a UN authorization which the Bush crowd sought but, when denied, they conveniently said they didn’t need it. The invasion also violated the Nuremberg Charter as an aggressive act of war and the occupation, torture and killing violated the Geneva conventions. Ask any other expert on the international laws of war and they will tell you the same. Thank you.

    So my douche bag dectector is going off big time, but I wanted to reply to this “expert” to see what his sources would be if I listed the UN resolutions regarding Iraq. I even gave him direct links to the UN resolutions right off the UN’s website. Also reminded him about the cease fire and that Afghanistan was a UN approved operation. So I was thinking maybe that just maybe I might get a response to these Resolutions. Mistake 2.

    Doesn’t justify an invasion. Plain and simple under international law.

    Yea, that counters everything, just reply back with a comment that all but says: “I am right because I say so”.

    I message the person to say that I am hardly impressed with her new “friend” and she was less then impressed as well about the exchange.

    Then there was another one were I was directed to this link after I used Iraq as a example of a working counter-insurgency place. The person that I replied to was making a comment that only a operation like the one in Sri Lanka.

    The article starts off with the again standard claim that there is a Civil War raging in Iraq

    Bombings took the lives of 62 Shiite pilgrims, mostly in the holy city of Karbala, but also in Diyala province. Sunni Arab guerrillas are still attempting to destabilize the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by provoking Shiite-Sunni feuds and spreading a feeling of instability that interferes with investment and reconstruction. .

    The second I saw Diyala providence got my attention right away. For those that do not know I was stationed in Iraq from 2008-2009. So considering that I went on over 165 missions in this area, I wanted to know what he was trying to paint that place as.

    All these years after George W. Bush’s insane war of choice against Iraq, that country remains mired in civil war, as social scientists define it:

    Ugh, no it was not really as bad as he claims it is. You can read my thoughts on this on that link.

    Also his confidence in US and the Iraqi populations is less then stunning.

    The bad news is that there is no early prospect of this civil war ending, and security improvements have leveled off in recent months.

    All this is not to say that the 47,000 US troops still in the country should remain (at all!) If Arabic-speaking, Iraqi Shiite troops and police could not stop a truck bombing in Karbala, US troops wouldn’t have a prayer of doing so. This level of violence cannot in fact bring down the Iraqi government. But it can keep Iraq from attracting foreign investment and keep the population nervous, and so is an element of destabilization.

    Bush and the Neoconservatives’ shining beacon on a hill has in fact become a nearly 8 year long civil war, with no end in sight.

    But then again this is the same guy that said this.

    There are rumors that the Israeli government may declare a unilateral cease fire Saturday. They had better. Because if they ruin the Obama inauguration by splashing the bloody bodies of dead Palestinian children all over the press during the next few days, no Americans, even the most pro-Israeli, are going to forgive them.

    Why do I do this to myself thinking that I get a real conversation.

    ADDED:

    I just got this a reply.

    Of course there’s a civil war: that’s what the neocons wanted and that’s why there was no post-war planning. The Israel Lobby neocons pretend to be about spreading democracy whereas they actually are about destabilization. Michael A. Ledeen wrote in his 2002 book The War Against the Terror Masters: “First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the big three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria.” “Stability is an unworthy American mission…. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia…The real issue is not whether, but how best to destabilize.” Of course, fomenting civil wars and destabilizing the Muslim enemies of Israeli expansionism has been a longtime Israeli strategy. This policy was enunciated in February 1982 by Israeli strategist Oded Yinon writing in the World Zionist Organization magazine Kivunim. The idea was to dissolve Israel’s enemies into powerless mini-states. Yinon relished the Iraq-Iran War which he hoped would lead to civil war and fragmentation of Iraq, Israel’s most feared enemy. It did not. However, the Zionist neocons then lied us into the unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003 which did foment a civil war. Similarly, the current US/Israel-pushed Hariri tribunal is aimed at destabilizing Lebanon. That’s what the neocons want.

    **FACE PALM**

  • Bank accused of overcharging Veterans on home loans.

    It seems that Chase bank is being accused of overcharging and improperly foreclosing on homes of Veterans.

    One of the nation’s biggest banks — JP Morgan Chase — admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

    Chase bank has said that there have been at least 4,000 people that might have been overcharged and at least 14 who had theirs homes taken because of this. Chase Bank has said in a statement that it will be sending out refunds and help those that have lost their homes to have them returned.

    “We are deeply appreciative of those who fight to protect our country and Chase funds a number of programs that provide benefits to military personnel and veterans, and while any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly badly about the mistakes we made here,” Chase chief communications officer Kristin Lemkau said in a statement to NBC News.

    She said that beginning this week Chase will be mailing a total of about $2 million in refunds to families that may have been overcharged. She says most of the families improperly foreclosed on have gotten or will get their homes back. A bank official described what happened here as “grim,” but emphasized the mistakes were inadvertent, not malicious.

    If you have or know anyone that is currently having a mortgage with Chase bank to get the word out to make sure that people are not being overcharged on their interest rates.

  • Afghanistan IED’s claim more victims.

    Seventeen more Afghanistan civilians were killed to include at least one child. Nine of them were guests at a wedding. So once again Insurgents deliberate attacks have caused innocent deaths that do not get reported with the same effort.

    The wedding guests, all members of the same extended family, were killed when their station wagon hit a bomb outside Pul-i-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province north of Kabul, provincial authorities said. Baghlan, along with a wide swath of northern territory, has become far more dangerous over the last year as the Taliban insurgency pushes outward from its traditional strongholds in the south and east.

    A spokesman for the provincial government, Mahmood Haqmal, identified the dead as two men, six women and one child.

    Family members and neighbors often travel together in overcrowded vehicles, particularly in rural Afghanistan, so a single bomb often has devastating results. A day earlier, in Helmand province in the country’s south, a minivan triggered a roadside bomb, killing six people, and two others were killed by an improvised bomb in neighboring Oruzgan province, officials said.

    Also one thing that seems to be claims is a embargo on fuel being made against Iran by some of the local Afghanistan government.

    For some Afghans, war’s hardships are overshadowed by more mundane daily privations. A fuel shortage has been spreading — blamed by Afghan officials on a near-blockade imposed by Iran, which borders Afghanistan to the west.

    Hundreds of fuel tankers are stranded at the border, with only a fraction of the usual number trickling through.

    Afghanistan’s commerce minister, Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, said Sunday that the government was trying to obtain fuel from other neighboring countries. Negotiations with Iran to allow tankers through in their usual numbers have so far been unsuccessful, he said.

    Afghan officials have cited Iranian suspicions that the fuel is destined for North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force says none of its supplies come by way of Iran.

  • Things said in our names.

    Some of the newer things going around on Facebook, Conservatives growing weary of Afghan war: study

    A new survey commissioned by the Afghanistan Study Group reveals that conservatives and tea party voters are growing concerned about the sustainability of US operations in Afghanistan.

    Sixty-six percent of conservatives said the US should diminish its military presence in Afghanistan — 39 percent supported reduced troop levels while 27 percent championed prompt withdrawal.

    The only time I have ever heard people call for a draw down is that the President should go all in our all out, not a in between. But this is being passed around as it it is a sudden change that the those against the Wars are winning political ground.

    Of course that means putting out more videos like this one by Kathy Kelly.

    Just back from Afghanistan, Kathy talks about the impact of the war, Afghan desires for non-military solutions, and the role of the US peace movement.

    The second part can be found here.

    Of course videos like this would not be complete without anti-recruiting videos.

    Straight talk from soldiers, veterans and their family members tells what is missing from the sales pitches presented by recruiters and the military’s marketing efforts.

    So in short everything is your fault you blood thirsty bastard, but we really care about you.

  • What is going around on Facebook: Village Razing by US troops.

    I have a few friends on Facebook on the opposite side of the Afghanistan War so I get several links that pass around. This one caught my eye.

    The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing

    Long story short is that the author is upset that we dealt the Taliban that kicked out the villagers and used their homes as weapons. But at a glance the article implies that we are randomly destroying villages to not “lose momentum”.

    Of course when people have mentioned that the town was a bomb they just started the insults.

    The point of these razing is not to hurt the people or even influence them – the purpose is to make safe the area for the civilians in the most effective and efficient manner possible.

    They didn’t raze a harmless village. The village was turned into a massive bomb by the Taliban. The US forces destroyed a Taliban stronghold that just happened to have been a civilian town before. The Taliban are the enemy of the people here, not the US Soldiers. If the Taliban hadn’t filled the place with bombs, after kicking out the civilians, it wouldn’t have had to have been destroyed.

    Here is another good one that the author does not consider.

    Yes, the explosives imbedded in the village would have made it difficult for the soldiers to “clear it” safely – without assistance from the villagers, that is. You have to wonder, if the village was turned into a “massive bomb,” how were the villagers able to live in it? Surely a little effort at diplomacy would have yielded the neccessary information, building friendships instead of hostility.

    I have seen it myself in Iraq in 2008. They drive out the local population and use the houses for House borne IEDs.

    But since people will just look at the photos make a false assumption about what is going on in Afghanistan.